Milord had intended her to see that footage. She knew he had. It was overwhelming to think that he had fed into someone else’s agenda as well – that this version was coming to her from friends instead of enemies.
“You’d be surprised how many enemies I have who think you’re worth rescuing,” she heard Milord say again. “Say hello to Arms-Sergeant D’Artagnan.”
Conrad’s eyes flicked towards the cam in surprise, then away. “You almost got me,” he said dryly. “But D’Artagnan’s not the one who’s going to get me out of here.”
“Such little faith,” mocked Milord.
“He’s a piece of work, this de Winter fellow,” Aramis muttered. “Could he be any more villainous?”
“He’s skilled at hiding that side of him,” Dana sighed. “Under all the charm and the pretty.”
“Whatever you say, baby doll.” Aramis smirked. “He’s not my type.”
Conrad’s eyes darted past the cam, seeing something beyond the lens. Even in the dingy light, his face lit up in a genuine moment of joy. “On the contrary,” he said. “I have so much faith right now, Slate.”
There was a noise: a meaty thump that suggested a fight of some kind, flesh on flesh. Conrad disappeared from sight.
After more grunts and smacking sounds, the cam spun around to show the collapsed, unconscious figure of Milord de Winter on the stone floor, his fancy suit gathering dust.
Conrad leaned into the camera with the practised ease of a famous athlete who had to put up with paparazzi interviews all the time. “If you’re watching this, Dana,” he said. “Don’t worry about coming to rescue me. My team has it covered.”
“Su, stop pissing about,” said an impatient, aristocratic male voice. Another figure swept past the feed. This man was masked, wearing the uniform of a Red Hammer, but Dana knew would have bet her life it was Alek of Auster, Prince Consort.
Conrad blew a kiss into the cam, and ran after his rescuer.
Dana stared at the fallen figure of Milord, before the cam feed finally bled once more into static.
“They should have finished him,” she said in a low, vengeful voice. “I should have finished him. When I had a chance.”
Aramis lay her smooth hand on Dana’s shoulder, stroking the side of her neck. “It’s a specialised skill, killing people in cold blood. We don’t all have the knack for it.”
The static jumped to a new piece of footage, dated only a few hours ago. It was Madame Chevreuse herself, her hair pearl-white and cut into a tidy bob instead of the elaborate locks she had been sporting when Dana saw her last.
“Hey Aramis,” she said with a warm smile. Dana could practically feel her friend glow in response. “Just to let you – and your Gascon friend – know that the tailoring package has been delivered safely to me. I plan to keep it well away from Paris for now.”
Chevreuse’s hand came into view long enough for her to blow a kiss. “Be valiant in battle, win the war, and get home safe, both of you. I’ll see you again.”
There had been a tension inside Dana for so long: guilt and fear about Conrad. He looked good, despite all that time in Milord’s custody. She was going to see him again someday, when the war was over.
“She looked puffy,” said Aramis with a twist of her mouth. “Do you think she looked puffy? I mean, the extra weight suits her, Chev was all cheekbones and sharp edges when we were together, but she looks exhausted, what are they doing to her on the Daughters of Peace? I can’t imagine that a life without the Cardinal breathing down her neck is somehow less stressful than –”
“She’s pregnant,” Dana blurted out.
Aramis blinked, and looked at her. “Excuse me, now?”
Dana felt hot. She hadn’t meant to say it, possibly it wasn’t a thing even, but. “At least, she was pregnant when I saw her on Luna Palais a couple of months ago, so she must be almost completely done with being pregnant now, but there was definitely a – uh.”
“Huh,” said Aramis. “I guess that explains why she wasn’t along for the rescue, punching Milord in the head and all that. I wonder why she never mentioned it. I never thought her husband was the type to insist that particular clause. But they were re-negotiating their contract, last time I saw her.” She shrugged and smiled. “Fancy visiting Peace once we’re done with this whole alien armada thing? We’ll have some rec leave banked up, I can buy outrageous outfits for Chevreuse’s baby, and you can visit your boy.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Dana.
Aramis gave her a big, squeezing hug. “Better now? Conrad will be safe with Chev until your squishy romantic reunion. Hey, he’s a tailor, right? He can make tiny outfits. Every baby needs a flight suit with sequins.”
Dana nodded, and hugged Aramis back. Safe. Conrad was safe.
WHATEVER HAPPENED THE DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAM?
In recent weeks, Georgiana Villiers or “Buck” to her friends has become a shell of her former self. She went from being one of Valour’s most-tracked celebrities, to a social media black hole.
Heartbreak? Drug addiction? Mental breakdown? Or something more sinister?
Our reporter, Coral Wishlist, was able to capture Buck for some one-on-one time earlier today. As you can see from the footage, the Duchess of Danger Sports lacks her usual energy, and has gone for a dramatic image change.
CORAL: You look amazing, Buck. What are you wearing?
BUCK: The silk dressing gown is from Shania’s latest collection. If you’re going to wear pyjamas during the day, they should at least be as expensive as a new car, right?
CORAL: That quote’s going straight up on our website!
[They laugh]
CORAL: Seriously, the world has been worried about you after you dropped out of sight! Tell us the truth: was it rehab?
BUCK: I wish it was that easy. I’ve been working through a few emotional issues, and my life coach thought it best that I stay out of the spotlight to gain some perspective. I spent a week on an ornamental llama farm, and a fortnight at a meditation retreat in the foothills, specialising in mindful silence and therapeutic yarncraft. I’m feeling much stronger now.
CORAL: I’m glad to hear you’re taking care of yourself. But I hope you’ll be tweeting again soon – the digital space isn’t the same without you!
BUCK: Believe me, I’m planning my social media comeback.
CORAL: Did all that mindful silence allow you any time for romance?
BUCK: Watch this space!
After the reporter and her cams had gone, Buck staggered back up to her private suite and splashed water on her face. She looked in the mirror for a long time, her fingertips brushing over the short curls that were all that remained of her once wild, tangled bronze curls.
She had been sober for two weeks, and Winter had not made an appearance in her head. That was good, right? Perhaps he was done with her. The implant, or whatever it was, might simply have dissolved after a certain amount of time.
Or perhaps he had got better at erasing her memories without leaving a trace. No, she couldn’t think like that, she couldn’t.
She really would go insane.
A trill caught her attention as a subspace call came through. Since she was already sitting at her bathroom mirror, she patched the call through.
“Hey Buck!”
To Buck’s astonishment, it was Chevreuse – a smiling, tired-looking Chevreuse, holding a bundle in her lap.
“Babe, is that your baby?” Buck blurted out.
“It’s a baby, I made a baby!” Chevreuse held up the tiny bundle long enough for Buck to see a pink, scrunched up face. “They’re so much better on the outside, believe me, but noisier and messier. I’m so not doing the organic method again – capsule hatching all the way for future heirs to Montbazon’s fortune.” Her voice dropped to a more business-like tone. “Are you alone?”
No, never alone, never safe, never clear, don’t trust me. “Of course. What’s up?”
“Our Conrad’s got himself into a bit of troub
le. Alek and I just rescued him from this godawful tower on a freaking asteroid where he’d been held prisoner for more than a month. I’d keep him here, but people will start asking too many questions, and it’s not safe to send him back to Paris yet.”
Buck forced her face into a smile. “You want me to take him? I don’t think that’s a good idea …”
“Your place is huge, and there are always guests in and out. It’ll be fine, as long as you can keep his face off social media. Maybe find him a cozy monastery somewhere? Valour has monasteries, right? I know you’re all about the historical reenactment bullshit. I’m putting him on a shuttle to you today.”
“Chev –” but Buck’s mouth wouldn’t work, wouldn’t let her voice craft an excuse.
“You have to keep him clear from any government officials, especially Milord de Winter – he’s the Secretary of the Interior on Valour, I think? In fact, keep Conrad clear of all government officials until after the Fleet have dealt with the Siege of Truth. After that, some Musketeers will be coming by to pick him up – or I will, if they can’t make it. Got it?”
No, no, no.
“No problem,” Buck found herself saying, the words coming out with an easy smile. “I’m sure we can keep ourselves occupied. I’m having a zero gravity tank installed in the summer house.”
Chevreuse laughed and blew kisses. “Awesome. Alek sends – well, you know. Completely platonic but genuine and politically-neutral expressions of friendship. You’ll have Conrad in two to three days. He’ll message you when he docks. Keep our boy safe.”
The call cut out, leaving Buck to sit at her bathroom mirror in a haze of shock. She could hear laughter inside her head. No, not inside at all. She wrneched back the shower door to find the silver-haired man who called himself Winter lying in the empty cubicle with his bare feet up against the edge of the tub, laughing hysterically.
“So glad I stuck around in your brain,” her personal hallucination managed to sputter out, half-choking on his amusement. “This is going to be marvellous.”
44
The Boys From Auster
“Well,” said Conrad Su, his arms folded comfortably behind his head as he settled into the co-pilot’s seat. “Can’t say I’m not disappointed.”
“I am sorry it’s not up to Sir’s usual standards,” replied his rescuer with light sarcasm. “Sonic shower not hot enough?”
“It was tolerable,” Conrad said with a smirk. “You’d think a fancy crate like this would run to a proper claw-foot tub. And maybe a spa.”
Prince Alek rolled his eyes, and punched his friend lightly in the shoulder. “I’ll have one put in for Sir’s next voyage.”
There were many things they were not going to talk about. Like the weeks and weeks of imprisonment that Conrad had endured in the abandoned asteroid base that felt every inch the medieval tower.
Like the interrogation at the hands of his kidnapper, the grey-eyed man who called himself Slate.
Like the fact that Conrad’s wife Jingfei – with whom he had entered a marriage contract that he assumed was based on mutual trust and pragmatism – had been selling secrets to the Cardinal.
Like…
He closed his eyes for a minute.
“You all right?” Alek asked hesitantly.
“Fancy decor’s giving me a headache,” Conrad muttered.
He had never seen this particular ship before. Prince Alek’s Jacaranda was a moth fighter, sleek and ordinary on the outside, but decorated inside with detail worthy of a Palace boudoir.
The colour signature was matte purple, with highlights of glossy purple, shot through with contrast details in violet, iris, lavender, and at least another dozen shades that Conrad would call something other than ‘purple’ if he was talking about bolts of cloth. The walls were lined with actual satin, and punctured with the occasional cluster of genuine pearls.
The Jacaranda was the perfect frivolous gift one might give a prince if one knew absolutely nothing about him.
When Conrad went to clean himself up in the cabin, he had discovered that the back part of the ship was far less objectionable – someone with more modest taste had stripped the soft furnishings off the walls and replaced them with wood-panel lining, along with holographic windows that displayed familiar scenery from home.
The country of Auster, in the southern hemisphere of Honour, with its scalded red hills and dry, grey-green foliage and the occasional, yes, flutter of purple flowers among the dryness and the heat. A place where having a pattern of scales down your amber-brown neck didn’t mark you out as an exotic freak.
Conrad had been wrong. The rear half of the spaceship was worse. It made him homesick in a way he hadn’t been for years.
He didn’t want to think about Auster. Not now, when they were travelling to entirely the wrong planet. Valour, of all places. Chevreuse had laughed at the expression on his face, when he realised he wasn’t being sent back to Paris.
“We can’t afford to have the Prince Consort of the Solar System regularly disappear on rescue missions, you know,” she chided. “He’s supposed to be keeping the home fires burning on Lunar Palais while the Regence gets all the military glory.”
“You don’t know I’d get kidnapped again,” Conrad sulked in reply.
Chevreuse had laughed again, and wrapped her arms around both of “her boys” until their shoulders relaxed into the friendly embrace. It was so long since they had been together, the three of them, without drama.
Conrad missed the old days – back when he and Chevreuse and Alek were a team. Practicing TeamJoust was the only time that he and Alek could be equals instead of master and servant.
He should be used to it by now. Conrad’s family had served Alek’s since they were both children. But it was hard-going when your oldest and closest friend had the power of life and death over yourself and your family.
“Valour will be good for you,” Alek said now, breaking the silence between them. “You haven’t had a holiday in years.”
No, because I couldn’t afford to leave you unsupervised, Conrad thought but did not say aloud.
“I don’t like the idea of you back in Paris without friends close by,” was what he did say. Between the machinations of the Regence and those of the Cardinal, Alek had been isolated from his own allies in the court. The companions and servants who had accompanied him from Honour were stripped out one by one, and then the new supporters like Chevreuse whom he had befriended after his marriage went the same way.
Conrad was the last of them, and he couldn’t help Alek while hiding out on some country estate with the Duchess of frigging Buckingham.
“I wish I was staying with you,” Alek said with a twisted smile.
“Yeah, no way that could go terribly wrong,” Conrad said dryly. After all the trouble he and Chevreuse and the Musketeers had gone to – after all the risks they had taken to enable Alek and Buck to be together, however briefly. No, letting the two of them near each other again was the ultimate bad idea.
“That’s not the reason,” Alek said, sounding remarkably serious. “I mean – yes, obviously, that’s the reason. I promised I would keep my distance from Buck for the remainder of my marriage contract, and I mean to keep my word. But that’s not the reason I have to return so hastily to Paris.”
“Go on, then,” said Conrad, his eyes fixed on his friend. “Surprise me.”
Alek relaxed his hands from the ship controls, and unfastened his embroidered jacket, letting it fall open. Underneath, he wore what looked at first to be a tactical armour vest, though it had no military identification marks on it.
Conrad leaned in, curious about the unfamiliar garment, and then jerked back when he realised what the flat silver pouches in the front of the vest must be. “Are those –”
“The future Regences of the Solar System?” Alek said with a wry smile. “God willing, they are.”
Conrad pressed his hands to his mouth. “But I thought – didn’t she agree to try body pregnanc
ies rather than capsules? It was a clause in your marriage contract.” There had been nights where he scoured that marriage contract, checking over the precise meanings of words and phrases, because he was terrified his friend was going to start a civil war by breaching it. He knew every line by heart.
“It was never going to happen that way,” said Alek in a flat sort of voice, which made it clear he did not want to discuss the details. “Anyway, the Cardinal would not support the Regence uniting the Fleet and going personally into battle without some insurance left behind, for the future of the Crown. Lalla-Louise has agreed to fake a body pregnancy to placate my family and the Elemental factions on Honour who already think I betrayed them with this marriage. It’s not a bad idea for security reasons, anyway.”
Conrad was tempted to reach out and touch the silver pouches, but kept his hands to himself. The enormity of Alek’s sacrifice crashed in on him. Conrad was not a particularly devout Elemental, but it had always been important to Alek to follow his family’s faith as closely as he could, even when his marriage to the Regence meant that he had to publicly join the Church of All.
Damn it all, the future sovereign of the Solar System was sitting on Alek’s chest, along with a bunch of his or her backup siblings, and Alek had still thrown himself into a physical fight to rescue his friend.
“Why on earth would you risk them to come after me?” Conrad blurted, horrified.
“Well, I wasn’t going to leave them behind,” said Alek, which didn’t answer the question at all. He reached out, and cuffed Conrad lightly on the back of the head. “It’s fine. The capsules are like armour, built to withstand laser fire and sword thrusts. It’s supposed to be good for them to experience different sounds and vibrations while they’re gestating. Develops the brain better, or something.”
“Sounds and vibrations like you punching that bastard kidnapper of mine in the head?”
“Exactly.”
The Jacaranda was supplied with discreet New Aristocrat protocols that allowed him to bypass most of Valour’s security requirements. They landed in a green field, instead of an official air dock.
Musketeer Space Page 41