“I waited in that cavern to be born for thousands of years?” Bianca said.

  Voyou nodded. “So it seems. Your father was a scientist beyond compare, even for one who lived in that age of wonders – his brilliance is what made him a target for his enemies, of course.”

  Bianca shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why did he keep me locked away in some machine? Why not just let me be born, and raise me?”

  “These are excellent questions, and display the sort of keen mind I would expect the heir to the Malladoc name to have. Sadly, the records we found were incomplete, and partially corrupted. Based on what we could read, and our own extrapolations, I suspect your father intended to wait until things were safe for him at home before bringing you fully to term. Doubtless he wished to raise you in the Barony, rather than in this savage place. Before he could return home, though, some tragedy befell him. We do not know how he died. His remains were far too old to provide useful information. Perhaps he suffered wounds himself in the escape. Perhaps it was something as simple as an infection. Or–”

  “She doesn’t look anything like the Letnev,” Willen broke in. “Her skin isn’t blue. This doesn’t make any sense!”

  “That skeleton didn’t look much like you either,” Keon said with a frown.

  “Do not humans come in a variety of hues and shapes?” Voyou smiled. “The Letnev are the same. Oh, most of us have a bluish tint these days, but some are far paler. The Lady Malladoc doesn’t resemble you much more than she resembles me, does she? Why, to an alien eye, you might not even seem the same species – she is smaller, her skin and hair differs from yours, and so on. Over the course of so many thousands of years, a species must be expected to change its appearance somewhat. I assure you, your adopted daughter is the very epitome of beauty, by the standards of imperial-era Letnev.”

  “So, she’s a princess.” Keon crossed his arms. “Fine. What does that mean?”

  The undercommandant spread his hands. “It means her life is about to change, and infinitely for the better. While the noble families no longer possess the absolute power they once held in Letnev society, the Lady Malladoc is the heir to great estates and wealth.”

  “Surely after thousands of years there’d be nothing left,” Willen said.

  “You too show a keen mind!” Voyou said. “The Malladoc assets were indeed dispersed, when their line was believed to be finished, but Barony inheritance law is complex, and your daughter had many other powerful relatives. Portions of at least a dozen assorted estates have been held in escrow while a legitimate heir is sought. Those will be hers. I have also mentioned the Barony’s ongoing attempts to recover old property and holdings, like the planet Darit. Some of the properties scheduled for reclamation are the rightful property of your daughter.”

  Bianca stared at him. “Wait… do you mean I’ll own houses, and fields, and things?”

  “My lady,” Voyou said. “I do mean that, but I don’t mean just that. I mean you’ll own islands. I mean you’ll own continents. I mean you’ll own moons.”

  Moons. “If I were reading this in a story,” Bianca said, “this is the part where I would ‘faint dead away in shock.’ But I’ve never felt more awake in my life.”

  “You want to take Bee away from us?” Willen said. She took Keon’s hand and squeezed it tight.

  Voyou shook his head. “I would not dream of taking a lady of her stature anywhere she did not wish to go. But, yes, she does have the option, if she wishes, to join me on my ship. I have informed my superiors of her presence, and they have authorized me to take her to one of her ancestral properties.”

  One of my properties. “Undercommandant,” she said. “This is a lot to think about. If I go, can I take my parents with me?”

  They looked even more terrified at the prospect of that than they had at the possibility of losing her, she realized, but then, they actually liked the rhythms of life here, and found the sameness comforting in a way Bianca never had.

  But Voyou was shaking his head. “We cannot accommo­date your parents on our ship, I’m afraid. Normally we wouldn’t take on any passengers at all – the Grim Countenance is a Barony military ship, not a transport vessel – but these are special circumstances. An exception has been made for you, my lady, but only for you. Once you are settled, of course, you can send for your parents if you like. You’ll have ample resources to send more comfortable transport for them.” He looked around the room. “Or, if your parents prefer to stay here, you can make sure they are amply provided for, and live in comfort forever.”

  Bianca leaned forward. “I’m going to need an advance.”

  Voyou looked at her blankly. “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re proposing to take away one-third of the labor force of a working farm,” Bianca said. “My parents will have to hire help if I leave. They’ll need to be compensated for that.” Her mother and father looked from her to the undercommandant and back again like they were watching a spirited game of bounceball.

  “Surely you’re of marriageable age, and would be leaving the farm soon anyway?” There was a gleam in Voyou’s eyes that made her think, improbably, that he was enjoying this, but then, you probably didn’t get to run a planetary annexation team if you didn’t enjoy sparring, even of the verbal kind.

  “Any pair-bonding arrangement would involve a reciprocal work exchange,” Bianca said. “My partner’s family would provide labor or tangible goods to balance the benefits of me joining their family. That’s simple economics. Surely if I have such vast resources coming to me soon, compensating my family for the cost of my departure should be trivial?”

  Voyou leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, then laced his fingers together over the knee. “I am authorized to make such arrangements. I must say, you’re very practical and level-headed for someone who just had her entire understanding of her world and her self transformed.”

  “I grew up on a farm,” Bianca said. “You can look up at the stars as much as you want, as long as you remember to shovel all the dung first.” She glanced at her parents. “We’ll need to talk this over as a family.”

  “Would, say, ten minutes suffice? The Grim Countenance is leaving shortly.”

  Bianca snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even if I decide to go, I’d have to make arrangements, say my goodbyes, pack–”

  “There is nothing here that you need, believe me. We can provide all–”

  “Even if you’ll feed and clothe me, there are matters of sentimental value.”

  Voyou sniffed. “Sentimental? That’s not a very Letnev thing to say, but then, you weren’t raised among your people, so it’s understandable.” He rose. “I can give you, mmm, seven local hours, and even then, you’ll have to come to town to catch the shuttle.”

  “You want her to leave home in the middle of the night?” her father burst out.

  “Where I am from, Monsieur Xing, it is always the middle of the night. And yes. That is when the Grim Countenance is departing this system.” He smiled faintly. “Don’t worry, there will be Letnev officials stationed in all the villages. The Lowcliff governor will be moving into your burgher’s house, I believe. If you wish to send a message to your daughter, you may contact him, and receive any replies in the same way.” He bowed smartly to Bianca, turned, and walked out of the house.

  The Xings sat, silently, as they listened to the shuttle spin up its engine, roar, rise, and gradually fade to silence, except for the distant bleating of the caprids.

  After a beat of quiet, her father burst out, “Bianca, you can’t go!”

  Bianca looked at him, an almost physical pain in her chest. “Pa…” she began, but her mother put her hand on his arm instead.

  “Our little Bee was always going to fly away, Keon,” she said. “I half expected to wake up some morning and find her gone a-wandering, with just a note left behind.”

  Bianca reached across the table and took their hands. “I love you both. But… I think I need to see what all this means. If I really am what he says, then I can help the family, help the farm, help all of Darit, even. And if the truth is something else, if this story he told us is just a story, I should find out why they lied.”

  “Maybe it’s true,” Keon said. “What that man said, it does explain things, about the… birthing chamber, or whatever it was. I’m sorry we never told you the truth about how we found you, Bianca. We just, we wanted you to feel like you belonged.”

  She’d never felt like she belonged, but not because of anything her parents had done. There was just something waiting for her out there in the stars. She’d always known it. Now she might find out what. “You did make me feel that way,” she said. “You always did.”

  “What will you do with your last hours?” her mother said. “Say goodbye to Grandly?”

  Bianca had never been as attached to Grandly as everyone else, including Grandly, wanted her to be. “Maybe,” she said. “But I have to go see someone else first.”

  Chapter 8

  “Your majesty.” Torvald puffed on a foul-smelling pipe, the stench of which not even the advanced air filters in his bunker could fully neutralize. “Your Baronic majesty? Is that the adjective?”

  “They didn’t give me a book of protocol.” Bianca flopped back on Torvald’s cot. Her parents had fussed over her and cried and put together a care package of her favorite jerky and dried fruit and so forth for hours, and Bianca didn’t have much time left before she had to go to the village to catch her ride off the planet. “What do you make of all this?”

  “Hmm?” Torvald said. “Oh, you mean their story, and you being a princess and all? Total nonsense.”

  Bianca stared at the shiny metal curve of the ceiling and sighed. “Yeah. I thought so, too.”

  “For one thing, Darit was never a Barony holding. I dug deep enough into the database to confirm my recollection for real and for sure. We were part of the Federation of Sol, the bitterest enemies the Barony of Letnev had. There’s no way an aristocrat from the Barony would have hidden out on a planet full of humans, even in the midst of a civil war, unless he was some kind of traitor who’d allied himself with the humans, and then the Barony would hardly be welcoming you back, now would they? If that part of the story is a lie, and it is…” He shrugged.

  “Then there’s no reason to believe any of it,” Bianca said. “But if I’m not a secret princess, why do they really want me?”

  “Something to do with the non-standard nature of your birth, I’d guess,” Torvald said. “Could you do me a favor, Bee?”

  “What?”

  “Stand up there and lift up your shirt, just enough to show me your belly.”

  She sat up on the bunk and glared at him. “The last person who asked me to lift my shirt was Grandly, Torvald, and I was fool enough to do it for him, though I didn’t get much out of the experience myself. Why do you want me to do it? You’ve never been creepy before.”

  Torvald burst out laughing, which she found reassuring. “Bianca, you don’t have to worry about that. For one thing, you’re an ill-tempered irritant, and for another, you’re an infant, but the main thing is – have you ever wondered why I don’t have a wife and a whole mess of children around here? My romantic preferences lie in other directions, if you see what I mean.”

  Bianca’s face warmed up. She herself was attracted to men and women and androgynes, but she’d never thought of old Torvald being attracted to anyone, because he was old. “Gross. Fine. You’d better have a good reason, though.” She lifted up her shirt, just enough to show her stomach.

  Torvald peered at her, then nodded and puffed his pipe. “You’ve got a navel.”

  “Everyone has a navel,” she said.

  He shrugged. “It suggests their story isn’t entirely caprid-shit, is all. The database says it is indeed possible to grow a baby from scratch in a laboratory, but if you never spent time in a person’s womb, that means you never had an umbilical cord, and then you wouldn’t have that little dimple full of lint on your stomach. That suggests you were inside a mother at some point, even if that mother wasn’t a Letnev aristocrat.” He cocked his head. “Unless.”

  “Unless what?”

  “Oh, nothing, I’ve always had a twisty and treacherous sort of mind.”

  “Out with it, old man. I can’t go into space wondering what you’re not telling me.”

  “I keep thinking about the way your pa cut his hand,” Torvald said. “A drop of blood on his fingertip, and the next day there’s a baby. A human baby, as far as we can tell, though skin color aside, our species does look enough like the Letnev that’s it’s hard to tell.”

  “You think the machine, what, took a sample of my father’s blood and used that as a blueprint to make me?”

  Torvald shook his head. “You’d look more like your ma and pa if that was the case. That skeleton watching over the machinery wasn’t human, though, and it doesn’t sound like it was Letnev, either. Why would you turn out to look so human, in that case? What I’m wondering is, did the machine take a sample of your pa to find out what the local people are made of? What if the birthing chamber used that information to tweak your design parameters, to make sure you’d conform to local norms, physiologically speaking? If that’s the case, you looking like a human is just a good disguise, and that belly button you’ve got there might just be a convincing detail the machine added on.”

  Bianca frowned. “That seems like a stretch. You’re always telling me the simpler explanation is usually the right one.”

  Torvald shrugged. “I’m just wondering out loud, that’s all. But Bianca, whatever you’re caught up in now, it’s not simple, so maybe my old saws don’t cut as well in this situation. This whole thing is so strange, there’s not a simple explanation to cover it. I sure wish we could run a test or two, though, maybe peek into your genetic code and see what’s going on there, but I don’t have that capability down here. The nearest place with decent medical facilities is days away, too.”

  “I wish I could just believe them.” Bianca slumped. “It’s such a nice story. I’d love to be a secret princess. What if they want to cut me open or something? Maybe I should run away and hide.”

  “If they really wanted to find you, they would,” Torvald said. “They wouldn’t even have to look that hard, would they? They could just burn your parents’ farm, or kill one of them and broadcast word that they’d kill the other if you didn’t come home.”

  Bianca shuddered. “Would they really do that?”

  “The head they put on a spike a few villages over wasn’t a cultural anomaly, unless the Letnev have become a more peaceful and relaxed race since my database was last updated. But as for cutting you open… I think you can rest easy there, Bee. If they wanted to hurt you, they’d have just snatched you and been done with it. Nobody here could stop them, after all. If they wanted to look at your genetic code, they could have plucked a hair or come up with some excuse to take a blood sample. No, whatever they want from you, they need your cooperation to do it, or they wouldn’t have spun you such a tempting tale.”

  “Maybe I’m the daughter of a human aristocrat, and they want to ransom me back, or something.”

  “Maybe,” Torvald said. “Maybe someone in the Federation of Sol, if it even still exists, gives enough of a damn about family history from thousands of years ago to make that worth the Barony’s while.” He took another puff. “I’d enjoy reading a novel about something like that, sure enough. No matter what the truth turns out to be, though, you’re getting what you always wanted, albeit in something of a roundabout way. You’re leaving all the caprids and mud behind and going to the stars.”

  Bianca nodded, but with a sour face. “I never thought about everything I’d miss!” she cried. “Pa’s cooking, Ma’s songs, nights sitting around the fire reading, even visiting you, old man. I’ll even miss Grandly, a little, looking at me with those big eyes like he’s a caprid hoping I’ll give him something to eat. He made me feel special and important, anyway.”

  “Grandly won’t be the last one to look at you that way, Bee. And you’re some kind of special and important anyway, it seems. You just have to find out what. I’ve got a little gift for you.” He reached into the front pocket of his overalls and fished out something that glittered: a ring of some moon-bright polished metal. “Why don’t you slip this on? And if the Barony people ask about it, tell them it’s a promise ring from your beau or something of the sort.”

  Bianca took the ring and held it up to the light. Pretty, in a plain way. “I’m not sure we’re ready to get engaged, Torvald. I have some concerns about your ability to support our inevitable brood.”

  “Me, support you? I was thinking the other way around. Why else would I want to marry a princess? You can keep me in the manner to which I wish to become accustomed.” He grinned. “That ring’s a piece of old tech, taken off a skeleton found beneath a tree uprooted in the last real big storm. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. That skeleton had been in the ground so long the roots of the tree had grown all through the ribs. I thought the ring was just a bit of shiny and took to wearing it myself, and I’d fiddle with it sometimes, twist it this way and that. One day, I twisted it just right, and fried the insides of a mech I was repairing.” He leaned forward. “I assume the ring was used for self-defense. Wear it on your finger, and twist it all the way around, counterclockwise, exactly three-hundred-sixty degrees, no more and no less. I put a little scratch in it on the side there so it’s easier to tell when you’ve gone all the way around. Do that, and the next thing you touch with that hand will get one hell of an electric shock. Enough to overload a machine or paralyze a person, according to my voltmeter. Somehow the ring shields the wearer from its effects, so don’t worry about hurting yourself, just others. It has a little integrated battery that I have no idea how to recharge, and think it only has a jolt or two left in it. I hope you’ll never need to use it, but if there’s ever a proper emergency, maybe it’ll give you an edge the cause of that emergency won’t see coming.”