by Kate Elliott
It’s the life I ran away from. For five years I’ve been cut off, out of contact, free from reminders of the way people live when they belong to one of the seven Core Houses that stand atop Chaonian society.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t feel sorry for me. I left my noble family’s island compound on a rainy day when I was sixteen, carrying a tote bag containing five items. One of the items was enough credit to get my chip—every Chaonian has a chip implanted in their skull when they’re seven—wiped and replaced with a new identity. The Honorable Persephone Lee became humble and dirt-poor citizen Persephone Lǐ Alargos, born and raised in the teeming metropolis of Argos. My excellent test scores high enough to qualify for CeDCA were the real thing.
I ran away from home after my parents and aunt informed me I would never be allowed to fight in the war. I was the spare, being held in reserve in case something happened to my twin brother the way something terrible happened to our beloved elder sister.
And there my twin is on-screen, bigger than life, looking trim and sleek. Perseus is laughing in a way he never did at home as he dives into the glassy water to go after a wink of light on the seafloor. He was sent at age eleven to become one of Princess Sun’s Companions. I still miss him, but it’s not at all clear he mourns me. His life of congratulatory excess, cutthroat court intrigue, and the best connections money and status can buy agrees with him.
In ten days I ship out to train as a beacon engineer, starting as a lowly ensign apprentice. I will become one of the heroes who fight the Phene and their vicious Gatoi allies. In this way I will honor the memory of my dead sister, and I’ll do something useful with my life. I’ll have comrades-in-arms instead of servants and rivals.
“But what we’re all asking is, once this goodwill tour is done, what’s next for the heir to the throne of the Republic of Chaonia?”
The camera zooms in for a close-up of Princess Sun’s self-important glower. I’ve never personally met the infamously competitive and overachieving princess nor any of her privileged Companions, with the exception of my twin.
Fortunately, now I’ll never, ever have to.
“Stay tuned to Channel Idol.”
9
Royal Wedding Updates!
In a balmy archipelago stretched along the equator of Molossia Prime, a yacht named the Glorious Halcyon floated amid the calm of a cluster of reef-ringed islets. Sun sat cross-legged on the deck blinking through a virtual sheaf of classified intel she’d already read. Her temper had not been improved by five months of glad-handing in this infuriating exile. Worse, she’d run out of targets to focus on in this enforced ten-day week of idleness that she was cursedly sure had been requested by Channel Idol. The more they could stream Alika practicing while shirtless aboard a luxury yacht, the more they could entice their audience with the possibility he would compete again in this year’s Idol Faire.
Seated on a cushion in the shade, the Handsome—and currently shirtless—Alika tried out various embellishments for a ukulele accompaniment of the ancient travelers’ classic “I Am a Vagabond.” Candace was asleep in a bunk, awaiting the night watch. Octavian stood watch at the prow while Isis held the wheel with her pteranodon perched on a shoulder. Percy and Duke leaned at the starboard rail, excitedly pointing at a vibrant coral formation about a quarter klick away.
Her gaze slid past them to the person closest to her. Hetty reclined in a lounger examining the same intel, which Sun had passed to her via the ring network. The rise and fall of Hetty’s breathing distracted Sun, making her think of night and curtained alcoves and two bodies pressed belly to belly to become one. A breeze rustled the fabric of Hetty’s pareo, curling it up over the curve of her knees. Her skin was effortlessly golden beneath the strong light, finally getting color after the four years she had spent living in a dome on Yele Prime’s Congress moon with her Chaonian diplomat father and her Yele-born scholar father.
Hetty glanced up to find Sun staring at her legs. She arched a playful eyebrow and punctuated it with a teasing smile. Eirene’s words to João from almost six months ago flared into Sun’s thoughts: It’s bad enough you’ve given me a half-Gatoi daughter. Chaonians will never stand for a half-Yele child becoming queen-marshal.
Sun yanked off her hat so she could lie flat on her back. With hands linked behind her head and ankles crossed, she glowered up at the blisteringly blue sky.
Hetty broke the silence. “What do you think, dear Sun, about this first report?”
“The one about Admiral Manu possibly being spotted at Hellion Terminus, of all places? It is curious. He’s never made a public speech for or against my mother. He doesn’t seem to be linked to a faction at all, as unlikely as that seems of any Yele. So why would the only living Yele admiral worthy of that title turn up at a dead-end backwater of the Phene Empire? What if it’s a false-flag operation by the Phene to try to break my mother’s alliance with the League?”
“Rumors are distraction. Sun, look here. This is the report you need to note. There’s shortages of armor coming soon if factories can’t meet increased demand. You should be advocating for—”
“Hold on.”
Sunlight caught briefly on a tiny object hovering above the mast, a flash Sun would have missed if she hadn’t been looking directly at the tip of the mast swaying above her. She slowly stretched out an arm as if reaching for the brimmed hat she had just cast aside.
“Slide your stinger over here.”
Hetty gave no outward sign of having heard the whisper. Instead, she languidly dropped a foot to the deck as if stretching her leg and nudged the weapon as if accidentally toward the princess’s fingers.
Sun tilted her head to get another angle on the object: small, probably no bigger than a thumb, and coated with a nonreflective surface to make it hard to see. She inhaled and exhaled fully, inhaled again as her fingers wrapped around the rifle and exhaled until her shoulders relaxed. On a held breath she sat bolt upright as she swung the rifle up to sight level and released a pulse.
With a snap and a burst of light, the object tumbled out of the sky to vanish into the water. Everyone on deck swiveled their heads to look.
She jumped to her feet. “Did anyone see where it went in?”
“I’ll get it for you!” Percy dove off the side of the boat, barely making a splash.
Hetty glanced skyward. “Why fetch the wasp when Channel Idol will just send more to sting our every step?”
As if in answer, Alika strummed a cadence to take him out of the song he was playing and into another. “‘… every game you stake, I’ll be watching you.’”
With an impatient shake of her head the princess got up to lean on the railing and scan the sea. Hetty closed the sheaf and got up to stand at Sun’s side. The water was so clear they could see an object resting on the sand. Percy dove straight and true for the seafloor, where he scooped it up and kicked for the surface. He breached, took a breath, and threw it toward them. Sun caught it one-handed and displayed it on her palm.
Hetty examined the tiny drone. “No Channel Idol logo. It’s just blank.”
Sun walked to the prow, where Octavian stood making sweeps of the horizon with his enhanced vision. He reflexively tapped the rifle hanging along his back before glancing at Sun’s open hand.
“It looks like a standard-issue media wasp, Princess, but you never know. Channel Idol’s wasps are required by law to display their logo. They’re also not allowed to coat them with cloaking materials. So it could be a rogue outfit selling to pirate channels. It could be the usual Lee House security overkill.”
“It could be a spy-bot,” she said with a glance toward the stairs that led down to the cabin.
“Sure. And it could be military grade, the queen-marshal’s intelligence team keeping an eye on you.”
“Things have been suspiciously quiet. It’s odd how little news we’re hearing even on the inner court network. It should have occurred to me our communications stream might be being deliberately censored.”
He nodded. “See if the Honorable James can do a trace on the signal. Also, that was a good shot.”
She responded with a curt nod of acknowledgment, but behind her straight expression burned a blaze of satisfaction at Octavian’s praise.
“Oi! Duke!” Percy had taken advantage of being in the water to swim over to the coral. “There’s trilobites here! We can get images and a census.”
Duke released the tender from its garage and motored the little boat over.
“Do you want Wing to scout for any more suspicious wasps, Your Highness?” Isis called, raising a hand to allow the little animal to rub its beak along her fingers.
“Not until I have more information,” said Sun.
She went to the open hatch that led down into the saloon, where James was staying out of the sun after his spectacular sunburn of two days ago. He’d heard everything that had been said up top. His voice rose out of the open hatch as her shadow fell across it.
“It’s actually ‘every step you take,’ not ‘every game you stake.’”
“What is?” Sun asked.
“The lyrics Alika messed up because victory has gone to his head. Come look at this. Bring whatever you shot out of the sky. I just got an anomalous reaction, and I think they might be related.”
She jumped down the ladder into the saloon. Navah looked up from the galley where she was arranging cups and saucers on a tray. She nodded to acknowledge Sun’s presence before collecting the teapot from its warmer.
James was using the dinner table as a platform. He’d pulled up various data streams to create virtual towers of glowing numbers piled up into the air like a holographic three-dimensional image of crowded skyscrapers in miniature.
“What do you have?” Sun asked.
He tugged his flatcap over to the right, a sign of triumph. She could always tell his mood by the cap’s tilt and angle. “You know how little news we’ve been receiving through our net connections?”
“Yes. Octavian and I were just talking about that.”
He waved a hand through the pulsating towers of numbers. The gleaming numerals shuddered, faded to gray, and popped back to a brilliant yellow as his hand moved on. “These are data stacks. The instant you shot down that object, this happened.”
He pushed aside the towers to show what appeared to be a small green sapling unfurling at their base.
“What’s that?”
“My way of representing a suppressed network. Look at these tendrils.” He snagged a stylus from behind his ear and tapped the table’s surface, peeling back a layer of code to show a dark network like roots glowing beneath the sapling. “I think what you shot down isn’t a wasp filming our every laugh and fart. I think it’s a suppressor.”
“You mean someone has been deliberately cutting off our access to the net? So we’re only receiving the feeds they want us to receive?”
“That’s right. If I’m correct, it’s been going on the entire five months we’ve been traveling. There should be three other suppressor drones up there, using a triangulation effect around the central seed—”
“The central seed being the one I shot down.”
“—to fully excise our contact to the net. Look what happens if I tug on this new thread.”
He poked with his stylus at the shining green sapling and with a gentle stroke encouraged its single baby leaf to unfurl. A tower of data climbed in a tight upward spiral out of the leaf. Images and sounds flashed in the air. Ads had the strongest signal, smashing like bricks through a window.
Vogue Academy readies Chaonia for our republic-wide graduation season! Are you graduating or know someone who is? Be the vanguard, not the laggard. See all the latest fabric trends from the premier style and innovation institute and its top design vogues and fashion companions. And don’t sweat your exams! You’ve got this!
“Turn it down!” said Sun with a surprised laugh. “No. Wait!”
A new image appeared depicting a box of small rectangular cakes, each cake baked with the Double Happiness character for good fortune and happiness in marriage. The sunburst representing the royal house shimmered into view, superimposed over the cakes, and exploded as fireworks. A spritely soprano sang out the good news.
Royal wedding updates! Color schemes for your block party! Bake these Double Happiness cakes!
“Royal wedding updates!” exclaimed Sun as the full import of the words hit her. “Is my mother getting married again?”
A loud crash came from the galley.
Sun had barely drawn breath before Octavian dropped feetfirst down through the hatch, rifle raised. He lowered the weapon as they all looked toward the galley.
Navah had dropped the tea tray. Shattered porcelain and puddles of steaming liquid lay in a scatter pattern around her beaded slippers.
“You startled me, Your Highness,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
Sun immediately looked at Octavian, but he gave the swift slight downward dip of the chin that meant to leave things as they were.
A shape appeared at the top of the hatch. Hetty called down, quite out of breath from the shock of hearing the unexpected crash. “Sun? Are you all right?”
“It’s all right,” said Sun without looking away from Navah.
“I’ll clean up.” The cee-cee turned away to open the galley locker.
“We are being censored,” Sun whispered to Octavian, still keeping her gaze on Navah. “But by whom?”
“It’s got to be military intelligence under the command of the palace,” said James. “Look here.”
He had faded the data towers into barely visible ghost images and superimposed a three-dimensional and color-coded route map of their long trip through the provincial cities, industrial parks, and military sites in Thesprotis and Molossia Systems.
“See these brownout zones?” He traced lines with his stylus. “These are all areas where for various reasons—interference, topography, isolation, military security—it is easiest to censor net access. Note how all of our tour has stayed within brown zones.”
“A trip whose every stop the palace arranged,” said Hetty, who had knelt at the top of the hatch so she could peer down into the galley.
“Including this particularly isolated week in the middle of nowhere with no satellite link. And all done according to protocol, so nothing to make us suspicious.” Sun studied James’s map.
“Not until you spotted that drone,” said Octavian. Rifle set casually at his hip, he was still watching Navah as she stepped back from the locker with a vac and started its quiet suction.
James pulled the brim of his flatcap down until it was almost over his eyes. He squinted as he poked at the data. “Until we bring down the other suppressors I won’t be able to access anything except ads because they override everything else.”
The recipe and a demonstration of how to bake the cakes shimmered in the air, accompanied by flashes of festive fireworks.
James looked at Sun. He pulled off his cap and set it on his knee. “Do you think the queen-marshal made an arrangement for you to get married without telling you?”
“That would be just like her,” agreed Sun, “but no. She needs my father’s permission to make legal arrangements regarding me. He’d never let her get away with it, and anyway he would tell me first.”
The princess bent her gaze to the sapling’s data stack, which was still growing. Images flashed in the air and scraps of phrases whispered past her ear as the new connection tried to fully open. The three remaining suppressors were still acting as a baffle. A bright announcement burbled at the edge of Sun’s vision, splashed with red-and-gold highlights for a military flair.
See this fresh interview with a patriot soldier you’d love to bring home to your family! All quiet on the front lines because of the brave service of our troops and the industrious labor of our workers and farmers. Send a message of support through Channel Idol’s registry, approved by the Ministry of Defense.
“What if she sen
t me on this trip to keep us so far away we can’t be on the guest list? Who could she be marrying that she would want to hide it from me? It would have to be someone whose elevation to consort wouldn’t insult Baron Voy and the Yele League after all the work she did to get them under her control. We have to find out. Octavian, you and Isis plot a course to the space elevator. We’re ending the goodwill tour and making our own plans from here on out.”
James twisted his cap in both hands. “Ending it, as in, cutting it off before it’s meant to be over without the queen-marshal’s permission?”
“That’s right,” said Sun.
“If you do this, do you have any idea of the harangue about duty and respect for elders I’m going to get from my father? And then Anas will feel free to give me the elder-brother lecture he so delights in. Are you going to make me endure that?”
“You knew what you signed up for when you stayed with me.”
She reached up to touch Hetty’s bare foot where it rested on the top step. Hetty’s skin was warm from the sun, like balm to a person whose spirit could never find tranquility. Sun let her hand linger there, savoring the contact, then realized she was doing so in the sight of the others and pulled it back.
“You’ll come with me, Hetty. We’ll take out the tender and track down the other three suppressors.”
Navah shut off the vac and, kneeling beside it, picked up a last broken shard of cup. “Now, Your Highness? Should I open the garage and release the tender?”
“No need. I’ve got it in hand. James, if I can get you all four suppressors, can we get a full comms feed or are we still in a brownout zone?”
When he didn’t reply she turned. He’d bunched the cap’s fabric into clenched fingers as his lips parted in alarm at something he was seeing in the data.
“Wait! That’s not right—”
Whatever else he meant to say was cut off by an explosion.
10
In Which the Wily Persephone’s Hopes and Dreams Are Shot Through the Lungs and Turned to Greasy Ash
