But perhaps …
“Perhaps you’re right,” she said to him, engaging him despite his commander’s wishes that he keep to himself. She suspected, though, that the order had been given for diplomatic reasons. The commander did not want his man to say anything that might offend the future empress of Allay. But Ambrea had always craved strong intellects and varying opinions. She had never sat above those around her thinking she was always in the right and that no one should gainsay her. “Perhaps I have been sheltered … and frightened. Afraid to move for fear of hurting someone. I always tried so hard to be the opposite of what my father was … what my uncle is. But I can see how neither extreme makes for good leadership.”
“It’s not a bad thing that you don’t want to hurt anyone,” Ender said rather gently. It made her smile, and she tilted her head and peered into his warm eyes. That brownish red color was just so peculiar, she thought. She’d never seen anything like it. Not that that was saying much. They were so exotic, dark golden lashes spiking away from their rims like the fanning tail of a durou bird. Again she saw a streak of strong beauty in what others might see as hardened and barbaric.
He was right to say she had been raised in a bubble. She’d been denied many things in her exile, things like a Universal Database connection, something every single person in the Three Worlds could have free access to if they wanted to buy the tech necessary to tap into it. Oh, how well educated she might have been had she been able to tap into the UD! Instead she’d been limited to what VidMags her ladies had access to or VidBooks in the server library at her house. Since the server library had been completely controlled by her father’s aides, it had contained reams of florid propaganda about the emperor and the magnificence of Allay. Still, she had been able to pick out some truths and basics of things.
“But living my life in fear of that has allowed first my brother and now my uncle to usurp my rightful place,” she continued. “To treat my people ill. It has been hard to know what to do, whom to throw in with. People have approached me over the years wanting to stage a coup, but I always felt it too risky, fearing that their motives were not necessarily pure.”
“Very few of us have pure motives,” he said.
But, Rush realized, she genuinely did. She was passionately dedicated to doing the right thing, according to her own intense moral code. He had noticed that the small paper book she had grabbed from her cell was in her hands, the pages wet all along the edges where the leather had not protected it from the dunking she had taken earlier. She was continually fanning out the pages, no doubt to dry them, as she walked. He realized that it was a devotional book. A prayer book that he often saw in the belongings of those, like Bronse, who followed the belief in the one Great Being. This was most prevalent on Ulrike, but ever since travel between the planets had begun, missionaries had spread the belief in the Great Being throughout the system.
Except for on the actual planet of Tari. Tarians believed in their many spirits, and it was likely never to change. The spirits and the people used one another to stay connected to the planet. To sever that connection would be to sever them from the world around them, the air they breathed, the food that nourished them, the animals that coexisted with them. There had been many things that had made it hard for Rush to leave Tari back when he had first joined the IM. Leaving his connection to the spirits had been one of the most difficult. Justice had been born on one of the platforms, so she had not been as imbued with that connection as those planetside Tarians were.
Rush found himself curious about Ambrea’s connection to the book. Even in the heat of her escape, the first thing she had thought of, even at the risk of her own safety and the safety of Suna and himself, something she was clearly loath to put on the line, was that book.
“Are you very religious?” he asked, breaking another standing rule. Two things he didn’t like to discuss were politics and religion. They tended to be hot, volatile topics, and he tried not to have any passionate thoughts on either. It kept him out of trouble, kept things relatively smooth and easy. It was best to be a soldier, obey orders from someone he trusted, use the skills he had in the way he knew best. Simple. Clean. Safe.
“I am,” she said. “I try to be,” she qualified after a moment. “I have faith in the Great Being. In the Being’s plans for me. The lessons of the Followers are strong and beautiful. They help us to value one another, to value all life. Its simplicities, its complexities. Hardships in our lives create their own rewards later on. I firmly believe that.” Then her voice was so soft he might not have heard her over the sound of their crunching through the forest bracken. “I need to believe that.” She turned her head to narrow her pretty blue eyes on him. “What about you? Are you very religious?”
He didn’t know how to answer that. Not just for her, but for himself. There had been a time when his connection to the spirits had meant everything. But he had left that all behind him. “I haven’t communed with the spirits for a very long time.”
“I didn’t ask if you practiced your religion. No more than you did of me. I meant do you have faith in something more powerful, more comprehensive in the universe than yourself.”
“I have faith in my fellow soldiers. Faith in my ability to kick some ass when it needs to be kicked, because the IM showed me how.” He shrugged, knowing that someone like her, someone golden and privileged and serenely dedicated to her One Being, would frown on his more tangible beliefs. One Being or many spirits, whatever may or may not be out there, none of them had ever done anything to ease his way in this life. He had made his own mark, picked himself up, and driven himself to make a path. Gods had little to do with that. If there were gods out there, he was pretty sure they had forsaken him a long time ago.
“It must be exhausting to feel that way,” she observed gently. “To feel that nothing keeps your head above water except you.”
“I’m pretty damn strong. Pretty damn tough. I don’t tire easily.”
But looking at her, looking at how she seemed almost fragile in spite of being tall and long limbed, he could see why she would need to seek strength outside of herself. She wasn’t physically strong like most women he knew. Then again, all the women he knew these days were soldiers like Justice. And although Justice ran a little shorter than the princess, it was clear she was in top shape, athletic and tough. He most certainly wouldn’t want to meet up with a scrapper like the team’s pilot in a dark corner somewhere. Tarian women were just as strong as the men, although they packed it into a more streamlined package. Just as strong as most Tarian men anyway. He wasn’t exactly like most Tarian men. Or any men, for that matter. He ran pretty big by all the standards of the Three Worlds. And honestly it seemed redundant. He had enough going for him. Size wasn’t necessary.
Maybe it was because she was so pale. Deprived of sunlight for so long, she didn’t have much color in her complexion. Perhaps that’s why her eyes seemed so big, so brilliant. Her hair as well. Impractical as it had been, he’d actually hated to cut it off. It was the most glorious red, fiery and bright with streaks of glimmering gold. And soft. Despite all the hardship of living trapped in a cell, her hair had been as soft as if she had pampered it every day, dried it with Yojni silk, infused it with nourishing Ayalya spice, as many of the wealthier women in the Three Worlds were wont to do. He watched it now as the drying tendrils flew like tiny banners in the wind, one moment wrapping around her, the next trying to get away. It hung to the middle of her back now, still cumbersome, unbound as it was, but he found he couldn’t be irritated by the inefficiency. The hair, the eyes, the woman as a whole was far too pretty and too sweet-natured to be an irritant. He liked the strong set of her shoulders, admired her for the things he’d learned about her in their mission briefing. Many people did not survive the type of imprisonment she had been made to suffer. No daylight. No movement outside of that same tiny space, hour after hour, day after day. That in itself was a torture. The only relief she had, he supposed, was the stimulation o
f the sharp-witted Suna.
But there had been no Suna that first time she’d been put into the wet rooms at the tender age of eleven. How had a child come through an entire year of incarceration like that? How had she managed to hold up in the face of a tyrannical adult accusing her of sedition, and power-hungry nobles all around her seeking to use her for exactly that?
“It must be a relief to be out in the open,” he said, wondering why he continually felt the need to engage her in conversation. He wasn’t known for being the talkative type. Quite the opposite. He kept quiet, pulled pins, blew shit up. Ate, slept, and then did it all again the next day. Simple. He liked simple.
“Aye, it is,” she said passionately, taking in a very deep breath and turning her face to the sun. The sun burned a rosy gold in the sky, the day clear and crisp and almost eerily cloudless. The trees with their blue-green leaves creaked and groaned in the strong breeze, their massive height leaving the small group in shade more often than not. “I spend a great deal of time out of doors.” She hedged. “When I’m able. I stitch and read outside all the time. We would take long walks, feed the stray bray-bray. It had gotten so they would eat straight out of my hand. I could feel their little forked tongues flickering against my palm.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t feel their teeth,” he said.
“If you’re patient, approach them gently, and wait for them to come to you on their own terms, they will not bite you. People say the bray-bray are vicious through and through, but that’s not true. They—”
“Shh!”
The soft hiss came from Chapel, and he raised a hand in a gesture indicating they should halt. Rush grabbed hold of the princess by her upper arm, drawing her close to the protection of his body yet giving himself room to move and access all his munitions if necessary. He felt her balk at being touched for a moment, but more from surprise at the sensation, he realized, than from some kind of privileged snobbery that Suna seemed to feel she should respond with. Ambrea had been the same way in the tunnels. She hadn’t dissembled about being held and holding on; she just didn’t have any experience with person-to-person contact.
Did that mean she had had no affection whatsoever growing up, he wondered. At least he’d had that much. His mother had loved him a great deal, had always showered him with attention and affection. She had always made certain he knew she thought he was a person of great value. That he was rich with the love of another. Her death when he was fifteen had devastated him. But at least he’d had her that long. How old had the princess been when her mother was executed? Four?
Rush shook off the trivial detail and focused on their situation. As soon as all of them were quiet, he could hear what had drawn Chapel’s attention. Another group was moving through the woods. They were loud and even bawdy as their conversation echoed off the canopy above them.
“It’s all over now,” one man joked. “Emperor Balkin is the man of the hour, pretty concubines lining up on their knees to kiss his cock, ready to spread their legs to make him some heirs.”
“Not if he has the same luck as Benit did,” another snorted noisily. The unmistakable sound of a gun coming out of a holster made the hairs on the back of Rush’s neck stand up. There was something very distinctive about the sound of metal escaping leather. The whine of the pistol being cocked and warmed up, the shuttle being checked, the power clip being removed and firmly reseated again—these were sounds that any soldier would recognize. The group must be Imperial Guards. The preserve’s rangers didn’t carry anything more powerful than a stunner. Rush’s ears made the identification of an MX-240 by the power pitch and the snap in the shuttle. A 240 was made to kill. Painfully. It burned up a body from the inside out; the more powerful the setting, the more vicious the damage.
The weapon was outlawed in the Three Worlds for its barbarity. Clearly the emperor had not heeded that mandate any more than he had heeded others set down by the IM.
“Benit had three hundred concubines at any given moment, right?” the soldier continued. “How do you not make an army of royal brats with three hundred incubators lined up ready and waiting? They can’t all have been the problem, right? The royal rocks were shooting blanks. I’ll bet his kids aren’t even his. Maybe some guard or some pit washer banged one of his bitches behind his back.”
“Don’t be stupid,” another said as the heavy-footed contingent came closer and closer to the tree that Rush and his group were huddled behind. The trunk of the quoia tree was thick enough to conceal twenty men of Rush’s size. With any luck the other group could keep walking and never see them. “As soon as the whelps are born, they test their DNA and prove their lineage. This isn’t like the Third Age, when no one knew which bastard belonged to which bastard, ’cept by the woman’s say-so.”
“And we know how trustworthy a woman can be,” a new voice piped up. The men laughed as a whole.
“I have to say, I’m surprised the princess finally got up the guts to try to escape. She’s been meek as a mouse all these years in exile. Never so much as a peep out of her.”
“Don’t be an ass,” the readily armed guard said. “She didn’t try to escape. Balkin blistered her from the inside out, buried the body, and is making a show of it to satisfy the IM’s suspicious eyes.”
“So we’re basically out here wasting our time,” another said.
“Hey, I don’t care. I get paid either way. It’s not so bad as details go. Could be worse. We could be like those poor bastards who are searching through that brine at the bottom of the wet rooms.”
And just like that, the soldier walked into sight, almost running into Rush.
Eirie swept silently through the rear halls of Blossom Palace, the Yojni silk of her dress fluttering behind her in the breeze of her own movement. She crept past the senior concubine quarters—the entire west wing of the palace that was dedicated to housing all of Emperor Benit’s former concubines. Those who had family to return to had already been sent away with a retirement dowry to help them live in small comfort. Those who wanted their freedom had also been set adrift—with far too much of the treasury’s monies, in Eirie’s opinion. But tradition was tradition, and Balkin could not afford to upset the traditionalist public, which liked their royals to behave according to certain guidelines set down in the past. Eirie had respected Emperor Benit, though, for being a true man of power, for acting as he saw fit to use the law in his favor, or make new laws to suit. Those in the Noble Seat, the elected seats that supposedly represented the needs of the people from all over the continent and brought those needs to the emperor’s ear, ideally had a say in which new laws were ratified, but all that really meant was who could and could not be swayed or bought to see things the emperor’s way. The prelates and paxors were made fat and rich by giving the emperor his way. When they did not, they were considered thorns and personal enemies and had to struggle for survival amongst their contemporaries.
Balkin had a knack for buying his brother the majority vote. He also had a talent for punishing those who did not comply in creative ways. It wouldn’t do to be obvious about it. So maybe a business would inexplicably suffer, or perhaps a cherished daughter would be chosen for a concubine. Under the guise of being bestowed a great honor, they would be forced to hand the girl over to the monster they knew could kill a concubine at whim. It was surprising, though, how many would eagerly send a girl into these opulent rooms, Eirie thought. They would always think, in their arrogance, that it would be their daughter to finally give the emperor the children he so desperately craved.
Idiots. The lot of them. There was only one true seat of power for any woman in Allay.
Empress.
That was why Eirie had written off Benit Tsu Allay a long time ago. With him, the best she could have hoped for was lead concubine. Benit would make no woman his wife, and no woman empress. He would not share his power. Ever. Except, perhaps, with his brother. It could be said that Benit had loved only two people in his lifetime. His brother and his son. Eirie d
id not count that contemptible concubine Junessa, because love was meant to be enduring, and Junessa had not lasted more than five years in Benit’s affections. Damn fool of a woman. She had had him. Right in the palm of her hand. And she had let him slip through her fingers.
Junessa had made fatal mistakes. Eirie would not.
She pushed through the doors to the old chapel, the one that had been abandoned after the new one had been built directly off the concubines’ main salon. The doors creaked, the hinges uncared for over time. She was immediately engulfed in the pervading dimness of the room, the smell of long-standing dust in the air, and the single window at the rear of the altar casting light onto the edges of the silvery cobwebs hanging in the rafters.
Eirie gathered up the train of her gown so it wouldn’t trail in the dust, draping it over her forearm and continuing on her way through the chapel. She took care with her steps, lifting and placing each foot so she wouldn’t kick up dust onto her handcrafted court slippers. At the rear of the chapel was the entrance to the rectory, what would normally be the priestess’s private chambers. But unlike the chapel, these chambers were not in disrepair as Eirie let herself into them. They were soft and quaint, a simple sort of pretty that her grandmother’s house had once been. They were far too simple for any priestess of the Great Being, although the walls were still made of beaten gold and platinum, as had been dictated by the previous tenant. There wasn’t much that the current tenant could do about that. As it was, she wasn’t even supposed to be in these rooms. Not officially anyway.
“Curta?”
Curta moved, startling Eirie, who had not seen her in the corner of the sitting room. As usual, the older woman was not sitting. She stood, wearing a classic peach-colored gown that was held on to her body by links of Delran platinum made into the most delicate of chains, one after another lying in gently sweeping loops against her dark skin. Skin so dark it was almost black. She was from the Farma continent, a place on the other side of the world where the people were sometimes only half as civilized as those in Allay and Ulrike. In contrast to her rich, near-ebony skin, the older woman’s hair was golden, like threads of metal filament, only it was unmistakably soft as it rested in an array of whorls around her neck and down her back. It was hard to tell how old the Farma woman was. Her skin was smooth and without age. Her golden lashes seemed to glitter above her purple pupils and fair sky blue irises.
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