The Stars Undying Reimagines Ancient Roman Drama Through a Sci-Fi Lens

The Stars Undying, the upcoming sci-fi debut from Emery Robin, introduces an interstellar princess compelled into circumstances that’ll require each little bit of royal power she will muster to beat. It’ll be launched in November, however io9 is thrilled to share a beneficiant excerpt from the e-book at the moment.

Here’s an outline of the e-book, adopted by its first two chapters.

Princess Altagracia has misplaced all the pieces. After a bloody civil warfare, her twin sister has claimed each the crown of their planet, Szayet, and the Pearl of its prophecy: a pc that incorporates the immortal soul of Szayet’s god.

So when the interstellar Empire of Ceiao turns its conquering eye towards Szayet, Gracia sees a chance. To regain her planet, Gracia locations herself within the arms of the empire and its harmful commander, Matheus Ceirran.

But profitable over Matheus, to say nothing of his mercurial and compelling captain Anita, is not any simple feat. And in attempting to safe her planet’s sovereignty and future, Gracia will discover herself torn between Matheus’s ambitions, Anita’s unpredictable wishes, and the calls for of the Pearl that whispers in her ear.

For Szayet’s sake and her personal, she might want to develop into greater than a princess with a silver tongue. She must develop into a queen as historical past has by no means seen earlier than.

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Chapter One — Gracia

In the primary yr of the Thirty-Third Dynasty, when He got here to the planet the place I used to be born and fabricated from it a wasteland for glory’s sake, my ten-times-great grandfather’s king and lover Alekso Undying constructed on the ruins of the gods who had lived earlier than Him Alectelo, the City of Endless Pearl, the Bride of Szayet, the Star of the Swordbelt Arm, the Ever-Living God’s Empty Grave.

He caught fever and stuffed that grave, ten months later. You can’t consider in names.

Three hundred years is a very long time to name something Endless, for one factor. Alectelo is not any completely different, and the pearl of the harbor-gate was cracked and flaking once I ran my hand up it, and its shine had lengthy since worn away. It had solely ever been inlay, anyway. Beneath it was brass, strong and heat, and browning like bread on the edges the place the air was creeping via.

“It needs repairs,” mentioned Zorione, simply behind my shoulder.

I curled my fingers in opposition to the steel. “It needs money,” I mentioned.

“She won’t give it,” Zorione mentioned. She was sitting on a close-by crate already, stretching her legs out in entrance of her. She had complained of her outdated bones and aching toes via each again alley and tunnel within the metropolis, and been silent solely once we handed beneath markets, the place the noise might need carried to the road. “Why would she?” she went on, with out taking a look at me. “She never comes to the harbor. Are the captains and generals kept in wine and honey-cakes? Yes? That keeps her happy.”

I mentioned nothing. After a second she mentioned, “Of course—it’s not hers,” and subsided.

I had not meant her to mistake my silence for offense, however I knew I should be pleased about her devotion. Nevertheless it was not a query of possession that stirred me, trying on the curling rust on that gate framing the white inlet the place our island broke to the countless sea. Nor was it a query of reverence, although it might need been, in higher instances. It was the deepest anger I had ever felt, and one of many few angers I had by no means discovered myself in a position to put apart. It was the second time in my life the queen of my planet had been careless with one thing stunning.

“It wouldn’t matter, anyway,” I mentioned, and let my hand fall. “This is quicksilver pearl. It only grows in Ceiao these days.”

It was a cool day on the fringe of the one world I had ever recognized. The commerce winds have been arising from the ocean, smelling of brine and exhaust, and the half-moon-studded sky was a transparent and cloudless blue. At the sting of my listening to was the distant hum of rockets from throughout the water, a low roar just like the sound of the lions my folks had as soon as worshiped. I took it as an omen, and hoped it a very good one. Alectelans had made no sacrifices to senseless beasts, these final three centuries. If Alekso heard my prayers, although, it was months since He had answered them, and I wanted all of the succor I might get.

“How long until the ship?” I mentioned.

I had requested thrice within the final half-hour, however she mentioned patiently, “Ten minutes,” as if it have been the primary time. “If she hasn’t caught it yet,” and she or he made an indication in opposition to unhealthy luck within the air, and spit over her shoulder. It made me smile, although I attempted to not let him see it. She was a real Alectelan, Sintian in title and in parentage however in coronary heart half orthodoxy and half heathenism, in that peculiar fanatical mix that each born resident of town held shut. And although she carried all unhappiness as unfailingly as she carried my remaining possessions, I had little interest in offending her. She had proven no signal, as but, of being able to disloyalty. Still: I had so little left to lose.

The water was white-green and uneven with the wind, and so when our ship got here skipping throughout the ocean ultimately solely the sparks gave it away, meandering orange and crimson in direction of the concrete shore like moths. It slowed on the final second, and skidded onto the runway in a cloud of exhaust, coming to a cease simply yards from our toes.

My maid was coughing. I held nonetheless, and listened for the creak of a hatch. When the smuggler appeared via the drifting gray particulates a second later, shaven-headed and crooked-toothed and grinning, Zorione jumped.

“Good morning,” I mentioned. “Anastazia Szaradya? We spoke earlier. I’m—”

“I know who you are,” she mentioned in Szayeti-accented Sintian. Her eyes took me in— cotton gown, dust-grey sandals, naked face, naked arms—earlier than they flicked to Zorione, behind me. “This is the backer, yes?”

I stored my smile large and nice. “One of them,” I mentioned. “The rest are expecting our report from the satellite in—I’m sorry, was it three hours? Four?”

“By nightfall, madam,” Zorione mentioned, trying deeply uncomfortable.

I gave her an apologetic look behind the smuggler’s again. If I had had selection in who to play the position of the backer, I’d not have chosen Zorione, who so long as I had recognized her had despised deception virtually as fiercely as rule-breaking, and rule-breaking like blasphemy. But she knew in addition to I did what a luxurious selection had develop into. “By nightfall,” I repeated. “Shall we board the ship?”

The smuggler narrowed her eyes at me. “And how long after will the pearls be sent to the satellite?” she mentioned. “You said three days?”

I flicked my eyes to Zorione, who cleared her throat. “A week,” she mentioned. “The transport ship will bring them, if they find her safe and sound. Only if,” she added, in a burst of improvisation. I gave her a fast encouraging nod.

“A week?” mentioned the smuggler. “For a piece of walking bad luck? Better I should be holding a bomb! Was this what we agreed to?”

Zorione’s face went clean. “You know,” I mentioned unexpectedly, “you’re very right—speed is of the essence. I would personally prefer to leave the system as soon as possible. Madam Buquista, might your consortium abandon the precautionary measures we discussed? I understand the concern that the army not trace the payment back to Madam Szaradaya—of course the Ceians might, too, and come to investigate her—but is that really my highest priority? Perhaps instead—”

The smuggler snorted. “Hush,” she mentioned. “Fine. Keep your precautions. You, girl, can keep your patience. Meanwhile,” she nodded at Zorione’s outraged face, “when your ship comes for her, we will discuss what delay fees I collect, hmm?”

Zorione appeared admirably extra sad at this, and I’d have nodded at her to place up a prolonged and dropping argument, when there was a low, uninteresting hum, akin to the noise of an insect.

The sky wiped darkish from horizon to horizon. The sea, which had been glittering with daylight, went black without delay; the shadow of the smuggler’s ship swelled, swept over us, leaving in darkness. The smuggler swore—I whispered a prayer, and I might see Zorione’s silhouetted arms shifting in a allure in opposition to in poor health fortune—and above us, simply the place the solar had been and twenty instances its dimension, the face of the Queen of Szayet opened up like a watch.

She was smiling down at us. She was a stunning girl, the queen, and although holos had a peculiar high quality that at all times appeared to make it unattainable to satisfy anybody’s eyes, her gaze felt heavy and prickling because it swept over the concrete and the ocean and the pearl of the harbor-gate under. She had braided her hair within the excessive Ceian model, and she or he had thrown on a navy coat and hat that I used to be virtually sure had belonged to the king who was useless, and she or he had painted her mouth, unexpectedly sufficient that it smeared on the nook, and dripped there as if she had simply bitten right into a uncooked piece of meat. Around her left ear, stretching as much as her hairline, curled a dozen golden wires, pressed so intently to her pores and skin they may have been a tattoo. An artfully draped braid hid the place I knew they slipped via her temple, into her cranium. In her earlobe, on the base of the wires, sat a shining silver pearl.

She mentioned, sweetly and really slowly—I might hear it echo, as I knew it was doing on docks and in cathedrals, in marketplaces and alleyways, throughout the entire metropolis of Alectelo, and although I had seen the machines within the markets that threw these photos into sky, although I had had laid arms on them and proven them my very own face, my breath caught, my coronary heart hammered, I wished to fall to my knees—

—“Do you think the Oracle blind?”

She paused as if for a response. There was none, after all. She added, much more sweetly, “Or perhaps you think her stupid?”

“Time to go,” mentioned the smuggler.

We scrabbled ourselves up the ladder into the outlet on the prime of the ship as finest we might: the smuggler first, then me, Zorione taking the rear with the handles of my baggage clenched in her bony fingers. Above me, the queen’s voice was rising: “Did you think I would not see,” she mentioned, “did you think the tongue and eyes of Alekso Undying would not know? I have heard—I will be told—where the liar Altagracia Caviro is hiding. I will be told in what harbor she dares to stand, I will be told in what ship she dares to fly. You are bound to do her harm, all you who worship the Undying—you are bound to do her harm, Alekso wishes it so—”

Zorione, swaying on the rungs, made one other elaborate signal within the air, this time in opposition to blasphemy. “Please don’t fall,” I known as all the way down to her. “I can’t afford to lose you. But I appreciate the piety.” She huffed, and seized maintain of the ladder once more.

When we had all tumbled into the cramped confines of the ship, the smuggler slammed the hatch shut above my head, and shoved lumps of bread and a pinch of salt into our ready arms. The bread was laborious as stone, and tasted like lint—it should have come out of her pocket, a thought I instantly determined to not ponder—however I swallowed it as finest I might, and smeared the salt onto my tongue with my thumb. The queen’s voice was echoing even via the partitions, muffled and metallic. I heard worship a mendacity and demand by proper and levy upon you, and turned my head away.

The smuggler had gone forward of me, via the bowels of the ship. I made to push previous Zorione, however she caught my arm on the final second, and stood on her tiptoes to whisper into my ear, “Madam, I’m afraid—”

“I know,” I mentioned, “but we knew she would only be a step behind—we have to go,” however she shook her head frantically, leaned nearer, and hissed:

“What is this thief going to do to us when she finds out there isn’t any consortium?”

My first, absurd impulse was to giggle, and I needed to clap my hand over my mouth to stifle it. When I had myself beneath management, I shook my head, and bent to whisper again: “Zorione, how can it be worse than what would have happened if we hadn’t told her that there was?”

She let me go, then, her face pinched with fear. I wanted I knew what to say to her—however I had every week to search out a solution, and right here and now I made my means via sputtering wires and hissing pipes via the little hallway the place the smuggler had disappeared.

I discovered her in a worn chair at what I thought to be the ship’s solely management panel, specified by crimson lights earlier than a darkish viewscreen not 4 handspans large. “How long until we’re out of the atmosphere?” I mentioned.

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” mentioned the smuggler. “If you have any service complaints, you’ve got three guesses who you can complain to.”

Three guesses appeared extreme, nevertheless it was extra munificence than I had been provided in months. “If I stand here behind you,” I mentioned, “will I be in your way?”

“You’re in my way wherever you are,” she mentioned, and shoved a lever ahead, and beneath us the engines coughed irritably to life. “Don’t go into the back, it’s full of Szayeti falcon jars. Eighteenth dynasty.”

I’d keep in mind that. I let it settle to the ground of my thoughts for now, although, and tucked myself into what little area there was behind the smuggler’s chair. We had begun our journey again throughout the water, now, bouncing over the flickering waves. The spray threw rainbows round us, so shiny I discovered myself blinking and missed our arrival on the launch spot fully, and my first discover that we had begun to rise into the air was a hum in my ears, low after which louder—after which a ache in my head, as sharp as if somebody had clapped their arms to my ears and squeezed. The smuggler was mouthing one thing—I assumed it was right here we go—

—after which the sky was fading, blue right into a pale colorlessness, and the ocean was shrinking under us, dotted by scudding clouds. The flooring of the ship shook, then coughed. My ears popped.

“Simple part done,” mentioned the smuggler. I used to be starting to consider she preferred having somebody to speak to.

That, not less than, I knew find out how to indulge. “Simple part?” I mentioned, as bewildered as if I didn’t already know the reply. “What comes next?”

“That,” mentioned the smuggler, pointing with grim satisfaction. I allowed myself a second of satisfaction—it had been glorious timing—and appeared previous her pointing finger to the place the Ceian-bought warship sat black and seething like an anthill within the middle of my sky.

“We can’t answer a royal customs holo,” I mentioned, making myself sound shocked.

“Wasn’t planning to,” mentioned the smuggler. “Primitive little fucks already gave the queen my face. Three decades ago, I flew from here to Muntiru and back through twenty ports without telling any man my name. Now every asteroid twenty feet across is full of barbarians in blue, asking for the order of every gene my mother gave me.” She paused. “Wonder whose fault that is.”

It took a lot religion to attribute that sort of affect to any Oracle, not to mention the Oracle she meant. But religion, in contrast to warships, had by no means been briefly provide on Szayet.

“What will we do?” I mentioned. “Speed through the army’s radar?”

“Better,” mentioned the smuggler. “We outweave it. Hold on.”

That was the one warning I received. In the again, I might hear Zorione yelp because the ship spun like a prime, all of the sudden and violently. The smuggler shoved a lever ahead, yanked it to the left, and pushed three sliders on the management board as much as their highest positions. A holo had sprung to life on the dashboard, a glittering spiderweb of yellow strains delineated by a large black curve at their edge. Within it was a single white dot: our ship, I guessed, and the sting of the environment.

“What’s that?” I mentioned, anyway, and let the smuggler clarify. She preferred explaining, and it distracted me, which I knew after only some seconds I’d badly want. Flying with the smuggler was not in contrast to being a chunk of cleaning soap dropped within the tub. She might need misplaced management of the ship fully and I’d by no means have recognized the distinction, aside from the unwavering fierceness of her smile. “How many times have you done this?” I tried to ask via my rattling tooth as we swiveled and plummeted via empty air.

“At least twice!” she mentioned, with malicious cheer.

It was tough to inform once we handed the warship. Certainly the smuggler didn’t appear to know. I believe she should have thought that, have been I sufficiently bumped and jolted, I’d surrender and go be a part of my nursemaid within the again, however I held on stubbornly to the again of her chair, and stared from the management panel to the viewscreen to the holo and again once more, matching every to every in my thoughts. It was an outdated trick I had, when combating off sickness or ache or plain distress, to give attention to one thing at which I felt very silly, and study every element as if it have been one other tongue. At different instances it had served me nicely. Now, hungry and drained and nauseous , it was harder, and by the point the ship turned as soon as ultimate time and settled ultimately into stillness, I used to be clinging to the smuggler’s chair as if it have been my father alive once more.

The smuggler smirked. “Twenty minutes,” she mentioned. “New record. Hey,” she added in Szayeti, principally to herself, “maybe she carries good luck after all.”

“I try to,” I mentioned, in the identical language, and caught the glint of her first true smile. Below us, I might see the broad white fringe of the planet, starting to shrink in opposition to the darkness. I had seen it from this distance solely as soon as earlier than in my life.

My individuals are a folks of prophecy. Long earlier than Alekso Undying got here from outdated Sintia to our shores, lengthy earlier than my ten-times-great-grandfather carried His physique weeping from the palace at Kutayet to the tomb the place I grew up, my folks spoke with the voices of serpents and lions, falcons and foxes, who roamed this world and who noticed the long run written in blood. The folks then mentioned what was, what’s, and what will probably be; and although Alekso’s beloved and his descendants are their rulers now, and although they’ve had no god however their conqueror for 300 years, they haven’t forgotten that they as soon as advised the long run as freely as any queen. They by no means will.

The Queen of Szayet had prophesied, these final six months, that she was the one and rightful bearer of the Pearl of the Dead. She had prophesied herself the inheritor to the voice of Alekso our conqueror, the Undying who had died these centuries in the past. She had prophesied her phrases have been His phrases, and her phrases have been the long run, and that there was no future in them for Altagracia Caviro Patramata, father-beloved girl of Alectelo, seeker of the God and pal to the folks, her solely rival, her solely enemy, her solely and her best-beloved sister.

As the rust-green coin of Szayet receded earlier than me, and the night time crept in from each nook of the viewscreen, I leaned throughout the smuggler’s shoulder and pressed my fingers to the glass as I needed to the arch on the harbor, and I whispered: “I will see you again.”

My sister had known as me a liar at the moment.

I’m a liar, after all. But I meant to be a prophet, too.

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Chapter Two — Ceirran

I had beloved Quinha, extra’s the difficulty.

In the entire empire of Ceiao, for all its rabble and status, there’s solely a fistful of residents who’ve the born-or-bred true expertise of a navy basic. Fewer with the charisma and the cash to deal with the populace, and fewer nonetheless who’ve any head for politic, and solely a sprinkling, solely sufficient for me to depend on the fingers of my good proper hand, are that rarest of issues: a rattling wonderful pilot. Quinha had been all of those, and a pal beside. I’d fought along with her, and plotted along with her. I’d cared for her. I hadn’t wished to kill her.

Nevertheless.

She was arising the meteor financial institution when her ship slipped into our sights: an imperial dreadnought twenty klicks large, blooming on our radar screens as a mass of shifting yellows and reds. In the darkness of the accretion-tide she was hardly seen. If I’d been in my fighter I might need caught her, and picked off her cannons, one after the other, and my fingers itched for the controls. But these days have been gone and had been for a few years, and I had my governorship to consider, and my dignity moreover.

“Let me at her,” mentioned Ana, who had neither. She was sprawled in a curved white chair at my proper hand. She preferred that kind of factor, Ana did. If she had ever been capable of finding the persistence for subtlety, she wouldn’t have appeared for it.

I thought of the thought. Ana was no ace, however she was a fast draw and a vicious brute in battle, and it paid to indulge her, as a rule. But I shook my head in the long run.

“I want her pinned to a planet,” I mentioned, “and coming out ground-fighting. Bring the soldiers their force-shields, and pull around Laureathan to port. We’ll drive her up the bank towards the star-well.”

“Like conquerors we’ll do it,” mentioned Ana. “Bring her corpse before us to the city gates.”

That wasn’t why. Quinha’s ship was borrowed, a colony-made pirate factor, however I feared her weapons. If I had no selection however to struggle her in open area, I’d ship in a dozen fair-size destroyers, and do her harm sufficient to make her hesitate at coming inside our cannon vary. For now, although, there was selection, and I’d have been a idiot to not discover it. And there was one more reason beside this, which Ana would have had no abdomen to listen to. “Yes,” I mentioned, anyway. “She’ll try to find safe harbor on some near planet. We’ll carry her in the brig for the home journey.”

I had not recognized, on the time, what planet she would hunt down. Even had I recognized, would I’ve cared? The hand of the Empire reaches far and large, from outdated Cherekku’s stone mazes to the sulfide-storms of Madinabia, and I had not been to this arm of the galaxy since my childhood. We make some extent, in Ceiao, to not be overcome by decadence. Even the title of Alekso of Sintia means little to us.

It meant little to me, in any case, on the time.

We surged after her. It was an excellent ship that I used to be driving, constructed beneath my eye at Ceiao’s personal river-docks by a thousand educated workmen. Quinha’s wasn’t, and she or he knew it: we might see her struggling to dart and weave among the many asteroid storms, her aching-slow banks and turns up the gravity curves. If she’d charmed the builders, or bribed the navy, or besieged the dockyards, or had her males put in among the many magistrates—however she hadn’t. She hadn’t, and I had, and she or he had misplaced Ceiao, and I had gained the warfare.

It made me ashamed to observe her fly. She was the one who had taught me, all these years in the past, by no means to respect a commander whose combating begins on the battlefield.

When she gunned her engines I hesitated. This was her nook of native area, and she or he knew it just like the again of her hand. She might need been main me into the trail of a comet, or some trick of native gravity that may have despatched half the fleet tumbling right into a new child star. But her dreadnought was shrinking in our sights, and Ana had risen from her seat and was pacing the viewscreen like a lion.

“Chase her,” I mentioned, and shut my eyes as the good warship shuddered beneath me. Betting in opposition to Quinha’s lengthy expertise had failed me within the Merchant’s Council as soon as. Betting in opposition to it a second time on the battlefield had gained me a metropolis. Best of three, as they mentioned in Ceiao, made fortune.

I needn’t have frightened.

The system rose up in our viewscreen . It was an outdated star we have been taking a look at—life-bearing, naturally, however reddening and rusted across the edges. There have been only some planets, idly flung out beside it at haphazard angles. Nearly all have been ringed; just one, somewhat blue-green factor with a patchwork of cloud atop its floor, was surrounded by a sprinkling of moons, and even they have been peculiar and knobbled, jagged at odd edges. I considered a rogue planet plowing via the orbit-path, till Captain Galvão Orcadan mentioned behind me: “Szayet, sir.”

Szayet! I exhaled. “Prepare the rafts,” I mentioned, and some lieutenants sprang into life and disappeared down the ladders. “Get ahead of her, if you can, shunt her towards Medveyet—but if you can’t, press her in hard. The less time she has to disembark the better. She’s got ocean-ships in that hold, and provisions for weeks. I don’t want her hiding on the water out there.”

“She’ll need to make landfall, sir,” mentioned Galvão, “or try to exit the atmosphere again, and we’re sure to see if she does. She can hide, but she can’t hide for long. We may not need to chase her down at all.” His voice crept up on the finish, unsure.

“I have no intention of letting every cynic in Ceiao watch me spend thirty days blockading the richest treasury in the Swordbelt Arm,” I mentioned.

Galvão subsided without delay. He was proper, after all, and if I might, I’d have advised him so. But there was a purpose I wished to satisfy Quinha planetside, and it was a purpose I had stored from Ana.

There was a veneer of ships overlaying the planet, thicker than I had anticipated. If I hadn’t recognized higher I might need thought she had steered us right into a entice in any case—they have been our make, every of them, good Ceian metal gunboats and galleons and blue destroyers dodging out and in of the ports like flies—however they have been the native authorities’s, after all. Bought at a premium, almost definitely. I’d even have offered a few of them myself, again in my Justice of the Peace days.

Nevertheless I held up a hand, and the ship slowed and pulled up right into a reluctant orbit. Quinha was barreling ahead, after all, previous the gunners, in direction of the thick, drifting air of the planet. The ships made no transfer to cease her as she grew smaller and smaller, like mud, and eventually popped out of eyesight. Still I watched, and nonetheless I waited, and when Galvão grew stressed and mentioned “Commander Ceirran, you said—” I held up a hand once more.

“I know,” I mentioned. “One moment more.”

Ana had gone useless nonetheless. Only her eyes have been shifting: from me to the viewscreen, from the viewscreen to me, her head cocked like a canine that had scented prey. I caught her gaze and held it, telling her: Wait, and: Yes, and her lips parted barely—

There it was. I took a step ahead, involuntary, and Ana’s head whipped spherical: a Szayeti destroyer, peeled away from the closest warship, was dropping like a stone in direction of the planet.

“Is it—” mentioned Galvão.

“It is,” I mentioned. “They’re going after her. Someone find the lieutenants and tell them to hold our ships.”

Ana mentioned nothing. She adopted me again to my quarters, although, as I had recognized she would do, and once we arrived she shut the door behind her and threw herself into the chair throughout from my desk.

“Fortune’s tits,” she mentioned. “You’ll give up a prize we’ve chased down half this spiral arm? And for what—politic?”

“Will I?” I mentioned mildly, easing myself down throughout from her.

“She’ll raise an army,” mentioned Ana, “and stretch out this war for another three months, and send half my men to the void, and they will rake you over the coals at home, and I’ll be stuck on the inside of a cruiser, poking at radar screens and driving you mad with complaining. Not a chance! Let me at her, and to hell with Szayeti sovereignty—what good has it ever done them anyway?”

“Your grasp of foreign policy is remarkable,” I mentioned. “Tell me, what is your opinion of the Oracle of Szayet?”

“The girl?” mentioned Ana. “I’ll tell you this much, I’d have bet my captain’s pin she’d be a poor strategist, but it turns out I was wrong. Another reason you should let me take twenty men and—yes, all right. Good-looking. Parochial. A bit of a complainer, to my mind. Young to be queen. Hope she’s more careful about eating rotten meat than her father was. Why?”

“I met her father, once,” I mentioned, “but never her.”

“Well, I never met her either,” mentioned Ana. “What of it?”

“I know,” I mentioned, and picked up a pill pen and rolled it over my fingers thoughtfully, knuckle to knuckle. “Has Quinha?”

That stopped Ana in her tracks. She leaned again in her chair and checked out me with narrowed eyes. “You think she hasn’t,” she mentioned. “You think Quinha can’t manage her?”

“I am not,” I mentioned, “entirely sure that Quinha knows what she is managing.”

“How old is she, fourteen?” mentioned Ana, who knew very nicely Casimiro Caviro Faifisto’s daughters have been only some years youthful than she. “That’d be old enough to go to war at home. How childish can she be?”

Back the pill pen went, over the identical 4 knuckles. “Are you in debt, Anita?” I mentioned.

“That’s a personal question,” mentioned Ana, and once I checked out her, “Yes, and you know the amount to the centono.”

“So is Szayet,” I mentioned. “By several orders of magnitude more than you, I hope. From simply buying the Ceian ships they needed to defend themselves, at first, and then from buying Ceian weapons, and then her advice, and then her aid. Faifisto nearly tripled the debts in his lifetime, but he inherited them from his aunt, who inherited them from her mother, who inherited them from her grandfather, and he used Szayet itself as collateral against them when he put down a civil war.” I tapped the pill pen on my desk, and it woke right into a shivering sea of maps and paperwork and ready holos. “Quinha bought the bulk of them,” I mentioned, “not long after we met.”

Ana stared a second, then swore.

“Then you will give up the prize,” she mentioned. “She won’t need to raise an army—the queen will raise one for her! What in the world are you thinking?”

“I am thinking,” I mentioned, “about diplomacy. Do you have your dress uniform?”

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Excerpt from Emery Robin’s The Stars Undying reprinted by permission of Orbit.

The Stars Undying is at the moment out there for preorder and will probably be launched on November 8.

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