After the Crown

by K. B. Wagers

  “Majesty—” Emmory’s voice was tight.

  “It’s all right, Emmory.” I couldn’t quite keep the awe out of my voice at what we were seeing.

  The silver crawled up Dailun’s arms, disappearing momentarily beneath his shirtsleeves before it appeared again on the skin of his neck. Dailun closed his eyes and shuddered delicately, and when he opened them again his black eyes were chased with silver—like the stars in the night sky.

  Releasing the breath I’d been holding, I walked Emmory back to his seat before I spoke. “Ah hala-locvaria.”

  It was a Svatir blessing that roughly translated meant—congratulations.

  “My mother was Svatir.” Dailun’s voice echoed a little with his transformation into what the Svatir considered adulthood. “Her dreaming came early and my translation was pushed back to my eighteenth year because of the mourning time.” He held up his arms, now bare of any mark that claimed him as part of Po-Sin’s family.

  “Great-Grandfather has given me permission for the Traveling. I would now ask permission to travel with you for this journey.” He dropped his head to wait for an answer, and I was glad for it because my chin had just fallen all the way to the floor.

  “The Traveling?” Emmory hissed the question at me in the Old Tongue, a language Dailun would be unlikely to know.

  “Lu Xing,” I replied with a little shrug. “A rite of passage among those who are both Cheng and Svatir. Po-Sin has given his blessing for Dailun to separate from the family. He travels a different road than the one traditionally ascribed to him. If he finds something else he’d rather be doing, he’s free to spend his life that way. If he chooses to return to the fold, he’ll be welcomed with open arms.” I blew out a breath and shoved both hands into my hair. “This is heavy-duty shit, Emmory.”

  “Can we trust him?”

  “Yes,” I replied, without hesitation. “He’d bring dishonor not only onto himself but the whole of his Svatir family and Cheng clan if he went into this with anything other than the purest of intentions. If he screwed me over, Po-Sin would come after him with a vengeance.” A shudder crawled up my spine. “I don’t even want to think what his other family would do to him.”

  “Do you have to say yes to him?”

  “No,” I admitted with a second shrug. “But I do think—”

  “That we should take him with us.” A brief smile flickered over Emmory’s face at the shock that must have shown on mine. “I do trust your instincts, Majesty, despite questioning your methods on occasion.”

  Dailun was still standing with his head bowed, waiting patiently for a response.

  There were a number of benefits to taking this kid on. If I said yes, the bond between us would be sacred. He’d pledge his oath to me with the same bone-deep loyalty as Emmory, and he’d be honor-bound to notify me when he chose to change the path of his travels.

  We could use a pilot when we got to Guizhou. I could fly my ship, but it would be easier to have someone else do it. From what I’d seen so far, this kid was good—damn good.

  It also wasn’t going to hurt to add one more person I could trust onto my side of this game. Even if it meant Hao was going to kill me for stealing his pilot.

  I put my hand on the back of his head. His hair was softer than I expected and my fingers sank down to his skull. The pink made my skin seem darker. Flexing my hand slightly, I sent a silent prayer upward that I wasn’t messing this up.

  I’d seen a Lu Xing ceremony only once before, but the words had stuck with me in their beautiful simplicity. Dailun seemed to trust I’d know the ritual, and I dragged in a deep breath.

  “It is no small matter to walk the stars alone. Come, Seeker. Come and take my hand. I will walk with you.”

  Dailun didn’t move a muscle, but I felt the tension bleed out of him in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

  “Thank you, Sister, for taking this journey with me. Gladly would I have walked alone, more glad am I that I am allowed to walk in your glory.”

  I couldn’t help myself and snorted with laughter. “I don’t know about glory, but things will probably get pretty crazy around here.”

  Dailun’s eyes sparkled with a mirth that surprised me when he lifted his head. “It will be a most worthy trip.”

  I choked back my laughter and gave him a little shove toward his seat. “Why don’t you get us to Guizhou? I probably need to go apologize to Hao for stealing his pilot.”

  “Hai, jiejie. My cousin will forgive you, I am sure.”

  My laughter faded some when he returned to his seat and the enormity of what I’d done slammed into me. I’d just taken an eighteen-year-old Svatir-Cheng under my protection. The great-grandson of the most feared Cheng gang lord. A boy who’d probably killed more people in his short life than Emmory had in his whole career.

  “Regrets?”

  “Ten million,” I replied without looking at Emmory. “This isn’t one of them.”

  It was actually the truth.

  We landed in Guizhou with no trouble and Hao took the news about Dailun with a shrug and a salute that bordered on rudeness on at least sixty different worlds. Otherwise, he was surprisingly sanguine about it, which troubled me.

  Even with his bare arms proclaiming his separation from his families, Dailun was well liked in this outback station. We hired a shuttle pilot he promised I could trust—a mute girl named Shi who communicated in sign language—and were on our way within an hour of landing.

  Guizhou was a barren planet, prone to vicious lightning storms, unexpected downpours, and long dry periods where the howling winds could rip meat off bone. The landscape was scarred with great plateaus and rabbit-warren canyons carved out by rivers that ran fast and high during the wet season but trickled down to almost nothing in the dry. There was little water above the canyons and even less vegetation.

  Other than the people clustered around the station and a strange indigenous creature that some twisted person had named a Harvey, there was little life on the planet.

  The Harveys looked like a disturbing cross between an Earth rabbit and the spiders from Jupiter IV.

  For once the universe cut everyone a break and hadn’t made these meter-across monsters carnivorous like the Jupiter spiders. Instead they were timid creatures that preferred to avoid any contact with the humans who did venture away from the station.

  Of course, most people erred on the side of caution and avoided wandering this far from civilization. It was one of the major reasons the ready-made cavern I’d won had been built here. Portis and I had both agreed this was the perfect spot for an emergency stash.

  Memories slammed into me as the shuttle sped through the air and the brown rocks blurred beneath us. I dug my fingers into the seat under me and fought back against the past.

  I didn’t want to see Portis’s laughing face. Didn’t want to remember sneaking out here in the middle of the night. Didn’t want to relive how he’d laid me down under triple full moons and made love to me.

  All of that was gone and I wasn’t ever getting it back.

  I was tense and snappish by the time we touched down at the coordinates I’d given Dailun. The sun was high in the hazy purple sky and I shaded my eyes with one hand as I disembarked.

  Everyone but Cas, Zin, and Dailun had stayed on board Hao’s ship—despite Gita’s protests and Emmory’s disapproving looks. Emmory was in no shape to make the trip and Gita didn’t know how to climb. Plus, I didn’t need an audience for the trip down to my stash. It was bad enough that Hao knew what planet it was on.

  Cas was a silent shadow at my back. He hadn’t said much the past few hours, but the silence between us seemed to have settled back into some kind of comfortable rhythm after my fuckup in the restaurant.

  There were conflicting reports about what had happened on Red Cliff, who was alive, and who was to blame.

  The empire was worse. Phanin had been broadcasting all the way back to Pashati, and breaking some speed records to get home so fast. A
ll the imperial stations were on lockdown, but Taz seemed to have a handle on the PR side of things and several Upjas stations were going full-tilt to contradict Phanin’s claims.

  “Jiejie, should I tell Shi to head back to port?” Dailun stayed well back as he asked the question. Emmory had apparently had a brief one-sided discussion with him before we left about trust and how close he was allowed to get to me.

  “Just a moment,” I murmured in reply. I closed my eyes to the sun and reached out with my smati.

  “Password, Captain?” The computer’s voice was as dry as the landscape around us. I responded with the complicated 218-digit code.

  “Verified. Your smati has been altered, Captain.”

  I breathed a grateful prayer for my last-second paranoia. “Yes, pursuant to Backup Plan IF. My smati was reconnected to the imperial network.”

  “So noted. Please enter appropriate codes at entrance.”

  I nodded in reflex. The computer wasn’t expecting a reply anyway, and it couldn’t see me from where we were standing. Rolling my shoulders under the weight of my pack, I turned my back on the sun before opening my eyes again. “We’re in business. Dailun, send your friend back with my thanks.”

  He bowed his head slightly and the ramp to the shuttle retracted. A few moments later, the four of us were alone on the windswept canyon edge.

  “We go down,” I said, and started down the steep path into the canyon. I heard Cas’s hissed protest, but I was already out of his reach, and any interference on his part would have dislodged my grip. I was grateful for his impulse control. It was a hundred-meter tumble to the hard canyon floor if I lost my footing.

  “Fan out and watch your step,” he snapped at the others, and then I felt the impact of his feet ripple through the ground as he took off after me and allowed myself a grin.

  The earth under my hands grew redder, coating my skin with a dull film as I worked my way down.

  Memories continued to batter at me as I climbed, wearing down my resistance and the wall around my chaotic emotions. Thankfully I was far enough ahead of the others that my annoyed exhale as I shoved my thoughts aside went unheard.

  Zin caught up with me when we reached the first plateau. I ducked under an outcropping that offered up meager shade and unstrapped my pack to get at my water.

  “A little warning would have been nice,” Zin said, settling down next to me. “Cas is wound tight enough to snap. How far do we have to go?”

  “A ways.” I shrugged and gestured vaguely with my bottle.

  “Where’s the route?” Zin asked.

  “Down there.” I grinned and pointed into the blackness over the side. “Come on, we’ve got to hurry. I’m not doing this trek in the dark, it’s too dangerous.”

  Our descent to the plateau had taken more than three hours by my clock and the sun was already kissing the upper edge of the canyon wall. In another three standard hours it would be pitch-black in the canyon.

  “Majesty, let me—”

  “I know the way,” I said, sliding over the edge before Cas could grab hold of me.

  I dropped two meters, landing lightly on the balls of my feet, and blinked until my eyes adjusted to the sudden dimness.

  “Just drop down,” I called back up to the others, moving out of the way so they didn’t land on me.

  “Majesty, will you please—”

  “I am not being deliberately difficult, I promise, Cas. Trying to describe the trail to someone else is impossible. I can walk the damn thing in my sleep. It’s best if I go first.”

  I grabbed for the rocks to my right and swung out onto them, feeling the familiar little jolt in my stomach as I hung for just a moment over empty air. Then my feet found their purchase and I started working my way downward, trusting that the others could follow without instruction.

  The change in terrain was almost instantaneous. The dust that plagued us aboveground was dampened by the moisture in the air. There were trees down here: scrubby, bushlike things that rose a few meters off the ground.

  We climbed downward in silence for well over an hour, continuing a slow, even pace down a rocky trail that more often than not required clinging to rocks over open air.

  It was quiet. The eerie echoing calls of the Harveys bounced back to us along the canyon walls, and the softer shushing of runoff still making its way underground layered itself over my breathing. Once we hit the main canyon, all that would change and the roar of the Guizhou River would drown out the sounds of everything else.

  “We must have just missed the rains.” I kept my voice low, but it still seemed unnaturally loud in the stillness. “I don’t know if the lower path will be accessible or not.” I swung my legs out over the edge of the cliff and boosted down onto the ledge below. The stillness and the climbing had eased my tension to the point where I felt almost giddy, almost back to my old self.

  “Majesty, I have a rope.” Zin started forward. “This would be easier—”

  “There’s no point in messing with it, a rope will just complicate things. I know what I’m doing.” I grinned up at him just as the ledge came loose beneath me.

  24

  Hail!”

  My grin vanished, replaced by panic. I grabbed at the rock face in a desperate search for handholds. There was a sharp stab of pain in my left hand as my nail ripped free and my swearing mingled with Zin’s frantic curses.

  I found a grip but it was precarious and left me stretched too far for a second move. The thirty-meter drop below wouldn’t leave enough of me for a funeral.

  Bugger me. It wouldn’t hurt for more than a second, but I was going to make a mess when I hit. After all this, I was going to die on a gods-forsaken pile of Cheng rock betrayed by my own confidence.

  “Hail, hang on.”

  I honestly wasn’t sure what else Zin expected me to do, or for that matter, how long I could do it. Blood from my injured finger was eroding my grip by the second.

  I jerked when Dailun’s arm closed around my waist and I had to choke down a relieved sob.

  “I’ve got you, Sister,” he murmured in my ear. “It’s all right.”

  I dragged in a breath, somehow managing to convince my hands to let go of the rocks I’d been clinging to and grab onto Zin instead as Dailun supported me with a strength that was surprising.

  Zin lowered us the rest of the way down, rappelling smoothly past jagged rock and the grasping limbs of trees growing out of the rock as Cas held the rope like an anchor.

  We dropped to the canyon floor, where I barely resisted the urge to put my face in the dirt and kiss the ground. Here the dusty red gave way to green as life flourished out of the brutal sun and winds, soaking up all the moisture of the rains with greedy efficiency. Several Harveys scuttled back into their holes at our arrival.

  I let go of Zin and stuck my throbbing index finger into my mouth. There was almost as much iron in the dirt as in my blood, and I turned my head to the side to spit it out.

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Zin grabbed me before I could move away, and I gasped when he pinned me back against the rocks.

  “What?” I shoved at him, but he didn’t budge.

  He stuck his face too close to mine. He was angry. Really angry. My heart stuttered to a halt for a beat before it started again. I’d never seen this side of my normally calm and collected BodyGuard. Whatever iron-fisted control Zin had was slipping at an alarming rate.

  “Do you want to die?”

  I thought about taking a swing at him, decided against it, and exhaled a shuddering breath. “Zin, I—”

  “Answer the question, Hail. Because I’m not going to let Cas and the others throw their lives away if you have a death wish. If you want to die there’s nothing we can do to stop you and I’ll be damned before I go through that again.”

  Shock again, this time at his casual use of my name three times in as many minutes. Then the rest of it filtered into my head.

  “You think I have a death wish?” The quest
ion came out a choked whisper, and the tears that followed were part grief, part hysterical laughter. “Half my empire is gunning for my head. I’ve made more enemies among the ass-side of society than I know what to do with, and you can bet Phanin will put that to good use if he has any sense. I don’t need a death wish, Zin. I have a fucking WANTED notice tattooed on my forehead! Let me go.” I shoved at him again, but he wasn’t in the mood to let me get away.

  “You can’t keep doing this,” he snarled. “People’s lives are at stake. Your life. Emm—”

  “I never asked for this! Shiva, Zin! Haven’t you figured out that I’m not a pampered princess? I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can. The question I’m asking is—do you want to?” He grabbed me by the shoulders, jerking me onto my toes. “I get that you never asked for this. I was there, remember? But you stayed and you promised. Are you going back on that? Because ever since Red Cliff you’ve done nothing but walk into situations like you’re invincible. This recklessness has to stop. You keep waltzing into danger without waiting for us to go first and you’re going to get killed.

  “You’re not a gunrunner anymore, Hail. You’re the Empress of Indrana.”

  “I know very well what I am. The last woman standing.” My voice shook, but I straightened my spine and stared him in the eye. “There’s no one left but me. If I go down I leave Alice and all the rest of you to die. You think I’m so idiotic and reckless I don’t feel the weight of that?”

  I poked him in the chest, forcing him back a step. “I’m it, Zin. I don’t have the luxury of rolling over and dying just because I lost everything I’ve ever cared about.” He winced, but I refused to feel bad for the sharpness of my words. “I get to keep going. So guess what. I’m going to do it on my terms.”

  “Hail—”

  “You’re the one who said to me I could be both empress and gunrunner. Emmory trusts me, but the rest of you—” I spread my arms wide, looking at Cas over his shoulder. “It’s like you think I’m no longer capable just because I put a fucking crown on my head. The weight of which did not scramble my brains, thank you very much.”