The Emperor's New Clothes (Royce Ree #1) (4 page)

“We’re walking in circles,” observed
Les.

“Ellipses,” corrected Royce. “We need to
wait till a very specific shuttle-pilot is scheduled to make a run
to the space-station.”

“If we need to burn time,” said Les,
“can we do it at a resto? I’m starving.”

Royce gave a short bark of laughter.
“Yeah, ok,” he said, and began veering towards the jumble of
one-storey buildings they’d passed two circuits ago.

The jumble numbered within it two small
scrap-electronics depots and a low-cal, low-price canteen for
dockworkers. Not exactly a resto, but it would have to do.

The canteen was almost empty, save for a
few mechanics and lifters collecting overtime, and a fat,
tousle-haired man was doing triple duty as waiter and bartender and
cook.

With their mechanics’ overalls and
toolboxes, the waiter-bartender-cook barely gave them a second
glance as they entered. He was too busy shoving shredded mushrooms
through the feeder-hatch of a small cage near the back of the
canteen. Two rabbits, one of them looking as if it had lost a fight
with a particularly ornery hedgehog, sat on their haunches, waiting
for their lunch to be ready.

Royce sighed and led Les to a booth
himself; it was no use expecting service until the cook was done
dealing with his rabbits.

Royce saw Les shudder a bit as his hands
touched the bright red synthetic covering of the booth’s seats. But
he didn’t complain—Les never complained.
Just left you out in
the cold without a word
.

Les looked at the menu flickering on the
holoscreen. “The number four looks good.”

Royce twisted his frame around, but the
holoscreen was just out of his line-of-sight. “What’s a number
four?”

Just then, the waiter-bartender-cook
came over. “Hallo gents. I’m Geddys, third half-uncle to the
Princess, twice removed on her mother’s side. What’ll you be
having?”

Before Royce could speak, “I’m Lees,
seventh full cousin to the Princess,” said Les, neatly taking
control of the cover
Royce
invented. “This is Rooice, my
husband. He used to be closer, fourth cousin to the King through
his half-sister, but we don’t talk about his half-sister anymore.”
Les shrugged.

The waiter-bartender-cook grunted. “I
have a half-sister. Wish
my
nuclears didn’t talk about her.
What’ll I get you?”

“Two number fours please,” said Les.

Refusing to be
ordered for
, Royce
snapped out the first thing he could think of. “Coffee.”

I hate coffee.

“Darling, coffee gives you terrible
heartburn,” Les said sweetly, then looked up at the
waiter-bartender-cook. “He’ll have a small synthahol.”

The waiter-bartender-cook grunted, then
headed off towards the kitchen.

“Did you have to?” asked Royce.

A half-smile shivered at the end of
Les’s mouth, throwing a dimple into shadow. Royce blinked, taken by
surprise at his heartache at the sight of that dimple.

“Let’s talk,” Les was saying, “about why
HQ wants
you
, the most dress-sense challenged agent in the
entire Empire, to go undercover as couturier to royalty.”

There was a budget hotel nearby…maybe
they could rest for a bit, catch the next shuttle up. Maybe he
could convince Les that they needed to have sex for cover
purposes.

He left you. He doesn’t want you.

“I’m supposed to steal the Baldasshi’s
impeccable sense of style,” Royce said instead.

Les’s dimple disappeared. “Their
what
?”

“Surely you’ve noticed it?” Royce asked,
who himself hadn’t, not till he received his mission spec.

“Their ambassador is always very well
dressed,” said Les, hesitant. “But they’re all fashion-savvy, I
mean, look at Geddys! He’s running a cantina, and even he knows
enough not to wear
dholags
with workplace-casuals.”

Royce wondered if that comment was aimed
at him.
What the hell is a
dholag
?
“Maybe his rabbits
ate his
dholag
,” he muttered.

The dimple was back. “The style is a
cultural thing, like the pets.”

“More than that,” said Royce, “Every
Baldasshi envoy, every civil servant, each and every member of
their FTL crews—all of them are impeccably dressed, no matter who
they’re talking to. They have never made a fashion faux pas in the
six years since their First Contact.

“Too perfect? Some kind of
perception-filter, you think?”

“Has to be.”

“So why do we need…” Les trailed off as
comprehension dawned on face. “The Millennial happens in less than
a week!”

“Exactly,” said Royce, leaning back in
the booth. “The Emperor wants new clothes.”

“
The Imperium stretches across
uncountable worlds, a thousand planets with a thousand
ever-changing rules of dress and propriety…Our Imperial Master must
address each of those worlds simultaneously, but every Millennial,
some planet, somewhere, gets pissed off because the Emperor was not
‘dressed in a respectful-enough manner’. Then we have protests. And
counter-protests. And counter-counter…you get the picture. Last
time the situation devolved into a free-for-all riot across three
galaxies.”

-Imperial Ambassador Awl’Murem,
inebriated

Speech to the Intergalactic Senate

They’d burned enough time at the cantina
that Royce judged it prudent to jog to their destination. But he
could see Les getting more and more nervous as they got closer to
it.

Royce had no idea where Les had stashed
the FTL drive core in his form-fitting jumpsuit. “Is it…?” he
ventured.

“Safe,” said Les shortly.

Not your problem
, that’s what
that tone meant, despite all evidence to the contrary. Les’s
shoulders were on the verge of being hunched, clear lines of stress
radiating out from his arms; the customs officials would pick up on
it. And it wouldn’t end if Les made it off planet. He was a
domestic counter-espionage operative, with half a deepcover mission
under his belt. A fuckup could happen anywhere between here and the
Empire.

The man needed a competent escort.

But gods help Royce if he dared to voice
that. So he had to keep Les distracted with the “undercover
couturier” mission till the situation was suitably engineered…It
wouldn’t do for Les to start questioning things…he shouldn’t
suspect anything till they were both light-years away, safely
onboard the intergalactic-transport. Then Les could discover
Royce…maybe hiding in the luggage compartment. Royce hadn’t decided
yet.

He felt a brief pang for the career he
was about to throw away. Regardless of how unbelievably stupid the
couturier mission was, its failure would still count against
Royce’s record.

So be it.

They joined the shortest line in front
of them.

“Our cover is airtight,” Royce said, his
voice low. “Plus, with all the confusion of the Kova takeover, they
won’t have time to spend on an escaped lab technician.”

“Stop reassuring yourself,” said Les,
“and start getting ready to run if they pull ballistics.”

But the woman at the ticket desk looked
harried. “I’m Tonnya, ninth aunt, once removed, to the Princess,”
she began, her tone clipped and unfriendly.

Royce took charge before Les could open
his mouth. “Rooice and my husband, Lees, closest lines are…” he
chanted to requisite litany, tracing his and Les’s “relationship”
to the current reigning monarch.

He would be glad when they could revert
to an Imperial-origin cover story, and not just because it would
stop the damned introductions. No, the very thought of so many
relatives, however invented, was starting to make Royce jumpy. How
could these people
live
, knowing that every single person on
the street was related to them, and might just feel a familial
compulsion to poke their nose into things?

“No baggage?” asked a woman, a glimmer
of curiosity entering her eyes.

Curiosity was bad. “Day trip, ma’am,”
said Royce.

“Aunt Tonnya, it’s our anniversary,”
gushed Les, clutching at Royce’s arm.

“Congratulations,” said the woman, her
voice returning to a bored monotone. “Next shuttle is at Gate 3, go
straight, then turn left.”

As they walked away, “You’ve learned to
lie,” Royce murmured. Frankly, he was surprised.

Les’s steps faltered. “Kernels of
truth,” he said, avoiding Royce’s eyes. An indecipherable smile
played around his lips.

Royce felt like he’d been punched in the
gut. How could he have forgotten?
How could you
remember
?
It was always Les who remembered for both of us.

Today would have been Royce Ree’s fifth
wedding anniversary.

Recall all diplomatic personnel. We will
not legitimize the Kova by leaving Baldessh an embassy.

-Imperial Communiqué 87372.1

All Imperial Agents are ordered to
evacuate Baldasshi Planetary Space immediately.

-Imperial Order 10991.6

Agent Les’Anther Dai-Sarn has not
acknowledged evacuation order. The agent is presumed AWOL.

-Excerpt from Progress Report on
Baldasshi Withdrawal

Les dropped into his assigned seat with
a groan.

“I don’t know
what
that man fed
me—”

“
You
ordered…”

This was Les’s third trip to the head
since they’d boarded the surface-to-orbit shuttle. Royce felt a
little guilty—he knew how relaxed spaceport canteens’
health-standards were, but damnit, the man had asked for food.

“Where were we?” asked Les, reaching for
the damned tablet-reader again. He’d been fiddling with the thing
throughout the flight, barely sparing a word for Royce. Then
something changed, in the last few minutes before his unfortunate
stomach-upset.

Royce sighed. “You were about to tell me
the Most Important Thing.” The capitalization was all his own.

“Right,” said Les. “Fashion has one
fundamental aim: to define the subject’s relation to the
background. Background is defined—”

“I don’t need a lecture,” said Royce,
hastily. “I need something impressive…like the Snapping-Beetle
mission.”
That
mission was used as a case-study in the
Academy.

Les put away the tablet and turned to
give Royce his full attention. “You can’t fake expertise like
that,” he said. The look on his face suddenly changed to
nausea.

“It’ll settle down once the shuttle
stops maneuvering,” offered Royce helpfully.

Les replied by getting out of his seat
and rushing towards the head. When he returned, the shuttle was
firing thrusters to match velocities with the transfer station.

“You don’t have to come any further,”
said Les. “You should continue with your mission—I can certainly
make it to an Imperial ship on my own.”

Royce cleared his throat. “I’m in no
rush—the meeting with the Princess’s representative can be
delayed.”
Indefinitely
.

Les just reached for the tablet again.
But, instead of turning it on, he held it out to Royce.

“This is the closest you’ll come to
faking it,” he said. “Patterns—a selection of pieces from my
mother’s wardrobe for the last two cycles. Would have been three,
but, well, I’ve been stuck down here without communications for so
long.”

And what the hell am I supposed to do
with patterns?

“You’ll have access to a syntha-poly
extrusion printer in the Palace,” Les continued. “Just
plug-and-print. The dresses should more than satisfy the princess’s
appetite for Imperial Haute-Couture, despite being made of
synthetic polymers.”

“I…I don’t think your mother will
approve of you handing over her sartorial secrets. To
me
of
all people.”

Les shrugged. “Then don’t tell her.”

“I had been hoping for…tips and tricks,
that kind of thing.”

“Sorry,” said Les. “All I’ve got is
lectures
, which you don’t want to listen to. And anyway,
we’re out of time—I have a ship to catch.”

The shuttle’s micro-rotations stilled
and its axes came into alignment with the station’s. Les
immediately pushed himself off the seat and started floating down
the corridor towards the shuttle’s exit.

With a muttered curse, Royce hurled
himself after the man. He’d almost caught up to him when Les gave a
strangled cry, and clapped a hand over his neck. The sudden
movement resulted in an uncontrolled spin. People were starting to
notice, but Royce was far more concerned about the fact that Les
wasn’t trying to correct his motion.

An arms-length away from him, Royce
reached out and grabbed his ex’s shoulder, pulling him towards
himself till Les rested against his chest. Tremors were running
through Les’s frame, and his eyes were rolled up into his
skull.

Shit. Shit. Shit.
Royce gestured
to the shuttle attendant standing uncertainly beside the exit
hatch. “Medical emergency,” said Royce. “Get that open!”

“Yes, sir,” said the attendant, and
hauled the heavy door upwards.

His nostrils were immediately assaulted
by the unmistakable station-pong of bodies and recycled air. He
didn’t allow himself time to get used to the environment. Instead,
he grabbed Les, swung him into a spaceman’s hold, and pushed
himself down the last length of shuttle corridor.

“
Our agent is still on
Baldessh.”

“
Do you think he will? Return, that
is?”

“
Yes, and with evidence. Imperial
Intelligence will even expedite the process by a task-force to
extract their errant agent.”

“
Do you think the Spymaster
suspects…?”

“
No.”

“
Are you sure?”

-Transcript, Casual Conversation,
Trinity Prime 20.2994.11