“Women belong to no caste, no race, their grace, their beauty and their charm serving them in place of birth and family. Their inborn finesse, their instinctive elegance, their suppleness of wit, are their only aristocracy, making some daughters of the people the equal of great ladies.”

―Guy de Maupassant, “A Piece of String”/“The Diamond Necklace”

“They praise women they own so they can sell them for higher prices. They never have anything good to say about me.”

—Madam Chang, “A Piece of Rope”/“The Choking Necklace”

With Von Schmidt’s kind permission, the Princess had forgone supper and chatter, and headed straight towards her allotted room, which, surprisingly, was plain to the point of homeliness. It had the minimum amount of decoration needed to indicate that the room was more expensive than a person of a lower station could afford, but there was no cleverness to it, no convoluted snobbishness to elevate it above the pedestrian. Von Schmidt could have as easily plastered the walls with currency and achieved the same effect. This, more than anything else, betrayed his lowborn origins.

The bed in the room was sufficient in size to offer comfortable sleep for a sheik and all his wives, or a pair of monogamous elephants, and still leave room for all the chief executive officers of North America. With plain satin sheets and a thick mattress, it looked very inviting. However, something was nevertheless missing. There were no paintings that damned with faint praise, no drones in high baroque style, nor any gadgets worked into the woodwork. The pillows didn’t glow in different colors as you applied pressure on them. It didn’t even have one ornate header a la duchesse. It was a bed designed merely to facilitate sleep, not to encourage lively social and political discourse, which, the Princess was informed, was the main function of beds. It may have been a royal bed in size, but in everything else it was simply a bed.

Presently, the Princess sat on a stool and absentmindedly petted Audric. She wanted to lie down most keenly, but she didn’t want to soil the bed with her battle-tested armor. The ferret, being sympathetic to her distraught and exhausted state, kept biting and clawing to a necessary minimum. Of course, being a royal pet, it was also expected of him, socially speaking, to occasionally bite people, which he did most dutifully, though not without pleasure. Often, the Princess wondered why on Earth she’d suffered the company of the insolent mustelid. At other times, she wondered if she could ever love anything as much she loved him.

The Princess’s meditation was broken by the sound of gentle footsteps. She steeled herself for bad company and turned around to find a young maid in an only slightly used condition.

“Von Schmidt bid me to wait on you,” the maid said with a light German accent and performed a perfect curtsey. The young woman had washed away the soot and blood from her face, and changed into a fresh uniform smelling of lavender, but she could not wash away the scars and bruises that, as it were, characterized her more than her facial features, fashion choices, or even her name. There was no doubt—she was the brave woman who waited on the Princess in the turret.

Despite the fact that Martina bore Von Schmidt’s coat of arms on her chest, the Princess found herself rapidly warming up to the unassuming maid. She found the fact that she didn’t have to constantly scheme the woman’s murder highly endearing.

“It is good of you to come with such haste. Kindly prepare a bath for myself and my ferret and help me remove my armor. Do you have samur masrikh animal shampoo? Now, as for myself, I’d like—”

Martina was staring at the Princess with an expression of utter bemusement. The Princess didn’t blame the poor thing as what the Princess wore was equal parts tactical armor, spacesuit, anti-kinetic field generator, short term orbital vehicle, a chemical and medical laboratory, a kennel, and the latest statement in Dutch post-Gigerian fashion. To remove it without damaging anything, oneself included, one needed to be a technician, a puzzle aficionado, and a Swedish fashion expert. Being a programmer and a zoologist was helpful as well.

Fortunately, Martina proved to be a young woman of skill and resolve and after some trial and error, as well as consultation with an outdated copy of the Grand Manual of Style and the authorized autobiography of the great fashion designer Gustav Andres Bromius (Gruber’s most prominent successor), started working on dismantling the fearsome armor plates most deftly. Heartsick and lonely, the Princess allowed herself a small breach of protocol by engaging in casual conversation, a habit strongly discouraged by her father as it tended to export more information than it imported.

“Are you married?” she asked Martina, who was kneeling before her, struggling with the complex magnetic sabaton locks.

“Yes, mein fraulein.”

“Were you born on this planetoid?” The Princess joyfully wiggled the emancipated appendages despite their somewhat unladylike odor.

“I don’t have parents, mein fraulein. I was designed by Jovian geneticists according to strict specifications provided by Von Schmidt and artificially gestated in a tank before being imported to the planetoid at early puberty with a male counterpart.” Martina removed the second sabaton and moved behind the Princess’s back to work at her spaulders.

The Princess raised her hands above her head to give Martina easier access to the shoulder pins. “Were any of the children on the roof yours?”

“We are infertile, mein fraulein. The children are our clones, with minor modifications. We tend to them collectively.” Martina went for the closet and returned with a wrench and a manometer.

“Then why are you divided into couples?” the Princess enquired.

“Von Schmidt says that importing us in twos makes him feel like a character in a book he was fond of as a younger man and always strove to imitate. Also, there is the obvious reason.”

“What obvious reason …? Oh …” The Princess felt herself blushing.

Martina groaned under the weight of the spaulders as she carefully placed it on the floor. The smell released into the air was less aromatic than what would be expected from a Princess under normal circumstances. Audric raised his head and started audibly sniffing the air. The Princess stuck her tongue out at him. Martina smiled politely before getting on her knees again to fiddle with the chausses.

“Mein fraulein, may I be so bold as to make a personal remark?” The young woman stepped behind the Princess armed with the manual of style and a device that looked like a cross between a corkscrew and a scalpel.

“Please do. While everyone is keenly invested in my person, very few seem to be concerned with my personality.”

“You have very lovely hair,” Martina said. The Princess involuntarily tensed her back as she felt a light brush coupled with a warm breath against her neck.

“I should hope so! More means were invested in my hair than in the economies of some East European states! But please, let us focus on rescuing me from this infernal suit of armor. I am almost as desirous to be rid of it as I am of anyone else on this planetoid.” That came out harsher than the Princess had intended, but it wouldn’t do for someone of her station to apologize to a maid, even a personal lady’s maid. One had to take into account the old feudal spirit and so forth.

Soon, the myriad parts of the Princess’s armor, some scorched and some brand new, were neatly arranged on the floor, a maze for Audric’s entertainment and a record of an adventure the Princess did not care to recall at the moment. On the stool, the dress uniform of a colonel of the Old Brigade was neatly folded and pressed down by a baldric, a belt, a flexipad she had forgotten she owned, and a small capsule of antimatter she kept for peace of mind.

The Princess remained in a camisole and pettipants that were as plain as those worn by the simplest worker, only much better. Audric, a true connoisseur of foul odors, left the armor plates in peace to rub himself against the Princess’s bare feet. He made a surprised yelp as the Princess grabbed him by the collar and lifted him off the ground. She held him in the air like a dirty bit of cloth and turned towards Martina. “Is the bath ready?”

“Yes, mein fraulein.” Martina indicated the bathroom door with her hand but made no suggestion of accompanying the Princess. While it was definitely a breach of etiquette, the Princess didn’t comment on this since soaking alone in hot water seemed like a rather appealing prospect.

The bathroom appeared to be as plain as the bedroom, but the Princess knew better. The main attraction was a purple marble bathtub filled with colorful bubbles. Purple marble was a material unique to Terra and was fully mined millennia ago. If one wanted to commission a new item of purple marble, one had to acquire a priceless artifact and hire a priceless artificer to work it into a new form. With a purple marble bathtub, any other decoration would be as redundant as a flashlight on the sun.

Sighing over a doubtlessly beautiful sculpture broken and reshaped to receive her dirt and grime, the Princess peeled off her undergarments and lowered herself into the bath, drifting into a dreamlike state almost immediately.