Shades of Empire (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  Alexander didn’t have to feign shock. He had never thought the rebel team had a real chance of succeeding. “Dead?”

  The man nodded. “The palace was attacked by a horde of a hundred terrorists. They killed more than thirty people, including the Emperor and the Empress and half the imperial harem.”

  “What?”

  The man pulled away. “Let go of me! I have to get home. The army’s imposed martial law. No one can leave the city, and there’s a curfew as soon as it’s dark.”

  Alexander let him go and made hasty plans. In the next street, he found a house agent’s establishment; he had remembered seeing it next to a tavern frequented by the Corps. The tavern was doing a brisk business in selling bottles to commuters who planned on getting through their shock and dismay at the Emperor’s demise with the numbing effects of alcohol. The house agent seemed more concerned with work. He was still in the office, his door wide open.

  Alexander stepped inside and found the man trying to go through his electronic files to close out his records before he closed his doors indefinitely. He wasn’t inclined to be helpful.

  “Please,” Alexander said, “I’m literally stuck here in Montmartre. I came to finish some business, and now that office is closed and likely won’t be open for days. I don’t have anywhere to stay, and I’m sure the hotels are all full by now. I’ll pay a month’s rent if you have anywhere furnished.”

  The agent looked halfway persuaded, and Alexander named a specific figure that was very generous for a month’s rent.

  “I don’t have anywhere that fancy,” the agent said.

  “I don’t need fancy. Just don’t put me anywhere too close in. I’m from the country, and I can’t stand the noise and the bustle.”

  “Well,” the house agent said slowly, “I suppose I could let you have the old Judson place. It’s furnished because the old man died there about a month ago. His daughter took the linens and her father’s clothes, but she left everything else.” Greed warred with candor in his expression. “It’s kind of a dump, though. There’s a clothes fresher, but no real kitchen appliances. And Old Judson was a widower who didn’t worry about niceties like cleaning floors or dusting.”

  “I won’t mind—so long as it’s quiet.”

  The house agent smiled sourly. “Oh, it’s quiet all right. It’s so far out, it’s barely in the city limits. It used to be a farmhouse, you see, when Montmartre was smaller. Then when the city grew, Judson sold off most of the land but kept the house. There are no close neighbors at all.”

  “It sounds perfect,” Alexander said truthfully. “I’ll take it.”

  The agent consented to take Alexander’s money, and to hand over the key to the house as well as directions. Alexander breathed a sigh of relief that he had thought to ask Ostrov for false identification, as the agent wasn’t too busy to run his ID through a cipher decoder before he turned over the keys.

  Alexander debated, but decided to hide downtown rather than attempting to go to the rented house. He would need to be on the watch at the crack of dawn, and he couldn’t be certain he could get back to the palace if he left the downtown area now. From the accounts in the news bulletins, both the army and the police were out in force.

  Alexander parked the skimmer in the same deserted garage where he had found it, and stretched out on the floor of the cargo space to sleep.

  • • •

  Shortly after dawn the next morning, Alexander crouched in the shadows in an alley, and waited. He was beginning to wonder if he had miscalculated the date, somehow, or if the events of the day before were so profound that all normal palace activities were suspended, even the automated ones not initiated by people.

  There was a faint whine and the rumble of the tread-like wheels of a ground transport, and the object for which Alexander had been waiting for over an hour lumbered into view.

  It was a trash cart, an automated vehicle that took this route once a week. Alexander had watched them many times, and he knew the routine. The cart would deliver and install an empty canister, cleaned, odorless, and sterilized, and take the full one to the recycling center.

  Alexander waited until the cart was directly across from him, and then he jumped onto the canister at the back of it. As the cart continued to lumber on its way, he pulled himself up to the top using the hand rails, and then wrenched open the top hatch. He leaned over the opening and was almost stunned by the odor. He took a deep breath and put his head inside.

  There she was, still in the bag, floating gently above the sea of imperial refuse. Alexander reached one long arm into the hatch and managed to snag the draw string. He pulled the bag closer and then maneuvered it through the hatch.

  He took barely a moment to look inside, to reassure himself that the woman was still alive. Then he shut the hatch, grabbed hold of the drawstring, and made a jump from the moving vehicle.

  He fell when he landed, but the bag floated safely above him. Alexander scrambled to his feet, and pulled the bag along behind him as he sprinted for the skimmer he had parked at the other end of the alley. He put the bag in the cargo hold, deactivating the anti-grav pad so that his prize came to rest gently on the floor.

  Alexander started the engine and piloted the skimmer through the narrow alley and into the residential area around the palace. He had been sure of the path of the trash cart only as far as the park around the palace, so he hadn’t dared to let it go any farther than this. He only hoped no one had seen him jump onto it.

  He drove at a measured pace, not too slowly and not too fast. There were only a few vehicles already abroad this early, and he didn’t want to stand out. He noted that most of the houses already had some sign of mourning—either a black cloth draping the doorway or a picture of the late Emperor, framed in black and propped in a window.

  Alexander moved to the express lanes that headed to the fringes of the city. At the edge of town, he took a turning that led him to the outer suburbs, into more open space. He stopped before he got too far away from the mercantile areas, and bought food and other supplies, and then continued on his way, popping the directions the house agent had given into the directional finder in the skimmer.

  In a short time, he found himself pulling up next to what had obviously once been a farmhouse. In fact, it was so like the house Alexander had grown up in that it gave him a pang of nostalgia to see it. He was pleased to note that there was a shed where he could hide the skimmer.

  Alexander left the skimmer near the back door and carried his living burden carefully into the house. He set the bag down on the parlor floor, opened the draw string, and peeled the bag back from his escaped concubine as if she were a lurnana fruit.

  Alexander picked her up as gently as he could and deposited her on the sofa. He hadn’t thought to ask the revolutionaries for an antidote for the anesthetic they had assured him would last for at least a full day, so he had no alternative but to wait for her to wake up on her own.

  He studied her while she lay there. She looked very peaceful in sleep, almost serene. There was none of the desperation he had seen earlier at the palace. Alexander straightened her dress primly, and then folded her hands neatly at her waist. He frowned when he realized that she looked as if she were laid out in a coffin, and he laid his head on her breast to make certain she was indeed breathing.

  He heard her heart beating strongly, which reassured him. When he looked down at her again, he was distressed to find that at such close range he couldn’t help noticing the round fullness of her breasts as they rose and fell in a gentle rhythm. For a moment her vulnerability overwhelmed Alexander. He wanted very much to touch her, to stroke that slender neck, and caress the soft, inviting mounds of her breasts.

  Instead, he returned to the skimmer and moved it into the shed. He carried the sheets and blankets he had bought into the house. When he looked into the parlor, she lay just as he had left her. He draped a blanket over her, put the other linens in the ground floor bedroom, then went back to unload the
food.

  He had put everything away, made tea, and was preparing dinner when he heard a noise from the parlor.

  Alexander ran from the kitchen and found his guest sitting up on the sofa looking utterly bewildered.

  “Hello,” Alexander said. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded slowly, as if she weren’t really sure herself, and then she glanced around the room. “How did I get here? And where is here?”

  “You’re in an old house on the outskirts of Montmartre,” Alexander said with a certain amount of pride. “I brought you here in a skimmer.”

  “But,” she persisted, wrinkling her brow, “how did you get me out of the palace?”

  “In a trash cart. I put you in a bag that was shielded, and then put the bag into a trash canister. There was an anti-grav pad in the bag, so you weren’t buried in the trash or anything. Then I just waited for the trash cart to bring the canister out, and I got you back.”

  She looked at him admiringly. “That was a clever plan. You must be a very clever person.”

  “No,” Alexander said, his smile a little grim. If he had been truly clever he wouldn’t have been caught when he tried to break Celia out.

  “Thank you. I could never have gotten out on my own.”

  He nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  She stared at him in concern. “Did you hurt your face?”

  Alexander realized he had removed the makeup and covered his tattoo since she had seen him last. “No,” he said, and he ripped the bandage off. “Not lately, anyway.” The imperial seal gleamed in a dynamic display of golden swirls.

  The woman looked surprised as she got to her feet. “That’s right! I remember now. You were dressed as a guardsman before, and you even had the tattoo.” She studied his face and almost frowned. “You looked different, though.”

  “I had makeup on as part of my disguise. I needed to look like a guardsman but not look like me.”

  “Is that how you got out?”

  He nodded again. “It was easy. They never suspected one of their own.”

  “Oh,” she said breathlessly. “And you came for Celia! You must be the guardsman who fell in love with her. We all thought you were dead.”

  Alexander didn’t correct her statement. “You said Celia killed herself?”

  She looked up at him with sad eyes. “Yes. They gave her to the Corps, you see, and after a month, she couldn’t take it anymore. She killed herself with a kitchen knife.”

  Alexander remembered Mona Sandowsky’s account of her ordeal as a whore. He sat down in a chair and closed his eyes for a second.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, taking a step closer to him. “Really, I am. It wasn’t fair that you loved each other and you couldn’t be together.”

  “My name is Alexander,” he said, as much to change the subject as anything. “What’s yours?”

  She looked a little surprised, as if she had expected him to know it. “Cassandra.”

  He frowned at the name, thinking that it should have some significance. “Cassandra?” he repeated.

  “Cassandra Fitzlothar,” she said helpfully.

  His surprise was so complete, it was as if he had received an electric shock. “The Emperor’s daughter?”

  She nodded.

  He jumped to his feet, his head suddenly pounding with rage. “You’re the Emperor’s daughter? I risked my life to take a fucking princess out of the palace?”

  “I’m not a princess.” She sounded insulted. “My mother was one of my father’s concubines, just like Celia, except that he allowed her to have a child.”

  Alexander walked closer. She was a du Plessis, and the urge to hurt her almost overwhelmed him. He could feel his fury growing every second. “Do you know what your father did to me? Do you know what he did to Celia?”

  “I don’t know what he did to you. But I know all about what he did to Celia. He made me watch with the concubines and the servants.”

  Alexander was breathing hard. He cursed violently, and then turned from her, not trusting himself not to strike her.

  “He made me watch, too,” he said, his voice savage with rage and bitterness. “He made me watch over and over. I almost went mad.” He looked back at her, feeling his face contort into a mask of anger. “Maybe I did go mad?” he said, coming closer and looming over her. “Maybe you’re here alone in this house with a deranged man who hates you?”

  She didn’t take her eyes off him; she met his gaze eye to eye. “Are you going to rape me?”

  He turned away abruptly and put his head in his hands. “Oh, god,” he said, his desolation complete. It had all been for nothing. Celia was dead, and he was alone with the Emperor’s daughter. “I wish I was dead.”

  She hesitated and then stepped closer and touched his arm. “It’s all right,” she said, as gently as a mother talking to a small child. “I’d rather it was you than Antonio.”

  It took him a moment to sort out the implications of this statement. “Antonio? Crown Prince Antonio? Your brother?”

  She nodded. “Why do you think I wanted to get away so badly? Antonio frightens me.”

  “But he’s your brother!”

  She shrugged. “He’s Vinitra’s brother, too. That didn’t stop him from wanting her.”

  Alexander was still incredulous. “You’re making this up.”

  She looked hurt. “No, I’m not. He’s wanted her for a long time. When the Empress caught them together two years ago, both of them had taken off all their clothes and Antonio was—was—” She broke off her explanation abruptly as if she were unable to express what had happened. “Vinitra was still a virgin,” she said lamely, “but Antonio had persuaded her to let him, um, stimulate her. After that, the Empress had her doctor condition Vinitra so that it hurt her physically anytime she let a man touch her.”

  Her revelation shocked Alexander profoundly. Not even Emperor Lothar had been this perverted. Not even the Emperor’s Own Corps was as bad as the Emperor’s only son. “My, god! His own sister!” He shuddered and then studied Cassandra. She seemed too childlike for such knowledge. “How do you know this?”

  “Vinnie told me. Before she discovered that he wanted me as well as her, she used to confide in me. Now she hates me because she’s jealous.”

  Alexander’s eyes opened wider. “She wants him, too?”

  “Oh, yes.” Cassandra sounded almost as if she were explaining her family’s peccadilloes to a much younger person. “She’s always loved Antonio deeply, ever since she was little. And he was clever enough to exploit her feelings and make them into something different. He controls her, in a way. He can make her do almost anything, but he can’t get past the conditioning.”

  Alexander let his disgust show on his face. “Your brother sounds worse than his father.”

  “I think he probably is,” Cassandra said seriously. “So you see, it doesn’t matter if you do rape me. You rescued me from Antonio, and that’s enough.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Alexander said, flushing as he remembered his reaction to her identity. “Of course I’m not going to rape you.”

  She looked doubtful but murmured a polite thank you.

  “Oh, shut up,” he said, irritated by good manners in such circumstances. “What the hell am I going to do with you?” he added in exasperation. “A spare concubine no one would worry about, but an almost-princess is something else again.”

  She didn’t look overly concerned. “I expect my father will be angry because he was going to use me as a reward for some noble whose support he needed, but other than that, no one will care—except Antonio, and he can’t do anything about it because my father would find out why he wanted me back.”

  Alexander watched her surreptitiously. He was surprised to find that he was reluctant to be the one to break the news of her father’s death to her. “I’m afraid he can,” he said, going at it all in a rush. “Your brother is the Emperor now. Your father is dead.”

  She stared at him in astonishme
nt. “Dead?”

  “Yes. I don’t really understand how it could have happened. There were only eight in the raid, and if you ask me they had more dedication than skill or experience. I would never have thought they’d succeed, but they must have. The news bulletins said both the Emperor and the Empress were killed by assassins.”

  Cassandra’s face froze in bewilderment as she contemplated what, Alexander knew, must be the collapse of the natural order of her universe.

  “She’s dead?” she said.

  “According to the published reports,” Alexander said, taken aback that she focused more on the Empress’ death than on her father’s.

  “Well, it’s too bad about Antonio, but at least some good came out of it. Thalia is finally gone.”

  Alexander was both amazed and a little revolted. She not only showed no emotion on learning of her father’s death, she sounded happy at the death of his wife. Cassandra took one look at his face and seemed to understand what he was thinking.

  “Don’t judge me too harshly,” she said. “I suppose in some ways Thalia was a better person than my father, because at least she loved her children. That was more than he ever did. Still, the woman was my enemy. She hated my mother, and she hated me. I’ve feared her all my life, so I can’t be sorry she’s dead.”

  Alexander frowned, not at her revelation, but at something that had just occurred to him. “Wait a minute. If you’re Emperor Lothar’s daughter, why wasn’t there anything in the bulletins about you being missing?”

  She was neither concerned nor helpful. “I don’t know. Maybe it was so chaotic that they don’t know yet?”

  Alexander wasn’t convinced. The leadership of the Corps might have an inflated sense of their own worth, but they were hardly inept. “They could have searched the whole palace from floor to ceiling by now. They must know you’re gone.”

  Cassandra made a small, impatient gesture, as if it were of no consequence. “Maybe they don’t care? Antonio has Vinitra now. There’s nothing to stop him from having the conditioning removed. Maybe he doesn’t want me anymore?”