by K. Eason
“I think a eunuch would be the perfect bodyguard for you. No one wants to be killed by a eunuch. You’d be totally safe on Urse.”
The Crown Prince Jacen leaned back in the high-backed chair and stacked his boots on the table. In a taller individual, such a posture would communicate disdain and disrespect for those at the table with him, and for the Regent-Consort, his mother, who had expressly forbidden such behavior. But since Jacen was a weedy, unimpressive nine, the elevation of his feet effectively eclipsed his face, and left his audience—the Vizier, Princess Rory, and the Minister of Defense, at the moment, the others having been dismissed—staring at the soles of his boots.
“We could get you one.” Jacen’s feet waggled back and forth like scolding fingers. “Couldn’t we, General Foyle?”
The Minister of Defense had the grace to look uncomfortable. “The practice is illegal in the Consortium, Majesty.”
“Right, but it’s perfectly legal in the Free Worlds of Tadesh.”
Foyle winced. His gaze slunk sidelong until the Vizier noticed it. Then it crept away and settled on the table. “I don’t think it’s wise to entrust your sister’s safety to a Tadeshi bodyguard, your Majesty. That’s rather the point of this meeting. To ensure the Princess is guarded by our personnel, and to determine who that will be, which we have done, Majesty, to my satisfaction.”
“Yes, but—”
Rory shifted a little bit left, so that she could see Jacen’s face. She cut him off smoothly. “Thank you for your concern, Jacen, but I don’t need another bodyguard. I have Grytt.”
Two spots of red bloomed on Jacen’s cheeks. “Grytt’s only half of anything. Besides. Body-maids are for Kreshti. We aren’t Kreshti. We’re Consortium. And I don’t think our new father will want you keeping someone with mecha parts, especially after what happened with Ivar’s body-man, and especially not a Kreshti on top of all that. There are murmurs of sedition on Urse, you know, caused by Kreshti.”
It was an impressive string of logic, for the Prince. The Vizier suspected Deme Isabelle’s hand in the speech-writing. Sedition was a syllable or two beyond Jacen’s typical conversational muscle.
General Foyle was frowning, now. The Vizier knew him as a man of formidable intellect and precarious patience. Rory, in contrast, was displaying a remarkable forbearance. No hint of true feelings on her face. His training, that. The Vizier felt a gentle sunrise of pride stirring in his chest.
That satisfaction lasted exactly three heartbeats, at which point the Princess ran her hands down both arms, as if straightening her sleeves. In another person, that would be fidgeting, and Rory was certainly capable of that; but the Vizier had spent too many years around Grytt, and around Rory, to be fooled. Rory was checking weapons. That she was carrying them at all, in the Council chambers, in the Crown Prince’s presence—well, it was certainly illegal, even for another member of the royal house. It was also almost certainly at Grytt’s prompting. And because neither Grytt nor Rory believed in empty gestures, those illicit weapons were certainly not pins.
The Vizier did not honestly believe Rory would draw steel on her brother. That she seriously considered it, however, he did not doubt at all. And certain as he was of her beneficence, he felt a surge of relief when she gripped the ends of the arms of her chair and spoke.
“Moss is not, nor will ever be, our father.”
Jacen’s smirk grew wider. “But it’s his kingdom. It’s his station. And if he says you have to get rid of Grytt, then you do.”
Rory regarded Jacen for a long, quiet moment, until the Prince’s smirk faded and slipped sideways down his face. Then she pushed her chair back and stood up. Jacen jerked upright in his chair, scraping his boots across the table in his haste to get them back on the ground. Foyle startled in his chair, hands reaching for absent weapons. Someone, at least, followed protocol.
If Rory noticed the ripple of upset, she gave no sign. She nudged the table with her hip, just exactly far enough to catch the Prince still sitting. Jacen could only rise now by scooting his chair back, and the conspiracy of thick carpet, wheelless chair legs, and his own royal physique would render that effort conspicuous and undignified.
Rory stared down at her brother, past a nose and cheekbones that owed more to her Kreshti ancestry than the Thorne. Then she leaned over the table, bracing her hands flat. The long tail of her braid slipped off her shoulder and dangled. The Vizier fancied that he could see Jacen’s face reflected in the blue-black gloss.
“I will not replace Grytt to suit our mother’s husband. If he doesn’t like that, then he can refuse to let my shuttle dock, and I will be more than happy to turn around and come back home.”
“You can’t do that! Mother says—”
“Oh, now it’s Mother says. Mother’s said nothing about leaving Grytt behind. That’s your idea, which is why I’m ignoring it. You’re not King yet, little brother.”
“I will be, someday,” Jacen said. “Then you’ll have to do what I say.”
“We’ll see,” said Rory.
It was unclear to the Vizier whether she meant the conditional phrase to apply to her projected filial obedience or to Jacen’s eventual sovereignty. In any case, it proved academic.
Part Two
CHAPTER EIGHT
Urse
Thorne’s sovereign territory on Urse was a double suite, large by station standards, measuring approximately one thousand square meters, comprising two discrete units. The smaller of the two suites housed the four-person guard detail in military luxury, which is to say, very little comfort at all. The larger one was more finely appointed, with three sleeping rooms (“I’ve had bigger bunks than this,” said Grytt) and a central living area (“Wonderful, if we don’t mind bumping our knees,” said Grytt), with a small, private kitchen, so that they needn’t troop to the common mess to dine (“Oh, bother,” Messer Rupert had said. “We aren’t letting Grytt cook, are we?”).
It was a perimeter unit, as well, nested against the outer hull of Urse, at the juncture of two corridors, which meant it had two portholes in the living area. It was, Rory was assured by the Tadeshi staff, a wealth of portholes.
“Which is evidently what one calls a pair, here on Urse,” she muttered to Grytt. “What is one, I wonder? A paucity of portholes? I think we should change the name. Call these two a prosperity. What do you think?”
Grytt, who had proved none too sanguine about walking on a deck rather than a floor, or living with a horizon that curved the wrong direction, or a half dozen other things, which she would detail at length with very little invitation, eyed the two
invitations to disaster
objects in question and grunted.
“Hope the seals hold. Leak would pull us right out. Be a contest to see if we freeze before we choke.”
Rory did not point out that, should the seals fail, the sudden evacuation of aether would probably draw them against the opening, thus rendering the pulling of Grytt’s apprehensions into a more violent, gruesome sucking, which would then supplant asphyxiation and freezing as the likely cause of death. She also thought any catastrophic decompression was highly unlikely. The porthole seals were so thoroughly hexed against failure that their perimeters glowed to the naked, arithmantically educated eye. Rory had spent some time examining them, with an arithmancer’s admiration, before Grytt shooed her away, insisting that she would “mess something up” and “kill us all.”
Grytt had completed her mandatory service as a Kreshti marine, to be sure; but, as Grytt was fond of recounting, marines did not have portholes in their quarters, and battleships did not invite hull breach by cutting holes in good steel to improve the scenery. And ship life was, most importantly, temporary. A body could expect, after a tesser-hex or several, to drop dirtside and experience proper gravity.
By which, Rory supposed, one might surmise that Urse’s gravity was entirely improper, although tha
t was far less true for the station than for any of the battleships that used a gravity-hex instead of basic physics. Urse was an old-style station, one of the first: essentially a giant wheel, spinning around its axis as it rolled an orbit between the planets Bielo and Cherno, called the Brothers, and their unassuming yellow star, Svaro.
After the first seventy times Grytt had imagined out loud some gruesome death, Rory began to think it might have been kinder to leave her on Thorne after all. But when she had suggested it to Messer Rupert, he nearly choked on his tea.
“Whatever makes you think that?” he had asked, dabbing distractedly at the damp patches on his robe, while at the same time peering at her from beneath knotted brows. “Have you
taken leave of your senses
quarreled?”
“Not at all. She’s just so unhappy here, Messer Rupert.”
“Bah. Don’t let the frequency or the volume deceive you, Princess. She
isn’t any more unhappy than the rest of us
was a marine before she came into your mother’s service. Complaints are a marine’s version of a counter-hex against universal ill-will and bad luck.”
Then perhaps, Rory thought, Grytt should complain even more strenuously.
Outside the prosperity of portholes, the gas giant Cherno, the darker of the Brothers, crept into visibility. It filled the porthole, a massive sphere of hydrocarbons rendered darkish orange and brown by the chemicals in its poisonous atmosphere. Its dozen visible moons glittered like gems that had been tossed into the air and had forgotten to fall again. It should have been imposing, perhaps even intimidating, a childhood monster creeping out of the dark. Certainly Messer Rupert preferred the curtains be drawn when Cherno appeared. But to Rory, the single deep, dried-blood stripe, which sat just a little above the equator, made the planet look like a fat man with his belt too high. A favorite old uncle, instead of a troll.
Or perhaps a fat troll, Rory thought. Ready to eat princesses.
“Do you mind if I turn off the lights?” she asked, knowing full well Grytt’s mecha eye could see in all wavelengths. And Grytt, knowing full well this was Rory’s favorite time of day, grunted what passed for yes, when it was just the pair of them with no Messer Rupert to insist on complete syllables.
Rory whispered the tesla counter-hex. The room’s artificial, blue-tinted lights winked out, dropping the room into the orange-y glow of sunlight bouncing off Cherno’s cloud layers. It was a little like being at the bottom of a pond, looking up. Local opinion considered Cherno ugly. It was, Rory supposed, meant to be a subtle insult, placing her quarters on this side of Urse, for all that she rated a prosperity of portholes.
She thought it a kindness. The brighter Brother, Bielo, was a pale, methane blue, exactly the same poisonous shade as Vernor Moss’s eyes. Put that outside, and she would have twitched the curtains closed and kept them that way, preferring teslas and cold shadows to even the suggestion of that man watching her.
That Moss did eavesdrop, however, was inarguable, despite the marked lack of actual eaves. Messer Rupert had found no fewer than six tiny spybots in their quarters within fifteen minutes of their arrival. Grytt had promptly destroyed them, in total silence, making sharp shut up gestures whenever Rory tried to ask what was happening. Only afterward did Messer Rupert say that he’d expected the ’bots, and that Regent Moss would have expected them to find and destroy them; so there might be others, better concealed.
Be careful, Messer Rupert meant. But in Messer Rupert’s absence—he was currently in the embassy, performing endless acts of administration and diplomacy—Rory raised her voice and enumerated Moss’s moral failings with a volume and inventiveness that would have sent her tutor into apoplexy, had he been present.
Grytt, forever cleaning her weapons (permitted only under elaborate treaty amendments), only smirked.
Rory hoped (but held no hope) that Moss might be scandalized enough to send her home. But she suspected she swore entirely for her own comfort. It was like lighting a match against all of the cold void and holding it close for the warmth.
He had yet to meet her formally. That was either a social breach, or a deliberate snub, and it did not take fairy gifts to discern which. He had not met her shuttle at the dock to convey his welcome. He instead sent a handful of guards—one more than her own complement—and his Prime Minister, who had a prior acquaintance with Messer Rupert, and whose first utterance after Welcome, your Highness was a well-rehearsed apology. The Regent was engaged in important business and unable to break away. Please accept his most sincere apologies and the assurance of a meeting at the earliest possible hour.
Rory had smiled, inclined her head exactly as far as a Princess should to a social inferior, and told the Minister to think nothing of it, she would be pleased to meet the Regent at his leisure, they were weary from their journey, they were just glad to be here, on Urse.
It was fortunate that the Minister did not possess a version of the thirteenth fairy’s gift.
Nor had Prince Ivar sent word of any kind, beyond a generically formal note on the turing terminal in their quarters. A set of five lines, centered on the screen, that said:
Welcome, Princess Rory Thorne, to the Free Worlds of Tadesh.
I hope you find these quarters to your liking,
and I hope to renew our acquaintance soon.
Please feel free to summon staff if you need anything.
I remain your servant, Prince Ivar Valenko
Rory had spent a great deal of the journey to Urse imagining how Ivar might have evolved: whether he’d be taller and dark, like his father. If he’d have developed callouses on his hands, or on his spirit.
There is imagining, and there is hope, and Rory thought it best to remain neutral on that subject. She had not, however, imagined her first communication with him to be a one-way note on the turing.
She had showed it to Grytt, who grunted, and to Messer Rupert, who raised an eyebrow and said, “Hm,” and, “The terminal’s probably been hexed with spyware. Don’t link up your tablets until I’ve cleared it.”
Then they had got to unpacking and arranging, and discovering that Cherno marched across their portholes once a day. They also agreed that they did not want to invite station staff into their quarters for meal preparations if it meant sweeping the place for ’bots every time, and while they had not been forbidden the common dining areas, Grytt did not feel it prudent to explore the station overmuch.
And so, while waiting for Moss’s official summons, they learned that Grytt could not cook, and Messer Rupert could, and Rory had a knack for making curries.
“A fairy gift, no doubt,” she had said. “A princess should be able to cook. That’s pleasing to kings and princes, isn’t it?”
“A princess should be more able to eat neatly, without spilling soup on her shirt,” said Messer Rupert. “And I assure you, the fairies made no mention of making curry in their blessings—here. Add the cardamom and the turmeric.”
The apartment still smelled orange and brown, good match to Cherno’s sullen glow. Rory glanced around the room again. Grytt at the dining table. Messer Rupert absent. The turing terminal, left untouched since their arrival, Messer Rupert never quite finding the time to unhex it.
Whereas, Rory was learning, a princess who was also a hostage, being studiously ignored, and thus unofficially confined to her quarters, had a great deal of time.
She sidled toward the terminal. Slid a guilty glance at Grytt, whose chromed half-skull flashed dully as she bent over her weapon. Urse law forbade ballistic firearms—not for any fear of perforating the outer hull, which was far tougher than bullets, but because small high-velocity bits of metal or plastic had a tendency to ricochet in the narrow corridors. As a result, Grytt’s permitted-by-treaty arsenal included more archaic blade weapons, the use of which Rory knew well, and the P-370 ’slinger, which she did not, an
d which Grytt currently had in twelve pieces on the table. She seemed occupied. Busy, even.
Rory took another step. A third.
“Get on it, Princess,” Grytt said. She tilted the ’slinger’s chassis carefully from side to side, peering into the barrels from all angles. “Better to say sorry than may I.”
“Do you always know what I’m thinking?”
Grytt snorted. “No.”
“Just most times.”
“You’re wasting your time. He’ll come back soon enough. Best you’re done when he gets here.”
“Right,” Rory muttered, and slid into the chair behind the turing terminal’s console.
Cracking a turing’s security hex was a great deal more complicated than hexing an aura-scanner. It was all arithmancy, true; but a turing’s logic and motivations shaped the sorts of hexes it could accommodate, and most public access turings, and tablets, were basic, simple drones performing a set of limited, prescribed tasks. A simple turing was easy to hex because its motivations were simple: do its job and repeat, without variation. The complications came at the higher levels, with an almost-intelligent collective composed of all the terminals on a network pooling their experiences, which conferred enough originality for the collective to detect tampering with one of its drones. The station’s networked intelligence might be overtaxed by the demands on its systems. It might be bored or diligent, suspicious or curious. Rory didn’t hold out much hope for that last quality, but she was hoping for the first or the second.
She found her way into the terminal’s settings readily enough, with a few taps on the keypad. Then she unlocked its root access, and began a careful exploration of its systems. Very basic, very simple, which was both encouraging and daunting together. She held her breath and slid her awareness into the first and nearest layer of aether, where she hexed a rudimentary sense of curiosity into the turing’s code. Not much, not enough that it would start pinging queries at every other terminal on the network, but sufficient that it would seek information of its own volition, at least on particular topics.