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  As Mahliki walked closer to Father’s door, she noticed it stood ajar with lamplight flowing out. Good. Whoever his guest was, the meeting couldn’t be so important as to require utter secrecy. It was, however, odd that the guard who usually stood outside the door was missing. Father hadn’t stepped out, had he?

  But, no, as she approached the threshold, she heard voices drifting out. Father’s and... a woman’s. One of those business people angling for some concession? Hadn’t he been directing them to the new Chief of Domestic Economics?

  Mahliki softened her steps—as much as her burden allowed—and stopped a few inches from the door.

  “...look so tired, dear,” a woman said—Mahliki didn’t recognize the voice. “And your brow is all furrowed together. Do you have another headache?”

  Mahliki’s mouth fell open. Who was calling her father dear? Unless Grandmother Starcrest had decided to visit the capital, this couldn’t have a promising explanation. Father wouldn’t be... cheating on Mother. Surely, not. They were too loving and supportive of each other. It was almost gooey. Mahliki and her siblings had rolled many an eye as they were growing up. Father wouldn’t... he couldn’t.

  Mahliki wished there were a table in the hall that she could set the helmet on. Her arms ached, and her palms had started sweating. She wouldn’t walk away from this conversation for anything though.

  “What you need,” the woman went on, “is a true confidant here. Someone who was born and bred in the capital and understands the Turgonian culture. That... foreign woman, what use is she here? There are no ancient pots to study, or whatever it is she does.”

  Mahliki was torn between holding her breath and not moving an inch, lest one of the old floorboards beneath the runner creak, and wanting to barge in and punch whoever this woman was in the face. Father should be punching her in the face. Or at least shoving her out the door.

  An inside door thumped shut. The lavatory? Or maybe that big closet Father had converted into a file room.

  “Are you still here, Sauda?” Father sighed, and a chair creaked. “Lieutenant Pustvan, I thought I asked you to escort the lady to the foyer.”

  “Yes, My Lord, but she threatened me when I tried to take her arm.” Ah, there was the door guard. “And I wasn’t sure how much bodily force you wanted me to use given her... status.”

  “She threatened you? You weigh a hundred pounds more than she does.”

  “Well, she threatened parts of me. Parts I’m partial to.”

  The woman issued a haughty sniff, as if she had done no such thing. Mahliki could have disliked her from the tone of that sniff alone. She definitely sounded like someone who deserved a punch in the face. And, cursed sand sprites, the stupid helmet was getting heavy.

  “You may bully me out of here if you wish, Rias, but that does not invalidate the truth.”

  Rias? Only family members and close friends called Father that. None of the staff here ever called him anything except “My Lord” or, when they were trying to be modern and progressive, “Lord President.” The proper title was supposed to be Mister President, but everyone in the warrior caste seemed to find the notion of leaving lord out of the address positively insulting. A few of his old friends called him Lord Admiral, but very few other people here presumed first-name intimacy. So who in all the oceans was this woman?

  Mahliki leaned closer to the door, trying to see through the three-inch opening.

  “Yes, Sauda,” Father said. “I acknowledge that. As I said, leave the paperwork on my desk, and I’ll speak with an attorney.”

  “But Rias,” the woman purred, “there’s no need for that. I thought the gift I sent would make my feelings clear on the matter. I am willing to accept you back, despite your... dalliances in other countries. Our agreement goes back more than forty years and certainly predates anything that’s transpired in the last twenty.”

  The chair squeaked. “Dalliances? Such as a marriage of twenty years and three children?”

  “A marriage you had no legal right to pursue, Rias.”

  On tiptoes in the hallway, Mahliki couldn’t make out more than Lieutenant Pustvan’s arm and the right half of the woman’s back—her long black hair was swept up in an elaborate coif, and she wore a mink fur coat. That hair had to be dyed, Mahliki decided, as the reality of who this was sank in. Father had never spoken of his former wife, but Mother mentioned it whenever she told her version of the story about how they had met and fallen in love—over frozen and mutilated bodies.

  The woman backed up, and Father came into view. Mahliki skittered back—or tried to. Her heel caught a wrinkle in the carpet runner and the awkward helmet threw off her balance. She kept from pitching onto her backside, but her sweaty palms betrayed her. The solid brass helmet clunked to the floor like an elephant falling through a roof. At least it didn’t crash through the floor and into someone’s bedroom below.

  The door swung all the way open. Father stood there, gripping the back of the woman’s arm, ready to escort her out—or perhaps propel her out.

  Mahliki flung an arm out and leaned against the railing, as if she wasn’t guilty of a thing in the world. “Oh, hello, Father. How are you doing? I just got here, of course. I was needing your help with, ah...”

  Father gazed blandly down at the diving helmet blocking the doorway. The woman... wore a lot of rouge, lipstick, and face powder, among other things. It and the dyed hair succeeded in making her look younger than what must have been sixty-odd years, and Mahliki grudgingly admitted that she must have been gorgeous in her youth. Her facial features had a refined elegance even now. The woman—Sauda—returned Mahliki’s scrutiny, her expression somewhere between curiosity, exasperation, and contempt. Well, Mahliki had suffered similar looks before, usually from tutors. She wondered if Sauda had ever had children. Or ever wanted them. She also wondered if she could have held that diving helmet for three more seconds so it would have dropped on the woman’s foot. Open-toed shoes. Poor armor.

  “There’s a problem with your diving helmet?” Father asked.

  “Yes,” Mahliki said, “it’s empty. It would like to be full. I thought we could discuss this discrepancy.”

  He sighed. “Wait inside, please. I’ll be back in a moment. Lieutenant, bring those papers, will you? I want them dropped off tonight.”

  “Yes, My Lord.” Lieutenant Pustvan, a stout man with a ruddy-cheeked face, grabbed a folder on the desk, then scurried for the hallway. He gave Mahliki a quick smile and a shy wave wholly incongruous with his supposedly fierce stature as presidential bodyguard. She didn’t smile back, not with Father watching on. The fellow had enough trouble without receiving a lecture from the president on the fact that his daughter should not be flirted with while on duty, or any other time. The lieutenant dropped his hands to cover his genitals as he hustled past Sauda. Father wore a long-suffering look as he trooped off, escorting the wo—his former wife, Mahliki corrected, and yes, that was almost too bizarre to comprehend. Even though she knew it meant nothing, it was strange and uncomfortable to see him walking side-by-side down the steps with a woman who wasn’t Mother.

  She wrestled the helmet into the office and thumped it down on the desk. Too bad the lieutenant had taken those papers. She would have been curious to see them. More than curious. It sounded like Father’s old marriage might never have been dissolved. How could that be? Surely he couldn’t have forgotten about something that important.

  Mahliki poked around the office while she waited, aware that it was taking longer for Father to return than it should have if all he had done was walk downstairs to the front door and back. Was he talking to her? Or had someone else waylaid him in the hall?

  The woman had mentioned a gift. What could that be? Something spiteful? No, it had sounded like she wanted to stand at Father’s side again, as if he would brush away his family of twenty years like lint on a sweater. Delusional woman. But if she could bind things up with legal entanglements, what might it mean for Mother? The Turgonians had n
o love for the Kyattese, and Mahliki had read a few snide newspaper articles pointing out the inappropriateness of a foreign wife for the first president. No one would take a jab at Father, of course, not with his military record. But Mother?

  Did Mother even know Sauda had been by? More than once, it sounded like. Mahliki wondered if she could locate the gift. And arrange for a diving helmet to fall upon it. A petty thought, but she found herself smiling at the idea and peering around the office, nonetheless. The idea dwindled when her gaze fell upon the hundred-odd gifts stacked on and around the bookcases to either side of the door, with even more rising in stacks in the corners. People must have been delivering welcome-to-the-office-and-please-don’t-forget-to-think-kindly-of-my-establishment gifts since Election Day had made Father’s job title official. He either hadn’t had time to open them or hadn’t cared to open them. Perhaps he wished to remain oblivious to bribe requests.

  Mahliki wandered over to one of the piles and started poking around, looking at name cards, but there were too many to go through. More than a hundred. Given what she had seen of this Sauda, something wrapped in flamboyant paper—or furs—might be expected, but she didn’t see anything that grandiose. She paused over a black scroll case tied with simple but tasteful silver string. Unlike most of the gifts, it had been opened.

  Her heart rate increased at the thought that Father might have opened her gift. What would that mean, when he had touched so few of the others? No, he had been indifferent to her; she had heard it with her own ears. This had to be from someone else. Still, her hand trembled as she reached for the case. She thumbed open the name card, and blinked in surprise. Not Sauda...

  May your years in the chair be less turbulent than mine were. ~ Sespian.

  Mahliki opened the scroll case and tipped it toward her hand. A small slip fell out, followed by a larger sheet. The first was a receipt to Father for ordering a custom-made frame from a local woodworker. The second paper made her breath catch. It was an ink portrait of the family, Mother, Father, Agarik, Koanani, and her. And it was beautiful. The family had never stood and posed for Sespian—Mahliki hadn’t even been positive he knew who her siblings were, but he must have met them at the funerals last winter—so he had done it all from memory. He had even captured... all the right emotions. Father and Mother weren’t as grave as they appeared in public, and they were standing arm and arm, sharing smiles with each other. She and her siblings wore mischievous expressions, and she marveled at how well he had captured each person’s mannerisms, including hers. She was fiddling with the end of her braid in the picture. Hah, she hadn’t realized she did that so often that others noticed. Or maybe Sespian was just an observant man. Artists tended to be so, didn’t they?

  “Yeah, then how come he hasn’t observed that you would like him to kiss you?” she muttered. Maybe he had and simply wasn’t interested. Not a heartening notion.

  “Snooping?” came a voice from the doorway.

  Mahliki jumped, almost dropping the portrait. She flushed but had too much respect for it—and the artist—to stuff it back into the tube with haste. Colonel Dak stood in the doorway. She wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse than being caught rummaging by Father. She was sure she should have shut the door before, er, snooping, yes.

  Her first instinct was to decry this accusation, but she had been caught with her finger in the coconut pudding bowl. She shrugged nonchalantly instead. “Would you tell Father if I was? Or try to recruit me for the intelligence office?”

  “Depends.” Dak walked in and slumped into one of the chairs at the desk, not Father’s.

  “On?” Mahliki carefully returned the portrait to its home. She hadn’t run across her cousin often in the time he had been here—or known he was on the premises until recently—so didn’t know how to interact with him. Even thinking of a forty-year-old man as a cousin seemed odd, as all her cousins on her mother’s side were closer to her own age.

  “On whether you were snooping out of concern for your father and the welfare of Turgonia, or whether it was because of a boy.”

  Mahliki flushed. His one eye was either extra strong to make up for the lack of the other, or he had seen the portrait before and knew who it was from. But how could he know Mahliki had an... interest in Sespian? Sespian didn’t even know.

  Dak rapped the diving helmet with a knuckle. “Guess that explains why I was called up here. You’re wondering why your trip has been delayed.”

  “Yes.” Mahliki couldn’t keep from sounding a touch huffy. “I should think that finding a way to eliminate that plant would be a priority. I don’t know if Father has told you, but I’m a biologist, and, despite my age, I have a great deal of experience with exotic foliage.”

  “He’s told me. He’s proud of you.”

  Her huffiness deflated. “Oh. I mean, I know.”

  “The plant is a priority, and it’s becoming more of one everyday. That’s why we’re letting you go out on a naval vessel in the morning. With a military escort, in addition to Sespian and whoever else you’re taking down.” He lifted a hand, clearly anticipating an objection, though Mahliki didn’t care how many men he sent along to clean their fingernails while she was under the surface, so long as she got to go. “There’s a new assassin in the city, a good one, and we have no idea where he is or what his target will be, but he’s Nurian. Given how many Nurian deaths your father caused in the last war, we must assume that he’s in danger, and that his family may be too.”

  “Including you?”

  Dak snorted. “I doubt the Nurians know I exist.”

  “A benefit of working in intelligence?” In truth, Mahliki had no idea what Dak’s career had involved, but she had notions of military intelligence people doing a lot of clandestine spy work.

  “A benefit? I suppose, but most Turgonians don’t know I exist, either.” For a moment, a wistful expression softened his gruff face, but it disappeared so quickly she might have imagined it. Time for a topic change.

  “Did you see... uhm, do you know anything about... that woman?”

  The wolfish grin that flashed across his face surprised her. “You mean your father’s not-so-ex-wife?”

  She frowned at the grin—and the amusement in his voice. “I believe so, yes.”

  “Forgive me my inappropriate delight in his predicament, but my uncle has lived a golden life. He deserves a flea bite now and then.”

  “I don’t understand how... what is she claiming, exactly?” Mahliki asked.

  “That they’re still married.”

  “Didn’t Father... file some paperwork or something? Say... twenty years ago? Before he married Mother?”

  “Twenty years ago, he was declared dead by the emperor. Something everyone here believed for a long time.” Dak grimaced. “Death nullifies marriage vows. As it turns out, he was imprisoned and later exiled. The emperor never forgave him for what he considered crimes, and to him, Rias was ash on the wind. His wife was never informed that he was anything other than deceased. Over the years, Rias sent a few letters, informing the family as to the truth—and about his Kyattese nuptials—but only to a select few. It wasn’t until Raumesys died a few years ago that he might have had a chance to come home, but even then, he knew nothing of Sespian or what he believed about him. For all Rias knew, the coastal garrisons might have orders to shoot him on sight if he wandered into port.”

  Mahliki caught herself twirling the tip of her braid and stopped. “But didn’t that woman, Sauda, ever get remarried?”

  Twenty years, that was longer than Mahliki had been alive. An eternity. How long could a woman mourn for her dead husband?

  “Oh, yes.” Dak held up three fingers. “But none of the marriages lasted long. And she’s conveniently—or inconveniently for Rias—unattached now. Except to him.” He started to grin again but seemed to remember her disapproval and squashed the gesture. “He said you’re welcome to share this information with your mother, if she doesn’t already know. He’s been... absent
minded of late and doesn’t remember if he told her.” Dak’s humor disappeared and was replaced by concern. “I trust the bond they’ve forged over the years will withstand this trial. Though they can expect some awkward moments.”

  “Why do I have a feeling that’s an understatement?” And what did he mean that Father had been absentminded?

  “Perhaps.” Dak settled back into the chair and opened the folder he had brought with him. Ugh, he must be waiting for Father to return for some meeting. That was going to make it hard to continue snooping.

  Mahliki wandered toward the window, as if to consider the view, and a hint of leopard print wrapping paper peeked out at her from behind a stack in the corner. Ah ha. She glanced back to see if Dak was looking. At the same time, he lifted his head, brows rising in inquiry.

  Mahliki parted her lips, on the verge of asking him to look the other way or to help her pry into the gift. Maybe she could make a secret ally of him. But she barely knew him, and nothing in his scarred face said he wanted to be the secret ally of a teenage girl. No, he looked every bit the grizzled veteran, a mature adult who would not think of unwrapping his famous uncle’s gifts.

  “So,” Mahliki said instead, “you say a team will be ready to go in the morning? Where shall I meet them?”

  “Yes, it will be ready,” came her father’s voice from behind her. “Let’s go over the details. Dak, are you ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mahliki forgot about the leopard-print wrapping for the moment, eager to discuss the details of what she had come to think of as her mission.

  Chapter 5

  Maldynado hopped off the trolley at Legion and Oak, clothed in an elegant gray vest and black jacket—the sedate style had been Sespian’s recommendation; with a straight face, he had sworn they were Starcrest’s favorite colors. He and Sespian strode through the Upper Waterfront neighborhood toward the Emperor’s Bulwark. Despite the building’s age, the marble facade, gold-gilded columns, gold-plated roof tiles, and leering grimbal down spouts had held up well over the years, though Maldynado hoped the structure Sespian had designed possessed more modern flair. Like most of the dwellings in the city, the hotel firmly said Empire. The president should reside in a building that bespoke this new age, something with creative lines. A few curly cues, perhaps. Cheerful colors. Nude female statuary.