Empress Game: The Empress Game Trilogy Book 1 (44 page)

Pretty much, yeah. Or at least my octet is
.

“This is Princess Isonde’s body-double. We received multiple threats against Isonde and Prince Ardin.” Which was at least always true. “The wedding was deemed an unsecured situation, we couldn’t risk having them exposed like that.”

“Prince Ardin had a body-double too?”

“He was hurried out before the switch could be discovered. The only reason you’re meeting Isonde’s double is because she’s braver than any of us, and jumped on the canister to try to save everyone.”

Kayla grumbled. “I might be locked in crystallized foam,
Agent Rua
, but I can still talk.” Her sarcastic tone couldn’t cover her anxiety. She nodded at Carsov. “Evelyn. Hi. Nice to meet you. Can you cut me loose now?”

“It’s a little more complex than that.” Carsov flipped on the scanner he held and started a silent survey of the hardened biocontainment foam.

Malkor wanted to kiss the tightness from Kayla’s lips. He wanted to switch places with her. If he’d been faster…

“It’s not your fault,” she said softly. “No one could have stopped me from going for the canister.”

“I could have beaten you to it.”

She scoffed. “Not in a million years, buddy.”

Same old Kayla.

“No nanovirus has breached the foam,” Carsov said. He stood. “Help me with the containment tent, let’s get this done.”

Malkor took a last look at her, then let the coat fall back into place to shield her from the vid feeds. Carsov unpacked folded sheets of the same coppery material from which his suit was made and started laying them out. He instructed Malkor on the assembly of the poles for the tent’s frame.

“So, Princess Isonde using a body-double, huh? How long’s that been going on?” Carsov smoothed wrinkles from the material as he spoke.

“It’s protocol,” Malkor said. “I figured you’d love that.”

Carsov began sealing the edges of the copper-colored sheets together without comment.

They worked in silence, Malkor building the tent’s frame around Kayla and Carsov fusing the sheets to the poles to form the containment walls. When it was finished, when Kayla was hidden inside, they both stood and stared at it. Carsov might be steeling himself for a delicate procedure, but after three hours of waiting, Malkor couldn’t take one more second of not knowing if Kayla had been infected.

“Well?”

“Before I go in, tell me this: Was it just the wedding that was deemed too risky for Princess Isonde, or were there other parts of the Game as well?” The suit’s camera lens focused on him like an unblinking eye.

“It’s classified.”

“Thought so.” Carsov hefted his carry case of tools and entered the containment tent.

Minutes went by, too many minutes, while Malkor paced in silence, waiting for word.

Finally, Carsov called out, “Layer one is dissolved, no nanites present. Proceeding with layer two.”

“Evelyn?”

“I’m fine, but damn it’s hot in here. You got a fan in that case, Carsov?” The strain in her voice left her words flat. Both fell silent after that and Malkor went back to pacing.

“Layer two, no nanites present.

“Layer three, no nanites present.”

How many layers could foam have?

“I’m into the hypodermis now.”

A whirring sound kicked up from inside the tent and he barely held his ground. What was better, waiting and guessing what was going on, or watching every moment, layer by agonizing layer?

“Layer four—” The sound stopped. “Agent, I’m about to breach the last layer, I highly recommend that you leave the arena at this time.”

“Why, what have you found?”

No answer.

“He’s got a scanner,” Kayla said, “but I can’t read the screen.”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” Carsov said, in an overly steady voice. He’d heard that tone before. He’d used it himself during incendiary negotiations. “It’s just a precaution, Agent Rua, but I am asking you again to leave.”

“Listen to him, Malkor. Please.”

“Just get it over with,” Malkor called back, nausea settling in, “or I’ll come break her out myself.” He should run. Carsov wouldn’t tell him to leave again if his scanner wasn’t picking up nanites. No reason he and Kayla both had to be infected with the TNV.

No reason except that he couldn’t leave her to face the death sentence alone.

“Breaching final layer now.”

Malkor couldn’t breathe as he waited for the confirmation from Carsov.

Instead he heard a sharp
crack
and Kayla’s groan as someone’s body hit the floor.

“Kayla!”

“Layer four is clear, no nanites present. The reading is coming from inside the canister.”

Malkor knocked over the containment tent and rushed to where Kayla had collapsed, his coat still veiling her face. She groaned again, and a peek under the coat showed her teeth gritted in an eerie rictus of a smile, the shards of broken containment foam all around her.

“Ha!” she finally gasped out. “Take that you frutter!”

“What’s wrong?”

She gripped her legs, and it took a second to realize the sound coming from her was a raspy chuckle. “Just recirculation pain. I’ve been immobilized for three hours, I thought my legs were going to break off.” She chuckled again. “We stopped him. Trebulan thought he was so slick with that TNV. He thought— He—”

Her weak laugh turned to gulped breath, and then the tears were flowing. They were tears of denied fears, tears of relief. He felt dangerously close to tears himself, and he hadn’t been clutching a canister of TNV for the last three hours.

The tears lasted no more than a minute. She scrubbed them away before he could speak without a clench in his throat.

“Your coat stinks, by the way.”

He laughed, and the sound eased the breath in his chest. She was fine, and he was fine. They were fine.

“You just saved hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, and the first thing you think to say is that my coat stinks?”

“Well, it does.” She sat up, keeping the coat around her like a hood. Her gaze fell on the canister that Carsov was locking away in the carry case. “All those people, Malkor.”

All those people, their lives so close to the edge today.

“Has the IDC discovered where he got the TNV from, or where he’d kept it until today?” she asked. The nanites in Trebulan’s body were all inactive, she knew, his body having miraculously defeated them years ago. He’d need another source.

Malkor shook his head.

“So there could be more out there, more canisters to set off?”

“Exactly. The entire planet is on lockdown but it’s utter chaos out there.”

Carsov broke in. “Agent Rua, okay if I comm my team leader, let them know the TNV’s contained?” He hadn’t taken his suit off, not with the TNV so close, even if it was sealed away. A pity. Malkor wanted to look right into the eyes of the man who now had the knowledge to ruin them.

Instead, he wrapped his arm around Kayla’s shoulders, the most intimate gesture he was allowed under so much scrutiny.

“Carry on, Carsov. But if the IDC learns you breathed one word of what you saw here…”

There was no reply from the coppery suit.

K
ayla had seen Malkor half-a-dozen times in the week since the Trebulan incident.

Unfortunately, most of those times had been on the vidscreen.

Rigger had had a new hologram biostrip waiting for her the moment she and Malkor had escaped the arena. They’d slapped it right over the minor electrical burn on her throat from the old one and brought her out into the throng, a waving, triumphant Princess Isonde, soon-to-be empress-apparent and now the Savoir of Falanar. She’d belonged to the public since that moment.

She had barely been able to get four hours of sleep in a row, never mind have a private moment to herself, between all of the appearances and interviews. She’d done her duty by the press, as she knew Isonde would have.

Interviews about the Game:

What does it feel like to have won?

Why do you think the Wyrds abdicated the crowning fight to you?

Do you and the Wyrds have an alliance?

Interviews about the TNV:

What was going through your mind when you wrestled with Prince Trebulan?

How did you know he had the TNV?

You must have been mortally afraid! Tell us how frightening those three hours were!

The worst were the joint appearances with Ardin:

You two look so in love, you must be devastated that the wedding is pushed off.

Tell us about your love story.

Give us a kiss. Oh, don’t be bashful, go on, show us how you really feel about each other!

And at each of them, the questions about Malkor:

We understand you two grew up together, tell us about him.

How long have you been friends? You must be
some friends
for him to stay by your side in the arena with the TNV.

Is he single? Citizens across the empire want to know!

They showed the footage over and over: she, walking unscathed from the arena, giving the military reporter a wave—“the wave seen across the stars!”—all the while gripping Malkor’s hand for support.

The IDC needed a new secretary just to deal with all the proposals of marriage and bonding ceremonies that Malkor had received since then.

If her life had become a whirlwind, Malkor’s had become a full-blown storm. The empire had gone crazy since Trebulan’s unsuccessful attack at the wedding, and the IDC was caught up in more conflicts than they could handle in three lifetimes. Every available octet was pulling double and triple shifts to quench the political wildfires. The first few days had been the worst, when the planet was under quarantine while the search for Trebulan’s possible supply of TNV had occurred. Tensions were so high she could taste it in the air. Everyone suspected everyone, alliances fractured and fear reigned. The repercussions spread outward across the system, reaching the homeworlds of everyone trapped on Falanar. The empire was mobilized in a way it never had been before.

Trebulan had gotten his wish.

Once his remaining supply of TNV had been found—a single canister, stashed in a warehouse in Shimville—the planet-wide quarantine had been lifted. The attempted mass exodus from Falanar created even more problems as people were forced to wait to receive transport to the space docks above the planet, and from there wait longer for their launch window amid millions of others.

No wonder her contact with Malkor had been limited to a handful of quick hellos via vidscreen.

The days apart had given her room to think, and time to spend in vid chat with her
il’haars
. Vayne, Corinth and the Ilmenans had been trapped by the quarantine along with everyone else. Whenever Kayla had two spare moments she commed the ship, checking in with Corinth, Vayne and her rescued family members. The connection had clarified her thinking.

Now their launch window loomed. They had been cleared to leave tonight, in a few hours in fact. She planned to be on that flight. She was only waiting planet-side for a visit with Malkor, to break the news to him.

He’d better hurry
.

She left her—Isonde’s—sumptuous bedchamber and strode down the hall toward the bedchamber that contained Isonde’s medical pod. Isonde kept a house in the capital city and Kayla had taken up residence there now that the Game complex had been evacuated. After a week Kayla still felt like an intruder.

She slipped into the room quietly, wanting to check on Isonde one last time.

Nothing had changed.

The display at the foot of the pod glowed with the same low-level life signs it had all week. The second formulation of the possible cure didn’t seem to be working.

Two down, two to go, with the odds decreasing daily.

Isonde lay like a barely breathing corpse amid the sheets of the bed inside, her lips slightly blue. Evidence of Ardin was all over the room, from the chair that bore his imprint pulled up beside the pod, to the clothes strewn about and the untouched dinner tray on a side table. He practically lived here with them, in between everything else.

Isonde’s hands were arranged perfectly symmetrical to each other, which meant Ardin had been holding one of them. Kayla had seen the way he placed her hand back on her stomach before he left, delicately arranging each finger to be perfectly spaced apart. It was the only thing he could do for her, the only comfort he could give.

It felt too intrusive to Kayla to touch her, so she patted the edge of the medical pod instead. “You’ll come out of it. Toble is the best.”

Two chemical formulations of hope left.

And then?

She patted the pod again. “It will work.”

That was all she could stand, so she made her escape from the room and returned to her chambers. The bag she’d brought from her escape from Fengar Swamp on Altair Tri greeted her at the door, packed with all her possessions.

Right.
Her
possessions.

Everything she owned in the universe was strapped to her thighs. The clothes she’d packed, even the outfit she wore, were all compliments of her double-life here on Falanar.

A comm from the security detail at the front of the house demanded her attention.

“Princess, Agent Rua is here to see you.”

“Thank you, Rawn, send him up.”

When Malkor entered the room minutes later, uncertainty hit her in the chest at the sight of him. Had she come to the right decision over the week?

She peeled off the hologram and cupped it in one fist.

“It is so good to see
you
,” he said, and smiled as if the stress of the last five days melted away. He was three steps into the room before the import of her bag by the door hit him—she saw it in his expression. If she were going anywhere as Isonde, she would have packed Isonde’s clothes in one of Isonde’s cases. But the sight of
that
bag, her bag…

His smile faded as he stopped a meter from her.

“I’m leaving,” she said, with no other words to soften the truth. Nothing could soften it.