Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (18 page)

“It was one of the rare times I was away from my
il’haar
. Vayne and a host of others in the palace were with a visiting master learning about levitation. He was safe, surrounded by the strongest psionics in my family, so I spent the afternoon with some of my untwinned sisters.” Her sisters. It made her guilty to look at them, every time thinking how incomplete they were, women with no
il’haars
, knowing she had been granted what they would never have.

On Ordoch, when the royal family conceived it was always a set of male–female twins or a single female. Males, the stronger psionic half of the pair, were never born without a twin to protect them physically. It was only that way in the upper reaches of their society, though. Most Wyrds lived and died untwinned, unknowing of an
il’haar–ro’haar
bond.

“I knew he was safe and hadn’t worried. When the explosion came I didn’t even understand it. It decimated our courtyard. I was flung against the wall, something broken. At the time I thought it an accident, then I heard Vayne screaming for me in my head. Screaming and screaming and screaming.”

That scream still woke her some nights.

“I left my sisters there, dead or not, and limped my way down corridors to him. He screamed and then—he stopped. Nothing. Silence. On my way I began to realize that charges must have been set throughout the palace, that I’d heard other explosions. I was almost there when I saw them. Saw him.”

Malkor looked so pained by the telling that she almost stopped. But she couldn’t, not now. She couldn’t think past her memory. The words tumbled out as his hand fell from her shoulder.

“Teal and indigo and soot and blood. Imperial military dragging charred bodies from the chamber, counting them. I tucked myself against a piece of debris and watched. They dragged him out. My Vayne. By his leg.” The fury washed up in her. The helplessness. The screaming bloodlust hatred for the men who touched him. For the
kin’shaa
who approached him.

“He twitched. In my mind I felt him grope for me. ‘Where?’ he asked in a single instant. I need you. His last words. ‘Kayla. I need you.’ I—” She choked, panted at the recall. “Dolan came up, studied my Vayne. Vayne twitched again, fighting the damage to his body. The
kin’shaa
shot him.”

Vayne’s burnt body had jerked like a broken puppet, then lay still. Dead, like so many others in the palace.

She had reached out with her mind then, everywhere silence, every ally gone. Every voice absent but one. She had been a microsecond from hurling herself at the pile of bodies to join Vayne when she’d heard it.

Her littlest brother. A terrified voice. Too untrained to know that in his fear he mentally shouted at the top of his lungs.

“I found Corinth in one of the practice rooms. He was hiding under the bodies of our aunt and his twin, both having died killing the soldiers who had been sent for them. I don’t know how we escaped the palace. It has a million ins and outs, we must have taken one of the hidden routes. We intersected with two others fleeing. Somehow we ended up on a ship. A trade vessel.” She fought for the memories. “We were nearly shot down on launch. I can’t remember it all. Something about a damaged navconsole and star compass. There was a jump to hyperspace.” She’d been unconscious most of the time, delirious from the pain of untreated injuries and Vayne’s loss. Any lucid minutes were spent staring at the catatonic Corinth with a mix of desperate need and fierce hatred. He wasn’t Vayne. He was all she had left. She had failed, but she had saved.

“Without a navconsole we’d taken a hyperstream blindly and it deposited us in the outer atmosphere of one of the empire’s most distant planets.”

“Altair Tri,” Malkor said.

She nodded, lacking the energy for anything else. “The ship had been torn up in the firefight and the trip through hyperspace. It crashed somewhere outside the Slums. We survived the crash. We did not, however, survive the slavers and scavengers that reached the wreck almost immediately. Corinth and I were taken, the others killed as they were too old to fetch a price to cover their medical costs. The slavers didn’t know who we were, only that the ship could be used for scrap metal and that we were young enough to fetch a fortune of credits on the pleasure slave auction blocks with our exotic blue hair and eyes.”

“They didn’t—”

“No. The slavers splurged for the best healer the slum side had to offer, first. Corinth and I were worth it, apparently. My body healed well. The slavers didn’t live very long once the healers were finished. The rest you know.” She shrugged a shoulder. “I found a way to support us, to keep us hidden in case the IDC and Dolan were searching for two members of Ordoch’s royal family who escaped the coup.”

“That’s why you agreed to help us, in exchange for passage anywhere you asked,” he said. “You need to get back to Wyrd Space.”

She had no words left. The telling had drained them from her. Repercussions would come later. For now, only one thing mattered. “I need to see Corinth.”

Malkor was immediately all action, as if desperate to get away. “Stay here, I’ll bring him to you.” He ducked his head, not meeting her eyes, and fled.

* * *

Malkor barged out of Kayla’s room.

He couldn’t listen to any more recounting of the attack he’d knowingly, if unwillingly, aided. Those soldiers had been allowed planet-side on Ordoch because of him. The charges placed in halls of the palace on Ordoch—the soldiers had had access to those areas because of him, because of his negotiations with the seneschal.

Frutt.

True, he hadn’t planned the attack, hadn’t placed the charges, hadn’t killed anyone. Not directly. But he’d helped to put all the pieces into place, even if he never thought the empire would go through with the coup. Willfully naïve, or just plain stupid?

And now, Kayla. Her name suited her.

“Good talk, then?” Isonde’s voice brought him up short. She stood just down the hallway from their door.

“Not now, Isonde.” He recognized the jealous look she couldn’t quite hide. Not his problem. She had chosen Ardin and the empire over him two years ago and right now he couldn’t care less.

He worked to order his thoughts as he strode away.

Kayla and Corinth—Wyrds, psionics. Had they been reading his mind this whole time? That brought a cold wash over him. What the void had he said? What had they heard?

Damnit. He had to protect himself.

He recalled Dolan’s lessons for mental shielding and began visualizing layers of plassteel wrapping his mind, the sections of a wall forming, edges fusing together. He reinforced the image over and over. Once the shield was in place it was natural to maintain it unconsciously. Ideally, it would remain until he decided to lower it.

Ideally.

He entered the IDC wing and halted outside Trinan and Vid’s door. Shields. Steel. Focus.

He commed the room and Rigger let him in. His gaze immediately fell on Corinth. Was he reading his mind right now?

The boy’s eyes widened and his hand froze mid-action.

He was so small to have survived. And he’d been even smaller. Malkor took a step into the room and Corinth’s hands tightened spasmodically on the biostrip and tactile probe he held. Malkor felt the lightest touch, the pressure of a palm in the center of his chest, nothing more than that. The boy looked terrified. Hunted. How was he going to get him to Kayla?

The probe and biostrip fell to the table. In two seconds Corinth was up and pushing past him. Corinth burst into the hall and took off at a run. Malkor could barely keep up. They sprinted into the main corridor separating the housing wings, and Corinth slammed his ID bracelet against the lock on Kayla’s wing when they reached it. Her door was already open and she waited just inside. Corinth catapulted himself at her and she caught him, rock-steady.

Over his head she murmured, “Thank you,” to Malkor before leading Corinth into her sleeping chamber. The door shut behind them and Malkor found himself standing awkwardly in the common room of their apartments once more, alone with Isonde.

“Is he…?” Isonde made a vague motion toward Kayla’s room with the datapad she held. “Is everything okay? He looked…” Concern shadowed her voice. She glanced at Kayla’s door then back to him. “Evelyn looked worried like I’ve never seen. What did you say to her?”

Malkor took a deep breath. “I think they’ll be okay now.” That was a lie. How could they be?

He checked his mobile comm. About a million messages waited for him and a flashing indicator told him he’d missed a meeting. He sat down on the couch opposite Isonde. “Nightmares, I think.”

She nodded, her gaze drifting to Kayla’s door again.

Silence lengthened between them. There was no reason to stay, but he couldn’t go.

“You’ll be at the extravaganza tonight?” he asked.

“With Evelyn, hopefully. If she’s up for it. Malkor—” she paused, as if choosing her words. “You did well finding her, she was the right choice for my body double.” Kayla must have really impressed Isonde with her dedication to the plan for Isonde to admit to any such thing. “She was impressive at the party last night. Natural. I had some doubts, but after seeing her charm Priestess Ush… She’s a real asset to our cause.”

Gee, couldn’t imagine why. The exiled princess of Ordoch wanting to build alliances that would lead to the freeing of her homeworld. “I’ll tell her.”

“Well, don’t get
too
carried away.” Isonde turned her attention back to her datapad.

He recognized her dismissal when he saw it. He’d never liked that about her.

He should check on Rigger’s progress with Isonde’s hologram. He should review the list of the most likely candidates for cheating the Game with his commander. He should check the healing progress on Janeen’s ankle, debrief Gio and Aronse after their time with the Wyrds and circle back with Hekkar. He should do… something. Anything. Anything to avoid the truth of Kayla’s identity and problems that knowledge caused.

As he walked back toward his octet’s wing he focused on questions he could answer, such as why Kayla and Corinth had been declared dead instead of missing by Dolan or the IDC leaders, and why a giant manhunt hadn’t been launched. That was simple military coup tactics. Announcing that two members of the family had survived the coup and were at large among the populace offered hope. Hope sparked rebellion. Even if Kayla and Corinth were never found, their people would have mobilized around the idea of them, catalyzed into trying to retake their birthright.

The assumed death of every member of the family left the people with no leader to rally behind. And if the two had in fact survived and surfaced later? The IDC could deal with them then. It would not be their first or last political assassination.

He knew now how Kayla and Corinth communicated, and what trauma had left him mute. He knew why Kayla was so determined, inhumanely so, to protect her brother, and he knew how she had learned to be so deadly. His mobile comm pulsed and he pulled the unit out to see his commander’s ID flash on the screen, driving home the question he couldn’t avoid.

Now that he knew who Kayla was, what was he supposed to do with her?

T
he next morning Kayla stood on the edge of the sparring ring, trying to catch her breath. Her opponent stood on the other side, trying not to cry.

Kayla almost felt bad about beating the girl.

Almost.

Barely out of adolescence, Maiden Frolova had clearly nurtured hope of winning the Empress Game. That hadn’t stopped Kayla from winning a best of three series of best of three matches 2–0 and 2–0. It was poor luck for the girl to have drawn Kayla on her first day or she might have made it farther. Judging by Frolova’s father’s thunderous look, it would be a long time before he let her forget her failure here.

Kayla turned her back on the pair and walked to where Isonde waited, wearing her skin.

I need to eat more
.

Isonde, in her Kayla hologram, handed her a towel. “That was easy.”

“From where you’re standing, maybe.” Kayla wiped sweat from her face.

“Three down.”

Kayla scanned the huge pit that made up the floor of the arena. “Three million to go.” The pit had been divided into thousands of sparring circles; she could barely make out the far end of the arena through the mass of contestants present. Security on the tournament floor was extremely tight. Contestants were only allowed their one attendant with them, and both had to consent to full identification procedures before entering the pit. Security officers were stationed at regular intervals along the perimeter and IDC agents circulated throughout the maze, randomly re-verifying contestants. She herself had already been re-print and DNA scanned twice.

The switch Rigger and Corinth engineered worked perfectly. With her hologram biostrip active, Kayla’s print, DNA and iris scan data linked to Isonde’s profile, and vice versa. No need for a DNA-laced cell spray on her hands or the rigid optical filters for her pupils.

The only other people allowed on the tournament floor were imperial officials overseeing the matches, and servers who provided the only allowed beverages and food. Everyone else was relegated to the stands. Today, on the first day of qualifying, the arena was only half-full.

“Where to next?” she asked Isonde, rubbing the back of her neck with the towel. She glanced at her defeated opponent. Yep, definitely crying.

The princess checked the schedule pad. “Ring 1A-731-BXD.”

They wove through the crowd to reach the site. The previous series hadn’t wrapped yet, and it looked intense. The combatants wielded staves, a choice Kayla hadn’t seen often this morning. Fights at the Empress Game occurred either unarmed, or else a particular weapon was chosen for both to use. The allowable choices were staves, swords or knives, the blades being metal with dulled edges. The choice of which weapon to use was given to the contestant with the best record to date, or the one with the highest randomly assigned number if their records matched.

One of the women had a height advantage, but was smart enough to recognize her opponent as quicker. She had wisely chosen staves to make the most of her reach and keep the faster opponent at bay.