by Kate Elliott
“I’ve come back now and will not leave again.”
“I know.” Yet Sun shifted restlessly, rubbed her eyes, gave a sharp sigh.
“Dear Sun, you’re agitated. What is wrong?”
“Would it be too much for my mother to offer me a scrap of praise? Tell me I’ve done well? Say she’s proud of me?”
“That’s not her way. To give you jobs to do? That’s how she shows you that she thinks you’re fit. She’d not have sent you to the front if she thought you incapable of a command. She placed you in position to allow for you to lead the crowning blow yourself. That is your praise. What higher can there be?”
“Then why send me on this ridiculous tour when there are more battles I could be sent to fight?”
“Logistics win campaigns. This will help you. People will be grateful that you care enough to visit where they live and work. They’ll see you as they have not seen the queen-marshal for years except in news reports. You’ll come alive to them. They’ll take your part. And also you will learn while on the ground all the extent of our capacities. Our resource load, our freight, our training schemes. What we have in excess. What we lack. You’ll need this knowledge later, mark my words. And one last thing.”
“Campaigns are won and lost on supply,” Sun murmured.
“That’s right, and we have pushed both far and fast. Chaonia must rebuild—”
“—repair, and reinforce our lines. I know. I know.” Sun frowned. “It’s true we took a lot of damage at Na Iri. It’s true we’ve gotten stretched thin all through the Hatti reaches. Imagine what might happen if the Phene knew how vulnerable we are and decide to attack while we’re reeling from all our victories.”
Hetty nudged her shoulder to shoulder. “Let’s go have tea and speak of Duke’s medusas.”
“It’s quite a feat,” Sun agreed, accepting the change of subject.
In better humor she accompanied Hetty back to the courtyard where the others were seated, except Percy, who could never sit still. He was hanging from the gazebo roof’s rim doing pull-ups but dropped gracefully to the ground as Sun and Hetty came up. Duke, his middle-aged cee-cee, hurried out of the service alley drying his hands on a cloth. Sun invited him to take the cushion beside her rather than serve with Navah and Candace so he could fill her in on the details of his research. Duke had been an unemployed marine biologist whose family had gone into debt to pay for his advanced courses. He had only applied for Vogue Academy’s special course for “personal attendant” out of desperation when his clan’s home had come within days of being sold to clear the loan. His serious but equable disposition matched well with Percy’s impulsive, disorganized cheerfulness.
Thinking of the dismissive things Marduk and Moira Lee had said about Perseus annoyed her all over again. She sent the three cee-cees away and afterward cupped her hands around a bowl of tea. Her four Companions regarded her each with their own particular brand of patience or curiosity.
“You all know we’re headed for Thesprotis and Molossia for six long months. So we are going to learn everything we can and make all the alliances and create all the goodwill possible. We will be ambassadors for the palace, but also for this great mission our republic is engaged in—”
James gave a choked sound and pitched forward at the waist, barely avoiding smashing the last bean cake with his face. “It hurts. It hurts. Can’t you skip the deadly dull speeches with us?”
“I liked the sound of it,” said Percy brightly.
Alika picked up the baritone ukulele he’d made famous on Idol Faire and tried out “This great mission our republic is engaged in” with several different melodies.
Hetty smiled, and when Hetty smiled, the universe smiled.
James popped back up, snatched the last bean cake, and stuck it in his mouth. “So good.”
Sun glanced toward the doors that led into the kitchen area. No one was in sight. Through a half-recessed door to the right she could see Octavian and Isis seated in comfortable chairs with sake, talking over security and tutoring arrangements or perhaps reminiscing about shared campaigns from the ancient days of their youth.
She lowered her voice. “Percy, why would your aunt Moira be visiting the queen-marshal at COSY?”
He shrugged. “She wouldn’t. Governors never leave Chaonia Prime when the queen-marshal is on campaign.”
“Nevertheless, she was there. Was there ever any talk in Lee House about her scandalous affair with Queen-Marshal Nézhā?”
“Queen-Marshal Nézhā?” Cheerful Percy drained away into a frowning, uncomfortable visage. He picked up his teabowl but set it down without drinking. “I never heard anything about that. But I was only eleven when they sent me to you. Afterward I rarely saw them once they realized I wasn’t going to fill their ears with details of your habits and secrets. They stopped talking to me. It’s not that they value loyalty. They require it.”
“But Moira had to give up being one of my mother’s original and most trusted Companions because of the affair, didn’t she?”
“Do we have to talk about this?”
“Yes, we do.”
He sighed, shoulders slumping. Hetty cocked a critical eyebrow toward Sun. James shook his head disapprovingly. Alika plucked a single discordant chord. They all protected Percy, each in their own way, but Sun had never underestimated Perseus Lee, not as most people did.
“My gut is telling me this is important. I have to figure out why.”
“Whenever my mother wanted to needle Aunt Moira, she brought up how Moira had disgraced the family by getting banished from the Companions. She never said why, at least not in my hearing. I guess they both knew perfectly well. It was just the nasty way it always unfolded, like she was trying to goad Moira into slapping her so then she could cry about being slapped.”
James winced. Hetty settled a restful hand on Percy’s forearm. Alika watched in his usual silence.
“After your aunt Nona Lee died, and Lee House had to replace her as governor, is it possible Eirene was involved in having Moira named as Nona’s successor?”
“Ha!” His laugh was like scorched earth. “As if Lee House would ever let any outsider poke grubby hands into its inner workings. Not even the queen-marshal.”
“But Aisa Lee is the second child, isn’t that right? Wouldn’t it be expected that she would become governor after Nona?”
“Yes, but she was passed over in favor of Moira, who’s youngest. Let me tell you that even after nine years I can still quote entire ranting speeches by my mother complaining about the Lee House council snubbing her unfairly.”
“Wow,” said James. “I’ve met Aisa Lee at court functions with your father, who’s as handsome as he is scary. But she just seemed a little possessive and self-centered.”
“You have no idea what a monster she is, and I hope you never find out. Do we have to keep talking about this, Sun?”
“Yes. Your mother’s resentment doesn’t explain why Moira was chosen as governor in place of her. There’s something here I need to know, but I don’t know what it is.”
He ran a hand over his close-cropped black hair. “There was something funny about how Aunt Nona died.”
James perked up abruptly. “Nona Lee torched a refugee camp in a retaliatory action that killed thousands of innocent people.”
“That’s not how she died!” Sun blinked on her net and did a quick search. “She died in a conflagration in Troia System after Phene sympathizers attacked one of our military bases. It’s true a lot of refugees died in the neighboring camp. Collateral damage. But Nona Lee gave her life to salvage the situation.”
“That’s the Channel Idol story, the official story,” said James. “That Phene operatives bombed the camp and Nona Lee died nobly during the rescue operations. Scuttlebutt whispers it was Nona Lee’s operation from the get-go. It’s said she accused the camp of being a front for Phene operatives and torched it on the principle of one guilty, all guilty.”
“There are always conspiracy
theories floating around deep in the twitch.”
“I’ll ping you the squib I found. I dug it up fifteen minutes ago while I was admiring the medusas. And I’m just getting started. For example, it’s not clear if Nona Lee’s body was actually found. If not, then whose remains took her place at her funeral?”
“Did you hear any rumors of that when you were little, Percy?” Sun asked.
Percy set both hands palm down on the tabletop, expression drawn and eyes weary. “You know why I don’t talk about my family. Because they are awful. And as awful as my mother and Aunt Moira are, Nona was rumored to be the awfullest of all. The whisper even inside Lee House was that after she died they had to fill in one wing of the underground prison with concrete to hide her illegal experiments.”
Sun exchanged a glance with James, and he nodded, fingers twitching as he started another dive. Percy kept talking, gaze fixed on his hands.
“The greatest fortune I ever received was when the House council picked me over my twin to come to you.” He looked up at Sun, dark eyes brimming with unshed tears. “And you kept me on. I’m so grateful.”
“They can’t all have been awful,” said Sun, turning over his comments in her mind. “What about the eight-times-worthy hero Ereshkigal Lee?”
Alika played the bravura opening run of his now-famous Aspera Drift, a musical tribute to the desperate battle fought almost six years ago at the edge of Aspera System, one quick beacon hop out from Troia.
“The adults are all awful, I mean. Not my cousins and siblings. They were still too young. My mother tried so hard to make Ereshkigal into a nasty little version of herself, but she couldn’t ruin her because Resh was the best.” Percy’s smile ghosted back, tenuous and sad. “Resh used to drag Perse and me around, and sometimes when we had to our cousin Manea—”
“Purse?”
“Persephone. My twin sister. We were like the hooligan gang with Resh the ringleader.”
“The eight-times-worthy Ereshkigal Lee was a hooligan?” James asked with a skeptical grimace.
Percy laughed. “You have no idea, and I pinkie swore not to tell. Well, Perse made me swear and threatened to bite off my right pinkie finger if I told.”
“Bold! I like that!” said James.
Alika shook his head.
Hetty patted Percy’s forearm with a sympathetic smile. The splay of her fingers against skin drew Sun’s attention for a moment too long.
“It’s weird, though,” Percy went on in a musing tone. “Perse vanished after Resh’s death. My mother told me Perse had a nervous breakdown, but that doesn’t sound like her. She was always the bossy, conniving one. I missed her for so long.”
“I remember,” said Sun. “You cried every day for the first year you were here. It’s the reason I didn’t send you back like I did with the tedious rats the other Houses tried to foist on me.”
His wry smile held regret, not self-pity. “Then I got accustomed to not having to deal with my mother and let it go. Sun, why does this matter to you so much?”
“I didn’t like the way Moira Lee treated my father.”
“What can Lee House do to him—or to you, for that matter? Sure, you’re half Gatoi, and most of the Gatoi fight for the Phene, but the prince has always kept his side of the alliance with the queen-marshal. Anyway you’re Eirene’s heir. That gives your father a lot of clout. And a lot of protection.”
Sun considered the table and its lack of bean cakes and deep-fried sesame balls, since they had eaten them all. As she pinged the kitchen for more, the door into Octavian’s office slid fully open, and he and Isis walked out.
“Princess, the manifest of casualties has finally come in. You requested to be informed right away.”
She jumped up. “I want to be involved in the funeral rites before we leave.”
The others rose too, moving away, all but Perseus.
Sun studied his preoccupied expression, so different from his usual way of being present in each moment. “Percy, are you okay?”
“I can’t ever forget I left Perse stuck in a pit of venomous centipedes.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Or your choice.”
“I know. But what worries me is they kept her back, instead of me. They thought she was the one they could turn into them. It makes me sick to think of what she could be like now, stuck in their trap. Still, I guess it’s out of my hands.”
With an effort he took in a breath. The desperate, damaged boy who had come to her nine years ago was shucked away into the restively cheerful young man of twenty who could make almost anyone smile.
“We are going to have so much fun on this tour, Sun. I already have lots and lots of ideas to entertain our various hosts. It will be smooth sailing and an unending barrel of laughs.”
7
Introducing the Wily Persephone and the Loyal Solomon with the Predictable Result of Their Foray into Battle
My best friend and I sit side by side on the intercontinental train. I’ve got my legs tucked up under me as I slump over the tablet that’s resting on my thighs, fiercely studying for the final exam. Solomon sits with perfect straight posture and feet flat on the floor, eyes forward, on schedule and prepared like the star cadet he is. Around us, other travelers work, listen, read, and doze as the train speeds through a seemingly endless expanse of coniferous forest.
Solomon touches his chin and tips his hand at me in the sign for good luck. He stands and walks toward the back of the car, out of my sight because I don’t turn to watch him go. I’m too busy with the tablet, which projects a three-dimensional model of the transportation system of the Republic of Chaonia. Interlocking threads create a shining network of transport hubs and lines across the surface of the planet and out into space, where they link up into the intersystem beacon routes.
A glitch burns through the model. It winks out, winks back in, then scatters in a fizz of bubbling sparks as the hum of the train stutters, kicks in briefly, and sputters away into an ominous quiet. I look up.
People start muttering as the train sighs to a stop like a huge creature letting out a death exhale. A man wearing the red-and-gold military uniform of the Republican Guard of Chaonia jumps up and presses both hands against a window.
“I saw something in the forest,” he says loudly enough that everyone stops talking and turns to look out the window he’s leaning against.
There’s a lull of thick silence. Everyone, including me, is holding their breath.
An explosion booms, the sound tearing through my body like shrapnel. The car shakes and the windows ripple but don’t shatter. The explosion is followed by another vibration with a pitch so low I can’t hear it except as a jolt. My tablet fizzes to life, visuals flashing, then goes inert.
Dammit. A premonition of disaster whirls through my mind as my heart hammers, but I manage to hold on to just enough self-possession to roll up the thin tablet and stuff it into my sleeve pocket. No emergency lights are flashing. There aren’t any lights at all.
The military man leans back from the window and glances around the carriage.
“Anyone here a transportation engineer?” he asks. “It looks like the explosion hit the power grid. Maybe if we go to the engine car we can figure out a workaround.”
I raise my hand like I’m in class and unsure if I have the right answer. “I’m a cadet, studying transportation engineering. I’ll go with you—”
A thunk interrupts my offer. The soldier recoils and flops onto his back with a slab of window sticking out of his chest. Just sticking there like a malignant sculpture.
My mind goes blank, and my skin goes cold. No one in Chaonia believes the war will ever come here, not after what Eirene has accomplished as queen-marshal. The Phene would have to slice through Troia’s gate and Molossia’s defenses to reach Chaonia Prime.
A packet of glowing ion fléchettes punches through the shattered window, slamming into the train wall and into several of the passengers too. Blood spatters onto my cadet’s uniform before I c
an register the scope of the carnage. Screams and shouts break out as people scramble for cover. A blood-spotted child sitting in the opposite row starts to bawl as their parent tries frantically to shove them under a seat.
Finally, finally, my academy training kicks in, and I drop to the floor. The military man is lying on his back not two meters from me. He convulses, and the slab of window stuck into his body tilts crazily and with a terrible sucking sound tears out of his chest. Blood bubbles up from the shocking gash. My mouth has gone dry and my hands are shaking as I crawl to him and press hands to the gaping wound, trying to stop the blood.
Another soldier slips in beside me. “I’m a medic. Didn’t you say you’re an engineer? Can you get the train running?”
“I am. I can.” Every citizen of Chaonia has a job to do, and I need to do mine.
Another spray of fléchettes hits the remaining windows. I twist onto my back, as if that would save me, but nothing hits me. According to the timer that’s always running in the background of my network it’s been 117 seconds since the glitch, even though it seems like an hour.
Focus. Focus. Check all parameters. Note all details. Find a way to the engine car and fix the power grid to get the train away from the attack.
Because I’m now on my back on the floor I see at an odd angle up through the banks of windows. Treetops seem to hang upside-down into the blue sky. Shade-striped gliders skim over the trees with an ease that strikes me as beautiful, until people drop down from the gliders’ rigging onto the railway embankment and launch themselves at the train cars.
They aren’t imperial Phene. That’s easy to tell because these invaders have only two arms. They are something worse, the Phene’s savage allies who seek honor through death in combat. We call them the Gatoi. These soldiers don’t feel pain because their bodies are threaded with some kind of neuro enhancers.
The invaders climb the slick sides of the train cars. They pound energy axes against the heavy-duty clear windows, bolts sizzling out from each impact like webs of lightning. When panes crack the soldiers launch themselves through, heedless of the gouges the edges leave in their flesh.