by Laura Lam
A flicker of fear showed in the young girl’s face. “I was becoming obsolete.” At Kyla’s frown, Ariadne forced a smile. “And I didn’t like it there. So I’m here. We’re here. Okay?”
Kyla nodded slowly. “Okay.” She kept her voice low, soothing. This was more gentleness than Eris had ever seen in her superior. “Can you show me the cargo that was on board?”
“It’s just some weird, hazardous rock,” Clo said. “Ariadne has it.”
Ariadne passed the glove-covered rock to Kyla, who donned another glove from the pocket of her jumpsuit. The commander examined the small stone, turning it this way and that. Eris thought she saw a bit of a glow emanating from the inside, but it could have been a trick of the light.
“What do you think, Eris?” Kyla murmured. “Could it be a weapon component?”
Kyla passed Eris her other glove. After putting it on, she took the rock from Kyla and smoothed her thumb across the rough surface. She held it up to the light and there it was. A faint glimmer inside, like fire trapped beneath foggy glass.
“If it is, it’s not anything I’ve ever seen,” Eris said.
“Or,” Clo said, finally losing her patience, “it’s literally just a rock.”
Nyx curled her lip. “Listen, jackass. It happens to be a rock that Prince Damocles ordered twenty of the Archon’s best soldiers to guard. Does that sound like the kind of military resources they’d waste? Come on.”
“Or,” Clo argued, “how do we know this wasn’t just some ruse to lure the Novantae out of hiding? Even if you’re not spies, you could have accidentally lead them to us. Right, Eris?”
Eris had to concede that was a good point. “She’s right.”
Kyla reluctantly showed her agreement. “The Archon has been retaliating against the Novantae since we were blamed for Princess Discordia’s death. Every pretender only makes him more determined to destroy us.” She shook her head. “For all we know, another stupid, desperate woman made the mistake of claiming to be the long-lost general and was executed over it.”
If Eris’s father suspected she was actually alive and had defected to his enemies, it would be a disaster. She and the Novantae had had to stage her death in a ship crash with an asteroid. As it was, she’d barely made it out alive. The Tholosians recovered the wrecked ship, and the rumors began when her body was never found.
After that, many, many women tried to claim they were General Discordia. Facial shifters gave them the ability to change their features to resemble those of the princess—easily done, as her icons were in every city on every Empire planet in several galaxies. Some pretenders were said to be Evoli trying to gain entrance into the royal palace on Tholos to spy on the Archon and learn the secrets of the Oracle. Others were impoverished citizens from different slums who had a natural resistance to the Oracle’s brain uploads, seeking what they assumed would be a better, more privileged life.
But the Archon knew his daughter. No one could mimic the results of how he’d trained her. To prove themselves, he would show pretenders the same brutality she’d endured once and survived without complaint, without tears.
Above all, without screaming.
No ordinary human would have survived such conditions. Not the engineered, and certainly not the natural-born who managed to escape the slums.
Eris shoved down the guilt she always felt when she thought about those women. They shouldn’t have done it. They should have just let me stay dead.
“I would know if another pretender had come to the palace,” Ariadne said. “All clearance went through me. Besides, I understand the Oracle. I grew up with One.”
Eris blinked at her in surprise. “You grew up with the Oracle?”
If Ariadne had been at the palace that long, she would have seen Eris before she’d permanently changed her features. Eris had heard about One’s Engineer, but . . .
“How long have you been Engineer?” she couldn’t help but ask.
Ariadne looked uncomfortable. “All my life. The Oracle had my genetics designed to One’s specifics, and had my brain altered after birth to enhance my logical-mathematical intelligence so I could check One’s programming. I was the Oracle’s—” She pressed her lips together and took a step back, shaking her head. “Look, I promise you: One had no idea we were on this ship. I was very careful. I didn’t even risk contacting Kyla to warn her.”
Rhea stepped in front of her. “And so were Nyx and I. We wouldn’t have left if we feared discovery.” She let out a breath and squared her shoulders. “You’re just going to have to trust us on this.”
“I don’t care if they trust us,” Nyx said with a scowl. “Let me just be clear here: my allegiance isn’t to Tholos anymore, and it sure as shit isn’t to the Novantae. I’m only here to ensure these two”—she jerked her head toward Rhea and Ariadne—“could bargain for a safe relocation on a planet away from the Empire.”
That captured Eris’s attention. Nyx looked to be in her early twenties, so when Eris escaped Tholos, Nyx would have still been undergoing the harsh training reserved for members of the royal guard. Eris’s own training was similar but separate, and entirely under the devoted and ruthless attentions of her father.
Both lessons included eliminating weaknesses by having them beaten out of her. Affection was a weakness. Friendships were weaknesses, unless it was your cohort. All you had were loyalty and Tholosian patriotism, drilled into you until you no longer questioned or doubted the superiority of the Empire. Until you truly believed—with your entire heart—that everyone else who rebelled deserved to be executed, and every planet outside of it needed to be conquered.
“And you?” Eris found herself asking. “What do you want?”
She didn’t look away when Nyx’s harsh gaze met her own. “I want to go a day without executing someone,” Nyx said. “I can’t do it anymore.”
Eris went still, remembering her words to Sher when she first defected to the Novantae. I can’t do it anymore. Not after Xander. Not after the terrible things she had been commanded to do.
As stony and indifferent as Nyx’s expression was, Eris recognized the same weariness. It was the cold, hard truth that no matter what either one of them did, or how many people they tried to save, it would never make up for the things they had done.
Eris studied the tattoos on the side of Nyx’s face. The thick, jagged lines around her brow and across her cheekbone. Among the royal guard, it was an honor to wear the marks, but it also meant they could never defect. Never hide.
“Okay.” Eris gestured to the tattoos. “Do you want those removed?”
“You can do that?” Though Nyx sounded impassive, her breathing hitched to a slightly ragged cadence.
If Eris had needed further proof that these women were genuine, that was it. No one still loyal to the Tholosian Empire would opt to have their tattoos removed; they’d die first.
Clo looked at Eris in surprise. “Seriously? She’s military. Are we just going to forget the fact that those tattoos mean she’s killed a silt-ton—”
“You should know better than anyone why that doesn’t matter to me,” Eris snapped. “I believe in second chances. Kyla?”
The Novan commander glanced up from the rock and assessed Nyx’s tattoos. “Those will take at least three removal sessions. Maybe five. Still want them gone?” At Nyx’s nod, Kyla said, “Clo, grab the laser and strap her down. Nyx, I hope you have a high pain threshold, because this is going to hurt like you’ve been sent straight to Avern.”
16.
ERIS
Present day
Nyx lay on the reclining chair in the medical bay, two decks down from the command center. Clo lingered in the corner, arms crossed. Eris had secured the leather straps around Nyx’s wrists and ankles to keep her still while Kyla painstakingly lasered the tattoos off her face. The laser sizzled, and the air smelled of burned flesh.
Eris had seen Kyla do this for various Novan crews over the years. It wasn’t just royal guards who were marked for identification purposes. The Archon marked servants, soldiers, and prisoners. The gerulae wore the scythes on their cheeks. The marks were a message, both I own you and You will never be more than this.
Eris could count on one hand the number of people who made it through the multiple sessions required to remove most Tholosian tattoos. Her father and previous Archons did that on purpose; the heavy metals native to Tholos were used to create ink, spread with nanotech inserted through the needle so the tattoo went deep beneath the surface of the dermis and marked bone. Leftover scars would be visible on Nyx’s face, requiring further treatments to smooth away.
Nyx’s lips pressed into a thin line while Rhea gripped her cuffed hand. The soldier never moved, never hissed in pain. If Nyx twitched at all, Rhea smoothed a thumb across her wrist in a single, comforting stroke. Eris noticed Nyx grimace, and she couldn’t tell if it was the pain or Rhea’s touch.
“Does it hurt?” Clo asked as Kyla lasered the intricate design on Nyx’s cheek.
Nyx’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t flinch as Kyla ran the wand across her cheekbone. “What the fuck do you think?” she asked when Kyla paused.
“Nyx,” Rhea chastised.
Kyla slowly slid the tip of the laser across the jagged lines that branched beneath Nyx’s eyes.
“Most people pass out by now; that’s all,” Clo said.
“I’m not most people,” Nyx said tightly, moving her mouth as little as possible.
“I suppose that’s true.” Eris craned her neck for a better view. At Clo’s questioning look, Eris explained, “Members of the royal guard have training so strict and brutal, they consider war a respite. That laser is like trying to beat her unconscious with a spoon.”
Even so, Nyx held the pain in better than most.
Stop it, Eris, she told herself. It’s not admirable. That training wasn’t admirable. It was messed-up. Xander told you that, remember? He used to have nightmares. He used to—
“How do you know that?” Nyx asked.
Eris kept her expression even. A soldier like Nyx would have been taught to recognize the slightest shift in features, anything that would give away emotion.
Kyla supplied the answer for Eris. “Intel,” the commander said casually. “The Novantae know about the training for Tholosian soldiers. We have a few defectors, myself included.”
Nyx turned her stony gaze on Kyla. “I’ve heard nothing about defectors from the royal guard.”
Kyla continued her strokes down Nyx’s cheek to her chin. The hum of the laser wand filled the silence. “Of course you haven’t. Sher and I gave them new identities and staged their deaths. Made it look like they perished in skirmishes with the Evoli.”
Nyx closed her eyes as Kyla ran the laser over where the tattoos dipped below her chin. After another minute, Kyla turned off the laser and leaned back. “That should do it for the first treatment.” She undid the straps around Nyx’s wrists and handed her a serum. It contained a pale echo of the nanites in Eris’s blood. Not cheap, and not something the resistance could afford to give away. “Put this on to speed up the healing, and I’ll start another treatment in a few hours.”
They all returned to the command center to find Ariadne still laboring over the sample rock in a small glass side room usually reserved for pilot and copilot to rest between shifts. She’d snagged a massive dome light from the med center, and wore one of the ship’s jumpsuits for an extra layer of protection.
“Any luck with that rock, or are we throwing it into space?” Eris asked.
Ariadne brushed the dust from the rock with one of her tools and peeked inside, the light reflecting off the visor of her helmet. “Well, the interior emits a luminescence,” her voice said through her helmet’s comms. “The basic tests came up empty, and it has unique, unidentified endospores that release with any hard impact.”
Clo wrinkled her nose. “Translate that, please.”
“Dormant bacterial morphotypes,” Ariadne explained, as if that would help. “Resistant to tough conditions on certain planets. But that’s it. I can’t do much more without running it through an analyzer.”
Nyx scoffed. “So. We have nothing so far.”
Ariadne looked cheerful. “Not nothing. It’s so shiny!”
“Kid, you’re not helping.”
A high chime echoed from the comms. Every ship in the galaxy was fitted with an announcer that received royal proclamations. Even the Novantae didn’t dare remove them; they needed to see proclamations live just like everyone else. They were that rare.
Eris recalled the last proclamation vividly. Shortly after Eris had defected, she was in the medical suite at Nova, recovering from injuries sustained while staging her death. That ringing had sounded throughout headquarters—and the whole empire—a klaxon announcing her death.
Even though the Novantae had staged her ship’s crash to look like an accident, the Archon used it as an excuse to blame the Evoli, retaliating and threatening to reignite all-out war.
How many deaths resulted? Eris was the one who chose to leave. She knew what she risked.
The chimes faded. The lights dimmed and the screen over the main controls clicked on. The live feed showed the Secretary to the Archon standing at the podium of the throne room, speaking the formal introductions. Behind him was the glimmering marble slab of the dais, with the simple seat from which her father took his appointments. The Archon sat, regal in his clean, pressed black military uniform and gold threads.
It was the first time Eris had seen her father in three years. He looked so much older, even with plenty of years left in his reign. Body mods reserved only for members of the royal family allowed them to live longer than humans did naturally; her father was approaching one hundred and eighty-six Old World years. But Eris didn’t remember those gray streaks in his jet-black hair, or the sharp lines across his forehead. His expression was as stern as she remembered. Every bit as cold.
For a few years, she had known her father better than anyone. He was her captain, her trainer, and her tormentor. He only ever allowed a slight glimpse of emotion after she completed a training session. She’d be bleeding on the floor, and he’d approach, smooth down her hair, and whisper: On your feet, Discordia.
Clo tapped her metallic toes impatiently as the Secretary yielded the floor to the Archon. “What does he want?”
Rhea sighed. “He’s made a difficult decision.”
“How would you know?” Eris pressed.
Rhea gave her a look that said it all.
“Archons aren’t supposed to take courtesans.” Eris’s words were hollow. She thought her father had honored that vow.
If Eris had continued on the path to become the first Archontissa, she would have taken that vow to the God of Death to be His Hand, and in that oath was a promise to forsake all others: family, lovers, friends. Death required impartiality, the knowledge that He would come for everyone at the right time, and it was at His will. Devotion to such a deity meant a ruler must sacrifice worldly pleasures that could lead to a deeper connection; a soul could not share space with the God of Death, for He owned it and in death it would be His.
Resentment tightened in Eris’s chest. She’d accepted that her devotion to their gods was as flawed as a cracked vase. And in the end, her father was just as weak as she was. He was simply better at hiding it.
Rhea’s face stayed smooth as glass. “We were rarely intimate in the way you’re thinking—he had another courtesan for that—but he needed someone to listen. I was considered to be Damocles’s, but the Archon came some nights. Often, I suspect, because he was curious about his Heir’s chosen.” Rhea nodded to the screen. “Out here, he looks calm. He could never hide behind that with me.”
Eris’s breath caught. Rhea had been her bro
ther’s chosen. He, too, disregarded the vow. As much as emotions warred within her, Eris already wondered how they could use this to their advantage. What weakness might her brother have divulged, whispered among satin pillows in the Pleasure Garden? How long had he gone to this woman? And her father? Rhea looked so young.
Eris tried to hide her troubled expression. “You’re what? Nineteen?”
“Twenty-one.”
Show nothing. Eris didn’t want Rhea to assume she held judgment for her or for the other courtesans. No, all her feelings were reserved for her father and brother and what they must have done to make this woman risk death to run.
Still, she had to ask, “How can you sound fond of him?”
If Rhea was offended by that, she didn’t show it. “He is a complicated man. But if I condoned the things he did, I wouldn’t be here.”
The Archon began speaking. Eris was distracted by his voice—the deep, rolling Tholosian accent that was deliberately intended to lull the masses. She knew she should hate him for everything he did—everything he did to her—but she didn’t.
Until his words broke the spell. “—negotiating a truce with the Evoli leaders, the Oversouls. In just under a month’s time, once our negotiations are complete, we will sign a formal declaration for peace at a ceremony on the Evolian planet Laguna. It will be broadcast across our galaxies, in every corner of our Empires. The Evoli and Tholosians have been at war for over five centuries. It’s time we ended it.”
The screen went black and they all stared at it in varying measures of shock.
“He’s lying,” Clo finally said, her breathing sounding a bit ragged. She looked wildly at Eris. “Right? I don’t trust him. Do you?”
That drew a sharp glance from Nyx, who didn’t miss anything.
“I don’t know,” Eris murmured. “With Charon no longer producing crops, the Empire’s resources are too strained to support its population. The Evoli have more resource-rich planets in their galaxy.”
“Then what would the Evoli get out of it?” Clo asked, incredulous.
