Princess of the Void ch 69 - Emergency

Hroq practically sprints into the emergency emigrant station. He’s ready for a milling crowd, ready to throw elbows, but the path up to the line of clerks is clear.

“Flights out. We need one.” He finishes his run at the lip of a clerk’s desk. “I don’t know if the public ones are back or what but if we gotta do private I can pay.” He slaps a wad of cash onto the desk.

She was just staring into the air as he was approaching. Now she looks startled down at his desperate bribe. “Sir—”

“I can.” Hroq pushes it forward. “I don’t have it all upfront, but we could do installments.”

“Sir, we’re not doing any evacuations. We—”

“By Eqt’s fucking tits," Hroq barks. Rubberneckers turn to look at him. Why is everyone just standing there? “My family is in the sledge outside, and we’re not turning back, and we need to get off this planet, do you understand?”

“Sir. Turn on a goddamn aerial.” The clerk scrambles for the remote, points it at the curved screen above the line of desks, and unmutes.

Hroq’s vision follows the motion. And he realizes with a lance of self-consciousness that he is looking now at what everyone else was watching. He sees a High Councilor—Qilik, maybe?—standing at Highhall’s gray altar, her face solemn and downcast to the declaration laid out in front of her. She’s paused momentarily in whatever address she’s giving. A slow, pathos-laden march plays in the gap.

“Been looping for a half-turning, man,” the clerk says, as Qilik’s echoing voice resumes. “There’s nothing to run from. It’s over.”

Hroq’s legs tremble and threaten to give out. He catches himself on the marble desktop. “How?”

The clerk nods toward the screen and turns the volume up.

“To that end,” Qilik is saying. “The Council of Two Hundred and the Ecclesiarchy of Eqt have jointly passed an emergency resolution of surrender.” Her eyes raise to the camera. “We affirm our status as citizens of the Taiikari Empire.”

***

Vora turns to the last page of the document and drops it onto the hexagonal command deck table. “It’s going to need quite a lot of hammering,” she says. “Enough that I recommend a complete rewrite issued from our offices. But it’s a start. The surrender is ratified.”

“Fuck me sideways,” Waian says. “A song did that.”

“A rapid uptick in evacuation attempts, which was quickly leading to the erosion of the public will, did that,” Hyax says. “The hardliners and militants were counting on either our blinking, or a mass casualty event, in order to strengthen their claim. When those failed to materialize, there were enough factional defections to the appeasement movement that they called an emergency resolution vote and passed a temporary agreement.”

“A temporary agreement.” Sykora, who’s changed back into uniform and taken an unabashed seat in Grant’s lap, signs scare brackets around it. “We’ll let them save face. It’s finished. Once they sit down at the table, they’re not standing until we have it.”

“So that’s really that.” Grant reaches past Sykora to the printed and punched statement. “An unconditional surrender.”

“Correction, Majesty.” Vora wags her highlighter at him. “An extremely conditional one. That’s what they’ve earned, submitting before the desolation. Taiqan lives, and the Eqtorans enter as fully naturalized vassals. As perfect a success as we could hope for.”

A bang from the other side of the table. Hyax has produced—from where, Grant isn’t sure—the sizable jug of Indrikan cider, and slapped it down onto the table. “Majesties,” she says. “By your leave.”

Waian scoots past her and starts sliding steins across the tabletop. She two-hands a big Maekyonite-sized one to Grant.

Sykora holds her glass out. “Granted, Brigadier.”

Hyax fills it to the foaming brim and moves on to Grant.

He laughs as she pours deep enough it overflows onto his fingers. “You don’t have to go that hard, Hyax.”

“Yes I do.” Hyax sloshes the cider. “We’re killing this jug tonight.”

“Brigadier’s gotta kill something,” Waian says.

“Up yours, Chief Engineer.” Hyax strides back to her chair but remains standing. She raises her glass. “To the Princess and Prince of the Black Pike. The best fucking ZKZ in the Empire. Pike’s up.”

The command group raise their steins. “Pike’s up,” they chorus, and drink deep.

Grant hums with surprise as the cider touches his lips. This tastes alcoholic, in a way no other Taiikari drink has managed. He clacks his stein back onto the table, next to Sykora’s; she’s drained a full third of hers.

“Gods of the Firmament.” The Princess wipes her mouth. “I forgot how hard this kicks. We are going to need help with this.”

“The omnidivine mother-effing provides, sister.” Tymar is waltzing from the lift, another full carafe of the stuff in his hand. “I’m just glad I didn’t open this one yet.”

Lady Ipqen-mek-Taqa is in tow. She raises a blunt thumb and forefinger to her eye in Eqtoran greeing. “Howdy,” she says. “Heard this is where we’re getting drunk.”

The command group makes room for their guests around the table, and fall in and chatter and drink and propose an unending round robin of toasts.

“To Vora,” Sykora says. “Who actually did her job while the rest of us faffed about and put on a concert.”

“To me,” Waian says. “For my excellent fucking membrane maintenance.”

“To Waian,” Vora says. “For her boundless humility.”

“To the bridge crew,” Hyax says. “And the clean hands we’ve given them.”

“To the ecclesiasts of Eqtora,” Tymar says. “For their prudence and their coming siblinghood in the temple of the omnidivine.”

“To Lady Ipqen,” Grant says. “For everything she’s put herself through.”

“To my big hunky husband for his sexy guitar fingers.”

“To me again because I just remembered how crystal-clear that broadcast was.”

“To the broadcast crew for whom Waian is taking the credit.”

“To Brother Tymar and the monks of Indrik for this astonishing cider.”

“To Hyax for being just such a cool bitch. I love you, Hyax.”

“Can I do one?” Ipqen holds her stein up. The command group watches expectantly.

“To the Republic,” Ipqen says. “May it be remembered.”

They pause momentarily.

“To the Republic,” Sykora says.

They echo her, and drink.

Ipqen sits back down gingerly in her undersized seat. “It was nice while it lasted.”

“Didn’t you listen to Her Majesty’s little song, Lady Ipqen?” Hyax clacks her stein against Ipqen’s, which takes quite the reach on her part. “Nothing ends.”

***

Grant and Sykora jog giggling from the party, back to their cabin. Or—Grant does, anyway. He’s carrying Sykora over his shoulder.

The door slides shut and they’re safely cocooned again in the draping silks of the Princess’s suite. Grant tosses Sykora onto their bed.

She pokes her head out from the pile of pillows he’s flung her into. “Your aim,” she proclaims. “Is getting better.”

“I’m a conqueror.” He strikes a martial statue pose. “I have to have good aim. For conquering purposes.”

“My big sexy badass handsome conquering sexy Prince.” She’s tugging her pants off. “C’mere and conquer me.”

“Hey, okay.” Grant rolls into bed.

Midway into their kiss, Sykora pauses and drums his shoulders. “Oh. Oh oh wait. Dove. I was—I had to say something.”

Grant lets her up and tries to look very attentive as he slowly unzips her uniform.

“Hyax told me she told you,” Sykora says. “About the incidents with the, uh—the explosions.”

“Ooh. Yes. She did.”

“I just want you to know.” Her bare foot rubs his knee. “I wouldn’t have shot them if there had been any other way. I tried very hard to imagine you there and trying to find another solution with me. But it came down to the attackers or the evacuees.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “I trust you.”

“And I would have informed you. Truly, I would have. But we hadn’t the time and I knew you were busy and I didn’t want you thinking about all the shit going on outside the post. I wanted to handle business.”

He kisses her neck. “It’s really okay. I mean, we had our own incident at the listening post, and I kept that to my chest for basically the same reason.”

“You—” Sykora’s limbs stiffen. “What?”

Grant’s fingers curl into the bedsheets beside her. He looks up. A destabilizing pit opens in his gut. You dumbass. This was a sober conversation.

“Uh. Yeah.”

Her face is frozen in consternation. “What incident?”

And Grant props himself up and back, and tells her about the Rivenland, and the danger, and the interception. Sykora’s face grows darker and more pinched with every sentence. Grant’s happy buzz is draining away into something miasmatic and suffocating.

“You flew the ship?” she asks, when he’s finished.

“Yeah.”

“Into gunfire?”

“We were okay.”

“They all just let you do that?”

This gets him sitting further up. “Let me? I ordered them to. I can do orders.”

“And you kept it from me?”

“Yeah. I mean—yeah.” He tries to will himself sober again. “You’d have fallen apart, Sykora.”

“Am I so fragile?”

“Well—” He thinks of the notebook with his name doodled in it. “Yeah, hon. Sort of.”

Her eyes narrow.

“Not fragile, I guess,” he says. “And not now. But you were having a low time, and I was afraid that if you thought I was in danger you’d do something rash. And I handled it.” He lets that straighten his shoulders. “I handled it, yeah? Ajax and I captured a cruiser and its crew alive.”

“Give me a moment.” She sits up and climbs out of bed. “I’m going to take a short walk.”

“Sykora.”

She tugs her boots on. “I’ll be back.”

“Sykora,” he says. “I understood when you—”

“Grantyde.” Her eyes dilate; he sees the first simmering sparkle of a compulsion that she snaps her lids shut over. “I’ll talk about it in a moment. I just need a moment.”

The cabin door slides open and Sykora strides out, buckling her belt.

Grant lets out a frustrated gust of air. He flops back into bed.

His first impulse is to be ashamed. Then a font of righteous, inebriated indignation bubbles over and past it. She did the same thing, he thinks. Only I stealth-saved my secret, and she stealth-killed hers.

Those differences between them, how oppositely their scales weigh lives and loyalties. He knows they’re not alike, him and his wife. Normally he’s all right with it. Welcomes it, even. Right now it prickles. This bed, round and recessed into the floor. It disquiets him. It doesn’t feel right.

This is their first fight, he guesses. He’s drunk for their first fight.

Well—their first fight that isn’t about his freedom.

Which she begged for, from the most terrifying person in the firmament.

He sighs. He knows how she feels about things being kept from her. Knew it when he was making the decision, even. And he’d make the same decision again, he would, but that doesn’t mean he can’t apologize. When she comes back in he ought to. Or not apologize (these goddamn Taiikari and their aversion to sorry) but find some way of recompense.

A rustling sound. A wispy brush on his shoulder. Is that Sykora? He didn’t even hear her come in. He turns; there’s no one there.

“Hi,” Sykora whispers into his ear.

“Baby?” He looks at the curvaceous hump in the covers where her legs aren’t. “Where’s your uniform?”

A silky giggle in reply.

He rolls over and puts his arms around his wife; she flows like water out of his grasp. The covers spill off her. The shift of the bedspread and the source of her voice move over to his other side. “You want to see a Princess Trick, Grantyde?”

Intermingling drunken waves of relief and desire wipe the last of his trepidation away. He reaches toward her voice. “You’ve tried this one before, Princess. Can’t trick me.” He closes his hand around her tail. “I know where this is.”

He gives it a tug, summoning a gasping giggle of “Grant,” from thin air. Her butt lands in the crook of his arm.

“I know where this is, too.” He pokes her bellybutton and makes her squeak. “And this—this one’s tricky but I think it’s right—here.” His thumb brushes the firm bud of her nipple. Her air-chilled skin makes a velvety rasp against his as she squirms in his embrace.

“And I bet anything that these—” He reaches up. A breathy moan from Sykora; his hands have found her horns. He grins. “Are out.”

She huffs. “What do you expect? A big insufferable Maekyonite poking and pulling and—”

Another squeak as Grant’s leg comes up between hers and boosts her into his lap.

His touch slides down his wife’s horns into her downy hair. He cups her face.

“Even when I don’t see you, I see you,” he whispers, and he feels her hot, cider-sweetened breath against his face, and he finds her lips. When your eyes are closed, kissing an invisible woman is all the same.

“I was—I was going to—” Sykora cuts herself off with a melting moan as he nuzzles into her neck. “I had a whole thing, Grantyde. Nura has an entire textbook on invisible seduction.”

“Yeah?” The anger is gone, gone completely. The aggression is still there, but it’s kindled into something else, a familiar and welcome heat that closes his hands tight around her petite waist. “What were you gonna do?”

“I—” Her breath falters as his hands travel downward along her warming body. “Oh, who gives a shit.” An unseen tail wraps around his neck and yanks him on top of her.

He traces her contours, mapping her by touch. The slim, sinuous limbs. The ripples of her abdomen, muscle sliding beneath the skin as her body takes its fill of his. The soft, indulgent squish. The racing heart beneath it. The quivering lower lip, the mouth that plants urgent kisses against his fingers. His boxer briefs slide down his legs seemingly of their own accord. He kicks them the rest of the way off and anchors his grip on the curve where invisible legs meet invisible hips. He caresses the smooth interplay between firm bone and supple thigh. His thumbs slip along the inner tendons of her legs as he opens them wide and seats himself between them.

Tiny unseen fingers guide him to the soft edge of a throbbing, hungry heat. “Okay, Mr. Maekyonite.” His wife’s purring voice, inflected with a translucent smile: “Are you ready for the Princess Trick?”

Invisible ankles wrap around the small of his back, and pull.

His cock disappears.

A sharp inhale, a shaky moan, and then Sykora sings: “Ta-daaah!”

***

They lie together, in the soft saffron light from Taiqan’s surface. The world hanging before their cabin’s broad window like a vast golden coin. Grant admires the cool blue of his wife’s skin in the pockets of shadow his body makes on hers.

“I take it you’re not angry,” he says.

“I was.” Her tail’s dark paintbrush tuft traces figure eights on his thigh. “I was quite angry. I took a walk, and I took a few breaths, and got a tad more sober. And you’re right.” She sighs. “I would have fallen apart if you’d told me. I’d have had a nervous breakdown on the damn command deck at the thought I’d put you in danger. And you did handle it. That’s what royals do.”

“I should have told you.”

“We just saved a fucking civilization,” she says. “And we were about to bicker about a communicator call. And I…” she burps. “Hellfire. I am rather drunk.”

He laughs under his breath. “When you put it like that…”

“It was my call that exposed you in the first place. And I was about to be quite a hypocrite. You’re not angry, are you?”

“I was getting ready to be.” He reaches out and finds an invisible shoulder. “Now I guess I’m not.”

“Me neither,” she says. “I, um. I am working on my temper. I have sworn to myself that before I unleash it on you, I’ll give my stupid brain a chance to vent it out.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“Yes I am. I—Grant ohmygod put me down”

“No way.” Grant hoists her higher and curls her legs up in his arms to halt her erratic kicking. “You insulted my wife.”

“I will bite you.”

“Say you’re a genius and I’ll let you go.”

“I’m a genius.” Her tail wraps around the nape of his neck. “Release me, Maekyonite.”

“Changed my mind.” He flops backward and holds her in place against his chest. “Go ahead and bite me.”

She nips his shoulder.

He grunts, more out of surprise than any actual pain, and chuckles. “You little gremlin.”

Her tail wags. Her fangs rest lightly against his chest. “Yu toldmi tu,” she says, in stilted English.

He rubs his shoulder and feels a few flecks of damp under his hand. He jolts momentarily—is that blood?—but when he brings it to his face, it’s clear and shiny. “What’s this?”

“Oh Hellfire.” She sits up and wipes her palm across his chest, where a little more of the sweet-scented stuff sits. “That’s the, uh… nectar. If you get excited enough, you can accidentally, um. Sprinkle some.”

“For real?” His lips curl up. “Nectar like for the breeding bite?”

“Not enough to do anything. Even if I’d broken the skin.” Her blush deepens. “I wonder if perhaps we could talk about something else. Or stop talking altogether, even.”

“Mmm.” He wipes the rest of the nectar on the bed and rolls her over into little-spoon position. “Okay.”

They watch the world hover out their window. There’s a line of pinprick lights from the Eqtoran ships bringing their people home again.

“What they were about to do,” Grant murmurs. “Burn in defiance, I mean. There’s a piece of me that gets it.”

“Is there?”

He nods into her hair. “This nagging little Maekyonite piece of me. It thinks the moral, ethical thing—the only thing that would make me righteous—would be to die fighting the Empire.”

She draws his arms over her shoulders.

“But I’m not going to do that,” he continues. “Because I want to live. I love my life too much. I love you way too much. I love these abs.” He cups her stomach. “And the little noise you make when I kiss them. I love how gentle you are with me. I love the shit that you let me get away with, that you’re willing to try. I love that I can see the kindness in you, even through all the Imperial decrees and the bomb in your head and the planet-killing warship and the cold face you show the firmament. I can’t see you as the enemy. I could never. I think you’re the best fucking person I’ve ever met, and it’s insane to me that you love me back as much as you do.”

“It makes perfect sense to me.” She kisses his wrist.

“So,” he says. “In conclusion. I’m not going to fight.”

“Next time you want to squeeze me into a costume as ridiculous as that fishy goddess one, you’re going to have to.” She twists around. “I’ll claw your face off.”

“That’s a shame.” He plays with her fingers where they interlace with his. “I have a lot of costume ideas I’d love to see you in.”

“Oh.” Her horns twitch. “Uh. I mean—we could negotiate. You’re good at negotiating.”

He pokes her little stomach. “You’re good at negotiating.”

“You’re good.”

“You’re good.”

“You’re fucking great.” She flops her thigh over him. “You fucking—your guitar tamed a fucking solar system, Grantyde.”

His vision unfocuses and turns Taiqan into a bokeh smear. “Yeah. I guess it did.”

“You should be so proud.” She plays with his hair. “You are proud, right?”

“I am. I just—” He tries to find the words as his mind comes sloping gradually down from its drunkenness and high emotion. “I mean of course it doesn’t bother me. Not considering what the alternative would have been.”

Outside their window, a sliver of moon has begun to rise from the rim of the world. Soon the sigil of the Pike will be visible on its surface.

“I can’t help but feel, though,” he says. “Their myths. Their songs. We took advantage of them.”

She shakes her head. “I disagree, dove.”

“You don’t think that’s what did it, in the end?”

“That’s not what I disagree with,” she says. “I disagree it was a myth.”

His brows knit.

“The Eqtoran legend spoke of an angelic being,” she says. “That would descend from the heavens in their darkest hour. To bring songs of salvation, and deliver the children of Eqt from war and cataclysm.”

Her nose rubs his.

“I was the one in the costume,” she whispers. “But isn’t that exactly what you did?”

----

One last chapter left in Volume III. Call it a lil' epilogue.