Gambit (17 page)

Chae lifted her skirts and followed the tramp of the entourage up the turn of the carved stairs.
“Is this necessary? The guards, the attendants? Is someone going to try something here?”
Her foot hit the last stair and the tide of people turned her along the gallery. The sunder-seld pushed deep into the hind part of her brain and stretched her nerves for a reason she couldn’t quite grasp. That, and her hatred of being hemmed in, curdled her thoughts.
“And I swear, if you say it’s tradition, Daned…”

“Then I won’t, Majesty.”

More doors led them into a long hall, huge ornate images of ancient ancestors lining the walls. Their flat gazes itched under Chae’s skin. The sunder-seld filled in names, the murmur of its voice flowing over the heavy clatter of the guards’ boots against the flagstones, and there was an edge to its tone. The names grew more clipped as they approached the end of the dim hall. A shield shimmered over an archway. Her heart thudded. Memories of Ara emperors flickered through her thoughts. Beyond the arch was a throne room, a scaled-down version of the great throne room in the citadel on Ladaia-prime.

The entourage stopped and parted. Through the half haze of the shield, Chae stared at the throne in the center of the vaulted room. It gleamed a dull black, evidence that an imperial backside had claimed the sunder-seld. And she had to walk through the shield as another outward proof that
she
had the rightful imperial arse.

Fuck. She’d be skinned. Still, it wouldn’t concern the princes. They wanted her power any way they could get it. Fucking a skinless lump would simply be another unpleasant princely task.

“Majesty…” Daned broke aloud into the depressing spiral of her thoughts.

“I know,” she muttered. Her shoulders straightened.
“This will hurt, won’t it?”

“Yes.”
The smooth voice of the sunder-seld answered her, filling her thoughts.
“But every emperor—”

“Seriously, the not mentioning it’s ‘tradition’ applies to you as well as Daned.”

“As you wish.”

She paused before the wide arch, the hum of the shield jarring her teeth. Her hand hovered over the haze. With a stinging touch of her fingertip, she set off a ripple of movement. Yes, that had hurt.
“And if I just grabbed a gun, Daned, and hijacked a ship? What then?”

“Majesty…”
The chair sounded world-weary. Was it already regretting her as a choice of empress?
“You are the heart and soul of your people…”

Great. She was being guilt-tripped by a sentient slab of carved crystal. She’d had more freedom as a penniless runner with her mentor’s ship than she had now with planets of black crystal.

Chae let out a slow breath, directed curses learned on the streets of Ulan Bator at both the sunder-seld and Daned…and stepped into the shield.

Chapter Nine

Pain sliced through her skin down to the bone. Pain needled into every pore. She couldn’t move. The fucking thing caught her, held her trapped, immobile, despite the desperate power she pushed into her arms and legs. Why couldn’t she move? Was the bloody chair defective and she wasn’t the empress?

Sweat coated her spine and stuck the lining of the corset to her skin.
“What does this prove?”
The haze thinned and, through her agony, eight princes and their attendants watched her, their faces impassive as if they saw a woman fighting pain in the archway every day.
“Really, what?”

“These men are powerful. They rule not simply through the loyalty of the castes but by strength, through fear. They have to gauge your strength…as I will gauge theirs.”

Chae wished she had the energy to roll her eyes.
“If I’d known it would’ve been this much trouble…”
It was hard to keep up her sarcasm, to think of anything other than the hot flicks of pain against raw nerves. Daned had hinted at the rituals on their trek to the citadel. That felt like a lifetime ago. But they were something he was meant to endure…not her. The stabs of hot energy sank into her bones and she ached to cry out, to curl into a ball and deny the pain burning her flesh. But she couldn’t.

She willed herself forward. Beyond the agony of the shield, she would find wealth beyond anything she could ever imagine—her mouth quirked upward and lanced pain under her cheek—and she had an excellent imagination. She’d be damned before she gave up her right to that opulence. Not exactly heroic reasoning, but whatever got her through was fine by her. And hell, she wasn’t a hero anyway.

Her foot stamped against the stone-flagged floor of the Ara throne room. The lack of pain in her foot, ankle, calf and knee bloomed excited heat through the rest of her body. She would not be caught like a living fly in the doorway. Her left hand broke free and she flexed her fingers. Obviously her obsession with money was working.

Her shoulder and whole left side escaped the shield and she sucked in a calming breath. Fire chased down her right arm, ribs, hip and right leg to a burning point in her toes. She shoved every ounce of her strength into yanking herself free, cursing her luck and planning a change in tradition. She would not put a child of hers through such an insane amount of pain.

“This tradition has—”

“I said no more.”

The sunder-seld stayed silent.

Chae broke free of the shield and staggered. She found her balance and straightened, running a hand over her hair. She pulled in a tight breath…and the constriction of her corset dug into her ribs, finding the dull echo of pain from the shield. Another tradition to forget. She didn’t think like a Ladaian. At that moment, she thanked her mother for it.

“Hello, gentlemen.”

As one, the princes and their attendants presented her with low bows. Behind her, the fizz of the shield died.

“Majesty.” Daned’s fingertips touched her spine, light and fleeting. A flash of color burned in his cheeks. Worry, quickly masked, shone in his eyes.

Her heart twisted and the sarcastic words died on her tongue. It hurt too much to be flippant right then. “I’m fine, Daned,” she murmured, knowing he couldn’t ask that question of her. She forced a brief smile across her mouth. “Thoughts of all that lovely black crystal got me through.”

His lips twitched. “It’s time for you to take your throne, Majesty.”

Chae focused on the black crystal throne in the center of the vaulted room. A baldaquin with pillars of crystal and gold formed a wide canopy. Soft synthetic light washed down over the simply carved chair. She willed herself to take strong strides toward it, stopped and sank against the cold stone. The heat of the sunder-seld flared out, warming the throne and making it gleam.

The princes straightened. Chae felt the turn of their thoughts, the push of ambition and the reluctant admission that she held the right to sit on the imperial throne. She stopped herself from wincing. She caught more than one dark streak of distaste. Didn’t the idiots realize she shared their thoughts?

The sunder-seld prodded her into action, filling her mind with the elaborate and long speeches from previous emperors. The themes of honor, loyalty, obeying the word of the imperial throne swirled through her head. Chae stroked the smooth curve of the throne’s arms, the warmed crystal almost humming under her fingertips. She let her gaze slide over the silent men. All wore an expression of polite attention and she willed herself not to sink into the mire of their thoughts. Her attention stopped on Daned. She let out a soft sigh and her lightly tapping fingers curled into her palm. To hell with this particular tradition. She wasn’t a speechmaker. Never would be.

“I’m not what you expected or want.” She pressed her lips together and swallowed, hating that her voice had cracked. She breathed, waiting for her nerves to calm, knowing that the men surrounding her were leery, but they had to hang on her every word. A smile quirked her mouth. “But the sunder-seld accepted me.” She waved her hand toward the clear arch, the shield now a dull memory. “And I walked through that archway.” She paused. “What traditions I choose to accept is up to me.”

More than one man’s eyes narrowed, and the surge of anger in the room rose.

Chae shrugged and her smile grew. “Now I need to find more comfortable clothes.” She rose, her bodice creaking, and the men swept into low bows, even as their emotions seethed.

“You must be careful not to antagonize these men, Majesty.”
Daned’s thoughts broke into hers with a cut of censure.
“Their loyalty is different from a caste Ladaian’s.”

“Fine.”
She brushed her hands over the bronze silk of her full skirts. “I am agreeing to the tradition of the sunder-seld choosing my successor from a ranking prince.” She glared at Daned.
“Happy?”

A frown touched his mouth, but he gave her an almost imperceptible nod, his mind shuttered. He spoke aloud. “The imperial apartments are this way, Majesty.”

Chae followed him from the hall, holding back a wince as they passed beneath the arch that had inflicted so much pain only moments before. Her skirts swished over the stone floor, that and the heavy, even thud of Daned’s boots the only echoing sound.
“When?”

“Majesty?”

“Do you really have to use that title when you’re inside my head? Really?”
Chae pushed down her surge of sudden anger. Her nerves were shot. Having power and wealth came with too many unpleasant clauses and she was not having fun. The urge to grab a gun and hijack a ship burned through her again.
“Never mind. When and how will the decision of who I fuck be made?”

Guards snapped to attention and opened the doors that led into another long corridor lined with dead nobility. Daned’s footsteps echoed and the scent of cloves wrapped around her. His mind was closed to her, an impenetrable wall of gleaming diamond.
“Daned?”

“As the sun sets, the princes will stand in the throne room holding a sliver of black crystal. The sunder-seld will then make the choice. Though past emperors have taken all to their beds.”

His words sounded calm, collected, and she wanted to poke at him, wanting him to admit that the whole thing stank like Ulan Bator on a hot day.
“Did they? Pretty daughters, were they?”
She paused fighting for every scrap of calm.
“And when does it happen again?”

“Again?”

She didn’t miss the sharp cut of emotion under his question. She knew lashing out was childish, but, fuck, she hurt.
“Heir and a spare, Daned. Isn’t that the usual requirement for succession?”

His boots beat through the silence and matched the heavy rhythm of her heart. His lack of reply meant that she did indeed need an heir and a spare. Shit. That would teach her to take out her frustration on Daned. It helped neither of them. Soft light pushed shadows down over his body, over the strength of his shoulders hidden from her by an insanely expensive and far-too-conservative suit.

The memory of his naked body, of the taste of his skin against her tongue, ran unwanted heat through her flesh and tightened her chest.
“Will this get easier?”

He didn’t insult her by playing ignorant. His quiet
“I don’t know”
did little to ease the pain.

More guards broke out in a sharp salute and broke her thoughts away from how she couldn’t have Daned in the way in which her body craved. Chae resisted the need to scrub her hands over her face. Fate laughed at her. It did. Great big fucking belly laughs until it couldn’t breathe and had to wave its hands in surrender.

Doors opened onto a vaulted room carved from pure black crystal. The thrum of the room warmed under her skin and it almost,
almost
removed the sour turn of her thoughts. Deep couches sat before thin windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, late afternoon sun slanting golden light across the rich red fabric. Artwork, no doubt priceless, covered the carved walls and her slippered feet sank into the thick pile of one of the room’s many rugs. The air, laced with the familiar hint of cloves, smelled fresh, as clean as the mountain view through the long windows.

The heavy wooden doors thudded shut behind her and Chae jumped. “Is this Odgar’s room?”

Daned stared around the room, his hands caught in his dark hair. Sunlight gilded him and his beauty hurt her. “Every palace has an imperial wing.”

“So no one’s been in here for a century?” She ran her finger along the gleaming surface of a little ornate table. Holding her finger up, she found not a particle of dust marred her skin. “You have good cleaners.”

Daned wanted to roll his eyes at her, she just knew it. “There are sleeping apartments through that archway.” He pointed to a dark curve in the wall, the soft light carving out gray shadow. “I’ll wait here, Majesty.”

Chae wished it was that easy. “You need to pry me out of this thing. It took three of the crew to buckle me into it.”

A muscle ticked under his left eye. “Chae…”

“You’ve seen me semi-naked.” She padded toward the arch. “No, actually you’ve seen me
fully
naked—”

“That’s no longer appropriate.”

Chae chewed at her lip. “I know.” She let out a slow sigh, wincing at the bite of the bodice into her flesh. “But I need to get out of this contraption before the deformity becomes permanent.”

Daned followed her, silent, the shape of his mind shuttered and untouchable. Chae almost wished the mercenaries were hunting them again. She wanted something, anything to break the uncomfortable and strained silences that grew up between her and Daned. The tug of their connection, the ache to fulfill it, hooked into her flesh and was a constant reminder that she could no longer have him. And there was nothing she could do about it.

She palmed open the double doors at the end of the long corridor and they opened inward. Light striped the room from long windows that looked out onto a lush green valley. “Will it always be like this?”