March Upcountry

deadlocked most of the time.

“So,” she finished, “that’s the tale. Both the one that I used as a case study of blown political conspiracies, and the additional data I was made privy to as your tutor.” She looked at the prince, who was staring at the far wall. “Questions?”

“A million,” Roger said. “But one simple one first. Is this why no one has ever trusted me with anything important? Because of my blood?” he ended angrily.

“Partially,” she admitted with a nod. “But more of it was, well . . . you, Roger. I certainly didn’t realize you’d never been ‘briefed,’ so I’m guessing that, just like me, everyone else around you must have assumed that someone else had told you. They thought you knew. So if you knew the problems that had been associated with your father, and yet chose to emulate him in every way, then one logical conclusion was that you’d chosen him as your role model rather than your mother.”

“Oh, shit,” Roger said, shaking his head. “So all this time . . .”

“Captain Pahner asked me, early in the voyage, if you were a threat to the throne,” Eleanora said quietly. “I had to tell him that, frankly, I didn’t know.” She looked the prince in the eye. “For that, I’m sorry, Roger. But I didn’t know. And I doubt that anyone, except probably Kostas, was sure about you.”

“Is that why we’re here?” Roger asked, with a hand over his eyes. “Is that why we’re stuck in this rathole?” he grated in an iron tone. “Because everyone thought I was in a conspiracy with Prince Jackson? To overthrow my own mother?”

“I prefer to believe you were being protected,” the chief of staff said. “That your mother saw a gathering storm and chose to put you out of harm’s way.”

“On Leviathan.” Roger dropped his hand and looked at her with tight eyes. “Where I’d be safe if it ‘dropped in the pot,’ as Julian likes to put it.”

“Um,” O’Casey said, thinking about the company’s incredible battle to have reached even as far as Marshad. “Well, yes.”

“Oh!” Roger began to laugh even as tears welled up in his eyes. “Thank God she didn’t let me stick around for something dangerous! I’d hate to think what Mother might find dangerous! Maybe facing the Kranolta with a knife?!”

“Roger.”

“Aaaahhhhh!” he screamed as the door burst open to admit a worried Marine sentry. Kyrou panned his bead rifle around the room, looking for the threat, as the prince slammed both fists down on the table. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Pock, pock it, and pock you, Mother! Fuck you and your fucking paranoia, you secretive, Machiavellian, untrusting, coldhearted bitch!”

Kyrou stepped aside as Pahner slid through the door, pistol in a two-handed grip.

“What the hell is going on here?” the captain barked.

“Out!” Roger screamed. He picked O’Casey up by one biceps, and shoved her towards the door. “Out! All of you, out!” He pushed Kyrou so hard the heavyset private skittered backwards on his butt through the doorway. “If you’re not out of here in one fucking second, I will fucking kill every fucking one of you!”

The solid door of the suite slammed shut with an ear-shattering boom, followed almost instantly by the sounds of complicated destruction.

“I think I could have handled that better,” Eleanora said judiciously. “I’m not sure how, but I’m almost certain I could have.”

“What just happened?” Kyrou said, lurching upright and looking around the main room of the suite, where the Marines were all staring at the door.

“Did he just say what I think he said?” Corporal Damdin asked, his eyes wide. “About the Empress?”

“Yes,” Eleanora said calmly, “he did. But,” she continued, raising her voice, “he just found out something very personal and unpleasant. He’s very upset with the Empress, not as the Empress, but as his mother. I think that once he calms down,” she suggested as the sound of breaking wood came through the door, “he’ll be less—”

“Treasonous?” Pahner suggested lightly.

“He’s angry at his mother, Captain—very angry, I might add, and not completely without reason—and, not at the Empress,” the chief of staff said coldly. “There is, in this instance, a distinct difference. One you and I need to discuss.”

Pahner looked at her, then glanced at the door as the sound of hacking came from the far side. The door shook to the pounding blows of the prince’s sword.

“What did you say to him?” the captain asked incredulously.

“I told him the truth, Captain,” the former tutor said tautly. “All of it.”

“Oh,” the Marine said. “You’re right. We do need to talk.” He looked around the room. “Kyrou, back on post. The rest of you—” He glanced at the door and winced at the sound of steel skittering on stone. Roger loved that sword; if he was willing to bang stones with it, his fury was even more towering than the captain had thought.

“The rest of you, go back to sleep,” he said finally, and beckoned for O’Casey to follow him out of the room.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

The next day passed quietly, especially in the hostages’ suite.

Roger failed to emerge from his room even when a breakfast of barleyrice and vegetables was brought to the suite. The food no longer contained the obnoxious herb that had been so prevalent in the first dinner, but there was still a weird, bitter aftertaste. Despite that, Roger had been able to stomach it on the previous two days, but he obviously had no interest in it at all today.

An hour after the breakfast had been cleared, Pahner opened the door to make sure he was all right. Roger was sprawled on his camp bed, in the middle of a mass of broken fixtures, his forearm across his face. When the door opened, the prince simply glanced at the captain and resumed his position. Recognizing a deep funk that was in no mood for semi-parental bitching, the Marine shook his head and closed the door.

Back in the troop barracks, however, the mood was quiet but active. Rumors were still the only method of faster than light communication the military had discovered.

“I heard he called the Empress a whore!” St. John (M.) said.

“I heard it was just a bitch,” St. John (J.) said. The older twin had often had to control the outbursts of his younger brother. “But still.”

“It was a bitch,” Kosutic confirmed, appearing as if by magic behind them. “To be precise, a ‘paranoid bitch.’ But,” she added, “he was also referring to the Empress as his mother, not the Empress. It’s a big difference.”

“How?” St. John (M.) asked. “They’re the same person, ain’t they?”

“Yes,” the sergeant major agreed. “But calling one of them a bitch is treason, and calling the other one a bitch is just being really, really pissed at your mother.” She looked from twin to twin. “Either one of you ever been upset with your mother before?”

“Welll . . .” St. John (M.) said.

“He always calls her a damnsaint when he’s mad at Momma,” St. John (J.) said with a grin.

“Well so do you!” St. John (M.) protested.

“Sure, Mark. But not to her face!”

“The point is,” the sergeant major said before the family feud could go any farther, “that he was mad at his mother. Not at Empress Alexandra.”