by K. B. Wagers
“Fasé.” I smiled at the Farian and the other two members of Captain Gill’s squad as we came through the doorway. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Likewise, Your Highness.”
“Do you have plans for the holiday?” Farians tended to assimilate into the cultures they were living in, somehow seamlessly blending their own beliefs into Indranan holidays and celebrations.
“No, ma’am. We’re on duty.”
A rotund little man bustled through the crowd toward us.
“Your Imperial Highness, you do me a great honor.” Avan Shivan bowed low, popping up before he overbalanced and landed face-first on the polished wood floor. His round face was dominated by a pleasant smile, and he held out both hands, palms up.
“So formal,” I teased, taking them without hesitation. I ignored Emmory’s pained noise of protest, and leaned down to press my cheek to Avan’s. “It is very good to see you again, old friend. You haven’t changed at all.”
Shivan’s was a haven for the rich and powerful. Not only was the food excellent, but Avan’s grandfather had fought for—and won—an injunction keeping the media from being allowed on the property. That ruling had instantly made his restaurant the preferred place for people who wanted more than the usual privacy, for whatever reason.
Avan kept up the tradition of his grandfather and father—great food, and a little peace for those whose lives were constantly in the spotlight.
He’d also taken in one restless royal princess. I’d spent a large chunk of the year before and the months after my father’s death hiding in the kitchens of Shivan’s.
Avan smiled even wider, a feat I wasn’t sure was possible without damaging his face. “I’m afraid I can’t say the same about you, Princess,” he teased, pulling away with a quick apologetic glance at my BodyGuards. “You’ve made quite the transformation since I saw you last.”
“Evidence of my misspent youth.”
Avan barked a laugh that sounded very much like a pure Earth sea lion. “So I’ve heard. Please, come this way. I have a room ready for you on the third floor.” He waved a hand over his shoulder, heading not for the glass elevator that dominated the center of the building, but for the stairs. “Your Ekam requested we avoid the elevator.”
“Of course he did,” I murmured.
“If your Highness would rather—”
“No, Avan,” I replied with a wave of my hand. “I’ve upset my BodyGuards enough tonight. Let’s not push our luck. Two flights of stairs won’t kill me.”
We wound through the crowd, diners rising to greet me as we passed. I spotted Alice in the corner having dinner with her father and gave her a brief smile. We’d set her up in the main room to see if there would be any buzz about my dinner plans.
Pezan and Willimet stood at attention in the hallway outside our room. “Lady Surakesh and her husband are already here,” Pezan said. “I showed them in. Kisah and Rama are in the room.”
“Thank you.” I spotted the admiral and her aide approaching from the other direction. “Oh sure, she gets to take the elevator.”
Admiral Hassan’s brown eyes widened in shock at my comment and Zin’s muffled laughter. Emmory didn’t even bat an eyelash as he replied, “No one has tried to kill her lately, Highness.”
“No one’s tried to kill me for several days now either,” I muttered. “Though, Admiral, you’ll probably want to sleep a little lighter. If you stay at my side for much longer, they might decide you’re a target.”
“I always sleep lightly, Your Highness.” Admiral Hassan bowed, her short black hair shifting with the movement. “You remember my aide? Commander Hamprasade.”
“Admiral,” I replied with a nod of my own. “Commander.”
The woman at Hassan’s side bowed to me with a murmured “Highness.”
“Avan, it’s good to see you again,” Hassan said to the proprietor, who beamed at her. I stepped behind Avan so he could say his hellos, heading through the dark green door Pezan held open.
The room within was small but well lit, with walls covered in rich green fabric. A table for five was the centerpiece of the room, its dark wood surface gleaming under the lights.
“Your Highness.” Leena dropped into a perfect curtsy, her silver-blue dress looking like a pool of liquid mercury. Laabh was dressed in uniform and his perfunctory bow wasn’t fast enough to hide the surprised confusion when he’d spotted Admiral Hassan.
“Leena. So good to see you again.” I took her hands and urged her to her feet, kissing her cheeks. She was the puzzle. Either up to her neck in the whole plot or totally innocent, and I hadn’t figured out yet which it was.
“You, too, Highness. I am very relieved you are feeling better.” Her face was open, dark eyes filled with hesitant delight.
“You and me both,” I quipped and her surprised blink seemed genuine. “This is Admiral Hassan and her aide.” I passed Leena off to the admiral and turned to my nephew. “Laabh.”
His smile was brief and filled with nervousness. “Your Highness.”
“I think in private we can be a little less formal. Have you met Admiral Hassan yet?”
“No, ma’am. It’s a pleasure.”
“Highness.” Emmory handed me a glass of wine and I took it with a smile. After the poisoning debacle, the only way to get my Ekam to agree to this meeting was to allow him to set the rules for food. Everything I got to eat tonight had been checked and rechecked, analyzed together and alone, until Emmory was certain it was clean.
The report from Dr. Ganjen had been both enlightening and disturbing. An innocuous substance in my drink—in all the drinks at the party, in fact—had reacted with another that the doctor thought had been introduced through contact absorption. What we couldn’t pinpoint was if that had been from what I was wearing or the long list of people I’d come in contact with that day. Given how fast my reaction had been, I was sure it had to have been something—or someone—I’d touched in the moments right before I collapsed. That narrowed the suspects somewhat, but the only thing I knew for sure was that Emmory’s quick response was the reason I was still alive.
I smiled at Zin when he pulled my chair out for me, and I settled into my seat, letting the bustle of the BodyGuards and Avan’s silently efficient staff flow around me.
Admiral Hassan and Commander Hamprasade took the seats on the left side, leaving the ones for the right for Leena and my nephew, and a few moments later quiet descended as Avan bowed his way out of the room.
Emmory and Cas took up positions on the inside of the door, their hands tucked behind their backs and masks of disinterest plastered over their faces. Zin and Jet were on the far side of the room, and the rest of my BodyGuards were outside.
I closed my fingers around the delicate stem of my wineglass and lifted it slightly. “My empress-mother, long may she reign,” I said, impressed that I managed to keep the irony out of my voice.
The others echoed the toast and we started in on the spread of appetizers Avan had provided. I easily slid into casual conversation with the commander, who, it turned out, was from the same coastal town of Tible where Emmory and Zin had grown up.
I grabbed for an asparagus spear wrapped with cheese and meat and bit the end off. A happy sigh escaped me, and I saw Admiral Hassan smother a smile, but I was too blissed out by the smooth Earth Havarti to care. I took a sip of my wine. The deep rose vintage was from Shallot with the same dry finish that characterized all the wines of the arid planet. It complemented the food perfectly.
We continued the pleasant, if useless, conversation through dinner. As the last of the plates were cleared and Avan vanished with a promise of coffee and dessert when I rang for it, a silence descended on the room.
“It’s a terrible business, all this,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “Nice to know I still have family left and people I can count on.”
Laabh’s hand tightened almost imperceptibly on his glass. Leena didn’t flinch at all; instead she smiled. “Times hav
e been rough. It is our great hope to see Indrana strong again, Highness.”
“She will be. We’re closing the net on those responsible. It won’t be long now.”
There’d been a lot of discussion as to just how I should phrase the sentences I was going to poke my nephew with. It needed to be vague enough not to startle Leena, but direct enough to make him nervous. I kept my eyes on him as I said it and felt a little thrill of vindictive joy when he looked away first.
“I thought the Upjas responsible were already executed,” he said, his voice strained.
“Some Upjas were executed,” Hassan interjected. “However, we are still looking into things.”
“Cleaning up some loose ends, so to speak.” I hoped my easy smile didn’t look forced.
“It’s an awful business,” Leena said with a shake of her head. “Taran spent so much time with the empress before his mother died. The empress made time in her schedule specifically to see him. He would bring her the lokum she loves so much. I’m sure he would love to see you also.”
“I would like that very much.” I smiled, surprised that I felt no bitterness at all that Mother went to such lengths to spend so much time with her grandson when it seemed like she’d never had time for us. Bribery with the sticky candy probably helped convince her. “All this will be over soon. Once things have settled down, I’ll let you know when he can visit.”
“Speaking of, we really should get home before his bedtime.” Laabh rose and I debated for a moment staying in my seat to drive home the rudeness of his behavior, but judging by the look his wife gave him, he’d get an earful on the way home.
Instead I got to my feet and said my good-byes.
“That was fucking awkward,” I muttered to Admiral Hassan as the door closed behind the pair.
“Tell me about it.” Hassan swallowed and added, “Ma’am.”
“What’s your opinion on Leena?”
“I doubt she’s involved. We should be able to tell here shortly, though. Some of General Saito’s women are following them. If Laabh drops his wife off at home and goes back out, we can be pretty sure she’s not involved.”
“I hope so. I like her.” It would be bad enough that she’d lose her husband and the disgrace that was likely to follow. From what I could tell, she’d been very kind to Taran and I hated to repay that kind of loyalty with the death of her husband.
“Highness, we’re leaving. Now.”
I blinked at Emmory. “What? Why? I haven’t had dessert yet.”
“They just found Dr. Satir’s body in her home.” Emmory had both of us moving before he finished the sentence and Admiral Hassan’s gasp of surprise echoed my own.
“How—”
“She’s been dead since the night of the celebration, Highness.”
“Does that necessitate us rushing out of here?”
“I’m not taking any chances. Move, please.” Emmory propelled me out the door and my other Guards formed up around us as we hustled for the stairs.
“My car is at the back door, Ekam.” Hassan didn’t flinch from the look that Emmory gave her when we hit the landing. “You need to trust me. We have no idea if they’ve planned all this. Your charge could be dead the minute you walk out the front.”
“Or dead the minute I let her go with you,” he replied.
“Emmory.” Zin’s quiet voice cut through the chaos. “Out the front. I’ll go.”
The grip on my arm loosened as Emmory passed me wordlessly off to Zin with only the briefest of glances at his partner. Cas and Jet handed off their weapons to Commander Hamprasade and the admiral. I held a hand out for the gun that Zin was already passing my way and he allowed a smile to flicker.
“I’ll watch your back.” My heart was pounding in my throat as I said it and Zin nodded. Half a second later we burst through Shivan’s kitchens. Zin was in front with me right behind. I could feel Admiral Hassan’s hand on my back as we made a mad dash through the startled employees and emerged out the back door.
I was shoved into the back of the aircar. The others piled in after me and we took off at a speed that threatened to ruin the meal I’d just eaten.
Coming off the adrenaline rush left me with a wicked headache. I took the cup of chai from Stasia with a grateful smile and looked over at Emmory. “Okay, we’re safe again. Now tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Dr. Satir is dead, Highness. Presumably from an overdose of AVI.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s a lot of AVI.”
“A contact of mine with the police messaged me the scene photos and the doctor’s alleged suicide note.”
“Emmory, she never would have—”
“Desperation, remember?” he replied, pushing away from the windowsill to pace the room. “Time of death is the evening of the celebration. Dr. Satir must have known something. Maybe she was going to talk. Whoever is trying to kill you had to take her out of the picture also.”
My cup rattled on the table when I set it down and got to my feet. I ignored Admiral Hassan’s curious look and hooked my hands behind my neck as I wandered to the windowsill Emmory had just vacated.
“What did she know?” I voiced the question even though I didn’t expect an answer from anyone in the room. “We need to find out, Emmory. Are they—” I broke off, the grief slamming into me, and pressed a hand to my mouth as I tried to hold it back. “Are they going to download her smati?”
He nodded. “My contact promised me a copy. Once we’re done sifting through the information, I’ll let you know what we find.”
“If anything,” I murmured. It was likely that most of the files would be corrupted given how long she’d been dead. I should have pressed about her absence, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that something could be wrong.
“We’re already reasonably sure your cousin and nephew are behind this, Highness,” Admiral Hassan said.
“We’re missing something. I can feel it.” Shaking my head, I tapped myself in the stomach. “Right here. I don’t deny Ganda and Laabh are up to their necks in this whole thing, but they couldn’t have pulled this all off on their own.” I looked at Emmory with a frown. “Wait, you said alleged suicide note?”
“She confessed to poisoning the empress.”
“Holy cowshit,” I countered.
Hassan attempted to cover up her laughter, failed miserably, and settled for a reproving look that I met with a grim smile.
“If Dr. Satir had wanted to take out the royal family, she could have done it a lot sooner than the last six months.”
“She had the access, ma’am, and timing is everything. We already suspect the recent tensions with the Saxons are part of this plot. It makes sense that they’d have to wait to put certain parts of their plan in motion until the right moment.”
“You said alleged.”
Emmory shrugged one shoulder. “Only because I don’t think she killed herself, Highness. I’m not discounting the possibility that she was involved.”
“She loved my mother, Emmory. I don’t believe it.”
He looked at Hassan and then back at me. “With respect, ma’am, you’ll believe your nephew is responsible for the deaths of his sister and mother without any proof? Why? Because he’s a man?”
Emmory’s comment dropped on the room like an LCT into a combat zone, leaving a stunned silence in its wake. Hassan half rose out of her chair, gaping at my Ekam in appalled shock.
“Ouch,” I said, waving Hassan back down into her seat. “Point taken, Emmory. And even though that was a rhetorical question, I’ll give you an answer. I’ve seen the depths people will go to when they think power is in their grasp. I’ve seen the lengths they’ll go to get it and keep it and it’s always worse when it’s someone who doesn’t have the power to begin with. So yes, to a certain extent I’m able to believe that Laabh is more likely to do this because he’s a man, but—bugger me.”
Several ideas collided at once in my head and I turned on a heel.
“Ma’
am?”
I held up a hand at Emmory, snapping my fingers. “Hang on, I need to think.” The thoughts crystallized as I paced. “Oh, bugger me. What do we know about this whole thing so far? One, my cousin managed to insinuate herself rather quickly into position to become heir when Cire was killed. It would have stood to reason; she’s not my mother’s issue, but she’s the eldest daughter of the eldest son of my grandmother. She’d still be in line for the throne after the rest of us were dead.”
I walked a circuit from the window to the fireplace and back, throwing up fingers as I rattled off points. “Two, somehow the people behind this whole mess managed to convince a radical sect of the Upjas to join forces with them. How do you do that if you’re still going to put a woman on the throne?”
Hassan frowned.
“I suspect Ganda wouldn’t be on the throne for long, Highness,” Emmory said. “If it were me, I’d tell the radicals that Laabh would rule.”
“While telling Ganda she’s the one who’s going to be in charge just to get her support?” I shrugged. “It would make sense. Who had the initial idea, though? My cousin?”
“And then Laabh decided to double-cross her.”
“What happened to him to make him so heartless?” I rubbed my hands over my face with a sigh.
“Sometimes people are born that way, Highness.”
We fell into an uneasy silence for several moments.
“Number three, you prove the empress incompetent.” Hassan got to her feet and started pacing also. “Which would be enough to sway certain members of the military to your side when the princesses are suddenly removed from the picture?”
“It would have been perfect if they’d managed to kill me, too.”
“It’s close enough even with you alive.” Hassan dragged a hand through her hair. “Your pardon, Highness, but your past has apparently still been enough to convince members of the military to support Ganda in this foolishness.”
“True enough,” I said after a moment. “I wonder if they will continue to support Ganda when they realize she’s killed three members of my family to get to this point.”
