The Truthspoken Heir, page 7
The moon shone as a large crescent overhead, its second a fuller but dimmer orb to the right. Soft golden lanterns glowed around and through the rows of leafy bushes, and flowers rose up from raised beds, swaying gently in the muggy breeze. Trees lined the low terrace walls and kept anyone who stood on the palace grounds below from peering too closely into their depths.
Had the ballgoers fully dispersed by now? Rhys couldn’t hear any sounds of partying below. Couldn’t hear any music, and the band had been loud enough.
Dressa led them down the first row of the greenery, an even more private locale. She clutched their arm as she walked, her breaths coming faster than they should have. Her forehead sheened—the air was heavy with summer humidity, but not that hot.
Rhys’s pulse spiked. They were already on edge, but now they remembered that Dressa had touched the magicker. Had that magicker gotten to her, too? And yes, they’d been around Truthspoken long enough to know that the surface of things was never as they truly were. But that Arianna had been taken down by a Green Magicker, who never should have got that far, or been in any way disposed to that kind of violence, and all in the most publicly humiliating way possible, was . . . there was something off about all of it.
Rhys couldn’t wait for Dressa to speak, and they were mostly alone here, though the gardens would have security bugs scattered throughout.
They took a breath. If Dressa hadn’t spoken yet, it meant either she was too distressed to do so, or she was trying to formulate a way to say what she needed to without making it obvious to any listeners. So why not just bring Rhys into her apartments, into her prep room, which had no bugs?
Rhys’s skin prickled with their own non-heat-related sheen of sweat. “Is our sister okay?”
Dressa waved the question away, and their deliberate breach of protocol in naming Arianna their sister. “She’s fine. Arianna is . . . fine. She’ll recover. I—” She made a vague gesture in the air, like she was trying to describe a concept she couldn’t picture. “I have to go away for a bit.”
She stopped to look at them—she wasn’t much shorter than they were tall. Adeius, but she’d grown into a poised and polished person all around, and when had that happened? When Rhys had been holed up at the Academy, cramming for exams. When they’d been on their ship near the border, watching for what baffling thing the Kidaa would do next. It felt like another universe, not this one they shared with their younger siblings. Rhys had the uncomfortable sense they didn’t know Dressa as well as they thought anymore.
Truthspoken. She would always, always be Truthspoken. And they would not.
Dressa looked down to play with a loose thread on her sleeve. There was definitely something she couldn’t say but needed them to know. What she needed them to know wasn’t the fact she was going away.
“You’re going away?” Rhys ventured. It was, at least, a starting point to information.
That she was in danger was a given—Arianna had been attacked on a vector previously thought to be a low risk. Would there be more attacks from Green Magickers? Why had the magicker attacked Arianna in the first place? It was probably wise for Dressa to retreat from court to a safer place—Rhys would have suggested it themself if they’d thought they had any right to, but they also knew it wasn’t the best move politically.
Was the Seritarchus so rattled that he’d weaken an already wobbling control to keep his second daughter safe?
“Um, why are you going away? I’d think your father would want you here, to help with Arianna’s duties while she recovers, if she’ll need time to recover.”
Dressa made a rude noise, pulling her overcoat tighter around herself—not that it was cold. “Arianna will be up and terrorizing the staff again in a day or so. Father wants me to form my own engagement, just in case Arianna totally screws this up with Lesander, or if there’s another attack—the Seritarchus wants a backup plan. So I’m going on a tour to visit his top three eligible candidates—whose names will not be released publicly, just that I’m going on the tour. So no one gets jealous and gets ideas about the health and safety of the others.”
Rhys cocked their head. She was lying. It was all a perfectly good explanation, and they didn’t know which part of it wasn’t true, but she was lying about something. And she wanted them to know she was lying.
Rhys tried, in everyday life, not to use the evaku they’d learned from being around their siblings growing up. They especially tried not to use it when they were on duty. In the Academy and on their ship, they’d gone out of their way to present a show of social awkwardness, and after a time of suspicion—people wondering if they were, in fact, a secret fourth Truthspoken—people had just begun to assume Rhys was who they presented themself to be. They hated that that wasn’t entirely true. But the deception was necessary. Few people would want to serve with someone who’d absorbed almost as much about seeing through Human behavior and how to manipulate it as a Truthspoken.
Here at the palace, though, with Dressa, their senses were fully tuned. They watched every angle of her posture, ran her tone through all the arcane calculations Arianna and Dressa had taught them years ago. That were now just second nature.
Something was very wrong. Beyond the fact that Arianna, the Truthspoken Heir, had been attacked in plain sight.
And that really was weird, wasn’t it? They kept thinking that was weird. They’d watched Dressa tackle the magicker and had been intensely proud of her just then. They’d been a few steps behind, but the magicker had slipped away into the crowd, flickering in and out of sight.
That had been weird, too. They’d been around Green Magickers before—there was a magicker on most ships in the Navy, though the magicker for Rhys’s ship had retired the year before and their replacement hadn’t come in yet. There had been several at the Academy, too, including one of their teachers—but they’d never seen a magicker disappear like that.
There had been something intensely wrong about that, like the air had bent with negative energy. Had Dressa felt that? Was that part of what she was trying to say, that something was going on with the Green Magickers and, what, she was being sent to investigate it? Rhys wished they could go with her.
“So, okay, you’re going on a dating trip.”
“Courting,” Dressa corrected. “And yeah, I’ll try and actually enjoy it. I’m not as opposed to the general idea of marriage as Arianna. That’s why I wanted to tell you—I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Rhys’s heart sank. It had taken most of a week to get to Valon from the border. They only had two weeks’ total leave, and they’d been hoping to spend some time with Dressa.
“And what about Arianna?”
“What about her? I told you, she’s fine. A magicker can hardly take down a Truthspoken—if you mean what are the guards going to do to protect her better, or what is the Seritarchus doing about all of this—that’s up to the Seritarchus. He hasn’t told me that.” She took their arm again and started walking. “You should visit Arianna, after I leave. At least she’ll be here to keep you company.”
Lie. That last was a lie. What the hell?
A cold sweat broke out all over Rhys, and they strained their senses to the limit.
Dressa was distressed, yes. But she wasn’t . . . she wasn’t grieving, Rhys didn’t think. Arianna wasn’t . . . Adeius, the unthinkable. Arianna wasn’t dead.
“You’re sure Arianna is well?”
“Well enough.”
True.
“Dressa, you know I’m not that close to Arianna anymore. Not like you and me. Can’t you stay at least a few more days, until my leave is up? I don’t know when I’ll get leave again. Please don’t make me spend all that time with Mother.”
Not that Rhys would. They shuddered to even think it. They’d do their one obligatory visit to their mother, like they always did. And if Dressa wasn’t here, they’d just go back early.
Dressa shrugged. “Arianna’s a stiff-edged brat, but I know she’ll want to see you.”
True, and true. Well, it didn’t take a genius to know the first was true. Rhys wasn’t so sure about Dressa’s read on the second.
Was it Arianna who needed to tell them something and was sending a message through Dressa? But no, that didn’t feel right. So why was Dressa insisting they see Arianna? It wasn’t out of familial duty, Dressa’s tone wasn’t right for that. Though . . . she was tense enough for this to be about familial duty. Her walk was all airy graciousness, but her arm in theirs was rigidly tense.
They strolled around the far end of the garden and started back toward the doors. Rhys had marked the two guards just visible inside the glass doors, one guard outside, and one standing at the far edge of the terrace looking out over the grounds below. Not subtle, but not obtrusive, either.
Then, from one step to the next, everything Dressa had said, and everything she hadn’t said, clicked. Rhys had learned to think in patterns around their siblings, in metaphors and misdirection, because that’s how Truthspoken thought. Even Dressa, open as she was, wasn’t the whole of herself in public, not by a long shot.
It wasn’t Dressa who was going away, was it? It wasn’t Arianna, at least the Arianna Rhys knew, who would want to see them. Who was so insistent on seeing Rhys, because Rhys, if few others, would know who she was.
Oh, no. Rhys was starting to understand, and they didn’t like it at all.
12
APPREHENSION
The Kidaa are the first non-Human sentients we’ve encountered, and though their ways are still largely a mystery to us, and they’ve shown little interest in helping us attain a higher level of technology, they’ve also shown little interest in conquering us or anyone else. I’ll call that an optimal first contact scenario.
ADMIRAL BRYNC QUACH IN HER REPORT “THE STATE OF AFFAIRS WITH THE KIDAA”
Rhys’s mouth twitch was the only thing that betrayed their flash of rage. Dressa stiffened, reading the reaction.
Then they both smoothed out their postures and kept walking.
How dare the Seritarchus do this to Dressa. Adeius. Dressa didn’t enjoy being Truthspoken. She worked hard to not be seen as so rigidly in control as that. She didn’t want to be the Heir. And if she had to be the Heir, she wouldn’t want to do it while being Arianna.
That’s what was going on, wasn’t it? Rhys had seen one of the times they’d switched as children—they’d done it not long after Rhys had started tagging along with them. Rhys hadn’t had enough evaku then to tell why they kept giggling at the weirdest moments. Their performances had been nearly perfect.
It hadn’t lasted longer than a day. How long would this last? Long enough, at least, for “Dressa” to plausibly go visiting potential suitors. Which would factor in travel time, visiting time, and . . . it would be weeks, at least. Maybe longer.
This certainly wasn’t Dressa’s idea. She was much too tense for that. Or Arianna’s? Maybe. But Dressa had dropped that comment about her father wanting her to go on a trip. This had the Seritarchus’s signature all over it.
“Don’t,” Dressa whispered, and they realized how tense they themself were getting.
Rhys glanced over, met her eyes. There was pleading in hers. There was panic.
“Yeah, I’ll visit Arianna. And hope she’s not too much of a brat.” They attempted a smile. They weren’t sure they pulled it off.
Dressa gripped their hand and started swinging both of their arms together, like they’d done as kids.
“Tell me about life on your ship. Is it good? Are they treating you okay?”
And where would Arianna be if Dressa was to take her place? Had the magicker cursed her that badly? But “Dressa’s” trip would end. So that meant Arianna, the real Arianna, would be back at some point. Was she being sent to hunt down rogue magickers? Was she being sent away to keep her safe, was Dressa now a decoy for other attacks? Was Dressa expendable, was she bait?
“Oh, it’s fine,” Rhys said. “I’m treated like crap, which means I’m treated like the new person onboard, and that’s exactly how it should be.” They shrugged. “But we’ve got a new ensign coming onboard by the time I go back, so I won’t be the newest anymore.”
Was Arianna going to be Dressa, then? Was that the reason for that trip? Some sort of covert mission? They thought back to Dressa’s earlier words, probing for the exact lies. They didn’t have enough information. The lie could be that Dressa wasn’t actually her going on the trip, or the trip itself could be the lie. Both. Neither. They didn’t have enough information, and their job on their ship was to sift through reports and raw data, checking for errors. They hated not having enough information.
Dressa squeezed Rhys’s hand as they stopped before a budding orange tree.
Rhys reached up, running fingers down the branches overhead. “Truly, Cousin, how badly was Arianna cursed?”
There was a lie in that, too, Rhys could sense it. Yes, Green Magickers could lay curses on people, but what would a magicker gain from cursing the Truthspoken Heir in public? It would do absolutely nothing to further the cause of the magickers and only bring down greater oversight on them, which they couldn’t want. Even if the magicker was mentally unstable, there was too much structure to this pattern of events.
Dressa stared at them, not answering. She’d crossed lines tonight in telling them what she already had, but whatever was behind this line was something she could not tell. Or maybe something that wasn’t hers to tell.
There was an orchestration to all this, but whose? Had the magicker been the pawn of someone else, maybe one of the high houses not chosen to marry into the Rhialden Seritarcracy? Was this revenge, or a plot to scare Lesander off?
Or had Arianna not wished to marry Lesander badly enough to make that kind of display herself? She’d have had no choice in the engagement. Political marriage was her duty, uniting strong bloodlines and strong politics. Their mother’s match to the Seritarchus had been politics, and that match had made their mother project her misery to everyone around her. Was that Arianna’s fate? Was that part of the reason for this switch?
Rhys wouldn’t wish their mother’s situation on anyone—Arianna or Lesander. Or their children.
“The engagement is okay? This didn’t hurt Arianna’s standing with Lesander?”
“The engagement is fine, as far as I know.” Dressa blew out her breath, looked away.
Was that . . . oh, was that an actual blush?
Rhys very carefully didn’t raise their brows. If Dressa would be Arianna, she’d have the duty of courting Lesander. She’d be signing the engagement with Lesander, if it hadn’t been done already. Adeius, how would that all untangle? Would Lesander, at any point, be told?
Dressa swung their arm again. She wanted to change the subject.
So Rhys, straining to pull subjects from the air, started rambling about their pet project—which was taking more and more of their scarce free time on the ship. It had started when they’d been assigned to organize the scan data from when their ship, the border scout Occam’s Storm, passed through the edges of Kidaa-held systems.
“I’ve been studying the Kidaa clans these last months, and—I don’t think what our scholars wrote about them covers even the half of how complex their society is. They’re really different from us, yes, but you know their technology. They’re leagues ahead of us in how they navigate and manipulate spacetime. We don’t know how their ships work, or why they’ll decide to stay on a planet only a few months, or what might make them decide to make a permanent settlement versus moving on. They don’t have cities. I know a lot of scholars think their society is on a long decline from a past golden age, but I’m not so sure about that.”
Those first hours of pouring through ship data, Rhys had found a pattern that itched at their evaku senses. Then, like with Arianna and the magicker now, things with the Kidaa didn’t quite add up. And from there, they’d started digging. At first just to satisfy curiosity, but then, because they couldn’t find the information they needed in traditional research papers and military reports on the Kidaa. Rhys didn’t think it was because the information was classified—it just wasn’t there.
Could they seriously have been the only one to notice the odd symmetries in Kidaa societies? Like the way Clan Ice and Clan Hydrogen walked—it was very distinctively this forward rolling gait among their four legs, arms held stiffly to their gnarled hides. Those two clans were very different, and they lived in different sectors, one mostly planet-based and the other space-based, and they didn’t even share as many common genetics as some of the other clans. But yet, among all the Kidaa clans, only those two walked the same. Why?
Dressa plucked a dead flower hanging from a branch that needed pruned and began twirling it through her fingers. “Why don’t you write a book? On what you’ve found.”
Rhys’s face went hot. “I—maybe. It’s just a thought. I mean, just theories. I still have a lot of research I need to do.” They shrugged. And would anyone want to publish, let alone read, a bunch of theories from a junior lieutenant who was trained in the command track, not xenopsychology?
Dressa’s lips quirked up. “Researching the Kidaa, of all things. Never thought that would be your off-hours haunt.” She started singing, “In my off-hours, I haunt the—”
“Adeius, Dressa, don’t get that stuck in my head again.” It was a hit from last year and incredibly raunchy. Rhys had still been in the Academy, and another upper classer had made the greenies all sing the damn song for twenty-six hours straight. In their underwear. On the front lawn. The officers, of course, had ignored the whole thing.
Rhys hadn’t gotten the song out of their head for months.
Dressa grinned and threw her head back, spinning out of reach, tossing the flower she’d just plucked. “In my off-hours, I haunt the bar on Sixth Street—”
Adeius, Rhys wished they’d never told her that story. She’d be taunting them with that forever.
They lunged after her and she danced another few steps back, crooning, “—and we made some music between satin sheets, with—”
