But then, he does have everything to lose. I, meanwhile, have already lost everything.
“Thank you, M.A.R.I.E.,” I say, stepping forward. The doors open as though pushed by invisible hands. My legs are wobbly, but somehow I stride into the world-renowned Appartement de la Reine.
It looks…like it always does.
The enormous canopied bed, golden curlicued wallpaper, feathered wall hangings, candled chandeliers. All behind a golden railing that gives the illusion of keeping dangerous things out.
The bots are already busily unpacking my clothing and putting it into the wardrobe—not a walk-in closet so much as an entire adjoining room. Every piece of my clothing will fill but a fraction of it. I remember looking at my now-former bedroom in wonder when we first relocated from our modest house in Versailles City, at the edges of the court, to the finery of our rooms in the palace. It felt like such an increase! This new step up is easily as significant. The luxury that surrounds me defies imagination, and sometimes I wonder how the Sun King of so many centuries ago did imagine it without the aid of digital technology.
Though the floor is convincingly wooden in front of the golden railing that divides the room, behind it lies a carpet so thick and soft it’s like walking across a marshy lawn. The walls are alive with intricate silken coverings, painstakingly restored when Sonoma bought the Palace of Versailles, and the gilding on every surface glows so bright it reflects dully on my face.
The candled chandeliers are lit, and a fire is burning in the enormous golden fireplace, but even so, I shiver.
I peer back at His Highness, but he seems to have lost interest in me, instead muttering into the panel near the door that constitutes M.A.R.I.E.’s presence in this room. I should be curious as to what limitations and rules he’s enacting in whispers, but it’s not as though I can do anything about that right now, and exhaustion is setting in. So I open the low golden gate and step to the enormous canopied bed and wonder if it’s the same bedding Justin’s mother slept in before she died. Cheery thought, that.
I never wanted this. I intended to make my own place at court—maybe start in the software division. I’d been working on Sonoman algorithms long enough to qualify for an internship. I could inherit my family’s shares eventually and be a Lady in my own right. Marry when and if it suited me. I just wanted to be a coder; they decided to make me Queen.
“I’ll leave you here, then,” the King says at full volume. Now that we’re alone in the royal rooms, the public formality is gone from his tone. “But you know where to find me if you have a nightmare.” His voice is cheeky, humorous, and you could almost believe we were friends making jabs.
“My chamber door will be locked, I hope,” I say in a voice of thin glass.
“If you wish it so,” he replies calmly, and sweeps me a low bow. He seems to sense he shouldn’t push me any further tonight. I have no doubt he’ll resume being intolerable tomorrow.
The click of my door closing echoes. I drop my façade and slump against the confines of my stays as I stare around at my gilded cage—the place where I’ll reside for the foreseeable future.
I will never call it home.
“May I undress you?” The familiarity of the synthesized voice is the only thing that prevents me from leaping out of my skin.
“Of course,” I mumble, realizing the sun is already starting to brighten the windows.
I cross the room to the dressing stool that came with my new quarters. I’ll have to order a new one that isn’t raised so high off the floor. By the time I finally stopped growing, I was 177 centimeters tall—five foot ten inches—and half a head taller than most full-grown women. I’d simply stand on the floor to be undressed, but the sensors in the stool orient the bots. So I tower over them the way I tower over most of the ladies at Versailles. I’ve grown used to it.
His Highness’ mother must have been quite diminutive. She and the former King Wyndham both died when His Highness was fifteen. It’s strange to think that two people can be so wealthy, so powerful, that they literally own their own kingdom…and accidents still happen. An electrical storm downed their jet over the ocean somewhere between Australia and India. The wreckage was found months later, but the bodies never were. There were murmurs, of course. Deluded conspiracy theorists who spun tales of deaths faked, assassinations carried out, tech tampered with. But I think the truth is simple: they died. And no one meant for it to happen.
I hold my arms out and the bots carefully remove each delicate piece of my gown. A bot plucks at my hairpins until the entire dark brown mass tumbles down from its high pompadour. I sigh in relief and massage my scalp, rubbing my fingertips in tiny circles.
With a few theatrical exceptions—and the artistic exterior of the bots—we’ve escaped the signature powdered wigs of the Baroque era, thanks in part to a convincing argument that hygiene, rather than fashion, was their impetus. But elaborate updos are still a fixture. Some of the ladies of the court use wire forms beneath their hair to achieve greater height—certainly Molli and Lady Mei do—but I’ve been both blessed and cursed with thick, semi-wavy hair, so I merely get dozens of hairpins.
While rubbing my scalp, I almost miss one of the bots reaching for the ties on my corset. “No!” I say, too harshly, then add an apologetic “Thank you,” as if it had feelings. “I generally sleep in my stays.” I try not to feel too annoyed by the mistake; M.A.R.I.E. knows my preferences, or should, but if my profile didn’t transfer properly to this new room, I can hardly blame her. His Highness may have told her to start afresh. That would be just like him—to try to make his soon-to-be Queen up from scratch.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” the bot replies—technically the proper title for the occupant of this room. It would have said the same thing if I’d claimed to sleep sopping wet and could she please dump a barrel of water over my head.
Tasks completed, the mask-faced bots make synchronized bows and wheel back toward their concealed cubbies, executing their standard shutdown sequence. They’ll awaken again at the slightest command, but until then, I’m alone.
I stare at myself in the full-length mirror. My white silk shift strains across my breasts, still pushed up by the corset. Below my stays the shift protrudes in a light, semisheer cascade of skirt that reaches to precisely three fingers’ width from the ground. My hands go to—and nearly circle—my overly cinched waist, and I try to take a deep breath, which is, of course, not possible. But it hurts, a familiar, comforting hurt that tends to settle not around my stomach, but in the form of a persistent jab at the bottom of my ribs.
It’s so different from when I first started wearing corsets. I was excited to be laced into my first set of stays. It’s a sign of emerging womanhood, and in her heart of hearts, I think every girl wishes she could fast-forward the arduous process of becoming into actually being a woman.
When I put on most of my height, it became apparent I wouldn’t be one of those frail, willowy nymphs. I was tall, and I was solid. With another ten kilos I might even have been called stout. But while Mother’s plans would never have allowed that, the fact remained that I was not and would never again be small. So instead Mother ordered that my corsets be maintained at the same measurements even as I continued to grow. When my body changed so rapidly that I felt almost a stranger in it, I found an inexplicable satisfaction in exploring the limits of my laces.
At the end of the day, though, I was grateful to put them away.
Until I witnessed the King killing that girl. When the time came that night to unlace my stays…I simply declined. Every week or two, when it stops hurting, I set the bots to pull my laces a bit tighter. Now I have nearly the smallest waist in court, despite my height. The other ladies think it’s because I’m vain.
In truth, it oddly anchors me. Maybe it’s the pain in my ribs that reminds me I’m alive.
I STAND BEFORE the door of what was my home only twelve hours ago and knock. How odd that feels. I’ve never knocked on this door. The realizatio
n gives me a confusing ache in my chest. After a full minute, I enter my code on the camouflaged pad and let myself in. Once alone in the foyer, I pull out a handkerchief, wipe my sweaty palms, and try to get hold of myself. This is my father, for crying out loud.
But he might have the answer.
Even when I was selling every piece of jewelry I could put my sometimes-sticky fingers on, the possibility of escape felt so remote as to be fantastical. But now? Maybe. Just maybe.
I tuck the handkerchief away and key open the interior door that leads to my father’s rooms. While my eyes adjust from the brightness of the foyer, I peer into the shadows of his study. The space on the ground where he was huddled last night is empty. After pulling the study door closed, I head down the hall to his bedroom, and there I find him fully dressed and sprawled facedown on top of the damask bedspread.
It’s a step up from the floor.
“Father.” My voice doesn’t rouse him, but it was worth a five-second try. In the bathroom I find a washcloth and wet it. Then I lift my heavy skirts to sit on the bed beside him and press the chilly cloth against his cheeks and forehead until he begins to stir—with plenty of groans of protest.
His eyes are bloodshot when he opens them. “Dani?” His breath is so foul I have to hold mine.
I briefly explain my new living arrangements, more to pass the time while he gathers his wits than because I think he’s going to remember. Or care very much.
But I’m wrong. “That bastard! He can’t have you!” he shouts, and I put out both hands to quiet his ravings.
“He won’t,” I promise, sardonically amused at the tardiness of his protests. “But I need your help.”
He looks at me with a touch of clarity, but before he can speak I hold up a finger for his attention. His eyes follow my hand as I dig into my pocket and remove a small contact case. I pop out my Lens and put it in the opaque container. Offline times are easier to explain than damning details. “Tell me about these patches,” I say once the canister of saline is closed.
He looks stricken with shock. And guilt. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“No,” I say, cutting him off before he can get emotional. “What’s done is done. How did you come to obtain them?”
His jaw flexes; he must think this is some kind of trap. “Tell me,” I demand, and even to my own ears I sound more like my mother than myself, and I hate it.
He sits in stunned silence until I want to shake him, but I force myself to remain motionless and continue glaring instead.
“Two weeks after…after the incident.” He stops, grits his teeth, and says in a shaky voice, “After your mother sold you.” I can’t help but be pleased that at least he understands how unforgivable it is. “I was in Versailles. The city, not the country.”
It is, unfortunately, a distinction we often have to make. The name of the historic French city surrounding the palace complex is also…Versailles. Though Sonoma lobbied France to change the name to avoid confusion, France predictably refused. But being so close to Sonoman-Versailles—the country—the culture of our court has leaked into Versailles—the city—and it’s an odd mishmash of modern and faux-Baroque culture. It’s where we lived before my father inherited his palace apartment in Sonoman-Versailles—the country.
“A tavern in Versailles,” my father amends, pulling my attention back. At least he’s being forthright. “I was very, very drunk and a man approached me and we…we talked.”
“About what?”
“You, mostly.”
Ah, the joys of life in the public eye.
“He had no love for our King. But I did not spill your secrets.”
My secrets indeed.
“We groused about His Highness and his power-hungry ways, and I confessed that I had failed to protect you. How much…how often I now found myself soused to drown my guilt. He told me there was something better. He told me about the patches, gave me a few.”
My eyes widen. “At forty euros apiece, that’s a generous gift.”
But his only response is a dismissive shrug. “I tried one that night and I—” He can’t hide a smile. “I’d never felt better.”
“And after that?”
“I returned to the tavern. It took a few nights, but he came back. We struck a deal. Then…” His voice fades and he waves his hand to indicate a story that needs no telling.
My eyes dart to his arm, where—though covered by his wrinkled linen sleeve—I know his patch is affixed. “Why don’t I know about this stuff?”
He snaps out of his daze. “It’s not for courtiers.”
I raise a questioning eyebrow, not bothering to point out the obvious fact that he is a courtier.
“I have to be careful. If the King finds out, I…”
He doesn’t want to say it, but the look on his face communicates his fears well enough. At the very least, the King would put a stop to my father’s illicit purchases, just as my mother and I put a stop to his drinking.
“Where’s the envelope?”
Suspicion is etched deeply in his eyes, but he intuits that I’m in charge today. Besides, his pocket is hardly the most brilliant hiding place.
I rise and walk to the window, separating one patch from the others and holding it up to the light. Even through the white backing I can see the thin layer of shimmering specks that caught my eye last night. “What are you?” I whisper. Then, returning the patch to the envelope, I address him again. “You’re certain the rest of the nobility doesn’t know about this?”
“And you must not tell,” he pleads, laying one hand beseechingly on my arm. I’ve never seen him so afraid; the thought of losing access to his little adhesive friends has set him to trembling.
I finger the velvet purse looped around my wrist and begin pacing. “How do you get it?”
“A man—”
“Of course,” I say. “The man from last night.”
“He comes to my rooms, dressed as a servant.”
That throws me off a bit. Most of our servants are bots. About forty years ago the board decided that serving among the upper class creates jealousy and aspirations that could tear down our society, just as the class divide of the 1700s led to the French Revolution. So they replaced humans with bots wherever possible. Beyond the historical facts, I’d never particularly noticed nor cared.
The number of things I’m discovering I neither noticed nor cared about before is growing uncomfortably large.
Still, there are a fair number of real people on staff—it wouldn’t be difficult to add another servant to the mix, not with my father’s credentials. “You have a prearranged time?”
“We exchange notes.”
I consider that. The obvious answer is to be present during one of these meetings, but I’m not certain I want to wait six more days.
“Could you deliver a note for me?” I ask. One note. I’ll trust him with one note and then I’ll never have to put my faith in him again.
“For you? But why?”
“You don’t want to know, nor do I care to tell you.” I sweep from the room, my skirts swishing against both sides of the doorframe as I nearly run to the desk in his study. A quick search of the top drawer yields a small supply of stationery and a ballpoint quill. I scribble a few lines, then reach into my well-hidden purse and carefully count out ten thousand euros.
It hurts to look at the stack on the desk.
Six hundred euros my father paid for one batch of patches. Six hundred. At first glance that seems hardly worth noticing—the gown I’m wearing is probably worth two or three thousand. But of course it wasn’t paid for with euros. It was paid for with credits, the unimaginatively christened scrip Sonoma pays its employees and accepts at its various commercial outlets.
Credits can theoretically be exchanged for euros, or dollars, or yen, but the rate is beyond abysmal. Outside Sonoma’s sphere of influence, credits might as well be the plastic chips children use when they’re learning to play piquet. The meager contents of my c
ash box are already worth dramatically more than the credits in my bank account. And this stack of bills represents a not-insignificant percentage of my precious savings.
My hand shakes as I tuck the money into a fresh envelope. A token of good faith, reads my freshly penned missive. More like a token of desperation.
I turn to find my father standing in the doorway, studying me, confused. I’d be confused too. But I gather my composure and take small, graceful steps toward him, every centimeter the lady I pretend to be. “For your criminal man,” I say sternly. “And do not take so much as a single bill from this envelope.”
The packet falls into my father’s palm with a faint smack. He stares at it, then me, then it.
“If,” I say harshly, “that note and the money inside reach its destination, I will”—I swallow hard, then force the words out—“I will take over paying for your patches.” Though take over is misleading at best, as I’ve technically been paying for them all along.
The look he gives me is a confusing mixture of apology, resignation, and shame. He says nothing. After a moment, he simply nods.
“Today,” I add firmly. Not only for my own designs, but it’s best to remove temptation from my father’s grasp as quickly as possible.
“I’d better go,” I say, taking a few moments to reinsert my Lens and pull on my gloves. “Dinner plans.”
“It’s midafternoon,” my father protests, and for the first time since I arrived—the first time in weeks—I get the impression he wants me to stay.
It’s not possible, of course. “When one is dining with the devil himself,” I mutter, “a vast amount of preparation is in order.”
ON TUESDAY MORNING—before I would expect any of the fashionables to be awake—my black, self-driving car slips through the golden gates of Versailles. It’s only when we’ve left the Sonoman-Versailles grounds that I speak my final destination to the Nav controls. Eyebrows tend to rise when one wants to go to Paris. It’s no secret France hates us. And I, for one, completely understand. The founders of Sonoman-Versailles lied their way through the purchase of one of France’s most beloved sites just shy of a hundred years ago.