She opened her eyes and saw that there was, in fact, a blinking light in front of her. It was set into the small wooden table on the side of her bed, a corner of the surface blinking in soft blue. She groaned lightly and touched the light, wondering who could be leaving her a message here.
The voice that came over the small speakers in the table made her sit upright in bed.
"Danai, it's Erde. I've just arrived on the ship, and I'm told that you're here. I would like you to call on me when you have a moment. No rush—just drop by cabin eighteen when you have a moment. I should be in most of the time."
Like hell there's no rush, Danai thought. She had the lights on and was running a brush through her hair before the message finished playing. She'd deliberately gone into the casino without a comm—she didn't want any members of her company bothering her with petty concerns—and now this happened. The message she'd been anxious about since her arrival on Oriente had finally gotten a reply.
As she ran toward cabin eighteen she had a brief qualm about calling on her aunt at this late hour, but then she remembered that day and night had little meaning on a pleasure circus ship. She'd been keeping herself on Oriente time, since she'd be heading back there soon, but there was a good chance the other patrons were keeping themselves on the times of at least a dozen other planets. Everything on the pleasure circus was open constantly, and there was no notable surge or drop in business from one hour to the next. There were always customers.
As Danai had no way of knowing what kind of schedule Erde was on, she might as well take her at her word and drop by when she had a moment. She had a moment now.
Her heart was pounding when she reached the door to cabin eighteen. She thought about turning back and going to bed, but the questions in her mind weren't about to just vanish after a little sleep. Not when she had the chance to take care of them now.
She pushed the buzzer next to the palmpad for Erde's door, then waited. After ten seconds, the door slid open.
Erde was dressed in her customary sky blue. She looked alert and cheerful, but her face seemed to have gained a few extra wrinkles in the past weeks, and her shoulders seemed to have become more slumped. She looked like she was slowly being worn down.
You and me both, Danai thought.
"Danai!" Erde said, the smile on her face only increasing the number of wrinkles. "So good of you to respond to my message so quickly. Come in, come in."
Danai walked in, almost at a funeral pace. The door slid closed after she passed through it, then her aunt stepped forward to give her a hug. "I'm very glad to see you, Danai. You have no idea."
Danai returned the hug without much conviction, then walked farther into the cabin. It was vast, with a broad screen that showed a picture of the stars and planets outside. It was designed to look like a window, but it wasn't—this cabin was nowhere near the JumpShip's exterior hull. The picture was a reasonable facsimile of a window, though, and unlike the rest of the ship, it helped remind you that you were floating in outer space.
Danai took a seat on a black sofa near the picture, and her aunt sat right next to her. Danai would have preferred a little more distance between them until her questions were resolved, but she wasn't going to tell her aunt that. She'd make do.
"Aunt Erde, what are you doing here?" Danai asked. "It's a pretty big coincidence to run into you here."
"Not a coincidence at all," Erde said. "I came here looking for you."
"Looking for me? Why?"
"I received your note," she said, and as if to prove this she pulled the note out of a pocket in her dress. "I thought it needed a personal response."
"How did you find me here?"
Erde smiled gently. "My dear, the networks I have cultivated over the years would be useless indeed if I could not use them to pinpoint the location of one of my favorite people in the known universe. I sent the proper inquiries to the proper people, and they told me how to find you."
"I'm touched that you would seek me out," Danai said. "Touched and amazed. Glad, too—what I wanted to talk about might go better in person: If you can help me understand a thing or two." Her voice didn't sound right in her own ears, and she hoped that was due to the drinks she'd downed with Clara and Sandra. But she hadn't really drunk that much.
"You know I'll do my best," Erde said.
"All right, then. Good. So you got my note. Do you have an answer?"
"Yes, Danai. The answer is yes. I've known who your father is for quite some time."
Danai exploded off the sofa. "Then why didn't you tell me? Why did you bleeding wait for him to drop the news on me? If you know—you, the person I've trusted for so long—why couldn't you tell me the truth?"
"And how would I tell you?" Erde said, calmly meeting Danai's ire. "When? How would I deal with Daoshen once he found out I'd let go of a secret he'd been holding onto for years? It wasn't my place to tell you, and even if it was, it is not a simple secret to divulge."
"Not your place?" Danai exclaimed, leaning over her still-seated aunt. "You raised me. How could anything that has anything to do with me be considered not your place?"
"You know your broth—your father. You know how he reacts to things. You know what could have happened if I told you before his appointed time. He could have separated us so easily. Made it so I never saw you again. Raised you himself." Erde shuddered. "Do you know what you would have become then? What he would have made you into?"
Danai closed her eyes. She had her impressions of him from her earliest childhood, memories burned into her brain despite the long, relatively happy years with Erde in the Magistracy. If she had spent all her childhood with Daoshen . . .
She didn't want to finish that thought, but Erde did it for her.
"You would be an empty vessel," Erde said. "A duplicate of himself. Daoshen is only the latest living example of the Capellan quirk of believing the state is greater than the individual, that the individual—particularly individual rulers—should be a tool of the state. The truth is that the state is nothing more than a collection of individuals. The state is the tool of those people, not the other way around.
"If I had lost you, Daoshen would have you. You would have become his. Is that what you would have wanted?"
Danai fervently shook her head.
"I wouldn't think so," Erde said. "But now that he has told you, now that he has decided you are ready for that particular piece of information, I can tell you the whole truth. That's why I came to find you.
"The past year has, I imagine, helped you learn much about the kind of person your father is, about the character he possesses and the personality he once had but has since done away with. But I'm not certain you understand the full extent of his obsession—of what some might consider his madness.
"By now you certainly realize that 'God Incarnate' is, to Daoshen, more than an exalted title. He sees it as the literal truth. He is the descendant of divinity, and he is divinity himself. One thing divinity is loath to do is to mix its blood with the common blood of humanity, thus diluting its holiness. The divine line must be maintained at full strength."
A small black hole opened in Danai's gut. She knew what was coming, and the dread of it threatened to overwhelm her. But she had gone this far, and she had to know for sure. She had to hear it from Erde's lips.
"He needed an heir," Erde continued, "but he needed a mate of the right blood. Fortunately for him, there was one close at hand—one for whom he had always felt an illicit attraction. Once he told himself the deed was necessary, he had little compunction about performing it.
"He forced himself on his sister Ilsa and impregnated her. Then, through a combination of threats and cajoling, he convinced her to carry the resulting child to term. You are the product of their union."
Danai sat quietly. The news that Daoshen was her father had sent her into hysteria, but this latest revelation—one more blow to absorb—weighed her down, numbed her. All thought, all feeling, were sucked away into her black hol
e. She had no desire to scream, to cry, to even move. All she wanted to do was sit and wait to disappear.
When Erde spoke again, her warm whisper came from near Danai's ear. Her arm was around Danai's shoulders, though Danai hadn't seen her, hadn't felt her draw near.
"There is nothing I can say to make this easier to bear," she said. "You are the only one who can make the pain go away, and it will take time. But I can give you one piece of advice, for whatever it is worth. Any person is more than simply the sum of their parents. As long as you keep some portion of yourself about you, something beyond being a tool of the state, you will have at least that advantage over your father. You will be more than an empty vessel."
An empty vessel, Danai repeated silently. Daoshen. A vessel that had raped his sister. Her mother.
When Danai had been recalled to the Confederation after her years in the Magistracy, it was a nightmare. At least for the first few months. She lived in fear of being summoned again into her brother's presence, of trying to bear up under his cold scrutiny, of feeling the animal fear his presence inspired.
He'd called her to the throne room one dark spring morning, her third visit to his lair since her return from the Magistracy. She nearly threw up on the throne room floor after the guards let her enter, but she somehow managed to stay upright. But when Daoshen spoke to her, she noticed that his tone seemed milder than it had been during their previous meetings. He asked about her comfort, her well-being—things he had seemingly not given a thought to before that moment. Then Danai noticed that Daoshen was not the only other person in the throne room. Standing off to his right was Ilsa, looking regal but smiling warmly. Danai could not help but notice that Daoshen threw her the occasional glance, as if ensuring he had her approval. The questions about her well-being, she realized immediately, were not Daoshen's idea. They were Ilsa's.
In that moment, Danai's new life made a bit more sense. She once again saw a woman instilling compassion and thoughtfulness in a man, something she had been taught in her youth was the natural order of things. Even better, she saw that she might not have to fear Daoshen all her life—at least one person in the Confederation managed to exert control over him. There would always be distance between Ilsa and Danai, and Danai could never treat Ilsa as a true sister because of that gulf. But Ilsa was a role model when Danai needed one.
Now, however, all of Ilsa's admirable qualities, her poise, her control of Daoshen, were shown to be hollow, since they all came after a terrible defeat. A defeat that Daoshen's mere presence—not to mention Danai's presence—would bring to Ilsa's mind again and again. She was a victim, sitting there next to the man who raped her, walking with him into formal occasions, again and again and again.
Danai would never let that happen to herself. She would never sit calmly next to Caleb. If she ever saw him again, she planned to rip his arms off and beat him with the bloody stumps.
When she thought that, she felt a surge of anger in her gut. It wasn't a pleasant emotion, but it was something the black hole hadn't managed to take from her. It was something, for now, to hold on to.
26
Amur, Oriente
Oriente Protectorate
20 June 3136
A month later, she was still running primarily on anger. She'd left Erde back at Shuen Wan, and their parting, at least on Danai's end. was colder than she would have liked. She wanted to muster some warmth, some thanks to Erde for her kindness, but that part of her personality had not returned yet. Her aunt's words, though, had at least given her hope they would return someday.
During the journey to Oriente, Danai had recovered enough presence of mind to use her anger constructively. She knew how she would approach Jessica Marik, and hopefully be off-planet quickly with everything she wanted.
Her landing and reception this time had been far less formal. She hadn't assembled a party to march into the palace; instead, she'd sent most of her company back to their quarters in the DropPort while she and Clara traveled to Amur Palace to let the captain-general know they had arrived.
Jessica, naturally, made them wait before she met with them. It was a ruler's way, Danai knew, to try to avoid ever having anyone believe they were the sovereign's top priority. So she patiently waited, then appeared in Jessica's office at the appointed time, ready to get to business.
The main difference in this meeting was Nikol's absence; one of her older sisters took her place. Danai felt a bit of regret about the deterioration of her friendship with Nikol—she hadn't bothered to say good-bye to her friend when she had left Oriente in April—but since anger was her dominant emotion at the moment, the ire she felt at Nikol's betrayal far outweighed any other feeling.
She exchanged a few pleasantries with Jessica, and then the captain-general got to business.
"I suppose the first matter is to discuss how your meeting with Chancellor Liao went," Jessica said.
"My meeting?" Danai said, allowing wrath to color her voice. "The one where I had to ask the chancellor to give additional concessions on an agreement he thought was already in place? Well, let me first say that the chancellor was not thrilled to see me arrive without a signed agreement in hand. And when I told him the terms needed to be renegotiated, he was somewhat . . . less happy."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Jessica said mildly. "I'd be even more sorry if Chancellor Liao's happiness was my top concern. Should I take it by his displeasure that he was not willing to grant what I asked?"
Danai scowled. "He certainly wasn't initially. But I pressed him, tried to get past his wounded pride to see the benefit of doing what you wanted. He didn't like the precedent, and if you try to plateau bargain with him again he will be inclined to cut off all discussions, but eventually I convinced him. The Duchy of Andurien will not trouble you."
"Then I'm sure the forces of the Protectorate will be happy to move deeper into Prefecture VI."
"If you don't mind, this time I believe we'll put it in writing."
Jessica smiled, looking much like Danai assumed the fairy-tale Goldilocks had appeared when she tasted that third, perfect bowl of porridge. "Of course," she said.
The next few hours were gobbled up by wrangling over the finer details of the treaty, making Wiggins and the Oriente stenographer type up draft treaties, compare the versions, revise them and so on repeatedly. Both Danai and Jessica had minor riders they wanted attached to the agreement—for example, Danai asked for Bell to be released and all charges to be dismissed, while Jessica included a provision stating that, "No official of the Capellan Confederation would publish rumors concerning the alleged relationship between Irian Technologies and the Oriente Protectorate until such time that the rumors could be indisputably proven true." Danai did not think it would take long for the Confederation to acquire such proof, with Irian 'Mechs likely to be on the move throughout Prefecture VI in short order, but in the meantime Jessica would have enough time to spring whatever surprise attacks she wanted against targets other than the Confederation.
Finally, the negotiations ended, and a final version of the treaty was produced and signed. Danai's first diplomatic mission, a three-month effort, was officially a success. And in all that, she hadn't had to say a word about Ilsa's pending marriage to Duke Humphreys.
The tedium of the negotiations had helped mute Danai's anger, and she was surprised, when she wrote her name on the bottom line, to feel something else. It wasn't strong, just a sense of contentment. But it was more pleasant than anger, and was the first real sign that what Erde had said might come true, that her personality might recover from all the blows. She might not ever be normal again, but she could at least discover a new normal.
The job complete, Danai saw no reason to stay on Oriente any longer. She wanted to report to Daoshen, and then see what he might give her for a job well done. She sent Clara to make preparations for a launch, then went to reclaim Bell. After that, she had one other matter to take care of.
* * *
Bell, while not entirely thr
illed at having sat in jail for two months while his entire company enjoyed a pleasure circus, was still in good spirits when Danai found him. He'd been treated well, he said, and even been allowed to use a simulator on a few occasions, though he suspected that was because his captors wanted to study Capellan tactics rather than help keep his skills fresh. To throw them off the track, he purposefully engaged in the wildest, most suicidal strategies he'd dreamed up while in the field. He'd had a lot of fun, plus he hadn't shown his captors anything of use.
Danai dispatched Bell back to the DropPort, while she opened her comm and dialed a number she'd received a year ago on Terra.
"Hello?"
"Nikol? It's Danai."
"Danai! You're talking to me! Are you here? On Oriente? Where are you?"
"At the palace. Heading to the gardens. Would you like to meet me there?"
"Of course! Give me . . . oh, just go there. I'll be there first."
And she was, sitting on the same bench they had occupied when Danai told her what Caleb had done to her. The rosebush she had ripped out had carefully been replanted, but there were still a few bare spots where Danai's hands had ripped away leaves and petals.
Nikol sprang to her feet as soon as she saw Danai, her eyes dancing, but she didn't step forward for a hug. "Danai! I'm so glad to .. . well, I'm just glad."
"I'm glad to see you too," Danai said, measuring the words in her mouth to see if they were true. They seemed to be.
"Sit down," Nikol said, but Danai balked.
"Not yet," she said.
Nikol shrugged, and she remained standing also.
"I gathered that you were mad at me," Nikol said. "It wasn't that hard to figure out. But I didn't know why."
"Really," Danai said dryly.
"So I thought about it. About when it might have started. And I remembered the look you gave me at that one meeting, and I remembered what my mother said. She said something about you and men. About why they give you such problems. I know my mother; it was an offhand insult, just pulled off the top of her head to make you mad. To play on your Canopian roots. But you heard her say 'men.' And you thought I'd told her about Caleb." She whispered the last name like it was a shameful curse. Which, Danai thought, it was.
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