Cassandra was weird.
It was easy to tell that she was no Cantator; she looked too full and too healthy for that. Lyra couldn't decide if she was a very aged-looking thirty-something or a very young-looking seventy-something—her face fell into a strange category that was somehow old and young all at once. Inexplicably, she wore thick holographic sunglasses, which seemed very unnecessary considering the darkness down here. Her entire outfit looked like it would have worked better on a 13-year-old, and she was drenched in so much body glitter that it looked like she'd taken a dip in a pool full of the stuff.
"Hey," she said, her voice a gravelly soprano. Lyra didn't know people's voices could even sound like that. She wondered briefly if Cassandra was a cyborg, but she didn't see any wires or metal on her person. Maybe she was a rich cyborg. They could afford implants that looked so humanlike it made detection impossible.
"Hey," T said, leaning on the wall behind her. He looked very, very cool, like the main character of a gritty sci-fi holofilm. All he needed was a cigarette and a big, black laser gun.
"You gonna explain yourselves or what?" Cassandra asked. Lyra wasn't sure if she was angry or just being facetious. Nothing about her expression made any sense. It wasn't that she was stoic or hard-looking—it was more like her face was displaying the entire spectrum of human emotion, plus some extra feelings, simultaneously.
T's brow furrowed. "Explain what?"
"Last night."
"You know what happened."
"Um, actually, I don't."
"Are you joking around or are you really that stupid?" Ace snapped. Lyra assumed he was referring to the assassination—the whole room was abuzz with discussions about it. That was the one advantage of being born a Cantator; nobody cared about the lower castes enough to even pay attention to what they thought. They could talk about whatever they wanted, and Alestra Cipher would be none the wiser.
"Hey now," Cassandra said, "watch your temper. Do you want even more media attention?"
"Attention for what?" Lyra asked. She didn't recall seeing Ace before, on the telescreens or elsewhere. Even if he had committed a crime, who would notice? Upper-class kids could get away with anything scot-free, and even if whatever he'd done was bad enough to get people fired up about it, it would have been completely forgotten after the assassination attempt. Nothing could eclipse that, especially not a white collar crime. (And it had to be a white collar crime—Ace looked like the type of guy who'd probably fall over if he tried to punch someone. Most of the army strategists did.)
Cassandra reached to her lips, looking for a cigarette that wasn't there. (Not that smoking would have made her appear any cooler; she already looked like an overgrown bubblegum-pop idol singer.) "I told you," she said, "to lay low."
"What was I supposed to do? They were going to kill her! Besides, it's not like anyone put the pieces together about T—"
"Don't," Cassandra said sharply. "We can't talk about this here. Look at all these people." She gestured to the crowded room and the adjacent alleyway, which was very nearly empty.
"No offense, but I don't think the guy sleeping in a dumpster or the girl passed out on the sidewalk are going to be reporting back to the Nova," Ace said dryly.
T rolled his eyes. "Well, if there's something to discuss here—which, keep in mind, I had no idea about—we should stop bickering and start talking already. Let's go." He gestured for Lyra to move along with him, but she paused, wondering again if this was really a good idea.
Cassandra turned around and looked at her, her bright purple eyes glimmering. "Who are you?"
"They call me Lyra."
"She helped us track you down," T explained quickly, "and she was bleeding, so she's coming with us now." He smiled awkwardly, like a little boy who'd brought a stray kitten back to his unassuming father.
Lyra half-expected Cassandra to inquire further, but instead, she merely shrugged. "If you think she's safe, then I trust your judgement."
"Hey!" Ace whined. "Why do you have so much faith in him and not me?"
"Because you're an idiot and T is usually semi-responsible."
"That's not fair—"
"Yes it is," T interrupted. "Now, let's go."
***
Cassandra's house looked like someone had taken ancient Rome and painted it bright pink, then added a heavy dose of surrealism and glitch art. The walls were held up by elaborate Dorian columns, but the floor was neon magenta and pitch black, like someone had forgotten to add the texture there. The lighting was hazy and fluorescent white, and it flickered on and off in a way that suggested it was intentional. Corporate-sounding stock music played from another room, looping endlessly, on and on ad infinitum. It was a vaporware fever dream, rife with nostalgia for an era Lyra never lived in, and she had the uncanny feeling that it'd be easy to get lost in this place.
"Your apartment gives me a headache," Ace whined. "Will you turn off that music?"
"No," Cassandra said simply.
"Why?"
"Aesthetic."
Lyra almost laughed, then she remembered the rumors she'd been told about digital drugs, and she wondered if Cassandra was benevolent or… well, something else. It was incredibly hard to tell—nothing about her seemed normal. Ace and T didn't seem bothered, though, which Lyra took as a good sign.
Seemingly annoyed by the music, but unwilling to debate the matter, Ace collapsed onto a plasticky-looking, translucent couch. It pulsed under his body's weight like a living thing, looking far more repulsive than a lavender sofa had any right to. Cassandra glared at him. "You're tracking mud all over my house."
"I am not!"
"Ace, stop," T groaned. "Will you two quit bickering and clue me in to exactly what you're talking about? If you haven���t noticed, I'm still out of the loop here, and whatever this is must be pretty serious or Cass wouldn't have mentioned it to begin with."
"Oh, right, that," Cassandra said, rolling her neon eyes. "So about the assassination attempt… apparently Alestra has decided that house Generalis is back in her good graces now, because she's decided to shift the blame away from Cassiopeia."
T furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that all the news stations have suddenly shifted from accusing Cassiopeia of losing her mind to pretending that they don't know what's happening. Have you watched the news since last night?"
"I was busy going on a wild goose chase for an agent who can never be bothered to remember where she said she'd meet us," T replied dryly. "So no, I haven't."
"Well, you should pay a little more attention, because they seem pretty hell-bent on picking a scapegoat… and their scapegoat of choice seems to be the random-ass soldier who jumped on top of Acidalia and started tearing at her clothes."
"What?!" T demanded. "Who—"
"You, asinus. Or, him, rather." Cassandra pointed at Ace. "They have a beautiful picture of him that they took off the surveillance cameras. 4D HD and everything. He's all covered in bloody taffeta and he looks like he just ate Acidalia Cipher alive, and he definitely seems more threatening than fragile little Cassiopeia, last of house Generalis."
Ace looked down at himself, panicked, and Lyra realized suddenly that Cassandra was right—though he'd obviously tried to clean himself off, there were drops of blood splattered across his front and in his lap. Diamond dust sat on his shoulders like glittery snow, and there was a thin, fluttering strip of transparent fabric wrapped around one of his pins. She supposed it wasn't out of the question for a high-ranking AX soldier to have met the Imperatrix, but there was no way those scraps actually came from her clothes—her guards would probably kill any other man who came within five feet of her. Ace would've been shot before he could even touch her.
"That's not fair," he protested, picking at the lace. "I was trying to get her out of the way so T could—"
"Wait, you met Acidalia Cipher?" Lyra interrupted. "How did you—"
Ace sighed moodily and brushed glitter off his shoulders. "Don't get so excited. I've only actually spoken to her, like, twice. We have a recurring thing where I dive in front of her to protect her from danger and then she dives in front of me to protect me from danger and neither of us really acknowledge it, and you'd think it'd come across as romantic, but it really, really doesn't."
"So you're on the Imperial Guard?" Lyra asked.
Ace and T looked at each other. "Sort of," T said.
"Wow. What are men like you doing down here?"
"Getting blamed for trying to kill the Imperatrix, apparently," Ace replied, looking sourly at Cassandra. "For the record, I have never once tried to kill Acidalia. I'm pretty sure T would shoot me if I even tried."
"For the record," T added, "I absolutely would."
Ace rolled his eyes. "You only say that because she loves you."
"Quit saying that. You're making our relationship sound like something it's not."
"Wait," Lyra said. "What relationship? Are you two—"
T's eyes went wide. "No! Not like that! Not like that, at all, whatsoever, not even a little bit. We are just friends. Strictly friends. We are absolutely one hundred percent not dating, and we never ever ever will."
"But you just said she loves you." Lyra thought suddenly of the stereotypical royal romance plot: the high-and-mighty, extraordinarily wealthy princess falls in love with a rough and hardened-around-the edges peasant, and they have to keep their relationship under wraps because they're from two different worlds. Acidalia never seemed like the type of woman to engage in flings with soldier boys—most of the noblewomen presented themselves as either painfully chaste or too scary to attract anyone—but maybe that was why T was denying it so hard. Lyra thought it was sweet, in a way, that he was so willing to protect her reputation. Most boys she knew would shout it from the mountaintops if Acidalia—or any rich girl, for that matter—so much as looked at them.
"She does love me," T sighed, "but think less eros and more philia. Or maybe storge? Definitely agape. But not eros."
"You're going to have to explain a little more, I'm not educated on the classics." A tinge of blush crept up Lyra's cheeks. Of course she didn't know what he was talking about; she barely knew how to read.
T leant forward slightly and balanced his head on his hand. A moment passed, and Ace and Cassandra looked at each other like they were sharing a secret. Finally, T said plainly, "she's my sister."
"Oh my god, I'm sorry I even mentioned anything—ugh." Lyra shook her head. Wonderful, she thought. I've just insinuated that a high-ranking TB-class soldier was sexually attracted to his sister, who happens to be the Imperatrix Ceasarina. Why did every conversation she had seem to end up with her putting her foot in her mouth? Then, abruptly, her momentary exasperation with herself was replaced with shock as she realized that she was sitting right next to the brother of Acidalia-Planitia herself.
"Way to let the cat out of the bag, moron," Ace snarked before Lyra even had the chance to respond.
"Don't be stupid. Everyone can see it." T was right; now that Lyra knew his secret, his relationship to the Imperatrix was staggeringly obvious. Their features were nearly identical—they had their father's deep brown eyes and jet-black hair, but Alestra's high cheekbones and her pretty Grecian nose. There was no way T was lying; they looked so alike that it simply couldn't have been coincidental, and his face was so natural that she doubted it was plastic surgery or genetic mods. She had no idea how she hadn't seen it before.
"I guess the rumors were true, then," Lyra said, still slightly awed that this man she was sitting next to was of the same flesh and blood as the royal family. "Alestra really did have other children."
"There are rumors about me?" T asked, concerned.
Lyra blushed. "Well, not you, exactly. But people know that Acidalia wasn't really… well, planned, and they think that Alestra might have had other unplanned children, too." She didn't want to say the word "bastard. "
"Oh, believe me, Acidalia and I were planned," T scoffed. "I'm pretty sure she intentionally got pregnant just to make our father stay with her, or maybe to get revenge on him for something he did. My mother is many things, but stupid isn't one of them. She wouldn't make the same mistake twice. She had to have had a reason… even though I must admit that I don't know what it is. You're still bleeding, by the way."
"Oh." Lyra looked down at her shirt. Fresh red blood droplets soaked into the black fabric, leaving little pools of dampness behind. She'd grown so numb to the taste and smell of blood that she hadn't even noticed the drip-drip-drip of her nosebleed. It was probably more due to the acrid air and the burning chemicals than anything; the atmosphere down here was so toxic and abrasive that the cells in her nose and throat were constantly raw. Of course, being hit didn't exactly help, either.
T wordlessly handed her another handkerchief. His hands were smooth and soft—he'd clearly never done any manual labor in his life.
"Thank you," she said, lifting it up to her nose. It was a flimsy thing that seemed very ill-suited for such a bloody purpose, all white silk and lace trim. She wondered briefly where T had gotten a lady's handkerchief, then she noticed the initials A.P.C. in the corner.
"Does this belong to—"
"Acidalia? Yeah."
"Will she miss it?"
T shook his head. "With the amount of stuff she owns? You could probably steal a car from her and she wouldn't notice. She has a million of them and she doesn't even drive. One time Ace literally took two thousand credits out of her coat pocket and she didn't say anything, because she had so much money that two thousand credits was nothing."
"How do you even fit two thousand credits in your pocket?" Lyra asked, awed. She couldn't imagine having that much money. She envisioned Acidalia with her pockets overflowing with bills, but that seemed trashy.
"They make thousand-credit bills now," Ace said, "for all your rich-people needs. You know, for the awkward moments when you want to buy a new yacht—" he pronounced it yak-it— "but you have to pay credit."
"Yachts cost a lot more than two thousand credits," T replied dryly.
"Eh, after a while all the numbers blend together. One of Acidalia's ladies-in-waiting spent three million credits on a dress that used to belong to Anna Luminosa, so I've stopped pretending I know how much anything is worth."
"Well, buying historical artifacts is a little different. Anna Luminosa was one of the Founders, by the way," he explained to a bemused Lyra. "She was a friend of Katerina, or maybe a relative."
Lyra nodded along, not wanting to seem uneducated. She had no idea who Anna Luminosa was, but that probably didn't matter. She knew enough to understand that anyone who had ever met Katerina was important by virtue of that alone.
"Anyway," Cassandra said, interrupting the conversation, "let's talk about the fact that everyone is out for Ace's blood. Why did we stop talking about that? That seems more important than the spending habits of idiot Princips-castes with more money than common sense."
Ace groaned. "Can we maybe not? Listen, I get it, but what am I going to do about it? I can't exactly go out there and say I'm innocent. Nobody will believe me—I'll get eaten alive. The only person who could possibly save me at the moment is Acidalia Cipher, and everyone knows she won't." His voice had a slight edge of resentment to it, and Lyra wondered if he was jealous.
"See, the problem with that is that Acidalia absolutely would defend you if you asked her to," T said. "But you are not going to ask her, because we don't need her getting more scrutiny than she already does. They're probably planning on killing her as we speak. Her jumping to Ace's defense will only accelerate that."
"Yeah, but if she doesn't, they'll kill me."
Cassandra glared at him. "Stop the melodrama. They can't kill you if they can't find you. They know you didn't do it, and they have no interest in really tracking you down—they just need someone to blame, and you happened to be convenient."
"But what if they do try to hunt me down?" Ace asked, his tone high-pitched and whiny. He picked at the neon purple fabric of the couch, looking equal parts stressed and immature.
"Then you'll just have to hide," Cassandra shrugged.
"Easy for you to say. You've spent your whole life hiding."
"You get used to it."
"Maybe you and Kalyn do, but I'm not like that." Ace shook his head. "This is insane. I can't believe I've been accused of trying to assassinate my best friend's sister. Sure, I've said I wanted to kill her before, but it was just a joke, you know? I would never—"
"Don't," T interrupted. "It's not me you have to convince."
Ace leant back, crestfallen, and Lyra's heart sunk. "Why are they so hell-bent on making Cassiopeia into a heroine?" she asked. Noblewomen defended their own—they usually did—but house Cipher and house Generalis hated each other. It was an open secret that the only reason house Generalis was dying was because Alestra had murdered all of its leaders. She supposed it made sense that she was only pardoning Cassiopeia because she didn't like Acidalia, but even then…
"Blame the Nova," Ace said miserably. "The goddamn Novagenetica are behind everything."
"What?" Lyra had only heard the name Novagenetica once or twice, but it had never been in a particularly good context. They were a group of fringe caste supremacists who believed staunchly in the merit of eugenics, but Lyra had never taken the time to really understand what that meant. She knew they were annoying and sometimes violent, but they weren't that big or important—to her knowledge, at least.
"Don't listen to him," T said. "We don't know that for sure. We have our suspicions, but we can't prove anything definitively. Alestra is Nova, and so are some others, but the notion that they're secretly controlling everything in the whole court is a little out there."
"But Alestra is Nova?" Lyra didn't know why she was surprised. The empress and her court were notorious for their dislike of the lower castes—Alestra's obsessive hatred of everyone below the Logos cohort far eclipsed that of Ciphers past. It made sense that she'd be in the Nova, naturally, if they held such similar opinions. But still…
"Yes," T said, "and that's a problem, because Alestra is rich. Really rich. She's turned a fringe hate group into a paramilitary powerhouse, and fighting against them grows more difficult every day. Luckily, Acidalia has money, too, and the court is fractured and splintered enough that it's unlikely for every noblewomen to be a part of the same cause. Maybe Alestra and Cassiopeia are allies now—I don't know. But the notion that the Nova is behind every single event that's ever happened in the court, that's too much for even me to believe."
Ace shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."
"It doesn't matter, anyway," T replied. "Acidalia is in danger regardless. The Nova don't like people they don't consider perfect, and who's more imperfect than a Martian bastard who somehow managed to swindle her way onto Eleutheria's throne? Last night was just one attempt, but if this pattern continues, it'll be the first of many. And who says they'll even be things she can fight off? Someone once killed a spy with a poison dart hidden inside an umbrella gun. How do you even defend yourself from that?"
"Stay away from umbrellas," Cassandra said flippantly, like the answer was obvious. Lyra didn't know if she was playing dumb or if she actually believed that was a viable long-term strategy. The truth was if Alestra wanted someone dead, they'd die—even Acidalia could never hope to evade the grip of someone so powerful. Maybe it wouldn't be poison darts shot out of umbrellas, but there were a million other ways an aristocrat could go about killing a woman she didn't like—cyanide-laced food, nerve gas in the air vents, shots fired by invisible snipers, handheld items rigged to explode when touched. And Alestra wouldn't even have to take the blame for it. She could do what she'd done with Ace and pass it off as some crazed attack by a lone-wolf psychopath, and she and everyone she loved would come out of it unharmed. There was no way Acidalia would last another week with so many people after her blood.
"Does nobody but me realize the severity of this?" T asked, looking stressed. "Forget about losing your leader for a moment. Forget about the fact that she's my sister, forget about Aleskynn taking the throne, forget about Alestra ruling unabated for another seven years until she reaches her majority. Forget about all that. Acidalia is a Cipher. She's a lethal biological weapon in the form of a twenty-something empress, and if she dies, so does the whole Revolution."
"Biological weapon?" Lyra asked. "Revolution? What—"
"Don't ask," Cassandra said sharply. "All right, fine, Acidalia is important. What are we going to do about her imminent demise, then?"
"Are we just going to ignore the fact that I'm—" Ace began.
"Yes," T interrupted. "We can talk about that later once people stop trying to murder my sister in broad daylight, okay? First we need to get Acidalia out of danger. She is our priority right now."
Ace sighed melodramatically. "Fine. But when they kill me, I'm going to haunt you so hard."
T evidently elected to ignore him. "We should get Andromeda on this," he said, "and let someone from the Magistratum know. There might be enough time to get someone capable on the Imperial Guard if we can get the bribe money. Maybe we can even arrange an impromptu rendezvous on Mars or something—any excuse to get Acidalia away from this planet. The only caveat is that she can't plan things herself—it'll look suspicious. And—" Suddenly he jumped up, looking alarmed.
"What is it?" Ace asked.
T looked down at his hands. They were bright red and sticky, drenched in coagulating blood. Lyra cringed—she hadn't realized that she'd been bleeding badly enough to cover the whole couch.
"This girl needs a doctor yesterday," T finished. "We have to get back to base ASAP. Are you coming with us?"
It took Lyra a minute to notice that he was addressing her. Did she want to go back "to base" with them? she wondered. If they were talking about a military base built by and for the Eleutherian space force, then she'd stick out like a sore thumb, but the fact that he spoke to Cassandra like she was a member of his group made Lyra think that they were not discussing standard army procedures. And he had mentioned the word "revolution" before. Did Lyra want to be a revolutionary? She had no strong feelings towards Acidalia, but this man who had been so uncharacteristically nice was her brother, and that had to count for something. Besides, Alestra was no saint.
"Yes," she said, her voice sounding louder than she expected. "Yeah. Yeah, absolutely."
"Great." As T ran out of the room, presumably to get a transport machine of some kind, he tossed her another white handkerchief emblazoned with his sister's initials. "Hold your nose tight and keep your head down—you don't want the blood going down your throat."
"I will." Lyra felt dizzied, but she didn't think it was the bleeding. What the hell had she just said yes to?