I muttered curses after the door closed, jerked off my pajama bottoms, and grabbed the uniform pants from the counter. They were long enough, and thankfully made of a material with some give—my hips were more generous than Emmory’s. I tugged the black tunic on over the gray tank and plopped down onto the toilet seat to put my boots on.
First, I freed the hammered silver ring that was tangled in the laces of my boots and slid it onto my right hand. I unhooked the slender band of dark brown leather and wrapped it around my wrist.
“Take this.” Cire pressed the leather into my hand and my eyes went wide.
“Father gave this to you, I can’t—”
“Take it, Hail.” Cire was almost twenty years old and already behaving like an empress; the frown on her face wasn’t one to be argued with. “I want you to have it. To remember us. Just in case.”
“I’m going to stay in touch.”
“You might not be able to,” she said too softly for our sister to hear.
“And this,” Pace squeaked, waving a ring in the air. “I got it at the market. The old man said it was a wishing ring. Turn it on your finger three times and whisper your wish into your hand.”
I took the beaten ring of silver from her, not having the heart to tell her that wishes didn’t come true. She’d learn it soon enough.
“Damn it.” I was crying again, tears streaking down my face and dripping onto my shirt. I wasn’t going to last five minutes in the palace if I couldn’t get a handle on my ramshackle emotions.
Scrubbing my hands over my face, I peeked at myself in the mirror. Gods, I looked horrible. Even with the shiner gone, I looked precisely as exhausted as I felt.
“Let’s get this shit over with,” I muttered, heading back into the room.
Zin straightened when I stepped over the threshold.
“Highness,” Emmory said, giving me a quick nod. He was back to the implacable mask. There was no hint of what he and Zin might have discussed showing on his face. “We’re about to drop out of warp.”
The warning chime sounded and I braced myself on the wall again as the bubble contracted back into the AWD, leaving us once more in normal space-time.
“We’ll be in orbit around Pashati and on the ground within the hour. It’s two a.m. at the palace, but they’ve word of our arrival.”
“I’d like to watch the approach. Can we go to the bridge?”
My Trackers exchanged a glance and I suspected there was a whole conversation behind it. Emmory nodded finally. “If you’ll give us a moment to talk with the captain. She’s not aware you’re on board.”
“How did you talk her into making this trip in the first place? Royal starships aren’t flown all over the galaxy without a good reason.”
“Princess Cire authorized it,” Emmory replied. “And the captain is Zin’s sister.”
Zin didn’t say anything as he left the room, and Emmory watched him go, his eyes lingering on the door for a moment before he looked at me.
“I’m sorry I scared him.” The apology tumbled out, surprising us both. “I was trying to make a point.”
“The heir doesn’t make points, Highness, she gives orders. Zin trusts that you know what you’re doing. So if you ask him to commit suicide, he’s going to take it personally.”
“Maybe his mistake is thinking I know what I’m doing,” I huffed, turning away from him and throwing my hands into the air. Give it up, Hail. You’re not going to win this one.
Thankfully Zin came back before I could make a fool of myself and try again. “The captain said she would meet us in her briefing room and you could watch from there if that’s acceptable.” He wasn’t any good at hiding his wariness, and I mentally punched myself in the head several times before I replied.
“That will work, thank you.”
We left my room, the two ITS troops following behind us, and we passed through empty corridors until we got to the bridge.
Captain Hafin waited for us just outside the door to her briefing room. I could see the family resemblance immediately, though her eyes were darker than her brother’s and her dreadlocked hair was long, twisted into a complicated knot at the base of her neck.
“Your Imperial Highness.” There was no hesitation in her greeting or her bow, nothing to suggest that she’d been shocked by her brother’s news. “It is a pleasure to have you on board. I apologize the accommodations were not better prepared.”
There was the surprise. I caught the way her eyes slid toward Zin for just a second as she bowed and the frustration bled through the tail end of her sentence.
“It’s no problem. They were just following orders, Captain.”
“May I be the first to welcome you home, ma’am? And extend my sympathies.”
I nodded sharply and went through the open doorway. Captain Hafin followed me, leaving my Trackers to enter last. The wide, opaque wall shifted to reveal the endless blackness of space and the twin stars of the Ashvin System.
Nasatya, the larger G-class star, and its companion, Dasra—a smallish orange dwarf—danced across their elliptical orbits. Dasra twirled closer to Pashati and then flung itself away on an eighty-year cycle like the whirling dervishes of old.
The other habitable planet, Ashva, orbited Dasra every five months, and it had developed into an ideal, if quiet, agricultural world for the empire.
“Jai maa,” I whispered when Pashati, the crown jewel of the Indranan Empire, came into view. The years hadn’t stolen her splendor. The massive blue-green planet hung suspended against the black, and I could see the traces of red appearing at the far edge. Pashati’s sun was rising over the Great Desert, but its light wouldn’t reach the capital city on the western edge of the Lakshitani Sea for several hours yet.
Welcome home, Hail.
The Ashvin System had been settled over three millennia ago by colonists from the Solarian Conglomerate. The first colony ship—piloted by my ancestor’s husband—had set down on Pashati two Earth-Standard years before the other colony ships arrived.
There were fourteen other families on board, sacrificial lambs if one were to be honest. Colonization of other worlds was a brutal business in the early days. Long travel times from Earth coupled with unknown hazards meant the scout ships were on their own.
There was always a possibility that the first surveys and scouts missed something important after all, and Earth learned their lesson the hard way. Hundreds of thousands of people perished in the early days from a random strain of bacteria, oddly aggressive plant life, the air mixture shifting with the seasons. Any one thing or a combination of things could wipe out the settlers faster than they could call for help, and certainly faster than help could arrive.
The new system of sending down a small group of families was the easiest solution. If they were still alive when the other ships got there, it was assumed safe. If they weren’t, the planet was X-ed from the habitable planet list.
For many families—mine included—it was worth the risk. Being a front family meant you were given certain privileges. First pick of land, a seat on the ruling council, a bonus payment if you survived until the ships came.
Or a death bonus for your family if you didn’t.
My ancestor’s husband and several other men didn’t survive, succumbing to space madness; but their wives and children did, and my ancestor was savvy enough to keep her husband’s spot on the Earth-appointed council.
She and her descendants held on to that spot and what amounted to control of the colony all the way up to the break with Earth, and after the dust from that ruckus settled, the empire was born: an empire ruled by women, my ancestor at the head, backed by the women of the other original families.
Those fourteen women made up the Matriarch Council; their daughters and other selected female nobles made up the Ancillary. Even today, this system held in place.
I understood what they’d been working toward. The gender politics of certain areas of the Solarian Conglomerate at the time weren’t stellar, and colonization efforts tended to scrape from the more desperate levels of society. In the early days of colonization, women were treated more as breeding stock than explorers with equal rights. However, like so many great ideas, they took it too far.
I pressed my hands to the window as Pashati swelled until the blackness of space was lost to the dark blue of the night side of the planet. I was going back to everything I hated, and the thought of it was a fist around my heart.
“Highness, we should head for the cargo bay,” Emmory said.
“Of course. Captain, thank you for the use of your ship.”
“It’s an honor to serve, ma’am.” Captain Hafin saluted me.
“Lead the way, Tracker,” I replied with a wave of my hand, privately horrified at how easily commands came out of my mouth in that frozen royal tone.
Time, it seemed, didn’t change much at all.
I followed Emmory down the corridor, with Zin and the two ITS troops at my back and the familiar hum of a ship in spaceflight vibrating the floor under my feet. I felt it shift, the vibration growing darker, heralding our entrance into the planet’s atmosphere.
We hit a set of stairs leading downward, and I stumbled as the ship shook more violently than normal.
Zin grabbed me by the upper arm to steady me. “Careful, Highness,” he said.
“Thanks.” I mustered up a smile.
Zin released me with an answering smile that was genuine. The man apparently didn’t hold grudges. “Everything will be okay, Highness.”
I wished I could believe him, but my stomach was a mass of ugly knots and I’d survived for too damn long on my instincts to ignore them now. This whole thing was going to get far worse before it got better.
But I couldn’t tell him all that, so instead I followed Emmory the rest of the way down, through another corridor, and into a wide bay.
Five people were already there, waiting. Their laughter cut off abruptly when someone spotted us and all of them jerked to attention. I spotted Fasé’s red hair in the circle of ITS members.
“Your Imperial Highness.” The voice coming from the stout woman was familiar as she greeted me with a surprisingly elegant bow for someone her size. “Captain Ilyia Gill. Allow me to apologize for pointing our weapons at you earlier. We were not aware you would be on that ship.”
“Forgiven, Captain,” I replied with a dip of my head.
“Trackers.” She nodded sharply at Emmory and Zin.
“Captain,” Emmory said.
The ship shook again, and both Emmory and Gill reached out to steady me this time.
Welcome to your old life, Princess.
I had to swallow my snarl at the thought. The captain didn’t deserve it, and if I was going to be honest, Emmory didn’t really either. They were just doing their jobs—their duty.
I wanted to scream.
“Highness?” Zin said as Emmory shook a cloak out, the flat black material eating the light that touched it.
“I’m skulking into the palace, Tracker?”
Emmory handed it off to Zin. Their hands brushed and the pair shared a brief smile. An image of Portis smiling at me like that swept through me and the ache almost put me on my knees.
“For your protection, Highness,” Emmory answered, looking back at me. “Given the circumstances, we thought it prudent. We’ve tried to make your arrival as unobtrusive as possible, but word will get out. The press can’t get onto the landing pad, but they will probably be as close as possible.”
I felt a little trill of panic at his words. I hadn’t read nearly enough of those files from Cire. I was walking blind into what very well could be a trap.
Wouldn’t be the first time, Cressen.
I straightened my shoulders as Zin draped the cloak over them. He pulled the hood up, and must have spotted the expression on my face because his stone gaze softened. “All will be well, Highness. I promise you.”
“You keep saying that. I hope you’re right, Tracker.”
Zin fell back behind me, while Emmory stayed at my side, just slightly in front of me, and icy fingers walked up my spine.
He’d take a shot for me.
He’d just met me, and even though we knew I hadn’t killed his brother, he clearly didn’t like me. Yet here we were. He’d give his life for me without hesitation. Either of them would. Buggered loyal fools. Those icy fingers wrapped around my spine and pulled.
Portis and I, we’d saved each other’s lives more times than I could count. Because we knew each other, because we’d cared for each other—or so I thought.
This kind of blind devotion had been one of the many reasons I’d stayed away. I didn’t want meaningless pleasantries to my face while someone stabbed me in the back. I wanted people who actually cared for me.
But I’d learned a long time ago that what I wanted and what the universe wanted rarely matched up.
Captain Gill’s squad formed up around us. I couldn’t stop the insane whirling of my mind as we disembarked the Para Sahi and crossed the tarmac at a speed just short of a run.