“I understand that Void Princess Kanori is no more,” Narika says.

“Correct,” Sykora says. “We’re investigating why.”

“As am I.” Narika digs into her vacsuit satchel.

“You needn’t waste your time, Narika. There is knowledge only I am privy to and there are avenues only I have available.”

Without breaking her crimson eye contact with her sister, Narika removes a waxy cardboard container from her satchel. She unfolds a straw, pops it through the lid, and takes a long drink. Sykora stares with ill-disguised contempt as her sister drains her juice box. The Princess of the Glory Banner finishes with a satisfied ahh. “Inadama told you to find a daemon,” she says. “Kanori had it in her sector and someone killed her over it. Now you want to know why.”

“I really just hate you quite a lot,” Sykora says.

“And I you,” Narika says.

“How does everyone in the goddamn firmament know about this goddamn daemon?”

Narika cocks her hip. “You beat her at a duel, she quite publicly demanded your condition, and then I hear you foiled an assassination attempt on Tamion. Which is where your daemon foundry is. It’s simple enough to put two-and-two together.”

“Why are you so disastrously obsessed with me, Narika? Not enough going on in Glory Banner?”

“Every Void Princess is watching you, Sykora. Not all of them as successful, or as closely, as I am. But you’re the first of us to break out of the position since the Malkest tragedy. And in recognition, not ignominy. Did you not imagine you’d be attracting attention? What kind of daemon is it?”

“The fabricant manager told us it was a Gravitas player.”

Narika takes another sip. “Not likely.”

“I know that, Narika. You don’t think I know that?” Sykora pinches the bridge of her nose. “Look. Stay out of this one, right? I have no reason to trust you with anything I’m doing. Not after last time. Not after you lied to my face and spilled my secrets.”

Narika’s eyelids lower. “Grantyde told you, then.”

“He did.” Sykora looks back at Grant where he stands in the line of marines and blows him a kiss. “He told me readily. Come on up, dove.”

Grant steps from the line and goes to Sykora’s side.

She takes his hand. “So if you imagined you could drive any kind of wedge between us, you were sadly mistaken.”

“I know.” Narika casts Grant a bemused look. “He told me he was going to tell you.”

Sykora looks like she’s holding herself back from stomping her booted foot. “You keep posing these damn quandaries to my man like he’s some kind of experiment. Just because you don’t have your own husband doesn’t give you the right to pester mine.”

“And we arrive once again at the ha ha Narika’s single checkpoint you place into every conversation.” Narika scoffs. “I consider the husband-of-the-void law an abomination.”

“Grant isn’t

a husband-of-the-void.”

“I know. Not all of us have your fortune, Sykora.”

“You broke your oath to me,” Sykora says. “You swore on Kiar and you broke that oath. I take that as a—”

“I’m sorry,” Narika says.

A sharp inhalation from Narika’s majordomo. Her marines are stock-still.

“For what it’s worth,” Narika says. “I can’t regret telling Her High Majesty what she demanded of me. But yes. I swore an oath to you and broke it, and I am sorry, Sykora.”

“You… uh.” Sykora’s righteous indignation is punctured and rapidly draining. “I suppose if the Empress commanded you it’s somewhat understandable. As long as you know how you erred.”

“I do,” Narika says.

“Right. Well.” Sykora fiddles with the clasp on her vacsuit sleeve. “Apology accepted, I suppose.” She recovers her chilly game face. “Provided you stay out of my business on this.”

“It’s not because we don’t trust you,” Grant says.

“Not entirely,” Sykora clarifies. “But whatever is happening here, Void Princesses are uniquely vulnerable to it. And as loathsome a bug as you are, I suppose I’ve already made a habit of saving your life. I might as well keep it going.”

Narika shrugs and takes another box from her bag. “If your request is I remain unattached to this situation, then I will. What I came here to discuss in the main isn’t Cloud Gate’s Princess, but its territory. Juice, Majesty?”

“I’m all right,” Grant says.

Narika pops her straw in. “Kanori was a middling Princess. Too focused on plucking her portions, unwilling to gamble on difficult acquisitions or annexations. She did all right, for being the neighbor of two Void Princesses as ambitious as we are. But her territory was no great goliath and her loss is no mighty tragedy.”

“Callously stated,” Sykora says.

Narika hums around her straw and lowers it. “I’m only saying what we both know. I intend to suggest to the Palatines that there is no need to replace Kanori. That there are already more than enough Void Princesses, and that her ZKZ is better drawn back into the Palatine fold than left to idle on the frontier. They’ll salivate over that, and if you and I make a show of cooperation, that’s rare enough I imagine we can convince the Empress. Her territory we can divide between you and me, and the Princess of the Bright Covenant.”

“Bright Covenant, hmm?” Sykora’s indignation has given way to a chin-rubbing consideration. “Princess Dantia?”

Narika shrugs. “Already overextended, from what I hear. She’ll scoop a system or two, maybe put up a fight for the resource-rich ones close to her boundary. But she’ll present no real resistance, I should think. Too busy expanding her counterspin with that ungainly privateer corps of hers.”

Sykora snorts. “What, you don’t think her system is sewwww innovative?”

“Oh, it’s sewwww innovative.” Narika joins her on what Grant imagines to be an uncharitable impression of their fellow Void Princess. “But while she’s busy innovating, we’ll get busy taking.”

“So, what. You came here with the offer to split Cloud Gate between us?”

“I came here to tell you I’m ripping Cloud Gate from you entirely, sister.” Narika favors the line of Black Pike crew with a cold smile. “And we’ll claw and spit like two rabid kindeks over every piece of it, just like always. But if you advocate with me, we’ll get the chance to see who earns it.”

She extends a golden-gloved hand.

Sykora looks at Narika’s outstretched hand like it’s carrion. “All right. Fine.” She takes it and shakes it. “Off to cut one another’s throats, then.”

“That’s our remit,” Narika says.

Sykora wipes her hand on her vacsuit front. “You’re going to be an aunt, you know.”

“Am I?” Narika wipes hers. “You told Inadama where she could stick it when it came to family.”

“I would never be her daughter,” Sykora says. “But I’d be your sister, hateful as you are.”

Narika raises an eyebrow. “An excellent pitch. I can see why the nobles are queueing for your time.”

Sykora raises a mirrored eyebrow right back. “Every family needs an evil aunt or two. I can point you out to my children and say that’s Auntie Narika. She’s what happens if you let your pride pickle too long.”

Narika lets out a hiss of air that one could almost mistake for a laugh. “Get out of my face, Black Pike.”

“You get out of my dome, Glory Banner.” Sykora breaks contact and turns on her heel. “I have Cloud Gate’s survivors next. Off with you.”

Narika’s tail flicks through the air with the quick turn of her heel. She nods to a petite, silvery-blue woman who must be her Vora, and her marines stand aside to grant them passage.

“Give me a second.” Grant scritches Sykora’s head. “I need a moment with Narika.”

Sykora gives this a quizzical look but nods her assent.

Grant hops the hydroponic divider. As he approaches the Glory Banner line the black-and-gold marines close ranks. “Pardon me, gents,” Grant says.

“Let him through, Sergeant.” Narika calls from behind the wall of HAKed men. Grant inches past and feels their close scrutiny on him.

Narika waits for him in the pale hallway beyond the greenhouse, her majordomo at her shoulder. “Can I ask you something?” Grant asks.

Narika nods to her majordomo. “Give us some space, Tari.”

Majordomo Tari demonstrates a mastery of the backing-up-while-bowing maneuver that rivals Vora’s.

Grant drops to a knee. “You said not all of us have your fortune,” he says. “When you were talking about a free husband.”

“Hmm.” Narika smirks. “Not my best riposte, but she wields you well.”

“Was it just a riposte? If you were given the option of having a free husband, like Sykora does. Would you stop taking K-wort and get one, or would you stay on?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“You’re my sister-in-law,” he says. “And I know nothing about you. And there’s a lot of new stuff happening with me and Sykora, and I think we might have the chance to reapproach how this thing is between us and you. And to be… I don’t know.”

“A family,” Narika says.

“Uh.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Narika absently tugs a flower from a bed running along the hallway, and turns it over in her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “I appreciate how focused my solitude makes me. I already have so much to concern myself with. Being an aunt or a sister is already fondness and folly. Let alone a wife. Back before Sykora had a husband, she was much more aggressive in going after my border systems. You have distracted and mellowed her. I’m more vicious than her, now. Not how it used to be.”

Guilt rises in him. “So no?”

“So I don’t know.” Narika stares at the glowing horizon out the dome’s glass lattice. “Kabira’s wort does an excellent job of managing libido. Of sharpening my mind. But—”

The way her thick, dark brows gather, the way she bites the inside of her lip. It’s so eerie, how closely she looks like her sister.

“I never considered myself a lonely person. But the way Sykora looks at you. How does that feel, I wonder. To need someone that badly, to the point of dependency. Of weakness.” She frowns. “It ought to repulse me.”

“But it doesn’t?”

Narika flicks with her thumb and severs the flower’s bloom. It flips end-over-end back into the bed. “Goodbye, Prince.” She hands him the beheaded stem. “I trust you’ll prevent your feral wife from eating my nieces and nephews. Please share with her my congratulations on your upcoming children.”

“I don’t know if she’d believe me.”

Narika chuckles. “That’s why I’m sharing them.”

Grant returns to the greenhouse center. Sykora is in conference with Ajax. “Let them in,” she says. “But I want one of us camouflaged in that treeline. Just in case.”

Ajax salutes. “Do it myself, Majesty.” He sees Grant approach and pivots his salute. “Cloud Gate has arrived, Majesty. With more than the pre-agreed force. Full platoon.”

Sykora grimaces. “Trying to intimidate us, I imagine. I’d hoped we might play nice, but we’ll need to pull the Waian card before the day is over.”

Ajax’s HAK suit hisses and opens. It’s empty inside. The grass in front of it crunches below his bare feet. “Get me a spear,” a sourceless voice calls. “And stow my suit.” A marine steps forward and holds out a carbon-steel rod, which catches in the air, unfolds, and locks into a tactical-black spear. The spear bobs across the greenhouse and floats up into the trees, where it disappears atop a branch. If Grant hadn’t watched Ajax hide it, he’d have no idea it was there. Lance Corporal Goran approaches the HAK suit, held up by its hydraulics, and slaps a button on its neck that clatters it into his grip.

“Let me,” Grant says. “You should get ready.”

Goran salutes; Grant shoulders the empty HAK and hauls it away away, secreting it in the lab hallway. He lays it across the floor and takes a moment to stare at it.

I have got to get myself one of these things.

He hurries back to the greenhouse in time to witness the blue-and-silver soldiers trooping into the meetingplace. They outnumber the Pike marines by at least half, flanking a dusty-freckled sapphire woman in middle age.

“Narika says congratulations, by the way,” Grant whispers to Sykora, as their counterparts assemble.

Sykora snorts.

“The crew of the Cloud Gate greets the Princess of the Black Pike,” the freckled woman says. “I am Niminoa, Kanori’s majordomo.”

“Greetings, majordomo.” Sykora steps closer to Grant’s hip. “You have my condolences for the loss of Void Princess Kanori, and my promise that I will not rest until her death is solved.”

“Appreciated, Majesty. But I am afraid that my comrades and I have not come on glad tidings or to bandy conversation. This dome has been surrounded by Cloud Gate marines.” Grit catches at the edges of Niminoa’s voice; it sounds like she’s been crying. “You will not be returning to the Black Pike. You’ll be our guest aboard the Cloud Gate, while we ascertain your role in Kanori’s death.”

Sykora doesn’t flinch. “I think not. My chief engineer is aboard the Pike, with a recording of Kanori’s final call locked and ready to broadcast wide, at my signal or in my absence. I am sure the Imperial Core chancellors and your governesses will be intrigued by what, exactly—” Sykora crooks a finger. The fronds of the tree above Majordomo Niminoa’s head shake. A black streak launches from it.

“—Kanori did to be the first Void Princess executed by kill phrase during the Zithran regime,” Sykora continues, as though no speartip, held by an invisible hand, now presses against Niminoa’s neck. As if marines on both sides of the water aren’t leveling their rifles at one another.

Niminoa swallows. Her arms are tight by her sides; Grant realizes belatedly that a tail must be binding her. The spear’s blackened steel creates an indent of deadly promise at her throat.

“In fact, this little display has sapped my generosity.” Sykora rests her finger against her lip. “I do believe you will be our guest aboard the Pike, Majordomo Niminoa. You will accompany us to the Imperial Core, where we will investigate the office from which the kill phrase was issued. In this way you’ll be given the opportunity to clear your deceased Princess’s name, a gift for which my only required recompense is your full cooperation.”

“Perhaps,” Niminoa says, “we might start this conversation over.”

“Aboard the Pike, perhaps,” Sykora prompts.

“Perhaps.”

Sykora smiles at Niminoa down the length of the invisible Ajax’s spear. “You know, Nim. I think we are going to make a wonderful team.”