by C. Gockel
She looked up and he was suddenly there, pausing in the doorway to the guard chamber.
“Nice shooting,” she commented.
He shrugged. “They were an easy target. Hadn’t even bothered with particle shielding.”
“How did you know?”
“I analyzed the data from the first attack. Sloppy. Then again, most land-based attackers don’t use torpedoes, so I suppose they weren’t out of line in thinking they were safe.” The black eyes glinted at her, his amusement showing in the slight crinkles at the outer corners. “You did a good job of keeping Darlester talking.”
“Well, it’s easy when you’ve got someone who likes the sound of his own voice.” She stood, feeling suddenly awkward, and pushed her loose hair back over her shoulders. “Of course, he also liked what I was promising him.”
“Which was?”
“Forty-five cases of silk and about a quarter-million in loose change.”
“No wonder he wanted to go on talking.”
Miala crossed her arms, and fixed Eryk Thorn with what she hoped was a no-nonsense stare. “Well, I had to keep feeding him what he wanted to hear, considering how long it took you to finally get it together.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Ever been on a spaceship?”
“No—so what?”
“Even the fastest ship takes a few minutes to power up. You can’t force some things.”
Once again, he was right. Whenever she was around Thorn, Miala seemed to be constantly reminded of how little she actually knew about how the galaxy worked, of how sheltered her life had really been. It was not a feeling she enjoyed. For the first time she realized she had always thought of herself as—how had Thorn put it?—a big fish in a little pond. She’d always considered herself superior to the denizens of Aldis Nova, people whom she’d considered to be narrow-minded at best and positively backward at worst. It humbled her to realize how insignificant she really was.
“Miala.”
She lifted her head to look at him. Someone who hadn’t spent the last week watching his face would have thought there was no expression on those dark features, but she knew better. There was approval in his eyes, approval and growing respect. Once again he had set a task for her, and she had not been found wanting. She had a feeling that it was no easy thing to earn Eryk Thorn’s respect.
“I suppose we’d better get back to work,” she said, and at that he actually smiled.
“I had something a little different in mind,” he replied, and held out his hand.
She took it, wondering what was going to come next. She should have known.
“I hate being interrupted,” he said, pulling her toward him.
Once again his mouth met hers, and she let herself fall into the embrace, letting him surround her, become her universe, until nothing else mattered. She had only an intellectual understanding of what drowning was, but she thought dimly that this must be what it felt like—to swirl down into darkness, to feel nothing but the pounding of your heart in your breast, the pulse of blood in your ears and throat.
Finally he let her go, and she stepped back, gasping a little.
He smiled a bit, just that small lift at the corner of his mouth, then said, “Now we get back to work.” And with that he turned and headed back out into the corridor, obviously expecting Miala to follow him.
Which of course she did, her pulse still racing and breath coming to her with difficulty. As she trailed after Thorn, she wondered if she would ever begin to understand him—whether he was just toying with her, or whether he felt for her even a little.
What frightened her was that she found she didn’t care. As long as she could be with him, nothing else mattered.
8
The forty-five crates of silk turned out to be hidden in the third and final vault, just as Miala had suspected. She paused in her exertions for a moment as Thorn stood and looked at the neatly stacked crates, his eyebrows creasing slightly. Probably he was trying to decide whether it would all fit in the already overloaded cargo hold of the Fury.
“We’re leaving it,” he said finally, and Miala stared up at him in shock.
“Leaving it?” she demanded. “Do you have any idea how much that stuff is worth?”
“Probably more than you,” he replied, fixing her with a quelling dark gaze. “But I’m not a smuggler or a silk dealer. I’ve got no use for it.”
Miala opened her mouth again, took a closer look at Thorn, then decided it was better not to argue. He was right—of course she had no idea what the street value of that much silk could be. However, she was fairly sure it was quite a bit, probably as much as the treasure they’d already loaded. Still, he must know what he was doing. She thought for a moment of the difficulties involved in trying to move that much silk around, realizing that without connections they’d have a very tough time unloading the stuff. While she didn’t know all the ins and outs of the silk trade, she did know that if you weren’t on file with the silk merchants’ guild, you could be in big trouble if you tried to sell it as an indie.
“Besides,” he added, pushing the button to close the doors to the vault, “if the bones aren’t picked completely clean when the next scavengers show up, there’s less of a chance they’ll start wondering where the rest of the treasure went.”
It took a few seconds for the full import of his words to sink in, but once it did, Miala cast a worried look up at Thorn. “So you think there’ll be more?”
“Of course. The universe has an unending supply of scum.” He must have noticed the concern on her face, for he went on, “But don’t worry—we’ll be long gone before the next one shows up.”
That did reassure her, as well as the fact that he had said “we.” The fear had still been there, buried but not forgotten, the worry that he would just go off and leave her here once the treasure was loaded. Even as she watched Eryk swoop down on Darlester’s ore processor, one small part of her mind had wondered whether he would just keep going once he finished his attack run. After all, he was on board a ship already loaded with the bulk of Mast’s treasure. There had been nothing to stop him from heading on out into space.
Nothing, except...except what? He had kissed her, but even Miala knew she wasn’t naïve enough to think that necessarily meant anything. People left all the time. Her mother had run off, and she’d abandoned a husband and baby. All Eryk Thorn would have left behind was a silly girl who’d been foolish enough to think he owed her some kind of debt.
But he didn’t leave, she thought fiercely. He came back, and he’s still here now. That’s got to count for something.
“When are we going?” she asked. Best to confront the source of her worry at once—not that she would necessarily know whether he was lying to her or not.
His reply was immediate. “Tomorrow morning. I’ve been monitoring the local transmissions and just hearing the usual chatter, nothing to indicate anyone is planning on coming here any time soon. We’ve bought some breathing room. And the ship’s ready to go if any more trouble crops up sooner than that.”
“Good,” she said, perhaps with a bit more depth of emotion than she had intended. Thorn gave her a searching look, and she added, “I could do with some rest first. And a decent meal.”
He nodded, but didn’t look particularly enthusiastic.
“Steaks straight from Gaia,” Miala offered, and he raised an eyebrow.
“Where’d you get those?”
“Lost treasures of Mast’s refrigeration units,” she replied.
“Appropriate.”
“Dinner at nineteen hundred, then,” Miala said, and was gratified to see him nod. After all, they deserved a little celebration for their last night on Iradia…
She tried to make everything as perfect as she could. Cooking for her father all those years had certainly given Miala a certain level of skill, for of course they’d never been able to afford a mech to take on those sorts of tasks. But they’d also never had the funds to buy the sort of foodstuffs she
was making now for Eryk Thorn, and she fretted over their preparation much more than she ever had over a meal for her father.
Of course there were the gorgeous pink beef filets, but along with the steaks she concocted a rich side dish of delicate rosy-veined tubers with cream, accompanied by fresh-baked bread and a salad of various off-world fruits that she’d found in a back corner of one of the freezers. The wine cellars located just below the kitchens yielded all kinds of riches, but Miala had no real idea of what she was looking at or what would work best with the meal she had prepared. After scanning the various labels (those that she could read; several were in alien scripts), she stood there for a moment, irresolute, and finally grabbed two bottles: one red wine and one pale straw-colored one. Thorn could decide which kind he wanted—if he drank at all, she realized suddenly. Still, from what she had read and what she had seen on the various ’net programs, wine was usually expected with dinner, and she did not want to appear ignorant.
Mast of course had had no real use for a dining hall, but the compound had first been built by a group of Buddhist monks…before they figured out that the frontier world had very little use for such a peaceful philosophy…and so the old dining room was still there, more or less intact. The other kitchen drudges had mentioned that it was used every once in a while, if Mast had important enough visitors, but that had never happened during Miala’s tenure at the compound.
She wiped down the old polished travertine dining table and dusted off the rustic wooden chairs, then found an ancient pair of carved stone candlesticks and a box of candles in one of the kitchen cupboards, along with some faded but clean table linens. The candles intrigued her; she’d seen lighted candles once years before at a friend’s home as part of their holiday celebrations, but they were a rarity in Aldis Nova, an archaic tradition that even then Miala had found strangely charming. Now she thought they would add an elegant touch to the table.
Allowing herself once last quick glance around the kitchen to make sure everything was in hand, Miala then ducked out and hastened up the steps to the slave girls’ dormitory. It was almost 19:00, and she’d told Thorn she would call him on the handheld when dinner was ready, but she had one last thing to take care of. Off went the serviceable but now stained tunic and pants she had been wearing, and she drew out of the wardrobe an outfit she’d spied several days ago but hadn’t thought she ever have a reason to wear. Like Genna’s other pre-slave castoffs, it consisted of a fitted tunic over narrowly cut pants, but this one was of shimmering copper-colored fabric, embroidered in black and gold around the deeply cut neckline and side-slit hem. It was sleeveless, and in the trinket box the slave girls had shared Miala found a stack of gold-colored bangles, five for each wrist, and a pair of dangling earrings to finish off the look. The flat sandals she had been wearing all along would have to do.
Once she was done, Miala paused in front of the mirror in the dressing area and surveyed herself carefully. Thorn had obviously liked seeing her hair down, and she had to admit the effect was good, especially the way the long coppery-red strands blended into the silky fabric of the tunic. There were pots of cosmetics stacked neatly along the counter, but Miala didn’t really know what to do with them, and now was not the time to for experimentation. Instead she settled for giving her hair a few quick brush strokes before she turned away from the mirror and hurried back downstairs, all the while telling herself she was making a fuss over nothing. Thorn did not seem like the sort of man to be impressed by fancy clothes—far from it—but Miala told herself that it would be disrespectful to the meal she had prepared to sit down at table in the same disheveled garments she had been wearing. Let Eryk Thorn make of her appearance what he would.
The sun was low on the horizon when she returned to the dining room. Miala lifted the mechanized lighter she’d found in the kitchen to first one, then the other of the two candles she had set out on the table, and watched as the flickering light combined with the ruddy glow of the sunset to turn the chamber into a swirl of red and copper that reflected off the polished stone of the table and the faded frescoes on the walls. The color found an echo in her hair and the clothes she wore, and for a second she felt as if she were suspended in light, floating on the edge of another world. Then she blinked, and the impression was gone, though the room was still awash in copper-tinted hues.
She lifted the handheld. “Any time you’re ready,” she said.
Thorn’s voice came through immediately. “Got it.”
Miala set the handheld down on a sideboard and returned to the kitchen, where she transferred the food to its serving pieces and began moving it to the table. She’d already unstoppered the wine and set the red bottle in front of Eryk Thorn’s place setting and the pale yellow one in front of hers. The plates she had set out were old, old metal, probably left over from the monastery days as well. The monks had been ascetic to the extreme, but even they had had to eat—well, at least before one of Iradia’s crime lords decided their compound was the perfect place for his base of operations and came in and exterminated the lot. The oversized wine goblets were newer and bore all the signs of Mast’s trademark ostentation—glass bowls set into dark metal bases that looked like writhing serpents—but she hadn’t been able to find anything more appropriate and so had set them down on the table with a sigh.
“Expecting company?” Thorn asked, pausing at the entry to the dining chamber and eyeing the elaborate spread.
“Just you,” she replied, hoping the ruddy light that spilled in through the arched windows hid the flush in her cheeks.
He made no reply, instead taking in her elaborate costume with a slightly arched eyebrow. Then he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head before moving to the chair at the head of the table and sitting down in it.
Miala gritted her teeth and told herself, Count to ten...
If that was how he was going to be, fine. She pulled out her own chair with a rough scrape of wood across stone and settled a napkin in her lap. “I thought it would be nice to celebrate my last night on Iradia,” she said evenly. “I’m sure planet-hopping is old news to you, but I’ve never been anywhere but here.”
After a quick survey of the table, Thorn nodded. “This looks about as good as anything I’ve had off-world.”
“Well—thank you.” Once again he had caught her off-guard with a compliment. To cover her confusion, Miala lifted the ruddy-hued bottle and asked, “Wine?”
“Normally, no, but—” He lifted his shoulders. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
She poured him a glass, filling it only halfway. Those goblets were enormous, scaled apparently to Mast’s prodigious appetites; it would be far too easy to overindulge if one didn’t pay attention. After she did the same with her own goblet, she set the wine bottle back down, then noticed with some surprise that Thorn had lifted his glass and apparently was waiting for her to do the same.
“To Arlen Mast,” he said, a sly glint in his eyes, “without whom this feast would not be possible.”
“To Mast,” she echoed, unable to repress a smile.
Really, Thorn had the oddest sense of humor. She lifted the glass to her lips and drank, feeling the warmth of the heavy wine work its way down her throat. The sensation made her feel very adult and somewhat wicked. She’s only tasted wine once before, at an engagement reception for a school friend of hers, and it had been nothing like this. At the time she had thought wine rather sour and nasty, and certainly not worth the fuss. But this deep red vintage tasted of fruit and earth and an alien sun that made things grow instead of burning them into dust, and Miala thought she could definitely get used to it.
After that they were silent for a few moments as she loaded Thorn’s and her own plates with all the various foods she had spent the afternoon preparing, and they began to eat. It seemed years since she’d had a proper meal besides hastily scrounged bites. The drudges had never gotten that much to eat, and she had been careless about meals once she was on her own. Now the tender meat and
carefully seasoned side dishes tasted like a little piece of heaven.
Thorn appreciated the meal as well, she could tell. She’d spent too many years feeding her father not to know when a man was enjoying his food. He ate efficiently and quickly, but not so rapidly that she couldn’t see him pause every once in a while to savor a bite.
“Computers and cooking,” he said at length, after taking a small sip of wine. “Any other hidden skills I should know about?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Miala said, pleased that he seemed to be enjoying himself. “Although I should warn you that I play a mean hand of poker.”
“I don’t gamble,” he said flatly. “Waste of time.”
Lifting an eyebrow, Miala replied, “My father preferred to think of it as a game of skill. He found it an interesting way to teach me probability.”
“Mmm.” Thorn applied himself to another piece of filet.
“My father didn’t gamble,” she said, suddenly irritated by what she saw as a silent condemnation. “We liked to play cards together.”
He looked up from his food and gave her a slow, measuring stare. “Did I say anything?”
She had to admit that he hadn’t, really. What was it about him that always made her feel on the defensive? There was no way, after all, that Eryk Thorn could have known her father’s fascination with poker was one of the chief reasons they never had enough money to get off-planet. In silence she poured herself another half-glass of wine, trying to ignore Thorn’s pointed stare as she did so.
“So what about your father?” she asked finally.
“My father didn’t play poker, either.”
“Funny. I mean, what did he do?”
Was it her imagination, or did his jaw muscles tighten involuntarily, just for a second? It was hard to tell in the flickering light, but she noticed he lifted his own glass and took another drink before replying. “I have no idea. Besides spend money on whores, that is.”
