A Treason of Truths Read online

  Lyre’s face didn’t change, her gaze still angled down, jaw tight, but Sabine was close enough now to hear the soft hitch in her breath, like fingers on silk. She pressed on before her nerves snagged on it. “Lyre, you’ve always known me, seen me, better than even my own brother. You have to know how I feel. That I—”

  The sound that brought her short wasn’t a laugh, not precisely. It was too sharp, too forceful for real humor. Lyre’s shoulders twitched, and she still wasn’t looking at her. “I’m flattered,” she muttered.

  Sabine felt her certainty sway and tried to regain some center on her emotions. “Well, you should be...”

  “Flattered,” Lyre repeated, in a flat, dull voice she usually only saved for soldiers who had proposed something particularly stupid. And finally, she looked up. Her eyes were bleak obsidian shields, polished and twice as cold. “Flattered that the Spider Queen thinks I’m so useful that she lowers herself to seduction. Really, Sabine, as you said, we know each other.”

  Sabine caught her breath. “That’s not—”

  “No? No.” Lyre glanced away again, picking at her shirt until gaining an alien kind of calm. She looked up, bright, bleak eyes, dimple, smile like a perfect, poisoned rose. A Lyre mask. “Please, don’t finish that sentence. It embarrasses both of us. We slept together once—once, Sabs—and then I assume you realized immediately that you made a mistake because we haven’t talked about it since. And that’s fine. I’m perfectly happy to provide comfort. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement—”

  “Lyre—” Sabine’s gut clenched. Provide comfort. That’d been exactly the problem back then too. Comfort hadn’t been what she felt when she looked at Lyre, not by any turn, it’d been—

  “And thank the gods, because I don’t know how I would have tolerated your shit otherwise,” Lyre barreled on. “You and your brother’s antics. Your constant all-consuming concern about legacy! As if any of this bloody game you nobles play matters.”

  A cold kind of coin flip happened in her heart. Miserable, desperate, angry, hurt. Sabine held still, because of all things, stillness was to be trusted. She could survive anything if she remained still. “You are being crude.”

  “I’m being practical.” There was a sharp edge to the way Lyre’s shoulders were set, a cutting slant to her eyes.

  Yes, well, Sabine supposed she’d embarrassed her. She’d effectively confessed her feelings to her best—only—lifelong friend, and if feelings weren’t returned...oh.

  “I see,” she said, and neatly snipped the loose threads around her emotions.

  “I knew you would.” Lyre’s voice was muddled. She ducked under Sabine’s arm in her haste to get away from her. She squared herself up to the window, facing away from Sabine. That was all right. Sabine wouldn’t be seeking her gaze again. Lyre swept up her discarded glass and emptied it down her throat in one violent motion. Her voice was almost normal when she spoke. “Now, if that’s settled, you’ll excuse me. I have a lot to do before we leave for the summit. Paperwork to inflict on Kitten and—”

  “No,” Sabine said.

  “No paperwork? But there’s nothing you love more than proper documentation, why—”

  “No,” Sabine said, embarrassment stiffening her shoulders again. “No to the summit. I cannot take anyone less than optimal to such a delicate negotiation. If you’re so weary that you must retire, I will not stop you. You are excused from my...” Her words stumbled, fading. She let her gaze rest just over Lyre’s shoulder, and let her vision disengage. The ocular shield tried to help make sense of the little light and dark she could still perceive on her right side, but only when she tried to focus. She stopped trying. The left side of her world collapsed into shadow. Maybe it would hurt less if she only half saw it. She was so tired, tired of pretending to be a hundred things, to be all things. “You are excused from service. Immediately. We thank you for your gracious service to the crown.”

  Lyre turned, but Sabine was already moving toward the door to her office. She felt a brush of air, as if Lyre had reached out a hand then hesitated. Lyre huffed at her back instead. “Don’t be ridiculous—”

  The office door slid open and Sabine waited until she was across the threshold to pivot. It forced Lyre to skip back a step on the other side. “I promise you, I’ll never be ridiculous in your presence again. If you feel so—” No. Sabine measured her breath. She didn’t want the hurt in her chest, the shame in her cheeks. No, better to be insulted instead. Proud. Anger was a kind of composure as well. “I will not require your services for the summit.”

  Lyre was always smiling with closed lips—smirking, eternally reveling at a joke only she was privy to. It was always a smile that held a secret: silent and pressed tight. She had perfect, lush lips, which was why Sabine caught the flicker of movement when they parted. Shock that was there then gone, rifled away before a new seriousness. She didn’t smile now. “You’re going to the Cloud Vault. You’ll need me.”

  “No, it appears I will not. I’m perfectly capable of handling a room of scheming diplomats.” Sabine began to close the door but was stopped by Lyre’s boot.

  “This is the Vault. You don’t understand. I have to be there.” Lyre’s tone was urgent and strained with need. If only Sabine could have drawn out such passion earlier.

  It made her heart ache, and made her offer a second chance. “Why? If I don’t understand, explain it to me, spymaster.”

  She expected the smile to return, or at least words, an arsenal of quick, clever words. Words were Sabine’s weapon of choice, she felt an expert of arguments and had a soft spot for a well-placed lie. But though others had nicknamed her the Liar, Lyre had never been less than honest with Sabine. Perhaps that’s what parted her lips, then closed them up tight again. No smile.

  It was a jagged silence, and Sabine already felt bleeding. “Enjoy your retirement, Lyre.” She smiled instead, the royal smile she practiced, thin and false. And shut the door.

  Chapter Three

  The Empire thrived because of mental metaphors. Sabine saw strategy as a game of stacked tiles, reading a room and knowing exactly where to press your finger to make obstacles fall. Galen saw strategy as a game of hist, where correct positioning and assets would win the day. But Lyre knew better. Strategy was not stacked tiles or hist.

  Strategy was physics.

  Every action had a reaction. It didn’t matter what game was being played on the surface if you knew which way the table it was played on tilted. Knew which joint to press to flip the whole table. Anticipate and control the reaction, you controlled the game.

  But Lyre had lost. She hadn’t anticipated this reaction. She had anticipated Sabine might demand she stay, even might appeal to their long...whatever this was. Lyre had thought she’d known. Lyre anticipated she might have to be brusque, painfully dismantle whatever kind impulses Sabine held. A declaration—of need, of more than a need, of feeling—no, that was never supposed to be in the cards, but Lyre was a professional. She could cut her heart out for the game. She’d done it before. Working in intelligence meant carrying your own homeland inside you, soil to absorb it all until you could bleed in private. She’d thought she could control the reaction.

  But then it was what she fell in love with in the first place; no one controlled Sabine but Sabine.

  The flat panel of locked door in front of her nose didn’t stop her—few doors in the Empire could—but the look in Sabine’s eye did. There was no controlled reaction that way, only explosion. But she still had a job to do. She couldn’t let Sabine be a victim of the Vault’s schemes. No matter the cost. She’d fucked this up, all of it, by waiting so long. She just hadn’t had the strength to let go. And now... Lyre strode out of the royal suites and tried to read the terrain of a rare mistake.

  “CHARIS.” Silver flared to life in the wall beside her, dim like a shadow but keeping up. The AI knew she preferred a subtle presence.
“Locate Galen and Olivia de Corvus.”

  It didn’t take long: “Galen and Olivia de Corvus are in the auxiliary kitchens.”

  That made this simpler. “Are they decent?”

  There was a bemused pause that was either the AI being surprised, or forced to run a check. “Neither are engaged in coitus in the auxiliary kitchens.”

  “Yet,” Lyre muttered. When Galen had brought home a refugee Syndicate caricae woman as a mate, Lyre had been concerned she’d be too skittish and repressed to warm up to the Imperial way of romantic mates. No such luck, it turned out.

  They were in their own world when Lyre strode into the kitchen. Olivia was perched on a counter, legs dangling to either side as Galen leaned in. Heads bowed, foreheads nearly touching. Another minute and they’d be rutting on the counter and that was not what Lyre needed to deal with right now.

  She cleared her throat. Galen startled, shifting just enough for Olivia to glare at Lyre from around his shoulder. “I thought you were with Sabine.”

  “That’s the problem,” Lyre said grimly. “She’s punted me.”

  “What?” Galen slid away from his mate to frown at Lyre. It was the same wrinkle of the brows that Sabine got when she was being stubborn. It fucking hurt. “What do you mean?”

  “Released from service to the crown,” Lyre said, trying for a mimic but instead falling somewhere in the realm of pinched whine. Gods, she needed to pull it together. “She says she’ll go to the summit alone.”

  “Like hell,” Olivia said with a snort.

  “Hell is Sabine scorned,” Lyre said.

  That just made Galen’s face darken further. “What did you do to my sister?”

  Not nearly as much as I’d like to have done. To her. With her. That was a truth Lyre only said to herself. Lyre let the mask answer instead. She shrugged. “Nothing. I live to serve. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. My point is Sabine is going to need you.”

  Olivia waved a hand, more to sway Galen’s darkening mood than anything. “When has Sabine not needed us?”

  “Not us—you. I need a favor.” Lyre paused and reflected. “Strike that, maybe Sabine will listen to sense from her own blood. Galen...?”

  “I will see if CHARIS will let me speak to her.” He heaved up from the bench and pressed a kiss to Olivia’s temple and left for the lift.

  “A favor, eh?” Olivia’s smile was already sharpening knives.

  “Don’t wind yourself up too much, kitten.” Lyre emphasized the nickname and Olivia scowled, as she knew she would. The predictableness of Olivia’s annoyance was almost soothing after messing things up so poorly with Sabine. Physics. Strategy was physics. “You’re gonna help me either way.”

  “After all the times you’ve made me suffer? Why would I make it that easy?”

  “Because,” Lyre said, “if Sabine goes to the Vault without me, no one will be able to protect her or the Empire.”

  She could track the moment Olivia’s mask slipped by the flinch of surprise in her eyes. Olivia was a former Whisper—a mercenary shadow for the Syn government—and it didn’t take her long to squint at Lyre’s expression and recognize something in it. The amusement dropped from her face. “What do you know about the Vault, Liar?”

  “It’s a politically neutral guild. Full of tech developed in secrecy and only selectively chosen to share with the world.”

  Olivia made a face. “Let me rephrase that, what do you know about the Vault that the rest of us don’t?”

  Lyre had come to Olivia knowing she’d pick at the seams of her secrets, just like she did hers. Their friendship, for what it was, was a camaraderie made of the long shadow of their pasts and questions not asked. She’d always appreciated that Olivia had respected that, until now.

  “Everything,” Lyre said. Her voice sounded strange to her ears, too muted and, more importantly, too vulnerable. She turned to the table and clapped her foot on a chair. She pulled a knife from her boot and began cleaning it so she wouldn’t have to see Olivia’s brow inch up. “I know everything about the Vault. I worked for them.”

  Every Syndicate citizen she had ever met wore suspicion like armor. Olivia was no exception, but Lyre had obviously caught her with something she hadn’t even imagined suspecting. The surprised sound cut off, and Lyre kept polishing her knife. “I imagine you have questions.”

  “You used to work for them? The Cloud Vault? The scary isolationist floating fucking citadel?”

  “Used to.”

  Lyre swiped the cloth over the knife twice before Olivia asked, “How long ago?”

  Lyre could see her reflection in the blade. It grimaced at her. “Not long enough. I was born there.”

  “You’re an Imperial citizen.”

  “I am now.”

  Toes scuffed the polished floor before Olivia made a deflated sound and collapsed into a chair. “Well, shit. Do they know?”

  “No.” And Lyre hated the loathing in her voice. “They don’t.”

  They being the royal family. They being Sabine and Galen, the Corvus siblings, the only approximation of family she’d had since the gray days. The only they that ever mattered to Lyre. She stabbed the knife back into her boot rather than her chest.

  Silence had a way of turning, and Lyre turned with it. Olivia was still slouched in the chair, hands buried in her pockets, but there was a stillness to the droop of her chin that hadn’t been there before. Lyre had no doubt one of those pockets had a weapon, and the damned girl probably had mapped out three more ways to take her down. Good. Lyre wouldn’t have wasted her time with her if she hadn’t. “I’m here because I know where my loyalties lie, kitten.”

  “Do I know where your loyalties lie?”

  “I’d hope so. Unless you’re stupid as you look.”

  Olivia’s expression soured into something a fraction more natural. She considered, then slowly drew her hands out of her pockets. “I’m not keeping this from Galen.”

  “I didn’t expect you to.” Lyre sat back—slowly—onto the edge of the table. “But I hope once you hear my plan, you’ll help me first.”

  “Help. You. You need my help. Somehow I always thought this moment would be more fun.” Olivia sighed and raked a hand through her hair. “Shit. All right, what do you need?”

  Lyre smiled. “Are you still friends with the heir of Vhehaden province?”

  * * *

  There were few things that Sabine insisted on doing herself; dressing was one of them. Her staff would pack all the little mundane things for any trip. But if this summit was her battle arena—and it was—then fashion was her armor. The right defense could guard against opposition, or entice an unexpected ally. Sabine never left such important matters to other hands.

  This battle called for something subtle. Her opponents would be well versed. Sabine bypassed the ornate ball gowns, cuffs crusted with gems and gilt, and selected a saffron gown with a drape like a waterfall. Too simple, by Imperial tastes, but it made her skin glow.

  Lyre had told her that.

  Her breath snagged in her chest. She was alone, she could allow that much. She mechanically laid out one outfit, then another, until she had to stop. Her mother’s old tut echoed in her head, Tears spoil the silk, stop that now. You’ll make your brother cry. She threw the scarf she’d been contemplating over her shoulder.

  “You have a military. Simply point to the wardrobe which so offends you and I’ll call in an airstrike.” Galen stood in the doorway of her rooms, surveying Sabine’s pile of discarded clothes like a particularly volatile bomb.

  “I’m packing.” Sabine placidly turned back to her half-empty luggage and changed her mind on the saffron dress. Too draped, too casual. Some politicians managed to win their way with false intimacy, but not Sabine. It left her feeling too vulnerable. Her negotiations always went better with an air of armored disdain.

 
Armor. Ah, yes, the silver pinstripe and blue brocade. It would match and direct attention to her crystal eye. A scar to match the pinstripe, and pride for both. Perfect. It’d been almost a year since the attempted coup. Since a vile, traitorous noble had used a Syn creation called lockbots to torture her for information, the codes that would hand over the building and the throne. Sabine had kept the codes, but lost most of the sight in her right eye. It’d been a fair trade at the time. What hadn’t been fair had been the year of discomfort and learning to maneuver the world smoothly again with a cloak of gray dimming one half of her vision. All under the scrutinizing eyes and greedy tongues of the court.

  “I understand there’s been a change to the summit roster.” It was said levelly, as if commenting on the weather. Her brother was cunning with a gun in his hands, but in these kinds of things he was so...straightforward. Sabine couldn’t decide whether she was annoyed or relieved.

  She plucked a bit of lint from the suit. “I’ve removed Lyre from the entourage.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because she’s—” abandoning me “—leaving. She’s leaving. Gave her notice.” Sabine’s throat felt too tight. “Might as well not waste her time with a tedious negotiation, which will likely go on long past the summit. Her successor will need briefing and I do hate repeating myself.”

  When she risked a glance, Galen was looking at her as if she were ten years old again with a scabby knee. Even three years younger, he always looked at her like that. “But she’s Lyre,” he said softly. “Lyre. She’s been with us since—”

  “I know.” Bitter hurt rose in her throat, escaping to stab the words before Sabine could tamp it down. She sighed and rubbed her temples. “I know, and that’s why I can’t. I can’t watch her just tidy up loose ends and walk away. Like it meant nothing, Like I—like we—” The cloth clenched in her hands. Sabine smoothed it. “I need your support on this, brother. Please.”