Axyna leers at them from an easy chair as they emerge from the examination room. “Have fun in there, gals?”

She hops from her seat and holds her hand out. Sykora wordlessly gives the canister over. Axyna takes it and makes a show of pretending it’s heavy. “Whoa. Stud. This will do nicely.”

“What’s next?” Grant asks. He’s got his uniform jacket folded in front of him to cover the wet spot his wife left on him.

“What’s next is you go do what you’re told.” Axyna’s tail tugs a cabinet door open that blasts polar air into the room. She slots the cylinder into a rack and swings the freezer shut again. “And if you’re good, and you find that Daemon of yours, you and wifey get your litter.”

Sykora scowls. “You speak out of station, Specialist-Gefreiter. Recall your rank.”

Axyna lets out a strange, stutter-stop giggle at that. “My rank. Really, Majesty. You, of all people, should know how deceptive rank can be.” Her opaque goggles reflect the glaring Princess back in a dull, dried-blood shade. “And how little it matters when one finds oneself trapped.”

Sykora’s eyes grow bright and furious. Her ear does that flickering thing it does when she’s about to boil over. Grant’s hand lands on her back. “How do you know about the Daemon?” he asks.

Axyna shrugs. “How do I know about your immunity? How do I know about your burgeoning friendship with the Countess of Korak? How do I know the Princess’s favorite food is rula bean stew?”

“I despise rula bean stew.” Sykora’s voice is tight with the effort to control her temper.

“Ahhh, but now I know that.” Axyna taps her forehead. “You see? The myriad ways in which information flows my way?”

Grant’s finger hooks gently into the collar of Sykora’s uniform beneath her long hair and gives it a tug. “If that concludes our business,” he says, “we’ll be going.”

“Farewell, your royal highnesses.” Axyna’s bow is exaggeratedly deep and florid. “Try not to die. It’d be such a shame for you to miss the future you’ve just put in motion.” She looks up. The ersatz light shines off her half-moon grin. “Glory to the Pike. Glory to the Empress.”

Sykora’s tail thwacks the workshop door shut.

***

Arn gives them a stiff salute as they cross the wind-buffeted landing pad. Sykora stomps into the shuttle and buckles herself in. Her tail winds and turns like a living thing. “Get us off this planet before I burn it.”

“Yes, Majesty.” Arn points their nose up into the air and burns into the sky. The hum of the engine on Grant’s back is like a massage chair, tipping him into an enervated comfort. Judging by the emphatic sigh his wife issues, she’s the same.

She turns her head on its cushion and looks at him. “Normally someone with a hand in it as large as hers would be on the list for our conception party. But I’d sooner invite Marquess Palatine Inadama than that noisome little toad.”

“There’s a conception party?”

“Oh, yes. Very traditional, very raunchy. To celebrate the successful endurance of the act, and the litter to come from it. It’s an opportunity to embarrass your superiors without social consequences.” She pulls a face. “Let’s not invite Inadama either, to be clear.”

“Sort of like a bachelorette party on Maekyon? Penis-shaped balloons and such?”

“By the dozen. Thank goodness you’re prepared. The command group is going to be merciless.”

“Oh yeah?” He matches her grin. “Bring it on.”

“Waian is so excited, you know,” Sykora says.

“For the penis balloons?”

She laughs. “For our children, dove. She adores babies. That’s why she’s always trying to play matchmaker with that army of bedmates she has. She’s practically vibrating about ours. She already told me she’s going to clear her sleep-around schedule to be an auntie for a while.”

“We’ll raise them aboard, then? I’d half-worried we’d need to take leave planetside somewhere. I don’t see a lot of strollers on the Pike.”

“That’s what most parents do,” Sykora says. “They take their maternity leave from the Pike until the children are old enough to walk and talk, then return.”

“How long is that?”

“A decacycle or so.”

His brows raise. “That seems quick.”

Sykora rubs her chin. “Does it?”

The shuttle slows to a halt in the queue outside the space elevator. Arn flips a switch and the walls are bathed in blue; the shuttle rises above the line and proceeds forward.

“A Maekyonite baby doesn’t start walking until fifteen cycles or so,” Grant says. He peers out the window at the civilians below them. The faces he can see through the windows of barges and skycars look sour that the Princess is skipping the line.

Sykora’s brows furrow. “How long does Maekyonite potty training take?”

“I don’t know. Uh. Twice that long?”

“Goodness.” Sykora sucks air in through her teeth. “I hope I don’t offend you when I say this, dove, but I’m glad we’re having Taiikari.”

Grant thinks back to a conversation he had with Tikani, once. I’ll never belong, not really. But my kids will.

“Me, too,” he murmurs.

“Even so short as a decacycle isn’t an option for us, of course.” Sykora is all brightness and cheer now that she’s off the surface of Taiikar. “Our children will be voidborn, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I was voidborn. And Vora was voidborn, too, and so was Hyax. We all grew up in ZK nurseries. I hope you didn’t let Inadama drip any of that poison into your ear about voidborn children.”

“She tried,” Grant says. “She failed.”

“Good.” She nuzzles into his neck.

“What about Waian? Was she voidborn?”

“Waian rolled off an assembly line, fully grown and fully horny.”

The shuttle engine silences; a series of pneumatic clanks sound as Arn parks them in the space elevator. Their driver’s robotic voice: “Prepare for atmospheric departure, Majesties.”

“We have some excellent caregivers, dove,” Sykora says. “You’ll see. I can take you by the schoolhouse floor and show you. We’ll keep our family close. But we’ll have a place for them to go, when we’re presiding over the Pike. Or when we need alone time.”

The tingle in Grant’s cheeks clues him in that he’s smiling involuntarily. For all the agony they’ve gone through and all the trouble they’ll have getting this damn daemon delivered, he feels nothing but excitement when he thinks about their family. Maybe the anxiety will come later. Right now he’s nothing but eager.

He wonders when they should start talking about names. What’s too early to a Taiikari? What’s too early to a Maekyonite? He doesn’t even know.

Sykora points out the window. “Ooh. Grantyde. I know I said get me off this planet before I burn

it, but look down there.” He follows her finger to a gleaming glass cylinder nestled in the purple reaches of a park. “That’s the Grand Merchantry. It’s quite famous for its clothiers. Maybe we could take a trip and find a nice white dress.”

Arn allows a touch of testiness into his monotone. “We are on our way up, Majesty.”

“You could just detach us, Arn.” Sykora kicks her sandals off. “What are they going to do, ticket me?”

“They would, Majesty.”

“Then I’ll pay the ticket. It’s probably a tenth of what those dresses’ll be.”

“Let’s just split, I think,” Grant says.

Sykora chuckles. “What, you’re not excited to watch me dress shop for hours?”

“It’s not that,” Grant says. “It’s just bad luck for the groom to see the dress before the wedding.”

“Is it?” Sykora’s nose wrinkles. “Your little traditions. I love that. Toss that idea, then, Arn.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“I’ll get my secret dress from the Black Pike sector. None of this Imperial Core stuff. Better that way, anyway.” Sykora raises her legs up and into Grant’s lap. “A white dress and a red dress.”

Grant rubs her heel as the space elevator accelerates. “You’ve got a bunch of red dresses.”

“I do, but I’m fond of all of them. Privacy screen, please, Arn.”

The pilot’s mastered the art of doleful looks behind impenetrable military anticomps. He keys the privacy screen and seals the backseat from the cockpit with an opaque, soundproof wall.

“What I need,” Sykora purrs, “is a red dress I’m all right with my husband tearing apart.”

“You think I’m gonna do that?”

“That is the least of what you’ll do to me. You’ll be such a beast with my nectar in your veins.” She beams. Her toes wiggle. “It’s going to be a legendary night.”

The sheer excitement she has at her apparent future sexual destruction brings a laugh to his lips. “Are we sure it’ll work?”

“There’s no reason to imagine it won’t. But we can visit the medtechs and microdose it, to ensure it works properly on Maekyonites. There’s synthetic nectar. They sell it as an aphrodisiac, or for couples that can’t produce their own for whatever reason.”

Her hand strays to the side of his neck. It caresses him, just below his jugular. Her lips part, just enough to let her fangs show.

“But the night of,” she whispers, “you are going to get yours right from the source.”

***

“Our first stop on this odious errand will be Tamion.” Hyax brings the holographic display to life and the command deck is lit in ruby tones by the volcanic world she summons at its center. “Host of Kahanai Fabricant tW, a foundry specializing in simulation engines.”

“We’re framing this as a rapturous reception for your presentation at the Void Convocation and your victory in the Paas system,” Vora says. “Our real reason is gathering whatever information we can about our missing daemon.”

“The foundry itself is located on the thin part of the world that is populace.” Vora points at a patch of spiderwebbing lights and verdant land at Tamion’s north pole. “The rest of the planet is a volcanic hellhole.”

“All that therm is fantastic

for industry,” Waian adds. “All of Black Pike sector’s best foundries and fabricants are there.” She taps her metallic forearm. “Goola here’s a Tamion original.”

Grant leans forward into the hologram. “You named your arm?”

“She named it twice,” mutters Hyax.

“The specific foundry we’re seeking in is owned by a Marquess Reka,” Sykora says. “We’ll be attending the party in the evening, spending the night at her estate, and touring the foundry in the morning. I’ll be able to isolate the woman then.”

“I met Reka, didn’t I? At the gallery party.” Grant sits back and resumes braiding Sykora’s hair. He’s learning the more complicated plaits, slowly but surely. “She was that lady whose head you bit off, right?”

“Really, dove.” Sykora shifts on his thigh. “I didn’t biteher head off. I simply reminded her of the proper hierarchy of the sector. That’s what the coteries require when you return. Without the regular presence of an authority figure, there can be… drift. The majordomo ably handled the Pike in my absence—”

“Thank you, Majesty.”

“Thank you, Vora—but the noblewomen at large were never going to acknowledge her without my title. They needed to reacquaint themselves with me. That’s one reason you need a Void Princess. The Empire relies upon its regents. Absent a present and personified authority, Taiikari nobility can grow somewhat—spirited. Some of them grow ambitious, and some of them grow vulnerable to demagoguery or influence from whispering corners. That’s what happened to Paxea of Entmok, I think. I trusted her too well, and then I vanished for half a decacycle. Too long without the Pike in her sky, and she let her alien husband, uh…”

She trails off.

“Influence her?” Grant finishes.

Sykora casts a warning look around the table. “Okay. But that didn’t happen to me.”

“Of course not, Majesty,” Vora says.

“My mind is a trained fortress.”

“Absolutely,” Hyax says. “Now if you’d care to get out of your husband’s lap, we can lower the platform and call for the sweep to Tamion.”

Sykora scoffs and hops from her throne, and the husband who upholsters it. She sticks out her tongue at her Brigadier, and throws the lever to lower the command deck.

The violet-and-blue goliath of Taiikar shifts and shrinks above the polyhedral glass dome. The command deck begins its slow descent. Vora links her hands behind her back and stands staring at the world they’re departing as it reflects in her owlish glasses. Her tail sweeps across the ground. Grant’s never been good at knowing what she’s thinking. Waian is engaged in whispered, giggly conversation with a stonefaced Hyax, who favors her with a nod.

“Husband.” Sykora’s tail wags toward him. “Attend, if you would.”

Grant stands up and kneels by Sykora. “What’s up, Batty?”

“While we sweep, I’d like you to consider something with me.”

“Sure.”

“During the Eqtoran annexation, you came into your own. I’d never seen you so… inspired, I suppose is the word.” Sykora is nibbling the tip of her tufted tail. “And it’s given me cause to wonder whether you might be ready to take on more responsibility in the sector. When we first wed, I thought to shield you from all this politicking, and give you a life of ease and comfort. But I think I might have a job for you, if you’d like.”

He gently removes the tail from her fidgeting hands, as she’s asked him to do when he catches her in this habit. “I’m certainly listening.”

Sykora smooths her uniform out. “You’re a Prince. And I’d never dream of denying you your rightful place as my second-in-command aboard the Pike. But it’s occurred to me that you aren’t exactly trained in the art of commanding a voidship.”

Grant glances at the glowing lights of the bridge, rising to meet them. “It’s occurred to me a few times, as well.”

“I’d be happy to train you on its command,” Sykora says. “To make you a splendid Prince Margrave alongside me. I’m sure you’d be better at it than you think. But I swore an oath to you, if you’ll remember. That you’d never have to kill again. I intend to keep that promise.”

She moves toward the head of the command deck. He stands and follows.

“I’ve been speaking with Qilik about her system’s potential wellspring,” she says. “That exo planet, Qarnaq. I’m sure the sector’s peerage is lining up for governesship and extraction rights. There’ll be no end of bidding. But I left Ptolek to operate with a certain independence that they gave me cause to regret. My intention was to keep a tighter grip on this one. More oversight. A working group between myself, the governess, and the exo clan heads. A steadier hand on the reins.” She adjusts her tricorne as she cranes her neck up to him. “You worked on Maekyon as an energy extractor. In that Alborda place.”

He nods.

“And if memory serves, you had many ideas for the way the workers ought to be treated.”

His guts knot themselves as they catch up to his ears. “I did.”

Her tail wags. “I think, Prince Grantyde, that the time has come to give you your very first planet.”