The Poems of Madam Albithurst: The Duke

The door was large and steel. The room was cold and dark. My Archonarchian friend ushered me inside, and closed the door behind me. The light came from high above, creating a cold silver circle for me to stand in.

I certainly felt at the time that the dark emptiness was a refreshing change from the chaotic outside. The noise had given an ache to my head, and now I found myself at rest. But it was not long before the soothing respite was broken by the sound of approaching steps. In moments, another light shone down from above, a second circle of silver, a moon drawing ever closer to mine. In the middle of the circle stood a man I had seen before.

“By my heart,” I clasped my hand to my breast in sincere and affected surprise. “It cannot be.”

“I certainly hope it can,” the Duke of Ten Vials, for it was he, stepped forward. “If it cannot, then I certainly have some explaining to do — and I don’t have a good explanation to give.”

I thought at the time, I am not ashamed to admit, that I had perhaps been driven mad, that even this distant proximity to the world of the Archonarchy had somehow affected me in a manner the most fanciful legends of the creeping doom suggested. It could not be true, and yet it was! The Duke could not live, and yet here he stood! If I was not mad, then surely the world was.

I suppose it was some desperate attempt to find my footing again that forced my tongue to move once more. In desperation, I spoke aloud in the hope of shattering this dream, this lie. “Are you not dead?”

“Dead?” The Duke glanced down at his smooth hands, a faint smile drifting across his face. “Oh! Will you look at that? Well…I suppose from your point of view I must be. Such an odd thing.”

“What other point of view is there?” I asked. “I saw the blood. Turned dry and black, it was. A body doesn’t last without blood in it.”

“Now, now, Madam Albithurst,” the Duke grinned wider before taking my hand and ushering me through the strange darkness we inhabited. “You of all people should know better. There are over a trillion souls throughout the Myriad Worlds, I should think, and each one has their own point of view. Is that not the purpose of your poems? To share one’s point of view with others?”

“Perhaps,” I said, quite churlishly. In spite of my companion’s charm and pointed accuracy in his analysis.

“Perhaps,” he repeated, his knowing smile filling me with frustration. “Well, we’ll say no more about it.”

“If I might ask,” I said, graciously turning my attention away from my own consternation, “my dear friend and erstwhile companion, Captain Venriki de’Laisey, of the Anointed Bulwark — perhaps you know him? I must have mentioned him when we spoke at the ball — has been given the charge to discover the murderer of your corporeal form. I wouldn’t ask something so personal, you understand, only the poor thing is so dreadfully devoted to his work.”

The Duke of Ten Vials frowned. “Who killed me? I suppose that too is a matter of perspective, much as my death is. You see, the High on High and the Archonarchy have long been at odds with each other, as have the Arcwhite kingdoms, and the Circumvexing Hill, and the Principalities of Cast, and…well, it was time for a change.”

“A change?” I repeated. “What on earth do you mean?”

“We talked,” the Duke continued, as though he had not heard me, “of a great many things that night. We spoke of our love for each other, and the future we wished we could have. We spoke of the pleasures of spring, and the struggles of winter. We told stories of the lands we had never shared, and shed many, many tears.”

It was at this moment that I realized that the Duke was not talking about me, but some other charming companion I had not yet been introduced to.

“There wasn’t a plan,” he continued. “At least, not like you’d recognize. It grew like flowers or trees, out of the fertile soil of our uncertainties. All twelve of us imagined a whole new world. The Myriad plus one. It seemed like such an absurd dream, and yet here we are at the precipice.”

“I do not care for dreams,” I said, understating my loathing to spare his embarrassment.

“I remember,” he nodded. “The hereandnow is your domain, as the future is now ours.” He turned to look at me then, with eyes of deepest brown. “I suppose we must be enemies, then.”

I do not like to think about what boiled in my breast at those words, as much now as then, and so instead I told him plainly: “How like a man, and how typical of a Duke to think so. I have had, on several auspicious occasions, spoken with Uumphoun sages about any number of matters, and never once did they stoop to such a violent view.”

The Duke paused then, cocking his head as if to ask me to continue, so I did most happily.

“There is an old Uumphoun saying,” I explained, “from centuries before centuries: ’the bright side of the tree warms the shade.’ I myself spent far too many sleepless nights turning the phrase over and over in my head, but at last, I felt I understand its meaning. It was quite disappointing for me, in fact, to realize it was no more than one of the thousand sayings of duality. The light and the dark, fire and ice, mountain and valley, one and the other. The two-sides that make the coin. The hereandnow, the thereandthen. We need not be enemies. Adversaries, perhaps, but not enemies. We can co-exist. You do not need a great weapon to destroy me.”

“No,” he shook his head. “That is not the worldview we build. I am not of the thereandthen. Rather the whereandwhen.”

A chill trickled down my back like a drop of icy water. “Truly? My dear Duke, you cannot be serious! Such a weapon… such a weapon! You cannot believe there is ever a time such a terrible weapon would be justified in its use! Such a thing could destroy…”

I daresay I trailed off, then. A minor shame, but a shame nonetheless, for such trailing is not proper behavior for anyone of proper breeding nor self-awareness. I trailed off nonetheless, as a sudden realization was more than enough to make me reconsider my entire take on the immediate situation.

“You see why I think we must be enemies, then,” the Duke walked with grave portent around his silver circle. “We are not two sides of the same coin in this. Indeed, we are opposed to even the very idea of the hereandnow.”

“We?” the word croaked from my lips “You mean the Archonarchy? Did you, in your foolishness, your hubris, or your madness, betray your oath to the High on High?

“No!” The Duke waved his hands in desperation. “I did nothing of the kind! Well, not really. I suppose I could see how you might think that, considering. It’s interesting, really, when you look at my oath as Duke — such a simple vow — you realize that there is a massive…well, I wouldn’t call it a loophole, exactly, but I’d certainly call it unexpected. You see, I had to do it. We did. Do you know what it is like to preside over something so…primal as the Encinidine?”

“Of course I do not,” I adjusted my dress for a moment before continuing, “though I do preside, in a certain use of the term, over the primal act of sensation.”

“One of many,” the Duke nodded. “She inspired me, you know. The two of us, we had such plans! We made them over the course of centuries, since I first was invested as Duke.”

“She? Which lady do you speak of?”

“I don’t know where she is,” the Duke shook his head. “The plan was for her to join me. Us. There were twelve of us, in the end.”

“The Twelve Hands,” I nodded, remembering my Archonarchian Agent’s original target. “They thought you were opposing the great construction. Do you mean to say you were assisting it?”

“We were its origin,” the Duke nodded. “What they saw as opposition to the construction was in fact opposition to its hindrance. The Archonarchy never understood what it truly is, they are building. She knew they never would.”

“She,” I repeated. “This lady?”

“She said — as she plunged the blade through my heart — that she would return once she had finished her job on a Golden Howdah. Her death, she said, needed to be outside the influence of the spheres…”

“The Aoelam?” I was amazed at the obviousness of it. “The one who died in the Velvet? She was the one who slew you?”

“Yes,” The Duke nodded, “she slew me, and herself. It was perhaps the most important part of our plan.”

“A strange plan, then,” I suggested. “For death to be so important a piece, I cannot say I would call it a good plan.”

Oh, the look on his face, of such pain and such admiration. “All good plans must include a death of some kind. The death of the plan if nothing else, for what happens after? You planned to find and sample the Encinidine, but what then? Your friend, Mr. Porist, plans to ask is question to dear old Hakkle, keeper of the Marble Shell of Aspriescence, and then what? Sir Juhrooz has his plans, as Mx. Image has xers, and the Archonarchy plans to build its great indestructible world-view, but what happens next?”

“Dreams,” I dismissed the question.

“Yes,” he nodded sadly. “The Great Construction was designed to combat such marbled thinking: Death is an end, destruction causes deconstruction, post hoc ergo post hoc…”

A light lit in my mind. “Your plan, the Twelve Hands, your plan was to build the Great Construction…and then destroy it?”

He smiled then, patting my hand with his own. “Destruction can be creation. Eating a meal allows a child to grow. Destroying a tyrant frees the servants to prosper. What we wanted to birth could only be born through the death of something not-yet-created, so we had to create it. We created it to destroy it. It must be done.”

I did not have the time to inquire further about what he meant, however, as he continued; “Dreams, my dear. I know you despise them so. Illusions to distract and pull you away from the hereandnow. But truly, you must see that the universe is only a dream? And like any dream, it follows the singular logic of dreams; the frivolous autocracy of fiat.”

“And this is what you are creating?” I shook my head. “A universe tied together by arbitrary words?”

“No,” he shook his head. “We are creating the means by which change can finally occur! Some will fight it, of course, but most will not succeed. There will be blood shed, as mine was, for less reason.”

“I do not understand what you are trying to tell me.”

“Because you are telling, while I am understanding. There is so much more to this world than just the hereandnow! You are so powerful, Madam Albithurst. I knew it when we met so many years ago. The grip you have on the hereandnow is inspiring. Breathtaking. But there is more to the Myriad Worlds than that.”

“I have heard the theory,” I remembered back to our long conversation. “The past and future exist as clearly and solidly as any furnished room in the mansion of time. It is we who travel through these rooms at a slow and steady pace, and so the thereandthen is no less real than the hereandnow. I am sad to say it is nonsense. If it were true, then I could pick up the future and inspect it as I could any vase or snuffbox. No, the hereandnow is the only reality, the moment when the boundary-line where the imperceptible future becomes the intangible past.”

“A knife’s edge,” the Duke nodded, “on which to live. Surely such an existence must terrify you.”

“I am terrified. Not of life, nor that you seek to create and destroy something so great, nor even that your imagined future is cold and cruel. No, I am far more terrified about what may happen if you fail.”

The Duke’s death had not diminished the acute intellect I had noted so many years ago. He gave a slow nod: “Like a disease.”

“If you succeed,” I nodded, “the folk of the Myriad Worlds will be stronger. If you do not, the next weapon will need to be greater still. I beg you, if indeed you have control over this project, please stop before it is too late!”

“You see then, why we must be adversaries?” the Duke sighed. “Our very life’s blood works in opposition to the other. If either of us were to compromise, it would mean our death.

“If we must be enemies,” I crossed my arms, “then it will go worse for you. All this about us, I can destroy it all before it even starts.”

The Duke laughed, fool boy, thinking I was bluffing, or perhaps playing coy. When he looked again into my eyes, however, he saw the sincerity of my statement. Whether I was right or not, he saw that I believed it. “How?” he asked.

“A simple question,” I answered. “I have walked these many halls and seen the many pieces of your Great Construction, seen its inner workings, and saw a single piece missing. A piece most curious in its absence, considering who you yourself are, and how you came to this project.”

The color drained from the Duke’s face, as he realized of what I spoke. “Are you certain you saw all the rooms?”

“Of course not,” I waved my hand in dismissal, “but let us not be foolish. If you had even a piece of the Encinidine, it would not be hidden in some storage chamber, would it? Surely, according to the blueprints hidden in the Polyamtrix —” and here I displayed the ring on my finger, to the Duke’s dismay, “— at least one part of the Encinidine is integral to its function?”

The Duke’s eyes lowered. “Ten vials, bottles, flasks, ampules, containers of liquids. You know the difference between the four elements? Earth solid, Water liquid, Air gas, Fire energy. They all have their properties, and the vial holds that which conforms to that which holds it. Gas expands, fills, and struggles to flee. Solid ignores, maintaining itself, its shape. Energy affects the container, trying to change it. Liquid…”

He paused then, heaving a great sigh. “Yes,” he muttered in despair. “Integral.”

I was delighted to hear him admit what I had until now merely guessed, but I did not relish in the sensation long before continuing; “But surely, as Duke of the Ten Vials, you could have simply handed the Encinidine over, couldn’t you? Unless you could not, for some reason as yet undisclosed to me. You had not been deposed, so you clearly had access. No… you did not supply the Encinidine because you would not. Where did you hide it? Why did you not give it to your erstwhile allies?”

“Hidden? It was never hidden. It is in the same place it always was, ready for the taking by any who saw fit to do so.”

Was I a fool? Perhaps I was. Always, I might have been. There, standing in front of my Duke, I saw then where the Encinidine was. I knew that it was mine for the tasting, and always had been. I knew what to do, and more importantly, what he wanted me to do.

“You want me to complete the construction,” I folded my gloved hands. “Complete it, and then destroy it.”

The Duke slowly nodded, with a careworn face that brought me low.

Nevertheless, I found myself performing the role of a coy and elegant lady. I tapped my lips gently with my gloved hand, and said; “I will not. I cannot. For all the formulation you have done, now I am left with only a single option. A single word. One of the simple interrogatives. Not who — an obvious answer; nor when — unimportant. Not what, nor how. Where is self evident. But the last…the last question could — would — render your plan obsolete.”

The Duke heaved a heavy sigh, and folded his arms in resignation. “But,” he said, “such a question would destroy you as well. This magic word of yours, this question is in defiance of the hereandnow, is it not?”

Of course it was true, as there was nothing else the question was for. I could do nothing but nod. “It appears we have reached an impasse,” I muttered. “Our destruction will be mutually assured if either of us asks the question, so neither must ask it. Not even of ourselves.”

“But we must ask it, mustn’t we? No!” he raised his hands. “Forgive me, I did not wish to provoke you.”

How easy it was! Surely, the question had been on my lips and ready to fly the moment my tongue had finished shaping it, but the Duke had saved us both. “It will be very dangerous,” I answered. “And it need not be me who asks it.”

“I suppose not,” The Duke frowned in thought, “but it will need to be asked constantly, by all who have voice.” After a moment more, the Duke flapped his hands in submission, a look of resignation crossing his face. “Very well then. I agree that we are at an impasse. Then we can be friends, yes? There are a great many things I would love to show you.”

And show me he did, as we stood there in our respective moons, walking slowly and carefully through the black void. It was a charming diversion from the ominous unpleasantness that still hung over our heads.

I’m afraid I cannot describe the things that he showed me, for two reasons. The first of which is the more obvious one, that I promised him I would tell no-one of what we saw. The experience was ours and ours alone — something of a minor sin among the Sensates, but a promise I made nonetheless.

The second reason is that I do not remember most of it.

But at long last I could bare the silence no longer. I paused in our wondering and turned to my companion to say: “I’m afraid I don’t know what to do next.”

“No? Lost in the hereandnow? I daresay you have lived so long in it, that you have forgotten how to look ahead.”

“Nothing so simple, I’m afraid,” I sighed. “I know what the hereandnow demands of me, but I’m afraid of what might happen if I do.”

“My dear Madam Albithurst,” the Duke stepped closer, his smile kind and gentle. “I beg of you, do not sacrifice your self on my account. Please, what would you like to do?”

I looked at him, then, my Duke of Ten Vials. I looked into his eyes and saw flickering in their depths a piece of the man I had once known, and found so charming and clever. I doubted, forgive me, for a moment, that what I desired was the hereandnow and not some echo of the past, some dream come to claim its final victory over me.

In the end I still do not know for sure. But if it is so, if the ghosts and lies of the nonexistent past took me for their own, I cannot bring myself to say I chose wrong.

I held out my hand and said, “my dear Duke, might I have this dance?”

And we did, two moons circling about each other.