This was a mandala, unsurprisingly, established to enforce decorum. Although the soul of Vigil and several internal minds attempted two or three meditative tricks or slippery definitions, he could not convince his hindbrain or midbrain of the idea that running swiftly here was in keeping with the grave dignity of the chamber. An alien force moved through his nervous system, leaving him flaccid and unable to make himself run. Perforce, he slowed, and his steps became sober, his expression and gesture magnanimous and filled with pomp and grandeur.

This allowed the seneschal, who apparently had smart material in his absurd shoes to allow him to lengthen his stride when need be without toppling, to loom up behind him and catch Vigil by the shoulder.

“My good lord,” said the seneschal, “my office requires I present you, but only once certain formalities—”

Vigil raised his hand to his shoulder, intending to break the man’s thumb, but the mandala looming above the doors filled his vision and prevented violence. He was only allowed to brush the hand away. Vigil said, “Tell me your name and lineage, that I might know whose family to encompass in my complaint.”

The seneschal laughed with relief. “Is it legal action you contemplate? My line is a client of the Leafsmith family, who hold the monopoly on barristers, jurists, and prosecutors. No writ can prevail.”

Vigil was shocked at the open admission of the corruption of the legal system. Perhaps he was merely a rural boy from the far reservations to the north, unequal to the sophistication and decay of this great city.

He gritted his teeth and whispered, “And my vengeance?”

Once again, like a marionette with its programming flummoxed, the man fell prone, crouching and striking his tall, ridiculous hat against the floor.

4. Nice Costume

At that same moment, a tall, bleak-featured, and ugly man came around the corner, pushing a bucket on wheels and carrying a mop. Vigil was puzzled at the sight, since he had never seen a mop that required a man to carry it before. Perhaps it was a manual antique.

His interest in antiques pulled his eyes toward the mop. It was a long moment before he looked at the man. Only then did Vigil realize the man was like no one he had seen before.

The man’s bloodline was uncertain, but there was something Chimerical in his deep-set eyes, which never seemed to blink. The man was dressed in the smock and headscarf of a janitor and wore boots like a Nomad or Esne. In his mouth was a device Vigil had never seen before, some sort of incense burner or intoxicant. It looked like a roll of leaves tightly wound together and lit on fire. The smoke was clinging and unpleasant, and the tall man drew it into his mouth with a deep breath. The smoke came pouring out of an odd organ on the front of the man’s face. The organ occupied the position where a nose would be, but only if a nose was two or three times its normal size, crooked, and hooked like the bill of a bird.

The man’s hair, which was close cropped, was colored like Fox hair, a reddish hue that no normal human ever wore. On one hand were scars from old knife fights. His ears and Adam’s Apple protruded. The errors and ungainliness of the face was such that Vigil realized this must be the member of some order of ascetics who had vowed to avoid all cosmetic corrections. But what order would take so cruel a vow?

But no! Vigil let one of his internals utter a silent laugh. He had forgotten the day. The janitor was returning from a fancy dress ball, and his face was comically marred to resemble some figure from the history of some far world, or perhaps a horror tale circulating among small boys. Vigil felt sorry for the man. Most masqueraders made the mistake of assuming that the fuzzy and discolored old records were literal and that people in the old days actually looked so stiff and so uncomely. Vigil knew that was not true. Only the most ancient of all races of man, the long-extinct Sylphs, or the nameless race that came before them, did not have access to nanocellular regeneration techniques.

“Nice costume,” said Vigil.

“I didn’t reckon you’d spy through it so right quick as all that. I keep forgetting every Jack and Harry is as bright as whatever he needs to be, these days. So what is it going to be?”

The tall man spread his hands and moved his shoulders up. It was a gesture Vigil did not recognize; it did not seem to be a mudra, nor was it in the list for recognized military command gestures.

Vigil’s father would have known everyone in the Palace of Future History on sight and should have shared all his memories with his son. Was the janitor expecting Vigil to call him by name, despite his uncosmetic surgery?

The janitor then plucked his headscarf off, pushed it into a pocket of his smock, drew the smock over his head, and threw it in a corner. Then he dropped the mop handle. The mop stared up sullenly, slithered over to the dropped smock, and picked it up.

Vigil, without moving his eyes, looked down through a nearby camera spot at where the seneschal was crouching on all fours. Vigil certainly did not want to admit in the seneschal’s hearing that he had no idea what was going on here.

Vigil said, “I am summoned to the Table. Ruffians attempted to impede me, and the sentries and this man here to delay me. The lighthouse beam is misaligned and the Emancipation will not be landed, and all the Stability is in vain. I am not easily halted, and I weary of these delays. So? What now? What do you think it is going to be?”

The janitor shifted his cylinder of smoldering leaf from one corner of his mouth to the other with a twist of his lips.

“You being bushwhacked, that weren’t none of my doing, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Vigil said quite honestly, “I was not thinking that, no.”

“I’m retired,” the tall man said.

Vigil looked at where the sad mop was holding the smock and headscarf. “Yes, I see that. I have need of someone who knows the details of procedure here. Are you familiar with them?”

The other said, “The standard procedures ain’t changed since the days when the Starfarer’s Guild was founded, for obvious reasons, even if some younger folk forget what they are for.”

Vigil’s antiquarian interests were provoked. “You have traveled far and slumbered long?”

He meant it as a question, but the man obviously took it as a statement, because the man nodded. “Obviously I know all the old procedures. You know who I am.”

Vigil was sure, now, that the man was an Esne of the Errant line. No one else was so proud and crude. “I know who you are,” he said graciously, “but let not our difference in station be a difficulty!”

The man nodded. “Won’t bug me if it don’t bug you.”

“There are things my father did not tell me. I do not wish to shame his name. You may join my retinue if you need employment. You can serve as my valet and help me negotiate these difficulties. I have no one else.”

The ex-janitor looked so surprised that his mouth sagged, and his smoking cylinder fell from his lips, but he managed to catch it nimbly in his hand and juggle it, swearing strange oaths, between his two hands, not quite burning himself.

The man eventually got the smoldering tube back in his mouth. “My aunt Bertholda’s sagging pestilential putrefic paps, is you offering me a job? A job? Like for pay?”

The man must be of a very low caste indeed, if the offer of such a humble post so astonished him.

“I do not think any difference in rank or race matters,” said Vigil, trying not to sound condescending. “The Sacerdotes say all races are equal in the eyes of Providence, despite the inequalities in the Hermeticists who created them placed in them.”

The fellow laughed. “A man after my own heart! I ain’t heard talk like that in a long time. But what makes you think I will help you land the ship? I don’t need anything on her. What’s she carrying for me? ’Cept a big headache.”