Impact Velocity (The Physics of Falling) Read online

  “Jacob, I understand that this is not your sphere and you still are not familiar with our ways. But it is simply insulting to subject a child like Owen to the common ‘testing’ that others require to place them in their positions in life. His position is clear.”

  “This is no attempt to belittle, or ‘classify’ him, Duke Laudley. It can be a valuable tool for understanding him. Cognitive and aptitude tests may show us an area of talent we haven’t seen in him yet, and help him discover where he excels. It’s no different than any other test he’s given by his tutors.”

  “Grand Duke.”

  I cut him a sideways glance, surprised and amused that he should try to correct me on the use of his proper title when he’d made no attempt to use mine.

  “Owen’s education is none of your concern,” I said.

  Laudley stopped and faced me. “You truly do not understand, do you? Do you imagine you are really a prince, or even a duke? You are nothing. An unclass. Less—you are not even that anymore. You think he made you something but really he made you nothing at all. Do you think anyone believes otherwise? You have no right to even speak to my grandson, much less dictate his path in life.”

  I stared at him and almost laughed. “I’ve never taken you for a stupid man, Laudley. But I’m willing to reassess the conclusion. Do you really think you can insult me like this and get away with it? Do you imagine the emperor won’t care?”

  A smile quirked at his lips. “So you have learned to speak to him, then? I was wondering.”

  I flushed hot and cold. “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve done some idiotic things in the past. I learn from my mistakes.”

  “So I see.” He looked away as if unconcerned, nodding toward Owen. “He looks more like his father every day, do you think?”

  I took a deep breath. One of the things I had learned from my mistakes was how to control my temper. Sometimes. The importance of doing so, at least. That time, I managed it. “I see more of Hera in him.”

  Laudley paused, and I got the impression that it was difficult for him to pass that comment by. That he was able to do it made me think less of him than I did already.

  “He has his father’s eyes,” he said. “I wonder what his father would think to see him now? He would not have allowed the testing. Of that I am certain.”

  “Blaine is dead. I’m his father now.”

  Laudley turned to me with a wicked grin. “You really believe that?”

  A cold chill washed over me.

  “I mean I’m the one raising him,” I rasped.

  He huffed an indifferent noise. “It is odd that none of the family was there to witness his father’s death. That is very strange, even for a private execution.” He paused. “Perhaps Owen was there?”

  “He was two. No, I didn’t take him to see his father beheaded.”

  “Ah. Who did witness that, exactly? The records are so unclear. Were you there?”

  “Of course.”

  “And did he die well?”

  I turned to face him. “You saw the recording. That’s all there was to see. He was executed. He is dead. Owen is all that matters now. This family, the emperor, Molly, Owen, and me. And none of it is any of your concern.”

  A wicked smile spread across his face. “Oh, Jacob. So much of what you believe you hold in your common, unclass hands is not what you think it is at all.”

  “I didn’t give you permission to call me by name.”

  At the tone of my voice, one of the guards behind us stepped closer, her weapon held at an angle that wasn’t threatening but suggested she was terribly interested in what was going on. Laudley didn’t even look at her, or reply.

  “I’ll overlook the disrespect this time,” I said. “See that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Owen’s decided he wants to learn the trumpet now.

  I thought it was the violin?

  This is in addition to, not instead of.

  That’s rather a lot for a child, don’t you think? That would be three instruments at the same time.

  What’s the harm in letting him try?

  I wonder where he gets this talent from.

  I’d rather not think about that.

  iv4

  I stepped up the pace after that, closing the distance between us and Pete. The children still ranged ahead but never completely out of sight, and never far from their guards. So it all seemed to go in horribly slow-motion when a too-loud “pop” rang out ahead of me and Owen recoiled, his face stunned and pale, his eyes finding mine as a red stain spread beneath his fingers where he clutched his arm.

  I was thrown to the ground, startled exclamations ringing out around me, Pete’s voice, Molly’s.

  “Owen!” There were heavy hands holding me down.

  “Please, Your Highness.” It was the voice of one of the servants. My head servant. The man whose name I suddenly couldn’t remember at all. The one who wasn’t Jonathan. “The guards are securing the area.”

  “Molly! Pete!”

  “They appear to be fine,” he said. Nef. That was his name. He was crouched over me, enough that he could see what was going on while still shielding me with his body as the guards were doing. I felt a ridiculous moment of relief that it wasn’t Jonathan putting himself in danger for me. And then anger at myself both for feeling charitable toward the man who had betrayed me and for even thinking about him in this moment.

  “What about Owen?”

  Nef was scanning the area with sharp, efficient movements. “The medic is there. She doesn’t appear to be overly concerned.”

  A hammerblow of memory kicked me in the stomach. Hiking in the woods around the IIC. The pop of a weapon discharge and the sensation of impact in my arm. The slow spread of fire in my body, the overwhelming pain.

  “Are you sure? It could be izellium—”

  “I’m sure that’s the first thing she considered, Your Highness,” one of the guards said.

  Yes, of course she would. These were the empire’s best. Maybe he’d never even feel it...

  “Come,” she said. “We’re moving you all together.”

  We stayed low to the ground, with the guards clustered around us like a living wall, herding Pete, Molly, Laudley, and me together into a clump around Owen. I fell to my knees at his side. He was pale and trembling, but patiently enduring the medic’s attentions. Even though I was looking for the worst, he only appeared to be scared, not hurt.

  “Guardsman?” Pete said. She nodded.

  “I’ve administered all the preventatives and antidotes, just to be safe. But—” She ripped away a piece of Owen’s shirt. It was red, the color of fresh blood, and yet when Pete touched it, he frowned. I followed his example. It wasn’t even wet. We looked at Owen’s arm. It was whole and unharmed, only slightly pink where the shirt had been torn away.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Owen said, meeting my eye with a directness that I realized was meant to reassure me. He did the same to Pete. “I’m not hurt.”

  Sam, our guard captain, came crashing through the underbrush nearby, hauling with him a boy I vaguely recognized. He was a little older than Owen, ashen under his dark skin, tears tracking down his face. In Sam’s other hand was an odd looking gun. Several of the guards made exclamations of relief, even startled amusement.

  “All clear,” Sam said. “Stand down, everyone.”

  Pete and I stood almost at the same time. Sam stopped in front of Pete, holding out the weapon.

  “Paintguns.”

  We just stared at him for a moment. Pete glanced at the boy, back to the weapon, and then his eyes closed in relief. He exhaled a long sigh. “Paintguns.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Gannon. You’re not in any trouble. Who were you playing with?”

  Even as he said it guards were returning with other boys and girls
in tow. Paintguns. They released a chemical that stained like blood but disappeared entirely when a tiny emitter was activated at the end of the game. Paintguns.

  “Some of us,” the boy was trembling so hard it was difficult to understand him. “Plu and Aaron and Indira and—”

  Pete squeezed his shoulder and the boy’s words cut off as if with a knife. Pete’s voice was soft, reassuring. “You were just playing paintwar with your friends. You didn’t even know anyone else was out here.”

  The boy shook his head hard, tears flying off his jaw.

  Pete smiled at him. “Were you having fun?”

  Gannon nodded uncertainly. “We were winning, I mean, until—” his voice choked off and he started to sob. “I’m sorry, Your Excellence. We weren’t trying to—” The tears choked off anything more and Pete pulled him close, hugging him briefly.

  “I know you weren’t. It’s just fine, Gannon. Everyone’s fine and no one’s in trouble.” Pete looked up at Sam. “Will you see the children back to the palace? Make sure everyone understands that no one is at fault.”

  Sam gave him a crisp nod. I turned to find Owen standing beside me.

  “I think I lost this time, Gan,” he said to the other boy, grinning shakily. “First time you beat me.” Gannon coughed out a strained laugh and gave him a weak smile in return as Sam steered him away.

  Molly crashed into Owen, gripping him around the waist. “No one’s allowed to hurt you!”

  He hugged her back, petting her hair. “Yep. Nothing to worry about.”

  Have you had Laudley’s gifts scanned and searched thoroughly?

  Oh, Jake.

  iv5

  Owen still had dinner with his grandfather that night. It had been a scare, that was all. Still, Owen and Laudley dined alone. Pete, Molly, and I did as well.

  While Pete and I lingered over coffee, Molly played in our room and I told Pete about the conversation with Laudley. Keeping things from Pete was something I’d learned to stop doing before it had completely destroyed our lives, though it had been a close call.

  Pete sat in silence for a long time, staring out over the ocean, his face pensive. He shook his head. “It just doesn’t make any sense. What can he think to accomplish by openly insulting you? Unless he thought you wouldn’t tell me? But even that isn’t the only thing that could hurt him. You’re the one who has the final say in Owen’s life, not me. You could practically cut him off from Owen without even mentioning it to me.”

  I cracked a smile. “Like you wouldn’t have noticed.”

  He returned a grin. “I’ve always noticed. It’s just that now I would ask you about it.”

  The events of our early marriage had taught him a few things too. He’d always known a lot more than I’d ever told him. But he tried to respect my choice about how much to share. Maybe that worked in other marriages, but he was the emperor, and that changed everything.

  He’d essentially let me control the marriage all that time. That made sense on some level, considering the power differential between us and the fact that he literally could dictate my life in its entirety. But it wasn’t safe for either of us for him to tiptoe around my feelings and—even I could admit—my temper and unreasonable reactions.

  “Maybe he just wanted to get it out of his system,” I said, “things he’s wanted to say for years. Maybe he feels safe enough now. Owen’s old enough to want to preserve the relationship for his own reasons and ask me to let him keep seeing Laudley, even if I try to keep them apart.”

  Pete cocked an eyebrow. “You think he would?”

  “Not really.” I spun my coffee cup slowly on the saucer, watching its revolutions. “Though I think that’s more due to temperament than whether or not he cares for Laudley.”

  “Do you think he cares for him? He never talks about him.”

  I frowned at my cup. “That may be temperament too. He’s smart enough to pick up on the undercurrents.” I looked up at Pete. “He knows we don’t like Laudley, no matter how much we might pretend otherwise. I think, no matter how he feels, he won’t talk to us about Laudley because he doesn’t want to hurt our feelings, any more than he would ask not to see Laudley, so as to not hurt his feelings.”

  Pete sighed. “I agree.” He smiled sadly. “It’s never going to be easy for Owen, is it?”

  I shrugged. “Someday it might. Laudley can’t live forever.” I gave Pete a wry grin. “And when he’s of age he’ll have a place and power in his own right. A duke living independently is in quite a different position than the minor son of a convicted traitor living as the ward of the emperor’s husband.”

  Pete took my hand. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it. We’ll do the best we can for both the children and that’s a lot.” He chuckled. “Whatever game Laudley’s playing, it can hardly be worse than The Patriot was.”

  I shivered.

  ***

  I couldn’t sleep that night. Pete managed it just fine. He’d spent his whole life as a target and had learned the trick of tuning that out and moving on. When I thought about it, I’d spent most of my life as a target too, if for different reasons. The child in Abenez, the unclass at the IIC, the emperor’s lover, the condemned traitor, and the pardoned prince and consort. I still didn’t know how to sleep through the fear, though.

  Molly stayed with Owen that night. She refused to let him out of her sight. Long after the rest of my family slept, I stole quietly into Owen’s bedroom and sank into the armchair, watching the synchronized rise and fall of their breaths, Molly’s little arm draped over Owen’s neck.

  Jonathan would have tried to give me one of Dr. Heinriksen’s remedies, and then stood silent vigil with me when I refused.

  But there was no Jonathan anymore. He’d been betraying me to Blaine, all the years I’d believed he was my friend. If I’d waited for imperial justice, Jonathan would have died a traitor’s death. I exiled him instead, without even asking Pete. That was years ago now. For all I knew he was dead already. I shouldn’t have cared anymore.

  But it was a hole in my chest, an ache in my throat, the need to simply have him there in times like this, when he’d always been there before. When I’d trusted him.

  It would have been easier if I could hate him.

  I got up and stood by Owen’s bed. I kissed his forehead, and Molly’s cheek, the last of the babyfat still clinging to her face. I missed the simplicity of those days, when we were too busy with diapers and scraped knees to worry about their future.

  It was coming fast now. Whether I was ready for it or not.

  Did you ever give me that list of things you wanted from Prussia?

  Jonathan should have it.

  Nef. I meant Nef.

  iv6

  One of the things that had suffered from the chaos of the early years of our marriage was my work. I felt at times like I was losing my identity, the man I had been slowly subsumed in the roles I had taken on. But what bothered me the most was when it distanced me from my work.

  I have always been a physicist. It’s something I knew about myself since before I knew what word to give it, before I knew it would ever mean anything more than that I saw the world in a way that no one else I knew did or could. And that I would never fit into Abenez, as if there were such a thing as “fitting” a slum and a life of abject poverty. As if anyone deserved or should reconcile themselves to such an existence.

  But at eight, I’d been taken away from Abenez, to a place where they knew what it meant to see the world as I did, and where they gave it not only a name but a purpose, a dignity, a freedom of sorts. Had I been anything but unclass, things there would have been so different.

  I had a feeling Laudley’s objection to Owen taking the year-eight tests was as much about the changes Pete and I had been making over the years, and how the tests had figured into them, as it was about Owen himself. We’d
taken it slow, both of us having learned caution, but in the five years since The Patriot had been brought down, we’d made subtle but meaningful changes in the social structure of the empire.

  As a child I’d never questioned the structure of the empire. I’d barely known of life outside the all-consuming confines of poverty and hunger. We were what we were, we didn’t have the time or even a reason to question it. As if it could ever be different.

  Even when my life changed and I was in a position to study the politics and economics, I’d alternated between pretending the class structure didn’t matter and railing blindly against it.

  Eventually I’d set about to make changes, but I delegated to my oldest friend Kirti the understanding and analyzing of it. Somewhere in the time after her death and the destruction of Abenez, I’d realized I couldn’t remain as ignorant or as distant as I wanted to be.

  When I set out to finally understand why such poverty and suffering could exist in the face of so much wealth, power, stability, and technology, I discovered nothing that the experts didn’t already know.

  It was deliberate. The premise of our society was built on enforced stratification by wealth and class, the two having become practically synonymous. The unclass lived in cold and hunger and suffering because they were intended to. Stability was built on the back of predictable and entrenched social and civic interactions. Ambition and opportunity led to conflict and confusion. The empire didn’t allow such things outside of clearly defined parameters.

  It had been designed and put in place in a time when the people were too scattered and war-weary to object, when in fact they clung to the promise of peace by any means. Once that was accomplished, it was too well engrained, the propaganda too well swallowed and internalized to be changed.

  And Pete had always known that.

  It was the beginning of the worst time of our marriage, the time when the danger wasn’t attacks from outside but strife at home. I was angry, he was defensive. We fought, a lot.