A Thin Line

By Mica Le Fox

Kirion Valonn gets a call from the office of Imperatrix Simianka and she attends the royal's private suite at The Palace to give a private recital. She is a young flautist in The National Symphony Orchestra and Imperatrix Simianka happened to be in the royal box at her performance that day. Kirion had been noticed and summoned!

She is asked to give further recitals to the beautiful, but arrogant and demanding Imperatrix who is part of a monarchy that believe they are selected by God and have ruled the country with an iron grip for a thousand years.

But when she makes a demand on Kirion that has nothing whatsoever to do with music, the flautist is shocked and humiliated. Simianka sees no wrong of course... she is a high ranking royal and nothing is beyond her. What she wants, she gets. But if she wanted Kirion’s affection, she has destroyed that hope and the musician loathes and despises her.

Simianka’s continuing pursuit of Kirion, despite her marriage to The Imperator Aristido, makes the flautist even angrier and she is unguardedly hostile, risking her life to resist Simianka’s advances.

But is that what Kirion really wants? She finds herself repelled by the imperatrix’s disgraceful use of bribery and threat to get what she wants... but infuriatingly attracted to her beauty and even the dark cynical humour that she wields like a club to batter anyone who comes into range. Well Kirion should disapprove, but then Simianka is very funny... as well as being self-pitying, arrogant and bombastic. She has no concept how ordinary people live and a scooter ride to the shops leaves Kirion bemused and enraged at the royal’s ignorance and presumptuousness - although oddly terrified that Simianka’s stupidly naïve unwariness that the danger from her hostile subjects crowding the market could get her killed.

A Thin Line is a romance set against an atmosphere of the end of an era... a monarchy desperately trying to retain power by force... which only serves to hasten their demise. Kirion and Simianka are on opposite sides and should have nothing in common... but their hearts and bodies tell them otherwise.

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mica Le Fox
• Release date: Feb 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005670559

Mica Le Fox

Totally out of my depth at an academic school I mercifully discovered I could draw and blagged my way into a career in advertising and visual arts. So far, so not too bad. It's been OK, but writing has been part of my remit and I've always itched to do more, so here I am, blagging my way into book writing. It's all fiction. Fiction is often way better than real life and I spend most of my time thinking things up. But I will never try to make you accept the completely unbelievable. If you watch, say, science fiction on TV, it's alright to 'suspend your disbelief' - I do - but not to accept the unbelievable. I hope my books will introduce to you human characters (mostly) with ordinary human emotions and fallibilities. I especially like fallibilities... they are the most interesting thing about us all and certainly the best to write about. I want you to have a booky window on people sometimes making mistakes... maybe sometimes getting it right as well. And I will try to make you feel what they do, you know, like you are in their shoes... well, unless they're undressed of course. Whether I do all this well is another matter, I only write these stories so I have no idea. Anyway, it's for you to decide. Buy the books and let me know. Ha! Blagging again.

Book preview

A Thin Line

By Mica Le Fox

Copyright 2022 Mica Le Fox

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Chapter one

I got a telephone call about ten-thirty in the evening. He said he was from the office of The Imperatrix Simianka at The Grand Palace and that I’d been summoned to give a private recital to Her Royal Highness.

Oh yes? I replied. Should I wear full national dress or can I come in the pyjamas I am currently wearing?

Well now, he said after a moment’s pause, I would place my selection somewhere between the two, but you will need to decide soon because the car will arrive in about ten minutes.

And who the fuck is The Imperatrix Simianka? Never heard of her so I doubt she exists and that’s where your little game falls down… Tobyn, isn’t it? I know it’s you and you’re just not funny.

Tobyn was my oldest friend from childhood and fond of a gag or two, which I usually fell for. Ha! Not this time.

A non-existent imperatrix? Really? Is that your best shot? I continued. And that bloody accent. It sounds like a stand-up comic’s portrayal of an officious wassock from the Ministry of No Return or something.

There was a deathly silence on the line and I began to have my first doubts. It was normally about this time that Tobyn could hold it together no longer and give himself away. Perhaps he was getting a bit too good at this prank thing. It is Tobyn, isn’t it?

The very flat tone started up again. My name is Secretary Ysirin and what you just said amounts to treason on at least two counts, not to mention a personal insult to myself, so if I were you, I would go straight to the wardrobe, change into something comfortable but acceptable for the private chambers of a royal imperatrix, make sure you bring your instrument and hope that Her Royal Highness finds your recital acceptable. You have seven minutes.

I chose an everyday skirt and blouse so that if Tobyn turned up to cash in on his little gag, it would look like I had not panicked, but had worn these clothes all day and when the buzzer buzzed, I opened the street door not to Tobyn but to a short, wiry and somewhat weaselly man in a chauffeur’s tunic with the royal crest on his peaked cap.

Ready? he asked.

I told him I just had to get my case, but he seemed irritable. Be quick, The Imperatrix doesn’t like to be kept waiting.

So, I climbed the stairs back to my apartment two at a time, then back down again with my case to find the chauffeur holding open the rear door of a rather large black automobile.

We drove through the wet and now deserted cobbled streets of the High Wen, the powerful engine of the limousine barely registering the steep climbs that marked the journey to the highest point of the city and I sat, tiny in the expansive rear compartment with my case resting on my knees. At the gates, the driver was waved through the sentry post and we pulled into a courtyard at the rear of… yes, The Royal Palace. How wrong can you be?

Come with me, he ordered, and I followed him past two more sentries down a very long corridor, his heels clacking on the marble floor, at the end of which he held the door open for me to enter what looked like an antechamber, a large, hexagonal room with impressively grand double doors that I assumed led into the Royal Suite.

To the side, a fortyish man with thinning hair and rimless glasses, engrossed in skimming through the pages of a document, eventually looked up from his desk, pushed his glasses down his nose and made an inspection of me before concluding with what sounded very much like, Ah-hah.

In the silence that followed, I said. I’m Kirion Valonn, I’m here to…

I know who you are. You are the treasonous flautist who hopes to avoid the firing squad by means of her virtuosity.

I guessed this was Private Secretary Ysirin.

You are a virtuoso, aren’t you? He was possibly thinking we could cut to the chase and I go straight to the firing squad without the recital.

I... well…

Never mind. We shall see in due course anyway without the need to suffer your inarticulate rambling beforehand.

He gave a pained exhalation, stood up and said, with practised economy, Wait. Remain standing, then marched to the double doors, knocked respectfully and disappeared inside, to reappear fifteen seconds later and address me imperiously. The Imperatrix Simianka will see you now. And he stood back to allow me to enter the Royal Suite.

I have to say, it occurred to me that I may be on my way to my death, although I think that was the impression Ysirin would have liked me to have - that death was impending, but I could perhaps divert it if entertaining enough. On the other hand, I did detect a certain gallows humour in his voice which I hoped indicated that his threats of execution for treason were not entirely serious, but it was in no way clear and I was far from comfortable as I stood in a large room with a bed at one end, a sofa and two armchairs gathered around an ornate central fireplace and a table set into a bay with four chairs. The fire made the room warm even though the night was not cold.

Ysirin tipped his head. Kirion Valonn, Ma’am, Third Flautist to the National Symphony Orchestra.

Having announced me, he leaned towards me and said under his breath, Curtsy now.

On the bed at the far end of the room, I could just make out the form of someone lying propped against a heap of pillows.

I curtsied. I knew how to because, as Ysirin suggested, I am a member of the wind section of the National Symphony Orchestra of Overstradia and it is sometimes required when we are performing to The Royal Family. In fact, on joining the orchestra, I was taught how to curtsy and spent one entire, exhausting evening practising for a test the next day.

I saw a hand rise from the form on the bed and Ysirin held out a palm to me. You may approach, Subject Valonn.

. . .

Destiny’s virus, I call it. The first and second flautists were struck down with it on the day we gave a royal performance, I was elevated to lead and another musician was borrowed from somewhere to take second. As it happened, the royal balcony was empty as I launched into my opening solo, apart from a very ordinarily dressed middle-aged woman and a teenage girl, neither of whom I recognised, although my knowledge of The Royals is far from encyclopaedic as you probably realise.

I have to admit to a slight feeling of disappointment. I mean, I would obviously not wish illness upon my fellow musicians, but as I had been thrust unwilled into the spotlight on the evening of a royal audience, to discover that there are actually none in attendance left me feeling just a little deflated.

Of course, I do get to play in front of audiences from time to time, say, if there is a need for an extra flute for a particular piece, or perhaps just for the experience - keeping my hand in - when either of flutes one and two graciously stand aside for a couple of evenings. But this was my first in front of The Royals… or not, as it turned out.

Still, I gave the performance my all and apart from a slight timing issue in the third movement, it was not bad if I say so myself. Of course, if the first or second flutes had been playing rather than me, needless to say there would have been no timing issues at all.

But at the end, I stood to receive my round of applause and a small bouquet of violets - a modest flower if you ask me - and I was about to curtsy to the royal balcony but noticed that it was now empty. No point, I considered, in curtsying to empty seats, is there?

And then I went home. Alone. No car for the third flautist, just me and my scooter with my case strapped to the rack behind the pillion, pop-popping and bump-bumping cautiously across the slippery cobbled streets to the East Side of the High Wen and the buildings gradually changed from grand residences and public offices to a jumble of factories and poorer residential. Mine was the best apartment block of Caussien Street’s mix of shops, tenements and warehouses and would once have been a single house, probably for the owner of the textile warehouse next door. I dismounted outside the front door and left my scooter amongst the jumble of cycles, both motor and pedal, that frayed the roadside.

Inside the house, I climbed the elegant but now rather shabby spiralling marble and wrought iron staircase to the top floor where there is only my door with its peeling forest green paintwork and the letter ‘K’ - the topmost and last flat.

I poured myself a glass of wine and opened the fridge… actually not particularly rewarding as I discovered only the remains of a fish pie which I took with a fork to the windows overlooking the street. Despite the earlier downpour the night was still mild, so I opened one of the floor-to-ceiling doors, stepped onto the shallow ironwork balcony, leaned on the rail and listened to the tinny sound of music from the Firefly Bar along the street, breathing in the smell of fried liver from the apartment below. As I was about to take a mouthful of fish pie, the telephone rang... and there we are, up to date again.

. . .

Approaching the end of the bed, I could see that the person on it was just a young girl and as I looked closer realised that she was one of the two on the royal balcony earlier. The Royal Imperatrix Simianka had been in attendance at my performance. Dear God, my playing had been competent, but far from bravura, so what on earth was I doing here?

Your performance was just acceptable tonight Subject Valonn. It seemed as if The Imperatrix had read my thoughts and agreed with them.

Oh. Well, I’m sorry it didn’t meet with your expectations Your Highness.

I didn’t know who the hell you were, Valonn, so I had no expectations. Consequently, I rather think it was in your grasp to have impressed your Imperatrix but I’m left with a memory that your timing was, shall we say, adrift in the third movement and there were various passages where a little more colour would have benefitted the performance.

I’m, um, grateful for your, um, observant critique, Your Highness.

Your Royal Highness. She corrected. I’m The King’s sister and that entitles me to the whole shebang… if you’d be so kind.

I think now would be a good time to tell you that I come from a long line of Disgruntles. My mother is Maranzina Valonn, probably the finest concert pianist of her era but although she has never publicly supported revolution, the whiff of anti-establishment that hangs over my family was enough to inhibit her career and prevent her from becoming the National’s Maestro. My father, Lusgarda, is a well-known liberal Disgruntle calling for greater democracy in the governance of the country, which makes him a marked man, although not outspoken enough to warrant arrest and vanishment, and his gentle reformism is actually useful to The Monarchy when they occasionally wish to appear more inclusive and allow him to speak. He too is a talented multi-instrumentalist, but not in the same league as my mother.

My brothers are a different kettle of fish and neither do I know, nor wish to say too much about their activities, but our parents frequently lose sleep when they are late home. They are no musicians except perhaps to accompany themselves on the guitar to a thinly disguised irreverent folk song in the right… or perhaps wrong… bars.

Radl is my elder brother – he is twenty-five and has always been a bit of a hothead. Dad’s liberal Disgruntlement cuts no ice with him; he just sees it as a sop and advocates a far more radical anti-monarchy agenda including what he calls physical resistance. Trinny is only nineteen and the baby, but is very influenced by Radl and would follow him into a fire. He is an artist and his subversive graphics are to be seen posted on the walls of