“You’re late.”

“I know.” T sunk back into the crowd, trying to blend in with the rest of his cohort. He wished mess dress allowed for the use of helmets; he stuck out like a sore thumb when the TB-class soldiers faces were uncovered. He didn’t need to receive any more comments about how strange it was that he resembled the Imperatrix so closely, almost as if he was her brother. The people who pointed and gossiped were mostly conspiracy theorists whose obsession with uncovering the secrets of the Imperials bordered on insanity, but T had no intention of making anyone aware that the observations they’d dismissed as fringe lunatic nonsense were more accurate than anyone thought.

“Did you at least—“

“Yes, I gave her the chip.” T fidgeted uncomfortably, trying to shield his face from the onlookers. “We should stop talking about this.”

“Then what do you want to talk about?” Ace asked, clearly bored.

“How about how incredible it is that our glorious Imperatrix has taken her rightful place on the throne of Eleutheria?” T replied loudly, making sure he was in earshot of their centurion.

“Yes, let us bask in her glorious presence.” Ace rolled his eyes, though based on the way he was looking at Acidalia, he didn’t mind “basking in her presence” as much as he claimed he did.

The men around them whispered amongst themselves. It was technically a breach of decorum, but nobody seemed to mind—the noise of the cornicenes was loud enough to drone out any errant rumors. Still, T could hear scattered fragments of conversations, words like bastard and Martian and filia nullius. Momentarily, he wished he could inform them who they were speaking to. They’d shape up real quick if they knew the man in front of them was the son of Alestra Cipher.

But to reveal his heritage would be foolish, and it would only fuel the rumor mill to give hints and implications, so T didn’t bother to try to stop the conversation. He’d long since made his peace with the fact that high society would never see his sister as legitimate, and Acidalia most likely had, too. When the revolution came, these haughty scandalmongers would be outnumbered by the people they oppressed, and T would have his justice then.

Until that moment came, though, he would sit and let the nonbelievers complain.

Acidalia was making a speech again, another meaningless sermon about how very thankful she was for the mother who’d never been anything but violently abusive for the entirety of her life. Alestra stood next to her, a mocking caricature of a proud parent. To the untrained eye, she appeared harmless and maternal, but T didn’t need his enhanced vision to see that her eyes were anything but loving. Behind them was Aleskynn, bored and annoyed, twiddling her thumbs in between posing extravagantly for the cameras. Later her picture would be on the newsreels and splattered all over the Internet; she knew that the media favored photos of her over photos of Acidalia.

Aleskynn was a classic Eleutherian beauty, and once she grew up, men would be bending over backwards for her favor. If marriage as a concept still existed on Terra, she’d probably have a thousand proposals from soldiers each more wealthy and powerful than the last. She was only 13, but that didn’t deter anyone. T had nearly killed a man behind a bar in Appalachia for saying something that involved Aleskynn’s name and the age of consent; T had never met his little half-sister, but it didn’t take much for the big-brother instinct to kick in. Everyone else had dismissed it as an act of drunken violence, and he’d gotten off with a slap on the wrist, which was no doubt because he was a TB-class immune and the other man was an O9-class miles. Pulling rank almost always felt wrong, but that time, it was far more gratifying than T would have liked to admit.

T worried about Aleskynn sometimes, though Acidalia assured him that she’d be fine. She was no doubt the favorite daughter; her birth was what convinced Alestra to repeal the one-child law she’d passed in a fit of rage one night when some advisor had implored her to do something, anything, about Eleutheria’s dying environment. It took quite a lot to make Alestra change her mind, especially when it didn’t benefit her in the least. She didn’t have to listen to her own rules—it was generally understood that noblewomen, especially the Imperatrices, were excluded from nearly all legislation they passed. So going through the process of rewriting the law so that mothers could have multiple daughters was uncharacteristic. Alestra was extremely attached to Aleskynn—so much so that they practically shared a name—and perhaps that attachment had finally let her see the joy she was preventing other mothers from experiencing. (It was attachment, not love—T was convinced that Alestra was not at all capable of love.)

He still remembered the night when Principissa Aleskynn was born, though he was only four years old at the time. They’d all watched the announcement, clustered around the screen in their home base. Alestra lifted her up like something out of Leo Regem, and the crowds below cheered, like the birth of a princess affected them in any sort of positive way. Maybe they just liked cute children with dazzlingly pale skin and golden-yellow hair. So they cheered for their new Principissa, and Alestra made a lovely speech about how sometimes when things go bad, you just have to start again anew. T was eight when he realized that it was nothing but a thinly-veiled way to make fun of Acidalia in front of the entire nation, and eleven when he realized that not only was she effectively disowning Acidalia, she was disowning him, too (if it even counted as “disowning” when she never acknowledged his existence in the first place.) His blood had boiled, then, and it continued to boil now, red-hot anger coursing through his veins as he watched the rest of the crowd stare rapturously at Alestra like she was a deity.

But even Aleskynn being the favorite child didn’t save her from anything. Celestia was reportedly Alestra’s favorite sister, and that didn’t help her make it past the age of 7. It would only take one small thing, one little slip up, for Aleskynn to feel her mother’s wrath. And even if by some miracle she managed to avoid the brunt of Alestra’s insanity, she was still growing up in a horrific, cutthroat environment where innocent people were mercilessly slaughtered for crimes they didn’t commit on a regular basis. That was no place for a child to be.

Not that T had had a particularly wonderful childhood himself. At least they didn’t put underage immunes into combat; lower-ranking men had it even worse.

He used to wish he’d been born with an X chromosome; then Alestra would have no choice but to acknowledge him, and he’d be second-in-line. Perhaps then he’d actually know Aleskynn, and perhaps he and Acidalia would have been able to spend their childhoods together. But then he’d have the responsibilities of leading a planet, and he wasn’t sure if he could ever handle politics as seamlessly and perfectly as Acidalia did. Legitimate or not, she was practically made for the job, though T thought she could use a little more self-preservation.

Eventually Alestra’s voice stopped, and the crowd cheered again, mostly. The few servants scattered throughout the flock just looked at one another. T didn’t blame them; they had no reason to like Alestra, or anyone else in the upper class, for that matter. Then Acidalia started talking, and it was just another version of their mother’s meaningless, droning, scripted speech. She spoke like she was filled with emotion, but when T looked at her face, it was blank, empty. He started to doze off again, lost in his own mind, then suddenly something jerked him back to the present.

“You okay?” Ace asked under his breath.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” T shook his head. But there was something bothering him, some gut feeling that told him there was a problem. He scanned the men around him quickly—other than Ace, he didn’t trust any of them very much. Still, none seemed to be saying or doing anything incriminating. The man on his left stared at Acidalia mindlessly, no doubt ignoring her speech like T had been, and most of the others seemed wrapped up in a whispered conversation about bets they placed on the outcome of this year’s Winter Olympics. They all seemed relatively innocent. So what, then…?

Then he caught it. A woman stood a ways behind Acidalia, finger on the trigger of a very well-concealed laser pistol. His heart raced for a second and he tried to convince himself that he was being paranoid, that someone else would have noticed such a blatant assassination attempt, then he remembered that nobody else would have noticed at all. High-ranking supersoldiers, or at least the young men who would one day become supersoldiers, were the only people with accurate enough vision to see the woman from here, and T was the only one in the whole crowd who was paying attention to Acidalia whatsoever.

Silently, he elbowed Ace, who looked at him curiously. He nodded towards the podium and Ace’s bright brown eyes suddenly displayed a look of recognition, and—

And then a million things happened in about one Planck second.

T tackled the woman to the ground without a second thought. She shrieked and set off the gun, though thankfully not in his direction—the laser went flying through the crowd, scattering Aleskynn and her ladies-in-waiting, who ducked for cover under chairs and behind their mothers. Behind him, Ace had Acidalia pinned to the ground, and luckily she had the sense not to move. T heard only her panicked “Quid—?” before she too realized the events that were unfolding, and she pulled herself out from Ace’s grip, darting off into the crowd and leaving Ace clutching at the remnants of her torn organza skirt.

T’s momentary distraction allowed the woman to wrestle out of his arms and fire another shot, which he easily dodged; she was clearly untrained, and he wondered if she’d ever even used a gun before. The laser ricocheted off the ceiling and hit someone in the audience, sending an emergency services crew that appeared out of nowhere sprinting to attend to her. Desperate, T hit the woman across the face, and blood flew across her white ballgown, leaving thick, scarlet-red stains. She fell back, dazed, nose bleeding, and T grabbed the gun out of her hand and kicked her to the side. He looked at the Imperial Guard, who stood behind Alestra dutifully, but they didn’t even seem to notice him. Of course they wouldn’t—half of them were probably in on the plan.

God damn it, Acidalia, he thought, what did I tell you? He spared a glance at the bleeding woman he’d just knocked to the floor. Though she was covering most of her face with her gloved hands, he recognized her immediately as Cassiopeia, last of house Generalis, one of Alestra’s favorite followers. Then he had the abrupt revelation that to anyone in the audience, this would look very, very bad. He and Ace had just tackled the Imperatrix to the ground while shots flew in indiscernible directions—to the innocent members of the court, they probably looked like assassins, and to the Nova conspirators, they were criminals for stopping their plans from coming to fruition.

He spared a second to look for Acidalia, who was easy to spot in a crowd of pale blondes. Her curtain of black hair wavered behind her like a flag—or a target. Then he jumped off the podium and made a beeline for her, taking advantage of the chaos surrounding him and the fact that nearly every other man here was dressed in the same uniform he wore. Ace followed, vanishing into the crowd of identical soldiers and leaving a trail of organza and satin fabric behind.

Acidalia sat near the entrance with her gun drawn, looking like a complete wreck. Her dress were coming apart at the seams where Ace had torn it, exposing at least half a dozen petticoats and a very uncomfortable-looking cage crinoline. One sleeve had fallen from its place on her shoulder, revealing a bright purple bruise, and her entire bodice was drenched in Cassiopeia’s blood.

“I never knew House Generalis had such a grudge against me,” she mentioned casually, like everything that had just preceded the conversation was completely normal.

“For Christ’s sake, Acidalia, what are you doing?” T groaned. “Get the hell out of here. I can handle it.”

“I don’t need you being in any more danger than you already are. I can handle myself.”

“No one woman can ‘handle herself’ in a room where everyone else wants to kill her, Dalia.”

“Neither can one boy.”

“They aren’t specifically targeting me!” T yelled, exasperated. One of the girls, a gray-eyed Scientia who didn’t exactly look like she belonged here, stared at him in fear. “Look at these people,” he hissed at Acidalia. “Cassiopeia almost killed you, and the two noblewomen beside her most definitely saw, but they didn’t do shit. That means they were almost certainly in on it. Our mother’s a complete sociopath—she wants you dead more than anyone else—and even if there is a single other sympathetic soul in this room, they’re probably too afraid of her to do anything. I’m also reasonably sure that at least one of Aleskynn’s friends is a spy. Face it—this is not a good location for you right now.”

Acidalia looked at the crowd hesitantly, then lowered her gun. “You’re right,” she admitted, “and I hate it. This place is going to become a bloodbath in a few minutes, and it’ll all be over me. I do hate leaving wars I started.”

“Stop taking responsibility for things you weren’t involved in. You didn’t make any of these assholes join the Nova.”

She looked at him, her eyes forlorn. T knew what she was silently saying—maybe she hadn’t intentionally started any wars, but her birth and subsequent ascension was the catalyst for years of tension coming to a head. But she couldn’t control where she was born any more than a common Cantator—the Ciphers liked to pretend they were hand-picked by some vague immortal god to rule over the Empire, but that was all a sort of pseudotheology limited to propaganda, and Acidalia knew that better than anyone else ever could. She had no reason to feel guilty.

“Dalia,” T said again, “go. I know you want to stay here and protect me, but you’re in so much more danger than I am right now. Please, just leave.”

Acidalia bit her lip, but she lowered her gun. “If I listen to you and run right now,” she said, “you need to promise two things to me.”

“Anything,” T said. “Cross my heart.”

“One: tell Artemis I’m alive at some point. She doesn’t deserve to spend the next few days panicking about me; she has her own issues, and we certainly don’t need anyone else in the court picking up on the fact that she seems inordinately concerned about the bastard Imperatrix they’ve all decided to kill,” Acidalia said. “Not that they don’t have enough evidence against her already, but, well… I’d rather have them be suspicious than certain. Understood?”

T nodded. “Makes perfect sense to me, though I might have a difficult time convincing Ace. He and Artemis don’t exactly love each other.”

“Ace’s petty squabbles with his superior officers are irrelevant. Please promise me you’ll at least tell her.”

“I will. I swear.” That was easy enough—barely even a mission. “And number two?”

“When I leave, you leave too,” Acidalia said firmly. “No staying behind to investigate new assassination plots or interrogate potential spies or do anything else you weren’t explicitly assigned. I am not letting you put yourself in more unnecessary danger.”

His heart sunk. “But—“

“Listen to me. You are seventeen. You have so much life left to live, and if you stick around here for any longer, you drastically increase your chances of being captured or killed. I never thought I’d tell you this, but please, for all that is holy, find Ace and proceed to your assignment in the Underground. You’ll be much safer down there.”

T almost voiced a protest, but Acidalia’s expression said clearly that she was not in the mood to argue. She was scarily good at forcing others to bend to her will, and, like the rest of the planet, T was prone to forgetting all thoughts of resistance the minute he looked at her face. She was so domineering, every bit the empress she was born to be, and even though he knew, logically, that she would never so much as lay a finger on him, it felt unwise to even try to oppose her.

“Okay,” he said finally, hoping he wouldn’t regret it later. “I promise. Now run, please.” Behind them, he could already hear more shots firing—laser guns were quiet, but not silent, and if he listened closely, his enhanced hearing could just barely pick up on the whoosh of laser bolts over the sounds of screaming.

“It does sound like the calvary has arrived.” Acidalia spared a glance over T’s head. “I love you. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“You know me.” T smiled reassuringly. “Now go.”

She looked over at him one last time, as if to ensure that he was still standing there, then tore off down the hallway, leaving a trail of fabric and diamond dust. Even after all these years, it still shocked T somewhat to see how careless she was with money. Lab-grown or not, diamonds were expensive, and the amount of precious stones that had been on her ruined dress could probably have fed a family for months.

Not that he really blamed Acidalia for being clueless about value and worth. Alestra hadn’t exactly given her the world’s best education regarding economics.

He stood there for a few seconds, making sure she’d actually left. She was almost always truthful with him, but there had been isolated incidents where she’d lied for his protection, and, uncommon though they were, they’d taught him to never really trust anything she said about her own safety. Acidalia wasn’t dumb, but she was dangerously selfless, especially when it came to her loved ones. T had seen older boys with that same magnanimous altruism. They usually didn’t make it past twenty.

Ace caught up to him just as he finished sweeping the hallways, which were, evidently, clear of Acidalia (though he wouldn’t put it past her to be sitting someplace up in the rafters acting like a royal sniper.) At some point, the torn pieces of her skirt had come apart, and they stuck to Ace with static cling. Strips of fraying lace dangled from his uniform, catching on pins and wrapping around badges, leaving behind tiny white threads that made him look like he’d been caught in one of Eleutheria’s famously rare snowstorms.

“You look like you have dandruff,” T said flatly, reading up to brush some of the white debris off of Ace’s shoulder.

“You look like you have heatstroke,” he retorted, his voice equally as deadpan. “Where’s your sister?”

“Gone.”

Ace frowned. “I was hoping to meet her.”

“Not a good time for her to schedule an audience. And don’t call her my sister, you don’t know who’s listening.”

Ace rolled his eyes. “Like anyone here will put the pieces together.”

“Alestra would. We look very alike.” T and Acidalia could easily be recognized as siblings if they were stood side by side; they both had Alestra’s slender face and high cheekbones, coupled with their father’s deep brown eyes, brown skin, and pitch-black hair. The combination of “noble Eleutherian” and “penniless Martian” was not common, and it wouldn’t take a genius to see that they were more than strangers. Alestra had given birth to T, even if she’d have liked to forget it, and she was no idiot—she’d be quick to realize their relationship. T didn’t know the ramifications that would have, but considering his mother’s dislike of Acidalia, he had a feeling that it wouldn’t end well.

“We still can’t risk it,” he said, not wanting to argue with Ace any longer. “We need to get out of here. We have to go to the Underground at some point, anyway, and it’s too dangerous to stick around much longer.” The fighting behind them had mostly stopped, but it would probably not look very good if a Magistratus rounded the corner to see Acidalia missing and Ace clutching at the remnants of her torn clothes.

“Ironic, isn’t it? Who’d have thought that the Underground is safer than nice, pretty uptown Appalachia.”

“Sometimes it’s better to be in a place where nobody has any idea who you are.” T glanced one last time at the crowd of diplomats and the police trying to keep them in line before pulling Ace down another hallway. He knew this place like the back of his hand—he and Acidalia had spent their adolescent years hiding from Alestra in these stark white corridors. It wasn’t unusual for soldiers to be seen around the palace, especially high-ranking immunes like Ace and himself, but they’d always been cautious, just in case. The stakes were too high for them to let their masks slip. The planet had never been closer to a civil war, and T didn’t want to be the harbinger of a new era of violence—that was, if it wasn’t already written in his DNA.