June 14th 2013, 4:12 AM
Catherine awoke, and knew she wasn’t alone.
She opened her eyes sleepily. Nobody there. It was probably something about air currents, she thought in her half-asleep state, that she’d heard about people who were so attuned to a really stable place that they knew whenever anything changed because the air currents were different, and that sounded like a pretty plausible explanation for why she was completely certain that there was someone, invisible but tangible, standing by the force-screened window into her room - on the inside of the room - watching.
She closed her eyes again, tried to keep her breathing steady. It might be Elgolian, he might have secret elfy powers that let him be invisible. Idealists could be like that. It couldn’t be one of the servants; they certainly weren’t invisible. She couldn’t think of anyone with invisibility powers off the top of her head who might be sneaking into her room, especially not…
She tried to focus. Where was he? Feel the air… or whatever it was.
She had the location. Her stun-ray was right by her bedside table, and she grabbed it, aimed, pointed, and pulled the trigger, and the stunner-nimbus fountained off a spot in midair as if it had struck a wall.
“Are you here to kill me?” Catherine asked quietly.
“No,” said Luminosa. She was slightly visible now; still nothing more than a vague shadow, though. “I’m here because there are other people who want to kill you.”
Catherine didn’t think she’d ever met Luminosa before, but the conversation seemed pleasant and peaceful enough. Seemed logical, however little sense it actually made.
“Who?”
“Your sister’s men. She sent Mase, her shapeshifter, shortly before her capture.”
“Yes, that makes sense.” She considered. “Mase is the one they’d send. But why are you trying to stop them? I presume you’re trying to stop them, not just sitting around watching?”
“I’m here because I want you alive, yes.”
“Why?”
“When you get to my age you start to think in the long term,” said Luminosa, sounding far too much like Prudence for a superhero. “Your brother is bad for Novapest. Your sister, if she was released, would be worse. Even if Steelmind shapes up, there’s a list of people who hold grudges against the Tyrant and his tyranny longer than his criminal record. Without major reforms, Novapest is doomed.”
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.
“I know that,” said Catherine. “But you’re a superhero and a citizen of Saint-Andrews, and I’m a supervillain’s daughter and a subject of Novapest. Don’t you want Novapest to be doomed?”
“Think in the long term,” said Luminosa. “We’ve seen what happens when the US and UN try to turn dictatorships into democracies. It goes badly. I don’t know we’d do much better than the average. Certainly not willing to bet my homeland on it unless there’s no better option.”
She smiled.
“What we need,” she said, “is a compromise. A leader who understands politics, and who can keep the support of enough of the knights so that they’ll tolerate token monarchy, while winning the support of the people by introducing democracy and human rights. A way of keeping everyone on the same side.”
“Well, of course if I took power I’d have to transition into a constitutional monarchy,” said Catherine. “Feudal systems really don’t work, as everyone has been learning and will probably continue to learn. You think I haven’t thought about that?”
“I’m glad you have. I’d rather that the people I’m supposed to protect had a leader who thinks.”
“No,” said Catherine. “I’m sorry, but you completely misunderstand. I know what you want me to do. I’ve thought of it myself, obviously. If I ever inherited, the first thing I’d have to do would be to fight a bloody pointless civil war with the counts to get them to accept me abolishing feudalism, which I’d lose, and expand a bureaucracy to replace the counts and get into the UN and try to get everyone to stop embargoing our goods and stop selling heroin and end half the privileges of the superpowered and call a constitutional convention and bring actual rule of law and order to this place the way it is in most of the other countries where they speak English. And I’d have to do that not because democracy is just or fair, but just because I need foreign support and local stability and problems solved without me needing to solve them.”
Luminosa opened her mouth to speak, closed it. Catherine didn’t stop talking.
“But I’m not willing to do that. I’d never be willing to do that, even if I hadn’t given my word to my father and even if it wouldn’t require me to go against my brother, whom I love. I’d have to be queen,” said Catherine with quiet loathing. “I’d spend every minute of every hour of every day when I wasn’t sleeping working. My breakfast would be an audience if it wasn’t just listening to half a dozen untrustworthy advisors summarize news inaccurately to me. I’d have to have my friends exiled when they betrayed me, and be constantly on watch for assassins who’d probably get me anyway, and doubt everything that I was told. I’d be famous, and that’s the last thing I ever wanted - except, of course, for desperately trying to talk a group of fanatical republican-revolutionary patriots into understanding Economics 101, and that would mean I’d either have to exercise despotism and destroy the democracy my state needs to prevent civil war, or accept that errors I had the power to prevent were made. And I’d know that when I died, everything would probably go back to the way it would have been if I had never been born. Unless I won the against-odds bet, I’d just be another brick in the wall.”
“Forty years of peace is worth more than one life, Catherine Balog.”
Catherine shook her head with more firmness.
“I will not do it,” said Catherine. “I will not be queen.”
“I’ll still protect you,” said Luminosa.
“I know. You’re a hero. That’s what heroes do.”
Catherine rolled over.
“Sleep well,” said Luminosa.