The communicator vibrates across Ybbak of Hiran's desk and bumps against the statuette of Maekyon the Wise he's using as a paperweight. Ybbak glances at it. He clicks its mute switch and returns to his textbook.

Pock. A wood pellet from the front garden bounces off his window. He squints out at the amber evening.

"Ybbak. Yo. Ybbak."

He looks up from his textbook with a frustrated sigh. He pokes his head out the window and glares four stories down into the front yard of his clan's apartments. The Indus officer of his pod, a slender girl named Akrina, is standing on the divider between the sidewalk and the tube platform. A handful of commuters look bemusedly at her from the gate.

"What the shit, Krina?" he calls. "I'm studying."

"Is your communicator up your butt or something?" she demands.

"My communicator is muted while I'm studying."

"Did you not turn on your feed, man?"

"Again," he says. "Studying."

Her tail curls inquisitively. "Her Majesty's giving the Newtide address, like, twenty minutes away. The Square."

"I know."

"Are you seriously going to sit up there studying instead of going? Come down. We don't even gotta go on the tube. Horaki's rented a hauler." She points to the end of the block, where a big warty truck is pulled up to the edge of the autolane. "He's driving the whole pod."

"The exam is in two days," Ybbak says.

"Come on, kid," one of the guys waiting for the tube calls. Must be a transfer from the 4-line; Ybbak doesn't recognize him. "You'll regret not going."

"Yeah, kid." Akrina laughs. "And once you finish the exam, you're gonna get an amazing free-ride clerkship to some core world—"

"Not if I don't—"

"Don't interrupt—and you'll be on the first ship to Chamchek, outta Black Pike, without ever having actually seen Her Majesty in the flesh." She folds her hands beseechingly. "Pleeeease, Ybbak? How many more chances are we gonna get to hang out?"

He sighs. "Is everyone waiting?"

"Yuh-huh. You're the second-to-last stop and then we pick up Gorlai."

"Gorlai's coming?" Ybbak thought Gorlai would be going with his clan. He hopes that Akrina didn't see the twitch in his ears. "He's in the pod?"

Judging by the broad grin that settles on her face, she does. "He sure is. Joined up last tenday. If you had gone to the potluck, you'd know. But I guess if you're too busy studying, we could, like, tell him you said hello or something."

"Don't—God. Okay."

Akrina's tail wags. "Okay?"

"Just give me two minutes. Two goddamn minutes, right? Bunch of screeching throoks."

A window slams open on the other side of the street. "Who's yelling?"

"Hi, Ms. Lolabai," a commuter calls—that's Rumei, leading a brief crest of hellos. Lolabai flutters her kohl-painted lashes at him.

"Ms. Lolabai." Akrina points at Ybbak's window. "Can you pry Povani's boy out of his books for a second? He's gonna miss the address."

"You're avoiding the Princess's speech for a damn book?" Lolabai glares. "Children these days. Gods of Aodok."

"I'm not. I'm going." Ybbak holds his half-stuffed satchel up to his window. "See? Look. I'm going."

"We could give you a ride, Ms. Lolabai," Akrina calls sweetly. "If you wanted."

"No, no. Bless you, but no." Ms. Lolabai beams down at the girl. "I'm watching it on the feed. All this dashing about is for the pods and the callow youth. I have a nice chair."

"Excuses," Ybbak says.

"Excuse you. If I still had both my legs maybe I'd be traipsing around like a firmament bravo."

"You have two legs, Ms. Lolabai, you always forget to charge one."

"I'm watching it on the feed," Ms. Lolabai snaps. "I am venerable."

Akrina is delighted. "She's venerable, Ybbak. What's the hold-up?"

"I'm bringing my materials."

"You absolutely are not."

"I absolutely am. I'm bringing flashcards."

"You're gonna be doing flashcards while Gorlai is making smoochy faces at you across this hauler and he's going to think you're not interested and he's going to start dating that rotbreath dude from the tula fields and you'll be up there in the Core at your paper-pushing job thinking about what could have been."

"What's with the screaming match, kids?" Sergeant Hoxoi has paused his evening beat-walk at the garden gate. "Ybbak's got a crush now?"

"Officer." Akrina does a quarter-bow. "Ybbak's studying instead of—"

"I'm not studying!" Ybbak zips his satchel shut. "I'm coming. Gods of the Firmament."

"You need mediation?" Hoxoi calls.

"No, officer. Thank you. We'll stop yelling."

"Glad to hear it."

"Oh hello, officer."

"Hello, Ms. Lolabai."

"Hoxoi!" A woman on the other side of the tube platform waves. "You catch Blue Waters last night?"

"Hi, Nika. Didn't see it. I heard about Lord Yugo, though."

"It was crazy. The racing scene—"

"HEY." Another window clacks open below Lolabai's. Qinix pokes his head out. "Nobody spoil anything about the damn race."

"Lord Yugo. Such a rogue. If I were a kilo younger—"

"Evening, Qinix."

"Evening, officer."

"Hi, Qinix!"

"Hey there, Rumei."

"Anyone know why the tube's delayed?"

"Two minutes northbound. Congestion for the speech, you reckon."

"Why's everyone yellin'?"

"Qinix. Your anticomps are crooked."

"Shove off, Lola."

"We can't keep the engine idling much longer," Akrina reports over the sudden block party that's unfolding in front of Ybbak's house. "Hoxoi's gonna give us a road demerit, dude. Come on."

Hoxoi shrugs. "You park on the right side of the line this time?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Ybbak shrugs his sashed jacket on. "Can you all just flash yourselves frozen for a second?"

He takes a look at himself in the mirror. Not good enough, if Gorlai's coming. God, his horns are so goofy-looking. He should grow his hair out and cover them up more. He switches jackets to the navy surplus blouson that Akrina says makes his shoulders look good. His tail thwacks the door shut and turns the STUDYING FOR CLERK EXAM-SHHHH! sign around on its peg. He hustles down the stairs.

In the kitchen, Povani's on a stepstool before the stove, shaking her butt to a recording of the Pestleflowers while her girlfriend's husband stands behind her and laughs into her hair.

"I haven't heard this song in hectos," he says. "The lyrics are so much dirtier than I remember."

"Let me froth the milk, Caro." She gives him a light kick and a flash from her eyes. "Siddown. I'll give you something."

He pinches her butt as he sits back down.

"Gross," Ybbak notes. Clan Huran's kindek, Bulu, skitters across the floor and up Ybbak's leg, churring and cooing as her six legs scramble on his canvas work pants.

His grandmother glances over her spaghetti-strapped shoulder. "Hi, sonny." She waves the tuft of her tail at him while she cleans up. "Lots of carrying on outside, hmm? Was old Ms. Lolabai being antimasculinist at you again?"

"No, Grandma. The pod's outside." He bows. "I'm off to Her Majesty's address, with your permission."

"Absolutely. I was worried you'd be scampering around up there on date night." Munora chuckles and flicks a dishtowel into her hand with her tail. "Go on. Cry out clan Huran's blessings to Her Majesty. Just uh—remember your anticomps."

"I'll be with my pod the whole time." He gives a parting scritch to Bulu's feathery antenna and puts her on the kitchen table. "It's fine."

"Uh-uh." The playfulness flees her. She points with the foamer's tip at the goggles on the hook by the door. "Take a pair, Ybbak. Not a choice time."

"Surety takes security, kid," his grandma's barterfriend says.

Ybbak wants to bristle at this, but his grand-generation doesn't budge when it comes to anticomps. He fumbles a pair on, if only to satisfy the olds.

Onto the pod's hauler, to a chorus of hi Ybbaks, a waterfall of good-natured backslaps and tailtaps. If Ybbak stays away from the pod for too long he fools himself into thinking he prefers his isolation, but no. Once he's coaxed out he remembers how much he enjoys this. The camaraderie. Becoming part of the whole.

A magenta tail curls around the boarding bar and Ybbak rubbernecks toward it hard enough it pulls a giggle out of his pod's indus. "Stay cool, Bakky," Akrina whispers.

"I'm cool. I'm so cool."

Gorlai pokes his head into their row and gestures to the space next to Ybbak. His horns are so small and smooth on the ends. Does he grind them? He must. They're too perfect. "Anyone sitting here?"

"Yeah." Ybbak's eyes dart away from Gorlai's horns before he remembers he's in anticomps. Good call, grandma. "I mean no. I mean yes, if you are. You want to?"

"Sure." Gorlai grins and takes a seat with a rustle of his sleek chore tunic. Ybbak's only seen him in school uniforms. He looks great in a chore tunic. "What's the news back here?"

"We were just talking about how cool Ybbak is," Akrina says.

Ybbak wonders if there's room for him to hide under the seats in this thing. "No we weren't."

"Yes you are. He's driven." Akrina points. "He literally brought flashcards on the hauler to the address."

Gorlai points to Ybbak's satchel. "Can I see?"

Ybbak sighs and gets his deck out.

"These are so cool," Gorlai says. "Did you make these?"

"Yeah." Ybbak's face is hot.

"They're color coded?"

He nods. "These red ones are, uh, the ordinances."

Gorlai pulls a card from the middle of the stack. "First ordinance of the Parzon resource treaty. Precept four."

"The, uh, the Orbital Practice exemption," Ybbak recites. "Exo clan carve-out in the inheritrix ordinance, written to keep the Parzonian baronesses from protestation and then adopted as Empire-wide practice by Ziavra VII."

Gorlai taps the card. "In?"

"Shit, uh…"

Lusha pokes her head up from the seat in front of them. "They don't care about the exact dates like that on the exam."

"No, no." Ybbak holds a finger up. "I have this."

"You wanna hint?" Gorlai asks.

"7323," Ybbak says.

"Hellfire, Ybbak." Lusha whistles. "That's so good."

Gorlai shuffles the card back into the deck. "You're really passing this, huh?"

Ybbak grins. "You don't have to sound so surprised."

"No, it's—I mean I figured you would. It's just…" Gorlai's smile is small and melancholic. "I wish I'd met you sooner, I guess."

"Why are you so eager to leave anyway?" That's Niek nosing in, an apprentice HVAC guy with a bicep tattoo of the twin halberds. He doesn't go to very many of the pod's school lessons anymore, but everyone's tacitly agreed to let him hang around.

"Don't give him a hard time," Gorlai says. He doesn't look away from Ybbak's eyes.

"It's okay." Ybbak's tail tuft paffs against Niek's shoulder. "I guess… I guess I just want to be where it's happening, you know? Where there's a future."

"There isn't here?"

"I love the sector," Ybbak says. "Of course I do. But it's just for one generation, right? It can feel… uh, I don't know the word for it, really."

"Ephemeral," Gorlai offers.

"Right. Ephemeral. I live with my grandparents, and they can remember a time before the Black Pike sector even existed. They grew up without private citizen anticomps. I want to be somewhere with a past and a future. Somewhere those decisions are made."

"Sure," Niek laughs. "Ybbak's gonna get a seat on the Palatine council and a statue at the Imperial Hall."

Gorlai smiles but does not laugh. "Maybe," he says.

The rolling Mykai pastures give way to buzzing suburbs and then city thoroughfares. Traffic picks up; packed and repurposed pod-haulers like theirs, worker convoys, cheering pilgrims. Congestion skylanes open and the nicer vehicles lift into the air to megaphoned instructions from roadwardens with brightly flashing siren helmets. This rickety old hauler doesn't have repulsors, and the pod agrees they wouldn't trust any it did.

Twenty minutes is more like thirty in this eager crush, but Indus Akrina's pod is finally directed to a free spot. The boys hop onto the roof first and help their pint-sized compatriots up with them.

"We're here so late." Lusha huffs as she sits in Niek's lap. "Could have just watched it on the feeds at home. She's like a speck."

"Complain complain. Here." Niek passes his optics down.

Ybbak peers through his own pair, past the collonades and the statues (and he can't help but wonder how much bigger they are, the statues, in the Imperial City).

There she is, framed by the glittering dome of the Governess' mansion. Moving up to the podium. Radiant in crimson like a bird of paradise, stark and vivid against the navy Aodok sky. The Princess of the Black Pike takes her place at the podium. A wash of whispering attentiveness settles over the square, its crowded rooftops and balconies, its packed crowd.

Behind Princess Sykora stands her Prince. Ybbak doesn't like to think of himself as having eyes for anyone but Gorlai, but he can't deny that the man is beautiful. Like a goliath warrior from myth. Towering and broad, with hair as dark and rich as black tea, with questing eyes and a fascinating stubble of trimmed fur across the well-carved bottom half of his face, like a maned Wlakonian.

"God," Lusha murmurs. "Look at the Prince. Holy shit."

"His planet's called Maekyon, right?" Akrina says. "Ybbak has a big boner for Maekyon the Wise."

"I think he has a big boner for Maekyon the -ite," Wal says.

Ybbak lowers the optics. "Okay. One, if anything, I have a boner for Maekyon's philosophy, not him."

"A mind boner, then."

"Two, I'm pretty sure that planet is named for the Core-era Prince Consort Maekyon, not Maekyon the Wise."

"Makes sense they'd name the planet for the hunky consort," Niek says. "Bet when it's annexed that'll be their chief export."

"Friends and citizens."

Akrina's tail cuffs Niek. "Shhh. It's starting."

"It's been too long since I have had the honor of seeing you face-to-face." The floating billboard screens reflect Princess Sykora's solemn, gorgeous visage, scores of times larger than the real article. "I imagine you've heard of the difficulties this past decacycle has inflicted upon my vessel and its crew. But Newtide has come. It's upon us."

She smiles, and God help Ybbak's ridiculous Taiikari soul; his Princess is smiling and in spite of the crowd and the traffic he is, too, now.

"This is the moment we choose what we will bring forward into 7752-5," she says, "and shed that which has no more use. The vexations and villains of 52-4 I shake from me now like a worn cloak, and wreathe myself in the familiar warmth and the boundless possibilities promised to us all by the turning of the decacycle. This is the moment we hold fast to what we have newly found, or what we have long cherished, and carry it forward with us. And I carry forward each of you."

She looks around the crowd and it's as though a physical force is sweeping through them. Ybbak feels it when her gaze lands on him. A leaping in his heart.

"Joy lends itself far better to celebration than to stodgy speechcraft," Her Majesty says. "I'd be loath to keep you overlong from the festivities your fair Governess has prepared for you. In my vanity, I often think of myself as a fine speechwriter. Able to turn a phrase, yes? You'll agree, I hope. Or at least you've done a fantastic job at humoring me. But I, uh."

Her eyes flutter downward momentarily.

"I confess that my attempts have failed me to capture the enormity of what I must tell you," she says. "I've tried a few times and crumpled everything up. I suppose the unadorned facts will have to suffice, and ask your forgiveness."

She clears her throat.

"I reintroduce myself to you, on the final night of Newtide, at a moment of change." She holds her arms out wide. Her tail, Ybbak sees, is wrapped around her husband's leg. His hand against her back. "The Black Pike sector is the first ever on the frontier to be led not by a Void Princess but by a Princess Margrave. The Empress has willed it. My friends, I am Princess Margrave Sykora of the Black Pike."

Princess Margrave. This breaks across them like a dawn, slow at first as they ask one another did you hear that? What does that mean? And then all at once, banishing the mist, a bright and brilliant noise of joy.

"A real Princess," crows Lusha. "We got a real fucking Princess!"

Akrina would normally be angrily hushing talk like that, anything that implied Her Majesty was anything less than a Core Princess, but she's too busy crying her eyes out.

"And I—" Sykora's voice trembles. Her eyes flutter shut. When they open again they glisten with nascent tears.

"I am with child," she says. "The line is secured. The House of the Black Pike continues. Your sector has its Princess-in-waiting."

And Ybbak barely remembers the rest of the speech, barely hears it over the euphoric pandemonium, the hugging and the clamor and the gallingly premature confetti that the neighboring pods and clans and fellowships are setting off.

And Ybbak screams GLORY TO THE BLACK PIKE with the ocean of his fellow citizens, and the doubt is blasted from his brain. Fuck the clerk exam, fuck the last ship to Chamchek, fuck the Core. The Black Pike sector has its next generation. Ybbak will be part of it. Why would he leave?

His hand finds Gorlai's in the crowd.

Ybbak comes home that night and puts his flash cards in his wastebasket.

Then he fishes them out and puts it under his bed instead, because he worked really hard on those and Gorlai complimented them. But the sentiment stays.

He wants to be where everything changes? He already is.

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.