Archive of Our Own

They meet on leaving-day at the Imperial Science and Technology Academy--the planetary royalty has a hundred-plus-year tradition of wining and dining the young ISTA pilots, the ceremony going back to Good King Edward (whoever the fuck he was). It is, confides Catesby, the principal means by which the planet keeps hold of its trained combatants and makes them into soldiers rather than mercs. Doesn't always work, because who the fuck hasn't heard of Captain Hawkwood's Great Company or the capture of mad Ed Tudor, but frankly Richard Ratcliffe has never even considered the life of the mercenary. The way he sees it, a successful military career will see him thirty years away from a comfortable retirement up in Lake Province, with a pension and a wife and perhaps a pack of kids--and if that's a pretty fucking boring way to go, it beats a quick death in cold space.

The way Ratcliffe sees it, a man who's got an inclination to be a mercenary will go offworld so long he can reasonably do so under interplanetary treaty and domestic customs laws; a man who's got an inclination to stay and serve his king will stay, and that's the end of it. A fine dinner in dress uniform's not going to change any minds, will-they nil-they.

So when the young York lord smiles and raises his glass across the table, Ratcliffe doesn't think anything of raising his glass back. Everyone knows the Yorks have the dear mad king's favour, and a distinguished record at ISTA to boot (although he's heard that the one who went to U of C got chucked out for conduct unbecoming). And this would be Richard of Gloucester, of course, there's no mistaking the shape of that back; years of the best reconstructive surgery couldn't align that crooked spine, although the man's cybernetic hand has been the subject of some gossip. (Did he tack on a pair of fingers cased in synthskin, the way any sane man would've, or did he really cut the whole thing off to start fresh? Is it true that he doesn't have fingerprints? What the fuck does it look like under that great black glove?)

Bored? mouths Richard of Gloucester, with a perfectly affable smile; he has a handsome face, all sharp cheekbones and fine, straight nose. Not a patch on his elder brother, of course, but there's not many who are. There's something about that guileless smile that makes Ratcliffe trust Gloucester immediately; Like you wouldn't believe, he answers, raising his glass across the table.

Come drinking with me, says the lord, and he drains his glass.

Ratcliffe stands at once. He knows that he's been given an order, and he finds that he doesn't mind a bit.

Catesby's things are packed neatly into boxes on one side of the room; Ratcliffe's sold or sent off everything but his certificates of merit and his ex-birlfriend's collection of trashy merc novels. Those are currently in a box under Ratcliffe's arm as they zip up to the top floor of the complex; Catesby has the rubbish can and the accelerant. Seems fitting that they're parting like this--clearing their space, burning the old together.

"You ready?" asks Catesby, grinning as she slides a card under the window-latch to disable the fire alarm. "No going back once you've burned them. That one on the Gallics and the Borgias is in pretty near mint condition--"

"Open the damn window," growls Ratcliffe, but he's smiling, too, and there's the window slipping open as smoothly as though it's been greased. There's a slim stair outside, bolted to the building along all sixty-eight floors--up here, the wind is intense, and the stairs creak. He can feel the metal shifting and complaining with every step, even as the gale makes his eyes tear up; he's left and re-entered atmosphere three dozen times since he started at ISTA, but after the first time it's never fucking terrified him like these sixty-eight flights of stairs. At least there's no trace of rust on them (because cheap as the landlord is, he's at least up to code enough to rust-proof his escape stairs). For a moment Ratcliffe wonders what would happen if he tossed the merc novel over the edge of the stairwell and let it fall swift and fatal to the streets.

Probably knock someone's eye out.

They draw themselves over the edge of the roof, into the relative shelter of the corner of the building, and Ratcliffe dumps the merc novels into the rubbish bin to be doused with nafthe oil.

Catesby tears out a page from a novel, and she flicks a lighter at the corner. It's only paper; it goes up at once, and the rest of the bin follows with a whoosh of heat and blue-white flame.

For the first time since he and his ex broke up, Ratcliffe's glad for hir insistence on pulp. Damn sight easier to burn than chips and readers.

"I heard Harry Tudor's following in his dad's footsteps," says Ratcliffe as Catching Edmund Tewdwr catches alight. "Going to pick up a company and worry the shipping routes between here and Eire--"

"That's not all I heard," says Catesby, her eyes luminous in the flame and her arms caught around her knees. "Got snapped up by York Province, eh?"

"And you--you're going to be a courier." Even after a week, he can't quite keep the incredulity out of his voice. "You can do better than that, Cate--"

"Don't want to." She grins, leaning back a little from their fire. "While you're going to be stuck in the barracks in some hick-town in York, I'm going to be zipping across provincial lines as fast as you can unzip your jumpsuit. Got a flash new skimmer and everything, fresh off the assembly line--you think of me when you're shivering in the gang showers 'cos some twit's ganked all the hot water."

"It's not like that," he says. "Gloucester says he wants me in his personal detachment. Says he needs a man like me on his team, whatever the fuck that means."

"Something to do with the succession," answers Catesby. "His brother's put himself forward for an heir, and you should've seen the Duchess of York and the Queen trading glares at the banquet--kept making pointed comments about their sons--but no, you skipped out to go drinking, the way you always do."

Ratcliffe runs his fingers back through his hair. There's probably a film of greasy smoke residue on his face. "Gloucester invited me. Would've been rude to refuse."

"Well, it's got you in with the Yorks, so you'd best lie in the bed you've made yourself. Looks to be a comfortable one."

"Suppose I'd best."

They stare at the flames together until the paper's burned to ashes. They leave the rubbish bin on the rooftop, empty and burnt; they won't be needing it anymore.

Richard of Gloucester is fond of fine, elegant, spare-built things--Troian reconstructionist sculptures of sphinxes and goddesses and men with tiny dicks; ancient blades of tempered steel; a lean skimmer glistening with polished chrome. He's an immoderate driver, too, back hunched over the console and knees clasped against the body, eyes hidden behind the visor of his helmet as he blisters down the steep slope of Colla Celsa. Ratcliffe grew up skimming the slopes like every other Lake Province kid, racing down from the peak of Colla Celsa and tossing wine bottles over the edge into bottomless Cavum Zabuli, his old beater of a skimmer only handspans from the ground and in constant danger of striking a ridge--he knew a girl who'd bottomed out halfway down the mountain, and he still remembered the flutter of her hair as she'd fallen screaming. No one had worn helmets, back in those days.

It's utterly impossible that Richard of Gloucester should fall. On his state-of-the-art machine, with his visor down and his body almost imperceptibly sheathed in crash cushions, he can only mean to live--the thrill's not in the threat of death, but in the immense and exhilarating possibility of life. Watch me, he seems to be saying. I'll survive to laugh at you yet.

Ratcliffe can only grip his new skimmer with his legs, hands fixed in a deathgrip on the handlebars, and try to keep pace.

They come to a rest in the foothills of Colla Celsa, easing to a halt atop the hill that the locals (Ratcliffe, for one) call Caput Collis. The engines of the skimmers are purring low and hot and vibrant underneath them--none of tell-tale cough that Ratcliffe remembers from the old exhaust systems, none of the queer, shuddering feeling that came with the cobbled-together chassis of a Lake-boy's skimmer. He knows that he should feel guilty for accepting such an expensive gift, but he realizes with a little shiver of pleasure that he actually does not give a fuck how expensive the skimmer was. It's clean and smooth and perfect under him, and it pleases Richard that he should have it. It's almost a shame to kill the engines, but they need to stretch out their legs; Ratcliffe remembers the crippling cramps racking his thighs from spending all day on a skimmer. Slowly, he brings the jointed belly of the machine to rest on the soft foliage of the hill.

"I can see why you like the place," says Richard, softly. He's got his hands thrust into the pockets of his crash jacket, his helmet braced under one arm; Ratcliffe knows, now, that two fingers on Richard's hand are false. Richard wears his synthskin untinted, so that the metal shows through the clear coating. Not that he parades that around; that's what it was that made him wear a glove, Ratcliffe thinks, was vanity (because synthskin's never a good match for real flesh, no matter how neat the tinting job; better to hide the lot).

He doesn't want to be thinking about Richard's hands right now.

"Think you'd like a summer home up here?" he asks, looking out over the hills to the river. It glimmers softly in the moonslight.

Beside him, Richard shakes out his long, dark hair and smirks. "You never did think big enough, Ratcliffe. I could get you the whole bloody province, if you wanted it--Ned will be generous, when he's on the throne. A word, and you'd be the governor of Lake Province."

"Nah, make me the provincial sheriff," laughs Ratcliffe. "What would I want with being a governor? It's all paperwork and bureaucracy and fat old men--not my scene at all."

"Your scene's a little cottage up in the Colles Frondis, with a wife who retools classic skimmers," answers Richard. "I've seen your ISTA evaluations. You can do better than that."

"Maybe I don't want to do better." Ratcliffe starts down the hill and wonders whether Richard will follow. He's a creature of the city, slick and sleek and urbane; he's out of his element here, or the element doesn't square with him.

At the foot of the hill, Richard's hand closes on his shoulder. It's strange to feel the power in that grip and to know that there's steel in it, only barely covered with synthetic flesh. "You deserve better," he says, softly. "I chose you for a reason; it isn't every dumb hull jockey who gets a place with me. You're going to be a part of something bigger, something incredible--in a few years, the world will change forever. The war's over; it's time for us to take hold of our planet and to reshape it for the better."

Something stirs in Ratcliffe at the sound of these words, and perhaps it's only the way that they echo back from the quiet hills; it could be the light of the half-moons bracketing the sky, one just rising and the other just setting.

He feels his stomach clench, and he thinks that he likes the feeling.

"Well," he answers, and his voice comes out queer and rough. "Then we'd best get started."

A bit past midnight on Ratcliffe's twenty-third birthday, Catesby sends him a holotext. "Hey," she says, if it's really her behind that tinted visor. Sun's sparking off the steel running stripes; wherever she is, it's broad daylight. He can't even begin to count how many times he's told her not to text and drive. "They're evacuating Noctiluca--the ISTA center, the labs, everything. Thought you'd like to hear it first."

"Who's 'they'?"

"Our good friends over in Lancaster Province, since you ask. All kept very quiet, but I'll bet you a month's wages you and the rest of York province will be breaching atmosphere within a week. I've sent you a set of coordinates; have Gloucester run them, eh? Happy birthday; got to go, I'm dodging traffic--" And then Catesby's image disappears, leaving only a set of coordinates in lunar notation. They project, glowing faintly, on the wall of his bedroom; Ratcliffe can feel his stomach twisting.

Catesby's finger is always at the jugular of society, reading the pulse there with brusque efficiency. If she thinks there's about to be a war, well--damned if there isn't going to be a war.

He throws his legs over the side of his bed (a heavy thing nearly big enough for two; real wood frame with carved bedposts), then slips on a clean jumpsuit and a knit jacket. Picks up his holoreader and slips it into his pocket; zips on his boots at the door.

Breaching atmosphere within a week--it's been nearly half a year since he breached atmosphere, although he's done some training in the thermosphere to keep his hand in. He can fly with the rest of the York militia, knows how they fight and what will make them flee, but it's only ever been practice, only ever been play. This is civil war, or near enough to it, and he can feel his skin prickling at the chill certainty of it. He closes his fingers over the door latch, lets it read his fingerprints until he hears the click of the lock engaging. Not that he has anything to lock away, but he's cared more about security since he got to York Province.

He wonders what will happen to his things, if he locks the door and never comes back to press his fingers against those sensitive pads--and the thought's so absurd that he damn near bursts out laughing.

He should just forward the text and have done with it. Politics aren't his business; his business is war. Richard's been good to him, but his brother's as good as king; surely they know whatever damn stupid coordinates Ratcliffe has to offer. He should turn around and go back to that too-large bed and try not to think about whether he believes in a god enough to pray to one.

The halls are cold at night, and they echo queerly. No carpets, no synthwood mats to dull the sound--every footstep rings like an alarm bell. And maybe that's security, too.

When he raps his knuckles against Richard's door, there's such a long pause that he nearly turns around and goes. Instead, he hammers harder, and suddenly the door's sliding open smooth and easy.

Richard doesn't look as though he's gone to bed yet. He's fully dressed, immaculately neat, his pupils wide against the dim light. "Ratcliffe," he says warmly. "Something's the matter."

"Sir--I have something to show you." Once the door's shut behind him, Ratcliff takes his holoreader from his pocket and brings up Catesby's text; her face projects on the wall, and this time he can just barely see the little smile beneath her visor.

They're evacuating Noctiluca--the ISTA center, the labs, everything. Thought you'd like to hear it first.

When the coordinates flash up, Ratcliffe keys in a search. Somewhere far above the planet, between two and two dozen synchronous satellites lock onto the location, streaming video in three dimensions onto the neatly-folded comforter that covers Richard's bed.

There can be no mistaking the queen's decals on the dozens of craft docked there.

"How the fuck did they get those off-planet?" Ratcliffe asks, wonderingly--because it's just good sense to monitor travel on-world and off-world, particularly with the hot war grown cold with Gallia. To orchestrate a secret launch of this magnitude, to bypass customs and law enforcement so completely (or to destroy all record of the launch so utterly)--

"You've given us an unimaginable advantage by sharing this with me," says Richard softly. "I won't forget it, Ratcliffe--and that friend of yours--"

"Catesby."

"See if she wants a position with us."

When Henry VI is found murdered in his padded chamber, the locks still intact, and his blood sprayed over the room (gratuitous, the newscasters say, spectacular, as though someone took a bloody great syringe and doused the walls all slick and red)--when Ned's crowned Edward IV on interplanetary news over a crowd of Lancastrian protests, Ratcliffe can't help breathing a quiet sigh of relief.

He can never say with absolute certainty, and he wouldn't dare venture a guess--presumptuous to guess, and Ratcliffe knows his place--but if Richard had, well, he staved off a damned bloody civil war. One man's life is a fair price.

Richard comes back from the spinal surgeon with his lips pressed together until they're bone-white and his hands closed firmly into fists. He sits straighter, but that's probably the brace and the pain more than the surgery; Ratcliffe has broken limbs enough to know that selective neural blocks are too damn selective to do any good as anaesthesia.

Nor does he respond well to Catesby's inquiries after his health. "I've got enough pins and rods in my back to rig a tent," says Richard, smiling across the table in a way that looks like baring his teeth. "There's nothing remarkable about this particular operation, and there won't be anything remarkable about the next one." His plate's empty, but despite the faint traces of grease smeared over it, Ratcliffe suspects that Richard hasn't eaten. There's something hideously queasy-making about agony suppressed by neural blocks; it's as though there's a hole in the body with ragged, burning edges, shot through sometimes with phantom-pain. If Richard's wine isn't laced with something stronger, may the empire damn him for a fool.

It's not even as though it'll make his back any less crooked.

"You've heard about my brother, I assume," says Richard to the room in general; the corner of Buckingham's mouth draws up, which means that it's probably George and not Ned he means.

"What," asks Catesby, who still follows the news with nigh-religious devotion; "Do you mean running an unlogged spack trade out of Clarence? Or getting brought up on sedition charges?"

"I hadn't heard about the spack," Richard answers, "but it sounds like him. Probably less a trade than a few crates mysteriously dropped off at the port over the course of years--" and Buckingham snickers "--or more than a few; my brother does have expansive tastes."

"But the sedition," Catesby presses. She props her elbows up on the table and her chin on her hands, her grey-green eyes intent. "Damnedest thing--I haven't heard a scrap of good evidence."

"It'll be a cold day in Dorset when the courts care for evidence," says Buckingham. It's been months, and Ratcliffe can't yet bring himself to think of the man as Stafford, let alone Henry; he might be a bit of a backwater provincial lord, but it's more than Ratcliffe's place is worth to get over-friendly. Buckingham's a big, florid man with powerful shoulders and a heavy nose and a chin covered with stubble; he's half again Ratcliffe's size and twice Catesby's--and he's absolutely transparent about using Richard to sink his claws into Hereford.

To say that Ratcliffe dislikes him would be too generous by half.

"Courts or no courts, I fear that dear George won't have an easy time of it. We've still got the old anti-Gallic sedition laws in the databanks," says Richard, dropping smoothly into the pause left by Buckingham's silence. "He'll never have a chance to go before a jury--it will all be down to the politics of his judge."

"He'd be better off saving the executioner the trouble," remarks Buckingham. His heavy fingers close around the handle of his cup, and he drains the lot of it in one go.

Ratcliffe and Catesby exchange glances, but she only raises her eyebrows and pushes back her chair. "Sorry to leave the party, but I thought I'd catch a nap before my drills start. See you in the morning, Dickon." Ratcliffe can't help but grin at that, even as he answers as though by rote, "Fuck you, Cate."

As she goes, Buckingham puts down his cup and stands as well. "Think I'll turn in early, too. Long day ahead, eh, Gloucester?"

"Incredibly so," Richard answers, toasting him. Ratcliffe can't help but notice that his glass is still full, although he's been miming drinking all night--letting the rest of them get sloshed, he supposes.

For a moment, Ratcliffe considers offering his shoulder to help Richard to his rooms. He can see the tightness around the other man's eyes, around his lips, in his clenched fist (those false fingers will be leaving bruises in the palm) ... but it'd be daft of him to offer Richard anything he didn't ask for, and he knows it. "I'll be going, then," he says, awkwardly, unable to think of a pressing obligation that might call him from the table.

He knows that it reads like pity, but he can't make it read another way.

George of Clarence passes away unexpectedly in his white-collar prison, halfway to an overdose and all the way to a punctured aorta; no one knows who slipped him the spack or the knife, although the popular theory is that Gallic agitators or Margueritian partisans (or both; one can't forget that the queen was a Gallic lady) have tried to keep him from fingering their chums. The holographs are oddly restrained, after the high-def bloodbath that was the king's murder--just a plump little man slumped against the wall of a jail cell, his white prison jumper stained down the front with gore and vomit.

So far, the conservative stations are the only ones connecting dear old George with mad Henry. They're the sort who'd blame the queen for bad weather, who insisted that the old king's death was part of a Margueritian plot to seize the throne for Gallia--and of course, when the Noctiluca Gambit came out, when the satellite holos of the queen's ships were plastered across the news stations, it wasn't a coincidence she and her son had been disinherited. The only reason to dock ships on the moon was to prepare for civil war, and after the Gallic Wars, Parliament wasn't kindly disposed toward Gallics starting civil ones.

Marguerite of Anjou is a cancer on our planet, sneers one of the holo-jockeys on the news; She turns our flesh against itself, with no other aim but to set Albian against Albian until we destroy each other. We have to ask ourselves, is it a coincidence that Henry VI and George of Clarence suffered such spectacular and inexplicable deaths? Is it a coincidence that the droga spagnera or "spack" trading pipeline runs straight from Spagniola to Gallia? Is it a coincidence that our late king's psychological symptoms so closely resemble withdrawal from droga spagnera? Citizens, I submit to you that it is not. Unless the Margueritian cancer is excised, George of Clarence won't be the last to fall to foreign drugs and foreign politics.

"Oh, for the love of Cardea, turn the damned thing off," cries Catesby. "How can they be so damn thick?"

Ratcliffe leans back against her wall, knees drawn up near to his chest. They're sitting on Catesby's bed a little before midnight, sharing a cold bottle of fermented tea; Ratcliffe's spending most of the time holding the bottle, though, because Catesby can't keep from shouting at the newscasters. He nudges her elbow and passes the bottle over, and she takes it grudgingly. "They've been hating Gallia since they were in diapers, Cate. Bit much to ask them to stop hating Gallia now."

"You know that's not what I mean." For a moment, she tears her gaze away from the projection; her eyes are narrowed. Her face is pale and blue and luminous in the light from the holoreader, and he's suddenly aware of how close she is. He can feel heat radiating from her skin. "You do know what I mean, right?"

He swallows. "We're getting away with a coup, and not a damn person's noticed."

"Not a single damn person," she agrees--and it's such a relief to have it said, to have it in the open at last, that he's cracking into helpless laughter, clinging to Catesby's arm until she's making half-hysterical sobbing sounds because she can't fucking breathe she's laughing so hard--and she must've put the bottle down because then they're just holding each other and laughing like fools until their bodies ache with it.

His palm's pressed tight against the throttle, fingers closed there white-knuckled as he kills the dead-man's spiral and drives the ship's nose at the sky. At once gravity flattens him against his chair--his eyes press hard against the sockets, and for an instant he feels as though his head's going to fucking explode the pressure's so intense--and then he's leveled out, leading the formation in a pass over the stands. They sweep low over the arena with a gale in their wake dragging off hats and ripping red bunting from the stands.

Ratcliffe has grown up learning to drive on souped-up skimmers, hovering a handspan from the ground with the machine's belly hugging every curve and contour of the land--and even now, piloting a trans-atmospheric ship, he can feel his hair stand on end as he tilts up from parallel and into a steady climb.

They'll all be watching, he knows--King Ned and his wife in a private box lined with wafer-thin blastglass, their children pressing round little faces against the thin little wall that keeps out the bad folk; former Queen Marguerite and her son with their eyes fixed hateful on the sky. They'll be in the stands like common men, muttering to each other about their failed attempt to wipe the Yorkist fleet from the sky.

Let them say what they like, thinks Ratcliffe, so long as they keep their eyes on the bright ships spinning and diving in the sunlight.

He sets down in synch with Catesby and Hastings, old Stanley and Buckingham touching their hulls to the field only an instant after. They're too far from the stands to hear the cheer, but then the commlinks crackle and roar; "They love you," says Richard over the line, and Ratcliffe can hear the smirk in his voice. "Come let them show you how much by ripping you apart."

"What do you think?" laughs Stanley, dragging off her helmet and shaking sweat from her hair. "Ready to be torn limb from limb?"

"Just about ready," answers Hastings. He hooks his hands behind his head, chin tilted up as he breathes in the hot, dry air. He's the tallest of them--uppermost limit of the height range for ISTA pilots--and a standard piloting chair is nearly too small for him. They'd called him Hasty back at the Academy, Hasty to pick a fight with his instructors and Hasty to get off the ground and Hasty to get out of the damn ship to stretch his limbs. Damn good-looking, too, with hair red as a Spagnera sunset and skin nearly copper with freckles. "They'll tear into you for more than your dives, flyboy," Stanley teases, as though she doesn't have a son only a year or two younger than Hastings.

Catesby only grins at them. "Let 'em have their fun," she says, hooking her arm through Ratcliffe's and pulling him toward the arena. "She's just divorced, he's just left the Academy--sounds like time for a few bad decisions."

"Not in my crew," Ratcliffe says, but he can't stop himself grinning like a mad thing. There's adrenaline burning through his veins, and his skin feels hot and tight and tingling--that was a damn near perfect maneuver, perfect calibration and perfect execution and perfect synch, and he almost wants the crowd to grab him by the wrists and the ankles and rip him to pieces--

Richard is waiting for them at the entryway to the arena, inconspicuous in security drag; his eyes are as bright as though he's been lit from the inside. He was a pilot, too, Ratcliffe remembers; he knows the roll and the press and the hot mad burn of the flight, and for an instant Ratcliffe wants to seize him by the collar and kiss him until he stops wanting to scream with joy.

"Your public," says Richard--and then there's only a wall of noise and a press of hot bodies as the audience hops over the barrier at the foot of the stands, only a continuous piercing sound like a siren the size of the world.

The very air is vibrating, and Ratcliffe can't tell whether he's screaming or not.

In the press of the throng, Ratcliffe suddenly catches sight of a woman at the barrier; she's wearing all white, her features oddly still amid the tumult. (He's heard that some of the well-to-do get the surface-muscles of their faces paralyzed to show that they're in mourning, although he's never known anyone rich enough to get it done; it would match her fine white gown and her fine white skin and her fine white hair done up in a thousand knots.) The empty-faced man beside her is the image of the dead king--

--and then the crowd sweeps Ratcliffe away, and he loses himself to the heat of their hands and the roar of their voices.

He dreams of the woman in white that night, her pale fingers threading through Richard's hair and her pale face cracking slowly like a mask of plaster.

He wakes sweating and chilled, groping in the darkness for anything solid; there's a moment of terror when he misses the nightstand, when he thinks for a horrified instant that the world's dissolved or that he's woken in an unfamiliar bed--but then his hand closes on his holoreader, and he flicks it on for the saving light of it.

The pale woman's face shows plain in the holos from the last king's funeral; her blue eyes follow his body to that imperceptible line where ejecta burns in atmosphere. She is wearing mourning white, and Marguerite of Anjou's hand is closed on her wrist.

Anne Neville, the caption reads, watches her husband's father being put to rest.

George's widow has come down from Clarence with her two children in tow and a pack of lawyers trailing her everywhere; the woman wears neat suits with a white scarf about her throat, her eyes shaded behind frosted glasses. She is, she insists, only interested in securing her husband's estate--but her blank-faced son forms his hand into a weapon at the sight of the king, and her blank-faced daughter draws detailed renderings of her father's corpse. Even Ratcliffe can see that they're the show, all got up in mourning white. At least she hasn't paralysed their cheeks, although that makes their empty expressions eerier--it's worse seeing them dead-eyed and then hearing their laughter echoing in the halls behind him.

How Clarence came to have a family like that, Ratcliffe will never know, but he's not surprised old George turned to wine and spack.

"Mother would disinherit her if she could," comes Richard's voice, and Ratcliffe wheels. Richard is leaning casually against the smooth glass arch of the doorframe, and it strikes Ratcliffe that he must have been there for some time--watching the Duchess of Clarence, and watching him watching her. "She's too closely tied to the Margueritian faction."

"Her sister," says Ratcliffe; he registers the approval on Richard's face. "She was at the maneuvers the other day."

"I saw her," answers Richard simply. "Her husband will be an inconvenience, if he decides to appeal to the Empire. They were quite keen to close the Gallic Wars, even if the king who closed them was a madman--they'd like the thought of a half-Gallic king of Albia."

"You don't think they'd actually depose your brother? After Parliament confirmed him--"

"It does concern me," Richard answers. They are, Ratcliffe knows, no longer talking of Ned's claim to the throne.

Richard's eyes are fixed on his captain with a particular interest that Ratcliffe hasn't seen since that evening on the peaks; there's a queer sense of assessment to that look, as though Ratcliffe has suddenly become new--as though he's waiting for Ratcliffe to prove himself worthy or wanting. He can feel himself straightening under that gaze, his hands closing at the small of his back to present himself for inspection.

"I think," says Ratcliffe, swallowing, "Our Ned would be a poor king if he didn't have something planned. No need to concern ourselves too closely."

"I think Ned is a poor king," replies Richard (and for a moment Ratcliffe is sure that he's failed)--and then he smiles, clapping his hand on Ratcliffe's shoulder. "But he's also a dying one, no matter how well he's hushed it up, and his sons are young yet. Parliament would more readily authorize a madman than a boy. Ned's proving quite adept at dealing with treason, wouldn't you say?"

Richard's hand is warm even beneath his glove; Ratcliffe closes his fingers over it and feels a thrill of pleasure at the contact. "As I said, no need to concern ourselves too closely."

A child's laughter rings in the glass hall, striking clear notes from every pillar and every wall.

On the next day, Isabel Neville, Duchess of Clarence, is arrested for collusion with her husband; her children are placed in her sister's care, and the York estate begins to breathe easier for their absence.

Within a week, Edward of Westminster has voluntarily renounced his Albian citizenship and boarded a shuttle for Gallia.

He is not a stupid man.

Hastings doesn't usually come to meals with Richard and his contingent--he's in the king's employ and not Gloucester's, and anyway he has his own damn estate somewhere in the province (given to him, Catesby is often disposed to remark, more for his skill in giving head than for his nonetheless considerable prowess as a pilot). At the noon meal, though, he ducks in with his eyes alight and a set of unmistakable bruises at his neck and his wrists. "Mind if I grab a bite?" he asks, helping himself to a bowl of muesli and thick vegetable cream. "The lads'll laugh at me if I come to lunch looking like this--"

"What, like you usually do?" asks Catesby, glancing up at him from under her pale lashes. "They've seen it all before, Hasty. No good trying to pretend you're not a slut."

"That's sex-negative language," he chides, sitting across from her and digging a spoon into his grains.

Ratcliffe looks him over, taking in the dark circles under his eyes and the faint tremor in his hands; he certainly looks as though he just got laid, but Ratcliffe would wager that the sex hasn't helped. At an inquiring look, Hastings elaborates, "I shut down the reactor with Rivers yesterday. The king's very keen to see us lining up on his wife's side when--well. What I'm saying is, he's not interested in old schoolboy grudges. He hired us a mediator, got us to talk through the past--"

"And then you fucked your old weapons instructor," says Catesby, and she props her chin on one hand with a slow-growing smirk. "What, tired of Stanley already? Or couldn't you keep up?"

"She watched," Hastings laughs, which might be the truth or a way to get her to stop asking questions. Either way, he throws a napkin at her and settles back in his chair. "I'm trying to be serious, here--we're all carrying these old, stupid grudges, and we need to let those go. And yes, Rivers is good in bed, but I like him as a person, too, which is more than I can say for half the people I know. Including half the people I sleep with."

"You should try it," says Buckingham, with such uncharacteristic earnestness that Ratcliffe nearly chokes on his mouthful of juice. "Mediation, I mean. I've been in sessions with the queen, and after a few months, I can nearly stand that hateful bitch."

"I'm sure she feels the same about you," says Hastings, but there's a strange tightness around his eyes when he smiles, and it doesn't sound like a joke.

When he's finished his meal and gone, Richard's contingent sits back to regard one another. Catesby's hands are folded in her lap, her eyes on Buckingham's; Buckingham is finishing his juice with unruffled calm. "Checking up on your progress?" Catesby asks, once it becomes clear that Buckingham has no intention of looking at her.

"Trying to get us on board, more likely," says Ratcliffe, to which Buckingham nods. "Ned won't be with us long, and if the crown passes to his boys--he's not stupid. He knows Richard'll be fighting with the queen for the regency, and he's trying to head that off."

"Shutting down the reactor," agrees Catesby, and she nods at last. "Shutting down the damn reactor--sweet Cardea, my grandmother used to say that--"

"He probably got it from Stanley," says Buckingham. "She's old enough to be his grandmother--"

Or Rivers, thinks Ratcliffe, although Rivers is only a dozen years older than they are--he's a beautiful, spare-built man as dark as polished atrawood, with elegant cheekbones and full lips. He's got a manner about him that's more than a little like his sister the queen's; they've got the same liquid accent and the same way of standing with their hands braced at their hips when they're disappointed. Ratcliffe, you fucking moron, the target's a ship's-length away; how in the name of Fulgora do you think you'll be any kind of gunner if you can't--and there would be his hands on his hips, as though he had to pin them there to keep himself from strangling his students right there in the sim-chair--

He imagines those dark hands wrapped up in Hastings's red hair, closing fierce on pale wrists scattered with freckles; he imagines Rivers curling his fingers over Hastings's throat and strangling the bastard at last.

Edward IV collapses at his brother's effigy in the mortuary, surrounded by white flowers; his hand is closed around the base of the figurine, and his eyes are washed blood-red. The coroner reports the cause of death as a cerebral haemorrhage, most probably a result of the tumor that had been growing deep in the stem of his brain; it had been, the newscasters report, completely inoperable. Good King Ned had suffered in silence for months.

The holos of his body become iconic overnight: the king curled at the foot of a marble pillar engraved George of Clarence, resting among the blossoms with his wife's dark hand against his pale cheek and her red gown spreading around them. Her eyes are fixed on something out of frame.

That night, Richard puts on a suit of mourning white and ties his hair back with a white cord; it wasn't politic to wear white for George, but so far as Ratcliffe can see there's no reason not to mourn for the king. "My family's having dinner together," he tells his contingent, his face unreadable. "It's our first battlefield, lads--we should make a good showing." For a moment even Buckingham hesitates to answer; Stanley swallows whatever comforting words she wants to offer.

Then Richard's gaze rests on Ratcliffe, and Ratcliffe can't stop himself saying, "Yes, sir." The corner of Richard's lips twitches; "Good," he answers, putting his arm about his captain's shoulder with an air of easy camaraderie. "Let's get you lot some white scarves, at the very least. You'd think none of you had ever seen a king die--"

We haven't, thinks Ratcliffe, and then he remembers Henry VI's bloody white walls.

There are white scarves enough for everyone, and Ratcliffe's rests soft and hot about his neck. Feels like a damned noose waiting to tighten.

The queen's favourites are ranged along one curve of a great sinuous synthwood table; there are her elder sons whispering together fierce as fighters, her daughters sitting quiet and kicking their legs under the table. The youngest rests against her mother's breast, face turned against the queen's shoulder. Ratcliffe has never realized before how many children the queen has--he knows Thomas of Equatorial Dorset and Richard Grey from ISTA, of course, because the nephews of an infamous bastard of a professor get talked about even when they don't stand out in the ranks. He remembers them as quiet boys, engineers instead of pilots; only Dorset had ever shared a class with him. And it's not much of a secret that Edward, Jr. is attending a private academy somewhere in the countryside--but seeing a half-dozen little girls in white suits, half of them hiding tears and the other half too young to know why they're crying--

--well, he doesn't know what to think about that.

There's a murmur at the table as the Duchess of York enters, trailing Clarence's two children behind her--and between them, holding their hands, is Lady Anne.

Ratcliffe can hear Richard swallowing at that, although he looks perfectly composed when Ratcliffe turns to him. Partial facial paralysis, he thinks; even Richard wouldn't simply stare like a stone at an entrance like that. "Thought she'd fled the planet," Ratcliffe mutters.

"Her husband did," Richard counters coolly. "That she didn't is very interesting."

"Planning to try for her?" asks Stanley under her breath, a note of amusement in her voice.

"I might just," says Richard. He toasts his mother across the table, then drinks deeply; his contingent follows suit.

The duchess comes to him with her hands trembling and her eyes damp. She tries to speak, but her shoulders shake with sobs--she presses her fingers to her lips to still herself, but she can't stop herself shaking and eventually Richard stands and makes his way around the table to take her hands. His mother shudders, one great colossal shudder that shakes her entire frame, and then she folds her arms around her son and clings to him until she cries at last.

This is, Ratcliffe thinks, the woman who stood down Marguerite of Anjou and who helped to put her son on the throne. This is the woman whose fierceness and cunning has helped to raise York from a backwater province to a global power--

For the first time, it strikes Ratcliffe that Good King Ned is really gone.

"I want you to die old," she whispers, quiet and carrying, voice cracking over the vowels. "I want you to die old, and happy, in bed, with your friends all around you, and--"

"Shh, Mother," says Richard, stroking her back. "I'll be all right. I'll be all right. Promise."

"She must've been drunk," laughs Richard, when they return to his wing of the estate; they've been getting a bit drunk themselves, and even Richard's had a glass or two of hard iced tea. Ratcliffe can feel a pleasant buzz in his limbs, like the hum of a skimmer idling over smooth turf. "She actually--" and Richard breaks off to laugh again "--she actually sounded as though she cared for me."

"Next thing you know, we'll be swearing oaths in Gallic," Buckingham cackles, slapping his knee with his face bright red. "Your mother--"

"My damned mother," agrees Richard, leaning on Catesby's shoulder until she tips him off and into Ratcliffe's lap.

He rests there a moment, head pillowed on Ratcliffe's thigh, laughing quietly to himself--but when his eyes meet Ratcliffe's, there's something hard and harried in them that chills him sober.

"There's something stirring up the Queen's people," says Catesby; she's braced before Ratcliffe on her old skimmer, his thighs clasped around hers and his head against her shoulder. Every time the skimmer shudders and dips, their helmets click together.

"Stirring up, eh?" says Ratcliffe.

"I can't crack into their holoreaders lately," she answers. "They've changed their encryption system--sometime in the past day or so."

"You regularly crack into their accounts?" he asks, and the last word stretches long and loud as the skimmer arcs like a leaping fish and then shrieks down the side of a ravine--he's clinging to Catesby's back, pressed up against her back as they go hurtling down the sheer rock face; they dodge thin trees like bony hands, outcroppings of stone slick with lichen--and then they're leveling out along the floor of the valley, and Catesby's laughing as though she's a little girl again, her head thrown back and her whole body warm and close.

"What a rush!" she crows, pulling them to a halt at last at a dilapidated bench beside the hiking trail that runs the length of the ravine. "Sweet fucking goddesses, I've missed that."

Ratcliffe throws his leg over the back of the skimmer and drops to the ground, dragging off his helmet and scratching the itchy spots under it as Catesby kills power and sets the skimmer down on a bed of smooth river-stones. The valley's narrow, mostly shadowed; although the cliff walls on either side are slick and dripping, dark stone marked over with bright green moss and lichen, the stream at the bottom's nearly dry. There can't be more than a handspan of water weaving through the rounded stones. It's cool, lush--the kind of place where people seldom go. There are only a few names scored deeply into the wall of the cliff, and they're mostly grown over already. "How did you find this place?" he asks.

"Used to come here all the time with my sister--we'd pretend the cliff was the wall of ancient Troia," she answers. "Or in flood season, it'd be the Punician inundation. That kind of thing."

"Baby Troian reconstructionist," Ratcliffe laughs; "I was a buff," she concedes, grinning. "Used to be able to name all the senators and consuls, and of course my sister and I would have to re-enact the campaigns--"

"How is your sister?" asks Ratcliffe, at which Catesby stifles a laugh. "I don't mean it like that--"

"She's fine. Working on her degree in medical botany; she'll be certified to practice in another cycle. Still single, even if you didn't mean it like that."

Catesby unstraps her helmet and runs her fingers through her hair, making it stand up in spikes. She wears it cut like Ratcliffe's, like Hastings's, short and efficient; it makes her look incredibly young. "But we were talking about the queen," she says, after a moment.

"How long have you been cracking into their network?" asks Ratcliffe. He sits on the old bench, feeling it shift under his weight. "Is this under Richard's orders?"

"I'm telling him what I find, if that's what you mean," she says. "He said he liked my initiative."

"And now you can't get in." He folds his hands behind his head, glancing up at the uneven cliff wall across the valley. The wind makes a queer whistling sound as it tears through scruffy trees and over stones; it's the sort of place where a pair of girls might easily hear the ghosts of Troians long since dead. "It's probably about the princes. You know the queen thinks they'll be safer in the public eye--"

"She's probably right," answers Catesby. She sinks down into the space beside Ratcliffe, leaning against his shoulder. "Richard wants the regency, and he knows he hasn't got a claim to it. He's trying to provoke her into doing something stupid, keeping her boys in custody--and you know she'll take the bait."

"She's a mum. You'd do the same, if they were yours." He drapes an arm around her shoulders, lightly tracing the seam on the upper arm of her jacket. "What do you think? Civil war?"

"Let's just say I've been monitoring the Embassy. If anyone files for mobilisation with the Empire, you'll be the first to know."

"Second, I should hope."

"After Gloucester, of course." She kicks idly at a patch of foliage, bruising the leaves; the smell of tea rises from them, sharp and green and sweet. "Dickon--you know him better than anyone. What do you think--will the regency be enough for him?"

"Probably not," Ratcliffe admits. "At first, it might be, but he knows his history. What happened to Beaufort, and to John of Gaunt before that ... well. Boy-kings don't stay boys."

"Suppose they don't," answers Catesby. "What do you think he'll do? Have them declared unfit to rule, or--"

Ratcliffe remembers Henry VI's blood, bright red and wet-looking on the holos; unusual splatter patterns, the holocasters had announced, blood all but coating the walls; forensic experts report that it would be literally impossible to reproduce the effect without tools designed for the purpose. He remembers Richard's eyes, dark and intent upon his, as he said, You've given us an unimaginable advantage.

"I think …" He swallows, squeezing her shoulder. His skin feels tight and hot. "I think he wouldn't stop there. Not if he thought there was even a chance he could lose the case."

"He's not a losing man, our Duke of Gloucester," she says. "Can you live with that?"

"I really think I can," says Ratcliffe. "Don't particularly like it, but I could live with it."

A breeze chills the skin at the back of his neck and makes him shiver, and Catesby curls up with her side pressed against his. "I think I can live with it, too," she tells him, cheek against his shoulder. "I don't know--there's just something about this whole thing--"

"Hard not to fall for him, at least a little," says Ratcliffe. "He makes you feel like you're part of this huge, brilliant thing, this perfect thing, and like it matters that you're his man and no one else's--I don't know how to explain it."

"I think you did all right," answers Catesby. After a few moments of sitting in silence, she heaves herself to her feet and stretches. He can hear her back crackling as she twists at the waist, rolls her neck on her shoulders; she sounds as though she's about to crack apart.

Then she turns to him, and she's smiling, cheeks bunched up round and wind-roughened. "What do you think, should we stop by my parents' house on the way back? They'll feed us dinner."

"I wouldn't say no to a good meal," says Ratcliffe, smiling in return. They replace their helmets and swing up onto the old skimmer, feeling it shudder to life. It lifts slowly, carefully from the ground, groaning as the joints creak and readjust to match the contours of the stones beneath it--then with a sickening little lurch, they're burning their way down the old trail, leaving behind the walls and ghosts of Troia.

Within a week, Queen Elizabeth has filed for civil war, and the Empire has dispatched surveyors to Noctiluca to adjudicate the conflict. The terraforming stations are evacuated; the geological surveying team brings up their core samples and orders the queen to defray the costs of transporting them back to Albia; the ISTA lunar arena is emptied and dismantled.

"Ratcliffe," says Richard, taking his arm and pulling him out of the line for medical inspection. They duck into an empty corridor in the medical bay, pacing one another; when they're out of earshot of the line, Richard braces his free arm against the wall and says in a low voice, "I want you as my gunner, when we deploy."

There's something oddly earnest and intimate in his tone, something arresting; Ratcliffe remembers the way Richard had smiled at that ISTA banquet a year ago, his wineglass at his lips, and he knows that he can't refuse.

"I'm not exactly a crack shot," he answers, honestly. "Catesby did better than I did on the gunnery exam--Hastings is a better gunner than I am--"

"Hastings is a good gunner," agrees Richard. He's smiling, tightly, lips pressed together and brows drawn down, his fingertips digging into Ratcliffe's sleeve. "And since my brother's death, he's devolved to the queen's detachment. Not his fault, of course, that he's on the wrong side; Catesby's been assigned to remind him of that. You, though--your loyalty is beyond reproach."

"And I'm a hell of a lot better on a weapons array than old Buckingham," answers Ratcliffe, with a wry smile. He closes his hand on Richard's wrist, clasping it like a promise. "I'd be honored to be your gunner, sir."

"I won't forget it," says Richard. "See me, once you've had your inspection. I'll be at my ship."

"Send me the specs on your array, all right? I'll work on memorizing it."

"If you like--Dickon? Is that what Catesby calls you?"

Ratcliffe swears, in a frantic moment, that he will murder Catesby in her bed. "Aye, she does," he admits. "It's--"

"They used to call me Dickon, when I was a boy," Richard answers, and it's impossible to tell whether he's telling the truth or just offering comfort. His smile is less strained, though, and that's something. "My ship. Don't forget."

He lets go and pushes off from the wall, his footsteps ringing on the hard metal floor as he goes. He's standing straighter than usual; Ratcliffe wonders whether he's been to the spinal surgeon's recently, getting another set of rods and pins threaded through his back.

Ratcliffe steps back into the line, listening to the rest of Richard's soldiers joking about the drug screening and venereal disease and the latest merc novels. He feels separate from the rank and file, disinterested in their gossip--in a week, they could all be dead. In a week, they could all be blasted out of the lunar sky; they could be burned to a cinder at the edge of the atmosphere; they could be floating loose in space until their oxytanks run down. Who gives a fuck whether Dunbar's put out a new novel about the Highland Separatists?

In Equatorial Dorset, thinks Ratcliffe, the queen's men are being screened, too--the gods forbid they should be in less than perfect health when they die.

The line moves.

Ratcliffe has left and re-entered atmosphere more than fifty times, but he never loses that stomach-churning terror at the knowledge that, but for insulation panels on the hull, he might burn up at the outermost edge of the air. Richard is a consummate pilot, exiting at the textbook angle, but even his skill isn't reassuring, this far out. Ratcliffe counts breaths, waiting for the ship's computer to announce that grav-sim is at full and it's safe to remove his oxygen mask.

"There's a reason more people don't turn mercenary," remarks Richard, pulling off his mask with a wry smile. "I can count the oxygen farms in this sector on one hand--hard to imagine living for re-entry."

"Going to make me seize controls from you and veer off to Fraterlunae, aren't you," says Ratcliffe, smiling tightly. The other man's baiting him; he has to be, glorious bastard that he is. "They've got proper breathable atmosphere there, at least--"

"And I'd have you before an imperial court for mutiny," answers Richard. He says it with utter unconcern, as though he can't imagine it--as though Ratcliffe's loyalty is beyond question.

As though he wouldn't hesitate a moment, if he found Ratcliffe wanting.

Richard brings them slowly parallel with the surface of Noctiluca, killing the deep-space propulsors and engaging the atmospheric engines (and it wasn't too long ago that Noctiluca didn't have an atmosphere, to speak of; the terraforming stations have done incredible work in only a century, and in another it might even be breathable). Ratcliffe can feel the grav-sim compensating for the pull of the moon, hear the engine powering down.

The rest of the fleet is around them; he can nearly make out the crests of Buckingham on a trio of old bangers, at least twenty years out of date, and old Bourchier's crests tucked discreetly away on a pair of sleek, predatory ships. Somewhere in the loose formation, Stanley will have ships, although she's probably lurking on Fraterlunae with her son to wait out the fight. In reserve, she'll probably say, as though she's not on fucking thin ice already.

Even before the sensors bring up the queen's fleet, he can see a faint column of dust on the horizon. They'll be flying low to ground, hoping to glide under the range of the gunnery turrets and then to take out the Ricardian fleet from below--it's what Rivers would've told them to do, any of them. "Grav-sim to full; truncated roll," Richard calls over the comm, and then the ships are all turning to expose their bellies to the air. The surface of the moon hangs close overhead, close and dark and claustrophobic; it's a damned miserable way to fly--

--but when the first ships marked with the crest of Dorset pass above-beneath, Ratcliffe's hands are steady on the console, and the smoke-trailing ships fall up and away.

Ratcliffe can feel his heartbeat hammering hard at his throat, his wrists, his loins; he can feel his blood surging through him hot and eager. Richard can take them screaming through gaps between enemy fighters, roll clear of oncoming fire as easily as he would roll out of bed--and Ratcliffe's hands are on the triggers, using every roll to rain death over the queen's fleet. This is what he was born to do--this is what he has trained eight years of his damn life to do, this is why he's here--

By the time the queen's flagship calls for surrender, the moon's rust-dark stones are littered with the carcasses of her ships.

They put down at the imperial arbiter's base, and the queen leaves her ship wearing a radiation suit with a breathing mask so that she can file her surrender formally. Her breathing is labored; her ship must've been touched in the fighting, thinks Ratcliffe, and leaking oxygen. They'll have locked down all but the bridge and gone to auxiliary air to compensate. When she makes it through the airlock, she removes her mask and takes a deep breath.

"Not yet," says Richard, raising a hand. His sister in law turns to him with an expression that speaks murder, hand poised over the wrist of her glove.

"Not yet?" she asks sharply. "You've gotten what you came for, Gloucester. The regency is yours; my people are dead. What more do you want?"

"There was a report," Richard replies, "That unauthorized drones were in use during the fighting—unmanned drones, I might add, that have been outlawed explicitly for lunar war. As you should know, given that your family opposed the d'Arc gambit and that you were one of the strongest opponents after that hideous Shore incident--"

For a moment, the queen's face is blank as a mask; her lips are parted, her eyes wide and unseeing. Ratcliffe can see the moment when realization breaks over her, washing her face with hatred. "No," she says, hand clenched over her wrist. "No, dear Devera, you can't--"

"I'm obligated to report that we did register drones on the field," says the arbiter, who is a pudgy fellow with a thin, high voice and obvious hair grafts. "And we did register them attacking Lord Buckingham's ships. A full inquiry will be conducted, of course, but given the limited time, ah, it might be preferable to proceed immediately with judicial review ... would you surrender your chief strategists, please?" He reaches for the comm and speaks into it. "Ahem, would the chief strategists for the Elizabethan fleet please make their way to the base--"

Slowly, Rivers and Grey and a fellow named Vaughan leave their ships and cross the lunar plain.

The queen can't meet their eyes. Her fingers are still closed around her wrist, as though she means to pull her hand off rather than set her fingerprint to a peace treaty. She knows as well as anyone what the penalty is for violating the laws of war.

They'll be convicted, of course. Richard will have made sure that there's evidence enough to convict them.

"You did well today," says Richard, once they have returned to the ship and strapped themselves into their chairs. "You're a better gunner than you said you'd be--efficient. Not a bullet wasted."

"Tried to do my duty, sir," Ratcliffe answers, but he can't hide a broad smile at being praised. Damned right, he's a good gunner; damned right he's exceeded Richard's expectations and his own. "And we've done it without having to apply the auxiliary oxygen at all. Good, quick, clean battle." Richard raises his brows at that, and Ratcliffe amends, "Clean enough to pass muster."

Pausing with his oxygen mask halfway to his face, Richard asks with an odd seriousness, "Is it that you haven't any scruples, Ratcliffe, or that you've put them aside?"

"I don't think you'd steer me wrong, sir," Ratcliffe answers, and it's as honest an answer as he knows how to give.

They close their masks over their faces and initiate pre-launch procedures--while the scanners are sweeping the hull for insulation breaches, Catesby's face appears on the holoreader. There's a pause, as though she's checking to see if the thing's on or trying to gauge her words before she speaks; she licks her lips, then tries to smile. "Spoke with Hastings," she reports. Her cheer reads false, even in holovision.

"What's his position?" Richard asks. He leans back in the pilot's chair, the fingers of his good hand drumming on the armrest.

"Says he's for you, of course; best man won, and he hoped we'd all be able to bang out our differences once the prince was on the throne." Ratcliffe can hear her reluctance, though, and the subtext is glass-clear. Once the prince is off the throne and Richard on it, Hastings's loyalty will become an open question. She glances back and forth between them until she's sure they've taken her message, then nods, almost imperceptibly. "Thought I'd pass the news along. Congratulations, sir; job well done."

"Thank you, Catesby. Close all communication channels and prepare for re-entry."

Catesby's face vanishes, and Ratcliffe grips the armrests of the gunner's chair. It feels as though he's been braced against launch for eons, every muscle tense and ready; when finally the slow burn of liftoff commences, the pressure snapping Ratcliffe back against his seat even with the grav-sim, he thinks he can hear wind rushing in his ears.

Fraterlunae hangs half-occluded by the planet, and Noctiluca drops slowly away. Ratcliffe can see the sunlight glittering on the ocean off the coast of Dorset, striking light off the wings of the ships that are leading them out.

He sees Hastings's crest and his callsign, recognizes from the angle of his ship that he's preparing to re-enter atmosphere.

"I have the shot," he whispers into his mask, so quietly that he can scarcely hear it. Under his skin, his heart is beating madly.

"Take it," Richard answers, and Ratcliffe closes his shaking hand on the trigger.

His aim isn't perfect--it doesn't have to be. The merest graze will do; the barest touch.

The bullet scores the insulation along the belly of Hastings's ship, ripping a groove deep enough to pour a fire in.

There will be satellite holovids of Hastings falling to the sea like a meteor, his ship burning to cinders as he falls. There will be memorials in his honor, thousands of strangers standing quiet with their lighters casting their eyes into shadow--Rivers, Vaughan, and Grey will die as criminals, their passing mourned only in private, but Hastings's death will be Albia's tragedy.

Ratcliffe couldn't care less about what will be. When Richard sets them down on Yorkish soil, when they've loosed their restraints and pulled off their masks, Ratcliffe catches him by the collar and drags him in for a long, hard kiss.

They've survived--they've won. The rest of the world can damn well burn, for all he cares.

"Well, that was fucking stupid of you," says Catesby. Her hands are on her hips, her head cocked to one side as though she's trying to align her face with Ratcliffe's. "He's going to be king within the month, and you thought it was a good idea to plant one on him?"

"Well, I wasn't fucking thinking, was I?" snarls Ratcliffe. "And now I'm going to lose my damn--my damn job, and he's probably going to have someone do me over the way he had me do Hastings--" He's drunk, and he knows it; he'd been drunk for a good hour before she showed up, and by now he's half convinced that he's going to drink himself to death. The bottle eludes his fingers, but eventually he closes his hand around it and drags it up for another pull.

"Give me that," she snaps, prying it out of his hands and taking a swig. She makes a face, then tips the bottle out over the washstand. "I haven't seen you this stinking drunk since--you know, actually I don't think I ever have seen you this bad. What would Gloucester think?"

He slumps over the table, pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead as though he's afraid it's going to split apart. "Damn'd if I care. Damn'd if he cares."

She hesitates, then puts a hand on his shoulder. It's warm, almost hot; the touch burns through the thin fabric of his shirt. "Was he nice about it, at least?"

"Nice enough, but he begged off pretty quick--had t' see to the fleet or some other damned thing--"

"Didn't occur to you, did it, that he might actually have had to see to the fleet? He's a commanding officer, on duty, after a major victory. In a damn open-paneled cockpit, where anyone could've seen you." She strokes her thumb over his shoulderblade with something like fondness, and he finds himself leaning against the solid, warm column of her abdomen. "No, you didn't think of any of that; you just went straight to the dispensary and got as much bad hooch as you could carry."

"'m not drinking him off," Ratcliffe answers, which is at least partially true. "It's--it's this whole thing, after Hastings, and I know he wouldn't slow down an instant to have me done for just like--"

"I think he'd slow down an instant," says Catesby. She brushes back his hair, scratching behind his ear as though he's a pet. "Look, take a purgative and go to him once you've detoxed."

"I'm not going to--"

"For the love of Cardea, Dickon, I'm not going to spend the night with you. I've got my own man to wear out."

Her words catch up to him after a moment, and he sits up straighter. "Your own ...?"

"His name's Lovell," she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. "He's only a desk jockey, but he's pretty fit, and he can follow me when I'm talking about cracking systems. I think we're going to be good together."

"'m happy for you," Ratcliffe manages, and maybe she's right--maybe he should just take the damned purgative, then curl up in bed and try to forget how hard it made him, having another man's life in his hands. "Guess I'll buzz the dispensary, see if they'll send someone over with a hypo."

"You do that. Bet you anything they've got a man making the rounds tonight; a lot of people will be as bad as you are. Worse, some of them." She presses a sisterly kiss to his temple before she lets him go. His head must be hot, he thinks, because her lips feel cold.

When she's gone and the birl from the dispensary has come by to jab him with a purgative hypo, he steps into the shower and lets himself sweat out the alcohol. He runs hot water; cold would only make the shivering worse.

Three hours ago, the whole empire-damned world was laid out before him like a globe; now, the world's condensed to his little cell of a room, the sheets taut on the bed and the table clear and the recycling bin full of bottles. The water cascades over his shoulders, down his back--he chokes down bile as the detox kicks in.

By the time he's finished bleeding alcohol through his pores, he feels as though he's fought a war. He feels--and he has to laugh at the thought--he feels worse than he did after he'd fought a war.

Ratcliffe lets the shower air-dry him, then steps out and nearly falls into bed.

There comes a knock at the door, sharp and clear. Dispensary must've sent someone to check on him after he drained a hypo of purgative; he groans, low in his throat, and rolls out of bed to drag on a pair of loose trousers (Hastings would've laughed at him for being old-fashioned, said Lake boys must think the world of their dangly bits, that they think they have to shield our eyes, or some other nonsense). Leaning against the doorframe, he presses his fingers against the latch until the lock disengages and then wrenches the door half-open.

Richard is standing there. In the sterile lighting of the hallway, the skin beneath his eyes looks dark and hollow.

"Sir," says Ratcliffe, after a moment. "Wasn't expecting you--beg your pardon."

"You know that I hate unfinished business," Richard answers. His voice is pitched low, the inflection warm and suggestive--there's something that Ratcliffe can't quite identify in his expression, though. Perhaps it's only the exhaustion, but his eyes seem unusually bright.

He brings his gloved hand up to touch Ratcliffe's cheek, synth-leather harsh against skin raw from detox; Ratcliffe swallows hard. "Or is the matter closed?"

The only answer he can give is his teeth closing on Richard's lip, his hands in the other man's hair as he presses his Prince Regent and Lord Protector against the door.

When Richard's nephews come to the York estate, summer has set in properly, and the gardens are heavy with fruit and teaflowers. The young king is always dragging his brother and his cousins to the orchards to climb trees and to pick early, still-sour berries, all under the watchful eye of a pair of mechanical sentinels. Holographers and journos stop by to collect their images; a child king is bad for Albia, as the saying goes, but from where Ratcliffe's sitting he's not bad for the holo-jockeys.

Albia's Little Liege, they call him, as though they hadn't trotted out the same phrases when Henry VI took the throne. In holovids playing in every complex in every city, sunlight gleams on the shoulders of the king's guardians. Heat rises from their carapaces in shimmering waves.

Meanwhile, the Marquess of Dorset meets with Richard to discuss how his brother's regent will rule. He always leaves their conferences early, pushing back from the table with his brow furrowed, and Ratcliffe gives him a sardonic salute as he passes. They are beyond the point of courtesy, though, and Dorset doesn't even spare him a glance. Bastard.

Might even be a bastard, given what people have been saying about the queen's proclivities.

"I'm anxious about this plan of yours," says Buckingham plainly, hooking his elbows over the back of his chair. He's thinner than he was when Ratcliffe first met him, and he's let his beard grow out a bit on his cheeks and his neck (vulgar-looking, as though he doesn't want to bother with basic laser hair removal). "If we just made it clear that the queen should be treated the same way that Marguerite was--"

"Marguerite was a Gallic and a traitor; Elizabeth is an Albian who filed for civil war and submitted to reasonable terms of surrender. And anyway, Edward renounced his citizenship voluntarily. The situations aren't comparable," says Bourchier. He should know about Gallics and traitors, given that his family's a holdover from the old days of Gallic domination. "You could seclude the boys, of course, but you try finding a place on the planet where they won't have network access. It'll be impossible to get them out of their mother's hands."

"Possible," Ratcliffe answers, "But I shouldn't like to think what sort of work it would take."

"Be careful," says Richard. He taps his fingertips on the tabletop, false fingers striking strange notes from the polished glass. "We don't want to convey the wrong impression in these conversations. Remember the fallout when a crowned king said, Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear--"

"King Richard's death was a mercy killing," Bourchier mutters. "If Exton hadn't done the deed, the radiation poisoning would have done its work soon enough."

"And this must be a merciful regency," says Richard. He turns a smile on Buckingham--Ratcliffe recognizes that smile; it means that Buckingham is being tested. "How would an enemy of the state go about accessing my dear nephews, if he wanted to do them harm?"

Buckingham swallows. He can't meet Richard's eyes, and picks at a frayed thread on his sleeve instead. "The boys are being closely watched. You've seen the TYR units in action; they're impossible to beat and damn near impossible to crack remotely. Poison might get past them, but otherwise ... let's not talk about this sort of thing," he says, leaning over the table with an intent expression. He looks a bit like a rodent sighting a seed. "There's a great lot of land to reallocate after the war, and we need to get to the business of allocating it. If I might put in a bid for Hereford--"

"I'm not interested in reallocating land at this point, Buckingham," answers Richard. "There are deputies in place, administering the provinces just the way their predecessors did. So far, the transition's been relatively peaceful--if I start handing out parcels of land to my favourites, I'll have a full-scale riot on my hands--"

"Might we call for a luncheon recess?" Bourchier cuts in smoothly. "I believe I smell our meal in the antechamber."

For a moment, Richard looks very much as though he wants to strike the priest of Iove across his great smug face. "Very well," he says, at last. "A luncheon recess. Ratcliffe, see if you can get me Lovell. He had some documents that I needed to see."

"Yes, sir," answers Ratcliffe, sliding back his chair and stretching as he stands. In a moment he's sent Catesby a holotext to forward to Lovell, and by the time the meal's on the conference table, the clerk is knocking at the window and waving to be let in. He is, Ratcliffe observes, exactly as fit as Catesby had said he was.

Lovell and Richard only speak for a minute or two, gesturing sharply, their heads bent together over Lovell's holoreader--as he's watching, Ratcliffe feels a tug at his sleeve.

He turns, and there is Buckingham, with his eyes red and moist and his breathing labored. Allergy, could be, or a hangover; he doesn't look well, that much is obvious. "Ratcliffe," he says, voice low, thick. "I know I've put my foot in it here, but ... well, we're friends, aren't we? Flown together, fought together--and Gloucester, he listens to what you have to say. If you could put a good word in ..."

"I'll see," says Ratcliffe, "But I can tell you for certain, you're not going to get hold of Hereford."

"I'll be damned lucky if I can keep hold of anything," answers Buckingham, and he smears the corner of his sleeve over his eyes.

No one can say why the young king's sentinels turn on him and his brother--no one, although their butchery is broadcast live on every network. The TYR units are impossible to crack. Their programming is impossible to reroute.

The boys' corpses lie amid half-rotten fruits in the orchards, with the sunlight casting leaf-dappled shadows over their faces.

Queen Elizabeth is quick to withdraw her daughters from the succession, after the deaths of her boys. Whatever people are saying about her--that she's a war criminal, a hypocrite, a whore--no one is stupid enough to call her a fool.

It's only a week before Richard of Gloucester is crowned King Richard III, but it's a full week. Richard grants interviews to the major news networks, with a brace under his clothes to keep his back straight for the holorecorders; he lets himself be seen making his devotions at the temples of Mercurius and Minerua, his patron gods (although Richard doesn't even swear by the gods; he only calls for the empire to damn whatever might oppose him, and calls his enemies bastards when he lets his anger get the better of him). Even Ratcliffe is pressed into service in crafting the king's image--flying in formation with him to show off the king as soldier, accompanying him to ISTA's Orkney campus to help establish the king as scholar.

ISTA-Orkney stands silhouetted against the sea, a ring of twelve towers of mirror-glass surrounded by wind-twisted trees. Ratcliffe stares up at them from the white stone pathway (real stone, too; it rings right under his heel)--he's used to ISTA-Manchester, set in the heart of the city's industrial district; he's used to the towering student housing complexes and the public transit tubes and the skimmer runs choked with commuters and the squatter shanties crowding onto the launch station.

There's something ancient and clean about this campus, and Ratcliffe knows at once why Richard chose it.

By the time they arrive in the classroom, the seats have already filled; Ratcliffe's seat has been reserved, but he has to shoo a girl out of it nonetheless. All around him, the walls are slowly lighting up as students at home tune their holoreaders to the lecture--there will be transmitters tuned in, as well, ready to broadcast the lecture across the world. At the bottom of the room, in the narrow well of the instructor's station, Richard looks very small.

When he speaks, though, his voice reverberates through the the great raucous room, and the students grow silent.

"Good morning, ISTA-Orkney, and thank you for inviting me to speak on your campus," he says, as though Lovell hasn't lobbied fiercely to get him a speaking appointment. The crowd obliges him with a cheer, flashers flickering in approbation; Richard smiles. His face is projected behind him, impossibly large.

"I come to you as an ambassador of the past," he says, more quietly (although the projector picks it up and magnifies it for all to hear). "Many of you are old enough to remember the terror of the Gallic Wars--some of you lost parents in the asteroid fields, and others remember being evacuated to the countryside; the rich earth of Orkney is still riddled with bunkers, and perhaps you remember a childhood in a bunker, with your parents commuting every day to the surface. Some of you probably remember the first time that you truly saw the sun."

Ratcliffe remembers hanging jamming screens over the roof with his mother, to block their heat signatures from Gallic scanners above; he remembers the day that the schools shut down and issued their students holoreaders instead. He had downloaded his lessons and transmitted his schoolwork for four years, until King Henry declared peace at last.

"We have become a culture acclimated to foreign war," continues Richard, "And in our late domestic broils, we've tried to point at Gallia as the threat. You've heard the holo-jockeys claim that Queen Marguerite had to abdicate because she was a Gallic, or that George of Clarence--my brother--was a supporter of Gallia; we want to think of our troubles as part of the Gallic wars, because to reach further back is simply too painful.

"But as I said, I am an ambassador of the past."

The walls of the room appear to dissolve, and the arena of the classroom becomes a crater; the sides are crowded with twisted metal and blasted skimmers--and then Ratcliffe looks closer and realizes that they aren't skimmers at all, but wheeled vehicles more than a hundred years old. As the holograph slowly shifts, taking in toppled buildings and following empty streets, Ratcliffe realizes that he knows what he is seeing.

There is a feeling like ice in his stomach. This crater is Shrewsbury, where King Henry IV detonated Albia's last nuclear bomb.

Richard is still speaking, but Ratcliffe doesn't hear him.

The crater slowly dissolves, leaving behind a disintegrated spit of land extending out to the sea. Ratcliffe knows this coastline, has seen it from space--he's seen the fallout scarring on the coast of York Province. He's heard it whispered that Richard owes his back and his hand to Henry Bolingbroke's attack on Ravenspurgh.

Ravenspurgh, too, dissolves, leaving only Richard's face. His eyes are unusually bright. "We remember the Gallic Wars at the hazard of forgetting our civil wars, in the days before our enlightened ancestors took our warring to Noctiluca. Perhaps, in your childhood, you heard your grandparents praying that Albia and Gallia would 'shut down the reactor,' and you wondered why--or perhaps you even say it yourself, unthinkingly, telling your friends that you've 'shut down the reactor' with an old enemy.

"I bring a message from the past, for all Albia," says Richard, "And that message is: forget our civil wars. Recognize their cost. And for the love of our world, shut down the reactor."

In the days before the coronation, dozens of criminals are pardoned; the Queen is cleared of charges of war crimes, and Isabel Neville is released from prison.

More than once, Ratcliffe has seen her sister sequestered with Richard in private conferences. He can't say that he's surprised, exactly, when the engagement of Anne Neville and Richard III is announced with great fanfare--it's only natural that the price for a royal pardon should be high.

When Richard comes to his bed, they fuck with brutal efficiency, and then lie whispering to one another about how Richard will rule. "Our planet will be great," he murmurs, as Ratcliffe's hand trails over the surgical scars at the base of his spine. "For the first time since the war--since the coming of the empire--Albia will be great."

On the day of his coronation, Richard wears white in mourning for his nephews, and he speaks stirringly of the world that he can build with his people behind him. His will be a kingdom of progress, of development; he'll step up the lunar terraforming projects, improve the scope of the medical sciences, and clear away the last of the nuclear residue from Albia forever. A Ricardian government will support its artists and its artisans, freeing them from the vicissitudes of the interplanetary economy. There will be peace, and prosperity, and honor.

He never mentions Old Troia, but there are statues of Troian emperors standing guard on the coronation platform, and everyone knows that Richard is a reconstructionist.

The new-crowned Queen Anne stands at his side in wedding black, hands folded in front of her and face carefully blank. From where Ratcliffe's sitting, in the front row, he can see the sweat standing out on her brow as she parts her lips for breath. Probably the first woman who's ever shown up to her own coronation half-paralysed on spack.

She makes a beautiful queen, at least, and her remarriage looks like shutting down the reactor. If Richard's afraid of poison in his breakfast or a drugged hypo in the marriage bed, he doesn't look it.

When the speech is finished, the crowd rises to its feet and raises lighters high--most are just little solar-powered flashers, but a few (like Ratcliffe's, like Catesby's) are genuine nafthe lighters. He's used his to light a consolatory smoke, to share a light with friends on that first night studying for an engineering exam at the Academy--it was his mum's lighter, and the smell of it is the smell of her after a long evening shift on the platform. The sweet, almost sick-sweet scent of nafthe oil perfumes the air as the room fills with light.

At the banquet that follows, there will be imported wine and even milk and meat. Ratcliffe has never had meat before, and he finds it sits strangely in his stomach--he can't quite shake the knowledge that he's eating something that was once (and recently) alive. If this is the taste of luxury, he thinks, then the wealthy can keep it. He can't bring himself to try the milk.

At the head of the table, Richard is finishing a filet as though he's had meat every damned day of his life.

Queen Anne hasn't touched her meal, but she drains her wineglass again and again.

After the coronation, he and Catesby climb the scaffolding on the outside of their wing, sitting on the roof to share a bottle of fermented tea under the stars. "He says he's going to make me sheriff of Lake Province," Ratcliffe laughs, leaning back against an exhaust fixture. "I haven't sorted out yet whether he's joking or not."

"He wants me to be his Chancellor of the Exchequer," Catesby answers, "And that's not a joke. I'll be sworn in tomorrow." She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "What happened with old Buckingham? Never did get a hold of Hereford, did he?"

"Last I heard, he was on a packet to Spagniola--good riddance, I say," says Ratcliffe. "You know, he actually asked me to put in a good word with the king for him?"

"Did you?"

"It wouldn't have done him any good. He's useless to us, and that's the bottom line, as far as Richard's concerned."

Catesby nods, then passes him the bottle and curls up with her head in his lap. The moons cast soft-edged shadows across her face, and they make her look strangely delicate. As he strokes back her hair, she asks gently, "Did you ever get around to kissing him again?"

"Who, Buckingham?" She swats him, and he laughs. "Yeah--yeah, I did get around to it." He must be smiling like some kind of imbecile, because Catesby leans up to kiss his cheek.

"Good for you," she tells him. "Never would've thought we'd be here, when we met."

"In Disciplinary at ISTA, with Rivers shouting that we'd never amount to anything if we didn't have the self-respect to keep our damn boots polished?" He grins, draining the bottle. "No, wouldn't have dreamed it."

Catesby takes the empty bottle from him, holding it up in a toast. "To Rivers," she says, solemnly, then pitches the bottle over the side of the roof. They can't see it strike ground, but it must have fallen on stone or pavement, because he can hear it shatter.

With his safety helmet muffling sound, Ratcliffe can nearly drown out the world of the gymnasion--the clang of metal striking metal and the beat of feet falling on the running pads, the damn audionews droning on about former Queen Elizabeth's eldest daughter eloping with that merc Harry Tudor. He shakes his head to clear it and drops into position, while Lovell grins and rolls his shoulders. He's taller than Ratcliffe, too tall for a pilot, but he's thin and wiry and favors his left side. Easy to take down, if Ratcliffe weren't humoring him. "Cate wasn't kidding," he remarks. "You really don't give up, do you?"

She's never let anyone else call her Cate. It rankles, and he's already pulsing with adrenaline; he takes a swing, which Lovell blocks handily. "Wasn't raised to give up," he growls, swinging once-twice-thrice as the audionews gives way to pounding music. "She doesn't say much about you--"

"I'm just a desk jockey," answers Lovell, smirking, and then his fist connects with Ratcliffe's temple hard enough to make his ears ring. Without the helmet, it would've been enough to lay him flat, and even with it he's dizzy.

Fuck going easy on Catesby's boyfriend; Lovell can handle himself.

In four blows, Lovell's on his back on the mat; Ratcliffe pulls the fifth, gritting his teeth and dragging off his helmet. There's something he doesn't entirely like about the man's expression as he lies there, lip bleeding, bruise starting to spread over his bare ribs--it looks too much like an invitation. Too much like Richard's face when he's lying loose-limbed on the sheets of the royal bed, his dark eyes glittering and sharp.

"Good match," Ratcliffe mutters. "You're out of your weight class."

"You're tense," replies Lovell, getting to his feet and pulling off his helmet. "Something to do with the docks emptying?"

Ratcliffe puts his helmet on the shelf with a dozen identical helmets, then undoes the snaps that hold his gloves to his wrists. "Let them empty. It's about time we demobilized. About time people like Dorset and Stanley got back to administrating their own damn provinces."

"And yet you're still here. Cate, I could see; she's got to handle planetary finances--but why aren't you in Lake Province?" Lovell catches him by the shoulder, fingers still closed in those padded gloves. For a moment, it feels like Richard's hand on his shoulder. He catches Lovell by the wrist and wrenches his hand back, and when Lovell gasps at the pain of it, Ratcliffe feels satisfaction coiling in his gut.

He lets go. "Stanley's a lord, and I'm not," he says shortly. "Anyway, I've got business with the king, and the king hates unfinished business."

Lovell follows him out of the athletic chamber and into the showers; they're the sort of gang showers that Catesby joked about, back when Ratcliffe was new to York Province's employ and they were both naïve about the kind of accommodations that Richard's willing to offer his people. They're the only two in the room, although the music's still echoing from the frosted glass walls; Lovell strips off his trousers and then turns on the water. "If this is a real--" he shakes his head, changes tack. "If I'm intruding, I am sorry."

"There's nothing to intrude on," says Ratcliffe, but he can't meet Lovell's eyes as they clean off sweat and traces of blood. Lovell is as freckled as Hastings was across his shoulders and the bridge of his nose, and from the corner of Ratcliffe's eye, his auburn hair could be a deeper red.

"You could stand to relax, is all I'm saying. If you really need to pound someone, now and then--by Sancus, I can't make it sound like something other than a proposition--well." He clears his throat. "You're Cate's best friend. We're all in this together, and I can take--take--"

Ratcliffe realizes that the music has gone quiet. He can make out the murmur of the audionews.

--queen's sudden death has left Albia staggered, as coroners and family members struggle to explain the overdose that took her life; she is survived by her husband, King Richard, and her sister, Isabel Neville--

He meets Lovell's eyes, but Lovell shakes his head.

It says something about them, he thinks, that they need to know that neither of them planned it.

Ratcliffe has never been to a state funeral, before Anne's--seen the holovids, of course, but he's never breached atmosphere to watch a person set to rest.

Richard's face is unreadable as his wife's coffin is released from the hold. Could be paralysed, as fashion dictates, but Ratcliffe thinks that the blankness is genuine. Holographers catch him nodding to Isabel Neville across the room; Isabel raises her eyes to meet his, and except for her knuckles whitening on the sleeves of her white gown, she shows no emotion.

The holo-jockeys claim that Queen Anne's death was staged, of course, because they'll shout down any damn thing if it will buy them a few more seconds of airtime; there are holographs of her corpse not yet cleaned of shit and vomit, holovids of her state funeral superimposed over the funerals of King Henry IV and Henry VI, second-by-second breakdowns of the time between the queen's death and the disposal of her coffin. The reactionary wackos claim that Isabel switched her sister's body for another, or that the funeral footage was faked; the radical wackos claim that Richard murdered Anne to unite national sentiment behind him. Across the political spectrum, though, they agree: Anne of York and Gloucester, formerly Anne Neville, is not dead.

They'd keep fighting it out until their dying days, too--but then the mercs level Tewkesbury and set the Forest of Dean afire.

It's high summer, and the dry trees grow up like kindling. The smoke blots out the sun.

King Richard III is on the front lines in Tewkesbury, stepping over the wreckage with ash smeared over one cheek and flakes of ash in his hair. The place is damn near a crater, but there are survivors being pulled from the wreckage in the suburbs; it's something, at least. "Get me personnel," Richard tells a courier newly-arrived on a flash skimmer; "I don't care if they're mine or Norfolk's or Stanley's or my mother's, so long as you get me men."

A temple collapses in on itself, marble facade crumbling as the pillars give way. The courier can't help jumping at the sound of it, gritting her teeth to keep from yelping. She hasn't even set her skimmer down yet. "There's a message from--"

"Have whoever it is send me a holotext," Richard snaps. "Get someone to Tewkesbury, damn it all--"

"It's from Buckingham's deputy," she says, and finally Richard gives her his full attention. He hasn't slept in nearly two solar days, and the drugs are only barely keeping him up and alert; his eyes are bright and the sclera shot through with red. The courier swallows. "Buckingham's cleared out his fleet. All off-world, sir. With the--"

"The mercenaries, I gathered," says the king. "Now get me personnel, or I'll see you shot."

As the courier speeds off, Richard turns to Ratcliffe and seizes his shoulder. His gloved hand closes too hard; Ratcliffe can feel the grind of the bone in the socket, and he tries not to wince. "Take Catesby," says Richard. His voice is rough with smoke, his breath hot against Ratcliffe's cheek. "Scout for me. I want to know how many ships the mercs have, what kind of damage they can do--have her crack their frequencies. Find out who hired them."

"I will." Ratcliffe closes his hand on Richard's, pressing it. "You need to sleep, sir. Won't do anyone any good if you keep going until you drop."

"I'll take that under advisement," Richard answers--and then Stanley draws level with them on a skimmer and sets down, yanking her helmet off and shaking out her hair. At once, Richard turns to her with a skeletal grin. "Stanley! Here to bring me good news, I hope!"

"Depends on your idea of good, sir," she says, and coughs at the smoke. Ratcliffe ducks out to prep his skimmer, zipping shut his jacket and getting his helmet settled while the engine warms. "There's a medical convoy coming in from Northumberland--"

"Northumberland!" shouts Richard. "What the fuck is it doing in Northumberland?"

"It's the closest we could pull in!" she shouts back, and she swings a leg over the back of the skimmer and slides off to stand nose to nose with the king. "You know how hard it is to reroute a medical convoy? You know how many fucking strings I had to pull?"

Richard scarcely blinks. "You're not a musician; it doesn't impress me to hear that you've pulled strings."

"I'm here to help you," Stanley snarls. "There aren't many people who'd say the same. Sir."

"Ratcliffe." With his hand still on the chinstrap of his helmet, Ratcliffe looks up. "While you're carrying messages, tell young Stanley that he's been promoted. He'll be my gunner when we engage the mercs."

If Stanley protests, screams that her son's too young or that he doesn't even have a gunnery license or that Richard's a madman who needs to rest before he damns them all, Ratcliffe doesn't hear it. The roar as he opens the throttle drowns her out, and then there's nothing but the hum of the engine shaking him to his core.

His skimmer lifts off from what was once the great park of Tewkesbury, and he speeds over fallen power lines and past collapsing arcades like uneven teeth.

No one is stunned, really, that Harry Tudor's mercs are in the pockets of former Prince Edward and Queen Marguerite. The Gallics would take any opportunity to see Albia brought low, and Queen Marguerite is the arch-Gallic. Only stands to reason that she'd want to watch Albia burn.

Not many are surprised that Queen Elizabeth has gone rogue and thrown her support behind her son-in-law and his Gallic employers, taking with her every fighting-fit ship in Dorset. She's seen enough death by now to drive any ordinary woman mad, and only a madwoman would turn against her world.

Ratcliffe is surprised, though, at just how many Albian lords have joined them.

He wakes with a jolt, groping for the comm before he realizes that the klaxons were a part of his dream--the alarm sirens were a dream, he's not suffocating, the computer's not telling him in an infuriatingly calm voice, Oxygen levels critical. Termination imminent. Do you wish to engage drone mode? Oxygen levels critical. Termination imminent--

Chancellor Warwick had come up before an imperial ethics board a few decades ago because ISTA's pilot training program ran real-life oxygen loss simulations. Students had been trapped in a sim-cockpit, just a gunner and a pilot strapped in together, panicking and pounding at the damn walls to get their instructors to let them out; the holovids showed them screaming and gasping and crying, Iove, Iuno, by all the gods let us out--and over all of it there'd been that computerized voice telling them that termination was imminent, asking if they wished to engage drone mode. They'd showed the footage in court, arguing that it was inhumane.

Today, no one blinks at that kind of thing. Ratcliffe had done his sim with a gruff highlander who'd listened to one go-round of the oxygen levels announcement and then answered calmly, "Engage drone mode. Eject the operators in two," while Ratcliffe had grabbed the comm and called into it, "Anyone nearing sector 1, 0.25 by 9.375, give us a pickup." And then they'd pulled on their helmets, slipped on the auxiliary oxygen tanks, and waited for ejection.

No one even blinks. Oxygen loss is routine, and you'd damn well better be ready.

He breathes, and sits up, and takes in his surroundings. Pay attention, he tells himself. Get a hold of yourself.

He's lying in Richard's bed, the blankets bunched up around his waist. There's a faint glow from his holoreader, which is resting on the bedside table; he taps the display, which brightens and shows him the time--it's obscenely early.

Richard is lying beside him, eyes closed, body curled up tight as though he's waiting to be born. The glow of the holoreader picks out the knobs of his vertebrae, the hollows at his hips, the metal of his fingers. He looks like a creature that's been engineered, all hard angles and shining armatures.

Then he shudders as though he's been struck, turning over with a choked-off sound, and Ratcliffe puts down the holoreader and touches his shoulder. His skin is fever-warm. "Ratcliffe," he says, as though he expected it to be someone else.

As though he's relieved to find that it isn't.

"I'm here, sir," answers Ratcliffe. He presses his palm to Richard's and clasps his hand, squeezing--it's confirmation that they're solid, real, present. He doesn't know why he needs to confirm it so damn badly. "I'm here--it's an hour before we need to prep for launch."

"An hour," says Richard, and he sinks back against his pillow with his free hand pressed over his eyes. "Damn me, I've been having the most hideous dream. I could almost think that--"

"Just a dream, sir," Ratcliffe answers. The sensation of his lungs bursting against the oxygen bleed still lingers. "Mine weren't much better. Could've been the stimulants; my mum always told me that there was a nasty come-down, after."

Richard licks his lips, then nods after a moment. "What do you think, Dickon? How do you think it will go?"

He hesitates. They both know full well that a few dozen lords are unreliable, and even Lovell's been complaining that Richard doesn't reward his supporters well enough to hold their loyalty. They know that Tudor will be ready with every Gallic ship he can commandeer, and if he's smart he'll have drones and perhaps even nuclear weapons in reserve.

He knows what he's being asked to say.

"I think it's not worth living in their Albia," says Ratcliffe, "So we'd best win."

They launch in the grey rain before dawn, Ratcliffe in the pilot's seat and Catesby beside him in the gunner's. They lift off with Norfolk's fleet, and so they're among the first out; Ratcliffe keeps his hand steady on the thrust lever as they break free of Albia's gravitational pull. Catesby is quiet, tight-lipped, leaning forward slightly as though it will help her pick out mercs' ships against the field of stars.

There's an oxygen farm in an asteroid belt a few hours' travel out from the planet; the mercs will be sheltering there, if they know what's good for them. There's nowhere else to set down in this sector.

"Are you afraid?" Ratcliffe asks softly. He can see Catesby reflected on the window before them, and she shakes her head. "Just like sim," she answers. "We were pretty damn good in sim."

"We were," he says, but it doesn't reassure him any more than it does her.

They've never fought in open space before; apart from the veterans of the ISTA faculty, he doesn't know anyone who has. They're damn good in sim, but everyone knows that sim is a game, and this isn't anything like a game.

The asteroid field is littered with hazardous particles, meteoroid fragments and glittering chunks of metal left over from the wrecks of the Gallic Wars--detritus that could easily crack the window or rip gashes in the insulation. Ratcliffe's attention is so taken up with picking a clear path through the field that he almost doesn't notice when Catesby whispers, "Here they come."

They rise out of the shadow of a massive asteroid, coming into view even as they leave the sensor-shielding of the great iron rock: a sleek battalion of fighter drones with noses like spears. No pilots, no one manning the controls from afar; they are designed for war without hesitation or mercy.

"Hold," comes Norfolk's voice over the comm. "Fire now, and we litter the field with so much debris that we won't get any deeper. Surrey, draw them out of the belt and engage them in open space; the rest of you, get a rock between you and their sensors."

"On it," says Surrey brusquely, and then he's making a run on the drones to draw them out--herding them, catching their attention and then sending in another fighter to harry them from behind. Whether he succeeds or not, Ratcliffe doesn't see; he's setting down on the pocked surface of an asteroid and keeping his eyes peeled for more drones. Following orders.

"There's a ship," says Catesby, and Ratcliffe looks up from the panel, and up, and up. The ship she's seen is a massive carrier, probably located between sectors 6 and 8--he can almost hear Blunt's lectures playing in his head; think of space in sectors, because you'll bollocks it up if you start trying that up/down, left/right nonsense. Far/near's only a bit more useful.

"We've got a visual on a carrier," Catesby calls into the comm. "Three or four sectors out from us; can't be sure until we get into sensor range. Engage?"

"Confirming your visual, Gloucester 1," Norfolk answers. "Engage."

There's a kick to liftoff as the thrusters push them away from the asteroid; Ratcliffe uses that momentum to hurl them toward the carrier, through the clear space above-below the field. He dodges the first missile, and the second--and then Catesby is shouting die, you bastards and raking the carrier with bullets; she's laughing, prepping her missiles for launch as Norfolk shouts over the comm for fighters to engage, engage, and this is fucking easy--

He never sees the missile that takes out their tail, sending them veering off course and killing their thrust.

He hears the emergency doors clang shut, closing the oxygen in the cockpit.

There are no sirens, no alarms, no computerized voice telling him that oxygen levels are critical. He turns to Catesby; there's a gash on her brow from striking something, but he can't tell what, and the diagnostic schema are reflected in her wide eyes. They're spinning, making slow, dizzy turns that take them drifting inexorably away from the carrier.

Ratcliffe opens the throttle as wide as it will go and gets nothing. "Gloucester 1, lost engines," he says into the comm, and although his hands are shaking, his voice is surprisingly steady. "We're on the oxygen that we've got in the cockpit, and that's it."

"Negative on that," says Catesby. "There's an oxygen bleed--going to have to tank up and eject."

Ratcliffe reaches for his helmet and the oxygen tank, just the way he's done in sim; he fastens both, loosens his straps. He can feel the grav-sim struggling, and that's a terrible sign, that means the power's about to give. "Ready?" he asks; Catesby nods. "Eject in one. Anyone nearing sector 7--no, make that 8--8.0 by 4.5, we're moving pretty damn fast, and we could use a pickup."

They take hands across the gap between the seats, bracing for ejection, counting down for it.

The grav-sim dies and the lights go with it, leaving only the emergency running lights.

The moment passes.

Catesby reaches for the comm with trembling hands. "N-negative on the pickup for 8.0 by 4.5," she says. "Eject failed. Power's gone; we're running on whatever the solar panels are picking up."

There's a long pause. "Confirming," says Norfolk at last. "Failed ejection for Gloucester 1. We'll notify your families."

Ratcliffe can see tears standing out on Catesby's cheeks. "Tell my sister I love her," she says, and then looks to Ratcliffe. "And my mum," he adds; "My mum and dad," Catesby agrees. "Tell them we went out--we went out serving Albia, all right?"

"Will do, Gloucester 1. For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Then Norfolk is out, and it's just the two of them in what's left of their ship.

There's only the sound of their breathing, after that. Emergency tanks carry half an hour's worth of oxygen; they know how long they've got.

The battle is getting farther and farther away as they drift; every now and then, someone will get on the comm calling for backup or a pickup, but mostly the frequency is silent. Even with their suits, the empty air is cold.

"Hey," Catesby whispers into her mask. She turns to Ratcliffe, eyes still red, voice cracking. "You used to tell me we'd have houses up in the Colles Frondis, and packs of kids, and we'd go skimming together on feast days--"

"Guess I'm not much at keeping promises," he answers. His head hurts; he knows that he's running out of air.

"My sister wanted me to ask you out for her," says Catesby. "Just for some tea, or something--I was going to tell you, after we got back."

Going to tell you. Ratcliffe chokes down what might be a sob or a gasp. "I'm sorry, Cate. It should've--it should've ended better than this."

She takes his hand, and although her grip is weak, she doesn't let go. "Could've ended worse."

As he drifts out of consciousness, he can hear Richard's voice over the comm--Anyone in sector 4, had to eject--I need a pickup, sector 4--

Stanley docked on the pier at the oxygen farm, letting the airlock shut behind her before she dared to strip off her helmet and mask. Harry Tudor was waiting for her on the side of another lock, grinning like some fucking cover model on a merc novel. His new best friend, Edward, was knocking back a glass of cold tea beside him. "Well, aren't you living it up like a pair of kings," she remarked coolly, hand on her hip. "Thanks for picking up my son, Harry."

"He's my brother, or as good as," Harry answered, shrugging. "Couldn't just leave him to drift."

"You know your mum only married me for my land," said Stanley, but she was smiling when she said it. "And you, Ned Lancaster--fresh out of Gallia."

"Fresh as a good wine, and of better vintage," answered Edward. He had his father's dark hair and his mother's fierce, laughing eyes; he looked, she thought, very much a prince. She could only hope he'd pay like one.

As Edward led them into the gardens at the heart of the asteroid, Stanley breathed deep of the rich air. Cargo ships dumped their carbon-heavy air into the reserve, to have it replaced with oxygen-laden air that smelled of fresh flowers; she'd hitched on a few interplanetary cargo freighters back when she was young and loved to travel, and the best part of the trip had always been the stop at the oxygen farm. It had never really occurred to her, though, how beautiful were the gardens that made that clean, rich air. Beneath the warm light of the D-lamps, there were beds of flowers tangling over one another, tiers of planters with berry-laden branches; she caught sight of a pair of pale women strolling through the trees. One was clearly Isabel Neville, with her tailored suit and dark glasses, but the other looked almost like--but Stanley had never seen Queen Anne smile like that--

"How did the battle go?" Edward asked. "I heard Queen Elizabeth's carrier came under pretty heavy fire."

"She's fine; no casualties among the Dorset contingent, from what I hear. Norfolk was a damn fool to charge her after he saw Harry's drones--lost a good few dozen fighters to them." She shrugged. "He was no strategist."

"What casualties are we looking at?" Harry asked. "Who's dead?"

For a moment, Stanley reviewed the rolls of the dead, lips moving as she recalled their names. "Well, John of Norfolk, as you know," she began. "And there's Buckingham, and Lord Ferrers, and Brakenbury, too--and Sir William Brandon."

"No one else?"

She thought another moment, then shook her head. "No one else of name."