“You really didn’t know,” whispered Sun.
“Is this some kind of a joke?” Persephone hissed.
“The queen-marshal lacks a sense of humor. My father is the only person ever known to have made her laugh.”
The Honorable Manea’s dyed-blond hair was short and spiky, streaked with pink highlights, and her eyes shone a sparklingly artificial blue. The right side of her face was painted in an elaborate bridal bouquet of pink lilies and red orchids. Their dazzling green-glitter stems wrapped down her neck into the gold-weighted neckline of her gown, as into a vase.
People’s eyes got caught on superficial things so it was easy to look at blond, blue-eyed, curvy Manea with her painted embellishments and not see the bone-deep truth beneath: that she and her black-haired, brown-eyed, leaner cousin Persephone had the same facial structure.
The queen-marshal raised a hand for silence but did not speak. It was not her place to greet the guests, as she was a guest herself in Lee House. Yet her swift gaze found Sun, and her brow creased as at an unsolved problem. Eirene hated unsolved problems. If only Prince João was there to interpret the subtle twists and turns of her quicksilver moods. He had that gift, as Sun did not.
Moira Lee’s smile was practiced and generous, shaded with the correct leavening of regretful sadness. Her gaze paused on Sun with an unreadable squint. Then she opened her arms in greeting to the assembly.
“Peace be upon you, and welcome to all of you who have entered Lee House as our guests at this banquet. Today we ask you to enjoy our hospitality as we celebrate the union contracted ninety days ago, sealed last month, and observed throughout Chaonia as a festival.”
Ninety days ago! Sun had been touring the deepest levels of the Myrmidon gold mine on Thesprotis Terce, cut off from the net.
“After the years of conflict on our borders, we need—and I believe we deserve—a feast for our weary souls. For I give you today this unexpected romantic story, my treasured daughter Manea and our most beloved queen-marshal, Eirene. They have found in each other that rarest of gems, a love match between deserving hearts.”
Sun stiffened, her right hand closing into a fist. “As if my father isn’t deserving?”
Hetty pressed her fingers in between Sun’s, prying them apart and easing the fist into openness. “Hush, hush,” she said softly. “Let harsh words pass unheard. Sit still.”
“It’s meant as an insult to my father,” Sun whispered. “I should walk out.”
“I know. You know. They know you know. So no.”
Cups were raised and the health of the handsome couple toasted to hearty cheers throughout the hall. Sun could not bring herself to touch the full cup at her plate. It would be like drinking poison. Yet when Hetty elbowed her in the ribs, she gritted her teeth and knocked it back in a single gulp. Her Companions drank with proper gusto, except Persephone, who still wore a blindsided expression that made Sun feel they were sitting on unexploded ordnance, waiting for a switch to click over into a blast.
The orchestra in the loft played “The Moon Represents My Heart.” Many gazes skewed toward Alika, who had adapted the traditional and beloved classic as part of his Idol Faire repertoire last year. He had his dreamy smile on, swaying to the languid beat. Sun wrenched her thoughts away from her own anger for long enough to glance at Tiana. The cee-cee was again staring starstruck at Alika, revealing a fascinating glimpse of naïveté at odds with her adroit manners. Interesting.
Moira proceeded with a round of introductions of the most honored guests, each toasted with another cup of wine. Eirene drank heartily, as always. Sun clutched her cup, forgetting to drink until, each time, Hetty elbowed her. Of course Moira made no toast to the heir to the throne and did not again look her way, as if she did not exist.
“We at Lee House have a special gift to present to the queen-marshal, now our precious in-law,” said Moira. “A reminder of our unflagging loyalty to the republic.”
Persephone sucked in a breath, as if she’d been slugged. Pressing hands to the table, she rose.
“Sit,” murmured Sun, abruptly realizing how out of place Persephone’s stark-white mourning clothes appeared in this assembly. How disrespectful it would look that she, the heir, allowed unlucky garb into a wedding feast in her train.
Persephone sat, then rubbed her forehead as she made the aggrieved grimace that seemed to be her preferred expression. “You don’t understand. I’ve figured out my aunt’s game. Why they brought the prisoner here.”
“What prisoner? Lee House didn’t know I was coming.”
“Of course they knew. They know everything. They intend to humiliate you in front of all the people in this hall and with the entire republic watching on Channel Idol.”
The urgency in the Lee girl’s voice braced Sun. So when a procession of security guards entered and the guests began to talk with a rising crescendo of excitement and alarm, she was prepared for some manner of slap.
But she wasn’t prepared for the sight of a banner soldier trapped in a glass display cage, quivering with prideful rage at being treated like an animal. The angle of the cage placed him full front to the hall with his back to the queen-marshal and the head tables. Everyone—and all of the citizens watching on Channel Idol—could drink in the sight of an enemy Gatoi looking ready to kill them all if only he could break free. Some of the guests booed. Others hissed.
Many turned to look at her. At Princess Sun, the daughter of a Gatoi Royal who had been Eirene’s most egregious and outrageous indiscretion.
Moira pressed a hand to her heart and intoned, “This gift we give to you today, Eirene. A rare captured Gatoi. He will stand as reminder of your valiant deeds and noble leadership. He will stand as a reminder of the dire threat that faces our republic in the person of these savages whose long alliance with the Phene threatens the integrity of the republic itself. I am sure all of us here will drink a toast to the hope that you and our beautiful daughter Manea will produce a suitable heir for Chaonia with true Chaonian blood.”
Sun was on her feet in an instant. “And what is Sun, then? Do I not have true Chaonian blood? Am I not suitable?”
Moira smiled with blissful ease. She raised her cup in a challenge to the entire hall, and indeed to the wasps and a republic-wide audience across multiple systems eager to drink up any intoxicating drama.
“Ask your father, Your Highness. Why is he not here to celebrate today, as Baron Voy is? Why would he feel obliged to leave the palace in disgrace if he were a man innocent of treasonous thoughts? Why should we trust the child he left behind to infiltrate the court?”
“Sun, no!” said Hetty.
Sun flung her cup at the high table.
Moira ducked aside too late. The cup hit her in the head before clattering to the ground. She yelped and staggered back with a hand pressed to her cheek.
Into the stunned silence the queen-marshal’s famous bellow rose, piercing to every corner of the vast hall.
“Shame! Shame on you, Sun! And shame on me for your dishonorable behavior toward our hosts. I knew you wouldn’t be able to control your temper and your petty jealousy. Which is why I didn’t invite you!” She gestured toward her daughter.
In the glass cage, the prisoner followed the gesture’s line of sight. Seeing Sun, he also saw Persephone seated beside her.
As furious as she was, Sun recognized the lightning flare of his neural network on and across and within his body. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he slammed his shoulders first to his left and then to his right and then again in a rebound so hard to the left that with a sizzling crackle the corner seam popped. The side of the cage gave way with a grinding tear and a crashing thud onto the ground.
He jumped down as people scrambled away from the nearest tables in a clatter of noise, but he didn’t even look at them before leaping high and fast over an entire table seating eight people. With a second leap he landed smack in the middle of Sun’s table. The tabletop shuddered but did not break.
C
andace was already on her feet, chair tipping backward, snapping out her battle fans. Hetty grabbed Sun’s arm to pull her away, but Octavian broke Hetty’s grip to interpose his own body between the princess and the prisoner.
“It’s not me he’s after!” Sun shouted.
Too late.
The banner soldier dove for Persephone. Driving her to the floor with the full force of his attack, he fixed his hands around the Lee girl’s throat and began choking her.
16
The Wily Persephone Realizes This Is Going to End Badly
I’m slammed back onto the ground so hard that pain from the impact obliterates all sound. For the first eternity of shock, it’s impossible even to react. The world collapses until all I can see is him.
His expression is flat, a soulless and lifeless machine singing with lightning stabs of energy beneath his skin. The fingers that close around my throat are anything but lifeless. His pulse throbs into my flesh. His amber stare bores into my head, but I see no personality or emotion behind the eyes, only a void. As black spots blur my vision, Solomon’s face flashes into my thoughts. All those extra hours of hand-to-hand training.
“You’re small, so avoid grappling. But if you’re forced to, then fight dirty. For example, if your opponent has balls, then kick them in the balls.”
I jam my knee up between his legs, but the Gatoi doesn’t react. Blood thunders in my ears as I try to twist my body to get an elbow into his ribs, anything to dislodge him. His fingers dig agony into my throat. He’s barely breathing, like killing doesn’t even wind him.
Sun’s emphatic voice penetrates the eerie silence. “Don’t hit him. Be ready to drag him off.”
The black spots turn into a haze that brushes my face with spidery threads. It’s not haze. It’s Hestia’s white silk scarf. Abruptly the cloth is twisted across his eyes to blind him.
The moment he can’t see me his hands release my throat.
Air.
I fade out.
* * *
“Perse?”
My head is being cradled on a lap. Two fingers rest lightly on the pulse at my throat. The scent of sandalwood encourages me to open my eyes.
Too tired to sit up, I croak, “What happened?”
Ti unbuttons the top two buttons on my collar to ease the pressure on my throat. “You’re going to have a bruise.”
Sound rushes back in a roar of shouting. An alarm bell clangs with a wrang wrang wrang that drowns out everything. All at once I remember we are in the hall at a wedding banquet in honor of Manea.
Manea. My cousin has become consort to the queen-marshal of the republic. What is my family plotting?
“Silence!” Eirene’s shout breaks through the chaos.
With Ti’s help I stand. Adrenaline screams through my body, scorching out the last traces of dizziness.
Ti whispers, “Are you sure you’re all right? I was afraid he was going to crush your windpipe.”
Reflexively I swallow. The movement hurts so badly I wince and hope I never have to swallow again. Nervously I look around for the Gatoi. The prisoner stands passively with the scarf bound over his eyes as Sun’s bodyguard wraps some kind of wire around his legs.
“You are no better than your father,” Eirene declares in a ringing voice whose words will carry across the many solar systems that make up the Republic of Chaonia. Wasps hover close to catch them all. “Reckless. Self-obsessed. Unrestrained.”
“Untrustworthy,” a voice calls from somewhere in the hall, the speaker untraceable. Yet the word hangs there, heard by all.
“You have so little self-control you have insulted our hosts with this petty display.”
“Ask yourself what Lee House’s purpose is in concocting this marriage,” Sun retorts, for she hasn’t backed down at all.
The queen-marshal stands with the toes of her black boots over the edge of the dais, on the brink of plunging off. By the fury washing her flushed face and the flashes of ire shimmering in her obsidian eye she is certainly thinking about taking the leap.
“Now you insult me, your own mother! As if you think I am so easily led.”
“That’s what they said about your romance with my father, isn’t it? Easily led. Unrestrained. Self-obsessed. Reckless.” Sun’s voice rings forcefully into the shocked silence. “But he’s the only person in this court who is honest with you. Lee House certainly isn’t being honest.”
“How dare you!” Eirene is frozen with fury, her color high, gripping a wine cup in one hand, but I sense the ice cracking. In a moment she’ll shake off the wine and the rage, and she’ll act.
Sun turns the prisoner as if he’s a puppet, to face the high table.
“Ready?” says Sun to her bodyguard.
“Ready.”
She yanks off the scarf. At first the Gatoi just stands there. His back is sweat-streaked and sculpted with muscle and made strangely beautiful by the luminescence of neural enhancers tracing ghostly patterns beneath his skin. By the angle of his head he’s glaring at Queen-Marshal Eirene as one does at an enemy’s ruler and commander in chief. Then his head shifts as he surveys the rest of the people at the high table. When it happens it’s like getting hit by a sledgehammer, an impact so powerful it stops your whole world. His body tenses to rigidity. The map on his back flares so brightly I have to deploy my nictitating membrane to cut the glare.
The Gatoi has forgotten about me. Like a thrown spear he launches himself toward the chair where Manea is seated.
The bodyguard yanks on the wires. It doesn’t stop him—nothing can stop a Gatoi gone berserk—but it trips him. He falls on his face with a satisfying smack. Even so, he starts scrambling up with no awareness of the blood flowing out of his nose. Yet the fall stalls him, giving the girl with the fans time to club him on the head. This blow staggers him for just long enough for the bodyguard to apply a massive percussion echo charge to his bare torso.
He collapses as heavily and completely as my plans for my future did when my family yanked me out of CeDCA.
Eirene drops her wine cup. It clatters to the dais and rolls to the edge, catching on the lip. A fierce red glow sparks deep in the queen-marshal’s obsidian eye.
“You put my consort at risk! You insult me! You—!”
Her foot catches on the cup, and she slips sideways as the beam of weaponized particles slices drunkenly toward the ceiling and cuts through a chandelier. Fragments of crystal hail down over a table of startled celebrants.
In a tone of self-congratulatory arrogance that couldn’t possibly be more annoying, Sun says, “I present to all of you the woman who is preparing to attack Karnos System and accost the Phene Empire! She can’t even keep to her feet.”
The way everyone in the hall turns to stare doesn’t make her blink, but it’s not like she craves the attention. I’m not sure she notices how everything and everyone now seems to revolve around her as the sun to our busy, scattered, outraged planets.
“I can’t take my eyes off her,” murmurs Ti in my ear.
I can’t take my eyes off her either.
Eirene climbs to her feet, flushed and furious. A trembling Manea grasps at her sleeve, but the queen-marshal shoves her back. A pinpoint of red light targets Sun’s right cheek. I grab for the princess, but she bats my hand away without taking her gaze from her mother.
When Octavian moves to place his body between her and the queen-marshal, Sun lifts her chin and says, “Get out of the way. If she wants to shoot me, let her shoot me with premeditation in front of the entire hall.”
Pride will not bow or retreat. The two women—mother and daughter, queen-marshal and princess—look a great deal alike at that moment. This is going to end badly. Aunt Moira’s anticipatory expression tells me everything I need to know. She’s set Sun up to bring her down in public, for everyone in the Republic of Chaonia to see. If Eirene kills her in a fit of rage, so much the better.
What my family wants harmed, I will protect. Even if Sun is a bitch.
I jum
p up on a chair and then to the tabletop with a thump. The queen-marshal and everyone glances toward me in surprise, jarred by the movement more than the noise.
“An excellent experiment, would you not agree!” I shout in what Solomon calls my “intimidate-the-first-years” voice. I add a formal bow at the precise thirty-six degrees appropriate to the queen-marshal. “Apologies for the interruption, Your Majestic Highness. Recently a researcher gave a guest lecture at the academy in which he suggested the Phene are using engineered hallucination to compel the Gatoi to fight. None of the higher-ups believed it. I’m not sure I believe it. But could this incident be proof the Phene are manipulating Gatoi soldiers? We mustn’t let the Phene know we suspect.”
Eirene shifts her murderous gaze from Sun to the Gatoi soldier lying prone and last to me, the hapless messenger. Her brow creases, the red-hot edge of rage blunting as she considers my provocative words. She’s startled but not as surprised as she ought to be.
“Where did you get a Gatoi prisoner, Moira?” she demands.
My aunt grits her teeth, then with an effort relaxes her jaw so she doesn’t look so obviously thwarted or guilty. “Return the prisoner to custody,” she calls to her chief security officer.
“I’ll take charge of him,” says Sun. Iris and Candace drape the prisoner’s arms over their shoulders. “And with all respect due to Lee House, I will retire from a celebration at which I am clearly not welcome.”
I leap down from the table to join her Companions as they march toward the doors. We move at a collective walk that’s brisk enough to get us out fast but not so hurried it seems like we’re running. Even though that’s exactly what we’re doing.
“I did not give you leave to depart!” thunders Eirene as she no doubt recalls that Sun has shamed her in public. “You will wait in detention until I am ready to deal with your savage manners and your disrespectful—”
We spill onto the boardwalk as the doors close behind us, sealing off the hall and the queen-marshal’s booming voice. All the pods are gone, leaving us caught on a five-meter-wide boardwalk three meters above the water.
Unconquerable Sun Page 15
