Diplomacy

by May Sage

“Fourteenth floor.”

  He pressed the right button before tapping his communicator. ”Get the troops in,” Kai ordered, no doubt speaking to Evi. “Round up the residents of this place on the fourteenth floor. Gently. I want no casualties if we can help it. There are three princesses and one male heir. They’re to be handled with care.” When he was done, he turned to Hart. “That girl? Speak to her. We'll need a reasonable local leader. I don't want to have to leave soldiers behind. If her father is an idiot, make her queen, and get her to sign the goddamn treaty.”

  Hart was somewhat confused, impressed, surprised, and pleased all at once. He’d imagined he’d face some remonstrance, perhaps. Sometimes, it was hard to remember that he wasn’t that young nineteen-year-old copying charters he had no hand in making, but the right hand of a leader who trusted his judgment. Mind blowing. Exhilarating.

  Two hours passed before they managed to get every resident, servant, and guard inside the throne room.

  Finally, it was confirmed that everyone was here; drones had even checked thermal signatures on the other floors to make sure. Hart scanned faces. The king, his council, two of his daughters, their household, and soldiers. But no matter how hard he looked, one person was missing.

  “Well?” Kai prompted, tapping his right-hand fingers on the arm of the imposing white throne impatiently.

  Hart remained silent. After an instant Kai chuckled, rotating the large curved seat to face Hart. He asked, “Your girl has run away, hasn’t she?”

  Hart swept the crowd in one glance for the nth time, entirely needlessly. He knew she wasn’t here.

  “So it seems,” he said between his teeth.

  Kai laughed again. “Ah, well. We can add her to the growing list of inconvenient, willful females roaming this kingdom. It seems we’re going to have to find an alternative solution to keep this planet in check.”

  And so, Kai moved on, attacking the next problem.

  Hart wished he could do the same.

  A week later, in another part of the Ratna Belt, he thought of the nameless female when he saw a stone that had a tone quite similar to her eyes. A month after that, he found that his eyes had followed the back of a lady with dark brown hair held in a braid high at the back of her head.

  A year after that, Hart still sometimes turned to random strangers, wondering if he might possibly have caught a glimpse of his lost Zeruvian princess. Each time, he ended up disappointed. No one had her eyes.

  Kai took to teasing him about her, as did his sister.

  With time, he accepted that he’d never see the female again.

  Eight

  Forging a New Path

  A few days after they left, Kaur had asked when they were heading back home. Dara replied that she liked it in space, he said that he liked it, too, and that was that.

  From time to time in the following days, Kaur talked about their sisters, his tutors, their uncle. Sometimes, even about their father. He asked how they were doing and when they’d see them again.

  A pang of guilt grew and festered inside Dara’s chest, because she couldn’t give one truthful answer to her little brother. “They’re just fine.”

  “Soon.”

  Bullshit.

  She was bracing herself for the inevitable, having to tell him the truth one day, that they’d run like cowards, that they had no news of their family, but about three weeks after they’d left, Zee beeped directly into Dara’s communicator, which translated the robot’s speech.

  “I have intercepted a communication,” said the highpitched metallic voice, “voice identified as one Lonar Rexis, searching for Dara and Kaur Rexis.”

  She’d practically run to the command center, half worried, half ecstatic, and above all, feeling guilty.

  “Lonar? Dara for Lonar Rexis, over,” she frantically called, talking to the coordinate Zee had shared, repeating herself a handful of times, without success at first.

  And then, finally, it came. “Dara, it's me.”

  A half-size hologram of Lonar’s torso appeared in front of her, above the control platform of the Fusion.

  Shit. Her uncle was alive.

  “Holy fuck, it’s really you!” she yelled, before launching in a series of apologies.

  But Lonar hadn't been pissed that she'd taken her brother; he hadn't even cared about his ship.

  “Don’t sweat it, kiddo. I told your father I sent you out. If anyone had been thinking clearly that night, we would have ordered someone to lead your siblings to safety. Taking your brother off-planet was smart; leaving your sisters, however?” Lonar sighed, sounding disappointed. ”You did good. Not great.”

  Dara couldn’t attempt to defend herself. She hadn't exactly thought things through that night. Less than an hour had passed between the moment she'd decided to go and the moment when she'd left the system. Stopping to get each of her sisters, convincing them to leave all their fineries behind, might have ended up making her exit impossible.

  Rather than justifying herself, Dara accepted the critique, and asked, “Are they okay? And you. And father. And the people.”

  She had so many questions. No official news had come from any frequency Zee had monitored for her, not surprisingly.

  Enlil, the warlord of their sector, liked to pretend that all was well, under control, that the mages were nothing more than small groups unworthy of their notice.

  There had been plenty of whispers and rumors contradicting the propaganda, hence the reason why Dara had known of the insurgents before they’d turned up, but it would take a while for the worlds to know what had happened in small systems such as Zeru.

  “Hush, child. We're all as well as can be. Alive. Unharmed.”

  Dara breathed out in relief and did her best to squash a new pang of regret. They could, and perhaps should, have stayed, then. The mage hadn’t lied, after all.

  “What happened?”

  She listened wordlessly, in awe, as Lonar talked her through the most horrifyingly efficient takeover she'd ever heard of.

  “After taking the main city and your father’s tower, the mages got to the bankers and merchants, controlling the financial district and ordering them to stop all trade and movements. No one can fight them, Dara. They truly are monsters. When you go against them, they break your bones with their minds and make your eyeballs bleed. They make you see horrors until your spirit breaks. So, our trade was under their thumb. They kept everyone in your father’s tower—your sisters, the councilmen, even the servants—locked up. Then, they summoned all the nobles. They were informed that they could keep their belongings, and their lands, and their titles. The one thing we had to relinquish was our slaves. They can stay in our employ if they voluntarily sign a contract of employment for a remuneration. They are to be paid more than a certain wage per hour and cannot be forced to work more than ten hours a day. This is going to affect our economy in ways I cannot foresee yet. The slaves are to be compensated for their prior years of service, too. That's going to bankrupt more than one family, but the mages were clear. If any of these terms aren't met, they're going to do something about it. They might like to sound all high and mighty, but they don't have much problem with torturing nobles.”

  Lonar was fuming, she heard it in his voice and saw it in his darkened eyes.

  Dara dared not speak, for she might have said something along the lines of the fact that the nobles hadn’t had much problem torturing their slaves, either.

  She heard the spite-filled words, read between the lines, and realized that these changes were not, in fact, for the worse.

  “So, what of the people? How many died?” she asked, perhaps to remind herself that the mages were evil.

  “Very few. Two hundred throughout the planet, perhaps. More were hurt. Those who were, received treatment. You should see how they heal, Dara. Just one hand on the head, sometimes around a wound, then they stay immobile for a minute, and that’s it, people are all healed up. Instead of waging war on all of us, those people should help th
ose in need.”

  “They might have, uncle, if they weren't condemned to death as teenagers.”

  She was as surprised as he when the words crossed her lips. She'd never been a champion for mages; not since her first run-in with their kind. And then, she’d met a silver-tongued, gray-eyed politician who’d moved her so deeply with a few words.

  “Well, yes. That is the second biggest change they demanded of us: no more killing mages. Their leader is a cold, cruel man. He said that he'd take an eye for an eye; if one mage child is killed, he'd see that one of our children is murdered, to even things out. These are dark times, Dara.”

  They could agree on that part, at the very least.

  “And what of our family?” she asked, knowing that it was unlikely that the mages would have left her father to rule after the events that had preceded the war.

  “We're to be replaced. A mage now serves as regent, while things stabilize. The other nobles can elect a king in five years, they said.”

  Again, the mages had proved bafflingly reasonable, Dara thought. She also kept that opinion to herself.

  “Our belongings are also ours to keep, but we will have to find some sort of employment. Your sisters are devastated, as is my brother.”

  “And you?” she asked Lonar.

  Dara saw the hologram of the male shrug his large shoulders indifferently. “I wasn't king,” he explained indifferently. “My situation isn’t changing as much as your father’s. I have experience and properties. I'll manage just fine.”

  “We all will,” she proclaimed.

  Dara wanted to believe that.

  She offered to bring back his ship, but Lonar shook his head. “Keep it, it will serve you better. I'm too old to galivant through the universe. Find something to do with your time. The Zeru we knew will change, Dara. Your father and sisters will leave. So should you. You won't belong here. Fly and find your place.”

  She'd done just that and soon found out that her actual place was behind the command platform of the Fusion, with Zee, Laeri, Raff, Earl, Wilm, and Kaur seated behind her.

  Her field of employment wasn’t what one would call legal, because Earl had steered them that way, but she didn’t do much harm overall, and her crew was getting by.

  Things had worked out for everyone, in the end.

  Kaur and Dara saw their family more often than she wished to. Her father and sisters had moved to Vratis, in the Farisles. She made a point of stopping by with presents from each corner of the Belt whenever she was in the vicinity, although she wasn't often welcomed, and never thanked.

  Dara was just feeling guilty; guilty that she fit in better in her current position than she ever had on Zeru, guilty for not regretting the good old days her sisters and father mourned, and, above all, guilty for having abandoned them three years ago.

  She didn't think the feeling would ever go away. She was flourishing, while her once flamboyant sisters withered, hating their lives and forever regretting the end of their reign.

  Kaur decided to stay with her; another source of guilt. She had to fight tooth and nail to keep him, when Kraul had wanted to have his heir with him, but Kaur hated, hated the family home. In the old days, they’d had an entire tower with a hundred floors; now her family lived in a comfortable villa with less than ten bedrooms. Larger than most, but it was impossible not to run into each other in so small a space. After one day there, the boy was ready to fly away. So was Dara; she couldn’t exactly blame him.

  Finally, Kraul caved, after Kaur painted his bedroom walls black and dyed his hair blue. Now the boy had a permanent place in Dara’s crew.

  “You’re sure you want to be here?” she asked, not for the first time.

  He just smiled. “I like it better here. Stop fussing.”

  From prince and heir to nothing, roaming the skies with a crew of mercenaries.

  If he could deal with that, she certainly could.

  Nine

  An Unexpected Encounter

  “I don’t know in what galaxy a T-17 power converter is only worth a hundred marks,” Dara said, rolling her eyes. “I’ll take two hundred and fifty, or I’ll sell it to someone else.”

  The dark red, smooth-skinned amphibian had a few colorful words to say about that, but Zee didn’t see that translating them was necessary. The alien woman’s outrage was understandable. After all, these converters were worth a hundred and fifteen, tops, and only because they were illegal.

  Dara knew she could sell them for a lot more out here, though. She was the only one with that model in the whole avenue of makeshift street merchant stands—she’d checked.

  “I’ll tell you what, if you buy all six I have, I’ll let them go at two hundred each. That’s my deal. I won’t go one mark lower than that.”

  She was actually willing to sell T-17 parts a lot lower than that, but not to an unknown creature who came in with far too much tech. The imperials had closed in around the outer borders of the Ratna Belt and were using a lot of sneaky techniques to draw out and condemn thieves.

  Dara wasn’t actually a thief. Not exactly. She liked the term ‘opportunist’ a hell of a lot more. As her ship was one of the fastest in the Belt, she answered distress calls from fellow members of the merchant guild when they were getting pursued by the authorities. They dropped their cargo so as not to be caught red—handed, and her crew grabbed it. She sold the stuff and paid the guild a portion for procuring it in the first place. Everyone won.

  Except the people from whom the original thieves stole it, but that wasn’t her problem.

  She had to be cautious, but still, she was willing to make a deal, if only to be rid of the converters. They were heavy, cumbersome, and quite obviously contraband, so they might have gotten her into trouble.

  The alien lady screeched at her robot, and Zee beeped rapidly, before displaying a series of number on the black screen that served as her face.

  “175 x 6.”

  That wasn’t a bad deal, really, and she could do with a bit more money. Kaur had been hinting for ages that he would like his own speeder, and the Goddess Light knew that the kid deserved a treat. He wasn’t one to complain about shoving his hands right inside the engine to do grunt work along with the rest of them.

  Dara bit her lip, weighing the pros and cons.

  Analyzing situations, calculating odds. That was her thing. Usually, she was good at it. But how the hell could anyone actually think in this heat?

  Ithel was, without any doubt, the hottest fucking planet she’d ever stepped on. And this was their winter. During the summer, the inhabitants actually lived underwater, in shielded cities, because the surface was basically a fiery hell.

  Dara didn’t hate it here. She didn’t hate it anywhere. Flying around the sector, getting to know each planet, hadn’t gotten old in three years. Not for her, or for Kaur.

  They didn’t often speak of their old home. The boy was older now, and he understood exactly what she’d done when she’d lured him for a trip the night their planet had been under attack, but they’d never discussed it.

  She couldn’t remember the last time he’d played games and enjoyed himself like a kid; he truly pulled his weight.

  A decent second-hand speeder cost perhaps five to seven thousand marks. She had as much saved, but she liked a little cushion in her finances. If she could manage two or three decent deals while on Ithel, she would be able to afford one, though. His birthday was coming up. Her keen eyes assessed the amphibian, an alien from the Kopparen region, no doubt. She seemed harmless enough, but she supposed that a spy for the enforcers would look harmless.

  Dara truly hated selling illegal goods to unknown parties, but the risk seemed minimal. Besides, getting rid of the converters was the right thing to do; right there in the open, they were a huge liability. What if an overzealous enforcer she couldn’t bribe saw them?

  “185 each, for the six of them. I'll round it up to 1100. That's my last offer.”

  The Kopparenian took a second to
consider, and finally extended her tentacled arm, holding up one slimy limb. Was that her version of a thumb up?

  The alien waved one of her followers forward; a male Evris, who held her purse. He started to count out bills and Dara moved to pack the power converters, stacking them up. She was at the fourth when a voice froze her in mid-reach.

  A voice she knew well. A voice she might have dreamt of a time or two.

  “Shouldn’t you pack them individually to limit the risk of explosion?”

  Dara froze in her tracks, her eyes widening in shock and horror. Fuck.

  It wasn't a voice that should have felt familiar at all, as she'd only heard it once in her entire life, and yet she identified it immediately, before her eyes went up, and up, and up. Eventually, they fell on him.

  He was but a stranger she’d barely interacted with, but none of her tutors, superiors, or elders, had affected her view of the world more than the mage had after a few instants, a few words. A few truths.

  Three years had passed, and the mage had changed a little, but she had no problem recognizing him. He still figured amongst the tallest Evris she’d come across. His hair was a little longer, shaggier, and perhaps also lighter—understandable under the sun of Ithel; her own tresses, usually very dark, had managed a few highlights. Like anyone who’d spent more than a day on this planet, his skin was tanned, darker than she remembered it.

  Dara was at leisure to see plenty of his golden skin, as he wore nothing on his torso but a blue necklace.

  He had thin marks on his shoulders and collarbones. She mistook them for tattoos at first, but in the sunlight, she saw them glimmer, shimmer gently. He’d been fitted with an electronic interface; the latest exosuits on the market. Dara had curiously eyed the products when they’d been launched a few years back, but the thought of actually getting a machine fitted inside her body hadn’t sat well with her. She wasn’t surprised that the mage hadn’t been squeamish. There was a pair of ceremonial pants hanging low on his hips and flaring around his legs like a skirt. It shouldn’t have been quite so sexy. She’d seen plenty of locals thus attired around the capital, but none had worn it as well.