Princess of the Void ch 6.29 - Folly Tower (Patreon)

“Oh, how lovely it is to return to a proper language after that choppy Maekyonite tapdance.” Narika tips her head onto the shuttle’s cushion. “Rather like slipping out of uncomfortable heels.”

“It’s the plosives for me,” Sykora says. “They dry my lips out.” She pulls a stick of balm from Grant’s pocket (he holds most things for her when she’s in slinky-gown mode) and pooches her lips out. “And for what, I ask you. Just another hour of talking in circles, a few more handshakes, and off we went.”

“We made a sort of lateral progress, anyway,” Grant says. “They’ve met you, they’ve treated with you, they’ve looked down your shirt.”

“God, didn’t they.” Sykora scoffs. “If I was here in conqueror mode I might have evaporated that bald bastard.”

”What were you talking about with the Ambassador from Singapore during that recess, Narika?” Grant asked.

“Her citizenship,” Narika says. “She’s eager to know how one might put one’s name in.”

“Hellfire,” Grant says. “That’s what we were talking about with Mr. Portugal. We’ll end up annexing every sympathizer and populating every Maekyonite governing body with xenophobic assholes.”

“The alternative is leaving every legislature stuffed with dual-citizen Taiikari puppets,” Narika says.

Sykora hums. “Now would that be so horrible? Perhaps we should discuss.”

“We should.” Narika removes her earrings; unlike Sykora, she doesn’t wear a clinking handful of them at all times. “But another time, I think. I need to eat something and take my k-wort.”

“You ought to have tried the little egg things they had.” Sykora snaps her fingers. “The whatsits. Dove?”

“Quiche,” Grant supplies.

“I intend to ease myself into Maekyonite cuisine with something a bit less yellow,” Narika says.

“The first eggs Kora fed me were purple,” Grant says. “I was very brave about it.”

“That is the proper color for eggs to be,” Narika says.

“Peace might be doomed over this,” Grant says. “And I might have to defect to Team Maekyon.”

“Ah, well.” Narika pulls her literal heels off to follow her metaphorical ones and wiggles her toes. ”Drop me off at the Banner first, if you please.”

The shuttle deposits the Princess of the Glory Banner into the obsidian halls of her vessel, then returns to its scarlet home. Two ZKZs in the same orbit over a Void world would send any Imperial prospect into apocalyptic fright. But Maekyon can barely detect either of them, and they are not here for the fiery conquest for which their orbital cannons and invincible membranes are fitted.

In the central cabin of their warship, the Prince and Princess of the Pike retire early. The heirs to the Pike are in their nursery beyond the tapestries, sleeping soundly after playing their favorite game of Pull As Much of Dad’s Beard As We Can Reach.

“That went quite well, I should think,” Sykora says, from the tub.

Grant’s at his desk, looking over the latest reports from the Korak refinery he runs with Countess Wenzai. Underneath it, waiting for secondary review, is the Taiikari plan for self-extradition outreach to America. “I think I lost some hairs.”

“I mean the Maekyon visit, silly man.” She kicks a playful splash at him. “I’m rather excited, in fact, to see what sort of hellholes your people have in store for our surveyors.”

“We’re not about to send poor Waian down into Death Valley, are we?”

“It’s really called Death Valley, then?” Sykora suds her hair. ”I hope you don’t mind my saying so, Grantyde, but your people have rather dramatic naming conventions.”

“You’ll have to pardon us, Princess Margrave Sykora of the ZKZ Black Pike.”

She giggles. “All right, point to Grantyde. Anyway we won’t be sending anyone, I shouldn’t think. We’ll use drones for this guff. It’s not that I don’t trust your people, dove…”

“I sure as shit don’t,” Grant says. “Drones is the right call.”

“Drones it shall be,” Sykora says. “Perhaps your leaders would be willing to hand off a bag of cheddar and some of those fascinating hats the Texan gentleman was wearing.”

“You, in a cowboy hat?” Grant’s winding up to laugh at it, but then he puts some daisy dukes on the image and a western shirt worn open and tied off at the waist, and actually maybe his wife deserves to be a cowgirl a while if that’s what she’d like.

A throat-clearing turns him up from his pages. At some point during his imaginings, his wife rose from the tub and slipped her fresh, dewy body into one of the lacy works of art she collects by the trunkful. This one’s a filmy, most-of-the-way translucent scrap of crimson silk over an intricately strappy little two-piece. She wore this once under a gown and kicked Grant’s shin all through a formal dinner so that he’d rip it off her after, but he loved it so much he’d taken it carefully off. It’s not this thong’s fault you’ve been such a little terrorist all night, he remembers saying, to which she’d responded mumph because he’d gagged her at that point.

Sykora stands, knees turned shyly inward, fingers fidgeting with the beautiful cloth. “It appears we’ve managed to escape the politicians for the time being.” She licks her full lips. “I’m sure that’s important work you’re doing, dove. But I wonder if we might have an early night.”

He puts aside his folder without hesitation. There’s important and then there’s essential.

She giggles breathily as he bears her into their bed and lays her across the silk bedspread. His leg tucks between hers; her pelvis starts its urgent rhythmic coaxing against his thigh. A tender little whine in her throat brings his hand to her neck—

And they pause. Like a thrown switch has cast a spotlight over them.

“Um,” Sykora says.

Grant lifts his hand away. The cool air of the cabin is suddenly too stinging, too temperature-controlled. “No?”

“Not no. Never no, just—” There’s tension beneath his touch. She’s pulling back. “I don’t—”

He releases his weight on her and rolls onto his side. He draws her into a face-to-face embrace, folding one of her curvy little legs over his hip. “Maybe like this?”

“Ooh,” she purrs. “This is nice.”

And it is. Of course it is. She’s beautiful, and soft, and warm inside, and they’re in love.

But they haven’t played any of their old games. No collar on Batty. No bite marks or signs of playful struggle on Grant. He makes love to his wife, and closes his hands around her wrists, and remembers when she would eagerly bind them, and be helpless and euphoric in his keeping.

After she’s fallen asleep, and he hasn’t, he sits up in the dark thinking about the look in her eyes. The one he used to see, every time they were together. That expression of pure, blissful surrender. The moment of letting go and falling, and knowing he’d be there to catch her, and keep her safe.

The one he hasn’t seen since the day Sykora’s Empress glared into her face and called her deviant.

It’s easy not to talk about it. There’s so much else happening. So many monumental challenges in front of them. Even if there wasn’t a world to conquer and then unconquer and then halfway conquer again, they’re parents now, after all. He should be glad they’re still finding this much time for each other. It’s not like he’s worried about their love diminishing. And what kind of guy would he be to press her on it, at a time like this? Hey, babe. I know we’re in the middle of deciding the future of Earth and the fate of billions. But I miss when you used to wear a leash and let me call you mean names.

He gets out of bed, careful not to wake her—though she doesn’t sleep light, his Taiikari Princess, nor do their children—and pours a glass of water, and looks at himself in the mirror. He imagines the chipped edge and the toothpaste flecks on the surface of his shitty old mirror in his shitty old apartment. He imagines when he’ll be older, a hundred years hence, with silver in his hair and wrinkles in his smile and scores of grandkids and great-grandkids. Everything he hoped for is still there. His luck is astounding. What greedy man could ask for more?

But Sykora used to give him all of herself. And now shame has locked a piece of her away.

He watches his children drift in their simple, sweet dreams for a while. He pads back to bed but it’s no use. Sleep continues to elude him.

He tightens the drawstring on his linen lounge pants and shrugs a tunic on. The lift bears him to the command deck, his usual insomniac haunt. Either he’ll be alone with the stars, or…

A pool of golden light illuminates the command table, and the fifthday Folly Tower game the command group is playing around it. “Evening, girls,” Grant says.

“Evening, Majesty.” Waian waves him over. “You want us to deal you in? We’re just getting into the third folly.”

“Sure.” Grant takes a seat and winches it low. “What’s the suit?”

Vora flips the hexagonal card over to reveal a helmed Taiikari warrior on a sinuous six-legged mount. “Knights.”

Grant accepts his hand of cards and the comically weak Taiikari beer they’re drinking. “We’re all ganging up on Hyax again tonight?”

“Go back to bed, Majesty,” Hyax says.

“We sure are,” Waian says.

They go through a couple of rounds in chummy hostility. Grant is rotten at the game, still, and foils out every time, but he’s getting better at knowing when to play his tower.

“I hear you wowed them on Maekyon, boss,” Waian says.

“Their Majesties were quite impressive,” Vora says. “But what impressed me the most is how well you’re working with Princess Narika.”

“She’s not so bad,” Grant says.

“His Majesty has always been fond of that hellion,” Hyax says. “It was Her Majesty whose temperance was tested.”

“You all right, Majesty?” Waian touches his hand.

“Hmm?” Grant reflexively reaches for his beer. “Yeah, fine. Why?”

“You’ve been a bit cloudy,” Waian says. “And someone mentioned Sykora just now and you didn’t get the goofy little smile you get whenever someone mentions Sykora.”

“I get a goofy little smile?”

“It’s not goofy,” Vora says. “It’s very sweet.”

Grant takes a drink while he tries to decide what to say. “When the Empress called her sick,” he says, when he’s run out of lager. “It really hurt her. And I’m not sure how to help.”

“Ah.” Vora sets her cards to one side. “I’d hoped I was only imagining things.”

“Imagining things how?” Grant frowns. “Did you not know about, uh… us?”

“Imagining the hurt you mentioned,” Vora says. “Your you, as we’re calling it, I’ve had inklings of. But it was never my business, and as far as I’m concerned it changes nothing.”

“Inklings, hell,” Waian says. “I knew the whole time.”

“How?”

“Cause sometimes you’d put your hand on the back of her neck and she’d get this look like—” Waian adopts a watery, doe-eyed expression that breaks Vora into a fit of giggles.

“You look at our faces too often,” Grant says.

“I wasn’t paying quite as much attention as Waian was,” Vora says. “But it makes perfect sense now that I know. You’re big, you’re uncompellable, you’re from a patriarchal society, and Sykora’s been quite eager to put you into the decisionmaker’s chair.”

“You make me sound like an homme fatale.”

“Oh, it never bothered me,” Vora says. “I quite liked the ways you changed her style. I told you that, didn’t I? At some point? Anyway it’s a rather, uh… flavorful kink, but I pretend to be a fantasy novel villain sometimes. Everyone’s got something. The usual horror story is that it leads to deficiency in leadership. But I certainly haven’t seen any, and between us I did look, just in case. So la-di-da.”

“And Hyax gets topped by fish now so she can’t rightly complain, either,” Waian says.

“I wasn’t going to,” Hyax complains.

“It’s bugging Kora, still,” Grant says.

“Of course it is,” Hyax says. “She can’t fool herself anymore that the Empress wouldn’t know or wouldn’t disapprove.”

Waian sighs unhappily. “Poor kid.”

“It’s the sort of thing someone checks themself into re-ed for,” Hyax says. “But then of course, word gets out a Princess is in re-ed and you’ve got a sectorwide scandal.”

“And we wouldn’t want her in there anyway,” Waian says. “Screw the Empress, if she’s gonna make my kid feel this way.”

“Chief, please.” Vora glances around the perimeter of the deck. “We already know she’s listening somehow.”

“Uh-huh.” Waian waves into the air. “Well, hello, High Majesty. My point is that from the Imperial perspective, your wife is fucked up, and from our perspective, she’s fucked up in exactly the opposite way. She needs permission to get unstuck in one direction or the other, or she’ll stay cut-in-half.”

“And I think we’re in agreement on which direction to tip her,” Hyax says.

“Brigadier.” Waian raises an eyebrow. “Are you being treasonous?”

“Fuck off.” Hyax opens another beer. “Glory to the Pike.”

A blue diode clicks on at the command deck console with a beep that makes everyone jump. Grant sits back down. “Oh my God I thought Hyax’s head was about to blow up or something.”

“That’s the priority message queue,” Vora says. “I’d open it but then the bridge crew would know I’m up late and I’d probably get pulled into some kind of—wait.” Her tail taps the floor. “I’m not the Majordomo anymore.”

They all look at one another.

Vora gets up and hits the button.

A voice begins in English, captioned in square Taiikari glyphs.

“To any Taiikari vessel in orbit.” It’s a woman’s voice, confident but with the quake of age or nerves on its edge. There’s something so familiar about it. “My name is Helen Gottlieb, the acting president of Archer West Holdings. I am the architect of the internment and torture of a Void Princess. As a token of cooperation and good faith, the government of the United States has asked me to voluntarily surrender myself to the Taiikari Empire, and in recognition of the severity of my crime, I have agreed. I am prepared to face the justice of the Empire.”