Impact Velocity (The Physics of Falling)

by Leah Petersen

  “Jake.”

  Jonathan was framed in the doorway, and I nodded acknowledgment, giving Molly a final pat and a kiss before I joined him in the hall.

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a part of the eulogy breakfast I think you might want to see.”

  I sighed. “Really, Jonathan, I don’t.”

  He wore a funny half-smile. “Don’t be so sure.”

  With that cryptic hint he got me curious enough to follow him to the sitting room where the vid was already queued up. I watched Lord Sifer rise, frailer than I remembered. Was it because of Pete’s death, or had I not noticed before?

  Then he began to talk.

  I stared at the screen, stunned, as he told a story I knew and didn’t know at all. It was one thing to talk to Pete, remembering those first days, all the ways and reasons we fell in love with each other. It was so different to hear Pete’s actual words reported by someone who had watched the delight on the young man’s face, understanding so much more than what he said.

  Jonathan paused the playback when Lord Sifer dropped heavily into his seat. I couldn’t move.

  “That was brave,” Jonathan remarked quietly. I nodded.

  “Stupid.”

  “Brave,” he insisted. “And unexpected.” I looked at him. “I knew he didn’t mind you, but he was so hard to read sometimes. I didn’t realize how much he actually liked you.”

  I huffed a laugh. “I never realized he liked me at all.”

  Jonathan just shook his head at me then pointed to the stilled vid. “There’s more.”

  It blinked to a view of Aliana as she stood, beautiful and fierce as she always was. A pang of loss gripped me. This too I didn’t have anymore. She was one of my first friends at the palace. I hadn’t seen her in months, maybe a year. We’d been busy and hadn’t taken the time.

  I sighed. Then smiled to myself as she spoke of Pete, of the boy I hadn’t known, but who I knew just as she described him. As she finished, her voice laced with anger and accusation, I fell back against my chair.

  “I can’t believe she said that.”

  “You can’t?”

  I laughed. “No, you’re right. Of course she did.” I shook my head. “I hope she can handle what she just started.”

  Jonathan frowned at me. “The queen can take care of herself.”

  I nodded, looking back at the still image of her, flushed with righteous anger and love for the man we’d both lost.

  “I still miss her, though.”

  Jonathan said nothing in reply.

  I don’t want to go, Pete.

  I know, but you should anyway.

  Hera would understand.

  But you should go anyway. You’ll regret it later if you don’t.

  I don’t want her to be dead.

  I know.

  iv30

  Late into the night, Jonathan and I sat out on the veranda, lit only by a brilliant moon, drinking concoctions he’d made from juices squeezed from the fruits of local trees and a more than generous helping of something I’m sure he was hoping would put me to sleep.

  It did make me tired, very tired, but I fought it. Somewhere in my mind I was sure that I couldn’t let this day end, that if the sun rose again, it would be firmly and completely established that Pete was dead and gone, buried, interred, and we would have to go on with our lives without him.

  So I fought sleep with all the reason and good sense I’d brought to most of the fights in my life. After a while I simply stood at the railing, watching the roll of wind through the trees, so like the ocean that was somehow different here than at the palace and still the same ocean. Funny how that worked. I scrubbed my face in my hands and drained my drink again.

  Jonathan put a full glass on the rail between us, taking up his own vigil beside me.

  “He wanted me with him all the time,” Jonathan said, and it took a moment for my soggy brain to catch the words. “After you were exiled. He wouldn’t say it like that, though he did officially transfer me to his own staff. But he wanted me nearby. He was visibly less in control when I wasn’t. So I stayed, all the hours of the day, wherever he was, and I didn’t leave his rooms until he was asleep each night. And for half of that time he ignored me, almost as if he was embarrassed to want me around so much but couldn’t bring himself to put a stop to it. I didn’t mind. I never minded.”

  He turned his head and I looked over to meet his gaze, so full of his own pain and loss. “I think I needed it as much as he did,” he said. “We’d both lost something, with more or less guilt attached to our part in it, but neither of us had anyone we could really admit the depth of that loss to. Not to ourselves, certainly not to each other. So we spent weeks in the same spaces, never talking about it. Pretending it wasn’t going on.”

  I shivered. “He got a bad bargain with me, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t think he’d agree at all.”

  I huffed. “Pete never did know what was good for him.”

  “He knew a lot more than you think.”

  “I should never have let us become friends. I should have kept him at a distance from the first. I knew better. I knew what a disaster it would be for him to befriend an unclass, let alone...” I sighed out what felt like my last breath. “It’s my fault. It’s my fault he died. If he’d never been with me—”

  My ears rang with the sound before the pain registered. Jonathan had slapped me. I stared at him in stunned disbelief. His palm smacked my cheek again. My hand went slowly to my face; my skin burned like fire under it.

  “What—”

  “When you were in exile, the emperor once said to me that it had all been his fault. If he hadn’t taken you out of the IIC, if he hadn’t kissed you, if he had listened to you when you said you shouldn’t take your relationship public, if he’d done a better job protecting you, if he’d prevented the scenes in the throne room.” Jonathan quivered with rage. “I wanted to slap him too. But I couldn’t. So that’s one for each of you.” His eyes bored into me like lasers. “Don’t you dare cheapen all you gave to each other. Don’t disrespect him and what you had together, those beautiful children, with that kind of complete and utter shit. Don’t you dare.”

  He glared at me, his breath harsh and fast. I coughed out a startled laugh. “OK.”

  I was installed as Regent to the twenty-third ruler of the Empire. Whoever that would be.

  iv31

  I didn’t stay late at the coronation feast. My mind whirled with all that had happened in so short a time. Queen Aliana’s words rang in my ears. I retreated to the emperor’s office and sank into the chair at the large desk, but turned my back to it, staring out at the ocean through the expanse of windows. The night sky was bright and brilliant and less frightening here than it had been for me in many years.

  It was an excellent room for painting. I always had admired the light.

  I was stalling, I knew it. The triumph and headiness of power that had made me almost giddy only hours before had waned, and doubts were creeping back in. I didn’t want to admit even to myself how much her words had shaken me. I forced myself to turn the chair until I faced the desk squarely, though I didn’t take my hands off the armrests.

  The throne might be more impressive, the symbol, but this was where the real ruling of the empire took place. I had been in this room many times but always on the other side of the desk. If I’d ever entertained notions of switching places, they felt now like a little boy’s dreams. The sort of nonsense we live within as children—harmless but impossible fantasies.

  I looked down at the desk. Scrolling readouts, open documents and reports were scattered across the digital surface, like a deck of playing cards. If I let my eyes unfocus, it almost looked like a movie playing. The Story of the Empire. The story of the rule of the House of Blaine.

  I shivered
and then, angry at myself for weakness, I lay my palms flat and began examining reports with a feverish intensity.

  In the notification area, a persistent blinking finally caught my attention and I opened the waiting message.

  The face of Rikhart IV appeared. “Hello, Your Excellence.”

  I catapulted out of my chair, my heart racing. I stared, wide-eyed as a mischievous grin spread across his face. “Still sounds strange, doesn’t it? You get used to it. Though every now and then it still throws me.”

  I looked at the timestamp on the recording: more than seven years ago.

  “There’s a long tradition of each imperial ruler leaving a message for his successor. I hope very much that I’m talking to my own child, but as I’ve only just gotten married, and haven’t broached the subject of children with Jake yet,” he smiled almost shyly, “I know it’s possible that I’m not. So I won’t assume.” He grimaced but then smiled.

  “In any case, the purpose of this message is twofold. First, when this message closes, it will open up your private access portal, which will let you into everything in the empire, no exceptions.” He grinned. “Including the private network the upper nobility thinks we don’t know about.” My mouth nearly fell open.

  “It’s more technical than I can explain, but, essentially, every piece of technology built in the last two hundred years has required a simple base code in order to even connect to the electrical grid. Because of this, there is a backdoor into every single electronic device in the empire. If it can be scanned, recorded, searched, or transmitted, you can find it.” He pressed his lips together.

  “Be careful with it. Almost everything can be accessed by the highest ISS officers, even more than is popularly believed. Intelligence and surveillance is their job, and what they do best. Quite frankly, you won’t have the time to sit around combing through everyone’s private things.”

  He looked down. “But even more than that, just because you can know something doesn’t mean you should. There are some things that aren’t worth knowing.” His expression was wry. “It actually makes it harder, not easier, to know what everyone really thinks of you. And there’s a very big difference between what they think and what they are willing to do.”

  He smiled. “Not that you won’t find the access useful. It may well save your life. It already has mine, once, and as I’m still quite a young man, it may yet again.” He sobered. “Just be careful. Make sure you really want to know something before you go looking for it.

  “Though, if you’re like everyone else I know,” he said, laughing, “you’ll probably end up learning that for yourself the hard way, but I wanted to warn you nonetheless.”

  He straightened with a sigh, as if he’d set down some heavy burden.

  “The second thing is a personal request. That used to be the only purpose of these messages, before the access portal was built, and, in my opinion, it’s the most important part. So,” he said, blowing out a decisive breath, “each emperor leaves one personal request for the one to follow him.” His mouth quirked. “Mine may be a little strange, though if you’re Jacob Dawes’ child, it probably won’t surprise you much.”

  His expression sobered. “I know I’ll be laid to rest in the imperial mausoleum. But I’d ask you, please, to get me out of there.” His expression was wry. “I know that sounds odd, but there is a reason, I promise.” He sat back, his gaze going far away.

  “A few weeks ago Jake and I were at the nebula, and I made a comment about how I wished we could have our remains put into it together after we were both gone. He may have liked the idea a little too much. He took it seriously and he’s determined to see it happen.”

  He sat forward, lacing his fingers together and staring at me intently. “I want to give that to him. I want that for us.” He sighed. “I can’t know now how it’s played out, whether or not he’s already dead or if he survived me, but, when both of us are gone, please, I’m asking you to take us out to the Dawes-Killearn nebula and put our remains there.

  “I haven’t told him about this,” he continued. “I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep, and I have no way of knowing who I’m talking to now. Maybe it’s Aliana, who I know would do this for us. Hopefully, you’re our oldest child. I don’t know you yet, but if there’s any of your other father in you, you’re probably headstrong and hardheaded.” His mouth curved in an unconscious smile.

  “But I don’t know whether that will translate into you doing this for us or deciding you don’t like the idea and ignoring it.” He sighed. “Maybe something worse has happened and you’re not anyone I expect. So I haven’t told him because I know I have no control over what is done with either of us now. But I’m asking this of you. If Jake’s still alive, I hope you’ll tell him, so he knows you’re going to carry it out.” He shook his head to himself. “I wouldn’t put it past him to try to steal my body from the crypt if he thought that was the only way he could get it. So, please, if you are going to do this for us, let him know, if he’s still alive.”

  He looked down at his hands, silent for a moment before he continued.

  “Good luck. I wish nothing but the best for you. Whoever you are. It’s a heavy burden, but it’s your burden now. I hope you bear it well.”

  The display went black. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring at the blank space, transfixed. I stood, and my knees felt watery under me. I approached the great wall of windows, staring out, unseeing, at the ocean until I was sure I had control of myself and then I left the room, walked away from the emperor’s office and through the halls, ignoring everyone, until I came at last to the emperor’s rooms. My rooms.

  I looked around. None of it was mine. Everything I saw was theirs. The emperor, Dawes, Princess Marquilla, and Owen. My Owen. Who hadn’t been my Owen in so long he probably didn’t remember me. I didn’t even know him.

  I stumbled into the smallest room, the library. I took a chair, turning its back to the door so that there was some semblance of separating myself from this place. From so many things that I suddenly knew and understood and didn’t want to know at all.

  I was still there when darkness fell and I succumbed finally to sleep.

  In the space of two days, the emperor’s rooms were cleared of all traces of Killearns and redone in the Blaine colors. They looked bare, waiting.

  iv32

  I woke in the morning with a crick in my neck and a new resolve. It was time to put my secret access to the test. There was no amount of deliberation or doubt about what I wanted to look for first. The location of the safehouse. I meant to find Owen.

  I settled in front of the desk in the private office within the emperor’s rooms, still wearing my robe and slippers. My first attempt at finding information produced only one result, and it opened itself immediately. The face of a woman appeared. She looked familiar but her name didn’t come to me right away. She didn’t look terribly impressed.

  “So you’ve decided to try to find the safehouse,” she said. “Maybe you’re the first. You won’t be the last. But I can save you time. You won’t find it. I have taken great pains to set up this sanctuary and I don’t intend it to be compromised, whether for nefarious purposes or mere curiosity.”

  Empress Olga. I recognized the face now. She’d come to power—and held it for five decades—after her father, mother, and three older siblings were all assassinated, one by one. Popular history held that she’d avoided no less than five assassination attempts. I guessed it was more than that.

  “The location of the safehouse is secret, for very good reason. Whether you’ve come to power through inheritance or murder, you too should appreciate and be committed to preserving the safety of that place.”

  Her smile was sardonic. “You may find yourself needing it someday. In the meantime, don’t imagine that you are the one who will discover the secret. You won’t. I advise you to stop trying. You’ll o
nly prove yourself to be inadequate to the position if you don’t respect the necessity for the safehouse, whether for your predecessor, yourself, or your heirs. Leave it alone.”

  The screen blanked and I was staring at a search that returned no results at all.

  ***

  I was surprisingly relieved to know that I couldn’t find the safehouse. On the one hand, of course I was frustrated, even angry that I should be the most powerful man in the empire now and still be denied my son. Yet the logic of her position was all too true. Every emperor should treasure that safety net.

  And there were perhaps things that were more important right now than bringing my son to this place, and into the life of Emperor Regent Enryn. Empress Olga had reminded me rather forcefully of how I had come to power. Not only that it had involved deception and assassination, but that it had not been my own doing. I held my position thanks to the machinations of someone else. And I wasn’t fool enough to think that my own safety or even my life was of any importance to him beyond his own benefit.

  I was eating breakfast in the little nook off the emperor’s solarium when the servant announced the Grand Duke Laudley. I went still. Carefully I answered, “Show him in.”

  Laudley seemed at ease for such an early morning after a night of celebration. He was never a man for many smiles, only when they were useful to him, but there was a careless triumph about him that made me grit my teeth. Perhaps he realized that because he gestured to the chair across from me.

  “May I sit?”

  I regarded him for a long moment, long enough that I could see him grow uncomfortable before I gestured wordlessly to the chair and he sat. The servant poured him coffee but he brushed off the offer of breakfast and we were left alone.

  “How did you get in here?” I asked.

  His expression hardened for only a flicker before he found his casual pose again. “The way one normally gets anywhere. I came, the servant announced me, and now I am here.”