by K. B. Wagers
“Your Highness, we don’t know.” Emmory held a hand up before I could say anything. “We’ve been off camera for too long, we’ve got incoming. We need you to come home.” His voice was abruptly distant.
It was my turn for a sharp nod as I bit my tongue and swallowed back the hundred or so questions I desperately wanted to ask. We were apparently back on camera. Besides that, now wasn’t the time, and I knew it, even though I hated it. Hated falling right back into the politics and politeness.
I wasn’t going to get stuck. I would go home, find the bastards responsible for murdering my sisters, and then figure it out from there. I gave Emmory a second sharp nod. “I’ll come home with you.”
“The empire is in your debt, Highness.” Emmory’s bow was formal and I barely managed to keep from rolling my eyes.
The empire can kiss my ass. I’m only doing this for my sisters.
“It’s a pleasure to do my duty,” I said out loud.
“We’ll be in warp for several hours yet,” Emmory said, still sounding stilted and formal. “I’d suggest some sleep. We could all use it. Shall I send Sergeant Terass in?”
I locked eyes with him, recognizing the test for what it was, and nodded. Emmory nodded back and the door slid open. A slender young woman with burnished copper hair came through. She was barely over a meter tall, a fragile-looking waif of a girl.
I didn’t have to see her pointed ears hiding among the curls to know what she was. Her stature coupled with her wide, round eyes and heart-shaped face was more than enough proof.
Farian.
Only my pride kept me from stepping back.
“Highness, Sergeant Fasé Terass.”
“Your Imperial Highness. It is a great honor.” She bowed, keeping her golden eyes on me. Her lilting voice was the same one I’d heard while lying on Sophie’s deck.
I answered the bow with a nod, palace manners so ingrained in my being that the years away couldn’t wipe them out. Fighting down my instinct to bolt, I smiled at her instead.
Fasé offered up a tiny smile in return. She tugged the glove off her right hand and my heart pounded so hard it bruised itself against my ribs. “Death you deal and death you shall become,” she whispered the edict, holding out her hand. “I am loyal to my gods and to you, Highness. I will not harm you.”
I swallowed, and laid my hand over hers. I fucking hoped she was telling me the truth. Otherwise, I’d just committed suicide.
I’d been healed by a Farian a time or two before, most memorably when Cire had blacked my eye. I’d gone one taunt too far about her short legs and the resulting punch had been brilliant.
Being healed is similar to weightlessness. A strange floating, slightly out of control feeling. I often wondered what the Farians felt, but I’ve never had the guts to ask. These strange aliens were among the first to welcome humanity to the stars, but though they’d integrated themselves into our lives so seamlessly, there was very little we knew about them.
They spent time with humans as part of some pilgrimage. An offering to the Tuesday god who’d given them the gift of healing. It was a double-edge sword of a gift, packed with the ability to kill, and if they hoarded the gift instead of sharing it, they would die. Hao had explained it to me as if a battery was being charged with no fail-safe. The energy just kept building until it burst.
As the ache in my face subsided and all my other minute complaints vanished, I released the breath I’d been holding. A second smile, shy and tired, fluttered at the corner of Fasé’s pale mouth.
“May you feel better, Highness,” she whispered the benediction and pulled her hand from mine. With another quick bow, she left the room, leaving me alone with Emmory and Zin once more.
“I brought you your boots,” Zin said as though nothing about this scene was out of the ordinary. “You won’t have much of an occasion to wear them in the palace, but I figured good boots are hard to find.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, earning a smile.
Emmory bowed his head a fraction. “Sleep well, Highness.”
I thought of a dozen pithy replies before I said, “You, too.” And as they left the room, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be the only one staring at the ceiling all night.
I didn’t actually stare at the ceiling the whole time. Most of it was spent reading through the files Cire had attached to her message and silently cursing myself for the last few years of near obsessive avoidance of Indranan politics.
The empire was crumbling, and as harsh as it sounded, my sister’s death was simply one more awful thing in a string of events that were knocking the foundation of Indrana out from underneath her.
I paced as I listened to Cire. What had started with civil unrest and ended with mounting tensions with the Saxon Kingdom was a tangled mess of economic failures, political demonstrations, riots, and the assassinations of three members of the royal family.
None of it was as shocking as the medical report attached to another short message from Cire.
“Mother has Shakti dementia. She started presenting symptoms about six months ago.”
Space madness.
A genetic mutation triggered by exposure to radiation in the early days of space travel had resulted in a new form of dementia that none of the known cures could touch. We said those who had it had been “touched by the Mother Destroyer” and were lost to her unforgiving hands. Once it manifested, it moved fast. Shakti dementia was what had killed my distant ancestor-grandfather when we first landed on Pashati. Men were more likely to suffer the effects, and the initial colonists struggled to overcome the onslaught. The balance of power shifted enough to allow my ancestor-grandmother to take command. Though the priests liked to say it was the will of the goddess that started the whole thing.
It started with wandering attention and an inability to focus. Then speech issues—forgetting words, garbled and unfinished sentences. As the disease progressed, there was memory loss and confusion of time where the victim started living in the past.
It was genetic and there was no way to test for the risk, no way to guard against it except to never leave the planet surface—something that was damn near impossible for members of the royal family. Still, since my ancestor-grandfather there had only been three other incidences of the dementia in my family.
“Ven noticed first and told me. I had Dr. Satir run some tests and she gave me the bad news. We haven’t told her yet. I decided it was for the best when the doctor said it could make the disease progress faster.” Cire looked haggard, but it was impossible to tell if she’d recorded this vid before or after the other. “You’ll have to tread lightly, Haili, at least until Atmikha is crowned. She has her good days, but she’s twitchy and the slightest thing can set her off. I remember how you and Mother were.” A smile flickered to life on her face and it made my heart ache. “Try not to piss her off too much.”
“I’m not making any promises,” I whispered.
I kept reading files until I passed out, dropping into a fitful sleep in the middle of a memo about troublesome Saxon activity on some of our border worlds. My dreams were spotty, filled with images of Portis dying, Cire vanishing in flame, and Pace choking to death on her own blood.
The last was too much and had me waking with a gasping sob that I muffled in the bedsheets. I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the bath. My stomach didn’t care about the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything for a good thirty hours and tried to empty itself repeatedly.
“Water?” The appearance of a cup over my shoulder startled me as much as Zin’s voice did, and my jerk almost resulted in the offered water being dumped over my head.
Zin swung it out of the way of my flailing arm and dropped into a crouch to offer it again.
“I hope your expectations of your new empress aren’t set too high,” I said after rinsing my mouth out and spitting into the toilet. “Because you’re in for a shock, Zin. I was a disappointing princess, according to my mother. I doubt I’ll be much better as empress.”
>
Zin smiled and offered me a hand up. “I try not to put expectations on people, Highness. It’s not very fair to ask them to conform to my ideas of the way the world should be.”
“Pretty words.” I leaned against the counter once I was on my feet. “So you’re the philosopher and Emmory is the sword?”
“We take turns, Highness. I brought you breakfast, if you think you can stand it.”
“Might as well try.” I spotted Emmory by the door as I made my way to the bed and poked at the food on the tray for a minute before I looked up at Zin. “My mother has space madness.”
Emmory nodded. “Yes, Highness.”
“It’s not public knowledge, though?”
“It is now,” he said. “The news leaked a few hours ago at home.”
“Does my mother know?”
“I believe Princess Cire was going to speak with her after we left, Highness. I am not sure if that happened.”
“Bugger.” Slowly I could feel the noose tightening on my neck. My plans to hunt down my sisters’ killers and then leave hadn’t included my mother’s failing health. “Well, I’m going to need something to wear besides this, Tracker. I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare uniform floating around?”
Zin frowned, glancing behind me at the now destroyed wardrobe. “You can’t—”
“It’s this or a uniform.” I gestured at my now wrinkled pajamas.
“Highness, that’s hardly appropriate attire.” Emmory’s voice was pained.
“I know, but unless you want to get into a wrestling match, I’m not putting on any of the clothing in there.”
“Your Highness.” He stopped and took a breath, letting it out slowly. I already recognized it as the sign of him struggling for composure. “We cannot present you to your empress-mother dressed in pajamas.”
He sounded so exasperated, I had to bite back a snort of laughter. I wanted to let it loose in the air just to see what he’d do, but I didn’t. I was the gunrunner they all expected to see and I’d bow to Mother in clothing of my choosing or not at all.
“You should find me something else then, Tracker. We’re about the same size.” I waved a hand at him. “And it’s better than pajamas.”
“That is debatable, Highness,” Emmory replied, but he vanished back out the door. He was right, of course. About the only way I could insult my mother more would be to show up dressed in the cheery yellow sari reserved for outcasts.
“Setting the tone early, Your Highness?” Zin hadn’t moved from his spot against the wall. “Coming home in military dress is going to raise eyebrows.”
“You probably should have thought about that before you came to get me. Bringing me home at all is going to raise eyebrows. Prodigal black sheep and all that.”
“It was an order, Highness.”
“Do you always follow orders?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So if I ordered you to kill your partner when he came back in the room, would you do it?”
Zin froze, his eyes desperately seeking a sign that I was pulling a horrible joke on him, and when he couldn’t find it, he fell back into the safety of formality. “Your Imperial Highness, I know my partner has behaved improperly to you, but he is only doing his duty.” He dropped to his knees and bent over, arms outstretched and palms facing upward, his face against the floor. “Please—”
I immediately felt like an asshole, and the feeling grew exponentially when Emmory walked back into the room. He froze, a uniform in unrelenting black in his hand.
“Highness?”
The request for information was tentative, and the reality was that I didn’t have to explain myself. Not only was I the Crown Princess, but I was a woman. I could do what I pleased and there was nothing these two could do about it.
I’d hated that twenty years ago and I still hated it. The inequality, the absolutism that bred contempt and hatred for a whole group of people simply because of the accident of their birth.
“Emmory, if I ordered you to not take me home, would you obey me?”
“No, Highness.”
“You’re going to want to explain why to your partner,” I said, grabbing the uniform out of his hand and heading for the bathroom.
4
I muttered curses after the door closed, jerked off my pajama bottoms, and grabbed the uniform pants from the counter. They were long enough, and thankfully made of a material with some give—my hips were more generous than Emmory’s. I tugged the black tunic on over the gray tank and plopped down onto the toilet seat to put my boots on.
First, I freed the hammered silver ring that was tangled in the laces of my boots and slid it onto my right hand. I unhooked the slender band of dark brown leather and wrapped it around my wrist.
“Take this.” Cire pressed the leather into my hand and my eyes went wide.
“Father gave this to you, I can’t—”
“Take it, Hail.” Cire was almost twenty years old and already behaving like an empress; the frown on her face wasn’t one to be argued with. “I want you to have it. To remember us. Just in case.”
“I’m going to stay in touch.”
“You might not be able to,” she said too softly for our sister to hear.
“And this,” Pace squeaked, waving a ring in the air. “I got it at the market. The old man said it was a wishing ring. Turn it on your finger three times and whisper your wish into your hand.”
I took the beaten ring of silver from her, not having the heart to tell her that wishes didn’t come true. She’d learn it soon enough.
“Damn it.” I was crying again, tears streaking down my face and dripping onto my shirt. I wasn’t going to last five minutes in the palace if I couldn’t get a handle on my ramshackle emotions.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I peeked at myself in the mirror. Gods, I looked horrible. Even with the shiner gone, I looked precisely as exhausted as I felt.
“Let’s get this shit over with,” I muttered, heading back into the room.
Zin straightened when I stepped over the threshold.
“Highness,” Emmory said, giving me a quick nod. He was back to the implacable mask. There was no hint of what he and Zin might have discussed showing on his face. “We’re about to drop out of warp.”
The warning chime sounded and I braced myself on the wall again as the bubble contracted back into the AWD, leaving us once more in normal space-time.
“We’ll be in orbit around Pashati and on the ground within the hour. It’s two a.m. at the palace, but they’ve word of our arrival.”
“I’d like to watch the approach. Can we go to the bridge?”
My Trackers exchanged a glance and I suspected there was a whole conversation behind it. Emmory nodded finally. “If you’ll give us a moment to talk with the captain. She’s not aware you’re on board.”
“How did you talk her into making this trip in the first place? Royal starships aren’t flown all over the galaxy without a good reason.”
“Princess Cire authorized it,” Emmory replied. “And the captain is Zin’s sister.”
Zin didn’t say anything as he left the room, and Emmory watched him go, his eyes lingering on the door for a moment before he looked at me.
“I’m sorry I scared him.” The apology tumbled out, surprising us both. “I was trying to make a point.”
“The heir doesn’t make points, Highness, she gives orders. Zin trusts that you know what you’re doing. So if you ask him to commit suicide, he’s going to take it personally.”
“Maybe his mistake is thinking I know what I’m doing,” I huffed, turning away from him and throwing my hands into the air. Give it up, Hail. You’re not going to win this one.
Thankfully Zin came back before I could make a fool of myself and try again. “The captain said she would meet us in her briefing room and you could watch from there if that’s acceptable.” He wasn’t any good at hiding his wariness, and I mentally punched myself in the head several times before I replied.
“That will work, thank you.”
We left my room, the two ITS troops following behind us, and we passed through empty corridors until we got to the bridge.
Captain Hafin waited for us just outside the door to her briefing room. I could see the family resemblance immediately, though her eyes were darker than her brother’s and her dreadlocked hair was long, twisted into a complicated knot at the base of her neck.
“Your Imperial Highness.” There was no hesitation in her greeting or her bow, nothing to suggest that she’d been shocked by her brother’s news. “It is a pleasure to have you on board. I apologize the accommodations were not better prepared.”
There was the surprise. I caught the way her eyes slid toward Zin for just a second as she bowed and the frustration bled through the tail end of her sentence.
“It’s no problem. They were just following orders, Captain.”
“May I be the first to welcome you home, ma’am? And extend my sympathies.”
I nodded sharply and went through the open doorway. Captain Hafin followed me, leaving my Trackers to enter last. The wide, opaque wall shifted to reveal the endless blackness of space and the twin stars of the Ashvin System.
Nasatya, the larger G-class star, and its companion, Dasra—a smallish orange dwarf—danced across their elliptical orbits. Dasra twirled closer to Pashati and then flung itself away on an eighty-year cycle like the whirling dervishes of old.
The other habitable planet, Ashva, orbited Dasra every five months, and it had developed into an ideal, if quiet, agricultural world for the empire.
“Jai maa,” I whispered when Pashati, the crown jewel of the Indranan Empire, came into view. The years hadn’t stolen her splendor. The massive blue-green planet hung suspended against the black, and I could see the traces of red appearing at the far edge. Pashati’s sun was rising over the Great Desert, but its light wouldn’t reach the capital city on the western edge of the Lakshitani Sea for several hours yet.
Welcome home, Hail.
The Ashvin System had been settled over three millennia ago by colonists from the Solarian Conglomerate. The first colony ship—piloted by my ancestor’s husband—had set down on Pashati two Earth-Standard years before the other colony ships arrived.