Sykora struts into the cabin and drops a tablet onto the table. “And look at that. Your machinery, dove. Just had to yank so tails and shake so hands. Half from the civic developnt funds, a quarter from Marquess Shoskia at wholesaler prices on favors-for-favors, the rest sourced from a half-score baronesses for a sweetheart deal. We’re going to need to sign so autographs and attend so functions, but we are coming in under budget on these turbines.”
“Uh huh.” Grant sets his guitar aside. He’s been trying to transfer so of this jittering, spiky energy from inside to outside by playing it, with limited success.
“And of course you did wonderfully as well, dove. I don’t an to brag unduly. Excellent work with those unionists.” Sykora shimmies to the kitchen to the beat of the track he was playing along to, shaking her can as she opens the fridge and peers through it. “Divide and conquer. That’s the English phrase, yes? We really managed it. I’d like to show all those noblewon who thought they’d need to babysit you in their proposals.”
She turns from the washed-out fridge light with a plate of leftover dumplings and a big fanged grin, which falters as she sees his face.
“You’re satisfied, yes?”
He tries to summon a smile. “Uh—yes. Yeah.”
“What’s happening, dove? What’s got you preoccupied?”
He taps the cabin's remote and turns the music off. “I guess… I’m not over the re-ed place.”
“You’re not still hung up on your first sip of nootch juice, are you?” She chuckles. “It’s an acquired taste, I know. But there’s a zaikem one that’s actually quite tasty.”
“It’s not the nootch,” he says. “Or not just that. It’s everything.”
“This—hold on. I didn’t realize how much this upset you.” She glances at the kitchen table, where his guitar case has taken residence. “Will you—I just need a place to put this damnable—” He shuffles his sheet music into the case and tugs it to the floor. “There we go. Thank you.” She sets the dumplings atop the kitchen table and perches on its lip.
“That place disturbed ,” Grant says. “I an, it really got to .”
“Right.” Sykora inhales through her teeth. “I should have assud it might. I know how you can get.”
His brows knit. “How I can get?”
“About freedom, I an.”
He sits at one of her elegantly carved kitchen chairs, close enough she can rest her socked feet on his knees. “I’m not gonna sit here and complain that prisons exist. It’s not like I love them, but Maekyonites have prisons.”
“I know you do,” Sykora says. “I was in one, rember?”
“That wasn’t—I an the compulsion stuff, in particular. That’s what got to .”
“The reflection room.”
“Whatever you want to call it, it—”
“I want to call it the reflection room.” She’s got so of that Princess tal in her voice. “And it’s a very important part of our correctional system for many kilocycles. Weren’t you going to pick and choose what you were Maekyonite moralist about?”
“This is picking and choosing.” He frowns. “What’s gotten into you?”
She frowns back. “What do you an what’s gotten into ?”
“You’re being—Princess-y at .”
“I’m not the one who brought up the problem,” Sykora says. “I was over here celebrating a really wonderful success. You heard , yes? That I managed to get what you wanted?”
“What we wanted? Yeah.” A defensive canopy is unfolding across his forebrain. He’s had conversations like this before, but never with Sykora. “And I’m grateful. Really I am.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Sykora says. “Because you haven’t thanked .”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welco.”
He thinks perhaps he should leave it there. But this is his wife; he’s never been afraid to have this kind of conversation with her. “I’m hung up on this, Sykora. It’s psychological torture.”
“They are feeling the effects of their own cris,” Sykora says. “It’s enforced empathy, not torture. If it hurts them, it’s because they hurt others first.”
“I think it’s a rotten idea to—”
“They’re criminals, Grantyde.” She leans forward with an expression of unfamiliar fervency. “They have offended against the Empress, and their fellow citizens, and against and you. They preyed on our subjects and violated our laws. They must understand the harm they caused. Their comfort must co second to their correction.”
“I think it’s a rotten idea to let the victims influence the punishnt like how that place does,” Grant says. “Justice gets twisted when it gets personal.”
“This is the standardized practice of incarceration across the Empire, Grantyde. If I were to disagree with it and introduce reforms, I would have to present them to the Empress and the Palatine Council and explain myself.”
“We’ve already gotten so much from them,” he says. “We can—”
“But I don’t disagree with it.” Sykora’s feet depart him. She scoots further back onto the table. “Those people have endangered this sector and its prosperity. Out of ignorance or malice. And if they’re ignorant, they need education, and if they are malicious, they need discipline. Perhaps this is another Maekyon versus Taiikari thing. Perhaps you just don’t understand.”
“I don’t think that’s true anymore,” Grant says. “Not at this point. I understand them, I command them, I’m going to be the father of three of them, for God’s sake. Maybe I have more to learn but I’m sure about this one. Taiikari can be vindictive, just like Maekyonites can. Victims can be, too.”
“The people who he’s hurt deserve their say. You’d take that from them?”
“If it’s gonna determine sothing like a compulsion?” He lays his palms on the table. “Yes. I would. And I thought adverse compulsion was inexcusable.”
“Against citizens, it is inexcusable,” Sykora says. “But those n’s citizenships have been confiscated, because they abused their fellow citizens, and proved they cannot be trusted. Not before they’re rectified. It’s not a universal punishnt, Grantyde. We save it for serious but andable offenses. We are careful with it.”
“I’m sure it isn’t universal,” Grant says. “Because it only works on fifty percent of you.”
“There’s a version for won,” Sykora says.
“With what? Group work and journaling?”
She folds her arms tightly. “As a matter of fact, yes.”
“But n don’t rate that kind of effort.”
“Compulsion is far more effective at drawing out genuine remorse. ” she says. “We have to work much harder to find quantifiable results without it. And that’s discounting the vast difference in correctional populations between n and won, which I don’t want to get into—”
“Of course there’s a vast difference, when if you’re maleborn, you can be compelled into revealing everything, into confessing anything, into false or lost mories—”
“I said I don’t want to get into it, Grantyde,” she snaps. "I can't defend the entire Empire in one conversation."
“What about the innocent? What if we falsely—”
“Why must you take up arms against the Empire every ti?” Sykora demands. “Do you want to retry Aokan’s case? Do you doubt his guilt?”
“I don’t—I an I have no reason to. I’m not talking about Aokan, I’m talking about everyone.”
“So you’re talking about . About what happens if I make a mistake.”
“Yeah, I—well, not you, necessarily, but your servants. Yes.”
“If a servant of mine makes a mistake, then that is my mistake, Grantyde. I put them there. That is the burden I have accepted in exchange for the power to te out justice. It’s not sothing I relish.”
“That’s not what you told . You said you’re proud of your cruelty to your enemies.”
“I am proud of my cruelty to my enemies.”
“So you’re proud of what’s being done down there?”
“Those people aren’t my enemies, Grantyde!” Sykora’s pupils dilate. “And that isn’t cruelty. It’s reform. It’s much-needed reform, for disordered thinking. The inmates of Shakami were deficient in empathy and duty and without a comprehensive understanding of how they hurt their society, they stand the chance of doing it again. And I gladly allowed you to let one go free early—”
“He’s not free, he’s indentured. And wait—”
Sykora stands up atop the table. “Oh, really, Grantyde.”
“Wait. Allowed ? What happened to us being equal partners on this?”
She folds her arms. “If you’re going to be this petulant, perhaps that’s a mistake.”
“Petulant? I’m—”
“And you must have seen the way Aokan and Ondai were looking at each other. That man is no more indentured than—”
“Than what?” he demands. “Than I was?”
“Than Ruaq is,” Sykora says.
“She asked for that.”
“So did he.”
“Because the alternative is psychological agony.”
“He made his choice,” she says. “The alternative was a comfortable life of dignity and friendship in a secure sector. That is what I promise my subjects, and his behavior threatened that promise.”
“Batty, co on—”
“Do you disagree?” She’s sharpening even further. “Are you about to harp on about the Trimond incident like all these exo baronesses? Because—”
“I was absolutely not going to do that,” he says. “Don’t put words in my mouth.”
She raises an accusatory finger. “You were just putting words in my mouth.”
“You didn’t even answer my question,” he says. “Do we even know what the false conviction rate is in this Empire? This sector, even? Has anyone even bothered to keep track?”
“If an innocent were to find himself in re-education, then its effects would compensate,” Sykora says. “The innocent mind has no reason to reprimand itself.”
“Don’t give the party line, Sykora. That’s not how compulsion works. You know that. I heard the commands. What about vindictive victims? What about sadistic guards?”
“Perhaps there are so overzealous reflection officers, but—”
“If soone tells to feel like shit, I’m gonna feel like shit, no matter whether I deserve it.”
“How would you even know, Grantyde?”
“I tried to blow myself up a cycle ago, Sykora!”
He pauses. He shuts his eyes and reopens them. He takes a deep breath and is surprised at how difficult it is to do the full inhale, at how shallowly he’d been breathing.
“Oh, dove,” Sykora says. All the fury has fled her, leaving her quiet and shaken. “Forgive . I’m—that was beastly of . Sothing has gotten into . I don’t know—I just—I wasn’t thinking. I’m…” She sighs heavily. “I’m sorry.”
He takes his anticomps off; he’s been forgetting to remove them lately, when he’s alone with Sykora or the command group and there’s no need to pretend. Outside their amber hue he sees the deep blush that’s co across her face.
“It is ssing with ,” he says, “that the people who devised and run this process are a bunch of uncompellable won who ca up with it and decided it was right, when they’ve never even felt it.”
“You’re right.” Sykora hops off the table and sheepishly places her plate back in the fridge. “On that score, at least, you’re right. God. I didn’t even think about—I’m such an idiot.”
Grant runs his hands through his hair. “It’s okay. We’re just—”
“No, Grant.” She whirls around, rekindled and reproachful. “It’s not okay.”
“Sykora.” His jaw is tight. His teeth are gritted. “I’m trying to be nice.”
“You cannot tolerate this kind of negligence. This is—I have disrespected you, Grantyde. Horribly. We are nobility. Our station must be respected. And if it isn’t, we must be willing to punish.”
His hands ball into fists at the resumption of hostilities. “If we need to resort to this kind of punishnt to maintain it, we don’t deserve it.”
“That’s why we deserve it, Grant. We are given power and expected to wield it. I need to trust that you’ll do that. It’s our job. And the coterie is going to peck you to death if you’re always this afraid of exercising discipline.”
“Discipline to who? You’re my wife.”
“I have been awful to you today.” She stomps to his side of the table. “I’m being a misandrist harpy. And you’re just letting ?”
“What, I’m supposed to just bend you over my knee and spank you instead of talking this out?”
“Maybe you should,” she snaps.
“Maybe I will,” he snaps.
They stare at each other, fists and lungs tight.
He notices, for the first ti, that her horns are all the way out.
He seizes her and yanks her onto the chair with him, butt in the air, head dangling off his lap.
“You little gremlin.” He holds her kicking legs roughly in place. “Is this why you’re still being such a hellion?”
She gasps as he flips her skirt up. Her back arches.
“Oh my God, it is.” He feels her hips grinding against his lap. “Isn’t it? You were riling up.”
She shakes her head, but her tail is wagging furiously. “That’s—”
“And now you’re trying to get out of this argunt by being kinky.”
“Don’t—don’t be ridiculous.”
He hooks his fingers into the band of her panties. “Stay right there.”
Her legs squirm. He catches her and holds her fast.
“I said stay,” he snaps. “This is exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Her breath hitches. “Uh-huh,” she says, her throat tight and breathy.
“You know what I think?” He yanks her panties down her thighs, so they’re binding her legs together. He leans into her ear. “I think I’m gonna exercise so discipline after all.”
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