by R. C. Lewis
I couldn’t stay in that room, couldn’t take the view, couldn’t face the two Exiles. I turned and strode back to the door. It wouldn’t open.
“Dane, let me out of here.”
If he heard the tremor in my voice, he didn’t show it, just keyed in the code for me.
“Tell the guards I’m going down to visit the drones, and I’ll break anyone who tries to stop me.”
IT TOOK ME TWICE AS LONG as it should have to find the spaceport hangar on my own, but Dane had clearly called ahead as requested. No one gave me any trouble. The attendant even opened the shuttle’s hatch for me.
“Will there be anything else, miss?” he asked.
My glare was enough to send him scurrying back to his station.
I went aboard, knowing I’d be left alone. With the shuttle’s landing struts held by the hangar’s docking clamps, I couldn’t have stolen the thing if I’d wanted to. Some of the tension leeched from my body as I walked into the engine compartment and caught a slight whiff of coolant. The shuttle was the one truly familiar place on Candara. Best of all, there were things to do. I found the drones on standby.
“Wake up, you two.”
Their little lights sparked to life, but I noticed a slight high-pitched whine as Dimwit’s systems came online. “Dimwit Essie.”
That was all it took for tears to press at the corners of my eyes. This blazing emotional nonsense is getting right embarrassing.
“I missed you, too, you walking disaster. Sounds like that business with the solar screen might’ve done a number on you. Cusser, how are your systems doing?”
“All systems nominal, Essie. Assistance required?”
“You want to help stitch up Dimwit? Grab the gear.”
Cusser got the requested items, but its arm fell dead before it got back to me, causing it to swear even more colorfully than usual.
“Truly, what do you do with your actuators when I’m not looking?”
“Cusser blowout Cusser.”
“Shut it, Dimwit.” Cusser’s retort was unexpected but unsurprising. It had certainly heard me say the same thing enough times.
“Settle down, I’ll get both of you stitched,” I said.
Without my own computer and tailored diagnostics, it wasn’t quite the same, but I settled in and started tinkering. The usual patch worked on Cusser’s arm. Dimwit had a few connectors loose—whether from the stunt with the solar screen or ordinary wear and tear, it was hard to say. I tightened those up and tested out the contacts on its primary circuit boards.
The work soothed me, drawing the itching-and-twitching out of my hands. Circuits and actuators, puzzles and programs…that was the world I belonged in. The one that made sense.
A pair of voices approached outside the shuttle. I tensed and paused in my work until I could make out what they said.
“—told her not to bother.” Male voice, sounded young.
“As you should. I keep telling you, Pondu, looks aren’t everything.” Also male, but more gravelly, possibly older.
“I know, I know. So what have we got today?”
“General systems check on number eight, and a complete power boost on number eleven. Come on, now, you need to keep up.”
Their footsteps faded as they walked on. Just a couple of maintenance engineers. I got back to working a stitch on Dimwit’s rear pair of legs. They’d sounded a touch grindy.
“Come on outside,” I said after a moment. “Let’s see if you can run, Dimwit.”
We exited through the hatch but only got two more steps before both of Dimwit’s back legs locked up. Cusser swore on Dimwit’s behalf, probably out of sympathy. I sighed and crouched down to find the problem. The legs were losing the signal somewhere along the way. Probably more loose connectors than I’d expected.
I spotted the two engineers across the hangar, doing that systems check on a small hover-vehicle. They spotted me, too, but looked more curious about the drones than me. They eyed Dimwit for a minute before turning back to their work. With my scarf covering my hair, I wasn’t that interesting. Their voices carried easily, but beyond their checklist, all I gathered was that the younger one—Pondu—had a girlfriend the other, Mikat, thought he shouldn’t be with.
“There, can you at least move the left one now, Dimwit?”
It could, but only through the first joint. I went back to tracing out connections.
“Whatcha doing?”
I jumped at the voice behind me, but quickly relaxed. It belonged to a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old. She looked like she wanted to come closer but wasn’t sure she dared.
“Just repairing this drone. What are you doing?”
“I’m here with my dad.” She pointed to Mikat but kept her eyes on the drones. “What are their names?”
“This here’s Dimwit, and that’s Cusser.”
She frowned. “Those aren’t very nice names.”
“Aye, you’re probably right, but they’re fitting.”
“Why do you talk funny?”
“Tatsa!” Mikat called out before I had a chance to answer. “What’re you doing over there?”
“Systems checks are boring, Dad.”
He gave her a definite Look but spoke to me. “Sorry, miss, is she bothering you? She has a particular fascination with robots.”
“Please can I help?” Tatsa asked. “I’m a really good helper.”
I supposed I didn’t mind, though her father might if Cusser decided to demonstrate how it earned its name.
“It’s fine,” said another voice behind me. This one was familiar and got Mikat to smile and turn back to his own work. “I’m sure Essie could use a hand.”
Tatsa’s eyes lit with similar recognition. “Hi, Dane!”
“Hi, there,” he replied, sitting on the floor next to me. “I bet Essie needs the rest of her gear. Still in the shuttle?”
I nodded, and Tatsa scurried up the ramp to retrieve the case.
“What’s wrong with Dimwit?” Dane continued, but more quietly. “I didn’t botch something when I adjusted his programming, did I?”
The urge to say yes tempted me, but I didn’t have any reason to believe that was true. The tone in his voice made it hard to concentrate, so I kept my eyes on the drone. “I don’t think so. Just need to tighten up the signal transfers, and its gait calibration might be out of sync.”
Tatsa jumped off the side of the ramp with my gear bouncing against her leg. “Here you go! What do you need?”
“A narrower signal tracer, for starters.”
She handed me the right tool before I could explain what it looked like. Not a bad assistant, even if she was awfully small. Then again, I was that small once.
“Do you come here often with your dad?” I asked.
“Kind of. Why?”
“Just seems like it could be dangerous with all the shuttles and equipment.”
She shrugged. “Nah, I’m careful. It’s just as dangerous for you.”
“Dimwit Essie protect Essie.”
The little girl giggled at the pronouncement, but I rolled my eyes. “You think you’re going to protect me, do you? Did you get a defense subroutine I don’t know about?”
“Essie writes all drone subroutines,” Cusser answered.
Tatsa bounced on her toes. “You should program them to fight! I bet they’d be great at it.”
“Not a bad idea,” Dane murmured. I dared a glance at him but couldn’t read his expression. Like he was thinking about something else, but then he shook it off. “Does Cusser need anything?”
“No, I—Don’t say it, Cusser!” Its arm chose that moment to lock up again. “I just fixed that.”
“Come here, I’ll take a look,” Dane said. “Maybe Tatsa will have some ideas.”
He set to work while I kept at it with Dimwit. Tatsa handed me whatever tools I needed. When Dane already had one, I got it from him directly.
There was something very different about the way Dane’s fingers brushed
mine as he handed me a tool. Tatsa’s touch was light, fleeting, while Dane’s lingered. It prompted me to glance at what he was using a few times and find an excuse for needing the same thing. There was something else, too, in the way Dane talked to the little girl, listening to her prattle and letting her make a few adjustments herself.
It made me think of the person we pulled from the shuttle on Thanda rather than the one who knocked me out and took me away.
We tinkered and stitched until all drone limbs were functional. Just as we were finishing up, Mikat and Pondu walked back across the hangar.
“Come along, Tatsa, time to go,” Mikat said. He offered another smile to Dane before turning back to his companion. “All I’m saying is, with that much aggravation, is she worth it? Is one girl worth it?”
Tatsa thanked us and ran after her father, but I wasn’t listening. Dane and I gathered the gear and got the drones back in the shuttle, but I wasn’t paying attention to any of that, either.
“Essie, are you all right?” Dane asked as he walked me back to my room.
“Aye, I’m fine.”
The answer was automatic, but it was also a lie. Mikat’s words about Pondu’s demanding girlfriend shouldn’t have meant anything to me, but that didn’t stop them. They rattled and cycled and festered inside me, refusing to leave me alone.
I couldn’t figure why the words bothered me so much. But they did.
For three days, I kept busy with the drones down in the hangar, stitching solutions to new problems, brainstorming for a basic defense subroutine, and pretending a second quake didn’t faze me. Dane kept me company most of the time. Our conversations centered around actuators and coding options. Nothing about the council, Windsong, my father, or the so-called war. It made our days working together strangely relaxed, but it couldn’t change the truth.
The council began deliberations leading to a vote. In response, I spent a good part of each night staring at the ceiling of my room, Mikat’s words pounding in my ears.
Is she worth it? Is one girl worth it?
What am I worth?
Do what needs doing, Essie.
Only one answer made sense.
“Essie, get up!”
I had enough time to register Dane’s panicked voice and open my eyes just before he grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet.
“What—what’s going on? Quake—attack—?”
“No, not that,” he said. His eyes darted to the door and back to me. “It—I just—oh, tank it!”
One hand still had my arm, and the other went to my cheek. He pulled me close—too close—and pressed his lips to mine. By the time I processed that he was kissing me and started considering what to do about it, he’d moved on to dragging me out of the room.
“Come on. We have to go.”
None of this made sense. My brain couldn’t keep up, not when I’d been sound asleep moments earlier. We were out in the hall before I came up with words again. His panic hadn’t faded, and the unfamiliarity of it made me anxious.
“Dane, what in blazes—where are we going?”
“I’ve got the shuttle prepped. I’m taking you back to Thanda.”
Back to Whirligig and the others. Away from the uncertainty and fear. Back to hiding. Away from responsibility. Too many emotions vied for my attention. I couldn’t figure where to start, and my indecision gave Dane time to drag me around a corner and into a lift. Finally I went with the easiest response.
“Now? Now you’re taking me back? Why?”
Dane’s eyes were anxious, his whole body tense. “Kip’s getting outvoted. They’re going to trade you for the prisoners.”
“So? It was your idea.”
“I can’t do it! I didn’t know about the queen, and I can’t trade your life for theirs. It’s not right—it’s not what my father would want.”
His father. A man who’d been captured because of my escape years ago. Because Kip refused to kill me. And he wasn’t alone.
Thanda, my lab, and the drones felt farther away than ever.
“Dane, it’s the only way to get him back.”
“I’ll have to find another.”
He dragged me along another hall before I dug in my heels. I had to do what needed doing. “No. I’m not going. My life is worth saving a dozen or more.”
He looked at me the same way I looked at Dimwit when it tried to repair a blown gasket with a block of wood. “That’s absolutely not true.”
Dane took my arm again, but I wrenched it away and shoved him back, the words bursting from behind an eight-year-old dam. “What good am I to anyone, then? Help a few miners so they can be lazy drunks? Hide on a frozen rock? What good is that? What blazing good have I ever done anyone?”
“You can do anything you want, because you’ll be free and alive!”
The fire left my voice. “I’ve been both of those for years, but it was borrowed time. I was never meant to be either.”
“What’s wrong with you, Essie? Why are you talking like this?”
I tried to evade the question by heading back to the lift, but Dane was too quick, blocking me. “The cost of my freedom was too high, all right? I didn’t…I didn’t know that until I came here. Blazes, that’s a lie. I knew about the war, knew it was my fault, but I didn’t do anything about it. And I didn’t want to know what happened to Kip and anyone else on Windsong when I left. Didn’t want to think that people lost their families because of me. But now I can try to make it right.”
His eyes widened. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t taken you from Thanda, you wouldn’t be thinking this way.”
“Willful blindness is no way to live.”
He crossed his arms and stood his ground. “I’m not letting them trade you like a case of merinium. I’d rather not knock you out again to get you on the shuttle. So what do you want me to do?”
I thought about it. “I want you to tell me why you kissed me before you explained what’s happening.”
Dane didn’t expect that, and it got him to shift a little. “Figured once I told you about the council, you’d break my nose and make your move to steal the shuttle yourself. So my last chance was before I told you. Kind of thought you’d break my nose because I kissed you, but I took the risk.”
“Why?”
“You’re not what I expected to find on Thanda. Not a spoiled princess, and not a tyrant’s daughter.”
“I am a tyrant’s daughter.”
“No, it’s like Kip said. I didn’t know your mother, but there’s more of her than Matthias in you. You’re not like him. You’re nothing like I expected, and with everything you are…” He trailed off, shaking his head. When he spoke again, his voice held no arguments, no explanations. Just an ache I’d never heard before. “How could I not kiss you?”
I’d thought my mind was as settled as the frozen poles of Thanda, that I would let myself be traded to repay the debt I’d incurred years ago. But that was before I had to endure Dane looking at me like he was, with new determination flickering in his eyes.
“Please, Essie,” he said. “Let me take you home. Let me make it right.”
If I went through with the trade, Dane would blame himself, and I didn’t like that. He may have taken me from Thanda, but it was just one step on a path I’d begun with my escape from Windsong. If I let him take me back to hide behind mine-drones and cage fights…it would never be the same. I couldn’t forget the price of my freedom.
There had to be another choice.
I had to create one.
Do what needs doing, even if it terrifies you.
Only one option remained. The one I’d never been willing to acknowledge, but now I had to.
“Right, then, I’ll go home.” Dane relaxed and smiled at my words, but I wasn’t done. “Home,” I went on, “is Windsong.”
His smile vanished. “Essie—”
“I have an idea. Tell the council I’ll see them in two hours.”
Emotions battled in Dane’s eyes. At last, he let
me by, but not without calling after me. “Why didn’t you break my nose?”
I only had one answer to give, and it troubled me most of all.
“I don’t know yet.”
Back in my room, getting more sleep was out of the question. I had too much to do.
First, I spent a heap of time figuring the frivolous items the council had stocked my room with. Exfoliants and moisturizers, buffers and balms, and things that had names I couldn’t make sense of. Whatever they were called, they succeeded in getting my skin soft and smooth, my nails shining rather than chipped.
I gave up my headscarf, leaving my hair down, straight and sleek and white as my name. I considered the jeweled combs but didn’t know what to do with them. My own clothes weren’t good enough, so I rifled through the contents of the closet. It held row upon row of satin and silk, too much to choose from. I finally selected a red silk tunic with delicate silver trim and paired it with black pants. The fabrics felt like a warm memory, yet at the same time made me squirm. The last step was the trickiest. I didn’t have any experience with makeup, but I remembered watching my mother apply hers. A steady hand for eyeliner and mascara, just a touch of blush and red lips, and I was finished.
My mirror-self stared back at me with one piece that still echoed my mother—my eyes. But hers had never shown such uncertainty. I couldn’t let mine show it, either. A few deep breaths steadied everything, from my hands to my nerves. I didn’t look like myself. No problem—I had to be someone else for what I was about to do.
Two hours after leaving Dane in that random corridor, I arrived at the council chamber. The guards couldn’t hide their surprise at my appearance, but they threw open the doors without a word.
Shoulders straight, Essie. Chin level. Just like Mother.
The council sat around the large table, caught in the midst of an argument. Dane was the first to spot me, his lips parting in mute surprise. The older council members followed his gaze, and the room went silent.
“You wanted a queen,” I said solidly, pushing my Thandan accent aside. “You’ve got one.”
DANE MANAGED TO FORM words amidst the gaping, sort of. “Ess—what?”