They can’t all think I’m stupid and naive, like Beckett said, can they? I know Ian does. He thinks I’m useless. And Merrick. I haven’t spent enough time with Max and Gage to know how they feel about me, but it’s not like they’re sticking up for me right now, is it?
“Princess, are you still with us, or have you decided now’s the perfect time for a nap?” Ian asks. I open my eyes just long enough to shoot him a glare, which he completely ignores. But it’s not like I can tell him I’m over here having a private pity party.
“You haven’t answered the question. Can you think of anyone who wants you dead?” he asks.
“The better question would be if I can think of anyone who doesn’t want me dead,” I start. “When you’re in power and richer than everyone else, there are always people who want you dead. My father was assassinated when I was fifteen. It’s one of the many reasons my mother has kept me so sheltered from public view. I live with that possibility every day of my life.”
“Who arranged for you to be on the Caelestis?” Max asks.
“My mother. And no, she did not send me there to be assassinated. Believe me, if she wanted me dead, she wouldn’t have had to send me all that way to do it.”
Ian’s face says he agrees with me, though he doesn’t want to. He turns to Merrick.
“What about the High Priestess? Anyone want her dead?”
“Of course not. Everyone loves her,” Merrick insists.
“Do you agree with that?” Ian asks Rain.
Her eyes are wide, and she blinks a couple of times. I actually think she’s enjoying this. “Well, admittedly the Sisterhood isn’t popular with everyone in Senestris. Certainly climate activists may not love me and what I represent. We’re often at odds with the Empire. So sure, I guess there could be lots of reasons someone would want me dead. But I mean, if I die, I’ll just be reborn again, so what would be the point?”
I can’t help wondering if she actually believes that. That every high priestess is really just the same soul reincarnated over and over again. It seems impossible to me.
But something does occur to me. “Why were you on the Caelestis?” I ask. “I know you stepped in for Ambassador Frellen, but why you? You don’t seem…” I search for a way to say this without hurting her feelings, because I genuinely like Rain. I think she might be the nicest person I’ve ever met.
“Very diplomatic?” Merrick suggests dryly. “Believe me, I’ve been thinking about the same thing myself. I think maybe the Sisterhood had gotten word about the heptosphere and wanted to see if Rain reacted to it.”
Rain and I look at each other. Suddenly, her appearance on the Caelestis seems even more mysterious.
“Why would she?” I ask.
He gives a shrug. “There are many stories in our scriptures connecting the high priestess with alien artifacts.”
I’d never heard that before, but the Sisterhood is a secretive lot. “And did you?” I ask Rain.
“I don’t think so. But I only touched it briefly.”
“Okay, so ‘everyone’ for Kali and ‘everyone’ for Rain. Cool.” Ian rolls his eyes before turning to Merrick. “What about you? You piss anyone off recently?”
“Probably,” Merrick answers with a shrug.
“Fucking great,” Ian snarls, sounding increasingly frustrated. “Gage?”
“I work for the Corporation,” Gage says matter-of-factly. “We aren’t exactly popular.”
“Fuck!” Ian is pacing now, pulling at the ends of his short hair.
I lock eyes with him. “Well, what about you? I mean, you did kidnap a princess, and you’re keeping her here against her will now. It’s probably the Empire looking for my safe return.”
“That doesn’t explain why your face is plastered on those wanted ads right alongside ours, sweetheart,” Ian argues. “And for someone who’s here against her will, you sure don’t seem to be protesting very much.”
I let out a huff. “Fine. But I’m sure you’ve annoyed someone to the point of murder recently.”
He smirks. “You mean other than you? Sure, every day.”
I throw my hands in the air. “So we’re no closer to narrowing down who’s after us than we were before. Anyone could be chasing us, wanting us dead. We’re all guilty—which means we’re all innocent,” I reason.
“Look, I don’t know about you, Princess, but no one even knew who Max and I really were on the Caelestis,” Ian argues. “We just got caught up in someone else’s shit.”
“Why were you on board?” I ask. “I know you’re looking for Milla, but what made you think she was on the Caelestis?”
For a moment, I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then he glances at Max, who shrugs.
“Milla was captured about three months ago, while we were on what should have been a straightforward job. But when we broke into the prison she was supposed to have been remanded to so we could rescue her, she was already gone, with no obvious trail as to where she’d been transferred.”
“Maybe she’s dead,” Beckett says, though she at least has the sense to look contrite about it. “They often execute prisoners quickly. I know it’s what I expected.”
“But what about a trial?” I ask. “People aren’t just executed in the Senestris justice system.”
Beckett gives a contemptuous roll of her eyes, but she doesn’t answer my question.
“She’s not dead,” Max tells her. “We’d know if she was.”
I want to ask him how they can be so certain, but Ian is talking again. “Anyway, we found her after the prison. It took us a little while—we had to get some money together for bribes—but we found out she’d been transferred to the Caelestis, though as far as we could tell, there was no official paperwork to back it up. With a few more bribes, we got taken on as guards—their security is actually pretty lax, like they think they’re too fucking important for anyone to mess with. But by the time we got there, she was already gone.”
“When was this?” Beckett asks.
“About two months ago. We figured she was transferred, so we got our very expensive accomplice here”—he waves a hand in Gage’s direction—“to break into the records and learned that she was taken off the Caelestis and onto the Reformer. An illegal prison ship run by raiders out of Vistenia. But there was no record of where she’d been shipped to.”
“So we hung around until the Reformer was due again,” Max continues. “We planned to stow away and find out where the prisoners are taken after Doc V has finished with them. We did manage to figure out that they’re not taken back to the prisons.”
“Maybe she just dumps them in space,” Beckett suggests helpfully. “Problem solved. She really is a miserable fuck.”
“Max told you,” Ian growls. “Milla is alive.”
He seems so sure, but how?
“Anyway,” Max continues, “we all know how well that plan went down.”
Ian scowls. “Yeah, so now all we can do is make a visit to the Reformer’s home port on Vistenia and hope we can bribe or otherwise coerce someone into telling us where she was headed.”