Page 26 of The Mars House

“You inherited the Department for Energy,” January repeated, blown sideways. “That—what? Families can’t inherit government departments. I thought Tharsis was a democracy?”

Gale inclined their head. The silver sigils in their hair caught the light and shone. “Other countries work the same way. There are organisations who decide who their successors are, not voters, even though they affect all the voters. All those megacompanies.”

“But they’re companies!”

“So are Great Houses. I own the sun fields, not the government. But you can’t have a company as rich as a country going around doing what it likes. Everyone has to be accountable. So each House has an automatic, mandatory seat in the Senate. I wasn’t elected. I have to attend.”

“How’s that a democracy again?” January demanded. Now wasn’t the time to dispute the governmental structure of Mars, but he couldn’t see past it.

“England has a House of Commons and a House of Lords, yes? One set is voted in, the other—at least when it was conceived—forces people who are influential to participate in government. Same idea.”

“Oh,” January said, his whole idea of the world shifting. He had to claw around for his original train of thought. “And—so—is there a . . .” He lost the word. “When do we do things?”

“There is the schedule to end all schedules.” Gale turned their tablet around for him on the table. It was in Mandarin and he panicked, but Gale waved one hand over it and it fizzed into English instead. “We’re going to go quite quickly. The wedding will be in a month. It will be a big public event, the whole of Tharsis is invited. We’ll announce it tomorrow, which—”

“Tomorrow!”

“—I know is very quick, but it doesn’t mean you’re immediately plunged into a media spotlight. If you want more time, we don’t have to announce who I’m marrying.”

That brought January up short. “We don’t?”

Gale smiled a bit. He was starting to notice it took them a long time to gear up to smiling properly in private; a lot of things had to go into rolling motion first, and even then, he didn’t think the mechanisms worked too well, and probably Gale had to catch them on their way downhill. It was very different to the sultry sunset smile they could aim at cameras and journalists.

Like a very old, archaeologically significant penny, a school memory dropped into his mind. There was always a difference, even a thousand years ago, between the person and the office of the King. The crown as an institution, distinct from the person underneath it. That was what he was seeing now. At the factory, he had met Senator Gale. Now, he was meeting Aubrey. As soon as he understood, he had an intrigued sense that he was being allowed to see secrets.

“No,” Gale said. “People expect some dramatic tension. Everyone always keeps what they’re wearing on the day secret, but we can go one further. My communications office is very keen on this. The first time you appear in public would be on the wedding day. Or, if you’d rather have your name in the press for this rather than the other thing, then that’s fine as well. The decision is yours. What do you think would be better?”

“This is your show and I’m not the director,” January pointed out. “I don’t want to be doing whatever I want at the expense of your campaign.”

“I’ve been told that people from your island are self-sabotagingly polite, is this that?” Gale asked.

“No—well, yes, we are—but you’re going to have to live with me for five years. I don’t want to start out by causing problems I don’t know about, you’ll end up hating me later. I don’t know enough about what you want to achieve or how to get it to make decisions like this without some guidance. Does that make sense?”

Gale looked at him as if he had come out in classical poetry. “That’s . . . very . . . courteous of you.”

“I mean. I feel like we should probably be courteous to each other.” He smiled. It felt good to agree about something.

“We should,” Gale said, with an unexpectedly deferential dip of their eyelashes. “Well; I like the idea of keeping it secret.”

“Let’s do that then.”

“You can’t keep living in that ghastly apartment, though,” Gale said. “Would you consider staying here?”

“Here? Where here?” January asked, thinking distractedly that he wanted to start calling things ghastly too. It was such a good word.

“The hotel. The Tiangong.”

“Stay at the—for a month?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“No, I mean I’d pay.”

“That’s stupid.” It was automatic. However rich you were, the Tiangong was stupid money. He had looked it up before he came out today to find out how much he would have to pay for a coffee if they split the bill, and he had actually spat his toast on his phone. Even God couldn’t afford a drink here without taking out a mortgage first.

“Is it stupid?” Gale said, voice smoking higher. “Will you perhaps not be dead if I leave you in the nuclear ice-box for another month? Or do Europeans need consistent refrigeration?”