CHAPTER EIGHT

To the Ambassador the Emperor delegated the task of gathering the necessary people for their conference. That left him to another of the existential questions abandoned by the Chatcaava. In this case: he could shift shape, and so choose one for this meeting. What shape, then? His default answer was ‘Chatcaavan,’ because it was the shape he associated with power and agency. But the majority of those attending the meeting were not Chatcaavan, and to them the dragon was a symbol of oppression and savagery. He could use this as an opportunity to begin rehabilitating that image, as was necessary if they were to become true allies. Or he could begin in vulnerability, by sharing their shape, but at the cost of impairing the confidence of his Chatcaavan allies. The Knife and Uuvek, he suspected, would not care what he looked like, but the Admiral-Offense, whose help he needed most, would be, perhaps, disquieted.

He found himself outside the clinic, and inevitably, he entered. Andrea was conferring with the taciturn Seersan Surgeon—Dellen Crosby, he recalled. Names, always. The latter squinted at him. “I hope you haven’t relapsed?”

Remembering he was human, the Emperor said, “No. I am merely… ”

“Experimenting?” Crosby said.

Thinking of the solid bones question, the Emperor replied, “Perhaps. You might help me with that later.”

“Wouldn’t I love to,” the Seersa said, interested. “No one’s ever had a good look at the biology of the Change. Outside the Empire, at least. I imagine inside it there must be subject matter experts.”

Were there? He assumed not, but what did he know? In the breadth of the Empire, there might be Chatcaava who did not abhor the Change, who also might have access to other sentients to attempt the experiment. But that would have to wait. Perhaps a very long time, given how he saw this war progressing. He looked at Andrea. “There is a meeting. Will you come?”

“Of course,” she said. “Dellen-alet, I will see you later for my shift.”

“Take your time. We’ll be here.”

She nodded and followed the Emperor into the hall. “A meeting?”

“I have an idea where we should go next,” the Emperor replied. Her presence was comforting. He missed the others too: Emlyn, Dominika. He had not welcomed them before, but now that he was free he found himself craving the reminder of the time he spent among them, when they had accepted him as one of their own.

“And you’re inviting me because…”

A good question.

“If you had a choice whether to come with us on this mission or not,” the Emperor asked, stopping. “Would you?”

She faced him, sliding her hands in the pockets of her pants. “Would you ask me?”

He frowned. “That would matter.”

“Of course,” Andrea said. “Everyone likes to feel needed. And for this in particular…” She looked up at the ceiling. “I miss home. Some part of me wants my life back, the way it was before the Worldlord’s slave quarters. But the Worldlord’s slave quarters happened. Even if I go back, my life won’t be the same, and I find I don’t want to pretend that I haven’t changed. If it were up to me… and if you needed a healer-assist with specialty in first-response care… then absolutely, I’d want a part of this. But I still want to know why you’re asking.”

“I am asking because—” Could he say it? “Because I don’t know how to need people. And yet I think I might need you.” He looked down, always down, the direction his head kept dragging toward. Bow. Bow your head, chattel. “I would miss the others as well.”

“That’s a great start.”

He managed a twist of a smile. “Perhaps you might begin by advising me on how to keep warmer. Even dressed, I find I am cold in this shape.”

“Are you going to the meeting in it?” she asked, as casually as if they were discussing a change of clothes.

“I think so.”

She nodded. “Well, let’s throw a sweatshirt on you, then. We’re supposed to be limiting power consumption, so there’s no genie use for a while. But the ship has stores.”

Lisinthir was the only person outside the conference room when he and Andrea arrived, and at the sight of them his pale brows rose. Amusement, the Emperor thought. His Ambassador, whose sense of humor was the edge of his sword-sharp wit. He remembered that about their time together. That Lisinthir had made him laugh, that later they had laughed together. He was glad he could make his Eldritch smile.

“Not just human, but in a Fleet pullover?” the Ambassador said, mouth curving up at one corner.

“It doesn’t have a logo,” Andrea said, turning to study the Emperor critically and adjusting the collar before nodding. “And the rest of us refugees are in them too. There, that’s good.” She smiled at the Ambassador and said, “My lord,” before passing into the room. Had she chosen to leave them alone because she’d sensed they’d want the time?

“You asked her to the meeting,” Lisinthir said.

“She… educates me.” The Emperor tucked his hands under his armpits to warm their fingertips. “I have become aware that I am expert in the customs of two cultures, both of them Imperial, and both of them blunt instruments. The Empire cannot survive without developing a culture with more subtlety and less severe consequences for mistakes.”

“Two cultures,” the Ambassador murmured.

“The court, which is specific to the throneworld capital. And the Navy.”

“Which may or may not survive the insurrection.” Lisinthir’s smile grew more pronounced and more crooked. “Your empire and my world are in similar straits. We too, will not survive without changing.”

“It is the only thing that gives me hope,” the Emperor said, surprised to find it true. “Surely if there is change to be mastered, we might have an advantage.”

“One hopes.” Lisinthir paused, then reached to him, cupped one of the Emperor’s human cheeks. One of his thumbs rested just beneath the Emperor’s eye, and the skin there was so delicate he felt pressure against the bone, straight through the flesh. “You are certain about this?”

“I believe the gesture would be… appreciated. Am I incorrect?”

“No,” Lisinthir said. And smiled for true this time. “You may puzzle some of them more than you please them, but they will note the effort.”

“Then I will make the gesture.” The Emperor turned his face enough to kiss that palm, silky warmth. “Come, Perfection. The work awaits.”

“The work may be endless,” Lisinthir murmured, falling in at his back.

“Nevertheless, it is ours.”

On the other side of the hatch, ranged around a long oval table, were nine people. Three were Chatcaavan: the Admiral-Offense, the Knife, and Uuvek. Six were from the Alliance: Andrea, and five people in Fleet uniform. The last of those Fleet personnel, he recognized, unfortunately: Khaska, the Slave Queen’s Pelted attendant from the harem. He had not even known the name the Queen had chosen for her until after the Ambassador left and they’d begun talking in earnest. But the Emperor’s personal memories of the Seersa had not dimmed; he could feel even now the texture of her fur, remember the weight of her body and the sound of her sobs. Though he’d known she was here, he hadn’t allowed himself to dwell on it, or the fact that she had helped Lisinthir rescue him from the Worldlord’s harem. He knew he would not be able to ignore her for much longer.

This, first, however. “Thank you,” he said in Universal, “for coming.”

“You’re still human,” one of the Fleet personnel said, a human herself with bright pink hair. “Did Dellen not help you?”

“He did,” the Emperor said. “I have chosen to remain human for now.”

“To put us at ease?” another of the Pelted asked, a woman with gray ears and a sardonic smile.

A Chatcaavan could appreciate such bluntness. “Only in part,” he said, to honor the question. “But also to remind myself that I am neither invulnerable, nor free from debt to those who aided me.”

That swift inhalation had come from Khaska’s direction. The Emperor ignored it to address the Admiral-Offense, using their tongue. “Have you informed them of the gravity of their situation?”

“I was awaiting your word, Exalted.”

“Then you shall tell them, and one of us will translate,” the Emperor said, sitting. “They will have had a precis from the Ambassador, but the details are necessary. Divulge them now.”

The Admiral-Offense’s wings tensed, as did the line up his neck that revealed how much he wanted to look away. “It goes against nature. Telling the wingless freaks everything they need to know to defeat us.”

“These people,” the Emperor answered, stressing the word, “rescued you. Rescued me. And are now going to ally with us to rescue what remains worthy of it from the clutches of the Usurper and Second. We will tell them everything we can to ensure our success, and we will call it natural. Because nothing, Admiral-Offense, is more natural than winning. When you are strong.”

The Admiral-Offense glanced at him. “Exalted, you do not look strong.”

“I am a Chatcaavan who does not refuse the Change,” the Emperor said. “That makes me stronger than everyone who does.” And added, quieter, “Huntfriend. Trust me.”

The Knife surprised them both by inserting himself into a conversation between two far, far above him in rank. “You will be surprised, Admiral-Offense. They are tougher than they look, these aliens.”

“We also speak your language,” the long-eared alien male drawled.

“If with a horrendous accent,” Khaska muttered, and leaned away from his mock swat.

The Admiral-Offense grimaced, teeth flaring at the parted lips.

“Don’t worry,” the long-eared male added, propping his cheek up with a hand. “We’re not at all offended at being called wingless freaks.”

“Na’er,” the gray-eared female murmured. “Enough.”

“Ma’am.”

To the Admiral-Offense, that female said, “All of us understand enough of the language to sit through a briefing. Lieutenant Baker can help us with any of the nuances if we fail to understand them. Please, go ahead.”

“We have a visual aid,” the Knife added. “Uuvek?”

Uuvek grunted and picked up an Alliance data tablet. A few moments later, a map of the Empire appeared—an accurate one, the Emperor noted, not the one distributed to the Alliance at the treaty table. The Admiral-Offense glanced up at it and snorted. To the two Chatcaava, “You are too forward.”

“We are Navy,” the Knife said, apologetic. “We prefer to think of it as taking initiative.”

“Efficient,” Uuvek said. “We’re being efficient.”

The Admiral-Offense didn’t sigh but he wanted to, and caught by accident a sympathetic glance from the Pelted superior. Such a small moment of understanding, the Emperor thought, but he read the Admiral-Offense’s surprise at it, and thought it a good beginning.

“Let us speak, then, of the Navy’s strength and disposition,” the Admiral-Offense began.

Did the numbers daunt them? The Emperor watched the aliens’ faces carefully, but they were professionals. Each wore a different expression, but that expression changed not at all. The gray-eared female who led them looked dispassionate but attentive. The long-eared male, amused and a little bored, eyes half-lidded. The Fleet human was politely interested, her head cocking now and then. The striped Pelted male beside her looked mildly curious. Andrea was the only one he could read easily: her pallor and set features radiated fear, and the determination not to submit to it. Khaska… Khaska stared at the projection, until she caught him looking at her.

He couldn’t read the look she gave him in return.

The Ambassador remained relaxed beside him, a welcome bulwark in a strange situation: to be surrounded by aliens, wearing their skin, and neither more powerful than them, nor less. Everything about it distracted him, from the way the chair pressed along the full breadth of his wingless back to the way human eyes failed to react as well to peripheral motion. Being clothed also struck him as… peculiar. He’d spent all his time naked as an Eldritch and then as a human. To have clothing in this shape, especially to have it completely cover his shoulders and back, felt unnatural. Curious.

The Admiral-Offense did not fail him. His briefing laid out in stark terms the size of the Chatcaavan Navy, its composition and readiness state, its location and the approximate times it would take for each sector fleet to muster to Apex-East; then he discussed each sector’s politics and the probable bearing of those forces on the possibility of mutiny, and mentioned the use of mercenaries—the pirates the Emperor had been disturbed to discover they’d trusted with anything—to harry the Alliance’s border. He stopped without obvious irritation when someone requested clarification of a term in the language which, he noticed, Khaska almost always provided. Sitting alongside him, Lisinthir maintained his silence. In that they were twins. Much could be learned from silence; that he had known, even before he’d become the Emperor.

When at last the Admiral-Offense finished, the Pelted superior said, “When we leave comm-silence…”

“We’ll bounce all that off a repeater faster than you can say ‘bless my heart we’re all about to die,’” her human subordinate said.

“Are we all about to die?” Andrea asked.

Lisinthir spoke at last. “I trust not, as I still have a great deal to do in this life. We have a plan.”

All of them looked at him, then. The Emperor said to the Knife, “You are a reader of poetry.”

Surprised, the Knife stammered, “I… yes, Exalted.”

“He’s religious,” Uuvek said absently, tapping at his data tablet with the side of his fingers, keeping the talons out of the way.

“And so, apparently, are our allies in the Empire?”

“Oh!” The Knife’s pupils contracted. Then he said, “Exalted. We do use it as a… hunt marker. Unofficially.”

“And if I said… unofficially… that I would like a message sent out as widely as possible that we were to meet at the Source? For… worship?”

The Knife’s second ‘oh’ was softer, and his eyes began to glow. Squaring his shoulders, he bobbed his head in an alien nod. “I know just the way.”

“So what’s this?” the Pelted superior said. “We’re going to broadcast our meeting place to the known universe?”

“In rhyme?” the striped male said, ears listing.

“We are,” the Emperor said to her. “Those who are sympathetic to us will come.”

“What if the rest of them come too?” the long-eared male said, one brow lifted.

“All the better for the Alliance,” Lisinthir said. “Yes? We draw the Chatcaava from the front. Give Fleet time to react to the message that Shanelle will send back.”

“That’s not going to help much if the Chatcaava who are our enemies kill off all the Chatcaava who might end up our allies,” the Pelted captain told the Ambassador.

“If they succeed in doing so,” Lisinthir replied, and the Emperor wondered if these aliens knew him well enough to perceive the emotion hiding under his facile mask, “then they’ll be significantly attrited. It will still benefit us.”

“And do you find this conversation distasteful?” the female said to the Emperor, meeting his eyes forthrightly. “We’re talking about possibly leading your allies to the slaughter. You’ll end up a monarch in exile of an empire run by your enemies, one that will still be big enough to wipe the floor with us.”

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight,” the pink-haired human murmured in Universal. “It’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Her superior glanced at her, then back at the Emperor. “I still want an answer.”

“We have an untenable task,” the Emperor said to her. “So we must break it into pieces we can encompass. Right now it looks as if the entirety of this—” He waved a hand at Uuvek’s map, “is poised to fall on you. But that map is not the military. The Navy employs only seven percent of that populace, and of that seven percent, some number of them are ours, not the Usurper’s. If that number is more than half, this war is over. But time is short, and we need some way of separating friend from foe.”

The female inhaled. “Fine. What if that number’s less than half? Maybe significantly?”

“Then, perhaps, we will die in the effort. Or not, if… the size of the fight in the dog—” said in Universal before he switched back, “—is more important than the size of the dog in the fight.”

“That could have been a Chatcaavan saying,” the Knife said, admiring.

“It’s human,” the pink-haired female said. “We’re pretty fierce for our size.” She grinned and added to the Emperor, “You have good taste in shapes. Though I bet you miss the wings. I would.”

Andrea hid a smile.

“Your shape has compensations,” the Emperor said, and thought it true. To the gray-eared female, he said, “Religion has become debased in our society. I doubt the Usurper will think of it at all. But if he does, and he comes for us, so much the better. A single battle might end this.”

“Too many variables,” the striped male muttered.

“Sounds like the only thing we can do is take a step and see if it solidifies things,” the long-eared male agreed, speaking to his superior. “We need more to work with than we’ve got right now.”

“Sometimes you need to take the big gamble to see the big payoff,” the pink-haired human said.

Their captain’s ears flicked back and she sighed. “Fine. I don’t really see a better path either, and I’m not the expert on the Empire’s internal politics.” She eyed the Emperor. “Which I have to hope you are, despite proof otherwise.”

“Do you always speak to allied heads of state in this fashion?” the Admiral-Offense said. “Is this an… alien… custom? Disrespect?”

“It’s not our custom, no,” the long-eared male said. “But we also don’t talk to torturers, rapists, and murderers, either. We try them for crimes and put them in penal colonies until they rot.”

“Na’er,” his superior said, not quite quelling. Warning.

“The dragons don’t like minced words,” Na’er said, looking at the Emperor directly, and there was no insolence there. The Emperor would have called it hatred, if it had been hotter. Disgust, perhaps. “I won’t mince them, then. We’re helping you because it’ll help the Alliance. But from every report, you’re a sadist, a killer, and a sociopath, and I won’t pretend to like you. And no, Meryl, I won’t apologize.” He stood and flexed his fingers before curling them into fists. “Should we duel over it?”

“No,” the Emperor said, ignoring the gape of the Admiral-Offense and the wide-eyed stare of the Knife. Uuvek was ignoring the exchange, predictably. “You have said nothing inaccurate.”

Andrea said, “He’s not a sadist, a killer, and a sociopath anymore, though.”

“Oh really,” Na’er replied, the sarcasm thick enough to drip.

“That’s enough.” The Pelted captain—Meryl—looked up at Na’er. “You can go. All of you.”

Na’er bounced two forefingers off his brow in what looked like a salute and marched out the conference room. He was followed by the rest of the Pelted crew and the two humans, Andrea and the pink-haired human female, who glanced at the Emperor thoughtfully on the way past. After they’d left, Meryl said, “I apologize for his outburst.”

“You need not,” the Emperor said.

“She needs must!” the Admiral-Offense objected. “How dare they judge us? Judge you? You are the Exalted Emperor of an empire large enough to crush them by rolling over!”

“Was,” Uuvek said without looking up from his data tablet. When the conversation halted, he lifted his head. “He was the Emperor of that Empire. Now he’s a rebel.”

“Rebellions need leaders,” the Knife told Uuvek.

“Yes,” Uuvek replied, resuming his perusal of the tablet. “He’ll make it work.”

Baffled, the Admiral-Offense stared at them, then, irritated, “Is disrespect contagious?”

“We beg your pardon, Admiral,” the Knife said, dipping his head. “Uuvek was always like this.”

“And you?” the Admiral-Offense asked.

“I… ah...” The Knife’s shoulders and wings slumped. “Suppose I did catch it like a disease.”

Meryl snorted. To the Emperor, she said, “I’ll agree to ignore your subordinates’ consistent… forcefulness…of opinions, if you will agree to ignore mine’s.”

The Emperor smiled a little. “We would waste a great deal of time if we did not.”

“Agreed.” She stood. “We’ll leave you to work that out, then.”

“We are going to discuss this now?” the Admiral-Offense said once Meryl had gone. “In front of one final alien?”

“If you call me a wingless freak again, I will cross this table and put a fist in your throat,” Lisinthir said conversationally.

“You are threatening me?” the Admiral-Offense said. Less offended, the Emperor thought, and more incredulous.

“I killed Third and his Hand,” Lisinthir said, studying him. “I don’t think you’ll be harder.”

“You can’t do it, sir,” the Knife interrupted the Admiral-Offense so earnestly they all looked at him. “Think of them that way, as wingless freaks rather than people. They are our huntbrothers and huntsisters.”

“Huntsisters!”

“Lieutenant Laniis Baker is my huntsister.” The Knife’s eyes narrowed. “She guarded my flanks in the Worldlord’s harem. She was fearless and competent. Her claws are hidden in her fingers but they are no less sharp for it. That is the Alliance, Admiral-Offense. Hidden but dangerous claws. They are worthy allies. Even the females.”

The Admiral-Offense looked away, and his wings sagged. “I understand that we need them. But this goes against…”

“Nature?” Lisinthir offered sweetly.

“Yes,” the Admiral-Offense said. “And you may find it insulting if you wish but it is no less true. This is not how we do things.”

“It may be a better way to do things,” the Knife said. “When you fight at their side, sir, you’ll see. They are soft until roused, and then they are terrible.”

“I suppose we’ll find out,” the Admiral-Offense said, rising. “And for all our sakes, I hope you’re right.” He bowed to the Emperor. “Exalted. May I go?”

The Emperor nodded. “Yes. And thank you for your service, huntbrother. I know this is difficult.”

The Admiral-Offense eyed him. “Soft words.”

“I wear a soft form,” the Emperor allowed. “It does not change who I am.”

“Are you certain?”

“You could try the Change and see.”

The Admiral-Offense could not conceal his shudder. “I think not.” He lowered his head. “Exalted.”

After he’d left, the Knife said, “I suppose it’s too much to expect a male of high rank to see what we do so easily.”

“Emperor’s a male of high rank,” Uuvek opined, absently. “He seems to be doing it fine.”

“Court rank is different from naval rank,” the Knife said.

Uuvek snorted. “Court rank is worse. He’s an exception, is all.”

“You are remarkably impertinent,” Lisinthir said with obvious amusement. “You might consider a more diplomatic tack when you’re among others.”

“What’s the point?” Uuvek said, putting away the data tablet and standing. “I’m not going to change on the inside either. I’ll follow the useful example in this room.” He glanced at the Emperor, then back at the Ambassador. “As an aside, I’ve lost contact with the D-per.”

Lisinthir sat up, and though the motion was controlled the Emperor read the alarm in it anyway. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your nestsister’s computer ally,” Uuvek said. “We’ve been talking on and off. But she didn’t answer my last comment. At this point it’s double the time she’s taken to respond before. It’s not like her.”

“She may be busy,” Lisinthir said. “Or operating under comm-silence. Keep us informed?”

“Didn’t I just do so?” Uuvek padded to the door. “Knife?”

“In a moment.”

Uuvek shrugged a hand and left.

The Knife did stand, though, resting a hand on the back of his chair. “Exalted… they are good people.”

“Good people,” the Emperor repeated.

“Males and females both.”

“Do you advocate for them so ardently, then?” the Emperor asked. “Why?”

“Because I have… I have Touched them, Exalted.” A fine tremor afflicted the Knife. “You cannot Touch them without knowing them.”

“So I have observed,” the Emperor said, quiet.

The Knife inhaled, centering himself, and became calm. “I know. It is why I trust you so, Exalted. If you are willing to know them, then you cannot fail to know yourself, either.”

Would that the Knife realized just how well he’d known himself before, and liked that drake well enough. Sadist. Killer. Sociopath. What had he said in response to the accusation? They were ‘not inaccurate’ statements. They would have remained accurate had it not been for the Eldritch beside him… and the transformative power of the Change. Did that make his evolution luck? Or had some decision been involved on his part, to be open to it? “You may go.” As the Knife reached the door, he added, “Your huntsister.”

“She is fierce,” the Knife said proudly.

“Would you tell her that I would like to see her, if she is amenable?”

“Of course, Exalted!” The Knife inclined his head. “I’ll ask now.”

The door slid shut, leaving him to the Ambassador, who murmured, “Was that wise?”

“I don’t know,” the Emperor admitted. “Do I not owe her an apology? And an opportunity to face me?”

“I don’t know,” Lisinthir said. “Some might find it… intimidating. Upsetting. To face their abuser.”

“You did not.”

His Perfection managed a smile. “I am rather more aggressive than many find comfortable.”

The Emperor studied him, then offered his hands. Lisinthir took them, pulled him closer; the Emperor allowed it and leaned into the Eldritch’s embrace. Strange, to have no wings to interrupt the arm that rested around his shoulders. Strange to find it comfortable. And yet, how he missed their absent third.

“As do I,” Lisinthir murmured against his hair. “Oh, Exalted. As do I.” After a moment, he added, “Na’er loves Lieutenant Baker.”

“Ah,” the Emperor said. “So I have made an enemy there.”

Lisinthir smiled, faintly. “You understand how that works, then.”

“I do now.” Thinking of how he would react to anyone attempting to hurt the Queen, he finished, “Perhaps some things are the same, no matter the species.”

“That is the trick of the thing, isn’t it. To know what remains Truth,” choosing the word for the abstraction, the perfect ideal, “and what mutable.”

“Perhaps the Source will have something useful to say on the subject.”

“I suppose,” Lisinthir said, “we will soon find out.”

Had the Emperor expected her to respond to his invitation? He didn’t know. He returned to his room with the Ambassador and crawled out of his human clothing and his human shape and into the Eldritch’s bed, and lost himself there to something that linked him back to the person he’d been when he’d begun changing. His Chatcaavan body felt alien to him, but love-making in it reminded him of its edges, and of days when it had been all he’d known. Had that ignorance been a cage, preventing him from understanding the world better? Or had he been stronger when he’d been purer? Less compromised by the worldviews and senses of non-Chatcaava?

Afterwards he followed the Eldritch to the shower to wash, though his ablutions took him less time. He chose to stay in the dragon’s body, dressing in it with attention to how it felt to adjust pants around tail, robes over wings. Such small things to be so alien, like how hard it was to find a comfortable position on the Pelted-designed couch in the front room. Somehow he managed, and resumed sorting through the messages Uuvek had stripped from their last drop point.

The Eldritch was still in the bathroom when the door chimed. He looked up and said, “Come.” And she was standing in the hatch, alone. She stepped in and the door slid shut behind her.

“I can’t imagine,” Khaska said in flawless Throne Chatcaavan, “why you would ask me here. That’s why I came.”

“I admit I didn’t think you would.”

“Why?” Her ears flipped back. “Did you think I lacked courage? Do you think I fear you?” Her eyes narrowed. “I have seen you naked and sobbing, Exalted Emperor. I don’t fear you.”

“Anymore,” he said, because he heard it clearly in the silence at the end of the sentence.

The Seersa lifted her chin. “Anymore. You’re right. You held complete power over me and you used it to torture me. You raped me repeatedly. You beat me. You shaved me. You treated me like a performing animal when you didn’t treat me as a toy. So yes, I did fear you. Did you want to hear me say it?”

“No,” the Emperor said, trying to understand his own feelings. “Yes.”

Khaska wrinkled her nose. “No? Yes? Which is it?”

“I needed to hear that I was someone who made others fear him…”

“Because you need to prop up your sense of power?”

“Because,” the Emperor said, “I need to never forget that my behavior was that reprehensible.”

The Seersa backed away, one step. “You want me to believe you’ve changed. Is that why I’m here? To forgive you?”

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” the Emperor said.

“Good. Because I don’t.” She looked away, ears flat against her pale hair. “You didn’t deserve what the Worldlord did to you. But it needed to happen to you.”

Her choice of words was… curious. “You have not said you hated me.”

“I don’t want to hate any person,” Khaska said, her words clipped. “Hatred hurts me more than it does the object of my hatred. But I admit, it’s really… really hard not to hate you.” She turned her orange eyes back to him. “Until I look at you.”

“I look no different now,” the Emperor said.

“Oh, your body’s the same,” Khaska said, flicking a hand in a Chatcaavan shrug. How confident her use of their language was! “But your eyes… your eyes are completely different. If I’d never met you before, I would probably have liked you.”

“An extraordinary statement,” the Emperor murmured.

“You have no idea.” She stepped forward, one step. Then another. She wore boots now, and he didn’t recognize the sound of her footfalls after months of keeping her. “You’ve been raped now. You’ve been beaten. You’ve had Chatcaava pierce your body parts against your will, decorate you in demeaning jewelry and clothes, collar you. You’ve had them rip open your skin with their talons, talk about your disposition in your presence as if you were nothing more than meat. You’ve suffered the same depredations I did. But you only suffered them for a few handful of days.” Another step took her right in front of him, her toes almost overlapping his. “I spent an entire terrestrial revolution in your harem, Exalted. An entire revolution. You know what happened to me there. You were responsible for most of it. And it went on, day after day. Month after month. Season after season. You think what you went through compares to that?”

“No,” he said. “No, it does not. Nor do I expect your forgiveness. I wanted only to tell you that I was wrong. That what I did to you was inexcusable.”

She reared back, ears still slicked to her mane. “The hells of it is, I think you mean that. And I hate that. Do you know why?”

“Why?” he asked when she seemed to be waiting for a reply.

“Because if I think you mean it, I can’t keep thinking of you as someone deserving of my hate, if I lapse into hating.” She stared at him. “I can’t believe that I’m talking to you at all. A revolution ago, if I’d been this close to you and capable, I would have killed you and called it saving the universe. And now…”

“Life is complicated.”

“Oh, is it,” she said, mouth twisted. “So you finally get it.”

“No. But I am trying.”

She looked away again, tail lashing. Then she sat on the coffee table across from him. Even draped over the top, her tail-tip flicked. “The Ambassador loves you.”

That, at least, he could answer without doubt. “Yes.”

“I don’t understand that either,” the Seersa said, searching his face. “Either my conception of the Ambassador is wrong or my conception of you is. And the Ambassador led me into the Worldlord’s harem and back out, and he… he hasn’t changed at all. Not really. He tells me you’ve changed, that you changed even before your experiences as a human slave. Logically, I should believe him, and the evidence.”

“But still, you hate me.”

“I…” She bared her teeth. “I am angry at you. I don’t want to hate anyone. Even you. But yes. I can’t believe it. The Ambassador is a good male.”

“Yes.” He remained very still, not wanting to agitate her further. “He gave me his pattern. Perhaps that is why I changed so much. I took him into me, and there he stayed.”

She looked up sharply. “You can become an Eldritch.”

“It was my first shape.”

“You can become an Eldritch,” Khaska murmured. “Then… I could show you how much I suffered in your harem. I could make you feel it. I could give you those memories.”

His heart stumbled once. He had lived through Lisinthir’s anguish on the rack. Surely he could survive the addition of Khaska’s. And did he not owe her that? Shouldn’t he know what he’d done? And with her, often without even caring. She’d been there to accept his violence, that was all. “You could, yes. Shall I Change?”

“Just like that?” she asked. “You would do it.”

“Yes.”

“It could take hours.”

“An entire revolution of torment would take much longer. Days. Weeks.”

“And you’d do that,” she pressed. “Go through it. Every day, until I ran out of memories.”

“Should you bear them alone, when I am responsible for them?”

She mistrusted his complaisance, he could tell. He maintained his body calm, waiting to see what she would decide. After all this time, thinking he’d finally plumbed the depths of sapient psychology, to discover that he’d left entire swathes of it untouched was… diminishing. All the softer emotions remained mysterious to him, and people like Khaska, who combined them with the crueler emotions he knew better, he could not predict at all.

“Then… we’ll do it,” she said abruptly. “Every morning. We’ll be on this ship for a long time, finishing our stealth escape and then heading for the back of the Empire. You’ll be trapped here, and every morning we’ll revisit what you did to me. Until I say we’re done.”

“Very well,” the Emperor said. “Shall I Change now?”

She jerked her chin up, eyes flashing. “Yes.”

The Eldritch shape was more familiar, less effort to wrap around his skin. Had not the Queen told him once? That practice improved the speed of the Change? He folded his arms around his knees and cupped his wings around his body and bowed head, and it wracked him from the inside out until he melted into the delicacy of an Eldritch frame. His head remained on his knees, hair shrouding his face. It made him wonder what happened to the rings he’d had glued to his horns. Had they been lost with his first shift to human after their application? He felt back along his temple, through the thick hair, and twitched when his fingers grazed the first of them, hidden on his scalp. How did his body decide what part of a hornless body would correspond to the horns he’d lost? Would the alien in the clinic want to dissect a Chatcaavan to find out, the way the Emperor had sent dead aliens to autopsies to sate his curiosity?

A quiver ran the length of his side. He lifted his head to find Khaska staring at him, eyes wide and ears sagging. When his gaze met hers, though, her expression stiffened.

“I am ready,” he said.

“Good. I am too.” She grasped his wrist.

Nothing. Then, abruptly, the wall between their minds fell. Her ambivalence had the force of a blow: her rage, her grief, nausea, unease, all braided together with a compassion that glinted like a sullied thread of gold, dull and unwilling but present all the same.

“Let’s start,” she said, lips pulling back from her teeth, “with them stripping me naked and collaring me. On your orders.”

Useless to protest he hadn’t specifically ordered her preparation for the harem. He had let that order stand from emperors past, hadn’t he? Because wingless freaks were the property of the strong, and he had been one of the strong. He bowed his head again and let her memory dig into him with clawed fingers, and relived it with her: the mortification. The sense of powerlessness. The fear. The despair. It reminded him too keenly of the experience he’d only just escaped, and the numb distance he’d achieved fell apart before that onslaught. He struggled not to hyperventilate, not to cry. He thought he failed in the latter, but the former he managed despite a growing tautness in his ribcage that threaded his ribs with nerve-thin lines of fire.

Arms slipped around him, strong and familiar. He wanted to turn into the Ambassador, but could not allow it. This was Khaska’s time—no, he knew her full name now, from her own memories of repeating it to maintain her sanity—this was Lieutenant Laniis Cariadh Baker’s time, and he would not steal it from her. He remained rigid on the couch until words flowed over him. He did not understand them, or wouldn’t have except they echoed through the Ambassador’s skin in delayed translation. Or preceded? Because the meaning formed before he made the words, the alien words the Emperor assumed to be the Eldritch tongue, something layered with fleeting veils of color that conveyed mood and flavor.

“Is this necessary?”

“He offered. I said yes.”

“You told me you did not want revenge.”

“This isn’t revenge, my lord. This is justice.”

He could not continue to listen. “She is correct,” he said, unsure whether he spoke Universal or Chatcaavan. “I said I would do it.”

Silence then. Laniis loosed her grip, withdrew her hand, left him hollow and haunted. The Emperor opened his eyes to meet hers, saw her through a film that shivered as the drops on the ends of his lashes fell off them.

“Will you stop us?” the female said.

The Ambassador’s formidable self-control kept all but the subtlest of emotions from leaking between their skins, just the faintest breath of distress. In the absence of that data, the Emperor found himself distracted instead by the warmth of Lisinthir’s skin, and the dampness that made his arm stick to the Emperor’s back.

“No,” the Ambassador said at last. “If the two of you are agreed, I will not stop you.”

She nodded once and rose, her movements jerky. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“I will be here,” the Emperor said, low. When they were alone, he sighed and let himself sag into Lisinthir’s body. “You do not think this wise.”

“I am withholding judgment for now,” Lisinthir said. “If it becomes baneful, I will say something. But if you will take my advice?”

The Emperor snorted, a soft puff of breath from this alien nose, so short. “Go on, then, Perfection.”

Lisinthir said, “See Andrea in the afternoon.”

The Emperor lifted his head.

“Laniis is your past, and your past is part of you,” Lisinthir said.

“But Andrea is my future?”

“Andrea allows you to have a future not defined by your past,” Lisinthir said. “If you dwell too deeply on what you were, Beloved, you will fetter yourself. To leave that male behind, you must be taken on your own terms, as you are, right now. And yes. I believe Andrea will allow you to see who you might be, and give you the freedom to become that person.”

“And you?” the Emperor asked, quiet.

“I do not walk before you. Only beside.”

“Are all Eldritch poets?” the Emperor asked, resting his head back down. “Or are you merely exemplary?”

Lisinthir chuckled softly. “Flattery does not suit you, Exalted.”

He couldn’t help it… he laughed. It was so much like their repartee before they’d loved one another. “Too witty by far, Ambassador. Take care lest you attract the attention of dragons.”

“Mmm. Too late.” Lisinthir stood and offered his hands. “Come. There is work to be done. A war does not prosecute itself.”

“No,” the Emperor agreed, and allowed himself to be pulled from the couch. “I was employed in reading Uuvek’s packets while you were in the bathroom, and can continue.”

“In that body?” Lisinthir wondered.

The Emperor touched his head where the rings were hidden beneath the fall of silken hair. “I have used it for loveplay enough. I would see what it is like when set to other purposes.”

The Ambassador chuckled. “And when you have explored these shapes will you devote each one to a singular purpose? One body for war, another for lovemaking, a third for swimming, another for poetry….”

“I think I will find they are not so simply understood, nor categorized. But I am here to learn.” The Emperor thought back to his early career. “It is the one thing that has remained constant in me. I need to learn.”

“It may save us yet,” Lisinthir offered him the desk and a data tablet.

“We shall see,” the Emperor said, and accepted it.