19

The few people out at this hour hurried back and forth on the streets, bundled up against the early morning chill. Most likely, shopkeepers and others who benefited more from working through the monthlong break the rest of the capital took during the holiday. I wondered how much they worried about the possibility of renewed war or if they were consumed by their own lives.

“Highness, move away from the window.” Emmory’s tone made it clear it wasn’t a request, so I moved because I was pretty sure otherwise he’d pick me up and do it himself.

Because I was still weak and shaky from the aftereffects of the toxin, I wasn’t in much of a position to fight with him, even if I’d wanted to. Three attempts in two weeks made me nervous; I couldn’t imagine how my Ekam felt.

“All they’d really need is a rocket launcher,” I said, still unable to resist the tease. Matriarch Desai’s house was well defended, but I could pick out at least three decent vantage points beyond the redbrick wall that lent themselves well to the weapon’s range.

I got the Look in reply, though it was a bit more pained than normal and followed with, “I wish you would stop that.”

“Humor helps the nerves,” I murmured and settled down onto the cream-colored couch in Matriarch Desai’s study.

“I would think that doing what your Ekam asks will help calm his nerves more, Your Highness,” Clara said with a smile as she passed me a cup of chai.

“Emmory enjoys being nervous.” I hid my grin behind the rim of my cup.

“Highness, Director Caspel and Admiral Hassan just pulled up.” Emmory turned from the window. “Stay put.”

“Little more than nervous,” Clara said as Emmory left the room.

I shrugged a shoulder. “Given the circumstances, I find it hard to blame him.” It had taken an hour of fast talking and agreement to two BodyGuard teams shadowing me inside the palace and no less than four outside it before Emmory had agreed to this meeting.

He’d also flat out told Nal to mind her own business and spend the day reviewing the Pratimas schedule when she’d asked where we were going.

“I appreciate your flexibility with this, Ekam,” Caspel said as they came into the room. “At present it is challenging to figure out whom we can trust.”

“It’s understood, sir.”

“Ah, Highness.” Caspel’s face creased into a smile. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Admiral. You’ll both forgive me if I don’t get up,” I said, extending my free hand to Caspel.

“Completely understandable. It’s good to see you well.” He squeezed my hand rather than brushing his lips over my knuckles.

“Ma’am.” Hassan nodded her head at me.

“What was so important you had to give my Ekam gray hair by insisting I left the palace this morning?”

The smile that flickered over Caspel’s face was drowned by the worry in his eyes. “We have two more visitors, Highness. I think once you hear what they have to say, you’ll understand the need for as much secrecy as we could muster.”

“They’re at the back door now.” Emmory’s lack of surprise meant he must have known about Caspel’s plans ahead of time, and when Kisah appeared at the door with Matriarch Gohil and General Saito, I knew why he’d been so agreeable. General Kaed Saito was the head of the Tracker Corps. She was tall and blond with distinctive Cheng features and her bow to me was as perfunctory as Alice’s curtsy was elegant.

“Your Highness, welcome home.”

I nodded at the greetings and sipped at my chai while beverages were prepared and everyone took a seat. My BodyGuards were spread out around the room, which was done up in rich brown leathers and pale cream. They all looked a little awkward among the finery. Emmory took up position just behind my left shoulder.

“To the empress. Long may she reign.” Caspel’s salute was without mockery, but he was looking at me and we were all too aware that my mother’s reign was fast coming to an end.

“Early this morning, Lady Alice approached me,” Caspel continued after the murmured declarations of loyalty had died down. “After last night’s incident, she’d received a rather frantic message from Lady Zaran Khatri requesting a meeting. I’ll let Lady Alice recount the details of that meeting.”

“Her mother was quite vocal in her objections at the council meeting,” I murmured with a raised eyebrow. “Leena mentioned that her mother was very unhappy about it.”

“She has been Ganda’s foremost supporter, which I found a bit odd. I didn’t think they had much contact before Princess Cire’s death. No formal objections were, of course, presented to me about you taking the throne, Highness.” Clara frowned, then waved a hand at Alice. “Go on, dear. I’m curious to hear what she had to tell you.”

Alice wrung her hands, a nervous gesture I found at odds with her calm demeanor in the council meeting. “Zaran is a loyal subject, Your Highness. She is young and rather sheltered. Her mother can be very overbearing and I think it led to Zaran looking for an escape.”

“Stop making excuses for her decisions, Alice. Tell me what happened.”

“Yes, sorry, Your Highness.” She dipped her head at my rebuke and swallowed. “Zaran fell in love with a young man who is a member of the Upjas. She saw him just before Princess Cire was murdered and he confided in her that a violent offshoot of the group was claiming responsibility for the death of Princess Pace under the Upjas’ name. He was afraid it was an effort to discredit the more levelheaded leaders and turn the rising tide of public support against their cause.

“It was no secret that the Crown Princess was sympathetic to the Upjas’ message,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow at Alice and she ducked her head slightly.

“She’d made several comments during interviews and council meetings, Highness. There were also more than a few arguments with the empress about her views.”

“Did you agree with Cire?” I asked.

“Your pardon, Highness. I did not. I do not think men are capable of the kind of responsibilities your sister wished to place on them. Our ancestor-mothers took over when their men could not cope with the stresses of space travel. This method has worked for thousands of years, and I see no reason to change it now.”

“Well, I like the honesty,” I said. “Continue.”

“Zaran says in the last few weeks there have been a lot of late-night visitors to her mother’s house. Or that her mother has left the house in the dead of night with only a single BodyGuard. She gave me several names of people she recognized and I passed them on to Caspel. Last night, after you collapsed, Zaran came home with her mother, who claimed to be so upset by the incident she was going to bed. However, Zaran said her mother left the house shortly after and she followed her to a shop in the Back District.”

The Back District was a dangerous place to be after dark, especially for a noble. I kept my surprised whistle from escaping and simply nodded at Alice to keep going.

“Matriarch Khatri met with your cousin Ganda, your nephew Laabh, and a man Zaran didn’t recognize. Her smati wouldn’t give her an identification either. All she could tell me was that he was about as tall as Laabh with broad shoulders. He wore a hooded jacket and his face was in shadow except for one brief moment in the light.”

“We can see if we can pull a memory that’s good enough to get a facial recognition print going. What did they talk about, Alice?” Caspel prompted.

“Ganda was upset with Laabh. Said he should have talked to her before they tried to poison you. She told him it was his fault for involving ‘those Upjas bastards.’ The hooded man interrupted their bickering with a reminder that his people had already set things in motion and time was running short. Ganda needed to move on to the next phase of her plans if this was going to work.”

My muttered curse was echoed by several others, most notably Clara, and I grinned sharply in her direction. “I take it we have no clue what this next phase actually entails.”

“Actually I have a suspicion, Highness,” Caspel said. “Several news stations received anonymous reports overnight accusing Princess Cire of being in a relationship with Upjas ringleader Abraham Suda before her death and insinuating that Atmikha was not Major Bristol’s daughter.”

This time my swearing was more violent and I pushed to my feet, intent on pacing the length of the study before my body reminded me that it wasn’t going to cooperate. I fell back against the couch and snapped a hand up, stopping anyone from fussing over me. “I’m fine. What the fuck do they think smearing my sister’s memory is going to prove, Caspel?”

“It’s not just your sister, Highness. There are also several news stories about your exploits.”

“Those have been running since I put my feet back on the ground here.”

The GIS officer’s smile was sympathetic. “Not like this. Are you familiar with the incident on Shotakan about five years ago?”

I froze. Bugger me.

“Caspel, I’d be very careful with the next words that come out of your mouth.” It was the only thing Emmory had said so far, but it dropped the temperature in the room down into the freezing range.

“Easy,” I murmured. “I’m pretty sure that he’s not going to say I had anything to do with an explosion that resulted in the deaths of a hundred and fifty-three schoolchildren.”

“Your employer did.”

“Yeah, no.” I ran my tongue over my teeth as I calculated the best way to tell this story without adding one more name onto the list of people who wanted me dead. I could handle my prissy cousin, dissatisfied nephew, and any other Indranan noble without blinking. Pissing Po-Sin off, however, was not something I wanted to do. “Po-Sin was embroiled in a territory war with an Irani up-and-comer named Roshanak. She turned several of his lieutenants, including a man named Jin, against him.”

I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck and sighed. It’d been an ugly business, six weeks of hell where I’d very nearly ended up as pieces of human sashimi.

“Jin planted the bomb as an attempt to discredit Po-Sin. He implicated me in the bombing. Po-Sin pretended to believe him in order to draw Jin and any other conspirators into the light. I’ll spare you all the details of how he did that and just what happened after. Suffice to say it was taken care of.”

I’d delivered the boxes filled with pieces of Jin and Roshanak to the Shotakan military along with an exquisitely worded note from Po-Sin and reparations for the families whose loved ones had been injured or died. Then I’d been escorted off-planet and told never to return.

“I’ll get with my people and see what kind of spin we can put on this. The good news is the story from Director Britlen has been running constantly since it aired. The fact that people now know you left home to find your father’s killer works in our favor. You’re pretty popular anyway. The populace feels like you’re accessible, so keep that up.

“There’s no possible way to do any kind of testing to prove the rumors about Atmikha, and I suspect we can quash them without too much trouble. She was too well loved by the people for this kind of smear campaign to do anything but anger the civilian population.”

“I want Zaran in the palace within the hour. We’ll make up some kind of excuse for getting her out of her mother’s house,” Clara said. “I want testimony about what she saw recorded and her visual of the unknown man downloaded so we can start searching for him. General?”

Saito nodded with a slight smile in Emmory’s direction. “My best team has been otherwise occupied, but I will find a team to put on this mysterious man as soon as you have a description for me, ma’am.”

“Admiral.” Inana Hassan looked up at me expectantly when I called. “Do you think that Major Bristol’s decision to leave with Admiral Shul’s fleet has anything to do with our current situation?”

Emmory and I had talked about this the night before. My sister’s husband was on the list, as was my dear cousin. The Saxons were always on the list and I didn’t think even a declaration from King Trace would convince me otherwise.

My Ekam hadn’t seemed at all shocked when I suggested Prime Minister Phanin. His little shrug spoke volumes about his opinion of the man.

The problem was that Phanin’s behavior was easily explained by Mother’s sickness and the trust my sister had put in him. Someone had to run the empire and the fact that the Matriarch Council hadn’t put the smackdown on him when he first stepped over the line said a lot. The man’s background was totally clean.

“It’s possible, ma’am,” Hassan said carefully in answer to my question. “We don’t have any proof that he’s also involved.”

“So who wants to talk about the elephant in the room? Why aren’t Generals Vandi and Prajapati here?”

General Prajapati was head of the Army, while General Mila Vandi was head of ITS and an old friend of my father’s.

“Someone authorized Phanin to use troops against the ambassador,” Caspel said after a moment of silence descended on the room. “Regular Army troops, not BodyGuards. I don’t have any hard evidence, Highness, but there have been rumors linking General Prajapati with Matriarch Khatri. And General Vandi’s aide was on the list of names Zaran provided to Alice.”

“We still don’t know who’s responsible for the leak in your security. Only three people knew you were on that ship,” General Saito said. “As much as Emmory assures me his brother wouldn’t have—”

“It wasn’t Portis who betrayed me,” I cut her off. “You have my assurance on that, too, General. Someone got to my navigator at Shanghai. Offer her enough money and Memz would have strung up her own grandmother.”

Saito dipped her head in acknowledgment. “No one knows General Vandi’s position on the matter, so Caspel decided to be cautious.”

“Someone probably should figure that out. If both the standing military branches are against us, we’re going to be in trouble. I can’t hold the palace with just my BodyGuards, General.”

“I would hope it doesn’t come to the point where you have to hold the palace, Highness,” Clara said. “However, should it come to that, the matriarchs will provide the Throne with assistance.”

“Assuming you won’t be in need of defending yourselves.” Saito’s comment wasn’t quite muttered and I bit my tongue.

“I suppose we’ll deal with that as it comes, General.” Clara smiled and rubbed her hands together. “I think we have pushed our luck as far as we dare today and I’m sure the princess needs to get back to her rooms and rest. Highness, I will message you if anything further comes up?”

“That would be fine.” I nodded at the others as they stood, and I carefully got to my own feet. “Admiral Hassan?”

“Yes, Highness?”

“If you have some time free before Pratimas, I’d appreciate a full briefing on the present situation with the Saxons and our border worlds.” I hid my smile at Hassan’s curious eyebrow. “I have the minutes from the meetings I’ve missed, but making sense of them without some background is going to prove a little challenging. I’d like to be caught up before the coronation.”

Pratimas was in six days, and the coronation would likely be after. Until that happened, I was in the rather awkward position of still not being empress. Mother could still overrule me, especially on matters of state, and with her sanity in question, we were going to find ourselves in deep shit if the Saxons decided to move on us in the middle of all this.

“Let me get with my aide, Highness? She can clear some time in my schedule.”

“Send it to Alba. She’ll be able to squeeze you in,” I replied with a nod. “I’ve got a meeting with her later today anyway, and she knows my schedule better than I do.” I caught the flicker of humor on the admiral’s face before she controlled it.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Admiral.”

Hassan nodded sharply and left the room. Caspel had hung back by the door and pulled it closed again, leaving the three of us alone.

“Highness, I need to ask you something indelicate. Is there truth to the rumors about Princess Cire?”

“I’m not sure how I could know that, given how long I’ve been away from home.”

The look he gave me wasn’t a duplicate of Emmory’s but it was close. I met it calmly.

“Tell you what, Director. I’ll tell you what I know if you tell me why you smiled when I mentioned Shanghai.”

Caspel’s raised eyebrows spoke volumes, and I held in the smug smile at having been able to surprise the taciturn intelligence agent. “You’re good, Highness. I had an agent in port. They mentioned you.”

“You do realize this puts you in rather the same predicament as General Vandi?” I replied.

“I didn’t put it all together until you were already home, Highness. I could have killed you six times over since we met. Trust me, if I wanted you dead, it would have already happened.”

“Not something you want to say in front of my Ekam, Caspel. And if you’ve bothered to read the extensive file you no doubt have on me, you know I’m a lot harder to kill than that.”

“Fair enough. I have spilled my secret, Highness.”

Hardly spilled, I thought with a mental snort. The man had barely acknowledged anything except what I’d already guessed for myself. Because of that I rolled my reply over in my head several times before I allowed the words to fly free.

“Twenty years ago, Abraham Suda was in love with my sister. Since I cannot read minds, I don’t know if the affection was returned. And since I have been away, there is no possibility I can speak with any surety as to the rumors about Atmikha’s paternal heritage.”

“Spoken like a consummate politician, Highness. One would think you’ve been doing this for years.”

“I have, Caspel. It just involved more guns.”

He inclined his head and reopened the door. I followed him from Clara’s house after a quick good-bye to my hostess and dozed in the aircar on the way back to the palace.

Back in my rooms, my thoughts were spinning all over and I stayed silent as Stasia helped me out of my gown and into bed.

Too many suspects. Several had been implicated today, but I still wondered about Bial and the Upjas.

My mother’s Ekam was as difficult for me to read as Emmory, and I couldn’t be at all certain that my opinion of the man hadn’t been irreparably damaged by the fact that he’d let someone poison my mother and kill my sisters. I knew he didn’t like me, but what I couldn’t figure out was where the root of that hatred lay. It seemed excessive to be mad over the fact that I’d been a gunrunner.

I queued up my smati and called Fenna. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Highness. What can I do for you?”

“Is she there?”

“She’s sleeping, Highness. Can I help you with something?”

“Tell me what you know about Bial.”

Fenna arched a red eyebrow at me. “Could you be more specific?”

“I could if I knew what I was looking for.” I muttered a curse under my breath and looked away. “I’m sorry, Fenna. It’s been a long day already.”

“You’ll want to be careful pushing yourself too hard.”

“Emmory already mothers me. Bial hates me, Fenna. Obviously he’s not saying it out loud, but it’s clear enough to me. What I don’t know is why. He’s spent an awful lot of time with Ganda, all of it in the course of his duties, and given how much she’s been up Mother’s skirts, it’s understandable.”

“And you need proof he’s involved?”

“I need something.” I threw my hands up in the air wishing I could pace. Unfortunately I’d probably end up flat on my face if I tried. “I can’t bar the man from my mother without a good reason, and if he’s involved, I don’t want him near her, even if the damage is already done.”

Fenna’s eyes widened and she nodded sharply. “I’ll send you what I have, Highness, later today. Don’t argue with me. You need your rest.”

I glared at her, but knew that she’d likely just call Emmory if I protested too much. So instead I nodded and disconnected the call.

Emmory shared my concern about Bial, and we’d all been proven right today about Ganda. I was having some trouble believing her capable of cooking up a scheme this complex, but I was also willing to admit my bias for her intelligence could be blinding my thinking.

The only ones Emmory and I couldn’t agree on as suspects were the Upjas. He saw them as the enemy, but I couldn’t separate my memories of my old friend, Taz, from the idea that someone had tried to kill me.

Not to mention Cire’s involvement with the man in charge of the Upjas. I wouldn’t admit it even to Caspel, but it wasn’t a far stretch to assume that Atmikha wasn’t Albin Bristol’s daughter.

However, the very thought that Abraham Suda could have killed the woman he’d been so desperately in love with was anathema to me.

But just because I couldn’t fathom him doing it didn’t mean much—if anything at all. I’d seen too many versions of the same ugly betrayal all over the universe to fool myself into believing that love conquered all.

The only way to know for sure was to look Abraham in the eye and ask him. Of course, that meant I had to either convince Emmory to let me meet with traitors to the throne or dodge my BodyGuard.

I didn’t like either option much, so I let the toxin-induced exhaustion drag me down into blackness.

The interview with INN two days later was all about damage control. The rumors about Cire had died out as quickly as we’d suspected they would, and only some of the fringe stations were still harping on them. Assaulting her memory had resulted in a lot of commentary on how crass it was to indulge in rumors against a dead woman and child.

The one about me was a little more exciting and one more brushstroke in this whole princess-gunrunner painting the press had been putting together since my arrival home.

I survived the interview, barely, and even managed to clear up my part in the whole mess without actually saying anything that would have gotten Po-Sin or Hao pissed at me. The journalist from INN seemed sympathetic enough, but even if she wasn’t, Emmory and Alba had final say on the piece before it was released to the public, so I wasn’t too worried. I hadn’t watched the footage yet, but I trusted Alba and Emmory hadn’t let me make a total fool of myself on camera.

I staggered away from Emmory’s punch, my head ringing and a stream of curses dropping from my mouth like B-5 cluster bombs.

“You need to watch that opening, ma’am.”

I shook the stars out of my eyes and shot Emmory a narrow-eyed glare. It was the fifth time he’d tapped me in the head since we’d started. Not hard enough to do actual damage, but enough to ring my bell.

What had seemed like a good idea when he proposed it now looked like it was going to turn into a daily ass-kicking session. Normally, kicking ass wouldn’t bother me, but in this case I was the recipient and Emmory was good at his job. I was good, too, but I had to grudgingly admit he was better than me.

“I am trying.”

“Not hard enough,” he replied.

The weakness of the toxins had worked itself out of my system after that first day. So yesterday, Emmory had brought me down into this small windowless room filled with workout equipment and weights just after dawn.

We’d started my training with a general workout, but today we’d moved on to more serious business.

Zin was perched on a stack of pads that stood against the far wall, coaching me and trading laughing insults with Emmory.

Cas and Jet were at the door, completing Team One. The traditional three-man team plus my Ekam were a normal escort inside the palace. Team Three was outside. True to his word, Emmory had broken with tradition and now two teams plus either himself or Nal followed me on palace grounds. It was quite the production when I had to go anywhere.

I didn’t know what he was worried about. The man could beat me down and go on to defeat whatever enemies wanted me dead without breaking a sweat.

He wasn’t sweating even though we’d been sparring for an hour. I, however, was soaked through; my black choli clung to my skin and even my pants were sticking in spots. Now that I was looking for it, I could see the similarities between Portis’s and Emmory’s fighting styles.

I shook out my arms and circled him. Before I could move, however, there was a commotion at the door. Mother and her cadre of Guards swept into the room, followed by Nal.

“Hailimi!”

“Oh, bugger me,” I muttered, swiping sweat from my face. Bial was right on Mother’s heels and his face was grim. She’d been bad the last few days, sliding into and out of lucidity with alarming unpredictability.

“Haili, what is going on here?” Mother demanded. She approached, holding up the heavy skirts of her blue dress as she padded over the workout room floor. I couldn’t help but notice how pale the skin of her hands was against the dark fabric. I could see the veins beneath the paper-thin surface, a spiderweb of ice streaking down her fingers.

“I’m working out.” My nerves seemed to have vanished entirely with the news of my ascension. Or maybe it was the attempted poisoning. I always had performed better when someone was trying to kill me.

“It’s unseemly.” Mother’s eyes were bright, like twin points of light in her face, a sure sign she’d worked herself into another episode. I wondered how long she’d be able to hold together a tirade.

“You’re a princess, not a tavern brawler. We won’t have it.”

“Mother—”

She cut me off, jamming a finger into my chest. “You’re behaving like a hooligan. We won’t have it in our house, Hailimi.”

“I’ll gladly move out, or off-planet, Your Majesty. Your choice.”

I hadn’t meant for it to sound snarky, but Mother’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t think we haven’t heard about you threatening Prime Minister Phanin.”

“I didn’t threaten him. I put him in his place. Arresting the Saxon ambassador could have started a war.” At least she hadn’t found out about my meeting with Clara and the others; that really wouldn’t have gone over well.

“He was just sending a message to them. If you’d been in any actual danger, your BodyGuard would have taken care of it. That’s what he’s here for. Not to teach you to fight like a street rat.”

I gaped at her, trying to follow the tangle of sentences. “If I’d been in danger? Mother, someone tried to poison me. Let’s get something straight here.” I crossed my arms over my chest as I faced her down. Nothing I could say would go over well, but I wasn’t going to stand there and let her treat me like a child. “I’m a grown woman and I’ll be responsible for my own safety. I’m not sitting around getting fat and lazy when there’s someone out there trying to kill me.”

“Yes, precisely.” I had enough time to frown at my mother’s sudden agreement before she turned on Emmory. “Ekam Tresk, you are relieved of your duty.”

“What?” Fear clogged my throat and I croaked the word out as the blood rushed to fill my ears with a roar.