Winter Prince

Book 1 of Seasons of War

Winter Prince

Sarah A. Hoyt

“…. perhaps the most notable thing about the initial settlers that departed from Earth in the early 22nd century, those that left when the Schrodingers were still thought to simply vanish with everyone aboard every other time or so were not desperate people, nor very poor people.

Of course, there were political prisoners: those too prominent or rebels against regimes too despised that simple massacre was impossible. Shipping them out was done under a cover of compassion, an appearance of wishing to give them the space to live out their anti-social fantasies without harming the common good of whatever despotism they’d been fighting. And if they disappeared, well, they had at least been given a chance.

But the strange thing was that the voluntary emigrants were by and large the rich, the well-connected and the fanatical. People who believed in radical equality and wanted their offspring to grow up in a genderless or raceless world, and – conversely – people who believed their children should be engineered to fit a class, role or occupation and therefore have their happiness assured. Or alternately people who thought their children should be tweaked for minimal need of social interaction or maximal desire for community.

There were also people simply willing to create the perfect society, while leaving the genetics of their descendants alone. Men and women with a theory to prove, or a philosophy to validate.

Then there were the usual religious groups, from Christian to Marxist, seeking to create their utopia de novo in a new land.

Hence the strange landscape when we learned to control the translation engines for time as well as for space, the unfortunate Schrodinger nickname fell away from them, and re-discovered the universe this time with certainty. Those colonies that hadn’t arrived when expected and which had been instead flung back in time – the oldest being 20 thousand years in the past – had almost all changed from their intention. Sometimes changed into very strange societies indeed.

But perhaps the strangest of all were those that had held on to their initial intention.”

Sarmakand Semprus, Earth 3120

I

They hurt you, my liege, and I was not there to protect you the words pounded through Lucrecia Lantos’s head as she rode the zoomer away from the palace, on the road between snow-covered fields. The sky was heavy, lowering, and only the distant glow of the spaceport lent color to the landscape – a red and gold magnificence against the sky, like a false sunset.

She’d changed from the reception gown she’d worn to her formal dismissal ceremony into the uniform she’d worn when actually defending Prince Nicodemus – fitted ankle-length dark-blue pants and equally fitted jacket, in silvery grey. Ornamental more than practical, but yet sparing her the need to ride side saddle.

The family licarge had stayed at the palace. It dated from her grandfather’s day, ornate and gilded with the family crest on the two – ponderously sliding -- doors. It had been designed to carry her grandfather’s family of ten children, plus retainers. Inside, it was a comfortable salon, with seating for twenty and compact cooking facilities. Very useful for long trips, as it flew higher altitudes making the trip faster, and certainly more comfortable.

It took Jon Coachman with his years of training and a heavy flying license to operate it. Father had made her take it to the palace. It was proper.

But she wasn’t leaving the palace when expected. She hadn’t wanted to explain why she was leaving. She didn’t want to be observed. She wasn’t even sure why. She just had to get away from the formality, the oppressive air of both celebration and mourning, an unholy comingling.

What drove her was a feeling, not a thought. Her grief was too present, too immediate to wish to be shared. Instead, she’d taken one of the zoomers the guard had used while in service, which had been set aside for them. Sleek silver machines: A tapering cylinder, containing the anti-grav unit, with a saddle, and handlebars for steering. They didn’t float too far above the road cut for ground transportation – mostly goods – and they didn’t go the speeds of enclosed carriages but it was enough to be faster than horses and certainly than walking.

The downside is that you had to ride a zoomer sidesaddle in a court gown. And Lucrecia would rather be whipped than ride ten miles side saddle.

Hence the change in clothing, which allowed her to ride astride, leaning forward over the humming machine. She’d ridden like this often, with her fellow guards.

And Prince Nicodemus.

Ten miles between the royal palace at Taurce and her family farm. She’d done the trip so often that she might have done it in her sleep. She’d come this way every weekend since she’d been selected to serve as the prince’s honor guard ten years ago, when she was just fifteen. And she often came alone or with Bruin – her neighbor – for her sole escort.

So long ago, she’d been selected to guard the prince. And she barely more than a child.

She’s a pretty thing, she remembered the major domo at the palace saying, his rough hand under her chin, pulling it up. And it’s not like the guard is likely to be anything but ornamental.

And so, he’d accepted a girl-child, barely fifteen, slim and small, whose only virtues were a pretty face and a certain quick facility of movement that in other worlds, or in another social class, might have made her a dancer.

That and her family pedigree.

The other five picked to serve as the young prince’s escorts were equally well born but small and slim, perhaps so they wouldn’t dwarf their charge who, unlike most kings of Olympias’s past, was slender, with a quick, gracile movement.  Also unlike the former kings of Olympias he was more beautiful than handsome, his an oval face surrounded by a shiny curtain of very straight dark hair, cut just long enough to swing in front of his eyes when he inclined his head.

Most people who knew him, and certainly the bodyguards who spent all of their time with him, were grateful when those eyes were obscured, otherwise -- amber-gold and intent -- they could give the impression of seeing past skin and bone and into the souls of those around him. And yet, more often than not, after his intent scrutiny, he would smile, a quirky smile, higher up on the left side than the right, as if to say that whatever peccadillos of yours he might have discovered, you weren’t so very bad after all.

They’d all adored him from the very first day, Lucrecia – whom he called Lucky – and the other two girls, Izzy and Myria, and the boys, Pete and Marcus and Bruin.

And he’d taken them seriously, not as play friends or even as servants, but as companions, serious, working companions. Even the girls.

 I have no use for an ornamental guard, he’d said. If you’re going to be my body guards, you’re going to learn to guard me. You’re going to learn blades and sonic cutters and projectile weapons too. And you’ll learn to use every shield available and to plan and mount campaigns. I wouldn’t be the first king of Olympias left to rebuild when only myself and my bodyguards are available to fight off insurrection and rebuild. So you’re going to learn all that. And you’re going to be capable of fighting and defending me.

And they had been. He’d got them masters. The palace guard had been picked over and officers chosen to whom the honor of teaching the prince’s guards had been vouchsafed, in such a way that they couldn’t refuse. Within a year, Lucky and her colleagues had become -- without any of the older people, the ceremonial masters, the bureaucrats in the palace noticing it – as good at armed an unarmed combat as any of the trained military officers who guarded king Phillomenos. Lucky, perhaps a little better than the rest – in reflexes and thinking -- had most often been chosen to guard his highness.

Yet, when it had come to it, she hadn’t been there, with him when she was needed. No. The king had not deemed the prince’s honor guard efficient enough to go to real war. And the prince had been captured by the enemies of Olympias. The enemy of all of humanity.

You were hurt, my prince, and I wasn’t there to defend you.

The words tore from her inner mind like a sob from her chest, made her breath catch on her lips, and she bent further over the zoomer, as if it were all an adjustment of her position, as if she hadn’t been about to break down and cry. Because Lucky didn’t cry. She was – as prince Nicodemus had often told her – an officer, a sworn protector of the crown in the person of the prince heir of Olympias. She was not, she could not be a girl like all other girls.

She took the turn off to her family lands without thinking, and rode at the same speed along the narrower lane surrounded by evergreens that gave it a shadowed appearance, a funereal green-and-black cast. Ancient trees, planted by her ancestors to provide shadow and comfort now seemed to her confining and dark.

Her family’s farm-manor loomed ahead, broad gate set between colonnaded pillars, on either side of which a wall stretched, eight feet tall and made of poured everlast – smooth like glass, strong like stone. Couldn’t be climbed or broken through. It spoke of more violent times, when the city states of newly-colonized Olympias had fought one against the other and every manor must be a fortified citadel. Those days were over many centuries ago. Olympias’ only enemies, right now, were external, and weren’t human.

She touched the bracelet on her wrist, which held the control to the gate. It swung open in front of her just in time for her to squeeze through at full speed and to ride down the lane, like a woman possessed, causing a man walking several dogs to step hastily aside into the grassed area amid trees. Lucrecia ignored him, as well as all other retainers who fled out of the way of the zoomer. Not something she did normally.

Her father had taught her that while some in Olympias had been designed by the gengineers and curated by the geneticists to be rules, and some to be servants, there was honor in both positions. A nobleman or woman worthy of his salt didn’t ignore those who served him, and whose work was just as vital.

Normally Lucrecia would have stopped to chat to each of the retainers, or at least smiled and acknowledged their presence.

But not today. No, not today.

In front of the main stairway which led up to the front door, one floor up, she dismounted and blindly switched off the zoomer, not even fully seeing the retainer who came out to collect it and take it to the garage.

Climbing the stairs, boots slapping against stone steps, she didn’t see her father loom in front of her until almost colliding with him., and was brought up short, stopping barely in time, and curtseying awkwardly, before looking up into her father’s lined face, to see worry in his dark blue eyes. He was a massive man, dark haired and blue eyed. She got her lightness and her red hair from her mother. Right then he looked older than she knew he was. “What’s wrong Lucrecia? What did they tell you?”

“Nothing new,” she said. “Nothing we didn’t know. The ceremony was just to dismiss the prince’s honor guard. Since they say we won’t be needed anymore.”

Since they say whatever the aliens did to him left him bereft of a mind, her thought continued, as good as dead, but she didn’t speak it aloud, because there was no point in it. Her father knew it as well as she did. It had been in the news over and over, looped again and again, since they’d recovered what was left of Prince Nicodemus. His body had been recovered and brought to Taurce, where it was being kept alive – as any other body wouldn’t be – until he could fulfil his royal obligation of giving heirs to the crown. Nothing more. The mind that had animated those amber-gold eyes and the quick humor that had quirked his mobile mouth into a lopsided smile, those were as gone as if his body were already entombed in the royal cemetery, beneath marble and snow.

They hurt you, Nicky, and I wasn’t there to save you, Lucky thought, and shied away from the thought – because she’d never called him Nicky when there was anyone else present. He was his Royal Highness and Prince Nicodemus and My Lord. It was only when they were alone, reading or playing chess that the boon he’d granted her long ago, over some forgotten bet in adolescence, of being allowed to call him Nicky operated. She was the only one who called him that, and the word had become a sweet balm for all ills that could befall them. But not this one. There was no cure for a world bereft of Nicky.

“You look disturbed,” her father said. “More disturbed than...”

“Then I should look?” she said. She shrugged. “I was loyal to him. He was my liege. I...”

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. He’d served Nicodemus’ late father and had been loyal to him in his own youth. The grief – and guilt – for his liege lord’s death remained with him these twenty years later.

And now, something of the understanding of the failure of letting one’s liege lord die, was in his eyes as he looked at Lucky. “I was ten feet from my Lord, when the assassin’s blade found him,” he told his daughter. “If I could I’d still go back and offer my life for his.”

Lucky nodded. And let her father think it was only that. Oh, it was partly that. She’d sworn to protect Nicky. She’d sworn to die for him. But the other part was that he was Nicky and that she, beyond being his bodyguard, was the closest thing the prince had to a friend. He’d sent her letters, through an elaborate subterfuge, after he’d left to command the royal force in space, against the invading alien. He’d sent her electronic messages that were bounced over half of Olympias before reaching her, but which were still unmistakably his.

They told her of the battles and of the enemy, and of what they did to those they captured. Nicky’s most serious – most disturbing – letter had been about prisoners who’d been recovered with their minds effectively destroyed, so that there was nothing left, and no hope of recovering them. He talked of giving them the only mercy that could be given, in the circumstances.

And she thought if that was what had happened to him, if they’d recovered him and given him swift, clean death, then she wouldn’t mind so much.

Oh, she’d still mind. Nicky was… energy and movement and thought, and without him a little light would go out of the sun, a little color would go out of the world, leaving subdued movement, quietness, sadness. Without Nicky and the purpose of guarding him, a little of Lucky’s life would be gone.

But what made the situation unbearable was the other thing. He was the carrier of the royal line of Olympias. The kings of Olympias were absolute in deed and will. Like every other person in Olympias, since the colony’s founding thousands of years ago, they’d been designed to be responsible and intelligent, and the best kings possible for the now one billion subjects.

It was believed only that could make a world government work and keep it functioning without quarrels. Everyone in Olympias was engineered for their station, designed for their role in society.

And it had worked. It had worked for two thousand years and counting.

But one thing the kings had no control of. Their reproduction – the exact genetic makeup of their heirs – was decided by the Archons – a council of ten geneticists who combed through all available brides before selecting one. Normally their selections were predictable. Minor nobility or major, or sometimes some prominent foreigner from worlds beyond the system. But when Nicky’s father, Prince Herato, had come of age, the Archons had decided the royal line needed something different. They had picked for him a young woman from a family of free traders – humans without world who traveled between the stars, and traded between worlds. A message had been sent, a dowry negotiated, and the woman had come down to Olympias – much to everyone’s surprise – to take her place as queen-in-waiting.

The result had been Nicky and only Nicky, since his mother had died when he was a babe in arms, and his father had been assassinated two years later. That left Nicky as the bearer of whatever the intent of the archons was for the royal line of Olympias.

“Why would they breed him, when his mind is gone?” she asked, suddenly, forcefully, and using barnyard language she would normally shy away from even letting her father know she knew. “Why would they do that? Why can’t King Phillomenos just remarry?”

“Because it is not the same,” her father said, looking surprised, or perhaps shocked by her words. “The blood of prince Herato was different. His mother came from a family that has no daughters, certainly no daughters of a similar makeup. Prince Nicodemus has a genetic makeup that is not easy to recreate. One the archons believe best suited to the challenges ahead, now that Earth has found us again, and we have to negotiate and work with the Federated Human Worlds. So they believe he owes the crown an heir before he dies.”

“They say he will be ceremonially married. Even though his brain is not... Even though he’s not...” She shook her head and could not go on. The idea was monstrous, horrible. It was defilement. It was using the body after it was dead in every sense.

“Well, certainly. You must see that. The prince heir must be legitimate.”

She nodded, but she didn’t see it. All she did she is that they were going to use Nicky as if he were a stallion, or prized bull. Not even that, since she very much doubted his body would be taking much active part in the proceedings. It would all be needles and tubes, chemicals and medtechs.

There was something obscene to the thought. Something horrible.

“I’ll be well, Father,” she lied. “I just need time to compose myself.” And bobbing a more composed curtesy, this time, she walked around him and up the stairs to her room.

Her room, on the second floor was simple. She hadn’t lived in it much, and she’d disdained the fashionable appointments, the tables that held only ornamental objects and chairs no one sat in, and books no one ever read.

Raised as a fighter and a retainer, she had opted for only the necessary furnishings in the vast and bright room: a bio bed with a mattress that adjusted to her body and to the temperature, a bedside table, a desk, and a closet full of clothes she’d worn at the palace. Gowns and uniforms and exercise coveralls. All of which were a thing of the past. She’d been dismissed. Retired. She had a decoration, to show she had served with valor. Valor. Empty Valor that could not do its duty!

They hurt you, my love, and I wasn’t there to stop them. The sentence made her stop mid-step. It wasn’t that she didn’t know she loved Nicky, but that she’d never admitted it to herself, much less to him. And now she’d never admit it to him, because he was gone.

In front of her closet, she stopped and tottered, as her brain worked too fast for her body to follow. They were bringing Nicky to Taurce the capital of Olympias tomorrow, to be married to whomever the Archons had indicated. She’d been trained in shooting and in blade use. She’d been trained to stop assassins. She knew how to assassinate.

The thought riveted her to the spot. She never, ever, not in her lifetime, would have thought of killing Nicky, of stilling his smile, of shutting forever his observant gaze. But that was done. All that was left now was a breathing corpse, a corpse about to be desecrated in a horrible manner. In a manner she was sure would have repelled him.

She flung her closet open and pulled out a dull black stretch suit. In it she would look like a hundred anonymous retainers around the palace. She would need help. Pete and Bruin. She was absolutely sure they would follow her plan.

Opening the small case at the back of the closet she extracted a slim gun with a clear range of about thirty feet. It should be enough. It wasn’t like Nicky would be jumping around.

She understood the penalty for regicide was death. But there were duties that transcended life. She’d leave via the window and the tree next to it, though. There was no reason to alarm her father, and besides, she thought, as she twisted her waist-long red hair into a tight knot and pinned it at the back of her head, she wanted him to be able to deny knowing anything about her plans. She was risking her life, but not her parents’ or sisters’.

I am coming, my liege. To do what I must do.

II

The zoomer was still in the garage, and there was no one around. Lucky had to think hard to figure out why not, which was a measure of how much she’d lost track of time and events since standing in that dreadful line with her friends, being given that meaningless star-shaped medal, while the king boomed and droned about how they’d served Nicky well and faithfully.

Hang well. She’d serve him faithfully one last time.

Then she realized it would be dinner time, and the retainers would now be in the vast dining hall where their meals were served.

Meanwhile, Lucky’s mother would be walking softly up the stairs, to convince her incomprehensible elder daughter to wash her tear-streaked face, dress suitably and come downstairs to join the family at meals, which was – surely – good for the family, for the retainers to see, and for Lucky herself.

Lucky snorted, a sound that – at home – would be classed as crass and rude.

Here her life bifurcated, her fate divided.

Everyone in Olympias was born to a role, with a life more or less sketched out in front of them. It was the one way humanity had found to defeat the sense of disorientation and lack of purpose that had destroyed so many civilizations on Earth. It was the way to avoid slow decay or fast devolution. It was what made Olympias worth living in, a world for the generations, with prosperity and peace.

At birth her life had been that of the daughter of an old ruling family. The Archons would match her. She would marry and bear children who would carry on the heritage of her family.  That her father had only daughters was of no consequence. Her husband would be chosen from one of the surplus sons of ruling families. He would move in and assume her family name. And the world would spin on.

Only she’d been chosen to be the prince’s bodyguard.

She wondered how everyone thought that would play out. It was normal for boys of ruling families to fulfill such roles, not girls.

Did her parents’ imagine that after a suitable period of serving as ceremonial body guard – and why had Nicky required a ceremonial bodyguard? No one had ever explained. – she would be matched, and life would go on as normal? Or had there never been anything to it, but her father’s remorse over failing to defend prince Herato, and the king’s attempt to assuage an old retainer?  Who knew?

But she’d taken an oath and meant it. Just like her male ancestors might have meant it.

She knew what lay before her now.  Two choices: stay here, as the heir, the honored older daughter. Marry whomever the Archons chose, and have children. Live her life, build the future of her family while Nicky’s memory remained encysted within her, intact but inaccessible.  Never speak of it, never think of it. Forget her years as a bodyguard and their miserable, failed end. Be the lady she was bred to be.

It wasn’t a bad life, not given a halfway decent husband. And her father would have a say in that. Sometimes perfect genetic matches were passed up for second best, because the man bearing the genes couldn’t be trusted. It wasn’t something to do at the royal level, but it was perfectly acceptable down the line.

Lucky could see all of it and even know it would be a relatively happy life. And she’d have children to live on after her.

All of it was perfectly acceptable, except for the certainty – the absolute certainty – that she could not live with herself having broken her oath.

Years ago she’d sworn to guard and protect Nicky. Surely protecting him involved keeping him from being used as a … a meat puppet. Surely protecting him involved keeping him from being married to a complete stranger and bred like… like a prize farm animal.

No. Lucky knew where her duty lay.

She mounted the zoomer.  It was still warm.  Reflexively she checked the charge. Enough for several rides between here and Taurce. Good.

The back of her mind was keeping track of her mother’s imagined movements, back in the palace. Now mother would be going up the stairs, knocking on her door.  She could almost hear her mother’s soft, well-bred voice calling her.  “Lucrecia, now,” she would say, in that gentle, quiet way of her.  “Crecy, my darling.”  And it would be the voice she’d used when Lucky was very young and had hurt herself or had one of her toys break.

Then there would come the tentative opening of the door.  Eventually there would come steps into the room. And eventually, dismay at the room being empty.  Mother would probably rush to the garage before giving the alarm.

Just as Lucky headed out of the garage at speed, she heard her mother’s voice behind her, “Crecy, where are you going?”  It was as close to a scream as mother could produce. There was a cracking of perfect composure in the rising voice ending in an almost growl of despair.

All very well, Lucky thought, leaning in close, and pushing the zoomer as fast as it would go and willing it faster still. She’d escaped. And mother would never find out. Even now she wouldn’t give the alarm. She would go to Father, the acknowledged household authority on their daughter, and Father would say Lucky needed silence and solitude and was probably headed to the hunting lodge on the grounds, and not to worry, the girl knew how to take care of herself.

It might be days before they found out what she was doing.  Unless, of course, the news reached them first. As hopefully they would.

But that meant not leaving by the gate. To preserve the illusion, she would have to head to the forest.

Instead of taking the broad, evergreen shaded path, she headed down a path in the woods, simultaneously flicking on the lights, and turning on the hypersonic animal-repellent capability on the zoomer.  It was designed, mostly, for making cows move out of the way when one drove rural tracks.

There were no cows in the forest, but it was stocked with all sorts of Earth species, whose ancestors had been brought to Olympias as embryos millennia ago, just as the trees had.  Olympia had been no more than a planet with Earth-like temperature and composition and a similar atmosphere. But it had either been barren or had only unicellular life.  The historians disagreed, with some of the crazier ones screaming that the initial settlers had committed genocide when eliminating the original, non-compatible life forms.

Lucky thought it all of little interest, since – after all – it had been decided and done millenia before her birth by people now long, long dead and therefore gone beyond accounting.

At any rate, she was told all of the world had been colonized with life forms from Earth, which meant her family’s ancestral hunting preserve – a bit of a relic of the past, since her father didn’t hunt – was stocked with deer and fox, with rabbits and wolves.  She didn’t want to run into any of them. Particularly and definitely not a buck, who would be about the same size and heavier than her and the zoomer.

She didn’t see any.  The light shone in a yellowish-white cone ahead of her, enabling her to lift the zoomer to maximum altitude – about six feet – to go over fallen trees, or places where tangles of vegetation had grown, spiny and wild, across the path.  Which meant the forester was neglecting his work. Which would happen, since the forest was rarely used. She heard sounds of animals scurrying away from the path, but saw none. Which was just as well since, even without animals getting in the way, maneuvering the path required her entire attention.  Which also kept her from morbid thoughts.

She emerged into the broad clearing where the hunting lodge was.  It was a vast dome-building, probably dating back to the days of colonization, perhaps the first place to house her ancestors. It was pretty much self-maintaining, both as to repairs and to cleaning, as well as having automated cooking facilities.  Her grandfather, who had aspired to a life as a recluse was said to have spent most of his life there, and away from his vast family.  Except, Lucky thought, as she stopped in front of the lodge, obviously for the visits required to beget yet another child.

Lucky herself had stayed here with Nicky and her fellow bodyguards, for a couple of weeks of forest craft administered by the forester.

She could now stay here, she thought, and send a message to Bruin, asking him to meet her here. Surely that would be the best way to get in touch with him.  And here, they would be safe to discuss the situation and plot in peace, without being interrupted or—

She stopped. Was she absolutely sure there was no way to spy on the hunting lodge? She seemed to remember her father saying, once, long ago, that her grandmother had bugged the place because she’d become convinced her husband was carrying on with one of the tenant wives.

Surely, if that was true and the machinery was still in place – and no one ever got rid of anything in this family. She was sure somewhere they still had the underwear the first Lantas had worn when disembarking from the colonizer ship and onto the virgin planet of Olympias – her father or mother might very well turn it on, to make sure the girl isn’t getting dangerously overwrought. You know what she is.

No. She’d have to do this the hard way.

She restarted the zoomer and headed for the fence, dividing their property from the Thasserons, Bruin’s family.

There was a bad moment at the fence.  It was, as all around the property, made of everlast and tall enough to deter casual invaders. She happened to know that here, just here, above this one stretch of fence, once, probably centuries before her birth, a tall pine tree had collapsed, and had taken with it the alarm structure above it, which would give the alert should the fence be broached.

She had overheard this interesting bit of information – including how expensive it would be to fix, and how it didn’t matter since the Thasserons had their own fence, and you could count on them to keep undesirables off their property – from maintenance workers when she was maybe ten.  And she’d found from Bruin, that he had personally disabled the alarm at that point on his side. After that, she’d used the nearby trees to climb over the fence and onto the Thasseron side, and she and Bruin had enjoyed many, many hours of unsupervised play after escaping their respective minders.

All perfectly innocent, of course, though she didn’t doubt even at those ages the family would have worried about her forming an Archon-unapproved attachment.  They’d climbed trees, and looked at nests, and fished in the streams, and once cooked a fish – which had proven inedible without salt – in a forest glade.  They’d made up stories of battles and fought imaginary attackers.

She hadn’t used this way in years. Certainly not since becoming bound to the prince.

She could climb the trees and over. Supposing no one had fixed this spot’s alarm in the last ten years.

On the other hand, it was a good two miles to the house.  She wanted the zoomer.

She eyed the fence diffidently.  The wall up in front of the house was eight feet, but she thought it was no more than six here.

The thing about zoomers and altitude is that you had to be moving fast, to make it climb to the highest altitude.  So there was a chance she’d miss it by inches, and crash hard, or break her legs against the wall. She realized – and it made her laugh – that she’d forgotten to bring even a link with her.  So if she crashed and broke something, she’d be here, at the mercy of the elements until and unless her family decided to look for her.

Well, her family motto was Fortitudo Me Defendit. She didn’t believe it for a moment. Courage was more likely to give one a broken head than to protect her. But never mind.

She sped up as fast as possible at the wall, jammed the altitude controls for “up” and tucked her legs in as far as it would go.

There was a blur of speed, a rushing of wind, as she sped on and up.  Her heart beat so loudly she wasn’t sure of hearing anything else outside it. A thought crossed her mind that this was an interesting way of committing suicide.

At the moment courage failed her, but not fatally. She neither slowed down nor tried to descend, but she closed her eyes.  There was a sound of scrapping, barely audible over her heart and the hum of the zoomer.

She opened one eye in time to see she was flying above a dark cluster of trees.  By memory she found the path through that forest which led to the house, and – her heart pounding – let herself descend to no more than two feet above the path.  She found the stirrups with her feet. The left one was misshapen and required jamming her foot hard into it. She suspected that was the scraping sound. No matter, not mechanic. It didn’t endanger her.

The Thasserons forest was better maintained which was why it hadn’t been used for the woodcraft lesson.  Bruin’s father used it for hunting regularly, and their forester, obviously, stayed more attentive.

Belatedly it occurred to Lucrecia she might meet foresters in the wooded expanse, or perhaps hunters – which would be worse – but she didn’t.  She saw lights in the distance once, but that was all.

A shorter fence in the way to the house grounds proper was leapt without much thought, and then she was zooming across a vast expanse of lawn-covered, flowerbed ornamented grounds.

The best possible scenario of course, would be finding the house was done with dinner and that Bruin was in his room, but she didn’t expect that.

She knew he’d been as discomfited by the ceremony as she had and she knew he had left in his family’s licarge before she, herself, had escaped the palace of Taurce on the zoomer.

She almost hoped he’d sought solitude.

But she knew which was his room window – she’d thrown pebbles at it often enough as a tomboy on an escapade and looking for a friend to share it with – and it was dark.

Cursing softly, in words learned early from those people detailed to teach them fighting, words she knew a girl of her breeding should pretend not to know, she took the zoomer around the side of the house.  And really cursed. She cursed all of the Thasserons, all of their ancestry, and the dubious sanity of Bruin’s parents.

There was a party. Who in actual hell would have a party when Nicky lay as good as dead? When Bruin had been dismissed from the duty he’d not been allowed to fulfill?  Apparently the demented Thasserons.

Around the front of the house, there were licarges, heavy, gilded, with distinguished family crests blazoned on their doors, smaller, sportier flitters, many of them also with crests and all of them looking very impressive, probably transport for smaller families, single men and dowagers.

They numbered more than a dozen. She didn’t stop to count.  She was too busy swearing under her breath.

Then it came to her it was silly. If she was prepared to break into the royal palace at Taurce, why would she balk at disrupting a Thasseron party to talk to Bruin.

She edged the zoomer around the edge of the many vehicles, away from the group of coachmen gathered in the center of it, around a well-lit table and being served food by house servants.  Right.

This was where she had to be subtle. It wasn’t as if she weren’t trained. Or didn’t know this house as well as her own, or the royal palace.

She left the zoomer, having half-edged it under a spread of rose bushes. She wasn’t so much hiding it as hoping it wouldn’t call attention to itself.  She was not done with it.

The thought occurred that she should procure the uniform of one of the servants of the house. Easier to blend in. But it seemed like the sort of trick one attempted in a comedy, and whatever else this was, Lucky was fairly sure it wasn’t a comedy.

And besides she was too impatient to skulk around the servants’ quarters, identifying someone whose uniform would fit her, then finding that person’s lodging, all to finally steal a uniform and change. Also, it was easier to explain her presence here if caught – she could say she’d come to condole with Bruin – than it would be had she changed into a uniform not belonging to her.

She found the side door that the servants used to come and go, opened it, slid inside into a darkened corridor.

Almost immediately, she heard steps, and knit herself with the wall, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed.  A large man went by, carrying something and – fortunately – without bothering to turn on the lights.

Her heart beating a little louder, she resumed her way.  She was headed, as far as she remembered and could navigate via the servants’ passages, to the ballroom. She guessed for a party this size they’d be there. Or the big dining halls nearby.

If she were caught, she told herself, she’d claim she’d used the servants’ passages because she wasn’t dressed for the party.

Up three floors, meeting no one, she opened a door into a softly lit hallway.  Then by memory, quietly, trying to look as if she belonged there, down another hallway and another.  The ballroom was empty. She didn’t need to open the door to know that. It was silent.

However, from the main dining hall, the one with the chandeliers and all the paintings of Bruin’s ancestors on the wall, came the sound of speech and clinking glasses.

She ducked into the servant passage there, and opened the door used to bring dishes from the kitchen. She opened it a bare crack, just enough to see inside.

Everyone was at the table, with Bruin and… Izzy? Seated halfway up the right side, while their parents, were seated a couple – Bruin’s parents – at the head and a couple – Izzy’s – at the foot.

What in living hells was going on?  Footsteps approached and Lucky knit herself with the wall, but it was no use.  The man who came down the passage, carrying a tureen, gave her a long puzzled look. Of course, he wouldn’t give the alarm. Why would he? Everyone here knew Lucky. As well as they knew Bruin. And it wasn’t the first time they caught her skulking around where she shouldn’t be. None of them had ever told on her either. Lucky didn’t know if they were under the impression that she and Bruin were carrying on an illicit romance, or simply that they were too young and foolish to be gotten in trouble. But no one had ever told either of their parents.

Now was no exception.  The man, young, dark haired, good looking, probably chosen for his looks to serve at big parties, nodded to her but said nothing.

She had a few seconds to try to figure out how to get word to Bruin and curse her stupidity in not bringing a link. Then a man came out of the dining room.  He was tall, maybe thirty, and looked paternal and vexed. He was Maurs, Bruin’s personal valet and attendant. He was probably helping supervise the serving, which meant it was an all-hands-on-deck type of operation.  He saw her and bowed minimally, “Miss Lantas? Is anything wrong?”

Everything was wrong. Nicky was living-dead. But she had to remind herself that’s not what they meant, but only what was wrong with her right here, right now.  And nothing was.  She composed her face.  “I need a word with Bruin,” she said. 

The man looked unaccountably alarmed. He seemed to be trying to compose his mind, or perhaps just words.  He finally spoke, “Miss Lantas. I know you and Master Bruin have been good friends. But surely you know that his engagement would be decided by the Archons, and that—”

“Engagement?”

Maurs blinked. Whatever he expected, it wasn’t that question. Unaccountably, he seemed to relax a little. A small smile hovered on his lips, and he bowed again, “Master Bruin’s bride, Miss Isabella Biri has been chosen by the Archons, and we’re celebrating their betrothal, with the wedding next week. Do you mean you didn’t know?”

Lucky shook her head. And light dawned. Maurs had been afraid she’d had some kind of grand romance with Bruin, and had come to claim him from Izzy’s arms. Nonsense and stuff.  “No,” she said. “And I’m sure I wish them very happy.” What a time to pick for such a thing. Were both families insane? “I need a word with Master Bruin. Nothing related.”

Her stomach felt hollow, though, and she felt defeated. There was no way that Bruin would leave his engagement party to help with her mad scheme. There was no way he’d risk his future now. She didn’t even know why she thought he would. It was all nonsense. And what right did she, on a mission to end up killed as a regicide to involve people like Bruin and Izzy, who’d been her friends, and who didn’t deserve this kind of grief, or worse, execution as her accomplices?

She put a hand out, as Maurs was about to turn away, and held his arm. She saw the shock in his face, and almost felt it through their contact. But it was the way to stop him. She dropped her hand, smiled and whispered, “No, never mind. Don’t disturb him. Not tonight.  Only let me take a peek at them before I go.”

Maurs seemed confused but bowed, and stepped back, extricating himself from her grasping hand.  He stepped through the door, but left it slightly open, so she could look inside.

Bruin was the biggest and tallest of Prince Nicodemus’ bodyguards, which wasn’t saying much, but since Izzy was the smallest, a delicate dark beauty with smiling brown eyes, it made his bluff, handsome features look more masculine and stronger, and his blond hair paler and almost luminous.  They sat side by side, he in his bodyguard’s uniform, the star decoration pinned to the left side of the chest.  Izzy was not in uniform. She wouldn’t be, since a girl fulfilling a military role – even a ceremonial one – was eccentric enough in Olympias’ well-ordered society to raise eyebrows. It had been accepted, but it should not be flaunted. She wore a white silk dress, cut low in the bosom, with a spreading skirt. The collar and hem were ornamented with pink roses.  There was a wreath of pale pink roses in her hair.

As Lucrecia looked on, Izzy looked up and met her eyes.  She made an exclamation, lost in the party noise, and Bruin looked that way also.

Caught in their gazes, before anyone else followed them, Lucky smiled and bowed, then, impulsively, blew them a kiss.

Then she closed the door and ran down the passage, not caring who saw her.

She was alone in this. And her mission must be done, implicating no one else, and before anyone thought to pursue her.

The zoomer was where she had left it. She dragged it out, mounted it, and headed towards the Thasserons’ main gate.

It was open, as it usually was during  a party, and she zoomed out of it, probably unremarked by the guards, who probably thought of the zoomer as no more than a message being sent; a last minute errand.

Under dark, overcast skies, alone with her fate, she hurried in the night through the country lanes, and towards Taurce.

II

She had been taught strategy. She had been taught to plot battles. But no one, not in the name of the First Landers or the Hell of Oath Breakers had ever taught her to plot the assassination of a prince she was sworn to defend.

Which, Lucky thought to herself, might very well have been on purpose. After all, if both the history of Olympias, and what had been added to their curriculum from the history of mother Earth to say nothing of her varied and far-flung colonies was correct, kings were more likely to get killed by their bodyguards and close retainers than by just about anyone else. So perhaps their instructors – and Nicky – hadn’t wanted them to know that.

But it was a devilish fix to be in.

She had somehow counted on talking to her fellows, to Bruin, yes, even to Pete and Marcus, and maybe Izzy and Myria. She figured they’d know what to do, or at least be able to give her some ideas on how to get near Nicky and kill him before anyone could figure out what she was about to do. That had been stupid, and only justifiable because she was emotionally off-balance, and she had always counted on them, or at least for the last five years or so. They’d sharpened their ideas in argument and dulled their blades in mock combat.

In many ways those five and Nicky were closer to her than her sisters, Nissalia and Valentina, twins five years younger than her and always – it seemed to her – oppressively well behaved girls.

When she’d visited, on weekends, she’d admired Nissa’s and Tina’s embroidery, and tried to tell them about the pomp and clothes at court when they asked, but it wasn’t as though they had much in common with her.

Her five fellow bodyguards, on the other hand, had read the same books, learned the same games and had common acquaintances.

As she zoomed into Taurce in the dark and the cold, she felt bereft indeed without them.  She banished it from her mind. She was not to involve them in this.

Just as her honor and her feeling of duty demanded that she get to Nicky and save him, the same honor, the same sense of what was due to them, and their friendship, kept her from exposing her closest friends – her brothers and sisters in all but genetics – to danger.

Getting to the palace, she reminded herself that no one would know what she was here for. Her guilt, and her planning were not written on her face. It seemed impossible that both her momentous decision and her doom wouldn’t be clearly stamped on her features. But even – she reminded herself – any emotion from grief to anger showing on her face would be written off as being merely the agitation of what had happened to the prince, and the changes in her life. No one would realize she had meant to do something horrible to forestall something even more horrible.

But it was even easier than that, she realized, as she handed over her zoomer to one of the attendants in the royal garage, and walked into the palace by her accustomed entrance.  No one even noticed her strange attire or stopped her to ask her why she was back.

If anyone but the garage attendants realized she had left, no one cared. The garage attendants, themselves, didn’t seem to care, or not really. They had treated her as always.

She still had a room in the palace, of course.  Oh, it would probably get reassigned, but not for months, perhaps years. The royal bureaucracy moved very slowly indeed, and though she had lost her official position, no one would be in a great hurry to close off her apartments, or those of her fellow guards.  In fact, it was possible no one would bother till well after Nicky’s wedding, when his new wife would decide to reorganize the household floor, and probably give the rooms to her ladies in waiting. Probably. If she bothered.

It occurred to Lucky that though she surely had heard, at least once, the name of the prince’s betrothed, she had not registered it, or given it any thought. It had been unimportant in the tide of her grief. It wasn’t as if this woman truly was Nicky’s betrothed, to live with him and reign by his side.  His wedding hadn’t been planned for years, so doubtless the Archons had rushed to get someone who would fit the role. She wouldn’t be of exotic provenance, like Nicky’s mother.  And she certainly wouldn’t be someone who had chosen this life.  Instead, she would be some well behaved girl, of high nobility and unimpeachable lineage. And chances were she felt as trapped as Nicky would feel if he could feel anything.

She was unimportant. What Lucky was doing would set her free.

Lucky walked through the long hallways, and climbed staircases purposely.  Her apartments were below the family floor, on the fourth floor of the palace.

The level was decorated in white and blue, in the slightly faded grandeur of Nicky’s great-grandmother’s taste – no one had bothered decorating that level since then – and almost unornamented, save for old paintings of ladies of Olympias wearing elaborate court gowns, set in heavy gold frames.  Lucky knew that most of these were the daughters of the kings of Olympias, married off to various nobles and notables.  Somewhere was a portrait of her own many times grandmother, who had been the youngest of ten royal daughters, and as such deemed insignificant enough to ask the Archons to approve her marriage to Lucky’s ancestor, a mere landed gentleman, but a then-famous general in one of the many civil wars seven hundred years ago.

This floor was normally silent as the tomb, unless it were for the voices and movement of her friends. Lucky and the other five were the only permanent residents; the other twenty rooms were guest rooms for visiting high dignitaries.

Now it was busy, with people she didn’t know coming and going.  From their clothes, and the uniforms of their retainers, she guessed these were all important noblemen, and frowned in confusion.

Gaining the sanctuary of her room, and opening it with her bracelet, she was happy to find it was untouched, and that it still contained all her furniture and belongings.

Her bed and furnishings were as spare as the ones at home. A bio bed, with adjustable controls; a couple of comfortable chairs, a desk with her big link, the one in which she composed letters and wrote her analysis of various works assigned to them, and a tablet with her reading list, mostly works of science and history, leavened with a couple of books of poetry that Nicky had recommended in his last message.

Near the window, the curtains of which were closed, there were two chairs, with a small, ornate table in between. This held a beautifully carved chess set.  The table and the set had been gifts from Nicky, and the chairs had been set the way they were so that it would be ready for their chess matches.

That they played chess alone in her room was an open secret amid her fellows, but unknown to the rest of the world. It would probably have caused a fit of the vapors in anyone outside their own circle.  Their own circle… For the first time, as she closed the door of her room behind her, Lucky wondered what the rest of them thought of the relationship between her and Nicky.

Or was she imagining things? Perhaps every one of them had liberties that were allowed and special things they did with Nicky. It would make perfect sense, given that he was after all trying to keep them all loyal to him. He would try to have a personal relationship with each one wouldn’t he?

Sure, she, personally had been in love with him, something she thought didn’t affect either of the other girls – Myria had been in love with Marcus for years, she’d once confessed to Lucky – and certainly none of the boys. But was Nicky in love with her?

Lucky almost laughed at the thought. It was nonsense. Love wasn’t for kings. Or even for someone of her station. After all, neither of them would be free to marry whomever they loved.  All nobility from high to mere landowners saw the Archons for their matching. And every commoner went to a geneticist for approval before marrying, even if he chose. Love matches were for stories, not for real life.

Lucky’s mother had once told her that if love was as complicated as the novels made it out to be, it was all for the best that most of them couldn’t really indulge in it, and Mother was probably right.

So none of her friends had cared about it.  The older people might have been afraid of an unplanned bastard child, though, had they heard. Lucky had a vague idea they happened, but no one talked about them.

And then she realized she was thinking of all this to avoid thinking of Nicky and what she’d have to do.  “Stuff and nonsense,” she told herself and took a deep breath.

She had been overdramatic and ridiculous, she now realized, changing into an all black exercise suit, as though she could slip into the palace, knit herself with the wall and slink into Nicky’s quarters to give him mercy.  She didn’t even know if he was in the palace yet, nor what might have brought all these guests to the palace. Surely they weren’t performing a wedding with him just arrived? And at any rate, she told herself she wasn’t going to slip into his room while dressed as if she were going to the gym. She’d stick out like a sore thumb.

No, she’d change into one of her court gowns, head out and mingle, and find out what had been happening.

Maybe she would call for her maid. Iro, a fifteen year old woman, had been assigned to her this year, since in Nicky’s absence she’d been asked to wear formal gowns and participate in various palace entertainments.  Iro was great at dressing her hair, and helping her into her gowns.  Stepping to the controls near her bed, Lucky hesitated with her finger over the button that would call the maid, then sighed.  No. She wouldn’t. Because even though Iro had only known her for six months, Iro knew her moods, and her normal way of acting.

While the girl might not realize what Lucky meant to do, she would definitely realize there was something wrong. She would also, likely, talk to her fellow servants. In an hour everyone would know that Lucky had arrived in exercise clothing and looked agitated. No. The garage attendants were unlikely to talk about a relatively insignificant person as Lucky arriving astride a zoomer. But Iro would. Lucky was her claim to status in the servants’ quarters.

Lucky would change by herself and do something likely with her hair. It would not, granted, look as good as when Iro arranged it, but a simple tie back with some kind of ornament would be enough.

Lucky threw her closet open, and reached back to touch the spot that would cause her suit to peel off and down, and froze as she heard a loud, “pssssssssst.”

She turned around, as her suit opened down the back, to see a pale young man step out from behind her curtains.  “Lucky,” he said.

“Pete!”

He was dressed much as she was, in an all black exercise suit. And he had a pellet gun, much like her own, in hand.

She looked at it, wondering if she could disarm him before he fired. Somewhere in the back of her head, a certainty grew that he knew what she’d come here to do. He was here on orders of king Phillomenos and he was about to do the only thing that would stop her.

Pete looked down at his hand and made a sound, like someone embarrassed by his own forgetfulness, and put the gun away, in a holster at his waist, “Lucky, I came to kill the prince,” he said.

Hearing the words pronounced made Lucky shake. It was what she meant to do as well, but hearing it aloud was like hearing an obscenity pronounced in the light of day.

She stood looking at Pete, aware that she was staring and probably pale.

“Oh, hell, Lucky, don’t look like that. Think about it. I wouldn’t hurt the prince for the world. I promised to guard him and I would. I will. I promised not to let him be hurt or killed. We weren’t allowed to go with him, and I couldn’t prevent his mind being wiped, or whatever the hell the aliens did. But I can and will make it so that he is given decent burial with his ancestors, instead of being kept alive and treated as… as a thing.”

“The geneticists, the Archons—” Lucky heard the words come out of her mouth, not very sure what she was going to say next, except perhaps that the proper authorities had given permission to this abomination, and therefore—

“Oh, boil the Archons,” Pete said. He was only slightly taller than Lucky, and his hair was medium brown, which went well with his medium-brown eyes, and his non-descript features. He used to joke that he could enter a room and leave it and no one, not one person who didn’t know him by name, would be able to describe him, except perhaps by age and height, and even that not very well, as he looked younger than he was, and people routinely underestimated his size.

His family, the Nisais, were titled. His father was the Earl of Eresi, a region to the North that had once been a small kingdom, during the age of city-states. Now they were, of course, loyal subjects of the king of Olympias. And instead of being a prince, Petrus Nisai was the Viscount of Mantas, a smaller city state the family had absorbed.  But looking at the prince’s bodyguards, no one would pick Pete as one of the most socially prominent.

Now he looked as angry and scared and outraged as Lucky felt. “Boil the Archons, in oil,” he reiterated. “It’s not decent, Lucky, and I don’t care what they say. It really isn’t. No one should be kept alive to be a breeding stallion when his brain is gone. You know he wouldn’t allow that to happen to any of us— Well, not that you could, exactly be a stallion. But you know what I mean.”

Lucky found her voice. “I know what you mean.” She turned so he could see the shape of the gun at her waist, under the stretchy material of the suit.

“Oh,” he said.  “You—”

She told him about her flight from Taurce, her perhaps over dramatic decision, her escape, then she hesitated, “I was going to ask you and Bruin for help, but the Thasserons are having a party for Bruin and Izzy—”

“What?”

“You see, apparently they went to the Archons and either asked for permission to the match or asked for a match to be made, and they were matched. So the family is holding an engagement dinner.”

Pete made a face. “Sounds hurried.” And hastened. “No, I don’t mean they did anything wrong. Honestly, I don’t think they ever particularly liked each other. I don’t mean they dislike each other, but—”

“We were all raised almost like siblings,” she said. “No romance.”

He nodded. “Right. But I think her parents, or his, or perhaps both, thought of this and arranged it, so they wouldn’t have time to think or grieve or—”

“Decide to do what we decided to do?”

A fleeting smile, and Pete nodded. “That.  Perhaps my parents would have been wiser to do something like it, and yours too.”

“Perhaps.” Lucky was rational enough to concede it, but added, “But I don’t think it would have been the best for Nick—For the prince. Like you, I can’t bear the thought of his body being used in that way. My only fear is that the Archons have this planned for a reason, and that by interfering we’ll set off something awful, like the time of wars.”

“War with whom? People like my family and Marcus’ have long since become loyal subjects. And there have been no civil wars on Olympias for three hundred years since we joined the Federated Worlds. I suspect if we fell to, the Federales would intervene and pacify us, and no one wants that. Besides, there’s the aliens.”  He shook his head. “No, all that happens if Nicki is gone is that the Archons will have to come up with a new match for the king. He’s in his sixties, not very old. Some of the kings in history – ours and humanity’s – have married much later than that. I don’t know why they want Nicky, and I will not let them.” Anguish returned into his features, as though it had been a flood he’d kept at bay until now, and he’d gotten tired of containing it. “He was my friend, Lucky. Sure, I was his bodyguard, but we were also friends. When my grandfather died, he spent hours letting me vent about it.” He shook his head. “He was as close to me as a brother. Closer than my brother. I can’t allow them to do this.”

“No,” she said. “Neither can I.” And only when this had been disclosed did she remember that her suit was undone in the back – the air cool on her bare skin – and that Paul was in her room. Which made no sense. “But what part of this required hiding in my curtains?” she said, unable to keep an inquisitive tone from her voice.

He shook his head. “Probably nothing, except I came in to see if you were here, and then your woman – Iro? – came in to hang one of your gowns. I ducked behind the curtains, and waited till she left then a while longer, in case she doubled down, and then you came in.”

“Oh, but why were you looking for me?”

“Because I need help. They’ve brought Nicky in, an hour or so ago.”

“So, that’s why the palace is full?”

Pete looked like he was going to spit. “Oh, no,” he said. “Those are wedding guests. The wedding is to take place tomorrow, in the ancestor chapel.”

Lucky’s jaw dropped open. Talk about a hurried wedding. Sure, okay, so maybe Bruin’s and Izzy’s parents had hurried, but nothing like this.  For a royal wedding there must, normally, be a betrothal and a feast for that, then a prolonged period of festivity, and then the wedding, to which every nobleman in the land would be invited, and the celebration of which could last for a month, itself. Not the least because for some provincial families any time in the capital would be precious and a good time for making matches and deals, and arranging to hire needed specialists for their domains.

“Yeah, they are hurrying that much,” Pete said. “And the only thing I can think is that they’re in a great hurry to get it all done, before anyone objects. I mean, sure, of course, the royal marriages are made by the Archons, or at least that’s how the matches are arranged, and I grant you that I’m no lawyer, but I think that it is still in the law somewhere that you have to consent for a wedding to be legal. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have a wedding ceremony, in which consent is asked for and recorded, would they?”

“I don’t know,” Lucky said. “People do a lot of things because they’ve always been done that way.”

“No. They wouldn’t go through that trouble if consent weren’t needed. Why betrothal and marriage and all. They’d just have the Archons decided, and bam, you’d be married.” He made a gesture as though dismissing the whole thing.  “I’m sure this isn’t legal. Can’t be. And that’s why they’re rushing it before anyone objects. Not to mention someone objecting on the basis of decency.”

“So, you needed me for—”

“Nick, I mean the prince, is alone in his room now. That is, he’s alone except for a low-grade medtech who was left with him. I thought you could put on one of your fancy gowns and go in ahead of me, and talk to him, you know, bedazzle him, and distract him, so I could go in, and have time to kill Nick, without being stopped.”

“I don’t know if I know how to bedazzle someone. I am not even sure what bedazzling means.”

“Oh, blood and duty, woman. I’m fairly sure he’ll be bedazzled if only you address him. He’s just a medtech, tech class, and about our age, not fully trained, even. I’m sure he’ll be bedazzled if you so much as address him. After all you’re a court lady, of old families. Just talk to him. That will give me time to do what I must do.  Afterwards, you can say you had no idea what I intended to do, that you just wanted to see Nick one last time. No one will believe otherwise. They know you—You are very loyal to him.”

Lucky hesitated, then shook her head. “No, if I’m going to be an accomplice in this, I’m going to be an accomplice in this, and I will take my punishment, just was you will. In fact, I’ll be ready to do it if you can’t. But I have one request?”

“Yes?”

“Before I bedazzle this poor man, I want to say goodbye to Nicky.” She forestalled the protest she saw forming in his eyes. “I know Nicky is no longer there. But it’s the closest I’ll come to seeing him again, this side of eternity. You bedazzle the tech while I get a couple of minutes with Nicky.”

“I don’t think I can bedazzle a man!” Pete said in confusion, then, “Or a woman either, though that would be more likely.”

“Distract him, then.”

Pete hesitated.  “All right,” he said, at last.  He didn’t look reluctant, exactly, but his face was set and grave, as though this were a momentous decision. Which, of course it was.

“Turn away while I change,” Lucky said.