“Who sent the message to Larz? Was it Father or Mikos?”
“It came directly from Mikos, but—and I don’t know this for sure—I think they might agree on this matter. They’ve wanted Larz to denounce me and leave me for a very long time, and though they know all about bonding, and have bonded themselves, they can’t understand why he won’t just come back home and leave me behind. They believe I’ve brainwashed him in some way.”
Vannos shook his head. “I love all my brothers, but Mikos can be stubborn, and he can hold onto a grudge. He greatly influences my father too. I know Omak is really upset about the differences between Mikos and Larz, though. This all should have been settled long ago. Please be assured the rest of the family fully support Larz and his choices.”
He offered his arm to Janos, once we had climbed down and headed inside. The Tygerians often did such things, walking closely together like that, and it wasn’t because he consideredJanos to be effeminate. Janos was small but not weak or frail, in any kind of way. I think Vannos was just trying to be nice and show solidarity. I liked him right away.
The interior was about what I expected—huge rooms with stone walls and lofty ceilings. Colorful tapestries hung on most of the walls, and thick rugs covered the floors. Massive chandeliers hung from above, and the doors and the woodwork were all made of dark and intricately carved wood. It all looked to be ancient, and I thought it was beautiful. Vannos led us to the second floor and down a long hallway to our rooms. They had put me across the hall from Janos and Larz.
Once we said our goodbyes to Prince Vannos and promised to come down for a meal as soon as we got settled, we went to our separate rooms. But I decided to explore a little before eating anything, and I had very little from my bags to put away. It could all stay in my bags for that matter and save me the trouble of putting it away. We wore very little on Laltana because of the hot weather. Mostly I wore a leather harness on my chest and a short, apron like covering that was all the soldiers wore in the blisteringly hot Herkon climate.
Because of the weather and leaving in a hurry, I hadn’t considered how much cooler it would be on Moravia. Vannos noticed though and said I could borrow some of his boys’ clothes if I needed to. But because Larz had warned me that it would be cold here on this mountain, I’d at least come prepared with a coat.
Before we left, I had dug through Luc Dimitri’s wardrobe to find the overcoat I wanted to borrow and take with me. It was an old Alliance red coat like the soldiers used to wear during the war. It came almost to the floor and was made of something called “wool blend,” according to the tag inside. It would keep me really warm.
When the Axis won, they outlawed the coats and even the use of the color red, restricting it from Earth’s use, along with their Alliance allies, reclaiming the color red for themselves. That’s the level of petty they could be. That was why the Imperial guards had adopted that shade of red for their uniforms, I’d heard. The unfortunate former Alliance soldiers had to dye their old coats black if they wanted to keep them—because they were mostly kept too poor and downtrodden by the oppressors to buy new coats. I’d had found this one in the very back of Luc’s closet, and it was pretty old and shabby—still the original color, though faded now. It was all I’d ever need, if stayed on Moravia. And I didn’t care what the Tygerians thought about it and the red color. As Luc would say,in their face. (I wasn’t totally sure what that meant, but again I kind of liked the sound of it)
Anyway, I was glad I’d borrowed it, because it was winter here on Moravia now and damn cold, so I needed to cover up a little. On Laltana, we went around half naked most of the time out of sheer necessity—since we had no tilt to our axis on Laltana, the temperatures were unchanging though to me it seemed every day was hotter than the one before. As a result, nobody cared much about nudity. Larz had already told me that I’d probably have to change the way I dressed on most other planets. Especially if I ever spent time on Tygeria or if I was around any Tygerians.
I figured I’d just tell them to mind their own damn business. But I wondered why they were such prudes about their bodies? They were just bodies and everybody had the same parts mostly. I asked Larz to explain, but his face just got red, and he said he’d tell me later, when I was older. I think he still thought of me as that dumb little nine-year-old kid he’d first met.
Anyway, Vannos sent me some trousers and a few shirts to wear that his eldest son, Bryos, had outgrown. Even though some of these Moravian princes had been born without thedoctors’ interference in their DNA, they had a huge father on both sides, so they were much larger than I was now. Bryos’s old things were of fine quality and fit me well enough, and I had the coat to wear over them. Like I said, Herkon soldiers wore very little as a rule, with their arms, legs and torsos bare to the elements, leaving us completely bare in the back with only a strip of cloth that went up and tied around the waist. It was all colored a bright red, which was King Janos’s color.
Once we arrived, I put on Bryos’s clothes, consisting of a pair of what Vannos called “tights” and a warm shirt that was a bit too small and only came down to my waist. It was still warm though, so I left it and wore the coat over it. Still feeling restless, and wanting to explore, I went downstairs and out the front door. I wanted to get a closer look at that huge chasm in front of the palace. Right away, I saw Larz standing on the front steps, looking out over the mountains too. He turned as he saw me and motioned me to come over and stand beside him.
“Am I interrupting?” I asked him.
He turned to smile at me. “Of course, not. I was just admiring the view and thinking about when I last spent time here on Moravia. It wasn’t long before I left to go for my training. My omak and my younger brother spent a whole summer here with Vannos, and he taught me and my brother Nicarr to ride arrizes. It was a good memory, and I thought about it a lot after I first got taken.”
He meant kidnapped, and I stepped closer to put a hand on his shoulder. He’d been just a kid on his way to a training camp when the Farlians had attacked their ship. The slavers had killed all the adults and taken the young boys for sex trafficking. I’d heard a little about how scared and traumatized he’d been, and about how some of those boys—all of whom were his good friends—mostly had never been found, not even their bodies, though Larz had dedicated a lot of time and effort into lookingfor all of them and bringing as many as he could find back home. Since he’d been the Governor of Laltana, he’d found more than twenty bodies and had them all taken back home to Tygeria.
He found a few of the boys still alive. Some—a very few—were still able to be reunited with their parents. Larz had been one of the lucky ones, to have landed on Laltana and been treated fairly well. He hadn’t been abused, but almost none of the others had been as lucky.
“Are you thinking of going riding later on?” I asked, mostly to change the subject, which I thought he still brooded about a little too often to be good for him.
“Maybe I will. Would you like to go with me?”
“I’d love it.”
Larz turned to smile down at me. “I love how fearless you’ve always been.” He suddenly hugged me to him so hard that he pulled me up off my feet. He hadn’t done that in a long time, and I laughed as he swung me around, like he used to do when I’d first come to Herkos.
“I’m starving. Let’s go in and find something to eat. Janos will be coming down in a minute, and I want to be on hand to meet him. He’s nervous about being here, though he’d die before he’d admit it.”
He slung his arm around my neck then like he always did and kissed my cheek, and we went inside to find some food.
****
Colonel Kirstos Vargarra of the Imperial Guards
We had arrived late in the evening, almost two full days ahead of schedule and began orbiting the planet of Moravia. We had remained cloaked, however, as Prince Mikos wanted to keep his presence a secret just yet from the residents of Moravia. His fathers were on the way from a different location, and they’dbe arriving soon as well. The old technology on the planet would be unable to detect us in any way, which would allow us to eavesdrop on their transmissions and communications if we wanted to, as well as giving us the advantage of surprise if we needed it.
We knew, for example, that Prince Larz and his entourage had arrived and that they were now on the surface at the king’s palace. This large planet, ruled by King Stefan, the son-in-law of King Davos, was an interesting one. Stefan was married to Prince Vannos, another of King Davos’s sons, whom I’d never met, and had only seen in pictures or at a distance. He had left Tygeria around the time I first attended training at the age of ten, a mandatory age at the time for all male children on Tygeria. I remember hearing about his marriage, which had occurred without the King’s permission. For a while, we’d all been excited at the prospect of a war with Moravia, because, like Larz, Vannos had been kidnapped, though as it turned out, not by the king. Anyway, unfortunately, the war had never come to fruition.
The Moravian king married the prince instead in a proper ceremony, with King Davos and his consort in attendance, and since then, a few little princes had been born to the couple. And after a while, life went on as usual. It was twenty some cycles later now, and I was finally getting a chance to go to Moravia. Not to fight them, unfortunately, but for a meeting between King Davos, Prince Mikos and two more of his sons, on what had been declared “neutral ground” by our king, at the request of his consort, Blake. Moravia was still under Tygerian rule, and a member of the Axis, so I struggled to understand any kind of neutral status for the planet, but it was well known that the king frequently indulged his consort in such ways. With any other king, it might be looked upon as a weakness, but Davos was a legendary warrior, decorated so many times for his prowess andcourage in battle that he was beyond reproach. I figured he must have his reasons.
I was observing the planet from the bridge on board Prince Mikos’s starship, sitting at a console in front of a surveillance screen focused on the palace, when I saw a figure come out the front door. I zoomed in even closer and saw one of the princes standing at the top of the broad front steps that led down to the circular driveway in front of the palace. It wasn’t one I was familiar with, so it could have been either Prince Vannos or Prince Larz, both of whom were known to be inside the palace. All of the royal princes except for Prince Rakkur looked a great deal like their father, King Davos—so much as to be unmistakably his offspring. I decided this one was probably Larz, because of his height, which was similar to His Majesty’s, along with his dark red hair color. I’d seen images of Prince Vannos, and his hair was more golden-red in color, and he was not quite as tall as his father.
The prince was very good looking, like all the others, and he had the look of a warrior. As I observed him, the door opened behind him and a smaller man in a long red Alliance coat came out to stand beside him. I bristled a little at the sight of the despised garment, which had been outlawed all over the galaxy—and then I got a look at the one wearing the coat. And I froze, my breath stuttering in my throat.
