Admiral Read Free Page A

purposeless—slaughter that accompanied it had to be the prime goal of any decent and intelligent being. If a crown would help me end it sooner—and in my heart I knew it would—then a crown it'd be, as much as I hated the life it'd force me to live. Besides, who would serve as Protector of the freed slaves if not me?
     
    Maybe I could sort of abdicate somewhere down the road?
     
    "Excellent!" James was grinning his best grin when he replied to my acceptance letter over our private link. "Gwendolyn and I had planned a private dinner for tonight, but... This is too big not to celebrate, David. En famile, at least. Would you and Nestor care to join us?"
     
    I gulped, then decided that turning James down the first time he ever asked anything of me was a lousy way to get started as Prince of the Realm. "Sure," I answered. "We'll be there."
     
    Nestor and I spend almost an hour sprucing up for the evening meal—we had to cancel a meeting with the Royal Council on Slave Species Empowerment, but my meals with James were important. Even if some were less pleasant than others.
     
    "Don't you like Lady Gwendolyn, sir?" Nestor asked as he helped me into my uniform jacket. My host's fiancé had specifically asked me come in full naval regalia; she'd never seen me out of civvies before. "She seems like a pleasant enough sort."
     
    Normally I made it a point to smile when Nestor made a correct guess as to my innermost workings. This time I did no such thing, however—not only because I wasn't even faintly in the mood but because he'd missed his mark by a mile. "She's charming," I answered honestly. "Intelligent, capable, not prejudiced at all that I can see... She'll make a great queen."
     
    Nestor nodded and looked away—he'd told me once that he often guessed wrong on important matters, and that when he made a mistake he made it a point to figure out where he'd gone wrong. Since that was the last thing I wanted, I decided to offer a half-truth instead. "She's a very pleasant woman, Nestor, and I believe she'll make a fine match for James. Plus, she's a high-ranking Wilkes on her mother's side. It might be a good thing politically just now if the House of Wilkes felt that they had a stake in the success of James's reign. Her appearance is also said to be quite pleasing, though I'll leave that for the humans to judge. But..." I scowled theatrically. "Being around her puts me in a bad mood for other reasons entirely."
     
    My aide's ears pricked up. "Really?"
     
    I nodded back and sighed as he buckled on my Sword. "It's Frieda again," I explained, though I could've said much more. "James is younger than I am, you see—almost two full years. In the old days it didn't matter—he was in many ways the elder due to the differences in our circumstances and how much catching up I had to do in so many ways. And now here he's to be married soon, while I..." I looked away and sighed.
     
    "I see," Nestor replied, his face suddenly grave. Then he looked away. "And I sympathize, for what it's worth."
     
    "Of course," I replied with a smile. Of all the things Nestor and I had in common, this was perhaps the deepest and darkest. For his personal life—perhaps his very sexuality, for all I knew—had been ruined by the Masters just as thoroughly as had my own. Even more so, perhaps; while I at least had been granted a fleeting, immature glimpse of what love might be like, so far as I could tell his own romantic inclinations had been systematically degraded and ground away to nothing. Everyone in the universe seemed to follow our successes and triumphs, but I preferred to keep my failings to myself. Yet every time I attended a social function accompanied by Nestor instead of a wife I felt the unasked—perhaps even unthought, as I might well have been projecting—questions hanging thickly in the air. Even alone with James I felt awkward and somehow incomplete, and His Majesty was of course fully aware of the ultimate truth of the matter.