The Queen’s Throne of Derse was not uncomfortable, as thrones went. Hours upon hours listening to grievances of the Pawns of Derse was a literal pain in the neck.
“Unthinkable” had been a word Her Imperious Condensation – a title that had felt a bit excessive for a number of sweeps – had trained herself against using. It’s omission was one of those necessary steps towards actually using one’s imagination. No, she was suppressing the thought that she never would have stooped to this at the height of her political powers, when a significant fraction of her galaxy bowed to her. With all those subjects, there was always some righteous schmuck that wanted to do this arbitration thing, and that was fine with her.
Now, her current situation was literally a game, one she had been forced in to playing by circumstance. A game that, she was now certain, would not be won by anyone. An unforgiving construct that had no screen to offer a “You Lose” message, and offered no retry button. It’s players – and her – were just expected to go on in ignorance. Which left The Condesce with some rather pitiful duties to maintain the title of the Black Queen until her party was assembled.
Roxy was supposedly starting the next step of that assembly process right now. Or, more accurately, started hours ago.
The Condesce’s current style of governance – her laissez faire “W)(ATEVS” policy – had still left her with two essential duties as Queen; the weekly parade, and the hearing of grievances. The first was a nice long stroll around Derse, trumpets blaring, standards waving, every pawn on the planetoid out and ready to cheer as their turns came. The latter had her playing judge and jury to so many petty pawn squabbles.
This particular pawn had already been going for hours – determined to talk themselves out of their WIFI bill. The previous two dozen cases had been quick, reasonable, bloodless things. The game liked that. Bloodless. Every damned pawn death off the battlefield had to be justified, even if as soon as one had died a replacement clone was seeded. Only a player could ignorantly break that cycle. Which meant Roxy’s assistance had been used once or twice now to beneficial effect – at least the human had lost a little guilt over the whole killing thing since ascending. No need to guide the gun in her hands, anymore.
But the Black Queen couldn’t kill her own citizens without justification. When such actions lacked justification, it became quite evident; waking up one evening to find some new stately carapace sitting on your throne one day. It was a culling that was annoying enough to forgo the potential of stress relief; interim orders had to be discovered, interim orders had to be countered. In the worst case, political standing with Prospit could be affected. The process of The Condesce re-crowning herself was entirely more trouble than it was worth.
So, without Roxy to dispatch the complainer, Condy was filling a notepad with logic notes, trying to map out the pawn’s programming. This process, rationally carried out, was taking approximately forever. Four word question. Four paragraph response – and probably the same paragraphs she had already heard an hour ago. Bleh.
Is that Skaia rising in the window? Where was that dam gurl?
Pawns are pretty observant, as semi-sentient creatures go. Still, they still needed hints about what is normal and abnormal for a species. So if the Condesce pulled out her shell phone unapologetically, nobody in the room cared. If she managed not to look too disappointed that there were no update messages from Roxy, no one cared.
Neither of those actions required poise. But then, neither had that one weekly parade she had walked in the nude. That was just confidence. Doing the whole thing walking on her hands – that had required poise. Three attempts to go without incident, and two replacement carapace queens to slay. All attempts made before the players had arrived, of course. It wouldn’t do for these humans to see any weakness if there was any chance for Derse to win.
But at the moment there was neither a chance to win, nor humans in sight, and the Condesce’s neck soreness had been aggravated, trying to suppress a public reaction to Roxy’s lack of communication.
So The Condesce’s poise was employed as she reached up to a horn and pulled it, counterclockwise, from noon to four. While audible snaps of ligaments could not be avoided, no one in court gave any more response than a momentary glance at the queen. Their eyes shortly wandered back at the one monologuing up a calm.
So much better.
Releasing her horn, she gave her neck only a second to straighten before twisting it clockwise to mirror the previous stretch. In this direction, her brow only went to 6:30, so she held it for an extra moment, listening as her heart labored to force blood past constricted vessels.
Heart.
That was one thing the pawns had utterly failed to do – make any innovation in language. It was textbook. Textbooks from different decades perhaps, but she had lived through all of them. She really could have stood a young subject troll coming up with some euphemism for the organ. The Condesce was well past that age, herself. But so, now, was any troll in adjoining universes.
Roxy had, of course, confirmed this lack. In mere minutes, Roxy God-cat enhanced form had zapped to every edge and corner of paradox space her sprite-mind knew existed. A survey that would have taken the Battleship Condescension years at sub-lightspeed. This yielded two eventual options – Back to some unknown version of Earth and it’s universe, or to the GREEN SUN. The latter had infinitesimal chance of bringing about anything positive without a Seer of some sort. Even if… so many ‘even ifs’. A proper Space player would have opened so many more possibilities. Roxy’s inherited ones made the Rogue, at best, a smuggler.
A silence had fallen. They were waiting for the next question.
Screw that.
“T)(E QUEEN SP-EAKS. Confishkate all electronic devices ’till the bill has been paid. Any attempt at electronic communication before payment will result in yer cullin’.”
She stood. All bowed. Guards lead off the noisy one.
“Any moray complaints?”
The crowd looked tired at a moments notice.
“Y’all dismissed. Next session will be in two weeks.”
And The Condesce ran from that room faster than any of her subjects could manage.
~
Jane would be great to have on board, free will and all. For multiple reasons, once she had ascended. Roxy at least had the talents now to manage that last detail. Resurrection was such a nice feature. And man, there were some moves the Condesce would really like to try out, if permanent disfigurement was out of the picture.
Like, leaning her head so far back her horns would go either side of her neck – what would her breasts even do in that situation? And based on that…. the troll shivered. She wanted to do ALL THE MOVES. But, of course, building up an implicit trust came first. Planning for two, maybe four Weapons of Mass Destruction on your ship – that trust was a requirement.
Condy whipped the shell phone out again. Her hands needed something to do – Still nothing.
I’m gonna corkscrew that girl for making me wait.
Who cares if Roxy would actually enjoy it. But. Maybe Condy could just… Mentally reach over and…
Wait, no.
The Condesce considered sitting down there in the hallway, but no. Lavatory. Worst thing to do while trying to mind-control a person – or in this case, the cat part of an ascended being – was to stay standing with a full load. Any unexpected feedback could quickly make everything both unpleasant and distracting.
But the lavatory was a secure enough room to attempt it anyways, once possible distractions were taken care of.
~
To the sound of rushing water, she focused on the darkness. Searching. Cat.
There was only one live cat around. The most arrogant creature in the system, besides herself. And mind-controlling herself had very limited applications.
It was a chair. A kitchen. Roxy was sitting on it, in pajamas. Jane’s Kitchen. The Condesce had only visited her grandson’s house once, when Jane was small. Now it was so much easier to visit him, in his rooms in Derse. How was she being distracted? Concentrate. Jane was across the table. That was good. Flapjacks. They were having breakfast. How long had that session at court actually gone? Hmm. Raspberry syrup. Good stuff. Roxy noticed.
wait. please. i can handle this – jus – get out.
The Condesce heard a tank refilling. Her vantage point was the lavatory again. Had… she taught Roxy how to reject mind control?
The room felt big. Really big. Oh. She was sitting. The Condesce pushed herself to her feet, Her senses taking their sweet time to properly reorient themselves.
She could try again. Maybe just… for communication. That might work. She sat down again. The water had stopped. The only sounds were distant now…
But Roxy Lalonde had gone missing.
The Condesce sighed. Of course the cat in her would run. Probably to the GREEN SUN’s orbit. Presumably with her friend. Hopefully the girl had at least warned Jane before… the oddness of the trip.
Well, that could have been handled better.
~
Her Grandson. He would be enough to distract her while she waited for… something. Anything. It had been, what, a week since the last visit? He’d have another round of terrible jokes and gags to try on her by now. Bleh.
He had calmed down, at least, during the last visits. After the talk about rounding up the kids and heading back to Earth. And sharing some select memories of his father, and Grandfather. He was a little too much like the latter, at times.
Maybe they could bake something together. Pies, maybe. That sounded like a adequate day.
__
Jane isn’t in this one. Roxy isn’t even in this one. Why would you read this? (illustrated)
Illustrations by cosmicsynthetics.tumblr.com.
Beta read by Jesseth.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120914
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