Teresa didn’t care. She had her own problems.
It was still thirty interminable minutes before the dinner was served when Ilich escorted her to the dais at the back of the room. The crowd got quiet without being prompted. Like they’d been trained. She’d been trained too. She knew what to do.
“I want to thank all of you for coming tonight,” she lied with a smile. “I am honored to be in your company now, and for all the years that I’ve lived here among you. My mother, as you all know, died when I was very young. And my father carries his own burdens. He can’t be with us here tonight because his duties to all of us don’t allow him time even for simple, honest pleasures like this.”
Plus which, he’s out of his fucking mind. Lost to all of you and to me as well, but I’m the only one who knows it, you poor fuckers. She grinned widely at the pattered soft applause, taking an angry pleasure in the raw perversity of the situation.
Teresa caught sight of Elvi Okoye in the back of the room. Yellow gown, and her husband at her side. She was holding a wineglass in her fist like she was trying to break the stem. She knew too.
“All of you have been a family to me as I grew up,” Teresa said. Ilich’s words didn’t sound like something she’d say, but none of them knew her well enough to catch it. “I am humbled. And I am grateful.” Another round of applause, and Teresa bowed her head like she was actually grateful. Like she actually cared whether the enemy ships burning from the edge of the system reduced everyone in the room to ash.
You’re one of the angriest people I know. She wore the words now like a shawl, smiled and made her little bows as if they weren’t statements of contempt.
“Please enjoy this evening as both my guest and my father’s,” she said, and stepped down. The guests turned back to each other, oppressed and anxious and thinking less about her than the return of the Gathering Storm and its pirate fleet. Reminiscing less about Teresa Duarte’s childhood and more about the violent death of the Heart of the Tempest.
Teresa made her way across the ballroom, avoiding Ilich and Connor and Muriel. She found Elvi and her husband not far from where she’d seen them. From the dais, Elvi had looked stressed. Close up, she looked angry.
“Is everything all right?” Teresa asked.
Elvi started, snapped out of whatever other place her mind had been by Teresa’s voice. For a moment, she didn’t speak, and when she did, it wasn’t convincing. “Fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Well,” Teresa said. “Except.”
Elvi nodded, the movement hinging in her chest so that it seemed less like agreement, more like someone preparing for violence. “Yes. Except,” Elvi said.
The chime rang, calling them all to the dining room like the most privileged cattle in the universe. When they started walking, Teresa stayed at Elvi’s side. Her husband was using a cane and wincing as he walked. That was fine. Teresa wanted to go slowly.
“I was wondering, Dr. Okoye,” Teresa said. “The Falcon.”
Again, it took Elvi a moment to come back. “What about it?”
“I wondered how the repairs were going. With everything that’s going on . . . I mean, it is built for sustained high burn. It has breathable liquid crash couches.”
Elvi shuddered.
“Those are unpleasant,” her husband said.
“But still. If the fighting got close? You’d be able to use it to get away?”
Elvi and her husband exchanged a look that Teresa couldn’t quite read. Like there was another conversation going on that she couldn’t quite hear.
“Unfortunately,” Elvi said, “the Falcon was deeply, deeply compromised.”
“I got a new foot, toenails and all,” her husband said. “But that ship’s still in pieces.”
“I really don’t think it’ll come to evacuation,” Elvi said. “None of those ships are even going to get close to the planet. And everything Admiral Trejo has at his disposal will be used to keep us all safe.”
“Maybe you should put a push on the repairs, then,” Teresa said. It came out sharper than she’d meant it to, but Elvi laughed. That was interesting.
“Maybe I should,” she sighed, and then they were in the dining room, and Teresa was escorted to the high table with Ilich and a half dozen guests more honored than Elvi Okoye.
The meal was a feast. Fresh pasta. Lobster tails taken from actual lobsters. Gently marbled steak grown from the finest samples. The centerpieces were all Laconian flowers, and they smelled of mint and iron and resin. No one asked after Dr. Cortázar. That, Teresa had come to understand, was one of the unwritten rules. When someone disappears, don’t ask why. She wondered if they’d mention her after she left. Assuming she could find a way.
She looked over at the table where Elvi Okoye sat. Her husband was telling a story, his hands shifting in exaggerated gestures for the delight of their tablemates. The doctor was lost in her own thoughts. Teresa wondered whether they’d been lying about the Falcon. She wasn’t sure, and she wasn’t even sure how she’d find out.
Regretfully, she discarded the plan to have them escape the invasion and take her along. She’d have to find another plan.
Days passed. Weeks. The invasion proved harder to stop than anyone liked. The state newsfeeds kept a brightly optimistic view, treating the threat as more of an annoyance by disgruntled idiots than an actual danger to the empire. She still had the access her father had given her to high-level secret reports and briefings, but even if she hadn’t, she’d have known the reports were bullshit.
Apart from the peer class, her lessons were ignored now. She only saw Ilich at meal times. He didn’t repeat his threat to force-feed her, but he didn’t need to. She understood the terms of their relationship now. Having lost control over so many other things, he made up for it by controlling her. There was nothing she could do about it.
“They’ve slipped this time,” Ilich said. “They panicked. That great huge ship of theirs lost part of its magnetic bottle, and they’re all going to defend it.”
“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea,” Teresa said, forcing herself to take another spoonful of the corn chowder. It should have tasted good, but the texture was slimy and it was too sweet. She swallowed and didn’t gag.
They were sitting in an enclosed courtyard with ivy growing up the walls and artificial lights that mimicked the sun. The actual weather was a snowstorm that was covering the gardens in white up to her ankles. Muskrat had been running through it with a wide canine grin and little balls of ice forming on her coat. Ilich hadn’t let her in with them while they ate because she stank of wet dog.
“It wouldn’t be if there was any way for them to actually mount a successful defense. They’ve survived as long as they have by running away. We could kill any of them whenever we chose to, but Trejo was waiting.”
“For what?”
“For this,” Ilich said. He did love the sound of his own voice. The calm, patient instructor unfolding for the clueless little girl how the universe really worked. It had seemed like kindness for so many years. Now it looked like condescension. “The three Martian battleships are the irreplaceable core of their makeshift fleet. And when you have something that important, it’s natural to try to protect it. But it’s an emotional response, not a tactical one. And that’s why they’re going to pay for it.”
He had said all the same things at breakfast—eggs, sweet rice with fish, seared spinach with almonds—and she let him repeat himself now. Nothing he said mattered to her anymore.
“The Whirlwind will go through them like they weren’t there. There’ll be some cleanup afterward. We won’t get all of them. But their major ships? They’re even putting the Storm in harm’s way for this. It’ll be a bloodbath. And I—”
His handheld chimed. Ilich scowled and accepted the connection. Teresa put down her spoon and took a sip of water. Trejo’s voice was clear, and it was tense.
“I’d like a word with you in the tactical office, Colonel.”
Ilich didn’t speak, only nodded, rose, and walked away. Teresa was forgotten behind him. Which suited her just fine. When he was around the corner, she got up and opened the door for Muskrat. The dog trotted in, huffing under her breath. Teresa took out her handheld and opened the tactical reports.
There was a moment of sorrow. They came now and then. The memory of her father telling her that she could be the leader they needed her to be. That he wanted to train her with all the things he knew, just in case. She’d been a different girl then. He’d been a different man. She missed both of them. But the pain faded quickly, and she didn’t lose anything by letting it go. It always came back.