Astrid straightened, her Emperor’s mask sliding into place. “Being Emperor has considerations you know nothing about.”
“Considerations that don’t include friends, it seems. Or me.”
Astrid reached down and took my hands in hers. “Levar, I’m telling you I still love you, despite all that’s happened.”
I gently slid my hands from her grasp to raise hers towards my face, then pushed them away. “After all that’s happened, you expect me to believe that? After everyone you’ve killed? Your family, I understand, in an Imperial sort of way. You didn’t plan the coup, just exploited it. But you started this war against us. You chose to send your armies to kill us. We were your friends, Astrid. I was your lover. Yet you threw our lives away in favor of your Imperial ambitions. You can’t have truly loved me if you never imagined I might die in the war you started. How could I imagine you can possibly love anyone?”
Astrid started as if electrified, and her face took on a hideous snarl. “Get out,” she said. She stood quivering, vibrating with restrained actions. I wondered if she wanted to hit me. When I tarried too long, she screamed, “Get the Fall away from me!”
“Come, sir. Let’s return to your chambers.” Wiktor had appeared at my side, grabbing my elbow. I allowed him to pull me away without a word, but I looked back at Astrid as long as I could. She glared at me so hatefully I wondered if she would shed her gloves and attack me, but she remained tense and violently angry until I passed out of sight. Then Iheard a hideous crack and the sound of water pouring from a pond.
I didn’t want to take pleasure in hurting Astrid, but it felt good knowing I could wound her just as much as she had wounded me.
RESTORING COLOR
THE NEXT DAYwas grey. I mentally retreated back to the star front where nothing mattered. I had spent the last few days on vacation, enjoying my time here at the Crystal Palace, entertaining notions of resuming a romance with my long-lost love, but now I’d regained a galactic perspective. I was just another soldier, another pawn, another cog in the machine. Any chance for a great sweeping romance to save the day and let peace reign victorious and love triumphant was dashed by reality. I was too broken by the war to accept Astrid’s love. The Emperor was too elevated to accept the attentions of an enemy officer. Our love could not be. I would serve out my time here, then return to the front to resume my fruitless military career. At some place between New Melbourne and the capital, I would die. It was not worth worrying about – it was a certainty. Facing my inevitable demise, it was hard to care about Prince Aureli’s morning briefing, or Boleslaw’s interrogation of the previous night’s events, beyond fending off her probing questions with monosyllabic answers until shegrew frustrated and drifted beyond my perception. I simply had to go through the motions until the universal mechanism decided my time had expired.
My final bout on the tilting field was less exciting than the first two. My opponent, a middle-aged cavalier from some defunct League nation, traded blows with me for a quarter of an hour. He was skilled, but in a tournament fashion. I could tell he would not have survived long on the battlefield. Neither of us unseated the other, but when the final bell rang, the knight had scored more hits than I had. Still, I had put up a good fight and not embarrassed my country. To tell the truth, I was relieved. Most of the riders advancing to the final melee were demon princes, and after the debacle with Gretsky, I did not relish the idea of even mock combat against them.
Tilly was disappointed. She thought we could take the noble and wanted another crack at him. The moment I dismounted, she pulled into her stable stall nose-forward without so much as allowing me an after-action systems check. She probably thought I’d pulled my cuts. In a way, she was right. I could have engaged the aristocrat more aggressively, like I had yesterday, or when the Imps or their allies attacked one of my supply depots.
“Maybe we could have taken him, but it would have been a nasty fight. In this diplomatic battleground, I’d rather have a clean defeat than a messy victory.” Not that it mattered either way, but I might as well cause as few diplomatic eddies as possible on my trajectory to the grave.
Tilly gave a derisive cough from her exhaust system to show exactly what she felt about that. Tilly liked to win, but more importantly, she hated to lose.
“This isn’t the battlefield, Tilly. This is diplomacy. Such vicious tactics make more enemies than allies.” Prince Aureli’s words still buzzed in my ear. In response, Tilly turned to moreperfectly align away from me and lowered her docking clamp.
“Tilly, we don’t have time for this,” I said to the recalcitrant machine’s rear cowling. She didn’t respond. I didn’t want to leave her in this state, lest she take her frustration out on some unsuspecting stable mechanic.
“Are you arguing with your steed?”
I whirled. Princess Marie-Christina stood in the stable’s main bay, wearing a derby outfit dominated by a massive hat, a navy-blue affair with a wide swooping brim and the crown completely obscured by soft feathers and silk rosettes. Had she not paired it with a close-fitting high-waisted jacket and ankle-length pleated skirt, it would have looked ridiculous, but on her, it looked classy.
Most importantly, her presence brought color back into my world. Princess Marie was separate from the inevitable war, more real.
“Princess, what brings you here?” I asked, conscious of how sweaty and dusty I was.
She blushed and lowered her head, completely concealing her face beneath the brim of her hat. “You promised to introduce me to your hoversteed. I thought, since you would already be in the stables and everyone else is watching the last few tilts, now would be a good time.”
I rubbed my chin, streaking gritty sweat across my face. “I’d normally agree with you, but Tilly and I are having a bit of a disagreement right now.”
“Is she going rogue?” the princess asked, her eyes suddenly wide with fear. ‘Going rogue’ was the common phrase for a Synthetic Intelligence deciding to kill its makers. It was rare now, but many early military SIs had suffered from murderous faults. It came from being programmed to kill people, I suspected.
I hooked a thumb at Tilly in a gesture meant to dismissMarie’s fears. “Oh no, nothing like that. Tilly’s upset with me that we didn’t win the tilt.”
Princess Marie gave a shy smile. “But you two flew beautifully. I do not know how you could have done better.”
Tilly gave her mechanical snort again, and it was my turn to blush. “I could’ve used tactics more like yesterday and the day before.”
“I see,” the princess said, then considered. “Well, those days, you fought ungentlemanly opponents, so it was right that you fought in an ungentlemanly way. Today you fought with honor. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
Tilly snorted once more, but less forcefully this time. It seemed she liked what the princess was saying.
I leaned down, putting my hands on my knees. “How about it, Tilly? Want to come say hello?” Tilly didn’t move.
“Did you tell her I’m an ally?” Marie asked, leaning down beside me.
I hesitated, removing my riding gloves. “Tilly doesn’t really get ‘allies.’ She has enemies, not-enemies, and me, and most not-enemies she thinks are plotting against her anyways.”
