“Boredom is the desire for desires.”

—Count Leo Tolstoy

“The great Russian is correct as always. When you can afford everything, poverty is not being unable to get what you want. It is being unable to want what you want. Fortunately for me, I want everything.”

—Baron (supposedly) Von Schmidt

Presently, a cadre of fresh footmen walked into the dining hall, each holding a large covered silver platter. The footmen simultaneously removed silver domes to reveal black star-shaped biscuits intermingled with gingerbread men in Von Schmidt’s colors.

“Nothing like a fair and balanced breakfast to start the day,” Von Schmidt said brightly, dipping one of the black biscuits into sunny apricot sauce and gingerly biting off one of the edges. “This is only to whet the tongue and to awaken the mind, my dear friends. The main course reborn will arrive shortly, I’m told.”

“Right,” the Princess said, standing up. “With your leave, I’d like to break my fast with the staff.”

Von Schmidt tilted his hand in the Princess’s direction. “Refusing such a meticulously crafted breakfast goes against every rule of hospitality. Honestly, I did not expect such conduct from a lady of your breeding.”

The Princess could have said that the rules of hospitality bound guests, not prisoners, and that she was a princess, and as such was bound by no rules at all. However, she instead said, “It is not the food that offends me, it is the questionable company.”

“We object!” Jean exclaimed. “We are not questionable. Our vice is beyond question.”

Von Schmidt laughed heartily and made a quick hand motion in the air. “Very well, I have informed Martin of your desire. I trust you will not, like the princess of ancient lore, wander into dark and terrible places.”

“I am afraid I have already done that. Now, I’m looking for bright and wonderful places, though I’d settle for a plain and honest breakfast with plain and honest folks.”

Von Schmidt waved her away, not bothering with a comeback, which suited the Princess just fine as she was near the limit of her good manners and probably already on the wrong side of it.

Outside, she was met by Martin, who nodded courteously and said, “Please follow me, mein fraulein.”

The Princess followed him through the gates and into a labyrinth of corridors and halls that probably made a great deal of sense, but only to one who was utterly insane. Curious stylistic choices aside, some of them seemed to have great difficulty deciding what gravitational laws they subscribed to, resulting in the Princess nearly tripping and falling upward and sideways, possibly getting several milliseconds younger in the process. On the way, they passed many interesting doors that just begged to be pried into. These included a glass door that seemed to lead into an artificial veldt of some sort, a reinforced steel door that shook with monstrous pounding, a smooth polymer door labeled “holochamber,” a wooden gate that promised a passage to Valhalla, and a deeply scratched porthole on the ceiling that read, “Die Stelle der schrecklichen Vögel!”

If the damage to the porthole was done by talons, then whatever beast had produced them could easily damage a space marine’s armor suit and even penetrate an anti-kinetic shield if it attacked cleverly enough. If the Jeans’ boasts of uplifting inoculations were true … well, it was a most disconcerting perspective for humankind.

“Are the Vögel in this room really schrecklichen?” the Princess asked as she passed under the portal.

“Begging your kind pardon, I do not feel that it would be appropriate to discuss my master’s private affairs at this juncture. It should suffice to say that any interaction with elements of the structure not previously coordinated with the master will inevitably lead to personal injury of a debilitating nature.”

“Well, that certainly sounds very schrecklichen. Just to put your heart at ease, I have no plans to randomly open doors in the mansion. I am young enough to remember the story of Bluebeard.”

“Very good, mein fraulein.”

They passed several more doors, including a six-meter-tall affair made of ice that radiated intense heat and no less intense Scandinavian neofolk music, a door asking what 2+2 was under a crude image of a rat, and two doors decorated with outlandish devices possibly originating in the Scattered Disc, if not the horror vacui itself. One door was guarded by a blue praying mantis large enough to eat a ferret, if not a Princess. The sign read “Maurice Maeterlinck Appreciation Center.”

Eventually they reached the service elevator, which was bare and smelled of disinfectant. Martin made a ludicrously long and complex series of motions that seemed to the Princess like a postmodernist interpretive dance. Appreciating the gesture, the elevator started moving in a horizontal direction with occasional smooth shifts in acceleration and angle.

After about half a minute, just as the Princess started to get motion sick, it came to a gradual stop and opened into a well-lit passage with six doors on each side and a small dining room down the hall. Right by the elevator doors, two boys were reading something on a flexipad. They disappeared into one of the doors before the Princess stepped out of the elevator, clearing her path to the dining hall.

Exposed concrete and plain pipes dominated this level, but there was no feeling of cutbacks or incompletion—this minimalist bareness was a design choice. Well, she had asked for plain and honest, hadn’t she?

The dining hall, which reminded the Princess of a regimental mess hall she visited with her father during his bimonthly address to the troops, held a young girl who very seriously ate cereal in serious pajamas. The late Calzoni’s two former companions sat across from the girl, each dressed in a black or white bathrobe, in contrast with her own natural coloring. They were chatting about some form of visual entertainment not familiar to the Princess. They referred to it as “reality,” but the scenarios they were discussing didn’t sound realistic at all.

Ignoring the geometry of the narrow corridor, Martin somehow bypassed the Princess and offered her a seat at the head of the table. As she sat down, she smiled politely at the two women and the little girl and said, “Gesegnete Mahlzeit” with the sort of accent that said, “I respect you enough to affect proper enunciation, but not enough to break my teeth and twist my tongue over it.”

The young girl said, “Danke” and tiptoed away with her spoon and bowl. The women laughed. The Princess gave them an evil glance because she felt laughing at such a polite and quiet girl was extremely rude. However, the problem with rude people is that they can never take subtle hints about their rudeness. This is why you have to occasionally beat them. However, this was a task for their parents, not for the Princess, who was several years, some kilograms, and many centimeters their junior.

The albino woman stared at the Princess and clapped loudly, “Awright! Yer that lassie that saved us fae that pie-eating basturd calzone, may he rot! He wis sic a boaby, ah don’t ken howfur tae ta! Mah name’s Sarah, by th’ wey, ’n’ this black beauty ower ’ere is Namibia, lik’ th’ land, aye?” As the woman spoke, words and phlegm left her mouth in equal measures. The Princess wasn’t sure which communicated more information.

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sarah and Namibia,” the Princess said, forcing herself to appear gracious rather than squeamish. “I’m glad to see you’re well,” she added earnestly. She didn’t have anything against the proletariat; she just didn’t want to be in their immediate vicinity, at least not without an umbrella.

“Aye, thar taking real guid care o’ us ’ere. Food’s stoatin ’n’ they’re a’ sae crakin’ ’n’ thay don’t mak’ us wirk or anythin’, ye know?”

“Well, not from experience, I’m sorry to say, but my observation does seem to corroborate your persuasion regarding this subject.”

A Martina, but not the Martina, entered the room and placed three sets of plates, silverware, and napkins on the table.

“Danke,” the Princess said.

“Yhy ye blether lik’ this? ’Tis solid to ken ye, aye? Urr ye French or something?”

“Heavens no! I’m from—”

The Princess stopped in mid-sentence as two footmen walked in and adorned the table with plain, honest-looking fare. Sarah flinched, apparently spooked by the sudden and soundless appearance of various eating utensils in front of her. There was something charmingly naïve about seeing Sarah and Namibia sitting with their backs to the door. Even the lowliest of servants in her father’s palace weren’t nearly so careless as to sit exposed in that way. In fact, many of the conflicts of her childhood stemmed from this obsession with security. Henrico Swift, the VP of Assassination, always scolded the Princess for not watching the door, claiming an assassin, a paparazzo, or some combination of both could surprise her this way. She agreed, saying that yes, she would indeed hate to rob the media corporations of her reaction shot and possibly even a clever one-liner before she was sliced to ribbons.

Hearing of this verbal exchange, her father sent her to her bedroom hungry, where she’d spent the whole evening reading subversive Jovian fiction with her back to the door, a fact her brother had used to creep up on her and pull at her braid with all his strength before running away laughing like a hyena, unwittingly providing just the sort of educational experience her father and tutor intended for her. This had been a productive lesson, one for which her brother was rewarded many times with a variety of hard objects, both sharp and blunt.

“Breakfast is served and not a second too soon!” the Princess declared happily as she spotted the butler entering the room, his hands laden with food. “Why, I’m positively famished!”

There was a large platter of cold meats, cheeses, and freshly baked bread and a pitcher of orange juice and some blue beverage from Neptune that smelled like hard work and genocide. The Princess appreciated how nothing on the table was shaped like anything except for what it actually was. Given her host’s taste for culinary allegory, she’d forgotten that food that didn’t double as a metaphor was an option.

“Please let me know if you’d care for any other refreshments, mein fraulein,” Martin said and elegantly dissolved into the background.

“Yo wha? Me an’ Sarah don’ git nahh love? Don’ make me come ova there an’ slap yo ass, byatch,” Namibia said angrily, but the butler was already nowhere to be seen. The Princess hoped the rash girl wouldn’t try to make good on her promise. It would be nice to have at least a single meal without any corpses in the immediate vicinity.

“Gallus bastard!” Sarah shouted in support of Namibia before returning her attention to the Princess. “Anyhow, howfur come you’re dressed lik’ that? Ye someone important?”

“Well, I am the firstborn scion of an ancient and distinguished dynasty with shares in nearly all major corporations and banks, as well as numerous holdings in the Outer Planets. I am also a commissioned officer of considerable rank in the Old Brigade, a colonel at present, if I’m not much mistaken, albeit an honorary one. Finally, I am the Daughter of the Eagle, which doesn’t actually mean anything, but as I quite like the ring of it, I enjoy introducing myself to people as such. I own a lovely feather crown, but I’m afraid it’s not here at the moment.” The Princess took a deep breath. “Far be it from me to decide if this counts as important or not by your standards,” she added, since one mustn’t boast before one’s inferiors. It’s not polite.

“Ah didn’t dig shit. Ah guess dis here means you real important,” Namibia laughed.