by Sara King
Dragomir raised an eyebrow.
He could almost see the Golden Rule flash across the back of her brain in huge, neon red letters. Her eyes widened. “Uh,” the princess said. “I mean.” She swallowed, hard. “Thank you for your input.” She grated out every word, and it sounded like she was cracking teeth in the process. Dragomir had to suppress a chuckle.
Keeping a straight face, he said, “So, we are in agreement? You will claim you are still too ill to move around, but will be out just as soon as you can stop vomiting all over the place.”
The princess gave him a look like she would rather take instructions from a moldy dumpster, but she nodded.
“Good,” Dragomir grunted. “Then get me some clothes. I’m tired of running around in my birthday suit. Too many pretty ladies around here to gawk at me.” He winked at her. “I might feel like I’m being taken advantage of.”
The princess wrinkled her face and opened her mouth. “There’s no way I’m—” She caught herself, swallowing, the Golden Rule again blazing like a warning beacon in the back of her head. “Uh,” she said. “Right away.”
Dragomir was actually surprised that she didn’t add, “Sir,” so cowed was her expression.
This is going to be so much fun, he thought, suppressing an inner giggle. He stretched out on a couch, watching as Praetorian departed at a run to find him clothes. They returned with a too-tight servant’s outfit, but he wasn’t going to complain. He shrugged it over his shoulders and yanked up the pants, so utterly ecstatic to have clothing again that the pinch in the chest and the calf-length legs didn’t bother him.
The Praetorian, for their part, seemed thrilled at his idea to keep the princess abed, and immediately took up positions around the room, the argument settled. Even Whip, with her bandaged hand, stood at attention beside the door.
“There’s going to be hell to pay for this,” Victory muttered, but she ended her complaints and instead entertained herself with the view out her suite window.
Dragomir, who had never even been on a skimmer before Prince Matthias had abducted him, went to sit beside her. He found himself awed by the view, by the mountains and rivers passing beneath them. Then, suddenly, a towering black cliff was passing outside, not fifteen feet from the window, and he jerked back, staring out the glass in awe.
At his gasp, Victory quirked a curious eyebrow at him. “Have you never been on a cruise before?” As if it were the most natural—and common—thing in the world to sail around in a massive ship for weeks on end, wasting enough fuel and supplies to keep a thousand villages powered for the next ten millennia.
He had known such diversions existed, but it had been in a distant corner of his brain, his thoughts instead going towards his daily existence, and how he was going to put away enough food for winter. To be faced with it now, after living in a cottage eating eggs and potatoes his whole life, Dragomir found it very overwhelming. “I knew it was possible,” Dragomir admitted, “But I never thought I’d actually experience it myself.”
She frowned at him as if she didn’t believe him. “Never?” As if everyone had the opportunity to sail around the world because they were bored.
At her stare of pitying disbelief, Dragomir felt himself bristle. “Until two weeks ago, Victory, I had never left my village except to go to the next town over, to trade goats.”
The princess stiffened at his use of her name, but, with a sideways look, she did not mention it.
The Golden Rule, Dragomir thought, unable to stifle his grin that time.
Victory narrowed his eyes at him, but turned her attention back to the passing scenery.
A courier came a half hour before dinner, telling them that the Adjudicator required the princess’s presence. The Praetorian took his message, then told him that the princess was ill, and that, while unfortunate, the Adjudicator could more or less get stuffed. Another arrived ten minutes before dinner, again insisting that the princess’s father demanded her attendance. He was sent away with just as much fanfare as the first.
The third messenger arrived, mid-meal, with a note scribbled by the Adjudicator’s own hand. Victory, who had been snoozing, sat up, read it, grunted, and tossed it into the fire.
“He says I am humiliating him,” Victory said, “And that if I am not at his table within five minutes, he is going to send his Praetorian to retrieve me.” She glanced around the room. “Considering that I’ve got nineteen of them with me, and he brought only sixteen, ten of which must stay with him at all times, I’m not seeing how he’s going to follow through on that particular threat.” She yawned and went back to sleep.
Two hours later, there was a commotion in the hall, and Dragomir heard someone shouting Victory’s name in Imperial.
“Sounds like he’s here,” Victory said. She gestured at her Praetorian to let him inside.
As soon as the door was open, Victory’s father strode in, red-faced and furious. His blonde eyebrows stood out on his crimson face like fresh snow upon a bloodstain. “I commanded you to attend me,” he snarled. “How dare you disobey?”
“I sent a response message,” Victory said, still lying in bed, “but since my brother tells me you rarely read your messages, perhaps you didn’t catch the fact that I would politely vomit all over your table and shit all over your chair. I’m sick. Have been since eating in Cook’s kitchen the last time. I think I found some bad cheese. I can’t move without my world spinning and my bowels spilling themselves like pudding from a sack.”
Her father narrowed his eyes, but she saw a flicker of recognition there.
You bastard, Victory thought, her hopes that her father was not responsible for her assassination attempts dashed by the calculation on his face.
“I was told you weren’t eating from the kitchen anymore,” her father finally said.
“I’m not,” Victory snapped. “If this is what I get?” She snorted. “I’ll eat my own food, thank you. Whatever disease is plaguing his kitchen can stay with Cook.”
“Have the doctors attended to you?” her father demanded. “You don’t look sick.”
Victory gave him a grim smile. “Would you like me to demonstrate?”
Her father gave her a distasteful look. “No, I am quite content with—” He froze, his eyes on her slave. His face darkened to a thunderhead. His voice was utterly cold when he said, “You clothed him.”
“Yes,” Victory said. “He is my slave, after all.”
“I ordered him to be naked.”
“You also ordered me to dinner,” Victory said. “We saw how well that worked.”
Her father stared at her as if she had lost her mind. Then, slowly, she saw his anger rise again, like a volcano that was slowly increasing pressure from the inside. “Praetorian,” he said, his eyes still fixed on Victory, “Beat her slave to death. She can drag around a corpse for the rest of the trip.”
As three of his house guard stepped forward, ten black-clad women stepped between, swords out and resting on the men’s throats. Behind them, nine more women drew swords, the sound of ringing steel sweet to Victory’s ears.
“Turns out,” Victory said, as her father sputtered in rage, “My personal guard have taken a liking to the brute. Now get out of my chambers.”
For a moment, she thought her father would actually be stupid enough to pick a fight. He had twelve Praetorian with him, the other four probably stationed at his chamber door. She had nineteen, and they already had their blades bared and ready, their hands on their energy weapons.
“If you don’t leave now,” Victory said softly, “I think I might decide to inherit my empire early, father.” She plucked a piece of her dinner from between her teeth. “After all, the house Praetorian serve the ruler. If you are dead, then that will be…” She cocked her head, pretending to think about it. “Why, that would be me.”
For what seemed like an eternity, her father merely glared at her over the shoulders of her guard. Victory met his gaze with one of her own, refusing to be cowed by the lying, selfish bast
ard any longer. Finally, her father’s lips stretched in a small smile.
“You’ll be dead before this cruise is complete.” His words were soft, so full of fury that they came out only as a whisper.
Victory smiled, showing teeth. “We’ll see, Father.”
“You will. I’ll make sure of it.” The Adjudicator had Death in his eyes as he turned and stalked from the room. His twelve Praetorian, looking nervous and conflicted, eventually backed from the room, eyes on their sisters’ swordpoints.
“Close the door and stay together,” Victory said. “None of you go anywhere alone. I doubt he’ll try anything overt, but he might have his men take potshots, should you give them the opportunity.”
Then, nerves on edge, she sank back down to her couch and tried not to think about just how utterly dead she and all of her Praetorian would be if her brother’s plan failed.
Her brother came to her chambers about an hour later, looking disturbed. His green eyes flickered over the Praetorian, then back to her. “I heard that you threatened Father’s life.”
“He told his guard to beat my slave to death,” Victory said. “I told him to back down, or I might decide to inherit my empire early.”
Matthias sighed and glanced at the Emp, who was currently lounging in a sofa like a big cat. “Well, at least it’s assured that this ship is doomed to crash.”
Victory raised an eyebrow. “Have you made arrangements?”
“A little mining village out in the Twinbrook Range. Completely surrounded by about three hundred miles of mountains in any direction. They’re building cells in the mine as we speak.”
“What did you tell them?” Victory asked.
“Uncooperative slaves,” her brother said. “In return for housing them for a few months, we will gift their village with a freight skimmer. As they have it now, they’ve been packing their minerals and supplies back and forth on donkeyback. Their mine is actually quite productive—they are simply bottlenecked at how much they can haul, not how much they can pull out of the ground. One good freight skimmer and that town could be booming by next year.”
Victory gave Dragomir a wary look. “Could I stay there, too?” she asked. “Perhaps we could rent a villager’s house…”
Her brother shook his head. “They have a much higher chance of being found, simply by the numbers involved.” He gestured at the ship around them. “It takes two hundred people just to keep this place running. If you add all guests that father leaves behind, as well as staff for those guests, we’re probably looking at somewhere around four hundred people. I’m going to have to ship food into that town on a weekly basis. Sooner or later, the Constable of Numbers is going to take another look at the odd charges I’ve made to my accounts lately. Someone’s going to talk. I estimate they will find the prisoners before they manage to pull the ship from the Boiling Rift, though I can hope for longer.”
“Then you discovered the ambush site?” Victory asked.
“Two days beyond the Boiling Rift,” her brother said. “There’s a cluster of ships gathered in the mountains directly overlooking our flight path. Aside from our route, there is nothing interesting in that area for seven hundred miles in any direction.”
“When do you figure Father will depart?” Victory asked.
Her brother shrugged. “After your display? I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves tomorrow.”
Matthias was wrong. Their father departed that night, and left Matthias with standing orders to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice, because it was looking as if the uprising that had demanded his attention might require the General Commander to put it down.
A day and a half later, as they were sailing over Mercy’s largest ocean, nearing the Boiling Rift, Matthias got the call. Victory made a show of walking him to the ship that came to get him, then waving and wishing his safety in the war as he departed.
Four hours later, as evening was settling over the ocean, Victory saw the mass of steam and rippled water on the horizon. Even through the ship’s filtration systems, she began to smell ammonia.
Thirty minutes later, the ship’s alarms went off. The intercom light came on, and the captain said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. Don’t panic, but it appears we are being attacked by pirates. They are attempting to board, but our ship’s crew is well-trained in these matters, and can easily stand against a few ragtag rebels. Stay within your cabins and everything will be handled by our expert crew.”
Ten minutes after that, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the captain. It seems our attempts to repel the invaders failed, and they have taken the bridge. They intend to drive the ship into the Boiling Rift as a warning to the Adjudicator. They will free the crew and any non-royal guests in the closest port city, and are currently opening their ship to boarding. I repeat. They are going to scuttle the ship. Please retire to the upper deck and please do not hide from their searchers. I repeat. There is no surviving the Boiling Rift. Its temperatures are over three hundred degrees at the surface. Jumping ship would be fatal. Please, go quietly to their ship and this will all be over soon.”
“Well,” Victory said, gesturing at Dragomir. “Let’s go.”
She and her Praetorian stepped into the hall, where they were met by one of her brother’s men. He bowed deeply, shouldering his energy rifle, and led them down the corridor towards the upper deck of the ship. “The skimmers were all sabotaged?” she asked him, as they walked.
He nodded. “There is no way that the traitor could have escaped, milady, unless he had left with your father’s staff.”
It was possible, Victory thought, but not probable. More likely than not, her father had given his man the order to see the job finished, this time, so that she could not come back to haunt him.
“This way,” the man said, leading her out onto the upper balcony and sweeping around to the front of the ship. As they approached, they saw the invading ship—large and sleek, with guns poking from every surface, it was one of her brother’s best warships, albeit with a hasty makeover and a sloppy paint job. Still, Victory was a bit disappointed that the captain mistook it for a raider ship. She would need to remember to increase wartime training requirements for ship captains, when she took the throne.
At the base of the warship’s gangplank, a mass of frightened, expensively-dressed guests were gathered and milling, herded into place by a few dozen of her brother’s heavily-armed soldiers. More were being added by the minute, as searchers brought up the stragglers in the bowels of the ship.
“You see him?” Victory asked the Emp, as they came to stand beside the base of the gangplank, flanked by another dozen of her brother’s soldiers.
“Not yet,” Dragomir said, frowning. “Start letting them on the ship.”
Slowly, the men at the gangplank allowed a trickle to filter from the mass of people, up into the open maw where another dozen heavily-armed soldiers stood at the top, waiting.
“And now?” Victory demanded, as the last stragglers were brought from the ship’s bowels, the captain was brought down from the helm, and the exit doors were sealed.
“No,” Dragomir said, through a frown of concentration.
Four fifths of the cruise ship’s occupants had boarded the gangplank by the time Dragomir’s fist tightened on her arm. “There he is,” he whispered. His eyes were riveted to an arthritic old woman hobbling up the plank.
Victory looked up at the old serving woman, saw the woman’s ice-blue eyes dance nervously over her brother’s men from under her thin white bangs, and she knew.
“Stop,” Victory commanded, gesturing at the woman.
A dozen men retrieved the assassin from the gangplank, to her loud and agitated struggles. They took her off to the side and held her there as Dragomir watched the rest of the men board. Her bottom lip, Victory noticed, was scarred.
“Take off her disguise,” Victory ordered.
Six men started stripping the old woman, trying to pull off her wig, removing her c
lothes, and when they revealed withered old breasts and knobby knees, she frowned, feeling her first traces of doubt.
“What disguise?” the woman cried, the picture of ancient indignance. “I don’t know what’s going on!”
Could he have been wrong? Victory thought, glancing at Dragomir. He was still scanning each person as they boarded, the men guarding the plank waiting for him to shake his head before allowing the next to board. Dragomir hesitated at a couple—most of them single-minded courtesans with aspirations of power—but eventually let them each through. Victory turned back to the old woman. Or could there have been two of them?
Victory caught the woman watching Dragomir with a frown. Then her ice-blue eyes flickered with shock. “He’s an Emp,” she snarled, fury clear in her voice.
“Of course,” Victory said, smiling sweetly. “How else do you catch an assassin who seems to disappear into the walls themselves?”
Her brother’s men, who had already been informed, did not even bat an eye.
It was at that point that the woman began to panic. Victory saw the shimmer in the woman’s flesh, saw the slight shift in proportions before she got her fear back under control. Her eyes narrowed.
“And you’re a Shi,” Victory said softly, trying not to let it show how the assassin’s presence was giving her goosebumps. To her brother’s men, she said, “Make sure it doesn’t escape.”
When finally the last passenger had boarded the ship under the shake of Dragomir’s head, her brother’s men retracted the gangplank and the warship departed. A moment later, a smaller courier ship slipped in behind it, taking its place. As the bow opened and the ramp extended, the Shi watched it with hungry eyes.
“Are you going to kill me, then?” it asked. Neither male nor female, an inShi—a Shi with the power to make internal changes in the base structure of matter, rather than external—was born hermaphroditic, with the ability to change shape between the sexes at will. And, with much practice and dedication, could eventually change the appearance of age and features, as well.
