CHAPTER SEVEN
“So the crown jewel of your entire planet is actually… data storage?”
Sebastian was pacing the sitting room of their hotel room. It was a large suite but stuffed with ornate furniture and the stone carvings that seemed to be popular on Fortuna, so he couldn’t pace as effectively as he wanted. He settled for yanking a hand through his hair. Ren stood stiffly, hands gripping the back of a chair, while Jaime and Rylan perched uneasily on the long couch.
They’d finished the walkthrough of Graven’s collection, quiet as they noted the many antique and deadly weapons, everyone full of questions they couldn’t ask. Sebastian made excuses to their host, pleading weariness but implying that he and Ren were leaving to have loud sex. Then there had been a silent airship ride through the dark, a rattling gondola trip down from the cliffs to the hotel, and a tense walk down the lushly decorated hallways of the building, until finally — finally — the door was locked, the room scanned for bugs, and they all could turn to Ren and find out exactly what the fuck he’d gotten them into.
“It’s more complicated than that,” Ren said tiredly. “The Heart contains more than simply data. Think of it as like a ship’s AI but—”
“Sentient, self-aware, and capable of doing whatever the fuck it wants once it’s inside any computer system. Yes, we know about things like that. How did you come to have a piece of the Singularity as evening wear?”
Ren stared back at him with genuine surprise. “The Singularity? No. Never. The Heart is… family.”
He looked like he wanted to flinch as three sets of eyes bored into him, but instead Ren smoothed a hand over his short black hair and straightened his posture.
“I don’t know what history they teach off-planet, but the first monarch of Arcadia was a legendary figure to us.”
Unexpectedly, Rylan spoke up. “Morowa Edugyan. She led an entire fleet of ships out of Singularity-controlled space. The only humans recorded to have escaped from the Earth system.” He shrugged off their glances. “I like stories about people surviving the Singularity.”
“She did more than just survive,” Ren said. “There were thousands on those ships, people she was able to take to Arcadia and secure the settlement there. The reason she was able to break the Singularity’s control and to fight off other vessels sent to attack them was because she, along with her son — my great-great-grandfather — had abilities, gifts. Like you.” He looked at Jaime, inclining his head in the way he often did, but this time the gesture was more like a bow. “You see, on my planet we don’t call people like you wizards or mutants. We call them royalty.”
“Oh.” Jaime’s eyes were huge as he took all of it in. “I think I want to go there.”
“Wait.” Sebastian frowned. “But Ren you’re not a wizard or whatever you call it, are you?”
“No.” Ren’s voice was tight. “The gift is in my bloodline, but it does not always manifest.”
“Recessive genes,” Jaime said, nodding.
This was all sounding too complicated. “So what does this have to do with the jewel?”
“Before she died, Queen Morowa was able to transfer much of her memories, her very self, into the Heart. She feared us losing even more of our history, all of Earth’s knowledge. Ever since, the Monarch has worn the jewel and been able to connect with her wisdom. It’s how Arcadia is ruled. Without the Heart, there is no way to govern the planet.”
“Have you considered a constitution? Open elections? Sorry, sorry, I felt myself channeling the doctor for a moment.” Sebastian sighed and shook himself. “All right, what does this mean for us? How dangerous is this thing?”
“It is not—”
“Yes, it’s your dear sweet granny — whatever. I’m not asking you.” He looked at Jaime.
Jaime swallowed nervously but shook his head. “It felt dormant, I guess. Not as strong.” He glanced at Ren. “We’ve encountered something similar, a Singularity AI inside a data storage crystal.”
Rylan groaned. “That was supposed to be classified.”
“Sorry,” Jaime said.
“If your brother wanted us to keep Commonwealth secrets better, he should have bribed us more,” Sebastian snapped. “So what happens if it comes aboard the ship? Will it try to take over?”
“That’s not how it works—” Ren took a calming breath. “I assure you there is no danger to you from the Heart. It only communicates with the Monarch.”
“That’s been tested?” Sebastian asked snidely. “How many people outside your royal family get to play with it? The necklace been taken on a lot of test drives of spacecraft?”
Ren gave him a long and steady glare.
“We have lined crates we can store it in,” Rylan said reasonably. “There’s that shielded room off the storage hold.”
Sebastian rubbed his face. “So all we have left to do is the not inconsiderable task of stealing it.”
Ren let out a breath. “You’re still doing it?”
“I’m not abandoning you.” Sebastian hastily plunged on before Ren could remember that he had done precisely that in the past. “We’re professionals after all, and professionals never leave a job before getting paid. You’ll be walking home with your trinket, though, if it shows any sign of meddling with the ship. Dub has enough problems as it is. Oh, and under no circumstances is Jaime to touch that necklace.”
“Good,” Jaime and Rylan both said, and Sebastian saw Ren’s shoulders relax a fraction.
Sebastian dropped down into one of the plush chairs. “All right, we should get the layout of the display room out of Rylan’s arm and compare it to our own recollections. Jaime needs to go over the security measures in place—”
“Can it wait?“ Jaime was scrunched back against the couch. “I mean, we have to get Mags and Bo in on this too, right? And Simi. Maybe we shouldn’t do anything more until tomorrow.” Rylan was looking at him with concern, and Jaime raised a shoulder. “It’s just been a long day, that’s all.”
Sebastian heaved a sigh. “Fine. Just don’t forget any details of the computer systems. We’ll start as soon as the others arrive.” As Jaime and Rylan got up to make their way toward the small bedroom off the main sitting room, Sebastian coughed pointedly. “I want you to remember there’s a damage deposit on that room,” Sebastian said in his most captain-like voice. He took some satisfaction in counting the seconds until Rylan started to blush. Jaime merely rolled his eyes and led Rylan away, firmly shutting the door behind them.
Left alone in the room, Sebastian looked at Ren, and Ren looked back at him.
“Thank you for continuing the mission,” Ren said. “Perhaps I should have disclosed the true nature of the Heart before, but it’s a secret very few people outside my family know.”
“It’s only fair. I didn’t tell you I was going to be aiming a truck at Graven.” He raised an eyebrow. “You going to be in trouble for telling us?”
Ren shrugged. “I’m hoping no one else needs to find out. And… that you’ll not mention that I told you to Zaria.”
Sebastian gave a mock shudder. “I can only imagine the disapproving looks if she found out.”
“The throat clearings would be truly epic.”
They almost grinned at each other as silence fell over the room.
“I suppose it is late,” Ren said.
“It is.”
“And tomorrow will be an important day. We need to be rested and sharp.”
“We do.” Sebastian stretched out in his chair, eyes still on Ren.
“Well, then…” Ren looked uncertain. He glanced at the door to his bedroom, the couch where Sebastian had slept last night and was planning to sleep again, and back at Sebastian. “So good night,” Ren said at last.
He turned and walked into the large bedroom. Ren didn’t look back, not seeing Sebastian get to his feet and take a step toward him. The double doors closed with soft finality, leaving Sebastian in desperate need of a drink.
Instead he flopped face-first on the large, comfortable, and highly inadequate couch, burying himself in its excessive cushions. He shouldn’t be entertaining thoughts of the wide bed on the other side of those doors, much less Ren lying in it. The trouble was he liked arguing with Ren, and he liked plotting with him, and watching him at the party, and shopping, and teasing. He liked Ren. But then he always had, right back to when they’d first met. Liked him too much, which had been the problem. None of which had stopped Sebastian from betraying him terribly.
No, it was better to focus on the job and getting through it so that he could get Ren back to where he belonged — safe and sound and far away from Sebastian.
He raised his head, thinking more about what Ren had told them. He should let Ren rest; he knew the party had been an ordeal for him, but Sebastian still got up and went to knock on the double doors.
When Sebastian opened them, Ren turned from where he was standing in front of the wide window that curved over one side of the room. The view was dramatic — a narrow, high waterfall cascading over the cliffs opposite the hotel — but Sebastian only saw Ren, lit in the soft light of the bedside lamp. Ren’s coat was off and his shirt untucked and loose at the neck, revealing the dark column of his throat and beneath it the sharp lines of his collarbones. He watched Sebastian in the doorway with a complicated expression moving over his face.
“Just one thing, and I’ll let you sleep,” Sebastian said, stepping into the room. “So if you can’t do what Jaime does — talk to the computers — how does that work with you and the Heart?”
Ren’s face shuttered quickly before he turned toward the window. “Ah. It means it doesn’t work. At all.” He looked back at Sebastian. “I can’t be the Monarch.”
Sebastian frowned and came closer, boots quiet over the carpeted floor. “But you’re the prince.”
Ren abandoned the window in favor of moving around the room, turning on another lamp and restlessly adjusting the various expensive and impersonal objects that decorated the large bedroom.
“The last Monarch — my mother — died nine years ago. My aunt has been regent ever since. My… shortcoming had been kept quiet in hopes that I was merely slow to develop. Most begin communicating with machines as children, but there have been cases where the ability doesn’t surface until well into adolescence. Some even thought that perhaps the powers would manifest under stress.”
Sebastian wasn’t sure exactly how his face looked at that, but Ren gave him an exasperated sigh.
“No one was torturing me, Sebastian. It was like — being in the military, I suppose, but I was the only soldier. I spent years training, preparing for something that was never going to happen. As I got older, the thinking changed. The last few years, the hope has been that I would have a child with a second or third cousin and that my future offspring would be able to rule. I know that’s the regent’s wish. She could have taken up the Heart at any time and become Monarch, but instead she’s kept my defect a secret.” He stopped moving and faced Sebastian squarely. “She’s protected me, and I don’t wish to let her down. Again.”
“Is this why you ran away? Back when we first met.”
“There were many reasons. I wanted adventure. I wanted to go to a place where no one knew me.” His eyes turned downcast. “To finally escape all that disappointment.”
He fell silent, staring at the floor. The two of them were at opposite sides of the room, and Sebastian very much wanted to cross it to go to him, but he didn’t have the right.
Still, he tried to reach out with his words. “It’s not your fault. Not what’s in your blood. Or what I did. Not any of it, Ren. Not you.”
He looked up at Sebastian, his face wide open, free of any mask. “My whole existence is a failure, Sebastian.”
Sebastian curved his lips in a smile. “Who knew we had so much in common, Your Majesty?”
Ren shook his head. “You live the life I always wanted. Traveling among the stars, beholden to no one—”
“Except my creditors. On a ship that’s in constant need of new parts.“
“No family to disappoint or judge you.”
“Have you met my crew? They’re the most judgmental people in existence. And they’re my family.” He dropped down on the bed. “As for before that, I was always a disappointment in my parents’ eyes. Always wanting the wrong things, asking too many questions, getting into trouble.”
“That I do believe.” Ren sat down on the bed too, not exactly beside Sebastian — the bed was so wide they both could have stretched out their arms and not touched each other.
“Did I ever tell you that I’m a runaway too?”
“Were you more successful than I was? I lasted twelve weeks.”
Sebastian knew that three of those had been spent with him. “Twenty-one years and counting.” He shrugged at Ren’s questioning look. “You ever hear of a place called Paruroa? No? Count yourself lucky, it doesn’t have much to recommend it. More sheep than people, and the sheep provide better conversation.
“So that’s how you know about wool.”
“Oh yes, years of unwilling study. The seasons are very long on Paruroa so patience is not just a virtue but a requirement. I didn’t fit in very well. It seemed like I was moving at a different speed than anyone else. Most of the time everything I did, everything about me, was wrong.”
This wasn’t a story for looking at anyone while he told it, so Sebastian lay back on the bed to stare up at the ceiling.
“We were isolated, but it wasn’t one of those colonies that shuns all contact or technology, so we had regular visits from the Commonwealth every few months. To everyone else those trading missions were a necessary evil, a distraction from the important business of moving sheep from one place to the other. But for me they were… magical. A spaceship descending from the sky and bringing books and new tech and stories. I would hang around as much as I could, making a nuisance of myself, until it was time for them to fly away again. Then there was that one day when I realized I couldn’t bear to be left behind, so I snuck onto the ship and hid myself away in the cargo hold. I was going to escape or die trying. I had a flair for the dramatic back then.”
“It’s hard to imagine,” Ren said dryly. He hesitated for a moment and then lay back on the bed too, on his side, facing Sebastian. “I take it you didn’t get caught.”
“Oh, I did. Almost immediately spotted by one of the soldiers.” He smiled. “It was Mags. She’d been one of the few who had time for the annoying teen who always came around looking for stories. Even shared some. She actually listened to me then rather than immediately hauling me off the ship. It was a problem — I wasn’t yet sixteen, still too young to request emancipation from my colony, and I wasn’t that much of a self-involved little shit that I could lie and claim I was being abused.”
There was the memory of his father’s hand, raised to slap — but that was how things were there. Everyone he knew got hit when they forgot their chores or spent too much time dreaming; Sebastian just did it more than most.
He continued before Ren could notice the pause. “Somehow I managed to convince Mags that I was better off not going back. She hid me on the ship until we got to the next port. Then, and I’m still afraid to ask how she did it, she got me into one of the Commonwealth military academies. A place where I could learn how to fly ships and see the galaxy.”
“All your dreams came true,” Ren said quietly.
Sebastian turned his head to look at Ren. “Oh, no. I was terrible at it. You think the science and math studies on the mud ball I was from prepared me for flight school? Also, I hated taking orders. I did become very good at cheating. And trading in contraband and favors. So school actually did prepare me for my future career. By the time they figured out what I was up to and booted me out, I had learned enough to be a middling pilot and a very good smuggler.”
“Did you ever go back to your home?”
“A few times over the years. It never… went well. My father especially. He saw my decision to leave as a rejection of every single one of his values. To be fair, he was right. And he wasn’t too impressed with the choices I made afterward.”
It was Ren’s turn to roll onto his back and stare up at the ceiling. “My father sees himself as a politician. He’s the kind of person who talks to everyone at a party and makes each one feel like they’re being heard. He can make speeches for hours with no notes.”
“That’s supposed to be a good thing?”
“I can’t imagine what he thinks when he looks at me. Actually I can because I’ve been told in many different ways. It’s bad enough that I can’t do what I was born to do, but I’m hopeless at everything that comes so naturally to him. I’m not even comfortable making conversation.”
Sebastian turned his head toward him, the sheets soft against his cheek. “We’re talking.”
“That’s different.” Ren turned his head too, and Sebastian was caught by his eyes, so dark and deep.
“Is it?” he asked. Ren’s skin gleamed in the lamplight, and they were close enough now that they could have touched each other, but it would take both of them reaching out.
Ren hesitated, his lips parting. Then he turned his face away. “It’s late,” he said, voice perfectly polite.
“Even later than when we first started this conversation,” Sebastian agreed. He stood up. “Sleep well, Your Highness. We have crimes to plan in the morning.”
He was trying for breezy, but Sebastian wasn’t strong enough to make it out the door without looking back, though when he did, he saw that Ren hadn’t moved, and was still lying on the bed, staring up, hands tight at his side. “Good night,” Sebastian said softly but got no response.
The thing that stayed with Sebastian as he took himself to the couch in the sitting room and kept him from sleeping for many hours was the memory of Ren’s face when he’d first walked into the room. Standing there at the window, just for a moment, it had seemed like Ren had looked at him with something like hope.