"You have my gratitude for the aid you tendered during this crisis, Majordomo Niminoa." Sykora inclines her head to the woman in the cell. "I understand the pain of breaking an oath to a departed friend."

"Friend." Niminoa's croak muffles into the bowl of curry she's glumly eating. "The woman I dedicated a kilocycle of my life to. The center spoke of my existence. She was the finest woman on the Void Frontier. The firmament is a husked zaikem shell without her. Friend. What a threadbare word." She looks up. "Where are you taking me, then?"

"The destruction of the Argosy True requires recompense," Sykora says. "And whatever other deceptions were used to hide the daemon. An accounting must be made."

"All of it was in the Empress's name," Niminoa says.

Sykora folds her arms and steps out from the command group, closer to the glass cell wall. "I don't presume to judge you. You'll accompany us to the Imperial Core, and we'll tender you to the Empress's custody. She can decide better than we can whether and which of your methods were justifiable."

Niminoa shrugs mutely.

"If the petition passes, Cloud Gate will be picked apart," Grant says. "You might want to consider what you'll do next."

Niminoa sits back, resting her head against the wall of her cell. "Was she there?"

"Who?"

"The woman who killed my Princess." Niminoa's voice is flat and dull with the patina of grief. "Was she there?"

"She must have been broadcasting from somewhere else." Sykora shakes her head. "And once the tables turned on her, she went silent. Any tools we could have traced her with, she'd disabled until the connection terminated. She's gone to ground."

"As long as she is alive, Kanori hasn't been avenged. Not yet." The statement brings animation to the former majordomo of Cloud Gate. She stands up, her tail curling into a half-moon curve. "And that is what I'll do next."

"She was a real trooper, you know." Waian hits the lift summon button to depart the brig level. "She told me everything she could about the daemon while we were crawling through the vents. It wasn't much, but it helped. Tugged me outta the console, too. Might have saved my bacon."

"I am so glad that it didn't kill you," Sykora says. "So that I can kill you for making me think it killed you."

Waian chuckles. "What?"

"That fucking display in the hangar. You're lucky you weren't throttled, Chief Engineer."

"Who's gonna carry my arm? Am I gonna carry it?" Waian's got a big shit-eating grin on her face as she wags her pinned-up sleeve. "I only have one hand."

"You know exactly what you were doing. I am not speaking to you anymore." Sykora points at Hyax. "You're on thin ice too, Brigadier."

Hyax bows. "I understand, Majesty."

"Majordomo," Sykora says. "Kindly inform the chief engineer to work with her people and set a course for Tamion."

Vora glances to Waian. "Uh, chief engineer—"

"I heard," Waian says. "What for?"

"For the NVI room-form simulator," Sykora says. "Before we return to the Core, I need to see what this daemon really is. I need to speak to it."

"Like you just spoke to me?"

"Majordomo, inform the chief engineer she can stuff it." Sykora threads her arm around Grant's waist. "I am off to shower this blood from me and then sleep for an entire tenday. Would you accompany me, husband?"

He nests his hand in her hair, and lays his palm on the back of her neck, over the detonator. Soapstone. A lie. They're safe. For now, they're safe.

"Anywhere," he says.

Sykora slumbers soundly, her hands settled across her midsection.

Grant is having trouble again.

This happened with Thror, and it's happening again tonight, even though he'd pull the trigger again a thousand times. It's not a conflict within him. Nothing that he actually regrets. It's just the face that Lors made when he shot her in the stomach. The recoil, the sound. It collides with the memory of—

With the lack of memory, rather.

Sometimes when he gets this way, it helps to get out of bed and retrieve his guitar, and ride the lift down to the command deck. The great glass expanse of its ceiling makes it feel outdoors, almost. Even more than the foliage of the agro level.

From the glass-walled lift, he looks out at the evening lights of the ship, the cool amber walkways where distant crew walk, singly and in pairs. He's already feeling better. He's home.

His thumbprint is keyed to the command deck door (they used a thumb instead of a tail for him). He opens it out onto the starry dome and hears murmuring voices, and sees a pool of light around the projector table where the command group has gathered. They've opened drinks and passed out cards, thick and hexagonal like coasters. Each is barely bigger than a matchbook. The conversation stops momentarily as Grant arrives.

"Hey, gals," he says. "Thought I was the only one who came here after hours."

"Majesty!" Vora waves him over. "Were you looking for privacy? We can relocate."

"Not privacy. Just—I don't know." Grant approaches. "I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"Not at all, boss." Waian drags her seat to one side. "Pull up a chair. You wanna learn the rules?"

"Every fifthday is Folly Tower Night," Hyax says. "Grotesque little game. Don't know why I still play it."

Grant looks at the tiny cards. They're printed with antique depictions of warriors and weapons, stamped with stripy Taiikari numerals. His sleepless logic center shakes its head at him. "Think I'll just watch."

"Watch me clean these two out," Waian says. "Buy myself a new arm made of solid platinum."

"She's kidding, Majesty," Vora says. "Gambling isn't legal aboard a ZKZ."

"Gambling isn't legal hardly anywhere." Waian sips her beer. "Doesn't stop anyone."

Hyax rests her cards on the table. "Tower."

"Fuck yourself with a horn, Brigadier," Waian says.

Vora giggles as she retrieves everyone's cards. "Next round, then." Grant eases into his chair.

Waian hands him a beer. "We were just talking about Niminoa."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yep. Got tired of talking about the Empress-in-the-box."

"You didn't have to tell His Majesty that," Hyax grumbles.

"Wasn't an interesting conversation, to be honest," Waian says. "Just a bunch of hmmm, very disturbing." She shifts and then pauses. She wiggles her stump. "Motherfucker. My bottle opener's gone."

"What else can one say, really?" Vora spreads a fan of face-down cards. "First folly is…" She flips the first. "Spears."

"To live past your Void Princess," Hyax says. "To see her die in that way. Give me, Majesty." She gestures for Grant's bottle. "I don't much care for that Niminoa woman on the whole, but it's a tough thing. Reminds me of when we thought we'd lost Sykora."

"I never thought we'd lost Sykora," Waian says.

Hyax harrumphs at that. Her combat knife levers Grant's bottlecap off with a carbonated hiss.

"I wonder how much she had to do with the Argosy True," Vora says. "And how many people Cloud Gate ended up killing to hide that daemon. And it didn't even work."

"What would you do, majordomo?" Grant asks. "If Sykora asked a thing like that of you."

"What would I do if the firmament turned into treacle and melted out of the sky?" Vora picks through her cards. "Why worry about it? Sykora wouldn't misuse me that way."

"But you'd compromise your morals for her, surely," Hyax says. She places a card face-down. "We all would."

"Yes." Vora mirrors her. "I daresay I would. But I won't. That's my good fortune. And so is this." She turns one of her cards onto its face. "Nine spear."

Waian scratches her stump. "Remember how close we came with the Eqtorans?"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"That's what Eqtora proved to me," Vora says. "Sykora has her principles, and thanks to Grantyde, they're stronger than they've ever been."

"Has there never been a time you feared she'd abandon them?" Grant asks.

"Nah." Waian says. She flips a card. "Twelve spear."

"My job is to fear for her, not fear her," Hyax says. She drops her cards onto the table. "Follied. I'm out."

"Once," Vora says.

"When was that?" Grant asks.

"When she brought you home, Majesty." Vora smiles. "And look at you now."

"Hey. Here's to Grantyde, huh?" One-handed Waian has to drop her cards to hold her bottle up. "Prisoner to Prince." The other two clink theirs to it. Grant smiles and taps a phantom lager against the flock.

A communal drink, and Waian lifts her beer out again. "And here's to Goola. My right-hand hand."

"What are you naming the next one?" Hyax asks. "Goola the Second?"

"Not anymore. You'll think it was your idea." Waian downs a gulp, burps, and takes up her cards again. She slaps one down face-up. "Ten spear. That's a fucking tower, baby."

"Shit," Hyax says.

"That's the round." Vora collects the cards and shuffles them into the deck. "Would you like to sit in on the next one, Majesty? We'll teach you."

"Not tonight." Grant stands up. "But I'd love to learn sometime."

"You got what you need, then?" Waian asks.

Grant looks around the table. They look back at him. The faithful majordomo, the steadfast brigadier, the doting chief engineer. How briefly he's known them, and how important they are to him now. He swallows against a sudden thickness in his throat.

"Yeah," he says. "Thank you. Night, ladies."

They chorus their good nights back to him. He leaves their cheerful chatter behind and returns to his darkened cabin, and his sheltering bed, and the little blue love of his life, warm and soft and slumbering in his arms.

They take a Kahanai Fabricant magma yacht out from the foundry's steaming volcanic mouth. Just Grant, Sykora, and a frazzled Director Wex, her bright and brilliant plumage laid flat against her four limbs. She doesn't ask them what it is they're doing; they don't ask her why it is that this yacht is equipped with a simulator room. The chrome arrowhead of the yacht hovers on the thermal cushion of magma, slipping along the flows and rivers in mutual discomfort.

The bare, glowing simulator room is smaller than the one back at the foundry, but it has the same routing plinth in its center. Sykora holds up her hand as Grant approaches it and takes a bolstering breath. "I'll do the talking, yes?"

"Please." Grant passes her the daemon's microphone, then places the worn wooden statue on the plinth.

The paperwhite walls resolve into a twilit copy of Taiikar. Or what might be Taiikar, anyway. It's hard to tell with the systemic brutalization of the landscape. Grant and Sykora stand in the center of what was once a forest. Every tree has been severed, every stone upturned. A lawn of stumps stretches to the plum night's horizon. In the distance, an orange glow casts craggy light across the gathered clouds.

"Locate the NVI and move to it," Sykora murmurs into the mic. The landscape blurs and falls away. They fly across the depletion at speed, until the first tower breaches the horizon. A city, Grant sees. An ancient city crafted out of wood and stone. Dilapidated in its center, new on its edges. Like an organic thing, a moss or mycelium, crawling across the simulation around it. Its skyline is dominated by a massive painted palace, its crenellations festooned with statues. Some life-sized, some much larger. All of the same woman.

Then they stand before the genuine article. Or, at least, a convincing copy.

Seated atop a carved and chiseled throne, in an empty echoing room lit by flickering sconces, Empress Zithra XIX sits as motionless as her statues, head in her hands.

The microphone shakes as Sykora raises it to her lips. "High Majesty."

For a few seconds, there's no response. Then Zithra's head raises in slow wonder. She looks younger than the woman Grant met. Younger and so much less certain.

"Inadama?" she breathes.

Sykora's face mirrors that same speechless shock.

"Inadama. My girl." A tear drops down the Empress daemon's cheek. "You came for me. You came."

"I—uh, High Majesty." Sykora finds her voice. "I am not Inadama."

"No?" Zithra's face crumples. "But—I thought. Your voice."

"Inadama is my." Sykora clears her throat. "She's my mother."

Zithra rests her chin on her ring-encrusted hands. She tilts her head. Her voice is growing stronger as she uses it, like the cobwebs of ages are clearing away. "Are you Sykora, then? Or Narika?"

"I'm Sykora. You know my name? How?"

A faint smile crosses Zithra's face. "A lucky guess. She said if she ever had another litter, she'd have a daughter named Sykora. And here you are. A Void Princess, yes?"

"Yes, High Majesty," Sykora says. "For now. By returning you, I make myself a Princess Margrave."

"How about that." Zithra's rings clatter together as she drums her fingers across one another. "I didn't think it was possible. But if anyone could do it, a child of Inadama could. You're returning me?"

"To the Core, yes."

Zithra sits up. "Where am I now?"

"In my sector. The Black Pike sector. It's— It is an honor, High Majesty. To host you. To see you, even in this way. It's an honor."

Zithra chuckles. "Inadama raised you well, I see."

"Inadama didn't raise me, High Majesty. I am a Void Princess."

"Of course. Of course. You'll forgive me, I hope. My mind is…" Zithra blows a rueful laugh. "I'm not used to thinking this quickly anymore."

"I understand, High Majesty."

"Are you here alone?"

"My husband is here with me, High Majesty."

"Your husband." Zithra clicks her tongue. "Good. You love him? It was a love match?"

"Yes, High Majesty."

"I would have liked it," Zithra says. "To be a Void Princess. To be something other than I was. I would have liked it very much, I think. To fly a ZKZ out of the Core. To see new stars. To do something so vulnerable and vulgar as fall in love. What a sweet impossibility, hmm?" She stands and steps to the pillared terrace. "Is she still alive, out there, your mother? Time has gotten so strange."

"She is, High Majesty," Sykora says.

"Thank God." Zithra sighs. "Thank God. She sent you?"

"She did, High Majesty."

Zithra smiles at that. "There's my girl."

"High Majesty." Sykora's brows are high and fearful. "Why did you do this to yourself?"

"Because I am weak, Sykora." Zithra rests a palm on her chest. "This monstrous weakness in me. The fear of that which I can't control. Mortality is the ultimate uncountable variable. The one thing I can't bend. And prideful old fool that I am, I tried anyway. This—" She gestures to the desolation across the horizon. "This is a threat. I am a threat. My existence. A threat to my Empire. Her Empire." She lets out an acrid laugh. "You see? The envy."

"Is that why you obeyed the Penitent?"

"I obeyed the Penitent out of the hope it would call my servants down from the world outside," Zithra says. "I obeyed the Penitent because it was something to do, I suppose. Because I thought I'd be strong enough. And I was. For a very long time, I was. But not long enough. Impossibilities."

She turns back to her throne. Her eyes, though they can't see Grant and Sykora, are piercing and full of command. Suddenly she looks much more like her real-world equivalent.

"I obeyed her, so that when you finally found me, you would destroy me," she says. "You must end this hideous mistake."

"I was ordered to retrieve you," Sykora says. "To bring you back, not to destroy you."

Zithra shakes her head. "You are young. You have the conviction to see this for what it is, and to know what must be done. I cannot be sure my counterpart does. If you have love for your Empress, you will do as I ask."

Sykora's fingers flex against the microphone.

"Your husband," Zithra gently prompts. "Who is he?"

"His name is Grantyde of Maekyon." Sykora's eyes are getting misty.

"And you trust him?"

"More than anyone."

"Ask him what you should do," Zithra says. "I have always longed for someone there to ask. Ask him."

Sykora gives Grant a glance of unalloyed anxiety. He kneels and closes his touch around her hands on the microphone. They're slick with sweat.

"Yes," he whispers.

Sykora raises her microphone. "Order me, High Majesty."

"I order you, Princess Sykora." Zithra wears a gentle smile. Her eyes flash. "Destroy me. Replace this program with some deniable stamped clone of what it was supposed to be. Then dare them to call your bluff. Tell the Zithra outside, and tell Inadama. Tell them both to stop being such hardhorned fools. And that death is not so terrifying as its absence. Tell them—"

Zithra sits forward and steeples her fingers.

A minute passes, maybe two, before Sykora says, "Tell them what?"

"Ah." The Empress laughs. "You'll have to excuse me. I'm not used to thinking so fast. Not anymore. Tell the Empress to remember what Astrama told her on the beach. Tell her how unafraid I was. Tell her…" Zithra pauses. "Well, don't waste too much breath. She knows what I know."

"I will," Sykora breathes. "I swear on my life."

"If I could only see you," Zithra says. "If I could touch you. But impossibilities, I suppose." She returns to her throne and sits on its cold slab. Her shoulders are square. Her bearing is regal. "Off with you now, Sykora. Go and be glorious. Go with my love. Go; goodbye."

Sykora clutches the mic so tight, Grant fears she might break it. "Goodbye, High Majesty." She lowers the mic and nods to her husband.

Grant lifts the daemon off the plinth. The New Empress and her sunset world vanish.

Sykora lets out a held, shaky breath, and turns on her heel from the room. "Come, dove. Let's be about it."

Grant follows Sykora out of the simulation room and to the glass-bulbed main deck. Its cool, festive lighting contrasts with the bright molten world beyond its controlled interior. Wex is seated on a bone-colored couch, uncertainly stirring a stiff drink.

Sykora holds up the statue. "Are you aware of this daemon's contents, Director Wex?"

"Uh, Majesty. As you noted last time we met I am quite hopeless at political maneuvering." Wex lets out an apologetic, beak-clicking titter. "My life is in my work. Yes, it is. All I want is to do the job I love, for the Empire I love. That's all."

"Do that, then." Sykora places the daemon on the oval glass coffee table by Wex's couch. "This daemon's program is defective. Restore it to the factory parameters. Wipe the data and reinstall Rovakt's NVI on it."

Wex stares from Sykora to the daemon and back.

"Do as your Princess commands you, Wex." Sykora taps her foot. "And then I'll leave you be, with my thanks for all you do in the name of the Black Pike sector. If you can't, I'll arrest you and toss the thing overboard anyway."

"Uh—yes. Yes, Majesty. Right away." Wex lifts the daemon like it's scalding to the touch and takes it over to a terminal whose console is built into the gleaming span of the yacht's cockpit.

Sykora watches over her shoulder as she works. Keys clatter in symphony under four sets of claws. The screen flickers. Progress bars load, fill, flash blue, and fade.

Wex visibly deflates into her eggshell seat. "It's done." She holds the daemon out. "K-77272, factory reset."

Sykora takes the statue, strides to the couch, and tosses the K-77 underhand into the little pile of bags and accoutrements they brought with them. Wex winces as it lands amid a travel cloak and a pair of boots. His wife sprawls across the couch and stares at the ashy sky.

Grant sits next to her. With automatic precision her head finds his lap.

"That's a brave thing you did," he says. "And kind, I think."

"Inadama said that it was my duty to retrieve the daemon," Sykora says. "But my Empress gave me a command."

"You told me that they aren't people."

Sykora blows an exhausted breath out in a raspberry. "You know how I always tell you that you're my conscience, dove?"

"Uh huh."

She turns onto her stomach. Her chin nudges his thigh. "Shut up and just be my back-scratcher for a while."

He chuckles and assumes his role. She sighs as his nails pass across her slight silk uniform.

"The Penitent," she murmurs. "Ridiculous name. Sad little woman. That could have been me, you know. Broken and bitter, with millions dead by my hand."

"You know I don't believe that."

"Doesn't matter one way or the other," she says. "I have you."

Her horns creep upward from her velvety black hair. She crawls the rest of the way into his lap, encompassing his waist in the scope of her cushiony blue hips.

"And do you know what I'm going to do to you?" she whispers.

He does, but he wants to hear it all again. "What?"

"I'll take you to Taiikar." She presses her face against his chest. "We'll sign my commission and get Axyna to cough up our re-encoding medications. We'll have our big Maekyonite wedding. I'll marry you all over again. The vows. The cake. You'll love the cake. Kymai's sure of it. And then—"

She scoots further forward. Her tail nudges his head down.

"And then I'll take you to our suite. And I'll take off my white dress, and put on my red dress." Her eyes bore into his. "And then. And finally…"

She kisses his neck. He feels the slightest poke of her canine.

"Prince," she whispers. "Husband."

A bead of nectar drips from her fang onto the crimson fabric at his shoulder.

Her lips brush his ear. "Father."

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