Chapter 1

He was an indolent youth, much to his tutor’s despair, though they all admitted he was intelligent, cunning even. Yet instead of using his brains to rise high amongst the elite of Vreekoosian society, he would use it to avoid any effort he deemed more trouble than it was worth. This generally meant anything that appeared to be work ... other than the exercise regime he practised relentlessly. For things he did think were worthwhile ... discreet married women, for instance, he would go the extra pacemark, if only to get into their beds. Then again, he had the tendency to drop them aside once he’d enjoyed their charms, though never considered the potential enemy he’d made. This naturally gained him a reputation, and not a good one. However, this did not appear to slow down his charm offensive against several potential conquests, who, truth be told, often had an equal or worse reputation than Amantus.

This reputation was only amongst women; men, both his male peers and seniors, rarely got to hear of his conquests, or rather, their names, and, truth be told, one of Amantus’s few virtues was that he was close-lipped about those he intimately interacted with ... if only to avoid being called out in a duel.

Meeting people to stave off boredom was an obsession amongst the privileged upper classes of Vreekoos. There were nightclubs, soirees, salons and debating societies. Yet, few of those attending realised their true purpose, which was to keep them away from the levers of power and obsessed with social one-upmanship, discreet affairs and gossip ... mainly gossip. The only stipulation to the various social mores was that there must be no scandals, particularly amongst unmarried girls of the nobility, who were expected to be virgins at their bonding ceremonies. Hence, the inurbs of the elite had all the appearance of serene tranquillity with chaperones guarding the young and the adults engaging in their various passions, all without appearing in any scandalsheets as the news broadcasts were called. Though even they were careful not to name names, just hints and allusions.

The Vreekoos Protectorate had just reached one hundred worlds, and this had been celebrated wildly by the populace on many, though not all, of the worlds it covered. Those worlds, being the most recently conquered, whose population had been put to work extracting ores to construct more warships to conquer more worlds. Those that weren’t recruited into the ever-voracious Vreekoosian Legions used to hold down the restive populations of said conquered worlds.

Not that Amantus gave much thought to anything outside his social circle, oh sure, he would occasionally bed the prettier serving girls his peers employed, though he was not interested in their lives, simply their bodies ... at least for the time he indulged with them. Yet surprisingly, the reputation of Amantus amongst the lower-class serving girls was good; he wasn’t cruel, did not abuse ... if occasionally he was very persuasive in talking a girl into attempting a less usual form of penetration. Yet the lower classes knew their place, and the girls enjoyed his attentions, even if they were occasionally disappointed at his dropping them for the next pretty face he saw, as they knew they would not be able to join his social level.

This naturally led to his downfall ... and eventual rise to glory.

“Amantus, your father has summoned you,” the mechanical voice of the domicile monitor announced.

“What now?” Amantus sighed, as he’d been pleasantly plotting the conquest of the wife of Orliantomin Devvos, a woman with the reputation of being both chaste and unimpressed with the bed hopping a lot of the noble class indulged in.

“He did not inform me,” the monitor pedantically replied. “But yes, now.”

Amantus rose from his soft bed and pulled on a semi-formal robe, before checking his appearance in a screen before setting off to meet his father in the family conference room. The door to the room smoothly slid aside as he stepped into the room, only to pull up short as not only was his father there, but also his great-grandfather, the Orliantomin and patriarch of the clan and someone, rumour had it, you did not mess with. That the patriarch had travelled from his domicile on the forbidden continent of Lassos told Amantus that he was in deep trouble.

“Father, honoured elder,” Amantus croaked out a greeting along with a hand to chest bow.

“Sit, boy,” the patriarch growled. “You’re in the shit, and I’m here to ensure you don’t drag the family name through your mess.”

Mess, sir?” Amantus replied carefully, somewhat at a loss as to anything he had done to warrant a face-to-face with the patriarch.

“What do you know of Hertrucha Pelli, and answer honestly, boy?”

“Who?” Amantus replied politely, yet bristling internally at being called boy, as he was reckoned an adult by how Vreekoos measured these things ... albeit by only a couple of binary cycles.

“The young woman you deflowered!”

“You’ve lost me,” Amantus replied. “As far as I’m aware, I’ve deflowered no lady of the nobility.”

“You were noted to be in the residence of Lendmenos Hachat seven cycles ago and had access to his daughter, Pelli, at the time she claims you took her,” the patriarch grated out. “The records are clear, and the house monitor cannot be overridden ... Hachat claims.”

“I was there, I admit, though it was not there to see Pelli,” simply a liaison with one of the house girls,” Amantus replied carefully as he now knew who Hachat was, though it had been his wife Tialle, not the daughter he had been ‘visiting’.

“Nevertheless, Pelli has been examined by the house healer and discovered not to be virgo intacta,” the patriarch replied. “You were the only nobleborn in a position to ... have caused it.”

Amantus knew it wasn’t he who had done it, though he also realised no one was going to believe an accusation like this. Amantus suspected that Pelli had been seduced by one of the male servants, though naturally would deny it and try to pin the blame on Amantus as a nobleborn visitor.”

“Well, boy?” the patriarch asked ominously.

“I did not deflower Pelli,” Amantus stated.

“Heh! I believe you, boy, but no one else will,” the patriarch smiled. “Nevertheless, to avoid a scandal, you’ll be the one dealt with.”