“Do not argue the Lacuna, condemning the whole argument using the hole in the argument. Technicality is not truth.”

—The General Principles of Gens Nethress

----

Thorssel Palace of Governance

Tumbling Seeding 24, 1885 CE

“And you are sure that there is no chance they will reconsider?” Try as she might to maintain an optimistic demeanor, Oralie could not fool Dorsin. She looked as aged and weary as he felt; where a stranger might merely note a well-bred, even-tempered matron, Dorsin knew that the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, the slight forward bend of her shoulders, the nervous way she tapped her right index finger on the table, all signified fear. And to his nose, she smelled of sour anxiety.

Magus Dux Dorsin Generosus Ortus Nethress — Dux of the duchy of Thorssel, renowned warrior and general, cause of his bloodline’s woes — wished he could console his wife’s troubled heart, but to do so would be to lie. “Yes,” he said. “The Pacuatl doubt our ability to protect their daughters. Their Thing was quite clear that they would provide no further contracts until we prove that the hair-maidens would not be in any danger.”

“Let us prove it, then.”

The invitation to find a silver lining was tempting. Dorsin ignored it. “We haven’t the manpower to spare. We don’t even know where they might be holding the hair-maidens. For all we know, Gens Nxtlu may, at this moment, be claiming that it liberated the women from our control, and therefore it is returning them to their people. We have no way of knowing.”

“That would go a long way toward convincing the Pacuatl to restore the Nxtlu contracts,” Oralie admitted.

“Or they may have enslaved the girls and taken them to a secure location. We don’t know. We might as well be a blind man waving a gun about. No. I wish it could be otherwise, but we must count the hairsilk contracts a loss, and make it up elsewhere. Piotr.”

Dorsin’s retainer, ebony and permanently Stigmatized with armor-plated skin that gave him a somewhat lizardlike texture, stepped forward from the door, bowed, and presented a folder to the Dux. “What news do you have for me, Piotr?” Dorsin asked as he flipped through the pages.

“While you were departed for negotiations, Dux, Gens Nxtlu assaulted our Greenbelt holdings.”

“The result?”

“The loss of one apiary to Nxtlu control and the torching of one of our wineries.”

“But the rest are fine?”

“Yes, my Dux, but the genalysis Tools have been reporting fungal infections in some of the vines. They are resistant to standard therapy. We have dedicated our best syntheticians to stopping the infection.”

“What of human losses, Piotr?” Oralie asked.

The ebony-skinned man scowled. The expression was a sign of how poor Nethress’s position was; Piotr usually accepted success and failure both with the same stoic grace. “We bought the security of our estates dearly, as we were not prepared for the assault. Eight hundred of our irregulars dead. At last count, we eliminated two hundred of theirs, but they have fortified their gains.”

“And our forces in New Pullmas did not report on the gathering of their troops? I find that hard to believe,” Dorsin said.

“My Dux, our loyalists in New Pullmas have ceased all reports.”

Dorsin could not keep from cursing. “Blood and bile. We’ve lost the city, then.”

“It appears so, my Dux.”

“And Acerbia?”

“Resistance reports are sparse, but they have not yet stopped. Your… special asset within the city reports that Nxtlu are still hunting loyalists. She believes that this indicates that the resistance still poses a threat.”

Oralie reached across the table and took Dorsin’s hand. He squeezed it and gave her a strained smile, then turned back to Piotr. “But what of my daughter?”

“There are no reports yet, my Dux.”

Dorsin closed his eyes and fought off the urge to bare his teeth. “I should have ensured that she was taught Synapsis before she left,” he murmured. If Senrii could have sent a message instantly from Acerbia to Thorssel, perhaps she would have already checked in.

Or perhaps she wouldn’t have, and Dorsin’s anxiety would have been that much stronger.

“Don’t, Dorsin,” Oralie said. “Senrii is a resourceful girl. I’m sure she’s fine.”

“My Dux,” Piotr continued, “Magus Odinwel has reported via Synapsis that there was an apparent standoff in the Acerbia Sodality Chapterhouse, and that the Ambassatrix departed soon thereafter.”

“Then perhaps she made it to the secondary extraction,” Dorsin said.

“I am sure she did, my love.” Ah, Oralie, so brave in the face of so many conflicts of the heart. What must she be thinking now, to expose her daughter to the raw realities of history? Dorsin would have preferred to have left the past where it was for as long as possible, but if telling Senrii the truth was the price he had to pay to bring his daughter back safe and sound, Dorsin would pay it ten thousand times over.

“Piotr. The treasury?”

“Yes, my Dux. I am afraid to say that at the current trajectory, there will be insufficient common economy funds to purchase treatments for Jorn and Norman both upon their reaching puberty. And I believe that we have almost tapped out our credit within the peer economy as well.”

Oralie swallowed deeply. Dorsin wished, as he always did, that that open wound would heal just for one day. But then, who was he to wish it, when the fault was his and his alone? “How much, then, Piotr?”

“Perhaps four intervals’ worth.”

Four intervals’ worth. It was a pitiful amount. The real cost of the Chrysalis was not in the treatments to cause the Symbiosis, but in the drugs required to forestall a suboptimal bond when the first, and the second, and the third treatment inevitably resulted in only a partial merge with the Symbiont.

No Generosus worth her genes would tolerate merely having access to a Sequencing Organism: Prophage/Human Interface in Adequate Symbiosis, a SOPHIAS. No; no Gens would tolerate their highest members’ becoming mere purple-bloods, half-Bound, able only to direct their Symbionts to perform painstaking manual genetic alterations to plants and animals.

Only an Optimal Symbiosis, a SOPHIOS, would do for the Gentes, creating full-powered Magi who could assimilate, read, and manifest xenokaryotic DNA templates as STIGMOI or apply them in a more permanent fashion to a Stigmatized retainer like Piotr.

Any family line that could rely on successful binding upon the first treatment would have leapt ahead of the rest of the Gentes in financial matters. If any bloodline could do such a thing, however, Dorsin’s was not it. The caprices of genetics had forced him into six intervals before his own symbiosis was optimal. Such difficulty was unheard of in the blood of Gens Nethress. Most of his brothers and sisters had required only three intervals each. Even Senrii, the combinations of Dorsin’s unlucky genes and Oralie’s promising ones, had managed to complete a bond in four. Dorsin was the weak link, and he knew his sons would share in his inadequacy.

“Four intervals’ worth,” he mused. “Sufficient for one, perhaps.”

Piotr nodded. “I shall task the genalysts at once to determine which of the two boys is more promising.”

“See that you do.”

“Would you have me request the Sodality to perform the genalysis instead?”

“No. We have no need of an immediate answer, and I would as soon leave them out of it.”

“With respect, Dux?”

“You always respect me, Piotr. What is it?”

“It is likely that within the decade we will be unable to fund any more Chrysalises whatsoever.”

The words fell like iron in Dorsin’s heart. So that was it, then. His branch of Gens Nethress was destined for extinction. And with that being the case, the rest of the family would not be far behind. Dorsin gave a long, slow nod. “Thank you for your honesty.”

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“Of course, my Dux.”

Dorsin sighed and leaned back in his chair, staring at the coral ceiling that curved to a shallow dome above their heads. He had spent so many hours in this room as a child, sitting under the table, listening to his father brief his uncles and aunts and determine strategies for proceeding with the goal of Imperium. Why had the estate of Thorssel fallen to Dorsin? Any one of his brethren would have been better fits for the duchy.

Dorsin had proven that with his youthful rashness.

And yet his father had allowed him to retain the city. Magus Princeps Gerart Generosus Ortus Nethress was no fool. So why?

“Dux Dorsin!” A panting servant boy had appeared at the doorway while Dorsin was lost in thought. “Dux Dorsin, a message has just come in on the shortsphere.”

“Out with it, boy.”

“Maga Senrii has returned. Her whaleship is at the edge of shortsphere range.”

“She has returned? Forty miles?” Oralie looked from the boy to her husband. “That gives us enough time to meet them at the landing pad.” The worry was gone, and an excited edge had entered her voice.

“My Dux! Begging your pardon, Era — they’re flying on a Sodality ship.”

“We expected as much,” Dorsin observed.

“There’s a whole delegation, my Dux. Maga Senrii and several bloodless citizens of Acerbia. A family — a boy and two young girls, my Dux.”

“Citizens?” Dorsin frowned.

“And also the Ambassatrix of Acerbia’s Sodality.”

Dorsin clasped Oralie’s hands to prevent her fingernails from tapping so loudly against the wood that the servant boy would notice. At the same time, he felt ashamed for doing so, because the motion was as much an expression of excitement as an attempt to calm his wife. Had his heart truly fluttered to hear those words even as his conscience reeled?

What good was Dorsin to Oralie if he could not protect his wife from a history full of heartbreak?

“Perhaps,” Dorsin said, “we ought to receive Senrii and the, ah, citizens first, and allow the Ambassatrix to announce herself at her pleasure.”

“My Dux,” the servant boy said, “they have sent word that the Ambassatrix has already announced herself to the Thorssel Chapterhouse.”

“She wants us to meet her at the pad,” Oralie mused.

Dorsin stood. “Give me a moment alone with my wife.” Piotr and the boy cleared out. When they were gone, Dorsin came around the table and took Oralie’s hands in his own. “I swear to you, Oralie, I had nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, Dorsin. You have everything to do with everything she does, you foolish man.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“And you’re worried. I give you my word, my love, I will not —”

Oralie shook her head. “I’m not worried about that, Dorsin. I’m worried because I don’t know what could bring Rosabella out of Acerbia like this. If it’s a message, why didn’t she send it using — the normal methods?”

“It must be very sensitive.”

“That, my love, is what worries me.”

“Oralie, you don’t have to come. I can bring Senrii back —”

“Dorsin, when my daughter steps off of that ship, I want to be there to see it.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “And what gives you the impression that I don’t want to see Rosabella?”

A complicated, heartbreaking history — that was the legacy of Dorsin’s youthful indiscretions.

Dorsin had Piotr call for a carriage. A biomobile would be faster, of course, but there were forms to observe. Within fifteen minutes, the Dux and his wife were sitting in a sleekly decorated carriage. The panting of the jungle wolves drawing their conveyance faded into the background noise of the gently lapping waters beneath the city as they trotted down crowded market streets and over coral bridges.

There was no city quite like Thorssel anywhere in the world. New Pullmas’s spiny forgebone spires and Acerbia’s shadowy hives of darkness and light could not match the Coral Metropolis’s sheer beauty. Even Lellonell, the City of Living Trees, could only approach the colors of Thorssel when the Withering months came and the leaves changed their hues. Thorssel was a diamond floating atop a bed of sapphires.

What had Dorsin ever done to deserve it?

They left the city behind and rode over one of the narrow causeways that stretched over the bay and toward the docks. Ships of both water and air entered the city at the same port; to the ocean docks on the left, a few seagoing vessels drifted lazily beside their quays. Cranes dotted the enormous platform, and dockworkers hurried to and fro, unloading cargo boxes from incoming merchantmen while preparing other ships for departure.

Who, to look on this scene, would know the dire straits of Gens Nethress?

To the right, long pillars that disappeared into the deep held up a vast landing platform. The carriage rode across the airfield and came to a stop next to a deconstructed hangar. The Dux helped his wife from the carriage, and Piotr stepped out after them, retrieving his telescoping forgebone halberd from the hooks on the side of the vehicle. The bodyguard took up the ritual position in front of his Dux, and they waited.

A half-finished control tower occupied one of the corners of the enormous platform. Dorsin had ordered its production a few years ago, but the loss of Acerbia’s wealth had forced him to put a halt to the construction.

For now, at least, the Archon Tool was sufficient for controlling the air traffic to and from the city. The landing platform was barely operating at one tenth capacity. It was little more than a flat expanse punctuated here and there by whaleships in various stages of inflation. Dorsin set aside the natural impulse to marvel at the wastefulness; appearances were deceiving, he knew, and the size of the platform was based on a different calculation than simply how many commercials vessels could reasonably be expected on a daily basis. Capacity is a maximum, not an average.

And one day— perhaps one day soon— Gens Nethress would need all that capacity. Not merely the surface area on top, but the volume that stretched down, down into the depths of the water, as well.

The surface area of the platform could serve vessels. But volume could store them.

For all the size of the biopolymer helium podding of the enormous zeppelin that was now descending from the sky, the double-helix symbol clear to see on its side, even the arrival of Dorsin’s daughter and her entourage would do little to fill the empty space of the airfield. Slowly, slowly, the vessel descended, its massive balloon casting the waiting Dux into shadow, until finally spindly legs emerged from its belly and groped toward the ground. The whaleship settled in and at last breathed a sigh of relief as the enormous fans that propelled it whirred to a halt.

Oralie took Dorsin’s hand and squeezed it as a door opened on the side of the cabin beneath the pod. Such a large vessel for such a small living space.

A long, thin limb the width of the door extruded from beneath the portal, obscuring the view of the door from the ground, and paused. Then it began to descend.

“They’re coming,” Oralie whispered.

The approach of the limb passed an inflection point, and a head of brunette hair came into view. Dorsin commanded his SOPHIOS to enhance his vision, and was rewarded with the sight of a pair of deep brown brown eyes set in a youthful face. “Mom! Father!” Senrii cried, waving over the edge of the limb that was bearing her to the ground. The acuteness of Dorsin’s vision was dissonant with the distance of Senrii’s voice. Dorsin commanded the SOPHIOS to restore his eyes to their normal function. When all else is equal, let a man deny himself, as the General Principles commanded. He would see Senrii up close soon enough.

“Senrii,” Oralie called, clasping her hands to her heart. “Oh, my beautiful girl!”

“Not as beautiful as you, mom. How are things?”

“Ten times better, now that I know you’re safe.”

Dorsin put a hand on Oralie’s shoulder. Senrii was not safe here. None of them was safe. And Senrii was in a dangerous line of work.

As the limb passed another inflection point and the rest of the travelers became visible, Dorsin forced himself to keep his attention focused on Senrii, but the shock of red in his peripheral vision made it difficult. He turned instead to Oralie.

His wife was gazing up at the descending limb, emotions of surprise, heartache, memories wild and lovely and horrid playing across her face— or rather, in her eyes. For all her practice at hiding her outward emotional reactions, Oralie was three decades Dorsin’s bride, and he could read her like a book.

A heavy thump informed the Dux that the descent was complete. Oralie strode past Piotr, disregarding entirely the polearm in his hands, as Senrii leapt to the ground. Oralie embraced her daughter.

“Hey, hey, mom. No need for the waterworks. I’m here, I’m safe.”

“There are no waterworks, Senrii,” Oralie said into her daughter’s shoulder. The muffling did not suffice to hide the amusement in her voice.

“Yeah, I know. I’m just telling you there’s no need for them. So don’t get any ideas.”

Oralie pushed back and held her daughter at shoulder length. “You’ve grown.”

“You’ve shrunk.”

“Age takes some of us more quickly than others.”

An awkward silence ensued. Senrii glanced at her father and pressed her lips together nervously as Dorsin took a deep breath and drew himself to full height. “You are late, Senrii.”

“I know, Father.”

“We had no word on you. We were very worried.”

“I’m sorry, Father.”

Dorsin walked to his daughter and looked her up and down. She submitted to his gaze with obvious trepidation. Oh, Senrii. How little she understood. Dorsin reached out and enveloped her in his arms. “How can you be sorry?” he whispered. “You came back to us. Never be sorry.”

“Dad…”

“Hush. I’m sure we have a great deal to discuss. But now is not the time.” He glanced up at the rest of the buckets. The servant boy’s word had been good. There were one young man, two little girls — and a woman as radiant as the setting sun, whose smile as his eyes met hers set his heart whirling in ways that he had almost forgotten over the years. Dorsin stepped back. “We should greet our guests first.”

“Dad,” Senrii said, turning as the others stepped down to the ground. “This is Tvorh.” A small boy for his age — mid-teens, Dorsin would have guessed. He bore one of the little girls in his arms, and the other clung to his legs. “Tvorh, this is my father, Magus Dux of Thorssel Dorsin Generosus Ortus Nethress.”

“Sir,” the boy said and nodded at him. Manners were lacking, then. Dorsin nodded back. He would demand an explanation from Senrii later.

“And these,” Senrii continued, pointing to the girls, “are Bilr and Hrega.”

“Say hello to the Dux,” Tvorh said.

“Hello, Dux,” the twins said. They seemed earnest, and the boy obviously cared for his family. That did count for something.

Senrii turned to the last of the visitors. “And I hear you already know Ambassatrix Acerbiae Magistra Uxori Rosabella Sodalitatis.”

Rosabella glided down the last steps of the ramp-limb, her gold and red skirts dancing around her ankles. How she managed to walk up and down slopes in those shoes, Dorsin would never know. But somehow she managed to do it, looking as earth-shatteringly ravishing as ever as she took the final step to the ground.

To be double minded is to be less than human, Dorsin reminded himself.

Piotr shifted uncomfortably as Oralie slipped past Dorsin. Rosabella’s smile became truer and sadder as the wife of the Dux approached. “Era Oralie Generosus Nethress Ortus La Table d’Or,” she murmured. “It makes my heart glad to see you again with my own eyes.”

Oralie took the Ambassatrix’s hands in her own. “Rosabella. It has been too long.”

Rosabella leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I know. I am sorry, Oralie. May I never make the same mistake again.”

Oralie nodded and stepped back, and Rosabella turned to Dorsin. Why, oh why, did he feel as though he couldn’t breathe? No farmer has attention to spare for two fields, no matter how great he might believe the yield, he reminded himself. Was this not one of the General Principles of Gens Nethress? Why was he so helpless to remember it in the presence of this lovely visage?

She was curtsying. When had she done that? He hadn’t even noticed. “My lord,” she said. “It has been too long.”

Dorsin nodded and swallowed dryly. “We are, as always, at your service, Ambassatrix.”

She rose and studied his face, her lips twitching into a smile. “As I am at yours, my lord.”