Princess of the Void ch 22 - Dinner

“So Sykora finally buckled. Well, I can see why. You are quite beautiful.” Narika’s focus is so sharp he almost feels it pricking him. “But this is what I mean. You can profess that you don’t need it all you want, but you need a safeguard. The responsible thing is to take k-wort.”

“Responsible and humane.” One of the guys she’s talking to nods.

“No distractions, no drama, no indentured grooms. I didn’t think Sykora would—well. You look happy enough.” Narika pats his hand. “It’s quite magnanimous of you to forgive her. But we were just talking, the Barons and I, about how disappointed we were to see Sykora take a husband-of-the-void. I’d hoped she would take a more modern attitude. Kabira’s wort is available to Void Princesses for a reason.”

“We, uh…” Grant is scanning the crowd desperately for his wife. “We make it work. Excuse me, folks.”

“Settle something for me first. A little debate we were having.” Narika’s in his path. “What do you think about it? The void husbandry system? Speak freely.”

Grant clears his throat. “Well. Majesty. We make it work.”

“You’ve mentioned.” Narika smiles. “But that’s not what I asked.”

“Sister.” An identical voice cuts through the knot of people. Grant exhales a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding as Sykora’s hand lands protectively on his back. “It’s good to see you after all this time.”

Narika’s piercing gaze slides from Grant and downward to his wife. “Likewise, Majesty. You’ve found yourself a lovely new plaything.”

Sykora gives Narika a tight, unkind smile. “Perhaps if you get off the k-wort crutch, you’ll remember all that a marriage can be, besides play.”

Narika’s smile is equally unkind. “Perhaps if you get on it, you can free your sex slave.”

“You presume I am so unlovable that my man would gladly be freed from me. We are similar in many ways, sister, but not all.” Sykora tugs Grant’s jacket. “Our seats are over there, husband. Let me take you.”

The Princess of the Glory Banner’s eyes bore into them as Sykora extracts Grant.

“Did that feral woman maul you?” Sykora whispers.

He shakes his head. “You came just in time.” He hands her their gift-wrapped excuse. Pressed on the bottom of it is the leech chip. He lays it on her palm. “I got it.”

“What did I tell you? I knew you would.” She slips the chip into her purse as she tucks the gift under her arm. “You are a marvel.”

As they move to the table, Marquess Paxea falls in with Sykora. The two exchange low whispers. Grant tries not to be obvious as he leans lower, trying to listen in.

“Konia invited her directly,” Paxea murmurs. “It’s an open secret by now, her designs on Ptolek.”

“She hasn’t been so bold as to approach Garuna, surely,” Sykora says.

“No. But proxies are speaking with proxies. If a protestation is brought, she’s not solid. I wish I had better news.”

“It hasn’t happened yet.” Sykora pats Paxea’s shoulder. “Thank you, Marquess.”

Paxea breaks from Sykora’s side with a shallow bow. She puts a smile back on her angular face and waves jauntily to Grant as he replaces her. “See you at the table, Prince Consort. The nak fruit are mine, fresh from Amadar. I do hope you’ll sample them.”

He waves back. “I’ll make sure to.”

Sykora’s tail tickles his knuckle. “I saw you trying to snoop there, my lofty lover. Are you curious?”

“I admit it.”

Sykora’s eyes flash. “Duck into this alcove with me, dove. And kneel.” She says it loud enough to be overheard. Grant obeys, tugging Sykora by the waist into one of the great chamber’s amber-lit pockets.

“I don’t want anyone overhearing me telling you this,” she whispers. “Pretend we’ve ducked in here to make out.”

He sticks his lip out. “We haven’t?”

“One thing at a time.” She slides Grant’s hand up along her hip. As he kisses her neck, she murmurs into his ear:

“Ptolek is on the border between my sector’s and Narika’s. That makes a protestation quite easy to lodge. She could bring a case to the Core and steal the system from me. She’s done it before.”

He takes a deep breath of her hair. “How often?”

“Five times,” Sykora says. “Four unsuccessful, but she scooped a phlogiston system from me. A planet called Sotham. And I’ve taken one from her. We’re tied.”

“What did you take from her?”

“Ptolek, dove.” Sykora casts a dim glance back out to the party, where her sister circles, vulture-style. “I took Ptolek.”

“It’s all rabble-rousing,” Garuna says. “The refiners were perfectly happy with their generous benefits, and then the unionists rolled in and told them no, you’re actually discontent. Vociferously enough that they’ve gotten several sites to actually believe it.” She scoots her finely carved chair further into the table. “It’s such a turnaround every time you let them slip into the production line. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were using compulsion.”

“If only we could employ compulsion again.” This from the dark blue viscountess by her arm, whose name Grant hasn’t caught. “It would be better for everyone. The workers would have that nice, fuzzy feeling, reapplied on the hour, and we’d save so much on compliance enforcement. And it would be safer for everyone.”

“I think you overestimate the duration and pleasantness of the warmth, Viscountess.” Duke Morek pipes up. “It fizzles out long before the order wears off.”

“Morek’s got the right of it. But there is, I have to say, a clarity-of-focus that must come in handy when handling hazardous machinery.” Count Tikani the Kovikan is all joviality. He’s subsumed his solemnity from the gallery as though it was never there. He gestures across the table to his wife, the sleepy-looking goth Grant saw earlier, who’s tucked her napkin into her unapologetically low neckline as the collective waits for the first course. “If Wenzai didn’t compel a half hour of writing out of me every day, I don’t know how I wouldn’t fall behind on publication.”

Wenzai winks a shadowed eyelid at her husband. “Not to mention all the hazardous machinery I got you handling.”

Tikani covers his laugh with the back of his hand.

Wenzai glances Grant’s way again. They make eye contact. Her glossy black lips pull into a smile, and she winks at him, too.

“There, you see?” Garuna replaces her wine glass and wipes her mouth. “Look at the accident reports before and after. We’re putting our men at risk.”

“Why don’t we just include it in their contracts?” says a glamorously sequined woman. Marquess Reka, if Grant remembers right. “Then it’s voluntary. You consent to compulsion when you consent to the job.”

“That’s not voluntary. That’s coercion.”

The table turns as one to Grant. He suddenly wishes he weren’t quite so tall.

Easy, Grantyde. You’re here as Prince Consort. You have power. Knock over enough little dominoes...

“On Maekyon,” he says. “That’s what we’d call it. Coercion. If your livelihood depends on it, you’re not in a position to refuse, and it’s not a choice. That’s just replicating compulsion without the flash.”

Reka puts on an artificial smile. “Negotiation isn’t compulsion, Prince Consort.”

“I haven’t been a subject of the Empress long,” he says. “But I think you should consider her intent. And it seems clear to me in this case. Looking for loopholes might be legal, but it hardly seems loyal.”

Reka’s pupils dilate. Grant realizes that he may have hit a little harder than he intended.

The dark blue countess gives Sykora, who’s sitting across from him, a pointed look. “Majesty?”

Sykora glances over with feigned inattention. “Yes, Viscountess Lorimare?”

So that’s the woman whose shuttle he broke into. “Do you agree with the Prince Consort?” she prompts.

“Are you suggesting my husband has overstepped?” Sykora’s an icy lake. Her tail settles protectively over Grant’s thigh under the table.

“Well, no, not as such. I mean, of course not.” Lorimare blanches. “Not if you don’t think so.”

“I don’t.” Sykora’s mien melts into a warm smile. “Never fear, dear cousin. I’d hate to see you upset on my account.”

“I’m just curious as to your thoughts. Being the Princess of our sector.”

“My thoughts.” Sykora rests her chin on her knuckles as she considers her words. Grant has put her on the back heel, he realizes. “I think my husband understands the way to be a loyal subject. I speak from firsthand experience.” She winks at Grant.

The table laughs at that. He joins in.

“He has us when it comes to the loopholes, though, doesn’t he?” Sykora pats Grant’s hand. “Considering her intent is such a crucial task, after all. Second only to enforcement. We ought to take care that in our dealings with the unionists we don’t grasp for advantages that our Empress doesn’t intend us to have.”

Garuna’s eyes narrow. “Is this a mandate from my Princess, or just a friendly suggestion?”

“Now, Garuna.” Sykora laughs as if the Governess had told a witty joke. “I couldn’t possibly mandate any sort of planetside stewardship. On Ptolek, your word carries. I’m only speaking as your fond cousin, whose fortunes are bound up with yours.” She sips her wine. “We have to remember, cousins, that from menial to Marquess, we’re servants of the same mistress. Best to take good care of our tools. Our lofty titles are contingent on the work we accomplish with them.”

A sniffing chuckle from across the table.

Sykora’s head snaps toward the sound. “I’m glad to amuse you, Marquess Reka, intentionally or otherwise, though I wonder if you might explain the humor.”

“It’s a lovely sentiment, Majesty, but I wonder at how you express it. So often I hear this sort of refrain from the civically minded noblewoman, as though the wellspring of your power were different, somehow.” Reka’s dress scintillates as she props her elbow by her empty plate. “But we don’t have to pretend here. Our blood gives us our titles, not our works. It isn’t pretty, but it’s true. Your ship, your sector. These are gifts you were given by the right of your birth. I mean no offense.”

Sykora smiles beneficently. “Gifts we were given, Marquess. Such is our good fortune, that every gift our Empress gives one of us may be made, by scrupulous duty, a gift for all of us. The Black Pike was a handsome gift to me. And in happy concordance it has passed forward to you. I keep your ships safe in the firmament, and your business prosperous on Tamion. It’s twenty cycles now, isn’t it, since I drove the Shacklemare clan from your border, as you implored of me with such commendable humility. Perhaps I’ll do so again next time they come knocking, since you so courteously mentioned you mean no offense.”

The Marquess’s knuckles are white where her hands fold.

Sykora’s smile has morphed into the same one he saw on her sister’s face. The shark one. “You, for your part, have brought this delicious ice wine to our good cousin’s party, if I remember right. How lovely, the extent to which our joys can be redoubled by sharing them among the peerage.” She holds up her glass in salutation. “As best as each of us is able.”

She takes another sip.

“It’s just so lovely, this wine. Don’t you think so, darling?”

Grant tries the wine. It tastes like wine. “Delicious. Thank you, Marquess.”

“You are most welcome,” Marquess Reka mutters.

“It seems rather unorthodox, doesn’t it. How eager our dear cousin is to air the opinions of her property.” Narika has her hands folded in her lap. “If I didn’t know better, Kora, I’d say you were boy-crazy.”

“What a delight to hear you know better.” Sykora returns Narika’s razor stare. “I’ve lived seven hectocycles comfortably unattached, dear sister. Without the use of Kabira’s wort. If I thought Grantyde was nothing more than a pretty face, I never would have taken him.”

The ginger who waved at him giggles. “Although it is such a pretty face.”

Narika does not relent. “It’s new from you, Sykora. This workers’ rights angle.”

“My angle is the dominion of my Empress. As always. That’s how I run the sector that’s so graciously hosting you. I should hope it’s how you run yours.”

“Really?” Narika dabs a bead of wine from the edge of her lip. It’s like a bloodstain on the napkin. “I hear there’s another matriarch carving out space in the Black Pike sector these days.”

“Scavengers always circle the greatest prizes,” Sykora says. “A little tip for you, dear sister, should you ever acquire one. But they circle wide, if you keep control.”

Narika smirks. “Perhaps you should ensure you can control the prize, first.”

“Control is what we are for, Narika.” Sykora turns her face to Grant. Her hand finds his under the table. Squeeze. Wiggle. Her eyes flash. She holds up her glass. “A little more wine.”

He stands and circles the table, plucking a cruet of wine from the place setting as he goes. He leans low as he fills her glass—low enough he feels the leash he’s been trying to ignore, on his neck.

“They’re testing us,” she whispers. “Forgive me, dove.”

He kisses her temple as he withdraws.

Their display has luckily coincided with the first course, and steered the table’s attention and conversation elsewhere.

Grant picks at the appetizer, a verdant seedpod salad, while Marquess Paxea holds forth about the fussy, labor-intensive particulars of growing something called stekkai. Thror It’s that breakfast fruit he had, he realizes, the one that smeared like brie. He didn’t realize just how difficult and luxurious it was. Was giving it to him part of Sykora’s apology?

His wife has picked her fork up and put it down a few times, now. She’s standing it on its tongs at the edge of her napkin. But she hasn’t eaten yet. She keeps glancing over at him.

She catches his eye, and her vision darts to her plate, then back to his face. He realizes what she’s asking for and his throat goes dry.

He gives the Princess of the Black Pike a tiny nod of permission.

Instantly she takes a forkful and pops it into her mouth. A grateful little mmm as she chews. But her eyes, when they meet his again, are still full of hunger.

Grant’s got no idea how the tiny Taiikari women eat as much as their larger counterparts. The main course is a thick slab of gamey meat coated with pumpkin-orange chutney and Sykora eats hers faster than he does. The heat she’s always radiating makes sense, he supposes, if this is the metabolism Taiikari have.

As they decamp from the table, it coasts smoothly away from them on floor-bound casters, and the dance floor is left unoccupied. A polite cough draws Grant’s fascinated eye away.

A slim, black-clad servant is at his arm. “From the Baroness Konia, sir.” He presents Grant with a small burgundy envelope and departs.

Grant paces to the edge of the populating dance floor. At its center, the young man whose paintings he was admiring is being presented to polite society. A dour, slim Taiikari youth, whose spidery wire spectacles mark him as the only one in the hall with anticomps. Grant joins in the applause from the periphery, then opens the envelope.

The Baroness Arenta Konia kindly requests your presence at the Fifty-Eighth Ptolek Cloudsprint, in one tenday and three.

“What’s that?” Sykora’s followed him to the hexagonal rim of the floor. He passes her the invitation. He sees just a moment of elation cross her face, before a stormy expression bumps it away. She huffs in annoyance and gestures him down to a knee.

“You are my fucking hero and I would kiss you dizzy,” she murmurs, “but Konia’s surely got eyes on us. When you stand up, act like we’re fighting.”

He straightens up again, doing his best to look chastened and upset. Sykora’s got her arms crossed tight. “Horns,” he whispers.

She tosses her dark hair over the little blue nubs poking out of her scalp and pointedly avoids his eyes.

He watches the dancers gather on the floor. The music is a curious admixture of classical and electronic: legato string-instrument washes over an insistent rhythmic pulse of digital percussion. Grant wondered how a species with such a wide variance in height dances: the answer, it turns out, is “with great concentration.” The moves are acrobatic and precise, with husbands acting as platforms and bolsters for their wives. It’s all Grant can do not to gasp when, at the song’s swelling apex, a woman in flowing black is tossed into a twirling 720-degree spin and caught by her stonefaced beau.

“That’s Duchess Ixima. She never misses a chance to show off.” Sykora breaks her fake silent treatment.

“I’d ask you to dance,” he says out the corner of his mouth. “But I’d be terrified of dropping you.”

She glances his way. “Let’s not terrify you. I’ll teach you the steps sometime and we’ll be ready for the next one.” She steers him toward the ballroom doors. “How about we actually give that art gallery the time of day, hmm? And find a place to talk.”

He takes her arm and they leave the technicolor dance behind.

“I got you in hot water,” he says, keeping his voice quiet in the echoing hallway.

She shrugs. “You were confrontational. But what you said made sense. I’ll come up with a way to smooth it over with Reka. A privately given gift ought to suffice. She knows she overstepped.”

“I worry I did, too.”

Sykora sighs. “I wouldn’t say so. Some people at that table would.” Her tail brushes him. “But fuck them.”

Grant smiles. But the guilt doesn’t fade. This no apologies thing is harder than he thought it would be.

“There are things you think about that very few in the Empire do. That I don’t,” Sykora says. “There are contradictions. Sometimes I hold two different things in my head at once. Sometimes I’m not… good. Not like you are.”

“I’m—”

“You are, Grant.” Her eyes burn. “You’re good and I’m not. I am ambitious and cruel and I subjugate planets, and it’s selfish of me to want your love anyway, but I do. I want you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“When I get too evil, when what I choose will make you think less of me, challenge me.” She holds his hand tight as they enter the gallery. “Please. It might not change what I do. But at least I’ll… I’ll try. To explain myself, or mitigate, or make recompense.”

Her shoulders are tense. She’s been thinking the same things he has, he realizes, about her job. In reverse.

Her tail wraps around his leg. “But do it when we’re alone. That’s all I ask. So that we don’t have to pretend in front of my crew or those n’vekai at the table.”

“I promise.” He takes a knee and folds her into an embrace.

“Thank you.” Her little fingers rub his beard. She kisses his jaw. “Thank you, dove.”

I can change her, he realizes, as he feels the skin of her cheek on his. I’ve done it already. I can keep going. I can change her and she can change the Empire.

He stands up. “I didn’t get that last word, by the way. N’vekai?”

“An ugly little scavenger thing. I’ll show you a picture.” She snaps her fingers. “Picture! That’s reminded me. I promised I’d get you something from here. If you’d like.”

“I was looking at one earlier, actually.”

“Oh?” She takes his hand. “Which one?”

He leads her through the gallery. She looks warily around at the sea of eyes. “It’s very red.”

Grant points out the mural he was looking at earlier, the one with the black-on-black figures suspended within. “I love that big one, but I don’t know if we’ll get it to fit in the shuttle. What do you think of it?”

“It’s nice. I like the composition.” She tilts her head. “It’s a bit—abstract.”

“It is. But, uh. He captures it. The feeling. It doesn’t happen for me like it happens for the rest, of course, especially on the Pike, with the anticomps. But that’s the feeling.”

Sykora’s smile goes flat and contemplative at the edges. “It is?”

He nods. “Not with you, though.” His fingers glide through her hair and rub the choker on the back of her neck. “Not anymore.”

He sees the little nubs of her horns begin to poke out again. “How about I get you this painting,” she says. “And we’ll go back to the shuttle and see if we can make it fit.”

Sykora disengages the escape velocity thrusters. They float through silent firmament. “Was I cutthroat enough for you, Grantyde?”

Grant unbuckles from his seat. “You were downright merciless, Majesty.”

“I had a man to defend.” She punches the artificial gravity on and they settle into their seats. “Your first taste of the coterie in full force. Well done getting through it.”

His wife’s tail is wagging. His wife. Grant grins. That amrita’s had its desired effect. He feels loose and lifted.

Sykora glances his way. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

“You are fascinating, do you know that? I watched you peel a woman apart in front of the entire coterie, and then you asked for permission before you ate.”

“What, the food?” She reddens. He loves the shade she turns when she blushes. “That was nothing. I just wasn’t particularly hungry today.”

He quirks a brow.

“You’re imagining things.” Her horns are slowly rising further, parting her elegant hair. She coasts them slower, away from the holographically displayed route back to the Pike. Grant watches the speedometer zero out. “And you have a promise to keep, you know.”

“What’s that?”

She clicks herself free of her harness. “You said if I was cutthroat, you’d take me home and undress me.”

“We’re not all the way home yet.”

She pouts. “We’re on the shuttle. It’s my shuttle.” She pokes his knee. “The shuttle counts.”

“What about chasing those pirates off?”

“I’ve chased thousands of pirates off. I’ve only gotten fucked once.” She crosses her arms.

“Twice.”

“Two rounds counts as one time.”

“Let’s make a deal.” Grant straightens his legs out and climbs from his seat. “I’ll give you what you’re looking for.” He pushes his thumbs lightly into her shoulders and watches her back arch. “But I won’t take that dress off you yet.”

“Deal.” She hops up so quick he needs to juke to avoid her horns bonking him. She scurries to the back of the shuttle. “Watch this.” She pushes two buttons on a console on the back seat. It folds down and rotates as it descends. A twin-sized mattress is now laying across the back of the shuttle.

“Pretty good, right?” Sykora bobs her eyebrows at him as she looks back. Her hips are wiggling. The frilly garters hugging her thighs peek into view. She cranes her neck up to him as he steps into the rear of the shuttle with her. “Well. Maybe it’s a little small, actually.”

He laughs. “It’s perfect. And we have the floor if we need it.” He sits at the edge of the bed. “Come here.”

With him sitting and her standing, she still needs to go on tiptoes to kiss him. His hands cup her heart-shaped butt over her satiny dress as she wiggles further into the space between his legs.

“Grant.” She pulls from the kiss and nuzzles against his scruff. “You’ll say if these little, uh… hijinks I’m doing unsettle you. Yes?”

“What, the submissive stuff? It’s new.” He braces himself. “But it’s hard to be upset when you’re being such a good girl.”

The little molten noise in her throat makes him chuckle. “Big pink smug bastard. I’m not a good girl. I’m a Princess. A Princess does not submit to a commoner.”

“My mistake.” He cups her cheek. “Do you want to get tied up?”

Her ears perk. “Yes.”

“Then get on your knees for me, Princess.”

She eagerly drops to the carpeted floor of the shuttle, smoothing the hem of her dress as she goes. Grant stands over her. His shadow looms across her face. He pauses in the middle of undoing his belt. “Uh. Maybe stand up again, actually. I forgot how short you are.”

She giggles. Her tail swats his thigh. “I’m not short. You’re too tall.”

“A majority opinion shared by you and half the doors. Hands behind your back, Majesty.”

She folds her arms back and lets him tie her wrists together. “I’m not submissive. I’m quite assertive. It’s just a matter of keeping things fair.”

“Uh huh.” He puts the buckle in her palm so she can undo it if she needs to. “Comfortable?”

“Very, thank you. On days we do what you want, I will be so dominant. You’ll see.”

With both of them standing, she’s at the perfect height for what he’s about to do to her. His hand rests on her cheek as he unbuttons his waistband. “I believe you.”

“I don’t want to owe debt. That’s all.”

His finger hooks under her choker and pulls her face gently forward. “Sure.”

“I’m a Princess, you know,” she says, and tugs down his fly with her teeth.