by Kate Elliott
The replay froze, accompanied by a splash of lighthearted banter. A woman walked out of the domed chamber into the entryway as the hatch closed behind her. Sun straightened, shoulders tight, then eased off with a hiss of expelled air. It wasn’t the queen-marshal come to greet her triumphant daughter. It was Moira Lee, Marduk’s cousin.
Marduk Lee glanced back. “Here you are, Moira. I have a pod waiting for you, as requested.”
A prick of instinct sparked in Sun’s chest, a sense of a threat hovering just out of sight. Moira Lee was a former Companion to Eirene and now governor and thus senior clan member of the powerful Lee House. So why was she here at a military post instead of back on Chaonia Prime overseeing the crucial ministerial operations for which Lee House was responsible?
Moira and two adjutants wearing Lee House’s emerald tree badge made their way around the emplacements. She stopped short when she saw Sun. “Princess Sun. I thought you were on the Boukephalas.”
“I was. Now I’m here.”
Moira Lee’s lips pinched together as she sorted it out. “I see. You must have come on the fast courier with the initial report. I hear congratulations are in order. You did well.”
“I did.”
Moira dipped her head in acknowledgment and her tone changed to something smoother and icier. “And dear Percy? How is my nephew?”
“I haven’t seen him for two months since my Companions were not allowed to accompany me to Na Iri, but his messages are exactly what you would expect.”
A harsh smile brushed across Moira’s smugly perfect mouth. “Percy always entertains, does he not? Not a deep thinker, our Percy.”
“I cherish his good nature.”
“That’s one way of putting it. I’ll see you at the palace soon enough, I am sure.”
“Am I not to be given active duty?” Sun asked as a fresh and sharper thorn of disquiet stung in her heart.
“It wasn’t a topic Eirene and I discussed.” Moira turned to the pod’s threshold. Seeing the Gatoi, she took a step back with a fierce grimace of disgust. “How have these … creatures … been allowed this close to the command node?”
Marduk gestured toward Prince João.
Moira wrinkled up her nose as at a bad smell. “I should have known. Is this exaggerated display of subservience really necessary, Your Highness?”
The prince had remained seated all this time, an arm draped casually along the back of the bench. “We were told to place all weapons on the floor. Each and every banner soldier is a weapon beyond compare, deadlier than any inorganic stock. But of course with Marduk’s go-ahead I will give my people permission to stand.”
“No need,” said Moira before Marduk could answer. “Gatoi should never have clearance to enter the command node. Return to the concourse at once.”
João uncrossed his legs and braced both boots on the ground. “Have you forgotten I am father of Eirene’s only viable heir?”
“Since you never let anyone forget it, how could we?” said Moira Lee with a cold smile. “Marduk, I need a clean, sanitized pod right away.”
The insult was so brazen, Sun could not let it pass. She struck with a frontal assault. “Governor Lee, isn’t it true that certain clandestine activities in your past required you to give up your place as Companion to my mother? A place your cousin Marduk then took?”
Moira was too canny and experienced to do more than give Sun a flat look meant to express boredom. “What’s your point, Princess Sun?”
“That you’re governor of Lee House now, not Companion to the queen-marshal. So you don’t have any say about who enters and who leaves her presence.” She addressed the man. “Marduk Lee, Prince João accompanies me. My bodyguard, Octavian, will remain behind with the Gatoi cohort, since you’re uncertain your own guards are up to the task of managing them.”
“A palpable hit,” said Marduk with a chuckle, although Sun wasn’t sure if it was the reminder of his cousin Moira’s old disgrace or the challenge with respect to his marines that amused him.
Her father rose with his usual prowling grace and blew a mocking kiss to Moira as he walked past her.
Once the pod door closed and the pod detached, the private, secure, untraceable network Sun shared with her bodyguard and Companions pinged open with a message from Octavian: KEEP YOUR TEMPER IN CHECK. STAY FOCUSED ON WHAT LIES AHEAD, AS WE DISCUSSED.
A second pod plugged in and opened. Moira Lee and her adjutants embarked without looking back. It was a relief to have them and their sneers gone.
“Fabulous boots,” said Marduk Lee to the prince, still looking delighted by the way the encounter had fallen out. “Aren’t they a copy of the famous artifacts on display at the Celestial Shrine on Yele Prime? I studied those artifacts when I did a university year there. I’m sad to say your copy isn’t fully accurate.”
“I used more authentic source material from the inner sanctum that isn’t displayed to the general public,” Prince João replied with a bland smile.
The other man cracked a laugh. “That’s right. You and Eirene first met in the Temple of Furious Heaven. Quite the coincidence.”
A powerful voice broke over them like a sudden storm. “Sun! Why are you dawdling out here? I told you to come at once.”
The hatch into the far chamber had opened while Marduk and João dueled. The queen-marshal stood at the threshold with the dome a vast space behind her. Her body was haloed by a gleaming three-dimensional reconstruction of the many solar systems that made up the Republic of Chaonia, making her seem larger than life, a figure burnished through great deeds and illuminated with a cunning and ruthless vision.
And by the look on Eirene’s face, she was mightily annoyed.
3
Her Obsidian Eye
Eirene was a robust woman with the typical stocky Chaonian build and a black prosthetic in her right eye. A tiara of optical fiber laced around her short hair tied her into the military network. She wore the red-and-gold uniform appropriate to Chaonia’s current Charlie state of threatcon, and a glower to match.
“What is João doing here?” She turned her incendiary glare on Marduk Lee.
Marduk shrugged, untroubled by her anger. “You’re the one who gave him clearance to move through all areas up to fifth-level security. Don’t look at me, Eirene. Look to how you favor your consorts.”
“Come inside,” she snapped.
Sun and João accompanied her into the chamber.
“Out,” she said to the three officers and two Companions in the chamber.
After they cleared out and all the hatches shut, Eirene crossed her arms and examined her second consort with a hard stare given an ominous shine by the laser embedded in her obsidian eye.
“Why are you here, João?”
“As your consort—”
“None of that. Answer the question.”
João smiled in the challenging way he used only on Eirene, leaving Sun to feel personally trapped between two rival sovereignties.
“I am here with my daughter, your heir, after her exceptional performance at the battle of Na Iri.”
“I meant here, at the command node. You could have waited on the concourse or in my suite. You know your being admitted inside the node’s security for everyone to see puts me in a compromised position. People already say I give you too much rope.”
“To hang myself with?”
Eirene smiled sharply. “So they hope. I don’t need your provocations right now with the border situation finally looking good for us. People believe you are a foreign agent who I am too weak-kneed to resist.”
“I can’t help what people think. What matters is you know I am not. Which reminds me—”
“Did you come here on the wings of Chaonia’s most recent victory thinking to use my good mood to entice me into agreeing to your cursed project?”
“It’s a great gamble that will benefit all involved if it succeeds. You know it is.”
Sun took a step forward. “What project are you two tal
king about—”
“Quiet.” Eirene’s raised hand cut off Sun’s question. She didn’t even look at her daughter because she only ever had eyes for him if they were in any room together. “It’s too expensive. Too risky. Too much of a long shot. If word gets out, the criticism will fall fast and hard and could destroy us both.”
“Oh, come, Eirene. After everything you’ve done for Chaonia? You survived and thrived after the deaths of your father and brothers in swift succession left Chaonia desperate and vulnerable. You forced the Yele League to the negotiating table and beat them at their own game. You have freed most of the Hatti region from the yoke of the Phene Empire. No one can take your triumphs from you. No one would dare. Your legacy and your position are assured.”
He gestured toward the command node’s ancestral shrine. Every mission control node and public administrative center in the republic displayed the venerable lineage of the queens-marshal of the Republic of Chaonia. The first queen-marshal, Inanna, had chosen the eight-pointed star as the badge of her authority and passed the device on to her descendants. Her lineage was arranged on a virtual wall as a visually appealing ancestral tree whose queens-marshal were given a doubled and thus sixteen-pointed sunburst halo and whose branch lines had been carefully pruned away so as to be conveniently forgotten.
Eirene’s three consorts had been given the courtesy of glowing portraits to remind people of the current queen-marshal’s adeptness in crafting political alliances through marriage. The first consort, the inscrutable Lady Sirena of the Alabaster Argosy, who had left Chaonia with her two-year-old son three months after Sun’s birth; the second, Prince João, with Sun; and the third, Baron Aloysius Voy of the Yele League, whom Eirene had married four years ago as part of a treaty that sealed the end of hostilities between the Yele League and the Republic of Chaonia.
“Still no child with Baron Voy, Eirene? What are you waiting for?” João’s ambiguous smile flickered in remarkable contrast to the welcoming grin seen on the image of the gregarious Baron Voy.
“Spare me your false concern. It’s bad enough you’ve given me a half-Gatoi daughter. Chaonians will never stand for a half-Yele child becoming queen-marshal.”
“The long history of relations between Yele and Chaonia is certainly contentious.” His smile sharpened to add mockery to the words.
“The Yele are arrogant pricks and always have been. But they bark at my command now.”
He chuckled. “The Yele do hate you with such a particular venom, don’t they? How lowering for them to be forced into a peace of your making, they who consider themselves the exemplar of all that is best amid the vast reaches of human civilization.”
“Father, you don’t care about the Yele,” said Sun, trying to get a foot into the discussion.
“That’s right. I don’t care about the Yele. But I do care about my people and this project, which your mother should recognize could break Phene control over the banner soldiers once and for all.”
“The Phene have a long-standing alliance with the Gatoi banners and their Conclave of Royals,” Sun said. “I thought you two were trying to negotiate treaties with the separate banners to get them to come over to our side one by one.”
“It’s not that simple. More people need to ask themselves why banner soldiers who serve as auxiliaries for the Phene fight to the death even when they don’t need to.”
“Honor,” said Sun.
“Compulsion,” said her father. “Literal, physical, physiological compulsion. Engineered into them by the Phene.”
“João!” Eirene snapped. “It’s a wild theory, not a proven fact.”
“Wild it may be, but I’ll say it again and again, until you hear me, Eirene. My obligation and duty as a Royal of the Gatoi is to fight for the well-being of my people.”
“Which is exactly why Chaonians don’t trust you.”
“They ought to, because in this case what would benefit the brave and honorable Gatoi banner soldiers would also benefit Chaonia against the empire. As you know perfectly well.”
“What kind of compulsion?” Sun demanded.
“Silence,” said Eirene. “Let me think.”
Her father caught Sun’s eye and tapped two fingers to his lips with a scolding tuck of the head. She could not shake the sense she was merely a potentially useful tool in her parents’ personal tool kits, a piece held in reserve within the larger game they were playing. But she knew better than to protest when they were thus arrayed against her.
Eirene studied the images of her consorts’ faces with a meditative frown. Something was going on behind Eirene’s always-intense expression with its quirks: a pinch of the lips, a squint of her flesh eye, a glance at the deck as her right boot traced a straight line like the path of a thought. But Sun could not have guessed what it was, and the lack of any handle to grab onto irked her mightily.
“After all perhaps you are correct.” Eirene took a turn around the room, pacing off a burst of energy.
“I’m correct?” João paused, looking suspicious. “In what way?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I’m giving your project the go-ahead.”
João eyed her suspiciously. “What brings on this abrupt change of heart?”
“The realization that if it’s true, and if you manage to do what you claim can be done, then the Conclave of Royals and the Gatoi clans will owe me.”
“How like you, Eirene. So be it. Whatever it takes.”
“It will have to be done in complete secrecy, totally off the grid. Do you understand?”
“I’ll need a venue.”
“I know of a venue that will work. I’ll release funds from my private treasury. And I’ll put out word that our raiders and operatives must send any captured Gatoi to my central authority immediately.”
“There’s a way to give cover to it, Eirene. You can say it’s a prisoner of war camp.”
“We’re not going to say anything because it’s going to be kept secret from everyone except you, me, and the people working there. My enemies in the court and the assembly will have a field day if they find out. To that end, you will disappear. I’ll put it about that I exiled you in anger. That way no one will question why you’re absent from court. You will vanish. You and your people will be allowed no net presence, no communication with the outside world.”
“Not even with me?” Sun demanded. “Am I not the heir? Am I not to be privy to this sort of information?”
Incredibly, her father was nodding so eagerly that he tuned out Sun’s question. “You’ll see how valuable this is, Eirene.”
“It had better be. I’m staking a great deal of reputation on your gamble. Because there’s another serendipitous piece that came in with the battle report. An entire arrow of banner soldiers was unexpectedly captured intact and alive on an orbital station above Na Iri Terce.”
“I didn’t hear about that,” said Sun.
“How was that managed?” João asked, still ignoring her.
“They got trapped in an inert engine well and were gassed into unconsciousness. They’re still in stasis while the high command decides what to do with them. I’ll have them officially declared dead on arrival and delivered to you instead.”
He laughed, rocketing from combative suspicion to ecstatic glamour so quickly it set Sun off-balance. She hated being off-balance. “An entire arrow! Lady Chaos smiles on us. And with more to come.”
“There won’t be many, João. You know they’re cursedly hard to capture alive.”
“Where are you going, Father?” Sun twined her fingers together as uneasiness washed through her. She wasn’t dependent on him while navigating the shoals of court, of course not, but she was used to having him at her back at all times.
“Your mother will explain.” Grasping Sun’s arm, he kissed her on each cheek, squeezed the hand on which she wore the ring he’d given her, and released her.
The main hatch opened. Eirene followed him to the threshold and, after a moment nailing a stare to h
is back, shouted angrily into the antechamber in his wake for all waiting in the outer chamber to see and hear. “And don’t come back until you’ve learned not to flout security and my authority!”
The hatch hissed shut. Eirene turned to face her daughter.
“Sit down, Sun.”
To remain standing in protest at this high-handed treatment would only provoke Eirene. Sun grabbed a chair set off to one side and guided it to the big oval strategos platform that doubled as a meeting table.
Stay focused on what lies ahead.
“I see you’ve learned some self-control,” remarked Eirene as Sun sat.
“What is this project?”
“Stop asking. I won’t tell you. And don’t try to cajole your father. I’ll instantly withdraw the funding if he tells you or you make any effort to dig out information on your own.”
“Why am I not allowed to know? I’m your heir. Haven’t I proven myself worthy? Isn’t it time for me to be given more responsibilities? Assigned to an active-duty station on a ship like the Boukephalas?”
Eirene leaned on the edge of the platform. The pinprick red light in her eye winked a reflection back at itself from the platform’s glossy surface. “You followed my battle plan well enough to push the Phene garrison fleet out of Na Iri System. My plan. That’s not the same as being ready for independent action.”
“Then what is it ready for?” Sun asked in the evenest tone she could muster as her hands closed into fists.
Eirene looked up. In the domed space above, virtual stars shone. The view zoomed out from the star systems that made up the republic to become a wider perspective.
“Tell me what you see,” said the queen-marshal.
Without the beacon network, built long ago by the now-vanished Apsaras Convergence, each star system would be an isolated island of humanity separated by months or years of travel. Sun traced the routes between worlds and alliances—the Republic of Chaonia, the Yele League and various small independencies hanging on its skirts; the Phene Empire, the wealthy city-states of Karnos and their Hatti cousins long under the thumb of the Phene, the fractious Hesjan cartels and shifting Skuda factions; sacred Mishirru and its outlying dependencies; the isolated Ring of Ravenna; and the terminus frontiers. These routes had seamlessly knit together all inhabited systems until an unexpected and shocking collapse had destroyed every beacon in the central region of the network, leaving in its wake what was now called the Apsaras Gap, a vast, beaconless expanse at the heart of inhabited space. At that time, eight hundred years ago, tendrils of destruction like cracks had splintered out along the outer network to randomly rupture individual beacons, which meant some routes were left more or less intact while others had broken links. The now-cut-off star systems weren’t wholly lost. They could still be reached by the venerable Argosies, powered by knnu drives and still in motion throughout the region even though their passage times were so much slower than beacon travel. Meanwhile, between the stars, the nomadic Gatoi fleets ran dark and cold, also powered by knnu drives and thus difficult to trace by anyone not born on one of the eleven clan wheelships, as Sun had not been.
