Princess of the Void ch 47 - Bow

This is the first bit of a chapter that stretched long enough it's becoming two chapters. There's gonna be a lot of shuffling in this part, I think. Ch 48 will probably be arriving later today.

I'd also like to take a moment to let all my new members know that these are uncorrected first drafts. You can call mistakes out in the comments--I'm grateful for it!--but I post these things before proofreading them thoroughly, and there will be changes and expansions as they're posted to Scribblehub which won't necessarily be reflected on the patreon's drafts. The epubs I put up I will strive to keep finalized, however.

The Prince and Princess of the Pike follow Ipqen onto a cavernous, violet-tinted deck, its electric sky circumnavigated by the electric green glow of an aurora borealis.

This glimmering skybox shines on a clutch of domed buildings in wood and elegantly curved steel. Each puts Grant in mind of a yurt—a cylinder topped by a vaulting ceiling with an oblong chimney sticking from it, like the bulb of an onion. Wood smoke rises from some of them; the whirring roar of ceiling-mounted vent fans presses against Grant’s eardrums.

Ipqen crouches and holds her arms open for a petite Eqtoran dressed in a flowing, colorful poncho, who comes running, her feet tapping across the metal floor. Judging by her stature, this must be Grant’s first ymeq. Her crest is a shade of cerulean close to his wife’s skin, and much longer than Ipqen’s. It flows behind her like waist-length hair. “Nueq’tqe Muetkqe, Ipqen,” she cries.

“Shhh.” Ipqen rubs the back of the petite Eqtoran’s head. “Ruaq. Hey, girly.” She looks to the translator. “Tell her we can’t talk yet. Brain’s still cooking.”

Ruaq’s face crumples as the translator speaks.

She says something. The translator holds up a finger and whispers with Sykora for a moment before answering.

Ipqen watches the Taiikari with stoic resignation. “How is she?”

“She’s well,” the translator says. “I’ve told her we’re going to get you a translation device. We just need to ensure your language pathways are baked in and our linguists have finalized the protocols.”

“They’re close, thanks to you,” Sykora says. “And then you won’t need an intermediary any longer.”

“She doesn’t look happy about it,” Ipqen says.

The translator dithers. Sykora doesn’t. “It’s not coming back on its own,” she says. “She didn’t know that.”

“Tell her I knew, before I did it,” Ipqen says. “That I did it for her and for everyone else. And that I—hold on. I’m risking the tangling.”

“Oh, dear.” Administrator Oorta flinches forward. “You really ought not to.”

“Sorry,” Ipqen says, and Oorta flinches again. The big Eqtoran pulls Ruaq into a hug, and murmurs something to her. Ruaq shuts her eyes, nods, and holds Ipqen’s linebacker shoulders tight. Then she backs away.

Ipqen stands up. She fishes out a pair of earplugs and pops them into her blunt ears. “See? I’m wearing the earplugs, now, even. We’re all goozbklaingk.”

Oorta’s eyes widen.

Ipqen laughs. “Just fucking with you, ma’am. C’mon.” She jerks her head toward the largest of the domed buildings, which is decorated with red-and-white geometries along its curved walls. “I’ll show you the meetinghouse.”

Ruaq watches them as they depart. She’s trying not to cry, with mixed success.

They move through the sliding-slat door into the meetinghouse. The brisk chill of the outside is replaced with the force of a shoulder tackle by dry, pine-scented warmth. A sizable fire sits in the round room’s center, penned in by hand-tooled stone. Shadows are thrown out from their feet to undulate across the walls. A half dozen Eqtorans are gathered, in various states of repose and conversation, around the firepit. One of them is playing some kind of five-stringed instrument, plugged into a compact amp that his thick-socked foot rests on.

The assembly looks to the visitors. They see Ipqen. In near-simultaneousness, they make some kind of greeting gesture—thumb and middle finger curled in and pressed to their eyes like a monocle. Ipqen makes it back.

She takes the group around the circle, introducing each of the Eqtorans in turn as they stare warily at their Taiikari captors.

“Here’s Puque. She worked at a fishery. She’s got a good attitude about this whole thing, on account of it’s not her dayjob, and we’ve been promised a stipend.”

That’s Uqan over there. Veteran artilleryman. Tough piece, that guy. I can’t understand anyone anymore, but at least I’m not half deaf.”

“This is Tektnal. He’s a nurse from Hearth, does pediatrics.”

Sykora raises a hand. “Hearth?”

“It’s what the translator is turning Eqtora into, Majesty,” the administrator says. “That’s where the name comes from.”

As Ipqen exchanges one of those forearm bump things with Tektnal, a rumbling cry breaks over the roar of the fire.

“Tamuraq!”

The word’s bellowed by a scarred male, his face pierced and dotted with runic tattoos. “Tamuraq,” he repeats, lower and flatter, like a curse. He points one stubby finger directly at Grant. This is followed by a stutterstep flow of syllables, with those cracks and glottal stops that turn Eqtoran into such a percussive beatbox of a language.

The translator tries in vain to placate the old man; Ajax steps forward, hand resting on the stock of his rifle, and that’s enough to get him quiet again.

“What was he saying?” Grant asks.

“Old superstitious talk,” Ipqen says. “Apocalypse myths and such. Pay it no mind, fella. Uqan there’s just a surly one, that’s all.”

They depart the meetinghouse, back into the chill of the village center. Grant looks back at Uqan, who’s standing silhouetted in front of the fire. The edges of his body wave indistinctly in front of its light and heat.

His sunken, glaring eyes glint off the artificial sky as the meetinghouse door closes.

***

“If you ask me, she was catastrophizing.” Sykora nudges Grant’s arm as they dismount from the shuttle. “Those people looked more than reasonable to me.”

“Hope you’re right.” Grant nervously sidesteps a pair of stardock workers, who take a moment from their jogging conveyance of an exo hose to bow low to him. Word must be spreading about Sykora’s intention to make him a full-fledged Prince. The bows are inescapable now.

Sykora’s tail brushes his leg. She’s watching him close, a concerned look on her face. “Do you need an ear, dove? Is it about the Eqtorans?”

“No. Not really.” Grant looks to the rest of the command group, who are holding murmured conversation as the party relocates to the deck for their debrief. “Can I—is there any way I could steal a moment somewhere private?”

“Of course.” Sykora turns to the assembly. “Get set up on the deck without me, everyone. Grantyde and I will be along shortly.”

They bow. More bowing. Grant’s fingers itch.

He and Sykora find a pocket of quiet in the hubbub, in an unoccupied muster room off the hangar level hallway. She locks the door with her tail and hops up on the hexagonal dais in the room’s center so they’re eye to eye. She pats her leg. “Come here.”

He walks over and leans into his wife’s furnace chest. She scratches the top of his head. “Take as long as you need in here, yes?” she murmurs. “It’s been a long, troublesome day.”

“Okay.” Grant breathes her in, and lets it suffuse him. He didn’t realize the tight fist of anxiety in his chest until the warm scent of the Princess, her perfume and her sweet sweat intermingled, begins to unclench it.

She plays with his hair. “This is getting a little shaggy, you know,” she says. “Do you want a hair cut?”

“Do you think I should?”

She shakes her head. “However long you want it, you can have it. No navy regulations for royalty.”

“Do you like it long?”

“I like it however you like it. But I do sort of miss the prickly sides.” She scritches behind his ear and gets a grin out of him. “I forget sometimes you don’t purr.”

He imitates her throaty cat noise and makes her giggle.

“Talk to me, dove,” she says. “Tell me what’s getting to you. If you don’t mind.”

Grant hesitates. But if she can tell there’s something on his mind, he can’t lie to her. “I don’t like the bowing,” he says. “Is there any way we could get people to cut back on that, when it comes to me?”

“Ah. Yes.” Sykora sighs. “I had intended to have this conversation with you. I really hate to upset you, but the bowing is required. I wish it wasn’t.”

“What, always?”

“Always,” Sykora says. “Yes. It was all right when you were a Prince Consort, Grantyde. But you’re royalty now. Officially. For the Navy enlisted, a salute is permissible, but for everyone else, the bow is compulsory. Especially aboard a ZKZ. If they neglect to, you’re within your rights to throw them in the brig.”

“I’d never do that.”

“I wouldn’t either, dove. And I’d never expect you to, in the unlikely situation they forget or refuse. But you cannot discourage it. You need to practice the way you receive a bow. You can’t keep asking people not to, or making that face when they do it.”

“What face?”

“That uncomfortable face.”

“Well—It makes me uncomfortable.”

“I know it does. You’ll get used to it, I promise. Until then, you need to pretend. It’s necessary, Grantyde.”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“If not for you, dove, do it for them,” Sykora says. “This might be foreign to you, from what you told me about Maekyonite behavior. But these people are a full sector away from safety and family. They want someone in command of them. Someone who has a plan to keep them safe, who has a use for them. They want a ruler who will recognize their love, accept it, and reward it.”

“Like you and the Empress.”

“Yes,” she says. “And, in a way, like me and you, Grantyde.” Her hand finds his, and binds around his fingers. “When I give myself over to your strength, and I know you won’t hurt me. That is the faith in submission that my kind looks for our entire lives. It’s the way a Taiikari feels safe.”

He strokes the webbing of her thumb.

“I could give a shit about the bow, honestly, from people whose loyalty I already trust,” she continues. “It is annoying, sometimes, watching everyone dip like a rocking fountain before you can hold a conversation with them. But you have to witness it and give it your approval. It’s part of the job. Make them feel as though you have seen their fidelity, felt it. Do you value them? Are you grateful for their loyalty to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then let them show it,” she says. “Let them bow to you, dove, and hold your head high when they do. Please. I know it makes you feel strange. But accept it with grace. Accept the burden they place on you. Don’t act as though you don’t deserve it. That won’t comfort them. It’ll dismay them.”

“It feels so artificial. I hate to feel that I’m at a remove from them.”

She hums a sympathetic noise. “But you are at a remove from them, Grant. They need you to be. You can be their friend. I’m glad you want to be. But they won’t forget what you are, or what their duty is to you. You can’t forget it, either.” She taps his chest. “You can express your humbleness in other ways, once they’re more comfortable around you. Just not with the bow. The bow is important. You can’t spurn it. This discomfort you feel is the tradeoff for the life they allow us to live. The luxury. This is our side of the deal.”

He sighs. “Okay. I’ll adjust. It just seems like a lonely way to live.”

“It was.” She nuzzles her cheek against his knuckles. “It was so lonely I cried myself to sleep, sometimes. But that was before us.”

She guides his hand to her mouth and kisses each of his fingerpads as she speaks.

“I won’t bow to you.” His pinky. “And you won’t bow to me.” His ring finger. “And we’ll be equal.” Middle finger. “Truly and always.” Pointer. She pops his thumb into her mouth and nibbles on it. “Right?” she asks around it.

He chuckles. “Right.”

“Thank you.” She releases his thumb and tilts her head forward so that his vision fills with her scarlet eyes. “My Prince.”

He gently tilts her head, and opens the way to her concord-grape lips.

Sykora nudges his shoulder a few seconds into their kiss. “Debriefing, dove,” she whispers. “We’ll fool around after, okay?”

He squeezes a handful of his wife’s butt as he lifts her off the dais and back to the floor. “Okay.”