Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (33 page)

Tomorrow they would start the search for Dolan’s prisoners, learn if any had survived whatever tests, research or torture he had put them through. Her dreams would be made whole or dashed.

Tomorrow they would have answers, but tonight she still had hope.

* * *

Kayla woke early the next morning after only a few hours of sleep and tiptoed into Isonde’s room. The princess still lay comatose in her medical pod. Her nose and teeth had been reconstructed after her fall on her face and she at least looked more like herself while the tissue healed. She should probably have her Kayla hologram on, in case Game officials busted into the room for any reason, but it was too disturbing for Kayla to see herself like that.

Not that it was any less disturbing to see Isonde lying stiffly, unconscious but not at ease. There were signs of Toble’s presence in the room, he’d been here late last night working on a cure for Isonde, to no avail. Her rigor continued unabated.

“We’ll get her,” Kayla said in a low voice. “But you have to fight. You have to beat her toxin.”

If only it were that easy.

“We’re down to the last series in the Game. I’ll win you that damned crown, but you need to wake up. I can’t be you for much longer.” Not if her family, her twin, were alive. “I can’t be you, Isonde. You need to fight.”

Isonde gave no reply.

* * *

By breakfast Kayla was sitting on the sofa in Malkor’s room, which had been turned into a base of operations for the massive investigation into Dolan’s affairs of the last five years. She’d already seen every agent in the octet save Aronse, and she hadn’t even finished her hot cereal yet.

She was useless in the search for the missing Ordochians in its current stage so she did the next best thing: prepped for her final series with Tia’tan tomorrow. That amounted to resting on the couch like an invalid and letting the regen cuff on her shoulder work its slow, painful magic.

“I understand you’re very busy with the number of guests staying in the royal pavilion for the Game.” Malkor spoke into his comm unit. His tone, which had varied from cajoling to authoritative, took on a seriously short-tempered note. “Yes. I know that. Sir, this is not a polite request, this is an order from Senior Agent Rua of the IDC. I require a list of every permanent and semi-permanent resident of the palace and their quarters locations.” He gave the man only a second to reply before barking, “I expect to see it within the hour, or you will be hearing from my commander, do I make myself clear?” He switched the comm off and leaned back in his chair. “Damn bureaucrats.”

Kayla scooped the last of her now lukewarm cereal out of its bowl. “No doubt running the emperor’s household during the Game is a once in a lifetime nightmare.”

“I’m going to be that man’s lifetime nightmare if he doesn’t get me that list in a half-hour,” Malkor said, already reaching for a datapad and moving on to his next contact. He looked ragged around the edges. His brown hair fell haphazardly into his eyes and his IDC casuals were creased.

She gestured to the multiple datapads lying about, all in mid-read or with their screens covered in notes. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Did you?” He gazed at her, assessing her appearance. She’d tried to dress as immaculately and elegantly as Isonde always did, but she hadn’t quite hit the mark this morning.

“How could I?”

He nodded. “Exactly.”

His words of yesterday rang in her head.
It’s important to Kayla. I’ll be there
. He hadn’t hesitated when Noar asked if he’d help.

Malkor returned to flipping through screens on a datapad while comparing them to something on his complink. It felt right to be here together, both focused on the same goal, bending their efforts in the same direction. He might need her for the crazy Empress Game scheme but she needed him just as much. More, even. She wouldn’t be able to find her family without him, never mind rescue them or get them off the planet. She needed him, and she didn’t mind the feeling.

Something was definitely wrong with her.

“Can you stop staring at me like I’ve grown a third eye?” he asked without looking up. “It’s disconcerting.”

“Sorry.” She gestured to her injured shoulder, feeling suddenly awkward. “I should get back, time to switch over to coolant packs.”

Concern crossed his features. “Kayla, I’m—”

The doors to his room slid apart without warning and Malkor shot to his feet. “Commander Parrel. Sir.”

“Are you running a circus in here, Senior Agent?” Commander Parrel’s voice carried into the corridor before the doors closed behind him. “A damn scavenger hunt?”

“No, sir.”

“Could have fooled me. I got a dozen alerts this morning, alarms pinging me from all different sectors about unauthorized access to sensitive files.” He stopped short, seeming to notice her for the first time. His frown deepened. “I guess that answers the question of who’s behind this inquest.”

Kayla froze. An IDC commander, here. Two meters from her. She glanced down at her hands to make sure the hologram still held up.

“You are aware, Agent Rua, that you still report to me, correct? That you don’t get to spend IDC agents and resources on investigations instigated by friends?” Malkor flushed a dull red. “I see that’s coming back to you now.”

Commander Parrel turned to her. “If your business here isn’t pressing”—and his tone put a world of meaning on the word “business”—“I need to speak to my agent. Alone.”

* * *

Malkor watched Kayla leave, wishing he could slink out after her.

“That woman’s your one weakness, Rua,” Commander Parrel said, before the doors had even finished closing.

Kayla? With her strength, fighting spirit and loneliness? How true that had become.

“You and Isonde are too close, always have been.” Parrel’s words drew him back to the situation. Isonde. Right. “You’re a good agent, one of my finest. I know you want what’s best for the empire and I depend on that, but your first loyalty is not to the IDC.”

A swift denial should have followed that statement, but Malkor couldn’t form the lie. “I serve for the good of the empire,” he said instead.

“Is that why you’re digging into all these files this morning? For the good of the empire?” Skepticism laced Parrel’s words.

“Yes and no, sir.”

Parrel frowned. “Which is it?”

Could he trust the man that far? He respected Parrel, they’d always been on the same side. But this…

“There’s what’s good for the empire, and then what’s right,” Malkor said.

“Don’t lecture me about gray areas,” Parrel snapped. “I’ve been making these kinds of decisions since you were toddling. And stop standing there at attention like a damned recruit, you look like a fool.”

Malkor sat without relaxing. Parrel crossed the room and grabbed another chair. He thunked it down opposite Malkor’s desk and perched—a bird of prey, waiting to strike.

“Well?” he prompted. “What has you so riled up about five-year-old files at this hour?”

“Master Dolan.”

Parrel nodded. “I suspected as much. His people are about to beat your lady in the Empress Game and suddenly you need something, anything, to catch him on. I get that, but why the Ordoch coup files?”

“How did you know?”

Parrel gave him a guarded look. “Every file on the Ordochian coup is classified highest security. We’re talking the Emperor, Council of Seven and senior IDC officials. Information like that isn’t left unguarded. I’m not the only one who set up protocols to be alerted in the case that someone breached the encryption and attempted to access the files.” Parrel looked as serious as death. “You’re lucky my protocols are touchier and it’s me that came looking for you.”

“I need access to those files, sir.”

“Why?”

All in. He was all in or he was done. Either Parrel would get him the access he needed or he would fire him. Kayla needed to know.
He
needed to know. Had the IDC allowed Dolan to take prisoners from Ordoch for experimentation?

“I have reason to believe that Master Dolan removed prisoners from Ordoch. Members of the royal family that were, as a matter of semi-public record, reported deceased. Prisoners that may still be alive and under his control.”

Silence.

That Parrel didn’t instantly deny it, or deny knowing one way or the other, confirmed it.

“That would have been against imperial wartime policy.” The standard response sounded stale coming from Commander Parrel.

Malkor nodded. “And a host of other humanitarian laws. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.” He stared Parrel down. “I need to know.” He needed to rescue Kayla’s family. Not just for her, for himself. To begin to repay, in some small part, the debt he owed to the Ordochians.

Not that it could ever be paid in full, but he could start. Here. Now.

Even without that, his honor as an IDC agent would not let this rest. Had the institution he served sanctioned Dolan’s actions?

“Who suggested this to you?”

“The Ilmenan Wyrds. They traveled light-years on the strength of this information. That’s enough for me.”

Parrel clearly teetered on the edge. He appeared as implacable as always on the surface. His eyes, though, said it all. He had doubts.

“I had been recalled ship-side when the coup went down,” Malkor said, “but you were there. You saw what actually happened on Ordoch. Let me read your report.”

Parrel shook his head.

Malkor splayed his fingers wide on the desktop, frustration building. “I
will
track this information down, Commander.” Nothing would stop him from learning the truth. If Ordochians had been taken from their home and given to Dolan for experimentation, Malkor wouldn’t rest until he’d found them and freed them. What torture had they been through in five years as lab rats? Had any even survived? It was unthinkable. Anyone involved in such an action, be it the IDC or the imperial army, had damn well better start running now. What’s more, Kayla’s family could be alive. The twin she still mourned daily could be here, on the same planet with her. Malkor could return someone to her she thought she’d lost forever.

“You don’t want my official report,” Parrel said.

“Sir—”

Parrel raised a hand. “You won’t find what you’re looking for in official reports.” He sighed, closing his eyes for a minute. When he finally opened them, the look he gave Malkor was part resignation, part respect. “I’ll tell you what I know, but only if you promise not to use the information to get yourself killed.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Don’t thank me, you pain in the ass. I’m the nicest of the guys who will come looking for you if you insist on pressing this.” Parrel gave a wry smile. “If I’m lucky, they’ll shoot you before you can involve me any further.”

K
ayla stood at attention in the center of the arena the next afternoon. Only the length of one sparring ring separated her from Princess Tia’tan, and every ounce of her concentration should be on the final fight of the Empress Game.

It wasn’t.

Instead she heard Malkor’s words when he’d come to see her late last night.

“He was alive, Kayla. Vayne was alive when Dolan evacuated him from Ordoch. What you think you saw… Dolan had them all stunned, each of the Wyrds he planned to take with him. He shot them with a stunner that interrupted their brain function and numbed their psi powers, essentially taking them off the psionic grid. That’s why you couldn’t reach Vayne, why he went silent and you thought he’d died. No one but Dolan’s own men was supposed to know.”

Malkor had held her when relief and grief brought her to her knees, and had known enough to back off when the rage followed.

“What he’s stolen from me,”
she had said,
“from Vayne, from all of us, I will make him repay.”

In blood. Nothing else would slake her thirst for retribution.

Now here she stood in the arena, ready to burst apart from the force of her hatred and pain. Did it show?

She knew it wouldn’t.

She was Princess Isonde, who never looked anything less than perfectly composed. Tia’tan glared at her from across the ring, similarly stoic.

In the center a historian droned on, extolling the accomplishment of the emperor’s family line. The last series of the Empress Game was apparently a time for lengthy patriotic speeches that emphasized how lucky one of the two women competing would be to join the Soliqual family and rise to the Council of Seven. The enormous crowd was into it. Thousands of people hung on the orator’s words, cheering so often that the speech took twice as long as it should have.

Even as he seemed to wind down, his words transitioning to a discussion of the significance of the Empress Game and the ferocity of the battle about to occur between her and Tia’tan, all Kayla could see was Vayne. Her last image of him, prone, bleeding, begging for her help, before being shot by the
kin’shaa
. She heard his voice, felt the touch of his mind. Not that weak imitation Dolan had somehow managed to create, but the real strength of him. The vibrant personality that influenced those around him.

Her true
il’haar
.

If he had somehow managed to survive what Dolan had done to him the last five years, she would save him, as she hadn’t before.

She would not fail him again.

But first, her series with Tia’tan. One fight. Such a small thing, to control the entirety of her planet’s destiny.

::I’m ready to shield, Kayla:: Corinth said in her mind. No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t possibly be. The Ilmenans would hit with the force of a starship’s core detonating.

The historian in the ring turned the voice augmenter over to someone else whose voice boomed through the arena with enough force to shake the floor. “Princess Tia’tan of Ilmena, for whom do you fight this eve?”

Tia’tan stepped into the ring, looking serious and oddly introspective for such a moment. She spoke without hesitation, her eyes on Kayla the whole way. “I fight for my people.”

It must not have been the answer the crowd expected. Half-hearted cheers and booing broke out, no one seeming to know how to respond to such a statement.