“All right.” Prince Grantyde takes his turn at the plinth. “While the good Brothers are speaking with our Eqtoran colleagues, I wanted to speak to the rest of you. A lot of you I’m talking to for the first time.”

  It’s so strange to hear such a plainspoken accent coming from someone so statuesque and richly adorned. Someone who looks like a pre-Imperial warrior king from a storybook and sounds like a turbine jockey. He feels beneath the plinth, maybe for some kind of winch to raise it, fails to find one, and plucks the stem of the microphone off the dais instead.

  “First off,” he says. “You should all know that your work has blown me away. I won’t bother reiterating how much of a backwood yokel I am to you, but where I come from, the biggest thing we’ve ever put up on a heavenly body outside our homeworld was a flag, and we felt pretty goddamn amazing about that. When I look at what you folks have built in the time it takes to grow a fucking carrot, I get short of breath.”

  No matter how much he doesn’t want to admit it, Aokan feels it. Try as he might not to fall for it, the Prince’s sheer earnestness has flipped the switch in his brain from cynic to subject. The tingling in his blood—the glow of pride that a superior has recognized him. There’s tails wagging in the audience.

  And if none of them know what a carrot is, they get the gist.

  “You’ve done this for each other and for your union and for pay,” the Prince continues. “But you’ve done it for me, too. And I am honored by your work. I never thought I’d have subjects. I resisted it for a long time. Your loyalty has changed me. I can’t be ashamed of it or hide from it. It’s priceless.”

  His eyes shut and the room inhales as he does. Aokan is straight as an arrow, but the alien is so undeniably handsome he feels his heart skip when His Majesty’s jaw sets.

  He removes his anticomps, revealing richly brown eyes under brows heavy with care. A monarch’s eyes. A murmur moves through the crowd.

  “All I can do is try to be worthy of you,” Prince Grantyde says. “Which means keeping you safe. So.” He adjusts his grip on the mic. “We’ve gone back and forth on disclosing this to you, but I decided it was unfair to send you back out there without forewarning. There are efforts underway by outside parties to disrupt and sabotage the Korak Refinery.”

  This triggers another wave of whispers throughout the assembly. Scores of anticomped eyes look Aokan’s way. Royak is a pair of them, and the expression of uncertainty and suspicion on his face hurts a piece of Aokan he thought had long become too calloused to feel anything.

  “These efforts will fail,” His Majesty continues. “The Korak refinery will be the envy of the sector. I look at you and ask myself how could it not be? You and I will ensure it. But I need your help. Anyone with any information about this—if you’ve been approached, if you’ve seen anything, whatever it is—I am coming to you as your Prince with the solemn order that you share it. You can do so anonymously, or just speak to your supervisor and they’ll come to me. We strongly suspect these efforts resulted in the collapse a couple of cycles ago, and while we can thank the Gods of Qarnaq that there were no casualties on that occasion, we also got lucky. Can’t depend on that a second time.”

  Grantyde’s sweeping gaze pauses on Aokan. There’s a twinge of recognition in those big coffee-colored eyes.

  “So if you’ve got something to say, and your loyalty for me isn’t enough to say it, then say it out of loyalty to the guys next to you, to their safety, and to your union.” He sets the mic back down and hunkers downward into it. “And that’s that. There’s lunch in the next room as recompense for dragging everyone’s asses in for an all-hands. It’s bw’muna steaks, which—”

  An audible reaction at this, breaking into awkward laughter at the group gasp. Some appreciative whistles and scattered applause.

  The Prince smiles and slides his anticomps back on, tossing his chin-length hair to readjust it. “Which everyone says I need to try. So I’ll see you in there.”

  Aokan watches him descend the steps and into the crowd. Shaking hands, repeating people’s names back to them. He doesn’t talk like a nobleman, but he certainly loves to be liked.

  Aokan’s shoulders tense as Prince Grantyde approaches. Then they loosen again as a knot of unionists pass by to the canteen and he sees the woman walking by the nobleman’s side (not the Countess, the other one). Corska Ondai winks at him.

  “Aokan of Lilek.” The Prince’s hand descends toward him like a big pink shuttle descending. “Been looking for the chance to talk to you outside an interrogation room.”

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  Aokan takes it, shakes it, bows. “Honored, Majesty.”

  The Maekyonite keeps his grip on Aokan’s hand and folds at the waist to get in Aokan’s airspace. Aokan’s used to that by now what with the Eqtorans but it still chafes. Oh well.

  “I hope you don’t resent me for keeping you from lunch,” Prince Grantyde says, voice low, “but I’m meeting with Corska, and she’s asked for you.”

  Behind Grantyde, Corska bounces her brows.

  Aokan steps back from their awkward handshake-hold. “Lead on.”

  They ascend the stairs on the stage corner and step through the seamless door into the administrative guts of the conference hall. Again the eyes of his fellows, dancing across his back as he accompanies the Prince.

  “I wanted to ask your forgiveness,” His Majesty says, as they depart the cavernous main hall. “For dragging you in on the investigation. Can’t feel good, knowing you’re doing your best to stay loyal and you’ve got people giving you the stink eye.”

  Aokan’s steps slow. “The stink eye?”

  The Prince laughs. “My bad. Maekyonite phrase. Point is that I regret we treated you that way. And I hope I can make recompense.”

  Never in a million goddamn cycles did Aokan of Lilek expect that a Prince would say something like this to him. “Uh,” he says, and that’s about as far as he gets.

  “I’ve talked with Corska and the Countess, and we think it would be fair payback to give you a pair of comp days,” the Prince says. “Just give your shift manager a tenday’s notice.”

  “Uh,” Aokan says again. “Thank you, Majesty. I will.”

  “Thank you for allowing Aokan’s presence, Majesty.” Behind their backs, Corska’s tail hovers near Aokan’s, close enough that he feels the tickle of its tuft. “If you need us to, he’s willing to be compelled to forget anything sensitive.”

  Aokan’s fused indenturement bracelet jingles as he gives two thumbs up.

  “Let’s use this room right here.” Grantyde cracks a door and ushers the two of them into a cramped side room mostly occupied by jugs of distilled water.

  Prince Grantyde sidles himself uncomfortably into a corner and looks between the two. “All right,” he says. “Let’s be brief and honest with each other, because I’m hungry as hell and I’m sure you are too. Is Narika still in your ear?”

  Corska’s slowly wagging tail stills.

  “I understand if you’ve still been taking meetings,” His Majesty says. “But I’m asking you respectfully—not Prince to subject, but as a fellow stakeholder in this refinery—to stop. That's what's eating the Eqtorans, the ones who aren't here. More meddling. I need you to stay straight on with me.”

  Corska recovers her composure by the time he’s done. “I don’t know—”

  “Sure.” Grantyde grimaces. “Sure. You don’t know what I’m talking about. But there’s something you should know. If you throw in and work with Narika, you’re working with her catspaws in the coterie, too. Which means you’re in bed with Marquess Shoskia of Ximin.”

  Corska’s mouth hardens into a line. “I take it that’s a bad thing,” she says.

  The Prince snorts as if she’d just told a joke. “Corska. C’mon. You know her. Couldn’t even hide your reaction that time, and you’re usually great at it.”

  Corska’s ears tilt backward. She is off her balance. Aokan wants to touch her, comfort her. But they are keeping it quiet in front of the royals, the delicate, beautiful little thing between them.

  “Look, guys,” His Majesty says. “I’m willing to fight, but not on two fronts, and not against people I’d honestly rather get a drink with. I understand we’re not exactly there. But you ought to know who you’re helping when you pick up the communicator for her. Wenzai is guessing that Shoskia announces her competing refinery in the next few days, try to undercut our announcement about the finished construction here.”

  “Majesty—” Corska is rarely so far from the right words. “I—I find these accusations disturbing.”

  “Accusations against who? You?” Grantyde raises an eyebrow. “You’re not my enemy, Corska, and I’m not yours. Once you see that, we can kick Shoskia’s ass, but not before. I’m gonna go get some steak now. Thank you both for all the work you’re putting in.”

  He squeezes out from his cage of water jugs and past them. He shuts the door behind him.

  “We’ll go get a couple plates,” Corska whispers. “Then you’ll come with me. You’re off-shift for the day. I’ll find a replacement.”

  Aokan’s heart speeds up. “Okay.”

  They load up with barbecue and thickly brewed black tea and then Aokan follows the angel of the union through the crinkled plastic of an arco-tube and into the worker housing. She’s on the third balcony, second hatch to the left. And so, to his delight and constant awe, is he.

  Corska kicks her shitkicker boots off and clears a space on her cluttered table for her food and her tea. Her eyes flash. “Heeeere, soldier boy,” she sing-songs, and her lovely, possessive need closes around his neck and gives him a firm tug to the couch.

  He sits down next to her, and she lounges across his lap. “I reckon we know the crab who’s living at the center of that shell company on the other side of Qarnaq II,” she says. “No wonder they’re scabbing. You know who Marquess Shoskia is?”

  “I know she’s a misandrist bitch,” Aokan says. “Anything else?”

  Corska laughs. “Nah. That’s the main point.” She swivels around so she’s straddling him. Her tail tilts his head down. “Are you ready to serve your union again, soldier boy?”

  “Always, Corska.” His hands knit shut across the small of her back. The wagging of her tail. “For you, always.”

  She cups his chin and widens her eyes. He looks into them.

  “Hit me, baby,” he says.

  Flash.

  The shadows in the room have ticked a few centimeters over. His teacup is drained; his steak is halfway finished, and its aftertaste is spiced and rich in his throat. He’s gone from sitting to laying on the couch sidesaddle; his hands have snuck their way into the back pockets of Corska’s cargo joggers. She’s kissing his chest.

  “Did we talk?” he asks.

  “We did.”

  “I’m guessing you liked what I had to say.”

  She laughs her husky laugh and nods against his chest. “I wish you could hear yourself. I think you might be the most brilliant crook I’ve ever met, Aokan of Lilek. A fucking artist.”

  “Corska.” He taps his forehead. “That’s incriminating, babe.”

  “Agh. Forgive me.” Another flash. “Forget that too,” she says. “And kiss me again.”

  He does.

  ? My 100th Life Will Be My Last ?

  by Asher Teivel

  Clara Crowsong has already lived and died ninety-nine times. This life is her last.

  My 100th Life Will Be My Last is a slow-burn progression fantasy featuring regression, necromancy, dungeon-diving, Divine Aspects, and the mystery behind Clara’s curse.