The Pygmallion had been grounded at Atrius III Starbase for no more than ten minutes, and if Rixie had her druthers, she would have lifted and headed back to Avalon.

There was no reason for her to come here. True, Jutuneim was on the opposite side of the Empire from Avalon, but the Pygmallion was a Regulus IV, it could easily make the trip with one refueling stop. And the ship she and Alex and Asteria and Thyllia were transferring to – the ISS Bay of Tuaut – would not be nearly so luxurious. Well, it would – it was the military transport of the Emperor – but she and Alex would not be in the owner’s suite.

“You want me to transfer the bags?” Taron asked.

“No, no, Alex and I will get them. By which I mean Thyllia and I will get them. By which I mean I will…don’t worry about it. Thanks for the ride.”

“Don’t mention it. So where is the Emperor taking you?”

“It’s…not something I can share. Sorry.”

Taron shrugged. “Not the first time people have told me that, won’t be the last. Was a little jarring the first time Manto pulled that, but even that doesn’t bother me now. Whatever it is, stay safe. I do not want Darren to be in charge of the 67^th long-term.”

Rixie chuckled. “Darren will do fine.”

Taron grinned. “Darren will do fine, but you know Darren, he’s going to want everyone to at least feign military discipline. I don’t want to see my man Starchild decide to fight Custar.”

“No, because if he did, Crorye would end that fight quick, and she just might kill Starchild, so…yes, I will try to hurry back. But the good news is this thing I can’t tell you about should be safe.”

Taron nodded. “Well, make sure it stays that way, you need to be around for the weddings.”

“Has anyone officially proposed yet?”

“Tommy and Amelia are all-but-official. You know Darren, he wants Tommy to tell him first, not because he isn’t going to give his blessing, but because he wants to see that Tommy is a strong enough man to let him know. And Tommy agreed to that, on the condition that Amelia do the same with Sophia, Brinn, and Zara.”

“Ooh, would love to see both of those. Not sure who has it worse.”

“Oh, we all had dinner last week, all the parents. Darren told us flat out that any man who could get his daughter to agree to that was a man he wanted in the family. And of course, none of us are gonna stand in the way of Amelia – at least, not now that she’s grown up a bit. Anyhow, Darren was joining a survey of the Western Territories just for fun, so he’s bringing Tommy along for the week; we’re gonna host Amelia over the same week.”

“Are you sure about that? You might scare her off.”

“I mean, she lived through Yamma’s assassination, she’s tough.”

“I know. Still,” Rixie said with a smirk.

“Yeah, we’re gonna be careful, don’t worry,” Taron said.

“And what about your other heroic son?”

Taron sighed. “Joseph figures if he asks first, he’ll keep Sorcha from doing whatever she has planned….”

“That’s true, and he is smart enough to pick his battles with Sorcha,” Rixie said. “And also smart enough not to keep those battles to none.”

Rixie and Taron headed out of the bridge and down toward the gangplank. Taron nodded as they closed the door. “Those two are really good for each other. They’re all good for each other. The one I really don’t get is Manto and Odin, Emperor’s sake, they’ve told all seven of us that it’s going to happen, just a matter of time, and yet Manto heads off for Acolyte training and they still don’t get on with it. At least Thyllia and Ryan had the sense to have a long engagement.”

“It was not sensible at all, they should have been married earlier,” Rixie said, then shook her head. “Of course, every time I think that, I remember that Alex and I got married, you know, this year, and tell myself I’m an idiot; there are a lot of marriages that aren’t real, and a lot of unmarried folks who are closer than married ones. Goodness, how long were you five just ‘dating?’”

“Longer than we should have been,” Taron said, as they walked down the stairs. “To be fair, the kids are fine. I’m just pushing because both Zara and I want to help plan a wedding. Sophia, Nick, Brinn, they’re all telling us that it’s up to the children how they want to do it, but we…we have ideas. And at least with Manto and Odin, we have Pryvani as a co-conspirator.”

“Now that’s a dangerous trio. And while Sophia and Nick and Brinn are probably right…I’m going to be pulling for you three just to see what you manage to come up with. With Pryvani involved, it might involve purchasing Fribbulus Xax.”

They reached the door just as Alex, Asteria, and Thyllia did. “Tee, are you sure….” Rixie began, but Alex started laughing.

“You think we haven’t had time to have this discussion during landing? She’s sure.”

“Honestly, Rixie, have you ever known me to pass up taking care of…anyone?” Thyllia said.

“No, but still, I know you have responsibilities to Darkstar, you aren’t our nanny.”

“No, I’m Asteria’s sister-in-law, and hiring a nanny would be silly, too many teenagers running around Tayas Mons who want to take care of her on any given day. Plus me. Besides, in a few months, you’ll be helping me with my daughter.”

“I’d do that even if you didn’t….”

There was a buzz from outside, which surprised Rixie as it was about two minutes early. “Captain Dande, your ship.”

“So it is,” Taron said, pressing a button. There was a brief hiss, and fans whirred as they finished equalizing pressure between the Pygmallion and Archavia. (The ship had in fact been slowly changing its pressurization and air mixture from Avalonian to Archavian all the way during the journey, subtly so that someone on board would barely notice – this was just a last bump to make it perfect. This was not something most ships could do – indeed, most ships required you to egress out an airlock for the first two hours after landing when grounding on another planet. But Pryvani Tarsuss was not one to purchase just any ship.)

The door opened, and two young Imperial officers greeted them (well, Rixie thought of them as young, though Rixie had found that the young officers were getting older all the time); the senior of the two, a Junior Crewmate, First Class, quickly eyeballed and saluted Rixie, who was glad that she’d decided to put on her dress blacks. “Magister-Imperator Tam, welcome to Atrius III Starbase.”

“Um…thank you, Mister…wait, I know you. Mister Bass, isn’t it?” Rixie said, returning the salute.

The young man grinned. “Aye, ma’am. I’m surprised you remember. I know you know my Aunt Eyrn and Aunt Nas, but we only met the one time.”

“Yeah, but you’re a Bass, you’re a memorable family,” Alex said. “Senedj, right?”

“Aye, Senator Carey.”

“Taron, Thyllia, this is Senedj Bass, Berosus’s son. Last I heard you were in the Academy, and given how time moves I guess that would have you with two squares,” Rixie said. “And I’m sorry, Ms. Violak,” Rixie said, nodding to the junior officer. “I have not had the privilege, but it is good to meet you as well.”

Theniu Violak blushed. This was not just a flag officer – that would be daunting enough. No, this was Magister-Imperator Carey! The woman who brought down Syon Fand and Vasha Zakrov! Theniu had gone into security because she wanted to transfer to the Imperators’ Corps someday. She’d studied some of the great ones from the previous couple of generations, folks like Vanser Nix and Yrusa Tam and Jomu Hobea – and of course, that included an Imperator who had broken Fand after she left the service, who then merely went on to play a pivotal role at First Contact.

Despite her nerves, she managed a salute. “Thank you, ma’am! The privilege is mine!”

Rixie smiled, and snapped off a salute. “You’ll get over panicking about flag officers around the time you pick up your second square, and by the time those two squares turn silver you’ll start complaining about us. Now, I’m hoping nobody’s here to put me under arrest.”

Senedj laughed. “No, ma’am. Induperator Bragacy received orders from Praetor-Imperator Chonemes that you were arriving and were to be escorted to the palace. Ms. Violak and I are here to do the escorting.”

Rixie’s brow furrowed; there was escorting, and then there was escorting. She was well aware that despite Pryvani’s assurances and the communications that she’d received, this could be the latter. That said, she also knew that even if Rajenlif had decided on that course of action, there wasn’t much she could do but ride it out and wait to see. Well…she could try to lift quickly and avoid being shot down by the Archavian CAP, but she gave herself no better than one-in-two hundred chance at that, even with Dhan Armac’s countermeasures aboard.

Besides, Alex and Asteria and Thyllia were here. Rixie knew that Rajenlif wouldn’t hurt Thyllia – Pryvani would not forgive, and Pryvani might be the only person alive who could realistically threaten the throne.

And honestly…the time to assassinate her had passed. Rajenlif could have ended this simply by telling Pryvani to keep her mouth shut. This was far more likely to be her aunt’s way of showing her respect.

It was a testament to Rixie’s skill at tactical analysis that she went through this entire decision tree in less than half a second. She simply nodded, and said, “Well, I assume that’s because of Sen. Carey, and we’re quite honored. We just need to get the bags.”

“No need, ma’am,” Senedj said. “We’re to collect those and route them to the Bay of Tuaut. If your ship’s master can show us….”

“This is Capt. Dande,” Rixie said. “He’s actually friends with Eyrn and Naskia too.”

“Nice to meet you,” Taron said. “And I’ll be happy to show you what’s where; I assume you need to take the important people right away?”

Rixie rolled her eyes as Senedj said, “Um…we are to take the Magister-Imperator and her group, yes, Captain. And it’s nice to meet you, I think I remember my dad talking about you. Oh! Your son is Sorcha’s boyfriend, right?”

Taron smiled wide. “He is. Surprised you made the connection with the last names different.”

“No, no, that’s why I remembered, he talked about your whole family…Joseph saved my cousin, and kept things together long enough to make my Uncles’ sacrifice matter,” Senedj said, offering his hand. “Whole family loves him, and we’re all waiting for them to get engaged. Dad says Sorcha is worried that if she proposes first she’ll screw up his proposal.”

Taron chuckled, and took Senedj’s wrist. “All right, looks like I need Zara to give Naskia a call, because that’s the exact opposite of what my son is saying. And for the record, my son is the man he is because he had a good partner to help get him there, and the family adores Sorcha, too. And of course, she’s even more of a hero than he is, and your uncles…well, they’re gonna be remembered as heroes long after the rest of us are forgotten.”

“So say we all,” Senedj said. “Ms. Violak and I will be back once we’ve taken these four to the shuttle, and if you want me to tell Sorcha to quit worrying and get on with it, let me know. She’ll listen to her big cousin. She may not actually do what I say, mind you, but she’ll hear the words.”

* * *

Rixie was not surprised when Alex, Thyllia, and Asteria were settled in to one room while she was shuffled to another. She was mildly surprised that Zhalem had been tasked with guiding her (though not that Zhalem didn’t appear to know why Rixie was there).

Rixie was somewhat more surprised that she’d been led to the Col I Retiring Room – she had been immersed in enough protocol over the years to know that this was not a neutral site. And she was very surprised at the one person in the room, the one who asked Zhalem to close the door behind Rixie.

“Raja has gone ahead to Jutuneim to prepare, but before we head off, I thought we should talk,” said Tiernan ColVanos, Fourth of that Name, Emperor of Archavia and All Its Possessions. “I’ve taken the liberty of pouring you a med. I don’t know if you like it, but if not, you will want to learn to at least tolerate it; the only Jotunn I know who don’t drink it are ones like Kullervo, who have sworn off all alcohol.”

“I forced myself to learn to like it when I was legal to drink,” Rixie said. She then sighed, and said, “To be honest, I forced myself to learn to like it somewhat before it was legal for me to drink.”

“You were young and in the Academy. I had Tams in my class too, you were far from the only one,” Tiernan said, sliding her a mug.

Traditional Jotnar med should not be confused with the Earth drink that takes its name; there is no analogue of honey in Jotnarherath. It is closer in character to kvass, as part of its base is fermented bread made of silgas and rohka, a more hearty, nutty grain. But unlike kvass, med also includes fermented sap and berries, giving it a taste that is something like a cross between beer, wine, fruit juice, and somehow, Vegemite. It is indeed quite like Vegemite in that unless you grow up with it, you are unlikely to like it, and if you don’t like it, you almost certainly hate it.

Rixie and Tiernan had both tried it first in their teens, and both had hated it. But for their own reasons – Rixie, because she was Jotnar, and Tiernan, because he loved one – they had ultimately forced themselves through the hatred to mild disgust to acceptance to actual enjoyment. Or at least they both felt they had.

“Zgaal!” Tiernan said, raising his mug; both he and Rixie took a long drink, then set their mugs down.

Tiernan gestured to two chairs and sat down in one of them; once he had sat, Rixie took the other one.

“I want you to know,” he said, “that this detour to Tuaut was my idea. I did not run it by Rajenlif. I wanted to get the opportunity to talk with you myself, before we drug you off to the Palace of the Three Shaars.”

“With due respect, your Imperial Majesty…I’m not sure that it’s any easier doing this in the Palace of the Rising Sun.”

Tiernan chuckled. “No, I would think not. Magister-Imperator Carey, you have been put in a very awkward spot by my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my wife. They all had the best of intentions. But you know, I am sure, the human saying about good intentions.”

Rixie’s lip twitched. “Alex may have mentioned it one or two thousand times.”

Tiernan looked quite sad as he said, “I have had my own experience hiding someone I loved from the general public in order to preserve decorum, preserve the reputation of my noble house. And what I have learned from that is that it does not make the issue go away. It may hide it, but the truth is known within the family, and the truth is painful. Hiding it is painful. I was blessed that my son-in-law was the strong and noble man he is, that he could bear my crime against him. But if there is any life beyond life, it is one of the mistakes I will have to account for, and I will not argue if it is viewed as unforgivable.”

Tiernan looked at Rixie, and said, “Hiding you was unforgivable. The reasons for it may seem different than they did for Pierce, but in the end they were the same. Avoiding shame, avoiding embarrassment, avoiding difficulty for the family. As your Emperor, I want you to know that whatever my wife may say, whatever my brother-in-law may say, if you wish to be known as a Princess of the House of Throden and ColVanos, I will share that news with the Empire myself.”

Rixie was momentarily speechless. “Your…Your Majesty, I….”

She swallowed hard, and recomposed herself. “Thank you for that. But I…I don’t need a title. And I know that it would cause problems for you, and Rajenlif, and Kullervo, and for the Imperial family.”

Tiernan smiled. “You are part of our family, Rixie. You are worth the trouble.”

Rixie found herself sobbing at that, and she chided herself internally. She was supposed to have more control, more composure than this. But Tiernan did not seem upset; instead, he gently touched her arm, and held his touch until she was able to breath evenly again.

“I am sorry, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“You have waited fifty years to hear words that you should have heard in your cradle. You will hear these words from Rajenlif and Kullervo and your mother, I should think.”

“I should still…I’m meeting with the Emperor, I should have more decorum,” Rixie said, wiping her eyes.

“No, Rixie. No. You are not meeting with the Emperor. You are having a med with your uncle. And if something moves you to tears, your family cries with you.”

Rixie looked over to Tiernan, and nodded. “I…do not want to be known as a princess. Not just to protect everyone else…I don’t want the title.”

Tiernan nodded. “I suspected as much. You work with Pryvani. You know the price of fame – and you know that this would make you famous, with very little compensation to you other than a title that is far less impressive than others you already hold. But just as you are a part of this family, even if it is never spoken aloud, that title belongs to you, even if you should never claim it.”

“The title isn’t important to me,” Rixie said. “But…I am grateful to be a part of a family.”

* * *

At first glance, the woman sitting in the corner of the bar would not have drawn one’s particular attention. Oh, perhaps she would have caught your notice because she was attractive; if you liked women, you’d notice her trim, athletic build, and she dressed in a form-fitting, cropped top that accentuated her disproportionately-large bosom, and showed off her flat stomach with a knot tattoo. (Humans would describe it as a Celtic knot, but of course, titan and human psychology being as similar as they are, the knot is the type of image that repeats in both species’ cultures.) Her hair was dyed blue, as were her eyebrows, but that was not unusual for a titan; it just suggested she was Aementi, or at least, that she wanted to look like she was Aementi.

So yes, the woman was attractive, but she was not the only attractive woman in the bar that night, nor the most attractive woman there. You would be no more likely to look at her than at anyone else. Still, if she caught your eye, you might soon notice two things about her that were unusual.

The first would be her left eye. Unlike her right, it was artificial, glowing softly. This was uncommon; usually, people who lost a single eye either went without or got a cloned replacement. If they really wanted an artificial eye, surgeons almost always replaced both. The feed from an artificial eye is slightly different than what a biological one kicks out, and while it’s not radically different – if it was, they wouldn’t work – it’s different enough that trying to use both at the same time tends to leave people fatigued and headachy.

But while that was unusual, if she tilted her head so the shock of blue hair hanging over her right temple moved out of the way, you’d see something that would startle you – a neural stabilizer.

Now, I know that three of you out there are raising your hand and saying that you’re quite familiar with neural stabilizers, and I’m glad that you’re working hard helping people with traumatic brain injuries to recover. But all three of you are quite aware that when your patients recover, the neural stabilizers will almost always be removed. The goal is to use the stabilizer to allow new neurons to grow, new connections to be formed to replace those too damaged to be saved even with a heavy dose of cortexifan and surgical intervention. The stabilizer may stay in for an Imperial year or two in the most extreme cases, but eventually, it comes out.

And of course, if you’re familiar enough to know how they work, you know why they do not remain implanted permanently. Neural stabilizers use the same type of technology as translators. They are a nanorobotic implant that feeds directly into the cortex, albeit with an external control that can be used to control the delicate dance of allowing neurons to replace bots, slowly and methodically, and to allow therapists to adjust the neural load the stabilizer handles.

In early therapy, stabilizers are literally programmed to mimic basic cortex function, to work the way a typical person’s cortex would. To support what’s left of the brain with a basic, baseline functionality, and to potentiate the development of stem cells into a new, fully biological cognitive self. And once cortex function recovers, the stabilizer becomes redundant. And that’s when they become quite illegal, because redundant neural stabilizers can be hacked. And when hacked, they can be used not to stabilize and support mental function, but to augment it.

Aside from the bioethical questions this brings – questions the Empire has preferred to simply ignore in favor of prohibition – if such hacking is not done extremely, extremely carefully, it can quickly drive users insane.

(We can get into an aside here about artificial intelligence – stabilizers can mimic actual neural function, so if you rigged up enough neural stabilizers, could you create an artificial person? The answer before such tests were outlawed was “sort of…but trust us, don’t.” The story of why that is has been largely buried in archives, but if you dig through them, you will quickly understand that what almost happened to the Empire one summer day in 1832 MA would have made the Short War look like the Garden of Eden.)

At any rate, there are some rare people who need neural stabilizers for life, whose brains were so severely damaged that they literally can’t recover all functions even after therapy. And if you had asked that woman, she would have been able to provide all the documentation you needed to see that this was true in her case. Some of it was even accurate; the projectile that had been meant for her father had pierced her eye and destroyed much of the right side of her brain. Well…it had destroyed much of someone’s brain; the woman didn’t really think of that person as the same person she was, and the woman was probably right.

But that didn’t mean that the stabilizer that was attached to her right temple wasn’t hacked to hell and back. And though she wasn’t insane…Xyly Lusan wasn’t exactly sane, either.

A man sat down at the table across from her. “Buy you a drink?” he said.

Xyly looked up at him. “Depends on what you’re getting me.”

“Have you ever had kapskrasi and soda? Not everyone likes it. Some people, ‘they dare to question whether wood and fire can be joined,’ you know.”

“’They are scorned and mocked, and yet they resist the urge to yield,’” Xyly replied.

“’They speak the noble truth; their resistance guides them true.’ You’re Polydix, I assume?”

Xyly snorted. “Who else would be giving you call signs? You said you had a couple jobs.”

“Right, right,” the man said, sliding a pad across the table. “One point five for the first target, one for the second.”

Xyly looked at the pad. “Two for the first.”

“Come on!”

“He’s going to be much more difficult to get to than a typical one. I’m sure you’ve already been told you can agree to up to two point five for him, so rather than haggle let’s just settle at two.”

The man nodded. “All right, so three for both. That pad has a link to one; we’ll get you one more after each is complete.”

Xyly nodded. “That sounds fair. Any particular reason for these two?”

The man shrugged. “I don’t get told anything. But I know this is coming from Keystone herself.”

Xyly nodded. “Should have asked for four total. All right, we’ll get it done.”

The man leaned back. “Everyone would like to know who your other half is, you know.”

“I know they would,” Xyly said. “But he likes to keep a low profile. We both do, of course.”

“Of course,” the man said. “That’s why we keep giving you business. Don’t know how you do it, don’t really want to know. But you’re a gorram hero, both of you are.”

“I’m just a businesswoman who happens to have no objection to what you’re doing. The money’s good, I keep taking jobs,” Xyly said. “I’m not in this for your resistance. But I appreciate you folks because you pay on time.”

“Fair enough. If you don’t mind me asking, why’s your partner in it?”

For the first time, Xyly smiled. “A love of the game,” she said.

* * *

The Bay of Tuaut left the Archavian System, heading at high speed toward Jutuneim. Rixie Carey stared out a window at the twisting kaleidoscope of space from the inside of a warp field.

It was beautiful, of course – it was easy to forget that, when you’d been at warp as many thousands of times as Rixie had been. But light from the universe was bent and smeared and stretched and folded back in on itself, and it appeared as if the ship was inside a thousand overlapping rainbows. If you were trained – and Rixie was – you could still pick out details in the whirlwind. One specific smear, she knew, was the trace of Sol Archavia; in a sense, the Bay of Tuaut was still in the Archavian System, and would be for some time until that pocket of space was cycled through the eleven-dimensional geometry that surrounded the ship.

She knew if she was on the bridge, she’d also begin to see a smear that corresponded to Sol Jutuneim, coming to them from the point in time when the ship would break out of warp. This wasn’t time travel, exactly – indeed, physicists had shown conclusively that no matter how you looked at that smear, you couldn’t gain any information about it. Rixie understood just enough of warp field theory to know that this weirdness was, paradoxically, the universe’s way of enforcing time travel restrictions. Of course, to understand why that was the case, one needed to be quite a bit smarter than you or I.

(One might object that if there was some sort of catastrophe that would befall the Bay of Tuaut en route, would that not mean that you wouldn’t see that future smear of light? Alas, though it makes for great scary stories about people going mad when they saw there was no future, that light shows up even if you abort your trip halfway, as if there is still a universe out there where you would get there anyhow. Who knows? Maybe there is.)

At any rate, Rixie was in enough of a pensive mood that it occurred to her that she could, in a literal sense, see both the place she was born and the place she was sent away to. She was departing the home she had known for the home she should have known.

Sitting in the quiet of the ship’s mess hall – the crew’s mess hall, that is; the Emperor had his own, much fancier dining area aft, and Rixie could have gone there, but she felt much more comfortable here – Rixie wondered what the frak she was doing, and how she was going to talk to Rajenlif when she met her on Jutuneim, and what she would say to Kullervo, and what she would say to her siblings, and whether she should arrange to travel to Sininentavas after this, or go home to Avalon and recover a bit first….

“Flag officer on deck!”

Rixie turned away from the window to see a young cadet who had just entered the mess hall. She had, as per protocol, stopped at the doorway and come to full attention.

Rixie blinked, as she noted the cadet was wearing the 1868-style uniform. That shouldn’t have been surprising; Rixie had worn one on occasion at the Academy. But sixty-eights were usually worn only during solemn memorials, like the anniversary of the Battle of Sperikos. They were worn for general duty only during wartime.

Which, of course, it was.

“As you were, cadet,” Rixie said, tapping her forehead. “Don’t mind me, I couldn’t sleep.”

“My apologies, ma’am. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

Rixie chuckled. “I needed to be disturbed, to be honest. How’s your first two-week assignment, Cadet Zakrov?”

Tylum shook her head. “To be honest, ma’am, I would rather be on the Prince Antero. I know why I drew this billet, but….”

“Alas, traditions are hard to break,” another voice said. “Your cousin served on the Bay of Tuaut, as did your uncle. I served on the Mount Idisoko, which was this ship’s forerunner. We couldn’t very well have you break the streak.”

At this, Rixie rose, and came to attention. “Emperor on deck!” she said.

“Oh, come now. If someone else is in the room, do model the right decorum, but it’s just me and Tylum and you, Rixie. I see you prefer this location for brooding. I do as well. Tylum, I assume you were grabbing breakfast before you started your rotation?”

“Yes, grandpa.”

“Excellent. Can you program the nutramixit machine for an Earth beverage called qahwah? With mek and sugar. I’m trying to wake up, I’ve found it’s even better for that then techou.”

“Ah, coffee,” Rixie said. “You have no idea how happy Alex was when we went to Earth after First Contact and he could get a cup. It’s a bit bitter for my tastes; for hot terran drinks, I’d go with chocolate, which is really excellent if you haven’t tried it.”

“It’s better as a candy,” Tylum said. “And dad claims that it’s really good as a donut.”

“Alas, donuts have never scaled well,” Tiernan said. “Too hard to cook. Pierce has tried.”

Rixie grinned. “Next time you’re near Avalon, stop by. Alex and Dhan Armac teamed up to make a fryer that can do it. It’s really complex, it basically prints the dough out in the oil, but they are really, really good. Not practical for commercial use yet, but Alex is determined to get it there, he thinks it could be the next big thing for Rixie’s.”

“If anyone knows what the next big thing is, it’s Alex. I assume he’s asleep?”

Rixie nodded. “He and Asteria both are. I got about fifteen hours in, which is probably enough.”

Tiernan chuckled. “It isn’t, but I’ll make sure that Rajenlif allows you a nap in whatever schedule she has planned.”

Tylum set down two mugs, one for Tiernan, filled with coffee (or at least, the system’s best approximation), and one for Rixie, filled with hot chocolate.

“What are you going to meet with grandma for?” Tylum said, coming back with a bowl of ubmat and a glass of juice.

“Nothing much,” Rixie said. Tiernan chuckled, and did a quick scan of the room.

“Actually, quite a major thing. Rixie, it turns out, is Kullervo’s daughter. And your cousin. Do not share that with anyone outside the family.”

“Of…course. I assume mummy knows? And mom? And dad?”

“Yes, yes, they do, as does Vallero. I haven’t had the chance to tell Gunvjer yet, but I will when I next see her in person.”

“Well…I’d welcome you to the family, but…I guess technically, I’m not….”

Tiernan snorted. “You are my granddaughter. The laws of primogeniture may argue otherwise, but you are no less my granddaughter than any other. You are the child of my daughter’s two spouses biologically, you can hardly do better than that.”

“It’s funny,” Rixie said. “Rules of primogeniture, I mean. By law, I could claim to be a princess. I don’t want to, but I could, because I have the right bloodline. But you’re a lot more a part of the Imperial family than I’ll ever be, no matter how welcoming you all have been. And you have been, so far.”

Tiernan nodded. “I am well aware of the absurdity of giving me power based on who my mother happened to be. And I have tried to explain that to my children. Go through our history and there have been good sovereigns and bad ones, and talk to geneticists and you find that every titan can trace their bloodline back to Senedj I somehow. It is just a bit of strange luck that for some reason, the lineage that leads to me grants me power. And it is why I have spent my time as Emperor trying very hard to be careful with that power, to only use it when I had no other choice – and even then, to try to use the threat of power, rather than the power itself. I think an Emperor can serve a useful function sometimes, but I have often wondered whether there is a better way to select the person who serves in that role. I do wonder if some day, we will vote for a sovereign for a fixed term, and the House of Throden and ColVanos will be a memory, like the House of Ankelos is today.

“But here, today, as Emperor and grandfather and uncle, I’m going to declare something to both of you. The ties of blood and the ties of love and care are all real and true, and neither is more or less important than the other. And if any exists, then the people bound by it are family. Know that I say this selfishly; I have the chance to have both of you in my family, and by extension, call Alex, Asteria, Ryan, Daz, and Pierce my kin. What sane man would pass on such a bounty as that?”

* * *

The pad buzzed.

And it kept buzzing.

After about thirty seconds, a man swore. He fumbled for it, picked it up, and jammed his thumb on the cancel button.

Five seconds later, it started buzzing again.

“Frakin’…all right, all right, frak.”

He picked it up, and this time, he checked the caller. Knowing full well that they would just keep calling until he answered, he did so.

“The frak you want?” he muttered.

“First off, how much etorphine are you on right now?”

“Picoskelo. Maybe two. Told you not to call for a few days.”

“It’s been a few days.”

The man rubbed his face. “Fine, fine. Xyly, what you want?”

“We have two jobs, Nonull.”

Xyly watched her pad, and saw the man wince at that. When he wasn’t drugged, he was handsome in a battered way – the scars on the right side of his face and the eyepatch he typically wore were evidence of a trauma that she understood well. But he was often drugged, and when he was, his features seemed hollowed-out, ghostly, and his eyepatch was nowhere to be seen, leaving his cloudy eye as a testament to the pain.

She knew on some level it was the jobs that they were doing that had cemented his dependence on alkaloids, knew that what he really needed was therapy and support, and lots of rest. But she also knew that he was too good at this job to waste in any other role. Just as her father had been a gifted chemist, who had used his skills to make millions selling illegal club drugs, just as she had inherited her father’s understanding and love of biochemistry, a love and understanding that persisted in her undamaged left hemisphere, a love so great that she did not mourn the loss of the person she’d been…so Nonull Tisenius’ gifts were too great to waste, even if they destroyed him.

“Okay. Fine. Where we going?” Nonull asked, finally.

She smiled tightly. “Jutuneim.”

“Jutuneim? Never been. All right. Gonna need some nalaxone, and a skelo of techouit. Maybe some allie too.”

“Have ‘em ready. You…need anything else?”

“Nah, nah. We have transport?”

“Booked a suite. Best way to avoid people.”

“A suite? This must be a good-paying job. All right, I’ll get cleaned up.”

“You always do,” Xyly said. “And once you are, I’ll fill you in on the details. These are gonna be a challenge.”

“Oh good. Hate for them to be boring,” Nonull muttered.