Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [21]
She didn’t even have to think of an answer. “I believe I am as committed to growth and change as you are, Lord.”
Pardek had smiled indulgently. “Ah, but you’re young yet. We will see if age and experience have their way with you.”
Her conversation with Pardek was still fresh in Cretak’s mind a few mornings later when she awoke beside Koval.
She propped herself up on one elbow and studied his face. He was feigning sleep, but she knew him well enough by now to tell it was only pretense. He was so seldom himself, it was safer to assume he was always pretending.
He has a weak chin, was her first thought. Why did I never notice this before? Then again, even the kindest of my kin say my jaw’s too strong. If we had had children, would they have favored him or me or something halfway between?
The match would have been an acceptable one. She and Koval were of the same caste, children of the intellectual and military families who made up the outer circle that protected the inner circle of the imperial court and who, of course, aspired by either marriage or accomplishment to be permitted into that inner circle someday. When and how had their society ossified into these rigid little boxes? Vulcan society, while nominally a meritocracy, also had its subtle class distinctions; it was a given that the old, propertied families wielded most of the true power. But Romulan society had subdivided into castes within castes, each ringed about with customs, laws, and taboos which made it all but impossible to escape from one into another.
Was this, too, an outcome of the Gnawing? Had the Sundered begun as a communal entity, with everything shared equally, or had they brought the concept of the Old Families with them from Vulcan? And with half their number gone, did the wealth shift to the survivors? Did they, anticipating a future Gnawing, build shields and fences of class and caste around their possessions, so that even if they died, their offspring would be safe?
Lost to the mists of time and revisionist history. No way of knowing in the here and now.
In the event, Koval and Cretak had recognized each other, at least by type, before they ever met. Though they came from different sectors, they were of the same caste, and had gone to the same sort of exclusive schools, studied the same subjects, been imbued with the same familial and societal expectations designed to shape them into good little apparatchiks in the service of the Empire, and both had followed form, each in their own way.
Their affair was discreet, and might have led to marriage, but after the initial blush of passion, it had become ordinary, predictable. The first thing to go had been anything resembling real conversation, and now Cretak understood why.
Koval was one kind of Romulan; she was another. He had accepted his role by moving smartly from his caste’s mandatory military duty into a low-level position with intelligence, and slowly climbed the ladder, stepping on hands or necks as necessary, but always carefully. Now that he was halfway up that ladder, it was said behind his back that Koval didn’t so much serve the Tal Shiar as much as it served him.
Most Romulans looked sideways and whispered whenever they said the words Tal Shiar. It could accurately be said that no one, not even the Emperor himself, for whom the organization was named, was safe from them, and there was no Romulan living whose life had not been touched by them, who did not have a relative or sometimes an entire branch of the family gone missing in the night, all their possessions confiscated. Everyone knew of former prisoners who had returned from detention in distant places with hollow eyes, silenced voices, empty souls, looking like nothing so much as survivors of the Gnawing.
To actually want to be a part of that… Cretak shivered, and not only because the room was cold. Koval was one of those who would do anything, to anyone, at any cost, to preserve the status quo and his