Musketeer Space

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  Not that Cardinal Richelieu had said anything at all to condemn the Prince Consort. She implied it with the occasional word, or gesture, or sympathetic glance. A hint in the wrong place could bring down her government, and Lalla-Louise could not let that happen.

  The Cardinal knew best. Lalla-Louise had always believed that, even when ‘what was best’ meant taking power and funding away from the Musketeers who had always served the Crown so diligently.

  The Regence of the Solar System maintained her independence from the Church. She shared breakfast chocolate with Amiral Treville as often as she did with the Cardinal. She listened to many advisors, not just the diplomatic priest who had been there since the beginning. Lalla-Louise had even married against the advice of her Eminence, thinking that she knew better.

  No, she had known better. Maintaining good relations with Honour and the Elemental faction was important, no matter what the Church of All said about it. Lalla-Louise married Alek to prove to the Solar System that she could unite everyone: Church and Elementals, dirtsiders and space dwellers.

  If they had an heir by now, even the Cardinal would drop her resistance to Alek’s role as Prince Consort. A baby would have been the perfect way to unite the most divisive groups in the Solar System.

  Lalla-Louise was going to have to put her foot down about that soon. Alek’s religious and cultural beliefs made it hard for him to accept the idea of a capsule-born baby, but he must realise by now that they were not going to get an heir any other way.

  Assuming, of course, that the marriage did not dissolve first.

  It was unthinkable, that the Cardinal might be this wrong about something. But if the Cardinal was right, then Lalla-Louise’s marriage was more of a lie than she had ever imagined. Alek – her sweet, beautiful husband was not hers after all, but another conspirator working against her.

  Lalla-Louise heard the chime that indicated that the Prince Consort had entered the ballroom. She rose to stride through the crowd of masked beauties. Her guests gleamed in peacock colours, scattered with diamonds and diamante beading.

  The ballroom was decked out as a glorious jewelled garden, with crystal hover-chandeliers lighting every corner. The hover-chandeliers were equipped with cam feeds, capturing the outrageous costumes and elegant dancing of the Regence’s chosen guests so that the party could be broadcast live across the solar system.

  Lalla-Louise was garbed as a huntress of olden times, with a gilded bow strung across her back and long trousers made of deep green suede. Instead of her usual army of dressmakers, she had summoned Alek’s own tailor Su to make her a long silk coat that would perfectly complement the one he had made for her husband’s birthday.

  She had taken the opportunity to examine Su’s face for any hint of betrayal, but his hands were calm and his manner pleasant during their fittings. Apparently, he knew of no reason why that coat might cause her pain or public embarrassment.

  Lalla-Louise cut through the crowd and finally, finally saw Alek. He stood in polite discussion with a group of political types from Valour. Of course, he was not surrounded with friends. He had so few left on Lunar Palais, with most of them exiled for political reasons, or distancing themselves from him for their own protection.

  He was as handsome as ever, a prime example of Austerian beauty. And yet, Lalla-Louise felt a chill as she approached him.

  Alek wore black from head to toe. His hair had been recoloured so that it fell in feathery locks of purple, green and gold like the fanned tail of a peacock, and he wore diamond beads that hung from each ear. But there was no sign of the peacock coat, nor the diamond studs. Lalla-Louise burned with a fury so hot that there was no air left in the room.

  It was true, then. She had made a mistake with him. The Cardinal would hold this over her head forever.

  “Husband,” she said, ice dripping from her voice. “How plain you look this evening.”

  “Wife,” he said politely, taking her hands to kiss them both. “I hope you don’t mind that I chose to dress simply tonight. How can one peacock stand out in a crowd of hundreds?”

  “On the contrary,” Lalla-Louise snarled. It was rare for her to feel any emotion outside her beloved game, but this made her so angry she couldn’t see straight. “I particularly chose the theme of this ball so that you could display the diamonds I gave you. I chose my own outfit to complement yours.” She sounded like a petulant child. If she had a glass of champagne in her hand, she would throw it over him.

  Alek’s face changed, as he realised the extent of her anger. “My darling, forgive me. I did not wish to risk eclipsing your own appearance.” He kissed her hands again, more passionately. “I shall change at once.”

  “See that you do,” she said, barely getting out the words. Her husband made his exit with a polite bow that infuriated her as much as everything else about this evening.

  The moment that Alek was gone from her sight, Lalla-Louise turned to see Cardinal Richelieu regarding her with warmth and sympathy.

  She wanted to smash everything. But instead she smiled and nodded and accepted the congratulations of her guests as if this party was everything she had ever hoped it would be.

  24

  Hover-Chandeliers are Forever

  Dana leaned back against the arm of an embroidered couch in the Prince Consort’s dressing room. She was not asleep – she could not imagine herself managing to lose consciousness yet – but she was nearly home and that was wonderful.

  Conrad was the opposite of relaxed. He was dressed for the ball, in a beautifully cut but undecorated black suit much like the one that the Prince had insisted upon wearing. The simple shade and lines of the suit showed off the golden-brown glow of Conrad’s skin and the metallic scales that trailed down the side of his neck.

  Conrad’s shoulders were tense. His long tailor’s fingers drummed in an anxious pattern against the back of the couch. His blue hair was a shade too long now, and kept falling in his eyes, forcing him to brush it impatiently away every few minutes. Dana could see that his thoughts were entirely on Alek, and the scene playing out right now in the ballroom.

  “Can’t go out there like a normal person, he has to make a performance of it…” Conrad muttered, mostly to himself.

  Adrenalin still burned through Dana – the long venturer journey back from Valour had not dampened the excitement of the mission, especially as she had spent most of her time fidgeting in her seat and recounting the adventure in her head, when not using Planchet’s clamshell to research any information she could find about Milord Vaniel de Winter. She had not been able to find out much except that he was Private Secretary of the Interior and had something to do with government intelligence.

  Ha. Something political. Hilarious.

  As Milord, he had been working with Rosnay Cho for the Cardinal. As Winter, he had apparently taken up residence inside Buck’s tortured mind. But what did any of that actually mean?

  Dana didn’t want to think about it. What she wanted was to lean over and lick a wet stripe up Conrad’s throat. If he could stop being irritated by the Prince’s antics for five seconds, she might get her chance.

  Conrad pressed both hands over his eyes now as if he was actually in pain. “He could have worn the damned coat and the damned studs in the first instance, now he’s just drawing attention to the whole mess, and…”

  “Conrad,” Dana said in a low voice.

  “It drives me up the wall, if subtlety was a gene his was removed at birth, maybe it’s some kind of subtlety disorder…”

  “Conrad.”

  “You don’t know what I put up with, Dana, you really don’t –”

  Dana crawled along the couch and straddled his lap. “Conrad.”

  He opened his eyes, huffing out a startled breath. Then, very slowly, he smiled. It was an exceptionally charming smile, and it warmed her all the way down. “Hello there,” he said, his attention finally on her.

  “Hi,” said Dana, shifting in his lap.

  “Ha
ve I mentioned how grateful I am that you saved my idiot boss’s hide?”

  “I’m sure you were about to mention it.”

  Conrad walked his fingers up the back of her bare neck, drawing their mouths closer together. His lower lip made a teasing swipe against her own, a preliminary touch that made her shiver. More. She wanted more. “I was definitely about to do that.”

  The door to the dressing room slammed open, and Alek marched in. “Don’t mind me,” he snapped, heading for where the peacock coat hung, freshly pressed, against the wall.

  Conrad drew back from Dana with an apologetic look, and she climbed off his lap so he could get on with his job. “Ready for Stage 2, highness?”

  “Stage 2,” Alek agreed, holding out his arms.

  Conrad slid the peacock coat on the Prince. The cut was perfect, of course, swinging against his hips in a fierce statement of bold beauty. The lapels of the coat glittered with twelve perfect diamond studs. Even knowing that two of them had been replaced very recently, Dana could not tell the difference.

  “Still don’t know why you needed to bother with Stage 1,” Conrad said, coughing as he spoke so that the Prince could choose to ignore the insubordinate tone.

  “Yes you do,” Alek said calmly. “I had to see if my wife chose to test me. I wanted to give her a chance to trust me.” He sighed, giving no sign of being pleased at the effect of the peacock jacket in the mirror. “Not that I have any right to complain.”

  “We all know that the Cardinal’s objections to you have nothing to do with what you do or don’t do in bed,” Conrad said, brushing the coat one last time for the sake of professional pride.

  “Still,” said Alek, his face set hard. “I have a second chance to make this right. I’m not going to let my own weakness get the better of me again. I knew the deal when I signed the contract. Time to start making the best of this bloody marriage.”

  He turned to Dana on his way out, clasping her hand for a moment. “I can never thank you enough, Captain D’Artagnan.”

  Dana blinked with shock at the title. “That’s not – that’s a long way off,” she said finally, embarrassed at the thought of it. “I’m not even a Musketeer.”

  “We’ll have to see if we can do something about that,” said the Prince Consort with a cheeky grin. “In the meantime, accept this token of my appreciation.” He pressed something small and sharp into the curve of Dana’s palm and then swung away, striding back to where the Regence was waiting for him in the ballroom.

  Dana looked down and saw a jewelled stud in her palm. It gave off a very expensive gleam of white, shot through with coloured veins that swallowed the light around it. “Oh,” she breathed.

  Conrad came to see, his blue hair falling in his face again as he peered over her palm. “That’s an opal,” he said. “Very rare. Only found on Auster. The prince likes you.” He looked up, then, his dark eyes catching hers before he smiled. “Not as much as I like you.”

  Dana arched an eyebrow at him. “You admit I was the right person for the mission, despite my lack of credentials?”

  Conrad laughed at that, dropping back on to the couch beside her. His hand trailed up and down her wrist, a casual touch that nevertheless made her pulse pick up speed. “You can’t blame a fellow for being careful.”

  “Careful is good.” Dana leaned back against the couch. “I suffered a lot for this mission. I wore a dress. Me. An actual dress.” She had changed back into a plain flight suit as soon as she reached Lunar Palais. The thought of swishing one of the Duchess of Buckingham’s gowns around here where people knew her was enough to make her howl with embarrassment.

  “I’d like to have seen that,” Conrad said, his eyes lighting up.

  “It was horrible. A crime against humanity.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it.” His hand stroked her arm, all the way up until his fingers brushed against her collarbone. “Dana, I can’t – you know about palace contracts, right?”

  She leaned into him, her own fingers combing through his spiky blue hair. If he was allowed to touch, then so was she. “Are we talking about morality clauses?”

  “No one cares about that stuff, not really, you know what palace types are like, all so sophisticated you want to smack them in the face. But I can’t afford to give anyone ammunition against me, not in the middle of all this. If I get myself exiled, Alek will have no one left in his corner.”

  Dana nodded, her fingertips drifting lower to trace the muscular ridges of his shoulder blades. “Are you saying we can’t, or that we have to be discreet?”

  Conrad leaned into her, nuzzling her neck. His breath was warm against her skin. “Discreet. Not the other one. The other one is a terrible idea.”

  “Where?” she whispered. She didn’t want to stop touching him, but he was right – the Prince’s dressing room was not the place for this. Discreet. She could do discreet.

  “I need to be here tonight. What are your plans for tomorrow?”

  Dana sighed, and pulled away from him. Her brain worked better when she wasn’t thinking about the warmth of his skin against hers. Tomorrow was so far away. “I have to report to Treville – and then check for any sign of communication from my friends. If there’s no word from any of them or their engies, I’ll have to retrace the trip and see if I can find out what happened to them.”

  “Will you still be in Paris tomorrow night?” Conrad moved back against the other side of the couch, putting distance between them. Dana wanted to pounce on him, but she could be a grown up about this. She could wait.

  “It should take a day or so to get everything sorted before I’m off again,” she said slowly. “So yes. I’ll still be here.”

  Conrad gave her a hopeful smile. “I have tomorrow evening free, and I know somewhere we can go. Will you meet me at the Fountain of Tranquility, at 19:00 hours?”

  “Yes,” Dana breathed. She tried to make herself stand up and walk out of here with her dignity intact, but she couldn’t help herself. She moved forward, just a slight arch of her back, and Conrad met her in the middle of the couch.

  They caught at each other, one hungry kiss turning into another, and another. One of them was going to have to be strong enough to pull away.

  As Conrad’s tongue grazed against her teeth, Dana was certain it wasn’t going to be her. She curled her hand into the fabric over his hip and tugged him closer.

  The Marquise de Wardes had embraced the peacock and diamonds theme more thoroughly than any other guest at the ball. Her thick, black corn-rows were adorned with ribbons and silk peacock feathers, fanning out as if she was about to take flight. She was wrapped in a gown that sparkled pale and gleaming against her dark skin, giving the effect that it was made of actual diamond.

  The hover-chandeliers, programmed to capture the most visually interesting moments of the Regence’s ball, clustered so intensely around the Marquise that they almost caused a collision.

  All the media representatives who had been allowed into the ball (a very exclusive list) clustered around her as devotedly as the hover-chandeliers.

  Lalla-Louise Renard Royal watched the scene – the Marquise’s glowing smile, and her self-depreciating laugh as the party began to orbit around her. The Cardinal was right. This was the woman that they – Church and Crown alike – needed as First Minister of Valour. The Regence needed the support of the Marquise, with her sharp wit, her talent for PR, and her unswerving loyalty to the idea of a united planetary government.

  It was almost as good as having Chevreuse around again. Lalla-Louise frowned at that thought. She had never found a good enough replacement for Minister Marie Chevreuse-Montbazon. But of course she had to go. A Minister of PR who cared more about the Prince Consort than the Regence Royal was not someone to be trusted.

  The Regence resolved to invite the Marquise de Wardes to extend her stay on Lunar Palais. They had much to discuss, and she wanted to make it clear to everyone that the other woman had her support and friendship. If that meant
sabotaging the Duchess of Buckingham’s attempts to win the Valour election and Lalla-Louise’s husband in one blow, then so much the better.

  “Your Highness looks sad,” said a voice. Lalla-Louise looked up into the calm eyes of Cardinal Richelieu: the one person who was always on her side. The Cardinal wore formal silks and a long star-scarf that entirely wrapped her hair. It was rare for her to dress so traditionally out of church services – though in a nod to the theme of the ball, the scarf was purple with a peacock pattern picked out in gold embroidery thread.

  “Your Eminence should not be so concerned about me,” Lalla-Louise replied softly.

  “How can I not? The Solar System rests in your hands, my dear. Your wellbeing is vital to us all.” This was the Cardinal as foster-mother and devoted longtime friend, then, and not the sharp-tongued, ruthless political advisor. It was not always easy to tell the difference.

  Lalla-Louise made an effort to smile. “This anniversary ball hasn’t gone quite as we hoped.”

  The Cardinal arched one perfect eyebrow. “I think it’s going splendidly. But perhaps we had different outcomes in mind.”

  Lalla-Louise became angry at Alek all over again. What in space was he thinking, strolling in wearing clothes that were barely formal enough for dinner? Had she lost his respect as well as his loyalty?

  She had hoped that by now they would have become a powerful team working in sync with each other, a partnership that strengthened her ability to rule the Solar System. Something like the robust, businesslike relationship her grandparents had enjoyed. She should not be worrying about any secret alliances his family on Auster might or might not have been making with the New Aristocrats of Valour behind her back.

  It all came back to Chevreuse. The Duchess of Buckingham going rogue was one thing, but if Buck had Marie Chevreuse on her side… that woman was diabolical.

  “You will forgive me, Highness,” said the Cardinal. “But I have a gift for you. As you know, I am always thinking about the Crown.”