“Vora has been my closest friend for as long as the Pike has been in the sky.” Sykora glares across the table at their Coreworld interloper. The confrontation has moved from the waiting room to a private dining suite off the buffet floor. The food smells amazing and looks sumptuous and is being left to cool on barely-touched driftwood-carved plates. “I neither need nor want a different majordomo.”

  Lomanza offers a mirror-polished smile and swallows her delicately cut bite of game. “I understand, Majesty. And if it were as simple as a choice between the two of us, none would begrudge you that decision. But these are the regulations as they stand.”

  “I had presumed that a situation as unprecedented as ours would forego such a regulation,” Vora says. A smudge of mud from the mask she hastily scrubbed away crusts at the edge of her nose.

  “I had as well, Majordomo,” Lomanza says. “But I am afraid the Empress has been quite explicit in this case.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lomanza silently removes a strip of parchment from her bag and passes it across the table.

  A letter, sealed in wax. The red eye of Clan Taiikar blindly meets the Princess’s gaze.

  Sykora sighs and unseals the message. She holds the parchment out and up for Grant and Vora to read over her shoulder. Grant scans the handwritten glyphs, crisply marked in a practiced, confident spiral from out-to-in.

  To my good Cousin Sykora, Princess Margrave of the Black Pike—

  I am glad to hear that your pregnancy progresses well. In recognition of your rising profile and as a late Newtide gift, I introduce you to your new majordomo. Lomanza, once of Tuqeroai and now of the Black Pike, is the finest of her class; she has been majordomo for several successful noblewomen, and has agreed as a personal favor to suborn herself now to the Black Pike. I have met and examined her and found her to be of the highest possible caliber.

  There are great and serious trials ahead that your current majordomo cannot aid you in. The Core exam is rigorous and requires many hectocycles of training. I know well that you love Vorakaia as a sister, but she is not equipped for the machinations of the Core, nor the great game into which you have been placed. She came of age, as you did, on the Frontier, and Core accreditation is beyond her, mentally and physically. She cannot hope to match Lomanza.

  I recognize the sorrow this may cause in you. Let your duty and fidelity to my word be its balm. You and Vora have been loyal to one another; but your loyalty is owed first to your Empress. As you love me and my Empire, you will take on Lomanza as your majordomo.

  I admire the honesty with which you and I treat with one another; in its spirit, and for my love for you, I will be frank:

  This is what you think it is.

  With unfeigned fondness, deeply felt,

  Her High Majesty Zithra XIX, Empress of Taiikar and Sovereign of the Known Firmament

  “I have studied your record.” Lomanza speaks up as Grant nears the flourish-filled signature set into the page’s center. “Majordomo Vora is a superb individual, and I would gladly have her as my Senior Clerk. But the work of a Coreworld majordomo is a different beast. It would be unfair to compare us. As Her High Majesty states, I have an insurmountable advantage in training and augmentation.”

  Grant looks up from the note. “Like what?”

  “As an example, Majesty, Vora lacks the anhedonic augment that I have voluntarily been fitted with. This is standard procedure in the Core for highly competitive clerical positions, but a Void Princess’s majordomo is expected to begin from childhood and grow up with her, in order to be more of an emotional anchor to her otherwise isolated monarch. To be a friend.”

  “An anhedonic augment? Like you don’t feel joy?”

  “I feel a kind of joy.” Lomanza smiles. “Perhaps not as you understand it, Majesty. It’s closer to a deep, abiding satisfaction when I am of use. It was a change wrought by my personal request; the biologically standard emotional makeup of the brain discomforted me. The day it was approved was the proudest day of my life.”

  Grant isn’t used to Sykora looking as repulsed as he does by some unexpected new Imperial horror. The certainty he felt barely an hour ago is fleeing him. This reminder of the Empire’s true reach, and his true place within it, is a cold bucket of water upended on the fire that Sykora lit in his chest.

  “Vorakaia has a husband, I’m told, and a son,” Lomanza says. “She has friends and hobbies. To put it plainly, she has a life beyond her duty. My life is entirely my duty, Princess Margrave, and that duty I now tender to you.”

  Vora’s tail lashes the air like a horsewhip. “You’re questioning my sense of duty? I was raised to—”

  “I am not speaking in metaphor, Vora.” Lomanza doesn’t raise her voice, but it cuts through regardless. “Forgive the interruption. This is just stark fact. You were raised to be Sykora’s majordomo. You were also raised to be a complete person. You are dedicated to your family, as you ought to be. I lack that, and do not regret its absence. To have outfitted you the way I am outfitted, at the age you began your career, would have been as wasteful as it was deeply unethical.”

  “I need no further augmentation to function,” Vora says. “Advantages in Coreworld biotechnology or study cannot make up for the degree of knowledge and dedication and—and trust I share with the Princess Margrave.”

  “I’m afraid I disagree, Majordomo.” Lomanza folds her hands on the table. “Last time you were in the Core you were placed in a disadvantageous position by Marquess Palatine Inadama. Her conduct was, by my count, in violation of six precepts and two, arguably three, topline ordinances. The resulting misadventure was avoidable.”

  “We could have maneuvered our way out,” Vora says. “We knew that. But we decided it would be better if—”

  Lomanza interrupts again. “List the fifth precept of the 6893 Algorithmic Compliance Accord.”

  Vora’s hands tighten into fists. “Algorithmic proprietors are hereby obligated to articulate, to avoid indemnifying doubt, that any and all sensory analyses, heuristic extrapolations, or quantum-probabilistic conjectures a Replicated Competency Algorithm may emit shall not be construed as constituting binding advisement, warranty of outcome, or acknowledgment of sentience, pursuant to Subsection 88-Scula.”

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “And the seventeenth.”

  “All interlocutors must be informed that any declarations, advisories, or syntactic formulations transmitted through a Replicated Competency Algorithm’s communication modules shall be interpreted strictly as provisional informational artifacts, devoid of any implicit covenants pertaining to operational safety, contractual reliance, or interpretive accuracy by the Algorithmic proprietor, pursuant to Regulation—ah—”

  Vora’s eyelids flutter.

  Lomanza shakes her head. “Do you see?”

  Vora holds up a shivering palm. “No. No. I have it. Pursuant to Regulation 12-Thule.”

  “You’re trembling,” Lomanza says. “You had to use your suite for that. For two of the most commonly cited 6893 precepts. I do not mean to upset you, but this is not up to the expectations of a Coreworld majordomo. In the Black Pike sector, the Princess Margrave’s word is often law, and this rigor is not a requirement. You cannot operate that way in the Core. Every other Princess has someone with full augmentations and perfect recall even without it. Her Majesty will be at a disadvantage without me.”

  Grant leans his elbows on the table and runs his hands through his hair. “Can’t we bring you on as some sort of expert, or assistant, or something?”

  “No, Majesty,” Lomanza says. “A woman of my station cannot legally serve as less than her Majesty’s majordomo. I wish it were not so, or that I had some comfort or loophole. But the Empress’s word overwhelms any. She commands me to serve you; she commands you to accept my service.”

  She stands and pushes her chair in.

  “Thank you for the food and for your hospitality.” She gestures to her half-finished portion. “I will request a delay in my assignment until after your children are born; I suspect this will be approved. There is already enough in flux and Vora will ably serve until then. And after, we will find her a suitable new position aboard the Pike.”

  She bows her way to the door and pauses at its handle.

  “And I am sorry,” she says. “To both of you.”

  With that, the self-styled majordomo of the Black Pike departs, leaving a painful silence in her wake.

  Vora stands. “Majesty,” she says. “I, uh. I wish to…” But whatever she wishes goes beyond what she can say, and she just stands there, out on her feet.

  Sykora stands up and folds the flagging woman into a hug.

  “I know,” she murmurs. “We’ll do all that we can do. And you will still be by my side no matter what. No matter what, Vora.” She kisses her Majordomo’s cheek. “I swear it to you.”

  Vora’s breath pauses. She stills as if a sudden tidal wave had submerged her. Then she parts from the hug, and bows, and says, “If you would give me leave, Majesty, I must return to the Pike.”

  “Of course, majordomo.” Sykora’s tail hooks around Vora’s shoulder, flexes, and releases her. “Go with my love.”

  Vora picks her untouched plate up from the table and sleepwalks from the room.

  “This is crazy, right?” Grant asks. “This is unacceptable.”

  When Sykora doesn’t speak up he glances her way. She’s staring at the letter.

  “What she wrote.” Her eyes dance across the note as if trying to unlock some meaning besides the unadorned truth. “This is what you think it is.”

  The icy feeling that started in Grant is chilling him further. “What is it?”

  “It’s the consequence, Grantyde.” The message is discolored from where her sweating fingers have worried its page. “All of the exceptions we’ve won. It could never go on forever. We’ve run out of slack and she’s tugging the leash. This is the Empress reminding us that there is no countermanding her.”

  You just sold these people Earth, Grant.

  “Surely we can get around this somehow,” Grant says. “We have before.”

  “No, Grant. No, we can’t. Don’t you see? It’s a test. To ensure that we have not forgotten our place. Or our—”

  Sykora’s voice cracks. Grant reaches across the table and covers her hand with his palm. The letter crinkles like a dead leaf under their touch.

  “Our loyalty,” Sykora says. “This is not a light request or a simple procedural hiccup. The Empress wouldn’t have handwritten this if it was. We have walked right up to the line. She is waiting, with a spear in hand, for us to take another step.”

  “But we’ve won so much from her,” Grant says.

  “Exactly,” Sykora says. “We won your freedom, and we won our children.”

  She folds the letter shut again.

  “But we’ve lost Vora.”

  “She was in my arms, and in love with me, and we had a future, then she wasn’t and we don’t.” Kamen bounces the ball off the floor, onto the wall, and back into his hand. Pock-pock. “And now I’m stuck. It’s like a shitty prank. I keep expecting her to be there with her big smug grin, and she isn’t. She isn’t anywhere anymore.”

  Pock-pock.

  “Not in the body, maybe.” Oryn surreptitiously scoots his rolling console table further out of the way. “But she was a well-loved woman with many friends. You have a whole ship’s worth of them. She’s in everyone she loved and everyone who loved her back. She’s in you and in the friends you shared, and the friends she had that you didn’t know. You have a network ready. They’re hurting too, right now. They could use your help just as you could use theirs. And you can keep discovering more about Reina. New things. Things you can laugh about and celebrate and honor.”

  “I don’t want that. I want the Reina I had.”

  “I understand that. But it might be healthy to talk about her with the people who knew her.”

  “Not yet. I…” The ensign’s jaw hangs open for a while. He hasn’t cried at session in a few days, now. A shutter’s rolled over his eyes. “I can’t.”

  A jangling ringtone issues from Oryn’s back pocket. He curses quietly and digs his communicator out.

  Kamen glances from the habitual flight of his ball, lips tugging humorlessly upward. “Do you need to get that?”

  “No, no. Forgive me.” Oryn shuts his communicator. “I thought I’d silenced it.”

  He has, he knows. But he kept Vora off silent, because she never calls him when he’s in-session. Not unless it’s an emergency. He takes an inhale on a four-count through his nose.

  “Let’s talk about that I can’t,” he says, and pays as much attention as he can, trying to ignore the clamoring alarm bell in his head.

  He bids farewell to Kamen with a brief, back-patting hug, and swallows his guilt along with a quick nip of amrita. You weren’t giving everything you should have. He picks up the communicator as soon as he’s sure the Ensign is out of earshot and hurriedly reactivates it. Another missed call after the first.

  As soon as he sees the flotsam of his wife’s previous attempts his communicator jumps and jingles again. He picks up this time. “I’m here, love.”

  “Are you at the office? Did I interrupt?” The voice is peaking its mic—Vora’s holding her communicator very close.

  “I am.” Oryn doesn’t bother with any reproof. He can tell even through the link that something is very wrong. Vora’s breathing is thick. “What’s going on?”

  “Not on the communicator,” she says. “I’m coming back. I need you.”

  “Cabin?”

  “Please.”

  Oryn throws his tablet, and his notebooks, and his communicator, and the little squeezy Kovikan stress-doll he throttles when he’s thinking, into his sling bag and hurries from his office.

  Five minutes of stressful pacing across the mahogany floor of their cabin, and then the love of his life stumbles into the room and falls into his arms.

  “I overdid it,” she stutters. Her skin is warm, as though she’d brought the summer-on-Aodok heat back with her, but she shivers violently. “Oh, Ory. I overdid it. My implant. I—I—”

  “Do you need me to get the pills?”

  “No. No no no. Just please.” She takes a deep, tremulous breath. “Please hold me.”

  He lifts her into his arms and lies on the sofa with her. She buries her face in his chest. He feels the dampness pool on him.

  “Vora. Lovebug.” He lays his hands on her back. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “They’re taking Sykora from me,” she sobs. “They’re taking my Princess.”

  And she tells him about the interloper and the letter and Sykora’s stricken face.

  He lets her words settle in him, waits out the initial impact and the first few ripples before he speaks. “No matter what happens, we can stay,” he says. “This is still our home. Whatever else changes, thank the Gods of the Firmament for that.”

  “No. Yes. No, I don’t—I can’t—I’m the Majordomo of the Black Pike. I’m Sykora’s. I’ve always been Sykora’s, and now I—I’m nothing. I’m gonna be sick.”

  He rubs her stomach. “It’s okay. Breathe. It’s okay.”

  She takes a billowing breath. “If I’m not majordomo then what in hellfire am I?” she wails.

  My wife, Oryn thinks. Alakair’s mother. The smartest, loveliest woman I’ve ever met.

  But this is the kind of cry that needs silence and touch, not words. So he holds her, and she sobs in sorrow and terror in his arms.

  And when she’s cried herself out, and the stimulants have vented her brain and taken her energy with them, she falls asleep, and he slips out from beneath her and lays a fuzzy crocheted blanket over her.

  And he sits across from her, finds his tablet, pours himself another, and thinks about how he’ll fix this.