Author: Rachel Bach

Even though coming to the embassy had been my idea, all the running I’d done recently had made me even more paranoid than usual, and as the woman led me briskly out of the bunker area into a much nicer part of the building, my stomach started to sink. Despite his Royal Warrant, I wasn’t sure how far Caldswell’s influence extended into the Paradoxian military. If my name was on a watch list, I might have doomed myself by coming home, but it was too late to worry about that now. We were already at the end of a very nice carpeted hall in front of a heavy, expensive-looking wooden door. The woman stopped at the threshold and crisply commanded me to disarm, for I was entering the presence of nobility.

I obeyed, placing Sasha and Mia gently in her hands. Elsie didn’t detach, so I held out my arm to let the woman peacebind my blade with metallic tape. She did the same to my grenade cache and then scanned my suit from head to toe to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything else. When the scanner beeped green, she opened the wooden door and stood back so I could enter.

The office I walked into was very nice, but it wasn’t a patch on the other noble offices I’d seen. There were no expensive ornamentations, no paintings, and no priceless family treasures. The man sitting behind the desk in the middle of the room was just as surprising. He looked to be in his midfifties with short, graying brown hair. He was armored, of course, Baron’s armor as befit his rank. Nice stuff, too. Not Verdemont, but definitely custom, though I’d expected nothing less. All nobles had money. What did surprise me was that he was wearing combat armor. Most nobles preferred the flashier racing suits, or dueling models if they were fighters. This man was clearly a fighter, but he looked more ready to storm a Terran battleship than engage in an honor duel. In fact, his suit design was so no-nonsense that I wasn’t sure this was the baron until he glared at me.

“Been too long among Terrans, girl?”

I jumped and dropped the deepest bow my suit could manage. “Forgive me, my lord. I did not expect to see you so quickly.”

Though my face was now parallel with the floor, I saw the baron wave dismissively through my cameras. “Only idiots ignore unexpected urgent messages,” he said. “Now, sit down and tell me what’s so goddamn important. And it had better be important, soldier, or you’re going to learn what it means to waste the king’s time.”

I paled. Threats like that were normal, but I’d never heard a noble curse before. As blood relations of the Sainted King, they were above such vulgarity. But I wasn’t about to tell the baron that. I jumped to obey, taking a seat on the heavy armor-scaled chair in front of him. Meanwhile, the baron leaned back in his own chair, watching me through the rainbow of projected screens splashed across his visor.

I fidgeted under his attention, scrambling to think of a place to begin that wouldn’t make me sound crazy. When nothing leaped out at me, I decided to just go with the broadest target possible. “Have you heard of phantoms, my lord?”

The baron’s face grew grave. “I have.”

The words held a clear warning, but all I felt was relief. In those two syllables, Baron Kells had removed a huge weight from my chest. I was no longer alone with my secret, no longer strung up between Caldswell and Brenton. I had my own side now, Paradox, my home, and as the baron listened, my story burst forth of its own accord.

It took me nearly two hours to get the whole thing out, plus answer the baron’s questions. His grave expression had only deepened as the conversation went on, and by the time I got to the end of the lelgis attack, he was looking grim as a rainy funeral.

“We’re very lucky you decided to come to me,” he said when I finished. “Knowledge of the phantoms, even among the nobility, is usually kept to dukes and higher.”

I blinked in surprise. “So how do you know about them?”

The baron gave me a murderous look, and my stomach clenched. I had been among Terrans too long, because the question had just popped out. I bowed hastily, sputtering apologies, but the baron just rolled his eyes.

“It’s none of your business,” he said. “But I’m rightly proud of it, so I’ll tell you anyway. I wasn’t born noble. King Stephen bestowed this office and my title on me last year as a reward for twenty years of service as a Devastator.”

I couldn’t stifle my startled gasp in time, and the baron’s face broke into a wicked smile. “I still keep up with the order, and I’ve heard your name tossed around a good bit, Deviana Morris. The Blackbird in the Verdemont suit collecting promotions so quickly you’d think they were giving them away. Last thing I’d heard was that you’d signed up with Caldswell’s flying coffin, so when you showed up unexpectedly at my door, I knew it would be bad news.”

I caught his meaning at once. “You’ve worked with Caldswell before, my lord?”

“A few times,” the baron said. “Enough to know I don’t want to do it again.” His look turned sour. “Up against the wall or not, you can’t trust a man who lets children do his fighting.”

“I agree, my lord,” I said. “But I hope that won’t have to happen anymore.”

The baron nodded and stood up, which meant I stood as well. “You were right to come to bring this to me,” he said. “If what you’re saying is true, and for the record, I believe it is, you’ve given Paradox a great weapon and an even greater opportunity. I’m going to send a message to the Royal Office right away. Meanwhile, I want you to get that leg to a doctor. Archer?”

The door opened when he said the name, and the woman in Knight’s armor who’d been waiting outside stepped in with a bow.

“Take Lieutenant Morris to the medbay,” the baron said, looking back at me. “I don’t need to tell you to keep your mouth shut about this, do I?”

“Of course not, my lord,” I said, bowing low.

The baron nodded and waved me into the hall before returning to his seat. I had just enough time to see him pull a top-security message screen onto his display before his door locked and the woman, Archer, ordered me to follow her.

Under any other circumstances I’d have grumbled at being ordered to the medbay like a first-year recruit who didn’t know better, but right then I’d have gladly gone anywhere the baron told me. I was so happy I even let the embassy staff take my armor away to be repaired by the staff armorsmith sight unseen. And as the army doctor numbed my leg in preparation for replacing my emergency patch with a real skin graft, all I could think was that the only mistake I’d made in coming here was not doing it sooner.

The doctor wasn’t happy that I’d gone so long on my injured leg. He cleaned the wound and grafted it as best he could, but he warned me I’d have a scar there forever. I had plenty of scars, so I wasn’t too worried about that. What really had me in a tizzy was the report from the armorsmith that they’d had to refactor my whole leg piece to repair the damage from Sasha’s bullet.

Armor can only be refactored so many times before you have to replace it, and mine had been in the oven a lot lately. Still, my Lady looked good as new when I got her back that evening. I was testing her out in the embassy’s gym when I got a message from the baron that my report had been received by the Royal Office and we’d be getting a formal answer by tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, I was put on lockdown, which only made sense. I was dangerous and possibly contagious, after all. Normally this would have chaffed, but this time I couldn’t care less. After days of near constant emergency, I was perfectly content to eat familiar foods, sleep until I couldn’t sleep anymore, and revel in the fact that I didn’t have to crawl through flooded tunnels or worry about monsters—xith’cal, lelgis, or symbiont—grabbing me in the night.

Even the few glowing bugs I saw floating through the embassy walls couldn’t bring me down. I was happy as a pig in mud to lie on my bunk in the little room they’d given me, eat my tray of army-style cafeteria food, and watch Paradoxian armor game shows on the delayed feed from Kingston until I fell asleep.

I haven’t slept that heavy in years. It took the guard two knocks to wake me up for breakfast late the next morning. I was happily munching my way through the huge platter of fried sausage, fried toast, and fried potatoes he’d brought when Archer came in to announce that the envoy from the Royal Office was here to pick me up.

I almost choked on my breakfast. Montblanc was a major colony, but it was about as far from Paradox as it was possible to get and still be in the Republic. Baron Kells’s report must have lit a fire back home to get someone out here so fast.

I abandoned my food and hopped up, reaching for my clean, recharged, repaired armor, but Archer shook her head.

“No armor,” she said sternly at my skeptical look. “Orders from the top.”

I swallowed. When you were talking about the Royal Office, “from the top” meant someone in the royal family, and as much as I hated the idea of going anywhere without my Lady, I wasn’t about to disobey. I locked my armor in the temporary case the armorsmith had dug up for me, lashed my guns to the top, and then followed the baron’s officer out into the hall, where four red suits were waiting to walk us out into the formal entry.

That actually made me a little nervous. Four red suits plus Archer’s Knight armor was a lot of honor guard for someone wearing no armor, especially since no one was supposed to know what I was. This was an envoy from the Royal Office, though. Maybe they’d sent an active duty Devastator to bring me back to Paradox? It could even be a Royal Knight.

That thought cheered me up enormously. I’d never actually met a Royal Knight in person, but they were exactly the sort of completely irreproachable, honorable, nearly fanatic loyalists you’d need to escort a secret alien superweapon back to Paradox. This theory was further supported when we walked into the entry hall to see Baron Kells himself waiting for us in the middle of the lobby. I couldn’t see who he was talking to, but with the baron paying such close attention, it could only be the envoy, and my spirits soared a little higher.

But when the baron turned to greet us, my soaring turned to plunging. The man Baron Kells had been talking to wasn’t wearing King-class armor as a Devastator should. He wasn’t wearing armor at all, actually, just a nice black suit. His back was to me, but that didn’t matter. I knew him from any angle, and I froze midstep as Rupert turned away from the smiling baron to lock his icy blue eyes on mine.

The guards around me stopped a second later, looking at me in confusion. Archer even reached out to touch my shoulder. “Lieutenant Morris?”

“Morris!” the baron called, glaring at me through his visor. “Stop gawking and get over here. This is the Royal Knight who will be escorting you to the king.”

“But my lord,” I whispered. “This man isn’t—”

“Lieutenant Morris is confused,” Rupert said, and my jaw dropped a second time. His accent was completely gone. Rupert was speaking King’s Tongue like he’d grown up in a wealthy Kingston family.

“I have the order right here,” he continued, all polite smiles as he pulled out a very official looking ledger marked with the king’s own crest. Baron Kells glanced at me curiously one last time, then took the ledger, checking it against his own.

“It bears the king’s seal, and King Stephen’s personal signature,” he said, his voice awed. “Yes, sir knight. We’ve disarmed her as requested. She’s all yours.”

I heard the baron’s words like he was speaking from the bottom of a well. Rupert wasn’t looking at me anymore, but I could see his body leaning in my direction, ready to give chase if I bolted. If he’d actually been the Paradoxian he had everyone convinced he was, he’d have known that wasn’t necessary. With that order, his status as the voice of the crown was cemented. If I tried to expose him, it would be my word against the king’s, which meant my word against the will of heaven. If I fought or ran, if I even tried to argue, I would be committing heresy and treason.