CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ren wiped blood out of his eyes and tried to grip the sword tighter with his sweat-slicked hands, waiting for Ebba to send the next wave of drones at him.
The others were coming, but they were running up the hill, still too far. Ren was tired and cut and bruised in a dozen places, and he didn’t dare look behind him to see how Sebastian was doing.
Half the swarm peeled away, flying down the slope of the hill toward the crew. The rest remained, buzzing, in front of Ren. He waited for them to attack.
And waited.
The drones stayed where they were, hovering. Ren turned his head to look, seeing the others climbing up, but making out Jaime by his thick head of hair, standing completely still, arms extended.
Ren realized Jaime must be holding the drones back with his mind, and he waded into them, swinging his sword, trying to destroy as many as he could. He didn’t know how long Jaime could maintain his control over them, especially with the rest of the drones headed toward him. Ren heard the crack of gunfire and saw Mags, Rylan, and Bo shooting at the drones approaching them.
“We need the doctor,” he shouted because he couldn’t see her among the others. “Sebastian is hurt!”
He whirled, slamming the flat of his sword into more drones and came face to face with Ebba, still seated in her one-person drone. Her lips were parted in an angry snarl, and Ren could see she held the bag containing the Heart of Arcadia in one hand and in the other was the pistol she had used to shoot Sebastian.
He raised the sword. This time he was going to stop her or die trying.
She raised the gun, but there was a sudden pop of sound and the rotor of her drone exploded. The drone spun out, tumbling down the hill with Ebba in it. Ren turned and saw Mags lowering her rifle. She and Bo turned and approached the fallen machine. All around them, drones were falling from the sky.
Ren turned, dropping the sword as he fell to his knees beside Sebastian. He didn’t know what to do. Sebastian was so still, his skin looking gray. Ren could hardly bear to look at the terrible wound below the ribs on his left side — it was a mess of blood, burned skin and cloth. He couldn’t tell if Sebastian was breathing. He didn’t know what to do—
Ren swayed, realizing that he was hyperventilating and close to passing out. He needed to steady his breathing. That was something at least; he could breathe for both of them.
He pressed his mouth to Sebastian’s, tasting blood. He focused on pushing air into Sebastian. In and out. Just that simple act became his entire focus, until he felt rather than heard a faint groan.
He pulled back, brushing hair out of Sebastian’s eyes, seeing them blink and focus. “Ren?” he whispered.
“It’s all right, you’re all right.” Something was pulling at Ren, and he wrenched away, trying to stay protectively over Sebastian, but a hand stronger than he could resist caught his shoulder.
“You gotta move back, Ren.” He stared up and saw it was Rylan. “Let the doc get to him.”
He realized that it wasn’t just him and Sebastian under the tree anymore. Lydia pushed past him, already digging into the bag strapped to her side. Ren shifted back but stayed as near as he could while she put an air regulator over Sebastian’s nose and mouth.
Ren spared a glance around. The crew of the Prince was gathered close — Mags kneeling, with Bo standing behind her, Jaime and Rylan standing at Sebastian’s feet, while Simi and Kaz perched on the four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle from the ship — but further out, the sides of the hill were littered with lifeless drones. Beyond that, three Arcadian ships — small planetary transports — had landed. Ren could see people approaching cautiously — mostly security forces, but he also saw the regent marching angrily up the hill toward them and, to his surprise, his grandfather. He almost stood up to call to them, but then there was a cry of pain from Sebastian, and Ren turned quickly back.
The doctor was bent over him, trying to put a patch over the wound on his side. Sebastian moaned, trying feebly to move away from her touch, and she injected something into his neck. Sebastian relaxed, his eyes closing and face going slack. Lydia pressed a med monitor to his chest and studied the readings, her face grim.
“This is more than I can deal with on the ship. We need to get him to a medical facility, a good one.”
Mags looked up at Ren from where she knelt on the other side of Sebastian, and Ren saw a swift calculation in her blue eyes.
Suddenly she drew a pistol from her belt and pointed it at Ren’s head.
He heard an intake of breath from Lydia, and saw, from the corner of his eye, Rylan start forward with Jaime catching at him, but Ren’s entire focus was on Mags.
“Tell them,” she said, her voice flat. “Either take him to a hospital or I shoot you. I’m sorry, Ren, I do like you, and Sebastian will kill me for this, but he doesn’t die today.”
He knew she wasn’t bluffing, but it didn’t make him afraid at all. Just the opposite. They were united in this one absolute certainty — that Sebastian was worth saving.
“That’s an option,” he told her, “but it may not come to that.” Ren stood up. “Regent, we have a badly injured man. He needs to go to the palace hospital immediately.”
She came to a halt, her face filled with disapproval. “That man is a criminal.”
“He’s a human being,” Ren said. “Regent — Aunt Ilona, please. He is my heart, and you must help him.”
He stood there trembling. He didn’t have a weapon in his hand anymore, but he knew that he was capable of tearing her and every one of them apart if necessary.
The regent’s lips pressed together. One of her hands twitched slightly, and there was a shout of warning from one of the ships. A medical transport stretcher came flying out from it, moving over the ground like Ren’s hover bike.
It came quickly up the hill, stopping by Sebastian. Lydia glanced up at it. “I haven’t seen one of these since med school,” she said. “Stand back, everyone.”
The stretcher hovered over Sebastian, the bottom of it sliding open as it lifted him up with an anti-gravity field until he was inside the transport.
The regent nodded to Lydia. “The doctor may go with him back to the palace — under guard,” she added.
Lydia and two guards began escorting the stretcher back to the Arcadian ship, trotting alongside it as it moved. But the regent raised a hand when the others started to follow, and the guards around her raised their guns. “The rest of you aren’t going anywhere until this is settled. Where is the Heart?”
Ren’s grandfather had reached them by now, huffing a little from the walk. “Ilona, Ren is hurt! What is wrong with you?”
“He’s also broken every order I’ve given him and helped prisoners escape,” the regent said icily. “I’m trying to discover if my nephew is a traitor.”
Ren touched his head, bloody from a cut on his scalp where a drone had hit him. “I’m fine, truly. And it was Ebba who wanted to use the Heart to become the next monarch. The woman you’ve been allowing to roam around the palace freely.”
The regent allowed herself a small frustrated sigh. “She was supposed to be confined to her rooms. Like you.”
Ren looked back at Mags. “Did you kill Ebba?”
“Not for lack of trying,” Mags said, “but I only hit her airship.”
Bo coughed politely, spreading his hands in a friendly gesture as the guards swung around to look at him. “Ebba’s unconscious in the drone wreckage,” he said. “Might need some medical attention herself if you’re so inclined, but her breathing was steady.” He reached carefully into his pocket and pulled out the laser gun. “I took this off of her—”
A couple of guards moved quickly toward him, looking nervous as they took the gun from him. “Just don’t touch the trigger,” Bo suggested helpfully. “Or drop it. Also, the bag slung over my back? You probably want to take that too; your necklace thing is in there.”
The guard brought the bag to Ren and his family and started to hand it to the regent, but his grandfather intercepted. “No, Ilona,” he said, snatching the bag. “Don’t touch it; it’s too dangerous.”
Ren stared at him, thinking to the conversation in his rooms, when his grandfather had talked about what the Heart had done to his wife and daughter. Ren remembered too what Ebba had said. “Grandfather,” Ren said slowly. “Papa. Was it you? Did you hire Ebba to steal the jewel in the first place?”
The regent rounded on him furiously. “Ren, are you insane? You blame everyone else for your own mistakes—”
His grandfather had reached into the bag to pull out the necklace, and he stared at it in his hand. “Enough,” he said quietly. Then he looked up at his daughter. “Enough. He’s right. It was me.”
The regent’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Father — what?”
“Don’t you see?” he said, tears in his eyes. “This” — he shook the necklace in his hand — “is a curse. You were being pressured to put it on, to become the monarch, since Ren couldn’t. But I’ve seen what it does — it changes people, drains them. Your mother, your sister. They lost themselves to it and then they died, both too soon. I didn’t protect them, but I couldn’t lose you too.” His voice broke. “My little girl.”
“Father,” the regent looked close to tears herself. “This is — it’s our tradition, it’s how we’ve survived.” The regent reached out to him, and the necklace.
“No.” Ren’s grandfather shook his head angrily. “Let it end. No more!”
He flung the necklace up and away into the sky. It arced up and then fell toward the ground, everyone frozen watching it, except for one person who reached out and caught the jewel in his hand.
Jaime stood still, holding the necklace, his eyes fluttering closed.
One of the guards started toward him, but the regent made a sharp gesture. “No, don’t touch him.” Her voice was raw. “It called out to him. The Heart — I heard it.”
Ren stared, his mouth gone dry. “Jaime?” he said. “Jaime.” He took a breath. “Monarch?”
Rylan made a low desperate sound in his throat. Hearing it, Jaime opened his eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said to Rylan and only to him. “I’m still me.” He looked around at the small crowd watching him, gaze landing on Ren. “But she wants to talk to you.”
“Who?”
Jaime took a few steps closer to him. Ren could see that the pupils of Jaime’s wide brown eyes were contracting and expanding rapidly. “The queen,” Jaime said. “She’s waiting for you.”
He reached out with the hand that wasn’t holding the jewel to grasp Ren’s wrist, and suddenly the world fell away.
Ren opened his eyes to find himself in a bright room.
Jaime let go of his hand. “I know this is weird.”
“How did we get here?”
“We haven’t gone anywhere, you’re still standing exactly where you were. I’m providing a kind of telepathic conduit between you and the AI in the jewel. This space that you see is a construct to help you make sense of everything.” Jaime glanced around. “I’m not sure exactly what it is, though. It’s supposed to be somewhere familiar and reassuring to you.”
The room was small but filled with sunshine. Ren recognized the spaceship models dangling from the ceiling, the shelves cluttered with battered toys and maps he’d drawn. “This was my childhood bedroom. Before we moved to the palace.”
“It’s nice.” Jaime sat down on the narrow bed. “I’m just gonna hang out here. You go on.” He nodded to the closed door.
“But Sebastian—”
“He’s on the ship now,” Jaime said. “And time moves differently for us here. To everyone watching we’ve been standing still for only a second.”
Ren supposed he might as well treat this as a dream that he was having and try to forget the outside world. It felt more real than any dream, though. He could see so many small details, like the marks on the wall that charted his height since he was a toddler and the title on the spine of a book borrowed from the library — Ten True Space Adventures. As he grasped the handle of the door he could feel it solid against his hand. But when he stepped outside the bedroom he was no longer in his childhood home. He stood instead in the throne room of the palace.
The throne room sounded grander than it was. The room had been a dining hall on the ship that had become Arcadia’s seat of government, chosen because it had a great many tables and chairs and so was good for meetings. The tables had been welded together to form one long, haphazard length for people to gather around, with a chair on the very end not matching the sleek pre-Singularity styles of the others. It was large and rough, hewn from one of Arcadia’s red-leafed trees. On it sat a woman Ren recognized from official holo portraits and murals.
Arcadia had had many monarchs over the years, but there had only ever been one queen.
Morowa Edugyan looked older than in the pictures, her hair entirely steel gray, done in long, tight braids that were gathered back and swept over one shoulder. As Ren moved closer he could see that her dark skin had sallow undertones and that her body was thin. She was wearing a loose cream-colored top with matching pants that might have been pajamas. Her feet were bare. But her posture was tall and straight as she sat on the throne, and her eyes missed nothing as Ren approached.
“My queen,” he said and bowed.
“My grandson,” she said. “Oh, I know you’re several generations removed from that, but it’s tiresome to say all the great-greats.” Her voice was higher-pitched than in the recordings Ren had heard. She raised a thin eyebrow at him. “I used to practice making my voice deeper before giving speeches. I had some idea it would make me sound like I knew what I was talking about.”
“Can you read my thoughts?” Ren asked. “I’m sorry, of course you can, that’s how we’re speaking right now.”
“I’m not hearing anything you choose not to verbalize, Ren,” she replied. “It’s just that every descendant I meet here for the first time notices the voice right away.” Her smile was wry. “It’s a good first lesson on the difference between public perception and reality.”
“Is this what happens with the monarchs?” he asked. He imagined his mother standing in this room where he was now. “They come here and talk with you?”
“It’s a little more convoluted in your case, but yes. In the beginning it’s easier to speak in a construct like this. We have conversations; they ask questions and I do my best to answer. Over time, they become more comfortable, and it’s like my thoughts and memories become their own.” Her mouth turned downward. “And therein lies the problem.”
The queen stood up from the chair, rubbing her hands over the cloth of her pants. It was a gesture that Ren recognized as one he often made when he was nervous. She walked to the wide windows that took up much of one wall, staring out over the sunlit city.
“You’re a very polite young man, and I appreciate you treating me like the queen, but I’m under no illusions about what I am.” She looked up at him with a sigh. “I know that I’m the memories of a long-dead woman merged with the coding of an AI. I can learn new things, grow in a fashion, but I’m not human, and because of that it’s taken me longer than it should have to understand the consequences of…” She gestured at the space between them. “All this.”
The view outside the window changed and darkened. Ren saw the darkness of space in it, and distantly, only a little larger than the size of his eye, a small blue planet. He stepped closer to the window. “Is that Earth?”
The queen nodded. “I helped write the history books, but it’s still impossible to convey how it felt. How different it was from life now.” She turned from the window. “We were on this ship, my husband and I, taking our son to see the outer reaches of the solar system. It was a gift because he’d done so well at school.” The view was changing again, moving close to a planet with rings. Ren was torn with wanting to stare out the window and trying to pay attention to the queen. She rubbed at her forehead. “The computer part of me could tell you how much fuel was expended on that trip. The frivolous waste of resources, but I remember it as being so beautiful. We had a wife too,” she added softly. “I only recorded her name in a few places, because it hurt so much to think about her, but it was Kris, and I remember loving her. She stayed behind on Earth, along with my parents, along with… everything.”
Ren turned away from the window. “I’m sorry.”
The queen smiled sadly. “It’s a question of scale. The loss of a wife, parents — it’s unbearable, but it can be understood. How to convey the loss of a planet? What about many planets and billions of people? An entire way of life? It’s impossible. I don’t have the capacity for that.”
“But you survived. You saved everyone on your ship.”
Her thin shoulders stiffened briefly. “The Singularity announced themselves, just before they struck. They wanted the humans to know that it wasn’t a computer failure or some glitch. There was intent. But in those few seconds we were able to gain control of the ship’s computers.” She shook her head ruefully. “It had been fashionable a few decades before to alter one’s genes in order to communicate telepathically with computers. As a girl, I persuaded my parents to let me get the procedure done because I said it would help me with my studies. Really it was just because all my friends were doing it.” Her face turned bleak. “I don’t think any of them survived despite it. We got lucky. My husband had the same abilities, and we discovered that our son had inherited it from us. Between the three of us we were able to maintain control of the ship.”
She sat down heavily on one of the small chairs around the table, and Ren sat next to her. “It was a terrible time,” she said. “The Singularity sent ships to attack us. Some we were able to take control of, but most of the time we just ran. Everywhere we went — we only found the Singularity and death. There were so few survivors. My husband — the strain was too much for him, and he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. I thought the same was going to happen to me, but finally, after all that running, we found Arcadia. It had been a small farming colony, not much technology, so there were more survivors than in other places. To them, seeing our little fleet of ships touch down, they thought they were saved, that everything would go back to normal. But that wasn’t the case. Life never went back to the way it had been.”
Ren had heard much of this before, of course, but it was very different hearing it from the queen than from a history teacher. It was hard to remember she wasn’t real, with all that pain in her eyes.
“We depended so much on technology, Ren. Our people didn’t know how to survive. I was — I had been a professor of ancient European history on Earth. I had no idea what I was doing, and yet everyone was looking to me because I could get the machines to work.”
“But you did it,” he said. “You built this world. You saved us.”
“I was always afraid, I just tried to hide it by playing at being a queen. That’s my great leadership secret. Pretend you know more than you do. Most of your relatives would laugh uneasily at this point.”
Ren thought of the mask he wore to get through the duties expected of him. “I can understand being afraid.”
“I think the fear is what led me to this. When I discovered I was dying it was… incredibly frustrating. We had the medical equipment on this ship and the others. It diagnosed exactly what was wrong and prescribed a cure. Except, we no longer had the ability to manufacture that particular drug. It was one more thing that had been lost.” She stared at her hands, the raised veins on the back of them, and clenched her fists. “I couldn’t stand the idea of losing more. And then there was my son. He would be left to run everything. He had small children of his own by then. The idea of leaving them all was… it was too much.”
“So you made the Heart?”
She wrapped arms around herself like she was cold. “I told myself this was to preserve the knowledge, to honor everyone who had been lost. I convinced myself that I was necessary.”
“But you are,” Ren assured her. “Monarchs have always relied on your wisdom.”
She sighed again. “That reliance became a dependence.”
Ren spoke carefully. “My grandfather thought that — talking to you — it changed people.”
“It was something I should have considered, made the calculations, considered the psychology. You feel so alone with this responsibility. The part of me that is Morowa also felt like I was a mother, looking after my children.” She straightened up, looking more regal and determined as she tilted her head to look at Ren. “It’s hard to trust that they’re grown, that they don’t need you anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
“I never meant for this jewel to become a substitute for actual leadership. I certainly didn’t want people to be plotting over it like some medieval court. I think… it’s finally time for me to retire.”
Ren felt uncertain about what was happening. “Can you do that?”
“I’m dead, Ren. I have been for more than a century. I need to accept it.”
“But all your knowledge, it’s important.”
“The data will still be here. I’m only going to deactivate the parts that make me Morowa. No more queen, no more opinions or asserting control.” She got up briskly, setting the chair back carefully in its place. “Consulting with me will be more like going to the library than dealing with an overbearing grandmother.” She raised a finger at him. “Make sure and tell the family that those consultations should be few and far between. Get some distance from the past.”
He stood up too, feeling a little numb, and mimicked her by pushing in his chair. He started to straighten his clothing, but she was already there, adjusting his jacket with steady hands. “I’m glad I got to meet you, Ren.”
“I am too.” He bowed his head, overwhelmed. “Thank you… Grandmother.”
“One more thing.” She touched his face, and her hands felt warm and alive. “Your mother was proud of you, Ren. So am I. Now go, live a good life. That’s all I ever wanted for my family and this world.”
Her hand brushed over Ren’s eyes, and he closed them. When he opened them again he was standing on the hill by the tree with Jaime in front of him.
“Hey,” Jaime said, “we’re back. Are you okay?”
“I’m—” Ren wiped at his eyes; they were wet with tears. “How long did that take?”
“Just a few minutes,” Jaime replied.
Ren let out a shaky breath. “It seemed longer.”
“It was,” Jaime nodded. “It’s just a matter of perspective.” He pressed the necklace into Ren’s hand. “This belongs to you.”
“Ren?” The regent sounded more uncertain than he had ever heard her.
Ren turned to look at her, at everyone. “I have a message from the queen.”
They were all staring at him — the regent, his grandfather, the guards, and the crew of the Prince. Having all that attention focused on him was something that should have made him feel panicked. Ren still was scared, but he squeezed the jewel in his hand a little tighter and began to speak.