Bree found herself staring over another railing. Instead of a frigid ocean, this one kept her from a two-kilometer drop. But oh, the view…
The sun rose behind her, glinting gold off a chain of mountain lakes and glowing through snowpack, leaving shadowed forested valleys alone with a promise of deeper greens later in the day. Worth protecting, she thought, and then, is this bit even mine? Nobody had yet gone to the trouble of painting red lines on the ground visible from airships. She couldn't tell Pact from Kingdom from unaligned from wilderness up here.
"Can't believe you used to be a little bratty underclasswoman," Emmerline said from behind her.
Bree turned, arranged her face in an approximation of an actual smile instead of an unsettling grin. "I was never a brat," she responded. "Best behavior at all times. Scholarship to maintain."
"Sure you were. Always got the last word in lecture and the first move on the dance floor. I was just thinking that you look so fucking dignified now."
"Hah. You want to know something horrifying that I picked up from the Fist?"
"You had me at 'horrifying'," Emmerline said.
"Ghoul."
Emmerline grinned, warmly, invitingly, a grin sculpted by a dozen generations of posh ancestry to produce one dangerously handsome woman. "Spill it," she said.
"You know they're calling me 'Bree the Blessed' now?"
"Get out. The Fist is?"
"They are. I'm sure they didn't invent it. The Fist idiot reading off the charges said 'commonly known as Bree the Blessed' right before they announced they were there to kill me."
"Well, that's a step up from 'Bree the Bodiless'. Which was never true anyway! You have a body."
"Mmm, yeah," Bree said, "that's what's got me brooding off the port bow of the Eternal Blue, as it happens. It's… I'm… I don't know. I think I'm starting to like it."
"We should all be so lucky,"
"I'm serious!"
"So am I. I don't get the problem."
"The body comes with certain habits. Or thoughts. You said 'dignified', right?"
"Yes, and I also said you used to be a huge brat. Couldn't go five minutes without starting something. Now you seem, I don't know, calmer. You've been hanging out at the bow for hours now, doing what, watching the clouds and thinking deep thoughts? Plus you look like you were born to have that cloak flap dramatically in the breeze. Well. Not born, I suppose. But it suits you either way."
"Em, this isn't me! I'm not sure what is me and what's the doll body and what's from the compulsions and constraints and bindings it was crafted with."
"You sure you didn't just grow up a bit?"
Bree tensed all of her frame actuators in frustration.
"I'd be more sure if I hadn't helped Coda build a few dozen like it with the same service compulsions. Mostly in the parts I can't swap out."
"Ah."
"I can practically feel the need to be a good helpful little… servant," she said, stopping "maid" just before it escaped her voice box. "And I don't know how far it extends! None of the dolls would ever have serious magic, power, allies, all the things I have, so I have no idea what'd happen if one got them! Am I only running around protecting the Kingdom because a bunch of control spells are woven into the pretty little reliquary where my brain should be? Or because that damned archon laid something even worse on it?"
Emmerline tilted her head, appraising.
"Bree. Darling. Two things. One: I'm under no such compulsions. I tracked you down, remember, after you saved my life? I'm here of my own free will." Emmerline held up a finger, then held up another. "So's Nost."
"Please. The way she looks at me. The things I've done to her—"
"It's a small airship. I've heard them. Has one of them been talking? Because I've had more than a few chats with her while waiting for your return. As obviously submissive as she is, Bree, as unassuming and as self-effacing as she can be, it's easy to forget that she's older and more experienced than either of us. She's been with good and bad partners, she's completely capable of choosing for herself. Oh, she also wants your body, but that's just her being an artificer."
"What about Zai?"
"Hmm, yes, Zai," Emmerline put up a third finger, furrowed her brow. "I have no idea. Is she here because she believes in you enough to go rogue, or is she the king's loyal servant, ready to stab us in our backs the instant we try something that Royal Intelligence wouldn't like? Sorry. Can't illuminate the bottom of that swamp," she said cheerily. "But that brings me to my second point: Zai's here and making herself useful because you started a fight with one of the great powers of the world, and by some measures, you are winning. How many of your dolls went and did that?"
Bree laughed, and turned from the rail. "Okay. Okay. Just me, so far. You might have a point."
"And you might still be a dramatic brat. Just a successful one. Stop questioning why everything, focus on how and when and where and what next and keeping the demon-fuckers in the Pact busy. Keep doing that and I'll back you up with all I've got."
"I'm not your underclasswoman any more, Em, I didn't even graduate. And we're a long way from the Academy now."
"Eh. Close enough. We Academy girls gotta stick together."
She offered a hand. Bree took it. Em pulled her, with some effort, into a hug.
"Did Zai put you up to this?" Bree said softly into Emmerline's ear.
"She only said you were moping near the bow."
"Not moping. Just… being. Promise."
"She did, however, have a suggestion for our next port of call."
"So you were able to get something out of those letters!" Bree cheered. "Nice. Thought our last excursion before I went north had been a bust."
"She helped," Zai said, jerking her head in Emmerline's direction.
"I recognized a phrase, that's all. Our pet spook had the first few words of the key worked out, and I just happened to remember the epigraph of 'Four Flowers on the Wind'. Funny that they used a Kingdom novel to key their code."
"You saved me at least a week, on that letter alone. And the reason they used a Kingdom novel is because it'd look strange to be caught with Pact literature. Now, the letter named a target for the squad you took it off two months ago, and Bree, you left them unable to exfiltrate and report?"
Bree nodded. "I did ask. Same as always. One chance, put your weapons down, walk away. No takers."
"I envy your ability to make the offer," Zai said suddenly. "You're strong, you can give them that one chance, knowing they'll almost certainly not take it. I'm weak, I fear giving my enemies anything, and I'll kill them before I offer them the chance to kill me." The spy had a pained expression.
"You wouldn't want to be a doll, Zai," Bree said. "Or would you? I'm not sure I'd recommend it."
The spy shook her head, her hair-bun wobbling side to side. "I think not. I've honed my own body; it does what I need." She pursed her lips briefly. "For now. Anyway, the letter: they're meant to converge three heavy squads at the Turquoise flower show, and the Pact noble Marchioness Miriya of Rostalpan is to be executed by the Fist, for the crime of collaboration with the Kingdom, in front of all the mingling aristos from both sides. Apparently Miriya loves flowers. She'd be an example for any other aspiring collaborators: don't even think about the other side of the fence."
"Is she a collaborator?"
"Not sure. Doesn't matter. We have the means and opportunity to visit Turquoise, and look like we're meant to be there right up until we counter-ambush the Fist."
"Miriya. Miriya," Bree said. "Heard that name before, I think. What do you know about her, Zai? Em?"
"Rostalpan is a poor march and house by the standards of human Pact nobility. No demonic patronage. That's all the Service knew when I left," the spy said, "a two-line entry in the Big Book. Didn't rate anything in the Little Book."
"Artist," Emmerline chimed in. "Landscapes. Competent, not brilliant, unless she's evolved spectacularly."
"You know her?" Bree asked. "Would she recognize you?"
"Not likely, since this was way back during the last peace treaty. My father took me to the cultural exchange. Said the peace would be no doubt over soon, but that I should learn what I could."
"And that was what you took away?" Zai asked.
"I was thirteen. What fine points of international politics do you remember from when you were thirteen?"
"At thirteen? I was in His Majesty's Reformatory for Wayward Youths for the crime of frightening a dauphin's horse with my screams after he ran me down in the street, maimed my brother, and broke my leg."
"Gods, you never said! And you're on our side?"
"What side?" Zai shrugged. "That dauphin will get his someday. Preferably slowly. The rest of you parasites will give up their riches or die. Meanwhile, I don't want to see my neighbors die to war and then demons than you, or the doll. So we work together, yes?"
Emmerline stared. She winced. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Then, "Yes," she said, and stuck out a hand.
"Right." Zai clasped it briefly, let go. "Bree, do you need help reconfiguring yourself? Should we go fetch Nost?"
"Oh good, you haven't forgotten about 'the doll'. Yes, please," Bree said, "it's much faster that way. But full briefing first. I don't think she's going to like it."
"So, Zai, you're serious about this? You want to have Em make an appearance at this resort town? To do what?"
"Turquoise is at a triple boundary between the Kingdom, the Pact, and the Gulf of Pearls. Neutral. Full of aristos from both sides, on vacation and behaving badly. We're going to visit to catch the famous yearly flower show and cozy up to this Marchioness before the Crimson Fist does. Em is once again Lady Emmerline Dupree, second daughter of House Dupree, still on her increasingly lengthy gap year between Academy graduation and royal service. Bree and I are her servants."
"This is going to burn Em," Nost said.
"Had to happen sometime," Emmerline snorted. "Last chance to clean out the family coffers, raid the closets, and steal the silverware. Least it's for a good cause."
"All right. What about me?"
"You're known to too many Pact security elements. You stay with the ship, as backup."
"And Bree isn't known?" Nost asked. "They have a whole list of epithets for her."
"Not… in my old body," Bree said, looking to Zai, who nodded.
"Her old body?" Nost blanched. "As in… no, you said the archon took that one. Which means… No. No no no. Bree, you can't. Everything we've built together, you won't have it!"
Bree grinned. Her grin left some humanity to be desired. Someone had told her that it never reached her eyes, given that even her current face didn't have the fine articulation she'd need to match human skin. It also displayed far too many teeth, which she'd added an extra row of, just because. Pity the teeth would need to stay with this head.
"Hey," she said, "Originally? I was literally 'maid' for the job. Get it?"
