Scarlet

Fourteen

“Your Majesty.”

Kai turned away from the window that he’d been staring out half the morning, listening to the drone of the news anchors and military officials reporting on the escape of the most-wanted convict in the Eastern Commonwealth. Chairman Huy stood in the doorway, Torin beside him. Both looked supremely unhappy.

He gulped. “Well?”

Huy stepped forward. “They’ve gotten away.”

Kai’s pulse hiccupped. He took a tentative step toward his father’s desk and gripped the back of the chair.

“I’ve given the order to deploy our reserve fleets immediately. I am confident we’ll have the fugitives found and taken into custody by sunset.”

“With all respect, Chairman, you don’t sound particularly confident.”

Though Huy puffed his chest out, his face took on a tinge of pink. “I am, Your Majesty. We can find them. It’s only that … it’s complicated by it being a stolen ship. All the tracking equipment has been stripped.”

Torin let out an irritated sigh. “The girl has proven herself to be more clever than I would have given her credit for.”

Kai dragged his hand through his hair, extinguishing an unexpected spark of pride.

“There is also the issue of the girl being Lunar,” Huy added.

“Whoever captures her will just have to be alert,” said Kai. “They should all be made well aware that she’ll no doubt try to turn their minds against them.”

“There is that too, but not what I was referring to. In the past, we’ve had difficulty tracking Lunar ships. It seems that they’ve learned how to disable our radar systems. I’m afraid we’re not sure how they do it.”

“Disable our radar systems?” Kai glanced at Torin. “Did you know about this?”

“I’ve heard rumors,” said Torin. “Your father and I chose to believe that’s all they were.”

“Not all my contemporaries agree with me on this matter,” said Huy. “But I myself am convinced it is the Lunars disabling our equipment. Whether it’s through their mental abilities or some other talent, I can’t tell. Regardless, Linh Cinder won’t get far. We’ll have every resource searching for her.”

Tempering his inner turmoil, Kai molded his face into stone. “Keep me informed.”

“Of course, Your Majesty. There is one other thing I thought you might want to see. We’ve finished going over our security footage from the prison.” Huy gestured to the inlaid screen in Kai’s desk.

Rounding his chair, Kai tugged on his long sleeves, suddenly warm, and sat down. A comm from the council of national security rotated in the corner. “Accept comm.”

The screen brightened with footage of the prison, all white and glossy walls. It showed a long hallway lined with smooth doors and ID scanners. A prison guard moved into view and gestured at a door. He was followed by a short, old man wearing a gray cap.

Kai jerked upward. It was Dr. Erland. “Volume up.”

Dr. Erland’s familiar voice filtered through the screen. “I am the leading scientist of the royal letumosis research team, and this girl is my prime test subject. I require blood samples from her before she leaves the planet.” Looking miffed, he reached into a bag and pulled something out—a syringe, but the bag still bulged. That wasn’t all that was inside it.

“I have my orders, sir,” said the guard. “You’ll have to obtain an official release from the emperor to be allowed entrance.”

Kai frowned as the doctor put the syringe back into the bag, knowing that Dr. Erland hadn’t made such a request.

“All right. If that’s protocol, I understand,” said Dr. Erland. And then he just stood there, serene and patient. After the space of a few heartbeats, Kai glimpsed the doctor’s smile. “There, you see? I have obtained the necessary release from the emperor. You may open the door.”

Kai’s jaw dropped as, amazingly, the guard turned toward the cell door, swiped his wrist across the scanner, and punched in a code. A green light flashed and the door opened.

“Thank you kindly,” said Dr. Erland, passing the guard. “I’ll ask that you give us a bit of privacy. I won’t be but a minute.”

The guard complied without argument, shutting the door and meandering in the direction they’d come from, leaving the screen empty.

Kai glanced up at Huy. “Has that guard been questioned?”

“Yes, sir, and his statement is that he remembers denying access to the girl, and then the doctor left. He was confounded when we showed him this footage. He claims to not remember any of it.”

“How is that possible?”

Huy busied his hands by buttoning his suit jacket. “It appears, Your Majesty, that Dr. Dmitri Erland glamoured the guard into allowing him access to the prisoner’s cell.”

Hairs prickling beneath his collar, Kai slumped back in his chair. “Glamoured? You think he’s Lunar?”

“That is our theory.”

Kai stared up at the ceiling. Cinder, Lunar. Dr. Erland, Lunar. “Is it a conspiracy?”

Torin cleared his throat, as he did whenever Kai mentioned some off-the-wall theory—although it seemed like a perfectly legitimate question to Kai. “We’re in the process of investigating all possibilities,” said Torin. “At least now we know how she escaped.”

“We have other video that shows the prisoner glamouring the guard on the next shift,” said Huy, “and being shown to a new cell. In that footage she has two feet, and a different left hand from the one she entered the prison with.”

Kai shoved himself out of his chair. “The bag,” he said, pacing toward the windows.

“Yes. Dr. Erland was bringing her these tools, we must assume with the intention of assisting her escape.”

“That’s why he left.” Kai shook his head, wondering how Cinder really knew Dr. Erland—what they’d really been doing all those times she’d come to see him at the hospital. Plotting, conniving, conspiring? “I thought she was just fixing a med-droid,” he murmured to himself. “I didn’t even question—stars, I’ve been so stupid.”

“Your Majesty,” said Huy, “our few resources not searching for Linh Cinder have been dedicated to finding Dmitri Erland. He will be arrested as a traitor to the crown.”

“Please excuse the interruption,” said Nainsi, the android who had once tutored Kai as a child, but had now taken on the more significant role of personal assistant. The android who had malfunctioned—was it not even four weeks ago?—and led him to his first meeting with Linh Cinder, back when she was nothing more to him than a renowned mechanic. “Her Majesty, Lunar Queen Levana, has requested an immediate appoint—”

“I will not be announced by an android!”

Huy and Torin spun around as Queen Levana swooped in and backhanded Nainsi across her single blue sensor, eyes flaming. The android no doubt would have toppled onto her back if her stabilizing hydraulics hadn’t kicked in just in time to catch her.

The queen’s usual entourage followed—Sybil Mira, head thaumaturge, whose role in the Lunar court seemed to be a cross between a doting lapdog and a gleeful servant who delighted in seeing to Levana’s cruelest requests. Kai had once seen her attack and nearly blind an innocent servant at the queen’s bidding, without a hint of hesitation.

She was followed by another thaumaturge, one rank beneath Sybil, who had dark skin and piercing eyes and no purpose, it seemed to Kai, other than to stand behind his queen and look smug.

Sybil’s personal guard followed, the blond man who had held Cinder during the ball when Levana first threatened her life. Even after a month of their being guests in his palace, Kai didn’t know his name. A second guard, his hair flaming red, had been the one to jump in between a bullet and Levana at the ball, taking it squarely in the shoulder. It seemed that bullet wounds weren’t enough to let one off royal guard duty, though, and the only indication of the wound was the lump of a bandage beneath his uniform.

“Your Majesty,” Kai said, addressing the queen with, he thought, an admirable lack of contempt. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“One more patronizing comment and I will have you slice off and nail your own tongue to the palace gate.”

Kai blanched. Levana’s voice, usually so melodious and sweet, was rigid as steel, and though he’d seen her angry many times before, it had never been enough for her to drop the thin veneer of diplomacy. “Your Majesty—”

“You let her escape! My prisoner!”

“I assure you, we’re doing everything we can—”

“Aimery, silence him.”

Kai’s tongue fell limp. Eyes widening, he reached a hand to his lips, realizing it wasn’t only his tongue, but his throat, his jaw. The muscles had gone useless. Which perhaps was better than having his tongue nailed to the palace gate, but still …

His gaze darted to the male thaumaturge in his pristine red coat, who grinned charmingly back. Rage flared inside him.

“You’re doing everything you can?” Levana flattened her palms on Kai’s desk. Their glares battled over the netscreen that still showed the empty prison hallway, frozen in time. “You’re telling me, young emperor, that you didn’t assist her escape? That your intention from the start hasn’t been to humiliate me on your soil?”

Kai sensed that she wanted him to fall to his knees and silently plead for forgiveness, to promise to move the Earth and heavens to satisfy her—but his anger overwhelmed his fear. With his ability to speak removed, he folded his arms over the back of his chair and waited.

From the corner of his eye he could see Torin and Huy, still as statues but for dark scowls. Sybil Mira, with her hands innocently tucked into her ivory sleeves, must have been holding them at bay with her Lunar mind magic.

Nainsi, the only being in the room that the Lunars couldn’t control with mind tricks, was being physically held by the blond guard, turned so that her sensor—and built-in camera—couldn’t capture the proceedings.

The queen’s fingertips whitened against the desk. “You expect me to believe that you didn’t encourage this escape? That you had nothing to do with it?” Her expression tightened. “You certainly don’t seem too upset about it, Your Majesty.”

Bewilderment stirred in Kai’s gut, but his face remained neutral. Years of rumors and superstitions circulated in his thoughts—rumors that Levana knew whenever anyone was talking about her, anywhere on Luna, even on Earth—but he suspected a much more plausible reason for her uncanny ability to know what she shouldn’t know.

She’d been spying on him, and his father before. He knew it—he just didn’t know how.

Realizing that she was waiting for a response, Kai quirked an eyebrow and flourished a hand toward his mouth.

Levana seethed and pushed herself back from the desk. She stretched her neck until she was staring down her nose at him. “Speak.”

Sensation returned to his tongue and Kai threw a thankless smile at Aimery. He then proceeded to do the most disrespectful thing he could think of—he pulled his chair back from his desk and sat down. Tipping back, he folded his hands over his stomach.

Anger sizzled behind Levana’s charcoal eyes until she was almost—briefly—unbeautiful.

“No,” Kai said. “I did not encourage the fugitive to escape or assist her in any way.”

“What reason do I have to believe that, after you seemed so enchanted with her at the ball?”

His brow twitched. “If you’re going to refuse to take my word, why don’t you just force a full confession out of me and be done with it?”

“Oh, I could, Your Majesty. I could put any words into that mouth of yours that I wanted to hear. But, unfortunately, we are not mind readers, and I am concerned only with truth.”

“Then allow me to give it to you.” Kai hoped he seemed more indulgent than annoyed. “Our preliminary investigation has shown that she used both her Lunar and cyborg abilities to escape from her cell, and while she may have had assistance from within the palace, it was done without my knowledge. I’m afraid we were unequipped to keep a prisoner who is both cyborg and Lunar. We will, of course, be working on strengthening our prison system for the future. In the meantime, we are doing everything in our power to track down the fugitive and apprehend her. I made a bargain with you, Your Majesty, and I do intend to keep my end.”

“You’ve already failed your end of the bargain,” she spat, but then her face softened. “Young emperor, I certainly hope you didn’t fancy yourself in love with this girl.”

Kai’s grip tightened until his knuckles screamed. “Any feelings I may have imagined for Linh Cinder were clearly nothing more than a Lunar trick.”

“Clearly. I am glad you recognize that.” Levana folded her own hands demurely before her. “I am done with this charade and am returning to Luna, immediately. You have three days to find the girl and deliver her to me. If you fail, I will send my own army to find her, and they will tear apart every spaceship, every docking station, and every home on this pathetic planet until she is found.”

White spots flashed in Kai’s vision and he shoved himself back to his feet. “Why don’t you say what you mean? You’ve been wanting a reason to invade Earth for ten years and now you’re using this one escaped Lunar, this nobody, to accomplish it.”

The corners of Levana’s lips tilted. “You seem to misunderstand my motives, so I will say precisely what I mean. I will someday rule the Commonwealth, and it is your decision whether that is to be through a war or through a peaceful and diplomatic marriage union. But this has nothing to do with war and politics. I want this girl, or I want her corpse. I will burn your country to the ground looking for her if I must.”

Levana pulled away from the desk and drifted out of the office, her entourage falling in step behind her with neither expression nor comment.

When they had gone, Huy and Torin each melted in front of Kai, looking like they hadn’t taken a breath since the queen’s entrance. And perhaps they hadn’t—Kai didn’t know what Sybil had been doing to them, but he could guess it hadn’t been comfortable.

Nainsi swiveled on her treads. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty. I never would have given her access, but the door was already open.”

Kai silenced her with a wave. “Yes, how coincidental that she chose the one time when the door wasn’t shut and coded to barge in here, isn’t it?”

Nainsi’s processor whirred, no doubt running the odds.

Kai rubbed one hand down his face. “It doesn’t matter. Everyone, out. Please.”

Nainsi vanished out the door, but Huy and Torin lingered.

“Your Majesty,” Huy said. “With all due respect, I need your permission—”

“Yes, fine, whatever you need to do. Just, I need a moment. Please.”

Huy clicked his heels. “Of course, Your Majesty.” Though Torin looked more apt to argue, he didn’t, and soon the door was hissing behind them both.

With the click of the latch, Kai let himself crumble into his chair. His entire body was shaking.

It was suddenly so clear that he wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to fill his father’s shoes. He couldn’t even keep Levana out of his own office—how was he going to protect an entire country from her—an entire planet?

Spinning his chair around, he raked his hands back through his hair. His attention swept over the city below, but was soon pulled up to the glaring blue sky, cloudless. Somewhere beyond it was the moon and the stars and tens of thousands of cargo ships, passenger ships, military ships, delivery ships, vying for space beyond the ozone. And Cinder was in one of them.

He couldn’t help it, but a part of him—maybe a large part of him—hoped Cinder would just disappear, like a fading comet’s tail. Just to spite the queen, to keep from her this one thing she so desperately wanted. It was only her vanity, after all, that had set off this tirade. Because Cinder had made that one foolish comment at the ball, suggesting that Levana wasn’t beautiful after all.

Kai massaged his temple, knowing that he had to give up these thoughts. Cinder had to be found, and soon, before millions were murdered in her place.

It was all politics now. Pros and cons, give and take, trades and agreements. Cinder had to be found, Levana had to be appeased, Kai had to stop acting cheated and indignant and start acting like an emperor.

Whatever he’d once felt for Cinder—or thought he’d felt for her—was over.