Exile by Julia Barrett

Warm clothing is in short supply and our home rock is quite chilly. Most of the guards, while not overtly cruel, are indifferent. A few men are kind. They risk their livelihood, their career, to smuggle in stockings and wool undergarments, even extra rations.”
    When both men frowned, she added, “Don’t pity us. It has made us quite resilient. I think the men of the Council were hoping we would die of the elements or deprivation within a year or so, but, well, what’s the old saying? The best laid plans?”
    Davi asked, “I would like to hear how you know my future. Are you like the traveling gypsy women of old? Do you tell fortunes? You claim you didn’t read Kyr’s mind, but did you read mine? I don’t understand how this works.”
    Aja thought for a moment. “After a generation of rule, the Coalition has been quite successful in making us, my family, I mean, seem a bit like gypsies. They’ve written us out of the history books, but because your parents and grandparents still remember the Royal Blood, we’ve become a mixture of fantasy and reality. The truth is different. It lies in the science of the ancient Earthers, our ancestors. My line, my own bloodline, was the result of a science experiment. The ancients perpetuated the Blood for a reason, because we can help guide the people through space and time.”
    “So you do see through time?” Kyr asked.
    “That’s one way to put it, I suppose,” Aja said. “We see time as we see space. You see before you a table, six chairs, three cups of cavitt, and a pot of Akkan honey. I see these things, too, but I can also see where the honey might be in six hours, or six days, or six months from now. It can be disconcerting. It’s why women of the Blood are trained to control these visions, to discern from among these pathways to the future. To discriminate between what is real and what is not yet. What is likely and what is unlikely.” Aja smiled. “It’s complicated and it’s why so many of my ancestors have, unfortunately, had difficulties.”
    “But the women pilots?” asked Davi.
    “Every woman who has an aptitude like mine must be a descendant of the Blood. There is no other way to navigate with ease and safety. The Coalition fears us for many reasons. One of which is that they believe we bend time. No one can bend time. We simply have the inbred ability to find our way through the time eddies and currents and we can choose the shortest route between here and there. If there is an ion storm, for instance, we see a safe path through it. It’s why your grandmother, Kyr, could fly through the Tionay Nebula and not fry.” Aja blew on her cavitt and took a sip. “The primary reason the members of the Coalition deposed the Royal Family is because they do not believe in the ascendance of women. They want a male-dominated galactic society, one in which wives are protected and cherished by confinement to their home compounds. The Coalition wants an empire where whores are made available to satisfy the sexual appetites of men. There is no in-between. The Coalition does not believe women are fit to rule, or to lead, or to guide the people.”
    “Yet Bom is your father,” said Kyr. “He’s in a position to understand the abilities of the Empress and the Blood better than anyone.”
    “You’re right, it’s true. I believe my mother chose him because of the purity of his line, among other things.”
    “Other things?” Kyr asked. “Other things like preventing the coup in the first place if she could see it coming?”
    “As I’ve told you, the future is not set in stone. I believe she must have discerned a larger pattern, a path between the lesser of two evils. Perhaps if she’d tried to prevent the coup, it would have been worse. I don’t know. It would appear she chose the middle road, one that would lead to the possibility of me. General Bom couldn’t see that path, but he agreed to the mating because he wanted her and he wanted to possess her