Blood Crown (8 page)

“Nine years ago today, we captured the Empire of the West. We eliminated the royal family, rendering the foolish prophecy void of fulfillment.” His voice is mild yet his words stab into my heart like Cook’s sharpest knife. My ears ring and I have to strain to hear the rest of his words. “I have an important announcement to make.”

He pauses and the guests titter and whisper to one another behind gloved hands. It’s clear to me that everyone knows what the announcement will be, but they enjoy playing the game. Playing at being human.

“Within the week, the Empire of the East will be ours.” He holds up a hand to pause the celebration that bubbles upward. “Within the week, we will reach the pinnacle of our creation. We will have surpassed even the Creator’s most daring dream. We will be both sun and moon.
We
will encompass the fruition of evolution.”

The guests erupt with applause and shouts of joy. A couple women even swoon, falling back into the arms of the nearest male. The leader gestures with his right hand which I take to mean we should approach with our trays.

“Celebrate our supreme achievement and prepare yourselves for the fulfillment of all our desires in the days to come. Soon, my friends,” his voice rings above the clapping that has not subsided, “we will claim the head of the snake and crush it beneath our feet.” On the last word his voice rises over the din as if amplified.

I approach the table, dread slowing my steps. A woman slips a small, flaky roll filled with smoked fish and fragile greens from my tray. I watch her hand, so fine boned, so delicate. Her fingers return, but does not touch the food—instead she reaches out and places them under my chin, drawing downward until our eyes meet.

I refuse to gasp, though I hear Tam, who stands on the other side of the table from me, make a startled noise in her throat. The woman’s eyes are as pale a green as the leaves in the sandwiches, with silver filaments pulsing within them.

The woman continues to hold my chin in her grasp, but out of the corner of my eye I see Tam making her way further down the table.

“Whatever happened to your face?” she says, forcing me to turn my head from side to side. I think for sure her grasp will leave bruises—certainly they would if I’d been as delicately skinned as the other girls. “Such a lovely face, too.” She clucks her tongue. “What a shame.”

She releases me and I straighten, about to hurry on to the next guest when she speaks again. This time her voice holds a metallic, demanding ring, and I feel certain it would be disastrous to disobey her. “Put down the tray.”

I do as she asks and fight the red that creeps into my face as the guests around us chuckle into their hands. The woman regards me openly. When a male’s hand touches my hip she slaps it away. “It’s not your turn, Jin-Jonyen. Patience.” The tray slides away from me as the guests pass it among themselves. Despite the lady’s words, I feel more hands creep over my bottom, my thigh, my hip. Perhaps she can’t see them, doesn’t know others are encroaching on her—I hate to think it—
property
.

“Though your face has been damaged, there’s something . . . special about you.” She waves her hand in a circle. “Don’t you think so, my darling?” Beside her, a man, who’s been looking down the table toward Minn, swivels in his seat.

When his eyes come to rest on my body, his lips slowly spread into a wide grin. And it terrifies me. There is no lust in it, no true desire, but there is something else, a cold calculation that weighs me, dissects me.

“She’s lovely, yes?” the woman asks. She has one hand pressed lightly to my left breast, as natural as one might lay claim to a chair or box. “That is, if you pay no attention to her face.”

Her companion looks toward Minn who now sits on a man’s lap on the other side of the table. Even from where I’m standing I can see her body trembling, can imagine her fear and loathing. The companion sighs before turning back to his lady. “I suppose she must do.”

“Come here, my sweet,” the lady says, grasping my breast and pulling me forward by it. It hurts, but I refuse to let this Elite know it. I don’t understand what is going on, and my mind reels with possibilities and options.

Her eyes have the tell-tale silver threads of an android but she is as unique from the others around her as I am from Minn or Sher. She beckons me to lie across her lap and the man beside her pulls me partway over to him, until I am suspended over both their legs. I haven’t yet fought back, though I can feel power gathering beneath my quiet limbs. While their hands rove over me, I observe the powdered, ostentatious androids around me.

There is something off about them. They should have been superior to the andies that occasionally visited the ship, but these beings totter in their seats, giggle in response to our whimpers. It isn’t until I see the woman who has me lean over and pluck a pinch of silver dust from a plate in the middle of the table, and deposit it on her tongue, that I get my answer.

“Mmm,” she groans, letting her head loll back on her neck. “Heavenly.”

When her eyes fall to my body again, the whites glow with a pearlescent light and it seems she can’t focus on me anymore.

“Let me,” insists her companion. He leans forward, carelessly pressing my head against the edge of the table. I squirm and he grips my hair with his left hand until I lie still.

“Naughty, naughty,” croons the woman. Her hand slides up my thigh.

“No. No!” cries Minn. I can’t see her, but I recognize the low, quiet, pitch of her voice. Soon afterward, Tam and Sher express similar objections.

At once I am
aware
. My mind no longer caught up in the swirls of analytical thought.

“Help,” Minn cries and I don’t think anymore. Instead I push.

Power surges through me as I shove against the man’s chest and thrust my knee into the woman’s chin. I grab the plate of silver dust and blow on it while turning. All around me the androids gasp and lean back in their chairs. Minn is the first to scramble to her feet.

“Sera!” she cries, looking wildly around.

“Grab a plate of that silver dust and blow!” I shout.

I catch a glimpse of Minn following my instructions before I whirl around and jump onto the table. In one long step I cross to the other side and grab another plate.

“Come on!” I shout to Sher and Tam who are dumped to the floor when their patrons try to distance themselves from the turmoil.

I jump onto the table and run down the length of it, knocking things over, spilling pitchers in my wake. Golden globes swim in my view, but I swat them away. I am bent on one task—finding the plates of silver dust and throwing it in the faces of the white-powdered androids I pass. But as I bend to grasp a delicate bowl piled high with the stuff, a cold hand grips the back of my neck, restraining me.

Red fills my view. It is the benefactor of this event—the man who commanded all who are here, who welcomed them to their seats, who spoke about the greatness of the Elite.

For a moment, fear paralyzes me and I hang, suspended in his hand. I notice the fine braiding of gold on the rope that wraps his waist and from which dangles a golden globe, its light swirling.

Then I see the feet of a girl step near and feel the android’s body quake with a blow. Out of the corner of my eye I see him grab Minn’s long dark hair and yank her back—a chair clanking to the floor at her feet.

Minn shrieks, the sound unstopping my frozen veins. I feel them resume their pumping, feel the familiar and welcome rush of energy swim up from my core. I twist in the man’s hand until I can see his face.

He is handsome, less powdered and affected than the others, and not high on whatever that silver dust is, either. When he looks down at me, his blue eyes widen—and then narrow.

“It can’t be,” he seethes through clenched teeth.

But I don’t stick around to see what will follow—commentary on my finer appearance? On the white-ridged scar that graces my face? Whatever it is, if it comes from him, I don’t want to hear it.

In that instant I see that he looks much like the man in my dreams, but I push that thought down and lock it away. He isn’t my father. No matter how his eyes look the same.

Taking advantage of his momentary hesitation, I launch myself up and backward, wrenching out of his grip. I grab Minn’s hand and run toward the door of the great hall.

“The others!” I shout, pulling up short before we cross the threshold.

“Already out!” Minn cries. She dashes past me and down the corridor to the transport. I take one last look at the wheeling crowd—the man in red watching me, unruffled, with his hands clasped in front of him—before yanking the big doors shut behind me and running after Minn.

The band of light above our heads pulses yellow. My pod-mates endure the boredom in games of tactics and combat while I remain clamped to the wall, my gaze fixed on the light. I fight to control my prime directive, but it is becoming more and more difficult. Serantha is near—so near I would not able to suppress the activity of my symbiants should Galen choose to examine me now. The vault in which I buried my true nature gapes wide open within me. I am Archibald, Serantha’s Servant. And she lives.

So I focus on the pulse of yellow light, grasp the smooth panels beneath my hands, and wait for the light to turn green.

“Come. On. Come on! Can’t this bucket of bolts go any faster? Ah!” I grab fistfuls of my hair as I pace away from the console, then back again—but in those two seconds we had not been magically transported across space. I shove on the back of Stuart’s seat and launch myself away again.

A hand lands on my shoulder and I spin around—but it is only Kevin, a man who has become my friend. “Get a hold of yourself, Wallace. Just . . . get a hold of yourself.”

It feels as if my teeth will grind to dust beneath the pressure of my jaw. I search Kevin’s eyes—and take a deep breath.

“ETA, Mr. Stuart?” Kevin says, though his eyes never leave my own.

“Twenty-nine hours and fifty-seven minutes, sir.”

Kevin grips my shoulder once more. “Thirty hours. Get some food. Get some sleep. In thirty hours you can kill the bastard.” He doesn’t wait for my response before brushing past me and leaving the Con.

For a moment I stand in the middle of the room, debating my next action. Finally it is the stiff silence, the hunched shoulders of the few men at the Con that make up my mind. They are awaiting another outburst, steeling themselves against my wrath.

Kevin is the only one here, the only one in the West, who knows my true identity. I fled my Empire because of my unwillingness to become a tyrant like my father. And I realize—as long as I stand here, as long as I allow myself to mistreat the people I work with, the people I fight with, I am just like him.

Simeon wrestles with Sher beside the transport, while a cigarette—so rare and expensive, the Elite surely paid him off with it—lies smoldering on the steel floor at his feet. Tam is inside the transport, screaming hysterically for Sher to
come on
. The pulsing lights around the shaft are red, and a voice reminds us that one must stand away from the transport edge before it can engage. But the guard has Sher by her hair and even though she’s mostly inside the transport now, he has her bent over, her neck over the divider. He wrenches her to him and Sher screams—but she surprises him and me both by lunging forward and kicking him in the shin. He only laughs, feeling nothing from her flash of bravery.