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  “How?” Thalina asked.

  “Because she didn’t dream,” Venero supplied. “If I hadn’t tried to send her a dream, and had the ability to do so in the first place, I wouldn’t have known, either.”

  “And neither of us guessed about Felice,” Gemma said.

  “Neither did I,” Thalina sighed, her gaze fixed on the automaton. “It’s amazing that they were so advanced. I wish I’d taken a closer look at your pet when I had the chance.” Gemma saw the yearning in her sister’s eyes. “I’d love to see an android again,” she said softly. “I wouldn’t miss a second chance.”

  “You’d just want to take it apart,” Gemma teased.

  “I’d want to know whether I could tell its nature,” Thalina said, then smiled. “And then I’d want to take it apart.” She turned to Ouros and raised her voice. “Will you send me to Cumae, Father? I could train as a Warrior Maiden, the way Gemma did.”

  “No,” Ouros said flatly. “Such a course would be dangerous.”

  “It wasn’t for Gemma!”

  “You and Gemma have very different natures,” their father said. “Gemma was always skilled at fighting and alert to her circumstance at all times. I knew that she would defend herself well on Cumae, regardless of what happened. You, however, can lose yourself in an intellectual puzzle, showing such focus that everything else in your vicinity becomes irrelevant to you. The same keen attention to detail that allowed you to create this marvel could be perilous to your survival.” His brows rose. “And that means, my dear Thalina, that you will remain where I can ensure your protection, until the Carrier of your Seed is revealed. I hope that he proves himself worthy of becoming your HeartKeeper, but if not, you will remain beneath my care.”

  Thalina frowned, but had no chance to argue.

  Their father managed the situation as he often did. He turned and raised his hands to the others, changing the subject in his royal way. “Let us applaud the cleverness of Thalina in creating this automaton and her generosity in giving it to Gemma and Venero as a wedding gift.” The family clapped heartily. “Let us thank Thantos for his tutelage and his indulgence of a royal curiosity.” The applause grew louder. Ouros turned to gesture at the automaton. “And let us watch this dragon hatch once again, before we descend to the great hall to dine and celebrate the marriage of Gemma and Venero!”

  The family hooted and cheered, gathering closer as Gemma pushed the gold button one more time. Her thoughts were spinning, because she understood Thalina’s frustration. Maybe she could convince Venero to take a trip outside their system and take Thalina along. Their father might allow Thalina to travel under her sister’s protection, and Thalina could satisfy some of her curiosity.

  It wasn’t the right moment to make such a suggestion, but Gemma would watch and wait for it. She wanted all of her sisters to be as happy as she was, and once she was securely established as Queen of Regalia, she might be able to help to make that happen.

  “First things first,” Venero whispered, so obviously guessing her thoughts that Gemma smiled at him.

  “Don’t cheat,” she advised.

  He held his fingertips to his heart. “And provoke a dragon queen? I’m not that foolish.” He caught her close and whispered in her ear. “But I don’t need to peek into your thoughts. I know you because I love you. Let’s secure our future, then see what we can do.” He lifted one brow. “I just might have to go to Advocia for advice.”

  “I do love you,” Gemma said with heat. The newly married pair kissed just as the automaton finished its sequence, much to the delight of the family surrounding them.

  Chapter One

  There were no dragons on Incendium.

  Acion wasn’t disappointed because he didn’t have the programming for such an emotional reaction. He wasn’t surprised, since he didn’t have that capacity, either. All the same, he had a sense of something lacking.

  That was new, so he analyzed it.

  It was a strange awareness, unlike anything he’s experienced before. It was so unusual that he couldn’t even compare it to anything. (He tried.)

  He walked through Incendium’s capital city, seeking explanations in his vast datastores.

  There was a fifty per cent probability that this reaction was due to the fact that he couldn’t add to his log by investigating a life form he hadn’t previously encountered. But still, it was illogical that he’d never experienced this sense of lack before. He’d been confronted with such situations many times in the past and had simply awaited new opportunities to add to his log.

  There was a ninety-five per cent chance that this new experience was due to the enhanced programming that the Hive had insisted upon installing before Acion’s departure on this mission. That would explain its novelty.

  The notion satisfied Acion. He calculated a ninety-seven per cent probability that the Hive was testing this new software. That was logical. He existed to serve. Acion gave full rein to his newfound sense of incompletion, knowing that the data from his sensors could only help the Hive to continue to refine androids such as himself.

  But where were the dragons? Incendium was ruled by a king who was a dragon shifter, who was married to a dragon shifter, and who had twelve dragon shifter daughters. Incendium had a population that was predominantly humanoid, but which also included about seven per cent dragon shifters. This information was in his brief. Given the number of people in Incendium’s capital city, Acion found it reasonable that he should have seen at least one dragon. In fact, by his calculations, based on the number of humanoids he’d counted since leaving the starport, he should have seen forty-three.

  But he hadn’t.

  Not one.

  Oh, there were dragons on pennants, dragon-shaped jewelry, dragons embroidered on clothing and dragons in shop windows. He paused before one window, that of a clockmaker, his attention caught by a glittering display. The dragon flapped its wings and took flight, circling around a castle tower and breathing fire. The castle was about half Acion’s height and the dragon could have sat on his hand.

  The children on either side of him were clearly delighted, but Acion didn’t understand. The dragon was made of metal. The “fire” was a twisting piece of orange glass, fixed in the dragon’s mouth, which spun as the dragon “flew.” The dragon was secured to a metal stick, which terminated in a track that circled the castle. It was mechanical and not a real dragon at all.

  He considered that as an illusion, it was somewhat lacking. What was the appeal?

  The children chattered to each other in their excitement, using the universal galactic tongue. Acion heard an inflection on the vowels, which must be the local variant, but knew he could mimic that well enough.

  “Where are the real dragons?” he asked one child.

  “You’re not from here,” the little boy declared, startling Acion with his conviction.

  A most unexpected assertion, and one worthy of investigation. “How can you tell?” The boy’s reply would help Acion to improve his ability to blend into local society.

  Not that he would be on Incendium for long.

  “Everyone knows they’re in the palace,” the boy said with scorn and pointed to the castle that loomed over the town. It was built of local stone cut into large blocks and constructed upon a natural hill. Acion knew this from his brief, but found that the actual castle appeared much larger than in the records he’d reviewed. The biggest dragon pennant he’d seen so far snapped in the wind above its high tower. It was deep blue with a golden dragon on it.

  He recognized the colors and insignia of the reigning monarch, King Ouros.

  High above the tower, Acion could detect the starport of Incendium in low orbit, with shuttles rising to it and descending from it. They appeared as lights in a line, moving slowly up or down. Just hours before, he’d been there himself. He’d rented a Starpod of his own, as instructed, in order to ensure that his own quick departure from Incendium city wasn’t hampered and left it at the star station in Incendium cit
y. He estimated that he would be at the port again within 9.4 local hours.

  Acion realized the child was still watching him, waiting for a reply.

  “Then I’ll look there,” he said and bowed to the little boy. The brief had said that bowing was important in Incendium society, but Acion’s move seemed to amuse the boy. “Thank you for your assistance.” Acion turned to stride to the castle.

  “Where are you from?” the boy called after him, but Acion ignored him.

  That data was not available to that individual at that time.

  It occurred to him he might have just spoken to a dragon shifter, who had chosen his humanoid form for the moment.

  Acion reviewed the information provided to him. The dragon shifters of Incendium came of legal age at eighty-one Incendium years, but there was no clear information as to their age when they gained the ability to shift shape in the first place. He made a notation on the Incendium file in his memory, drawing attention to the missing detail, then continued onward.

  What was this strange sense he felt? He might call it desire, but it wasn’t sexual. He might call it a need, but it wasn’t like his body’s imperative for food or water or sleep. Acion searched the thesaurus in his databank and found a curiously apt word.

  Yearn.

  He tried it out. He yearned to see a dragon. That sounded true. It sounded right. It felt right, which was even more interesting. Acion nodded, satisfied by the Hive’s modifications to his programming. What nuance. What subtlety. His reaction was almost organic.

  What was the cost of the change? Would his other reactions, the ones that ensured his survival, be compromised?

  Acion ran a check of his systems and found all operating at full capacity.

  The Hive had called the modifications “enhancements.” There was, after all, a ninety-seven per cent probability that Acion and his mission was a test of the effectiveness of these enhancements, whatever they were.

  This was as it should be.

  Acion existed to serve.

  * * *

  Thalina was in the chamber deep beneath her father’s castle called the Vault, where the security system of the palace was monitored and where the processors were stored.

  She was bored.

  The processors in question were comparatively large, each being a cube two-hand-spans on a side. Thalina thought them ridiculous clumsy compared to the personal computers they all used, which were thin films that could adhere to any surface. She usually wore hers on the inside of her left forearm. There was no doubting the impressive power of the nine main processors. They controlled all the exits and entrances to the palace, as well as monitoring every window and door, external and internal. There were very few places in the palace that weren’t monitored—the royal beds and lavatories were an exception. The processors also automatically backed up the data on every personal film in the palace at short, regular intervals and kept it all forever.

  Despite the elegance and efficiency of the system, something was wrong.

  Worse, King Ouros had been the one to notice it.

  Because Thalina, his third daughter, had always been mechanically inclined, he’d invited her to join him in the chamber for the investigation. She would much rather have gone to the clockmaker in town to check his progress on his newest automaton, but she didn’t protest. The new automaton was to be a gift for her father on the anniversary of his coronation, a collaboration between herself and the clockmaker, and intended to be a surprise. She didn’t dare even think about it in her father’s presence.

  Thalina had been to the Vault before, so wasn’t particularly interested in its contents. Her tutor had given her a challenge the year before, to identify the means by which an item entered the palace and left it again, so she’d spent a good bit of time in the Vault solving that riddle.

  The three guards listened as her father explained the difficulty with his access to the secret passage that led from his personal office to the audience chamber. Ector, the Captain of the Guard, stood before her father, with two of his subordinates ensuring that the recordings in question were displayed at Ouros’ command. They reviewed the recorded sequences of the king trying to open and seal the portal that very morning, and checked his access code.

  It should have worked.

  It hadn’t worked.

  They reviewed the sequence again and again and again, which showed her father to have been right—again and again and again—an exercise that pleased him enormously. Thalina, in contrast, found her toe tapping.

  “Might I look at the gates?” she asked, wanting to have a glimpse of the bustling village instead of this utilitarian little room. One of the lower ranking guards indicated a viewing screen with a bow. “Have the codes changed?” she asked, knowing they must have been.

  “On schedule, princess. Of course.” The guard entered the new code, and Thalina watched him to memorize it. She had no intention of using it. It was just her nature to collect such information.

  The screen was quickly filled with a display from the lowest gate, the one that allowed waste water to flow into the river. It was barred with a portcullis and metal mesh, naturally, which provided no obstacle to the water but a considerable barrier to anything larger than a mouse.

  “It appears that the door unlocks then locks again before it can be opened,” Ector said to her father.

  “Exactly!” Ouros agreed. “This next time, I tried to grab it.”

  “But even you weren’t quick enough, your highness. That is remarkable.”

  “And the mechanism?” asked another guard.

  “It’s oiled and perfectly operational, Father,” Thalina supplied without turning around. “I checked it yesterday when you first complained about it.”

  “It seemed slower yesterday,” her father explained.

  “The issue has to be the computer controlling the latch,” Thalina added.

  “We shall see about that, princess,” said Ector, clearly disliking the implication that any failure originated with the systems he monitored.

  Thalina sighed, knowing she’d never be a diplomat. It was better to just be quiet. Definitely simpler. She toggled the display to the next gate. This one led to the small bailey behind the kitchens. Some eggs were being delivered and the cook was arguing over the price. Thalina yawned and moved on.

  There were two knights riding through the main gate. The one on the right was rather handsome and looked familiar. Thalina magnified the image. It was Thierry, one of her father’s favorite champions. A notorious flirt. Her sister Flammara was obsessed with Thierry, and he was audacious enough to encourage that princess’s attention. He’d even ridden into tournament with Flammara’s colors recently, at the Inter-Galactic Joust on Certamen, much to the disapproval of Ouros. Thalina doubted the flirtation would end well for Thierry if he continued to tempt fate.

  Or the king.

  She changed the display. Three astrologers were at the queen’s gate, a smaller gate on one side of the palace and one that was more discreet. It looked as if one astrologer was Nero, the new arrival who Peri liked so well. Thalina didn’t mind him, although she wished he’d hurry up and finish the charts of all the sisters he’d promised to do. That was probably her mother’s fault, though. Ignita had appointed Nero to be her own astrologer and probably was monopolizing his time. Nero had an unusual method of casting a chart, one that gave different results and one that annoyed the senior members of the Royal College of Astrology like Astrum. Thalina liked him for that alone. He said he could chart when and where each princess would meet her HeartKeeper, which was enough to spark the curiosity of all the princesses, Thalina included.

  She toggled the display. A merchant at the viceroy’s door, looking for payment. Kraw was greeting him politely, so it was all routine. She yawned again and moved to the next portal.

  And straightened. There was nothing routine about the man knocking at the main portal for admission. Thalina had never seen a man like him. It wasn’t the way he was dre
ssed, for he wore a white shirt with a dark tabard, dark chausses and dark boots like pretty much every other man in Incendium. His cape was plain and dark but looked heavy and warm. He didn’t wear a hat and his head was shaved bald, which was unusual.

  But best of all, he was tall and broad-shouldered, built strong like the warriors in her father’s employ. Thalina guessed he was all muscle and a good fighter. There was something agile about his movements and she liked the glint in his eyes. He wasn’t dumb, like many of the tournament fighters.

  Like Thierry.

  A very feminine bit of Thalina was intrigued.

  Maybe he was a mercenary.

  “I have a gift for the king,” he said to the porter, his deep voice devoid of inflection. “I will present it to him.”

  “The frack you will,” the guard on duty there muttered, probably not realizing his words would be picked up by the monitoring system. He raised his voice. “I will require your identification and credentials, good visitor, before you can be admitted to the palace.”

  The arrival tugged off his gloves and offered his left hand, which had a screen embedded in the palm. How interesting. He probably wasn’t from Incendium or another planet in the Fiero-Four system because such augmentations were suspect—given Scintillon’s Law—and unfashionable. Thalina magnified the screen for a better look and managed to read the displayed words as they flashed.

  His name was Acion.

  He was from Cumae.

  He closed his hand as the guard verified his information.

  Cumae? Gemma had trained on Cumae and her best friend there and Sword Sister, Arista, had actually been an android. Gemma hadn’t guessed, which said a great deal about the sophistication of the android in question.

  Thalina was sure that Arista had fellow androids. No maker could create an android that sophisticated without having made more before.

  Or even after.

  Now that Acion had removed his gloves, Thalina glimpsed a blue tattoo under the silver ring on his right thumb. She tried to magnify the image to get a better look at the tattoo, but the movement of his hands and the ring obscured it.