by V. St. Clair
“Think of how it will look if I unleash you all on the Academy when most of the people there have no idea what happened. You all tearing through their classrooms, terrorizing the Gifted won’t accomplish anything except to show them that we’ve been rattled. Most of the Gifted are not a part of Hera’s movement, and may never get word of this unfortunate incident if we aren’t foolish enough to tell them, thus minimizing the damage to your reputations.”
Most of the Majors looked like they were beginning to calm down at this rational explanation of things. Jessamine exhaled a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. These people were her greatest defenders, the most powerful fighting force on the planet, and she trusted them daily with her life.
But still, a niggling voice in the back of her mind whispered. If they ever turned on you, you would be powerless to stop them. Your family only lives because these people have decided to protect you and serve you, and they are very angry right now…
“The first thing we must do is locate Maxton Mercuria,” the Viceroy continued. “I want a full search of the city for him, but don’t frighten the populace in the process. They’re bound to be shell-shocked when they see a horde of you barging into their businesses and homes, so be sure and tell them we are looking for a wanted man who tried to murder a high-ranking member of the government. There is no need to mention a Major was attacked, that Mercuria was a prisoner who has escaped, nor that the attack was partially successful.”
The others looked placated by this, and Fox nodded gratefully from his place on the bench, still looking drawn and woebegone. Jessamine wasn’t sure he would ever recover his reputation over this, no matter what the Viceroy said now. He would forever be the Provo-Major who lost his greatest weapons to a couple of young adults in the bathroom of a nightclub.
“I want a task force of Provo-Minor who monitor the Academy video feeds to turn to the task of identifying the girl while we await hospital reports,” the Viceroy continued. “Fox, you will need to sit with a sketch artist to try and give them something to work with, and they will forward any promising footage to you for review. Similarly, I want them to track anyone who hasn’t checked in for the night; this girl could be on the run, for all we know. Anyone who misses curfew will make the process much faster for us, and eventually we will know who she is and pull her biochip files. After your peers have tracked down Mercuria they can turn their attention to her and—”
“Excellency,” Fox’s voice was very quiet and shaky all of a sudden, but everyone in the room could hear him plainly.
“Yes?”
Fox looked like he would rather swallow fire than say whatever he was about to say now, but he forced himself onwards.
“It’s…the situation is worse than you know,” he hesitated. “The girl is the bigger threat—she’s everything. We have to put every resource we have into finding her and eliminating her as soon as possible, even if we have to bust down doors in the Academy and reveal what happened to me to the people there.”
Jessamine narrowed her eyebrows in confusion as her father said, “And why is that?”
“Your Excellency…the girl is a psychic, and she read my mind before she escaped with the prisoner.”
Jessamine could have heard a pin drop in the silence. No one seemed to know how to react to this astonishing piece of information.
“There are no psychics in the Academy, or we would have dealt with them a long time ago,” one of his colleagues spoke uncertainly into the silence.
Fox shook his head. “When they were fighting me, she looked into my eyes and—I felt her there.” He looked like he was struggling with the words to describe it. “She pulled things out of my head, she said them aloud…things she can’t possibly know otherwise.”
Oh shit, Jessamine’s lips parted in surprise as the full weight of this set in. The Provo-Major had access to their most classified government secrets, including troop movements, battle contingency plans, security systems, shift rotations, and emergency override codes. Everything.
And one of our Provo-Majors had his mind read by a psychic. She now holds some of his most powerful weapons and is likely working with the woman who is trying to bring down our entire government…
The Viceroy’s voice was ice when he said, “Wake the Minors up, now. All other assignments are on hold, all vacations cancelled. I want every one of them reviewing tapes until they’ve found the girl, and I want the others stationed at every building in the Academy looking for her. Notify all levels that all emergency override codes and access passwords are to be changed immediately.”
“And when we find her?” Gareth asked, rising to his feet with the rest of his peers who were preparing to descend on the city of Silveria.
“Capture her if you can, kill her if you can’t,” the Viceroy finished coldly.
The Provo divided into teams and began coordinating their search efforts while the Viceroy lectured his youngest daughter on the ill effects of overstepping her boundaries. Shellina looked pouty and chastened by the rebuke, but Jessamine was too busy trying to catch a particular Major’s eye to pay much attention to her sister’s embarrassment.
She descended the steps quickly, hoping to get in a private word with Topher before he left. She lost him in the crowd of Majors as she descended the stairs. Once on the ground, she scanned the room rapidly and spotted him at the doors of the nearest elevator.
“Major Topher,” she called out, hastening her stride to catch up to him and his two colleagues. Due to the high ceilings in the Chamber, her voice echoed and carried much more loudly than she intended, drawing the momentary attention of almost everyone in the room, including her father and sister.
Topher stood outside the open doors of the elevator while his colleagues preceded him in.
“Vicerina?” he asked neutrally, ignoring the attention of the others.
“May I speak with you privately before you depart?” Jessamine lowered her voice considerably as more people got in, but she knew his colleagues in the elevator could probably hear every word she said. Hanna had told her that the other Majors teased Topher for being a favorite of hers, and encouraged Jessamine not to be alone with him too often to avoid more rumors.
If the Majors in the elevator with them were the ones Hanna warned her about, they would doubtless add this encounter to their arsenal when ribbing Topher about it. She felt a momentary need to explain herself that she immediately squashed.
I am the Vicerina of this planet. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.
Topher’s eyes narrowed slightly as though he too was contemplating the possibilities, but then his expression returned to neutral.
“Of course,” he replied evenly, not that there was any other answer he could give a member of her family. His peers stopped holding the door for him and it shut almost instantly, sending them down to the two-hundredth floor. Topher hit the button to call it back after its descent.
In less than a minute the elevator returned and Jessamine and Topher stepped into it, along with half a dozen other Majors who were preparing to depart as well.
“Top floor, please,” she said to the one standing nearest the buttons, and Kristoph tapped the button with a sideways glance at Topher, who looked completely impassive and simply stared straight ahead.
It was completely silent in the elevator as they moved upwards, which made her doubly glad it was a short trip. The silence was oppressive to her, not the least of which because she was stuck in an elevator with a half-dozen furious Provo who were eager to avenge their comrade, and she knew her presence was the only thing keeping them quiet at this point. It made her wonder uneasily what secrets they might be hiding from her.
She suppressed those dark musings. Her people were entitled to their own private thoughts. It was beneath her to doubt her own Provo.
She and Topher departed the elevator at the top floor, back in the residential quarters of the Viceroy and his family. Most of the lights were dimmed or shut off by now,
and their footsteps sounded loud as they walked silently through the living room and continued through three more large open spaces before turning down the hall leading to Jessamine’s private rooms, passing only a few housekeepers and attendants.
“Shall we speak in the living room?” Topher suggested suddenly, though they had already passed through it.
“I would prefer not to be overheard,” Jessamine replied, wondering why he was always so averse to being alone with her. Maybe the other Provo gave him more grief about it than she thought…
They stopped outside the entrance to her personal quarters, where Hanna was waiting for her. Hanna took one steely-eyed look at Topher and frowned slightly.
“Beg pardon, Vicerina,” she spoke into the silence. “Perhaps you should have discussions with the Major in the main sitting room.” She looked embarrassed but resolved.
“I appreciate your concern, Hanna, but I require a private word with the Major before he departs on assignment. My sitting room is the only place I can guarantee we are not overheard.”
“I understand, Excellence, and you are entitled to conduct your business in a place of your choosing, but with your recent engagement—”
Ugh, this is about the Hamishes. Of course.
Immediately wary of her motives, Jessamine interrupted. “Did my father put you up to this?”
Hanna blushed and answered, “No. I speak only for myself, but appearances do matter right now. The ink is barely dry on your engagement papers, and Darius can withdraw from the negotiation at any time up until the wedding occurs. Your family needs this shipping contr—”
“I am aware of my family’s situation and of the many benefits of this arranged marriage. If you’ll recall, I was the one to present the option to my father,” Jessamine answered flatly, annoyed with her assistant’s interference on this matter.
Topher was watching the exchange in silence so far, his face inscrutable. Jessamine drew herself up to full height and said, “If the Viceroy has concerns about me discussing business with one of his hand-picked Majors, he can tell me himself. Since he has not yet done so, we’ll be in the sitting room.”
She scanned her wrist on the reader and heard the door unlock. There was a keypad next to the reader in case of a failure in the chip-reading database, but only four people on the entire planet had the manual override code, including her. Since Fox wasn’t one of those four, she saw no need to change her personal override codes.
She stepped inside and turned back to see Topher and Hanna hovering at the threshold. The former seemed to be doing some quick thinking when he said, “If Hanna believes there is a real threat to your engagement, it seems foolish to ignore her. Perhaps, as a compromise, she could sit with us, to put to bed any rumors that may reach Darius’s ears when he arrives.”
Jessamine was irritated by the inconvenience of having to worry about Darius Hamish’s feelings when he wasn’t even residing here yet, but she recognized the validity of Hanna’s concern. In her experience with the Hamishes, they were easily offended, and she didn’t want to jeopardize a deal she had spent a year arranging over something like this.
“That is a reasonable solution. Hanna, you may join us in the room, though my discussion with Major Topher will remain confidential, even from you.”
“I understand, Vicerina.”
Hanna brightened considerably at the concession and gave Topher a curt nod of approval as they both entered Jessamine’s private quarters, shutting and locking the door behind them.
Wordlessly, Jessamine handed Hanna a pair of soundproof ear-caps to wear, pointing her to an armchair on the far side of the room. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Hanna, or that she thought the older woman was particularly good at lip-reading, she just didn’t like all of her private conversations being spied on. Hanna did her the favor of selecting a book to scan from a nearby shelf, to give the appearance of not watching too closely.
She and Topher sat on opposite couches, facing each other across a glass coffee table, though it rarely lived up to its namesake. Most of her furnishings were the same: decorative but rarely used for their intended purpose. Checking to make sure Hanna’s ear-caps were well in place, Jessamine gestured to the maid. “Was this really necessary?”
“I’m not sure, but better to be safe than sorry where your engagement is concerned. I know how hard you worked on that deal with the Hamishes and I would hate to see it fall through over something so easily averted. If he is the type to question your virtue—”
“My virtue?” Jessamine interrupted in a dangerously low voice. “May I remind you, Major, we are no longer living like our ignorant ancestors of Earth, who thought a woman’s value was somehow linked to whether a thin sheet of skin was still intact within her vagina? We are in the modern age—thank Heavens—and I can have a harem of men in my room if I so choose. I can sleep with every person in the Augenspire if it suits me, and be none the less virtuous for it.” Actually, one of her ancestors was quite well-known for sleeping with a different member of her staff each night…
“I was ascribing those feelings to Darius, not to myself.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I support your goals, whatever they may be.” In a slightly amused voice he added, “Though, if you intend to share yourself with all thirty-thousand of the government employees here, you’re going to need to start fairly soon. It’s quite a lot of people when you do the math.” Damn him, he making her laugh.
“Even with a fairly aggressive schedule of five a night, you’re right, it’ll take me about…” she did some rough math in her head, “fifteen years or so to get through them all. I would do it, you know, if I was ever feeling sufficiently spiteful towards my husband.”
Topher sounded almost proud of her when he said, “I believe you completely.” On a more serious note he added, “I’m not sure your marriage would survive such a…test.”
Jessamine pursed her lips at this and said, “Well, yes, there is that.” She sighed. “But none of this would matter if I wasn’t going to marry that toad.”
The amusement left Topher’s face when he said, “But you are going to marry him, Vicerina. Nor do I advise letting anyone else hear your candid opinions about him, though to be honest, I didn’t think looks mattered all that much to you in a partner.”
There was a question in his eyes, though Jessamine wasn’t sure exactly what it was, so she decided to answer the most obvious thing.
“When I called him a ‘toad’ I wasn’t referring to his aesthetics—though he’s not much of a looker—it was a reference to his general character. He lacks his father’s business acumen, but to hear him tell it you’d think he’s the whole reason they have a shipping empire in the first place. Mostly he just eats dainty food, drinks wine that smells like turpentine, and complains about things he has little understanding of.”
Topher looked amused again and said, “All the same, you shouldn’t call him a toad where others can hear you.”
“What shall I call him then?” she played along, enjoying the moment of levity. This was why she liked being alone with Topher whenever possible; aside from being easy to talk to, he was more likely to relax his guard and smile with her when they weren’t around other people.
“A denizen of the pond?” he suggested with a wry grin. “A member of the Order of the Lily Pad? One whose voice is reminiscent of—”
“Enough!” Jessamine laughed, pressing her hands over her mouth to stifle the sound. Hanna glanced up at the gesture but then returned to her book.
Returning abruptly to business, Topher said, “I don’t expect this is what you called me up here to discuss.”
“No, it wasn’t.” Jessamine sighed and let the moment of levity pass. She missed it already. “I was wondering what was going through your head in the High Chamber when Major Fox shared his story. I could see you thinking—”
“It’s been known to happen,” Topher mumbled, and Jessamine flattened her lips in mock annoyance.
“What were you t
hinking?” she prodded.
Uncharacteristically, Topher looked away from her, studying his own hands for a long moment in silence before answering.
“I think…my personal opinions on this matter are not something I’d care to share.”
Jessamine frowned and said, “I’m not asking as your Vicerina right now, I want to know your—”
“But you are my Vicerina,” Topher interrupted, focusing his intense blue eyes on her again. “You are always my superior, even when you don’t want to be. I don’t envy you the position or the solitude it entails, but you must understand I have to be very careful in expressing my opinions to anyone in your family. Even if I tell you they’re opinions, unsubstantiated at best, you could take anything I tell you and use it in whatever way you want. Your father’s word is law, and someday yours will be too. Do you think my peers will continue to work with me if it’s obvious I have your ear?”
Jessamine frowned and put her head in her hands, abruptly weary. It was the middle of the night and she wasn’t going to sleep another wink, she was engaged to be married to a man who mildly repulsed her on the best of days, and the one true friend she had—the only Major even close to her in age—just reminded her they could never really be open with each other because of her position. Self-pity wasn’t an emotion she normally allowed herself to indulge in—she knew how fortunate her life was—but right now she couldn’t help it.
She startled slightly as she felt the couch cushions sink down beside her and looked up to see Topher there, motioning with one hand for Hanna to remain seated and keep her ear-caps on. The maid allowed it, but she clearly didn’t like the change in proximity between the Major and Jessamine.
The sudden nearness of him was overwhelming, since he was usually very careful to keep an unobjectionable amount of space between them in the name of propriety. Tentatively, he rested a hand on her wrist, and Jessamine wished she hadn’t put her armor on tonight so she could feel the heat of it properly.