Oaths of Legacy

by Emily Skrutskie

  None of it makes anything feel done.

  Maybe it’s because there’s so much missing. We took heavy losses in the battles, losses that feel callously outweighed in scope by the empty station on the bridge where Esperza used to sit. I didn’t think I’d miss her this badly, but without the commodore, the Torrent feels like someone’s knocked out a wall. Deidra con-Silon’s prim, unbothered ease at the helm has dissolved into a distracted unsteadiness that has more than a few whispers flying around the bridge. It appears the captain is lost without the casual needling that seemed to have made up a good portion of her interactions with the commodore.

  Wen’s all but disappeared. I’ve tailed her for long enough to know that Esperza was the model she was building all her hopes and dreams around, and the commodore’s capture seems to have rent something unfixable inside her. In want of a project—or maybe of something that makes her feel in control again—she’s thrown herself into repairing the powersuit. It’s only partially operational, last I heard, and who could blame it? The thing may be a nightmarish relic of Archon tech, but it took a fair amount of heat in the Fulcrum’s reactor and I’m astonished everyone seems to consider it salvageable. Wen spends every cycle of the Torrent’s day in the lab with the techs, puzzling out the last few things she needs to get it up and running again.

  I shudder to think what she’ll do with it once it’s operational. The derisive mutters about the Flame Knight have died in the atmospheric burn that consumed the Fulcrum. In the span of a few months, Wen Iffan has gone from Ettian’s notorious rogue operative to another one of those Umber stories told in hushed tones. I can picture kids in academies across the empire whispering after lights-out, I heard the Flame Knight once took out a dreadnought single-handedly. Honestly I can’t think of a feat more impressive, and it scares me how certain I am that Wen will be able to.

  But since she’s in the lab at all hours, I find myself completely unaccompanied—and completely at peace with that for the first time since I boarded the Torrent. I’ve managed to secure a datapad, and I spend most of my waking moments in my quarters, hanging backward off the bed with my feet propped against the wall, scrolling through the broadcasts we’ve picked up. I watch the reporting on the power transition on Imre, which is done mostly in quiet back rooms rather than through another grand, disastrous triumph ceremony. Ettian stays absent from most of it, recovering from the strain the battle put on his still-healing body, but he makes a broadcast appearance to announce his appointment for the new system governor.

  I scrawl notes nonstop through his speech, trying to untangle the genuinely useful feedback from my uncontrollable urge to force an Umber mindset on his governance. I have to keep reminding myself that gracious sharing of power plays well to Archon crowds—that it’s not a sign of weakness. It’s an entirely different philosophy of leadership from the one I grew up with, but this time, I’m trying my best to understand it.

  Roughly a week after the battle at Dasun, I get a message on my datapad summoning me to the nearest shuttle deck in the Torrent’s command core. I consider swinging by the lab and asking Wen to escort me, but there’s a part of me that wants to do it all on my own, just to prove I can.

  So I do, and it turns out I was right.

  When I find my way to the correct deck, I’m greeted by a surprising degree of emptiness and two familiar sights.

  The first is Ettian emp-Archon, dressed in a fine suit and a simple platinum circlet, looking far more at ease on his feet than the last time I saw him.

  The second is the Ruttin’ Hell.

  Ettian grins at the surprise on my face, keeping a respectful distance as I step up to the Beamer’s hull and run my hand wondrously over its heat shield. My fingertips are drawn almost magnetically to the juncture between the ship’s body and one of the rotary thrusters’ branches, where its unofficial designation has been sketched onto the hull in brassy paint.

  I press my index finger against the faint blob of a fingerprint. A second later, Ettian covers the one next to it.

  “Been a minute, huh?” he says with a breathy laugh.

  “Thought they would have scrapped this thing ages ago,” I reply. I trace my gaze along the brass stripes scoring its hull—anything to keep from looking at him directly.

  “They wanted to,” Ettian says, knocking his knuckles lovingly against the heat shield. “Even after all the modding Esperza did to make it flyable, the fact remains that…well, it’s a Beamer. We have better shuttles.”

  “But do we, though?”

  “Exactly,” Ettian says. His breath catches like he’s about to say something more, and I finally make the mistake of looking at him for real.

  I can feel the empty space where my revulsion is supposed to be, so recently vacated. I’m supposed to hate him on sight. The platinum on his brow alone should repel me.

  Instead I find myself leaning forward.

  “It’s yours,” Ettian blurts.

  That’s enough to bring me to a screeching halt. “It’s…What?”

  “Look,” he says, scrubbing one hand anxiously over the back of his neck, “I should have done this the second someone tried to kill you under my care. I can’t keep you safe here. I’m using you as a human shield, dragging you into the worst parts of the war, and then I went and got myself shot and Wen got herself suited and…We can’t protect you anymore. Not with so much on our shoulders. It’s not possible for me. It’s not fair to her.”

  “So, what?” I ask, trying to hold back the incredulous laugh building in my throat.

  “So take the Ruttin’ Hell and go.”

  “Ettian—”

  “The ship is yours. The Torrent’s cleared it to fly an exit run from this deck through the outer hull. The fleet’s been instructed to give it safe passage, and you have a window to go superluminal. By the time anyone questions it, you’ll be well on your way to the Imperial Seat.”

  I scoff. “Iral will find out soon enough, and he’s gonna eviscerate you when he does.”

  Ettian’s hand folds protectively over his stomach, and he smiles bitterly. “I’ve survived it once.”

  I throw my hands up, taking two quick strides away from the hull as I try to calm my breathing. “See, this? This is why I’m not going anywhere,” I snap, whirling on him and pointing an accusing finger at his face. “I leave you alone for a week and you get stupid ideas like this.”

  “You’re what?”

  “You heard me, dipshit,” I snarl, closing the distance between us and jabbing him in the chest. “I swear on the gods of all systems, if I actually got in this ship and rutted off to the other end of the galaxy, you’d be dead within the week.”

  “But you—”

  “Oh, don’t give me that self-sacrificing Archon bullshit. Your empire depends on you being a fixed point, not capitulating to the safety of your enemy.”

  “My enemy, who is—”

  “This is why I made notes on the last speech. We can go over them as soon as you’re done covering up whatever it is you’ve done here to get the clearances—”

  “Gal!” he snaps, clutching me by my forearms and jolting me out of the fury that’s overtaken me. “Are you…Are you seriously turning this down? I thought this was everything you ever wanted?”

  Safe passage home. A direct line from here to my crown. It’s all we set out to do all those months ago when we escaped the academy together. It’s everything I thought I was fighting for during my time in chains.

  But I think that time is over. I glance down at the platinum cuffs on my wrists, so familiar to me by now that I sometimes forget I’m wearing them. Taking them off feels…wrong, somehow. And I know I really shouldn’t be this far gone, but after the crucible of the battle at Dasun, I’m…

  I’ve changed.

  Ettian’s hands slip down my arms until he cups the cuffs. His fingers ply carefully
at the fasteners, his brow furrowing as he realizes it’s a bit more difficult than it looks. My breath feels lodged in my throat until the moment he loosens them completely and lets them fall to the floor between us.

  “You’re free,” Ettian urges. “Leave, Gal—while there’s still a window.”

  I take an unsteady half-step backward, glancing over my shoulder to confirm that the Ruttin’ Hell’s ramp is fully deployed. I feel unbalanced without the familiar weight of the platinum at my wrists, and I’m placing the blame solidly on that for why it’s taking me so long to find the right words.

  “You know the nice thing about freedom?” I ask after a long pause.

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t have to do a goddamn thing you say.”

  I have him by the collar before any more excuses can tumble out of his mouth. The motion takes me back, back, back to a riverside on Delos, when there was sand between our toes and a galaxy of secrets still between us. Back when I tried to kiss him—after he’d just tried to kiss me—and he held me back and told me we couldn’t. Shouldn’t. For the sake of my empire. Because we could never really be together—something we both knew and chose to ignore.

  Like last time, this is a leap of faith. A question waiting for an answer.

  Unlike last time, he doesn’t stop me before my lips reach his.

  For once, kissing him is simple—if only because I’ve decided every single consequence of it can rut right off. I don’t exist in the fallout of this action. I just exist in the moment of it, in the way he breaks the kiss on a gasp, then dives back in for more, the way my hands fit gently on his sides, pressing him against the Ruttin’ Hell’s hull. There’s a terrifying part of me that wants to make this moment my entire existence, forever, but that part gets shocked back to reality the second I press just a little too hard and Ettian breaks away, seething through his teeth as he clutches the wound on his stomach.

  His eyes meet mine, and I expect an accusation. Something about trying to kill him again, about how I must be manipulating him now, about—

  “You took notes on my speech?” he asks—not drily, sarcastically, but with so much hope and incredulity that it feels like it might rip me in half.

  I offer a sheepish shrug, one hand still firmly anchored on the back of his neck. “I wouldn’t trust it either. Both because it’s me we’re talking about and because it’s your job as an emperor to be on guard for shit from people like me. But…Look, in the battle, there was a lot going on. A lot to process. And something clicked in the midst of trying to keep Wen alive. Something I really, really hate having to say to your face.” I groan, which only makes Ettian’s grin grow wider.

  “Go on,” he says with a beatific imperial nod.

  “Oh rut off with that,” I fire back, resisting the urge to jab him where he’s sore. “The whole time after you found out who I was but before I knew who you were—it sucked, it was scary as hell, but it was the happiest I’d ever been. Because it was us together against the galaxy. And when the two of us were coordinating to keep Wen alive, I felt it again. I realized how much I missed it. I realized…”

  This time, Ettian doesn’t dare try any sort of smug gesture. He waits with bated breath for what I’m going to say next.

  “I realized it’s the most important thing to me. I realized I could have the throne, have the entire galaxy laid at my feet, but…No empire is worth it if I don’t have you too.”

  He smirks. “Heard that one before.”

  I scowl. “Didn’t have all the information last time I said it. Now I do. And I ruttin’ mean it, Archon.”

  His eyes go wide. I’ve never called him anything but mocking honorifics and his first name. Addressing him by his territory is a confession all in its own, acknowledging his legitimacy as its bloodright-granted heir. I think that, more than any other word of my haphazard speech, convinces him I’m telling the truth.

  “Gods, they’re all going to wish Hanji had killed me,” he murmurs just before he leans in and sweetly, gently presses his lips to mine.

  I’ve barely gotten used to the sensation when he jerks back abruptly, panic sparking in his eyes. “Shit, Silon, there was a meeting—I’m supposed to be…” He glances down, smoothing frantically at his rumpled suit, then back up at me with an anxious smile.

  “Go,” I tell him, tucking his collar back in place as I reluctantly slip my hand from his neck. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk this through later. And go over those notes I took. And—”

  “Till then,” Ettian whispers, then pecks my forehead and rushes off to the hangar’s exit as quickly as his injury will allow him to go. I watch him until he’s out of sight, then grin wide, draw back my foot, and punt one of my discarded platinum cuffs clear across the deck.

  The magnitude of what I’ve just done doesn’t hit until I’m back in my rooms. I just threw away the purpose I was born for and, for the first time in my life, chose something purely because it felt right. My heart’s hammering like I just told my mother to her face to go rut herself, but I can’t find it in me to fear that like I should.

  I’m still giddy, still rubbing one hand disbelievingly over my lips, when the door to my quarters blasts off its track and goes flying end over end across the room.

  A figure in a powersuit saunters in. “Oh,” Hanji Iwam’s voice echoes from within its impenetrable armored shell. “I could get used to this.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The powersuit was disabled. Wen said it was disabled.

  The sheer confusion renders me motionless, but my senses return as Hanji starts toward me. “Now, hold on one second,” I stammer, shrinking back against the couch. “I’m your emperor, right? You’re loyal to the Umber Crown. Hanji. Hanji, stop. Hanji!” I yelp as she grabs the arm I’ve flung out in a pointless attempt to ward her off. With her other, she grabs me by the waist and hoists me over her shoulder like I weigh no more than a towel. “I order you to stop,” I choke.

  “Sorry, Highness,” she says as she turns back to the ruins of the door and takes off at a jog. “I’ve got orders from a little higher up.”

  And oh, there’s the shock. My blood feels like I’ve been tossed into the void, like it’s boiling and freezing simultaneously. This is my mother’s reckoning. It starts with my safe return to the Umber Core and ends with the annihilation of the Archon fleet and everything Ettian’s rebellion has built. With license to hold nothing back, the Imperial Fleet will sweep clean through this system until nothing Archon remains.

  I convulse violently against Hanji’s armored grip, trying to worm free. My presence is the only thing protecting Ettian from annihilation. He needs me now more than ever. I still have the taste of him on my lips.

  “Help!” I shout, but as usual, there’s none to be had. Nothing’s changed in the months since the last time someone burst into my quarters and assaulted me. I should be thanking every god that this particular person wants to abduct me, not kill me, but right now I just need somebody, anybody—

  We round a corner into one of the Torrent’s service halls and Hanji stops dead in her tracks. I squirm, twisting my head as I try to see what’s frozen her, and my heart lifts like the gravity generators have failed.

  Wen Iffan stands in the middle of the corridor, one hand on the hilt of her vibrosword.

  I let out a short laugh that blasts through my panic. Hanji might fancy herself unstoppable in the powersuit, but I’d like to see her try to get past the girl who took down the Fulcrum single-handedly. If Wen’s standing between her and the exit, Hanji goes this far and no farther.

  “Firecracker,” Hanji says, nonchalant.

  “Longshot,” Wen replies. Her hand stays anchored on her vibrosword. No need to draw it just yet, apparently. Her eyes meet mine, and she nods.

  I jerk my head, desperately hoping it reads as a nod in return.

  Then her eyes shift ba
ck to Hanji. “This corridor should be clear all the way to the airlocks,” she says, then pulls a comms clip off her belt and tosses it. Hanji snatches it out of the air with her free hand.

  Wait.

  No.

  “No,” I blurt out loud. “Wen, help. She’s abducting me.” I beat uselessly against Hanji’s grip as she strides toward Wen, who steps aside easily, her sword still infuriatingly sheathed. Just as we’re about to move past her, Wen reaches up to lay a hand on Hanji’s plated shoulder. “I’ve done my part,” she says, low and level. “I’m giving you three months to do yours.”

  Esperza’s voice echoes wryly in my head. Sometimes the advancement of the enemy is in the empire’s best interest.

  “Three months?” Hanji replies, an unmistakable grin in her voice. “I’ll do it in two.”

  “Wen!” I yelp, trying to squirm free and grab her simultaneously as we pass. She takes a steady step back, folding her arms behind her. “Why?” I seethe.

  Her gaze flicks away, her lips going tight.

  “What do you think my mother’s gonna do to this fleet once I’m not in it?” I ask.

  Wen’s hand clenches on the vibrosword hilt. I don’t understand. She’s done all this—taking Rafe’s armor, running the gauntlet of the battle at Dasun, nearly immolating herself in the Fulcrum—to protect Ettian, and now she’s letting Hanji Iwam saunter out the door with his most effective shield slung over her shoulder. While wearing her most effective shield, for that matter. “Are you just gonna let her steal your goddamn suit?” I holler as Hanji rounds the corner.

  Wen doesn’t come after us.

  Hanji finally loosens her grip on me once we’re sealed in an airlock—which of course opens and closes to admit us without complaint, no thanks to Wen and whatever games she thinks she’s playing. I immediately flounder down from her shoulder and try to lunge for the door, but she grabs me by the collar like a stray kitten, laughing as she lifts Wen’s comm to her chest. “This is Wraith One. I’ve got him. Drop in five.”