The cabin door slides open with an unobtrusive hiss. Grant creeps inside to the sleeping section, where Sykora is still snoring. At some point she got up, opened the note, poured herself a glass of water, and then fell asleep again, wrapped in the old shearling that she used to sleep with before Grant shared her bed.

He slips in next to her and tucks her into his arms. Her snore interrupts itself. She sighs and stretches and feels her husband’s presence. She lets out a contented hum and burrows into his warmth, shrugging off his jacket.

“Hey, Batty,” he whispers.

“Mmm. Hi.” Her eyes stay shut. “How long have I been out?”

“About a half hour. We raised Cloud Gate. They’re in orbital dock over some planet called Antrice.”

“Antrice. Heard of it.” She smacks her lips and rolls over to rub her butt on him. “Pretty rocks, I hear.”

“That’ll be fun.” He turns sideways and spoons her up against him. His hand tucks into her cleavage to feel her tri-part heart on his skin. “How are you?”

“Fine.” She sighs. “I was being silly. It wasn’t the Empress. The Empress wouldn’t do that to me. I’m loyal.”

He doesn’t share her certainty on that, but he nods against her hair anyway.

“I can’t believe I did that,” she says. “Just—fell apart. Fucking humiliating.”

“Hey.” He turns her around so they’re face-to-face. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing. Okay? The only reason I’ve never panicked and freaked out about that detonator every day since I learned about it is you’ve been there to keep me okay. Let me take a turn carrying us.”

Her tail snakes its way behind him and tugs him into a kiss. She whimpers into his lips, quiet and needful. They linger, and deepen, until her breath is coming out in sharp exhalations and her little blue limbs are finding the places they can close around him.

He pulls back from their kiss. “One second. I came to tell you we got a call.”

She sighs. “God. Okay. Is it Cloud Gate’s majordomo?”

“It’s Glory Banner,” he says, and powers through the sour face she makes in reply. “I was going to tell her that we’re on a communications blackout, and that we’d get back to her later. But I don’t want to make that decision without you.”

“Let’s rip the bandage,” Sykora says. “Tell Narika we’ll meet in person. We’ll use Antrice and get some time with a representative from Cloud Gate, too.” Grant digs his communicator out to text Vora. “And tell the bitch to get the hell off the line. Someone’s got kill phrases and they’re using them. As blissful as it would be for her head to explode, I’d despise missing it.”

“Slow down a sec.” Grant is trying his best, but he’s still texting at grandparent speeds. He pauses. “Actually, we don’t need to send that last part.”

Vora replies quickly:

She accepts. Finding a meeting place by the southern continental port on Antrice. somewhere unobtrusive I think.

ETA is an hour. The command group can work the sweep out, OK?Take your time with her

“All right. We’re sweeping to Antrice. Get a good look at those rocks.” He sits up and props himself on the wall abutting the bed. “I have to tell you something. And I wanted to wait for when we were through this, for a moment we could relax, but relaxation doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards for a while. And it’s about to be relevant.”

Sykora shifts in the sheets and rests her head in his lap. “Go on.”

“Narika spilled to the Empress about us. She told our secret.”

He feels her stiffen under his touch. “She what.”

“Told me at the duel,” Grant says.

“That fucking hellhound,” Sykora says. “Smug blue oathbreaking liespinning holy-rolling two-timing double-dealing smug treasonous slanderous cuntfacéd rotbreath smug daughter of a flea-infested bitch.”

“Jeez, Batty.”

“May her tail catch fire. May her fangs fall out. May her flash burn out. Did she tell you why, or was it due to her ingrained duplicity?”

“The Empress suspected us. She ordered Narika for a confirmation, and Narika gave her one. I should have told you sooner.”

“No,” Sykora says. “This was the perfect time. It’s a fantastic distraction from my existential crisis.” She rolls further into his lap. “That poxy whore. Because of her stupid little counterplay, I am going to wring an army of gorgeous Maekyonite-blooded babies from my big hunky husband, and I am going to organize them into a parade with a bunch of pennants that say NARIKA IS A KISSLESS VIRGIN and I am going to march them through the Imperial Sky Plaza on Taiikar. With drums and thrak-horns.”

Grant tries to keep his face straight. “Is she a poxy whore or a kissless virgin?”

“She is a poxy virgin. Let’s meet with her. I’ll be very polite.” She wriggles out of her breeches and holds her arms out. “Squish time first.”

“We need to figure out how the Empress first suspected us.”

“We do. Later.” She impatiently wiggles her fingers. “Squish.”

He obeys his Princess, rolling onto her and smiling into his kisses along her neck as she lets out a contented purr. He pauses just before he reaches her mouth and presses his forehead against her. “One more thing.”

She tsks. “Okay.”

He winds his touch around the nape of her neck. “I can’t sit on my hands anymore and let that bomb stay inside you. We’re getting it out. We have to say something to the Empress. I don’t know what, but something.”

She doesn’t say no. She just clings to him.

“All right?” he prompts.

“It’s—“ She sighs. “It’s different this time.”

He raises off her onto his knees, to see her face. “What’s different?”

“Every other time I could tell myself I’m just doing what the Empress would do, if she were here. If she had all the information. But she was here. And she did have all the information. And it’s still in my head. And she expects me to—to bring life into the world. With it in my head.”

She runs her fingers along the hewn muscle and soft paunch of her stomach. Her touch leaves little grooves in her sky-blue skin.

“It was all so much easier,” she whispers. “When I knew what I was.”

He nuzzles into her hair, smells the linen-and-lemon freshness of her sabsum shampoo. “I know what you are.”

She looks up inquisitively at him. “What?”

He kisses the upturned tip of her nose. “Let me show you.”

He gently takes both her hands in one of his, and raises them above her head. Her curves flow as she arches and stretches. Their difference in height is so dramatic that he can keep her arms pinned there as he trails kisses down her chest and her stomach. He nudges her legs wider, and sinks his kisses into the fertile width of her hips. She giggles and squirms as his beard tickles her.

He gets to work. Her laugh sharpens into a gasp.

***

“Meena eats fish now,” Ajax says, as the sand crunches below his and Grant’s boots. “And I blame you.”

Grant adjusts the tint on his vacsuit helmet to let more of Antrice’s brilliant sunset in. “What did I even do?”

“You brought the fish on board. And Ipqen-mek-Taqa fed her some kind of skewer thing and now it’s her favorite protein.” Ajax follows his cell along the striated silica deposits of the plain they landed in, toward the clustered domes of the science outpost in which they’re meeting Narika. “She eats sauteed pinkfish and then chases me around and makes me kiss her fishy mouth.”

“It sounds like you should blame Lady mek-Taqa.” Grant squints out at the outpost’s glittering geodesic steel. In all their communications, Cloud Gate as a sector is in a terrified stupor as they reckon with the beheading of their ruling body. In their panicky state, all it took was a royal title and a firm request to provide a meeting place. Sykora and Narika are moving as quietly as possible, choosing this botanical research post on an otherwise-unoccupied continent to stage their talks.

“No fun,” Ajax says. “She’s too nice. She’ll get all upset and apologize and shit.”

Grant’s communicator buzzes. He digs into his belt pouch with the hand that isn’t holding Sykora’s.

whats funny dove?

He looks to his wife, who gives him a wave. Her helmet is sonically sealed; all she can hear in there is some white noise to keep her from going nuts over the sound of her breath. This is how they operate outside of the Pike at this point, anywhere that hasn’t been checked thoroughly, signal-jammed, and cleared.

jax is giving me the business because meena eats fish now

He holds the communicator up to show her. The front of her helmet fogs with her laugh. She types back:

Hyax has started eating it too now. kymai told me.

for practice perhaps….

He grins, and is one-handed typing something back when a skeletal buggy buzzes to them over the striated sands. The marine in the driver’s seat brings it to a hissing halt and throws a lever that unfolds a thinline ramp from its door.

Majordomo Vora steps from it in full vacsuit and bows to her sovereigns. “Majesties. The meeting room has been swept for speakers, infrascoped, and signal-jammed. We’ll be safe from killer transmissions at least.” She holds her tablet up, where her dictation has been converted into glowing Taiikari glyphs for Sykora.

The Princess of the Pike flashes a double thumbs-up in response.

“How’s that Gravitas daemon treating you, Vora?” Grant asks.

“Oh, it’s incredible, majesty. It kicks my butt every time. I can’t remember the last time that happened. Rovakt is such a genius. Such an honor to play even her digital shadow. I only wish it could learn me as I’m learning it, but I only manage a half dozen games between resets.” Vora slaps the door of the buggy; its wheels crackle back into motion and it drives back toward the carrier. “I suggest the Sergeant and his men move ahead. Glory Banner are already present in force at the greenhouse.”

Grant nods. “All right, Jax. See you up there.”

Ajax salutes and jogs ahead to the main column of marines.

Grant squeezes Sykora’s hand then detaches from it to write her a message:

vora says the meeting spot is all good. we can turn ur ears back on there

Sykora mimics wiping her brow in relief.

Vora falls into pace with the Prince and Princess. The tuft of her tail prods Sykora’s then hooks around it, and Princess and majordomo walk linked together, tail-in-tail, in silent communion.

Grant replaces his communicator in his belt pouch. “While it’s just the two of us, Vora. Can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Majesty.”

“How did you come to be Sykora’s majordomo?”

“I was assigned to her, Majesty.”

“Is there, like, an interesting story?”

Vora shakes her head. “I’m not interesting, Majesty.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Majordomos are not supposed to be interesting, Majesty. Hyax has her gruffness and her rigor. Waian has her experience and her cheerful insubordination. You challenge her ethics. That’s not my place.” Vora’s tail tightens a loop around Sykora’s. “My place is to serve Her Majesty and yourself in whatever way possible, and create no issues. No drama, no vices, no problems. To ensure that you never hesitate to lean on me. That is the majordomo’s creed. I appreciate you attempting to get to know me, but my life is as unremarkable as I could make it, on purpose.”

Grant raises a brow. “That’s quite the declaration, majordomo.”

“Well, I’m quite the majordomo.” Vora bumps her shoulder against Sykora’s and unwinds them from one another. “That’s the point of pride I permit myself. There’s a timeless stock character of the villainous, ambitious majordomo that undermines her Princess.” Her dismissive sniff sharpens to a static burst through her helmet mic. “A pall on the profession. My personal ambition is to be boring as possible.”

“Hey. If boring works for you, then it works for me. From what I understand you’re the only reason the sector didn’t fall apart while Sykora was out.”

“Not the only reason, Majesty.” Vora stands a little straighter. “But I did my part.”

“I think we’ll end up relying on you a lot more during the pregnancy.”

“I’m already putting together a seminar for you on Taiikari child-rearing,” Vora says. “I daresay it’ll be my least exciting achievement yet.”

The spiderwebbing steel and clamshell-white polymers of their host dome unfold in origami welcome to their contingent of marines. They step inside and through the gleaming airlock, and Sykora sighs with gratitude as she tugs her helmet off. “Thank the Gods of the Firmament,” she says. “I was feeling quite left out.”

Vora holds her hands out for Sykora’s helmet. “Welcome back, Majesty.”

“Thank you, majordomo.” Sykora tenders her helm and tugs her bun’s elastic free, sending a dark cascade of hair over the lip of the vacsuit collar. “What were you two discussing back there?”

“My unremarkable life speech, Majesty,” Vora says.

“Ah. Classic.” Sykora salutes Ajax and Lance Corporal Goran as the marines escort them through the warm-lit and verdant botany lab hallway. “Don’t let her tug your tail, Grantyde. Vora is vicious and conniving. I don’t have to tell you; you’ve played her in Gravitas.”

“You can rest easy, Majesty,” Vora says. “I play with digital ghosts now.”

“You’re going to be a holy terror once you’re in the mood for flesh-and-blood players again,” Sykora says. “I am counting my days.”

The dome was hurriedly evacuated by combined order of Black Pike and Glory Banner. Its open-plan center is a riot of multicolored blooms and draping fern-leaf trees in Taiikar violet. The Black Pike marine squad has occupied one half of the artificial rainforest clearing. On the other side, across a mangrove moat of hydroponic tubes, stand the black-and-gold Glory Banner marines, their banner post sigil reminding Grant of a Christian cross blazoned on their HAK suit chestplates.

The two ZKZs’ two squads face one another in two loose battle-ready lines of unhurried menace, rifles held loose and limbered. Sykora steps through the curtain of marines and inclines her head. “Show me Narika.”

Another Sykora, one with bobbed hair, thicker brows, and gold threading through her vacsuit rather than crimson, steps into the light.

“Hello, sister,” says Princess Sykora of the Black Pike. “You look guilty.”

“Hello, sister,” says Princess Narika of the Glory Banner. “You look complicit.”

Sykora steps to the edge of the bubbling water. “Let’s discuss dead Princesses and broken oaths, shall we?”

Narika steps to her own edge. “Let’s.”