Transmigrated Into A Women Dominated World

"Kayla will travel with you. She will be your escort for the whole of it."

His eyes opened, and he had already drawn the breath to argue.

"Don't," Ysmeine said, before a single word of it could leave him. "Dont argue about this one. It's settled, and it is the one part of this that I will not bend on. If I can be there with you, then she will be."

The breath went out of him without the argument attached to it.

"Fine," he said. "Then I suppose I had better start saying my goodbyes. Apparently I have one evening left to do it in."

"Don't forget to let your bondmates know about this," Ysmeine suggested.

Zaeryn walked off.

He found a seat in the atrium and sat down. The glass above him had gone the deep blue of the hour after sunset, and the whole space had that hushed, still quality it took on once the daylight left it.

He was not excited about this at all. The opposite of that, if he was being truthful with himself. It felt less like travel arrangements and more like being handed a date for his own sentencing, with the polite fiction that the verdict had not already been decided by people who had never met him.

He lifted his wrist and called Daphne first.

She answered almost immediately, and the blue projection resolved into her face, her hair pulled back messily, the harsh overhead light of the labs washing out the violet of her eyes.

"I have news," Zaeryn began.

"You're going to the Capital," Daphne said before he could even finish. "Tomorrow. Evaluation before the Imperial Council. I know."

Zaeryn stared at the projection. "You already know about that." He acknowledged. And he wasn't surprised.

"Yes." She admitted. " Also, I know you like to pretend not to, but I know you're worried."

"I'm not worried." He said.

Daphne's expression remained serious. "You'll be fine," she went on. "You have an unfair advantage in rooms full of women, and I say that as someone who has watched it work on me personally and had the good grace to find it irritating." She leaned in closer to her pickup, and the flat clinical register slid away entirely. "And also don't forget, you have my support. I'm the chief scientist of sector 7, so my words mean a lot."

★★★

Athea's private chamber sat high in the Capital Sector, its walls so dark that they swallowed the light from the recessed panels rather than reflecting it. A low table stood between the three women, its polished black surface bare except for a single inactive data-slate.

Sage had been working when Athea summoned her, and she had arrived to find both sisters already waiting.

She sat opposite them. Calyra had taken the chair beside Athea, angled slightly away from the table, and had watched Sage since she crossed the threshold with the unhurried attention of a woman still deciding how much confidence to place in her.

"I assure you, bringing him before the Council was unavoidable," Athea said.

"I understand that. I simply did not expect it to happen this soon."

"Neither did I, but the Queendom knows about him now, and the arrangements have already been made."

Athea rested her hands upon the cold surface of the table and did not move them again.

Sage remained silent for a moment.

"I need you to vouch for him," Athea said. "He needs your voice in that chamber."

"For what, exactly?"

"Threat or asset. Those are the only categories that room will recognise, and there is no third one available to him. If they cannot be persuaded that he is valuable, they will decide that he is dangerous."

Sage allowed that to settle.

It was an obscene way to describe a person, and it was also precisely accurate. The two things did nothing to cancel each other out. A threat was something the Queendom removed or contained. An asset was something the Queendom preserved, protected and ultimately found a use for. More than a dozen women who had never met Zaeryn would decide which of those two categories he belonged in, and whichever one they selected would determine the course of his life.

"If I defend him openly, it will raise questions I cannot afford to have asked," Athea continued. "Your connection to him is already known, so no one will find your loyalty surprising. They may accuse you of partiality, but they cannot dismiss your scientific assessment without also undermining the credentials that persuaded this same Council to place you in charge of the Aegis Division."

"You did not need to ask," Sage said. "I will defend him. I would have done it without being summoned here, and I would have done it even if you had ordered me not to."

Something shifted faintly at the corner of Calyra's mouth, too restrained to be called a smile but close enough for Sage to recognise the approval behind it. She said nothing.

"But it is unfair," Sage continued. "He has to stand before that Council and justify why he should be allowed to continue living freely. None of the women judging him has ever been required to defend her right to exist merely because she was born with an ability nobody understood. He will be the only person in that chamber expected to account for something he never chose."

Athea closed her eyes briefly before opening them again.

"You are right."

Sage had prepared herself for several possible answers, but an immediate agreement had not been among them.

"You are right," Athea repeated. "It is unfair, but refusing to acknowledge the position he is in will not protect him."

She paused, maintaining the same measured composure.

"The Council is not unreasonable, though. Do not mistake caution for cruelty. They are not hunting him, and none of them entered that chamber asking for his death. From where they sit, a male wielding Vitae in defiance of centuries of settled biology is an unknown capable of upsetting the balance of power. They will be careful with him because caution is what they are there for."

"They could still decide that containing him is the safest option."

"They could," Athea acknowledged. "Which is why we must give them a safer and more valuable alternative."

Sage considered that before asking the question she had needed to ask from the moment she received the summons.

"You are his mother. Are you going to take his side?"

"Yes," Athea answered. "By appearing not to."

"Explain."

"I preside over the Council. Every woman at that table has spent years studying me for some indication of where I want a vote to land, and they would find it in a single syllable if I allowed one to escape."

Her voice lowered, although nothing else about her moved.

"If I defend him openly, I surrender my neutrality and any credibility I possess regarding his evaluation. I will give every woman who already fears him a reason to dismiss my judgment as personal attachment, and I give every hostile faction in that chamber a common argument to use against both of us. Once that happens, I am no longer in a position to protect him."

"So you will treat him like everyone else in the room."

"I will sound like everyone else in the room," Athea corrected. "If it becomes necessary, I may appear harder on him than some of them."

Sage stared at her. "And the part that is not theatre?"

Calyra had asked the question. Having remained quiet throughout most of the conversation, she now looked directly at her sister.

Athea did not hesitate.

"I control the floor. I will establish the order of questioning, decide what evidence is admitted and keep the discussion within the stated scope of the evaluation. I will begin with matters whose answers favour him: the circumstances under which his abilities manifested, the control he has demonstrated, his training at the Lyceum and his conduct since Sector Seven discovered what he could do."

"And the questions you cannot control?" Sage asked.

"Anything intended to turn the evaluation into an interrogation will be dismissed as irrelevant in the bored voice of a woman managing an agenda. I will do it before anyone has enough time to interpret the intervention as evidence of partiality."

Sage looked between the two sisters.

"And if someone asks something dangerous before you can stop her?"

"Then Calyra will object."

Calyra inclined her head. "My objections will attract considerably less attention. I have challenged the Council over coercive military policies before, so nobody will find it unusual if I oppose any suggestion that Zaeryn should be detained or forced into service."

"There are others who may support him," Athea continued. "Valerie has already met him and is inclined to regard him favourably. General Rostova is interested in his strategic potential. Neither woman is guaranteed to defend him, but both can be persuaded if Zaeryn presents himself properly."

"As an asset."

"As someone capable of becoming one," Athea corrected. "He must demonstrate that he is intelligent, disciplined and capable of controlling what he possesses. They need to see that he has loyalties within the Queendom and that preserving his freedom carries less risk than attempting to take it from him."

Sage disliked the calculation beneath the words, but she understood it. Affection would not protect Zaeryn inside the Imperial Council chamber. Political value might.

"All right," Sage said. "Tell me what you want me to say."

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