CHAPTER ONE

It was a piece of arrogance that saw him here. The Emperor leaned back in his chair, pressing the arch of his foot against the desk’s edge as he watched the stars streak through the window of the flagship’s stateroom. The sectors lining the Empire’s border with the Alliance belonged to the Lord of the Marchward Flight, a male who’d been staring spinward at the riches of the freaks for longer than the Emperor had sat astride the Thorn Throne. But was that male honest about his avarice? No. He’d waited for the court to show signs of dissatisfaction, and then reported that the sector furthest from the throneworld had become mysteriously subject to rebellion, one the Lord of the Marchward Flight said was being fomented by encroaching neighbors.

It was a ridiculous fiction, as thin as tissue, and no real male would have resorted to it. Had he been worth his horns, the Lord of the Marchward Flight would have taken the adjacent sectors himself long ago. Instead, he would wait for the Emperor to pacify them—by destroying their system navies—and then sail in on the Emperor’s vortices to annex them without a fight.

It was efficient, certainly. But it showed a pettiness of spirit that suited a male who had learned to make deals with pirates from the Lord of the Twelveworld. Both the Twelveworld Lord and Third evinced the same flawed mettle. That was what came of negotiating with lawless bandit freaks. To believe this was, the Emperor was almost entirely sure, a Chatcaavan thought, even if he knew the Ambassador would have agreed with it.

Despite the genesis of his current errand, however, it suited the Emperor’s purpose to be here. There would be no holding the Empire together if he did not show it a strong hand now, and for that he needed not only these demonstrations of power, but to replace the ministers he’d been forced to kill at the court with a team at least as qualified. Not difficult, in Third’s case, but incredibly so in Second’s. His prior Second had been a male of rare loyalty, competence, and experience, and the Emperor regretted the necessity that had driven them to their lethal duel. The only male he thought capable of assuming Second’s title was Command-East, who had served with him for years in the Navy.

Which was the problem. The court, composed as it was mostly of system lords, already despised the Emperor for rising out of the ranks of the Navy. Appointing another military male into the most coveted position in the administration was going to threaten the stability the Emperor had imposed on the court with his bloody execution of Second-that-was.

He’d warned Command-East when offering him the new title that he would see at least one attempt at a coup while the Emperor was gone. That was all he’d given his newest appointee… and it was more than he should have. There was no choosing a new Second without evaluating his ability to meet the role’s challenges. Traditionally such trials involved duels against the Emperor, or his chosen tools; most males who served in the role of Second would have come up through the court’s ranks over the course of years.

The Emperor thought leaving Command-East on the throneworld with a restive court that despised him would demand far more from him than any more traditional path. It would be a true test, not just of the male’s prowess with claw and teeth, but of his administrative and political acumen, his diplomacy, his discretion, his foresight. But they’d hunted together in the past, and there was a history there that deserved acknowledgment. One warning, then: that was all. If the Emperor returned to an obedient court, the Empire would have its new Second. If he didn’t… the male who’d been Command-East would have to die, if he hadn’t already been slain by their rivals.

The Emperor would never have left the Queen on the throneworld if he’d believed Command-East would fail. But the form had to be observed. So he was here, on a ship on his way to chase down the Lord of the Marchward Flight’s too-convenient rebellion, where he had to be, because change would never come to the Empire through edict and proclamation and law. It had to come, raging and screaming and bleeding, because they were Chatcaava, and they had been trapped in this one shape too long to remember how to break free of it.

He missed her. He allowed himself to think it, and then dismissed memory and longing.

He missed him, also. That he thought even less on.

The computer hissed, opened a channel. “Exalted?”

The Emperor sat up, wings stretching behind him for balance. “Yes?”

“We have arrived at Apex-East. Our ETA to Naval-East is four hours.”

“Understood.”

Four hours ride in-system, there to rendezvous with the fleet he would take with him to quash the Marchward Flight’s dissidents. The Emperor pushed himself upright and stalked to his chambers to prepare.

The bridges of most Chatcaavan vessels were cramped and narrow cones that recalled the cockpits of the fighters they preferred to fly. The flagship’s bridge was an exception. Its ship class, devoted to the strategic oversight of battles complicated by the carriers they accompanied, was almost entirely administrative, with space for sophisticated detection and imaging systems. Those systems were a-blaze with lights when the Emperor joined the Admiral-Offense at the back of the flagship’s bridge. Apex-East was the central hub for the entire eastern quadrant of the Empire—the most industrialized and developed quadrant—and its naval base was the oldest, largest, and busiest of the Chatcaava’s military installations. The mooring lights of hundreds of carriers glittered around the base like a caul of stars, occluded by the passage of asteroids in the belt where the station had been anchored. Mining vessels stitched seams of light between those asteroids and the manufacturing platforms and drydocks that proliferated near the base; and the single habitable world, while technically in the possession of a system lord, was functionally a naval stronghold after years of close relations with the base. The orbital station and moonbase there provided training and extra factory capacity, and the world itself served as an idyllic refuge for overworked officers in need of fresh food and a sky to fly in. The volume of traffic entering and leaving Apex-East was so dense it was overseen by an entirely separate network of platforms and stations.

This system was one of the Empire’s treasures, all the more gratifying because the Emperor himself had once been based here, had made many allies among its administrators and officers, knew them personally. Naval-East was the heart of the Navy, and the Navy had led the Emperor to the Thorn Throne. Even after he’d claimed the Emperor’s tower, he’d considered this place home. In some ways, he thought, it always would be.

“It’s good to see it, isn’t it?” the Admiral-Offense said.

The Emperor came to stand alongside him, refolding his armored wings and tucking them close despite the size of the room. Military habits died hard, like the males who learned them. “It remains the best of what we are.”

“We’ve identified ourselves, though of course they knew who we were the moment we came in-system. We’re expected.”

The Emperor said, “And our fleet?”

“Already assembled near our departure arc. We are rising that way now, in accordance with traffic control’s directives.”

“All the ships we expected?”

“Yes. Twenty-five carriers with supporting screens—not one of them missing.” Admiral-Offense grinned then, a humorless flare of teeth. “I see that more often now that I accompany the Emperor on his missions. I recall it being less of a certitude when we bore other titles.”

“There are advantages to being what we are,” the Emperor observed, amused.

“There are.” The other male shook back the neat club of his mane. “I admit I think back to the days when the fights were harder won, and miss them.”

“We would not be what we are if we didn’t.”

“No,” Admiral-Offense said. “I am getting old, though.”

The Emperor glanced at him, arch. The other male was only two decades the Emperor’s senior, still in his prime: fierce, with a heavy frame that lent itself to punishing tackles, and an axe-slope head associated with battle prowess. He still had almost all his horns, though his light gray hide was seamed with scars where it was visible above the collar of his Naval body-armor. He had not risen to the title that permitted him to command an Empire’s primary active fleet without a survivor’s spirit.

“You are surprised?” the other male said. He rolled his shoulders, wings flexing with a rustle that reminded the Emperor suddenly of his prior Second’s. “Well. So am I. I never expected to live this long.”

“And having lived this long, do you suddenly wish to continue?”

Admiral-Offense snorted. “Ridiculous question, Exalted. If I may be bold. The living do not, by nature, seek death. Say what you mean.”

“Which is?”

“You ask if I would avoid conflict to preserve my life,” the male said.

“Would you?”

“You know the answer to that.”

The Emperor smiled a little, eyes narrowed.

“You see? You wouldn’t be standing here if you didn’t.” The Admiral-Offense shook out his wings, making the light play down the force field projected by the armored arches over the wing-arms. “Sometimes I think you have been at court too long, Exalted.”

“I am what I must be,” the Emperor murmured.

“That also,” the Admiral-Offense said. “But a male grows complex who deals with courts and nations. You are what you must be, but I would not be you.” He canted his head. “Do you miss the simplicity of this life?”

The Emperor considered that. Then: “My life was never simple. Even when I was here.”

That reply earned him a chuff, and if it was humor, it was wry almost to irony. “Unmitigated truth.”

“You would not be standing here if I were otherwise,” the Emperor said.

“No.” This time, the male smiled. “You are what you must be. I am also.” He pointed toward the navigation tank with the end of his nose. “Three more hours.”

“So far?”

“It’s on our departing heading.”

“Ah,” the Emperor said. “Then the transit—”

“One week,” the Admiral-Offense said.

“And we can put paid to this and move on to the next task.”

“How many?” When the Emperor glanced at him, the older male said, “How many more such tasks?”

The Emperor snorted. “It is the Chatcaavan Empire. There is never an end to those particular tasks.”

A pause, then a laugh. “No. There is still more Navy in you than court.”

Or more alien. Inside me there is another me, now. A me that has the taste of you. “Three hours is not long. I’ll stay.”

“Very good, Exalted.”

One week in transit, the Emperor thought. A few days for the fight and the clean-up, if it was quick. It might be as much as a month before he returned this time. He wondered how Second would face his crisis, and what shape that crisis would take. He supposed he would learn soon enough; when he did, he would be glad for the memory of battle for contrast. Claiming a stool for a perch, he watched the beads of light move across the system map. The concentration of capital ships near the base suggested someone had brought one of the major fleets in for resupply. Coordinating the movements of those fleets was the province of the Logistics males, one of whom sat in the central office of each apex system, and Logistics-East had shouldered the greatest load of the four, thanks to the size of the Eastern base. The Emperor had never served in the administrative arm of the Navy, but he’d been close with several males who had, and he had a sense for the staff that was orchestrating the movements of all the disparate ships in the system.

That was the Empire: so many silent males, working in concert to achieve so much. And the court doing its best to tear it to pieces, so those pieces could be picked up by someone new in the name of ambition. In retrospect, his own ascension to the throne had been unusual for its lack of collateral damage, and his tenure as Emperor, even before the Ambassador had infected him with alien ideas, had resulted in more stability than the Empire had become accustomed to. Their history was littered with the reigns of males who’d fought wars—or fomented them—in order to keep their rivals too weak to threaten anyone. That strategy worked, but to the detriment of the Empire as a whole: to its ability to grow, innovate, thrive. One could not conquer a universe without a people united in their purpose, and Chatcaava who were too busy rebuilding their lives from the last catastrophic conflict inflicted on them by their masters did not have the fire for anything beyond protecting themselves and their families from further depredations.

This the Emperor knew intimately. His family, long ago, had been among those titleless masses.

Once he had an administration on the throneworld he could trust he could return to the real work. These diversions… they were irritating, and potentially dangerous. But he would put them to rest and then… then, the future. Such an interesting and promising future.

The image of the carriers swelled in the tank alongside the system navigation plot. The Emperor stretched his wings, feeling the force field on the vanes like the warm tickle of a touched battery, and slid off the stool.

“We’ve hailed them and been recognized,” the Admiral-Offense said. “We’re moving to the head of the line now so we can prepare for the transit.”

“Excellent.”

They were passing through the most heavily fortified system in the Empire, among allies: the flagship of the most powerful male, under the direction of the Navy’s foremost active duty admiral. Subsequently, they were not shielded from external Pad transits. Even so, the abrupt arrival of the males on the bridge did not alarm anyone.

Until the first male died.

Pandemonium erupted. Their attackers wore the same body armor, styled their hair in the same military queues, were in no way distinguishable from the defenders. And they killed half the bridge crew with their augmented claws before the Emperor leapt down into the sensor pit and shredded the first one. The Admiral-Offense lunged after him, and then there was only killing: blood-hot claws, streaked with gore to the gauntleted wrist, the stench of dying bodies spilt like broken sacks, the howls of challenge and shrieks of pain. It had been a long time since the Emperor had participated in a melee like this: surrounded on all sides and outnumbered three to one. It was glorious until it ended, and he realized the depth of his rage. Swiping his blood-drenched forelock from his eyes, he snarled, “Status!” as the Admiral-Offense added, “Shields! Now!”

Of the forty males who’d been on the bridge, only twelve remained, but one of them sprinted for his console with commendable alacrity.

“Shields are up,” the first male said as another slid onto his stool and reported, “There is fighting all over the vessel, sir.”

“Betrayed,” the Admiral-Offense hissed.

“The carriers are launching,” the first male reported, voice strained.

“Propulsion is faltering,” a third male said, reaching his station. “The engines appear to be compromised.”

“Appear?” the Admiral-Offense said dangerously.

“We have lost access to the engineering management systems, sir. We no longer have visibility into any of the engine alarms.”

The ship shuddered.

“Fighters are latching on,” the second male said. “Initial count is… fifty in the first wave.”

“Second wave incoming in four minutes,” the first male said.

The Admiral-Offense met the Emperor’s eyes.

“No,” the Emperor said.

“Yes. You must. They’ve come for you, Exalted. And if they are so determined to see you dead—and so convinced it would take this much to kill you—you must not be taken. And you will be taken if you stay here.”

The Emperor said nothing, teeth bared, too aware of his breath rasping in his own throat, the drip of blood and sweat off his body. Naval armor was thin so as not to impede speed. There were bruises developing under his already.

“Aarvu. Tenlen. Are you loyal males or honorless freaks?”

The first and second male straightened, their eyes wearing twin expressions of shock and indignation.

“Sir, we are Navy,” the first said.

“Good. Make sure the Emperor reaches the launch bay.” To the Emperor, the Admiral-Offense said, “I’ll fight this ship hard. We’ll get messages out; someone will come for you. It may be several weeks. Make for the planet—you can survive there longer.”

Forcing words out felt like vomiting. “You would have me flee.”

“You will go,” the Admiral-Offense said, voice low and hard. “If you are the Emperor I know. Because otherwise you will die here, and dead rulers do not avenge their huntbrothers.”

The ship quivered under them again. The third male said, “The second wave of fighters has debouched.”

One of the Emperor’s feet moved. Then the next. He stopped before the Admiral-Offense, fought past the ball of rage cramping his chest. “Good hunting.”

“Exalted.” The male inclined his head. Then to the two ratings behind him, “Make sure he gets off this ship, or die before telling me of your failure.”

“Yes, sir!”

They exited the bridge into a silence that lasted all of two breaths before the Admiral-Offense triggered the Repel Boarders alert and the corridor erupted with the wail of sirens.

After that, the Emperor remembered only fighting. The physical effort of it. The sheer number of enemies. The shock of being struck, striking. The glare of hateful eyes.

He remembered warding his flanks because he no longer trusted anyone to do it for him. His two attendants guarded him anyway.

He killed—he couldn’t recall. More than he had since reaching the throneworld. He took wounds. None of them felt as grievous as the ones dealt him by Second, dying in the duel. Not to the flesh.

To his spirit, given form and life by the Living Air…

Betrayed, something in him hissed, and he ignored it, except as fuel.

The launch bay was at the back of the flagship: a straight line down the central corridor, then down in the lift and out again. Did they expect him to flee? Possibly.

He did not go to the launch bay.

“Exalted,” one of his hangers-on said, panting. His wing hung crooked from the shoulder, the armor stripped from it: a bad injury to heal. The male would be weeks in a gel tank if he survived, which he wouldn’t. There was only one outcome to this engagement. “The Admiral-Offense….”

“Isn’t here.” The Emperor ripped out the throat of the male between him and his search. “I am. Follow me, or don’t.”

They did, into a corridor slimed with blood but emptied of its living combatants. The bodies here had long since grown stale but at last he found one wearing an active fighter relay. Crouching alongside the body, he tapped the device, felt the vibration of its response. All the lights were red: the fighter was whole, fueled, had not discharged its weapons load.

“Oh,” hissed the second male, eyes widening. “Yes!”

Said the first urgently, “Will it take you?”

The Emperor pried the relay off, turning it in his slick fingers. It made him notice that the joints ached from the pounding he’d been giving them. “We need a Pad.”

“This way,” the first said, and they ran. There were no guarantees this part of the ship would remain silent.

When they reached the Pad, the Emperor pressed the relay to the interface; again, the vibration. The tunnel opened.

“Exalted,” said the second male. “It has been an honor to fight at your side.”

“We will guard your retreat,” added the first, hearing noise approaching them.

Words still cut coming out, but at least they came. “Die well, and be received by the Living Air.”

The first male glanced at him, startled. The second lunged to meet the foe that burst into the room.

The Emperor snatched the relay back and leaped over the Pad.

Chatcaavan fighters were single-occupant craft, and on their carriers their pilots entered through a hatch in the belly. But such fighters were intended to harry their prey to the point of dropped shields, and then to commit their pilots to boarding actions staged via the single-person Pads in each vessel.

Those Pads could also receive their pilots when they needed to retreat.

The Emperor stepped into his stolen craft and lunged for the pilot capsule. Had no one seen him leave, he might have passed unnoticed… but the males who’d accompanied him off the bridge were about to die, and when they did their murderers would realize where the Emperor had gone. Grimly, he strapped himself in, fingers flying through the neural connection sequences, joining armor to frame, as if years had not passed since he’d last used one of these craft.

Old habits, he thought, shoving his claws into the interface, died hard. Like the traitors he was going to kill in swathes, long before this was over. He woke the fighter and twitched it toward the asteroid belt, eyes sweeping the navigational data. Twenty, forty, seventy… too many fighters to count. He had to hope most of their pilots were still on the ship, knew they wouldn’t be there long.

No use stealth. They knew he’d escaped. His only hope was speed… and cunning.

He was the Exalted Emperor. If they brought him to ground, he did not deserve to be.

Peeling from the flagship’s flank, he drove hard for the asteroids that barred the way to the Apex world. As the fighters behind him filled with their pilots, he sorted and discarded options. Hiding on the base—too perilous. He didn’t know how deeply the rot bit, and there was no civilian populace to lose himself in. Nor could he remain in space indefinitely in a craft this small. Fighters couldn’t use the Well, either, so he couldn’t leave the system. His chances of hacking the computer systems of one of the furthest platforms were remote: even if he managed, he’d be stranded there after revealing his location with the transmission.

The Admiral-Offense had been right. It was the planet or death.

The fighter seemed to shiver around him: the neural skein reporting a near hit. Someone was shooting at him. The muscles in his wing-arms tensed as they would have had he been beating his pinions and the fighter accelerated in response, tilted as he veered toward a confusion of broken rock. No more time for thought. He was a flier, born to a race of fliers, in a craft designed to answer his every twitch, but every male now chasing him was no less adept.

What had made the Emperor better when he’d been the Pilot had been his ability to do what he was about to do now.

The fighter slalomed around the rock and into a field of dozens of asteroids, all moving at different speeds, directions. Bad enough stitching a course through that without the ships that were changing course at the sight of him diving through them. He gave himself over entirely to reaction: to multiple vectors crisscrossing his field of view as he leaned into the harness and stooped and swerved through cones of threat. The fighter painted warnings on his sides and arms and chest as his pursuit shot at him, warnings that taxed muscles already wrenched or skin already bleeding or flesh already contused.

It didn’t matter: he was flying, enraged and focused, and it was glorious. He breathed hate with every suck of the air at his gaping mouth. Behind him he left a trail of collisions he didn’t bother to count because the count would never be high enough.

The Emperor burst free of the asteroid belt, riding a shard broken from a collision so close it reopened a wound along his arm from the tension of holding the fighter off of it. The energy flung him outward and he stole it to arc for the planet. There was time then for thought as the ball of amber and blue grew in the windows. He had six fighters on his tail still—for now—but only these six would be able to catch him. If he went for the wilderness, they’d find him immediately.

The world swelled, and the fighter trembled hard around him. He shed a fraction of his velocity, prepared for atmospheric insertion… and aimed for the capital. Night there: dawn was an hour away, but the countryside was dark. He checked his display, found his harriers on his tail but slower. What need to rush? They thought they had him. He grinned humorlessly, all teeth, and felt the altitude and speed on his skin through the skein, punishing but necessary. He had no need to watch meters when he could feel it with all the instincts of the race. That energy he could expend plotting a course.

“Fighter. Ejection routine on my mark. Then execute Flight Plan A. Confirm.”

“Ejection on your mark, followed by Flight Plan A. Acknowledged.”

A cloud flickering past. Another. Trees now. He closed his eyes briefly, feeling the simulated wind buffeting him. It would be nothing to the real one: ejection was brutal. They wouldn’t expect it of him.

“Now.”

The harness dropped from him and the emergency hatch blew open, thrust him through it. For a blinding moment, every ignored wound exploded into sharp relief at the force of his body meeting that wall of air. Even armored it was almost overwhelming… but this too, was old memory, and he let himself drop until he bled the momentum of the ejection, until the prevailing winds began to push against his tightly tucked wings. Only then did he spread them, catching the air, and surge toward the city lights. Behind him, the fighter veered off on its programmed path, heading toward the wilderness where it would crash with convincing energy, if his hunters did not shoot it down first. He had until then to find a place to hide in the city. Not all the bleeding wounds on his body could slow him now, knowing that he could come this far and still fail.

He had never failed yet.

Closer, the city came, closer still. He arrowed down toward its highest point, where the powerful kept their manors, mind racing. They would expect him to head for the country. When they discovered he’d tricked them, they’d assume he’d run for the poorer, more crowded parts of the city where he wouldn’t be recognized. The only place he could go, then, was here. He ran off his momentum, stumbled beside a high-walled garden, fell, scraping both knees. Staggering to his feet he ran, avoiding voices and shadows and cataloging the avenues and streets and endless walls obscuring the details of each estate. Expensive. Well-maintained. Featureless. No way to know who lived in which. And he was losing strength. He stopped at last and leaned on one of the walls, assessing himself. Battered and exhausted. Wounded, hopefully not seriously, but it was hard to think. If he could find a place to go to ground for long enough to patch himself up….

The suit. The suit had to be discarded. He stripped it off in quick jerks and the plumbing connections hurt less than the wing arches and the collar, near his throbbing head. He forced himself to glide, stumbling back to the ground and winging up again, toward his memory of a lake bordering the largest of the estates. He stayed there long enough to watch it sink before forcing himself back. It would be best not to be found at the estate by this lake, but reaching the wall he found himself incapable of continuing on. He paused to press his brow against it, panting, too aware of the air on his naked body.

Over the wall, he heard a female’s voice, speaking Universal, the sound distant, but clear in the dawn’s uncanny silence. The first few words he lost, unable to process them in the context of a Chatcaavan city in the apex-system where no alien tongue should be heard. Then clarity.

“…deliver us, O God, from every durance. Forgive us our despair and anger, and help us back to the path of righteousness where You await us in glory—”

The murmur of Chatcaavan voices then, from around the corner. The Emperor looked down the street and saw the lip of the rising sun shimmering between the buildings.

“And hear us, O God, when we call to You for deliverance, as all who suffer in slavery and exile do—”

He looked up, tensed with spread wings, and leaped, beating to the top of the wall. No force field to repulse him on the way over—a hunting manor, then. He scrabbled, lost his balance, fell. His landing was poor enough that he lost a heartbeat to it, stunned and breathless. Then he rolled off the shrub that had stabbed him with its thin, hard branches and scanned the enclosure. Typical apron of open grass, leading toward a walled garden, complete with plashing fountain and songbirds trapped by force fields. And kneeling in that verdure was a human female who was turning confused and then shocked eyes to him.

A human female.

Now you know me. Now a part of me is in you.

A way to hide.

He stumbled to his feet and sprinted for the garden, hoped the force field did not span the garden’s decorative fence. It didn’t, which allowed him to extend a hand through it as he fell to his knees and leaned on the cool metal. “Your pattern,” he said. “Please. May I learn it.” At her blank stare, he switched languages, hearing more voices now, from inside the manor. “Alet. If I take your hand I can learn your shape. Please. Let me.”

That silence lasted less than a heartbeat but the moment crystallized anyway, so that he had time to watch her jaw tense, her eyes widen a fraction, her chest lift and then freeze there as she held her breath. Then: “Yes.”

She rushed to the fence to take his offered hand. Not much time now, but he had to do it right, or they would know the pattern for a falsehood. The shape of her fingers: longer than he’d expected, warmer. Callused, but from what he couldn’t tell. The flutter of her pulse in her wrist. The color of her skin, dark beige, more familiar than the Ambassador’s pearl pallor. Her nails… blunt and colorless and kind. His brow sank toward her knuckles, touched them as she allowed him to pull her hand past the picket. He inhaled the essence of Human and on the outbreath Changed, and it was not the rapture of the process he’d learned in the safety of the palace, but an aching, grinding agony that shot off sparkles of pleasure that drowned before they bloomed. He coughed, as if he could expel the pain physically, and shed wings and shed scales and shed horns and shed, shed, shed, until he was bleeding against the fence and he could feel nothing, nothing through her skin. He felt blind and weak. When he opened his eyes, he saw the edge of his own knee and did not recognize it.

“My God,” the human whispered.

A short furred form appeared in the door leading into the manor. “Andrea! They’re com—what is that?”

“I’ll explain later,” she said. “Alet, can you stand?”

Could he? He must. He pushed himself away from the fence and managed his feet. Was human skin less sensitive than Eldritch? Or was he simply so battered and tired that his senses were dulled? He managed to lift his chin and focus his less acute eyes on the shadowed figures approaching through an arch in one of the towers: not the same egress that had produced the other Pelted slave, but a ground-floor door. A Chatcaavan emerged, a sleek ivory male wearing his dark brown mane in one of the Naval hairstyles, moving with the predatory confidence of someone with a title. The male behind him, silver with silver mane, had a demeanor that hurt the Emperor to perceive: he recognized its long-suffering patience from his prior Second’s personality. An older male, that one, and used to supporting someone he deemed worthy of it.

“So you were right,” the first male said. “The commotion reported on the skein had some basis in fact.”

“And the peacekeepers were right also,” the second said, raking the Emperor-disguised with narrowed green eyes. “When they said the commotion led here.”

“An escaped slave!” The first male ran contemplative fingers over his jaw. “Open the gate, before one of the stalkers follows that blood trail.”

The gate was not far from where the Emperor was leaning. He watched warily as the second male opened it. “Escape shouldn’t be possible. Not for a slave.”

“No.” The first went through the gate and reached for the Emperor. Despite himself he swayed backward to avoid the touch. “Well. She fears her betters, as she should, at least. And little wonder… are those scars? And not a few of them. You, Fancy. Where did this new alien come from?”

The human woman glanced at the Emperor, just a flick of gray eyes with her body rigidly immobile. Then, in badly accented Chatcaavan, “My-better. From the wall.”

“We can tell that ourselves,” the second male said brusquely. “She broke the bushes and left bloody streaks on the stone on the way down.”

Twice was not a mistake. They had called him female. Did they not know the differences between male and female aliens? Outrage made his headache worse, made all the open wounds seem to pulse in time with his pounding heart.

“Did the alien speak to you?” the first male said to the human, and there was no cruelty in the words. He spoke as if to one with poor understanding, though anyone with a shred of sight could see the intelligence in the human’s eyes.

“My-better…” She hesitated. Then: “This one thinks she heard the alien speak of Manufactory-East.”

“Did she!” The first male laughed, trailing to a hiss. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“If you believe the words of freaks,” the second said, frowning.

“Why not? We know how Manufactory-East treats his possessions, and this creature’s history is written all over her. Well. We shall keep his lost prize until the Worldlord says otherwise. If Manufactory-East comes back to reclaim her, we can tell him… the hunter who deals the last wound wins.” He leaned toward the Emperor. “Did you hear that, slave? You have lucked into a better master. Fancy, tell her since she doesn’t appear to understand a real language.”

The human woman met his eyes and said in quiet Universal, “The Worldlord is now your owner. By Chatcaavan standards, he is the best you can hope for.”

The furred male standing on the other side of the door flicked his ears back but said nothing.

“I’ll have her prepared then,” the second male was saying. “For when the Worldlord returns. Did he say?”

“A few days.” The first male eyed the Emperor, nodded. “She’s a little less ugly than most of the freaks. Not as gangly. What should we name her?”

Rage shot through him, warming limbs going cold. They could not be serious—

“Pretty?” the second male mused. “Or… Dainty. She has the limbs for it.”

“Dainty,” the first male said. “I like it.” He grinned. “A most excellent catch, this creature. I’ll enjoy having her here, where her presence can enrage Manufactory-East. But have her healed, Steward, and then beaten for fleeing her old house. Discipline must be exerted on these creatures. For form’s sake.”

“Of course.” To the human, the Steward said, “Tell her to follow. Advise her disobedience is unwise.”

The human murmured in Universal, “Do what he says. Their claws go through skin like knives through wet paper.”

“I know,” the Emperor answered in kind, low, trying not to seethe. They had not named him. They had not given him a harem name. A harem female’s name.

“Come, Dainty. Tell her that’s the name she must answer to now.”

They had.

Could the human sense his fury? Was that why she was looking at him so carefully? Or did she understand the insult dealt him, knowing that he was only pretending to human shape? He didn’t know. Only that her voice was neutral when she said, “Go with him. It won’t end well otherwise.”

He did not ask if they would heal him only to beat him again. Had not slaves been treated thus in his own harem? And if he had not personally tortured them, it had not been out of any moral conviction, but because he’d been too busy with the Navy, the court, and his occasional trips to the harem to care enough to overturn any existing policy on treatment of Pelted slaves. When he’d personally interacted with them, it had been to exercise his curiosity on them, and while his curiosity had not extended toward killing them for the sake of killing, he had not considered them people. They were wingless freaks. That was all.

They had named him Dainty.

His impression of the manor was broken by blank moments, where the fog in his head overcame his ability to concentrate. It was hard to walk, and the guards were not kind about correcting his stagger. He saw walls and couldn’t remember how they connected to later halls. He remembered the tiles under his feet because they were too cold on thin human skin. The cold; that he remembered too. The feel of warm blood seeping from open cuts, down his side… the places it stuck his clothes to his body and then tugged at the skin when they adhered.

He remembered going down, when what he wanted, desperately, was to go up.

They administered his physical in a room that looked like something out of a slaughterhouse: white tiled walls, featureless, with steel tables and a drain. A swift check with a diagnostic wand, which they also used to seal his cuts, and then he was handed over to a new male.

“Standard discipline,” said the Chatcaavan who’d done the exam. “Avoid the head for the next week.”

They took him to a different room. There were manacles in this one, and a collar. When the male seized his wrist, the Emperor bared his teeth and yanked it back.

Without even looking him in the face, the male lifted a hand and slapped him with it.

The Emperor had fought in humanoid shape before. Despite its slightness, this human form was more solid than his Eldritch one. He’d wrestled the Ambassador into submission, drawn blood with blunt nails, bitten and fought and won while shifted. But the Ambassador had been humanoid himself, not a dragon. The Emperor had never fought one of the Chatcaava this way.

The force of that blow staggered him, and the claws ripped his unarmored cheek open almost to the bone. The pain was shocking—the sense that his integument was so fragile it could lose this much blood from a single blow, appalling. He wobbled, put his hand to his bleeding face, and jerked away from the raw wrongness as his too-sensitive fingertips skidded on wet muscle.

The male ignored his reaction to take his wrist again and clamp the manacle on it. This time the Emperor didn’t fight him. He didn’t know how to fight him without some advantage that this situation could not possibly convey: a weapon. Surprise. An ally.

The second manacle. The third and fourth. He wondered when the collar would come. The whip came first.

Waking disoriented him. His back felt wrong: not enough weight, too much pain. The world scoured his skin and yet he learned nothing from it that wasn’t already in him. He hurt. Everywhere. He should have been in a gel tank; instead he was on some hard, short bunk that ground against his flesh even when he held perfectly still... and he couldn’t hold still, afflicted with this much pain. The noise he made as he tried to curl into a ball was involuntary: a groan he would have never uttered had he had the choice.

A touch then: cool, wet. A cloth along the side of his too short nose, under his eye. The skin there was tender. Felt bruised. The water seemed to draw heat out of it. He opened his eyes, found his vision subdued by the low lighting. But he knew it was the human woman. What had the second Pelted slave called her? The aliens felt differently about names. She would want to be called by her real name. Andrea. That was it.

“They let you off lightly.” The female’s voice was low, but not tense. No danger then, not in her judgment. “They say you have a concussion. That’s probably why.” Her fingers lit on his jaw, probed carefully. “I’m going to turn your face. Tell me if it hurts too much.”

He let her… turning his head hurt, but he wanted to feel the cloth.

“You did a good job,” she continued. “Your eyes are a little larger than a human adult’s are typically, but it’s subtle. The color’s a little too vibrant too, but enough of us enhance our appearances cosmetically that you could pass for someone who’s had an iris-film. Your skin’s lighter than mine, but that’s within human norm. For the best too, it makes the scarring less noticeable. I don’t want to know what you’ve been through to have so many scars. I think the only part you muffed was your frame. That’s why they thought you were female.”

His voice felt rusty and strange and too high-pitched, issuing from a narrower throat. “Surely they know better now.”

“They’ve stripped you, yes.” She was examining his eye. Not looking into it, but studying its corners, its lashes, the shape. “So they know you’re male. But that doesn’t really matter to them. You look feminine and you’re no one who could object to being mischaracterized. As far as they’re concerned, you’re Dainty, the girly freak.” Now her eyes met his. “Expect them to rape you at some point. Or to hand you out to be used by a guest.”

He couldn’t begin to grapple with that. Instead, he said, “Why are you helping me?”

“Put your head back down.” She dipped her cloth—he could hear the water in the bowl, though he couldn’t see it—and brought it back to his face to clean his lips. He hadn’t realized there was blood on them until she started softening the crust at their corners. “I wouldn’t have. I have no reason to, as you apparently know. That’s novel enough, since most of your kind… it doesn’t occur to you to think we might hate captivity. But… you spoke Universal to me.” She lifted her gray eyes. “You said ‘please’. You asked.”

He didn’t need clarification. He knew very well why that would have made him unique among Chatcaava. “Where am I?”

“This is the manor of the Apex world’s lord,” she said, stopping to squint at a slice on the edge of his jaw. “Do you know anything about this system?” His cautious nod arrested her, and her brows lifted. “Did you get that with the shapechange? The gesture?”

Memory intruded, poisoned by rage and shock. “No. I learned it from someone.”

She waited, then shook her head and continued. “Well. Manufactory-East, who’s in charge of the moonbase, is the Navy’s fast ally. The Worldlord doesn’t like him much. Deputy-East, who you’ve met now—he’s the brunet with the ponytail—is friends with the Worldlord, though Deputy-East is also supposed to be a Naval ally. He’s in charge of the solar system. He and the Worldlord are always bickering with Manufactory-East about resources.”

An image of the system flashed through his mind, emblazoned with the thousands of beads of Chatcaavan warships. “They don’t win.”

She canted her head. “Not often, no.” Quieter, she said, “Who are you? Why are you running?”

What to say? What would speech avail? She couldn’t help him and could betray him. It surprised him to realize he didn’t expect her to do so intentionally, but her intentions wouldn’t matter. They could torture her, and he knew now about human flesh and Chatcaavan talons.

“I am the Survivor,” he said. “And that is all that I intend right now.”

“I hope that’s the only thing you ever intend,” the human said. “Because that’s the only thing you’ll achieve. There’s no escaping the Chatcaava.” She paused. “Unless you can shift again and go somewhere else?”

How long before the Admiral-Offense’s messages reached someone who could come? How would they contact him once they arrived? What possible allies could he make here in the stronghold of his traitorous enemies? The Worldlord might not like the Naval functionaries who fought him for money and power, but the Emperor knew better than to think they wouldn’t all turn on him if they knew his identity. The human had been right to characterize their interaction as bickering. It was the squabbling of brethren who would unite in a moment to savage an external foe. And they had surely thrown their lot in with his betrayers. To find the Emperor in their midst?

He would survive long enough to be delivered to whomever had spearheaded this travesty. His life wouldn’t be worth a spent shell beyond that.

“I thought so,” the human murmured. And quieter still, “I’m sorry.”

Lying there, battered and vulnerable, he felt the words as blows.