Shifter

by Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Alyssa Day

A matching desk and chair occupied the opposite corner from the suit of armor, both seeming to grow organically from the deck in curving walnut shapes. In the center of the room hung a simmie globe, currently projecting a superspace image of streaming stars in a rainbow of colors.

  Rance ignored the globe in favor of the suit of armor, which featured the same striking red and black color scheme as his own. The chief difference was the heraldic coat of arms that marked the suit’s right shoulder. Though the imperial arms featured a lion gripping a starship between its paws, this design was unfamiliar: a dragon rampant on a field of stars.

  “Ship,” he said aloud. “Whose coat of arms is that?”

  “The arms of House Lorezo.”

  Not the kind of suit you’d wear in an effort to hide who you were, then. So why not wear the imperial arms?

  A flash of gold along the suit’s right glove caught Rance’s attention, and he crouched for a better look. Something was written up the length of the gauntlet in a language he suspected was Latin; like their nineteenth-century role models, the aristos were big on ancient languages. “Ship, translate the sentence on her glove.”

  “‘I will no longer endure dishonor.’”

  Interesting. “Is that the motto of House Lorezo?”

  “No.”

  Rance straightened from his crouch and turned to sit down on the bunk. If the empress took exception to his making free with her cabin, he’d find out soon enough.

  In the meantime, he intended to make the most of the opportunity. “Ship, display the most recent media file concerning Empress Zarifa Lorezo.” The Empire’s media reported on every move she made with an obsessive interest.

  Two gossiporters appeared in the simmie globe, clad in velvet and lace in cheerfully eye-straining colors.

  “Any word on our party girl empress, Corvin?” the female of the pair inquired brightly. Her eyes were surrounded by an intricate pattern of glittering blue face paint that shimmered against her pale skin.

  “According to the palace, she’s in deep seclusion preparing for her wedding to the regent’s son, Gerik Natalo.” Corvin, a burly man in lime-green stripes, gestured with beefy fingers. An image appeared: Zafira, standing next to a hulking man who wore his long blond hair tied back in a club.

  Despite his massive, powerful build, her escort dressed like a fop, in dark purple silk with black lace spilling around his wide cuffs. There was cruelty in the sharp lines of his face, and his eyes looked too small, despite the eyeliner apparently intended to enhance them.

  “They’re a gorgeous couple, aren’t they?” the woman said, her smile blinding.

  “Not really,” Rance muttered. Zarifa’s expression was flat, almost doll-like compared to her normal intelligence and animation, and her smile looked strained. She might be engaged to Natalo, but she didn’t seem to like it.

  “Maybe Lord Natalo can get some of her more outrageous behavior under control,” Corvin sniffed.

  Yet another image flashed on screen: Zarifa, laughing hysterically, staggering as she climbed over the lip of a marble fountain. The spray splattered over her, dancing off her neck and shoulders.

  “That’s cold!” she yelped, jumping up and down under the pattering water as it quickly soaked through her thin clothes. Bouncing in dizzy circles, she grabbed the hem of her silk shirt and jerked it off over her head before throwing it aside with a whoop. Her naked breasts quivered, white and full under the lights of the city square.

  “Well, it was the empress’s twenty-fifth birthday,” the woman gossiporter trilled. “In accordance with her father’s will, she’ll officially take the reins of power this year on Our Lady’s Day.”

  Corvin laughed. “Lady help us all. Good thing she’ll be marrying Lord Natalo the same day. She won’t have time to do much damage.”

  The globe went black as the words “End File” flashed up.

  Rance frowned and lay back on the bed, crossing his bare feet at the ankle. “Next file.”

  The next story featured Zarifa sunbathing naked on a Throneworld beach, her red hair not quite covering her lovely backside. The gossiporters made all the appropriate sounds of scandalized titillation.

  The third file was an interview she’d apparently conducted while under the influence. She kept giggling, and she couldn’t seem to construct a coherent answer to the gossiporter’s questions.

  “Freeze image,” Rance snapped.

  Zarifa cut off in midgiggle. Despite the silly grin on her face, there was something different going on in her eyes, something that had caught his attention.

  Helpless rage and frustration.

  It was as if she hated what was coming out of her own mouth, yet she couldn’t seem to stop what she was saying.

  Rance ran a thumb across his lower lip, staring at the simmie image. Drunk or not, she sounded nothing like the capable, intelligent woman who’d confronted Casus on his behalf. He wouldn’t have even known it was the same person.

  But what really bothered him was the fact that the empire didn’t have freedom of media. If she’d wanted, Zarifa should have been able to censor these broadcasts. God knew Throneworld was quick enough to censor any other media report that was even remotely negative. Yet these stories had been permitted, despite the fact they made the empress look like a drunken slut.

  That suggested someone in government wanted her reputation ruined. And there was only one man with that kind of clout: The regent.

  The reason for that was obvious. If the public believed their empress was a drug-addicted idiot, nobody would complain when the regent continued to run the government—or when his son married her. What had the gossiporter said? “Good thing she’ll be marrying Lord Natalo the same day. She won’t have time to do much damage.”

  “And if she dies in a tragic, drunken accident six months after the wedding, no one will ask too many questions,” Rance said aloud.

  “You put that together fast,” Zarifa said from the doorway. “I have advisers who still have no clue, even after all these years.”

  Apparently she’d taken advantage of one of the ship’s other heads. She was dressed in a one-piece, dark blue uniform, stark and plain compared to the red hunting jacket she’d worn to buy him. Even so, the suit made the most of her lean, intensely female body.

  He watched as she walked in and sat on the bed beside him. “They’ve been drugging you, haven’t they? You’re not the type to play into their hands by drugging yourself.”

  She snorted. “The regent didn’t have to drug me. He controlled my nanosystem.”

  Nanos could induce intoxication, even hallucinations, without any drug use at all. It wasn’t unusual for people to become addicted to misusing them.

  But to force such intoxication on someone else was supposed to be practically impossible. “How did he hack into your system? You’re the empress, for God’s sake. Your security should be better than anyone’s.” Elaborate antivirus and firewalls were a necessity for everyone with a nanosystem. Otherwise an attacker could paralyze or even murder you by having the nanos attack your central nervous system.

  “I was fifteen when my parents died and Umar became my guardian.” Zarifa stared up at the simmie of her own frozen, enraged face with brooding eyes. “He had my system stripped and reprogrammed so I couldn’t defend myself. I’ve been his puppet ever since.”

  “He did that to a child?” Rance stared at her, appalled. “Why would your father make a man like that your regent?”

  Her laugh was short and bitter. “Lodur had his own questionable secrets. Umar made a profession of keeping them for him.”

  “He was blackmailing the emperor? With what? And why didn’t Lodur have him killed?”

  She rose restlessly to her feet, rubbing the back of her neck with both hands. “My father wasn’t an evil man, Rance. He just wasn’t very good.”

  “Are you going to elaborate on that?”

  Zarifa snorted as she began to pace. “Not likely.”

  Meaning that whatever
secret Umar had used to blackmail the old emperor still had power over her. And yet, she’d done all this. Escaped from Umar and his son, bought both this ship and Rance himself. “Umar’s not controlling you now, or you wouldn’t be here. How did you free yourself?” He remembered the comment she’d made about disconnecting Casus’s cameras: “I’ve got a pretty good nanosystem.” “You upgraded your nanos. A combat system? Something they can’t hack.”

  She stopped her pacing to shoot him a look. “Good guess.”

  “Where does Kuarc fit in all this?”

  “He’s going to be emperor.”

  Rance shook his head. “The aristos will never let him take the throne, and you know it. He’s a bastard.”

  “But he’s a bastard with an army.” She smiled grimly. “And I’m going to help him.”

  Unable to sit any longer, Rance rose to his feet. “Zarifa, I know Kuarc. He’s a friend of mine. He believes you were involved in your father’s death, and he’s sworn to kill you for it.”

  She stopped pacing to stare at him. “He honestly believes that ridiculous conspiracy theory? For the Lady’s sake, I was fifteen!”

  He leaned a shoulder against the nearest bulkhead. “You wouldn’t be the first teenage murderer.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Zarifa twisted the diamond on her finger, restlessly turning it back and forth, then sighed and dropped her hand. “I’m going to have to take the chance anyway. Besides, I’ve set up a meeting with one of his advisers. I think he’ll be able to convince Kuarc to see me.”

  Rance straightened away from the bulkhead and frowned at her. “That may not be a good idea. There’s a traitor in Kuarc’s organization. That’s how I ended up in this damned collar.”

  She nodded. “Dallon Izac, one of Kuarc’s chief lieutenants. Umar got to him last year.”

  Rance came to full alert. “Dallon Izac—that’s the son of a bitch’s name?”

  She lifted a red brow. “You don’t know?”

  “He didn’t introduce himself. I met the fucker in a bar on Market Station to arrange delivery of a shipment of weapons. The minute I sniffed him, I knew he was a lying spy. He had that stench.”

  Zarifa cocked her head, interested. “You can tell someone’s lying by smell?”

  He nodded. “Werewolf senses. Anyway, he realized I was onto him. Must have seen it on my face. I started to shift, but he shot me with a dart gun before I could take him out. Next thing I knew, Casus was fitting me for a collar.”

  “Wonder why he didn’t just kill you?”

  Rance bared his teeth. “Bad judgment.”

  She laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you’ll make him rue the day.”

  “I will; believe me.” Rance frowned and moved over to lean a hip on her desk. “In the meantime, I need to get to Kuarc and warn him about that bastard. Who knows how much damage Izac’s done?”

  “More than enough. According to what I’ve overheard, he’s been funneling information to Umar for months.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “But don’t worry too much. I’ve already gotten word about him to Kuarc. I just spoke to Edin, my father’s cousin, who’s also Kuarc’s chief adviser. He’s skeptical, but he did agree to meet us at one of Kuarc’s Thronesystem bases. If I can convince him I’m sincere, he’ll arrange a meeting.”

  Rance grimaced. “Assuming he doesn’t decide to kill you first.”

  SEVEN

  Zarifa went off to check the ship’s engines, leaving Rance to dress. He ordered the ship to fabricate a dark blue uni in his size and waited until the wall unit produced the one-piece suit and a pair of boots.

  Finally, dressed in normal clothing for the first time in months, he went looking for Zarifa.

  The Empire’s Hope was designed with its cargo hold and passenger deck forming a single fat egg shape that hung suspended under the long cylinder housing the super-C engines. The exotic fields the engines generated didn’t get along well with the ship’s artificial gravity, so the two had to be kept separate.

  Rance kicked through the circular hatch into the engine room to see Zarifa floating midway up the vast central pylon in the dimness. Her long red hair waved around her head like a halo as she watched the violent blue crackle of super-C fields inside the neutronium glass tube. The light painted the delicate contours of her face in an otherworldly glow.

  With a captain’s automatic caution, Rance studied the tube as he kicked off from the hatch and sailed up the length of the core. The energy patterns looked normal—no flashes of scarlet that might indicate a field rupture. “The engines okay?”

  “Fine.” She didn’t look around. “I just like watching them. All that destructive power, all that energy…”

  Rance caught one of the handholds jutting from the tube and brought his weightless body to a halt. “I know what you mean.” Clinging to the handhold, he watched the hot blue and green light dance inside the tube. “It is beautiful—even if it could wipe us out quicker than the fist of God.”

  Silence fell between them, filled by the low, bone-deep thrum of the generators. Rance turned to watch her watch the fields. Even with him right next to her, there seemed something profoundly alone about her.

  No surprise, he thought. She’s been betrayed by everyone she was supposed to be able to trust.

  Even him. He’d made love to her—and promptly turned on her the moment he found out who she was. The thought sent a stinging prickle of guilt through him.

  “I keep thinking about my uncle.” Her thumb twisted the diamond band around and around on her index finger.

  “The one we’re supposed to meet?”

  “No, not my father’s cousin—my father’s twin.”

  A dim memory from some history class reared its head. “Sevan of the Hundred Days.”

  Zarifa nodded. “He was just five minutes older than Lodur. Raised all his life to be emperor, only to end up murdered by terrorists one hundred days after taking the throne.”

  Which resulted in her father’s becoming emperor instead. Lodur had been dogged by rumors he’d killed his brother all sixteen years of his reign, just as many now whispered that his daughter had been involved in his murder.

  Rance was contemplating the irony of that when Zarifa said, “Before he became emperor, Sevan fell in love with a commoner.”

  He looked over at her in surprise, digesting the implications. “I can imagine how well that would have gone over with the aristos.”

  She snorted, a delicately inelegant sound. “Grandfather would have disinherited him on the spot if he’d known. To tell you the truth, I think that’s exactly what Sevan had in mind. He never wanted to be emperor.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” Rance said dryly. “Who wouldn’t want to live with a target painted on your back?”

  “Exactly. But then Granddad died, and there he was. Emperor. He could have both the crown and the woman he loved. And a hundred days later, he was dead. Killed by a sniper on his way home to her.”

  Rance studied her pensive expression in the dancing light. “You think your father had something to do with it?”

  “No, he wouldn’t stoop quite that low.”

  Which begged the question. “So how low would he stoop?”

  Zarifa turned in midair to give him a tight smile. “That, my shifter friend, is a bit of knowledge that would get you killed.”

  “Besides, you don’t trust me.”

  “Oh, I trust you,” she said lightly. “I gave you the chance to rip out my throat today, and you didn’t take it.”

  Rance was surprised by how much that stung. “Is that as good as it gets for you? You give somebody the chance to kill you, and they don’t?”

  Zarifa turned toward the core again. “Depends on the day.”

  Pure instinct had him catching her by one shoulder and tugging her into his arms. She looked up at him in surprise.

  “That shouldn’t be good enough for you, Zarifa.” Her violet eyes looked dark and mysterious as he lowered his mouth to hers. “It’s sure as
hell not good enough for me.”

  She seemed to resist the kiss for a moment, but just as he started to pull away, she moaned. Her body relaxed into his, her arms slipping around his shoulders. Surrendering.

  No. Trusting. Despite her hardened royal cynicism, despite the betrayals she’d suffered, for some reason she trusted him.

  And God, he hungered for that trust as if it filled an elemental need. Never mind that only hours before, he’d been willing to hurt her in order to escape.

  In some dim corner of his consciousness, he wondered what was happening to him. What was she doing to him?

  The rest of him didn’t care.

  Five seconds into the kiss, Zarifa realized something had changed. Rance had made love to her the first time with a seducer’s easy skill, but this was different. She could feel it in the faint tremor in his body as he anchored her against him with tender strength.

  He kissed her softly, endlessly, then nibbled his way down her chin to the underside of her jaw. She let her head fall back as he tasted her there in tiny, seductive nips.

  “Open your suit,” he whispered against her skin. He had both hands occupied: one wrapped around her waist, the other hanging on to a handhold to keep them from tumbling in weightlessness.

  Zarifa obediently wrapped both legs around his waist and leaned back to find the seal of her uni. His eyes flared as she opened it. He nuzzled the edge of the suit aside and closed his mouth over one nipple, sending an intoxicating sizzle straight to her core.

  “Rance,” she sighed.

  He rumbled deep in his throat, a purr more tiger than wolf. His tongue circled the pink bud, flicked and teased. His teeth raked with such precise delicacy, Zarifa quivered.

  She needed to touch him. Had to. Reaching between them as he continued his lazy ministrations to her breasts, she found the seal of his uni and raked a nail down it. The seal parted obediently. Zarifa grabbed the edges of the suit and tugged, but he still held her, and she couldn’t get it down his arms. She growled in frustration.

  “All right, all right!” With a low, sexy laugh, he let go of his anchoring handhold. They promptly started a weightless tumble. Both legs wrapped around him, Zarifa ignored the spinning room, intent on dragging the suit off.