Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (27 page)

“What’s your angle?” Malkor asked.

“My guests would of course stay on as advisors to Isonde, and be given prominent positions within the government. She would take their input on certain matters, and—”

“Not theirs,” Malkor interrupted, “yours. What do
you
get from arranging this alliance?”

He expected to hear a line about how proud Dolan was to be able to assist his countrymen, to try to mend relations between the empire and the Wyrd Worlds, or even something about doing the right thing for no reason other than that it was just.

“I want the princess.”

Malkor didn’t wonder for a second which princess he meant. “Not happening.”

“What use will you have for her once ‘Isonde’ wins the Game?” Dolan smiled, a look that set Malkor on edge. “I dare say she’s a liability, someone you couldn’t trust to wander around freely. Let me look after her.”

“And by ‘look after her’ you mean…?” The
kin’shaa
knew. Frutt. He
knew
, and he wanted her. Malkor eyed the entrance to the garden. How quickly could he find Kayla if he sprinted out of here this instant, find her and assure her safety?

“Perhaps I think she’ll make a good wife.”

He’d suck vacuum first.

Dolan arched a brow, giving him a slow once-over. “Maybe you mean to ‘look after’ her yourself.”

Fine job he’d done of it so far. Malkor didn’t bother to answer.

“The princess will be safe with me,” Dolan said, “I assure you.”

Malkor drew himself up, and his tone, when he spoke, was polite, if a touch frosty. “Thank you for your generous offer of aid, but I’m afraid we must decline.”

“For now, perhaps. We’ll speak again soon, Agent Rua.” The
kin’shaa
offered a short bow and made his way back to where the silent Wyrds waited.

Malkor headed for the exit as quickly as he could without knocking people down.

* * *

Kayla must have spoken to everyone at the party this evening. Certainly everyone seemed to have approached her. Everyone, that was, except Malkor. He had arrived at the dinner hall over an hour ago and hovered on the edge, in sight but too distant to engage.

For the best.

After their conversation yesterday and his insistence that she remain as Isonde, she didn’t want to speak to him. Something was on his mind, though. He had an intensity about him that unsettled her.

What—did he think she meant to flee? Rip the hologram off and declare to everyone that she was a fraud, that the real Isonde had been struck down? Or was something else afoot?

The head of state for Terra Prime descended on her with a gush of smiles and congratulations. She fully expected him to immediately turn the conversation to their mutual trade agreement. When instead he discussed only her success in the arena that day and his well wishes for her continued good fortune, the truth of the situation struck. He expected her to win. He hadn’t come to discuss a sticky political situation with Princess Isonde, he’d come to make the first inroads with soon-to-be Empress-Apparent Isonde, one half of the couple set to inherit the throne on the emperor’s death.

The party grew by one, then three, then six as others, sensing room at her side, joined their circle. Isonde, already a star in the sea of power-players, was a constellation unto herself now. Kayla was deep in a conversation with senior members of the Sovereign Council when the satellite that had orbited all evening was pulled in by her gravity.

Malkor. Approaching her, clearly on a mission.

The governor to Kayla’s left frowned, turning her head to murmur something to her lieutenant governor. Beside her other murmurs arose. Here a nervous gesture, there a bracing gulp of a drink. The senior councilors broke off and their stares turned chilly, but no one looked in Malkor’s direction. Instead, the uncertainty focused on someone behind her.

Intriguing. Kayla readied a polite smile, curious about the prejudice against whomever approached. The smile froze on her face when a gentle voice she recalled too well spoke Isonde’s name.

“How lovely you look this evening,” the
kin’shaa
said. Conversation halted and people shifted away from the Wyrd, trying not to look like they recoiled even as they gave ground.

As Grand Advisor of Science and Technology to the current emperor, Dolan was too important to ignore. That didn’t stop her companions from looking like they wished to be elsewhere. At least she knew now why Malkor had been trying to come to her rescue.

“Master Dolan.” She didn’t bother to nod in greeting.

“White is exquisite on the princess, don’t you agree, Sir Jahvier?” Dolan looked directly at a man who’d attempted to sidle away from his company.

“I— but of course. Princess Isonde is as lovely as ever.” Jahvier smiled weakly.

No one offered small talk to fill the awkward void in the air.

Dolan’s lips quirked, his sarcastic smirk deepening. “I’m sure I’ve interrupted a stimulating conversation. I wonder, though, if you’ve had enough of talking for one night, Princess?”

“I was enjoying my company greatly, to this moment.”

“No doubt.” His lavender robes stirred as he angled himself to more fully center his attention on her. “Surely it is exhausting to be always speaking politics, though.”

Kayla flexed her fingers, itching to shove him away from her with all her strength. As Isonde, she could not. He and Isonde had a working, if not warm, relationship. Isonde had told her that they interfaced from time to time, mostly during social affairs at court.

“Come. Enough work.” He held out a hand to her, palm up. She made no move to touch him.

They had everyone’s attention now. The look in his good eye said it all: he wouldn’t back down.

You were there
, she wanted to say.
On Ordoch. I saw you, I remember. You killed my Vayne.
She wanted to spit in his face. Her fingers curled around the spot where a kris dagger should have been strapped to her thigh. She would jam it up under his ribs, punching with all her force, her hand making a hollow in his stomach as she drove it in. Then she’d withdraw and do it again.

But Isonde never would.

Instead, with everyone watching her and a burning in the back of her throat that was loss and rage and hatred, she laid her hand on his.

“Where to?”

As he led her to the dance floor her gaze connected with Malkor’s. He’d stopped near Vid and Trinan, all three equally worried. She shook her head when he started to come after her. She could do this. One dance with Dolan to maintain appearances, then she’d quit the evening before the elite of the empire witnessed the impeccable Princess Isonde commit murder. The last thing any of them needed was Malkor making a scene. Vid laid a hand on Malkor’s arm, halting him as well.

“You seem to have something of a watchdog, Princess,” Dolan murmured, leading her into the crowd and away from her guards. Astute bastard.

He might have been handsome once, in the Wyrd way, before the Kalichma Ritual scarred him. The thought stopped her.
In the Wyrd way
? When had she decided there was any other way to be handsome? He was short, coming to her chin. It was said that in Ilmenans especially, the height (or lack thereof) of a man marked his power. He must have been an impressive psionic once.

No longer. Now he was as ruined as she.

He drew her through rings of dancers and into an empty pocket near the center where Malkor couldn’t see them. A pocket that subtly widened. They had privacy in the middle of it all, and an audience large enough to guarantee her best behavior. He turned to face her, that permanent half-smile on his face, and brought her closer by gently tugging on her hand. She tried not to flinch when he reached for her other hand. At least the dance required no more than this, intermittent hand-holding between turns and a series of steps that would bring them around each other.

She forced herself to look into his eyes, both of them, the healthy and the blank one.

“I’m here. What did you want?”

He didn’t miss a beat, even with her brusque opening. “Your company.”

“And what else?” They stepped apart before coming back together. He was younger than she remembered, younger than her own father but still older than her eldest brother and his twin sister had been.

“That isn’t enough?”

“Not for you.”

Was Isonde this rude with him? Not for the first time she felt at a loss when trying to play Isonde’s relationships. She’d blanked on someone earlier who had apparently been a longtime confidant of the princess. She softened. “I mean, you are very busy after all, with your guests.”

“They have little interest in the general amusements of the Game, and I found myself craving the company of someone who spoke aloud, if only for a short time.”

“And so you sought me?”

He smiled. “Who better?”

Perhaps someone who doesn’t intend to kill you before the Game is over.

“You’re quite possibly the most influential woman in the empire.”

She relaxed a fraction. This she could handle.

“So you
do
have an agenda.” She opened up as much space between them as the dance allowed. “Let’s hear it.”

“Didn’t I claim a lack of interest in politics this evening?”

“I doubt you ever tire of politics.”

He inclined his head. “Tonight, though, I prefer to dance.”

She stepped to the side as he did, bringing them shoulder to shoulder, their gazes in line.

Kin’shaa
. Exile. And with good reason. He should have been executed for his ethical violations against his own people. Well before joining the empire, well before coming to Ordoch as a supposed emissary of peace and betraying her family, he had been a scientist. A neuroengineer. Every Wyrd had read the account of his crimes.

She spun around him and he again took her hands, smiling as he watched her, no doubt sensing her tension. Reveling in the power of it.

Dolan’s cutting-edge research had been funded by the Ilmenan government. He’d developed an advanced AI, a synthetic brain that could interpret commands sent telepathically. It was rudimentary, he’d reported, but reliable. It would revolutionize the service and machine industry. Bots of every type—domestic, educational, constructional, militaristic—would be able to receive and act on commands through a psionic link with the user. His work was so advanced, with such a widespread potential for good, that he’d been allocated unlimited funds to improve the design.

And he’d improved it.

His quest to refine the psionic AI outstripped that of his peers, and unbeknownst to them he began his own research project in the other direction. He developed an AI not only capable of receiving telepathic commands, but sending them.

Kayla stepped away from him, trying to picture the slight man before her as the orchestrator of such a heinous experiment. He looked like any other councilor or advisor here. Understated lavender robes, zipped from toe to jaw, said he eschewed any vanity about his form. His only adornment was a series of rings, and his smile was polite, if a bit mocking. It would be hard for those gathered to imagine that he had raped an entire group of people mentally. Repeatedly, for years.

He’d set up a group of test subjects for his AI. She couldn’t recall what the cover story was, but all of his test subjects believed they were brought to live in a community for some other reason. He had one goal: override the minds and personalities of others on a protracted basis to see just how far he could push them beyond their natural inclinations. While a powerful Wyrd could, with enough force or surprise, inflict mind control on someone, it was severely limited—by proximity to the victim, the strength of the perpetrator’s psi powers, and of course the perpetrator’s need to be conscious the whole time.

An AI capable of sending sophisticated telepathic signals, however, with a direct and unflagging power source, could send those signals indefinitely. Dolan, using that AI as an amplifier, had controlled each and every member of the community, warping them into someone else. He made the peaceful violent, the shy gregarious. He manipulated love and hate, fear and loyalty. He controlled them down to their basic moral impetuses, determining their compass of right and wrong. He violated them on every level, using them as tools against each other. Who knows how far he would have taken it if he hadn’t been caught.

He clasped her hand, one of his thumbs moving over her skin in an almost-caress. The music pulled her toward him, away. Toward, around.

He deserved death. But even for a criminal who had tormented the souls of so many, Ilmena had no death penalty. The Kalichma Ritual should have killed him. Instead, like a festering supervirus that resisted every antibiotic thrown at it, he’d survived.

Survived to kill her
il’haar
.

Screw it. Scene or no scene, she had to leave.

Kayla pulled her hands from his with a snap. He stopped as well, a brow arched, looking amused.

“You must excuse me, the tournament begins early again tomorrow.”

He gave her a deep bow, eyes on her the whole time. “Of course.”

As she stepped off, he stopped her with a raised hand. “Princess? I should have mentioned this before, but… How like your brother you look. The resemblance is striking.” He bowed again. “Sleep well.”

The offhand comment shouldn’t have raised the hair on the back of her neck except for one thing—Isonde didn’t have a brother.

K
ayla collapsed back against the doors to her room as soon as they slid shut behind her. Her chest heaved and the breath echoed in the dark room. He knew. Dolan
knew.
She’d fled on slippered feet all the way to her room, too panicked to wait for the maglifts to free up. She’d taken the stairs in leaps, all the way feeling someone running her down.

Five years of hiding. For nothing. What the frutt had she been thinking, coming to Falanar? Bringing Corinth here?

Corinth—

Her doors hissed apart without warning and she fell back into the hallway, into someone’s arms. Before she could struggle the man wrapped her up hard, immobilizing her.