“What the Fall is going through your head?” he asked, his voice controlled for the public, but low with fury. “Flirting with the Emperor? What on Earth do you think you were doing?”
I didn’t know what I thought I was doing. Flirting with the girl who left me twelve years ago, expecting her to fall back into my arms? Astrid was the Emperor. I’d spent the last ten years killing her soldiers. How could I flirt with the person responsible for killing millions of my countrymen?
But then again, wasn’t that why I was here?
I was tired, mentally exhausted from the efforts ofdiplomacy and socializing. I thought I had done a great good for our nation today, intimating myself with the leader of our most tenacious enemy, and now the prince wasscoldingme?
“Exploiting my advantage, Your Highness. Isn’t that why you brought me aboard this venture?” I asked. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve been awake and sober these last forty hours. If I’m to be of any use to our nation, then I desperately need a drink and some stim.”
The Duke of Lynwyzc said nothing, but his eyes followed me as I walked around him. Other eyes watched me as I made my way to the bar. As I approached, several people directly in my path shifted, moving ever so slightly to give me a clear route. When I was ten feet away, two Imperial nobles, each twice my size, stood and opened a space at the bar for me. Gratefully, I nodded, and found the bartender right in front of me, ready to take my order.
“Whiskey, Eire, couple of fingers. And a hard coffee,” I ordered. The bartender immediately fetched a glass and a bottle, and a second later I held a tumbler in my hand while the barkeep went about mixing my caffeinated beverage.
I turned around and for an instant saw everyone nearby watching me before they pivoted back to their conversations as though I had not caught their curious stares. Lady d’Lyre’s eyes lingered upon me a moment longer, filled with an emotion I could not identify – intrigue? Desire? Appraisal? – before she too returned to her conversation.
As I sipped my whiskey, I wondered if I’d made the right decision, flirting with Astrid. It had felt right in the moment, but this was not my environment. I could handle a battlefield; I could run a supply depot. I could even maneuver at an Academy ball, making salacious talk with my beloved girlfriend, knowing we were going home to the same room after the music died and the champagne was corked, but thisCrystal Palace? What if I had made a serious mistake? Now everyone knew me.
One pair of eyes was still upon me. Princess Marie-Christina made eye contact from across the room, then raised an eyebrow in question. I pursed my lips in uncertainty, then smiled. She nodded, then was distracted by the Despotate officer leaning into her personal space.
I sipped my whiskey as my spiked coffee slid next to my elbow. While I kept my face impassive, inside I felt like grinning, laughing, curling up in a ball and sobbing in a corner. I’d danced once more with my love and wasn’t sure she was the same woman who’d won my heart long ago. But she was alive, and so was I, and we had a chance to figure out what that meant.
BREAKING FAST
THE LIGHT OFday was an unwelcome intrusion into the stygian blackness of my sleep, sending shafts of sunshine piercing through my eyelids. For a moment after the curtains were thrown aside, my body went on red alert, but there were no sounds of battle, no covert shuffling of infiltrators, just the footsteps of somebody walking around the room. My battle sense switched off, dropping me back into a miasma of newly awakened stupefaction. I groaned and turned over.
“Now now, Captain. It’s time you were up. The rest of the prince’s retinue is already at breakfast.”
“They are?” I mumbled, the words barely intelligible. That voice, it sounded familiar…
“Indeed. Now, we have to get you dressed. Come, I’ve brought you a morning suit.”
Dreading the act, I opened my eyes. As expected, the brightness hurt. After my pupils contracted, the silhouette of a Commonwealth royal valet swam into focus. Not justany valet, but the one who had stripped me down after my meeting with the high marshals.
“You,” I said as I slowly rose to a seated position. “What are you doing here?”
The valet did not look up from the suit he was laying at the foot of my bed. “Somebody has to make certain you are correctly attired during this soiree. As a result, you may consider me your personal valet for the duration of this Imperial jubilee. Now, wash yourself, and quickly. It does not do to keep a prince waiting.”
I swung my feet out from beneath the sheets. “You’re certain I can do it myself?” I chided.
“I trust you can clean off a single ballroom evening’s grime,” he said, his voice droll.
I considered the situation as I showered in the small commode attached to my room. When I emerged, I said, “Captains don’t get valets.”
“Consider me your batman, then,” he replied, holding up an undershirt and a pair of trunks.
I raised my eyebrows as I took them and began dressing. “You don’t look much like a corporal.”
“Good thing, too, since I am a master sergeant.” He was busy pulling out the grey three-piece suit, so he didn’t notice my shocked expression right away. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. Every member of Her Majesty’s household is a trained member of her Royal Guards. It keeps the illusion of a civil, genteel monarch without sacrificing her protection.”
I considered this while I finished buttoning my shirt. As I pulled on the pinstriped trousers, I said, “That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”
The valet helped me shrug into my one-and-a-half breasted waistcoat, leaving me to do up the nine buttons. “I am here to instruct you in the language of diplomacy, toguide you through the difficult steps of etiquette, and to make certain your bumbling soldier’s brashness does not outweigh your strategic usefulness.”
“An assistant’s assistant,” I quipped, noting with disdain the tiny, useless pockets barely large enough to hold a fob watch.
“A gentleman’s gentleman,” he corrected, holding up my cutaway jacket. It looked like a civilian jacket, except for the regiment-marked shoulder boards and the gold rank stripes around the sleeve cuffs. I’d not had a servant help me dress since my last visit to my family estate before the war, so I was amazed how easily the old habits came back.
“Well, if we are to be together these next several days, I should know your name,” I said as I slid my arms into the tight jacket sleeves.
