Chapter 62: Gilded Cage

Chloe sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the wood-paneled wall of her suite.

Neither bed nor suite were truly hers.

No more than the elegant gowns hanging in the closet, or the one lying discarded beside her on the bed's reactive gel, or the gold-framed mirror on the dresser, or the open case of jewelry beside it.

Chloe had torn her earlobes in her haste to get the diamond earrings out. They ached dully, a reminder she didn't entirely want to banish.

None of these things were hers. They did not belong to her. She did not want them.

She would leave them, and this place. As soon as she worked up the courage. The bravado she'd shown Stephan faded as soon as she stopped talking, leaving a black pit at the base of her stomach where her guts were supposed to be.

She'd come to her suite to pack and realized she had almost nothing to pack. She'd stripped off the gown and tossed it aside, dumped the necklace and the bracelets, torn away the earrings, shook her dark curls loose from their elaborate weave. She'd slipped into the familiar comfort of her flight suit.

Her few other possessions had been confiscated with the Mother Goose. Even the flight suit was a gift from Rudy, white instead of her familiar gray.

Rudy.

Her instincts, her hunch, told her she should go to him for help.

She didn't listen. A hunch had led her to the Kyrillos estate, where she manifestly did not belong. She couldn't trust it. She couldn't trust Rudy Kaine Algreil, either. If she owed the Kyrilloses for anything, she owed them for showing how little Rudy cared.

Somehow, Chloe couldn't muster much gratitude.

"If I can't trust a hunch or a friend or a knight in shining armor," she whispered, "what can I trust?"

Trust your machines, trust your family, trust yourself. Spacer upbringing had hammered those principles into Chloe. But her family and her machines were captured. The part of her she normally relied on had proven itself unreliable.

No, that wasn't right.

Her noble heritage – Imperial heritage, according to Stephan – had proven itself unreliable.

Her spacer's instincts, on the other hand, hadn't failed her yet. She hadn't paid them any mind in so long, how could they have?

Chloe balled her fists and rose. She swept across the suite to the door, which slid open at her approach.

Slava stood outside, flanked by two other ursids in Kyrillos livery.

"Let me pass," Chloe said, as regally as she could manage. She thought she sounded ridiculous, but the three men-at-arms instinctively took a step back.

Then braced themselves. Slava shook his head. "It is not good for Your Highness to go in this state," he said. "Better you wait. Better you think. Yes?"

"No," Chloe said. She strode toward the trio, who filled the hallway with their bulk and outweighed her a good ten to one. She marched straight up to Slava and looked up at his massive face.

He frowned down at her, shook his head sadly.

Chloe dumped the 'imperial' persona. She didn't need to command. She needed to bluff. She had no idea if Emperor Theophilos Astroykos could bluff. If so, she neither knew nor needed his style. The Jack Hughes method worked perfectly well.

"One way or another, I'm going to pass, Slava," she said. "I don't want to hurt you. Principle knows you've been very kind. But Principle also knows, if it comes down to you or my dad, I'm siding with my dad."

"You are not scaring me, Highness," the ursid said. "Lord Kyrillos wishes you to go back to your room. It would be best."

"If I'm not scaring you, Slava," Chloe said, "it's because you haven't thought about it enough. You really think you can keep a noble – an Imperial – locked up in a tower like a fairy-tale princess? Because I don't."

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"Your Highness has no training."

And whose fault is that, Chloe thought. She said, "Then you should be even more worried."

Slava cocked his head.

"See, if I were trained," Chloe continued, "I could pick the three of you up with a thought and just move you out of my way. Heck, I could just send a thought to you and you'd lie down and go to sleep and I'd walk on by. But not being trained – thanks to your lord – about all I can do is shove. Hard."

The two ursids she didn't know hesitated. One even took a step back.

"You will not," Slava said. "It is not your way."

"You'd bet your life on that?"

He shrugged. "I have orders."

"You'd die for your orders?"

Slava looked downright hurt. "Of course!"

Chloe took a deep breath. She didn't know the first thing about projecting psions as telekinetic force, the way Stephan and the Animus Hunter had. And Slava was right – she desperately didn't want to kill him, and didn't think, on the off chance she actually managed to call on her powers, she could hold back enough not to. In the stories she'd heard, a psychic's awakening to her powers was a violent thing, a storm of frightened thoughts, a maelstrom of telekinesis or pyrokinesis or both.

"Slava," she said, "please let me leave. It isn't right for you to keep me here. It isn't right for me to hurt you. But if you don't move, one or the other is gonna happen, and I'm telling you, it's gonna be the latter."

"I cannot, Your Highness. A thousand apologies."

Chloe raised her balled fist. She concentrated.

Slava gently, calmly picked her up by the shoulders and deposited her inside the still-open doorway of her suite. He released her and stepped back. "A thousand apologies," he repeated, and bowed.

Chloe's knuckles whitened. Principle, she didn't want to do this, didn't know if she could, but she had to try!

She felt the air stir. She imagined she felt a ripple of power.

"You must stay here," Slava said.

A third voice entered the conversation. "The hell she must."

The Kyrillos men-at-arms spun around. Chloe couldn't see past their bulky frames, but she knew the voice. As much as she didn't want it to, it made her heart leap. What concentration she'd mustered vanished.

The first ursid stumbled to his knees, gagging and clutching at his throat. The second spun around, ricocheted off the wall, and fell onto the first.

Rudy, his flight suit gleaming fiery neon red in the light of the hallway's broad stained glass window, grinned at Chloe and Slava.

"Chloe," Rudy said.

She felt a lump in her throat, swallowed hard. "Rudy."

"Mr. Algreil," Slava said, "this is very bad. You are a guest in my lord's house, but you attack us?"

Rudy shrugged. "What can I say? I've always been a bad boy."

"You will stop," Slava growled. He leaned forward, flexing his massive arms. His hands spread wide, his fingers squeezing as though they already gripped Rudy's neck. "Or I will stop you."

"Don't think so, big guy. Unlike Clo, I would love to get another shot at your hairy ass. But, if you're not profoundly ignorant, we can both walk away from this."

"That will not happen."

Rudy shrugged again.

Chloe never saw what he did to turn the casual shrug into sudden, terrifying motion. One minute he was spreading his arms; the next he was bouncing from the windowsill, his foot slamming Slava back against a wall and stunning him long enough for four rapid-fire punches to rocket into his snout.

Slava recovered better than his cohorts, reaching around to crush Rudy in a killing embrace.

Rudy jumped. Legs spread, he landed on the ursid's forearms, forcing them down. He used the momentum to stay airborne, grabbed Slava's collar and smashed their heads together. When Rudy's flew back, blood trailed from his forehead – most of it ursid blood. His fist shot up into Slava's chin, his elbow into Slava's chest, his shoulder into Slava's stomach.

The Kyrillos man-at-arms, blinded by pain and his own blood, swung wildly. Rudy grabbed the flailing blow and spun into it.

Slava's momentum sent him careening into the window. It exploded in a shower of stained glass. The Kyrillos man-at-arms flailed backwards, roaring in pain as his back snagged shards. His big hand snagged part of the metal frame. It started to bend.

Chloe lunged forward and grabbed his sleeve with both hands.

"You've got to be kidding me," Rudy said.

And grabbed the other sleeve.

Chloe smiled at him as, between the two of them, they hauled the roaring ursid away from the window.

Glass was embedded in Slava's back. His face was covered in blood.

Still, he forced himself to his knees and tried to turn to face Rudy.

Rudy snapped a kick. Before Chloe could even beg him to stop, his foot reached the side of Slava's mangled face.

And halted.

"I could have killed you," Rudy said. "It wouldn't even have been hard. But Chloe would never let me hear the end of it."

"I was to stop Her Highness, if I could," Slava said. He turned a battered eye toward the foot at his cheek. He managed what might have been a smile, or at least a grimace. "I am thinking – I cannot."

"You're not half as dumb as you look, big guy," Rudy said, grinning. He lowered his foot.

He turned to Chloe and waved toward the hallway. "You heard the man. Ready to go, ‘Your Highness’?"

"I –" She glanced at Slava and his subordinates. She wanted to help the ursids, but prudence, for once, trumped charity. Like she'd said: if it came down to him or her dad, she'd help her dad. Besides, she told herself, the Kyrilloses had far more medical facilities than they had retainers.

She said, "I'm ready."