Charles

  Most tourists are surprised to learn that Canada is one of the Western world’s oldest continuous monarchies. Hell, half the time, Canadians ourselves don’t remember that we, technically, have a monarchy—or, at least, we didn’t remember before the Shift. I bet we remember now.

  First, it was the Kings of France, who made Canada their colony in the 1530s; sovereignty passed to Great Britain in 1763 after the Seven Years’ War, neatly allowing us to sit out both Cromwell’s Republic and the French Revolution; meaning that we’ve had a monarchy longer than either of our European “mother countries”. Then, with the Statute of Westminster in 1931, Canada finally got its own legally distinct Crown—albeit, one that “just so happened” to be worn by the exact same person who wore the British and Australian ones. But: French or British or Canadian, absolute or ceremonial, willingly or unwillingly, the fact remains that, for nearly five centuries, the land now known as Canada has been under the continuous rule of a King or Queen. And each and every one of them eyes me haughtily from out of their oil portraits as I walk through the Senate Foyer in the Centre Block of Parliament. The world may have changed—reality itself may have changed—but Canada, against all odds, remains a monarchy.

  I haven’t been to Parliament since the capitulation, and our new “Gentry” look like they’ve done some redecorating. Like most of Ottawa these days, the Centre Block’s Gothic-Revivalist walls are thick with frost; but here, at least, it’s artisanally arranged in a delicate whorl pattern, filling the space with an ethereal glow to replace the now-useless electric lights. The craftsman in me is impressed—these Fairies have a decent sense of aesthetics. The elected representative in me, on the other hand, is disgusted that they’ve given themselves something so pretty when their new subjects are starving.

  A couple of soldiers—tall, pale blue in colour, and with faces that look like they were hand-sculpted from ice by snobby angels—glare down at me. I guess that schlubby, working-class-looking guys must clash with the Look they’re going for in this fine establishment. And I’m wearing my best tie!

  I put on my friendliest smile, the one I save for people who really hate me, and approach one of them. “Good afternoon, gents,” I say, extending a hand that the Fairy, quite pointedly, does not take. “I’m Chuck Oakes, Member of Parliament for North Saskatchewan–Athabasca, here for the new Governor General’s installation—”

  “We know who you are,” the Fairy replies in such a tone as to imply, probably accurately, that this is the sole reason why he hasn’t parted my head from my shoulders.

  “Fantastic! Can I go into the Senate Chamber now, or—”

  “No. You will wait with the other parliamentarians.”

  “Oh. Well, in that case, can you tell me where everyone is?”

  My interlocutor thrusts a finger violently toward a hallway at left.

  “Great! Thanks, buddy!” I flip him an enthusiastic finger gun and set off in the direction indicated.

  *

  I find the other parliamentarians in what used to be one of the Committee Rooms. What few of them there are, anyway: at dissolution, there were 338 seats in the House of Commons and 105 in the Senate, but barely sixty people look to be here today.

  “You look awfully chipper, Mr. Oakes,” greets Byron McFeely, a career stuffed-shirt from New Brunswick who was appointed to the Senate sometime in the 1980s and who hasn’t had a single independent thought since then.

  “I’m crying on the inside,” I tell him, which sounds like a hackneyed joke but is an accurate summation of my mood. “Where’s the Prime Minister?”

  “The PM is unable to join us today,” intones Oscar Cloutier, the Industry Minister—and, by the looks of things, the only Member present from the Government’s front bench. Cloutier is famous for his fashion sense: his well-tailored business suits and well-coiffed, well-manicured appearance. GQ did a profile of him one time. Today, he sports a fashionable five o’clock shadow and a suit that looks a size or two too large for him. That, more than anything else, drives home just how screwed we are.

  “What my learned colleague means is that the Prime Minister ran away,” says Heidi Hiscox, the Official Opposition’s critic for some minor portfolio I can’t be arsed to remember.

  “Much like your own leader, isn’t that right?” challenges a Government backbencher (his name might be Koontz?) from some riding in British Columbia.

  “For your information, my leader was off dialoguing with constituents in his riding when the power stopped working! Not like yours, who hopped on the first—”

  “Order!” someone shouts. I turn to see Rupi Dhaliwal, one of my own caucus colleagues, who has taken to standing on a chair. The word triggers a Pavlovian reaction among the assembled parliamentarians, who hush their arguments, if only for a moment.

  “What, are you Speaker of the House now?” demands Koontz.

  “Yes!” Dhaliwal declares, and I am impressed by how much volume she can get out of such a petite body. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

  No one raises their hand, which I guess indicates universal acclimation under the present circumstances.

  Oscar Cloutier seizes the opportunity: “Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs,” he oozes, stepping out in front of Rupi.

  “The Speaker recognizes the honourable member for Beauregard,” she hastens to say.

  Cloutier nods at her appreciatively. “This is not the time for partisan rancour. Look around you! Our country is occupied! Our people are starving! Reality itself is broken, and the Prime Minister is gone. If ever there was a time for a national unity government, this is it.”

  “Under you, no doubt,” calls Hiscox.

  “I appear to be the senior member on the Government bench. With the Prime Minister gone, I am his acting successor according to Orders in Council.”

  “Hold on!” Hiscox exclaims. “We have more members here! If anyone is to act as Prime Minister, it should be one of us!” This triggers a chorus of agreements from the Official Opposition, which does indeed seem to outnumber the Government. But I can see that there’s a flaw in her reasoning, and much though I might dislike Cloutier, he is in the right.

  “Point of order,” I say, raising my hand.

  “The Speaker recognizes the honourable member for umm…”

  “North Saskatchewan–Athabasca,” I whisper.

  “For North Saskatchewan–Athabasca!”

  “Thank you, Ms. Speaker,” I say, hoping to instil some sense of decorum. “As you know, I don’t have a horse in this race. My party doesn’t have precedent or the most MPs on our side; we have no claim to the Government. But for the record, Monsieur Cloutier has the law on his side. Regardless of who has the most MPs, the Government is appointed by the Governor General. The outgoing GG named Monsieur Cloutier’s party the Government, and the outgoing PM’s Orders in Council make him acting Prime Minister.”

  “But the Governor General is gone,” protests an Opposition backbencher whose name I can’t recall.

  “Order!” cries Rupi.

  “In fact, the new Governor General will be arriving within two hours,” says Cloutier, his smugness returned despite his shabby appearance. “Until such a time as she says otherwise, the current Government stands.”

  “What, the Fairy Viceroy!?” demands Hiscox. She catches herself and then, in a lower voice, adds: “The Gentry are lunatics! I hear that the new self-styled King of America is using the President as a human mount!”

  “Pas une grosse perte,” mutters a Government backbencher, tactlessly but also accurately.

  “Nevertheless,” says Cloutier. “Our capitulation was legal. That means that the Winter Queen is now, legally, our Head of State, and her Viceroy will soon be our Governor General.”

  “I can’t believe you’re sticking to a strict interpretation of the law, given everything that’s happened!”

  “Given everything that’s happened,” I pipe in, “the law is the only thing we have left.”

  “Order!” exclaims Dhaliwal. “The member’s legal argument is sound. The Speaker accepts Oscar Cloutier as acting Prime Minister.”

  I’m not strictly certain that the Speaker has the authority to do that, but it seems good enough for most people here. Even Hiscox grumblingly stands down once it becomes clear the matter has been decided.

  “Now then,” says Cloutier. “I have raised the matter of a national-unity government. Who agrees?”

  Most people—myself included—put their hands up immediately, though there are a few stragglers (I might call them “idiots,” if I were anything less than a gentleman) who raise their hands only once they see which way the wind is blowing.

  “Good,” says Cloutier. “Then we’ll put up a united front when we talk to the new GG.”

  Our meeting continues for another half-hour, during which we formulate our policy objectives. There’s pretty broad agreement on these, as one might expect: immediate food aid for the Canadian people, as well as a resumption of normal weather patterns. Over the longer term, we want electricity, heating, transport, and communications restored. We are just in the process of discussing public education in magic when the door swings violently open.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  A single Fairy guard—relatively small in stature, but still no doubt able to kill every last human in the room—struts inside, helmet tucked under his arm.

  “Your presence is required in the Senate Chamber,” he announces. With these words uttered, he spins on his heel and marches out of the room.

  For a moment, not one person moves. And then Senator McFeely, of all people, clears his throat. “Well. I don’t know about you—but I don’t want to be late.”

  *

  “Would you care to walk with me, Mr. Oakes?” Oscar Cloutier asks as we file out the door.

  “Certainly,” I shrug. “To what do I owe this unexpected honour, Mr. Acting Prime Minister?”

  “Gratitude,” he replies, either failing to notice or choosing to ignore my sarcastic tone. “And curiosity. We’ve had our share of differences politically, and I’ve never gotten the impression that you liked me much as a person. So why did you stand up for me back there?”

  “Because I meant what I said about the law,” I reply. “Right now, it really is all we have.”

  “That’s a surprisingly conservative perspective. Aren’t you supposed to be a radical?”

  “I am,” I reply. “But I mean it literally. Right now, we have no food; no weapons; no idea how to even fight, for God’s sake. They could wipe us out to a man, woman, and child if they wanted to. Literally the only thing that stands between us and annihilation is our constitutional order and the desperate, flailing hope that the new Viceroy gives a flying fuck about it, pardon my French. And if we want her to take it seriously, we need to show her that we take it seriously. Which means”—I sigh—“you for Prime Minister.”

  Cloutier releases a smug little closed-mouth chuckle at this response. Then he lays a hand on my shoulder. “I want you to come with me when we present our demands to the new Governor General.”

  I pause. “Are you sure that we want to present them as ‘demands’? I mean, we have no leverage—”

  “That’s exactly why we need to be uncompromising. We must show them that we’re unbroken and unbowed.”

  “We’ve already capitulated!” I insist in a whisper. “We don’t even know the lay of the land with this GG! Is it really wise to immediately stake out an adversarial relationship?”

  Cloutier’s lips form a tight, humourless smile. “Why don’t you leave the business of governing to those of us who have actually been in government?”

  He walks on ahead without me. Arrogant bastard.

  We pass into the Senate Chamber and here, too, the Fairies have been redecorating. The first thing I notice is the throne against the wall opposite. There was a throne there before the conquest too, of course—the Governor General would sit in it during her annual speech at the opening of Parliament—but it was more like a fancy chair, carved from wood with plush red upholstery; it was the sort of “throne” that you would expect for a constitutional monarchy that’s culturally allergic to ostentatiousness. This, though, is a Throne. It is ornately carved from ice, or glass, or perhaps even diamond, and gleaming with swirls of red gold and inlaid rubies; and it sits tantalizingly empty, awaiting the arrival of its occupant. About a dozen or so armoured knights stand clustered around it, some carrying banners of various colours. They look more ceremonial than combat-ready, but I don’t doubt that they could kill the lot of us if they wanted to.

  A Fairy “usher” directs us at spear-point to our own seats—a number of rows of shitty collapsible chairs arranged along the Senate floor. The rows of plush red seats running along the Chamber walls, which used to seat the Senators themselves, today are full of what I take to be Fairy nobles—the Gentry’s Gentry—clad in virgin cloaks of colours I didn’t even know existed. I smirk at the calculated humiliation, but sit nonetheless. Save the outrage for later.

  Cloutier looks like he could benefit from that advice; a few rows in front of me, he seems practically trembling with rage. I can tell our meeting with the Viceroy is going to be an absolute barrel of laughs.

  The ceiling’s an improvement, at least. The old ceiling was done up in an ugly wall-paper pattern of heraldic symbols; now, it’s a fresco of the night sky, stars all tinged in red light—presumably to match the Senate’s overall colour scheme. Why bother keeping the colour scheme? Why bother keeping Parliament at all, come to think of it?

  This question, like my anger, will need to wait, because at that precise moment a hush falls over the room. I look up, as this seems to be the general direction of everyone’s attention, and perceive what the commotion is all about.

  “Chasse-galerie!” someone whispers excitedly—and so it is.

  The first thing I think is that someone has done their research about their new vassal state. The second thing I think is: “Holy shit, a flying canoe!” But there it is; not an illustration, but paddling hard through the endless sky—which is, I remind myself, actually just the ceiling. A month ago, I would have dismissed this as an optical illusion, a giant LCD screen or something like that. But now I recognize it as real—or as real as anything is anymore.

  Images lose their power when they’re endlessly repeated; they become a sort of joke, even when there’s nothing funny about them. In Quebec, I’d seen the chasse-galerie used to advertise beer. But when you actually find it riding low over your head, you discover that there’s very little that’s cute or charming about a canoe full of cursed voyageurs damned to ride the skies until doomsday.

  As the boat draws closer, I can make out its occupants: the rowers, of course, whose skin is the colour and consistency of stone and whose eyes look out unseeing upon the world; and, between them, two women and a dragon.

  One of the women is the second-most beautiful and terrifying person that I’ve ever seen (second only to my wife when I forget to do the dishes); her hair is silver, her skin is an icy pale blue, and she has a long, sharp nose and cheekbones that could cut glass. She wears a dress made out of some kind of white fabric, threaded through with ornate patterns of gold; if this isn’t enough to identify her as the Viceroy, then there are also her eyes, which look out on the world like one who finds it wanting.

  The other woman is smaller and dressed more plainly in green. Her skin is a more natural-looking shade of golden-brown that could almost be human if it weren’t slightly luminescent, and she seems more than a little embarrassed to have so much attention on her—not the sort of attitude I’ve come to expect from the Gentry. Class differences? My inner rabble rouser is intrigued.

  And then, of course, there’s the dragon. At about the size of a polar bear, it’s small as far as dragons go—or, at least, smaller than the dragon that conquered Fort Knox in the earliest days of the Shift, the only member of the species with which I’m familiar. That doesn’t make it any less terrifying, though. It has silver scales and the posture of a T. rex, with what I take to be huge, leathery wings wrapped like a cape about its scaly bulk; it has a head like an alligator fat from eating kids and it roars ferociously as it flies past.

  The chasse-galerie circles about the room a few times, losing altitude before finally settling with a soft thud between us and the throne. I steal glances at my fellow parliamentarians, and each looks frightened to their bones; only then do I notice that I am too.

  For a moment, there’s silence. And then the pale, haughty woman rises in a single motion to her feet. One of her hands, I now see, carries the end of a sinuous, shiny leash wrapped almost invisibly around the dragon’s neck, looking more like a ribbon than a chain. She extends her hand and a heavily decorated Fairy knight clangs forward in a ridiculously ornate suit of battle armour to accept it from her.

  Not just any knight, I realize. Admittedly, they all look similar, but this one is unmistakably the one called Audan—the General who’d led the march into the city on the day of the capitulation: “Audan the Conqueror”, as I have no intention of calling him. Still, I can’t help but feel kind of sorry for him: the other “Gentry” come across as elegant and refined; he, by contrast, looks about as comfortable in his ceremonial finery as an Australian rugby hooligan in a powdered wig. He leads the dragon off to one side, clanging as he goes; and then, once he’s quite finished, the pale woman steps off the boat.

  The Gentry break out in a cheer. I spend a moment looking around uncertainly and then lightly clap my hands together a few times to be on the safe side—only to abruptly break off along with the rest of the crowd when some sort of creature steps forward from behind the throng of knights. Superficially, it looks kind of like a Fairy—the same sharp features, the arched ears, the pointy nose—but somehow also like one of those hairless cats: bulbous eyes, lanky, near-naked body with only a ragged loincloth preserving its dignity. A Goblin, maybe? Would I get in trouble for calling it that?

  Whatever it is, it holds aloft a crystal and starts speaking the Fairy language—a long, affectless monologue that sounds like it’s being recited. My guess is confirmed a moment later when he (presumably) repeats the address, first in English and then in French:

  “From her Majesty Dahuyn V, Winter Queen, by Grace of the Spirits of Land, Sea, and Sky, of Everglace and all Territories and Dominions thereof, to our beloved daughter Princess Elestrine Berit-Ardra av-Dahuyn: greetings. We do, by this our present commission, appoint you, Princess Elestrine, to be, during our pleasure, our Governor General and Commander-in-Chief over Canada, with all powers, rights, privileges, and responsibilities appertaining to the office…”

  I see Cloutier raise his eyebrows a few seats in front of me. Apparently, he’s noticed the same thing that I have—the speech has clearly been directly adapted from the letters of commission given to GGs before the Shift. Whoever these people are, they’re weirdly obsessed with parliamentary tradition. As if I didn’t have enough reason to hate them...

  The Goblin finally wraps up its address and lowers the crystal. Then, it ushers the pale woman—Princess Elestrine—over to the throne and asks her something in the same stentorian cadence. The translation comes: “Do you solemnly affirm that you will well and truly serve her Majesty the Winter Queen in the Office of Governor General and Commander in Chief and duly and impartially administer justice therein?”

  “Fvai,” she replies. I do.

  “Do you solemnly affirm that you will be faithful and bear true allegiance to her Majesty the Winter Queen?” asks the Goblin.

  This time, Elestrine pauses for an instant longer. “Fvai.”

  This brings about some murmuring amongst the Gentry for God only knows what reason; if there’s some big deal to this particular oath, then I’m just not seeing it. The princess offers a tight-lipped smile, but no more.

  And then, abruptly and without warning, the Goblin shoves both of its frail arms over its head and bellows in Fairy. By the time that it screams the translation—“Release the dragon! Libérez le dragon!”—the wretched thing is already in the air and barrelling directly toward us.

  Fuck!

  I dive on impulse toward the floor, my shitty collapsible chair clattering behind me. I hear a chorus of screams from my fellow parliamentarians (startled, rather than pained, at least), some peals of laughter from the assembled Gentry, and then a horrifying, awed quiet.

  I force myself to look up from where I’ve cradled my head beneath my hands on the floor. There, I see the dragon banking around the room on its too-small wings as the Gentry look anxiously on. And then, at last, it alights onto the very top of throne, circles around three times, and curls up like an enormous, scaly cat. Okay, so maybe not exactly like the installation ceremonies from before the Shift.

  A moment of silence ensues. Finally, the new Viceroy announces something in the Fairy language in a high, clear voice.

  From the benches, the Gentry start applauding wildly, rising to their feet in a standing ovation so loud that I can barely discern the voice of the Goblin: “The throne is treasure! Le tr?ne est un trésor! Vive la Reine d’Hiver! Long live the Winter Queen!”

  This is a performance, I realize suddenly.

  I clamber back up to my feet, picking up my chair from behind me. It’s so obvious that I could kick myself for not recognizing it earlier. This isn’t just an installation ceremony, and they didn’t invite us here as a courtesy; this is a show and we are the intended audience! Of course we are! Every single aspect has been designed to awe and terrify any humans watching—to impress upon us the Gentry’s authority, legal as much as magical. Why else bother aping parliamentary protocol? Why else dredge something like the chasse-galerie out of Canada’s admittedly rather spare cupboards of folklore—or circulate their set-piece around the audience like a ridiculous theatre gimmick?

  The thought cheers me somewhat, in spite of my circumstances; because a government that wants to scare you is a government that still cares what you think. And what that means is: we have leverage on them.

  I feel my lips curl into a smile and take in the Senate chamber with new eyes even as my peers around me nervously reassume their seats. We have leverage on them, I think again. And now it’s just a matter of figuring out what it is.