Lord Regret's Price: A Jane Austen Space Opera, Book 3 by Joely Sue Burkhart Page B

be pomp and circumstance. May I take a closer look at the throne?”
    “Be my guest.”
    Even the Dragon Throne got a bug, just in case there was some unusual technology lurking in the gilded monstrosity that she ought to know about.
    “Above, you can see the Xuanyuan Mirror.” Prince Gong indicated a large chandelier hanging above the throne, from which hung several large balls. “Legend says that if a false Emperor takes the throne, the Mirror sees the usurper and will fall to crush him.”
    “So if I sat on the throne,” Sig drawled, arching a brow at Charlotte, “that big ball would fall on me?”
    “So they say.” The prince grinned. “Of course no such calamities have ever been recorded. You’d be the first, if you wish to give it a try.”
    “I think I’ll pass this time.”
    Charlotte suspected he was thinking, I have a contract to complete first.
    As the prince led them behind the throne, she couldn’t help but wonder whom Sig had been hired to assassinate, and by whom. Zijin politics were complicated enough without worrying about who might not survive the next few days. Yet she wouldn’t press him for details.
    He had to know that he could trust her. If he wanted her to know, he’d tell her.
    Although waiting for him to approach her might finally put her in her grave where Majel had failed.
     
     
    Sig enjoyed the tour just because Charlie ate up every single detail. Her eyes glowed as brightly as the antique lamps on the walls. Animated, she asked endless questions, which Prince Gong surprisingly answered for the most part. He had amazing patience and fortitude to deal with a woman of Charlie’s immense curiosity.
    I hope he’s not the one I’m supposed to kill, because I rather like him.
    Though he’d killed plenty of people he liked.
    “If you’ll come this way, we’ll proceed to the next level.” Prince Gong led them behind the massive throne to a small dark door. They all stepped inside with room to spare, though it was dark and close like a water closet. He pressed a small button on the wall and the floor began to rise. “The lifts are powered by turbines beneath the main structure.”
    The roof slid back soundlessly and they rose into seemingly nothing. Sig reached out and felt a clear plastic, rounded tube. “I don’t particularly care to be rising twenty feet or more in the air with only plastic keeping us afloat.”
    She squeezed his arm and laughed softly. “Then I highly recommend that you not think about the plastic dome providing our oxygen and keeping us from tumbling away into the vacuum of space.”
    “Plastic may be a misnomer in this case,” Prince Gong replied, returning her smile. “The material’s actually a hybrid between polymer and glass. It makes for a lasting impression when the Emperor descends from the upper levels for a ceremony. To the people waiting in the courtyard below, it looks like he’s floating on thin air.”
    “The Son of Heaven,” Charlie whispered. “So how many levels are there above us?”
    “There are currently four levels. First, the public level, which is available for ceremonies. The Emperor’s advisers and clerks meet with him in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.”
    “Public, as in anyone can come through the wormhole?”
    The prince smiled apologetically. “My mistake. Public, as in whomever the Emperor has invited to enter Xuanyuan. He rarely leaves the city himself, so the best way to keep his finger on the pulse of Zijin is to meet regularly with his advisers.”
    Perhaps it was one of these trusted advisers whom Sig had been contracted to kill. He didn’t think so, though, unless the person was very, very powerful. In his research of the current political situation, no single adviser had the power to sway the Emperor. That was left to the Dowager Empresses. Maybe the Emperor wanted to cut that leash and rule on his own. Few assassins would kill a woman, but that had always been Sig’s specialty.
    “This level is more