by K. B. Wagers
The collective “No, Your Majesty” wasn’t particularly loud but it was delivered without hesitation.
“Then explain to me the rationale behind sending my Ekam a message asking him to betray me.”
Caspel closed his eyes for a moment. “Your Majesty, you are throwing around a lot of very charged words at the moment.”
“Be thankful I am halfway across the galaxy, Caspel. I’d be throwing something other than words.” I pushed off the table and crossed my arms. “You have read my reports. We are dancing on the edge of a knife here with a real chance for peace between the Farians and the Shen. I will not leave until that is realized, and I will not leave until I know that the threat coming can be dealt with.”
“And that is the problem, Your Majesty,” General Aganey Triskan, the head of Indrana’s army, said. “This threat is nebulous at best.”
“And the product of delusions at worst.”
I whipped my gaze to Caterina, but this time the matriarch impressively didn’t back down. “You are basing this all on visions, Your Majesty. You can’t deny how that sounds. Especially coming on the heels of what happened to you.”
“Caterina!”
I put up a hand before Alice could continue to tear into the woman sitting next to her, and my heir closed her mouth with a snap.
“Is the Matriarch Council rescinding their faith that I am fit to sit on the throne, Caterina?”
She recoiled as the formal phrase hit her like an actual slap. Part of the procedure for reinstating me as empress would have been for both councils to vote on my competence. It had been largely a formality at the time, even with the trauma of my rescue from Sparkos, but governments loved their rules and I wasn’t above using it to my own advantage.
“Your Majesty, that was not—”
“Answer the question.”
“No, ma’am. The Matriarch Council has not even discussed the matter.” She took a breath. “Your Majesty, you have been gone for more than a year. You should come home.”
“Alice, have I missed something in the last forty-eight hours?”
“No, Hail. My last report is still relatively current as to the state of the empire. While Indrana, of course, always needs her empress and we would like to have you home”—she shot Caterina a sideways glance—“we have things well under control. Your mission to facilitate peace between the Farians and the Shen is still a priority and it is my opinion that is not something you can do from Pashati.”
“Caspel, has anything changed from your last report?”
The intelligence director shook his head with a resigned smile. “It has not, Your Majesty.”
“Very well.” I glanced around one more time at the assembled faces. Everyone but Alice looked sufficiently chastised and I knew my heir would take care of any other problems that cropped up. “I think we’re done here. Don’t pull this cowshit again, or I will come home, but only to knock sense into all of you.” I leaned forward and disconnected the com.
“That went better than I thought it would,” Inana said.
“Sorry to stomp into the middle of that.” I turned around and leaned against the table. “I take it last night’s conversation did no good.”
“I only sent a message last night. The time difference had made it impossible to speak until now.” Inana paused for a moment and then exhaled. “Majesty, no one there is disloyal.”
“I know that.” I waved a hand. “They’re just anxious. I don’t blame them for that, but I do blame them for not coming directly to me. Especially Caspel. He knows better. Ironically, he trusts my gut, but he should have taken into account that Caterina doesn’t before he talked to her.” I rubbed my hands together. “I’d started a letter to Alice before this; I’m going to finish it and send it along because I think the reminder should be in the official record. The next time someone goes around me to you or Emmory to try to get me to do something, I will remove them from their post.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I blew out a breath. “Okay, what’s next?”
9
In the days that followed, an uneasy peace settled around us. The Pedalion surprisingly agreed to the security proposal and I stopped by a few times to make sure everything was proceeding without further incident.
When I wasn’t there, I locked myself away with Dailun, Alba, and Hao and we went through every permissible memory the Svatir had of the Hiervet attack.
It was exhausting work. I am no stranger to violence, but the heights the Svatir and Hiervet reached in their battles was like nothing I’d ever seen.
“Damn.” Hao rubbed a hand over his face, breaking the silence of the room.
I stood, hooking my hands behind my neck and stretching the kink out of my back. The blinking notification in the corner of my vision told me I had four messages waiting and that it was well past time when Aiz and Mia would return for the day. “I thought we were bad,” I replied.
“You mean we humans or you and I?” Hao grinned; it was tinged with shadows and I touched his shoulder as I passed, my rolling gut settling somewhat when he reached up and gripped my hand briefly.
“Both? We’ve done some shit; so has humanity.” I shrugged. “But this is a whole other level.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Alba also got to her feet. It was strange, even after all this time, to see her in the same matte-black uniform the rest of us were dressed in instead of her customary skirt and jacket.
“What doesn’t?” I wandered to the bar in my room, shooting Emmory a message that we were done for the day. The strict laws of the Svatir on the subject of violence meant only the four of us could see the memories directly, though I was allowed to brief the others on the things we viewed in as much detail as I wanted. “Who needs a drink?”
A chorus of yeses came back at me.
“Thyra said her people were created to be soldiers and that they rebelled and ran away because they didn’t want to fight any longer.” Alba took the drink I passed her, handing it off to Hao with a murmured “honored brother” in Cheng. He took it with a nod of thanks and I held the sudden bloom of warmth in my chest close. The loss of my family still sometimes hurt, but reminders like this—that I’d gained a whole new family—eased the pain.
The peace negotiations were going well. Adora’s people seemed to have quieted under the overwhelming pressure of the majority of Farians clamoring for answers from their former gods. Things were, for all appearances, finally going our way.
“Hail?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “Mind wandered.” I passed over two more drinks and then finished pouring mine. “Right, then they accidentally start a war with the Svatir. We know she’s lying about that bit—we’ve seen the evidence with these recordings. They landed on Svatir, pulled the same image trick they did to Faria.” I swore under my breath. “I wish I could pick Thyra out of the bunch.” We’d watched the initial meeting with the Hiervet through the Svatir’s eyes, a small group much like the story Sybil had told me of their landing on Faria.
“Why tell a lie that’s so easily verified?” Dailun asked.
I rolled the whiskey around in my mouth for a moment before swallowing it and answering. “That’s not really the issue here, though.”
“What is?” Hao asked.
I leaned over and hit the panel next to the door when it chimed, smiling at Emmory and Zin as they came into the room. “Evening, gentlemen, everything quiet?”
“For the most part,” Emmory replied. “It makes me nervous.”
I laughed and patted him on the arm. “I know that feeling. The Farian Hiervet claim their brethren still want war, but that they do not. That somehow they alone escaped the bloodlust that reverted the Hiervet back to their programming after the incident with the Svatir.”
“I wondered when we were going to get around to that,” Zin said, leaning against the door frame.
“There is no way you can watch the Svatir memories and not know the truth of it. The attack was deli
berate, orchestrated in such a way to try to keep the Svatir from being able to fight back until it was too late. Thyra and her friends might be dangerous, but that’s not what bothers me.”
“What does?” Dailun asked.
“The Hiervet are dangerous. They are coming for Thyra and the others. And they will roll over the top of the rest of us in the process.” I took a drink and shook my head. “All lies break down eventually, and my gut says Thyra and the others may still be involved despite their protests to the contrary. After all, we have Aiz’s account of fighting the gods, which happened after Thyra and the others had landed on Faria.”
“What about my fight?”
I turned to look at Aiz in the doorway, smiling as Mia slipped past Zin with a hand on his arm. My BodyGuard didn’t flinch at the contact, and a second rush of warmth filled me. I handed over my glass without question and she drank the remains of it.
“Rough day?”
“A little.” Mia squeezed my arm and continued to the bar. I watched her, listening with half an ear as Emmory caught Aiz up on our conversation.
Something I couldn’t put my finger on had shifted with Mia in the last week. She was quiet, more withdrawn than normal. It could have been the combination of the attack and the pressures of the peace talks, but I didn’t think that was all of it.
Of course, we’d barely had any time to ourselves, and what little time we’d managed to find alone had seen us both collapsing into exhausted sleep in my quarters.
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Aiz said before I could follow Mia and check on her. “The fight with Thyra and the others was almost too much for us, and we’d had the element of surprise on our side.”
“Have we ever considered that maybe the Hiervet don’t want to attack?” Zin’s question drew several frowns. “It’s just a thought. If we think the Farian Hiervet are lying, maybe them being afraid of the Hiervet is not a bad thing for us.”
“Mia’s vision showed the Hiervet attacking this galaxy if we didn’t kill the gods, there’s no reason to doubt it.” Aiz shook his head.
And there was the problem. I didn’t have a reason for my doubt. All I had was my gut and it was telling me that something didn’t add up with all this. However, I didn’t agree with Zin’s idea that the Hiervet were harmless, not after what I’d seen over the last few days. “Was Thyra at the peace talks today?” I asked.
“None of the Farian Hiervet have been at the talks.” Aiz shook his head. “Which is for the best, really. Why?”
“Just curious.” I shrugged. “I want to talk to her.”
Aiz raised an eyebrow at me. “Now?”
“If she’ll see me.” I looked at Emmory. “Can we make that happen?”
To my surprise, he didn’t protest. “Let me go ask, Majesty.”
We’d set up a liaison of sorts with Sybil to help keep us up to date on what was going on within the Pedalion chambers in addition to being able to pass messages along at need. After the arm-twisting I’d done to get the Pedalion to the negotiating table I’d thought it best to back off a bit.
Thyra probably wouldn’t tell me the truth, but I wanted to talk to her all the same. Sometimes you could learn just as much from people lying to you as you could from the actual information they were throwing out.
“You want some company?” Hao asked as the others broke into various conversations.
“I’d like that. I was going to ask you anyway. I’m curious which version of them you’ll see now. Where’s Jo?”
Hao tipped his head to the side as he used his smati to contact Johar. “She’s in the cargo bay, just got back from a meeting with Fasé’s people. Said she’s fine to head back out, though.”
“I’ll meet you down there.”
Hao headed out with Dailun and Alba, leaving me almost alone in my room once more. Aiz was speaking with Zin by the door; Mia still stood by the bar, nursing the drink in her hand and staring off into space.
“Are you okay?”
She jumped when I touched her elbow, whiskey sloshing up and over the sides of the glass. “I’m fine.”
“I’ve given that answer enough times to know what it means. Mia, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, looking up at me. There were tears in her gray eyes. “I have a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and a yawning blackness of uncertainty where the future used to be. I don’t know what to do about any of it.”
I heard the fear hidden in her voice, and should have taken the same care as our previous conversation about her lack of new visions, but this time several hours of watching atrocities and the puzzle of the Hiervet dulled my brain and made my reply thoughtless and callous.
“Welcome to being human,” I replied. “The rest of us manage our whole lives without knowing what’s coming.”
It was the wrong thing to say, I knew it as soon as the words left my mouth. Mia recoiled as if I’d slapped her.
“I am not human. I am Shen.”
The words were a gut punch that had me breathless. Mia set the glass down with such force I was surprised it didn’t crack. She brushed past her brother and Zin while I closed my eyes with a muttered curse.
When I opened them again, both men watched me with nearly identical sympathetic expressions.
“I—” Pinching my fingers to the bridge of my nose with a sigh, I struggled to find the words but gave up. “Bugger me.”
“Hail,” Aiz said, putting a hand out to me. “It’s not you. Mia is—”
“Majesty?” Emmory’s voice came over the main com.
“Go ahead,” I replied out loud, holding my hand up and shaking my head at Aiz. He nodded once and left me alone with Zin.
“Sybil says Thyra is free to see you whenever is convenient. Should I tell her we’re headed their way?”
“Please do.” I gestured at Zin and he followed me from the room. “We’re on our way to you.” My fuckup with Mia was going to have to wait until I got back.
Hopefully by that point I’d have come up with a suitable apology beyond Sorry for opening my mouth.
“Star of Indrana.”
It didn’t matter how many times I saw it, the Farian Hiervet’s version of a smile was unnerving. Part of me wondered if it would be less unnerving if I trusted Thyra more, or if it was the fact that I expected her to go for my throat like a sand cat from the Khar desert when she bared her teeth that made me so uneasy.
Either way, I shook off the clinging emotions from my fight with Mia and took the seat Thyra gestured toward with one of her limbs.
“Your Majesty,” I corrected.
“Ah, yes. Forgive me.”
Hao and Johar settled into place next to me and I leaned back in my chair, resisting the urge to curse when my elbow found one of the sharp edges.
“Did you know that Priam has been speaking with Adora?” I asked.
“Yes, he mentioned that you came to see her after the unfortunate attack on Mia.”
“Is that wise, to let him see her?” The interaction with Adora in medical had been rolling around in my brain for the past week and I couldn’t get over the fact that neither of them had looked angry at each other when we’d come into the room. My gut said they were up to something. The big question was if Thyra knew about it or if Priam was going behind her back.
Thyra stilled, though I wasn’t yet sure if it was the stillness of prey trying to hide or of a predator about to attack. “He is closer to her than any of us. If she will listen, it will be to him. But you didn’t come here to ask me about Adora, did you?”
I hadn’t, but there was something about Thyra’s reaction that made me extremely curious. I’d been rewatching as much of my footage of the gods as I could get my hands on in an effort to get a better handle on their facial expressions, but I was still a long way off from being able to accurately guess at their behaviors.
Which meant I needed to choose my words carefully, and my recent failure in that department didn’t bode well for th
is particular encounter. But I had Hao and Johar with me and I’d picked the pair for very specific reasons.
According to Thyra, it took a great deal of effort for them to appear as themselves, but Johar could see them the same way I did. Hao still saw them as the Old Gods, but he could spot a lie better than anyone I knew, myself included. He also had little use for gods and much like Johar wouldn’t be in awe no matter what he was seeing.
“I’m curious about something.” I leaned forward, resting my forearms on the table. “Why are you afraid of your people?”
A look I was reasonably sure was shock flickered over her face before it was hidden behind a mask of impassive curiosity I found extremely impressive.
“What do you mean?”
“All this.” I gestured around me. “A Farian told me the architecture was because it pleased the gods, but let’s be realistic here. This doesn’t please anyone.” I slapped a hand on the sharp-edged chair arm and tilted my head at her. “So, why the right angles?”
“You are observant.” The way her eyes narrowed suggested it wasn’t a compliment. “The architecture keeps us safe.”
“From?”
“Many things. To answer your question, it keeps us safe from our people. It keeps us hidden.”
The honesty was surprising, but unlike Thyra I’d practiced my blank expression in some of the most dangerous bars in the galaxy and I stared at her for a long moment. “So, tell me something. What have you done?”
“I don’t understand?”
“People usually only need to be kept safe from other people for two reasons. First is if they’ve done something. Second is if the people in question are dangerous. You’ve already told me that your people are not dangerous.” I leaned forward with a smile. “So what did you do, Thyra?”
“We did nothing, Your Majesty.” Thyra tapped her limbs together several times before she seemed to catch herself and stop. “I told you. Our people are dangerous. You’ve seen the prophecy yourself.”