by M. D. Cooper
“Are you covered in feathers?” the empress interrupted, a hand rising to her mouth as she shook her head. “I was thinking a white dress, not a costume, Petra!”
The ambassador shrugged. “I thought it would be a way to show you that I have no hard feelings about when you made me wear this last. Besides, I rather like it.”
The empress reached out and stroked Petra’s arm. “Wow, it feels so soft. Danny, I assume?”
“I’m pretty sure that if I used anyone else, he’d hunt me down and turn me into something horrid.”
Diana laughed, a rich, authentic sound that filled the air around them. “Oh, that he would. OK, show me those wings. I want to see you in all your glory.”
Petra checked the surrounding tables, making sure she had enough clearance. “Danny outdid himself, I think.”
“I’ll say,” the empress’s voice was soft with admiration as Petra unfurled her wings. “You’re going to have to give me a demonstration for me later. I want to see those things in action.”
“And how are you doing, Alastar?” Diana asked. “Keeping Petra out of trouble?”
“What trouble do I get into?” Diana asked as she took her seat, gesturing for Petra to do the same.
“On second thought…” The empress picked up the bottle of wine and poured herself two fingers of the dark liquid. Slender fingers plucked the glass from the table, and she breathed in its aroma before taking a sip. “You always could pick a vintage, Petra.”
“Helps that I love a good glass of wine as much as you do. So I take it, then, that you and Tenna are getting on well?”
Diana cocked an eyebrow. “Well, let’s just say that I’m getting a crash course in humility. I’ve never met an AI before that was so free with her opinions.”
“I swear,” Diana began, pausing to take another sip. “Freeing the empire’s AIs is going to be a lot harder than defeating the Hegemony. I’m getting pushback from every level of society and industry, but Tenna’s been a great help with ideas on how to show that liberated AIs are far better for the empire.”
“So…” Petra caught Diana’s gaze and held it as she took a sip of wine. “Are we having a working dinner, or…?”
“Stars…” the empress muttered. “I can’t even remember the last time I had a meal where the only goal was good food and good company.”
Petra felt her heart rate pick up at the other woman’s words. It seemed as though the Diana who had arrived at Atlior Pacel was a far different version of the empress from the day before. One who really was ready to move on.
“OK, so here’s a question,” Petra said as the waiter set a basket of fruit on the table. “If we’re not going to talk about affairs of state, what are we going to talk about?”
“Well…” Diana eyed Petra over the rim of her glass. “We could talk about us.”
Petra gave a cautious nod, knowing the topic would be a minefield. “I’d like that…I know I’ve said that I’m sorry a thousand times, but I don’t know if you believe me.”
The empress set her glass down and pursed her lips for a moment before her expression cleared. “OK…I’m going to try and set aside the stateswoman and just be Diana.”
Petra nodded, bracing herself for whatever was to come.
The empress’s dark eyes locked onto Petra’s, and a hint of moisture formed in the corners. “What you did hurt me so much…more than I ever thought possible. My father wasn’t a good role model, but he did teach me that, when you’re on the throne, you need to find one person you can trust, someone you can confide in. You were my one person, Petra. I was real with you. I told you my hopes and fears while we lay together, as I felt your breath on my cheek.”
“I know,” Petra whispered. “I’ve been doing this for so very long, and nothing has ever been as hard as that.”
“Why’s that?” A hard edge was in Diana’s voice.
“You need to know that I never worked against you.” Petra swallowed the last of her wine and poured another glass. “My job was always to support you. To ensure that Scipio remained strong.”
The moisture in Diana’s eyes was increasing. “Was that all it was? A job? How much of what you told me about yourself was the truth, Petra?”
Here we go, we’re finally getting to the meat of it.
“Nearly all of it, I swear. I only changed a few details about where I’m really from.”
“So that story about you going horseback riding and getting lost in the forest when you were eleven?” Diana pressed. “That was true?”
A smile formed on Petra’s lips at the memory. “It sure is. And my father really did make me map out the whole forest. It was really smart on his part—he knew there was no stopping me from riding. He figured that he may as well make sure I wasn’t going to get lost.”
“But surely he could have just sent you with any number of tracking devices.”
“Sure.” Petra shrugged. “But there are a dozen ways tech like that can fail. From a storm to a precocious young girl not taking it with her. He went with a solution that empowered me rather than kept me dependent on a device.”
“I suppose that makes sense…and I’m glad that you were as honest as you could be, I—”
“Diana,” Petra interrupted.
“What?”
“You were that one person for me, too, you know. I hate that it all got screwed up.”
The empress cocked an eyebrow. “The cold, hard spy needed ‘that one person’?”
Petra nodded and was about to respond when the waiter approached. They placed their orders for the first course and, when he’d left, resumed the conversation.
“I thought that with your cadre of spies, one of them would suffice for that,” Diana continued.
“Not really.” Petra pursed her lips. “You know how it is at the top. You can’t confide in the people who work for you, because they either won’t understand, or they’ll see you as weak.”
Diana popped a blackberry in her mouth and nodded. “Yes, I know that all too well. I suppose…I mean, our goals are aligned now. There’s no reason we can’t be that for one another again.”
“As I said, our goals were always aligned, Empress,” Petra replied. “I only ever sought to support you.”
“Because it was your job.”
“My job was to ensure that Scipio remained strong and secure. Supporting you ensured that.” Petra knew she was repeating herself, but couldn’t think of how to make Diana understand that she had supported her.
The empress snorted. “Not really digging yourself out of the hole there.”
“No,” Petra gave a rueful laugh. “I suppose not. I won’t try to explain it any further. We both know what I did and why, and I think you’d like to forgive me.”
“No,” Diana shook her head, the single word causing a wave of panic to well up in Petra before the empress continued. “I have forgiven you…in here.” She tapped her chest then slid her hand up and touched two fingers to her temple. “My head…well, it’s a bit trickier, but it’s coming around.”
The waiter
brought out the first course, a platter of cheeses, with small bowls of sauce to dip them in, along with an assortment of things that Petra privately thought of as glorified weeds, but that Diana loved.
The pair ate in silence for a minute before Petra finally figured out a reply.
“You’ve always been a complicated woman, Diana.”
A small snort came from the empress. “People always say that about me, you know. But I don’t really think it’s true.”
“Well…you do have a tendency to threaten people’s lives—frequently making good on those threats.” Petra added a wink to soften the statement, and was relieved when Diana laughed.
“I really have to work at that. If I’m too predictable, people will use that against me. But if I’m unpredictable, they do so as well. Everything is a game. Underneath, though, I’m only really focused on holding the empire together. I know it sounds facetious to say it, but I’m the best woman for the job. Without me, Scipio would have torn itself apart decades ago. And on top of that, our power creates stability, and prevents space for a thousand light years around us from falling into chaos.”
Petra nodded. “I don’t disagree in the least. It’s why I was sent here in the first place—to help you. But I thought we weren’t going to talk about our jobs?”
Diana leant back in her chair, heaving a sigh as she stared at Petra and shook her head. “What else do we have to talk about? You and I…we are our jobs. I’m not Diana who likes long walks in the park and oh, just so happens to be an empress. And you’re not Petra who loves to ride horses in the woods and is an ambassador-spy on the side.”
“Well, I do love to ride horses in the woods,” Petra replied with a wistful smile. “But I get your point. That’s why I’d really like us to work again.”
“OK…but we’re going to have to talk about work sometimes, or we’re going to run out of things to discuss. In about five minutes, from the looks of it.”
“Maybe we can find more time to do non-work things,” Petra suggested. “Stars…it feels so weird to call what we do ‘work’.”
Diana nodded, and Petra delighted in seeing a genuine smile form on the empress’s face. It lit up her dark eyes in a way that her usually calculated looks never did. She found herself basking in it, not wanting the moment to end.
The spell was broken as a look of consternation came over Diana’s face. “Well, today I had visits from both the ASN head, and Prelate Ryse.”
“Ira came by?” Petra was certain she knew what that would have been about. “Complaining about Silstrand, no doubt.”
“Yes. For a nation that has long complained about our lawless rimward border and how we need to do something about it, they’re certainly unhappy that we’re finally doing something about it.”
“And Ryse?” Petra asked, wondering about her own conversation with Chimellia, unsure if she should mention it or not.
“Of all the stupid things…. He’s nervous about us using Spica for our staging grounds. It makes no sense, he should be ecstatic.” Diana turned her eyes upward and pressed a palm to her forehead. “Why do the prelates always have to make things so difficult?”
“Because it’s their job?” Petra asked with a laugh. “I mean, technically you all function as balancing powers. Ideally, the four of them are strong enough to overthrow you, and you only need one of them to hold the others in check.”
“Core,” Diana muttered. “Who established that, anyway? It’s so tedious.”
“Well, I suppose your grandfather started it, but you made it official.”
“More the fool, I.”
Petra couldn’t help but laugh at the empress’s mournful tone. “Well, I think it’s still better than having to directly oversee the whole empire. That would be far more exhausting.”
The waiter came at that point and took the women’s orders for the next course, and Petra requested another bottle of wine. This time a drier and darker red that she knew would complement the steak that Diana ordered.
Petra knew she’d get nowhere with Kory, and resolved to follow his advice as best she could.
“I wonder if I should have children before long,” the empress said after a few minutes of comfortable silence had passed.
Typically, Petra prided herself on being in complete control of her reactions, but that statement caught her so off guard that she was certain her eyes bugged halfway out of her head.
“Children?”
The empress’s lips quirked up. “Bet you weren’t expecting that. But yeah. Kids, little humans, you know. Someone to pass things on to when I go.”
“You’ve still got centuries ahead of you,” Petra said. “Plus, if you have them too soon, they’ll start scheming against you to take the reins.”
“Stars,” Diana muttered. “If they’re smart enough to topple me, they can have the damn empire.”
Petra laughed, and the empress reddened.
“That makes me sound ungrateful, doesn’t it?” She sighed. “I didn’t mean it quite like that, I just meant that it would be good to know I’m passing it to someone with steel in their spine. It takes a lot of that to hold this thing together.”
“I guess it’s how you ‘inherited’ it from your father.” Petra’s lips twisted as she wondered what she’d do if a child of Diana’s tried to seize the throne—unlikely as it was that she would still be around by then. “But he was a terrible ruler. You took control to save Scipio. You, on the other hand, are a good leader. A child of yours that tried to take the throne by force would likely not be, in large part because of who they were overthrowing.”
“That thought crossed my mind, too,” Diana replied. “But then my father wasn’t always a despot. He just lost sight of what his job was and focused more on self-preservation than ruling. It’s an easy trap to fall into—it lurks around every corner.”
“I get that. I don’t have firsthand experience with it, though.”
“No? You’ve never made decisions based solely on your desire to maintain your rank, or climb the ladder?” The empress wore a smirk that betrayed her thoughts on the matter.
Petra supposed she was right. One didn’t get to her position without focusing on number one from time to time.
“Maaaaybe. But I do believe in what the Hand does…on what we did, I should say. Now we’re a whole new organization, doing a new type of work.”
“Do you think you were a force for good?” Diana asked.
Petra was surprised at the question. She knew that some would always view the Hand as a shadowy directorate, but she hadn’t expected Diana to view it that way—at least not once she got over the feelings of betrayal.
“Absolutely,” Petra confirmed, not having to feign an unequivocal belief in the words she spoke. “You have no idea how hard it’s been to pull humanity back out of the dark ages. We’ve stopped hundreds of interstellar wars before they even started. Yes, some solutions have involved simply assassinating the people stirring shit up, and I won’t say that makes me feel good inside, but considering the quadrillions of lives we saved, it’s been worth it.”
“You’re singing my tune, Petra,” the empress replied. “That’s the sort of decision I make every day. Though I admit it’s strange to think of it from an extra-national viewpoint. I always focus on what is best for Scipio, not what is best for humanity as a whole.”
“Well, since you’re not focused on expansion at any cost, those two things are well-aligned. But there need to be fringes, and there need to be anchors.”
“What do you mean by that?” Diana asked.
“Well…I mean that bad people always crop up. And they
tend to move out to bad areas, unsettled places like the Fringe between Scipio and the ASN. But they remember what stability was like, and as they grow in strength, they like to build stability themselves—to protect what they’ve made.”
“You make criminals sound like entrepreneurs.” Diana laughed and shook her head.
“The good ones are.” Petra gave the empress a serious nod. “And history looks on many of them as stabilizing influences. Sure, they’re not all good, but who is? Anyway, what I’m getting at is that things are always fluid. Humanity is never going to be in stasis—we’re always moving, always seeking the horizon, or trying to build something grand…or just have some added certainty about the future.
“The Hand guides people toward those things. Sometimes we have to do bad stuff to ensure a better future for all, and we’re not perfect…we’ve made mistakes. But I fervently believe that if not for the Hand, the Reconstruction Era would have failed, and we’d be in a new dark age already.”
“Oh?” Diana cocked an eyebrow. “I thought scholars still had us in that ‘reconstruction era’?”
“I think historians will look at this as a new age.” Petra ran a finger down her jaw, tapping on her chin for a moment. “Perhaps something like the Orion War. My money is on the inception event being the battle in the Bollam System twenty years ago.”
“Certainly a catalyst,” Diana replied, absently tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “Look at us. Back to full-on work talk again.”
“Sorry,” Petra shrugged. “You’re right, though, it defines us heavily.”
The empress placed her hands on the table. “Well, I’m more than work. I’m also all about fashion. Tell me, do you think after this that feathers will be in vogue?”
Petra couldn’t help but laugh at the mock-earnest look on Diana’s face. “It depends on whether or not you speak well of them. If you do, then yes, expect every other petitioner that comes into your audience chamber to be covered in them.”
“Stars…what a way to ruin it. Maybe I’ll do my best just to keep it as our little thing.”
“Ha! As if you could keep a secret like that under wraps. You know Danny has already shared a holo of me with a thousand of his closest friends.”