“With the galaxy in turmoil,” Annika said to him, “I’d think you’d be happy to be somewhere safe, not to mention with people who are wealthy. Or have you abandoned your hopes of getting rich?”
He gave her an ugly look. “I’d rather be alive.”
“Have you had any word from the Xerxes?” Elidia asked.
Judit sent a quick message to Beatrice. “We’re getting that Houses Atrius and Flavio are answering for the station and the surrounding sector.”
Elidia shifted in her seat. “No word from Munn?”
“Why worry if the other two are your allies?” Judit asked.
The way Elidia’s eyes shifted around the room said that any alliance had probably dissolved as soon as the Damat left the system. Maybe the other two houses had had their eyes on the station for a long time, and Judit had given them the excuse they needed to kick their third partner out. If they weren’t careful, Munn could find themselves disappearing, too, and they weren’t the smallest of the houses.
“I say someone is pushing buttons,” Annika said. “Everyone wouldn’t spontaneously rally like this, and these attacks, these takeovers, speak of careful planning.” She looked to Elidia. “And since you don’t seem to know, either your house had a council without you, or someone entirely unrelated is pulling the strings.” She raised an eyebrow. “There was a Flavio aboard the ship that kidnapped Noal and me.”
Elidia’s shocked expression could have been faked, but Judit hoped it was real. “I…Munn didn’t have anything to do with that!”
Judit rubbed her chin. “So whoever’s rallying the smaller houses either got Flavio to cooperate with them, or Flavio is doing it themselves.” She shook her head. “Could they have contacted all the smaller houses and gotten them to attack at a moment’s notice?”
Noal shook his head. “No, it sounds more as if someone knew when a crisis was going to occur. They arranged a kidnapping and were ready to light a match to the chaos that came afterward, no matter what that chaos might be.”
“And we’ve played into their hands,” Judit said.
Elidia’s face screwed up in doubt. “And who is this mysterious mastermind? Flavio doesn’t have that kind of clout.” She lifted her hands. “And I’m not just saying that because Munn is larger than they are.”
“I know one place to start looking,” Judit said. “The ship where we found Annika and Noal.”
Annika nodded. “We didn’t have time to go through the computers before.”
Judit turned to Elidia and Spartan, happy to have a course. “I’ll need you both to stay in your quarters until I send for you again.”
“Afraid we’re going to take control of your ship?” Elidia asked, a sneer in her voice.
“Not really,” Annika said.
Judit gave her a look. Even though her confidence was supremely sexy, it wasn’t helping. Then the image of the bodies on the kidnappers’ ship came to mind again, and she had to swallow. Somehow, the Annika she’d known for five years had killed an entire crew. Granted, they had kidnapped her and Noal, but something about the easy way she acted now said those deaths didn’t weigh on her conscience. They certainly would have weighed on Judit’s. Even though she’d been trained to kill in Noal’s defense, she’d never had to, didn’t even know if she could.
“Evie will take you to your rooms,” she said, interrupting their debate. Evie waited outside, and at a gesture from Judit, she moved in. Noal and Annika followed close behind Judit as she headed for the bridge. Annika nearly had to jog to keep up with her, but Judit didn’t slow.
“Is something wrong?” Annika asked.
Judit snorted a laugh. “Besides the kidnapping and the galaxy turmoil thing?”
Annika chuckled. “Yeah, besides that.”
How could she say what she was really thinking? If being a trained killer was simply part of who Annika was, what could she say about that? Since Annika had never shown any sign of that before being abducted, how many other parts were there?
“There’s a lot to think about,” Judit said quietly, aware of Noal behind them.
“Like how quickly we can be alone in your office again.” She winked, and Judit had to swallow as desire arced through her. In her office, there hadn’t been time to think, and that had been as delicious as the actions themselves. She told herself to push the other thoughts down, deal with them later.
* * *
Annika noticed Noal turn away as the kidnappers’ ship appeared on Judit’s screen, the slanted perspective making it seem as if that ship was coming closer and not the other way around. Annika supposed it was natural for him to shy away from bad memories. Ama would have encouraged her to do the same, to pretend the deaths affected her, but now that she’d had a small taste of telling the truth, she found she liked it.
Well, she liked telling part of the truth. She’d killed people who were going to sell her or kill her, and she didn’t see why she should feel remorse.
Judit touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
So, Judit thought she should be pained by her memories, too. That stung a little, as if both Judit and Noal were saying something was wrong with her. “I’m fine.”
Judit nodded slowly as if she didn’t believe that. Annika couldn’t blame her for being confused. Judit might have a false opinion of who Annika was, but Annika had helped build it. There had to be layers to Judit that Annika had yet to uncover, too. She hoped there was, something to even the field between them.
They went from the bridge to the Damat’s shuttle bay, and then the ride to the kidnappers’ ship was an easy one. Annika, Judit, tactical officer Evie, and Beatrice, who seemed to serve as both pilot and systems specialist on the Damat, all squeezed into the shuttle together.
Once on board the kidnappers’ ship, Annika didn’t pause at the bodies, but she didn’t hurry past them, either, conscious of Judit’s gaze. She wondered if she should pretend a little to put Judit at ease. She’d heard that happened even in the most honest relationships. She had to wonder what would make Judit happier: a cheerful lie or a bald-faced truth? Maybe she’d be happiest not even having to consider such a question.
On the bridge, Beatrice dug into the computer, copying what files she could and scanning others. Annika watched over her shoulder. Like all houses, Flavio used codes, but maybe someone on the Damat could decipher it. At one transmission record, Annika put a hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. She knew that code.
“Feric was here.” He’d left orders that she wasn’t to be awakened. He knew what she could do. Behind her, she could feel Judit watching, probably wondering the same thing she was. If Feric was giving orders, he was more than someone’s tool. And that had to mean Nocturna had been involved in the kidnapping.
Didn’t it? Feric had been raised to guard her. He was older than her, taken early from his parents, and raised to serve Nocturna above all else. Maybe mind control really was the key, then. The same techniques Nocturna had invented to control Noal. Maybe she should confess all she knew. Noal already suspected she was more than a guardian. Annika knew her lessons hadn’t been the same as Judit’s, and she didn’t know if Noal would put it down to the differences in their houses or if he suspected something greater. Maybe he wasn’t comfortable lying to himself. Ama would never have allowed such a thing inside her own house.
But if she told Noal Nocturna’s real plans, he would hate her; they all would. Judit would. She had to keep that secret for all their sakes. Besides, she suspected the worm was involved, but she didn’t know.
Annika leaned over Beatrice’s chair. “Can you find out where Feric went?”
Beatrice shrugged. “I can send the scans to Roberts, see if he can make anything out from telemetry and galaxy-wide chatter.”
“Copy everything to the Damat,” Judit said, “and let’s get out of here.”
Annika waited while Beatrice worked, her stomach in knots. Part of her had hoped Feric was dead, used and then discarded, but now she had to track him across
the galaxy if she wanted to find out what he knew. She should have keenly felt the sting of betrayal, but she kept remembering the giant who’d been a constant in her life, silent and protective. When they were alone together, he’d had this kind little smile. Her first kind smile. He’d never been disappointed in her. He’d never protected her from Ama, but she’d never expected him to. When she’d been a child, he’d held her.
He had to have been tricked. Manipulated. Controlled.
“It’ll be all right,” Judit said.
Annika took a deep breath, wondering how much of her discomfort had shown. But that didn’t matter. This was something she could share with Judit wholeheartedly, making both of them feel better.
“It’s Feric. I…” But what was the word for this mishmash of feelings? “When we find him, what will we do with him?” The real Feric, the one she’d grown up with, would never reveal a secret. What would she see now when she looked in his eyes? The blank look he’d had while abducting her? If he’d been working under Nocturna’s orders instead of mind control, he had to obey. Annika might now be working against her family’s plans. But someone had already disrupted their plans when they’d awoken her early. Whose script was she following?
Judit hugged her from the side, and Annika leaned into the touch.
They hurried back to the shuttle, everyone silent until they were aboard the Damat. In Judit’s office, they told Noal what they’d found. He cautioned them to wait until the crew had a chance to sift through the data before they shared it with Elidia and Spartan.
When it came time to speculate, Annika was at a loss. “All I can think of are ifs and maybes. Plans within plots within conspiracies. It’s making my head ache.”
“Now you know how I’ve felt since waking up in that ship,” Noal said. “I mean, was this our houses? I don’t know how…” He shrugged and stared at the floor. “I feel as if I don’t know anything anymore, as if no one ever told me anything.”
Yes, he would be feeling that most of all. His house had told him nothing, but a stray Ama thought said he should have been asking questions.
Judit clapped him on the shoulder. “Nothing’s as promised. Nothing’s as expected, but we still have allies. We still have one another. We can fight.”
Meridian thinking. Why bother to expect the unexpected when they could bash their way through every problem? “If we catch up to Feric, and he’s working under orders from my house, or if some other house has found a way to sway him, he won’t tell us anything. It won’t matter what we do to him. Resisting torture was part of his training.”
They both stared at her.
“What?” she asked.
“I thought we could…make an appeal,” Noal said haltingly.
Judit nodded. “You could talk some sense into him, or if he’s being manipulated or threatened, we could offer to help.”
“You were thinking torture?” Noal asked.
And even though they were the naive ones, Annika fought a little flush. “Well, I mean…Meridians are always quick to use their guns!”
“We might be bullheaded, but we talk first!” Noal said. “We don’t sneak around and stab people in the back. We don’t lie!”
“Oh please—”
“Enough!” Judit barked. “We can’t turn on one another now. Are we all agreed that we follow Feric once we find out where he’s gone? If we find him or not, maybe we can find what he was looking for or discover if he was meeting anyone.”
They nodded and settled into an uncomfortable silence. Luckily, they didn’t have long to wait. Roberts had analyzed the data from the kidnapper’s ship and discerned the transmission gate Feric had headed toward. From that gate’s data, he determined several likely destinations—most of them on the edges of colonized space—and sent his conclusions to Judit’s private computer.
Annika stared at the data and tried to make sense of it. It was a lot of nothing, several planets that were barely habitable, a deep-space listening post that was several years out of date, and one mining station under the control of a small house that Nocturna rarely had dealings with. Annika supposed they could be part of some conspiracy. There was also an unaligned habitable world, and that could be promising, too.
The last destination caught her attention: the Eye, the hierophant temple, the base of operations for the hierophants who traveled to the center of the galaxy in order to see the future in the time distortions of black holes. The givers of prophecy. Neutral, they normally stayed out of house business beyond officiating various ceremonies, but if Feric had been seeking information…
And information was something she sorely needed, too. “There,” she said. Unlike the destinations on the fringes of the galaxy, this one was close to the heart. It felt right.
“The Eye?” Judit asked.
“Even if he hadn’t been going there, we could sort through the prophecies for information.”
They both looked skeptical, but the hierophants had many prophecies they never released, those they could make no sense of, those that could too easily be misinterpreted. Some who traveled to the center of the galaxy were simply unable to translate what they saw and rambled nonsense that was recorded and archived.
“The hierophants could be keeping a prophecy they couldn’t make sense of, but we might know what it means. If someone saw something about us or about Feric…”
“Seems like a shot in the dark,” Noal said.
“Better than going to all these different worlds asking questions and giving our families more opportunities to track us down.” Annika’s temper spiked, but he didn’t back down from her gaze.
Judit sighed loudly. “Noal, any other ideas?”
His nostrils flared as he turned away, and Annika smiled in satisfaction. When Judit gave her a flat look, she shrugged and put the smile away.
“Even if we don’t find anything,” Annika said, “Nocturna has spies in the temple that are loyal to our house alone. They can tell us if Feric was there.”
Noal rolled his eyes. Annika fought down an outburst after Judit gave her a conciliatory look. They seemed so different from each other in that moment: Noal turned to sarcasm, and Judit took everything in stride. Maybe that was the difference between being raised a guardian and a chosen one. Of course, Meridian had known from the beginning who the real chosen one was. In the end, they would have needed someone adaptable, someone with Meridian sensibilities who could still take orders. Noal was raised a brat because they didn’t need him to be anything else until the time was right, and then they didn’t need him to be anything at all. It made sense to her, but she didn’t think Noal or Judit would appreciate it if she pointed it out. They probably thought their own house couldn’t be so conniving.
And she supposed she should give Noal a bit of a break. She tried to focus on the times he’d made her smile, the times she’d thought of him as a friend, but there was only so much pouting she could take.
When Judit went to the bridge to give the command to go to the Eye, Annika caught Noal’s arm. She didn’t want to fight with him, despite her lack of empathy. “I’m sorry, Noal, for what it’s worth. You would have made a good spouse.”
He sighed and ducked his head, but when he raised it, he had a slight smile. “You know, even though I always knew the marriage was coming, I never gave it much thought. I probably would have been terrible. And an even worse ruler.”
She smiled and denied it, but the truth was, he wouldn’t have been any kind of ruler at all, not if her house had its way. With any luck, he’d never find that out.
Chapter Eight
Annika tried to get her thoughts in order as they headed for the Eye. Even if they didn’t find anything at the temple, fewer people might be looking for them there. Until they knew who had organized the kidnapping, she thought it best to stay away from their families. She didn’t want to be abducted again, but more than that, she was tired of being a pawn. A taste of freedom had been sweeter than she’d imagined.
She r
emembered the first time she’d been let loose on her own: turned out onto the streets of Nocturna Prime at eight years old to live on her own for a week. It had been exciting, thrilling. She’d had many a dangerous thought. She could have gone anywhere, could have pretended to be anything, anyone. It wasn’t until years later that she’d found out Ama had been keeping an eye on her, that she would have been rescued if she’d truly needed help. Knowing that had soured the entire memory.
Now, loose on the Damat, she felt as if she was making her own decisions for the first time. Oh, she’d made a lot of choices on the kidnappers’ ship, on the Xerxes, but those had been for survival. Now, as she watched over Judit’s shoulder as the Eye came closer, she felt as if she was taking her first steps outside of fate.
Annika resisted the urge to rest her head on Judit’s strong shoulder. After they’d come back from the kidnappers’ ship, they’d split up to get some sleep. Annika had stared at Judit before they’d parted, wondering which of them would ask the other back to her quarters, but Judit had only bid her good night. Annika had been…relieved, and that had surprised her. She’d enjoyed her time in Judit’s office, very much so, but there was too much going on in her mind. She could flirt; she would have gone to Judit’s quarters if she’d been invited, but her mind would have kept drifting elsewhere: to Feric, to Noal, to the differences between all of them.
Now, though, with the heady taste of freedom in her mouth, Annika couldn’t stop staring at the line of Judit’s jaw, at the pale hairs that had escaped their tidy queue. She wanted to trail her fingers up and down Judit’s neck, wanted to kiss her, thoroughly distract her from her duties until she pounced.
Instead, Annika told herself to keep her mind on her mission. Nothing had changed between her and Judit save that they were now well rested. It had taken a night and all the next day to get to the Eye, even using a transmission gate. Roberts had fed false ship codes as they passed through the gate, but someone would put the pieces together; someone would track them. Even if Meridian wasn’t looking, Ama would never stop.
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