"Once, there was a world...

"Who was lonely.

"She dreamed of other worlds.

"She begged Adon to bring another to her.

"Once day, a world of claws and blood fell into orbit around her sun, and she regretted her prayers.

"'Be careful what you wish for,' said the world."

16 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

The scents of roses and lavender.

The sensation of silken scarlet strands splayed across Dorsin's chest beneath Rosabella's head, which rose as he inhaled, hung for a moment as he held his breath, and fell unsteadily as he let it out.

Last night had been a nightmare of claws and blood that turned into a dream of lust and desire, of clutching legs and curving breasts flushed with passion, of howls releasing four decades' worth of frustration in an instant. And this morning? It should have been a nightmare to awaken like this.

It wasn't.

Rosabella, awakening from her cetacean-sourced half-sleep, murmured an inaudible benediction, and her warm lips touched Dorsin's chest as she shifted languidly against him.

He lay for a while, drifting half in sleep as his hand stroked silken hair and softer flesh. Chaos had reigned last night, and then love had conquered.

He was safe. Rosabella was safe. Oralie--

A stab of guilt made him wince. Why should he wince? Rosabella had had a claim on him long before Oralie--

His heart staggered as horror finally battered him. He shut his eyes tightly and willed the guilt away.

Rosabella's soft breasts stroked across his chest as she stretched, then laid her arms across his body and her head atop them. Her chin tickled Dorsin's sternum. "My heart," she whispered.

She looked at him for an eternity, saying nothing, studying him. Then her eyes softened; she looked almost demure as she glanced away, sounded almost apologetic. "I cannot regret us."

May all of Dorsin's forebears forgive him for his crimes against Nethress's General Principles. "Nor can I," he admitted.

She purred in contentment that almost chased away the guilt he'd tasted when he thought of Oralie. Rosabella kissed his chest. Her tongue crawled up and down his sternum. He gasped as her whole body climbed him as a grapevine might climb a trellis.

As Rosabella rolled against him like an endlessly rising ride, slow at first, then flush with life and desire, seeking his passion again in ever-growing waves, Dorsin was so distracted that he didn't notice the shouting in the hallway. The pounding at the door came a moment after Rosabella had found his lips with hers, and he jerked away from her.

The door rattled again and again. "Open up!" shouted a muffled voice from the other side. "Open up, you cuckoo's child, you treacherous nest-stealer!"

Rosabella gasped and drew back from him. Other voices rose, anger clear in their tones.

"Stay here," Dorsin commanded. Rosabella nodded, slid off him, and clutched the tangled bedsheets to herself. Dorsin hoped for the sakes of the mob outside the door that none of their men would lay eyes on the beautiful Sodalitatis and think to claim her. Most men were better than that, but if any here weren't, Dorsin would give them no time to regret the mistake.

"I am coming," he called, wrapping his robe around his waist.

The racket continued.

"I said be still!" he roared, calling on the Symbiont to intensify his voice. Finally silence fell. After giving one last warning look to Rosabella, he opened the door and slipped out through the crack.

A silent mob awaited him, a crush of warm and stinking bodies in the narrow hall. Most of them were bourgeois, though Dorsin also noticed several refugees and several Generosi, including the Takahashi woman he'd overruled the night before on the bridge. Her husband was nowhere to be seen.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dorsin boomed, his voice still enhanced.

The people flinched, but a familiar short-haired blonde in the green-and-blue uniform of the crew recovered more quickly than the rest. The comms officer held up a shortsphere. "What do you think, Ortus Null?"

Ah. As the captain had warned him, and as he had suspected would happen, Nxtlu's message had made it through the ship. Most likely the snarling comms officer was responsible. Why did she hate him so?

It didn't matter. She straightened up and looked him right in the eye. "You're nothing but a common thief and a murderer. You're worse than all the rest of them, aren't you?"

"Nxtlu are liars," Dorsin said. "The message was a lie."

"Says the man pretending to be Gens Nethress. Hell, I've got no use for any of you, but in a Gens full of monsters, you're the most monstrous." A cheer went up from the crowd. The officer's mouth twitched in a slight smile and she glanced quickly about, acknowledging their approval with brief, staccato nods.

"What happened to you?" Dorsin murmured.

The woman snorted. "We're not here to relive the past. We're here to tell you that you aren't welcome on this ship any longer. Or anywhere." The crowd cheered, and for the first time Dorsin noticed the white-knuckled hands clutching at wooden rods, the keys extending between fingers like claws, the kitchen knives thrust into belts. There were even the bulges of pistols beneath the clothing of a few of the mob.

"What you think to do would be terribly unwise," Dorsin said, now keeping his voice low so the people would have to strain to hear.

The woman's eyes narrowed. "Not as unwise as unleashing the genophage on us again, but here we are, aren't we? All we ever wanted was to be left alone, but you Generosi just meddle and meddle and take and take." The few Generosi in the crowd shifted uncomfortably. Dorsin saw the Takahashi woman's nostrils flare, but she obviously knew better than to interrupt a crowd that was on the edge of riot. "You take our blood. You take our sisters in order to use their bodies--"

"Gens Nethress does no such thing," Dorsin protested.

"Yeah? Tell that to Magus Dux Pryan Generosus Ortus Nethress," the woman said, uttering the name like a curse. "Your brother, isn't he? Oh, right. You don't have brothers and sisters, do you? Well, if you ever get the chance, you can ask him about Sindee Waltatter. Or don't. He probably doesn't even remember my sister's name. But I do."

It was possible the woman was lying, but Dorsin suspected that the rage she was showing could only come from genuine hatred.

Pryan... that bastard. What had he done? Even from the grave, he was making trouble for Dorsin.

"But that's not enough, is it? You want to take our genes. Not just fucking and raping your way to new babies. You and your experiments. Your genophage. You want every base pair, every odd mutation." The officer jabbed her finger against her chest over and over. "Me. You want to steal who I am and then change it. Twist it around, like a tugging on a little girl's braid."

"I never--"

"Stop. Lying!" The woman stepped forward and shoved Dorsin. She was weak as a kitten compared to Dorsin, but he still had to shift his feet to keep his balance. One of his heels bumped the door to his room, and it creaked open.

The woman glanced past him, and her eyes went wide. "Oh, really? You wouldn't take an unwilling woman? What would she say?"

Rosabella, nude and frightened and plainly disheveled from the last night's acrobatics sessions, clutched the blankets to herself.

A satisfied grin crossed the officer's face. "Couldn't go a night without having a pretty, could you? Just thought you'd grab one of the refugees and nobody would notice?"

"No," Dorsin said.

"A cute little Sodality novice, all alone and too afraid to tell the terrible Princeps no?" The woman's nose twitched as she sneered up at him.

"Ambassatrix Rosabella was on the bridge with me yesterday," Dorsin said. "You saw her! We have long been friends."

The crowd fell silent. "Friends," the officer said flatly, then turned to the crowd. "Apparently this is friendship to Gens Nethress." The crowd booed, and the officer turned back to Dorsin. "Cheating on your wife, huh? Just another day in Princeps Nethress's life."

Dorsin scanned the muttering crowd. The woman's accusations followed no rhyme or reason. She didn't care whether Rosabella was a terrified novice or a willing adulteress--

--Adultery; Dorsin almost flinched at the thought of the word--

But that was all the same to the comms officer. It didn't matter, so long as she could find some wrongdoing to pin on Dorsin. She wanted blood, and she didn't care how she got it. She was of the second group that Captain Sylvie had mentioned, the ones who might not even believe the accusation but would still happily use it against those they hated.

Dorsin's Symbiont gibbered, begging for the chance to be let free, but he swallowed it down. "I have done nothing to you," Dorsin said. "Do not make a mistake you cannot take back."

By way of response, the comms officer flung the shortsphere receiver at his head.

Instincts honed during a lifetime of martial training took over. Dorsin ducked the heavy receiver; it ruffled his hair as it flew past. At the same time, he slipped forward, driving a fist into the comms officer's throat. Spikes--

--no!

The forgebone spurs forming at his knuckles tore at his tendons but halted before they could break his skin. Still, the comms officer staggered under the force of his punch. She fell back, clutching at her throat and gagging, eyes bulging, face red.

She had no idea how close she'd come to dying.

"Get him!" someone shouted, and the crowd flowed toward him. There was no time for thought. His fists flew; his palms battered away weak knives of bone.

His fingers raked down the face of a pudgy, puffing man in a round hat, clawing briefly into the man's eyes.

Fists and clubs fell. Dorsin ignored them. He grabbed a nose, yanked it hard, and bashed the attached head into the skull of a young, wide-eyed redheaded fellow next to it. He grappled a head, clinched the neck, tore off the ear and flung it into the eyes of the crazed knife-wielding woman behind, yanked his grappled and earless foe toward him to open the legs, snapped his shin up into the man's testicles, then shoved him back and planted a sternum-cracking kick in the middle of the man's chest.

The crowd bowled backward at the impact.

Only four or five could get at him at a time in the narrow hallway. Flesheater bacteria could quell this chaos for good--

"Don't." Rosabella clutched at his arm. Nude, beautiful Rosabella, first love of his heart, fear plain on her face, clung to him, trying to hold him back.

His battle instincts wavered at the sight of her; her voice pleading, "Don't, oh my heart, please don't," opened his ears.

He finally heard the screaming of the men and women he'd wounded. He looked over the recoiling crowd as if seeing them for the first time. And him? What must they see when they look at him?

A man born to battle, half-naked, spattered with blood that was not his own. An oppressor with one hand full of naphthgel ready to ignite, the other outstretched and ready to pour out flesheater bacteria.

They had chosen to come here. They had chosen to strike at him. He would be justified in choosing any response to their violence.

Wouldn't he?

He was Generosus Nethress. He was their better!

And yet, hadn't he been born a red-blood to a red-blooded mother, just as most of them had?

He looked to Rosabella, pleading silently with her to give him some guidance, but he couldn't read her emerald eyes. They were...

Raw. After forty years, he saw Rosabella unmasked for only the second time in his life.

What was he to do?

"What in Adon's name is the meaning of this?" Captain Sylvie's voice boomed down the corridor. The mob jumped like a single organism and cleared a path. The captain strode toward Dorsin, followed by a half-dozen security guards with nervebiter batons.

Greta Sylvie came to a stop next to her gagging comms officer. Not taking her eyes from Dorsin, she reached down, hooked a hand beneath Waltatter's shoulder, and hoisted her to her feet. "Officer Waltatter, what happened here?"

The whole crowd hushed as they waited for Waltatter to catch her breath. She gestured toward her throat, heaving gasping breaths that were somehow shallow. Finally she managed to squeak, "He struck me."

"Is this true, Princeps?"

Rosabella's hand squeezed his bicep, and resolve flowed into him at her touch. He wouldn't lie. He would tell the truth; all of it. "Yes. I defended myself against Officer Waltatter's assault on me, and with less force than was due."

"Assault?" Captain Sylvie asked Waltatter.

"He's lying," the officer rasped.

"After leading this crowd here and threatening me, Officer Waltatter flung her shortsphere at me," Dorsin clarified.

"Is this true?" Sylvie asked. Waltatter shook her head.

Rosabella slipped away from Dorsin and into the room.

Dorsin pointed to the whimpering one-eared man on the ground. "The keys next to him were in his fist when he charged me." He indicated the forgebone knives on the ground. "Those were not mine. Check him, him, and him for guns. You'll also notice a few clubs."

Rosabella returned with Waltatter's shortsphere. Several of the receiver's protective ribs had obviously cracked, and blood stained the bedpost and dripped from where the device had struck. Rosabella slipped beneath Dorsin's arm, angling herself between him and the crowd as if trying to protect him, and showed the injured device to the captain.

Captain Sylvie's eyes studied Rosabella as if noticing her for the first time. She frowned slightly. Of course--she was an Adonist, as opposed to adultery as Gens Nethress.

As Dorsin should have been.

"It's just a shortsphere," Waltatter said, then struck her chest as if trying to knock words free.

"I am a warrior," Dorsin said, wrapping an arm around Rosabella and tugging her against him. He would not pretend to be anything other than he was: orphan, Nethress, Magus, faithless husband. For honesty's sake, he would own it all. "I have been trained to response with lethal force when the lives of those I love are threatened. Be thankful I showed mercy and did not take yours."

Rosabella's nails clenched at the small of his back when he uttered the word "love."

The captain's frown deepened, but she kept a professional demeanor. "Does anybody care to tell a different story?" Faces in the crowd fell and looked abashed at the question. "No? All right. Disperse. Guards, take Officer Waltatter into custody and throw her in the brig."

"What?" Waltatter croaked.

"We won't need your services any longer, Waltatter," Sylvie said. "Get help for the injured, too." She chewed her lip and looked Dorsin up and down a long moment. "Hard way to learn not to assault a Magus, and a Princeps to boot, but..."

Dorsin waved his hand. "The injuries are punishment enough for them."

Sylvie glanced back at the moaning one-eared man as the guards helped him to his feet. "Agreed."

As the crowd dispersed, Dorsin, Rosabella, and Sylvie waited. When at last it was just the three of them, Sylvie took a deep breath, relaxed from her almost military stance, put her hands on her hips, and stared at Rosabella. Disapproval swept over the captain's face. She growled gutturally, then turned her attention back to Dorsin.

"I am guilty of many things," Dorsin admitted. He pointed down the hall where the crowd had gone. "But in that, I was blameless."

Sylvie pinched the bridge of her nose and grimaced. "What the hell am I supposed to do now? I can't let them get away with assaulting a guest. But Princeps, if you stay aboard, we're not going to make it anywhere near Acerbia. This skywhale will tear itself apart and we'll crash-land in some Chimera-infested Wildlands."

Dorsin was a Generosus. If anyone had the right to remain on the skywhale, it was he. But how could he turn others out the lock in order to protect himself? Dozens of them had just tried to kill him, yet he couldn't justify condemning them to death.

"Captain Sylvie, will you look after Ambassatrix Rosabella and see her safely to Acerbia if I disembark?" he asked.

Rosabella's body tightened against his. "No, my heart. We will find another way."

There was no other way. Either Dorsin left the ship or the attackers did, and at least Dorsin had a chance of surviving a journey through the Wildlands.

Sylvie chewed her lip thoughtfully. "Answer me a question, Princeps, and I'll answer yours. Was she in here with you when I came to warn you last night?"

It didn't matter that nothing had happened at that point. Both of them had known where the night had been headed. "Yes," he admitted.

"Hmm. Well, I guess my instincts were right. You said it yourself: you might be guilty of lots of things, but not lying. I can't promise we'll head straight to Acerbia, not with you off the skywhale, but I'll get her there eventually."

"Perhaps that is for the best." Gens Nxtlu had promised on the radio message that they intended to besiege Acerbia. Better for Rosabella not to be present if it fell.

But even better that Dorsin make it back and rally the defenses.

"I am coming with you, my heart," Rosabella said.

"Hush. Be wise."

"Yeah. Wisdom. We could use more of that this morning," Captain Sylvie said. "We should be over the Unspoken Frontier by midday. There are some tough country folk living out there. Mostly Adonists, but you don't share most Generosis' prejudice, so that's good. If we drop you there, among civilized folk, you'll have a better chance of making it back in one piece."

The Unspoken Frontier. It was better than Dorsin could have asked for, considering the circumstances. "Yes. I know some of those folk. That would do nicely."