Princess of the Void ch 7 - breakfast

A soft glow wakes him. A panel that last night showed the stretch of firmament in which they floated now beams the amber light of a planetside sunrise into the room like an open window.

Sykora is sprawled in her bed, the covers partway off her body. She’s naked. He looks judiciously away as he changes back into the uniform he was provided.

A rustle and a yawn as his noise wakes her. He decides to trust Sykora at her word and keep the olive branch extended. “Morning,” he says.

“Mmm. Is it?” Her sleepy red eyes open. “Goodness. I’ve slept in.”

“Do you have anywhere to be?” Perhaps she's changed her mind about keeping him constantly beside her.

“No sir.” She stretches. Her spine and her curves elongate. “It’s half-duty today, after all. The place I’m supposed to be is right here with my husband.” She glances at him and catches his eyes flicking away from her. He hears the smile in her words. “Good morning, darling. I hope I didn't scandalize you. But I missed sleeping without translucency. Much more relaxing.”

“It's your cabin, I guess.”

Sykora ahems. “Ours.”

Grant doesn't respond to that. He cinches his belt. It’s designed with a quick release that takes the entire uniform with it, and he wasn’t provided underwear. At first he took this as another sign of the horniness of his hostess, but he supposes when you can go invisible, it helps to have something you can put on and take off quickly. 

They eat in the kitchenette. He has no idea where the bathtub went, but an elegant hexagonal table has replaced it, with clawed feet and a spiral star chart traced across its surface. Breakfast is a curious canoe-shaped puff pastry, its passenger a pair of overeasy eggs. It’d look downright delicious if the eggs weren’t purple. There’s a whole spread of them, along with a steaming teakettle, delivered by a smiling Taiikari woman who greets her as “Majesty” and him as “Prince Consort” before bowing out of the room.

The princess wraps herself in a belted robe and slinks to the table. “Do these satisfy? We could find you something else in the pantry.”

“The color’s odd,” he admits. “But I’ll be okay.”

“A blue bride. Purple egg tarts. How strange it all must be for you.” Her robe is open enough that a crescent of areola peeks out from its band as she cuts herself a forkful. “I used to find it relaxing to make these myself. But Kymai—he’s my quartermaster—wouldn’t have it. He looks at my cooking the way my flight instructor watched my spiral dive.”

“You know how to fly?”

“Oh, yes. I’m not going to command a ship I don’t know how to steer. I love flying. You want to try it sometime?”

The eagerness in her face is clear, and more adorable than he’s comfortable admitting quite yet. It’s gratifying hearing this woman actually offer him a choice. It’s a start, anyway.

“Maybe,” he says. “Promise me no spiral dives.”

“I swear it. We can take my interceptor out.” She licks jammy yolk off her thumb. “I’ll inquire with the alien auxiliary corps about importing some oversized controls.”

“Did you, uh—” He changes his mind about the question and focuses on his food.

“Did I what?”

“You didn’t crash-land on Maekyon on a joyride or anything, right?”

“Grantyde.” A giggle gilds her mock-outrage. “I’ve certainly dinged myself on a few meteorites, but a planet you see coming rather early.”

“How’d you end up there?”

“An excellent question.” Her eyes grow chilly as she looks past him into the view of space beyond. “And one I intend to investigate fully.” She pops another bite into her mouth rather than expand further; Grant drops it for now.

He surveys the table. Sykora's cup has a dark, floral-scented drink in it, flecked with little motes of silver. He's not sure what that's a cuppa, but it's certainly not joe. If she's trying to bribe him out of his pants, he might as well use it. “You wouldn’t have coffee aboard, would you?” he asks.

“We do,” she says. “It’s a bit of an infantryman’s drink. But if you’d like some, I’ll send for it.”

“It’s an everyone’s drink on Maekyon.”

She presses and holds a button on the wall by her seat. “Hello, kitchen staff! Your Princess wishes you a good morning and sends her quartermaster compliments on the breakfast.”

She releases the button and takes a sip of her tea(?).

“Majesty.” A man’s voice crackles through, breathless and strained. “Did your husband like it?”

She holds the button again and looks Grant’s way. “Delicious, thank you,” he says.

“It wasn’t too spicy? I thought it was too spicy, this batch.”

“Quartermaster,” Sykora says. “You wouldn’t have any coffee down there, would you?”

“I cannot function without it, Majesty. Why?”

“Run up a carafe, please. For the Prince Consort.”

“Oh God.” A thread of panic laces through the intercom. “Majesty, it’s, it’s, it’s far from my standards for your cabin. Its flavor profile—the bitterness—I’d have to—”

“If it’s good enough for your palate, it surely surpasses ours, Quartermaster.” Sykora gives Grant an affectionate eye-roll.

“Majesty, please—”

“Deep breaths, Kymai. A carafe of the usual stuff. Sugar and cream on the side. Thank you!” She releases the button. “And that’s your first taste of our wonderful Quartermaster,” she says.

“I feel bad, now,” Grant says. “He doesn’t need to fuss on my account.”

“He fusses on every account he can find,” she says. “Pay it no mind, yes? From now on, if it’s within my power to grant it, I will. Your wife is going to spoil you rotten, Grantyde. I have a great deal to make amends for, if I want to earn your friendship. And your dick.” She winks as she passes him a tart.

“Thank you,” he says. Stay stonefaced, Grant. She's nicer now and she's cute. She's still your captor.

“You’re welcome.” She taps the flaky crust to break it open and let the yolk bloom through. “Did that translate correctly?”

“I think so.”

“It’s slang for penis.”

“I got it, Majesty.”

“Cock,” she tries. “Dong. Wze’kaenae.”

He smiles despite himself, leaning his cheek on his fist. “Didn’t get that last one, Majesty.”

“Hellfire.” She grimaces. “I quite like that one.”

She wipes her mouth with the lacy edge of a scarlet napkin and rises from the table toward her vanity mirror.

He watches her body sway with her feline walk. Her waist is so delicate and her hips are so wide. It’s like her silhouette was drawn by a sexually frustrated cartoonist. He clears his throat. “May I ask you about something?”

“Anything, husband.”

“You, uh. Your horns.” He gestures to the top of her head. “They come and go.”

She flushes. “Ah. Those. They emerge when our blood is sufficiently heated. Anger, desire. It’s, uh—it’s a little embarrassing. Perhaps you might not point them out.”

“They’re embarrassing?”

She’s flustered now. The horns have made their reappearance, peeking through her onyx locks. “How would you like it if I ogled whenever you’re hard?”

“You don’t?”

“Well. Not in public.” She shrugs herself into a uniform. “There’s many en vogue up-dos that hide them no matter their extrusion, but it’s the mark of a self-assured void princess to wear her hair down. A show of self-control. I’m normally rather good at it.”

“Oh?” He can’t keep a vein of teasing from his voice. “Why do I see them so often?”

“If a certain big beautiful ass hole would just get on with it and join me in bed, maybe I wouldn’t be walking around two points to the firmament.” Her tail swipes in the air at him.

“I see them all the time on your males. Are they just constantly bricked up?”

“Bricked up.” She clicks her tongue as she slips a pair of contact lenses in. “What a phrase. So orthogonal to meaning and yet so easy to grasp. They aren’t at full-mast, no. Horns don’t recede for a Taiikari male. Some get cosmetic surgery to remove them.”

“They’d do that?”

“Or reduce them.” She slides open a panel on her vanity, revealing a mad alchemist’s collection of cosmetics. “Small horns are a sign of beauty. They suggest a mild, thoughtful personality.”

“So, me not having them…”

A lip-biting smile as she makes eye contact with him in the mirror. “I am a fortunate woman. Or I will be. Some day.”

“We can talk about what some day looks like.” He swirls the egg boat around and lets the flaky pastry absorb the burst yolk. “After you free me.”

She varnishes her lip with gloss from one of her many canisters. “Shall we call a temporary truce? It’s too early.”

He sighs. “Okay. Truce.” He munches his egg tart. Its layers melt and coat his tongue with buttery bliss. 

“Your turn,” she says.

“My turn to what?”

“I’ve told you something I find attractive about you.” She glances at him in the mirror. “How about me?”

You make me feel like a horny caveman beholding a primordial fertility goddess. You have the face of a red-eyed angel. Your hair is so long and soft and beautiful it makes me want to weep. “I shouldn’t say,” he says.

She pouts. “Why not?”

“I’d be giving you ammunition.” He points his fork at her. “If you know what I like, you’ll be able to use it against me.”

“You know what I think you like?” She crosses her legs. “I think you like my ass.”

“No comment.” He returns to his breakfast.

The Princess hums as she applies her makeup. It’s warm and scratchy. He recognizes the tune as one he sang for her. 

“What are you up to today?” he asks.

She replaces the bullet-shaped tube in its rotating cylinder. “Today I have to put on a ridiculous hat and have lunch on a moon with a rather dreadful woman called Garuna.” She plucks the aforementioned wide-brimmed hat from a stand to her right. It makes her look a bit like a musketeer. “She’s a cousin of mine. A second cousin, I think. Second, third… ah, who can keep track. Vora will know. She’s on the periphery of a situation in my sector. An off-and-on series of high-profile deaths. Suicides, sicknesses, accidents. All surround a clan called the Trimonds, who own the planet’s largest exo refinery.”

Grant nods like he knows what exo is. “Weird coincidence?”

“Hardly.” Sykora smirks as she tries to get her hat into a less ridiculous angle.

“Rich people killing rich people?” he guesses.

“Mmhmm. Plutocrats picking each other off. Some rival family, perhaps a disgruntled second daughter of the Koniae.” Sykora settles on a position that could charitably be called rakish. “You can come with me, if you like.” She starts in on her eyeshadow. “And we’ll see if we can’t ferret out a conspiracy over lunch.”

Grant clears the dishes onto a silvery tray and sticks it into a dumbwaiter in the kitchenette's corner. Sykora’s finished with her face and has moved on to a sparkling starfield of jewelry. “Once I bring the assassin thing up,” she says, comparing bracelets, “Garuna will do all she can to project otherwise.”

“Why?”

“Bend down, dear. Let me do your collar.” He obeys and her dextrous little fingers smooth his stand collar straight. “She’s planetary governess of Ptolek and it’s been a very sensational few headlines,” she continues. “If the deaths are connected, I step in, and that’s another. An issue as grand as exo refinement is my jurisdiction. A gas giant governorship with a moon as habitable as Ptolek II is a prime posting. Puts a lot of pressure on her. If she can’t control her people, she might be replaced.”

“Are you the one who decides if she keeps it?”

“That’d be the Empress, my lovely alien, although as the Void Princess commanding her sector, I have influence.” She returns to her vanity and slots a percussion section’s worth of brass bangle onto her wrists. “I’d just as soon leave her in place, even if the killings are killings. She’s a bore and an airhead, but she’s got solid instincts. Though I have a theory I’m probing today that her mother does most of the ruling for her.”

A soft chime emits from the door. “That’s your coffee.” Sykora pushes the wall button again. “You may enter.”

A slender Taiikari male scurries into the room, with a brass tray of coffee and its accoutrements. Flour dusts the black parts of his uniform. His lined face is mostly bare; just a frosted pair of goggles to hide his eyes.

“Really, now, Quartermaster Kymai,” Sykora says. “You didn’t need to carry that all the way yourself.”

“I’m here to bring it back down if the Prince Consort doesn’t like it.” Kymai pours a mug. “Cream, milord? Sugar?”

“Just black is fine.”

“Ahh. Nothing to hide behind.” He runs a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, transmogrifying it into salt-and-pepper-and-flour hair. “I must find a way to redeem myself. It’s a commoner’s drink. I’m sure—”

Grant lowers the mug from his lips. “That is some incredible fucking coffee.”

“Oh. Oh, thank God.” Kymai decompresses. “You flatter me overmuch, milord, I’m sure. But thank God it’s acceptable.”

“I’d order you on a vacation, Kymai, if I didn’t think your heart needed some kind of stress floor to keep beating.” Sykora gives him a nod. “Thank you as always, Quartermaster. You may go.”

Kymai bows himself out, tray tucked beneath his arm. Grant watches his departure. “The quartermaster. Is he free, or do you own him, too?”

Sykora frowns. “Of course he's free.”

“So not all of your men are mind-slaves.”

“God, Grantyde.” She pulls a face. “What a notion. No. You can’t compel a citizen against their will. And every Taiikari aboard this vessel is a citizen.”

Grant takes another bracing sip. “But not me.”

“Well.” She mirrors him. “I can’t compel you either.”

“And you can’t free me.”

“Aliens aboard a ZKZ voidship must be someone’s property or prisoner,” she says. “It’s too priceless a weapon to let a non-Taiikari aboard otherwise. I can’t free you without removing you from the Pike. And I’d sooner remove my own leg.” She drums her fingers on the table. “Didn’t we call a truce on this?”

“Fine.” Grant holds up the mug. “You want to try some?”

“No, thank you. The smell is quite bracing enough on its own.” Sykora sprays herself with a little silver pump. Vanilla and something citrus-y. Lime, almost. “I know I said you’d accompany me everywhere, my dear, but this meeting has the potential to be a true bore. And you’d have to seem very obedient throughout. You needn’t subject yourself to it if you’d prefer. I could give you one of my command group as an escort.”

“I’m game for boring,” he says. “I took my old job because I was looking for boring.”

She quirks a carefully lined brow. “Whyever would you look for boring?”

“I, eh.” He shrugs. “When I was a kid, I had a rough crowd around me. I had a brother and a father who used to get in trouble a lot, boosting cars and things like that. And I used to have to get them out. I moved away, my brother passed, I moved back, my father passed, and I’d messed my life up enough at that point that it was go into what they were into, or find a legitimate job that most people don’t like to do. Those are all dirty, dangerous, or boring, and boring felt like the best option. My brother’s life was exciting as hell, and short as a song.”

“What’s boosting cars?”

“Stealing them.”

“Ooh.” Her other brow raises to join its twin. “My captor-turned-husband, the principled scion of a bandit king. How vivid.”

“Only thing he was king of was the trailer park,” Grant says. “But he held court.”

“Well, his son has had quite the up-jump.” She steps into her shoes and executes a brief turn that sweetly jangles the jewelry in her sizable ears. “What do we think?”

She is, as always, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. The tyrant who thinks she owns him is the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

You can’t want her. You cannot let yourself want her.

“Good to go,” he says.

Through the lush halls and brass balustrades of the Black Pike, Grant follows the Princess. Every crewmate they cross gives her a bow from the waist and gives him glances of barely disguised fascination and confusion. Sykora dismisses the pilot when they arrive at her shuttle. It’s a sleek runner, finned and graceful and striped in red and black like a tropical fish.

“Arn is a fine pilot, but I’d like some privacy,” she explains, as they buckle themselves into the cockpit. “And to show off my flying.”

“No spiral dives,” he says.

She bats her painted lashes. “I’ll behave.”

They lift from the gilded platform and into the dark, and the silky silence of the vessel surprises him again. The shuttle moves in jerky degrees of motion once it’s out of the hangar; he watches the view yaw as they depart.

The great rusty sphere of Ptolek dominates the starscape. Faintly visible in its low orbit is a ring around its equator. Antlike dots glide along and past it. Ships, he realizes, as they swing their nose toward the blue marble of Ptolek’s habitable moon. That ring is man-made; those are ships.

“Grantyde.” Sykora taps his hand, and he turns to her. “I’ve been thinking. And I want to give you another chance here to bow out. We can re-dock and you can find some other way to pass your day.”

“Why would I do that?”

“There will be…” Her tail paints a nervous figure-eight through the hole in her seat designed to accommodate it. “There will be attention on you. On us.”

“I can manage that.”

“They’re going to be curious. They’re going to test us.”

“Test us how?”

“A proper royal Taiikari marriage follows tradition.” Sykora fidgets with her rings. “There are couples, especially on the frontier, whose union is progressive, and equitable, and there is no compulsion, no obedience. But I am a Princess of the Imperial Family. I am expected to keep to our ways, to project poise and strength and, uh. Control.”

It dawns on him what she’s asking. “You’re going to pretend to compel me. You need me to play along.”

She places her hand on his. “Grantyde, you must. If not for my sake, then for the sake of your species.”

“What does that mean?”

“A male who can’t be compelled is a galactic fascination,” she says. “Maekyon is a speck of dust on the imperial ledger. It’s nowhere. Before I wound up on it, I barely even knew its name. The empire’s protocol for such a planet is to ignore it completely, until its people have either bombed themselves to glowing dirt, or advanced enough to colonize its solar system. But this secret changes that. Rips it to shreds.”

Her thumb is kneading the valley between two of his knuckles. “You’re a wonder of the firmament. And the Taiikari Empire hoards wonders. Cages them and studies them and takes them apart and rebuilds them as faithful little clockworks. A race of beautiful, strong giants, with a unique power like this? They would uplift you instantly. They’d sweep onto your world and colonize it. They’d rip your people from the soil by the roots and plant them in their pretty gardens. Or in great rows of harvest.”

He sees Drake’s eyes again. Sees the light leave them as they roll into his skull.

“I can’t stop you,” Sykora says. “You’re the only man I’ve ever known who I truly can’t stop. But I can plead with you, and I will if I must. I swear on my Empress’s sword I won’t compel any more than is absolutely necessary to keep your secret. We must pretend. At least until we can figure out an ironclad way to present you to the Empress herself.”

He sighs, but nods. “I can do that.”

She lets out a relieved breath and pats his palm. “Thank you, Grantyde.”

He cranes his neck to look back at the vessel they’re departing. She perks up. “You want a better look at the voidship, darling?”

“Sure,” he says, and she pirouettes them in the firmament.

The Black Pike fills their viewscreen. Its shape is apropos, he realizes, to its name. A jutting, graceful spire, a mile at least, arcs from a thick, blade-shaped protrusion, its span glowing with engine light.

Sykora hums contentedly as she beholds it. “Home.” She nudges his elbow. “Our home. And the home of seven hundred faithful souls.”

He gazes at the Pike as it slides superimposed across another of Ptolek’s moons. “It’s gorgeous,” he says.

“I’d love to show it to you with its sails out,” she says. “To catch the tides and ride the sweep. They’re beautiful. Massive and iridescent.”

“Sails?” He blinks. “Why do you need sails?”

“To get anywhere that’s anywhere, my dear,” she says. “They pass into a dimension where distance is a much looser concept. And they pull us with them. We call it the sweep. It’s exhilarating. You’ll see.” Her eyes dance at the thought. “I never grew up with a sunrise. Born in the void, just like the Pike. But I’ve never missed it.”

“So it’s like warping?”

“Warping.” She grins. “Is that what the Maekyonites call it?”

“Only in our movies,” he says. “We have nothing like this. Getting to our moon was a huge deal for us. You’re first contact, if you hadn’t realized.”

“I had a hunch when your ass hole masters spent fifteen cycles poking and measuring me.” She turns them around and refocuses their prow on Ptolek II. “Did I use that right? Ass hole?”

“That’s about right.” He laughs at the careful way she says it. “How long is fifteen cycles, anyway? How do Taiikari measure time? Do your days have twenty-four hours?”

“Twenty-six,” she says. “If I lost two, I don’t know how the hell I’d manage. There’s tendays and cycles. A tenday is… well, a tenday’s obvious, I’d think, if your translator is working. And a cycle is a pair of tendays.”

“So fifteen cycles…” Grant does some quick calculation. “You were down in the dark for ten months?”

She smiles sadly. “Mustn’t dwell. Much to do. And besides. It’s how I met my husband.” She lifts his hand and plants a kiss on his knuckle.

The little spot of wet warmth she placed on his hand cools quickly in the chilly air-conditioned shuttle.

He never used to mind the cold. But as his wife’s heat dissipates, he—

Don’t call her that. This woman isn’t your wife and you’re not her husband. You’re her prisoner. Don’t forget.

He sighs and refocuses on the gas giant looming in front of her. He hasn’t forgotten. But the mean defiance is turning into something else as his captor hums and wags her tail.

Something like longing.