by Lucia Ashta
His eyes were wide and shiny. My jaw was slack.
That voice... it couldn’t be. But of course it would be, because that’s just the kind of shit life would throw at us.
We continued to wait, because what could any of us say, exactly, in these circumstances? Soon enough, the situation would be unavoidable. The seconds stretched out, almost ticking, as if I had a clock somewhere in my head.
The voice was nearer now, and it was saying, “I can’t believe how much he looks like me. You were right, Ilara, but I still can’t understand how there’s another version of me walking around. This guy, hey, what’s your name, man?”
“Narcisse.” The single word sounded disembodied, as if the man who spoke it were detached from the upsets of his life.
“We look so much alike. Isn’t it crazy, man? I mean, you and me? To think, I had no idea. I’ve never even been to Cairo before, and you’ve been here all along?”
“More or less, but I’m not you.”
“Obviously you’re not me, because I’m me, I mean, I think I am.” Then came a nervous, yet happy, chuckle. At least this guy sounded like he rolled with the flow of life. That was a very good thing, I thought, because he’d really have to be able to roll with it once he reached the patio. He laughed again, a sunshiny kind of sound. “Whoa, I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around this one. It’s nuts. Never did I imagine this. Another version of me! Just like you said, Ilara.”
“This man isn’t you, Jordan,” the Princess said, her voice close.
“What do you mean?” Jordan laughed again. “The dude looks just like me. Sure, he’s a bit smaller, and his eyes are gray instead of green, but he’s almost like looking in a mirror.”
The Princess didn’t answer, but I could hear her steps, assured despite the circumstances.
Tanus was as rigid as a board. While his eyes remained on me, Dolpheus’ remained on him. No matter how much experience these two soldiers had, I couldn’t imagine any of it had prepared them for what happened since we descended on the splicing facility on O, thinking all we were doing was looking for a few answers.
Lila said, “Well this is going to be interesting.”
And then Narcisse walked out onto the patio, his face looking like he was looping through a continuous internal monologue: oh-fuck-oh-fuck-oh-fuck. Maybe he used more polite terms than I would, but that was definitely the gist of it. And who could blame him? Up until a few days ago I don’t think he even realized he had a brother. Yudelle wasn’t the up-front type. Now he not only had a brother, from the sound of it, he had two—sort of.
Although I’d only traversed space to land in Tanus’ arms what amounted to days ago, I’d recognize his voice anywhere. It had etched a place into my heart.
“How is this even possible?” Jordan was saying. “Will you explain because I don’t understand and you haven’t really told me—”
In the silence that followed you could have heard a sugar cube drop on the tablecloth. Even Lila’s mouth hung open, useless, for a change.
It was one thing to suspect what was coming, but it was a very different thing to come face to face with a man who looked just like the man you loved, the man you might not get to love anymore.
“What the fuck...” Jordan said, trailing off.
The Princess kept walking, but Jordan froze at the threshold.
“Uh, Ilara?” he said, looking like he wasn’t used to not knowing what to do or say. His eyes were trailing across what was visible of Tanus above the table, over and over again. “What the hell is going on?”
“That’s a very good question,” Tanus said, searching out the Princess, who was already taking a chair that one of Yudelle’s men had scrambled to place at the table.
“Oh goody,” the Princess said, “the tea is still hot.”
“Tea? You owe me a hell of a lot more than tea, that’s for damn sure. After all I’ve done for you, tea. Tea!” Jordan turned to leave.
“Come back here,” the Princess said, command ringing in her voice even though it was restrained.
Jordan snapped to look at her. “Why should I?”
“Because I haven’t told you the whole story yet.”
“Well you don’t have to be a fucking mind reader to know that. You haven’t told me any of the story from the looks of it. And I don’t appreciate being the butt of anyone’s joke, not even yours. No, I don’t think I’m going to stay. You can stay and resolve whatever you’ve got going on here without me. See ya.”
He made it a few feet down the hall, with remarkably confident steps considering the Princess had basically yanked the proverbial rug out from under his feet. Then she spoke and stopped him in his tracks.
“You’ll come back because I order you to.”
His face was furious when it popped back under the arch of the doorway. “You order me to?”
I didn’t blame him one bit for being pissed. I would’ve been pissed too, in fact, I was angry for him. Who did this princess think she was, anyway? Ordering people around and destroying their lives and hopes?
But the Princess didn’t bat a single one of her pretty eyelashes. “Yes, I order you to. I forgive you because you obviously don’t realize who I really am yet. I’m the Princess of Planet Origins, next in line to rule, the last of the Andaron Dynasty. So sit.”
He plummeted into the seat Yudelle’s men had set for him, but I didn’t think it was because the Princess ordered him too.
“Holy crap.”
Jordan’s eyes had just landed on me.
9
“Obviously I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in Crazytown,” Jordan said.
“It’s incredible,” Kai said. “He looks just like him.”
I liked how Kai generalized. He covered all the bases without tripping on his tongue. Jordan looked like Tanus, Tanus looked like Jordan, and even Jordan looked like Narcisse, and Narcisse looked like Tanus. ‘He’ and ‘him’ covered all of it.
And Jordan did look very much like Tanus. It was an outward manifestation of the jumble that had been going on inside me since the Princess first walked through that door. In her, I saw a replica of myself, but I didn’t look at her standing next to me—short of standing together in front of a mirror, and there was no way I was going to weird myself out that much just yet.
But now I could see two Tanuses. It was as shocking as seeing a woman that looked like what I saw when I looked at my reflection preparing her tea as if things like this happened every day.
Of all the things that could’ve been said just then, Tanus went to the heart of it—literally. “So you replaced me, knowing that I wasn’t him?” he asked her, even though he didn’t need an answer. It was obvious that’s what she’d done. “You accused me of betraying you with Ilara when you’d done worse.”
Relief whooshed through me that Tanus hadn’t referred to me as her. To him I was still Ilara, not just another woman he could shrug off on a pronoun. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and for now I was holding on to it like a life preserver in a thrashing ocean.
He continued, “I thought Ilara was you when I fell in love with her. I thought you’d returned to me, I had no idea it wasn’t you.”
“You fell in love with her? With another woman?” Her voice was stilted.
But Tanus—perhaps even my Tanus—didn’t shirk from her challenge.
“Yes, Ilara, I did. I fell in love with this other version of you, because I was already in love with you, and I thought she was you.”
“You must’ve known she wasn’t. She can’t possibly be so much like me that you couldn’t tell the difference. I’m quite unique, if you recall.”
“Oh, I recall.”
The rest of us were following the conversation, back and forth, as if following a ball from one side of a court to the other. Only this wasn’t a friendly competition. I didn’t know what this was.
“Then you knew it wasn’t me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Certainly sh
e doesn’t fuck like me, Tanus.”
“No, she doesn’t.” Tanus’ voice went soft with his answer, and it almost seemed as if love was what colored his voice just then. Love for me.
“Then you knew.”
“Look, Ilara, you can say it however many times you wish, it won’t change my answer, or what happened. What I’d like to know is how you can be angry at me for doing something that does not amount to a betrayal, when you purposefully replaced me with him.”
“Hey,” Jordan interrupted, “someone better start explaining what’s going on to me fast, or I’m leaving, Ilara—no matter what you say or who you claim to be. I’ll check myself into a loony bin on the way out of town and save everyone the trouble.”
“I don’t ‘claim’ to be anyone I’m not,” the Princess snapped. “I am a princess, and you will treat me as such.”
“I will treat you as you deserve and earn my respect,” Jordan said, and I couldn’t help but admire the balls on this version of Tanus. He must’ve been reeling from the upheaval of his world, yet he remained strong and assertive. “Up until now, you’ve had my respect, but you won’t have it for long if you don’t treat me as I deserve. Because it isn’t kind to dump me into a situation like this and not even bother explaining. It’s confusing as fuck, and I don’t like it.”
“I will explain, but don’t interrupt your princess.”
“You aren’t my princess, or haven’t you noticed? I might not know what’s going on, but last I checked, this was Planet Earth. If you’re princess of another planet—if you even can be—then I owe you no allegiance. Besides, you should know me well enough by now to realize I don’t give my allegiance to anyone unless I want to.”
The Princess was unruffled. Her posture was just as straight, her face just as composed and perfect, her dress accentuating every allure of her body as before, but something in her responded. “I do owe you an explanation, I realize that. Offer me a little patience and it will be rewarded.” The glint in her eye told me she was promising Jordan a fun sex romp in addition to explanations.
This woman wasn’t all that different from me, but in my case, I would’ve offered the sex romp with my pleasure in mind, not as a bargaining chip to ensure compliance. I saw how the Princess wielded her sexuality as a weapon. It was something I’d never done.
Jordan nodded, somewhat mollified, but not entirely. He’d take her up on her reward, but he wouldn’t let her get away with her shit. He wasn’t that different from Tanus either.
It seemed the similarities we shared as holographic duplicates of one another extended beyond the physical.
Tanus was also studying the exchange between them. “You’ve bonded with him.”
“As you clearly have with her.”
Silence fell around the table like a ripple in a pond. The tea was forgotten by everyone but the Princess. Perhaps we were all too curious to see what unfolded next. And even if I had wanted to say something, what exactly should I say? In the end, words made little difference. What mattered to me wouldn’t be settled over tea.
Tanus looked from Jordan, to me, to her. “I looked for you, you know. From the moment you disappeared, I knew you weren’t dead like your father said.”
“My father said I was dead?” Suddenly, her voice wasn’t that of a princess to be feared, but of a girl who’d been at the mercy of her father as much as any of his other subjects.
Tanus’ voice softened too, and I began to be able to see past the anger and betrayal between them to what might have been the love they shared. “He said assassins entered the Royal Palace and killed you.”
“And they did, didn’t they? Assassins entered the palace, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“So my mother really is dead?” Courage was evident in her voice, but she was so much like me that I could easily find the daughter beneath the courage, the one who couldn’t bear to think of her mother gone from the world—even another world that was far away from here.
“As far as I know.”
A disclaimer was definitely necessary in this situation. Who knew what was really going on? Nothing—nothing—had turned out to be as we thought it. If I had the time, I’d go back to the beginning of everything I’d ever learned to examine whether any of it was true. Was 1 + 1 even 2 anymore? Who knew? Maybe on this planet it was, but on O it might not be.
Tanus added, “The King made an announcement to all Oers across the royal comm that both you and the Queen had been murdered by assassins that broke into the palace during the night.”
“So my father says she’s dead.”
“Right, but Ilara, I have the feeling he’s telling the truth about this. At least I haven’t felt anything that indicates she’s alive, not like I felt with you.”
“You felt me?” The Princess actually smiled, and I had to admit, it did look beautiful on her. I decided right then to cut her a little slack. It couldn’t have been easy to be raised by a royal pimp who flung you off your home planet without any way to return. From the things I’d heard of her, this woman I all too recently thought I might be, she was as much a survivor of her circumstances as the rest of us.
Tanus said, “Of course I did. You know the connection we have. I felt you like a raw, aching pain in my chest from the moment you left my side.”
There it was again. I felt like a voyeur who shouldn’t be watching any of this, and I was surprised Tanus would talk like this in front of everyone. The man I’d seen on O valued the appearance of strength over most things. He’d indicated more than once that his reputation was necessary for survival on O, that his reputation for ferocity and the skill to back it up was what allowed for the life he led at home.
But maybe things were twisted and turned enough for him not to care anymore. Besides, we were very far from O, and as of that moment, with no way to return to it—at least not for everyone. Maybe Tanus and Dolpheus could transport back as I had, I suspected they might be capable of doing it if they practiced. But neither Tanus nor Dolpheus would leave their comrades behind, and we still had no way to fix the stabilizer doohickey on the transport shuttle.
“I started looking for you that very next morning,” Tanus said. “And I didn’t stop until I found you. Or, I thought I found you.”
He didn’t look at me, the one he found, and I felt the absence of his eyes like a knife between the shoulder blades, even if I had no real reason to.
“Really? You looked for me?”
“Of course I did, through the Koal Desert and every single bit of the Wilds.”
She laughed a bit, “So basically through hell and back.”
“Aye, you know there’s no place I wouldn’t go to look for you, even hell. I snuck into the Royal Palace too, and I even did a mind merge with the King.”
“You didn’t!”
“Oh, I did, and I still have an execution order on my head because of all of it. Lord Drakos tried to chop my handsome head off, and what would Dolpheus have done without me?” Tanus made it sound like a joke, but the danger was real. “Dolpheus, of course, went with me, searching everywhere for you. He even took on the body of Lord Dingaling to help, at one point.”
The Princess looked at Dolpheus. “Lord Dingaling, that round pest of a man? You? How did you even do that?”
“Don’t bother asking,” Dolpheus said, “let’s just say Tanus and I had a little help from Lila and Kai.” He shot a look at his friend. “You’re never going to let me live down the Lord Dingaling thing, are you, even though I did it to keep you from getting your pretty little head sliced off?”
Tanus grinned. “Never.”
“You actually looked like him?” the Princess asked. “All the way?”
“All the way,” Dolpheus said, looking at his lap meaningfully. “It was pathetic, trust me. I hope your father never ordered you to bed him.”
The jovial energy that had been trying to change the tenor of teatime vanished like a puff of smoke on a stiff wind.
“Oh man,” Dolpheus s
aid, “sorry.” He apologized to Tanus, not the Princess. As ever, his loyalty was with his friend first. “My mind hasn’t been what it normally is since Aletox flung us across space in that blasted death trap. I still don’t feel myself.”
“But at least you aren’t Lord Dingaling, huh?” the Princess said, but her voice was harsh now.
“Aye, sorry, Ilara. I didn’t think.”
“Clearly.”
The tension rose higher still.
Finally, she spoke again. “Well, at least that execution order will disappear once we return to O. My father will remove it if I ask.”
Dolpheus said, “The King isn’t the one who ordered it. Lord Drakos did. King Oderon is unwaking.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Assassins again.”
“The same assassins that tried to kill me?”
“No, he executed them on the spot. Other assassins.”
“Sent by whom?”
“Brachius, we think.”
“Brachius?” Yudelle said, sounding tired and sad all of a sudden.
Tanus said, “Yes, that’s the kind of man you left me with. But we don’t have proof, just suspicions. We aren’t sure he sent them, not even the King is, Brachius is cunning and covers his tracks well. But even King Oderon thinks it’s him. He told me as much.”
The Princess said, “You spoke with my father about this?”
“Oh, I spoke to your father about lots of stuff. Worse, I let him into my memories.”
“You did what?”
“Well, I told you I did a mind merge with him.”
“Aye, I guess you did. It’s just a lot to process.”
“Tell me about it,” Jordan muttered from across the table. The Princess ignored him.
She said, “When he was in your memories, did he see everything? Like, everything, everything?”
“Oh yes,” Tanus said, “he saw absolutely everything. He left nothing for me.”
“So he knows about us?”
“Most certainly.”
“Why would you ever do that? That’s crazy. You’re lucky he didn’t order your head cut off on the spot.”