Chapter Text
As far as her potential heirs went, Lady Theodora found Ambrosius de Wahl — sovereign of a backwater duchy on an even more backwater planet — to be of little consequence. Zero consequence, in fact. Subzero, even.
"Distant cousin," she referred to him brusquely, not looking up from the weapons display she was busy rearranging.
"I visited him once or twice; his entire private quarters were lined floor to ceiling with mirrors. If he were given the Warrant, he'd lock himself in the Chamber, spend his days pleasuring himself to the sight of it, and get nothing done. Though that is me being generous and assuming he'll outlive me. I half-expect the Arbites to gun him down for squandering his share of the tithe on extra beauty treatments. Strike him from the list, Abelard."
That was that on Ambrosius de Wahl; and so it remained for a few years... Until a merchant from the Calixis Sector, on whose repute Abelard would decline to comment but who had made a stop on that very same backwater planet to restock on prometheum, brought news that the mirror-loving Duke was, indeed, dead. But not at the hand of any servant of the Lex. Not even at the pitchforks of mutinous rabble, tired of being ruled by a pompous little man in his house of glass.
In fact, the merchant whispered, face crimson with amasec and voice dramatically husky, word in the duchy was... Master de Wahl had simply vanished one day. Withdrew into his glimmering reflective chambers and never came out.
His wife had cited sickness — the same mysterious malady, the subjects had reasoned, that had previously struck his beloved heiress, once so radiant and full of nearly superhuman zest for life. Curiously, the girl would still shamble out of her rooms now and again, pale and dazed, her eyes red-rimmed for lack of sleep and her lips and teeth stained with something dark. But not a peep of the Duke!
"If he expired in his bed, no-one ever saw his body," the merchant explained, clumsily pushing his glass forward for a new splash of amber liquid, which Theodora promptly had Abelard pour for him — while her own hands remained steepled in front of her face, and her gaze came alight with increasing curiosity.
"The palace burned down eventually. Right to the ground. Nobody escaped, save for the current Duchess."
Theodora quirked an eyebrow.
"The sick girl?"
"Oh no!"
The merchant smacked his lips — perhaps thirsty for more amasec, perhaps indicating that the story was about to get juicy.
"The young heiress was lost in that fire, too. No, the duchy is now ruled by her half-sister. A bastard child of the Duke and some priestess he'd brought along as the family confessor. Imagine the scandal! The heresy!"
Slowly, a smile crept across Theodora's face. The consequence meter was rapidly rising from sub-zero.
"A bastard, left the sole survivor after her entire family fell to unexplained illness and all the evidence was cleaned off by fire... What an interesting character she makes. Abelard — have Kunrad locate the girl, and summon her to me. She sounds like she might be twice the von Valancius her father was."
Abelard followed her orders, as was his solemn obligation, but not without a barely audible "Hmph" at the back of his throat. To him, this was a risk.
He understood why his mistress would sense instant kinship in this ruthless young bastard, who'd clawed her way out of obscurity through literal fire... But who was to say that, as soon as this newfound heiress stepped aboard the glorious Firstforged — a ship likely larger than her entire duchy — she wouldn't start conspiring against Lady Theodora? Brewing whatever poison she'd used on her father and half-sister; gathering kindling for a new destructive inferno?
Throne, how wrong he was.
It wouldn't be the heiress who'd plunge the ship into flames. It would be Kunrad. While the young woman from the backwater planet, whom Abelard wouldn't stop scanning with a flaring red implant and a suspiciously narrowed living eye, would rush into the fray, not stopping to so much as wipe sweat off her sooty brow until she got every single voidsman out of danger.
And now, his mistress was gone — torn away from him, from Idira, from the Protectorate that so sorely needed her firm hand — and he was left with a new Lord Captain. Constantia, unwanted fruit of a heretical dalliance; the last living member of the de Wahl Household; the new holder of the Warrant of Trade. For better or for worse.
One thing was clear: she was nothing like the clever little schemer Theodora had expected.
Idira, with her penchant for nicknames — once her eyes were dry and her throat, not as hoarse from screaming her lost lady's name — started calling the new Lord Captain, the Governess. And much as Abelard pushed his lips into a tight line and inhaled in dramatic disapproval, part of him... could somewhat see it.
In her crisp, high-waisted white dresses (her world's fashion, presumably) and buttoned-up grey overcoats, with her dark curls always gathered up and her head always half-inclined as she listened intently to all his lectures on service and duty, she would have looked quite at home shepherding a gaggle of some nobleman's rowdy children. In fact, whenever the senior officers argued, she'd treat them like rowdy children.
She'd stand observing them quietly until their faces contorted and flared up, and their hands (especially Sauerback's, though Abelard himself was not without sin) reached for their weapons... And then, she would pierce them all with her clear green eyes, and speak up, gentle yet firm, gracious yet unyielding, like a reed springing back in place again and again after a gust of wind. Determined to keep standing there, keep talking them down, until everyone cooled off.
The arguments she gave when she settled their disputes, the books she cited, from the intricacies of the Creed to the logistics of proving food to thousands of living souls — all pointed to her having managed her modest realm in person, day in and day out. This was not a Duchess who'd ascended to her throne by sinking crimson-soaked heels into the soft, lumpy mass of dead bodies underfoot. This was someone who'd assigned a ruler's duties to herself like homework, and was now toiling away diligently to fill in every single box in her textbook.
There was just one time when Abelard saw her demeanor change; when a ripple disturbed her gentle countenance, and from unquiet waters, something else emerged. Something wrought not of reed, but of cold steel. Something far more like what Theodora would have wanted.
As soon as they availed themselves of a Navigator, the young Lord Captain put her foot down upon the bridge and commanded to set course for the greater Imperium. As they approached the roiling Maw, venomous purple light came flooding in, turning everything into a kaleidoscope of pulsing flares, against which the crew stood in crooked silhouettes... And the outlines of the Lord Captain's figure were the starkest, the most rigid of all. She froze in place, even as an impossible wind, which had no place in a sealed compartment, tore at her frock and filled it like sickly water fills a blister. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, her thick eyebrows met in a low, pained line, the hinges of her augmented jaw locked tight.
And thus she remained, unflinching... until the first voidsman collapsed, screeching at an all-too-high pitch, blood streaming from his eyes, his ears, his twisting lips. Another voidsman followed suit moments after, collapsing into a grasping heap of limbs before Abelard could pull him back. Then another. Then, a howl, a wet squelch: someone's skull had burst, showering the crowd in heavy chunks of brain matter. The warp storm outside was getting worse — and would likely grow ever angrier, condensing into a stranglehold of greedy dark tentacles round the Firstforged's hull, as they attempted the jump to Port Wander in Calixis.
The Lord Captain's eyes softened. She shrank back into her usual self, and turned to Ravor.
"Abandon course," she said shakily. "I cannot risk your lives for this."
"Aye, aye, Lord Cap'n!" grunted the old voidborn; and as the ship creaked and careened, steering back on the void's churning waters in the direction of Footfall, Abelard discreetly wiped the blood from the corner of his own mouth. Frowning.
Whatever was that? Surely, she was not one to attempt a leap into the Maw for the sheer thrill of it. Not their gentle Governess! What had brought on this brief... lapse?
The answer would come to him in the dark of the void.
They had delved deep into the Immaterium again, preparing for the jump to Footfall Station; and even though the warp was not as deadly here as on the Maw's precipice, the voidship's corridors still filled with distant disembodied sobs, and if one brushed a careless hand against some of the piping, their fingers would get stained crimson.
Given their recent ordeal, most of the personnel were instructed to retreat to their quarters, and the Lord Captain followed suit. But hardly had Abelard shut the door of his room behind him, bracing for a prayer — Emperor help him, he was not ready to relive that night again — when the entire hapless thing nearly flew off its frame, as Idira burst in.
"And once again," Abelard sighed, massaging his temples, "It is confirmed that the customs of the fabled world Leira do not include knocking."
Idira gawped at him for a moment or two, out of breath, moist hair strands imprinted deep into her crinkled forehead.
"We must go to her, old man!" she wheezed at last. "To our Governess! The whispers are saying that something is wrong! Terribly wrong!"
Abelard's blood ran cold. Idira's whispers were seldom so specific. This did not bode well.
To make matters even worse, as Idira staggered out into the dark, and he rushed after her, they almost tumbled right into the deadly jaws of a growling cybermastiff.
Proctor Anthar was nearby, at least, gun on the ready.
"Glaito got some troubling readings from Fortuna that warranted investigating," he explained curtly — referring to the cyber eagle that the Lord Captain had brought aboard with her.
Once a familiar of her sister's, Fortuna had nearly perished in the fateful palace fire, and even though the Lord Captain, in her own words, had done all she could to nurse the magnificent living Aquila back to full health, the winged creature still preferred to perch quietly in her new mistress' chambers and guard her sleep. And apparently exchange cyber-gossip with the mastiff.
Together, the three of them (four, counting Glaito) made a swift march up to the Lord Captain's bedroom. The pearly silhouettes that phased in and out of the walls in the corner of their eye seemed fairly harmless. At least, as far as Abelard could tell: he valiantly resisted the temptation to observe them; to wait and see if one of them would eventually morph into a likeness of his Quatharina.
Even so. He could not take any chances.
"Proctor. Take your hound and patrol the perimeter for any hostile aberrations. Idira, I might need you on the inside. We are going in."
Master Anthar acknowledged the plan with a stiff nod, before turning a corner with the cybermastiff beside him. Abelard flexed his fingers around the hilt of his chainsword... Which nearly gnawed off his hand as Idira shoved her way past him. Inside.
The enforcers guarding the chambers were curled up on the floor in pitiful imitations of a pretzel Abelard had once shared with his children on some planet or other. The Lord Captain — alive, thank the Throne! — bobbed above their collapsed forms like a paper boat tossed back and forth on tidal waves. Her hair had come undone, curls cascading down her shoulders, and a sticky feverish glaze glistened over her brow and within her eyes. She had naught on but one of her white dresses... Not so pristine any more.
By the Emperor's grace... The fabric was torn, having caught in multiple places against metal, and there were crimson streaks soaking through it. For the Lord Captain was stuck in the violent trance of repeating the same forceful motion again and again, with the fervor of a soldier trying to get through enemy fortifications. She was throwing herself, as a living battering ram, against the lowered void shutters.
Abelard's heart jammed his windpipe at the sight of her. Was... Was he about to lose a second Rogue Trader, to some kind of void madness? Not allowing himself to get mired up in his own thoughts any longer, he leapt across the room and grabbed the Lord Captain by the forearm. Too tightly, too crudely — unforgivably so... But he had to hold her back.
She thrashed against his grip, each breath a growl. A thought twisted in Abelard's gut like a guardsman's rusted knife: she might not have even recognized him.
"Idira," he barked. "Do your witchcraft!"
The psyker trained her wide-eyed gaze on the Lord Captain, purple mist slithering over her glistening whites.
"Stand back, Governess," she pleaded, as a faint echo of several other voices danced around the edges of her own. Like chromatic aberrations in a faulty pict.
"What you seek is beyond your reach"
The Lord Captain's lips quivered.
"I shouldn't have turned away! I have to get back! I have to! My planet needs me! My — my people!"
"I am sorry," Idira said softly, reaching out to brush her hand over her arm, below the still locked vice of Abelard's fingers.
"You saw what happened when we tried to jump the Maw. Going to Calixis may be... out of the question for a while."
"My people..." the Lord Captain repeated, in a half-whisper this time.
Abelard did not dare let go of her, not yet, but something inside him — something that was decidedly not one of his century-old implants — felt like cracking when she sagged down against his chest, the cloud of her hair enveloping them both.
"I tried so hard to be good to them. I tended to their needs when all my father would do was admire himself in his mirrors... And after he was gone, after everyone was gone, I soothed them, I —"
She made another weak attempt to lurch towards the window.
"Whatever will they do without me..."
By now, the otherworldly echoes had fully drained from Idira's voice. Sounding quite human, she hissed,
"If I hear one peep from you about coddling the rabble, old man..."
He glared back at her, while his fingers finally released the Lord Captain, and travelled to the crown of her head, where, before he became fully aware of their antics, they did something outrageous. They wove through her hair.
"The people in Calixis will survive, Lord Captain. You now have a millionfold in your care right here, on the ship and throughout the Protectorate. Do they not need you as well?"
With a shuddering breath, she looked up at him. Her gaze was now clear; the reddish pall of delirium had melted away.
"I know. I remembered that back on the bridge. I just felt as though..."
She shut her eyes, setting forth the teardrops that had been swelling on her lower lashes.
"I have been nothing but a fool this whole night. Forgive me, Seneschal."
Abelard cleared his throat and hastily removed his trespassing hand.
"Dispensing forgiveness to the Rogue Trader is quite above my station, Lord Captain."
"Is using a med kit on the Lord Captain above your station too?" Idira asked impatiently. “Or beneath it?”
Abelard pursed his lips: quite reluctant to concede that she had a point... And also uncertain what to do about the odd lightness that blossomed in his chest whenever the skin of his palm remembered how those silky curls had just felt under his touch.
For most of her life — some thirty orbital turns of it — she was known as Constantia Viridis. For she was born at the height of summer, when the precious trees, one of the few commodities her tiny duchy was able to contribute to the Imperium, were a sea of rustling green... Such a lovely shade of it, so much darker and richer and more vibrant than her unremarkable, homely eyes. Though perhaps her eye color also contributed to her father choosing the last name for her. Bastards are always named after such arbitrary things, after all.
Regardless, she grew up with "Viridis" attached to her in the planetary census. Far beneath the de Wahl name and not yet discovered as a von Valancius. And as the planet spun around its star, three pearly moons in tow, the summer babe who never cried (as if mindful of offending the delicate hearing of her betters) became a quiet, meek child, always attached to the hip to Duke de Wahl's true-born daughter. A living doll for her nursery: somewhat ugly, but pliant under her hands whenever the little princess needed hair to braid or cheeks to smear rouge on. And the ever-patient fixer of her messes. Then, the child became an equally quiet young woman — still a fixer of messes, for the princess and her father the Duke, except now fully graduated from taking the blame for broken vases to soothing the tempers of creditors and tithe collectors and unquiet serfs.
And all the while, Constantia Viridis knew one simple, irrefutable truth. She had had the most value when she was still inside her mother's womb.
She had been allowed to grow from the Duke's carelessly spilled seed solely because her mother — a most devout servant of the Ecclesiarchy, save for that one lapse in virtue — fervently wished, and prayed, and wept in ecstatic glee, to birth a child that would then be turned into a cherub. What a beautiful symbol of faith she would have made! How would she have exalted Him on Terra; how would she have shined in true unsullied innocence, and soared forth on her cybernetic wings!
But just as the priestess’ wish was about to come true, the Duke, her one-time lover and her everlasting liege, changed his mind. His heiress, the real de Wahl, whose value was as astronomically high compared to Constantia’s, as Holy Terra was distant from their planet, pointed at the bundle with her half-sister, and clapped and laughed. And who was he to deny his princess a new toy?
He could have still given his bastard to the Mechanicus. He could have had her augmented husk follow his real daughter and sing praises to her, as Constantia's servo skulls do now... But instead, he decided that the little Desideria de Wahl needed a lady-in-waiting, a Seneschal, a devoted servant raised alongside her since infancy.
The priestess, deprived of her holy aspirations, soon departed to serve on a shrine world. And since then, since she was no longer a future herald of faith, ripening for collection within the priestess' belly, Constantia's value plummeted. She was nothing next to Desideria, and she would do well to remember that.
She was to shadow her. To deal with every nuisance on her path. To guess her every wish before Desideria's plump, sparkling pink-glossed lips even finished forming an order.
If Desideria set out to learn a skill befitting a high-born lady — whether it was speaking High Gothic, or embroidering the great deeds of saints on silken streamers, or painting, or playing the organ — Constantia was to learn alongside her. She was to explain the tutor's instructions whenever Desideria got distracted by scrolling through courtly gossip picts on her data slate; and do her homework if she was disinclined to be studious on a particularly hot summer afternoon, when the trees were green again and the perfumed breeze welcomed those of high value to frolic in the gardens and race on augmented horses. And when time came to demonstrate the princess' accomplishments to a salon full of indulgent guests, Constantia was to perform as atrociously as she could, so that by comparison, Desideria could appear exactly as brilliant as she always felt herself to be.
And, of course, should Desideria ever catch the eye of an eligible bachelor — the nephew of the planetary governor, still somewhat stiff from his latest rejuvenation procedure, the bejeweled heir of an interstellar prometheum-drilling dynasty, the massive-wigged, high-heeled dandy who also traced his lineage to a Rogue Trader — Constantia was to chaperone her as propriety dictated. And she also was — which was imperative! — to stand beside her at unflattering angles. This, just as during the salons, would let Desideria's beauty — so far, while she was yet young, only enhanced in minor ways under a chirurgeon's scalpel — truly bloom in contrast against Constantia's drab dresses, her sallow, makeup-less face, her plain updos of natural hair, with not an extension or a feather in sight... And most of all, her unshrunk aquiline nose — which might have looked noble and refined on the Duke's ode-worthy face, but, as his wife declared with a sour scowl in Constantia's general direction, was far too much for a young lady.
Courtly love was, in short, something that Constantia, the ugly and unremarkable and valueless Constantia, was tasked with observing, but was never meant to take part in. No matter how much she blushed as she nodded along to Desideria's breathless accounts of how delightfully she had been courted when Constantia was finally satisfied in her safety, and decided to let her and her suitor out of her sight to have some privacy. No matter how many piping-hot, heretical-if-you-squint books about perpetually bare-chested void pirates and voluptuous sorceresses from untamed planets she hid under her pillow to guiltily devour in between her duties. No matter which scenes from those books she attempted to paint, before hastily scraping all evidence off the canvas. For her, the doors to that enchanting world have been sealed shut tighter than a hermetic airlock. A lower-decker would sooner dine on a juicy grox roast (and with her at the head of the von Valancius dynasty, they just might; she just needs to puzzle out the logistics of redirecting rotting food excesses to the hungry masses, just as she did on her home world) than she would be let in.
It is funny, she supposes. Now that she has come to know Lady Cassia, who has gills cutting deep into her throat, and talons at the end of her bony white fingers, and a third eye underneath her protective gem — Constantia has been gently encouraging her interest in stories of gallant love. Oh, how many lovely evenings they have shared, Navigator and Rogue Trader, reading or painting together! And never once has Constantia agreed with Cassia's laments that she is too wretched and hideous to live the life of one of her books' heroines. But as for herself, those laments still ring true.
Even elevated to high value, transformed by tragic happenstance into one of the greatest sovereigns in this corner of the galaxy, she dares not stray from duty. This has become too engrained in her. She may get announced far and wide across the Expanse as Constantia von Valancius, but at her core, she is still Constantia Viridis.
And Constantia Viridis does not aim above her station. Constantia Viridis toils for the betterment of others, and does not give in to selfish desires.
Constantia Viridis certainly does not rest her hand over her forearm, where the fingers of her own Seneschal imprinted into her skin as he restrained her in the throes of warp jump delirium (for which he later apologized profusely; but oh Throne, her flesh remembered). Constantia Viridis does not feel her mouth run strangely dry when she recollects how big his hand was, how solid and heavy it felt. Constantia Viridis does not let her eyes flutter shut while running her hand over the spot he touched, imagining foolishly that the fingertips on her burning skin are, once again, his.
Constantia Viridis does not gape down at her sketchbook only to discover that the scribbles tossed together by her idle hand keep turning into the same set of cheekbones, same disapprovingly pursed mouth, same creases of skin around a living eye and circular optical implant.
And Constantia Viridis certainly does not lift the hem of her nightgown in that particular, disgraceful motion, and try to remember the right path to explore between her legs (which she has not done since puberty, and probably should never have done at all, for what is the point), while her free hand clutches another nigh-heretical book where the heroine's lover is in the Imperial Navy.
No, she can’t, she shouldn’t! She has so much work ahead of her! And work, diligent, useful work, has always been the sole domain of Constantia Viridis. What other way could one compensate for having no value?