by Smith, S. E.
“I am aware of the old gossip about Xandrina, yes.” Tassia waved one hand as if she was brushing aside a pesky fly. “Hardly relevant to the situation now.”
Setting the cup onto its delicate saucer with a clink, the Duchess continued her instructions, “People will clamor for invitations to the events leading up to the ball and for opportunities to bring their sons to your attention. Not too many elevated titles on the market these days. Not genuine pedigreed titles anyway. The reverse dowry will be stunning, although of course we won’t refer to the sums in such crass terms. Enough for you to live extremely well indeed.”
“And the revolution? Freeing Ruatsar from Gradmirov?” Under the circumstances, Liam thought Tassia’s voice was quite controlled. Her face gave nothing of her emotions away, not even to him, as intimately as he knew her. Tassia’s expression was polite and attentive, although her eyes were narrowed as she waited for the answer.
The Grand Duchess chuckled and selected a sugar dusted chocolate pastry. “Oh my dear, don’t be naïve! The Sectors has no desire for an outmoded remnant of a royal house to make trouble. I exist here on their sufferance and because I amuse a few key rich and powerful people, who exert helpful influence on my behalf in high government circles.” She shrugged, dislodging a jeweled shawl which fell to the floor. Liam resisted the urge to be polite and retrieve it for her. “My allies get what they want, and I’m allowed to live out my life in peace and something of the style to which I’m accustomed.” Gesturing with the cookie at the door to the waiting assemblage outside, she added, “And they—my court in exile— get to pretend their existence matters. Living in the past, living on false hope.”
Liam remembered the research he’d shared with Tassia, about the grand duchess’s massive investments. He was glad he’d given in to his natural inclination to learn what he could in as much depth as possible in the short time available and to call on old friends for help. Tassia needed to be armed with what he’d found out for her, in order to make a fully informed decision today before she bought into all this and was in too deep to back out. He wondered why the duchess was being so blunt, aside from concealing her financial state. She’d crossed the line into insulting more than once with her remarks. It was almost as if she was trying to warn or dissuade Tassia.
Could the old woman have the same goal he did, of saving Tassia from throwing her life away on a doomed cause no one truly cared about? Liam studied Emiliaza attentively, intrigued by the idea.
The elderly noblewoman was still talking, her tone more cheerful now. “You’ll find being head of a court in exile has its benefits. Entrée into the richest circles. And you’re young and pretty, so much the better.”
Tassia seemed to want to stem the tide of speculative prattle about superficial concerns. She set her tea cup down so firmly the tea sloshed into the saucer. “But shouldn’t we speak of—”
Emiliaza talked right over her. “You saw my guards outside, in their fine uniforms. All the military I have left. Younger sons mostly, with meaningless titles I’ve been persuaded to bestow in return for substantial recompense. Men fit for nothing else but looking handsome in a uniform and playing at being in the army. And romancing the ladies. A few bored mercenaries on my payroll to provide actual, trustworthy security for my person outside this compound. Anyone Ruatsarn with true ability joined the Sectors a long time ago. You must get over these naïve dreams, Alynnskaysa. The Oleavna day was done many decades ago. Your father was lucky to keep his throne as long as he did and I myself got out while there was time left. What we do here is for show.”
Finishing her tea, the duchess rose, addressing the assistant with a smile. “I am satisfied you are indeed my great-niece Alynnskaya miraculously restored to me though the grace of the goddess. We will announce this miracle to my court immediately.”
Now she’s trapped. Liam tensed, but there was nothing he could do. Tassia hadn’t signaled she wished him to take any action. He could see the golden spider web closing around her. Surely Tassia didn’t want to be a part of this ridiculous charade? But she’d been searching for the last remnant of her family virtually all her life, raised by the fanatical servant, so perhaps despite everything he’d found out for her, and the words of the grand duchess, she was dazzled? Willing to accept a harsh reality to have a vestige of family again?
“A moment, Aunt.” Tassia reached for her attaché case and undid the fastening. “I’ve brought you a gift, a piece of our heritage that should be in safer hands than mine.” She brought out the scarf holding the giant gem and tugged on the silk, allowing the fabric to flutter free and fall to the floor. The soft blue light seeped into the room as the Goddess Heart was revealed.
Liam heard the assistant gasp and wondered if the man was going to faint but he kept his attention riveted on Tassia and the duchess.
Emiliaza glanced from the jewel to Tassia’s face and then over at Liam. She didn’t show any surprise over the treasure of the Ruatsarn royal house suddenly reappearing in her sitting room. “It is well, Tassia.” Extending one hand, the duchess waited for Tassia to hand her the chain and then held the necklace up so the stone was at eye level, staring into it, as if seeing visions in the depths of the facets no one else could fathom. With a sigh, she eventually looped the chain over her head and allowed the stone to settle against her chest. “A wise decision, my child.” She patted Tassia’s cheek with one wrinkled hand and then imperiously swept forward. “We will now share our news with the court.”
The assistant opened the door with a flourish, although his eyes were glued to the necklace. Under other circumstances Liam would have laughed but he wasn’t entirely sure what was in play here. The final exchanges between Tassia and her great aunt had vibrated as if deep meaning lay behind the fairly banal words.
As Liam stepped from the drawing room behind the duchess and Tassia, he heard a rising swell of astonished chatter in the larger chamber as people caught sight of the Goddess Heart on the Royal’s chest.
Raising one hand, the duchess stilled the discussion. “Apparently our prayers have been answered and my great niece Alynnskaya has been restored to us, along with the Goddess Heart. There’s one tiny test remaining. A small thing really.” She turned to look at Tassia and, as she did so, her gaze rested on Liam for a heartbeat. He felt the connection like a tug at his heart, and he took a deep breath. What the seven hells was that about? As if the duchess was sending him a message, but he had no idea how to interpret her meaning.
Holding her hand out, palm up, the duchess said, “Centuries ago the goddess Normeia granted to those of the pure blood of the House of Oleavna the power to manifest her true fire. This ability gives our throne its title for we alone can make the flames dance.” There were gasps from the crowd as yellow, blue and purple flames appeared in the cupped hollow of her trembling hand, blazing six inches high, giving off a faint white smoke and fragrant perfume. The astonishing gem refracted the fire light, sending rainbows arcing around the room. “If you are indeed my great-niece, daughter of the late Nalexii Petronsin Oleavna, and therefore the rightful heiress to the Flame Throne, you will now demonstrate to me and to my court your command of the goddess’s gift.”
Tassia extended her hand as the duchess had done a moment earlier and Liam heard the indrawn, expectant breaths from the courtiers crowding them. Then she curled her fingers into a fist, placing it over her heart and shook her head. “I cannot, your grace. Now you force me to confess I’m not Alynnskaya. I’m Kitimia, the companion of Her Highness Princess Vladalenna Marina.”
The duchess nodded as if she wasn’t surprised. She closed her fingers and the flames were gone.
“But you knew all the answers, the most intimate details of the court, of the family!” The assistant was red in the face and practically shouting. “You had the gem!”
“Kitimia would have known those details,” the duchess said, shaking her head and assuming a pained expression, which Liam for one found suspiciously theatrical. “The prin
cess Vladalenna and Kitimia were inseparable from an early age, and she was privy to all the family secrets, including the whereabouts of the Goddess Heart. I suspected this when we spoke in my sitting room just now.”
“Why would she bring you the jewel? Why not keep it for herself?” The assistant wasn’t doing himself any favors and should shut up, in Liam’s opinion. The man bit his lip after his outburst as if belatedly realizing he was arguing a losing case. Even if the assistant wanted Tassia to be seen as the Princess Alynnskaya for his own purposes, it was too late for the duchess or Tassia to retract the new information, since the entire crowd of courtiers, servants and guards had heard the revelation.
“As a child fleeing the carnage, I scarcely thought at all—the necklace was there and I took it. As an adult, I calculated possession of the necklace would bolster my claim of being a royal,” Tassia said in a calm, quiet voice. “It’s too well known, too massive for me to keep safely any more in any case. I was nearly killed for it quite recently in fact and now I want it known throughout the Sectors I no longer have this dangerous nuisance anywhere near me.”
“In this one act, regarding the Goddess Heart, you have done the right thing,” the duchess said. “I therefore forgive you for the cruel deception you sought to perpetrate, and for raising an old woman’s hopes and dreams, child, for I know you too have suffered the loss of family. Go with my blessing and let this be the end of the story.”
Tassia curtseyed. Liam stepped to her side and took her hand. They walked from the room as the assembled courtiers and servants drew aside and turned to look anywhere but at Tassia. At the door, Tassia glanced back, as did Liam. The duchess was watching them, and he thought she gave a tiny nod but couldn’t be sure. Then they were though the portal, and the giant doors closed behind them with a thump.
He heard the musicians strike up a tune in the room they’d just left. Two soldiers in regular uniforms escorted them through the giant house, the concert growing dimmer and dimmer in his hearing until there was only the sound of their footfalls on the plush carpet. They were briskly shown out the front door, which also shut with a definitive thump as soon as he crossed the threshold behind Tassia.
As he walked hand in hand with her to the rented groundcar, Liam’s head buzzed with a million things to say yet nothing felt appropriate. Once he’d opened her door for her then gotten into the driver’s seat, initiating the vehicle to make the return trip to the spaceport, he said cautiously, “I don’t care if you’re the princess or the childhood friend. Whoever you began your life as, you’re Tassia the dancer to me and I love you. Nothing else but your happiness matters to me.”
Head tilted, she patted his arm, apparently calm and at ease with her decisions. “We hadn’t been there long today before I realized how right on the nose all your research was and I accepted the truth that the dreams of picking up the old life were just that: foolish dreams. Something to cling to as a child and to motivate myself to keep going when life was so bleak and hopeless. You’re my future, not all her faded pomp, fake ceremony and credit-making schemes. But I wanted to at least see the Grand Duchess before we left, and get rid of the gem as you’d suggested, so I had to play along with all the questions and the rituals. She’s the last link to my childhood, you know? And I’ll never have another chance to see her after today.” She flashed him a smile. “Thank you for standing by me, even when you must have believed I’d lost my mind.”
“I respected what you’d wanted to do for your people. Your heart was in a good place. And I totally get wanting to meet the great aunt. If I was told there was anyone left of my family or those who knew me as a child, I’d fly through a sun to reach them.”
“And yet,” she said, her voice thoughtful as she stared out the window at the passing cityscape, “All I saw was an old woman who I vaguely remembered meeting as a child once in a garden. Being in the room with her today didn’t bring the ghost of my mother back, or even make my memories of her more vivid. I felt…nothing.”
“But you got closure?” He hoped the long, difficult day satisfied whatever need she had to be able to leave the Ruatsar entanglements behind.
Tassia answered his question with a question of her own. “Does the offer to be Mrs. Austin still stand? The Comettes are holding my place in the dance line so I can contribute my salary to the household budget, you know.”
“Nothing would make me happier than having you as my wife.” He let the autopilot handle the car while he enthusiastically kissed his newly minted fiancée. “I swear I’ll buy you the most elegant ring the Zephyr’s jeweler has to offer.”
“A plain gold band will be fine. As I proved today, I have no need for jewels.”
As he took control of the groundcar again, preparing to navigate into the spaceport’s crowded outer traffic rings, he asked, “Did you not know there’d be her final test for you? About controlling the flames? I mean, your being unable to demonstrate the skill was convenient as an out for us to leave more or less gracefully. The duchess was a lot nicer about the deception than she had to be,” he said as the spires of the spaceport came into view. “Of course we did leave her with the Goddess Heart.”
Tassia turned to him with a huge smile, held out her hand and as the flames of the goddess danced in the sunlight above her palm, she said with a wink, “Oh, I knew.”
* * *
Thank you very much for reading STAR CRUISE: MYSTERY DANCER! I hope you enjoyed the story!
Also by Veronica Scott
SF Sectors Romances
Wreck of the Nebula Dream
Escape From Zulaire
Mission to Mahjundar
Star Cruise: Marooned
Star Cruise: Outbreak
Star Cruise Stowaway: A Novella With Rescue Golden Token Short Stories
Aydarr: A Badari Warriors SciFi Romance Novel (Sectors New Allies Series Book 1)
* * *
About Veronica Scott
USA Today Best Selling Author
“SciFi Encounters” columnist for the USA Today Happy Ever After blog
Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.
Seven time winner of the SFR Galaxy Award, as well as a National Excellence in Romance Fiction Award, Veronica is also the proud recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Medal relating to her former day job, not her romances!
She read the part of Star Trek Crew Member in the audiobook production of Harlan Ellison’s “The City On the Edge of Forever.”
You can learn by visiting Veronica’s website.
Operation Ark: A Project Enterprise Story
She’s a USMC Sergeant deployed to the Garradian Galaxy.
He was raised by the robots who freed him from slavery.
It’s a match made nowhere anyone can figure out.
They clashed as enemies but joined forces to defeat a common foe. Now they’re tasked with returning some freed prisoners to their home worlds. In the next galaxy. With an alien, a robot, and a caticorn. It was a bar joke without a punch line, though Carolina City has a feeling it is out there—like the truth.
Kraye isn’t eager to return to his galaxy where the dark secret of his past lays in wait, but he’s willing to risk it in hopes that Caro can teach him what the robots couldn’t: how to be human.
Together they must face a dangerous journey, a lethal enemy with a score to settle, their unexpected desire, and an uncertain future if they make it out alive.
Can Caro and Kraye navigate the minefields—both emotional and space based—to land a happy homecoming for the sentient animals in their care? Can the man raised by robots learn how to kiss the girl while the starchy Marine decides if she is willing to bend the rules for a happy ever after? Don’t miss Pauline Baird Jones’ newest Project Enterprise story!
1
They fil
ed in two by two, the click and scrape of claws and paws against the stone floor adding a discordant note to the music filtering quietly through Central Outpost’s intercom system. Some of them paused for a last look around before starting up the lowered ramp of the spaceship Emissary.
At the head of the unusual column were the Erinaceines, a pair of hedgehog-like creatures whose waddle was almost on the beat. They had the pointed noses of an Earth hedgehog, but their coloring was brighter, more in the yellow and orange range.
Behind them came the Pinyians, most closely resembling pandas, but they had black and red coloring. They ambled in, following a wandering path, and pausing often to return the curious looks of the humanoids.
After the pandas were the two Sulian Nebos. According to the Kikk Outpost’s biologist, these two were a green-footed version of the blue-footed booby. Their comically wide eyes explained the “booby” appellation, at least in their version, but it didn’t help that they waddled like cartoons characters into the room and up the ramp.
The two pure gray Cygninains made an interesting contrast with the boobys. Their swan-like grace was somewhat blunted by having to herd their small brood of cygnets onto the ship.
The Testudinians should have appeared next, but even by another name—and in another galaxy—they looked like turtles and were as slow as turtles. They’d started first and would arrive last.
The lone Harparian must have wearied of following them, because she appeared next, the tuft of feathers on the top of her head weaving with the snap of her clawed feet against stone.
According to their biologist, her species was similar to an Earth Harpy Eagle, though much, much larger. With feathers that were a mix of gray, royal blue, white, and pink, she was as tall or taller than the humanoids in the hanger, giving her a wing span that was four times longer than she was high. Each of her individual claws were the size of a big man’s hand, and they were so sharp, they glistened when they caught the light. Her black and gold gaze was fixed on the ship and nothing else. Her passage seemed to leave behind the scent of woods and high mountain cliff breezes.