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  I felt the blood drain from my face. Majda. Wrong again. I wasn’t facing nobility.

  This was royalty. Genuine, bonechilling royalty.

  III

  Majda

  The Matriarch indicated a brocaded couch with gilt-edged legs. Wooden legs. And Raylicon had no trees. “Let us sit,” she said in her terrifyingly rich voice.

  My knowledge of how to behave with royalty was exactly zilch. However, the Majda Matriarch also served as one of the Joint Commanders in charge of the Skolian military, specifically the General of the Pharaoh’s Army. And she had used my military title, though I had been out of the army for years. Military protocol I could handle. So I said, “Thank you, General.”

  She inclined her head, accepting the title. I sat on the couch and she settled on a wingchair. A table with red and gold mosaics stood between us. Majda crossed her long legs and light glinted on her polished knee-boots.

  “Would you care for a drink?” she asked. “I have a bit of Kazar brandy.”

  Seriously? I’d give a decade of life for genuine Kazar. I said only, “Thank you, yes.”

  Majda touched the scrolled arm on her chair. A circle the size of her fingertip glowed blue, but nothing else happened.

  Then we sat.

  I had no idea what to do with the silence. She would set the conversation. So I waited, racking my brain for what I knew about the Majdas. Five millennia ago, the Ruby Dynasty had reigned over an empire led by the Ruby Pharaoh, who was also Matriarch of the House of Skolia. Although the elected Assembly ruled the Imperialate now instead of the dynasty, the Skolias still wielded substantial power. After the Skolias, the Majdas were the most influential House. They no longer ruled Raylicon; in these modern times, their empire was financial. They controlled more wealth than the combined governments of entire planets.

  They also controlled a significant portion of the military. During the Ruby Empire, the House of Majda had supplied generals to the Pharaoh’s Army. Today, they dominated the two largest branches of Imperial Space Command, the army and the Imperial Fleet. Majda women served as officers. Only the women. Of all the noble Houses, Majda adhered most to the old ways. They kept their princes secluded, never seen by any women outside the family.

  A man in dark clothes entered the room carrying a tray with two crystal tumblers. Gold liquid sparkled in them. He set the tray on the table and bowed to Majda.

  The general inclined her head. “Thank you.”

  He left as silently as he had come. I stared after him. No one had human servants anymore. Robots were less expensive, more reliable, and required less upkeep.

  Majda indicated the tumblers to me. “Please be my guest.”

  We both took our glasses. The brandy swirled in my mouth, went down like ambrosia, and detonated when it hit bottom. Saints almighty. I sat up straighter. The nanomeds in my body would keep me sober, but gods, with brandy like this, I was tempted to get drunk.

  “That’s good,” I said, ever the master of understatement.

  Majda sipped her drink. “You have an interesting reputation, Major Bhaajan.”

  “You’ve a job for me, I take it.”

  “A discreet job.”

  Discretion was my specialty. No messes. “Of course.”

  “I need to find someone.” She considered me. “I’m told you are the best there is for such searches and that you know Cries.”

  “I grew up here.” I had no wish to remember my youth. I had lived in the undercity, deep below the gleaming City of Cries, a dust rat surviving on my wits, my ability to steal, and my sheer cussed refusal to let poverty kill me. I knew Cries in ways no Majda could understand. Before she could bring up any more about my past, I changed the subject. “I’ll need to see all the details you can give me about this person and how she disappeared. Holos, mesh access, traits, everything on her habits and friends.”

  “You will have the information.” Her voice hardened. “Be certain you never misuse it.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Misuse how?”

  “He is a member of this family.”

  He. He. Ah, hell.

  Majda had lost a prince, one of those hidden and robed enigmas that fascinated the empire. You could end up in prison just for trying to glimpse one of their men. It wasn’t so long ago that the penalty for a woman who touched a Majda prince was execution. My life wouldn’t be worth spit if I offended this House, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to piss them off than to trespass against one of their men.

  “What happened to him?” I asked.

  She tapped the arm on her chair and the room dimmed. Curtains closed over the windows. A screen came down in front of the wall across from us and a holo formed, the image of a man. He stood in a room similar to this one, but with wood paneling and tapestries on the walls instead of books. He looked in his early twenties. Luxuriant black hair curled over his forehead and he had the Majda eyes, large and dark, tilted upward. His broad shoulders, leanly muscled torso, and long legs had ideal proportions. He wore a tunic of russet velvet and red brocade, edged in gold, and darker trousers with knee hoots. The word gorgeous didn’t begin to describe him. He was, without doubt, the most singularly arresting man I had ever seen.

  He wasn’t smiling.

  “His name is Prince Dayjarind Kazair Majda,” the general said. “He is my nephew. No woman outside this family has ever seen him in person.” She paused. “Save one.”

  Had he run off with a lover who had a death wish? I spoke carefully. “Who?”

  “Roca Skolia.”

  That wasn’t what I had expected. “You mean the Pharaoh’s sister?”

  “That is correct.”

  Well, well. Roca Skolia was heir to the Ruby Throne, first in line to the title of Ruby Pharaoh. She not only held a hereditary seat in the elected Assembly that governed the Imperialate, she had also run for election and won a seat as a delegate. She had risen in the Assembly ranks until she became the Foreign Affairs Councilor, making her one of the most powerful politicians in the Imperialate. If this Majda queen expected me to investigate Roca Skolia, she had a far higher estimation of my skills than even I did myself.

  “Your Highness,” I said, “I can’t force a member of the Ruby Dynasty to return your nephew.”

  “He is not with Roca. They were betrothed. Almost.” A thinly concealed disdain edged her voice. “Two years ago, Roca broke her agreement in order to marry some barbarian king.” After a pause, she added, “Reparations were offered. Eventually my House accepted them.” Her tone implied acceptance hadn’t come easy. “I had thought the matter settled. Then three days ago, Dayj ran away.”

  “How did he leave?” It wouldn’t surprise me if this Prince Dayj had better security guarding him than some heads of state.

  “We aren’t certain.” She set her drink on the table. “I have always viewed my nephew as a pleasant and good-natured young man, but without much depth. I may have underestimated him.”

  “Do you have any idea where he went?”

  “None.”

  “What do the authorities in Cries say?”

  Her voice cooled. “Majda has its own police force.”

  “But they can’t find him?”

  A pause. “They haven’t exhausted all the possibilities.”

  Right. That was why they had brought me in, a stranger from another planet. “Could someone have kidnapped your nephew?”

  She spoke coolly. “It would be almost impossible to take him from here even with his cooperation. And we’ve received no ransom demand.” Her gaze darkened. “If he left of his own free will, which we believe he did, he knows nothing about survival outside this palace. He can read and write, but beyond that he has no experience in taking care of himself.”

  Maybe. If he had been able to outwit the Majda security, he was probably more savvy than she believed. “Did he leave a note?”

  “On his holopad.” Her voice sounded strained, as if she were in pain but trying to cover it. “It said, ‘I
can’t do this any longer. I have to go. I’m sorry. I love you all.’”

  Such a simple message with such a world of hurt. Yet she mentioned only a broken agreement with Roca Skolia from two years ago. “So you think he’s still upset about the betrothal?”

  Majda snorted. “Hardly. He never wanted to marry Roca.”

  “Then why do you mention it?”

  “Because he said the same thing after she broke the betrothal. Except not that sentence about having to go.”

  “Has he ever talked about leaving?”

  Majda waved her hand. “He never says much, just male talk. Inconsequentials.”

  I could already see plenty of reasons why Dayjarind Majda might have run off, but I couldn’t suggest any of them to the Matriarch. So I said only, “General Majda, if he can be found, I’ll do it.”

  “No measure is too extreme.” She leaned forward. “Whatever you need, we will provide.”

  * * *

  I spent the morning in a private suite the Majdas gave me in the palace, trying to figure out who might have helped Dayj escape. He was one of nine Majda princes here, including his father and two younger brothers. His Uncle Izam was consort to Vaj Majda, the Matriarch. Izam and Vaj had three daughters, Devon, Corey, and Naaj, and one son, Jazar. The Matriarch’s two sisters lived in the palace with their families, but her brothers had married and left Raylicon. The older brother continued to live in seclusion with his wife, the Matriarch of another noble House, but the general’s younger brother had pulverized tradition and scandalized his family by attending college. He was now a psychology professor at the Royal University on Parthonia. Good for him.

  Dayj had an odd life. His elders paid excruciatingly close attention to ensure he behaved as expected for an unmarried man of his station. I hadn’t known people still lived by those rigid codes, over five thousand years old. He could never leave the palace without an escort. On the rare occasion when he had permission to venture beyond the boundaries of his constrained life, he wore a cowled robe that hid him from head to toe. He couldn’t communicate with anyone outside the family, which meant he never used the meshes that spanned human-settled space, a web of communications that most people took for granted.

  He had no formal schooling. However, he used the Majda libraries extensively. I wondered if Vaj Majda had ever bothered to check, given her comments about his supposed lack of depth. He read voraciously in science and mathematics, art and culture, history and sociology, psychology and mysticism. His education went beyond what many of us learned in a lifetime. I couldn’t imagine what it must be like for him, confined here, knowing so much about the freedom beyond his cage.

  Still, it was a golden cage. He lived in a manner most people only dreamed about, if they could envision it at all. His family lavished him with jewels worth more than my entire life’s earnings; with tapestries sought by collectors throughout the Imperialate; with gourmet delicacies and wines. Anything he wanted, they gave him as long as it didn’t break his inviolable seclusion. He was among the greatest assets owned by Majda, an incomparably handsome prince who would bring great allies and fortune to the House through his marriage.

  No wonder he had run away.

  I wondered how he felt about the betrothal to Roca Skolia. He had almost given Majda a direct line into the Ruby Dynasty. I easily found broadcasts on the subject. They made the perfect couple, and their arranged betrothal had fascinated the public. So what had Roca done? Two years ago, she ran off with a farmer from some remote colony, one of the ancient settlements stranded five thousand years ago after the Ruby Empire fell and only recently rediscovered. The fellow apparently carried the blood of the ancient dynasty; either that, or he and Roca married out of love and the Ruby Dynasty scrambled for a royal connection to justify the union. The convoluted web of politics that tangled around all these people made me inestimably grateful for my simple life.

  Watching the holos of Dayj and Roca, I doubted he had suffered much heartbreak when she broke the agreement. His family recorded those strained visits; privacy seemed less valuable to them than ensuring that he and the Councilor maintained the proper behavior. Like Dayj, Roca was too beautiful. It was annoying. She had gold hair, gold eyes, golden skin, and an angel’s face. The two of them sat in wingback chairs, drank wine out of jeweled goblets, and conversed stiffly. Despite their perfectly composed sentences, neither seemed to enjoy the visits. Power, beauty, and wealth apparently didn’t translate into romantic bliss.

  Regardless of how Dayj had felt about his intended, it had to have hurt when she dumped him. His family had molded his life with one goal in mind: he would become the consort of a powerful woman. They achieved the pinnacle. He literally couldn’t have done better; the only more powerful woman was the Pharaoh herself, and she had to marry within her family, an arcane law that had managed to survive our legal system for millennia. Dayj had done exactly what he was supposed to do, and it had collapsed on him.

  I had landed in one holy mess. To solve this, I had to talk to the Majda princes, who would know aspects of Dayj that he probably never revealed to the women of the household. A million ways existed to trespass on the honor of the Majdas. One misstep could embroil me in more trouble than I’d ever seen. I disliked jobs from crime bosses, but even that would be easier to deal with. All criminals had to worry about was the law, or more accurately, not being caught when they broke it. Majda was a law unto itself. The police would look the other way if the Matriarch decided to take that law into her own hands.

  If I botched this, I was, literally, royally screwed.

  * * *

  Prince Paolo had married Colonel Lavinda Majda, the Matriarch’s youngest sister. A son of the Rajindia noble House, Paolo had led a relatively normal life prior to his marriage and earned several university degrees. Gods only knew why such a man would agree to live in seclusion, but even I wasn’t blind to the benefits of marrying into the House of Majda.

  I couldn’t see him alone, of course. Four male guards accompanied me into his study, led by Duane Ebersole, a retired major from the Pharaoh’s Army, a powerfully built man who projected a sense of self-assured authority. His people were recording this meeting. A female guard remained outside, Captain Krestone, another former officer who headed palace security and missed nothing. One thing I’d say for the Majdas; they chose their staff well. Both Krestone and Ebersole impressed me with their calm authority and a situational awareness that I recognized only because I’d also been taught to keep that same alert attention to all details, large and small.

  Paolo was seated behind his large desk. A clutter of data spheres, holosheets, and light styluses lay strewn across its surface, which consisted of a glossy black holoscreen. He leaned back as I sat across from him in a wing chair with smart cushions.

  “My greetings, Major,” he said.

  “My greetings, Your Highness,” I answered.

  He studied me with dark eyes. Of course he was handsome, even including the streaks of gray in his hair and fine lines around his eyes. All the Majda men I had seen were unusually good-looking, every one of them dark, well-proportioned, and undoubtedly fertile. The Matriarch might consider Dayj shallow, but maybe she ought to look at her own values. Majda women hardly seemed to choose their princes for depth. Then again, maybe there was more to it. Paolo Rajindia Majda was no fool. Before his marriage, he had earned a doctorate at the Architecture Institute associated with Imperial College on the world Metropoli, one of the most elite academic institutions in the Imperialate.

  “You’ve come to ask about Dayj,” he said.

  “That’s right.” I had intended to talk with Dayj’s parents first, but they were both at the starport with the police, trying to find out if he had gone offworld.

  Paolo rested his elbow on the arm of his chair. “Do you think he left Raylicon?”

  “I’ve no idea.” I tried a probe. “It depends how much help he had from inside the palace.”

  Paolo didn’t twitch. “What help?
”

  “To escape, he needed inside someone’s aid.”

  His voice cooled. “Why? You don’t think he could figure it out himself?”

  Interesting. Paolo didn’t like hearing his nephew’s intellect talked down. “I’ve no doubt about his intelligence,” I said. “However, he has no experience outside the limitations of his life here.”

  He spoke dryly. “If you have no doubt about his intellect, Major, you’re in a minority here.”

  “Maybe he didn’t appreciate that.”

  “Maybe not,” Paolo picked up a light stylus and tapped it against his desk. “Dayj could be vain and self-absorbed, but no one ever gave him a chance to be anything else. If anyone took the time to look, they might find a very different young man under his outward veneer.”

  I wondered who he meant by “anyone.” Dayj’s parents? The Matriarch? Her siblings? Paolo probably had a different take on Majda princes than family members who grew up at the palace.

  “You’ve an interesting background yourself,” I said.

  “That was tactful.” He spoke wryly. “Shall I answer the question you really wanted to ask?”

  “What question is that?”

  “Why am I willing to live in seclusion when I had job offers from some good companies?”

  According to my research, those “good companies” were all elite architectural firms. I asked. “Did you want a job like that?”

  “I have my own small business.” He motioned at the holosheets on his desk. “I’ve designed buildings in a few places, including Cries. Also in your corner of space, Selei City.”

  Ho! Those were two of the most prestigious markets in the Imperialate. “You have your own firm? How?”

  Paolo was watching me closely. “That I can’t leave this place, Major, doesn’t mean I can’t work. I have a staff. They take care of anything that requires interaction with the outside world. It leaves me free to be creative.”

  “Nice setup,” I said. “Except you can never touch your creations.” He could walk through virtual simulations of his buildings, but he could never set foot in them.