The primrose path

by Tym Greene

A centaur—newly arrived at the imperial court—finds that he’s caught the eye of the emperor himself. Hijinks ensue.

An onlooker with a taste for history and music might have noted with interest how the waltz, perennially popular for the past 15 centuries, was just beginning to be overtaken by the neo-mazurka, its faster time signature and livelier steps being especially preferred by the younger courtiers. Lavinia, on the other hand, simply watched.

On the asteroidal imperial fortress of New Gulporte, it did not do to stand out...unintentionally. Conformity was the watchword for those who intended to survive, blending in by dint of social camouflage. And so Lavinia sat with the older courtiers, watching her son hop and bounce with his peers (in age if not social standing) on the ancient parquetry.

Achille was still young and nimble, a centaur of good breeding like his mother, and his hooves—swaddled in the special nanofelt required of all courtiers not born with paws—daintily supported him in the dance. There was much of his father in his bearing and dappled coat…and hopefully none of his willful disregard.

Hadar had been handsome, and as inheritor of a significant portion of the landmass of Southern Lemuria, his appeal as a mate had been more than just political. Lavinia sighed and fanned herself a little harder lest tears run down her long face and spoil the thick makeup hiding her wrinkles. There had been passion—after all, she’d borne him a son—but Hadar had quickly lost interest in the new toy of his bride and her lands.

The music changed to a slow processional. The Emperor’s processional. Mid-leap, it seemed, the dancers spread from the floor, a drop of soap parting a sea of oil. They revealed the intricate patterning of the inlay, swirls and arabesques orbiting around the central motif, just as the worlds orbited (in concept if not in fact) around this core of all civilization.

A cloud of dry, formless fog poured into the room—one of the little magic tricks for which the Emperor had had a mania of late—obscuring the opening of doors, the measured strides, the form everyone knew. Then like the sun on spring mist, the fog parted from the center out, veiling the shape within until the last instant, when it vanished to reveal the tall figure standing square on the five-petaled flower inlaid in the center of the dance floor.

Gaesol, the Primrose Emperor, had arrived for the evening. The musicians, hidden in their alcove, began to play the rotational, during which every courtier was expected to make real the centralness of His Imperial Majesty by orbiting him on the dancefloor. Some scholars had once speculated that this originated from the need to inspect the royal person, looking for weaknesses or imposters, but the initial cause mattered little, not when His Imperial Majesty was intently inspecting each one of his courtiers, as though examining them for flaws—physical or devotional.

The golden dragon had celebrated—along with every world and people under his sway—his centennial birthday just a few years before, and his middle age was showing in the plumpness of his belly and the dullness of scales that had to be buffed and polished by servants before any appearance. Still, no one was about to tell the emperor that he was getting fat. He’d also begun to cultivate thick muttonchops as though in counterpoint to his thinning mane, and their hairs fluttered slowly in the still air of the ballroom. This night he was wearing a crimson (some might call it blood-hued) tunic with puffed sleeves and a matching pair of breeches, studded with pearls and trimmed with black lace. His bare talons padded softly on the ancient intarsia, and his outstretched arms encompassed all his court.

The rotational finished, the courtiers bowing and backing to their corners as Gaesol strode to the dais at the head of the room. Lowering himself into the ornate chair—not quite a throne, but obviously meant for no one else, with its carved dragon-claw feet and elaborate five-petal-emblem headrest—he smiled at his court. “Ladies, gentlemen, you honor me with your presence.”

“You honor us, Your Majesty,” came the resounding, and automatic, response.

His smile broadened, revealing gold-capped incisors that matched the gold capping his truncated horns, though without their elaborate chasing. “My children, tomorrow shall be a day worth remembering, for tomorrow there shall be a Carousel of Fashion!”

The ripple of dismay that flowed through the assembled nobles was followed by a tidal wave of applause and fawning oohs and aahs. An event such as this could spell disaster, and the absence of any warning ensured that there was no time to prepare. It was almost as though the Emperor intended to keep his court unbalanced and uncertain.

The young centaur, applauding the announcement with his peers, turned to the rhino standing beside him, and asked what was meant by “Carousel of Fashion.”

“How could you do that? How could you reveal your ignorance to the Count of Ioh?” Lavinia and Achille were back in their quarters after the dance had concluded. It wasn’t as small as the hive-like servants’ quarters on the floor above them, but among the courtiers the space granted to the two centaurs who ruled Ophir and Southern Lemuria was by far the smallest; a slight that was doubly painful in a world where space meant power, given that centaur bodies were the largest of all races in the Empire, barring only the dragons themselves.

Their own servant, an aging satyr named Gron, had removed the elegant tunics and the broad tapestry-like skirts that covered their equine backsides, replacing them with simple linen shifts that draped easily over upper and lower torsos. Lavinia waited patiently while he finished pinning her hair and mane into curlers for the night. She sometimes thought that her naturalism and authenticity set her apart in such an artificial age, and a small smile twitched her still-full lips as she examined her reflection in the large mirror; there was a perverse pride in having to cover up such beauty with powders and makeup and elaborate hairstyles. It was easy to imagine herself galloping the plains of Ophir once more—something she hadn’t done for over three decades now—mane and tail flowing in the open air, with nothing but a cubit’s width of elasticated fabric to cover her chest.

Then her head moved, and she caught sight of her son in the mirror, daydreaming as he stared out the projector window. The digital screen in its gilded frame was currently tuned to match a window from an upper tower of Ophir’s capital and main port, and the young centaur was visibly breathing in the artificially-scented breeze that flowed from the device; Lavinia could almost taste the sea salt. She bridled, grabbed his arm.

Tugging him back, she forced her son to meet her, face to face. “There are rules here: how to walk and how to talk, how to address a man or a woman where to sit, how to sit,” she said with a light swat on his rump. “How to behave in front of the Emperor. You know none of these things. If you don’t learn quick, we could both be out of favor, or worse. This is not a game...” Even Achille, flank smarting and head confused, could see the worry brimming in her eyes. “If you want to survive here, you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing.”

“Then how am I to learn?”

Lavinia groaned with exasperation. “You just don’t understa—”

There was a rustling whir from the other side of the room. The centauress held up a silencing hand, and both turned to look. A small flap had opened in the far wall, allowing a mechanical puck to trundle through. Arms and sensors unfolded once it had passed the little portal, and they watched as it progressed around the room, scanning and occasionally pausing to work at a scuff in the wall, a dent in the floorboards.

The repairbots, Lavinia would explain once it had left, were another “service” provided to nobles who lived in the palace. The more powerful, the better-favored you were, the more often they would visit; the small suite of rooms assigned to the de Pelouse household were scheduled for repairs on the third day of every month, an almost interminable wait for other nobles. Lavinia, however, knew that the repairbots were often used to carry listening devices and micro-cameras; what better way to spy on those in elevated positions than by one of the perks of that position.

There were benefits to being ignored.

“A great moment is upon us,” the Count of Ioh boomed as he saw Achille descending the broad main stair towards him. His basso profondo voice made him a driving force of any discussion, as did his tendency to make pithy pronouncements. “Come, lad, stand by me. They’ll be opening the doors soon and we shall see what wonders are in store.”

Remembering his mother’s admonition—and knowing she was still in their rooms finishing her toilette—he tossed his mane and linked his arm with the older rhino’s. “You never got a chance to tell me yesterday: what is a Carousel of...Progress?”

“Fashion, lad, fashion. The Carousel of Fashion is the event of the season. Fashion is the lifeblood of New Gulporte, the thrumming heartbeat that keeps things interesting. Without fashion, all would be monotonous, drudgery and bore.” Other nobles arrived before the great double doors that led into the grand ballroom, listening politely as the rhino espoused his commonplace views on the role of la mode in the center of a multi-planet empire.

Meanwhile, the final preparations were finished as the ballroom was made ready for the arrival of the court. The great room was the largest in the whole asteroidal palace, and the lowest floor, barring the emperor’s suite—the throne room with its “leagues of space,” seemingly carved out of solid gold, as well as the imperial bed and bathing chambers—and various rooms housing the machinery essential to the running of such a large household on a floating chunk of rock.

The asteroid had been mined in the early days of the Gulporte empire, the early prospectors hollowing out homes for themselves, then adding generators, artificial gravity, and sewage and water pipes. The more gold and platinum they extracted, the more they could afford to improve things. And then, just when the veins seemed tapped out, the imperial agents had approached them. Once the purchase was transacted, the original meeting hall was further hollowed out to make the palace’s ballroom, with exotic materials brought from every corner of the empire.

The old capital was too tied-down, it was determined, too strongly associated with one land, one planet, unbefitting an interplanetary dominion that prided itself on the equanimity of its laws and policies. So the court, archives, and treasures were all transported from Old Gulporte, the ancient capital of the once-country Talamhir, to the palatial asteroid New Gulporte.

Achille had heard all of this before, imperial history being one of the several subjects his tutors thought edifying for a young princeling. So he smiled and made appreciative noises as the older rhino pontificated and the other nobles gathered.

Finally, it was time.

With a fanfare of trumpets and a burst of confetti (vacuumed up by gold-chased repairbots almost as soon as it landed, lest it jam the air filtration systems), the grand ballroom’s doors swung wide. Achille stood, a rock amid the swirling tide, trying to make sense of what he saw as the other courtiers streamed past him. He could see the Count of Ioh’s gold-capped horns leading the charge and the desperately manic way the other nobles tried to be first at this or that table.

Then his eyes adjusted and he saw what was on the tables. Eagerly he joined the flood.

The hubbub of nobles and tradesmen was swallowed up by the yawning cavern of the ballroom, the tramp of a thousand feet dulled by the swathes of carpeting that had been laid over the intarsia floor. Bright colors flashed and glowed, and threading throughout was the soft chamber music of the court musicians, tempoed and pitched to evoke the rhythms of marketplace banter.

Holographic signs floated midair, picking out the tables and displays of this or that major provider, while some of the smaller vendors aimed more towards a boutique approach, their snug booths catering to only one potential connoisseur at a time. The theme throughout, however, was the palely-desaturated aqua color that spangled petit-fours, dyed pumps, and ombréd gowns. Other colors were in evidence too, but the aqua seemed to be the couleur du jour.

Draping a pale teal scarf across the red-spattered white of his rump, Achille grimaced: it was not a good match for his coloring. Thankfully, there were still plenty of other hues on offer. An orange shimmersilk spangled with glowing white blossoms caught his eye, especially once he saw that it was trimmed with cloth of gold lace.

While he was examining the other fabrics the merchant had on offer, he overheard the conversation coming from the neighboring stall (which seemed to contain nothing but tiny slips of fabric in bold patterns and daring colors: exotic undergarments).

A courtier Achille barely recognized—a chubby fox with his whiskers greased into a wide mustache—was fingering the wares, holding up a lace-frilled bikini with a prodigious pouch. “How can I explain spending half my country’s GDP on something like this? Do I need a thong with platinum embroidery?”

The booming voice of the Count of Ioh responded: “Need? Lad that’s not the question at all.” Glancing over the racks, Achille could see the elder rhino holding up a thong that seemed to be made of bright pink candy floss, and had to stifle a giggle at the thought of the big pachyderm wearing nothing but that little confection. “The question,” the Count continued, “is whether you can afford to do without it. Being here, in New Gulporte, the capital and heart of this great empire, not throwing one’s money around is decidedly frowned upon.” Achille could hear the thwump as the rhino smacked the fox’s back in his enthusiasm.

Moving as stealthily as possible for a centaur, he placed the shimmersilks back on their display and slipped out of the stall, steering clear of the Count lest he be dragged into another impromptu lecture.

The merchant dealing in gold- and jewel-encrusted gas masks and emergency equipment seemed to have made a miscalculation: not one of the nobles even stopped to glance at the gear. Achille passed the dejected jackal as well, wondering if owning such precautionary measures—even if they fit the style and opulence of the court—would have been like saying, “I don’t trust the Emperor’s palace, the anti- meteor grids, the guards and structural integrity fields.”

The other courtiers jostled around, bumping him and one another in their haste to get at the latest and greatest on offer before any of their competing compatriots. Most looked practically ecstatic, fangs showing through their grins as they negotiated with merchants, or struggled with other courtiers for the last...whatever it was.

Occasionally he could hear concerns voiced to trusted friends or loyal aides. “What if I buy the wrong color?” moaned one tiger who seemed just as displeased with the aqua theming as Achille was, while another noble worried aloud that he might be ousted by a more frugal replacement. “Or a more fashionable one!” piped up the noble’s companion.

As he strolled the aisles between merchants, Achille felt more and more overwhelmed: everything seemed to glitter and glow—even the discreet little price tags—and there was nowhere he could turn for advice. He didn’t even know if there was a budget for him; his tutors had made a lot of noise about finances and while he didn’t understand them, he did remember their injunction that his lands were not to be considered a cash cow.

Instead of worrying about money, then, he decided to spend the time looking. That had been another of their instructions: to observe everything at court, to watch and learn. He noticed right away that most of the fashion on offer had a preponderance of buttons, ties, clasps, or other fasteners. Neowhalebone stays and narrow hems were also in fashion. Almost as though to show off how much time, how many servants you’ve got, he mused, thinking of their lone servant, who was likely still assisting his mother with her toilette.

As he examined the electronic tapestries on offer at one of the stalls, thinking that they would make excellent side panels for a variable and historiated caparison for himself, he caught a hint of movement from one of the statuetted niches on the side wall. A shiver of silk and iridescent organza belied the secretive attentions of two courtiers.

Black and russet muzzles joined and parted furtively as the zebress and vixen gave in to their passion. The centaur pointedly turned away lest he be caught watching. How could they think this was an appropriate venue for a tryst? Then another thought came to mind, given the sorts of things he’d heard about the court and courtiers: I wonder if they—or one of the two, anyways—wants to be seen, in order to humiliate, or entice, or discredit someone? He shook his head; it all seemed like the sort of “Ah! But he knows that I know that he knows that I know!” scenario all too often favored in the currently- popular comedic operettas.

Ultimately he decided that the tapestry, with its leagues of cabling and chunk of computers, was still too heavy and bulky to be effective as clothing. Perhaps if the technology advanced further it would be comfortable enough to drape across his withers and lower back, making use of the changeable imagery to display his family crest, or a scene from mythology, or simply a pleasing color and pattern as the mood took him. He thanked the vendor politely and moved along. He couldn’t shake the impression that the horse had been eyeing him, taking mental notes about this new courtier in their midst.

Glancing around, he noticed others—vendors and courtiers alike—taking undue interest in one another. Could the stories really be true, could New Gulporte be a land of spies and informants, with everyone snooping on everyone else? A boisterous voice just behind him jostled his musings: “Count! How are you? How was that velvet horn warmer I sold you last Carousel?”

Moving as stealthily as possible for a sixteen-hands-high centaur, Achille made his way to the other side of the grand ballroom, well out of earshot of the vocable rhinoceros. Other vendors called out at other courtiers, trying to bank on their familiarity to make a few more sales. Glad he didn’t yet have to worry about that sort of expectation, the centaur instead focused on the marvels and fripperies on display.

The orange stripes and pearlescent white claws of the seller of hoof and nail polish caught his attention, and he lingered as the solidly-built tiger showed off the different colors and formulations. “Bottles marked with this star will change color in different temperatures, definitely good for natatorium fêtes and sauna soirees. And the polish in any bottle bearing this circle will peel off easily after 8 hours. A warm dusky orange like this would really accentuate your natural coloring,” he said smoothly, holding up a vial that seemed to contain distilled sunset.

The tiger bent to one knee, gently lifting Achille’s foreleg with a paw and holding the bottle above his hoof to approximate the look. Bending forward at the waist, the centaur could see that yes, the orange did bring out the warmth of his hide at cannon and pastern, making the more traditional roan hue of his knees and legs burn even more blazingly. The white of his flanks seemed almost glacial by comparison, their russet spatterings like blood on snow. The tiger’s paw was warm and gentle on his fetlock, the fingers moving slowly, as though the vendor were entirely unaware that he was stroking his potential customer’s leg.

Though he knew it was likely part of the salesman’s toolkit, a ploy to curry favor and ensure a purchase, Achille relished the attention. It seemed as though the tiger were actually enamored, especially when he stood to take the centaur’s hand and show how the polish could be used there as well. “See,” he whispered like it was the most romantic thing to say, “it would even look good on your fingernails.” Soft pads caressed skin, and Achille found himself becoming indecent from the attention. He gazed into the tiger’s hazel eyes, and he heard the chuffing rumble of the other man’s breath, the rolling musculature of his body beneath a glittering midnight-blue tunic.

He was prevented from responding—and from revealing his arousal beneath the hem of his short caparison—by the sound of trumpets. The entire massive room froze, romances and sales alike paused incomplete, mid-transaction. A shower of aqua-colored flower petals burst from the tall doors opposite the main entrance, but they did not fall. Instead they hovered, spinning like sycamore seeds, to create a curtain to be parted by a thick lemon-yellow arm.

Once the flat cloud of spinning petals was behind him, the Emperor lifted his arms to the applause of his captive audience. After a moment, he appeared sated and lowered his arms again, causing his teal nusilk robe to flutter and flow like liquid water. His next step towards the crowd of merchants and nobles caused the flower petals to erupt, flying out like shrapnel from a dying star. Achille heard a young voice cry out in swooning pleasure, saying something like: “A flower, from His Majesty!”

I hope I don’t sound like that, he thought with a world-wise smirk. He watched for a moment as the Emperor strode through the outer ring of vendors, fingering fabrics, examining accessories, always paying more attention to the products showing the couleur du jour. Some of the vendors thus approached seemed to be in transports of ecstasy, while others looked pale and tense, as though the stress of being considered by the Emperor (and the fortune or ruin that could follow, depending on his decision) were simply too much.

After a few minutes of watching the drama playing out, Achille turned back to examining the wares on his own. With all eyes on the yellow dragon, it was a lot easier for the centaur to go about his business without having to worry about fawning attentions or gossiping comparisons. There seemed to be a little district of stalls devoted entirely to shoes; he passed them by with only a cursory glance, glad he didn’t have to cram toes into such painful-looking constructions.

Towards the farther side of the ballroom, he found a stall with tailors who had prepared for more unusual bodytypes. While most of the vendors seemed to be specializing in one product, or one race, this family of humans were more generalized, with animatronic mannequins mounted above their racks: a slender satyr, a strutting centauress, even the elephantine race was represented. Trotting up to the racks beneath the quadrupedal mannequin, he was greeted by one of the three or four identical fresh-faced young ladies who were manning the booth—triplets or clones, he couldn’t tell, not that it mattered—who took quick measurements: his height, the girth of his barrel, the length of his lower and upper torsos, the waist where they joined, and finally his neck.

She worked so swiftly that he barely had time to notice her light aroma when she drew close. His nostrils flared and he caught a whiff of machine oil and synthetic flesh. That explains it. How better to deal with a variety of customers in a variety of sizes and types—as well as have an encyclopedic knowledge of what items in the inventory would fit which clients, and with what modifications—than to have androids handle all of it. Behind the discreet sales desk in the middle of the racks stood a matronly woman, still attractive and obviously the template for these ageless employees. She watched serenely as the android asked Achille a few quick questions about his habits and tastes.

Almost before he noticed she’d left, the android returned with several neat bundles of fabric in her arms. Placing them on a side table, she lifted the top one, allowing its shimmery fabric to unfold in a golden cascade. “I hope this pleases milord. It is an entirely new type of fabric, designed to adhere to your body without clasps or fastenings, ideal for exercise, perfect for quick costume changes.”

Intrigued, he raised his arms, letting her remove his tunic and light caparison, replacing it with what seemed at first to just be a length of cloth unrolled from its bolt. She draped and wound it around him where it hung limply: pretty, but not noteworthy. Then she placed a loose belt around his waist and showed him how to open the buckle’s sunburst face and press certain buttons hidden within. As soon as she did, there was a crackling that made his hide stand on end.

Just as suddenly, the burst of static across his body seemed to smooth out, and with it the fabric. It now clung to his body, showing off his lean contours, leaving artful little gaps through which his dapples were alluringly visible. The android snapped her fingers and an oversized mirror unfolded itself from one of the racks.

Achille was met with a handsome sight: a centaur, young and virile, swathed in gold that moved as though it were a part of him. It was like watching one of the ancient statues in the ruined temples of Lemuria come to life. He reared back, pranced a little, trotted back and forth; nothing he did dislodged the folds, not even the tail end that the android had tucked between his hind legs, covering his groin as though by accident.

Around his upper body, the fabric was more sculptural, accenting his shoulders with wing-like flourishes, and trailing a ruffle down his chest. A high collar of the fabric arched around his head, standing back so as not touch his mane or neck. It felt as though the length of fabric had been precisely calculated, no more nor less than was needed to suit the purpose. Perhaps, he thought, there’s more to fashion than just color and embellishment.

He continued to admire himself in the mirror, swirling and prancing, bucking as though trying to shake off the clinging fabric, shifting to catch the light on its various hard-edged creases and plains. He felt as though he were draped in windings of beaten gold foil.

So intent was Achille that he didn’t realize he was being watched by more than an attentive android and her owner. A puff of hot breath on the back of his neck made him spin around, his swaddled hooves scrabbling for purchase as he tried to corral his shock into a stately bow. “Your Majesty!”

The dragon smiled down the few cubits’ difference in their height, and puffed a ring of smoke idly into the air. His gaze bounced from head to hoof, taking in the obvious strength of the centaur, as well as the rump that the golden drapery did more to showcase than hide. “Oh, don’t stop on my account, it was a lovely little dance you were doing; quite new.”

“I, um, thank you, Your Majesty.” Achille bowed again, if only to give himself time to think. “I was merely testing the construction and fit of this garment.”

“Ah, putting it through its paces?” The lung asked with a laugh echoed by everyone in earshot. “Well, it seems to suit you just fine. Please, allow me to buy it for you.” He snapped his fingers and—as though by magic—a stern-faced minister of the Exchequer appeared at his side. “Pay the vendor for the young centaur’s new garment,” he said in a sotto voce whisper, at which the man nodded and turned to the older lady, who had a look of rapture on her face.

Meanwhile, the emperor had placed a gold-taloned hand on Achille’s shoulder. “You’re new in my court; I make a point of getting to know the up-and-comers. I’d like you to join me in a stroll, away from all this business of buying and selling.” He saw the centaur about to protest and added: “They’ll send your old clothes back up to your rooms.”

Achille tried to hide his blush in another bow. “You honor me, Your Majesty!”

“Oh please, call me Gaesol,” he said as he led his catch away. With a wave of his hand the doors opened for them.

The centauress appearing on the stairs at the other end of the hall, who had finally gotten her hair and tail properly coiffed, caught a glimpse of movement at the opposite pair of doors. The flash of gold and aqua fabric, the familiar forms of centaur and lung dragon, the russet-and-white dapples and lemon-yellow scales, her attentive eye caught all this and sent the impulse to her arm, which raised her hand and the fan it held to beckon to her son. “Come back,” she wanted to say, but could not, for he was with the Emperor.

Lavinia turned the motion into a flourish, snapping her fan open and fluttering it at her delicate throat. It would not do to be seen to bawl in court, nor could she let her discomfiture show. She smiled broadly at some of the other ladies as they drew near, intent on gossiping about the new seasonal color. Her light brown-hued roan coat would be a perfect match for the aqua currently in vogue, they averred, to which she giggled coquettishly and curtseyed. Her mind was in torment, but she’d been at New Gulporte too long to let it show.

They were, as far as Achille could see, alone. It was as though by striding out through the doors of the grand ballroom the Emperor had signaled to all his myriad flunkies that he wished for solitude. The conversation had been light thus far, with the Emperor inquiring after his schooling in Ophir, his voyage up to the asteroidal palace, and what he thought of New Gulporte.

“My Lord—Gaesol,” he corrected himself, “I’ve never seen such magnificence...though it pales in comparison to your Imperial self.” Achille tried to remember the things his mother and tutors had told him, how to behave and be courtly.

The lung dragon laughed heartily at that. “Oh come now, I’m one hundred and two standard years old. I’ve heard more flatterers than you’ve had hot breakfasts. If I’d wanted conversation with a mewling toady I would have selected one from the multitude out there,” he jerked his regal thumb towards the grand ballroom behind them. “I had hoped that you’d have the courage to speak your mind, lad.”

“I do mean it, Gaesol.” It felt so deliciously wrong to be addressing the Primrose Emperor of the Known Planets so informally, like going to bed without brushing one’s teeth (but with the added frisson from the potential threat of treason). “You are more than I could have imagined.”

That seemed to meet with the lung dragon’s approval, and they walked in content silence for a few minutes. When they approached a tall doorway, Gaesol spoke up, his voice soft: “There are times when even I feel...discouraged by the demands of the court: the wariness against intrigues, the knowledge that there are those—even here—who wish ill of me and my empire...” The old-style doors parted at the dragon’s gesture, producing a gentle chime that seemed to echo through the space. “And then I come here, and find a small courage in the green and growing things.”

Green is precisely what Achille’s first impression was: a profusion of emeraldine leaves, thick, waxy, some as big as his hand, others as small as his little finger. A blast of citrus-flavored air followed, making his eyes water and surprising him nearly as much as the Emperor’s quick confidence. “I...can see why someone would find comfort here,” he agreed. “I’d never even heard that there was a place like this here.”

“Nor should you have,” Gaesol said with a light chuckle, “this is, after all, my private orangery. We’re on the opposite side of the asteroid from the main bulk of the palace. The gravity is a little lower here, to allow my trees to grow tall, and as for the glass above us.

“ Again he gestured, this time at the conservatory-style roof, a fragile-looking network of spindly gilt framework holding panes filled with stars and the velvet black of space. At his snap, the spangled void became bright turquoise, rippling with silver. It took a moment for Achille to realize what he was looking at, but then a bright tropical fish swam by, a sort he’d become quite familiar with.

“That’s an Ophirian triggerfish.”

“Indeed it is. I imagine you’d never expect to see a forest underwater, eh? There are cameras mounted all over my different worlds to provide me with any vista I’d prefer.”

“Just like the viewport in our rooms,” the centaur mused as he looked around, watching the net of bright lines rippling and shifting across the trees, the fish swimming above them real as life. He knew the cost of even a small digital viewport like they had was high—and that wasn’t counting the cost of mounting and maintaining all the cameras—but to have a roof of such panels, of such high quality, and have them able to withstand the vacuum of space…that was true luxury.

Another Imperial snap and the underwater “sky” returned to a more quotidian azure, streaked with clouds just beginning to be tinted with sunset. Between the trees Achille could see glimpses of more sky, grounded by staggered green volcanic slopes. Glimpses of ocean peeked through, as well as the Ophirian towers of stepped and staggered stone, their softened by attentively cultivated mosses and ferns. Even as he watched the blue deepened to violet, the clouds pinkening to a bright coral hue, the unseen sun setting.

“I had these trees imported,” the Emperor was saying, “from every country, every region within my domain. Standing here I feel as though I’m looking across the whole of the Empire, even without the multitude of skies I can call upon.” He placed a hand on the young noble’s shoulder, directing him to look at a particular potted growth. “This lime tree was from Southern Lemuria. The buds are just beginning to open. Each month, a different type of blossom blooms, according to the colors of the rainbow; in here it is never winter.”

“It’s magnificent.”

The dragon coiled his long neck, clearly pursuing some inner train of thought. “There are still those who would seek to destroy it...the people never know what they want—the best are well-meaning but ignorant, the worst are simply envious of what they see here. I protect them, you know, give them a gravitational nexus about which all worlds can orbit. That’s the reason for all of this,” his open hands encompassed the orangery, the Carousel of Fashion they’d left behind, the entirety of the asteroid of New Gulporte and everything it symbolized.

“You provide a cultural anchorpoint, Gaesol,” Achille felt an understanding dawning even as the sun set behind the artificial windows. “Something to strive for, a benchmark of perfection. You are an ideal.”

“Ha! An enlightened tyrant I’ve been called—and it fits rather well—but ‘ideal’ is a new one.”

“Do you deny it?” Achille found himself smiling cattily, proud of his canny insight. And when the Emperor’s arm draped across his shoulders, rustling the clingy gold fabric, he didn’t mind.

Looking around the emperor’s private grove, he noticed a different green among the trunks and leaves: it was an orc, in a simple brown tunic, clutching a push room to his chest. Seeing that the centaur had spotted him, the gardener slowly shook his head back and forth, as though begging him not to call him to the emperor’s attention. “Gaesol,” Achille said, placing a hand upon the imperial hand on his shoulder, “what are those trees over there? They look different.”

“Well spotted,” the dragon rumbled as he led his subject to the other side of the orangery, away from the trembling orc. He reached up and caressed the shorter leaves with a tender claw, plucking one and crushing it. Lowering his hand, he presented the chlorophyll-smeared scales to the centaur’s nostrils.

Inhaling deeply, Achille felt little fireworks going off in his sinuses. “Oh, that’s lime all right,” he said, taking a second whiff.

“Limes from Ioh, easily the most flavorful in the Empire. When they’re ripe I’ll have a few sent up to your suite. Speaking of which, I was hoping you would join me. This evening. In my suite.”

“M-my Lord,” Achille nearly stumbled, blindsided by the invitation.

“Excellent, I’ll see that your ident card is enabled with the proper allowances.” He waved his hand, magically clean of leaf juices, and a holographic timepiece appeared before them. “I’m afraid I have duties to attend to now, but I’ll see you at eight this evening.” It wasn’t a question, merely a statement of fact.

A snap of the emperor’s fingers brought a liveried human running up. “Escort my guest back to his quarters,” the dragon purred before turning and striding away, his tail trailing behind like a wisp of golden smoke.

The footman did as he was ordered, bidding Achille to follow him along a path through the limes. The emperor likes me? He likes me! What does this mean? It can’t be anything but good, right? Achille’s mind was in such a whirl that the next thing he knew he was being deposited at his door.

“Mother? You’ll never guess what happened...” he called out once he managed to fumble through the lock, stopping when he saw the letter tucked into the frame of his projector window. The red wax seal bearing his mother’s crest was still warm, dragging streamers of crimson across the paper when he went to break it.

“My son,” it began, “urgent business calls me home to Ophir. I daren’t say more, only please heed our conversation of last night. A wrong word, an ill-thought gesture, the smallest thing can spell disaster here. Your exit this morning, accompanying the Primrose, has not gone unnoticed. Please think of me, your duties, our lands, and don’t...”

He cast the letter aside with a snorting scoff. She has no idea! he thought as he flopped onto his bed—a large pad built into the flooring, with bolstering on one end suitable to hold up a centaur’s upper torso. He didn’t care that his weight was probably creasing the gold fabric that had been so artfully draped around him, nor did he think to deactivate the static field that held it in place. He simply reclined, reveling in the thoughts of what lay before him, and what had happened thus far on his second day at court.

When he finally bethought himself of the time, little more than two hours remained before he had to be at the emperor’s door. With the assistance of the family’s servant Gron, he doffed the gold drapery, brushed teeth and hide, and in general made himself presentable.

The clothes he’d worn that morning had indeed been delivered—cleaned, pressed, scented, and tied with an aqua ribbon—while he’d been strolling with the emperor, and Achille judged them suitable for his meeting. With Gron’s help, he re-dressed and, as an afterthought, had the ribbon tied around his tail in a tidy bow.

With less than an hour remaining, he hurried to the turbolift and pressed the button for the lowest level accessible by courtiers. It was a long ride from his high-floor quarters, and the clear walls of the lift allowed him to see each level of the palace as he passed through. Even at such a late hour, there was activity: servants and repairbots bustling as always, occasional trysts glimpsed around corners, the swooshing of an official courier tiger intent on delivering his message.

Finally, with fifteen minutes to spare, he was deposited in the lobby outside the emperor’s suite. The decor had been arranged so that gold seemed to be leeching out from the inner sanctum, with just a few tendrils reaching to coil around the brackets of the turbolift shaft, the lights on the wall. The frame of the door he faced, on the other hand, was nearly all gold, with panels of mahogany and ebony set in the gleaming rectangles like works of art.

There was a slot beside a smaller door—more like a wicket gate than the main central set—and he slid his card in. Complex devices hidden within the wall read the electronic circuit concealed behind the petals of the official imperial seal, and the door swung open on silent hinges. A booming mechanical voice announced: “The Honorable Achille de Pelouse, inheritor of Ophir and Southern Lemuria, lord of the sandalwood forests.”

With dismay, Achille saw that he’d forgotten one key detail: on the other side of the door was the long golden acreage of the throne room, at the far end of which was the door that led to the imperial suite. He would have to trot, carefully balancing speed with nonchalance, for it’d be just as bad to be on time and lathered in sweat as it would to be late.

Despite his concern, he couldn’t help but be awed by the throne room itself: easily the largest space within the asteroid, the walls, ceiling, and floor all seemed to be hewn out of pure gold. As he loped across the gilded floor on his padded hooves, he watched the patterns of light shifting on the alternating panels of texture and bas reliefs set into the walls. If he weren’t in such a hurry—and not a little anxious over what the evening might contain—he would have paused to examine the thin sculptures. His tutors had mentioned that the throne room was decorated with scenes showcasing the great moments and significant acts of the imperial family, but they hadn’t seen fit to elaborate.

Finally, he reached the other side. Again he placed his card in the slot, and the door slowly withdrew as a soft voice purred, “The Honorable Achille de Pelouse, inheritor of Ophir and Southern Lemuria, lord of the sandalwood forests.” As the portal opened, more gold was revealed—tapestries, plush rugs, furniture—but interspersed with darker tones. Even the flames in the fireplace seemed to be darkly subdued.

What luxury, he thought, an actual fire on a space station. And then he saw what was illuminated by the muted glow of the blaze. The emperor himself was sitting in an oversized armchair, cradled by black velvet upholstery.

“Come, come closer,” Gaesol beckoned, motioning languidly at his guest. He was swaddled in a diaphanous drapery of bright creamy orange, his long body coiled up around itself in the light-sucking dark fabric. Drawing near, Achille couldn’t help but compare him to a sun in the blackness of space, and suspected the imagery wasn’t accidental.

Stopping before the chair and its great burden, the centaur bent a knee and bowed. The hand that touched his mane nearly made him bolt in surprise, but he mustered his faculties enough to remain motionless, with just a shiver traveling down his spine. The emperor’s hand continued to stroke Achille’s neck, the heavy scales warm and smooth.

The hand was joined by its brother, and together they began to undress the centaur. Achille may have been new to the palace, but even he knew just what sort of honor was being bestowed upon him. He held perfectly still as claws fumbled with the buckle of his short caparison, allowed his arms to slide out of his tunic, and suddenly felt quite aware of his nakedness as he stood before the emperor.

This was no swimming hole in the forests of Ophir, no deserted tropical isle. Even though centaurs, as a race, tended to have the most relaxed attitudes towards undress, they also tended to be aware of propriety, respectful of the needs of the situation. But this situation had never been addressed by his tutors; Achille was on his own.

Even though the fabric had been removed, the emperor continued caressing his subject’s body, feeling the muscles beneath the red and white dappled hide, examining the join where horsehair faded into (admittedly still quite hairy) humanish skin, and cupping the long, almost-equine face. Achille’s eyes focused on the imperial visage, watching it draw near as though in slow-motion, muttonchops and mustache tendrils flowing, smooth-scaled face pursed for a kiss.

Perhaps it was some of the emperor’s magic, perhaps it was a natural quality of his draconic lineage, perhaps it was the frisson of their so-disparate ranks. Whatever the reason, Achille felt himself melting into the yellow lung’s embrace, the pulse of his own massive heart ringing in his ears and throbbing between his hind legs. The touch of their lips, their tongues, was electric.

He reached out and did some caressing of his own: blindly, tentatively, careful lest he tear the fragile gauze, he undressed the emperor without breaking the kiss. The body beneath the fabric was warm, the scales like finely-polished metal, the muscles overlaid with a thick padding of fat; had he not been loath to end the galocher, he would have run his lips down the smooth curve of the flank, the firm swell of belly, the long torso with its seemingly unending acres of soft scutes.

The emperor had been denuded, and Achille saw something he’d never expected to see: the dragon’s golden shaft. The heat radiating from this length of living treasure was palpable, as though all the emperor’s cool scales and calm demeanor must be counteracted by this hidden bit of passion.

Achille glanced up, his eyes meeting Gaesol’s as they finally broke the kiss; the dragon nodded, sending his tendrils and muttonchops waving. With an odd sense of relief, the centaur dropped to his knees, flexible upper torso and long neck allowing him to reach his goal from his position on the floor before the great chair. Sensitive lips quested, found, met, kissed, engulfed throbbing gold, then pulled away to allow the tongue its place in the dance.

The taste was unlike anything Achille had experienced before; the closest he could approximate was the tang of vanilla extract, warm and buttery in the nostrils, herbal and biting on the tongue. He inhaled deeply as his tongue wormed its way around and down the shaft, feeling over the little ridges on its subtle knot, the knobs studding the underside, the tapering head and the scale-lined slit from which it had emerged.

A tentative hand caressed the flat space just below the slit, and he momentarily wondered if the emperor were a eunuch, but then he felt the twin lumps below the scutes, hard and hot. His hand continued its exploration, sliding further down to the emperor’s fundament, which was just as gold as the imperial staff and—he looked up—the nipples gracing the dragon’s soft pectorals.

He felt the cock jerking in his mouth, the slick smooth flesh almost too hot, the exotic flavor suddenly multiplied tenfold as precum dripped onto his tongue. Gaesol had started stroking the centaur’s hair and mane, claws gently brushing against the base of his ears, the nape of his neck, but now they gripped, and Achille could hear the grunting hiss as the older male tried to hold himself back.

The fingers holding his skull applied backward pressure and, taking the hint, Achille pulled away from the emperor’s groin. The cock emerged from his lips plump and rigid, gold and glittering in the low light as blood pumped through its veins. Panting, he looked up, the part of his mind still capable of rational thought wondering why the dragon had bid him stop…if he’d done something wrong or met with displeasure.

Then he saw the flash of the emperor’s eyes, the predatory grin behind those floating mustache tendrils, the jerk of his head and quirked eyebrow that directed him towards the bed.

Obediently, he rose, then froze. A whirring, trundling sound had begun on the other side of the room, near the floor. He glanced over and saw a gold-plated repairbot rolling through its little hatch. The little eyestalk swiveled around, scanning the room, and he was certain that it paused for longer than it should have when it was facing him.

Gaesol saw the centaur’s discomfiture and stood to look over the back of his armchair. A broad grin split his long snout and he laughed. “Are you afraid of a little repairbot?”

“No, my lo—Gaesol. It’s just, I was told that they can be used to spy on people.”

The dragon snorted, still smirking. “As though anyone would have the temerity to spy on me. Am I or am I not the Primrose Emperor of the Known Planets?”

“You are, my lord.”

“Then you have nothing to fear, little foal.”

The word made his ears twitch and his mane bristle as much as did the injunction to ignore the attentions of the little droid, but he did as he was bid, and turned once more to the bed.

The bed itself was massive, less a piece of furniture than an impressive edifice. It was draped with sturdy violet doublesilk sheets, obviously engineered to be soft and sumptuous, but able to withstand the scales and claws of a dragon without tearing, or even snagging; the simple linen sheets of Achille’s own bedpad were primitive by comparison. It was also plenty big enough for the two of them; a quick mental assessment told him that three fully grown centaurs would have had no problem getting comfortable on such a bed.

He climbed up, kneeling on the sturdy mattress beneath its layers of resistant bedding, waiting for the emperor’s next instruction. With the flash of a coiled snake striking, the dragon leapt onto the bed, seeming to float in the air before landing next to him with hardly a bounce. A tug on an equine foreleg got the centaur rolled around onto his back, with the dragon laid out next to him.

Languid once more, Gaesol gestured at the window set above them, a lazy claw tracing circles in the air. “I like to sleep under the stars,” he said, “and this way I can do that on any world in my empire, in any nation, any city.” Achille looked closer at the dark surface, which did indeed resemble a glazed skylight, watching tendrils of frost creeping across the joins and aurorae flicker among the stars beyond.

It was the tall crystals, like oversized quartz points, peeking past the edges of the elongated hexagon of the “window” that gave him the clue he needed. “It’s another projector window, just like above your orangery.” He glanced over at the dragon and, seeing his expectant gaze, continued: “This must be the night sky over Tenobrius? It’s the only place I know of with such massive crystalline growths and aurora borealis.”

The emperor’s grin in the unearthly green glow was by turns predatorily foreboding and patronizingly pleased. “Bravo, you have been taught well. And look here,” he gestured at what Achille first thought was the bed’s headboard. The rough-hewn edges seemed ill-suited to the rest of the imperial suite, and the decorations were simple in the extreme: silvery-grey bars and fields overlaid and set at sixty-degree angles, seemingly at random. “This is the only place in the palace where the bare asteroid can still be touched. I insisted that my bed be grounded, even in space.” He chuckled and stroked one of his trailing mustaches. “Touch it, feel its power.”

Obediently, Achille reached back and placed his palm on the stone. It was cold, as though conducting the chill of the space surrounding them all; the smooth-polished face tingled slightly on Achille’s skin, a frisson of static electricity, or possibly static magic. Either way, he didn’t have to act when he expressed amazement at its unusual properties.

“I’m glad you find the trappings pleasing,” the lung dragon purred, tugging on the centaur’s leg again. With some difficulty, Achille was able to roll onto his belly, moaning as the claws gently stroked his mane once more. The talon slid further down his spine, teasing his tail, caressing his rump, sliding down the soft velvet skin to dance around his hole.

“M-my lord...” Achille whimpered, biting his lip and feeling his shaft sliding out along the doublesilk sheets beneath him. His face felt as hot as his hindquarters, and it seemed as though his ears were burning so much that soon the fur on them would catch fire.

“Ah-ah,” the dragon chided as a warm slickness surrounded his fingers, “what was my injunction?” The magically-generated lubricant allowed him to slide one fat digit into the donut, followed swiftly by a second, and a third.

The centaur was barely able to form words. Blinking at the aurora-lit asteroid metal headboard (Were those arcane sigils he saw woven into the layered shapes, or were his eyes playing tricks on him?) he gulped air as his hindquarters received imperial attention. “Gaesol...ohh...”

“That’s better,” the emperor muttered, withdrawing his hand to slather the remaining lubricant on his golden shaft. The long body hefted itself up, the strong sinuous motion belying the chubbiness of a century’s worth of royal banquets.

Achille’s legs pressed into the bed as the scaled mass dropped on top of him, and he tried not to worry about how much his leaking shaft must be staining the bedclothes.

The emperor’s neck and tail coiled around the centaur—the tail especially making its presence felt between the equine hind legs—as he angled his approach. One clawed hand lifted the braided tail aside to give full access, and Achille felt as though he would be overwhelmed by the sensations as the tingling of the lube was heightened by the approach of the dragon’s cock.

Like some primeval predator ensnaring a whimpering preybeast, the Primrose Emperor pounced on the inheritor of Ophir and Southern Lemuria. With the help of the magical lubricant (as well as the centaur’s natural elasticity) the imperial shaft slid in with ease. Claws tugged at his mane, and the length of neck wrapping his own was fiery and pulsing. The tail coiled itself around Achille’s left hind leg, adding leverage.

The bed was so well-made that not a creak sounded from the rutting, not even as Gaesol began to thrust. With each withdrawal Achille was made patently aware of every single nub lined up along the golden cock’s underside, and with each push forward the imperial knot stretched him a little further. He heard the whir of another repairbot puttering around the room, and tried to ignore it.

A thought, like a chunk of frozen granite, dropped into his mind: what if the repairbots really were used to spy on the emperor? He’d read enough tales of court intrigue to be able to imagine the possible outcomes. Perhaps being selected by Gaesol would lift his fortunes among the other nobles, a sort of seal of imperial approval, or perhaps he would be left an untouchable as a result, or even blackmailed lest a holographic recording of this night would find its way to his mother. It made the weight coiled around him feel heavier, and he was particularly aware of the tendrils of mustache and muttonchop flicking against his face.

But the hunching dragon continued, his rhythms speeding up, accelerating to their impending crescendo. A tongue of blue flame emerged from between the panting scaly lips, and it was all Achille could do to keep from springing up and bolting. He watched, sweat beading on his forehead, eyes aching from the strain of looking without turning his head, as the flame grew, froze solid, evaporated to mist. The long forked tongue licked the lips, the mouth opened again, the flame reappeared, flickering with each draconic breath.

At the other end of his attention, he could feel the heat growing within him as well, the furnace stoked with each pistoning thrust. An outstretched talon, gripping the sheets before them, shook and juddered, the golden claws gleaming against the violet doublesilk. The centaur watched as the soft-yet-durable fabric took on a metallic sheen, crinkling like foil. He knew dragons had a natural proclivity towards magic, a resonance other races had to cultivate, but he never realized that that could have its downsides.

I’m going to end up turned to stone, was the thought that bounced through his skull with each thrust, each transmutation he glimpsed. He tried to calm down, to convince himself that the Primrose Emperor wouldn’t allow anything untoward to happen—and even if it did, surely it could be undone again. His rising anxiety, however, made his innards clench, his legs tensing as though intending to leap up and gallop away.

The dragon only coiled tighter as the centaur’s hole milked his shaft, as though he were intentionally goading his emperor on, spurring his rider to the finish. The magical lubricant did its job well, and Achille once again sank into the viscous pool of pleasure, relieved to cast aside thoughts once more as Gaesol redoubled his efforts. Draconic sweat, sweet and fragrant, dripped, mingling with the centaur foam soaking through the sheets.

Above them, the Tenobrian sky coruscated, phthalo green staining roan hide and yellow scales, as the towering crystals coruscated within the viewport’s frame. The fire’s flickering added to the unearthly light, making the headboard’s metal shift and swirl as Achille’s eyes lost their focus. “Oh, Gaesol,” he moaned, barely able to form the words.

A feral growl, like the puttering of a great engine, was his only reply. The centaur’s ears kicked back and he whimpered, lifting his haunches as much as he was able, welcoming the growing heat that threatened to melt him from the inside out. He felt his balls tighten, the flaring head of his own shaft trapped between belly and bed.

Thought was lost to him, as was will; he was a rutting animal, nothing more.

The coils tightened, almost to the point of pain, the clawed hand gripping his mane almost too tightly, the fiery breath almost too close to his muzzle. His eyes stared unseeing at the blue fire freezing and reigniting less than a handspan away. The sheets pinged and crinkled as more of the material was transmuted, the imperial magics unloosed by passion.

The dousing of those fires was a torrent, flooding the centaur until he felt as though his very limbs would slosh. The head had flared within him, or perhaps it was the ridged knot, or the stiffening spikes; whatever the cause, he felt himself goaded over the edge as well. The better part of Achille’s seed saturated the bed, spraying across the bare skin of his down-pushed chest and even bespattering the imperial claw.

He watched, panting, in a daze as the dragon unclenched his talon from the metallified sheet, examined it with the eye of a connoisseur, and flicked his tongue out to slurp up the gobbet before it fell. The still-hilted shaft throbbed, as though priming itself for another volley, but the blood slowly ceased its surging, and taut- stretched skin relaxed once more.

Though without the need to wait as long as the average canine, the dragon still lingered atop his ersatz steed, warming him within and without. Achille, for his part, was wordlessly thankful for the respite. Black fireworks danced in his vision and his breath was still ragged as the almost-liter—feeling more like a gallon or two—weighed down his innards.

When the emperor finally dismounted, Achille couldn’t hold back a whimper, fearful that he’d fountain like an uncorked champagne bottle. The only dampness he felt, however, was from the golden cock being wiped clean on the hide of his rump. “Feel free to use the bath,” the dragon said with soft insistence, an order veiled in a suggestion, “and take as long as you like.”

Craning his aching torso, the centaur looked back, watched as the hands crept down the yellow scales, glittering octarine mist clearing away sweat and semen alike, as though he were scrubbing himself off with a magical washrag. By the time he’d slid from the puddly bed and onto his shaky hooves, the dragon was already re-ensconced in his armchair by the fire, reading something on a low-lit datapad.

Feeling a little guilty about the mess he was leaving behind, but loathe to disobey, he plodded through the door to the imperial bath; where the bed chamber had felt like the interior of a golden prism, this seemed more like the interior of some monstrous seabeast turned inside out. The walls, floor, and ceiling had all been covered in ogee tiles of an opalescent turquoise, glittering and gleaming like fish scales.

The bath was a pit sunk into the floor, and turned out to be deep enough to keep his hooves from touching bottom. It filled itself as he drew near, taking only a few seconds; the water was a few degrees warmer than his body temperature, nearly soothing him to the point of slumber. The last time he’d been so ensconced in comforting fluid had been back in Ophir, those rare gaps between tutors when he could enjoy the benefit of a tropical port.

He almost didn’t notice the oscillation of aquatic sound waves battering against his hide, massaging his soft parts. When he reluctantly emerged from the water he felt like his whole body had been massaged by sonic toothbrushes. Even the ambient temperature of the bathroom seemed to have adjusted itself—this time to a few degrees cooler than the centaur was himself—which made the warmed towels feel all the more pleasant.

By the time he was clean and dry, the emperor had moved from armchair to desk, coiled upon a black leather-padded armature that seemed designed specifically to support his long body. In his absence, the repairbots must have come and gone, because the bedsheets were once more pristine (and no longer partially-metallic) and even his discarded clothes had been re-folded and neatly stacked on a side table. “Gaesol?” Achille asked with a little cough.

The head turned on its long neck, golden eyes looking him up and down. “Ah good, I’m glad to see you refreshed and relaxed. I hope you have a pleasant evening,” the head began turning back, then—as though just remembering—paused. “By the way, it would be...against protocol for you to address me by my first name in the presence of others. It wouldn’t do to appear too...familiar.” The smile seemed to bear the weight of a century’s worth of experience, intrigue, and power plays; the eyes were unreadable in the flickering firelight.

Picking up the bundle of his clothes, Achille bowed low, his right foreleg stuck out as far as it would go across the gilded parquet floor. “Thank you, my lord emperor.” But the dragon had already turned back to his work.

Stepping as quietly as he could, he left the bedchamber, tossing his clothes on in the sudden chill of the vast and empty throne room.

The hubbub of nobles didn’t seem to rise or fall, but as he took his place in the imperial theatre, Achille felt as though he were suddenly the topic of conversation. It’s just my imagination, he tried to convince himself. The velvet-padded belly-bench beside him—one of four in the box stage right reserved for centaurs—still empty.

His mother had not yet returned from her trip planetside, nor had he had the courage to put his experiences in a letter or voice message. The last thing he wanted was for some spy to intercept the missive and confirm what he suspected was already rumored. The repairbots had visited his small suite more times in the past day than they had in all the rest of his time at the palace, and he’d noticed them making improvements—a gold-painted baseboard, a new figural faucet with improved flowrate, higher resolution to the view port’s projections—instead of merely cleaning and repairing as they’d done before.

The basket of fresh Ophirian fruit that had appeared on his table just that morning, along with a formal invitation to the play he was now waiting to see, suggested the identity of his benefactor. As if I couldn’t guess, he thought with a feeling that was half confident swagger, half uncertain trepidation. He wished his mother were here, so he could ask what usually happened to those who’d shared the imperial bed.

But that would mean, he thought with a hard swallow, telling her. He had only rumor and hearsay, and the tales ran the gamut from lavish gifts and preferential treatment to disgrace and exile...or worse. Across the crowded theatre, he heard the loud drone of the Count of Ioh pontificating on some meaningless thing. Achille counted his blessings that the reinforced and oversized seats built specifically for the pachydermic races were situated far away from the centaurs’ box. He could probably have asked the rhino’s insight but then his predicament would have been broadcast to everyone within earshot.

As the lights dimmed he came to a conclusion with a heavy sigh: there was nothing for it but to wait, bide his time, and see what happened.

A light appeared at the back of the central vomitorium, a glowing pinkish orb that seemed to float through the darkness towards the stage. It stopped above the imperial box in the middle of the theatre, and with absolute silence, popped. The milky cloud it contained was released, pouring out over the assembled nobles with a smell of orange blossoms, and revealing the emperor already perched comfortably on his chair.

The yellow-scaled hand waved languidly at the applause, crimson draperies coiling around the arm and torso. It looked like the emperor had patronized the same vendor as Achille, with the same type of artistically-static fabric. Feeling a frisson of pride, he wondered if he could be considered a trend-setter, since he’d been the first to try the new style. With a snort, he shook his head: It’s not like I made it, designed it. How easy it was to fall under the sway of courtly habits.

The emperor gestured at the stage, and a spotlight leapt to life, encircling a slender minotaur. “Your Imperial Majesty, Primrose Emperor of the Known Planets; my lords and ladies. Thank you for joining myself and my humble troupe this evening.” He bowed, his horns catching the light on their points; he stood with hooves daintily in the third position, his body erect and arms outstretched. “There is a wide rift between the world we want and the world that is, just as there is between the world that is and the world that was.”

He began to stride the stage, gesturing like a consummate orator, a short cape trailing behind him. “This is, true, a story of yesterday—many yesterdays past—but here, tonight, in this space before you, you will see men and women brought back to life. They reach out to us across the centuries between ages, across the leagues of emptiness between planets, to show us that any one of us can make history.”

The curtain rose, showing the buildings of ancient Talamhir, stone and plaster approximated by wood and paint. A human—wearing false horns and fleece-covered legs—strode on stage, shouldering his knapsack and adjusting his pith helmet as the minotaur introduced him as the great merchant-explorer of Diogo F’dnan. It was a name Achille had heard before, one vaguely remembered from history lessons.

The satyr had come from Ioh, he recalled that much, and had written a guidebook for visitors to the ancient proto-empire of Talamhir, what would eventually become the seed of the current planet-spanning dominion. A glance across the boxes and seats revealed the rhino, staring in rapt attention at the portrayal of his countryman. The centaur felt no such focus.

Achille paid little attention to the antique costumes, the stiltedly-symbolic poses. Allegorical speeches washed over him in waves. The elaborately-machinated scenery changed from the markets of Mueh to the jungle fastness of Soryal, the towers of Tarnby and the frozen wastes of Tenobrius—complete with glowing crystals and projected aurorae—and still the centaur’s attention was diverted.

In looking to the other side of the theatre to gauge the Count of Ioh’s reaction, he also caught sight of the emperor. Unbidden, Achille’s tail twitched, his hole clenching in visceral memory of the earlier night. The dragon seemed unaware of this attention, gazing abstractedly at the performers on stage, and Achille wondered what thoughts were going through the imperial brain.

Was he calculating the taxes and expenditures of his worlds? Was he comparing the depiction of historical characters with the documents in the imperial archives? Was he too remembering the night of passion and physicality? The coils seemed hewn from solid gold in the dim reflected stagelight, immobile, barely breathing, never giving a hint at the thoughts that drove them.

A jade thought dropped into the tempestuous pool of Achille’s mind: what if it were all—the special attention, the confidences in the orangery, the sex—merely a ploy to bind the heart of a new arrival. He’d heard tales certainly of alliances forged and broken between bedsheets, but somehow he’d always viewed the Primrose Emperor as being above that sort of sordidness.

As the faux satyr on stage bemoaned a particularly bleak chapter of the adventure, when all seemed lost, Achille too felt the world darkening in his eyes. New Gulporte is a lot more accommodating when you leave your soul at the airlock, he thought with bitter determination. Despite the playwright’s exhortation, he doubted anyone would remember the name of Achille de Pelouse, and perhaps that wasn’t so bad.

It wasn’t about him, he realized. It wasn’t about his mother, or his father, or the Count of Ioh. None of it mattered, not the fashion or the colors or the gold or the technological marvels. He was merely a vessel, a repository for the sole ideal any noble ought to have: the best interests of his people. He suddenly felt as though his mother and tutors were once more at his side, enjoining him with the tenets of good governance.

He again looked at the emperor, remembered the swell of belly beneath the swathes of fabric, the shaft that split the scales, the magic tethered to pleasure and loosed by passion. There was a man—a man of unlimited power, granted, but a man nonetheless. A man with hungers and tastes.

Fashion, the noble pecking order, the grist mills of gossip, even the internecine power struggles, all were merely the gilded surface of the court. He wondered if Lavinia would be proud that he’d finally seen through to the core, the raison d’être.

As though feeling the pressure of the centaur’s gaze, the emperor stirred, glanced to the side. Their eyes met for the briefest of instants, before Achille bowed his head demurely; he even managed a blush. When next he looked up, he noticed that the emperor had taken a slightly different posture, as though shifting his legs and coils to hide a burgeoning erection.

Perhaps I’ll be summoned tonight, perhaps tomorrow, the centaur thought with a feline grin. Whenever he calls, I’ll be there, the wonder-eyed newcomer tripping over his own hooves to please his lord. He shifted his hips, his plumpening sheath grinding into the belly bench’s velvet. After all, there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in your work.

He joined the audience in thunderous applause as the curtain dropped for intermission, but waited a moment before dismounting to partake of the confections and refreshments, long enough for his pulse to calm and his breath to slow.

Dismounting the bench, he turned toward the box’s door where he saw a creamy white rectangle on the floor.

An envelope. An envelope with his name scripted on the front. And on the back, the five-petaled flower bound by a pentagon, with circuitry embedded within the ink. He couldn’t suppress a satisfied grin as he slid a finger through to break the seal.

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