Esa buried herself against his chest, a second, softly beating heart.
And then Berras took her arm, and for once he was grateful as his brother held his sister back. He turned, the kitten clutched safe against his collar, and boarded the ship.
His ship.
As the Spire drew out of the berth, Alucard looked up one last time, craning his head toward the royal palace. He searched the upper windows, the rooms he knew so well, hoping to glimpse a shadow there, to find some promise of the prince.
But the curtains were all drawn.
And so Alucard turned and took the ship’s wheel, and when the Night Spire sailed out of London, he kept his back to the city and his gaze ahead, until the red light of the river was gone.
* * *
Three years at sea.
It was long enough for wounds to heal and scars to form, silver and smooth. Long enough to change the map of one’s skin, to transform a proud noble into a shrewd captain. Long enough to hone one’s magic, and bury one’s heart behind charm and wit.
And long enough, he hoped, to weather this.
The wind picked up, the Night Spire rocking in the sudden breeze.
Bard said nothing, and Alucard was grateful for the silence, his attention focused on the place where the river met the sky. The place where nothing became a distant shimmer of light. Not magic, but glass and stone and gold, catching the sun.
The first glimmers of the royal palace.
Alucard steadied himself at the rail as London drew close, closer than it had in a thousand days, for he had counted every one.
Had dreamed of, and dreaded, this moment.
But he kept his hands on the wheel, the ship pointed toward the palace. He was done sailing away from his life.
It was time to go home.
I dropped into the Imperium airspace, my engines running hot. My little ship rattled and hummed underneath me and, not for the first time, I wondered how long the My Heart Will Go On would hold together. There was nothing inherently wrong with her except that I’d put her together from pieces I found in a scrapyard. And she was doing her best, just like me.
“Hold it together, Sis,” I murmured as I checked my scanners. Yep, yep, all good. Nothing worse than a little too much heat coming out of hyperspace. My ship would be fine. Me, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure. Just because I couldn’t see any hostiles didn’t mean they weren’t out there hiding.
I flipped on my internal comm. “Talk to me, Evie. What have I got?”
The old communications device sent static back along the line, and I asked again, “Evie, you there?”
“Affirmative,” a voice said, resolving out of the static. The voice was female, friendly, and entirely not human. My Evolutionary Vocalization Unit, a.k.a. Evie. “Here as always, Vi. How can I help you?”
I grinned. Evie may have just been an AI unit in my ship, but she was my go-to girl and my best friend. She had gotten me out of more close calls than I could remember and was always a steady voice in my ear, whether she was reading the schematics of a space station to find me an escape route out of a tricky situation or jamming hostile frequencies to gain me the few extra moments I needed to pull off a job. I owed that AI my life a dozen times over.
“Any hostiles?”
“Negative. And I’ve secured the required landing clearance to get you to the Imperium capital for the big party.”
“Sweet, Evie. Thanks millions.” The “big party” was the Imperium’s semi-annual Treasures of the Empire gala, where the elite of the galaxy gathered at the Museum of the Conquered to gloat over the wealth stolen from smaller, more vulnerable planets. It never failed to draw a crowd—and its share of enterprising thieves. Of which I was one. Sorta.
As if the Imperium isn’t the biggest thief of all, I thought bitterly.
And that fact made this job different. Normally, I was what they call a cat burglar, light of touch and quick on the in and out. Most people didn’t even know I had robbed them until I was three systems away, drinking a fruity daiquiri on some beach planet. I know not everyone approves of a criminal life, but the Imperium didn’t leave people much choice these days. We did what it took to survive, and this was what it took for me: Evie identifying and acquiring wealthy targets and me relieving them of their unearned wealth to redistribute to…well, myself. Not exactly Robin Hood—more like just robbing.
But this job was different. Stealing from the Museum of the Conquered was personal.
“Very personal,” I said, rubbing the glass-vial pendant around my neck. The vial was filled with red dirt, a memory of my home planet. The only thing I had left. Once I had had a family, brothers and sisters and cousins, but the Imperium had taken them all. Razed the planet for its natural resources and enslaved the people to work the mines and pipelines and space elevators. And those who had rebelled had simply been killed, like weeds that needed pruning to allow the Imperium to flourish.
But the Imperium hadn’t stopped with enslaving humans and extracting natural resources. They’d raided the sacred places of my people, taking the carvings and masks that had been our connection to our gods and our place in the galaxy and put them in their museums as a display of their dominance. There was never a thought of what those sacred items meant to us, the handful of survivors of their genocide. How their loss cut us off from both our past and our future. It was a violation that ripped our souls apart and cast them adrift in the vastness of space, both physically and spiritually.
They had come to my home planet fifteen years ago. I had been a baby, lucky to be sold to passing traders rather than killed outright. Traders who turned out to be pirates and happily made me one of them. They were my family for a while, and I loved them. Zinny with his goofy smile and bad jokes, Chrys who always shared their desserts with me, and our surrogate mom, Lantana. They gave me a name like theirs in memory of the flowers that grew on humanity’s legendary home planet, because I couldn’t remember my first name, the one my parents had given me. But the Imperium took my pirate family, too, in a raid on Primus. Everyone died but me, who’d had the luck (or un-luck) of being on a run to buy much-needed fuel. They’d been sitting ducks without it. And dead ducks in the end.
So now at the ripe old age of sixteen, give or take a few months, it was just me again. A me that ached for both my lost families, but mostly for justice. I wanted—no, I needed to take back something of what the Imperium had taken from me. Reclaiming the sacred objects of my home planet felt like a step toward that.
“Ready to break orbit and enter the atmosphere over the capital, Vi,” Evie said, her voice smooth and reassuring, like it always was.
I nodded, although there was no one there to see me. “Lead me in, Evie,” I said into the comm, and she did.
I could see the massive capital city splayed out below me, and for a moment I was awestruck. Gleaming metal structures, buildings that touched the clouds, millions and millions of kilometers of roads and airways and…civilization. Or what passed for civilization, since surely nothing civilized could build itself on the backs of so many of my people murdered. All those citizens of the Imperium down there, profiting off my dead planet without a care. Maybe those sacred objects weren’t much to them—another exotic artifact from off-world savages to be admired in a museum between fancy cocktails and a catered dinner—but they were everything to me.
“Landing in three minutes, Vi,” Evie said.
“Let’s do it, Evie,” I said, flipping on the autopilot. “Time to take back what’s ours.”
* * *
Sneaking into the Museum of the Conquered was easier than expected: I walked in the front door.
“They really are that arrogant,” I murmured to Evie through my well-hidden comm device. It was a portable that kept me connected to the AI in the ship. That way Evie and her big brain could keep working for
me while I was on foot, reading the blueprints and security cams of the museum.
“Yes,” Evie agreed, “but some credit must go to the very convincing paperwork that supports your invitation, Princess Amaryllis.”
I snorted. The princess thing I’d done on a whim. People of the Imperium often assigned royal titles to themselves when claiming ancestry from conquered planets. After all, no one wanted to admit that their great-great-grandfather was at best a promiscuous scoundrel, at worst something far different; better to say your grandmother was a princess of a long-lost kingdom, even if the other branch of your ancestry was the reason the kingdom was lost to begin with.
I’d traded my preferred trousers and pilot’s jacket for more formal attire that befit a princess, albeit one from an obscure planet that hopefully no one in attendance had heard of. My long dark hair was pulled back from my brown face and twisted in an elaborate series of braids that Evie had determined were all the fashion in the capital. Blooms of violets I’d traded with a hothouse gardener I knew from my pirate days were woven into my locks—my own touch, and a perfect color match for my deep purple gown. I’d kept my boots on in case I needed to run and hoped the length of the dress would cover them. If not, I’d play off my unusual footwear as a teenage peccadillo.
“Do not become overconfident,” Evie warned. “Security will be abundant, and you are not clear of impediments yet. As you know, the gala is a target for thieves, and the Imperium has taken precautions.”
“I’m counting on that fact to cover my escape,” I said. I had already sent out half a dozen false calls to notorious pirates I knew from my old days, purposefully increasing the interstellar chatter to cover any trail Evie and I might accidentally leave.
I passed a couple holding long-stemmed glasses full of golden liquid; they smiled indulgently at me. Probably thought I was someone’s daughter at my first dress ball or something. I smiled back, showing teeth. Suckers. Little did they know.
“Which way?” I asked Evie once I’d cleared the foyer.
“The exhibit hall of artifacts is forty paces straight ahead and to your right. Then another fourteen paces before another right. Once there you will have to pass through security once again. That should place you directly in front of the sacred objects you seek.”
“Cheers, Evie.”
“My pleasure.”
I tapped off the comm in my ear and made my way down the hallway, counting my steps and exchanging bland but appropriate smiles with passing strangers. I took the right turn Evie had instructed me to, and then, after fourteen paces, the second right.
“Invitation, miss?” a tall, bulky man in a dark uniform asked me.
“Of course.” I handed over the card with its fake information chip to the security guard, who ran it through a handheld device.
He frowned, brows creasing on a face a good half meter above my own.
My heart rate jumped. Nothing could go wrong now. I was so close. “Is there a problem?” I asked airily, hoping I sounded properly rich, annoyed, and innocent at the same time.
“My apologies, but…”
I held my breath. “Yes?”
“I referred to you as miss, when your proper title is princess.”
I stifled a groan. Oh, stars. I’d almost had a heart attack for nothing. “It’s fine, really,” I said. I let a small smile spread across my face. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
“Of course not.”
And then I was breezing through security, trying desperately to force my heart rate back to normal.
* * *
I wandered through the artifact exhibit holding back tears. Everywhere I looked were the treasures of a whole civilization—my civilization.
The first hall was full of jewels, some raw from mines and some exquisitely shaped by artisans into bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. The wealth of generations.
The next hall was labeled ARCHAEOLOGICAL ARTIFACTS. Walking through it made my stomach roil uncomfortably. Here, the items were encased in glass with a tiny holographic plaque that described them in insultingly simple terms.
MASK. CEREMONIAL ITEM. RECOVERED AT MOUNTAIN 32B. IMPERIUM YEAR 1598.
RATTLE. CEREMONIAL ITEM. RECOVERED AT MOUNTAIN 32B. IMPERIUM YEAR 1598.
CHILD’S SKULL. FUNERARY OBJECT. RECOVERED AT VALLEY 12. IMPERIUM YEAR 1599.
That last one made me gag. A human skull? What was it doing in a museum? Why had they taken it off-planet to begin with? My wave of nausea gave way to rage. I would return all these items to what was left of my people, if I had to spend the rest of my life searching the galaxy for them.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” a voice asked. A boy stood behind me, his expression mildly curious.
“Amazing? It’s barbaric,” I growled without thinking.
“Is it?” he asked, looking at me through long black lashes. He passed a hand across his golden hair, pushing his already impeccably coiffed bangs back into place. He wore a long coat of bright blue that matched his eyes, and a solid ruby sparkled on his middle finger. I startled. That ring was worth more than the My Heart Will Go On.
“And you are…?” he asked.
“Princess Amaryllis,” I supplied haughtily. Inside, I was kicking myself. Why had I said anything to this boy? He was clearly Imperium born and bred. Would a princess really call the Imperium barbaric?
His smile was small and thin. “A princess? Never met one of those before.”
I narrowed my eyes. “That ring and that jacket say otherwise.”
He fingered his lapel as if noticing it for the first time. “Do they?” He shrugged broad shoulders. “Well, nice to meet you, Princess. Do enjoy the barbaric exhibit.”
And then he was taking his smile and his ruby ring with him as he moved on to the next exhibit.
I frowned. Thought to shout out to him, say something more. But what? I should be glad he was gone and I was spared whatever that interaction would have been. It was one thing to pretend to be a princess for a security guard and a few random moments of intrusive questioning, but if the stranger had asked me more about my supposed kingdom, I wasn’t sure what I would have said. Still, there was something about him. Something that seemed familiar. But how many blond-haired, blue-eyed Imperium rich kids did I know? Thankfully, none.
“Focus on the mission,” I muttered.
The lights blinked above me, a sign that the exhibit was closing. I scanned the room, gaze roving over tables, stands, and glass boxes. And there, in the far corner, exactly where Evie said it would be: an air vent.
I did another circuit to make sure the room was empty, nodded at a few stragglers who were wandering out, and then made my way back to the vent. I slid on my gloves, checked the antigravity booster on my boots, and took a deep breath.
In one leap I was even with the vent. Two breaths and I’d used my screwdriver to remove the vent, three breaths and I’d slid my body inside. Four and the vent was back on, and all I had to do was wait.
* * *
I may have dozed a bit, because when I opened my eyes, the exhibit was dark, all the lights off except the security grid on the floor and the floodlights over the exhibits. Satisfied I was alone, I clicked my comm back on.
“You there, Evie?”
“Affirmative, Vi.”
“Can you disable security on the glass boxes in the exhibit room I’m in?”
“Processing. Please stand by….”
While Evie did her job, I got ready to do mine. I slipped my tools from the secret pocket in my ball-gown sleeve. Basics of the profession: a multifaceted lockpick in case Evie couldn’t disable the lock, a pair of printless sensory gloves, vibro pliers, my trusty screwdriver that had gotten me into the vent, and a lot of nerve.
“Evie?”
“Negative, Vi. The lock system is not attached to the network. I’m afraid yo
u’re on your own.”
“Got it.” I carefully removed the vent, wiggled my body out of the small space, and dropped into an unlit square on the floor. I froze, waiting for a security wail telling me I’d picked the wrong place to drop, but the only sound was the low hum of the system still in place. Exactly how I wanted it. I would be in and out before they even knew they’d been robbed.
I slid the lockpick into my hand, ready to get to work.
“Ho, what have we here?” A voice, just to my left.
I spun, holding the pick out as a weapon, expecting to see the burly security guard. But it was the boy from before, the Imperium snot.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered harshly, brandishing the pick. I wasn’t much for violence, but I’d protect myself if I had to.
The boy lifted his hands in the universal sign of innocence. In one hand was a crowbar. “Came back for a little smash-and-grab myself. Didn’t expect to find company.”
“You’re a thief?” I asked in disbelief.
“I prefer ‘artifacts liberator.’ ”
My eyes rolled all the way to Primus and back. What were the chances? I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “Wait, are you making fun of me?”
“I don’t even know you.”
Right, but something was off. “But your hair. Your eyes. That damn ring. You’re Imperium. I’d bet my best lockpicks on it.”
“Then you’d lose your lockpicks. This is a disguise. Heard of them? Hair’s a dye job; eyes are contacts. Even my pale complexion is a temporary color job.”
“So you look like me?” I scoffed. Sure, he could be as brown-skinned and black-haired as me, but I couldn’t see it.
“Cousins, for sure.” He winked, but then got serious. “I was raised in an Imperium household, but not by choice. I’m an orphan, picked up as a baby from my home planet and adopted. So now I do a little liberating in my free time.”
A Universe of Wishes Page 14