A bolt of cold lightning shoots up Grant’s spine. “Why?”

“She brought me in, demanded my recounting, and ordered me to speak truthfully,” Narika says. “So I did. She was already suspicious, or I wouldn’t have been called upon. But I will not excuse myself. She sought confirmation from me, and I gave it.”

“When was this?”

“About two cycles after it happened.”

Grant’s stomach drops. That would put their conversation right around the time the Empress called upon their protestation. Did she already know, when she first beheld him? Or did he and Sykora tip her off and send her hunting? He’s not sure which option is more distressing.

“The Empress is not a fool, Grantyde,” Narika whispers. “You already stood out, and have decided at every turn to stand out further. You were presented with the choice to keep your head down and content yourself with incrementalism, or to agitate. And you’ve chosen the latter. I understand why. You want to change things, and you’re in a hurry. But the desire for change brings scrutiny, Majesty. And it will continue to bring scrutiny. The harder you work, the harder the Empire’s agents of regression will work against you. You’re noble in your efforts, but consider that you are neither the first nor the most powerful person who has attempted these changes. Consider it carefully.”

“If Sykora finds out, she’s gonna kill you.”

“She’ll try. It wouldn’t be the first time, as I’m sure you recall.” A small and ambiguous grin on her lips. “But she’d have done the same thing, I think. I regret breaking my oath to you. But I won’t apologize for it. Oaths cannot stand above a Void Princess’s fealty to the Empress. I haven’t forgotten that I owe you my life. But I owe it to her first.” And she taps the back of her neck. The same spot Sykora’s cranial detonator is placed.

Grant adjusts his uniform’s collar. It’s too tight around his neck suddenly.

“Back!” The armiger’s deep exclamation separates the opponents. “Back to corners.”

Inadama makes a show of her sharp turn away, whooshing her tail past Sykora’s face. She flounces to the white corner. Sykora stalks to the black.

Grant watches his wife hop on her spot and loosen her limbs. Inadama’s earlier attack has left a thinning patch along the material over her thigh, but the spearhead didn’t punch through cloth or flesh. He looks to Narika. “Are the spears blunted or something?”

She shakes her head. “The uniforms are Malkesti-silk lattice. Hard to get through. A limb touch is the way. Or the face.”

Sykora said she’d take an eye. Grant shivers.

The armiger is at his post once more. “Set.”

“Will you tell her?” Narika asks.

“Tilt” comes the call, and again the fighters circle one another.

Grant remembers what happened the last time he kept something from Sykora. The narrowed eyes, the stiff spine. And the acceptance.

“Yes,” he says. “Eventually.”

Narika chews this and seems to manage swallowing it. She nods.

She’s right—Sykora would obey the Empress to sell her sister out if such a demand were made. And if the Empress was poking around the events on Ptolek II, surely she was already suspicious. But Grant is coming to understand that while he works things out in his head, Sykora functions best when she has someone to converse with and talk it out. He’s not sure whether that’s Taiikari psychology in general, or his wife in particular; either way he’s determined to be that person for her. That means finding the moment. Right now, she is in a spear duel with her mom. This is not the moment.

“Why don’t you like your sister, Majesty?” he asks.

“Because she’s a tyrant,” Narika says. “She is cruel and imperious and superior, and she seeks every advantage she can over me.”

Sykora’s speartip whistles as it whips past Inadama’s face. The older woman flows back and down into a crouch, whirling the haft of her polearm toward Sykora’s legs. The Princess of the Pike vaults over the attempt; her point quests out again and strikes Inadama’s shoulder, but succeeds only in shoving her back.

“We’ve spent hectocycles picking at one another, trying to take whatever we can out from each other’s grasp.” Narika’s eyes dart as she follows the action. “She stole Ptolek. She is a conniver. A shark.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I am,” Narika says.

“What makes you different, then?”

“Nothing,” Narika says.

“How is that not hypocritical?”

Narika’s mouth quirks up a micrometer or two at its edge. “Because I don’t like myself either.”

“Touch on white!”

Grant’s attention ricochets back to the arena. The fighters have separated. Inadama’s clutching her arm, where a shallow gash has opened along her bicep. Maroon blood leaks from the wound, dark on the pearly fabric.

Sykora twirls her spear across her shoulders, ending with the tip pointed at Inadama’s heart. “Yield,” she says.

Inadama coils her arm against her stomach. It leaves a smear where it drags. She blinks the sweat from her forehead. Then she stands and stalks to her side of the arena. The tip of her spear wavers in the air. “No.”

The armiger glides forward to the edge of the ring. “Set,” he says.

Both fighters lower their stances. Sykora’s heel scratches against the silica as it pivots back.

“Tilt.”

Inadama blurs forward. Grant is shocked backward against his seatback by the Marquess’s speed. Sykora chokes up on her spear, holding it like a quarterstaff, and catches Inadama’s overhead slice with a piercing thunderclap sound of knurled metal on metal. She slides forward along the length of the caught spear into a vicious hip-check that sends her mother staggering away and flecks her exposed calf with blood.

“The Sanmi defense.” Narika’s lip curls. “Sykora is toying with her.”

Another flashing exchange. The time for circumspect hesitation is over. Inadama parries. Sykora twists past her. A tail binds. A feathery crescent of kicked-out sand. A cry of pain.

“Touch! Touch on white!” The armiger rushes between them. Sykora releases her spear. It sticks in the groaning Marquess. She paces away. A team in white-and-green smocks crowds the arena now, speaking low and quick to one another over the rising conversation. Inadama hisses with pain as the spear is extracted and her wound patched and tended to. Sykora paces a slow circle. Someone hands her spear back to her.

“Be well, Prince,” Narika whispers. As nobles natter and stand to get a better look, she steps away from him.

“Narika,” he says. “Wait.”

She glances back at him.

He holds up a handkerchief. “You left this. Must have fallen out of your pocket.”

She peers at him, and at it. “Indeed?” She takes her handkerchief from him. “Thank you, then.”

And she slips away into the gathering crowd, examining the strip of cloth as she goes. She doesn’t need to. There’s nothing on it.

Just a little more of Waian’s training.

Inadama has managed to sit up. Her face is waxy, but her expression is determined. “You have won,” she says. “And I have my condition.”

“And you invoke it immediately,” Sykora says.

“I do.”

“I know.” Sykora lets her spear drop into Vora’s waiting grip, and strides past her wounded mother.

Inadama staggers to her feet. “I’ll be heard, Sykora.”

“I’ll hear you from aboard my voidship.” Sykora turns and glares. “After you’ve healed, and I’ve washed the last of your blood from me.” She raises her voice toward Inadama’s second. “See to the Marquess Palatine before she opens that wound further. I’m bound for the Pike.”

The armiger holds his hand out. “Will you not bow, Majesty?”

Sykora tsks and beckons with a flick of her tail. With the chunky clatter of marine armor, Hyax descends from the ringed platform above the arena, the Pike’s banner in tow. She passes it to Sykora, who thrusts it into the waiting hands of the armiger. He lifts it high above his head, at an angle to display the twin halberds of Sykora’s sigil. The crowd rises to its feet and applauds. No cheers, no whistles. Just the murmuration of their clapping.

Sykora bows stiffly. Then she strides from the arena as though its sand scalded her feet. She holds her hand out to Grant. It’s caked with half-dried blood.

“Run from this with me,” she whispers.

He takes her hand and lets her lift him from his seat. They ascend the Embassy’s amphitheater steps, Hyax and Vora in their train. The applause of the Imperial Core nobles surrounds them, as thin and cold as frost.

***

The applause of the Black Pike bridge, safely ensconced once again in orbit, is warm and unrestrained and full-throated. Sykora’s first genuine smile in hours breaks across her face as she leans forward on the command deck’s banister and salutes.

She turns from her subjects, tail wagging. Every minute aboard the Pike is loosening her like she’s lounging in a spa tub. “Brigadier. Half-day for you and for the marines who escorted me. Excellently intimidating.”

Hyax salutes. “Thank you, Majesty.”

“Majordomo, half-day for you, too.”

Vora bows. “I respectfully decline, Majesty. Your shift is my shift.”

“I knew you would.” Sykora’s tail bats her majordomo’s shoulder. “Just wanted the intention stated. Prince. Meet me at my chair, if you please.”

“You bet.” Grant takes a seat on Sykora’s embellished throne, which is large enough to accommodate him. Sykora hops into his lap and groans with enervation as she sprawls across him.

“I would have stabbed every single mother on that planet to escape it.” She tips her head back against Grant’s arm. Her tricorne falls off her head; he snags it before it hits the floor. “What did that hellion Narika want from you?” she asks.

“Just to talk,” he says. “She was being philosophical at me about the Eqtoran annexation.”

“I bet she was.” His imp of a wife smirks with impish satisfaction. “We out-goodied her.”

Grant dangles Sykora’s tricorne above her. “You want this?”

“Uh-uh.” Sykora tugs Grant’s hand onto the top of her head. “This is my new hat.”

He scritches behind her ear. She sighs with gratitude.

“I don’t mean to force you to inherit my enemies, you know,” she says. “And I know Narika likes you better than she likes me. And I must have seemed quite cruel to the Marquess. I—”

“Babe.” He slips his palm under her head and angles it up. “You ripped my biggest hater’s throat out with your teeth. I’m in your corner.”

Several of the glass panes on the main monitor window honeycomb into one another. An insistent trill sounds. “Incoming hail.” The pinched voice of the Monitor ensign rises from the bridge. “Patterned to Marquess Palatine Inadama of Taiikar.”

Sykora’s ears flatten to the sides of her head. “Speaking of haters.”

Grant puts his hands on the throne’s armrests. “Should I get up?”

She touches his stomach. “Stay, if you’d be so kind. I want her to see you.”

He relaxes back down and rests a hand in Sykora’s lap. She takes it.

“Full answer,” she calls.

A connecting chirp. Inadama’s face forms in the great glass before them.

“Marquess Palatine.” Sykora tilts her head in a brief ducking bow. “I trust you’re recovering.”

“Well enough.” Inadama sits at the same pitted desk as before. She waves a medtech away from her shoulder. “I’ve had worse.”

Sykora smirks at that.

“You have won your freedom from me,” Inadama continues, over the echoing departure of her healer. “And from your term as Void Princess. Henceforth you will be known as Princess Margrave Sykora of Taiikar.”

“No,” Sykora says. “Princess Margrave Sykora of the Black Pike.”

“That won’t—”

“My majordomo informs me it will.” Sykora widens her slouch. “I have no interest in pleasantries or conversation. I have no interest in knowing you, and you have no interest in me. This has become clear to me. Shall I send you my ledgers, or will we dispense with the charade?”

Inadama’s eyes drift upward with obvious exasperation. “I do not need your ledgers, Majesty. No.”

“Spring your ambush, then, and I’ll grant your demand, and we’ll be done with each other.”

Inadama’s ear twitches. Just like her daughter’s does, when she’s holding anger back. “Fine, then. In the name of Clan Taiikar, you will retrieve a daemon for me.”