The Lily and the Crown

by Roslyn Sinclair

  Of course, Ari had never wanted to do any of that with him. Banquets were bad enough. But…but it might have been nice if he’d asked. Just once.

  And then there were the pictures of her mother. There was, in fact, a whole box devoted to datachips of pictures of her mother, apparently chronicling her life from birth to death—pictures of her as a child, as an awkward teenager (who really did look remarkably like Ari had at that age), as an astonishingly beautiful young woman (who surely didn’t look like Ari at all). There were pictures of her parents’ wedding, of them on various trips and vacations, of Ari’s own birth.

  In all of them, Ari’s father was radiantly happy. He wore a smile that Ari had never seen, or could never remember seeing. Just being near Ari’s mother, near his wife, appeared to be a source of limitless energy and pleasure for him.

  There were pictures of Ari, too, but they were a lot fewer after Ari hit seven years old. After her mother died. She’d always known her father had sort of lost interest in her, but it was stunning, and hurtful, to see that in empirical proof by all the pictures that suddenly weren’t there. In the pictures that showed them as a family, Ari’s mother always held her close, always smiled at her, laughed over her, kissed her and cuddled her; Ari’s father looked at Ari’s mother with love in his eyes, and rarely at Ari herself. Without her mother in the frame, Ari supposed there hadn’t been much reason to take pictures of her anymore.

  They’d been married ten years by the time Ari’s mother had died. Would he have felt the same if he’d known her for as short a span of time as Ari had known Assistant? Would his grief have poisoned his life a little less? Or—on the flipside—if Ari had known and loved Assistant for ten years, if they’d had that decade together, would her own pain be even worse? She didn’t like to imagine what that would be like.

  “You were his responsibility,” Assistant had said. “Grief or not, he had no right to abandon you.”

  Ari bowed her head and wondered if maybe she was more like her father than she cared to admit. After Assistant’s death, nothing seemed as important as it had before. In fact, Ari often selfishly wished her father alive again—not for his own sake, but because while he’d lived, Assistant had been with Ari. Had been alive. Without her, Ari had stopped caring about eating, sleeping, hygiene—and about her plants. Her own children. Her own responsibilities that she had no right to abandon. Assistant would never have approved of that.

  So that was no good. Responsibility. Caring for her garden. She had to do that. Maybe soon she’d even enjoy doing that once more.

  Once, she’d thought of planting flowers, of having hummingbirds. Obviously, that was never going to happen now. Instead, she’d started making some medicines for sickbay at Dr. Eylen’s request. They weren’t exactly standardized medications—home remedies, at best—and Ari often wondered if the doctor didn’t just order them to make Ari feel useful and then throw them away. But she never asked. She didn’t want to know. It was another responsibility. And even if it felt like it was going to crush her eventually, it was probably good for her, too.

  Speaking of which, the seedlings needed watering now. Ari sighed and tossed the datachips back in the box. She’d figure out what to do with them later.

  That night Ari dreamed yet again that Assistant was walking toward the doorway. She had this dream nearly every night now, and always woke up straining for air. Yet again, the doorway turned into a sun; yet again, Assistant ignored Ari’s pleas; yet again Ari watched her vanish into the fire and brilliance.

  But tonight was different. Tonight, even in her dream, Ari knew she couldn’t bear it anymore; knew she couldn’t bear waking up without Assistant there, working in the garden and eating without her, talking to other people, and thinking about her the whole time, going through every hour of every day knowing she would never see Assistant again and that people expected her to get over it eventually. And worst of all, that maybe she would, she’d just go back to being the weird girl who played with plants, and she’d forget how much she had loved another human being. Better the bones.

  So tonight, Ari ran after Assistant, ran toward the star, which got bigger and hotter as she approached. She couldn’t see Assistant. As the star’s light brightened, she couldn’t see anything. She cried out “Where are you?”, but nobody replied, and Ari kept stumbling forward, feeling her dress catch fire, wondering if she would find Assistant before she—they—roasted to death. She had to try. Even if she failed, even if she burned, it was better than…better than…

  Ari woke up, trembling and gasping as always. And this time, stronger than grief, she felt the sting of failure. She hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t tried hard enough, hadn’t been in time, had lost Assistant in the star.

  She should probably want to get over this. She didn’t. And she couldn’t.

  ~ ~ ~

  “There has to be something we can do,” Ari pleaded, twisting her hands.

  The new stationmaster, Lord Koll, regarded her with patience. He was a tall, thin stick of a man with a long, lean face and deep green eyes that didn’t really seem to see her. “I understand you are grieving, Lady Ariana,” he said. “But surely you know there is nothing to be done.”

  Ari stared at him in frustration. It was two weeks since Thell had defected, and Mír’s fleet was swelling. Surely it was only a matter of time until she made another move. “But don’t you want to help?” Ari said. “I mean—Your Lordship, the stations near Thell and Carel—they’re sitting ducks. I bet, I bet if they had a little more support, more soldiers, more—”

  “I can on no account spare any of our soldiers,” Koll said firmly. “And unless Homeworld Command itself tells me to do so, they will stay right here.”

  “But the pirate fleet isn’t even near here,” Ari said. “They’re half the system away. They’re going station by station. You could help stop them long before they arrived!”

  “Lady Ariana, I understand you are an expert botanist,” Koll said, a smile on his lips and a sneer in his eyes, “but you are, with respect, no tactician.”

  Ari imagined herself bent over a Q’heri board, working through a dozen scenarios in her head as she fought to win. True, it wasn’t like marshalling real troops and ships, but at least it proved she could see farther than the tip of her own nose. Her temper flared. “My father never would have stood by like this.”

  Koll’s eyes went cold. “Thank you for your visit,” he said. “And please do call ahead next time. I’m afraid my schedule might not be as flexible as it was today.”

  Ari ground her teeth all the way back to her quarters. This was ridiculous. Surely somebody, somewhere in the Empire, was planning to do something about the fact that a murdering pirate was set to take over everything? Surely nobody was going to sit and do nothing while it happened?

  Perhaps Assistant had been right. She’d always been right. She’d said the Empire had been useless, relied too much on insufficiently protected perimeters while the center grew weak and decadent, like a rotting tooth. Maybe that was true. Once Mír gained enough of a foothold on the rim, nothing would stop her from advancing inward until she had control of Homeworld itself, if she wanted.

  Feeling helpless, that was the worst. If there was only a war effort Ari could contribute to—a fund, supplies, heck, even making medicines from her plants—something she could do…but there was nothing. And it looked like nobody would be interested if she tried to organize something all by herself. Not that she knew how to do such a thing.

  Ari’s door hissed shut behind her, and she stood in her kitchen, staring at her hands, trying to imagine them tearing through a suit of black armor like paper.

  ~ ~ ~

  Two nights later, at the hour when most people were asleep, the station’s security tower went dark and silent. All power except for emergency life support failed. The force fields went down. In the space of a few seconds, the entire space station was as vulnerable as a naked child in a desert.

  There was a shiver
of space, a flicker of light, outside the station windows. And then, in the blink of an eye, what appeared to be a hundred ships uncloaked, surrounded the whole station with cannons mounted and trained on every hangar bay. And in the middle of all of them, an enormous, black-hulled ship, grotesque in its power and menace, stared down the security tower itself.

  It didn’t take long for the panicked graveyard shift to put the entire station on red alert. As the alert spread, so did the news that a silver lily shimmered on the side of the enormous black ship.

  In less than an hour, four thousand people, sitting ducks all, knew that Mír had come.

  CHAPTER 18

  Huddled beneath her favorite tree, Ari wondered how it had happened so quickly. Her father had labored long on improving the station’s defenses—hadn’t that colonel in the Officers’ Mess said as much? But those defenses had been bypassed as if they were nothing. As if the pirates had known every weak point, had known how to override every failsafe. Not a single shot had been fired in the station’s defense. With the shields down and enemy ships surrounding it like a sea, to fight back would be suicide.

  Ari remembered Assistant’s fate, remembered that a quick death was mercy in the world of pirates, and thought that maybe suicide wasn’t such a bad idea—that was, to go down fighting instead of hoping for clemency that would never come. She hugged her knees to her chest and leaned against the tree trunk, just as she had done when her father had died, and countless times since then, always looking for comfort that remained just as elusive.

  And it wasn’t just that it had happened so fast—Ari couldn’t figure out why it had happened at all. Their station wasn’t anywhere close to Thell, Ankar, or Carel. They hadn’t made any overtures of peace or friendship to Mír—thank goodness, Ari couldn’t have endured the shame—and it must have taken enormous effort to get here, and to bring such a large fleet, when there were smaller and more eager targets nearby. Why had Mír come here, of all places?

  Just then, the station-wide intercom crackled to life. Ari jumped as a trying-to-be-calm voice made the announcement.

  All crew and family members to remain in quarters. Do not go outside. Do not try to override the lockdown on your quarters. Pirates have boarded the station.

  Ari hid her face in her knees. So, this was it. This was how it happened—just waiting for the end, instead of doing something. She felt like she’d been waiting all her life, though she’d never known for what until Assistant had come, and now she was going to die waiting, too.

  She remembered the last time she and Assistant had been together—the frenzy of it, the desperation—like Ari was trying to fight off death itself and forget what had happened to her father. It sure would be nice if Assistant was here now. Maybe they could have passed their final hours that way, instead of dying too far apart. It would be nice to have that one last thing, for one last hour.

  The time seemed to crawl. Ari had deliberately placed herself where she could see the clock from beneath the tree, curious to see how many minutes it would take before her life was over. She was surprised at how scared she wasn’t. Then again, none of this felt real—more like a child’s game, like Lord Koll would get on the intercom any second and say, “Just kidding!”

  Then, even as she thought about it, the intercom crackled again. It was, in fact, Lord Koll. But it wasn’t a station-wide announcement; instead, Koll said in a hesitant voice, “Lady Ariana? Are you there?”

  For a moment, Ari couldn’t respond. This was too unexpected. It seemed highly unlikely that Koll was calling to apologize for their earlier conversation and to concede that she’d been right all along about the pirate threat.

  Then she rallied and rose to her feet. Her knees shook as she approached the intercom and mashed the button. “Um…yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  What? “I—yes,” Ari said. “I mean, I guess?”

  “Thank goodness.” Koll sounded relieved. Really relieved. “I need you to come to my office right away.”

  “Me?” Maybe she’d fallen asleep against the tree and this was all a dream. She pinched her arm and winced at the sting. Nope. “What for? Isn’t the whole place on lockdown?”

  “We can, er, unlock your door remotely,” Koll said. “So, if you could just—”

  “But the pirates!” Ari rubbed a hand over her forehead. “What’s happening? Aren’t they here?”

  “Yes, Your Ladyship.” Koll’s voice was strained now. “They are here. In my office, actually. In fact, the pirates have demanded you come,” he finished heavily. Then, “Ah! Very well. Excuse me. The rebels have demanded you come.”

  “What?” Ari’s eyes widened. “Why?”

  “Their lieutenant has declined to answer,” Koll said, “and yet, looking at him right now, I believe he is a man unaccustomed to refusal. Lady Ariana, please come right away.”

  What was this? What could a bunch of pirates possibly want with Ari? They probably didn’t need her advice on planting seeds. The only possible reason was…

  She’d been Lord Geiker’s daughter. And her father had always been a dangerous foe to pirates. Even Assistant, a slave to Mír’s fleet, had known that. Was this revenge on a dead man? Something to send a message to the rest of the Empire? Were these bullying cowards out to kill Ari just like they’d killed Assistant—another woman who’d never done anybody any harm, just one unarmed person up against a whole pack of bloodthirsty mercenaries?

  Ari saw red. She began to shake with anger.

  “Lady Ariana?” Koll prompted, sounding extremely nervous now.

  “Forget it,” Ari heard herself say. “I’m not coming.”

  “You’re what?” Koll obviously couldn’t believe his ears. “My lady, the station is surrounded by pirates on all sides. This is the only demand they have made of us thus far—”

  “Oh, is it?” Ari curled her hands into fists. “Is it? Well, if it’s so important, then…then they can come and get me!” Before Koll could object, she mashed her thumb against the intercom’s power button and turned it off, which was quite against station regulations.

  Then she stood in her kitchen, trembling at what she’d just done. She’d just invited a bunch of murdering pirates to attack her in her own quarters. She’d probably made them angrier. They might even want to take it out on her plants. Stricken at the thought, Ari flew back into the foliage and wrapped her arms around her second-favorite tree. Only half aware of what she was saying, she stammered, “I-I’m sorry, I won’t let them, I’ll protect you,” just as she’d told Assistant once upon a time.

  It hadn’t been true then, either.

  What could she do? Nothing, really. Now that she’d taunted the pirates, she could count on rougher treatment. It would probably be easier if she just behaved meekly when they came to get her. The thought galled her to the core. But what else was there to do? She didn’t have a gun or a shock rod, and even if she did, she’d certainly have no idea how to use either of them.

  Maybe she could attack them with a pair of pruning shears. Or the edge of her trowel. She laughed before she could help it, high and hysterical, and then chewed on her knuckle in agitation and tried to think.

  Well, that’d be better than nothing. Hadn’t Ari thought of going down fighting? Assistant certainly wouldn’t sit back and cower by a tree—not the woman who defended herself even when she was asleep. Ari should take a page from her datapad. Heck, she should have asked Assistant to show her some self-defense moves. Why had that never occurred to her?

  She could only work with what she had. Pruning shears it was. She’d left them on a self at the other side of the room, but if she hurried—

  Footsteps sounded outside her door. Loud, heavy-booted footsteps. Several of them.

  No time to grab the shears. Ari’s mouth went dry. Sweat pooled in the small of her back and made her nightgown tacky against her skin. Her heart pounded so hard she could hardly breathe. Before she could think about it, she darted away from her tree, back i
nto a farther corner of the garden, where she hid behind an enormous leaf of Filathen merins.

  The door opened, and the heavy footsteps tramped inside. Ari was shaking so hard it felt like the whole garden trembled with her. She told herself, Stay calm. Be brave. Can’t you be brave?

  A man’s voice, loud and harsh, said, “Ariana? Daughter of Geiker?”

  Ari gulped and realized she didn’t have the breath to respond. She’d been so wrong. This wasn’t like a child’s game at all, and she didn’t want to die—even if life was painful, it was still life. And even if she had still been in the terrible darkness that had taken her after Assistant’s death, she wouldn’t have wanted to be tortured and murdered by pirates. Was there anything she could do? She couldn’t bring herself to plead for her life, although that would be the sensible thing. Even death would be preferable to debasing herself that way. Still, fighting off pirates with her bare hands seemed like the most ludicrous idea she’d ever—

  Then she saw it: a medium-sized shovel propped up against a wall.

  “Do we have the right room?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Do you think there’s more than one suite on this station with a jungle in it?” the man snapped.

  “Lady Ariana,” a third voice, another man, called out. “We know you’re in here. We heard you talking to Lord Koll.” Ari gripped the shovel in her hands and hefted it, quivering all over. “Show yourself. I promise you will not come to harm.”

  Oh, sure. Ari wondered if they’d said that before boarding Assistant’s freighter and killing everyone on board. And now it really hit her—these were Mír’s people. They might even have been the exact same pirates who’d killed Assistant. Who was to say otherwise? And even if they weren’t, they might know the pirates who did; they were all part of the same crew, the same evil, murderous—