Free Rock of Ages by Walter Jon Williams Page B

civil servants, courtiers, great actors, military officers, or Elvis impersonators.
    If one was a burglar, one was compelled to associate with many of the wrong sort: fences, enforcers, people willing to sell their employers’ secrets, the agents of insurance companies (parasites of parasites, in Roman’s view). Allowed Burglary required an irregular life, and constant travel both to avoid the police and to find new objects to steal. Often burglary was dangerous. It was irregular. Sometimes it was sordid.
    But, Roman was willing to concede, it was necessary in Maijstral’s case. It was where his master’s talents lay, and his master, alas, needed to earn a living. His attempts to do so, and to live in the social stratum to which he was born, involved Defect Number Three:
    Position . Though he preferred not to use his title, Maijstral’s theoretical social position was perfectly on a par with the Duchess of Benn’s, if not slightly better: he was descended from one of the oldest human families ennobled by the Imperium—which wasn’t much compared with an old Khosali title that might go back tens of thousands of years, but was pretty good as humans go.
    But, due to the misfortunes of his recent ancestors, the titles were empty of anything save honor and debt. Someone of the exalted rank of the Duke of Dornier should move effortlessly in the highest society (without, needless to say, having to steal), should grace government ministries with his talents, should endow foundations and pioneer planets—and, if the political situation should call for his employment as the Hereditary Captain-General of the Green Legion, he should occasionally go out and conquer something.
    But none of this was possible without money. It cost a lot to live in the highest reaches of society, and Maijstral had no sources of income not connected with burglary—even the Green Legion was mothballed, its existence memorialized only by a few ancient battle flags hung in a side chapel in the City of Seven Bright Rings. Thanks to a devoted attention to his profession and the fame this had brought him, Maijstral was only now beginning to enjoy the pleasant and civilized mode of life which should have been his from the beginning. But Allowed Burglary was a precarious existence at best, with arrest always a possibility, and though Maijstral’s income was now a comfortable one, it wasn’t anywhere near the state that would have permitted him to live as effortlessly and gloriously as the Duke of Dornier, in Roman’s estimation, ought.
    Marriage with the Duchess of Benn solved every single one of Maijstral’s problems. He would have access to as much money as anyone would desire. He would no longer have to earn a living as a burglar. And he would be able to live fully up to his position.
    It was, in Roman’s view, nothing less than Maijstral’s duty to marry the Duchess. Personalities and the complications of human character didn’t enter into it—as far as Roman could tell, they were unintelligible anyway, even to humans.
    Roman finished Maijstral’s side-laces and deftly pulled off Maijstral’s jacket and put it in the closet. Maijstral began working at the side-laces of his trousers.
    “I would like, on this auspicious occasion, to make a small presentation,” Roman said. He shifted his shoulders in his jacket. That itch between his shoulder blades was back.
    Maijstral’s ears, pricked back in surprise. He looked at the leather tube, then back to Roman.
    “Pray go ahead,” he said.
    Roman retrieved the tube, uncapped it, and drew forth a scroll. The scroll had been made of grookh hide of the finest quality, thinner than paper and more resilient than steel, suitable in fact for a Memorial to the Throne.
    But whereas a Memorial would be written with a jade- tipped pen in large, florid handwriting—emperors and their advisors have to read a lot of documents, and they appreciate large print—the writing on Roman’s scroll was quite