I slowly awoke, the fuzziness of my bedroom receding into pure clarity. It was warm, and the light (no longer true sunlight, robbed of that of its spectrum beyond the violet) shone softly through the window. I frowned for a moment, as fading memories of my dreams clung: the yearning for the true light of the Sun, the taste of human flesh unknowingly consumed, whatever it was on the other side of the mirrors of Varchas...perhaps they would never truly leave me. I had, at least, grown reaccustomed to the natural change of day and night.
Then Ruby ("Cladery Heir" was too formal for husband and wife, and she no longer knew her true name) stirred to my left, and I smiled. That darkness was behind me; another glorious day was ahead. I lay there, warm and immensely comfortable, unwilling to rise at first.
"What o'clock is it?" she mumbled. I glanced at the grandfather clock, pendulum swinging slowly on the far side of the room.
"Just past ten," I answered. I grinned. "That was quite the enjoyable night."
"Yes. Well. A thorough understanding of the human body does have certain practical applications. Could you call for breakfast?"
"Oh?" I feigned annoyance. "And why must I go and call for breakfast?"
"Because if you do not, I will, with no difficulty whatsoever, paralyze you tonight, at the very moment of la petite mort."
"I am the King of Sanctuary," I told her, rising slowly from the soft mattress. "Such threats are treason. I ought to have you clapped in irons."
She sat up then, dark red hair sprawled across her in a wild tangle, bare breasts firm and enticing, even exhausted as I was. "Well, then who would you have for a Queen?" she teased.
"I am quite certain that Nobody's Daughter would be glad to serve," I smirked at her.
"And I am quite certain that you would not want hands, used to freeing stuck pistons, or whatever merely mechanical thing she does, on your manhood."
I leaned in and kissed her tenderly. "I'll go call for breakfast," I told her. "Dress, if you would be so kind." High-born ladies in London had attire that took several servants to help on with, but she had always refused to wear anything like that, I largely agreed with her view of such things, and in any event we did not have enough people here to support such a staff. Our Royal Manor had a butler, a cook, and a gardener, the latter of which attended to other work some days of the week.
I opened the bedroom door and called down the stairs to the butler. His name was Samuel Jones, formerly serving a well-off London family. He lost his position due to some indiscretion he was evasive about, drank away most of his remaining money, and wound up starving on Wolfstack Docks begging for work. Once sober, he proved decent and reliable over months at zee, and grateful, at the end, to be given the opportunity to serve in his old manner.
"Good morning, my lord," he said.
"Good morning, my good man," I answered—familiar, perhaps, but I had always found that familiarity with the crew ensured their loyalty—and after all, why not be decently condescending? "Kindly tell the cook to prepare us breakfast. The Queen and I shall have our usual fare. We will be in the dining room in fifteen minutes."
"Of course, my lord. Will there be anything else?"
"Yes, now that you mention it: once you've done that, step over to the Institution and enquire whether the Royal Physician would care to join us."
"At once," he answered, and hurried off.
I returned upstairs. Ruby and I dressed. I had no royal robes, and dressed in a quite ordinary gentleman's suit. She donned one of her usual ensembles: simple yet clearly expensive, and with skirts so short as to go through daring and out the other side. She had on occasion been mistaken for a whore, back in London, which she had always found amusing. No one minded it here: we were the makers of manners, not confined within the weak list of Sanctuary's fashion (with my regards to Henry V and William Shakespeare).
We walked down the stairs together, but not touching. Except in bed, she always seemed inclined to keep apart, jealous of her independence, unwilling to belong to anyone. Hence, persuading her to marry me had taken some doing. But I would not have her be any other way.
Samuel informed us that the Campaigner was caring for patients and indisposed. These patients were three people who had left Visage due to some trouble involving improper following of roles. Their crude steam pinnace had collided with the reefs off the south of the island and disintegrated; one of them had been badly hurt, and the blood in the water attracted something unpleasant from the direction of the Chelonate, which attacked and seriously hurt all of them. Fortunately for them, one of our fishing boats saw all this and rescued them.
My breakfast consisted of fresh peaches and apricots from the eastern orchards, two boiled eggs (the chickens were fed on food waste), and bread slathered with the recent batch of strawberry preserve. Irem's defence had reduced the heat of the light: the old tropical species were surviving yet in the forested areas in the north of the island (I made a note to work out a system for harvesting lumber sustainably), as there was no winter here, but the climate had become more suitable for peaches than oranges. Ruby methodically picked clean her usual fish, becoming distracted once or twice by some point of their anatomy, following it with one apricot. I relaxed in my chair, content.
"My lord," Samuel said, coming in, "the Speaker is here, and wishes to discuss with you the districts for the coming election."
"Ah, yes. Yes, we must settle that. Ruby, you said you wished to assist our indomitable Royal Physician with the patients?" (She had been my viceroy, until that was no longer necessary; Ruby or else the Speaker could manage things in my absence.)
"She asked me to," she shrugged. "Might be interesting. I have never seen wounds exactly like theirs before."
"Well, take some notes for the Institute," I told her. "Samuel, did you know another natural philosopher, specializing in insects, arrived here yesterday? Apparently this island has several unique species. This is a tiny island, with a miniscule fraction of London's population, and yet, beyond what I had even hoped, we are becoming a center of scholarship and knowledge to rival the London colleges."
Samuel waited patiently for me to finish speaking. "Begging your pardon, my lord, but the Speaker—"
"Ah, right, yes, the Speaker. Send him in."
Ruby rose, leaning in to kiss me as I did the same. "Good-bye," I told her with a smile. "And no taking the patients' desires."
She only raised an eyebrow in response before walking away.
The Speaker was the chair, and leader of, the First Parliament: the ten sailors I had first landed on this island. With our population now 152 (155 if the Visage refugees chose to stay, which I supposed they would), we had decided it was time to hold new elections, establishing a constitution, a bill of rights (the document Parliament gave William of Orange as a starting point, perhaps), and altogether an enduring basis for the governance of this place. A few details remained to be resolved, such as the mapping of the districts from which M.P.s would be elected.
The Speaker, a man by the name of John East, came in. He had been a mere able seaman before landing here, and still looked uncomfortable in his formal attire. I had chosen not to involve myself in his election, hoping to establish a precedent of Parliamentary independence, but knew that all but one of my First Parliament had voted for him. He was a well-liked sort of person, a man's man, but somewhat lacking in qualifications.
"Cap—my lord," he began, then looked pained. I chuckled and waved it away. "Do yer have a plan for how ter draw the districts?"
I had spent the evening with Ruby, and had given the matter little thought. "Well...having considered the question carefully...I thought we might conduct a...what's the word, a...census! Right, we know how many people live here, but not where. If we recorded addresses—oh, bother, we don't have addresses. Well, we can assign those later, plot homes on a map for now, and...oh, bloody hell, we don't have a proper map." I frowned. "We may as well handle that at once. As soon as we have the map, we can plot streets and homes on it."
"My lord, that's another difficult sort of thing, see...the Main Street you planned out, some fellers from the Chelonate 'ave built a shack in midst of it, sir, over to the east."
I frowned and called for Samuel. "Samuel," I told him as he hurried in, "present my compliments to the Adventuress and instruct her to take some of her Royal Guardsmen down Main Street to the east, and remove any persons who have taken up residence in the course of it. If they refuse, tell them that any item left obstructing a king's highway for more than forty-eight hours becomes the property of the king."
"Is that the law, my lord?" Samuel asked.
"Er, well, it will be, as soon as Mr. East can have Parliament vote on it. Right?"
"Of course, of course, my lord."
Samuel bowed and walked off briskly.
Speaker East and I began work on a plan to properly map the island. I suggested that the lines we used for soundings could be just as effective on land, counting the number of lengths from one place to another. Aestival was not a large island, so this method would be adequate. I was endeavouring to determine how to measure direction precisely in the forested areas when there was a loud bang from the direction of the Institute.
"Our quite irrepressible cannoneer blowing things up again, no doubt," I noted. "Remind me not to attempt to start a glass industry on this island while that man is here." It was a joke, but I frowned then. "You know, that may not be a bad idea, if sited properly; we would no longer require to import our glassware from London or the Khanate. The beaches have good sand for it as well..." I scribbled down a note (below twenty-two other items) to instruct our ambassador to London, the former magician, to inquire whether any shapers of glass might wish to emigrate.
No sooner had I resumed my ill-advised cartography lesson than shouting became audible from the direction of the front door. I rose to investigate just as an aged Royal Guardsman (formerly a cast-off veteran of the invasion of Hell) stepped smartly into the room. "My lord," he said gravelly, saluting, "there are some Khaganians at the door, along with a young man from the Chelonate. There is some difficulty relating to him marrying a daughter of the Khaganian fellow, my lord, some strange foreign customs at issue, no doubt."
"You know, my good man," I remarked, moving to resolve this, "it will not be long before Londoners are calling us foreigners. Allies we may be, but we are building a new nation here...and with marriages like the one at issue, we shall be a new nationality, afore long."
As soon as the Guardsman opened the door, a Khaganian couple, their daughter, someone who looked like the mother of one of the couple, and the aforementioned young Chelonate man all began shouting furiously, mostly at one another, but the daughter at me. I had to shout myself to obtain quiet and inquire what this was about.
"This...man," the Khaganian father said, in such a way as to convey quite effectively that he considered the fellow from the Chelonate to barely qualify as such, "is try to seduction my daughter away with no approval of Khan of their union—"
"This is Sanctuary, not the Khanate!" the daughter shrieked. I imagined she would look quite pretty ordinarily; as it was, her face was stained with tears and several bruises. "You have no authority over me! You—"
Her mother struck her in the face. She hit her mother back nearly as hard, sending her reeling backward. Both of the other Khaganians began bellowing at her, her father advanced with fury in his eye, the Chelonate man moved in angrily, and I stepped between them.
"This is not the Khanate, and this is not the Chelonate," I snapped. "This is Sanctuary. Any man or woman, of sound mind and body, over eight and ten years of age, is to be considered independent and subject to all rights, privileges, and duties of law," I recited from one of the few laws we had managed to finish writing and pass so far. "How old are you?" I asked her.
"Seven and ten years," she answered, after a long hesitation. "Please, I don't want to go back with them, I love him..."
"This is bosh thing," the Khaganian father told me, heavily accented. "As she is no age full, she with me. We take and go home."
"You will not!" interjected the young lover, reaching for a harpoon that wasn't there.
"Please, sire," she begged, dropping to a knee before me (does wonders for my ego, I will say that—if you do not know what that is, ask a scholar about the theories of a Herr Sigmund Freud). "I won't be able to get passage back. Once they've got me in the Khanate again, I'll be theirs..."
"You speak English well," I noted.
"They were training me, for," she hesitated, glancing wildly around. "We wished to open trade with London, to purchase, ah, coffee, no, wine..."
She was lying, and not very well. "I cannot help you unless you tell me the truth," I told her, kindly but firmly.
She scrambled behind her lover. "No!" her father shouted in Khaganian. I told him to be silent.
"We were sent here as spies, after your kingdom was established," she said. "I was to be sent to London to gather intelligence there, but as you are in alliance with them—"
Her parents began shouting in Khaganian, too quickly for me to understand. I bellowed at them to shut up. "Right," I said. "You," I said to the father, "have two choices. Either leave this island on the next ship and never return, or else you will be arrested and charged with assault and battery, espionage, and anything else I can think of, and punished to the fullest extent of our law." We in fact did not have a law about the latter yet, nor a judge to administer it, but he did not know that. I turned to the couple. "If the two of you wish to remain here, I will allow that. However, I will require both of you to speak, separately, with the Captain of the Royal Guard, about what you know."
Tears welled in the eyes of the young woman; her husband-to-be gripped her firmly and promised to care for her well. The guards, as I instructed them, took the rest of the Khaganians to the docks, to keep them there until a ship departed for the Khanate.
"Speaker, have one of the MPs draft an espionage law and introduce it, if you would be so kind," I told him, walking back inside.
"You mean spyin', cap—my lord?"
"Yes. It needs be a crime to come here intending to convey confidential information to a foreign government. Not overly broad, you understand—we must preserve liberties. Now, with regards to the cartography, why not get some guards and MPs together and we can set to work at, say, three o'clock? We should be able to get a few hours' measuring in."
"Very well." Speaker East rose. "I shall gather everyone I can, and be back here by the stroke of three." (I mentally noted to look into obtaining a clock for the church being built.) He rose, we said our farewells, and off he strode.
The time was then nearly eleven. I left the house, planning to walk through the main town and see what there was to be seen. I crossed the lawn speedily, as it was greatly diminished; I had never seen much purpose to purely ornamental growths, and most of the former lawn had now been replaced by a sprawl of strawberry plants. Bees buzzed (do not think of the Isle of Cats, do not think of the Isle of Cats...), butterflies flitted, and birds called out. One bird flew overhead, then landed in the strawberries with a fluffle of wings. I clapped my hands and it flew away. I had ordered iron cages from a smith in London to place over the maturing fruit, meshed to stop birds but not light, but they had yet to arrive. Birds were not a common problem in the Underzee.
I passed along the path out of the strawberry patches, and thus to the gate. It had been left open by the Khaganians barging in, and I swung it silently closed behind me but, as usual, did not lock it. As we had no judge or court yet, it fell to me to resolve disputes on an ad hoc basis, so it was needful that entry for that purpose be possible.
Main Street ran west to the shore and east to the forest preserve, with the manor gate near its midpoint. Stone markers, some properly shaped and others just heaps of rubble, marked out the street's path. Additional stone markers had been placed to map out streets to the north. I began to walk north along Apricot Street—or was it Liberty Street? There were no street signs.
There were four houses on my right, and a steaming canning plant at their end. Many of our products would not keep in transit to London, let alone in storage there, and so preservation was necessary. To my left were several others. Most of the houses were made of assemblages of miscellaneous timber, some driftwood, others from the forests on the island, although two were largely made of slabs of stone. Beyond those buildings, the street was merely an arbitrary slash through rows of young apricot trees. I stopped a moment, tasting the sweet air and the beautiful smells of growth, life, and boiling apricot preserves...and a whiff of dung. I opened my eyes and saw a large mess that a horse or donkey had made in the street, presumably while everyone was going out to the fields that morning. I pulled out the pencil and newsman's pad I had in my pocket and made a note to find out why farmers were not removing that for fertilizer, and engage someone specifically to do it, if necessary.
I walked to where the fields began. The dirt was mostly damp but firm, although my boot went into a wagon track with a squelch. Without the Sun to drive evaporation to altitude, there was never rain in the Neath; instead, fog rose from the zee, then drifted over and condensed upon the land. Here, the heat of the sun prevented condensation over the island during the day, except over the cooler waters of Lake Crystal. I stopped for a moment, gazing up through the shifting shadows of the leaves at the void of the roof, false-stars hidden by the light from that brilliant spot (someday, we would build a balloon and discover exactly how that operated, and where the other end was). I thought of the Starved Men, and felt the old fear return for a moment. Sanctuary always felt like the surface, until suddenly it did not.
I stiffened my upper lip and walked back, noticing for the first time that one of the houses had a fence in front that intruded slightly into the space between the markers. I made a note of that as well—if you allowed that, afore long there would be no street left. A donkey pulled a cart full of fish past as I reentered Main Street. That was probably intended for the market, just east of the manor. Some of the farmers liked to buy fish fresh at the end of the day, so they could be brought directly to the grill or pot. Anything my (subjects? citizens?) didn't eat would be taken back to the coast, where a three-person company gathered zee salt, to be salted and packaged for shipment to London. I had heard rumors that Badstevener's Abyss was becoming overfished, and the fact that this was a profitable venture seemed to confirm them.
There was more time to wander before three, and I wished sincerely that I could. This was a beautiful island. But the list of matters to attend to was long, and likely to grow longer. Regretfully, I returned to the Manor gate.
Samuel had cleared away the dishes from breakfast by the time I passed back through the dining room. I called to him to bring me lunch in half an hour (though I had just eaten, Ruby and I had worked up quite the appetite the previous night) and, grasping some papers scattered about the table, proceeded to my study. I sighed, and settled myself into my chair. My position was one of beauty, comfort, and ease, but the price was that I had to actually make it all work. I examined my ubiquitous list of matters to attend to. Ah, yes...I rummaged through the litter of documents on my desk and found a copy of a book originating from (where else) America, entitled The Documents of Liberty and Civilization (that final word spelt in that amusing way of theirs). I turned the pages, which were printed with a rough translation of the Solonian Constitution, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, the Bill of Rights 1689, the Constitution of the United States of America, certain documents from France, and so on up to modernity, with the final item the Emancipation Proclamation issued by the American President during their civil war. Interesting people, the Americans, but with some good ideas. I examined the amendment procedure of the Constitution again before drawing out a sheet of paper, filling my fountain pen, and writing "The Sanctuary Bill of Rights" across the top. I thought a moment, then scratched out "Bill" and wrote "Declaration" instead. I frowned, shook my head, scratched that out as well, and replaced it with "Guarantee". That would do.
One. I wrote. All provisions of this document shall require the consent of four-fifths of the sitting Parliament, in addition to the approval of the King and Queen, or the one of them which exists, to append to, alter, or abolish. That sentence structure was awkward, but we would set it to rights in Parliament.
Two. All residentssubjects citizens...there was no good word for it. Citizen was too strong and subject too weak. I sighed and set the pen back in the inkwell for a moment, gazing out the window. It seemed a trivial question, but it could be crucial to the interpretation of a document that, I hoped, would be heeded for many years to come. My education had been focused unusually upon natural philosophy, and I was really not informed for this. I suddenly decided to go find my queen, and our indomitable physician, and ask for their thoughts on the matter.