Oaths of Legacy

by Emily Skrutskie

  It’s my first time out in public since the coronation, and I’ve been cleaned up for the occasion. My hair’s been trimmed at last, after months of wild growth, and a team of artisans have dulled my dark circles and brightened my cheeks to lessen the impression that I’ve been living in a fugue state since Ellit fell. I’ve been dressed in well-tailored shirtsleeves, which have been rolled up so that the platinum cuffs are stark against my skin. I’m a little ashamed of how familiar their weight feels—even after more than a month at the front, I always felt incomplete walking out the door each morning without them.

  My teeth are rattling nonstop, both from the vibration of the deflector armor strapped underneath my shirt and from the sonorous rumble of the imperial skin drums on the truck behind us. To everyone we pass, the victory rudiment they play is a new, joyous sound. For me, it’s getting to be the hundredth time. I could probably replicate the rhythm myself, and that’s saying something.

  In the vehicle ahead of me, Ettian stands tall and triumphant, waving to the crowd that screams his name. He wears a truly ostentatious amount of platinum, much of it twisting around emeralds set into the seams of his suit. It’s extravagant, but I’m barely begrudging him for it because General Iral is somewhere back with the rest of the officers, leaving the emperor to lead the procession—and claim rightful credit for the victory.

  Unlike our last semipublic appearance together, this time I try to keep my eyes focused on the emperor alone. I don’t want to see the faces of the people cheering for this victory—the victory I helped engineer. These people are supposed to be my people, and now they’re wholeheartedly applauding their separation from the Umber Empire. I’m sure there are dissidents out there preparing to strike back, but none of them are stupid enough to show up to a parade like this.

  At least I’m not the only one who’s a little sour about the occasion. Wen’s been installed as my guard today, standing at attention at my elbow. Her lips jut into the slightest of pouts as she surveys the parade route. “I listen to you and I get torn down,” she mutters, barely loud enough to be heard over the drums. “Ettian listens to you and…this happens.”

  “Careful,” I warn her, trying to move my mouth as little as possible. “Ettian needs this win. Save the criticism for when you’re not in front of several thousand people.”

  Mentally I kick myself for that. Rumors of Wen’s resentment could do work that I couldn’t possibly achieve on my own. If Archon’s precious little rogue knight is losing faith, what does that say about the state of the administration? But I also need to keep Wen from stirring up shit. She’s fully aware that I enabled this victory—that I encouraged it. I’ve narrowly avoided her threat to put me out of the airlock, but I have to keep reminding her that digging too deeply into why might destabilize Ettian’s reign, something neither of us can afford right now.

  We process into an open plaza at the center of the city, where a platform with a podium on it has been erected. The parade vehicles unload as they move past it—first the emperor, then me and Wen, then the rest of the Archon officers. The crowd’s noise swells appreciatively when Ettian mounts the podium, drops to low boos and hisses as I follow, then swells again when Iral steps up after me. This, too, is a careful calculation—one of my suggestions, in fact. With the gap in the noise, it’s difficult to determine whether the emperor or the general drew more cheers.

  It’s the emperor who steps forward to the podium, after that—the emperor who will greet the crowd and proclaim this city, this continent, this planet free in the name of the Archon Empire. Which in itself is another victory, one that will cement Ettian’s standing in his administration against the formidable shadow of Iral’s reputation. I try to remember that as I cast a withering glance sideways at the cadre of new administrators he’s about to introduce to their overeager subjects. The new planetary governor, a slim, tall woman with red-brown skin, looks a little queasy at the prospect, her gaze moving fast over the crowd.

  I all but roll my eyes. These people have had months to prepare. Gods of all systems, they’ve even had a perfect model of government turnover with the way Berr sys-Tosa swept through this system seven years ago. They should be rigid and hungry, not anxious wrecks.

  But if the Imperial Fleet’s about to mobilize, maybe they’re right to worry. Archon has won Ellit, but there’s no telling how long they’ll keep it once my mother’s forces enter the game. If I can just wait this out, it won’t be long until this world will be unshakably mine.

  I switch my gaze once more to Ettian’s back as Wen and I fall into place behind him. On the day I replace you, I vow to myself, I’ll show them all what it’s supposed to look like.

  It takes a full fifteen minutes to get everyone in position onstage, but at least the drums go quiet after that. The deflector armor’s still rattling around me, and I try to take a surreptitious peek at the battery levels. I was wheedled into attending this outing rather than rag-dolling on the floor of my room because I was promised protection. I just didn’t realize my protection might depend on nobody getting long-winded with their speeches.

  Ettian clears his throat, and the crowd’s noise drops to a low hum as the speakers around the square send the noise echoing off the nearby buildings. “People of Ellit,” he says—for with the cameras lined up along the front row, he’s speaking to more than just those gathered in the fresh spring air of the capital city. “I do not come before you today as a liberator; I come as a servant.”

  I muscle my facial expressions into order as he delves into the prepared remarks. I’ve heard him run the whole speech twice now, and both times I didn’t hold back with my muttering about how senselessly ineffectual it is. He’s dithering on about how he’s at his people’s service, about how his leadership will be one of trust and communication, and I want to scream in his ear, “THAT’S NOT HOW GALACTIC EMPIRES WORK!”

  But I hold my tongue. I stand, back straight, betraying no distress, staring out over the crowd with hard eyes that I hope read as resolute to the people watching carefully.

  “I leave you with hope,” Ettian says at last. His voice pitches soft, but the crowd leans in to hear it. “It’s not a word we’re used to hearing. It’s not something we’re used to feeling. For ten years, the Umber Empire has cropped our hope at the stem. We’ve fought to grow it back from whatever they left us. And now we’ll show them just how strong our roots are. Just how deep they go. And just how much these worlds are irrevocably ours!”

  He throws a fist in the air, and the roar of the crowd swells as if to catch it. For a glorious second, he does look the part of an emperor—proud of his conquest, fierce before his people.

  “I stand before you today as the face of that hope. And I promise—”

  Ettian cuts off on a gurgle that rings confusingly through the sound system. He cants suddenly backward before curling in over his stomach. His wide eyes blink once as he raises a hand to the front of his suit.

  It comes away painted red.

  The crowd’s panic revs up like a starship engine—zero to screaming in the space of a blink. The guards around us surge forward, closing to form a wall of bodies around the young emperor as Ettian pitches backward again. Wen darts in to break his fall, her arms locking around his torso as she drops to her knees under his weight. She clings to him as the guards tear open his shirt, revealing the deflector armor he’s wearing and the hole punched clean through it, all of them trying to make sense of the bloody mess unfurling over his stomach as if somewhere in it they can pinpoint the moment this afternoon all went wrong.

  I stand on the edge of the chaos, completely forgotten for what might be the first time in my entire life.

  My brain can barely process what’s happening. I’m caught up in a flurry of sound and color, swaying slightly as the crowd’s commotion starts to rumble the stage beneath my feet. But when my gaze catches on what looks like a rifle barrel slipping ba
ck behind a curtain on the upper levels of one of the nearby buildings, all that chaos falls away.

  I’m moving before I can really comprehend that I’m moving. The numbness has flushed from my veins like someone’s doused me in ice water. And no one tries to stop me. As I rip the platinum cuffs off my wrists and cast them aside, a series of large bangs go off on the edges of the square, sending the crowd scrambling for cover. I leap off the stage, landing in a haphazard roll that picks up enough dirt from the ground to drown out the obvious flash of my clothing. There’s no time to look back, to see if anyone’s going to stop me. I plow forward, joining the confused rush of bodies, my eyes fixed on the landmark of that window at the edge of the square.

  Fear nips at my heels, but it’s nothing compared to the fury yanking me forward. I charge heedlessly through the crowd, betting—perhaps a bit too optimistically—that everyone’s too panicked to realize that the Umber heir just sprinted past them. I join the throng of people rushing for the streets that exit the square, but before I can get swept away, I duck into the alley behind the building I sighted.

  Just in time to see a hooded person with a sniper rifle slung across their back drop from the fire escape.

  They unholster their gun, whirling for the nearest set of garbage bins, but before they can get the lid open, I’m on them. The first punch catches the sniper by surprise and they go down hard. I follow, dropping to my knees and swinging again. This time they catch my hand—painfully, grinding the bones of my wrist together, and I bring up my other arm to block the inevitable retaliation.

  It doesn’t come.

  “Gal?” the person mutters, astonished. They release my wrist.

  If fury got me through the crowd, it’s nothing compared to what unlocks now. I’ve felt this once before—that vicious, primal state I fell haphazardly into when the assassin tried to break into my rooms on Rana. But this time I go willingly, embracing every crunch of my bare fists against the sniper’s face.

  Go until I feel their nose give. Go until I feel my skin break. Go, even when a dull crunch sends a snap of pain rattling through one of my fingers.

  Through it all, the person beneath me has gone limp, as if welcoming the beating. As if unable to do a damn thing about it.

  My brain doesn’t catch up to my actions until someone drags me off the sniper. They pin my arms behind my back, and I spit into the dirt at my victim’s feet, seething through my teeth as another member of the emperor’s security detail hauls them upright.

  My rage flickers to confusion as I finally take a good look at the face I was dead set on ruining. It’s a bloody mess, but a bloody mess I’d recognize anywhere.

  Though her lips are busted and I’m pretty sure one of her teeth is missing, Hanji Iwam flashes me a grin.

  CHAPTER 18

  It doesn’t really hit me until I see him.

  The emperor’s finally come out of surgery, but he’s still unconscious and no one but his doctors is allowed in the room with him. Wen, the rest of his guard, and I have to wait in an adjacent viewing room, where we’ve got a clear view of everything and anything that might happen.

  Which, right now, is a whole lot of nothing. A whole lot of watching his chest rise and fall, a whole lot of trying to divine any variation from the faint chirp of his heart monitor, and a whole lot of wondering if I’m fooling myself into thinking the ashen pallor of his cheeks is improving.

  Ettian looks dead, and all at once the realization drops hard and heavy in the hollows of my chest. I don’t want this. I never could have actually wanted this. The fantasy of strangling him seems downright childish when Ettian emp-Archon lies on the other side of a sheet of duroglass, hooked to a dozen instruments with a mess of tubes and bandages twining around his midsection.

  A careful hand slips onto my shoulder, and I glance left to find Wen’s burnt side. Her lips are snarled into a taut scowl that her molten skin emphasizes. All of a sudden I wonder what kind of care she got after the Cutter lieutenant shoved her into a thruster. From the wary uncertainty in her gaze, I’m guessing it wasn’t anywhere near the dedication Ettian’s received, and my heart aches for her a little.

  Or she might just be worried about her prospects. She threw her lot in with Ettian, body and soul. She staked everything on his reign. Now he might slip away on the whisper of a breath, leaving her with nothing but a court full of people who doubt her and no meaningful reason to stay. The moment Esperza warned her about is here. Her whole life balances on whether Ettian pulls through or not, and there’s nothing she can do to sway the way her fate will fall.

  I know how she feels.

  “How are your hands?” Wen asks.

  I glance down. Most of the abrasions have been wrapped, but ugly bruises peek out around the white bandages. If I flex my fingers, they ache dully, but it’s nothing, all nothing compared to—

  “Gal.” She shakes me, and I realize my jaw has locked up.

  “One minor fracture,” I mumble, wriggling the splint on my left hand’s ring finger. If we were back at the academy, Hanji would probably gloat for days about the fact that her face broke a bone. I can’t reconcile that Hanji—the strapping, cheerful tower tech—was the girl who sniped the Archon emperor yesterday. I didn’t even recognize her until after I’d beaten her to a pulp. I swear her eyes were different.

  Her eyes were mine. Hollowed by betrayal, honed by anger. Ettian’s doing—of that I’m certain, because I know the feeling all too well. He’s turned us into these bitter, vengeful little monsters, sharpening us until the only thing we’re capable of is destruction.

  I hug my arms against my chest, closing my eyes. I miss softness. I miss being a soft person. At the academy, I wore a different name and lived a different life. Gal Veres wasn’t the kind of guy who’d break his hands on his friend’s face. Gal Veres laughed and smiled and played all sorts of stupid pranks. He lived as if the idea of taking his throne was a joke he was workshopping, one that wasn’t quite ready for the light of day.

  I’m not sure when he died—on the day the rogue Wraith Squadron tried to kill him, or the day Ettian emp-Archon took him prisoner?

  My eighteenth birthday was three days ago. I was so deep in the haze of Ellit’s fall that I didn’t realize. I’ve passed the metric that was supposed to mark me ready to begin my succession, and all I can feel is the numb certainty that I never could have been prepared for that, much less for what I’m facing now.

  “Come with me,” Wen says abruptly. Her grip on my shoulder tightens, yanking me toward the door. I balk, and her eyes narrow, flicking to the observation window and the devastating sight beyond it. “He’s not doing anything anytime soon, Gal,” she hisses. “And I don’t care how many system gods you’re praying to—staring at him isn’t going to move anything along. Now, come on.”

  With one last look at the shallow-breathing emperor on the other side of the glass, I let Wen drag me out of the room. Orderlies and guards alike duck out of our way as she leads me through the wide, sterile halls. Rather than stride down the middle, Wen sticks close to the walls, her eyes darting to the shadows and gaps and alcoves. I haven’t seen her like this since the day I met her, when her worst nightmare was breathing down her neck on the streets of Isla. Wen is spooked. She’s on her toes.

  I’m all but expecting it when she yanks me suddenly into an empty examination room and hisses, “We have to leave.”

  “Not until he wakes up,” I groan, rubbing my wrist.

  “Not the building, dumbass. We have to get off this planet, off this world, out of this empire. You were right, Gal. Rust it all, I thought…I tried…I didn’t think—”

  Gods of all systems, so this is what it takes to break her. Her breath overcomes her words, leaving her choking on air and spit as she slumps back against the counter. All of the distance we’ve cultivated between us since Esperza’s scolding collapses all at once. I catch
her by the shoulder and pull her against me before her legs give out entirely, and she clutches the front of my shirt and shrieks through her teeth. The noise is twisted and feral and so her that it nearly rips my heart in half to hear it.

  “Wen,” I murmur into her hair. Her braid is tangled and snarled in places—she hasn’t had a chance to unwind it since the attempt on Ettian’s life. “Wen, hey, in and out, okay? In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four.” As I chant the words, I pull my less-damaged hand slowly up and down the shell protecting her back. I don’t know if she can feel the touch through the armor, but her breathing slows by hiccupping increments until she’s following my count.

  I go quiet and just hug her, half expecting her to yank away from me. But maybe she needs this, or maybe she’s missed this, or maybe she knows I need it, too, because Wen Iffan’s arms wind around my torso as she buries her half-burnt face in my shoulder.

  She starts muttering something unintelligible, but I don’t ask her to repeat it. Slowly her words stumble toward coherence until at last I can grasp them. “Millions of miles, trillions, billions, rust it all, I don’t know how I ended up here. Isn’t in my blood, isn’t in my head, can’t do anything right. I should have seen it coming, should have stopped it, should have done something to protect him—it’s never enough…”

  “Hey, no—you don’t get to take the blame for it.”

  “It’s the whole reason I’m here. And I failed, and if he dies, I have nothing, Gal,” she spits. “And so do you, if Iral starts calling the shots. The general hates me—if he gets the chance, he’ll turn me out. He’s probably already planning on it while Ettian’s out of commission.”