“I’m simply saying, it’s better to marry soon, my boy. Whatever girl you choose, and I think Czarina would be a fine catch. You will lift her station by your choice. Better that than chancing your career over dalliances with maids so far beneath your social rank they would cause scandal. You could do worse than...”
Without causing a scene, and yet moving while her father was still mid-sentence, Kavya executed a perfunctory bow to the grand duke, and turned from him to march toward Symeon without looking back.
Symeon lost the thread of whatever tripe Ivan rab Rurikid was spouting. He watched Kavya for signs of her mood. Lapis highlights colored her cheeks, setting off her skin’s usual silver-blue. She held her lips pursed into a slight frown, but otherwise gave no indication of her internal emotions.
Symeon needed none. The princess was livid. He knew her too well to miss it.
“We’re leaving,” Kavya said with exquisite calm.
“Yes, Princess.”
Kavya handed Ivan, whose words had sputtered to a stop at her approach, her emptied wine glass. “Would you please dispose of this, Seneschal?”
Symeon saw a look of insult pass over Ivan’s expression, there and gone faster than a blink. If Kavya noticed, she made no sign of it.
Whom did he accuse of haughtiness?
“Yes, of course, Princess.” Ivan took the glass.
Kavya inclined her head for Symeon to follow and swept from the room in a cloud of silk gown and fuming rage. Symeon dutifully followed her, all the while suppressing the urge to grin like a madman for his patron’s temerity. No matter what pain it might bring in the coming hours or days, he was proud of her.
* * *
Kavya hadn’t sat down nor spoken other than to call Czarina to attend her in the twenty minutes since they left the observation deck. She paced her cabin in her stocking feet, having kicked off her high heels the instant they arrived, and randomly smacked pieces of furniture when she neared them.
Symeon stood across from her desk, out of the way, in the trained pose of a seneschal: arms behind his back, spine rigid, gaze open and attentive without staring at his patron. He knew she would speak when ready and saw no reason to prompt her.
Don’t poke a bear, smart thinking.
Symeon had never heard of such an animal, but when Yudi flashed an image of a fuzzy creature with a maw full of teeth and finger-length claws through his mind, he heartily agreed.
The cabin door slid open to admit an out of breath Czarina. She hurried to Kavya’s side and enfolded her in a hug. “I came as fast I could, Princess.”
In her state, Symeon half expected Kavya to eschew the physical contact from a slave, but Kavya leaned in, her eyes closed. “Thank you, dear.”
Czarina pulled away, looking the princess up and down. “Olga suggested that dress?”
Olga was Czarina’s subordinate, responsible for the princess’ needs whenever Kavya gave Czarina permission to be away.
“I know you say this one washes me out, but I happen to like it. Now, don’t get snippy with me, I’m already in a mood.”
“As you say, Princess. I am your humble servant, Princess.” Czarina’s tone hovered just this side of sassy. She bowed low like a young girl meeting her patron for the first time, and Kavya swatted her shoulder.
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m furious, and I don’t want to lose my edge.”
“I understand,” Czarina said, the playfulness filtered from her voice. “When you called, you said you had a run-in with your father. What happened?”
Kavya drew a calming breath and, with great care, took her seat behind the cabin’s small desk. “Will you two sit?”
Symeon held Czarina’s chair before taking his own, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the handmaid who shrugged and accepted his courtesy.
The princess folded her hands on the desk. “The first private words my father said to me after three years apart were this, ‘You will not embarrass me before the divor. You will keep silent no matter what you hear, no matter what you think, and then you will return to Yaya Island in a like manner.’”
“I’m so sorry, Kavya.” Czarina sat forward on her seat shaking her head. “What a bastard.”
Symeon goggled at the handmaid. He couldn’t say he disagreed with her sentiment, but they were Luxing, they didn’t get to say such things about a Shorvex, especially a grand duke. Not here, not anywhere! He drew breath to reprimand her, but Kavya cut him off.
“Don’t look so scandalized, Symeon. It’s unbecoming your station. Czarina hasn’t said anything wrong. My father is a bastard, or at least he’s become so in the last decade.” She turned her face to the wall. “I wish I didn’t love him.”
“Princess,” Symeon said, trying not to chide but failing. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” Her gaze locked on his, intense to the point of brittleness. “Not the man he was when I was small, but the uncaring technocrat he’s become. The two have nothing in common so far as I can tell. He used to be so kind. When he pushes me like this, I can’t see that old him, I see this doppelganger bent on expanding his power, his wealth, and to the abyss with all else.”
“Is that all he said? That you should keep quiet?” Czarina asked, her voice low, conciliatory. Knowing her position as an agent of the Wuxia, Symeon read more in the question than he might have before.
“He said the emperor’s choice to include heirs in the divor is the single stupidest blunder of ‘young Pyotr’s rule.’ I think it offends him that the emperor should bring us together against his will. It certainly offends me!” Kavya slapped the desk with an open palm.
“You want to inform on him,” Symeon said.
Kavya flattened her hands on the desk like a woman reaching for a lifeline. “I want you and Czarina to talk me out of it.”
Czarina caught Symeon’s eye, and though she didn’t shake her head outright, she nevertheless conveyed a resolute negation in that look. She would not, under any circumstances, out the Wuxia, and she expected the same loyalty from him.
“Kavya,” Symeon said, unaccustomed to saying her name aloud, though he found it most agreeable. “Think for a moment what would happen if you turned duchy’s evidence against your father. The empire, and that includes our duchy, is already reeling from the news of the Bith and what some space gate will mean to the system. Do they really need a succession scandal right now? If you accuse your father of treason, your uncles will demand a trial.”
Kavya nodded slowly, her gaze unfocused. “Uncle Vynor has coveted father’s seat for years.”
Kavya’s three uncles, dukes in their own right under their brother’s rule, had challenged her claim to her father’s seat when she was a babe in arms. They had argued their brother had no male heir and, while Shorvexan law allowed for a Grand Dame, few had been raised to rule a duchy in known history, the last over two hundred years ago. Fortunately, the imperial court had ruled against the uncles, and Grand Duke Alexei had named her his heir. Most pundits agreed Alexei’s choice not to rescind that decision after Kavya’s banishment rested squarely on the grudge he held against his brothers for dragging their family’s business before the public.
“Exactly. They wouldn’t allow you to ascend without a fight in the courts. And if they didn’t find the result they sought there—”
“They might attack.”
“We should trust in the work you’ve already done,” Czarina said. “Emperor Pyotr has called his banners, and the commonwealth fleet is already forming. The grand duke can’t launch a coup without his fleet. You’ve done it, Kavya. Don’t saw off the branch you’re standing on just to spite him.”
The princess nodded, her face relaxed. “Thank you both. That was exactly what I needed to hear precisely when I needed to hear it. Honestly, at this point, I just want to get through the divor and go home to Yaya. I never thought I’d miss my prison.”
“Life is simpler there, isn’t it?” Czarina said.
“And I’ll take simple over st
uffy meetings and stuffy people any day.” Kavya leaned back in her seat with a sigh.
“What of the Bith and their supposed gate?” Symeon asked. “Have you a position on those items before the divor?”
Kavya shrugged one shoulder. “No. Nothing I could say in the meeting would have any bearing on the peers. I’m just happy their arrival staved off father’s coup. Beyond that, whatever affairs the emperor and his government conduct with aliens rests far beyond my grasp.”
“At least you get to make history by attending the divor,” Czarina said, her voice bright. “Not that I’ll let you go near it in that dress. Come, let’s show Olga what a real gown looks like.”
* * * * *
Chapter 16
The flight down from the Emperor Nikolai took less than twenty minutes. Symeon spent that time watching Bastrayavich grow from a blue-green sphere on a holo projector into a landscape covered in life, its jungles at this latitude seemingly endless. Roughly the same mass as Phoenix, the fecund moon boasted a diverse ecosystem largely untouched by people.
Humans.
Symeon nodded.
Bastrayavich boasted one city, the capital of the Shorvexan Empire, Bishkek, a symbol of the empire’s wealth and might. By royal decree, no other part of the planet could be despoiled, and, besides some small robotic mining operations, the Shorvex adhered to this law. Of course, the city grew every year, spreading out from the emperor’s palace at its center in a haphazard pattern like mold, but it was nowhere near as large as some metropolitan areas on Phoenix.
Symeon watched through his passenger view screen as the sprawling city hove into view, its forerunners the square patchwork of farms tended by Luxing slaves and robots. Increasingly taller and more intricate skyscrapers dedicated to industry and living spaces followed soon after. Personal flyers darted between them, their shiny exteriors gleaming in the yellow sun.
The emperor’s palace stood upon a hill at the center of it all, bordered by a circular park two kilometers in diameter. While not as tall as the skyscrapers surrounding it—its largest tower a mere five hundred ninety-five meters high—the palace more than made up for its lack of space with abundant grandeur. Shaped like an inverted egg, the thinnest portion at the bottom, the main building’s multifaceted surface could change color according to the occupants’ whims. Today, it bore red in the center, though the hue lightened to a delicate pink as it spread to the edges of the Great Egg. More impressive, at least to Symeon’s mind, the palace floated twenty meters above the planet’s surface. He couldn’t imagine the energy costs to maintain that type of repulsor field running year after year, but the royal house likely took it in stride.
“It’s quite the spectacle, isn’t it?” Kavya asked. She sat in a plush chair facing Symeon, her silver-blue eyes on the holo monitor affixed to her seat, watching the landscape flip from one angle to another. “It’s meant to overawe the vassal houses with the emperor’s might.”
Czarina, who was riding down on a separate shuttle meant for lesser Luxing slaves, had dressed Kavya in a diaphanous red gown that hinted at revealing the princess’ body underneath and yet covered her perfectly.
“It does a fine job of that, Princess.”
“I suppose.” Kavya swiped away the image. “We’ll be in the thick of it all in a few minutes. Any last words of advice before we start this charade?”
Tell the emperor that the subjugation of the Luxing is a crime against nature and should be ended this very hour.
Symeon shook his head as much for Yudi’s intrusive commentary as the princess’ question. “No, Princess. I think you’re ready. Remember to step first with your left foot, and everything else will fall into place.”
She grinned. “I’ll do that.”
They touched down inside a docking port cleverly hidden on the Great Egg’s western side. The port’s glass walls and ceiling were programmed to display the sky and surrounding city as if it were the top of the building and the rest of the Great Egg didn’t exist. The mirage was perfect. Symeon felt as though they had landed atop a mountain peak in the city center.
Symeon and Kavya descended the shuttle’s ramp escorted by two of her father’s guards, Shorvexan oxobovo okhrana, or oxbrana, the duchy’s special forces. Dressed in silver mechanized body armor, and carrying bullet thrower machine pistols, the two struck a daunting pair.
Bastrayavich’s mother planet, Prahbog, hung in the otherwise blue-green sky like a painted hot air balloon, its striped face drawn in bands of orange, yellow, and black made hazy by the moon’s thick atmosphere. Despite the industrial surroundings, the air smelled of rich earth and growing things that reminded Symeon of his home back on Phoenix. Whether a natural scent wafted into the Great Egg’s landing bay from the surrounding park or an artificially manufactured aroma, Symeon couldn’t say, but he appreciated it. The smells of home helped ease his nerves. Even better, the sounds of living things—birds, amphibians, small mammals native to this moon—dominated the few flyers entering or leaving the Egg, which were sparse since local security restricted city traffic from approaching the palace without proper authorization.
A contingent of eight royal guards armed with rifles had gathered to meet their party. They stood on a scarlet carpet, their stiff backs to the building’s entrance, their silver-blue skin bright in the sunlight. Dressed in formal uniforms of red on black, accented with mirror-polished boots and chests heavy with ribbons, they looked particularly smart to Symeon who had seldom encountered the Emperor’s Doormen—the royal guard tasked with protecting the system’s leader and his family.
Don’t be fooled, Kavya’s two oxbrana guards would walk through them like a laser through lace with their armor. The Doormen might be skilled, but these are dressed like dandies, not soldiers.
“The Lady Kavya Rurikid, daughter of the venerable Grand Duke Alexei Rurikid,” announced Kavya’s ranking guard, a lieutenant , who strode ahead to address the Doormen captain.
“Very good. Welcome, Princess.” The royal captain and his fellows stepped away from the entrance with practiced movements.
“We shall await your return this evening, my Lady.” Kavya’s lieutenant motioned to his second, and the pair took up positions at either side of the shuttle’s ramp.
“Here we go,” Kavya whispered just loud enough for Symeon to hear as she led the way into the palace.
A gaggle of uniformed ushers dressed in blue and white stood at the threshold. One hurriedly detached himself from his fellows to lead the newcomers up three floors to the main entrance hall. The room’s doors appeared ancient, made of mahogany or perhaps oak, but they slid open at the princess’ approach to reveal a vast open space filled with people, conversation, and grandeur.
Kavya and Symeon entered a sumptuously appointed hall with a polished parquet floor, inlaid wooden walls meticulously carved with depictions of Bastrayavich’s wildlife and fauna, and a mosaic-covered ceiling that rose five meters overhead. A second set of Doormen eyed them as they passed inside, but made no move to delay their progress.
Dozens of the most famous royals in the system stood about the place in small groups, chatting with their peers while their Luxing attendants waited upon them for food, information, or whatever other needs might arise. A handful of robots walked, wheeled, or hovered through the crowd, but, on the whole the Shorvex peerage preferred Luxing servants, and it showed.
Grand Duke Alexei, regal in his military style uniform of gray and black, commanded one corner of the room. A gaggle of vassal dukes, counts, and other lesser royalty orbited him like planetoids and comets, ever ready to lend an ear or a laugh should their benefactor require it of them. Ivan rab Rurikid, dressed in a brown suit festooned with badges of office commensurate with his status, stood just behind and to one side of his master. The seneschal’s dark eyes lit upon Kavya and Symeon the moment they entered the hall, and he gave them a minute nod of his bristled chin.
“Princess Kavya Gabrochenkev Rurikid, princess of Duchy Valensk, heir to the
high seat of the same, daughter of his royal highness, Alexei Vadik Rurikid,” called the master at arms who held command of the Doormen at the entrance.
The crowd turned to show respect to Kavya, the men nodding, the few women—a mere eight out of the one hundred thirty-three people in this room—splayed their dresses to dip at the knees in acknowledgment of Kavya’s station. Though conversation continued, much of it switched to discussing Kavya and her long absence from the public eye. Symeon didn’t catch enough from any one speaker to sense the flavor of the conversation, but he doubted much of it was pleasant. They all wondered at her physical disappearance from the limelight three years before and the sometimes cryptic persona she cultivated on the system-wide sphere. Many of her fans inside and outside Valensk adored that person, often because of her mysterious nature. Too bad that Kavya Rurikid didn’t exist.
Kavya’s popular reputation, while somewhat outside his purview, nevertheless interested Symeon. After banishing her to Yaya, her father, or more likely Ivan, had assigned management of her social media persona to a team of publicists and brand makers. That team had existed already—most young royals had one—but their involvement in Kavya’s life changed from consulting to full-time control over her life in the virtual world of the sphere network. Whatever quips, deep philosophical insights, or simple platitudes Princess Kavya Rurikid released to the public came from these shadowy figures who were, in Symeon’s estimation, masters of their trade. They posited a sudden interest in seeking enlightenment as the reason for Kavya’s disappearance from the public sphere, and posted almost daily holos of her meditating on some remote mountaintop in high Borovalensk or walking the jungles of Fetezh, all while the real Kavya watched the days pass on Yaya Island.
Rumors abounded about the truth. Those who knew Kavya from her younger, more vapid days, doubted her new persona’s veracity. No one would naysay her claims outright. Kavya was, after all, princess of the most powerful duchy in the empire, but that didn’t stop some members of her peer group from indulging in juicy gossip. Some said she had gotten pregnant by a strapping Luxing slave whom she refused to denounce, and that her long-suffering father had banished her after she likewise refused to abort the freakish hybrid in her womb. Others, closer to the mark, averred she had somehow angered her father, probably by abusing her wealth and power and failed to fulfill her duties as an heiress. They had known her of old and expected no more of Kavya.
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