by Cara Bristol
The councilor was the twins’ father? How tragic for a parent to have both sons stricken. Naimo and Kur’s father held his emotions in check and dropped back into his seat, his expression blank.
“When will you know more?” another councilor asked.
“In the next few days.”
“Why not sooner?” he asked.
“I do not recognize the chemical structure of the substance identified in the preliminary scan. It appears to be…alien.”
Everyone in the councilory turned to stare at the only “alien” in the room.
Well, this is awkward. He’d been in a lot of uncomfortable situations, but never had he felt this conspicuous.
“With respect, your Grace, I warned this would happen if we joined the Association of Planets,” Kur and Naimo’s father spoke again. “When we open our doors to the galaxy, we invite in all manner of foreign contagion,” he growled. The others murmured in agreement.
With a slicing motion of his hand, Emperor Dusan quelled the rumble. “You have my deepest sympathies for the illness of your sons, and I pledge the full resources of the imperial court to heal them, Councilor Omax. However, joining the AOP was my decision, and it stands. I do not believe this situation arose from our friendship treaty with the galaxy. We will hear no more on the subject.” He shifted his attention from the councilory box to the healer. “How was the poison administered?”
“I believe their food, the morning meal, was tainted.”
Except Kur had sickened several hours before Naimo, and, in fact, he hadn’t appeared well at the banquet. He’d started to sweat profusely—just like Naimo had during the Sha’A’la.
“Are you sure?” March spoke up.
Everyone gaped at him.
“You are not allowed to question the healer,” barked a glowering Omax.
“Let him speak,” Dusan said. “Why do you ask, Mr. Fellows?”
“At last night’s banquet, Kur appeared a little ill. He had begun to sweat and complained of the room being warm. Today, during the Sha’A’la, Naimo also began to perspire. At the time, I attributed it to the exertion, but it is possible they were poisoned last night.”
“This is not good.” The healer shook his head. “That means the poison has been in their systems far longer than we thought.”
“Also…” March paused. He didn’t wish to step on any toes or speak out of turn, but they had jumped to conclusions without considering other possibilities. “Has anyone else complained of illness? Could it be Naimo and Kur are not the sole victims?”
“Great Xenia!” gasped a councilor.
Perhaps the twins hadn’t been exposed to an alien toxin; maybe it was a simple, but virulent case of natural food poisoning. Maybe those leggy fishy things had gone bad—or maybe they were venomous creatures that needed to be handled a certain way to neutralize the toxin.
Then again, someone could have altered the food. Naimo and Kur might have been victims of a biological attack. Lamis-Odg was still on the warpath. The only people the terrorist nation hated as much as the Terrans were the Xenians. No one from Lamis-Odg—or Malondus, their chief ally—had been invited, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t contracted the killing and sneaked someone on planet. Many alien dignitaries had been admitted for the ceremonies. No matter how stringent the vetting, a terrorist could have slipped through the cracks.
The emperor pressed his lips together. “Mr. Fellows makes a good point. We must consider all possibilities. Be discreet. We do not wish to alarm the guests, but query them and see how they are feeling. If any have fallen ill, they must be treated.”
“At once,” the healer said. “We will test the food scraps from last night’s banquet.”
“Keep me apprised of the medical analysis and Naimo and Kur’s conditions.” The emperor dismissed the healer.
Silence followed the medicine man’s departure.
Omax broke it. “Your Grace, forgive me for raising such an uncomfortable and unfortunate subject, but there is an exigent matter that must be dealt with.” He paused for a deep breath. “We must decide what will occur if the healer cannot save my son, Naimo.” He pointed a crooked, almost accusatory finger at March. “Under our customs, if the challenger wins the battle, he claims the mate.”
Shock ricocheted through March’s body. Heat flooded him, and his ears burned. Nanocytes buzzed. Claim Julietta? Become her mate?
“But, he is an alien, and our tradition does not allow an offworlder to become a bonded mate of any citizen, let alone the consort of the future empress. If, my son Naimo…should pass, who shall succeed him as the princess’s consort?”
“That is a good question. What say you?” The emperor looked at the old woman, their esteemed seer, March realized. The one who’d matched the imperial couple.
Deep-set piercing black eyes peered out from her deeply wrinkled face. White tufts of hair sprang up from an otherwise bald head. She looked ancient enough to have been around when Sha’A’la had first begun. “Two paths shall converge into one.” The old woman closed her eyes and remained still so long March wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then she stirred. “All will be as it was foretold. Patience. We must wait for it.
* * * *
Dusan dismissed March so the council could convene in private. If he had to bet, he’d place his credits on being on the agenda. He’d been seated between Naimo and Kur at the banquet and had been in the arena with Naimo when he collapsed. Participating hadn’t been his choice, but would they remember? No one had outright accused him of anything, but distrust had drifted from the councilory box like storm clouds across an angry sky. Could he blame them? With two people seeming to have been poisoned, perhaps a little paranoia could be healthy.
As soon as he left the chamber, he hailed Brock.
Fill me in, the other cyborg said.
It’s looking like Naimo and Kur were poisoned, he explained as he strode through the palace. Their condition is critical. The healer believes the origin is alien.
Alien? Lamis-Odg? Malodonian? Brock arrived at the same theory March had.
He doesn’t know yet, but that would be my guess unless evidence proves otherwise. If the perpetrator can halt the bonding, he can delay the coronation of the future empress and throw the planet into chaos. While they’re scrambling, figuring out who will rule, Lamis-Odg might get a toehold onto the planet.
Xenia orbited a strategic location. Gaining an outpost would make it easier for the terrorists to launch attacks on the galaxy.
Even if Lamis-Odg didn’t cause this, they might still use the political upheaval, Brock replied.
March feared the same thing. You’d think they’d give the current emperor an extension or relax the age requirement. If Kur and Naimo don’t survive, their deaths might be a tragedy for the two men and for Jules, but it doesn’t have to be for the nation.
Jules? Brock asked.
Shit. Had he said Jules? Julietta, I mean.
You called her Jules. You have a nickname for Princess Julietta?
Slip of the tongue. From the database in his cyberbrain, he pulled up a schematic of the imperial palace.
You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?
Nothing any more stupid than what he’d already done. Nothing to worry about.
All right, then. Getting back to your previous point, about why the emperor couldn’t continue to rule, it would be akin to the Terra United President and the complete line of succession being wiped out. As the immediate past president, Pia’s mother Mikala couldn’t just assume the office because she’d held it once before.
March got a fix on his destination and closed out the diagram. A normal man could get lost in the sprawling palace, but he plotted the coordinates. The processor in his brain would guide him. Well, it seems shortsighted. They should have a plan B.
They did have a plan B. It fell through, Brock argued. Each emperor produces an heir and a spare. While you were in with the emperor and his council, I did a little research.
Unfortunately, the current emperor’s brother died in a shuttle crash ten years ago.
It’s a very short line of succession.
It’s a short line, true. But, in their defense, they’ve been an isolated nation of pacifists for a millennium. Until now, they haven’t needed alternatives. Who plans for something that happens once in a thousand years? And it hasn’t happened yet. Naimo and Kur might recover.
I hope so. The bonding ceremony has been postponed indefinitely.
I figured as much. The guests have begun to depart.
Striding through the corridors, he attracted scrutiny ranging from curious to accusatory before the individuals looked away. It wasn’t hard to guess their thoughts: there he is—the Terran challenger who was in the arena when Naimo collapsed into a convulsing heap. Was he responsible? Had he caused it? Xenians were too polite to gawk, but the alien guests showed no such restraint. He pretended he didn’t notice. When are you leaving? March asked. Brock and Penelope had come for the ceremony, but now it was off.
Depends on you. Penelope needs to return to Terra, and I have a mission, but if you want me to stick around, Carter can assign someone else.
No, I can handle the situation. Dusan asked me to stay for a bit, but I’ll be leaving soon.
Okay. If you need anything, hail me. Should I clue in Carter?
No, I’ll contact him.
March’s cyborg brain recorded everything he saw. The palace operated like a city, industrious and self-sustaining. Rooms reflected past and present and hinted of the future. He noted dining hall after dining hall, multiple guest wings, map galleries, and theaters with holograms and computer screens, halls with artwork depicting the history and imperial lineage, and a weapons museum filled with artifacts. The latter was vacant, and though he wanted to get to the other side of the palace, he ducked inside for a peek.
Sabers, not unlike the ones he and Naimo had used in the Sha’A’la, and other long blades covered an entire wall, but they represented a small portion of the weaponry on display. The warring tribes had employed battle axes for throwing and cutting, flails with vicious balls chain-linked to short poles, spiked-bladed halberds and other pole axes, billhook machetes, and more daggers than he’d seen in his life. To attack with those weapons required a high tolerance for cruelty and a special brand of courage. It was quite different from firing a photon blaster from hundreds of meters away or detonating a microexplosive device after you’d vacated the area.
That Xenians had overcome their violent beginnings, save for the vestiges of the ritualized Sha’A’la, which served as a testament to the will and might of their emperors. Aggression was entrenched in their past, and somebody hadn’t been able to rise above it.
Farther into the palace complex and away from the area where the ceremony guests had been housed, the people he passed were servants or guards, and he garnered more intense scrutiny. People watched him as he passed. After a guard stopped him to ask whether he needed help, a polite way of questioning whether he had a right to be there, he shifted into stealth mode, checking corridors before entering, dodging servants and guards by ducking into the vacant chambers.
He had no wish for his foray, neither sanctioned nor prudent, to get back to the emperor or the council. Nothing about his intention was right: not the time, not the place, not recent events.
However, Xenia had put its past aside, and March intended to do the same. He’d come for answers, and he would get them before he left.
Call it luck or fate, but the corridor outside the princess’s residence was vacant. He halted outside her door, and, taking a deep breath, tapped the screen and hailed her.
Chapter Nine
Julietta’s quarters formed a quad, one room leading to the next: a bedchamber, a private sitting room, a library, a small drawing room for meeting guests. In the middle, a courtyard garden bloomed with native flowers, fuzzy orange-leafed blossoms of huber and fuchsia. At night, they closed up into tight little pods like they’d put themselves to sleep. Of all the flora, she favored a small flowering bush imported from Earth. A peony in the palest pink. A whiff of its sweet scent transported her back to a night on Terra when March had hopped a fence and stolen a single peony blossom from someone’s garden.
What brought March here? Why now?
The doors to the drawing room stood open, and she could hear the summoning hail of someone requesting an audience. She ignored it to lift one of the heavy flower heads to her nose. She breathed in the seductive scent, and pain seized her heart in a fierce grip. How in the galaxy had he ended up in the arena? Why, oh why, did she care more about his welfare than she did that of Naimo who’d fought for her and now battled for his life? Out of the shock of his collapse, relief had risen.
I will not be bonded today.
I am a horrible person.
Another persistent hail sounded from inside. Julietta frowned, hoping her mother and or Marji hadn’t returned to comfort her some more. She’d managed to convince them to leave minutes ago and had ordered the servants not to disturb her for any reason. Whoever stood in the corridor could go away. If the princess, the future empress couldn’t decide who she would or wouldn’t see, then what was the point?
Her headdress and bonding ceremony attire had been taken away, and she’d changed into a simple day tunic, comfortable pants, and sandals so she could walk in the garden. Julietta rubbed a sore indentation the headdress had left on her temple.
Everyone would assume she’d gone into solitude to deal with the worry of her chosen falling ill. But it was guilt and shame she wrestled with, not sorrow.
She did care about Naimo—as she would for anyone who had sickened. Possible poisoning, she’d been informed. His brother, Kur, too. That they might have been targeted because of her, to prevent the bonding, caused her pain. She wished neither of them harm.
Not even when she’d compared her chosen to March and her future consort had come up lacking by a wide margin. Nor when she’d held her breath during the Sha’A’la and wished for Naimo to lose. Of course, he wouldn’t. The outcome—like her chosen himself—had been determined. But her eyes had been on the challenger, committing to memory a man with bulging, rippling muscles, who moved with lightning speed and thundering power yet hardly broke a sweat.
Had it been a real fight, Naimo couldn’t have won. That had become clear to her at the start.
Except the intended mate never lost. Never.
Then the unthinkable had happened. Naimo had fallen. By default, March had won.
Another hail sounded, more insistent. Heartache and despair vented outward into fury, propelling her from the garden into the drawing room. She swiped her palm across the screen to open the door.
“I said I was not to be disturb—”
“Hello…Julietta,” March said.
Time and distance vanished so that only she and he existed. The air thickened, weighing heavily on her body as if it would drag her down even as lightness filled her head. For years, he’d existed as a memory she’d kept alive with longing and dreams. He stood here in the flesh, solid and real. She drank him in, absorbing the sight of him, the smell. He had changed, but she’d have recognized him anywhere. Despair mingled with joy to be inseparable. Her body swayed toward him, but she caught herself, and marshaled her training and heritage to keep from flinging herself into his arms and weeping. “What are you doing here?”
“On Xenia—or outside your quarters?”
She didn’t know what she meant. “On Xenia, for starters.”
He glanced up and down the corridor. “Would you like me to stand out here and tell you?”
Naimo would recover, she would be bonded, would give birth to a child, and in a year, would accept the scepter to the empire. Every second in March’s company plunged a dagger into her heart, each one a fatal wound in its own right. “Is it a long story?”
“I could make it one.” Blue eyes turned frosty.
“I never meant to hurt you. I’m sorry. I can’t sp
eak to you.” She reached for the scanner to close the door.
He shouldered past her into her quarters.
She gaped. “What are you doing? You have no right to enter!”
He jerked his head at the controls. “Close the door.”
“Maybe I’ll call the guards instead.” She reached for the call button.
He grabbed her wrist and pressed her hand to the screen, locking them in together. He released her and planted himself between her and the call button. Julietta rubbed her wrist. Though his hand had been callused and rough, his touch hadn’t been hurtful. The March of her past had had the smooth skin of an academic who spent the majority of his time indoors. She didn’t know what work he did now, but she guessed he didn’t teach at the university.
Stolen glimpses at the banquet and in the arena hadn’t prepared her for the effect of his presence. He had grown taller and acquired heavy, thick muscles, though there wasn’t a gram of excess fat on him anywhere. Maturity bracketed his mouth and etched the skin around his temples, but his eyes still reflected the Terran sky. Full lips, no longer soft, slashed across his face with dislike.
His nostrils flared as he exhaled, and then he raked a hand through his hair. He tilted his head. This time, when he looked at her, his anger had evaporated, and his eyes appeared haunted.
She’d earned his anger; his pain was more than she could bear. “March…”
“I shouldn’t be here. I apologize.” He turned to leave.
“Wait!” The entreaty was torn from her. What am I doing? Let him go. ”You’re right. We should talk.” She motioned to a settee. “Would you like to sit?”
“No, but I will.” He positioned himself with his legs spread wide, his hands clasped between his knees, taking up the entire space. He didn’t need to stake out his territory to prevent her from sitting next him; she wouldn’t have dared to join him. Distance was the only protection she had.
She lowered herself onto an opposite chair. “How have you been?” It sounded so inane, she winced.