Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [108]
Leabie sat up and looked at him. ‘I’m sure he wants to have a proper talk with you about it. After all, he doesn’t want to end up the way she did. It sounds ghastly.’
‘Did he ask me to go alone?’
‘He didn’t make any specific instructions. But I’m sure you could bring servants, secretaries. I’ll provide whoever you want.
And a shuttle, of course. He’s expecting you at eleven hundred IST. That’s in about two hours.’
‘Thank you, Lady Leabie,’ said the Doctor. ‘I’ll leave within the hour.’
‘Give His Majesty my best wishes. I’ll be seeing him in two days for the planning conference, of course.’
‘Don’t go,’ said Roz.
They were sitting around in Chris’s room. The Doctor looked over to Chris, who was surrounded by a tailor, taking 252
measurements. ‘You don’t have to come with me,’ he told the young man for the third time.
‘Neither of you should go,’ said Roz. ‘I don’t like this at all.’
‘It’s the Emperor, Roz,’ said Chris. The tailor tutted, trying to measure his chest. ‘We can’t not go.’
Roz put her hands on her hips. ‘I can’t let you boys out of my sight for a moment without you getting into trouble.’
‘Relax, Roz,’ said the Doctor. ‘If there is something afoot, Walid’s hardly going to draw attention to his connection by letting it happen in his palace.’
Roz said, ‘You mean, if he’d insisted on seeing you alone on some godforsaken asteroid, you wouldn’t go? But when he invites you to his palace, the centre of his power, where there are ninety-five billion guards, you don’t feel worried?’
‘Of course I’m worried,’ said the Doctor. ‘Appallingly worried.
I just don’t think Walid’s ready to act yet. He’s only just been crowned; he has yet to consolidate his power.’
‘Do you really think Walid is up to something?’ said Chris. ‘I thought Armand was the guy behind the conspiracy. Maybe we’re just being paranoid.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping to find out,’ said the Doctor.
The Doctor and his servant arrived at Callisto late in the moon’s morning, in one of Leabie’s personal yachts, the Model Citizen. Genevieve was waiting for them at the edge of the landing site. She was wearing mock chainmail and her ceremonial sword, and some probably very unauthentic but very gorgeous knightly clothes. Her yellow hair was tied up in a pair of elaborate pigtails, held by a lattice.
They walked from the yacht to where the grass began, half a kilometre from the palace itself. The Doctor’s shirt had actually been ironed, and he wore a matching Paisley waistcoat and tie.
He raised his hat. ‘My Lady.’
Poor Mr Cwej looked terrified, a smile fixed to his face. He was dressed in the uniform of one of Leabie’s staff, a tasteful black suit with the red stone of the House Forrester emblazoned over his left shoulder.
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She took Mr Cwej’s hands. ‘Welcome, both of you,’ she said.
‘The Duke has asked me to look after you until he can break free of the latest of these interminable meetings.’
The Doctor smiled and set off across the grass. Mr Cwej was staring up at the palace. It was a massive, inverted cone, more cones shooting up from its black, glassy surface, like a vast, sparkling artificial mountain. ‘Intimidating, isn’t it?’ she murmured, as she led him towards the entrance.
‘Yeah, I mean yes,’ he said. ‘A bit.’
‘I was petrified the first time I came here,’ she said. ‘I just about got back into my Hopper and went home. I felt like if I put a foot wrong, the whole building would fall down on me and squash me flat.’
Chris’s smile relaxed into a real one. ‘The Doctor’s so good at just talking to kings and dukes and people. I’m much better at alien monsters.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ said Genevieve. ‘Everyone’s nervous around the Emperor, even the dukes and duchesses. Part of my job is making sure every guest feels comfortable. Even the servants, and by the way, that uniform looks marvellous on you.’
‘I decided not to go back to the Adjudicators,’ said Chris.
‘After all these adventures, I need a rest. Leabie offered me a job as her personal pilot.’
‘That’s marvellous,’ she said. ‘Oh, the Doctor