A cousin the Emperor didn’t remember existed most of the time.
Radko’s oldest niece, Claudette, drifted over to talk to Chen and Saylor. Claudette was two years older than Radko. Hua hadn’t wanted a second child—after all, Henri was happily married and already producing grandchildren. But Hua’s nephew, Yu, insisted the family bloodline be carried by more than a single child. And who would argue with Yu, then newly ascended to the Lancian throne?
Saylor couldn’t hide his boredom although the occasional glare from Chen kept his acidic comments under control.
What had happened in the Radko family that made Chen desperate to stay on their side?
“Take off your jacket,” Tse commanded. “I need to see your arms.”
Radko did so.
Tse clapped her hand to her forehead. “Look at them. They’re… hard.”
“And she has no chest at all,” Zheng said. “Or nothing to speak of.”
Radko couldn’t tell if they were acting for their audience or genuinely upset. “Muscle tone never hurt anyone.” If they wanted curves, they wouldn’t get them from a Lancastrian soldier, especially not someone who worked for Abram Galenos.
Commodore Vega now, for Galenos had been promoted to admiral.
Zheng walked around Radko. “I could make her arms a feature. It would be unusual.”
“No,” Hua said, and her horror wasn’t faked. “It would be a show of strength. We don’t want to challenge anyone. Cover them. Cover them now,” and she picked up Radko’s jacket and thrust it at her. “I don’t ever want to see them again.”
Radko pulled on her jacket. She recognized genuine fear when she saw it. Had her mother always been so scared of the Emperor?
“Messires Zheng and Tse will come up with two designs each,” her mother said. “You must choose one of them. While it’s being made up, I’ll send Messire Coles in to attend your hair. In the meantime, do us all a favor and go and wash and change.”
“I wouldn’t mind some sleep.” Radko was a soldier. She could nap when she needed to. “It’s evening where I’ve come from.”
“You won’t have time,” her mother said.
Radko thought she might snatch a nap, anyway.
Claudette caught up with her outside the apartment. “Take the Tse outfit. Grandmama has promised that the designer you don’t choose can design my dress, and I already know what I want.”
Radko’s childhood had been made up of bargains and counterbargains like these. “Make sure Tse designs me something I want to wear, then. I don’t plan on looking stupid because you want the other designer.”
“I’ll find a way to send Tse along to your apartment,” Claudette said.
Radko missed her uniform already, and she was still wearing it.
“I want a dress I can move in,” Radko told Tse, when she was alone in her quarters with the designer. “And I want hidden strength.” She was a soldier. She was dangerous. Emperor Yu would do well to remember that. Then she remembered her mother’s obvious terror. “Maybe not the strength.” She didn’t want anything to reflect back negatively on her family.
“Clothes you can move in are not fashionable.”
“I’ll take a Zheng design then.”
“Your niece wants the Zheng outfit.” Tse took out her comms and extended it to a full drawing slate. “I can’t design a new dress in half an hour.” She paused, and looked at Radko. “You seem naïve—unusual for someone of your position—but your mother is a good customer of mine, so I’ll give you some advice for free. Don’t antagonize Emperor Yu. I’ve seen other people try it, like young Ethan Saylor back in your mother’s rooms. It gets you nowhere except out, and if your family want to retain any position they have, they would then have to disown you.”
“Is that what Saylor’s family did?”
Tse cocked her head to one side and studied Radko, then the design on her slate. She didn’t answer.
Radko looked at the design. A sheath dress, so tight she’d have to mince. “I can’t wear that. I need to move when I want to.”
“I’m thinking.” Tse changed the image. The new design was much better. “This I designed for the Crown Princess herself. All designers do, you know. In case they are ever asked. Not that we’re ever likely to, of course—Her Royal Highness has her own designers. But we all have half a design ready to build on. A classic, just in case.”
Tse modified the design and held up the final image. Tight-fitting leggings with a swirling, full-length tunic over the top. The tunic had side slits that went up to the waist. “You’ll be able to run in this.”
Not without pulling it up, but at least you could pull it up. If she was desperate, Radko could fling the cloth over her shoulders.
“The beauty in this is the cloth it’s made from,” Tse said. “It took me five years to come up with the design. But a soldier like you wouldn’t appreciate the finer things in life.”
“Even soldiers like to dress well.”
Tse sniffed. “I’d believe that more if you’d stopped to change before you went to your mother’s rooms.” She held up the design.
Radko nodded approval.
Afterward, Tse lingered.
“Is there something else?”
Tse still hesitated. Finally, she said, “Your mother is one of my best clients. I hope whatever you’re involved in doesn’t endanger her.”
“What I’m involved in?” How much did Tse know about Radko’s job? How much did she know about Ean?
“Your mother has a lot of new friends. All acquired after we heard you were coming home.”
Radko had only been summoned ten days ago.
“You don’t need friends like Tiana Chen or Ethan Saylor. They’ll discard you as soon as you’ve finished being useful. As will their mentor, Sattur Dow.”
“Thank you,” Radko said. Her mother knew better than she did what a minefield Lancian politics could be. She would know this already.
The swirling design on the outfit Tse produced reminded Radko of the creation scene on the wall in the large crew room on the Eleven.
Pieter waited with his gels and brushes. “I hardly know what to do with it,” he said. “The dress takes over.”
“What about an electrostatic halo,” Radko suggested. If she was to wear an outfit based on an alien design, she might as well wear her hair the way it often was when she was around lines.
“It’s plain,” Pieter said, doubtfully, when he was done. “But it’s striking enough, I suppose.”
It felt like home. “I’m used to its being like this.”
Pieter looked appalled. “Isn’t it dangerous to be close to so much static all the time?”
Radko smiled, thinking of Ean, who could throw a man across a shuttle bay with the help of the lines. “Of course it’s dangerous.” But perfectly safe, too.
Hua Radko kept up a constant, strained chatter in the aircar on the way to Baoshan. Radko thought the chatter covered nervousness and a bit of one-upmanship.
There were six of them in the car. Radko, her mother, Claudette, Tiana Chen, Ethan Saylor, and another close friend of her mother’s, who’d been around seemingly forever.
“It will be nice to see Michelle again,” Hua said. A subtle reminder to people like Chen and Saylor that Michelle was a relation. “She dresses so beautifully.”
Her mother hadn’t commented on Radko’s dress. Claudette hadn’t either, but Radko had seen the expression on her niece’s face. Tse had gotten herself another client out of this and probably started a new fashion.
“You work with Her Royal Highness,” Chen said to Radko. “You must see her every day.”