The Quicksand Singularity ArQive: Array.init:0

A0T5.3 The Ëchüha Incident (Part 4)

To her surprise, it was the same, stock-standard VScape Conference Room used by the Ministry. Simple and white, the square room had no doors, no windows, and no fancy designs or other such distractions. It was as bland as every milquetoast suit sitting behind a Tygea desk made of condensed fibre board and glued together with the last afterthoughts of a midlife crisis receding in the rearview mirror of a life more boring than a tunnelling machine. Two chairs and, between them, a table sat in the middle of the room. In the far chair sat a woman dressed resplendently in the finest imperial raiment, fanning herself with an ornately hand-decorated Jálüng Bàdzè. Her hair, in the fashion of the day, was unstyled and let to grow from brow to nape unfettered, neither bangs nor sideburns nor any other fibre seen to by the barber's blade. This silken mane of the Duchess Premiere hung down to the floor like a sheet of black silk where it was pooled on the long and elaborate train of her opulently embroidered robes.

This style was one Fhá had seen once before. The Provincial Duke and Duchess had visited her office several anno ago as part of their regular circuit. According to one of the visiting Duchess's handmaids, the style was called Yanlë Dáfvzé. Made possible only by Court Sonorians trained in fleshcrafting, it symbolised the wealth and prestige of a Duchess. The longer their Yanlë Dáfvzé could be grown and maintained, the more favour and renown a court noblewoman could curry.

The Duchess of Fhá's province, Ébúhi Yátsè Shü, had hers grown out to a train of nearly sixty centimetres. Duchess Tví's Yanlë Dáfvzé, on the other hand, was so long as to rival only the Empress', and one would be wise to not insult Her Supreme Majesty The Highest with garish displays of greater opulence than that of Her Supreme Majesty The Highest's. Twenty metres could be tolerated, but one did not exceed that limit. Her Supreme Majesty the Highest's was twenty-five, and only the Crown Princess, Her Holiness, Scion of Humanity, was permitted twenty-one. Indeed, what manner of haughty quean thought herself so high and mighty as to even approach the prestige of Her Supreme Majesty the Highest's throne with the audacity—nay, the hubris—with such a display of ostentatious impracticality!? Off with her head! Such an insult simply could not stand!

Fhá bowed low to the Duchess, having insulted a noblewoman in perhaps the most unforgivable way—keeping her waiting. Being late to Her Highness' beckon call was, after all, an offence the punishment for which was a nine-day death sentence by gradual immersion in a vat of corpse reprocessing solution, as well as a summary kick to the groin. Glory to the Imperial Arbiters!

"Sit, sit," Duchess Tví said, as though the requisite genuflections irritated her, "enough with the formalities."

"Yes, Your Highness," Fhá replied, sitting down.

"Please, if you must, m'lady is fine," Tví insisted.

"Yes, m'lady," Fhá responded.

"What have you discovered?" Tví asked.

"There..." Fhá began, but found herself stopped. The VirtuCast playing back in her head had gummed her voice with quiet. She closed her eyes and forced the words out. "I've made it about twenty percent through the file."

"Anything noteworthy?"

"It looks like...well...environmental degradation was encouraged," Fhá continued.

"For the sake of increased profits, I presume," Tví said. "Please, speak plainly. We're not at court."

"Yes, m'lady," Fhá acceded, "it very much appears that the environment was pushed to the point of collapse."

"Of course," Tví muttered, compressing an immensity of her disappointment and disdain for her son into those two words. "I assume the bulk of the file is post-collapse investigation."