Princess of the Void

“I’m undressing, Grantyde. If you’d like to avert your eyes.”

Sykora strips her belt from her waist and tosses it into an open locker. She slides a cabinet door open to reveal a cream-colored padded suit, with a scarlet stripe across its chest. “Got to get into fighting trim.”

“You can just go invisible.” He turns away, toward the lockers. “It was a neat trick.”

A muted laugh as fabric crinkles behind him. “Well, I wanted to give you the option to peek.” He hears a zipper and then a pneumatic hiss. “All right, darling. I’m decent.”

He turns back around to see her twisting a broad ribbon around her waist. “Whoever loses at Gravitas ties one hand behind their back.” She turns around with her left hand double-wrapped behind her back, the ends of the ribbon held in place with her palm. “Kindly do the honors, Grantyde?”

Grant steps up behind Sykora and takes the tie from her. He stoically ignores the breathy little noise she makes when he pulls it tight around her waist.

“How are you going to use a spear one-handed?” He knots her hand to her back.

“It’s not so hard. They’re lighter than they look. And I have plenty of practice, since Vora thrashes me at Gravitas every time.” She gives it an experimental tug and smiles. “Ooh. Nice and tight.” The fingers on her bound hand wiggle. “Are you practiced at tying pretty girls up, Grantyde?”

“I worked at an energy extraction mine on Maekyon. Place called Alberta.” Grant steps back. “You had to know your knots.”

“What a frivolous waste of an exemplary man,” Sykora says. “They should have been putting you and that guidar in arenas.”

“I really am just okay at it,” he says. “It’s a hobby.”

“If you really think so,” Sykora says, “then I order you as your Princess to continue your training.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Is that going to be my job? Official troubadour for the Pike?”

“You’re Prince Consort. Your job is to be my husband. But while we’re having our horny little battle of wills, you might as well have something to do with your hands. And if this is what just okay sounds like, then expertise could be a genuine political advantage. Let me know if there’s anything more I can snipe from Maekyon for you. Music books or a tutor or something.”

“You wouldn’t actually kidnap a tutor, would you?”

“Of course not, my dear. It would upset you.” She points. “Pass me that spear, darling?”

He hands her the spear, which is really more of a staff. One end is weighted and crowned with a blinking red light. She steps out of the locker room into a starkly lit room the size of a tennis court, its whitewashed walls and floors scraped and streaked. He follows. A black-painted circle waits for them in its center. From the opposite locker room, Vora emerges, in a blue-striped version of Sykora’s suit. “Usual stakes, Majesty?”

“You know it, my dear.” Sykora leans on her spear. “Winner pays the bar tab.”

“And your wife always wins,” Vora says. “And she drinks like a sailor.”

“We just use scrip, majordomo. It’s on my tab either way.” Sykora drops the spear from her free hand and balances it upright with her tail. She slaps the badge on her chest and an opaque dome helmet, marine-style, slides up over her head. A field of red diodes bursts to life on her torso. Vora mirrors her and glows blue.

“Torso, limbs, then head.” Sykora flicks her spear back into her open palm. “A speartip touch on each, in that order, to win the round.”

“A touch, she says.” The little majordomo twirls her spear with a rapid motion that catches Grant offguard. “Your wife hits hard.”

“You ratfucked my Inner Zone flotilla, majordomo. The imaginary blood of thousands is on your hands.” Sykora mirrors the motion one-handed. Her tail lashes out and thwacks the end of the spear, flickering its tip through the air. It finishes its arc couched into her armpit, pointed rock-steady at Vora’s heart. “At least you’ll see me coming.”

Grant gives the spears a wary look. He heard the whistles they made in the air. “Where should I stand?”

“Just on the edge of the room, darling. You’ll be fine.” Sykora steps into the circle. “You leave the ring, you cede a touch.”

The women halt in frozen readiness, ten feet apart from one another.

“Grantyde.” Sykora glances his way. “Would you officiate?”

“Is it easy?”

“The suits do all the work. Just say set

“Set.”

Sykora shifts to one side, and holds her spear high and straight, bolstered by her tail. Vora’s is low and braced to the ground.

“Tilt,” Grant says.

Sykora launches forward in a crimson blur. Two rapid jabs—Vora kneels away from the first one and corkscrews the second to the floor with a twirling guard. Sykora whirls past the riposte. The spears slam together with an echoing crack.

The Taiikari have traded spaces. Vora shifts her spear to a phalanx overhand. Sykora’s tail switches back and forth like a stalking lion’s. They orbit one another for a half dozen heartbeats of coiled anticipation. Then Vora darts forward.

Crack. The spears meet again. Sykora’s is knocked wide. Of course it is—she’s only got one hand on the thing.

She follows the motion and snaps her tail out. It catches Vora on the ankle and knocks her out of stance.

Sykora spins, the spear laid across her shoulder, and lunges with such violence that one foot lifts from the ground in a balletic arabesque. The spear slaps into Vora’s midsection. A klaxon trills as the majordomo staggers backward.

Vora winces and rubs her abdomen. “The comet lunge, Princess? Really?”

“Touch on blue.” Sykora skips backward. “Let me show off for my man, Majordomo.”

The lights on Vora’s suit blink and shift. They fade from her torso and appear instead all along her arms and legs. Vora crouches back into readiness. “Call the set, Prince Consort?”

“Set.” Grantyde’s pulse is raised. He watches the liquid curves of his wife’s silhouette straighten and bend as she stalks her slow circle. Sykora glances up at him. Her fingers drum along the span of her spear. He clears his throat.

“Tilt.”

Another flashing exchange, another flurry of spear-on-spear. Vora ducks and jogs backward to the edge of the ring, planting her foot on its painted line. She slaps her own thigh. The suit grinds to a halt, its joints locking with little puffs of steam. Its helmet tilts open; its entire front peels out. Grant gets just a moment of Vora’s slender, dark body, naked as the day she was born, emerging from the suit like a butterfly from a cocoon before she disappears. The spear is snatched from the suit’s opening hand and hovers in midair.

“Oh you ass.” Sykora freezes in her tracks as Vora’s spear loops around the room. “Chameleon gambit? In a casual bout?”

A disembodied snicker. “Maybe I want to show off, too.”

Sykora’s eyes dart, and Grant follows them, seeking a telltale shimmer near the spear. Without the rest of Vora’s body visible, Sykora’s confident defense has become a cautious guard.

Sykora lunges—not for the spear, but for the abandoned suit, whose exoskeleton has bent it upright into a neutral t-pose. Its arms and legs still have that blue glow on them.

Vora’s spear comes whistling down at an ersatz angle and slams the tip of Sykora’s to the ground. A half-moon spin and Sykora’s shoved backward by its point against her heart.

The empty suit rocks back on its heels; it snaps shut and reanimates as the Taiikari woman inside pumps her fist. “Touch on red!”

Sykora huffs as the light drifts from her torso to her arms and legs. “You just wanted to flash my husband. Harlot.”

“I’m scoring off you today, Kora.”

“Not without another trick up your sleeve, Vora.”

“Who’s to say I don’t have one, Kora?”

“How about you show me, then, Vora?”

Vora glances his way. “Call the set, Prince Consort.”

Grant takes another step back. They’re getting spirited in there. “Set.”

“Telling my husband what to do.” Sykora’s arm straightens. The spear tip quivers forward. “I’ll drill you for that.”

Vora rotates her grip. “You’ll try.”

“Tilt,” Grant says, and Sykora launches like a bullet. Vora drops into a bracing guard like she’s receiving a cavalry charge.

The round is over a breath after it’s begun. The spears lance past one another and score simultaneous touches—one across Sykora’s arm, one into Vora’s leg.

“Yes!” Vora spins round and pumps her fist again. Sykora stalks back to her mark. The diodes on the women’s arms and legs have faded. Twin lights, red and blue, now shine from the sides of their helmets, where their ears are sheathed. “How long has it been since I’ve gotten you to helm?”

Sykora’s teeth sound gritted. “Fifteen cycles, at least.”

“I’m developing a real thirst, Majesty.” Vora leans jauntily on her spear. “I hope you’re ready to splurge.”

“Grantyde.” Sykora says it flat and cold. It’s how she sounded the first night, when she was full of menace. “If you please.”

“Set,” he says. Their faces aren’t visible, but there’s a simmering tension in the air. He feels it. It’s the final round.

“Tilt.”