Chapter 39
- Krix'vorr -
The Nest rises ahead of us exactly as it did the day I first left it with Nora at my side, dark and enormous and indifferent to everything that's happened since.
This time there is no triumphant crew chatter, no argument over which details the Queen will want first. Word has clearly traveled ahead of us — that I turned around right outside the Nest, that I returned to a Gzet system without orders, and that I brought back two rescued aliens and an unauthorized marriage proposal.
The Beast's corridors are quiet in a way I don't like.
Nora enters the observation blister with the window, where I've been standing longer than I should, watching the Nest grow larger.
"You're doing the thing again," she says. "The brooding-alone-staring-at-stars thing."
I turn back to the stars. "There's no better way to brood. You should try it."
She puts a hand at my waist. "Does it help?"
"It doesn't change anything, if that's what you mean." I turn to look at her. "Whatever happens in that chamber, I need you to understand something first."
"Okay, being ominous."
"I don't care what rank I hold when we leave it," I tell her, and I mean every word of it more than I've meant anything in longcycles.
"Junior Harrower, disgraced Harrower, no Harrower at all.
I would fly a harvest scow for the rest of my life if it meant flying it with you beside me.
I need you to know that before we go in.
Afterwards it will have a different flavor. "
She takes my hand. “Will she kill you?”
I squeeze it. “Nothing is absolutely certain with a Queen. In this case, I doubt it. I am still bringing her the greatest Harvest ever for her to go out on. But I delayed telling her about it, setting you above her and above the Brood.”
She arches her eyebrows. “So…”
“So, probably not. But a demotion is certain. A Chief Harrower must be more than a Harrower. He must be above reproach. And I have not been.”
“I disagree,” Nora chirps.
"But my crew," I say, and this is the part that's kept me at this window far longer than my own fate ever could.
"They followed my orders. They fought when I told them to fight, and stayed silent when I told them to.
They came with me back to the Gzet station.
If I'm found guilty of disobedience, tradition says they fall with me.
I won't have that. Whatever the Queen decides for me, I intend to ask that it ends with me. "
Nora studies my face for a moment. "That's not going to be an easy thing to ask for, I think."
"Asking a Queen for anything is dangerous and difficult. But everything I do fits that description."
“Except me, of course.”
I can't hold back a bark of laughter. “My love, you are the most dangerous and difficult of all.”
“Hmf,” Nora sniffs. “You only say that because I always beat you when we practice fighting.”
I squeeze her hand again, happy that she came to break off my dark pondering. “See how difficult you are? Now you're pretending to forget who always wins.”
The Queen's chamber smells exactly as it always has. Decay beneath ceremony, ancient beneath fresh. And this time there is no crowd to soften the weight of walking toward the platform. Only Morr'ak, the Inquisitor Brax'tok, and a scattering of senior Harrowers whose faces I don't try to read.
I kneel. Nora, beside me, kneels as well, without needing to be told this time.
The Queen's great head turns toward us with the same unhurried slowness I remember from every audience before this one, and when she finally speaks, there is no warmth in it at all.
"Chief Harrower Krix'vorr." The word Chief comes out with an edge I haven't heard from her before, as though she's deciding, even as she says it, whether it still applies.
"You were sent to find the Gzet homeworld.
Having found it, you failed to return here to report its location.
Instead you turned around right outside our Nest, returned to hostile space without authorization, engaged a fortified station, and freed captives that were not yours to free.
Alien captives. You did all of this without a single word to the Inquisitor charged with observing you, or to this Nest."
"I did, Your Majesty." I'm surprised at how accurate her information is. Normally, any accusation will be embellished and enlarged by courtiers and rivals before they reach her. I sense the Inquisitor's hand in this.
"Do you have an explanation that isn't simply the alien female standing beside you?"
"No, Your Majesty," I say, because it would be a worse insult to lie to her now than to admit the truth plainly. "That is exactly what it was."
A ripple of something moves through the gathered Harrowers. Both amusement and alarm, I think. The Queen's clouded eye fixes on me for a long, silent moment, and I feel every longcycle of her age and patience bearing down on that single look.
"Before Your Majesty decides anything further," I say, before I can lose the nerve for it, "I ask one thing.
Whatever judgment falls on me, I ask that it end with me.
My crew followed my orders as they were bound to.
They did not choose this course. Their loyalty pulled them with me. They should not share the cost."
Morr'ak's antennae twitch in open surprise. Even Brax'tok, standing very still near the platform's edge, allows himself the smallest flicker of an expression.
"You ask me to break tradition," the Queen says slowly, "on behalf of others, before you have even learned what tradition intends for you."
"I do, Your Majesty."
The silence that follows stretches long enough that I hear my own hearts beating, both of them, out of rhythm with each other for the first time I can remember.
Then, unexpectedly, the Queen makes the same wet, rhythmic sound I remember from the very first time Nora stood before her. It's the sound, I now know well enough to recognize, of the Queen laughing.
"A Chief Harrower who disobeys me outright, and then asks a favor for his crew in the same breath," she creaks. "I have ruled this Brood for longer than anyone living remembers, Krix'vorr, and I don't believe anyone has ever managed both in one audience."
She shifts her vast bulk, servants scrambling to reposition cushions beneath her, and something in the chamber's tension loosens, though not entirely.
"Very well," she says. "Your crew's fate rests with you alone, as you've asked.
That much, I grant freely — it costs me nothing but precedent, and I find I care less for precedent than I once did.
" Her good eye narrows, sharp despite its age.
"Your own fate, however, is a separate matter. And a more interesting one."
I throw a quick glance at Nora. She's calm, her face neutral.
"Four planets, Krix'vorr." The Queen's tone changes, and something contemplative creeps into the creak of her voice.
"The richest target found in longcycles beyond counting.
I could execute you for the manner in which you found it, and still my successor would remember me as the Queen who claimed the greatest Harvest in the history of the Brood.
That is not a small thing to weigh against your disobedience. "
"I understand, Your Majesty."
"Do you?" She tilts her great head, studying me with an attention that makes my carapace prickle. "I wonder if you understand something else as well. Inquisitor Brax'tok tells me you intend to marry this alien."
"I do, Your Majesty."
"A formal union. With an alien. Not merely a plaything kept quietly in your own chamber, as any Chief Harrower might keep without comment.
" Her clouded eye doesn't leave my face.
"You understand what that means for you.
A Royal Mate cannot be bound to another female.
The position requires a male unencumbered, free to serve however the new Queen requires him, for as long as she requires him.
You have known this since the day I announced my successor, and you did it anyway. "
The chamber has gone very still. I feel Nora's hand tighten slightly against mine, though neither of us dares to look at the other.
"I did, Your Majesty," I say. "Deliberately."
Whatever answer she expected, it doesn't seem to have been that one. For a moment she says nothing at all, and I brace myself for whatever comes next.
Then the wet, rhythmic chuckle returns, deeper this time, rolling through her enormous body in a way that sets the nutrient tubes above her swaying.
"You sabotaged your own ambition," she says, delighted in a way I haven't heard from her since the day she first met Nora.
"Deliberately. To avoid a position every male in the Brood would kill for.
" She shakes her head, or does something with her vast bulk that approximates it.
"I have watched males scheme for that seat for longcycles.
I have watched them lie, poison, and murder their own brothers for a chance at it.
And you built yourself a wall against it, brick by brick, the moment you realized what it would cost you. "
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Extraordinary." She settles back, and something in her posture eases, decades of formality softening for just a moment into something almost fond.
"Perhaps it's fitting. I don't believe a Royal Mate bound heart and blood to some alien female would have served this Brood well regardless of what he intended.
Some males are meant for thrones. Others are meant for something smaller and, I suspect, considerably harder to hold onto. "
She turns her head, slow and deliberate, toward Morr'ak. "Strike Krix'vorr's name from consideration. Permanently. He has made the matter simple enough for all of us."
"As you command, Your Majesty," Morr'ak says, and if he's disappointed or relieved, I can't read it in his voice.
“And you, Nora the alien,” the Queen creaks. “You're not demanding tribute today?”
“I never demanded tribute, Your Majesty,” Nora says calmly. “I begged for help for my people. None was forthcoming. I will not beg again.”
“Indeed there shall be nothing given,” the Queen scoffs.
“And begging a second time is unbecoming.” Her attention returns to me.
"You will retain your rank, Chief Harrower.
You will retain your ship — I won't insult the Beast by pretending she'd answer to anyone else after everything she's carried you both through.
You disobeyed me, and you will not do so again without cost the next time.
But this once, in my old age, I find myself more entertained than offended.
" Her mouth curls at the edges. "And you may marry your alien, with my blessing, since you seem so intent on ruining every other option available to you. "
For a moment I can't speak at all. Beside me, I feel Nora let out a breath she must have been holding since we knelt.
"Thank you, Your Majesty," I finally manage.
"Don't thank me yet," she says, and there's a glint in her clouded eye that tells me she isn't finished. "I intend to see this wedding myself. It's been a very long time since anything in this Nest surprised me twice in one longcycle. I think I'd like to see how it ends."