Princess of the Void-2.24. Kids

The girl hastily executes a bow. “It is an honor to meet you may I take your picture.”

“Sire,” Tikani prompts.

“Sire,” Mava says

Grant laughs. “Sure.”

He poses this time. Mava scoots right up to him and takes a photo that—when it emerges, polaroid-style, from her camera—is mostly nostril.

“Well done.” Grant holds the photo up to the light. “Great composition.”

She bows gravely. “Thank you, sire.” She holds her hand out. Grant returns the photo.

“You want to give that picture to Grant as a gift?” Tikani asks.

Mava gravely shakes her head. “Dad I’m doing a book. The farmer book.”

“Right. Right. The book.” Tikani slaps himself on the forehead. “How could I have forgotten. Who’s Grant gonna be?”

Mava squints at the photo with an auteur’s critical eye. “The evil giant,” she decides.

“How about that. That’s a starring role.” Tikani glances Grant’s way. “Mav’s writing a storybook with a photo collage thing in it. Are you all right with being an evil giant?”

Grant gives a thumbs-up. “Best kind to be.”

Mava bows from the waist. “Thank you, sire.”

Grant bows back. “Good luck on the book.”

Tikani scoops Mava up one-handed and gives her a quick kiss on the forehead. “Where’s your brother and sister, bud?”

Her little tail wraps around his forearm. “Out back playing pioneers. Ana’s mad cause Orlo stole Ana’s rock.”

He deposits her back on the ground. “Go get mom and Her Majesty for me, okay? Tell them it’s dinner soon.”

“Kay.” She bows to him, and then to Grant again. Then she skitters away across the lawn.

“That is just about the cutest kid I’ve ever met,” Grant says. “How old is she?”

“Coming up on her eighth decacycle,” Tikani says. “Her first hecto, we’re taking her to Ramex.”

Not even four, yet. “That’s wild. She seems so mature.”

Tikani chuckles. “She’ll fool you. But she knows her manners around the higher ranks. That’s Taiikari for you. I swear me and Wen didn’t even have to try to teach them the bowing thing. They just picked it up.”

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

“No shit?”

Tikani nods. “I was terrified of having kids. I didn’t think I was ready. Not at all. I used to watch my cousin’s kids and—they were good but I mean they were kids, right? Running around knocking shit over. But I’ll tell you a secret: ninety nine percent of the time, raising a Taiikari is a goddamn dream.”

The cavity in Grant’s heart grows.

“They have this… deference, I guess, is the word,” Tikani says. “A natural hierarchy they’re predisposed to. It’s why the species has maintained such a huge and ancient empire, I think. I don’t know about Maekyonites, but Kovikan kids act out a lot.”

“Same with Maekyonites. We have our phases.”

“But Ana and Mava and Orlo.” Tik has a grin so big it shows his little needle teeth. “God, they hardly fuss, they hardly tantrum. I mean, sometimes—it was tricky with the girls, with the compulsion. That can be… tough.”

“Have they ever tried to compel you?”

“Never on purpose. But when they’re really little, they can’t control it. They flash you sometimes just out of high emotion. So there’s this brief window—it’s called the tyrant twos—where they know just enough Taiikari to give a command you can understand, but don’t know how to control it yet. That was an odd phase. A lot of wearing anticomps around the house. One time—“ he chuckles. “One time I wasn’t wearing them and trying to put Mav to bed early and she flashed me and said YOU bed early. And I went right to sleep on the nursery floor. And I wake up with her shaking my shoulders and crying her eyes out apologizing because Wenzai had flipped out on her. And that’s the last time that happened.”

“They ever flash Orlo?”

“Once. That was the big scare, and the big sit-down conversation with the girls. Mav compelled Orlo for the first time in a fight they were having. Just as a give it back thing. But it was a hard conversation. Two hard conversations. One with the girls and one with their mother. When he was born, you know, Wen and I had this long argument about corneal anticomps.”

“Corneal anticomps?”

“It’s a surgical thing. Hasn’t been around very long. They switch in a piece of your normal eyes for ones made of permanent anticompel glass. You have to act quick when the kid’s born, or the brain doesn’t accept them right. Wen had to talk me out of it.”

“What convinced you?”

“For one thing, it’s very visible—turns your eyes dark. And it’d make everything a shade of amber for him, his whole life. He’d miss out on proper colors. And the surgery is still new, and he’d need to get another surgery every hectocycle to swap them out. And it’s not widely accepted. A lot of controversy, a lot of ostracism. Change is slow. And what if the next Empress isn’t like Zithra? What if she’s some kind of regressive, and suddenly my kid’s got illegal eyes? And, uh… I don’t know.” Tikani shrugs. “She asked me if I’d have wanted them myself, if I had the choice, and I wasn’t sure.”

“No?”

“You know how I feel about the compulsion. God knows we both saw what it did to poor Thror. But I thought about my son falling in love with someone someday and maybe it’s a Taiikari girl, and him not being able to feel the warmth from her. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”

Grant nods, like he has any concept of what Orlo would be losing.

“And I’m not saying it’s worth it. I still don’t know if I think that. But I decided it wasn’t fair to pick for him. His sister flashing him like that was the only time I ever questioned that decision. A soul-searching moment.” Tikani leans his elbows on the terrace and looks out again at Ptolek’s swirling clouds. “But the triplets aren’t Kovikans. They’re Taiikari. I grew up so afraid of them. The red-eyed ones. And now I’m raising three of them—I made three of them—and I’m glad. This is their firmament before it’ll ever be ours. I mean, you know what it’s like, I’m sure. Even more than I do. To have a wife who loves you dearly and a life you’re so lucky to have, but…” His slitted nostrils twitch. “But you never forget. You love a Taiikari woman and you never forget how it would be if she didn’t love you back. You get what they allow you. It’ll be different for Orlo and the girls.”

Grant nods. But he’s having trouble paying full attention to Tikani’s words. A question is burning in his mind like a brand.

“I’ll never belong, not really. But my kids will.” Tikani pushes himself up and grins. “And like I said. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s an absolute dream.”

Grant asks it: “You said made. You didn’t adopt?”

Tikani shakes his head. “We considered it, but decided we wanted to re-encode. It wasn’t cheap, but it was worth it.”

“They—“ Grant watches Tikani’s daughter scamper to the back yard. “You’re their birth father?”

“Yes.” A sudden self-conscious expression crosses Tikani’s face as he recalls the strictures Grant and Sykora are under. “It’s called re-encoding. A few cycles of supplements for both of us, first, and some follow-up visits after, during the pregnancy, and then… yes.” He nods sheepishly. “It only works one way. We can’t have any Kovikans. But they’re mine. Mine and Wen’s.”

Grant glances at Tikani’s lime-green neck. He sees them. A pair of scars, a few inches from his Adam’s apple. Wenzai’s mark. They're breedmates. Real ones. They bred.

He feels as though he has just sprinted through a brick wall. He isn’t sure whether he wants to sing a joyful hosanna or tear his own hair out. It’s not just a dream. It’s real. He can be a father. Sykora can be a mother. They can have a family. They can. They can, they can.

They could. If Sykora wasn’t a Void Princess.

“My sister Mokari can keep the kids occupied,” Tikani says. “We can have dinner without them.”

The Kovikan is studying him, he realizes. Seeing the hurt. He forces his face back to breezy casualness. “No, that’s all right.”

“Are you sure, sire?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

“I think perhaps you should ask your wife. It’s, uh…” Tikani hesitates. “Between you and me, with the weird Taiikari baggage around the word out of the way, I’m sorry, sire.”

Grant puts his hand on Tikani’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Tik. Really. Doesn’t hurt to ask, but I’m sure Sykora will say the same thing.”

“Okay.”

“And knock it off with the sire thing, okay?” Grant turns the hand into a fist and delivers a light punch. “I need more friends who don’t call me that, and everyone aboard the Pike has to. It’s regulations, apparently.”

Tikani smiles. “Grantyde, then.”

Grant hears his wife’s voice, bouncing off the shimmering membrane. “Well, of course she’d say that. The amount of scrap those old reclaimers leave behind. They’re still operating on principles from last hexacycle.”

“I figured as much.” That’s Wenzai. “Count on Marquess Manak to be stodgy about alloys. Weird old broad.”

Sykora’s laugh is unburdened. “You’re a hazard, Countess.”

The two Taiikari women round the corner of the bungalow, glistening from the pool on its other side. They have fluffy orange towels wrapped around their waists. Sykora sees Grant’s stare and gives him a playful little sashay of those wide hips. Those childbearing hips. Shut the fuck up, brain.

“What,” Wenzai says. “Do you not think so?” She’s carrying a dozing toddler who’s using her ample chest as a pillow. Another girl.

“That’s your key supplier.”

“And I wouldn’t want another. Her rates are fabulous. Because of how weird and old she is.” Wenzai sees the husbands and waves. Her towel rides up as her tail wags. “Hello, Prince Consort. Hiiiii, Tikky.” This latter name she says with bubbly valley-girl flirtation. “Would you like to hold her, Majesty? I wanna flash my cleavage at the Count.”

Sykora plucks the little kid from Wenzai. Grant sees, now that he’s looking, the tattoos on the Countess. Two little stars, in the same position as the scars her fangs made on her husband.

Sykora strolls over to Grant and gives him a kiss on the cheek. Her skin is chilly and damp from the pool. The girl on her hip must be Ana. Her ears are so floppy.

He must not be able to hide how stricken he is, because her touch tightens on his back and she whispers, “Are you all right, dove?”

Grant thinks: I could be your breedmate for real it’s possible it’s not just a dream I could breed you I could knock you up I could get you pregnant I could fuck a Taiikari baby into you I could make you a mom I could have a family with you I could raise our tiny blue kids with you.

Grant says: “Yep.”

Wenzai hops lightly into Tikani’s arms. “I hear the Prince Consort is making his debut in Mava’s farmer fable.”

“I’m going to be an evil giant,” Grant says.

“I hear there’s drama about a rock.” Tikani carries Wenzai over to a deck chair and lays back on it, the Countess on his knee.

“Uh huh.” Wenzai giggles. “Anakai here chased Orlo so much she made herself sleepy.”

“It’s an astonishingly nice rock.” Sykora follows her own husband to another deck chair in the circle and perches on him; Ana curls into her lap. The two of them together are still so light.

“They showed you?” Wenzai pouts. “They didn’t show me. You’ve betrayed me, Ana.”

“Nuh uh,” Ana murmurs.

“The Prince Consort and I were just talking about whether the kids would be joining us for dinner.” Tikani’s scratching his wife’s back. She arches gratefully. “Mokari’s in for the evening next door. We could send the kids over.”

Wenzai glances in quiet confusion at Tikani. The two of them share a brief but meaningful moment; the Countess’s tail straightens out abashedly.

Sykora lounges laterally on Grant, propping her head up on his armrest. Anakai curls on Sykora’s stomach. He sees it now. The thin prow of her nose. It’s just like Tikani’s.

Tikani and Wenzai’s daughter.

Both Sykora and Ana seem blithely unaware of the silent negotiations. “Are you sure this one isn’t too tuckered out?” his wife asks.

“She’ll be up again in ten minutes, running around like a rokniak,” Wenzai says. “That’s what Ana does. Low capacity, fast charging. Don’t let her lull you into a false sense of security.”

Sykora’s touch snakes playfully up the hem of Grant’s shirt. “What do you think, dove? Are you down to dine with the litter?”

“Of course,” Grant says. “I—”

I love kids, he’s about to say. But that’s never been true of you, Grant. They always annoy you, the big families with the loud kids at restaurants. And if that’s changed, now, what help is it, to tell your wife that? What could it do but hurt her?

“I’d be fine with that,” he finishes.

She smiles softly. “Me, too,” she says. She scratches Anakai’s ear. The little Taiikari purrs.

And Grant makes an oath to himself, as the Taiikari ladies chatter happily from the laps of their respective aliens, and Sykora plaits a braid into Anakai’s auburn hair:

He will not let the Empire deny the Princess children of her own. One day he will sit like this again with his wife, but with their daughter in her arms. He does not care how long it takes. He absolutely refuses to spend 300 years with this gorgeous woman without giving her a child. Fuck this impossible talk. Freedom was impossible until it wasn’t. Grant’s defied the empire once. He can do it again. He can be a father.

There has to be a way.

There has to.