The Other Side of the Looking Glass
August 16 N.I.C., Phezzan
It was not a position that he deserved. Physician to the Imperial Family was a duty that should be given to someone with proven merit— a long career in the Fleet, perhaps— and not on sentimentality to a twenty-eight year old fresh out of his residency. But sentimentality had promised him the job thirteen years ago, and sentimentality had made him, with his hat in his hands, come collect on that promise when asked, no matter how much he felt the position was above him.
Emil von Selle’s office in the palace was simple. When he shadowed the former Imperial Physician, that man’s dark office full of knicknacks and awards on every shelf had felt too somber and overwhelming, so Emil had asked for one that had a big window rather than bookshelves, and he kept his desk as neat as he could. Perhaps years of service would fill it with mementoes, but for now it was empty, save for his computer, and the walls were bare except for a few framed decorative anatomical pieces that he found particularly interesting: an x-ray of the delicate bones in the hands as they held a giant ring of keys, an illustration of the muscles in the body as a man did the highjump. He could admit that it was all to indicate his professionalism, just signals and signs that didn’t mean anything other than that he could pick out art and get someone to frame it for him.
He spent a lot of time in the office, gazing out the window at the garden below. He was sure that when he got more used to the post, he would wander the building— he could be contacted by phone no matter where he went— but without an anchor to follow around, he was directionless. It was a strange way to feel about the palace, but the palace hadn’t even been built when Kaiser Reinhard was alive. Parts of the complex were still under construction, even now.
He was in his office, Thursday morning, two weeks into the start of his post, when he had a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he said, expecting one of the many orderlies who now suddenly worked under him.
The door opened, a guard pushing it open, and Kaiserin Hildegarde, regent of the Neue Reich, ruling for her son until he came of age, stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She was carrying a wrapped package under one arm. Emil stood from his plush chair in a rush and saluted, an old habit that never really died, though he was a civilian now, and had been since his post-graduate training.
She looked— not quite the same as she used to, but almost. She looked more like she did when Emil had first met her, before she had married Kaiser Reinhard. The nine months of her pregnancy, and then the time right after his death, had taken something out of her, and every time Emil saw her now, he was gratified that whatever it was that had been lost, was back, if not unchanged.
Now in her mid thirties, her face was thinner, and there were lines forming at the corners of her lips, like a perpetual suppressed smile. Her hair was short again, though beneath a chic green hat, and in a more trendy, curly style, one that she had originated on the behest of her household staff. He had read the newspapers about it for years— some bid to endear herself to the progressive and womanly elements of the Neue Reich’s conquered territories. It worked. She often gave speeches, even when directed to whole of the Reich, in the language of the conquered territories, her thick but clear and practiced accent giving the words a funny lilt.
He had been staring at her for a little too long. “Your Majesty,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you. It’s not our scheduled day.”
“I had some free time in my schedule.” A lie. He was well aware of her habits. The woman didn’t know how to rest, but it had never seemed to have much of a negative effect on her health. Slightly more awkwardly, she added, “I came to see how you were settling in, Emil.”
He didn’t mind the first name address— it was what he was there for. The position of Royal Physician was not one that required more medical knowledge than anyone else. He could consult experts on any subject, any time, could commandeer any resources he needed for the Royal Family. But they needed to trust him to make decisions, intimate, personal ones, that they could not. That trust was something that no amount of training could provide, but that Emil had.
“Would you like some tea?” he asked.
“No.” She chuckled. “I don’t have that much free time in my schedule. But I can sit and catch up.” She took a seat in front of his desk, leaving the package she held on her lap.
“I appreciate you taking the time.” He smiled at her— it wasn’t just a rote statement, but genuine. They had never been friends thirteen years ago— the difference in their ages had been too great for that— but they had occupied a unique and shared space in the universe, and there was a bittersweet, but still sweet, feeling to seeing her again, outside of the correspondence and phone calls that had secured him the post.
“How have you been finding the palace?” she asked, taking a look around his office.
“It’s different,” he said. He paused. “It’s strange— not the building, but being in it on my own.”
“Yes.”
“It might have been easier getting situated if you were still in the Hotel Vitava,” Emil said.
Hilde laughed, though it was with a bit of a melancholy tone. “They tore that place down, you know. Some kind of problem with the foundations.”
“I know, I saw the place it used to be. The new building isn’t a hotel, is it?”
“No, I’m not sure what it is. But Phezzan is always changing. I don’t there’s ever been a decade when the skyline has stayed the same.”
“It’s an interesting place.” He looked around the office, his eyes flicking out to the garden outside. “This palace should stay here for a while, though.”
“I hope so.” She shook her head. “Designed by a dead man for a man who never lived to see it built. But it should outlast all of us. Neue Sanssouci certainly did” She changed the topic. “You’ve been on Odin, right?”
“I did my doctorate on Odin, but my residency was at the general hospital on El Facil. It’s a very small place. A lot of industrial accidents in the trauma ward there— it’s a mining planet.”
“Oh, in the territories.”
“Yes.”
“So you speak their language?”
Emil laughed. “Well, I’ll never get rid of the accent.”
“Neither will I,” she admitted. “Why’d you pick there?” It seemed to be a very pointed question, one that caught Emil off guard, not expecting a test. The only answer was the honest one.
“It was as far away from here as I could get,” he said. “You promised me this position, and I knew you would keep your promise if I wanted it. I could have worked in a more prestigious place, but it seemed important for me to get experience in the wider world. It might have made me decide not to take this job— I almost didn’t.”
He seemed to have passed whatever test it was. “I’m glad you did.”
“If you don’t mind me saying so— I feel a little out of my depth.”
“You’ll find your footing.” She paused, then lifted the package she was holding. “I brought this for you. A little office-warming gift, if you want it.”
“Thank you,” he said. It was a slender thing, and pulled the gold paper off to reveal a framed photograph, of himself and Kaiser Reinhard riding horses together. It was a rare casual moment between them— Emil almost thought he could remember that specific day: what he had brought Kaiser Reinhard for breakfast, the feeling of fastening his cape for him, what they had talked about when riding. He couldn’t really remember, of course, but the feeling was there. The sun was bright in the photo, and Kaiser Reinhard was smiling, and Emil was smiling, too. He stared at it for a long time before Hilde anything.
“I thought it would be good decoration,” she said.
“It is.” He forced himself to look away from the photo, at the very barren office. “I’ve got plenty of places to put it.”
Hilde grinned, the suppressed laugh lines around the corners of her mouth unfolding into the position they were meant to take. “You’ll settle in soon enough.” She glanced at her watch. “I’d better run, though. Have you met Alexander yet?”
“When he was a baby.”
“I’ll invite you to dinner with the both of us sometime in the next week or so,” Hilde said. “That will be a better chance to get to know him rather than his monthly checkups.” There was something funny in her voice.
“Does he not like seeing the doctor?”
“He’s thirteen,” she said wryly. “I think it would be difficult to say that he likes anything.”
Emil hid a smile behind his hand. “Forgive me for laughing at my Kaiser.”
“You’re forgiven. But you’ll like him when you meet him.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Hilde stood up. “It is good to see you, Emil.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
He dreamed about Kaiser Reinhard that night. He hadn’t had one of those dreams in a long time, and, at first, he thought it was of the usual kind, where he was a child again. He saw Reinhard from far away, standing at the huge windows of his office in the Hotel Vitava. But when Emil walked up to him, empty handed, he found that he was taller than Reinhard was by a good few centimeters, and when he opened his mouth to speak, his voice came out with an adult’s timbre. “What do you need, Your Majesty? Are you feeling well?”
Reinhard turned towards him. “Oh, Emil,” he said. He seemed surprised to see him. “Are you here to take my temperature?”
Emil checked his pockets. “I didn’t bring my thermometer.”
“Oh, I can’t say I’m sorry about that,” Reinhard said. “There’s nothing worse than being treated like a sick man. But I don’t have a fever.”
He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, then beckoned Emil closer, and checked Emil’s temperature with the same gesture, comparing the two. “See? Reinhard said. “The same.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Emil said, though he had always been incapable of contradicting Reinhard. Perhaps he himself was running a fever, dizzy in the dream.
“When did you get so tall, Emil?” Reinhard asked.
“I don’t know, Your Majesty. I don’t remember.”
“It suits you.”
And Reinhard smiled, and ran his hand over Emil’s hair, and tugged at the fringe of bangs that fell over his forehead, wrapping the hair around his finger and pulling gently, so that Emil had no choice but to bend forward, Reinhard’s eyes right there before him.
In a way, it was like any other dream that he had had for years, the confused mixture of memory and desire for something that had never been and never could have been. Emil woke up sweating, and stared into the darkness above his still-unfamiliar bed in his room in the palace for a long, long time.
The opportunity to meet Kaiser Alexander came much earlier than the promised invitation to the family dinner. Emil was poking at the remains of his lunch at his desk in his office when, once again, there was a knock on his door. He had now trained himself, even when it was just one of his nurses, to stand up before telling whoever it was to come in, and he was very glad that he did.
The door opened to reveal no one other than Kaiser Alexander. It was one thing to see the thirteen year old in photographs, quite another to meet him in person. He was tall for a boy his age, and his hair was shoulder length and loose, with delicate waves that didn’t quite become curls. He was wearing casual clothing, dark colored pants and a light shirt, both of which looked very clean, though his hair was slightly limp with still-drying sweat. He might have just gotten back from some game of football, or something like that. He stood stiffly, like a little soldier, and his hands were behind his back.
“Your Majesty,” Emil said, and gave a deep bow. “What can I do for you?”
“You can wait outside,” Alexander said to the guard who had followed him into the room. “I’ll just be a minute.”
The guard didn’t protest, though he did give a glance around the room to make sure Emil was the only other person there before leaving, standing just outside the door and leaving it ajar. Alexander scowled and pulled it shut the rest of the way, then paced around Emil’s office with a haughty expression on his face.
He never answered the question Emil asked, but he walked around and looked out the window, then walked behind Emil’s desk to look at the pictures on the walls, first the anatomical studies of hands and leaping men, and then at the photograph of Emil and Reinhard.
“That’s my father,” he said, pointing at the photograph with his left hand, his right hand still held stiffly behind his back, and he kept turning so that Emil couldn’t see it. Emil consulted his memory of Alexander’s personal medical record— there would have been a note in there if he was left handed. Immediately, Emil understood that something strange was going on, and that Alexander had not just wandered into his office for a social visit.
“Yes, it is,” Emil said. “I knew him when I was your age.”
“That’s why my mother gave you this job.”
There was no point in lying. “Yes. We knew each other back then.”
Alexander sniffed. “Are you a good doctor?”
“I hope so. Kaiserin Hildegarde isn’t known for having incompetent staff, and I wouldn’t want to lose my job so quickly,” Emil said, trying to joke with the boy.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Alexander leaned over Emil’s desk and looked at the remains of Emil’s lunch, a salad and fruit. He picked up the apple that Emil had been saving for later and tossed it into the air, still catching it with his left hand. He did this for a few tosses, seemingly at a loss for what to say to Emil.
“It’s a pity I didn’t take more than one of those for lunch,” Emil said to fill the silence. “When I was doing my residency, I did a stint in the pediatric ward of the El Facil hospital— one of the nurses there taught me how to juggle. It always made the kids laugh.”
“I don’t need to be entertained.”
“Of course not, Your Majesty. Was there something you needed?”
“No,” Alexander said. But he didn’t put the apple down, and he didn’t leave. When the apple reached the top of its next arc on his toss, Emil reached out and snatched it from the air.
“Hey!”
“You want it back? Here—” And he tossed the apple, giving it a bit of a spin, a tricky but not impossible catch for the young Kaiser’s left hand, and he snatched it. Almost on instinct, he immediately tossed it back to Emil, who had to jump for it, though he managed the catch. “Good one, Your Majesty. Oop—” And he sent the apple sailing back.
They did a few more rounds of this, Emil carefully watching Alexander’s face, so like Kaiser Reinhard’s in expression, for the moment when he was about to switch from entertainment to boredom, and at the moment before then, Emil sent the apple on a path that Alexander would need to use his right hand to catch, tossing it underhanded and low, but fast, to his right side.
Alexander dove for it, abandoning his dignity, but missed, and the apple tumbled to the floor, landing hard enough to make a dent in its shiny exterior.
“Looks like I win,” Emil said, going over to pick up the now bruised apple.
Alexander wrinkled his face petulantly. “It wasn’t a competition.”
“Of course not, Your Majesty. But can your humble servant have his prize anyway?”
“What prize?”
“Tell me what’s wrong with your right hand, Your Majesty?”
Alexander’s cheeks and ears went bright red with embarrassment. “There’s nothing wrong with my right hand,” he said.
“Of course not. But may I see it?”
“Why? You want to kiss my ring?”
“Do people often do that to you?” Emil asked dryly. “I’m afraid I’ll have to do without the honor. But let me see. Come on.”
Reluctantly, with a seeming disdain for his own body, Alexander held out the offending arm. Gently, Emil took his hand, and undid the button at his wrist to push his sleeve up. Alexander’s face wrinkled in pain at the motion, though he didn’t make a sound.
He was wearing a ring, some sigil of the dynasty, the winged lion placing its paw on top of a red jewel. Other than that, his hands looked like any boy’s, childishly soft skin and delicate fingers like his father’s. But he had scraped the palm quite badly, and the wrist was beginning to swell.
The question was not how bad the injury was— Emil thought it was probably a sprain— but how none of the guards had noticed the boy injure himself. He was under observation constantly, or near-constantly, so it was strange that no one had seen him get hurt and brought him here immediately. And it was also strange that he hadn’t wanted to admit to being hurt— why?
Alexander sighed as Emil turned his wrist over. “I think it’s broken.”
“I doubt that, Your Majesty. I think it’s just a sprain. But we’ll give you an x-ray to be sure.”
“Hmpf. And if it is broken?”
“Then you can tell your mother what a horrible job I do as a doctor. Let’s go see. Come on.” He gave Alexander his hand back, and led him towards the door. To the waiting guards outside, he said, “The Kaiser just wants to see the diagnostic suite,” and led the whole group down the hallway.
Alexander had returned to walking stiffly, with his hands behind his back, and he marched at the forefront of their little ensemble. It was funny to watch him strut around, the afternoon sunlight from the hallway windows glinting off his golden hair. He was like a miniature version of his father, in some ways, though the differences were obvious. Kaiser Reinhard had always been secure in himself— Alexander’s whole act seemed to be a cover for insecurity, the kind that any thirteen year old was prone to, let alone a thirteen year old with the galaxy hovering over his shoulders.
He found himself walking behind Alexander, on the wrong side of the one-way-mirror of time. With hindsight, after Kaiser Reinhard was dead, Emil understood what he had meant to him, the young simulacrum of someone else long gone and far away. Now, here before him, the dead man he had loved was alive again, thirteen years old. Just for a minute. It was a strange, misplaced warmth and affection that filled him.
It was disconcerting, and Emil had to tear his eyes away from the golden hair, and the memory of brushing it. That was nothing he would ever do again, nor did he really want to, but the memory of it pressed onto the current moment, like the viewer’s reflection when looking through a window. Alexander’s hair curled above his ears, a little ring around his head like it held the dent of a crown; it was tamer than Kaiser Reinhard’s mane had been.
They came to the room with the x-ray machines, and Emil smiled at the guards and told them to wait outside, please. Alexander accompanied this with a glare.
The x-ray room was clean and modern, and Emil, not wanting to bring in a tech to do it and interrupt whatever camaraderie he had gotten Alexander to feel, putzed around the room, setting things up himself. He filled the silence with a rambling explanation of what each machine did, and what he was doing every step of the way. Alexander just watched and listened, taking it in with a dead seriousness.
When Emil brought him over to lay his hand flat on the imaging table, positioning it beneath the x-ray machine, Alexander asked, “And aren’t you going to ask me how I broke it?”
“I don’t think it’s broken, Your Majesty.”
“We’ll see.”
He took the x-ray image from the other room, watching Alexander through the glass window in the door the whole time. He was nervous, and the moment he was alone in the room, he started kicking his foot against the chair where he sat. The results flashed up on the diagnostic screens immediately, and Emil went back out to look at them.
He made a point of looking very carefully at the bones in Alexander’s wrist, but it was just a sprain.
“It’s just a sprain, Your Majesty. Which is very lucky for you.”
“Why?”
“I get the feeling that you wouldn’t have told me you were hurt if I didn’t pry it out of you. A sprain will probably heal on its own, though I’ll wrap it for you, but a break might set itself wrong.”
Alexander scowled at him. “Then I shouldn’t have bothered coming.”
“Do want me to wrap it for you, or are you going to try to hide this from your mother, too?”
“You’d just tell her.”
“I want you to trust me, Your Majesty,” Emil said. “I wouldn’t want to jeopardize that trust.”
“And you aren’t going to ask me how I got hurt?”
“Is it likely to happen again?”
Alexander laughed. “Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me, so that I can make a plan for treating it in the future, then.”
Alexander’s face went through a series of expressions, scrunching up his nose and crinkling his brow.
“Think about it— give me a second while I get the bandages.”
He stuck his head out of the room, let the guards know where he was going and that Alexander should stay there, please. Even though he said that, when he returned with his metal tray of bandages and antiseptic wipes and a bottle of painkillers, he half expected Alexander to have left.
But he was still in the room when Emil returned, impatiently or unhappily kicking the leg of his chair. And Emil pulled up his own chair in front of him. “Alright, let me see.”
This time, without complaint, Alexander held out his hand. Emil took it, and gently cleaned out the scrapes on his palm, none of which were too deep. They stung, which made Alexander wince and pull back, but Emil was gentle and patient, and didn’t comment on it.
He silently wrapped up his wrist, tightening the bandages to give it support and keep the swelling down a little. Years ago, Reinhard had looked at the burns on Emil’s hands just like this, though he shouldn’t have bothered. How strange it all had been, those few years.
“Felix and I were riding,” Alexander said. “That’s all.”
And something Felix, the adopted son of Fleet Admiral Mittermeyer, had done, had caused the injury. “It’s admirable that you don’t want to get your friend in trouble,” Emil said. “Your father would have done the same.”