Oaths of Legacy

by Emily Skrutskie

  Esperza’s eyes darken, and I feel a prickle of shame run through me for how happy I am to see Wen’s misstep play out in real time. “I’m begging you to be smart about this,” the commodore says in a low, level voice. “Especially now that the general is aboard. The rebellion’s been in the works for years—Ettian emp-Archon only became a part of it recently. Think hard about what that means for the people you serve with. And be strategic about where your education is coming from. That’s all.” With a curt nod and a stiff squeeze of Wen’s shoulder, she strides past us, following the rest of the general’s retinue.

  Wen’s eyes meet mine, and I feel myself torn in two. One side pulls with the urge to comfort her—to say, “See, the corvettes didn’t even matter.” The other is a tangled, wrathful monster of shame and indignation that started simmering in the Torrent’s core and is only now coming to boil.

  I’m weak. Weak for wanting to help her, for setting up a snare for her and falling right into it, for rooting for something so far from any of my own objectives that I think my mother would disown me on the spot if she knew about it. Weak for letting Iral’s appearance rattle me, as if a general with no bloodright to his name at all has any sort of dominion over the prince of a ruttin’ empire. Weak for my failure on the bridge, weak for the way my heart stutters at the mere mention of the emperor, weak for plenty of other reasons I’m sure I could enumerate if my self-pity spiral weren’t happening while Wen’s staring at me, no doubt wondering why I haven’t started talking already.

  And when she realizes I’m not going to say anything, her mouth hardens to a resolute line. “Maybe it’s best if we both take some time to examine our motivations, then,” she says, cementing what I hope is my final failure of the day. My greatest failure of the day—the one that knocks me back all the way to where I started, with no foothold toward getting my ass out of this wretched rebellion.

  But it’s not the one that hurts the worst, which only deepens my humiliation. Because the thing that aches, the thing that burns, the thing that makes me want to hop out the nearest airlock, is that I can’t help Wen anymore.

  CHAPTER 14

  With Iral aboard, everything changes. Gone are the long, slow days of trailing Wen through training exercise after training exercise. I can feel the temperature of the war rising around us. The strike against the Torrent was just the boiling point. Now everything is threatening to flash-cook.

  And I’m pinned in place, locked in my quarters while Wen gets absorbed into the Archon strategy meetings. She won’t tell me what goes on in them, and she seems hell-bent on not taking any more advice from me. I’ve tried to argue that Esperza actually endorsed my help, but Wen won’t have any of it. She’s determined to show the commodore that she’s truly independently motivated.

  After a week of having absolutely nothing to do but pace our quarters and fantasize about all the ways Iral could possibly have me killed, I finally cave. Wen may not listen to my advice anymore, but she’s not cruel enough to deny my request once she hears it.

  An hour later, Ettian appears at the door of our quarters.

  “Wait outside,” he tells his guards, and they take up posts in the hall. As he closes the door behind him, I catch the worried looks they pass each other.

  They’re right to worry.

  “You wanted to see me?” Ettian says, with an unsurprising degree of surprise.

  “I wanted to see you,” I confirm, taking a good long look at him. He’s dressed for war, ready for it to arrive at a moment’s notice. Gone are the slick suits of his palace days—now he walks around in lightweight deflector armor emblazoned with platinum sigils. He wears a simple circlet of flattened, jointed platinum—which, as usual, I desperately want to knock off his skull—and his hair’s still buzzed like a soldier’s. I wonder if he wears it like that in the hopes that it’ll make his subordinates respect him more.

  I think it makes him look young. Far too young to be leading any army. I hope it’s a sentiment shared by the rest of the Torrent’s population, but since I’ve been confined to quarters for the past week, I’ve fallen behind on the ship’s gossip channels. That’s part of the reason I’ve called him here. If I can’t keep abreast of the rumors, I’m gonna create them.

  A wicked hint of it must show in my eyes, because Ettian glances back at the door, no doubt wondering if he should call his guards in. I take a sudden step forward, throwing myself in front of him. “Shout for them and I drop to my knees,” I murmur.

  His lips peel back in distaste, and I swear I catch a flash of disappointment in his eyes. Did he think I’d thought things over and decided we could move forward in the precarious direction we were headed back on Rana? Was he carrying hopes about the things we could get up to in one of the few unmonitored rooms on the Torrent? I shouldn’t be pleased that it’s on his mind.

  Or maybe I should, because it means I’m going to get exactly what I wanted.

  “If you’re only going to play games, I’m not sticking around,” Ettian says. He stands resolute—not jumping back, not leaning in. He should be doing the former. I’d rather he did the—

  No, I need to stay focused.

  “Can you blame me for needing some ruttin’ entertainment? Well, not ruttin’ entertainment, though I wouldn’t say no to—”

  “Gal.”

  I hold up my hands. “Look, I don’t know if word got back to you about Wen’s run-in with the captain.”

  “You mean your run-in with the captain?”

  “Our run-in with the captain, the end result of which was my expulsion from pretty much any excuse I’ve ever had to leave these rooms.” I’ve spent so long practicing my invisible neutrality that it takes me an extra second to remember how to look pathetic. “I get it. I’m a tactical risk. But it’s ruttin’ torture sitting here doing nothing.”

  Ettian’s eyebrows lift. “Doing nothing instead of tearing down my empire brick by brick?”

  “Is that what you think I’ve been doing for the past month?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve been doing for the past month.”

  “Bullshit. Wen reports to you.”

  “Wen doesn’t have time to report to me. Have you seen her schedules lately?”

  “No,” I reply pointedly.

  Ettian snorts despite himself.

  “Well, then let me be the first to inform you that I’ve made myself useful around here.” I spread my arms magnanimously, taking a step back. “I took your rogue knight and transformed her into a savvy young officer.”

  “Esperza—”

  “Is a busy commodore with many important things to do. She’s doing her damnedest, but she can’t do everything. I, on the other hand, have had nothing but free time to follow Wen around and mercilessly criticize her. She’s making outstanding strides already.”

  Ettian doesn’t seem to be buying it—but do I really need him to? “And then that got taken away, and now you want to see me?”

  “Well, if I can’t mercilessly criticize her…”

  He smirks, and the sight of it hits my heart like a kickdrum. And maybe I’ve loosened my expression too much, because suddenly Ettian freezes as if my face has given away every single thought rocketing around inside my skull. “I’ve—” He breaks off, grappling with the words for an extra second. “I’ve missed this.”

  I turn my back on him, even though I know exactly what that looks like. Let him see me wrestling my emotions back into place. Let him see how I have to physically wall myself off from him to process those words. For a moment there, everything felt normal. For a moment the war fell away and the walls of our old academy dorm rose to take its place—so much so that I could almost hear Hanji banging on the door, telling us to get our asses to the cantina.

  For a moment, it almost felt like nothing’s changed at all.

  “I need something to do,” I announce, flinchin
g at both the hoarse notes in my voice and the abruptness of how quickly I’ve tried to move the conversation along. Get it together, I chide myself. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to react to him entirely in the month we’ve been apart.

  “I suggest taking up a craft,” Ettian replies peevishly.

  “I need something to do that feels useful,” I correct.

  “I think your definition of useful is a little skewed compared to mine.”

  “See, but that’s the thing.” I turn on him, ready to make my big point, but the enormity of what I’m about to admit catches up to me all at once. He just said he “missed this”—there’s no way this is more embarrassing, my brain screams, but what does my witless brain know? That’s feelings feelings.

  This is dread.

  “I…The general is aboard.”

  Ettian’s expression tightens. “And?”

  “And the general was gonna kill me last time he was in charge. Doubt that’s changed.” My voice has gone soft—too soft, vulnerable on all sides, so much so that I beat a hasty retreat to the anteroom’s couch and throw myself down on it.

  “He’s not in charge,” Ettian says, but he can’t quite make those words as firm as they need to be.

  “How soon until that changes?” It’s a good thing I sat down—I’ve gone from unsteady to properly shaky. I feel like I’ve grown numb to the way I’ve been holding myself together since I last saw Iral, and now it’s all catching up to me at once.

  Ettian fixes me with a look that lets me know I’m not the only one unraveling. In his eyes, I see the exact same stress that’s been plaguing me for the past week. “It’s my bloodright,” he says, low and level. “He can never take that away from me.”

  “Since when have you given a rat’s ass about bloodright?” I snap. “If that was something that mattered to you, you would have claimed it the second you walked onto that base back on Delos.”

  Ettian’s nostrils flare. “You have no ruttin’ idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m the only other person in the galaxy who knows what you’re—”

  “Gal.” His whole body has gone taut like a wound-up spring, engines hot on the verge of ignition. “The war, the aftermath, the…hell I lived through—none of it went away when I walked onto that base. Don’t tell me when my bloodright mattered to me and when it didn’t. You never knew that then, and you certainly don’t know it now.”

  I grimace, trying my damnedest not to concede the ground I’ve gained with my little outburst. I know what Ettian went through after the fall of Archon in broad strokes, but I don’t know if I’ll ever fully grasp the scope of it. I’ve never been so thoroughly abandoned, so destitute, so broken. Gods willing, I never will be. I don’t know what I’d do if I went through the same things that molded Ettian emp-Archon—I just know that I’d probably never come through it as intact as he did.

  “Circling back to the point,” I say after what feels like far too much glowering eye contact. “The Torrent has been minding its own business for a month with you aboard. The second it lands its first victory with you in command, General Iral comes swooping in to insert himself in the ship’s hierarchy. This is exactly what I warned you about when I said you needed to come to the front. He’s going to do everything in his power to put your leadership into question.” Ettian tries to open his mouth, but I cut him off with a hand gesture, a little thrill stealing through me when it works. “He’s not gonna kill you. Probably won’t even depose you. But if he turns you into a ceremonial puppet emperor, there’s nothing that’ll stop him from killing me.”

  I don’t need to say any more than that—I see it all click into place in Ettian’s head. “You want to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he says, though he doesn’t quite sound like he believes all of the implications that come with it.

  “Unfortunately, it’s become something of a priority. Especially now that I’m being left unsupervised for long stretches,” I say, sweeping my arms at the Wen-less room around me. “I need someone watching my back. You need someone watching yours.”

  Now Ettian definitely doesn’t believe what he’s hearing. “You put a knife to my throat a month ago.”

  “Yeah, but you liked it.”

  Ettian fumes, I smirk, and the inevitable conclusion I’ve just put forth solidifies in the air between us. “So, what?” Ettian finally says once he’s collected himself. “You want to tag along with me instead of Wen?”

  “That’s a start. And while I can’t be seen advising you directly, I can keep an eye on things and raise my concerns in private.”

  “I’m sure there will be many,” Ettian says flatly.

  “I’m good at this, okay? I’ve spent a month learning how to be invisible in a room full of Archon’s top brass—er, platinum. If Silon didn’t have it out for me, I’d still be doing it. And you can overrule Silon.”

  Ettian’s eyes darken. “There’s a cost to overruling Silon.”

  “Oh, come on, she’s only got continental bloodright.”

  He points an accusing finger at me. “See, that shit right there. That’s not going to fly if we’re going to make this work.”

  I scoff. “She’s no big fan of you—don’t give her any credit she hasn’t earned.”

  “That too,” Ettian grumbles, holding up another finger.

  “What?”

  “All this Umber bullshit. Who outranks whom, who bows to whom—that’s not how we do things.” Ettian throws himself down in one of the chairs opposite me, managing to make even casual distress look damn good. “I respect Silon. She runs the Torrent like no one else can, and if I start overruling her too much, I lose not only her trust but the trust of all of the people who work underneath her. Same goes for Iral. He’s been working with these people for five years. I haven’t even made it five months yet.”

  I grit my teeth, trying to combat the rising tension wracking my chest. Ettian being bullheadedly Archon is ultimately good for my purposes. A government founded on those ideals is unstable—with no rigidity to their power structures, they’re liable to tear themselves apart from the inside long before we have anything to do with it. But right now I need him to be a force. A fixed point, the center of his empire’s gravity. I don’t know any other way we can possibly hold out against Maxo Iral. “I’m not going to stop telling you how to keep your empire just because it makes you uncomfortable,” I grumble. “But I can’t force you to take my advice either.”

  “Is it advice, or is it just you trying to get under my skin?”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  Ettian smirks despite himself.

  “Look, remember when I told you I was the only person in the palace who truly had your best interests at heart? I think it’s…triply true for this ruttin’ dreadnought.” I stretch, folding my arms behind my head as I kick my feet up on the low stone table in front of me. “So ignore my advice all you want, but don’t come crying to me when it turns out you should have been following it.”

  His smirk breaks into a laugh, and it hits me so hard I’m lucky I’m already sprawled back against the couch. I don’t think I ever really believed I’d make him laugh again—in scorn, maybe, but not the genuine stuff that makes me feel like I’ve been tied to a Viper. And because he’s laughing, all of a sudden I’m laughing. I never could keep it in once he got going.

  The surrealism of the moment catches us like insects in amber, and for one golden moment, the happiness that glows through me isn’t rooted in cruelty or vindictiveness—it’s the real thing, founded in how good it feels to be my goddamn self. I don’t have to couch my feelings with Ettian. I don’t have to figure out how to make myself palatable to him. He knows the whole of me already, and there’s no point disguising any of it for him.

  Of course, it’s then that the main door slides open and Wen steps through. She takes a second to ingest the room�
��me splayed back on the couch, Ettian perched in his chair, his body leaning toward me, the last echoes of our paired laughter still bouncing off the walls.

  We blink back at her.

  “Weird,” she says, after a moment. Then, after a longer moment: “My sleep schedule’s completely rusted. I’m going to bed.” But she pauses at the threshold of her room, again looking like she’s mulling something over. “Don’t make too much noise,” she announces, then shuts the door behind her.

  Ettian and I exchange an uncertain glance. He rises out of the chair, looking like he’s just had a bucket of cold water thrown on him. “I…will call for you. Tomorrow. Or next…cycle—gods, it’s been over a month here and I’m still not used to the ‘living in space’ lingo. Anyway. Tomorrow. Ish.”

  I save my next bout of laughter until he’s safely back in the hall outside.

  CHAPTER 15

  I almost expect to be shot on sight the next time I set foot on the Torrent’s bridge. I press close to Ettian’s shadow as we step off the elevator, hoping to keep myself occluded from the captain’s view. But Silon’s locked in a hushed conversation with Esperza, her back turned. The only one who takes interest in my presence is Wen, who straightens abruptly in her seat at the commodore’s station, her gaze tracing a nervous ricochet between the bridge’s major powers.

  I resist the urge to tip her a cheeky little wave as I trail Ettian to his station, positioned adjacent to Esperza’s on the innermost ring surrounding Silon’s command chair. I wouldn’t be on the bridge if I didn’t have a mission here, and I’m not about to jeopardize it by putting Wen on the offensive.

  Our luck runs out within seconds. As Ettian and I reach his post, Silon’s gaze snaps up abruptly, her eyes sharpening on me. Just as she’s about to open her mouth, Ettian snaps his fingers in the corner of my vision, drawing my attention, then jabs his finger at the chair that’s been set up next to his. Not an invitation. A command.