Blood Crown (2 page)

I have not yet received confirmation that the system reboot has been successful when Galen nods once and pain rockets through my neck, shorting out my nervous system. My vision, my awareness, is gone before I hit the floor.

Now

I straighten my jacket and stare down my reflection. Today would have been Serantha’s nineteenth birthday. She would have celebrated tonight with a grand banquet and on the morrow we would have been married.

Instead . . .

Well, instead, I will abdicate my crown and leave my Empire.

With another tug on my jacket, I turn sharply away from the mirror and storm from my room, intent on reaching my father, on talking with him before I lose my nerve.

My symbiants tell me he is in the throne room, a place in which he spends far too much time. He is a petty king whose power tends toward opulence and frivolity.

Careful, he is still your father
, my Servant, Natalya, whispers in my mind. I ignore her. I earned the right to reject her council two years ago when I turned nineteen—and I will not be listening to her again. I am grateful for her Service, for the Gifts that set me apart, grant me the ability to interact with technology as seamlessly as androids themselves. But with the Mind’s murder of my betrothed, and the elimination of the entire line of the West, the whole purpose of the Gifts has been negated.

Man will not evolve. A thousand years of Gifts, of infusing the royal lines with organic technology woven into their DNA, has ended.
Will
end. With me. Without Serantha, there’s no point to any of it.

And my father sits on his ass entertaining petty complaints while the Mind devour the West and build their forces. He thinks we are beyond their reach, that our navy is superior and simply will not fall as the West did.

I am not quite so foolish.

Or perhaps, I am just foolish enough to think there’s still a reason for fighting back.

I pause in front of the ornate double doors at the entry to the throne room. For half a second I am tempted to reach out to Natalya, to seek her advice, her comfort and encouragement. But I am a man now and I have already made my decision.

I square my shoulders and shove through the doors.

With my hand pressed to the cold steel I feel the vastness of space beyond—and for a moment I consider punching my fist right through so I’ll get sucked away. Away from this stinking dungeon. Away from the blasted guards and their hungry hands and mouths. Away from . . . everything.

It would be so easy. Easy to leave, certainly. But easy to puncture the ship’s hull, too. I feel the steel responding to my touch, moving, reshaping itself to match my will. It wouldn’t take any strength, really. Just a thought. And my fist reaching through to the freezing void.

Instead, I yank my hand back and shove it under my arm to warm it. Not that it does any good. My body is nearly as cold as the wall. I don’t bother trying to warm myself—what’s the point? Life is pitiful. I am pitiful. I might as well suffer.

I roll away from the curved wall, pulling my knees to my chest. I lie on a thin palette of recycled fibers. There is no blanket, so the rough fabric scores irritation burns over all my boney parts—ankles, knees, hips, elbows, shoulders. I’d probably be better off lying on the steel floor itself, but there’s a part of me that relishes the discomfort. That same part that strains to hear the voices of my guards—will they be coming soon? Will they feed me? Release me?

Eventually they always come. Once they think I’ve suffered enough. They’ll return with a fist to my gut and a warning to keep my own punches to myself. Or they’ll come with their kisses and bites and threaten me to be more accommodating—because they’ll take what they want whether I wish it or not.

What they always forget though, is that they can only take what I’m willing to give—and while I sometimes tolerate their kisses, I’ll never let them take my body. Never.

That’s why I’m here now. Why I’ve been here for the last three days without food and the only water to be licked from the sweating walls of the ship.

I must have drifted off to sleep, the shuddering of my body its own kind of lullaby, because I wake to the sound of my own voice screaming, the feel of my own hands clawing at the crude bed beneath me.

Father
. I dreamed about him again. The dream is always the same—a tall, slender man dressed in white. His cold and efficient hands strangely soothing and comforting as he pushes, shoves me into a dark tunnel that swallows me up and sends me flying into the heart of a great beast.

I don’t feel any sense of abandonment from this dream. No thoughts scurry across my mind that the man was discarding me, throwing me out. What I feel is warmth. What I feel is love.

I am about to thrust myself back into sleep, my thoughts already calling out to him, to my father’s caring embrace, when I hear them.

The guards are returning.

I am standing when the wall disintegrates into a million tiny particles that spring apart, allowing a view of the hallway beyond my cell. A hand-shaped panel throbs red midway up the wall beside the outline of the door. Two human guards lurk on the other side, their uniforms, once black, are faded gray to match the gray walls, the gray floor, the gray everything. The guards stand proud, but their clothes are ill-fitting and tattered around the cuffs. I wonder if they ever doubt what they’re doing, since even I know there has been no ruling class on this ship for a long, long time.

Ours is a ghost ship, a shadow. It used to be a jewel, I know. A gem among the Empire of the West—the ship tells me so in her programming. I’ve heard her whisper of Commanders and courtiers, Royalty and Servants.

Now there are just eighteen humans and two andies remaining on a ship meant to house thousands. The kitchen cooks meals that only the four guards eat, and we continue to get the scraps. While only a handful of dishes are dirtied now, four of us scrub dishes all day, every day. It’s all drudgery without purpose. None of it has purpose.

What’s the point in living?

I wish the guards would go away and leave me to my dingy cell. I wish I could go back to the moment not long ago and make a different choice. I should have punched that hole through the hull. I should have made my escape. I don’t want to be here anymore, living this meaningless life.

The guards must see a change in me, because their faces morph from cruel masks to expressions of hope and lust. Their pupils dilate at the sight of me. They both lick their lips and I sigh. I would have preferred the cold detachment of an android pilot, but they rarely come to the lowest levels.

Not for the first time, I wonder what the human guards see in me. Why they choose me as their victim more than any other—it certainly costs them. None of the other scullery maids fight back.

While I’m aware that my body might be desirable under other circumstances, in my life those conditions don’t exist. In my world, my brown, thick hair lies heavy with oil against my back, my long braid reeking of kitchen smoke and grease. I have the suggestion of a desirable figure—hips that curve and sway, breasts that remain full despite my starvation—but I am so bone-thin that there is little softness on me.

I swallow against the bile that rises in my throat as the guards elbow each other and play a crude game to determine who will get the first shot at me.

Or who will take my first punches.

I flex my fists and crack my knuckles in anticipation.

Please. Let me kill one of them
.

I wish it, but I know I won’t do it. I remember when these two were boys. The tall, skinny one, Fale, is three years younger than me and clung to his mother’s skirts for longer than seemed natural. Gart, the highest ranking guard, ripped him away from her less than a year ago and has since done his best to groom him in his own image. Fale still seems timid and soft to me, though he’s learned to put on a good show. The other one adopted Gart’s cruelty with greater success.

These guards are barely worth my time. It’s Gart I’d like to thrust out the air-lock. The thought relaxes me, and I let my hands go limp at my side. I try a smile and find it doesn’t cost too much to give.

I step forward.

The guards—no, the
boys
—let their mouths hang open as they turn to face me. Fale gulps—his Adam’s apple bobbing as though his spit is stuck in his throat.

“It’s okay,” I say. I know they hear me, but I wonder if they know what I mean. Even I’m not sure.

They jostle each other as they push to the door and Fale presses his hand to the padlock. I can see the mechanism in the door turn and whir into action—I can see it with my eyes, but I can also see it in my mind. Can feel the steel grinding, detect the minute specs of metal that slough off each time the parts move against each other.

The door is unlocked and it vanishes from sight, though I’m aware of the molecules clinging to the wall, waiting to be recalled to their position in the door’s programming.

The bulkier one, nearly a man now—probably my age, I guess, judging by the even shadow of growth over his chin and the bulge of muscle beneath his uniform—shoves past Fale and takes two long steps until he stands directly in front of me.

He grabs me by my hips and pulls me to him, his thumbs digging painfully into the soft spots near my pelvic bone. I can smell his lunch on his breath—the milk he drank curdling as it clings to his tongue and gums. My eyes search his, but they’re empty. Though this boy is handsome enough on the exterior, behind his eyes lurks nothing of value. He is all want and need and power and aggression.

I close my eyes in a slow blink. I feel the moment he mistakes my action as acquiescence.

His fingers grip harder. He presses me more firmly against him, letting one hand slide around to the small of my back. His heartbeat races and his breath becomes a pant on my cheek. I feel his blood pump hotter, smell the sweat that pops out on his skin.

I concentrate on the sensation of wetness at my neck where he presses his lips—not in a kiss, more like a bite. Feel every one of his whiskers as they scrape against my skin.

He pulls back, dragging his nose across my cheek.

I open my eyes and he gasps when he meets my gaze.

There is a moment, a breath, when he knows what is coming. When I know what I am about to do.

My hands, which have stayed quiet at my sides, now grip his biceps so tightly he flinches. Then my knee is rising, my weakness from lack of nourishment long forgotten. It feels like an eternity—each move mapped out in my mind’s eye—but in reality it is over in less than five seconds. From the kiss to the impact of my knee to his groin, to his gasping, cringing fall to the floor.

I look at Fale who still stands in the doorway, one hand grasping his crotch. His eyes flick from the crumpled pile at my feet to my eyes, which steadily, unflinchingly, watch him.

“May I return to work?” I ask, my voice as sweet and innocent as I can muster.

The young guard swallows against that handicap of a bulge in his throat and steps to the side. He nods, unable to speak in a steady voice, I wager.

As I step over the fallen guard and walk past the one at the door, I smile. A sweet curve of my lips, a dip of the chin, eyes wide open. I feel the power I hold over these boys and thank the stars they were sent to release me and not Gart or his shadow, Simeon. They wouldn’t be fooled by pretty smiles or sweet words.

“Thank you.” Holding my head high, not looking back, I walk down the corridor, past all the other secret cells. It doesn’t matter who is in there or what crime they may or may not have committed. There is no real escape here and life in the kitchen can often feel more like hell than solitary confinement. Still, the slap of my thin shoes against the metal floor grows into a sharp staccato as I hurry toward a different kind of prison and the only home I know.