Chapter 47: Rendezvous

Welcome home, Steph, Rudy thought. Hope you're enjoying it.

He wasn't being entirely sarcastic.

Stephan Kyrillos had been unconscious when Lord Arsen Brise and his brothers delivered him to the landing pad on New Kyrillopolis. He hadn't woken up until Lord Brise disembarked, insisted on an overlong exchange of kisses on the cheek with Milissa, and pulled himself back to his mecha with effort apparently equal to escaping New Kyrillopolis's gravity well. Which, considering Lord Brise's weight, was maybe pretty close to true.

Rudy chuckled at the memory.

Stephan had woken up almost as soon as his rescuers left. He hadn't exactly said that the Brise brothers kept him under so they could negotiate with the more pliable Kyrillos, but he hadn't said otherwise, either.

He'd sure looked almost as pissed as hurt.

"Poor baby," Rudy muttered. "Somehow, he'll just have to content himself with Chloe fussing over him if his hot sister has to pack her bags for the big day."

Fuss, Chloe had. Milissa, too, but unless the nobs were way more screwed up than even Otto thought, it wasn't the same coming from a little sister.

Hell of it was, with Stephan safely returned and his possible death no longer hanging over Chloe's head, she had finally taken Rudy's good-as-ever advice and relaxed. She seemed looser, calmer, than she had since he met her.

Looser, calmer, and less in need of the company of one Rudolf Kaine Algreil.

Rudy kicked an outlying root. His foot got the worst of the exchange. He glared up at the tree.

It stayed stoically, infuriatingly silent.

"Maybe I should break my foot," he mused. "If that stiff can get this kind of crowd with injuries he just imagined, the real thing would be a hell of a hit."

"Don't even say such a thing!"

Rudy whirled, dropping into a fighting crouch and bouncing backwards toward the tree.

At first, he thought Chloe had snuck up on him. Then he realized he was looking at Milissa. She'd pulled her dark curls into a ponytail like Chloe preferred when her hair was too long to hang loose without getting in her way, she'd ditched more than half her makeup, and replaced the rest with powder that made her tanned skin look closer to spacer-pale.

"I'm sorry I startled you, Crimson Phoenix," she said. She lowered her long dark eyelashes and dipped her head in what an untrained observer would have called remorse.

"What are you doing out here?" Rudy asked. "I thought it was supposed to be dangerous."

"It isn't dark yet," Milissa said.

"Isn't far from it." Rudy eyed the darkening sky. Since they were near the estate, he could actually see it overhead. In the deep woods, like the path from the landing pad, the canopy was so thick it could pass for a cave system.

"Which is why," she said, stepping closer, "I was looking for you."

"To tell me to come in before the monsters get me?"

"Well..." Another step. "Yes. Of course."

"Or to put the moves on me while Chloe's fussing over your poor, injured bro?"

"It isn't like that," Milissa snapped. She surged forward and met him eye to eye. They were about the same height. Her stratosphere blues blazed. He hadn't seen her so offended before.

It made her look more like Chloe.

"You of all people must know what it's like, Crimson Phoenix. Stephan's injuries, even if they weren't real, they hurt like it, and –" She bit her lip. It seemed to be habitual with her. It made her lips look fuller and redder.

And more like Chloe's.

Rudy knew he should start taking her back to the estate. For one thing, if there really were large predators in the woods, they probably came out closer to dusk than night. She could get hurt.

So could you, dumbass, a voice that sounded too much like Otto's for comfort reminded him. And I don't just mean by the animals.

Otto.

Turning on the old Algreil charm was liable to get dangerous when Milissa was turning on the Kyrillos equivalent.

But Rudy remembered something else about the day New Kyrillopolis's lord and master came home. Something Lord Brise had said.

He lay a hand on Milissa's shoulder.

She melted into what she apparently expected to be an embrace.

"Milissa," he said quietly, "I need to ask you something."

"Anything, Crimson Phoenix," she whispered against his chest.

Shit, Rudy thought, I've had this dream. Not here, exactly, and not with Milissa. But with who she looked too damn much like.

Which, he thought, had to be intentional.

Milissa might actually be a fangirl like she claimed, but she was a nob, the sister of one of the most powerful and dangerous ones alive. Alive, hell. Ever. Even if she didn't have ten thousand angles on every move she made with that gorgeous bod pressed against him –

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Rudy imagined a globe of cold water. He couldn't remember if Otto or one of his much-loathed Fed or Oligarchical instructors had taught him this mental exercise. He'd never been very good at it. He almost imagined drinking the globe, but water was way too lame to be a regular part of his diet. Imagine drinking something with neither alcohol nor electrolytes!

Thinking about it distracted him regardless.

Anyway, even if Milissa didn't have plenty of angles to go with her curves, Stephan sure as hell did.

Let him. If an Algreil couldn't outplot a Kyrillos something was wrong with the galaxy. More wrong than usual.

Rudy said, "So what's the deal with Lord Brise?"

"Let's not talk about him," Milissa said.

"Let's," Rudy said. Gently, he pushed her away. He told himself he was being polite and subtle by taking his sweet time prying her off; better start practicing in case he had to tell Chloe the same thing. "Before you say or do anything I'll regret, I think you better tell me about him and you."

"It's nothing, Crimson Phoenix," Milissa said. "He's just a pompous old fool. He and all his brothers. Even the ones younger than me are old at heart, and Principle knows they're even worse for pompous."

Rudy laughed. "With an opinion like that, it's a wonder you invited him down for tea, much less to hang out here for pretty much as long as he likes."

"I had no choice," Milissa said. "I couldn't offend him by seeming ungrateful. Word would get around, and sooner or later someone would get the idea Stephan had been ungrateful, and where would we be then?"

Where indeed. Rudy got the impression the nobs maintained an economy all their own. The currency was trickier to nail down, but no less binding. No less deadly when you were in debt, either.

Since he couldn't care less about economics, aristocratic or otherwise, he shifted tactics. "I get the impression Lord Brise thinks you're his fiance. Or supposed to be, anyway."

"He can think what he likes." Milissa turned her nose up and away.

"What does Stephan think?"

"What he likes," Milissa said. A lot quieter.

"And you?"

"He'd be a very favorable match, politically speaking. It would be nice to be able –" Milissa bit her lip again, this time to clamp it shut. She turned away. "Well. Nothing will come of it anyway."

"Lord Brise seems to think something will, as soon as things settle down with the mundanes." A group in which Rudy was included. He didn't see himself as mundane, and Milissa didn't seem to either, but the aristocratic term for non-psychics still applied.

For now, Rudy wanted Milissa to forget that fact.

"I'm safe for life, then," she said.

"It's that bad?"

"You know how stubborn they are," she said, dismissing the whole of mundane humanity with a wave of her hand. "Once they get it into their heads to brawl about something, they quite simply won't stop until they make a mess of everything."

"So there is a new Civil War brewing," Rudy said.

"Well, of course." Milissa gulped. "Oh."

"You weren't supposed to mention that, were you?"

Slowly, she shook her head.

"Stephan's orders?"

Milissa didn't protest, which Rudy took as a 'yes.'

"Which means Steph knew it before he left."

Milissa took a halting step back. "I shouldn't –"

Rudy caught her wrist easily. "But you're gonna."

"Unhand me!"

"No."

Milissa wilted before the word. She fell backwards against a tree and would have dislocated her wrist if Rudy hadn't relaxed his grip enough to let her slide down.

Chloe would have kept fighting, Rudy thought. Kept fighting and lost, sure, and gotten depressed when she realized she wasn't a world-beater, or at least didn't know how to be.

Milissa didn't look nearly so broken up over losing the argument. She just pouted.

Rudy suppressed a sigh of relief. She was still gorgeous, still the type he'd once claimed wasn't his but sure as hell seemed to be, still a fangirl –

– but she couldn't pass for a non-spacer version of Chloe.

"I'm not letting go until I get some straight answers," Rudy said. "Is my brother gearing up to fight the Feds?"

"I think he already started," Milissa said.

"What's your brother gonna do about it?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing."

Rudy decided to believe her for the moment. Besides, Stephan wasn't about to throw in with the Feds. Any involvement above none would help the Oligarchical cause, not hurt it. Not in the short term, at least. "This is all over Chloe?"

Milissa nodded.

"What the hell am I gonna do?" Rudy asked. He meant the question rhetorically.

Milissa fingered the strap of her dress.

"I'm not talking about 'doing' you, Milissa," he said. "I'm talking about my brother and the Feds."

"But there's nothing you can do," she said. She reached for, and got, his hands. "If you go, you'll just get killed. I – I mean, the Empress, too –"

"That's real noble of you," Rudy deadpanned. "Thinking of Chloe's feelings."

She pulled away like his hands had caught fire. Maybe because her ears had.

"You're right," she said quietly. "I'm not a very good person."

Then she started crying.

Don't go to her, moron, Rudy told himself. She was faking. Obviously. She wasn't even faking because she was a crazy fangirl who wanted him in bed. She was doing it because her asshole brother ordered her to do it.

Obviously.

Even if she wasn't, why go to her? She wasn't a good person. Maybe she needed a good cry to wrap her head around how shitty her attempt to manipulate him away from Chloe had been. Couldn't hurt.

Obviously.

And he was an oligarch, not a nob. He didn't do favors. He got equivalent exchange. Sometimes he even asked it of Chloe. What the hell would Otto say?

What, if Milissa hadn't made herself into a romantic rival and maybe even though she had, would Chloe say?

Damn it.

Rudy put an arm over Milissa's shoulders. "Hey, I didn't mean it that way."

"But it's true," Milissa sniffled.

"Yeah," Rudy allowed.

She looked up as if stung.

She looked damned young right then. Some of her makeup had started to run, and it made her seem smaller and more vulnerable than if she hadn't worn it at all. Most fangirls were young, in his experience. Most grew out of it.

Rudy felt a sudden flash of anger toward Stephan. Milissa couldn't be much older than Chloe and she might be younger. Weirdly, she also seemed a hell of a lot less worldly. Chloe knew too damn well all the things she was supposed to avoid to be a good spacer girl, and why. Rudy might disagree on the whys, but he understood them. Principle knew she beat them into his head often enough! Rudy was willing to bet the next time Milissa met a 'why' that wasn't 'I want it' or 'Stephan wants it' would be the first.

Or, he thought, she's a hell of a better manipulator than he’d given her credit for.

Either way, he figured Stephan took the blame. Who else was going to train his sister to be this way?

"Milissa," he said.

She blinked. "Yes, Crimson Phoenix?"

"I've got just one more thing to ask you, then you're heading home."

"Anything," she breathed.

Rudy looked past her and asked, "What does a bandersnatch look like?"