Rene was struck by a blizzard of emotions. For a moment he had a vivid picture of Solae laying across the captain’s bed dressed in a gown of white gossamer silk, blood spreading down the front from stab wounds, her beautiful eyes glazed and vacant, red lips lolling open in the final exhalation of life. He felt his facial muscles jerk into a grimace that made his face momentarily look like a skull. He squeezed his eyes shut at the look of alarm from Solae and forced himself to relax, to ignore the tingling in his fingertips and the queasiness of unburned adrenaline flooding his system. It was like this before the moment of action, but he had no proper vent to give to the surging cocktail of pain and hormones. A slight tick began to pull at the corner of his cheek as lactic acid began to build. He exhaled deliberately.

“Solae, I don’t know…” Rene trailed off as he realised that among the things he didn’t know was how to finish that sentence. He took a seat beside her and glanced at the chronometer, there was still thirty standard before they reached the jump horizon. It would have been weakness to put the question off in any case and he was ashamed of himself for seeking an excuse. Instead he opened his mouth and began to speak.

“About five years ago...

Something was wrong. Renard du Quentain, Chevalier of the Steallar Empire realized. The flutters of nerves that had been chewing at his stomach all evening began to grow, converging into the proverbial hurricane. Amellia Siennaferara, Countess of Astragol, Jewel of the Southern Cross, and handmaiden and cousin to the Empress Mercedez Viatrente and the sole desire of his young heart was late. He paced back and forth on the shore of the artfully sculpted pond. They were within the walls of the Imperial Palace itself, not a great feat, given the palace covered several hundred square miles of Capella’s temperate northern continent, but a rarefied position in an empire covering thousands of known planets. The pool was dark under the soft violet glow of Capella’s moons, soft ripples throwing back prickles of light as the wind stirred them. Behind him trees of soft rose coloured crystal rose to twice the height of a man before branching out in an intricate lattice of tendrils more akin to a net of snowflakes than a canopy.

Amellia was supposed to have met him here by the first hour past Compline with her answer. Their courtship had been whirlwind by the glacial standards of the court, having known each other less than a standard year but both of them were sure of what they wanted and willing to face to social consequences. The Du Quentains were a powerful family, they very match Siennafaraia family might have sort for their daughters. Martial glory was much in fashion after the death of Phillipus Viatrente, two years ago. The former Emperor had been a timid man, intimidated by the aging generals and admirals who had served his grandfather so abely and had largely distanced such people from court. His daughter though was made of sterner stuff and families like the Du Quentain’s could look forward to great things during her reign. A relationship of the heart was unusual at this level of the nobillity, or at least purely of the heart but Renard and Amellia were determined to follow theirs. 

Or were they? Renard felt a cold knife of doubt slide into his ribs. She was already nearly an hour late, and as the minutes marched on his apprehension grew. When the full hour had passed Renard faced the inevitable, Amellia wasn’t coming. Perhaps she had been delayed by some business she couldn't escape? The young chevalier clutched at the thought, the way a dying man clutches at a branch, even one he knows is too small to save him. With a decisive turn he strode from the grove and headed to Amellia’s quarters.

The luxurious quarters of the Empresses’ Handmaidens were located on the souther foot of the towering Spire of Morning, where the Emperor’s reigned, carved from a single block of marble, miles in diameter, the boulevards were lined with fragrant rosewood trees, and gently sculpted terran olives. Soft lyrical music drifted from several of the smaller dwellings that lined the way. Musical accomplishment in a variety of instruments, and particularly song were requirements for Handmaidens. Indeed it had been Amellia’s voice, soaring like pure silver, that had first caught Renard’s eye. She was beautiful of course, but in a place where everyone was sculpted to express their own family view of physical beauty, it took a special something.

Amellia’s townhouse was on the corner where two of the wide streets intersected at a square. Vaulting dolphins, statues but so realistic they could have been alive, leaped skywards to form a fountain at the center of a small square. Renard saw that Amellia’s home was quiet and lightless. His heart lurched as he imagined her at the pond, wondering where he was, having missed him in the dark or due to some comedic misunderstanding. For a moment he hesitated with indecision, but having come this far was unwilling to give up. He asccended the door and laid his hand on the intricate carved inlay on the door. Genetic codes, given to him by Amellia, disolved the door in a shimmer of light, as though a mirror had wavered to perfect clarity. Quickly he stepped inside and the lights came on in the hallways.

“Amellia?” he called softly as he moved through the painstakingly furnished rooms, casting about for her. There was no response save for a low hum of electronics. The house had no AI, such things were forbidden so close to the Empress, security risks that a clever spy or assassin might exploit, so he couldn’t simply ask for her location. Instead he crossed to a dresser of ancient polished teak, opened a draw and withdrew a slender rod that combined the function of communicator, data interface and personal address system.

“Location of Amellia Siennaferara,” he said curtly, a nervous catch in his voice.

“Lady Amellia is at home, she is not currently recieving guests,” the automated response replied. Renard frowned. How could she be home. The twisting knives of doubt grew sharper. Almost reluctantly he ascended the stairs to the second level, passing holographic stills that depicted landscape scenes of Pracalcus and other worlds where the Siennaferara’s had interests. His nose wrinkled at the strange coppery scent on the air. Something, deep in racial memory, far from palaces and sculpted landscapes, began to gibber a warning. He felt weak, moving forward became more similar to swimming through thick jelly than walking. The door to her bed chamber stood slightly ajar, the coppery scent grew stronger, almost overpowering as he approached. Slowly with infinite reluctance, he reached a trembling hand forward, hating himself for his weakness. Finger tips brushed the smooth grain of the wood, and the door, perfectly balanced on its hinges swung inwards. 

There was blood everywhere. It dripped slowly from crimson pools on the silk sheets in several places, falling in slow drops which sounded like cannon shots even over Renard’s thundering heart. It ran in streams, filling the folds in the fabric before overflowing them in slow ripples. Amelia lay amids the spreading crimson stain. Her white gown, carefully picked out, her cosmetics expertly applied, her olive skin gleaming in the soft violet moonlight. A dozen deep cuts mared the priceless dress, plunging into the flesh beneath, each cut between the gathering of her breasts and the tapered finish of her waist. Her eyes were wide and sightless, her lips parted as in surprise or as though about to deliver some witty retort. Renard knew he should have been screaming, but he watched from outside his own body as he walked across the floor to her bedside. He knelt down beside her, face white with shock and reached for the hilt of a familiar dagger. The weapon was old, a steel blade with a white ivory handle inlaid with gold. In its hilt stood an emerald, hollowed and engraved on the inside with the Du Quentain crest. It had been a gift for her. The weapon was sticky in his hand its hilt smeared with blood. His chest hurt from the effort of trying to bring forth a shriek that was too big to exist in the universe. It heaved convulsively as he tried in desperation to draw breath. There was another scream, from behind him, one of the maids come to check on her mistress. As though the first scream was a catalyst, Renard finally gave vent to a cry of rage and pain which might have been better suited to an animal than a man. 

“There was no surveillance footage,” Rene explained in a dead voice, his eyes fixed on the bulkhead in front of him but focused nowhere in this universe. His voice was flat and bleak, colder and harder than Solae had ever heard from him. Recalling the events stripped away years of rigid compartmentalization that had kept the memories at bay. His fingers hurt and he was surprised to see they were gripping the sheets so hard that blood had run from his hands, leaving them white and pallid despite his soldiers tan. By increments he forced them to relax.

“That close to the palace there should have been something, but there was nothing, not even to convict me, but it was my knife and my DNA and fingerprints were everywhere. I had been there before, many times, I knew the codes. Later they came up with a story that it had been a crime of passion, a lovers quarrel gotten out of hand.” The bitterness of the interrogations, smiling intelligence officers who said they just wanted to help him. Hazy days of drug treatments and sleep deprivation. Endless variations of the same questions asked a thousand different ways.

“Solae… whoever did this whoever…” he struggled to force the words out but managed with a titanic effort, “whoever killed Amellia. They did it at the very foot of The Spire. The most secured, surveilled place in the human universe. I don’t know why they did it, but they had the power to make it happen, and well you know what an attack on a Handmaiden means.” By ancient custom an attack on one of the Emperor or Empress’ attendants was an attack on the sovereign, the gravest imaginable crime. Whole families had been obliterated for such offenses, galaxy spanning corporations dissolved in the blink of an eye.

“I tried looking into it of course,” he whispered hoarsely. Of course he had, as soon as he got out of the hell that was the first few months of Marine training he had chased down every source of data he could, but with his access codes expunged… dead ends every one of them.

“You can’t look into this Solae, whoever did this would kill you just to know you were looking.”