by Susan Grant
Chapter Ten
It took Tee’ah a few disbelieving seconds to realize she’d become separated from Ian and Muffin, swept away by the tide of miners. Instinctively she caught herself before calling out for them. Better to not broadcast the fact that she was now lost and alone. She reached for her comm, but it wasn’t in her pocket. Fortunately, her laser pistol was.
Within the length of several arcades, she gave up searching for her comrades. Too many people blocked her line of sight. She pushed her eyeshaders farther up the bridge of her nose. What would Ian and Muffin do? Turn back; she was certain of it. She spun on her heel and headed toward the docks. Infusing her stride with feigned confidence, she aimed to deter any possible predators, as she had on Donavan’s Blunder. But the Baréshtis mostly ignored her, too overburdened to allocate energy for curiosity.
Since she’d fled from the palace, her own concerns had dominated her thoughts. Now they seemed incredibly trivial. It wasn’t the barrenness of the mining outpost, the indigence, the disease or proliferation of what she suspected was hallucinogenic drug-use that disturbed her most: it was the lack of hope she sensed in the hearts of these people. She’d experienced hopelessness on a far smaller scale. But she’d escaped it. These people hadn’t that luxury.
To her left, she noticed a tall figure keeping pace with her. Kept at a distance by a mass of bodies, a man in a pale gray hooded cloak flickered in and out of view like moonlight between trees.
Her chest tightened. His luxurious cloak was a different color than that of the Vash gentleman she’d glimpsed on Grüma, but her senses prickled. He had the same look about him.
She ducked into an elevated doorway of a bustling arcade from where she could watch the street. A thin, very young woman regarded her from inside. Her blouse was see-through enough for Tee’ah to notice her breasts and nipples were plumped with ornate body art—tattoos and metallic implants. Tee’ah suspected that the scarcity of pleasure servants entitled her to charge high fees for sexual services, allowing her such vanities in addition to buying food.
Her study of the young pleasure servant was cut short as Tee’ah looked back over her shoulder. The hooded man was heading toward the doorway into which she’d ducked. Balling her left hand in a fist, Tee’ah made an abrupt about-face and pushed into the arcade. Her pursuer was right on her heels. She tried to run, but the crowd pressed in all around her.
“Tee’ah, stop,” a voice called. “I want to talk to you.” The voice was deep and sweetened by the educated burr of a full-blooded Vash. One that knew her name.
She made a sound of dismay and dove forward. She’d barely gotten a taste of freedom, and she wasn’t about to give it up so soon.
“Tee’ah. Stop.” Her pursuer grabbed her upper arm, spinning her toward him so fast that her eyeshaders clattered to the floor. Almost instantly, they were crushed by the boots of one of the arcade’s customers.
“Let go!” Her plea was drowned by the thunder of voices.
The man tugged off his hood, revealing Vash-gold eyes and hair the color of Mistraal sunshine. “Tsk, tsk,” he said, smiling. “The entire family is talking about you.”
“Dear heaven,” she gasped. Her ex-betrothed’s younger brother’s face was painfully familiar after all the holo-recordings their families had exchanged. Her thoughts spun wildly. Klark Vedla’s ambition and brash behavior were often frowned upon at her father’s palace, although many of the same critics admired him for being an impassioned supporter of his older brother, Ché—the prince she was supposed to have married. But never would Tee’ah have guessed that Klark was devoted enough—or smart enough—to find her in a trash-littered virtual reality arcade on a poverty-stricken asteroid at the farthest edge of settled space.
“How did you know I was here?” she demanded.
“I’ve been following you since Donavan’s Blunder.”
Klark was on Blunder? Tee’ah scoured her memory for anything she might have seen or heard that would substantiate that claim. Then she remembered the hooded man in the market on Grüma. He’d been following her, indeed.
He must have guessed that she’d made the connection. “So, you did see me that day,” he said smugly.
She took a step backward. “What a surprise that we bumped into each other. Small galaxy, yes? My apologies for running off, but I’m needed at my ship—”
The man’s hand shot out, and his fingers clamped around her upper arm. Her heart lurched and her mouth went dry. Her free hand inched toward her pistol. “Forget it, Klark. I’m not coming with you. I’m not going home.”
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not here to apprehend you. I’m not supposed to be here myself. So let’s keep this little meeting from the family—agreed?”
Tee’ah stared at him. “Ché didn’t send you?”
“None of this is about you, princess—as hard as that is to believe.”
She bristled. His implication that she was self-centered hit a nerve. She’d struggled with that doubt since leaving home. “Then what are you doing here?”
He took her by the arm and pushed her toward the bar. “We’re two vagabonds far from home. Let us share our experiences over a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink.” She didn’t have time for one, either. Ian would be frantic by now. Or furious.
Klark waved away her protest as if she were a bug with no opinions or desires of her own, and he pulled a floating tray between them. Amazed by the absurdity of the situation, she watched him take a flask and two thimble-sized glasses from his cloak, filling them with a pink-tinged liquid. “Join me in sampling a liqueur created from one of the rarest fruits in the galaxy. It is from a planet with the briefest of summers. When the snow melts, the star-berry bushes bloom.”
Tee’ah almost growled. She teetered at the precipice of losing her dreams, and Klark acted as if she were paying a social call.
He held the glasses to the light. “The flowers are extremely fragile and fall with the first flurries of autumn. The ripe berries must be picked immediately, else within days they’ll be buried under hundreds of standard feet of snow. This makes star-berry liqueur the most precious of drinks. It is—”
“I know what it is!”
“Then you know it must be shared in the traditional way.” Klark dipped a finger into his glass and rubbed his glistening fingertip along her bottom lip before she was able to block his arm. Reflexively, she licked at it, tasting the tart sweetness left behind. Star-berry liqueur was a rare and special treat to be shared by lovers. Or potential lovers. By anointing Tee’ah’s lips with the precious liquid, knowing that they had no past except for her intended engagement to his brother, he’d all but called her a whore.
“You, Klark Vedla, are unforgivably rude.”
“And you”—he took in her fuzzy green-brown hair, her dusty boots, and everything in between—“are an aberration. You aren’t good enough for my brother. No, Ché deserves better. He deserves more.” His expression darkened, and his fingers squeezed her arm. “Far more than the subordinate role Romlijhian B’kah is inclined to give him.”
Tee’ah plunged her hand into her pocket and pushed her laser pistol hard against the fabric. “Let me go, Vedla, or I’ll put a crater between your eyes.”
To her shock, he complied, immediately. Her legs trembled with adrenaline. She’d never dreamed she was capable of such audacity.
Klark’s neck muscles corded, and he sucked in a deep breath. “My apologies. My temper will prove to be my undoing yet.” He drew the wobbling tray between them. “Here. Finish your drink.”
She fought the explosion of her own temper. “It’s said that blessings sometimes come of unpleasant circumstances. Now I see why.” She gritted her teeth. “We were never officially promised, Ché and I. And I’m truly sorry if my leaving insulted him. But at least now I’ll never have to endure having you as a brother-in-law.”
She left him standing by the floating tray. Suddenly lightheaded, she ducked through the crowd, but t
he Baréshtis jostled her, slowing her progress. A floating sensation enveloped her body in a vague pleasantness at odds with her near panic. Star-berry liqueur was notoriously potent, but this was ridiculous.
She pushed onward.
Her knees nearly buckled at the sound of Ian’s voice coming from near the front exit. The young pleasure servant Tee’ah had seen earlier was talking to him, and he was gesturing wildly. Struggling forward, Tee’ah cried, “Ian!” above the clamor of music and voices. The woman accepted some credits from Ian, then pointed him in the right direction before she melted into the crowd.
By the time Tee’ah stumbled into the Earth dweller’s arms, her head was spinning. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his chest, breathing in his scent. At first she clutched him out of fear, then for comfort, and finally for pleasure.
He seemed to sense the change and caught her by the shoulders, moving her back. “Thank God.” He appeared as sharply relieved as she felt. “Muffin, I’ve got her!” he called.
The big security chief joined them within seconds. Steadying herself, Tee’ah tried to work saliva into her mouth, but her tongue felt numb, like it had after that first glass of Mandarian whiskey. “Lesh—let’s get out of here.”
Disbelief and then reluctant acceptance clouded Ian’s eyes. “Ah, Tee.” His voice thickened with pity. “You can’t keep out of the bars, can you?”
Something warm unfurled within her at his genuine concern. “I wasn’t drinking.” She hiccuped and pressed her hand over her mouth. “Not intentionally.”
Muffin snorted.
“Denial, we call that on Earth,” Ian muttered.
She tried to look over her shoulder, and it knocked her off-balance. Ian wrapped his arm around her waist. She leaned on him far more than was necessary, but he didn’t seem to mind. “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not what…what it seems. Someone bought me a drink I didn’t want.”
“Yeah. And they made you drink it, too.”
She wanted to howl. Salvaging her reputation meant explaining what had really happened. But if she did, she risked having to say who Klark Vedla was and how she knew him. She didn’t want Ian and the crew to view her as irresponsible; nor did she want her two lives to collide. Her ensuing indecision was almost physically painful.
They burst out of the arcade onto the street. When she saw that Klark was not waiting there, her chest ached with relief so sharp it hurt. She took his disappearance as a sign that she should keep the incident to herself. The prince was part of a life she wasn’t ready to reveal, and now it looked as if she wouldn’t yet have to. Perhaps all Klark had wanted to do was get her drunk, humiliating her in front of her employer and thereby avenge her jilting of his brother. That made sense, did it not? She tried to concentrate, but her speculation blurred in a liquor-induced haze.
“We’ll get right to work getting you sobered up,” Ian said, all business again. “Muffin, you get the tock ready, and Tee, you shower up and get something to eat. We’re launching for Grüma as soon as you’re able.”
She gave a silent groan. Wonderful, she thought dazedly. Here we go again.
They completed the return journey to Grüma with no ship malfunctions. Ian liked Tee’s reasoning that the computer was behaving itself only because it feared the consequences of further mischief. Her joking explanation was as good as any Quin had come up with so far and was one he suspected had paralleled her own outlook since she’d gotten tipsy on Barésh. Aside from remaining acutely apologetic about losing his extra pair of sunglasses, she avoided all mention of the incident. Yet here he was, bringing her to a bar on her first night back on Grüma. He needed his head examined.
“Randall’s here,” Muffin said as they emerged from the woods.
Anticipation buoyed Ian. Tonight he’d finally meet the man he’d chased halfway across the frontier. The local merchants had told him that Randall liked to eat dinner out and socialize in the town’s pubs afterward. Ian would be waiting for him when he did.
“What is the Earth word for that…ground car?” Tee peered in fascination at the jeep Randall and his men had left parked outside a restaurant.
Ian smiled. Like the curious crowd milling around the Army-issue vehicle, sniffing at the quaint scents of fossil fuel and rubber tires, she’d probably never seen a plain old everyday automobile. “It’s a jeep.”
“Ah.” She repeated the word as if savoring the sound. He’d long since learned that the pixie worshipped anything to do with his home planet.
The last of Grüma’s three moons settled below the horizon, plunging the downtown strip of eateries and bars into shadow. The planet’s major city was a lonely swath of civilization cut into a continent-sized forest, a fact made more apparent as the darkness deepened. Jumbo-sized insects with veined wings and tiny bat-like creatures crisscrossed a sky glowing with trillions of stars, but stranger still were some of the revelers in the rowdy pubs.
With Push on watch back at the Sun Devil, Ian led the remainder of his crew across the street. “We’ll wait for Randall next door,” he told them. As badly as he wanted to know how the U.S. senator had learned about Barésh, Ian was determined to take things slowly. He wanted to get a feel for the man and gain his trust before he revealed his identity. Diplomacy would keep the galaxy at peace. In this modern age of interstellar politics, threats and aggression were as barbaric as Roman Empire gladiator matches. He hoped the senator understood that.
A waitress clad in an ivory pantsuit and matching knee-length hair met them at the door of the pub. “A table by the window,” Ian said, slipping a fair amount of credits into her palm. “That one,” he said, pointing to the window closest to the adjacent restaurant, from where laughter and the scent of roasting meat drifted in the night air.
The waitress shooed away a table of drunks so Ian and the crew could sit. He thought they’d protest the incident, but money was plentiful on Grüma and bars abounded, so the revelers merely grumbled good-naturedly and stumbled out through the doors leading into the chilly night air.
Tee appeared utterly unaware of the attentive gazes she received from men at nearby tables, interest that waned the instant she swiped his ball cap off her head and combed her fingers through her freshly touched-up clumps of mud-green hair. Ian watched with misgiving as the whiskey-loving pixie settled her shapely and very distracting rear end on the stool next to him. Fortunately, Quin took the seat to her right. Ian forced himself to relax. She was surrounded. If she wanted to drink herself into oblivion, she was going to find it damned hard with her hands held behind her back.
His fingers flexed involuntarily as an image exploded in his mind…of Tee warm and eager in his arms, her mouth opening under his as he kissed her, holding her clasped hands at the small of her back.
A bolt of heat in his groin yanked him out of the vivid fantasy and back to reality in the smoky bar.
“…And at least the bartender seems semi-coherent, does he not? Hello,” Tee called to him after he didn’t answer. “Ian?”
He became aware of his surroundings as if surfacing from a deep dive. Tee gave him a decidedly flirtatious grin. With her smelly hair, she reminded him of the cartoon character Pèpé Le Pew, the debonair little French skunk whose amorous intent was handicapped by his total unawareness of the effect his odor had on those around him.
“You were light years away, Ian.” She smiled and tapped two perfectly formed fingertips on his knee. His body reacted as powerfully as if she’d placed her hand directly over his…
He groaned. “I need a drink.” You don’t drink. “I do now,” he argued.
Quin stared at him. “Captain?”
Tee laughed. “He’s pretending to be that bartender on Donavan’s Blunder.”
Only he hadn’t been pretending.
“Now that’s a depressing thought,” he said aloud to Tee’s obvious delight.
“That’s exactly what he was like!”
He frowned at his folded hands as
she relayed the rest of the story to Gredda, Muffin, and Quin. “You should have seen it—the bartender would have conversations with himself. Sometimes in several different voices.”
Gredda shrugged. “One would never get lonely that way.”
It wasn’t a crime to think about Tee, he supposed, as long as he took it no further. And he wouldn’t. If a wife hadn’t already been chosen for him in his absence, one would be soon. Vash Nadah marriages were alliances, not love matches—at first, anyway. The right spouse was essential for acceptance into his adopted culture.
“Here you are.” The waitress set bowls of shimmer crackers and croppers on the counter in front of them. The crew each scooped up handfuls of croppers, the crispy little question marks that took the place of peanuts in bars across the galaxy. They were spiced with something savory instead of salted, but were as addictive as potato chips. The shimmer crackers, on the other hand, were bland. Ian couldn’t understand why everyone liked them; they were nothing more than flashy junk food.
Tee dusted crumbs from her hands. “I need something to wash down these croppers. A glass of mog-melon wine will do.”
“Tee,” Quin and Ian chorused in warning.
She spread her hands. “What?”
Quin rolled his eyes. “Do the words Mandarian whiskey ring a bell?”
A faint blush stained her cheeks. “I’m not going to get drunk, for heaven’s sake. I’m on duty.” She glanced knowingly at where Randall’s group had been seated in the restaurant next door. “Am I not?”
No one argued with her, especially not Ian. His attention was drawn to the senator. Then a question dawned on him: How had she known who they were watching? Or had the look simply been a coincidence? Maybe one of the others had shown her a picture of Randall. He was being too paranoid.
The waitress took their orders. Ian kept silent as Tee requested her glass of wine. He wanted to be able to trust her—with alcohol and everything else. The longer she worked on his ship, the more involved she became in his mission. Unwittingly, for now. But she deserved to know the truth eventually.
