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  Dax nodded. “I guess I hadn’t thought that through.”

  “No, you didn’t. We’ve got a lead now.” She looked to the doorway, where she thought for a second she saw the hint of a shimmering glow. After an instant, it vanished. “Act normal—and go to bed. It’s time for me to go to work.”

  24

  Domus Quintiliana

  CASMARRA

  Work, for Georgiou, meant trying to get a few more facts about Jadama Rohn—and the possible blood devil—out of Quintilian in a way she’d known she would enjoy: seduction. She’d been interested since seeing him from the bridge of Hephaestus, but that, of course, was not to be. Or so she’d thought. One seldom had a second shot with a person after you reduced them to atoms.

  The wardrobe in her quarters was fully stocked with apparel suitable to the occasion; however busy he claimed he was, Quintilian was clearly no monk. She had changed her mind about what to wear—or not—several times, trying to calibrate between her desires and what the mogul’s relationship with Captain Georgiou might have been. Once settling on something, she’d lit the candles in her room and waited.

  And waited.

  Over the next hour and a half, she changed clothes five times, with her choices alternating between more conservative and less so. On one hand, she was angry about being stood up; on the other, she felt less like wasting time once he did appear.

  When he didn’t show by the two-hour mark, only the rage remained. It was a good thing so many of her rivals died aboard Charon; if any had ever somehow heard about a mere mortal standing up the emperor, her reign would have immediately ended.

  Screw Section 31, the Federation, and blood-eating clouds of all kinds—this is war!

  She reached beside the bed for one of the candlesticks and discarded the nub of wax, already burnt low. There was some weight to the holder. A good heave at the mirror would do double duty, attracting attention and giving her shards with which to cut the man’s throat when he arrived. She had it in hand when a knock came at the door.

  “There’s nobody home!” she yelled.

  “Madam, you are requested in the specularium.” The low voice belonged to the Dromax, Gnaeus.

  “Why should I go to—” she sputtered. “To the what?” It didn’t sound good.

  “It is the observatory. Master Quintilian has something he wants you to see.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, the observatory works best at night,” Gnaeus said, without a hint of satire. “It is across the lawn, so consider the temperature.”

  Blood still boiling, she tossed the candlestick onto the floor and found a kimono. It didn’t go with what she was already wearing at all—but as she yanked the obi tight, she knew he’d never find that out. He’d be lucky if she didn’t throw him off the side of his damn citadel.

  * * *

  She arrived at the weathered brick building at the edge of the rooftop terrace only after padding, barefoot, across the lawn. The fluffy pair of house shoes in her room had offended her by existing; besides, she had her fury to keep her warm against the Casmarran night.

  She found him not inside the structure, but on a patio at the far side, perched right at the yawning edge and overlooking much of the Alien Region far below. Quintilian’s attention was high above as he hunched over an ancient telescope, making adjustments by the light of the moons and the stars.

  Arriving nearby, she cleared her throat, determined to keep her thoughts to herself until she could find words so sharp, so acidic, that they would flay his skin from the bone.

  He spoke without looking back. “Have you ever been to Capri?”

  What?

  “Tiberius built a villa to each of the gods there,” he said, still peering into the eyepiece. “The richest is Villa Jovis, perched at the highest place on the island.” He gestured outward. “Tiberius’s behavior there was pretty horrible. Unspeakable, in fact. There are even rumors that he threw unwelcome guests over the walls, to die horribly on the way down.”

  Glad to hear my idea is sound.

  “The whole residence was on an artificial terrace, sort of like I have here. It was excavated at the orders of someone named Mussolini. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

  Heard of him? We had a starship class named for him.

  “At the promontory, they found the Specularium—an observatory the emperor had built for his astrologer, Thrasyllus of Mendes.” He turned to gesture to the structure around and behind him. “No one’s clear on what it looked like; the place was in ruins even before the Third World War. But I think it looked very much like this.” He looked to her for the first time. “Tiberius died at Villa Jovis, in fact.”

  “Did he freeze his ass off?”

  Quintilian stared at Georgiou—and then laughed, long and hard.

  She delighted to hear it, in spite of her anger. “I was thinking of throwing you over the edge, just now. You misled me.”

  “No, I just didn’t tell you where the nightcap would be.” He stepped to the shadows and retrieved a bottle and a pair of long-stemmed glasses. “I’m sorry. Business intervened. Apparently Zattah’s got the Casmarrans pretty riled up about my asking you here.”

  She took the glass. “Zattah? Not S’satah?”

  “I could never get the Caitian consonants down. Besides,” he said as he poured, “Zattah was one of the great emperor-consorts of the Orion Empire. She built the first Tallacoe, in fact.”

  “She and P’rou were… not too welcoming. You heard what P’rou did to my lieutenant.”

  “Well, Finneran is fine now.” He looked to her. “Finnegan?”

  “It really doesn’t matter.”

  “I take it he’s a bit of a brawler. He asked to wrestle a few falls with Gnaeus.”

  “And how would that go?”

  He chuckled. “Medical science can only fix so much.”

  She drank, knowing that Terran medical science had made Finnegan into a much better man. Or a better weapon, at least.

  Quintilian shook his head. “I’m sorry about what P’rou did. I’m afraid that’s more about me.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve known him most of his life. He’s an émigré here, like everyone else—his mother fled to join us when he was just a toddler. She tended to handle surface trading for us; she’s a good linguist, and helped develop those voice boxes the Casmarrans and the Dromax use. P’rou, meanwhile, was always aboard our ships. You could say the Veneti helped raise him.”

  “But?”

  Quintilian looked away. “As soon as he came of age, he wanted more responsibilities. He was good at it. He was on his way to being master trader—the post I used to have before I declared myself semi-retired. But as a captain, he treated his crews abominably.”

  “If they’re refugees too, they’ve probably seen worse.”

  “That’s not how I want to run the Veneti. We’re a haven from that—from many things.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t have P’rou mistreating others. So I relieved him of his duties.”

  “And his mother left your services, too.”

  “Not entirely because of that, but—” Quintilian waved his hand. “Well, you know all the rest.”

  No, I don’t, Georgiou thought.

  He placed his empty glass on the ground. “I’m so rude. Come look!”

  She didn’t know what he meant until she saw him step to the telescope. She really wasn’t interested; her opinion of the ugliness of the sky in Troika space hadn’t changed, and she wasn’t in the mood. “I don’t really feel like—”

  “I know what a lover of astronomy you are. Please, be my guest.”

  Grudgingly—and remembering which Philippa Georgiou she was supposed to be—she stepped to his side and studied the awkward contraption until she found the eyepiece. “Right here?” she asked.

  “You’re such a kidder. Take a look.”

  She did, wondering why her counterpart—or anyone else—bothered to use such an outdated means of studying the skies. But
when he spoke, she realized that there was a point to looking.

  “That’s Dromax,” he said, referring to the colorless glob in the eyepiece and the swarm of satellites surrounding it. “An enormous gas giant with dozens of huge moons, tearing themselves apart whenever they get near one another. A metaphor for the Dromax themselves, constantly warring.”

  Georgiou nodded. She’d interrupted their wars to enslave the race.

  “I’d show you Oast, but it’s enveloped in an absorption nebula.”

  She remembered. They were a bugger for her scouts to find—and once she’d decided to eliminate the species, her fleet had simply fired torpedoes at every gravity source within.

  He stepped closer to the edge and gestured downward to his facilities on the surface. “They were all isolated from everyone, even each other. The Veneti helped give them a classic triangular trading structure. The Casmarrans are great manufacturers, but they need raw materials—that’s something the Dromax have in abundance. The Dromax, in return, get weapons and machinery for their wars.”

  “You’re a war profiteer?”

  “I’m a shipping firm. If my people didn’t carry the Casmarrans’ goods, someone else would.”

  “And the Casmarrans make out either way.”

  “They do all right, but it’s not only about greed. By prolonging the wars between the Dromax, the Casmarrans ensure they don’t have any trouble from them.”

  Self-interest was something Georgiou understood. That Quintilian had also turned it to his advantage spoke well of him in her book.

  He crossed his arms. “You’ve seen what both parties get out of the deal from the Oastlings—food, and lots of it. Neither the Casmarrans or the Dromax are much for farming—and while you can’t see it, Oast’s sun makes the Oastling planet the breadbasket of the Troika.”

  “And what do the Oastlings get?” Georgiou asked.

  “They get left alone.”

  Georgiou understood that too. “So it isn’t real trade. They’re vassals, bartering for their protection.”

  “It’s not as simple as that—there’s more to them than meets the eye. But, yes, they do love their privacy. And are willing to accept what it costs.” He crossed his arms and looked to the sky. “Everything I need, Philippa—everything these people need—is right here.”

  She studied him. Welling with pride, and not in the least tired at this hour. He had accomplished something, though it had apparently taken most of a lifetime. She expected he had done the same in her reality, for all the good it had done any of them. She doubted any alliance between the Troika species was even possible; they were just too strange, too different. And it would not have made any difference in stopping the Terran onslaught.

  But this Quintilian didn’t know that, and he seemed happy. The rewards here were just so different, she thought. On arriving amid the Klingon War, she’d initially thought this universe wasn’t much different from her own; violence spoke and power was all. The merchant she’d seen on Hephaestus’s screen might have made for a plaything for a couple of days, but nothing more: he was somebody who’d chosen not to fight for dominance. A trader was a traitor to himself: a coward. The man before her, though, was something more. Might he have succeeded, had he followed a different path?

  And could she ever succeed in his?

  She blinked. Whipsaw. Blood devils. Focus.

  She stepped to his side. This wasn’t quite the place for a seduction—and it certainly wasn’t the weather for it. But even under these stars, she could get things rolling, and start coaxing out some more vital information later. She grasped his arm and pulled closer for warmth. His hands and body were colder than she’d expected, but she intended to change that. “Have you ever told me your real name?”

  He smirked. “You don’t like Quintilian?”

  “It sounds like you found it in an old history text.”

  “That I did. I was reading a lot in those days.” He nodded. “First name was Quin. Last doesn’t matter—that life was nothing to me.”

  “I have known my share of orphans.” And made a few too.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, remembering something and pulling back. “How is Michael, by the way?”

  She did a double take. “Burnham?”

  “Of course Burnham. You’re so proud of her. She made it through the war, I hope?”

  Georgiou answered carefully, but truthfully. “I saw her at the end.”

  “That’s good. I think we both take in orphans, hoping to find homes for them in our service.” He shook his head. “Didn’t work with P’rou, though.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Well, give her my best. And tell her I hope to see her again.”

  “Of course.” Georgiou tried to curl up closer to him. “I’ll—”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “Did you say ‘again’?”

  He nodded. “Of course. Five years ago, remember?”

  “I…”

  He parted from her and stepped to the telescope. “That was when you brought me this.”

  Georgiou stared at him, afraid she would start babbling. “Yes. I brought you that when I visited five years ago.”

  I visited five years ago?

  “I was sorry you both had to depart so abruptly, but I know Starfleet’s leave situation. Shenzhou needed you.” He looked up at the moons. “My business needs me bright and early tomorrow. But I’d like you and your friends to join me later in the morning, and I’ll show you around the operation.”

  He clapped his hands, and Gnaeus emerged from the interior of the observatory. “Yes, sir?”

  “See that the captain gets back to her quarters.”

  She stared. “To my quarters.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He stepped back closer to her and put his hand under her chin. “I’d suggest a different destination, but I remember what you said last time.”

  “What I said last time.”

  “I didn’t want to push—I know how you feel about that.”

  Her eyes goggled. “We’ve… been corresponding for a quarter of a century—and you’re afraid of moving too fast?”

  “Well, one of us was. I just want you to be sure,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “Good night.” He disappeared back into the observatory.

  Gnaeus remained on the balcony. “Your chambers, madam?”

  You’re lucky I’m very confused right now, she thought as she stormed past him. It was all she could do not to make like Tiberius and throw the headless thing over the edge.

  25

  Tallacoe

  CASMARRA

  “Why the hell didn’t Section 31 tell me I’d been here before?” the emperor asked. “I mean, that she’d been here before!”

  In a distribution-center alcove out of earshot from Quintilian’s tour group, Dax looked at Georgiou and shrugged. “I don’t know why they didn’t tell you. I haven’t thought of anything new since the last time you asked.” She added more softly, “But five minutes is a long time.”

  Georgiou clenched her fists and turned away.

  She had slept in the most comfortable bed she’d known since I.S.S. Charon, yet she had risen enraged—and also alone, which only added to her fury. After taking breakfast in her quarters, she’d belatedly joined Quintilian’s tour of the shipping facilities on his estate. Thereupon she fell, silently screaming, into a sea of disquisitions into the varied lading practices of freighters.

  “—the same freighters on the Oast–Dromax runs can be used on the Dromax–Casmarra runs, but they have to be disinfected once here to make sure no toxins from the Dromaxian ores survive to the next time it hauls food. Now, over here—”

  Were it not for Quintilian’s silken voice, the emperor would have fled entirely—that, and the fact that the man had found himself constantly interrupted by aides needing advice. Those interludes had given Georgiou ample chances to rant not-so-quietly to Dax.

  “Leland sent me here with practically a gigaquad of cor
respondence between the two of them, telling me to act like the captain,” Georgiou said. “They told me how she sips her tea, how she wears her hair, and drilled into me her whole service record, so I wouldn’t trip up. Yet nobody bothered to tell me that she’d actually visited the place. And she even brought Michael!”

  “Didn’t you say Burnham’s off on assignment with Discovery? Maybe they never got the chance to ask her about it.” Dax shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know about the whole thing.”

  “Leland acts like he knows everything. How could he not know?”

  “Well, he didn’t know this. Or maybe he had a reason not to tell you.” Dax pursed her lips and frowned. “But that doesn’t make a lot of sense either.”

  Georgiou added her own grimace. None of her Terran captains were allowed to go running around free from surveillance whenever they felt like it; there was too much danger of revolt. She kept them under watch at all times, usually with her chief of security, Joann Owosekun, providing reports that detailed every minute spent, every light-year traveled. But the emperor didn’t know how Starfleet worked. “Can a captain just hare off to a forbidden zone?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not Starfleet.” Seeing the third member of their party off chatting with Quintilian’s pilot, Dax had an idea. “Finnegan!”

  His head snapped toward her at the sound of his name. “Emony!”

  Georgiou rolled her eyes as he hustled over. Finnegan had reportedly appeared right on schedule for the tour, energized and none the worse for the previous day’s injuries and night’s festivities. Blackjack had been resilient, too, but his pain receptors had been surgically deadened. How Finnegan managed remained a mystery to her.

  Dax took him aside. “Is it possible for a Starfleet captain to just vanish for a week?”

  “You mean off the bridge, when encountering some kind of alien menace? Some mysterious power, is that it?”

  Georgiou glared. “She means vanish on their time off, you dolt.”