David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

It wasn’t enough to be Felph’s personal valet; Dooring had the misfortune of being the planet’s official dockmaster. As such, his obligations were simple. He had to verify that the ship didn’t carry any contraband, and that it was properly registered.

The job only took a few minutes.

Using a keycard, he verified to the ship’s Al that he was the dockmaster, then entered the ship. The Nightswift was a fast little personnel ship. The kind of thing that only the very wealthiest people could afford.

The inside was plush-plump couches, a fashionable flower arrangement on a small table, large staterooms. No one on Ruin lived in such luxury. Indeed, most folks on planet couldn’t dream of ever buying passage off-world. Dooring wondered. Gallen and Maggie were seeking jobs with old mad Felph when, if they had half the brains of a wetland mudsucker, they’d hop in their ship and fly off.

Dooring nosed around through the staterooms for a few minutes, studying the few possessions Gallen and the others had brought. He checked the cargo hold; it was nearly empty.

He went to the ship’s registry terminal and requested information on the ship’s registration and passenger logs.

He discovered that the ship was registered as a government-owned vehicle. Not a private ship at all. That was odd.

The news sent a little flutter in Dooring’s stomach. For a long moment, he wondered what to do. Gallen hadn’t identified himself as a government agent. As a Lord Protector, it was quite possible that he would be a government agent, but then he would be assigned a post.

Was he traveling undercover?

Yet he seemed to have no destination in mind, not if he were willing to stay here and work for Felph.

No, there was something curious about Gallen. Dooring had seen the fear in Maggie’s face earlier in the evening, when Rame had asked what brought them all to Ruin. She’d been terrified to the core of her soul.

She’s running from something, Dooring decided. Perhaps they were all running from something. Maybe this Gallen wasn’t even a Lord Protector, but only wore the stolen mantle of some dead man.

Dooring wondered: could the ship be stolen?

There was no ansible available on planet, but this ship had one. Dooring went to the ansible, requested a “security priority one” transmission, so that the ship’s Al would automatically delete any record of his call after it was made, then sent a broadband message across the cosmos, alerting authorities in the Milky Way that here on Ruin, a world in the Carina Galaxy, he had discovered a certain Lord Protector named Gallen O’Day flying what appeared to be a stolen spaceship. He sent the ship’s registration numbers along with the planetary coordinates, and sat back. Even at speeds much faster than light, the message would take a couple hours to reach the Milky Way.

Dooring didn’t want to wait for a reply. It was late, late, and his sweet wife Keri waited in bed.

Still, Dooring felt satisfied. If Gallen was hiding from someone, for whatever reason, Dooring had just blown the lad’s cover.

Wouldn’t it be grand , Dooring thought, if I caught this fellow in some scheme? Perhaps then Lord Felph would give me some respect.

Dooring smiled to himself, satisfied, as he exited the ship.

The night lord Felph released her, Hera shook from head to toe in anticipation. The heavens did not thunder, the rocks did not cry out. Yet it was such a momentous event in her life, it seemed odd to Hera that all nature did not take notice. With Zeus at her side, Felph had Hera sit in a chair before her vanity. Chandeliers of green brass hung above Lord Felph like vines, and the glow globes in them suspended in the air like pale lavender honeysuckle. The walls in this room tonight all displayed three-dimensional images of a tropical glade in shades of deep green, as if they stood in a vast garden of mangrove under the moonlight, with water glinting from distant pools.

Hera felt as if she were in an enchanted forest, then Dooring brought out the Guide extractor from its case. The device was a simple rod in shape-thin, like a long splinter of silver. A magic wand.

With this Felph touched her Guide on the central gem, on her forehead, and the AI quit sending its pulses through Hera’s nervous system, released control of her muscles. She seemed to relax more deeply than ever before. It was as if all her life she’d been tense, expectant, and now she eased totally into a plush, soothing couch.

After he’d freed Hera, Felph then freed Zeus. There was fear in Felph’s eyes as he did so, yet Zeus only smiled when the deed was finished.

Yet if the heavens did not thunder at her release, certainly the world changed profoundly. Hera did not notice it all at once. The first clues came as she and Zeus undressed, prepared for bed.

Zeus stood before the mirror on his vanity, removing his dinner jacket, putting away the platinum and Tanzanite pin he’d worn in his lapel. He’d been prattling, and Hera had been so preoccupied with her thoughts as she took off her makeup that she didn’t notice the turn in the conversation.

Zeus said, “I don’t know why father insists on hiring these off-worlders. It’s their mantles he wants, not the people under them, eh? Put on a Lord Protector’s mantle, and I’d be a Lord Protector myself.”

Hera said, between wiping off her eye shadow, “I doubt he’d sell it. You can’t buy a Lord Protector’s mantle.”

“If he didn’t sell, we could always take off his head. The mantle would make a fine little basket to hold it in, don’t you think?”

Hera turned and stared at him. He’d never made such a tasteless jest, never spoken that way before. But then, perhaps he’d never been free to do so. Her husband had worn a Guide all his life, and until this moment, Hera had believed that she loved him, that she loved Zeus desperately despite his penchant for adultery. Now she just stared at him in wonder, not knowing what to say.

Zeus was gazing into the mirror, his long dark hair swept back over his muscular shoulders, staring intently at his own reflection, at eyes so dark and penetration that it was like gazing at holes in the sky. He stared through the mirror, into some scene imagined; his lips curled in a sardonic grin.

Who are we? Hera wondered, suddenly feeling odd. The room was familiar, with its separate vanities and wardrobes, the enormous bed where they’d made love so many thousands of times. But the people in the room, Zeus and herself, were not familiar.

When she was a child, Hera had once asked Felph why she wore a Guide. He’d told her that all princes and princesses wore crowns. For years after, she’d always wanted to believe that the Guide made her special. But she never felt special. The Guide had only made her a slave, controlled her thoughts, ordered her perceptions, stimulated her emotions. It had made her a stranger to herself.

Hera had not chosen to marry Zeus, not really. As a child, she’d been enamored of him, and once when she was twelve, he’d lured her to a garden, and there he’d raped her. Afterward, she felt it was her fault. She forgave him, and in time grew to love him inestimably.

Lord Felph had created her to be Zeus’s wife, had given her to him. Her Guide had not allowed her to love another, to think wantonly of another man.

So Hera loved Zeus as perfectly as one person could love another. She craved his presence. She admired his strength. She ignored his faults. She forgave his infidelities.

And Zeus loved her in return, in his way. It was true that Lord Felph, acting from some motive Hera did not understand, had given Zeus more freedom than he allowed his other creations. Zeus’s Guide had let him lust after other women. Indeed, Hera wondered if his Guide had not even encouraged him to seek their affections.