Act One, Scene Sixteen
Royal Palace
Steelmind strode up to the door, hand brushing over the panel. Between heartbeats, he caught the signal it was trying to send and shut it down, told it to open and while it was doing that the computer it was talking to should display a loop of the previous camera feed while creating copies of the actual feed and sending it to him, instead of telling anyone he was here.
Then he stepped into his sister’s wing, silently walking down the halls of her own apartments. In here there was concrete and carpeting and expensive Persian rugs between him and any electronics he could touch, and he felt vulnerable. She’d had it remodeled a week after he got his power, as he’d known she would. His weapon was knowledge, and her weapon was terror, and that was why he’d had her security camera wirelessly feed him a full layout of the building through his glasses.
He knew the room she occupied, hesitated outside it. She did not keep her voice down.
“- Why yes, James. I am sure she’ll be there. My darling little sister wouldn’t miss a party in her honor, though I’m sure she’d rather stay home - you know how she is... Oh, yes, my brother’s outside, I hope you don’t need anything more -”
An instant later his fist rapped against the door. How had she known?
“Come in,” she said.
His thoughts ran over his actions as he opened the door. How had she known? He heard a tick of a clock. Of course. She’d expected him to come talk to her today, and had kept her eyes on a camera that was watching it. She’d seen the second hand jump back when he looped the camera, looked at the… yes, the mirror that looked at the keyhole in the door, and when she saw the light through the keyhole flicker she knew the only person who could control her cameras was outside her door.
“This is about Catherine, isn’t it,” she said, back to the door. “She’s the only thing anyone wants to talk about now.”
“No,” he said.
“Oh?” She smiled. “You have my attention.”
“I’m here to talk to the Countess of the Fourth.”
“She’s speaking, Count of the Third.”
“I recently arrested six individuals within the borders of the Third,” he said, in a bored tone. “For attempted vandalism and larceny. Do you know who they are?”
“Why, no!”
“They had recently received payments identical to sums leaving the Fourth’s treasury.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
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“Good. They refused to identify themselves, so I had them shot.”
She spun in her chair. “You what?”
“They had no ID and they committed crimes in my district. I did compare them to the public records, but none of them matched the appearances or powers of any knights or agents recorded for any county. Therefore I killed them.” Steelmind’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll cc you a copy of the paperwork. I already sent father the fine.”
“Over a prank?”
He knew her definition of prank. “I did nothing outside the law. You sent a knight and a few thugs to my county to make trouble, so I got rid of them. If you’re going to play the game, don’t disgrace me by playing it poorly.”
He turned on his heel and spun, striding out of his sister’s room. There was no camera working, so when he was out of her sight he started running. She wouldn’t start while he could see her, either, but he wanted to win the race to the control room before she could make it to their father’s study.
By the time he could see her through the cameras she’d dropped her earlier petulance like an empty cigarette carton and was headed to their father’s study. She opened the palm-locks with her palm instead of punching through them, which meant that there was no chance he’d made her angry enough to fumble this. A failure on his part.
The doors rose, fell, and slid into the walls, and she walked into their father’s study: a room lined with soft blue felt, high television screens on the walls simulating windows that looked out across the city and across the world, showing scenes of London and New York and Beijing, images that kept their father connected to the rest of the world even while he sat guarded by two forcefields and six feet of concrete. Below them were high bookshelves filled partly with books, partly with computer hardware.
The Tyrant sat facing computer monitors on which were scattered sketches for a Durendal Mark VIII, an ebook of Plutarch’s life of Pyrrhus in the original Greek, a report on recent supervillain activity in Mexico, and a copy of one of Catherine’s college essays. All of these blinked off when his older daughter entered the room, and Sandor Balog, the Titanium Tyrant, got up to hug “Bloody Lizzy” Balog, the Red Princess.
“How goes, daughter?” he said.
“Badly.”
“Oh?” He looked at her with real concern. “What can I do to make it better?”
“It’s Julius.”
“What is it this time?” he asked, resigned.
“Some of my people were in his district spying,” she explained, “and he had them killed.”
He gave her a Look.
“I’m just trying to learn what he’s doing! The Third district is well ahead of the Fourth in its recovery by this point, and I need to see what he’s doing to know whether I can copy it or not.”
“I’ll talk to him about it,” he said. “But the two of you need to settle this feud. You’re adults now.”
“Yes, father.”
“I mean it. If you can’t trust family, who can you trust?”
Julius sighed.
She smiled and said, “Yes, father,” and departed. Julius stood up, stretched, and went to talk to the Titanium Tyrant.
“Hello, Father.”
“Hello, Julius.”
He got hugged, too.
“Do you know what your sister just told me?”
“That I caught and executed six of her spies.”
“Did you?”
“No, I caught and sentenced to death six of her spies.”
“And will you enforce the sentence?”
“If they don’t tell me what they were looking for,” he said. “If they do I’ll let them go with a fine.”
“More sensible. You shouldn’t have aggravated your sister like that, though.”
“They’re more valuable to me if they’re believed dead.”
The Titanium Tyrant looked at his son, disappointed. “Believed by whom? If she’s not trustworthy, who is?”
He sighed. “She’s a Countess and I’m a Count, and we’re neighbors. In that context, we feud. As my father’s daughter, she’s an ally.”
The Titanium Tyrant shook his head. “As Count and Countess you’ll both be much richer if you stop wasting resources on stealing from and spying on each other. All the war of espionage and counter-espionage gets you is both of you being poorer. Cooperate with your allies, son, and crush your enemies. This rivalry gets you nothing.”
“Don’t worry, father. We’ll sort it out. We managed in the war, we can manage in peace.” She’s my sister, so I can’t kill her, so I’d best learn to live with her until I can find a way out.