The Worldlord’s Son—now the Knife—leaned back, pupils narrowing visibly in his bright eyes. To his credit, those were the only signs of uncertainty he betrayed. The Queen Ransomed found she liked him, though he was very different in character from her former Knife: older than his predecessor by a decade, this male had accepted the post in order to gain some political seasoning after his tour as commander of the Eastern Naval Reserve. He carried himself with calm confidence, and was more settled, while still being young enough to consider the changes in the Empire exciting rather than unnerving. She was glad of the differences… had he been too much like her former Knife, she might have wasted a great deal of time comparing the two, and being displeased. If he could only be cured of his awe of her, he would be, she thought, a very acceptable replacement.
“You wish to dance,” he repeated.
She said, “Yes. I understand that this might involve some risk. That is why I have asked your aid. So you might give me your opinions on mitigating it.”
He frowned, eyes narrowing in thought. “Am I the first you have asked?”
“You are my Knife, and in charge of my security,” she said.
“Ah!” He was silent a moment, considering. “Give me a few days, my Queen. I have an idea that may serve.”
“Excellent.” As he headed for the door, she added, “I will hope you won’t share my plans with anyone?”
“My Queen?” he said. “I am your Knife.”
Yes, she thought. He had many qualities to recommend him. The Worldlord had trained him well. “Yes! It is so. Thank you, Knife.”
He bowed, wings spread, and excused himself from her suite. Her office, she might call it, perhaps, but she didn’t, for it was the same gilded prison in which she’d spent most of her adult life. She’d ordered better computer access and had a desk installed, but other than that, she’d changed… almost nothing. It puzzled the Priestess that she hadn’t overhauled the space. “Doesn’t it remind you of being a slave?” that female had said, pacing irritably from one end of it to the other. “This is where Second had your wings chopped off. Where Third raped you repeatedly. Where you had to service anyone who wanted it, on your hands and knees. Where you slept alone, like some prized animal, leashed and bound!”
All of which was true. But it was also where Laniis had taught her with soft words and a hairbrush that aliens could be gentle, where she’d held the Ambassador’s head on her lap while he suffered his first honor wounds, where the Emperor had met his transformation. There were good memories here, too, and they were far more recent than the evil. And now… now she could step up onto the window ledge where she’d spent far too many days yearning, and leap, and glide to the Emperor’s balcony. Or to the sea. Or… as she hoped… to the clouds, to dance.
From the moment the Mother had told her the scriptures made mention of air-dancing, she’d wanted to try. An exhaustive computer search had resulted in many hours of footage of Chatcaavan males indulging in acrobatics, usually martial in origin, but no dancing. The air had been the province of males alone, and for so long, that frivolous pursuits had fallen away. Flying was for war, and for proving fitness, and for dominance displays. One did not dance. Four-armed females might dance, on the ground, for the pleasure of the males who owned them. But the Queen was no flightless female, and just looking at the sky, at the openness of it, made her long to play. To have joy of her working limbs, and her healthy body.
But she was not insensible to the risks. She could fly now, yes, but flight was still new to her. She did not want the Ambassador to come home from settling his affairs on his homeworld to find her in a gel tank. And the political situation in the Empire was unsettled enough without the Emperor’s consort acting erratically. The Queen did not doubt her mate’s ability to fly the storm, particularly with the help he had to hand—she liked the Worldlord and the allies he’d brought to the table, and against all expectations the Lord of the Twelveworld had also pledged himself, staunchly, to their side. But they had pirates at their borders, and unrest erupting into outright rebellion in multiple places, and their former Second-once-Command-East… no one believed he would be able to resist returning to see how much more territory he might steal away.
No, she refused to make their work any harder by endangering herself recklessly. But she also refused to turn from joy. Not anymore.
Several days later, the Knife arrived in her tower with a case, setting it down before bowing to her again, wings spread. “My Queen, I believe I have what you require.”
“Knife?”
He kneeled alongside the case, which was, she saw with bemusement, bio-locked. The lid opened on its own, as well, gliding up to reveal….
“Is that armor?”
“It is,” he said, approving. “Specifically, it is a jumpsuit, my Queen. Designed for soldiers doing drops from vessels in high atmosphere.” He lifted a one-piece suit, of some material she did not recognize, and offered it to her. “It protects the body from sudden changes in velocity and temperature. Will you try it on, please? I had it made for you, but it is the first such suit for females. Your lower body is different.”
The fabric—was it even fabric?—was strange to the touch, slick and thinner than she expected. Almost like another skin. She stepped into it and drew it on, surprised at its suppleness. She tried stretching, twisting her torso.
“It won’t impede you,” the Knife said gravely. “The opposite. It supports torsion and violent movement.”
She touched the chest, running her fingers down the thin strips she could just feel against her. They looked decorative, but nothing built for military purpose could be purely so. Could it? “And these?”
“Those counter gravity.”
The Queen’s head jerked up in surprise.
“Just so,” he said. “It is important that drop-soldiers be able to control their descent, or halt it if conditions are turbulent. We fly, my Queen, but trusting our wings alone when technology can help…” He smiled a little, a faint flex of his lips. “We seek advantage where we find it. Besides, not all who drop are good fliers.”
“Truly?” she asked, startled. “I would have thought a soldier must be an excellent flier.”
“A soldier must be an excellent soldier,” the Knife corrected, pulling a frame from the case. “There is more to that than flying. A fighter pilot must be a good flier. But someone who fights on uneven terrain, where the skies are barred… that is a different discipline.” He rose. “May I touch you, my Queen?”
“Yes?” she said, puzzled.
“Stretch your wing out, please.”
She arched it for him, watching as he brought the frame to it. It was barely anything, to her sight: a thin arch that settled over her wing arms from shoulder to the thumb joint. From there, a second piece of metal, or plastic? It clipped over the leading wing finger all the way to the claw, and bent with it. “This you will have to learn to do yourself,” the Knife said, conversationally. “But it is not difficult. Once you have it settled over your wing, you merely pull the cap on the suit shoulder over it, like so, and push until it locks…”
The Queen jumped as her wing became abruptly lighter. She lifted it, twisted, found it almost impossible to describe how it had changed, except that she felt… nimbler?
The Knife was already putting the other one in place. She watched, mystified. “What under the sky does it do?”
“It is armor,” he said firmly. “It is generating a field over your wings, my Queen, that shields them. Once you are in the sky, it will also take command from the antigrav, so that you can control yourself more precisely. This is the part you need most… the wings are most likely to be injured when engaging in acrobatics. But the countergravity and the shield will protect you if you stall in the air, which may be likely if your strength fails you from exertion.” He stepped back to study her, tipped his head once in approval. “Yes, that looks right. Does it feel well to you? Can you move in it easily?”
The Queen tried a few experimental steps and was surprised at how much quicker she felt. Like a breeze gamboling over the surface of the world, eager to be free. She lifted wide eyes to his, saw understanding there.
“Just so,” he said, gently. “Now attend me, my Queen, and I will teach you how to control it.”
“And to maintain it?” she asked, uncertain.
“Maintenance will be done by technicians,” he said. “Every time you use it. This is specialized equipment, my Queen, and your safety cannot be entrusted to anything less than professionals.”
“I understand,” she said, and leaned toward him. “Teach me, please.”
Learning to use the armor had entailed several sessions at the nearby naval base, where the Knife could oversee her flight in controlled conditions. She found those sessions exhilarating and exhausting. Flying she already loved, had not thought she could love it more. But assisted flight had been conceived by males who were accustomed to pushing their bodies in a way she was not yet capable of, and it was literally beyond her imagining. She could fly higher than she could breathe, protected by a face shield the Knife presented to her on the first day of training… and fall, only to arrest her flight without injury or even conscious decision, because the suit responded for her. The controls the Knife taught her involved suspending its processes, not engaging them.
“Will I hinder my progress?” she asked him that first day. “If I am using the suit, I am not using my muscles.”
He’d laughed and said, “My Queen, come to me tomorrow and make that claim.”
Waking all-over aches, she wondered just how hard she was working under the suit for its assistance to have left her so exhausted still.
But by the end of the week, the Knife was satisfied with her understanding and released her to fly where she would, providing she remanded her armor into the care of its technicians after each flight. She bowed to his greater wisdom, and immediately took to the skies above the palace. Circling her tower with the wind ruffling her mane, she stared down toward the sea and reveled in the view, the taste of the salt on the high wind. The suit allowed a surprising amount of sensory data through its surface, and in some cases accentuated it: she could now gauge the microturbulences of the airflow beneath her breastbone with an accuracy that felt almost dreamlike. It surprised her how much confidence the extra… data? Imparted. The suit must have been providing it, but it felt like the report of her senses. However it worked, the air no longer seemed so mysterious to her. She tried a leisurely twirl, and the wind cradled her as she flew through it, and she… she laughed. She couldn’t help it: joy bubbled out into sound, and sound broke around her as she glided through it.
Flapping upward, she climbed until the blue of the sky deepened, breathing deeply through the face mask’s filter, and allowed herself to drop a few meters before she caught herself with snapped wings and did it again, descending several times before she soared up again. Rolls… those required practice, she thought, because it was too easy to make herself dizzy. There must be a better way to handle those. Perhaps she would ask. For now… she chased the winds, stalled and pirouetted through her shallow drops, swooped out of them, tried flying upside down until her head swam and righted herself. A nearby cloudbank wreathed her wings in wisps of water vapor, which is how she discovered, to her delight, that the fields generated in front of their leading edges could be made visible that way. She dove, trailing streamers, and stitched her way through the cloud until she’d smeared its bottom edge, and only then darted away.
Not more than an hour, the Knife had warned her, until she grew stronger. Wistful, she circled back to her tower and caught at the window’s edge, thinking that she should make at least one more change and have a proper landing balcony built.
The Mother was awaiting her when she climbed through, wearing an expression of such patient long-suffering that the Queen almost laughed. Particularly when juxtaposed with the enraptured countenances of the two children accompanying her. “We came for another lesson in the language of the aliens,” the Mother said, “and found you trying to die untimely, my Queen!”
“That was FANTASTIC!” Gale exclaimed. “Is that real armor? I want real armor!”
Even his quieter sibling Whisper was moved to say, with wide, earnest eyes, “I wish I could fly like that.”
“Divine Breath willing, you will never need to,” the Mother said. “The wars are over, and yes, the needless violence too.”
If only, the Queen thought sadly. But there was no need to trouble the Mother with it. To the children, she said, “It is real armor, yes. Sit with me and I will teach you the alien words for the pieces as I put them away.”
All that week, she practiced, and came back from that practice exhausted and in need of a long soak, but so radiantly happy that even the Mother ceased to mutter about her dropping from the sky to a terrible doomful death. She submitted to that worthy’s hesitant lectures while accepting a massage, wondering suddenly if this was why so many males sought massage from four-armed females… because flight made massage so gratifying. She wondered if she would be able to talk the Ambassador into many such massages when he returned from his homeworld—to stay!—and hoped so; no Chatcaavan female would be able to equal the knowing touch of an Eldritch, sensing the exact location of her aches through his fingers. Save, of course, that she took the shape herself. Perhaps she would try that on her mate when she saw him next; he was about his business in orbit, and she was about hers, with her practice, and her petitioners, and her interactions with aliens.
A good partnership, she thought drowsily. To have come into it, when she expected nothing from her life…
Came a day she was dancing in the late afternoon sky, when a dark shape winged his way lazily toward her. She watched, surprised, as he climbed, higher than she thought possible unassisted, but then… he was the Exalted Emperor. She waited until he’d leveled off and then dropped, twirling. When she glanced past her wing, he was following. She laughed, and heard distantly his answering laugh, and then she flapped harder, building speed, and stalled straight through a cloud rimmed in afternoon sunlight. He plummeted after her, under her, and soared toward her in a long arc, trailing water vapor gilded by the setting sun.
After that… oh, they played. She ran from him and he gave chase; she reversed and he obligingly fled her. They flew loops around one another, and skidded from one thermal to another, played hide-and-seek amid a staggered cloudbank, and... she realized, breath quick in her throat, danced! She was tiring, though, when he darted close and caught her wrist. Surprised, she grasped his hand as he folded his wings tightly. She did the same, and they fell together, before he caught them both, and the strength in him to do it without armor took her breath from her.
The balcony on his tower was far easier to use, so she followed him there, lighting behind them and then rushing into his arms as he laughed and rubbed his cheek along hers. “How now, my Treasure… I find you dressed for battle!”
“I wanted to dance!” she said. “The Knife said the suit would keep me safer.”
“The Knife was correct,” the Emperor said, leaning back to cup her cheek in both his hands. “It becomes you. The dancing, and the armor both.”
“Do you think?” she asked, shy.
“I do.” He gathered her in again. “I like when you smell of the sky. It is where we belong.”
She exhaled, her gladness so enormous she felt the armor was the only thing trammeling it under her skin. “I love flying. Although there are things that escape me still, and probably will without a great deal more practice.”
“Perhaps I might be of service? It could be said I have some experience.”
She suppressed her giggle. That she lived a life where she could do so shocked her still. “I imagine you do.”
“Then,” the Emperor said, guiding her into the room, “ask me all your questions, my Treasure, and I will endeavor to answer them.”
She glanced at him and asked, softly, “The Ambassador?”
“Soon,” he said. “He said no more than two weeks on his world.”
She leaned into him. “He would love flying.”
A slight smile. “Adore it.”
The Queen sighed and smiled up at him. “Soon.”
The Emperor touched his nose to her cheek. “Let us peel you out of that, my Treasure, and soak you before you regret your exertions.”
“Nothing could make me regret this exertion,” she murmured, but she allowed him to draw her away.
The following day kept them both busy; the Emperor in conference with his new political counselors, and the Queen sorting through the correspondence she now had with aliens—so many aliens! She had reports from the former-Knife, now her Liaison-to-Aliens; she had separate discussions now with the Pelted whom had written the new treaty; and also letters from both the Princess Sediryl and her Queen. Not to mention she was somehow now involved in the charity that had seen her harem to safety and back, plus several organizations that concerned themselves with the refugees and homeless left in the wake of both pirate attack and war. She would have to formalize a council of her own, she thought, but it was early times yet. She wanted to consider her selections… in her copious spare time.
She ate lunch only because the Mother brought it to her and insisted on watching her as she ate it, and after that she plunged again into the work of the Breath of the Living Air, which was both exhilarating and terrifying. The revival of a moribund religion… it should have been a minor affair, something begun slowly and grown like a sapling over years. The revelation of the Twelveworld’s Vault, however, had made her resumption of the ancient title a political land mine. Neither she nor the Emperor knew what they would do with the knowledge divulged to them, but that it had tremendous and awe-inspiring ramifications….
The Queen pored over the texts left with her by the priest-in-waiting every day, educating herself, and every paragraph she read left her more and more unnerved at the magnitude of her responsibilities, and the loss the Chatcaava would be forced to recover from without, somehow, polarizing their populace into the privileged and the biologically-imprisoned.
Thinking of the Ambassador, she thought ruefully, O my Lord! How I miss you and your perspective.
By late afternoon she was done with a desk. Dressing herself in her armor she launched from the window without ceremony, desperate for the feel of the wind on her throat and the caress of the air as it streamed beneath her torso. The relief when she left behind the tower… she sighed into the world and felt her breath blown back into her face, like a gift. Leave your exhaustion behind, Daughter… here is your Breath returned.
Obedient and grateful, she swooped around the tower, watching the orange reflections off its rounded curves, lit on its apex and grasped the tower’s needle-thin tip. She looked up, not down… past the moons into the sky, filled with the promise of stars and the glint of satellite and orbiting stations. The wind poured over her shoulders, past the obstruction of her body, plucked at her tail until she opened her arms and fell backward into it, twisting to flap upward. From there she glided toward the Emperor’s tower… and as she expected, he was standing at the balcony, watching her. She came closer and gasped, her heart sprinting. Was that…?
She ran off her momentum into him, and he twirled her in place, chuckling. And it was as her eyes had reported. “You’re in armor!”
“I am, yes,” he said, and he was, though his suit looked more dangerous than hers, somehow. Dark, sleek, hardened in places hers wasn’t. He looked what he was: a predator made for the skies. It thrilled her. “The Surgeon tells me I am not to stint my own exercise. I thought I might take it with my Queen.”
“I would love it!” she exclaimed.
“I thought you might. Accordingly….” He held up a sleek, small curve of plastic, barely the size of her smallest talon. “May I?”
“Yes?” she said, and bent her head as he cupped her cheek and tilted it. The piece snapped in place on the band that generated her face shield.
“Now we will hear one another in the air.”
“Without a mouthpiece?”
“The bones of your jaw conduct the sound,” the Emperor said, licking the corner of her mouth until she shivered. “You will see. It will feel like magic.”
“Flying is already magic.”
He laughed. “Flying is joy.” Grasping her hand, he said, “Come!” and with a laugh she ran with him and together they leaped, and their wings smacked against one another before he released her and dropped. She cried out at the speed of that dive, and how abruptly he pulled out of it to rise toward her.
“You scared me!” she exclaimed
His laugh was gentle in her ear, as close as a caress. “I have been doing this all my life, my Treasure. Don’t fear for me. Now… come catch!”
“Not fair!” she said, laughing. “You were already faster than me without the armor!”
“There is no reason why you should not be quick, Queen Ransomed. I might have more muscle, but you’re lighter.”
She soared in circles over him, watching his mane streaming in the wind like a black banner. How beautiful he was! And he was… flipping slowly, his mane twisting as he rotated while also flying in circles. “How do you do that without getting dizzy?” she demanded.
Amusement. “Pick a point and fix your eyes on it.”
She drifted downward until she could see the glint of his eyes, observing. “You make it seem so easy. But it is all practice, isn’t it.”
“As most things are.”
She folded her wings and let herself drop through the center of his circle and squealed as he dove after her. They played chase, a wildling game around his tower, so quick that the Queen, skimming the dome, found herself running on it before she launched herself in the opposite direction. She couldn’t stop laughing—neither could he, and with the earpiece she heard it against the bones of her skull, deep in the frame of her body.
They broke to circle one another; she thought he heard her panting, and was grateful for the respite.
“It will pass,” he said. “You will grow stronger. Indeed, in some things you are already stronger than many.”
“I cannot believe it,” she said.
“Don’t doubt it, my Treasure. You have astonishing physical courage for someone who has never flown.”
“My lord?”
“You let yourself fall. Most of us have to be taught to stall—forced to, so we learn how to recover. It isn’t easy. And yet you simply… drop.”
She thought about that, letting the wind bear her up, conserving energy. It dried her sweat, leaving her comfortable. “I used to dream of falling out my window.”
Silence over the channel. A distinct one, as if he was no longer breathing.
“I would imagine it. The scrape of the sill under my legs as I pulled myself over it. The sight of the ground changing perspective as I went from craning my head toward it to aiming at it.” She stared down at the distant ground, the colors purpling as the sun drew downward. “I couldn’t imagine how fast the ground would come toward me. Some days I thought it would be too quick for me to see details. Some days I thought… it would take too long. Give me time to be afraid. I had never been afraid, but I guessed I might be so, confronting my death.”
The silence drew on so long that she wondered what he was thinking. His wings hadn’t missed a beat, still cupping the air and occasionally stroking to keep him level. At last, he said, “Why didn’t you do it?”
“Inertia? Habit?” She tried to remember what she’d felt at the time, but couldn’t. She’d spent so much of her life numb, and so little of it alive, and yet the living part had erased nearly all her memory of what had gone before. “To kill myself required effort. It was easier just to continue.”
“Do you fall now because you do not fear death?”
“No,” she said. “No, my love. I fall because I know I can catch myself.”
That ‘mmm’ was pleasure, was pride. She flushed.
“Come,” he said, and veered toward her. She flew toward him, let him catch her hand and lead her up, up toward the scintillant stars. “Trust?”
“You? Always.”
Meeting her eyes as they ascended, he said, “You did not always.”
“That time before happened to two other people, it seems sometimes to me. The you you are now I have always trusted.”
He blew out a breath she heard intimately in her ear. “You honor me, my Treasure.”
“Because you are Greatness, and I love you.” She drew in another breath. “What are we doing?” Gasping in. “We’re so high!”
“Keep on… the shield will let you breathe, though it won’t seem like it. Try not to pant.”
She did her best, and her best grew easier. She had never been so far up, and with the sun nearly below the horizon the cobalt blue of the sky was so piercingly lovely she would have wept had she had the eyes.
“Hover for a moment, my pet.”
She commanded the suit to hold her in place, and he joined her, facing her. That they could do so, cradled in the sky, as if the world had paused in the space between their ascent and their fall…
“I know,” he said, voice husky. More briskly: “When I tell you, tuck in your right wing.”
“Anything,” she said.
He pulled her into his embrace, arms tight under her wings. Surprised, she threw her arms around his neck, tangling her hands in his mane, fingers threaded among the horns.
“Fall,” he commanded, and trusting him, she released the countergrav. And so did he—
“Right in!”
She obeyed, and the muscle in her wing arm trembled as it fought the rushing air, wing vane rattling. The Emperor pulled in his left wing, holding her to him and they plummeted together, spinning as they dropped, faster and faster. When she squealed, his voice in her ear reminded: “Fixed point.”
She stared up at the moons, and they wheeled crazily, or she did, and it was glorious. She remembered shrieking, and the howl of the air streaming past, and the heat of his body against hers and her absolute faith in his strength and judgment. It was Perfection, like a shock to restart a heart, and it was the most intense thing she’d ever experienced—
His wings braked their fall abruptly, and she threw hers out too, and then they twirled apart, laughing. She spun as she arced away, eyes locked on the moons, and was not dizzy, save with elation.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, reverent.
“Oh, yes!”
And then his laugh again. “I am afraid we are making a legend for ourselves, my Treasure.”
“My lord?”
“Look at the towers.”
Puzzled, she glanced toward the palace… and found the balconies crowded with spectators, their eyes reflecting the moonlight as they followed the aerial play of their rulers. She lost count of the numbers, but there were enough that the servants must also be staring. “Oh no,” she whispered, and couldn’t help a self-conscious laugh. “Do you think we seem too reckless? I didn’t want to make trouble for you, my lord.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I think it does them very well to see us so.”
“I suppose we should do it more often….”
“Chatcaava should fly.”
“Yes,” she said softly, thinking of all the Chatcaava who couldn’t. “They should.”
After that they carved out an hour every day to dance. That they were watched was evident… and not just by eager spectators. There were also Chatcaava positioned at various points on different towers, and arranged on the ground. When she mentioned them, the Emperor said, “Snipers, my Treasure. They guard us.”
“I suppose we must worry about such things,” she said, uneasy.
He laughed through the earpiece. “No. It is for my security to worry about such things. And yours.”
“Is it too dangerous? What we do?”
A surprising pause before he answered, voice serious. “There is danger in exposure. There is also danger in being perceived as timorous.”
“Oh!” She was silent, listening to the wind against her body. “You still rule because you are the Empire’s apex predator.”
“There are many who will never accept any other way. And…” A deep breath. “Perhaps, in some ways, I am still one of them. I have learned, and Changed. But I still believe in strength. Just…” He pirouetted, banking under her until he was flying in her shadow, “…that strength comes in more than one form.”
“Strength Changes too,” she murmured. “To suit the situation.”
“Strength should,” he said. “It adapts. As we must.”
“We will,” she told him, looking down at him. “We are.”
“I know.” A smile in his voice. “A Queen Ransomed flies the skies with her chosen. How otherwise?”
“I do fly,” she said, in wonder. “I dance!”
“And well,” was the laughing answer, but she heard the pride in it and tried a roll, drawing in her wings and dropping to flank him. “A little closer, pet, and a little behind the wingtip… there, do you feel?”
With a shock, she exclaimed, “The air is pulling me!”
“Vortex surfing,” he said. “It is why you see migratory fliers flying in formation. You ride my slipstream.”
“Oh…!” the Queen said, as metaphors that had never made sense to her snapped into focus. So many things males said to one another, so casually… “I want to learn it all!”
“And so you will,” he answered. “And in the best way possible. Through skin and sweat, and the evidence of your senses.”
Riding in his wake, she was silent for a time, her eyes on the males at the emplacements on the ground. The guns were discreet, but there was no mistaking their purpose. She thought of all the things she had learned through skin and sweat, and all the things he had.
Perhaps he knew, because his voice was quiet in her ear… in Universal. “Don’t grieve, beloved. We passed through the crucible. Perhaps we shall again. But how can we but fly any storm, having flown the one we have broken through?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and in that tongue, “I love you so.”
“And I am yours,” he answered.
“Can you fly in my slipstream?” she asked suddenly, reverting to their tongue. “Is it hard to carry someone?”
His smile was in his voice. “Try and see.”
When he dropped back she surged forward and he socketed into formation alongside her, and just behind, as if he belonged there. They flew a long, lazy spiral around his tower, and he kept position, and she thought of all the years she had belonged to someone, had been no better than property, had been kept and used and useless. I am yours, he said, and gave his heart to her, and his safety as they flew. “Would you drop with me?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. “And let me catch us?”
“Yes.”
She said nothing, the wind tickling under her wing vanes, its textures so different, little streamers and bumps that her body compensated for by some instinct she couldn’t name. When they landed, some time later, she said, “I am not strong enough yet.”
“Your mind is strong enough already,” he said. “And when the mind is strong, the body follows.”
The Emperor returned to orbit to consult with his Naval liaisons, and the Queen felt his absence when she danced, but she danced alone anyway. She’d made do on her own for so long that it felt strange to miss someone. Miss several someones. But she could be patient. If nothing else, her life had taught her that.
The people around her became accustomed to her flights, each in his or her own way. The Knife claimed her suit to have it serviced after each session, the essence of courteous professionalism. She assumed he whisked it to whatever specialists he’d chosen until she came upon him at work on it with a toolset and a test kit; stopping abruptly, she said, “Knife? Are you my technician?”
“No, my Queen,” he said, wings lowered and bent into an attitude she would almost have characterized as… sheepish. “I began my Naval career in engineering… I haven’t lost the knowledge yet. And it is your safety, my Queen.” He set the wing frame down. “I only run the final checks, after two dedicated technicians see to it.” He raised his chin. “It is a matter of personal honor. We have not had a Queen in so long, nor a Breath.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I was not always either of those things.”
He resumed work, lowering his luminous eyes. “To our shame, and history will remember it so.”
How he managed the tools with the talons, she could barely fathom, and yet he was deft, and meticulous. In that moment she saw the male who might have remained an engineer, had not command and the power it promised beckoned him up the ladder. Truly the Worldlord’s son: a practical male as well as a successful one. That he might be personally devoted to her was a new thought, but when he looked up, he blushed hot enough that the skin rimming his eyes colored. “You fly like music, my Queen. I have never seen the like. And with the Emperor…”
“Dance,” she suggested.
“Our birthright,” the Knife said, hushed. “To see it is to desire it for all of us.”
“Is that why you watch?” she asked, curious.
“I watch,” he said, “because your safety is my duty. My place is among the crews who guard you.” He paused, and finished, “But afterwards, I watch the viseos, because it is Beauty.”
It was her turn to flush, and she turned, leaving him to his task. Later, she checked the palace skein and discovered that he was correct: there were viseos, exquisitely produced ones, and the access count suggested that a great many people had requested them. She watched part of one and found herself unable to continue. There was too much love in it, and too much joy. Easier to do it than to view it.
The Priestess, whom the Queen had not even been aware was avoiding her, came to her one evening and declared, “It makes me wild with jealousy.”
“I… I beg your pardon?” the Queen stammered.
“I want it so badly!” The other female stopped at the window, her upper hands clenched into fists and the lower set clutching the sill. “I’ve always wanted it. To fly. To see you doing it… and not to have it for myself! To have become free in name but not in fact! We are no longer chattel, but I am still a prisoner!”
The Queen held out her hands, wings sagging. “Priestess…”
The Priestess shook her head. “No. I don’t want this title. I’ve seen the real acolytes of the Living Air. I serve its ultimate priestess. And I’m not one of you. I hate your peace and your conviction, and your sense of knowing your place and being happy with it. I’m no priestess!” She held out a hand to stop the Queen from speaking. “Don’t. Don’t! I don’t expect you to say anything. What can you say? And I am not proud of my bitterness.” She scrubbed at her face with her upper hands. “I don’t know what to do, but this… this isn’t it.” Lifting her eyes, she said, “Give me work. Please.”
The Queen blurted, “Why don’t you learn to pilot ships?”
The suggestion filled the room, so unthinkable it shocked them both, the Queen for uttering it and the Priestess for existing in a world that contained it. They stared at one another, stunned.
“Can females do that?” the Priestess demanded, trembling.
“Females in the Alliance do so all the time?” the Queen said. “I don’t know why a Chatcaavan female should not.” She remembered Laniis’s confidence when dressed in her stark uniform, and the sleek single-person vehicle that Sediryl had commanded. “I should have a ship,” she said, to herself.
“My Queen?” the Priestess squeaked.
“To travel in, when I have need,” the Queen said, frowning. “Yes, why didn’t I think of it before? And you should be its pilot. I will ask the Knife how arduous the training is. Even if you cannot fly alone, you should be able to serve as second on a vessel until you are certified. I imagine there is a certification. The Knife—the previous Knife—mentioned such things.”
“Y-y-you want me to fly spacegoing vehicles?”
“Something small enough to enter atmosphere would probably also be good. You should,” the Queen decided, “learn to fly ground vehicles as well.” She paused, considering the female. “Unless… you don’t like the idea?”
“I… it’s… I can’t…”
“Even thinking it is audacity,” the Queen said, nodding as Laniis would have. “I understand. It took time for me to learn to entertain such alien thoughts. But we must entertain many more such thoughts if we wish to Change.” She considered the other female, who was still gaping at her. “Priestess? Will you allow me to arrange for this training?” Hesitant, “It is not flying with wings, but—”
“Yes, yes!” the Priestess exclaimed, holding out all four hands. “Stop before you talk us out of it!”
The Queen laughed. “All right. I will see to it. You will fly too.”
“Me,” the other female whispered. “Fly.”
“Fly ships,” the Queen said, “that ply the stars. Like males.” She canted her head. “Ships with weapons. You will be dangerous.”
“I don’t know what to do!” the Priestess exclaimed. “I feel as if I will burst!”
“The aliens embrace when they are happy,” the Queen said. “Would you like to try that?”
The Priestess scowled at her. “Don’t be ridiculous. They are soft and fluffy and bizarre.”
Hiding her amusement, the Queen said, “Maybe walking, then. If you must release your energy somehow.”
“Yes,” the Priestess said. “Up and down the steps. That is just the thing.” She headed for the stairs and paused there, looking over her shoulder.
“Thank me when you succeed,” the Queen told her. “Not before.”
“Hmph,” was the answer, but as there was no mistaking the tremor in her shoulders as she descended into the shadowed stairwell, against which her light-colored skin stood in stark contrast.
That night, speaking to the Emperor who was still on the orbital station, the Queen asked, “Do you think I should have a ship?”
He laughed. “The Breath of the Living Air forgets that the levies of the Twelveworld are all her ships.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and frowned. “They are already crewed, though, and I wanted the Priestess to become a pilot.”
“That ferocious female of yours? Living Air. We’ll send her through military training, anything less will be a waste.”
The Mother insisted on the massages after her sessions, but never ceased to turn mournful eyes on the Queen during them, so it was a surprise when that female approached her before one of her solitary sessions to offer her a double handful of bright red fabric.
“What is it?” the Queen asked, surprised.
“In the old tales, sky dancers wore them.” The Mother looked away. “I thought… they go on the horns.”
The Queen took one of the bundles and gasped as it unrolled, falling to her feet: a streamer of silk dyed in a gradient from sunrise orange to sunset crimson, and woven through with sparkles.
Gloomily, the Mother said, “Wearing them will probably cause you to fall when they fly in your face. Your mane is enough danger without adding these.”
“Will you help me…”
The Mother sighed. “Turn around.”
Fitted with the scarves, the Queen cautiously turned her head, then shook it, trying to dislodge them. As she glanced over her shoulder at their gleaming edges, the Mother said, “There was one tale about a female who lost her scarf, and a male caught it for her. A parable. About how the sexes are supposed to treat one another.”
With courtesy? As helpmeets to one another? As fellow fliers? The Queen thought of the Ambassador, who would possibly say ‘with chivalry,’ though that concept was so alien she still found it difficult to hold in her head. She could palpate its edges without seeing the whole of it. So strange, and so wondrous, her other beloved and the world he’d brought into her tower with his words and his translated ballads and his so serious eyes, like pieces of the night sky.
“Dark blue,” she said suddenly. “Can I have a second set, like the evening? Please?”
The Mother studied her, pulled the scarf in front of her right shoulder, petted it. Smiled at her. “I am sorry if I fret at you. But… a Breath after all these years! And I have seen it!”
The Queen clasped the other female’s lower hands. “You will continue to, I promise.”
“I know. But it is so hard to believe in hope, even when you are seeing its promise fulfilled.” The Mother stepped away. “Go, Mistress. Fly!”
That time she checked the computer before she went to sleep, and watched the viseos of herself twirling, red silk rippling around her body against the darkening purple horizon.
“Tonight,” the Emperor told her, when she was preparing for bed. “He is inbound.”
The Queen halted abruptly, turning to face him. She had wondered why he’d made no move to join her; even when he stayed up late to work, he often joined her in bed to talk a while before she drowsed off. Instead he had poured himself a cup of brandy and disposed himself at the small table by the balcony… and a striking silhouette he made there, his horns starkly cut against the clear dark blue of the night sky. It was jeweled with stars both real and artificial, in the form of satellites and orbital stations and planes going by in the far distance—she had learned from the Knife that the airspace around the palace was forbidden to almost any craft.
Abandoning the bedchamber, she joined him. “When? Tell me it is soon!”
“A few hours after midnight,” the Emperor said. “Shall I wake you when I have word?”
Tempting to stay up, but the time would pass so slowly. And yet how could she sleep, knowing he was at hand? She sighed and the Emperor smiled and touched the tip of her nose, let his fingers trail off it. “Me too, pet.”
She slid to her knees alongside his chair and rested her head on his thigh, and he stroked her hair, idle. To his wordless offer of the cup she shook her head; alcohol would muddle her. This… this was all she needed. To feel the cool air on her face, feel the gentle fingers in her mane. To look out on the darkness and know that it held love, and that love was coming home to stay.
Time passed… she thought she slept, a little. But at last she heard the Emperor’s tablet buzz. His voice had that after-midnight quality, small in a vast and somnolent world. “Yes?”
“We have the Ambassador, Exalted.”
“Send him up.”
“Yes, Exalted.”
How long would it take for him to ascend the stairs? So many, too long! Her spine had grown tense, and the fingers still petting her, too. In every way the Emperor remained relaxed in seeming, and yet, she could taste his anticipation as if she were in her Eldritch skin.
The sound of the door. The murmur of the guards at it. Then boot heels… how often she had derived comfort from the sound of Sediryl’s boots, because they had reminded her of his? And then he was there, framed in the layered gray and blue shadows of the back of the room.
Which of them rose first? The Queen didn’t know. Only that neither of them could have waited for him to approach, any more than he could have paused to allow them. They met in the middle of the room, and then—oh! The smell of him, so familiar now, no longer alien but welcome, sweet and musky and speaking to the Pattern under her skin that he himself had gifted her. The Ambassador pressed his jaw against the top of her head, and ducked so that the Emperor could rub his cheek against his, and as they turned to look up at him the Queen shifted shape, and then the Emperor, and then there were kisses bled across a confusion of mouths, hot and silk-soft and wet. Through her Eldritch skin, the Queen tasted the Emperor’s happiness, the Ambassador’s fierce joy, and knew her rapture shared.
“My beloveds,” Lisinthir said, voice husky against their faces. “I am home.”
This shape could weep, and did.
It was later—much later—that they thought to talk. When they had sated themselves with the tangibility of their bodies, and the presence implied by them. The Queen had been dragon, and Eldritch, and dragon, and was Eldritch again, the better to hear both the pleasure of her lover’s heart and its merely physical beating under her ear. The Emperor had not only been dragon and Eldritch, but human as well, and was again a dragon, sifting the Ambassador’s hair as he had done so often in those first days, admiring its texture. They reposed in the bed, with the clear night air entering from the balcony, and the stars a cool light to contrast the low, warm lamp the Emperor had lit.
“I am home,” the Ambassador said again. “And glad of it.”
A bittersweetness there, and the Queen caught a few measures of music through his skin, and a fleeting image that she could not clearly see, and did not have to. She recognized her gentle counselor even through the lens of the Ambassador’s perception. “Your kin?” she asked.
“Need time,” he said, tracing her jaw with a fingertip. “They have work to do, and titles to grow accustomed to. But we will have an invitation within the year to visit, I think. My cousins’ wedding, and Sediryl’s investiture as the heir.”
“Did you accomplish all you intended with your negotiations?” the Emperor asked, twirling a strand of white hair around his finger.
“Mmm. Don’t tug unless you plan to make good on the tease, Exalted.” Lisinthir grinned lazily. “But… yes. I have reclaimed my sire’s House and made it my own, and begun a new family in it: I left you Lisinthir Nase Galare and am now, if it please you, Lisinthir Lauvet Imthereli.” The Queen lifted her head, startled, and he touched her nose. “Yes, exactly.”
“Love. A good name, if a difficult idealization to have chosen to live up to,” the Emperor said with a low chuckle. “Did you have them fix the dragon on your sigil?”
“It is now winged, as it must be. In the books at least. They must make the new jewels, and I refused to wait.”
“Good.” The Emperor licked the Ambassador’s cheekbone. “What else? They should have given you a planet for a fiefdom, for the labors you did them.”
“What do I need a planet for, when I have an empire?” was the reply, and the Queen felt the surge of hot amusement in the Emperor, and the answering rush in the Ambassador, and thought for a moment they would tussle. But what had once been lethal earnest was now… a game to them. Another language they used to affirm their commitments to one another, and to the aggression and power they still needed to rule that empire.
“Insolent Perfection,” the Emperor said against Lisinthir’s ear, his smile in his voice.
“As you yourself once told me, if there is Insolence,” the Ambassador answered, “then it must have a Perfect form. Yes?”
The Emperor tapped the Eldritch’s chin with a talon. “Yes. But tell me what they gave you, if they did not give you a planet.”
The Queen felt the Ambassador’s sobriety wash through his skin like cool water. “For sooth, beloved. I did not want so many ties leashing me there. They have re-established my family on its ancestral lands and made me its lord. My Queen adjures me to send my heirs to be fostered by my cousins, where they might learn their father’s customs, and suggests we foster my cousins’ children in turn.”
“Your cousins’ children,” the Emperor murmured. “Those would be… the sons and daughters of the Eldritch Queen’s heir.”
“Correct.”
“My sister Sediryl’s children,” the Queen murmured. “By the Gentle Guide, who showed me the tree.”
“My cousin Jahir, yes, whom I love,” the Ambassador answered, caressing her face. “And Sediryl… whom you call sister, still?”
“What else?” the Queen said, leaning into his touch. “She and I… we share many things. And she understood me.”
He bent to kiss her between the eyes, as he might have her draconic form, and in this one she felt his breath intimately on more sensitive skin, how it ruffled against her brows and into the hollows on either side of her small and narrow nose. “I am glad,” he murmured. “That the two of you are close. It is for the best, I think. Not least because I wonder…”
The taste under his skin then… the Queen misliked it. She frowned up at him.
“You wonder,” the Emperor said, “if Second has chosen to settle himself closer to the Eldritch than to our Pelted allies. Is that correct?”
“You know the map as well as I do,” the Ambassador said. “Second cannot stay too near the Empire, or we will find him. And the Pelted are expanding in most of the other directions, and the Pelted… they are angry. They want blood payment. The safest place to run is into the dark… on my cousins’ side.”
The Emperor mmed, letting his hand come to rest on the Ambassador’s throat. “And yet, they are a distance from us. Your people.”
“The Eldritch will only be my people for a while,” the Ambassador answered, quiet. “When my heirs return to my homeworld, Beloved, they will be dragons. And then it will no longer be my people and your people, but our people.”
“When?” the Queen asked, and they both looked at her, confused. She almost wanted to laugh at how involved they could become in abstractions. “When shall we begin the mingling? Shall I have your children first, my Emperor? Or shall I have yours, Ambassador?” When they didn’t immediately answer, she said, “Of course, the Emperor has at least a dozen heirs already, so there is little urgency there. I would like to give the Empire children of my body, but that can wait perhaps until we secure the succession for the Ambassador? It is more important among his people. They always pass property and money through their blood. If we would like there to be more Lauvet Imtherelis, there must be children of his body to inherit the name. The… dynasty.” She tasted the word, liked it. “The dynasty.”
“God and Lady and Living Air,” the Ambassador whispered. “You cannot mean it, so soon.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I am not ready!”
She sniffed. “I will be the one doing most of the work. And you already have the property and titles and funds, and we have dozens of nursemaids available. Why wait?”
“She has a point,” the Emperor said, amused.
“We could arrive to this investiture with your heir,” she said. “I could show him or her to your Queen, to be formally recognized. That would be good, would it not?”
“To have my heir before you bear your Emperor’s…!”
His incredulity did not quite mask his nervousness, and the fact that she could make a man of the Ambassador’s confidence and courage nervous charmed and amused her. She hadn’t thought the Ambassador could feel nervous. Tapping her soft, Eldritch lip with a finger, the Queen murmured, “Oh, that is true. We should formalize our status as consorts first. Such a thing hasn’t been done in ages, though, not since there was a Queen Ransomed. And I do not believe there is a ceremony for a male consort or even concubine….”
Now the Ambassador was laughing. “You are teasing me, Beauty. Don’t think I don’t feel it through your skin.”
“Maybe a little,” she admitted, unable to help her mirth. But she sobered. “This… was a choice I never thought to have. To be able to bear young. I would like to. I would like to know what it is, to be a mother, after so long assuming I would have no future, or that my future would remain fixed and unchangeable.”
That silenced them both. And then the Emperor, who was also Kauvauc Ueneuvin, leaned over the Ambassador’s body and by the time he kissed her lips he was an Eldritch, long white hair pooling on the Ambassador’s waist. “My Treasure,” he said, his yellow eyes grave, “Whatever you wish most, we will give to you, and without reservation.”
“Then,” she said, “I wish you to be my mate, and I wish the Ambassador to be our consort, and I would like to be a mother.” Feeling the flutter of emotion, she finished, “But if it will distress your sense of propriety, Ambassador, I will have our Emperor’s first. And then yours.”
“I must assume that even in the Empire, there are mores that must be observed,” the Ambassador said, and the huskiness of his voice betrayed the emotions crowding against her skin. “Particularly since we are attempting to win to us those who yet hold those mores close.”
“Let us begin now, then,” the Queen said. “I am already the Emperor’s consort, so it would be entirely proper. And we will take you to mate as soon as we find a rite we can adapt.”
The Emperor was already chuckling against her jaw. “I like my more assertive Beauty.”
“If I have had sufficient agency to rescue myself—”
“—and your Emperor, if you will recall,” her Emperor said.
“—and the Pelted who would have fallen to the system lords had not the fleet augmented by your Twelveworld levies come to their rescue,” the Ambassador added, quiet.
“—then surely I can arrange to be bound to the males of my choice,” she finished, torn between blushing and laughing, and perhaps that was pride, and humility, and wonder that she might have become a heroine on such a rarified level.
“Like the women of the stories I told you long ago,” the Ambassador said softly. “You have Changed worlds.”
“I have not finished yet,” she said, and was astonished to discover that she meant it. That she intended it. Looking up at them both, she said, “There is so much to do yet, and so much of it so very consequential.”
“We know.” The Emperor brushed the back of his finger against her cheekbone, and shared through the touch his unease. The problems they’d surmounted had left them with problems even less tractable, and yet they could not be averted. “But we will win through, or spend ourselves in the attempt.”
She slipped her hands up his sides. She loved him in all his shapes, but this Eldritch one, so long and so delicate, she felt an especial fondness for, because it did not overpower her. Even the human shape had more weight.
“Like this?” he asked, sensing it.
“Can you do so?” the Ambassador asked, voice low. “In this shape?”
“In this shape and every shape,” the Queen answered, “We are Chatcaava.” Looking up into the Emperor’s Eldritch face, she finished in a whisper, “And yes. I would like it to be in this shape. Together.”
Conception was nothing like what she’d learned from overseeing the harem in her tenure as the Slave Queen. She had awarded the Mother’s jewels to more than one female, and listened to the talk those jewels inevitably prompted. Later, having become the Queen Ransomed, she asked the Mother about her personal experiences: why she liked children, and whether she liked being a mother or if those two interests were separate. Not one of those females had ever spoken of the conception of children as an active event. A matter of choice. Not just because females in those days did not have choices—they served the pleasure of males, or they were discarded—but because the body decided on its own. One of the mysteries, the Mother had divulged, for she could now speak of the religion she’d hidden for so long. “We do not choose. The Living Air chooses, and we are its medium.”
But bent over her mate, the Queen knew otherwise, because she felt the potential in his offering, and her body’s willingness, and she… she did not mistake that potential as passivity. Her body was waiting for her to decide: to choose. To discard the seed, or weave it into herself and make something new. She could taste in her mouth the complexities of the Emperor’s genetic pattern: like wine, and blood, and something peppery. Or coppery. Or like oranges—a little of all those things? And so many others? The smell of cinnamon, a rust-bitterness. The wind was in it, and the ocean, and the dueling circle: so was the sweetness of his extra shapes, like the rising descant of a children’s choir.
All of it was hers, if she wanted it. If she wanted to use it. And inevitably, because they were in their Eldritch shapes first, he felt her epiphany through the hands he had clasped on her hips, steadying her over him.
What did it feel like? The revelation? Like lightning, sudden and shocking? Or something slower and more welcome, like the uncurling smoke of an incense stick?
“One child,” she gasped out.
“As many as you wish, in whatever order,” the Emperor said.
Despite all they’d been through, still some part of her feared to ask. “Female. And winged.”
But all he said was, “What else?”
They both felt the rush of her relief. Smiling up at her from the Emperor’s side, the Ambassador said, “Did you expect anything else?”
“No,” she admitted, and bent to them. “More.”
She did not tell them, later, that the Ambassador’s pattern was hers to use too, and that she could knit strands of it into the Emperor’s and use them both at the same time. If they realized it later… well. Until then, a precious secret of her own to cradle, with the new life she had decreed and now harbored under her skin.
Could she have described the process? She didn’t think so. It certainly wasn’t as quantifiable as selecting the Emperor’s assertiveness and his curiosity and melding it with her patience and her endurance. Nothing was labeled; there were no convenient explanations. She chose because one taste worked well with another, and a third repelled her, or a fourth only worked in combination with another two, minor and subtle, that she recognized only after she’d coaxed her lovers into tumbling her another few times. And in different shapes, for the Emperor: it fascinated her that his pattern never changed when he did, but different aspects of it became easier to see. It was…
It was fun. A joy. And when they were sated, and she was pleased with the work, they slept, and she was surrounded on either side: by loving arms, and by the luxury of having two of the most powerful males in existence warding her.
When she woke, her head was cushioned on the Ambassador’s chest and the space at her back was empty. Her closed eyes were facing the balcony, and she could feel the warmth of the light on the thin skin of her Eldritch cheeks. She’d fallen asleep in that shape; the better, perhaps, to enjoy the feelings of her consorts directly as they drifted to dreams together. It worked: some of what she’d believed to be sunlight was in fact, the Ambassador’s sublime happiness, which effervesced under her tongue like his memories of champagne. He trailed the back of his hand along her temple, her cheekbone, the angle of her jaw, until he could wind some of her pearlescent hair around a finger, using the same motion the Emperor did when playing with his. “Good morning, Beauty.”
“It is a good morning, isn’t it?” she said.
“And we are in for many such mornings to come.” He tipped her chin up so he could kiss her brow. “I love you. Have I said?”
She blushed brightly peach. “Yes. But… I don’t mind hearing it.”
“How fortunate that I don’t mind saying it, then.” He pulled her closer and she nestled into the heat of his body, the scent of it, the satin finish of the skin stretched taut over muscles hard enough to satisfy even a Chatcaavan. “Our lover has had a collation set out for us, if we are interested in breakfast.”
“Do you want to get up?”
Agitation felt like a prickle up her sides; laziness, like the enervation of lying in a sun-puddle. She could guess which would win. “It would be good to stretch.”
Once they’d risen, the Queen did not have to ask where the Emperor had gone. He hadn’t eaten, which meant he’d gone for a flight. When the Ambassador ambled to the balcony and leaned on the jamb to stare into the sky, she knew it.
There were silky robes left folded on one of the chairs at the table where their food had been set. She unfolded one and brought it to him, and when she caught his attention, helped him into it. Shifting into a form that took chills less easily, she leaned against him with her wing cupping his back. As much of it as she could reach, for she was far shorter in her Chatcaavan shape.
“Do you sense him?” she asked, because she no longer knew the answer.
He smiled and slid his arm around her shoulders. “No. That would be my cousin’s specialty… to reach so far. But our Greatness told me he was off for his morning constitutional, so I know approximately where he must be.” He glanced down at her. “He told me that you join him now.”
“I do!” She pressed her head against his chest, fighting modesty and pride and wonder. “I can fly. It is wonderful.”
“So then… why don’t you go?”
She blinked several times. “Because you cannot join us.”
He chuckled. “We cannot be together every waking moment, Beauty. And I hate the thought of grounding you when you have fought so hard, and won through so much, to earn the skies.”
“It is a joy to fly,” she murmured.
“Then what are you waiting for?” He straightened and turned her to face him so he could kiss the corner of her long mouth. “Join our consort. When the two of you are done, you will find me here.”
To ask him if he was sure… it felt cruel, to make him continue to comfort her when he was the one who would be left behind. So instead she leaned into him, sliding her arms up around his neck and pressing herself against his body so he could taste her gratitude through their touch.
“Go on,” he murmured, smiling, and she did.
She could fly without armor, but knew the Knife would prefer her protected. That the Emperor and the Ambassador would also. So she took the long way to her tower, stopping only to request the Knife meet her there, and allowed herself to be properly dressed for her pleasures. It was a good twenty minutes before she leaped from her balcony, and by then she had to hunt to find the Emperor: sitting on one of the tower roofs, watching the clouds shake off their sunrise colors. She circled him, too refreshed by the cool wind under her wings to land.
The Emperor’s voice came over her headset. “He sent you?”
“He did,” the Queen replied. “He said I have been grounded too long to be denied the sky.”
“Very like him.”
The fevered days of their first seasons together flashed past, scoring her with claws of memory and delight and regret. “He said even the wingless need the sky. You remember?”
A low chuckle. “How could I forget, when that began everything that followed.” He stood, let himself skid down the roof until there was no roof left under his feet. Winging his way upward, he took position behind and to one side of her.
“I wish we didn’t have to leave him on the ground.”
“He would make a terrifying flier,” the Emperor said, amused. “Can you imagine?”
Could she? Yes, yes she could. Daring, quick, probably very reckless.
“You are imagining,” the Emperor said when she didn’t immediately reply. It startled her out of her thoughts, and she could almost see the considering look he was awarding her. She heard it in his voice, certainly. “What are you planning, my Treasure?”
“We should fly,” the Queen said. “If you don’t need to go back yet?”
“I don’t, no.”
“Then we should play,” she said. “Play, and pay attention to our play.” She flirted her wings at him. “If, my lord, you are willing to catch me?”
He laughed. “Always.”
She didn’t answer in words, but plummeted, weaving between the palace’s towers, and avoided him by the cold of his shadow on her body. He was a superlative predator, but practice had made her better at evading him; he had to apply himself to win more often now, and that exhilarated her. And if she rarely caught him unless he wanted to be caught, still she delighted him with her courage, and the neatness of her movements, and her penchant for using the palace instead of treating it as an obstacle. He’d told her once that she had a natural talent, and no praise could have pleased her more, and that was before he’d apologized for leaving her crippled for so many revolutions, and unable to use that talent.
This, she thought, with the wind in her face and laughter in her mouth and all the world beneath her wings… this was life.
They parted at the end of their dance, he to return to his tower, she to hers to drop off her armor. But she asked the Knife for escort and received it, because walking all the way back was too hard after the freedom of the skies. They glided up to the Emperor’s balcony, where the Knife veered off and left her to land alone… for the brief moments it took for her to be engulfed by both her lovers in an enthusiastic embrace. She laughed and burrowed into their arms.
“How marvelous you were, Beauty!” the Ambassador said.
“Were you watching, then?”
“How not?” A grin she heard despite it being muffled against her hair. “And after you’d retreated, the Emperor kindly showed me where to find the palace footage so I might watch the whole. Had you any notion that you were in possession of quite so many fans?”
“I know they watch,” she admitted. “It still seems… unreal.”
The Emperor made an amused sound. “Come, my Queen. Your bath awaits.”
“And food?”
The Ambassador said, “We shall feed you tidbits from the ledge, like the most abject and devoted of servants.”
The image made her laugh. “The two of you?”
“Do you doubt us?” The Ambassador smirked. “I believe, Exalted, we have been challenged.”
“By all means. Let us rise to it.”
They did, in fact, perch on the lip of the bath and feed her, until she was sated and interested in different food, and for that they slid into the water with her. After which, the Ambassador dried their Emperor and told him he should return to his study and work. “We shall not have a repetition of the events that saw this begun,” he said while plying the towel. “You will do your duty, and by that you will earn your reward.”
“And do you think you will be exempt from that duty?” the Emperor said.
The Queen watched with interest from the other side of the bathing chamber.
“When you award me one, I shall be sure to do it faithfully.”
The Emperor snorted. “And is that how it should work, Perfection? You wait on my largesse?” When the Ambassador lifted his head, the Emperor finished, “Tell me what you want.”
“And then fight you for it?”
A lazy grin, so like the ones from before the Emperor’s crucible that the Queen drew in a breath. Was she? Yes, she was glad that he could still summon such looks. “If you ask for too much, you’ll have to prove you deserve it to the court. But that should be incentive to choose outrageously, yes?”
The Ambassador laughed. “How well you know me, lover.”
“So?” The Emperor wound a hand in the Ambassador’s hair and jerked it. “Spit it out. Now.”
“Third,” was the instant reply, and from the tautness of the Ambassador’s shoulders he was ready to fight for it—eager. “I would be Third.”
Startled, the Queen walked to them, paused.
“Third,” the Emperor murmured. “An interesting choice. Explain.”
“To aim for Second’s pillow would be ill-advised,” the Ambassador replied. “You need a Chatcaavan in that role or your court will revolt. With good reason, because if you take me to consort, giving me the second highest seat in the government as well would grant me far too much power, official and secret. Also, you need a Chatcaavan voice near you—you have diverged too far from the norms embraced by your people to be without an advisor who can remind you what they were. Third, though… Third once managed your affairs with aliens. Who better to undertake that on your behalf than another alien? And—” A grin worthy of a Chatcaavan, all teeth and hunger. “The irony would please me.”
“Ha!” The Emperor tugged again. “Yes, I suspect it would. So… Third. You really will have to fight for that one. And not me, but others.”
“Do you doubt I’ll win?”
The Emperor snorted. “Not in the slightest.”
“Then it’s only a matter of whether you let me try for it.”
“When have I ever let you do anything, Perfection?”
“Still.”
The Emperor studied him, then glanced at her. “Well, my Queen? What say you?”
It had not yet ceased to surprise her, to be asked about policy. But she was the Queen in truth now, and not a slave, and she had spent years observing the court from a position few thought to guard themselves from. “We have not asked our appointee to Second’s position to prove himself on the dueling field.”
They were both looking at her now.
“In the tumult following the Usurper’s death, that was overlooked by the court,” she continued. “But… with the situation settling, I believe there is some resentment over the fact that the new Second was not forced to demonstrate his prowess.”
“Who is the new Second?” the Ambassador asked, curious.
The Emperor’s smile was complex; she could read the memories in it. “The Worldlord from Apex-East’s capital system.”
“The Worldlord!” The Ambassador paused, then draped the towel over his shoulder. “Actually, that’s perfect.” He glanced at the Queen. “You are suggesting he should fight to prove his right to the title? But he is an older male.”
“He’ll win,” the Emperor said. “Youth isn’t everything. But go on, Beauty.”
“You should allow him to defend his title. It will please the court to see business conducted as they expect, and it will be seen as a concession to tradition. That will allow them to bear the sight of a second, and less usual, trial for the title of Third with equanimity. Especially if you do not announce in advance your intent to appoint the Ambassador to the post.” She glanced at their Eldritch. “Let him win it fairly. The ones who are engaged by novelty and daring will be pleased; the ones who hate the changes will be able to console themselves with Second’s title having been fairly contested and won by a Chatcaavan of what they believe to be the old guard.”
“Truly your Treasure,” the Ambassador opined.
“And to think I left her languishing for revolutions in my harem.” The Emperor reached to her, ran a thumb along the edge of her jaw. “I thank the Living Air you forgave me for it.”
She stepped into him, enough to go under his wing. What could she say to make sense of it? That he kept mentioning it was enough sign of his change. “Without forgiveness there is no incentive to change. I could do nothing else, if I hoped for better.”
“Truly the Living Air chose well,” the Ambassador said, and she tucked her head under the Emperor’s to hide her abashment.
“I go, then, to meet the Worldlord and tell him we’ve rearranged his schedule,” the Emperor said, stroking her hair back and lapping at her brow, near the horn, before gently parting from her. “You may tarry if you wish—no one will expect you to be on your feet after so long a trip.”
“Which is exactly why I must be, yes? But I’ll have a nap before I go out.” The Ambassador ran his fingers through his damp hair and smiled at them, eyes smoldering. “For some reason I slept very little last night, when I perhaps should have been.”
“I shall put you to sleep,” the Queen said. “And then…”
“Join me?” the Emperor said. “To set the groundwork for the festivities.”
Because naturally a fight for primacy, with the award being the highest seats in the government, would become an event. “Yes. And I shall find ourselves a consort ritual. If we are to have a spectacle, it should be a grand one.”
“Business as usual,” the Emperor said. “That’s how your people say it, isn’t it, Perfection.”
The Ambassador chuckled. “Some of them, yes.”
They did, perhaps, linger in the bathing chamber after the Emperor’s departure, which necessitated another bath. During this one, though, the Queen could sense the Ambassador’s fatigue: an occasional tremor in his arms as he raised them, a tension in the skin around his eyes, as if he was forcing himself to remain alert. “It was a long journey,” she said, combing the lather through his hair with her clawed fingers. “He was right… you should have rested.”
“It’s not so much the exhaustion as the time changing,” the Ambassador replied. “And I would not have wanted to sleep too long, lest it make the acclimation to the local time more difficult. Now, though… now I think I can lie down for an hour, and be up again for the rest of the day, while still sleeping at night.”
“If we allow it?” she said, her head tilted down to hide her look—fooling him not at all.
“If you allow it,” he said, laughing. “And if I am hollow-eyed in the morning, I will be able to say, in all candor, that I was too busy spending myself with my lovers to sleep, and won’t that set them all to talking.”
“They already do,” she confessed.
“I know. So we might as well give them something worth the bother, ah?” His glance was too canny, but she’d been expecting it, and weathered it without distress. “Is it worthy of concern? Do I worry you, my Beauty?”
“No,” she said. “It is… an echo of some feeling from the past. But I no longer fear for either of you as I once did. In part because… I can help.”
“You did then.”
And she had—the thought still filled her with wonder—but: “I have more ways to help, and am less fettered.”
“So you are.” He caught her hands and kissed their palms. “Put me to bed, then, Breath of the Living Air.”
Did he know what she planned? But no, she didn’t think so. She stepped out of the bath, water sluicing from her legs, and fetched a towel so she could dry him. Because it pleased her to do so… to feel his body and know that it was not only hers, but that some part of it was in her, in the Pattern that had become her Eldritch shape. And yes, because it reminded her of those first days, when all she had to offer was a gentle hand and a listening ear. Now, though… now she could suffer herself to be dried in turn, as if an equal, because… she was.
The Ambassador allowed himself to be led to the bedchamber, and once there, dropped onto the mattress and rolled onto his back, one arm behind his head and the other loose on his ribs. All that white hair fanned around his head like some absurdly decorative creature from the imperial harem… but no female had ever had such scars, nor worn such a look. He could beckon with his eyes, and it was very nearly command, or something more compelling: a command phrased as an invitation, because he knew it to be irresistible. The sight of him made her exclaim, “We will get nothing done!”
His laughter broke the spell. Somewhat. “Fortunately for us all, we love the game of galactic politics as much as we love the games of the bedroom, or you’re right. We would get nothing done. But…” He reached for her, and she slid onto him willingly, shifting shape so it was the silk of her Eldritch inner thighs that skimmed the outside of his hips, and her delicate Eldritch hands that spread on his chest to prop herself upright. “We shall not make the same mistake again, Beauty. I pledge it you.”
“No,” she breathed. “We have too much to do.”
“So we do. Will you kiss me and see me to sleep, then?”
“Yes,” she said, “but… one thing first.”
He canted his head, the pillow creasing under it.
She touched her fingers to his brows, let them drift down to his cheekbones. “Close your eyes.” When he’d done so, she whispered, “A gift.” And brought back to mind the sensations of the Knife clipping the armor over her wing arms. Beneath her hands, the Ambassador’s chest rose abruptly, though she didn’t hear the gasp. She concentrated on the sudden buoyancy of her wings after the armor powered on; the sound of the Knife’s voice as he ran her through the safety information, as he did every time she flew; the twist of her neck as she looked toward the balcony… and then ran for it.
This time, the Ambassador did gasp, and then they were flying, through her eyes, through the memories shared between their skins. The Queen let herself down until she was lying on him, and set her cheek on his chest, and with her eyes closed she brought him with her: to the Emperor, sitting on the roof. To the lazy circles she flew around while talking to him. And then, to the games. Dancing in the clouds, diving, chasing one another in wild arcs, skidding over the roofs of the palace, leaping off them to plummet toward the ground only to jerk upward at the last moment… the exhilaration of it, the wild freedom, the endless openness of the sky around her and the knowledge that it was hers.
The Ambassador couldn’t fly—would never—but she could. And what was she, but a bridge between worlds? He had taught her that, long ago.
When she was done, she drew herself carefully from their communion, and discovered the scent of salt was not the ocean from her memories, but… lifting her head, the Queen said, “Do not weep.”
“How not, at such a gift?” He touched his fingertips to her cheek, so lightly she barely felt it, and it was nothing to the tumult of the emotions between their skins. Awe. Yearning. Triumph. Regret. Joy. “Oh, my love. Thank the gods and Living Air you were released, because truly you belong on the wing.”
“You gave me that,” she whispered.
“No,” he said. “No, you earned it, Beauty.” He cupped her face and brought her closer, close enough to kiss, and she tasted the sting of his tears on his mouth. “Perhaps I played a part, but you had to walk the path when it opened to you. Let no one take that from you. Never.”
“No,” she breathed, her own eyes heating, because… she had planned this as a gift for him, and it had turned, somehow, into a gift for herself. And that was before she became aware, through his hands of… something… something alien, and unexpected. “What… what is that? That you feel?”
A smile against her mouth. “Your daughter.”
She inhaled, abruptly, shaky. “You can sense her!”
“As the smallest spark of potential, but… yes. You didn’t know?”
“I didn’t think to… think! That it would be obvious outside myself. I knew, but…” She stopped because it was different, so different, to feel that dazzling knot from outside herself. She’d known she was creating that child, and she’d known it had taken. That the Ambassador could tell made it real, though. Just as sharing the flight with him had completed some circuit she hadn’t realized she needed closed. She had wrested back from her oppressors all that had been taken from her: agency, self-respect, love, her wings, her womb. But she hadn’t done it alone.
“I love you,” she whispered against his lips.
“And you are loved, so very loved, by me,” he answered, and wrapped his arms around her, around both of them, because he knew she was no longer alone in her body.
“Even the wingless,” she murmured.
He laughed then, rolling her onto her back. “Don’t pity me, Beauty. I might not have visible wings, but what I lack, I have through you, and the Emperor, and all the conquests before and behind me. You think too much of how much you believe you were given. Don’t underestimate how much you have given me, and others.” He kissed her, gently. “Thank you.”
“Always,” she answered, and pulled him to her, because she didn’t know what to do with her feelings. With the realization that he was right, and that he had been willing to show her that. To be vulnerable, to admit to having been incomplete without everything she and the Emperor and the Empire had made possible. That she had made possible, because… she had. Hadn’t she.
As his mouth sought hers, she murmured, “We are interrupting your nap.”
“Yes,” the Ambassador replied, amused, “We are. Unless my Queen has objections?”
She wound her legs around his hips, and linked her arms around his neck. “I… don’t think that I do.”
“Good. Then as consensus has been achieved—”
She started giggling.
“Let us disturb my rest a little longer.”
“Yes,” she said, beaming at him. “Welcome home, my lord.”