Free The Gambit with Perfection (The Phantom of the Earth Book 2) by Raeden Zen Page A

necks, smelling like crane flowers and torch ginger. The songs from violinists echoed from speakers upon pedestals. Yeuronian migrant workers dressed in silk gowns knelt behind them, massaging their naked shoulders.
    “Good,” Isabelle said, “ good. You did very well.”
    “Did I?” Valentine crumpled her brow. “Then why do you look so sad?”
    “It’s the steam and the essential oils, child.” Isabelle lifted the masseuse’s hands from her shoulders and ordered her to depart. “You’re finished too,” she said to Valentine’s masseuse. “Leave us.” The supreme director rolled her neck along the soft towel that sat upon the tub’s rim, and though she inhaled deeply, she didn’t imbibe flowery scents; she smelled death, spread from the ashes and winds of Northport. It was a scent she knew too well, one that didn’t easily evaporate from her nose.
    Valentine inclined her head. She appeared older than an adolescent, with vibrant reddish-violet eyes, plump cheeks, thin lips, and long hair that twisted around her neck. “What troubles you, my lady?”
    Isabelle worked with her couriers nearly as often as she did her Harpoon candidates. But where the candidates received accelerant injections to speed their growth to adulthood to within eighteen to thirty-seven days (depending on the developer), couriers passed from infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood over a traditional biological timeline of about twenty Earth years. Valentine never acted like an adolescent, excelling in math, science, and language comparable to the fully developed Harpoon candidates.
    Isabelle wanted to tell her that the chancellor’s policies had led to out-of-control population growth and economic malaise; that Reassortment continued seeping underground and was as deep as one thousand meters inside the Earth; that the Harpoon Champion they hired to find a cure had failed to do so for far too long; that a terrorist organization formed by one of the commonwealth’s founders was systematically destroying the world she’d built; that she feared she was losing control of the underground—
    Isabelle sighed. “You’re a perceptive one, my sweet.” She smiled wanly. “Come, sit by me.”
    Valentine eased across the tub to where Isabelle sprawled, her arms strewn across the porcelain rim, her feet crossed and perched on the seating adjacent to her. “Will you brush my hair?”
    Valentine nodded, and Isabelle telekinetically sent a brush to her from a nearby stand. The supreme director closed her eyes as Valentine eased the brush through her hair. She missed the days of her own adolescence, when her dreams had seemed as real as the commonwealth’s sky. “Have I ever told you about my own development?” Isabelle asked.
    Valentine stopped brushing midstroke. “No, my lady,” she said, then continued.
    “My developer was the finest in all Underground Central,” Isabelle began. “The Lady Faizah Marsellessa.” In her mind’s eye, Isabelle could see the lady in her gowns and capes, drifting from candidate to candidate, offering cookies and wisdom.
    “Development in those days took about eleven years for a newborn baby to reach adulthood and qualify for the Harpoon Exams. When I was an adolescent, the lady let me watch performances of the Barremian Ballet at Hammerton Hall …” Isabelle felt sad, thinking about it.
    “My lady?” Valentine said, and when Isabelle turned her head slightly, “you mentioned … performances?”
    Isabelle pushed her hands through the warm water, imagining she was onstage. “Lady Faizah told me how I’d be like those dancers one day, athletic, beautiful, strong, talented, and intelligent. ‘The consortiums will line up during the auction, with the Barremian Consortium first,’ the lady assured me. ‘You’ll impress them with your dance moves and when you tire of that you’ll write plays for them instead. With your mind and body, you’ll be the most famous entertainer in the