Princess of the Void ch 6 - Compulsion

“Do you like being here?”

Ajax turns his head as the platform rises through the hab block. “On this lift, or on the Pike?”

“On the Pike.”

“Nowhere else I’d want to be, Prince Consort.”

“You can be as honest as you want,” Grant says. “I’m just asking as myself.”

“I’m aware, Prince Consort.”

“Just making that clear. Sorry for the implication.”

Ajax stiffens. “There’s really no need for that, Prince Consort.”

“For what?”

“The apology.”

“Right. Sorry.”

It’s hard to tell behind the man’s reflective helmet, but something in his mien feels as though he’s staring.

They return to the Princess’s grand door. Grant presses the seal.

A crackle and Sykora’s voice pipes out. “Is that my manly Maekyonite?”

“It’s Grant.”

“Step in, my dear.”

Ajax nods at Grant as he enters the Princess’s cabin. Sykora is seated at a vanity by her bed, carefully applying plum-colored gloss to her lip. She’s wearing a fancier, scantier version of the Black Pike uniform, with an audacious keyhole neckline. A platinum diadem encircles her forehead. “Good evening, Grantyde. I didn’t intend for you to stay so long in that cell, today. But I have been so busy. I’m actually on my way to another meeting with the command group, but I’ve decided you’re attending this one so I can actually spend some time with my new husband before he returns to his cell. Or fucks me?” She glances back to him, brow raised.

He shakes his head.

“Ah, well.” She sighs and returns to her makeup. Her eyes flicker in the mirror. “Stay where you are for a moment while I finish my face up.”

Grant puts his hands in his pockets. His tunic does have nicely voluminous pockets.

“Did we enjoy ourselves in the cell?” Sykora hangs gold hoop rings from her broad ears.

“No.”

Her topcoat is hanging off a seat a few feet away. On its back, in velvety scarlet, is her twin-halberd sigil.

A holster dangles from the brocaded belt. A holster with an ornamented gun stock protruding from it.

“You know, Grantyde, I couldn’t exactly understand you down in that dungeon you kept me in. But I liked how talkative you were. I thought: I’d love to understand what this man is saying. His smile and his laugh speak well of him. I imagine he has a quick wit. It’s all right if I was wrong. You’re good-looking enough that you don’t need one. And I’ll chalk up how little you speak to how upset you are. But I’m hoping that as we’re reacquainted, we’ll find a groove in our repartee beyond—” Sykora drops her voice to a gravelly imitation of him. “No. What? Go fuck yourself.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

She laughs, then turns around and sees the gun in Grant’s hand. “Oh, you insufferable Maekyonite.”

“Stay where you are,” he says.

Her lips twist. Her pupils narrow. “Kindly refrain from shooting me, husband.”

“I don’t want to. But this arrangement needs to change.” He doesn’t know how this thing works, but the switch on the side certainly looks like a safety catch. He thumbs it and a green diode blinks on. “We can discuss terms. After you agree to my freedom.”

“Isn’t this déjà vu. You holding me prisoner.” She stands up and swans from her seat. He tracks her with the barrel of the pistol. “I wonder if déjà vu translated. Do you have a comparable idiom?”

“It translated,” he says. “I said stay where you are.”

She freezes. “Although it’s not exactly how it was, was it? If memory serves…”

She unlaces the clasp on her keyhole neckline.

“I had a lot less on,” she says.

Grant blinks and tries to keep his gaze steady as her uniform begins to slide apart. “You are fucking crazy, lady.”

“Do you feel better, now that you’re holding me up? Maybe this is how you’d like to have me.” Her dark lips pull into a grin. “Playing the big bad kidnapper. We could arrange that. I’m flexib—”

Her uniform drops to the floor. A flash of bare cerulean curves. She disappears.

Grant stumbles backward, raising the pistol. His eyes dart to the floor, to the silks, to anything that might track her passage.

An eddy of air disturbs a tapestry. He twists the barrel in that direction and suddenly, hair-first, she’s directly in front of him, staring straight down the barrel.

She seizes the pistol and presses it to her forehead. Her hand wraps around his and pushes his finger down on the trigger.

The gun makes a buzzing noise. Its green light blinks red.

“Oops,” Sykora purrs. “Clumsy hubby.”

The gun is wrenched behind his back. He slams to the floor. His cheek is flush to the carpet. His now-naked captor sits delicately on his back. He feels the globes of her butt shift as she crosses her legs.

“I really thought I put that out of reach.” Sykora’s grip is viselike on his arm. She is squeezing hard enough to brook no movement. Her tail is wrapped around the back of his neck in some strange configuration of a headlock. “I underestimated your long Maekyonite arms, I suppose. For reference, husband, when a gun is properly keyed to a print, it looks like this.” She pulls the gun from his numbing fingers and holds it before him. The panel flashes blue as she lays her thumb against the switch. A whirring hum of building energy sounds from it.

He feels the gun’s barrel kiss his spinal cord where it meets his skull. He shuts his eyes.

Her weight is suddenly off him. Her face is in his, her eyes gleaming. “Stand up, and do not try to harm me again.”

He rises to his knees. “That’s it?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Would you prefer I put you over my knee and spank you?”

“I threatened your life.”

“No, you didn’t,” she says. “You couldn’t have. Even if the gun had worked. You couldn’t bring yourself to pull the trigger. Do you see, now? The control I have over you?”

He glares. “Without me, you’d be down there, still trapped in that glass box. You don’t act like it.”

“I told you, darling. You did what I compelled you to do. A locksmith doesn’t thank her picks.”

“She doesn’t try to fuck them, either.”

She laughs, light and buoyant. “Maybe she would, if they were as finely crafted as you are.” She cups his chin. “I’m going to put my clothes back on, now. Or we’ll be late.”

“You are cruel,” he says. “It’s cruel to treat someone this way. Someone whose big mistake was saving you.”

She flicks his nose as she pulls away. “Tell yourself it was your decision, if you prefer. I don’t have the time to further disabuse you.” She zips her uniform up and holsters her gun. “Come.”

He follows. She grins, as if this was some point she’d proven.

They emerge onto a deck that for all the world seems to be open to space. A ribbon of emerald nebula wraps its way across the void.

A hexagonal table, carved from more of that scarlet wood, rests in the center of the chamber. Hexagons, red, and black. Grant is learning what Taiikari like.

Two Taiikari women rise to their feet as Sykora arrives on deck. A third, older than the rest and with a thumbprint of grease on her face, seemingly forgets to.

“Hail, Majesty.” Vora bows to her. “Good afternoon, Consort Grantyde.” She bows to him as well.

“Yes, co-signed.” The grease-smudged woman gestures with a creaky metal prosthetic arm. Her fleshy hand scrolls one of the handheld tablet things he’s seen them carry, though hers is much bulkier and haphazard than Vora’s slim model. “Bows, et cetera.”

The third, a scarred and strapping woman with thick-trimmed eyebrows and a platinum pixie cut, just grunts and nods, her gauntleted arms folded.

“Tablets at the table? Sullen grunts? You’re setting a bad example for my alien, you know.” Sykora takes her seat. “He’s already such a disobedient boy.” She pats a large, high-backed seat next to her. “Would you like to stand in defiance, Grantyde, or would you like a seat that fits your rear?”

Grant sits next to Sykora. Vora and the scarred woman take their seats simultaneously.

“That is Brigadier Hyax.” Sykora indicates her battle-damaged officer. “And that is Chief Engineer Waian. You’ve met Majordomo Vora. We four are the command group of the ZKZ Black Pike.”

Hyax glowers. “You ought to have seen me yesterday before that address, Majesty.”

“I knew as soon as I delivered it you’d feel that way, Brigadier. That’s why I’ve brought you this as recompense.” Sykora slides a lacquered box across the table.

Hyax opens it and pulls Grant’s pistol from it. “Ooh. Interesting.”

“A Maekyonite hand-rifle,” Sykora says. “Quite the relic, no?”

“That’s mine,” Grant protests.

Sykora beams and takes Grant’s hand. “It’s a gift from both of us, then.” Grant slips her grip.

Hyax slides the box under the table. “Worthy recompense, Majesty and Consort. Thank you and well-met.” She peers warily at Grant under her thick brows. “Though I didn’t count on you bringing him, Majesty.”

“I can’t leave my husband unattended at the moment, Brigadier. He’s undergoing a spirited phase. It’s either by my side or in his cell, and I can’t just coop the poor thing up all day. Don’t worry. He’ll be no harm.”

Grant’s surprised she’d say that when he was just pointing a gun at her, but he elects to stay silent in front of Sykora’s military chief.

“That harmless husband came from a world that held you prisoner,” Hyax says.

“Where was this, again?” Waian looks up from her tablet.

Sykora nods to Vora, who adjusts a panel laid into the table as she speaks. "An H-class world called Maekyon, between the borders of Black Pike and Glory Banner.” The display at the center of the table switches to a view of the Milky Way, pinpointing the Orion Arm. “Third planet in the Prelate system. We didn’t realize its local technology was at a level that could detain a Taiikari.”

“Nowhere close yet to an uplift candidate, I’m afraid,” Sykora says. “Pre-light. It’s a good thing their telecommunications were at an outsized advance. I would never have contacted you without Grantyde’s personal device. Everything else was rather crude.”

Not so crude we couldn’t keep you locked down, Grant thinks, and then admonishes himself. He’s not so resentful that he thinks what they were doing to Sykora was right.

“Well done on escaping, Majesty.” Waian’s prosthetic forearm clicks rhythmically as she zips her tablet into a sleeve by her boots. “Fought your way out, yeah?”

“Honestly, Chief Engineer,” mutters Hyax. “I send the debriefs for a reason.”

“I held on,” Sykora says. “Eventually they sent someone who hadn’t been briefed properly, I suppose, and I seduced him into teaching me enough of their language to compel him. And that’s how I met Grantyde. Say hello, Grantyde!”

Grant crosses his arms.

“I’m glad I managed to lift one out,” Sykora says. “You’d think being held captive by a race of sexy giants would be a dream, but the reality was quite awful.”

Grant thinks about someone finding Drake the potbellied cowboy sexy and smirks. Sykora sees it, and smirks coldly back. “But that’s over with, now,” she says. She’s misinterpreted him, but before he can tell her so, her gaze has swept past him. “Now onward to our little Ptolek situation. Vora’s mentioned the killings are still going on.”

“Your consort ought not to be present for matters this substantial, Majesty. Not when he’s still this insubordinate.” Brigadier Hyax’s eyes narrow as she takes Grant in. They flash red. “Leave, Maekyonite. Fetch us some tea.”

“Get it yourself,” he says.

“Hyax, you forget yourself.” Sykora leans forward with a glare. “You will not compel my—” Her voice dies. She stares at Grant. “What did you say?”

“I’m not gonna run around making your people tea,” Grant says.

Ten seconds of utter silence follow his pronouncement.

“Hyax,” Sykora says. “You did compel him. I didn’t imagine that. Yes?”

“Yes,” Hyax murmurs. Her scarred face is full of intrigue. “Consort. Tea. Go.”

That flash again. The slow dawn of realization colors Grant’s mind. “No,” he says, carefully.

Sykora’s cheeks are turning the color of a ripe blueberry. “Will you stop compelling my husband, Brigadier!”

“Gods of the firmament.” Waian’s mouth is half-covered by her metal hand. “Are you sick or something, Hyax?”

Vora is scribbling notes furiously. “And you’re sure he’s male by birth?”

“I.” Sykora blanches. “I had assumed—“

“I am,” Grant supplies. “By birth.”

Waian squints. “Has he had some kind of alien anticomps implanted? Was the implant installed right? Does he understand?”

“I understand you perfectly,” he says. “The words, anyway.”

Sykora’s mouth opens and closes. “Take your clothes off,” she says. Flash.

“On the deck? No.”

Sykora bites her lip. “Stand on one foot.” Flash.

His brow furrows. He stands on one foot.

Her chair screeches as she stands. “Why did you obey that one?”

“Because it doesn’t involve mooning your command group.”

Hyax’s face is turning a dark violet. “Does it not work on him, Majesty?”

“It must.” Sykora paces around the table to where Grant stands. “I used it on him in my escape.”

And Grant remembers. All the times Batty’s eyes flashed like this. They were times she was telling him to do something.

Sykora is staring at him with slowly mounting horror.

She thought she was controlling your mind. This entire time. She thought you had no choice but to free her.

A huff of disbelieving laughter escapes his lungs.

“Vora.” Hyax turns to the seneschal. “Compel him.”

“Um. Uh.” Vora’s eyes are bugged and anxious. They flash. “Sing a song.”

He looks to Sykora. “Am I supposed to be refusing, here, or obeying?”

“That’s enough,” Sykora snaps. “We’re adjourning.”

Vora’s white-knuckling her tablet. “Majesty—”

“Now, Vora.”

“We haven’t even started the damn briefing,” Hyax protests. “I had slides.”

“We’ll reconvene soon, Brigadier. Thank you for your time.” Sykora turns to Grant. “Come with me. Now.”

The door to Sykora’s scarlet suite slides shut. As soon as they’re sealed in, Sykora’s in Grant’s face, close enough he can feel her breath. Her eyes flash. “Stand on your head.”

“No.”

Another flash. “Count backwards from twenty.”

“Nuh-uh.”

She tries one more. “Kiss me.”

“No, Princess.”

Flash. “Please.”

“No.”

“Gods of the firmament.” Her gaze is wide and uncomprehending. “The compulsion doesn’t work on you. You’re maleborn, and it doesn’t work.”

“You’re talking about mind control,” he says. “You thought you were doing mind control on me.”

“Of course I did. I thought—” Her brow furrows. “But… I compelled you on Maekyon.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“You betrayed your species for me. You did everything I commanded you to do. You…” She trails off. She stares at him. “You freed me.”

“I wanted you to be free,” he says.

“Gods of the Firmament.” Sykora’s mouth hangs open. “You chose this.”

“I did.” He shakes his head. “You’ve given me cause to regret it. But I did.”

“I thought I was forcing you to do those things. Controlling your will. We call it compelling. It… you felt no compulsion? No strange thoughts, or force moving you beyond your ability to counter it?”

“I guess I was thinking with my dick. But I doubt that’s what you mean. You just looked like you needed help. And it seemed evil not to give it to you.”

“But.” A tear beads at the edge of her eye. “I’ve been—” She catches herself.

She’s silent for a while. He folds his arms.

She runs a palm over her face and wipes the condensation from her tear duct. She clears her throat. “I have misjudged the sort of person you are, Grantyde. I have been cold to you. Far too cold.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“I counted you my enemy,” she says. “I thought you were my willing jailer. And I was angry. Furious. I relished your fear of me. On Maekyon, I thought I was puppeteering you, and you were powerless to disobey.” She swallows. “But you weren’t. You—” A shiver runs along her, from her ears the tuft of her tail. “You risked everything for me. You lost everything for me.”

He feels the sting behind his eyes at it. All the things he’ll never see or do again. “That’s right.”

“And I’ve been…” She trails off once again. Her lip quivers.

“Are you working your way to a sorry?”

She snaps out of it. “The Princess of the Black Pike does not say sorry,” she hisses.

He grins ruefully. “All right.”

“But perhaps she does say, uh.” She shifts from foot to foot. “I’ve been a bit of an idiot.”

“A bit?”

“It’s unheard of, Grantyde.” Her tail straightens defensively. “You’re the first sapient species in the entire firmament who’s been unaffected. Why do you think all maleborn Taiikari go masked? The anticompel glass keeps any rogue compellers at bay.”

“You didn’t give me a mask.”

“You are not Taiikari. It’s, ah… the Consort traditionally goes unmasked. For the pleasure of their Princess.” Her explanation wilts. “If it’s any solace, I’m told by those who can receive it that the compulsion brings… pleasant feelings.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Grantyde.” She chews the nail on her thumb. “You called me cruel.”

He doesn’t speak. Just gives a shallow nod.

“I am cruel,” she says. “To those who wrong me, or threaten what I love, I’m unendingly cruel. I’m proud of that cruelty. I was proud when you said that to me. I’m far from proud, now. To my… my friends, and to my willing subjects, I’m kind.”

“I’ve seen that,” he says. “I’ve envied it.”

Her thumb rests on her lip. “I’d like to be kind to you.”

“Would you free me?”

“No,” she says.

His heart freezes. “But I saved you.”

“You did. And I wish I were a poet, so that I could come anywhere near the words I’d need to express my gratitude.”

“But I still can’t leave?”

She shakes her head.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my husband. You saved my life and I saved yours and now you’re my husband.” She takes a step toward him. “I won’t free you. But I’ll make you happy. I’ll reward you every day for what you did. I’ll make you glad you’re mine. You’ll see.”

He sighs. Take this win, Grant. Just don’t stop trying.

“If you want to start over,” he says, “I’d start over.”

“Very well.” She sticks her hand out. “Sykora, Princess of the Black Pike.”

He shakes it. “Grant Hyde.”

A tentative smile crosses her face. “Grantyde. That’s not changing either.”

Batty called him Grantyde too. He nods.

“You can’t be compelled,” she says. “That means you must be guarded much more closely. Compulsion is how I’d presumed to keep you obedient. You’ll need supervision.”

“Are you giving me a babysitter?”

“I am your wife, Grantyde.” She takes a slow breath. “I’ll oversee you myself. No more cell. You’ll have a berth in my cabin. You don’t need to sleep in my bed, but I will not risk any crewmate to guard someone with the ability to ignore our strongest security measure.” Her spine straightens. “If you intend to flee, you go through me.”

He chuckles, and realizes as it leaves him and Sykora’s face lights up that this is the first time he’s really laughed since he was abducted.

***

Grant’s cot is relocated to the cabin. Ajax has brought the forest poster. “You want this put up anywhere?”

Sykora very promptly snaps “No, thank you,” with a guilty glance to Grant.

“It was funny,” he says, as they settle in for bed.

“It wasn’t.” Sykora sits at the edge of her bed across the cabin from him. “It was awful and undeserved. I’ll find recompense. Perhaps allow some limited redecoration to the cabin on your part. And no more wiling away the day in your cell. From now on, you’re by my side.”

“Or by myself, maybe, if you trust me?”

She shakes her head. “I do trust you, Grantyde. But you’re staying by me. I have—for the second time—a new husband. A new context to see him through. And he has a new wife.”

He lays his head back. He recalls a question. “When I first arrived, you did something to me. Something with my brain. Now I can’t read my old books or speak my old language. And my words come to me now, sometimes, in a strange rhythm I can dance to without understanding how. An innate poetry. Like just now. That’s not the type of flowery shit I used to say.”

“Yes,” she says. “You were reprogrammed. You are speaking Taiikari. And understanding Taiikari. Your cadence is adapting. It is a heightened language, quite useful to know. Most of the settled firmament speaks it, even beyond the Empire.”

“What about—”

He pauses. He tries to remember. What was the word for the language he used to speak? There was a word. England. It started in a place called England. It’s English.

“What about English?”

“We overwrote it in you,” she says. “It’s the most expedient way. To take the existing pathways and retrofit them. If you returned home, they would no longer understand you, nor you them.”

He shuts his eyes. He figured as much, but hearing it still hurts.

“Grant.”

He looks up. That’s the first time she’s called him that.

“My appetite isn’t a game I’m playing. Or a way I’m trying to hurt you. It’s real. I thought I wanted to break you, but I don’t. I want…”

Her hands form little fists.

“I want you to fall in love with me.”

He sighs. “I can’t. Not the way you want me to. Not when I’m your possession.” He pulls the covers up over his chest. “The choice you’re giving me isn’t a choice at all, until I’m free.”

“I can’t free you. It’s not the way of the Taiikari.” Her red eyes disappear momentarily behind her lids. “I claimed you as a husband. Such things aren’t easily reversed. And it’s the only way an alien is allowed on a Taiikari voidship.”

“Then I’m no use to you.”

She sighs. “You’re asking too much of me.”

“I’m asking…? You kidnapped me and now you’re trying to make me your sex slave.”

“That’s not—” She takes a stabilizing breath. “I don’t see you that way, Grantyde. I swear.”

“It’s not about what you see.”

“It’s a voidship’s custom, Grantyde.”

“A human’s custom is doing our jobs and not freeing the aliens we’re supposed to be guarding. I broke mine for you.”

This hits home. He can tell. “I can’t put you back,” she says. “There’s nothing for you there any longer. Your mother tongue is gone. Your kings want you dead. I can’t reverse either of those things.”

“Is there another place for me? Are there other humans out there?”

“None I know of,” she says. “And if there were…”

She hesitates. He waits.

“If there were, I wouldn’t let you go.”

He stares at the ceiling.

“You are mine, Grantyde. I am grateful to you without end, but my hunger for your has grown, not abated.” Her sleepy voice sharpens. “I counted myself lucky when I thought the firmament had sent me a handsome, pliable plaything for a husband. And now I have your true value. Now I know your courage and your decency. And it drives the breath from my lungs. I will never allow you to part from me.”

Maybe it’s the way she says it. But her words, as much as he wants to rebel from them, kindle something in him.

“You could come to my bed.” She taps her pillow. “It’s a very nice bed. We don’t have to do anything. You can keep yourself from me and I’ll understand. But your warmth. That’s all I want.”

A pang of longing. But no. That’s not a good idea. That’s the first slippery step down a dangerous slope. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say sorry, Grantyde.” She’s sitting up. “I won’t surrender. My methods have changed, but my mission hasn’t. I will be good to you. I’ll make the Pike a home for you. I’ll earn your loyalty, and your company in my bed. Do you believe me?”

He cranes his neck to see her. She’s half-sat up in bed again. Her red eyes catch and shine in what little light there is.

“I want to,” he says.

“I’ll prove it.” There’s steel in her words. “Starting tomorrow. You’ll see the way Sykora of the Black Pike treats her friends.”