“Thanks,” she said, and took a bite. Surprisingly, it was good. She took another bite, accepted a cup of water he produced from a tray he had brought in with him, and drank deeply. After a few minutes she began to feel a little more human. “I guess that wasn’t very smart of me,” she added, even as her cheeks flushed with the admission.
“No,” he agreed.
Miala noticed that he had discarded the baggy Iradian-style clothing he had worn earlier and was clad instead in a close-fitting dark jumpsuit. Well, he had mentioned going out to check on his ship. Apparently he’d been able to scare up a change of clothes while he was out there. “Is your ship all right?” she asked. The last thing they needed was for their only off-world transport to have been damaged in the attack.
He nodded. “The landing pad’s inside the security perimeter, so it’s okay.” To her surprise, he touched her shoulder briefly, then said, “Come on. You need to get to sleep.”
The touch had been fleeting, but she could still feel the weight of his hand of her shoulder. Miala stood, a little surprised at how shaky her knees felt, how stiff her back was. It would feel good to lie down on a proper bed.
She stumbled a bit as she tried to maneuver past Thorn and the chair in which she had been sitting, and he reached out to put a steadying hand on her elbow.
“I’m all right,” she protested. As tired as she was, she couldn’t trust her reactions right now. Better to keep contact with him to a minimum.
He withdrew his hand, but remained close behind her as she made her way to the main staircase and began the climb to her room on the third floor. Perhaps he was worried she would trip and fall on the stairs—a distinct possibility in her current condition, she thought.
All the way up she clung grimly to the handrail, as much pulling herself along as actually walking up the steps. The part of her mind she’d begun to despise wondered idly whether he would catch her if she tripped and fell, and what it would feel like to have those strong arms close around her and hold her securely. Good thing she hadn’t taken complete leave of her senses yet, because she knew deep down she would never allow herself to do anything so foolish.
Finally—after she felt as if she’d climbed twenty flights of stairs instead of just two—they paused outside the doorway to the slave girls’ dormitory. Thorn eyed the portal with some curiosity, then asked, “Why up here? The guest chambers on the second floor are easier to get to.”
There was nothing in his face save a mild interest, but Miala still hesitated a moment before replying. “I—I didn’t have much in the way of clothes, and there’s a good deal here in the closets that I can use. So I just decided to stay up here.” Of course she’d never admit that she would have felt odd sleeping on the same floor of the compound as he, even though they would have been separated by at least ten rooms.
“Mmm,” was all he said, and again she got the feeling he was secretly amused by her. Perhaps he was imagining some of Genna’s more creative outfits and wondering whether he’d ever see her in one of those.
Not a chance in hell, she thought, so keep dreaming, Thorn!
“Good night,” she said then, making sure her voice sounded firm and in control. No sense in giving him any further ideas.
Once again she thought of how alone the two of them were here. It had been much easier when he was an invalid. Then at least she had known what the boundaries were between them. Now he was suddenly an active part of her life, and although part of her craved his company, she couldn’t help but be a little afraid of him as well. It had only been a few evenings ago that he’d threatened to hold a gun to her head, after all, although of course he hadn’t done anything remotely that sinister. Still, she began to wonder what would happen if he ever started to look at her as a woman and not just as the means to Mast’s treasure.
“’Night,” he said, and again his face was impassive, giving no hint of what he was thinking. Without another word he turned and headed back down the stairs, leaving Miala to stare after him in the darkness.
After a moment she stepped inside the dormitory, then pressed the controls to shut the door. For the first time she realized the door had no lock. It made sense, of course; in Mast’s mind, his slaves were property, with no more right to privacy than a mech or a pack animal. But the lack of security bothered her more than she cared to admit, even though she realized that a simple door lock was certainly not enough to deter a man like Eryk Thorn. If he wanted to get inside, he would, and that was that.
Perversely, the thought did not comfort her. She would have preferred a lock, ineffectual as it might prove to be. Perhaps she should move to one of the guest quarters on the floor below. Then she noted that she couldn’t possibly move her room now, or Thorn would be sure to comment.
“Damn him, anyway,” she muttered, as she moved into the room and pulled out the simple long shirt she had been using to sleep in. Even though she knew the door was shut and the windows securely shuttered and latched, Miala still felt exposed. She changed as quickly as she could and resisted the impulse to pull the covers up to her chin. It was way too hot for that, especially since the vents to the slave girls’ quarters had been partially blocked so they wouldn’t use up too much of the precious air conditioning.
Tired as she was, sleep seemed to elude her. Every time she shut her eyelids, she’d suddenly hear a sound from the corridor outside, and then she would startle, eyes flying open, straining to see something—anything—in the darkened room. Of course nothing was there, so she’d slide back down against the coarse sheets, heart pounding irrationally in her chest.
She shut her eyes and told herself she was being ridiculous; Thorn was probably dead asleep in his own room, and she should be sleeping as well. Sure, she was a little afraid of him, even as she felt some attraction to him, but he certainly did not seem to share her feelings. She needed to realize he had no reason to come here to her room. No, she was just exhausted and not thinking rationally. She would wake up in the morning and feel like a complete idiot.
And it was with these no-nonsense words echoing in her mind that she was finally able to fall into an uneasy sleep, one in which no specter of Eryk Thorn haunted her dreams. Instead, she dreamed that she wandered the halls of Mast’s compound, certain each doorway led to freedom, only to find all of them barred against her. In her dream she finally collapsed in some dim and forgotten corridor, weeping, certain she would be trapped here forever in a nightmare of her own making.
Miala awoke in the dim reaches of the night, tears still wet on her cheeks. Never before had she felt so alone. At that moment she would have welcomed Eryk Thorn’s presence—anything to keep the darkness at bay. But of course he slept somewhere in his own room below her, and she knew she would never go in search of him. To do so would be a display of weakness, and she could never allow that. So far she had earned at best a grudging respect from the mercenary. She was not about to jeopardize that because of a silly nightmare.
Hugging the lumpy pillow to her, Miala turned over in bed, willing herself to breathe deeply. You only need him for one thing, she thought, and that’s to get off-world. And he only needs you to get Mast’s treasure. Beyond that, you mean nothing to one another.
But even as she slipped back into the shadowy edges of dreams once again, she knew she was lying to herself. Perhaps she might mean nothing to him, but she feared he had begun to mean more to her than she wanted to admit.
VI
“Rafe Darlester,” Eryk Thorn said, not bothering to turn from the viewscreen.
“What?” Miala hesitated at the entrance to the chamber, caught off-guard by Thorn’s cryptic comment.
With that he swiveled halfway toward her. Then he gave a slight inclination of his head in the direction of an image frozen on the screen behind him. “Our friendly visitors from the other evening. Think I finally got a lock on ’em.”
Again, his simple, matter-of-fact attitude was immediately reassuring. Although she had spent a considerable length of
time in front of the dressing-room mirror this morning berating herself for her foolish thoughts of the night before, Miala had still been anxious at the thought of confronting Thorn once more. What if he could read some of her internal turmoil in her face? But she saw nothing in his own features save a slight satisfaction at finally solving the mystery of their attackers.
“So who’s Rafe Darlester?” she asked, hoping that she hadn’t paused too long before replying.
“Typical Mast wannabe,” he replied. “Maybe not completely typical. He’s pretty well-backed. Let’s call him the number-two or -three fish in this small pond.”
For a second she stared at him blankly, not comprehending the reference. Then she recalled a few of the things she’d read about Gaian biology, including the creatures that actually lived in water. Trying to assume a sage expression, she said, “Got it.”
His response was the same slightly lifted eyebrow, as if he knew all too well that she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. “He was in a lot of the same stuff as Mast—smuggling, racketeering, slaving. Looks like Mast got the better of him once or twice, which would have given him a reason to come sniffing around—as if just picking at the leavings in the compound wasn’t enough reason.”
Despite herself, she moved farther into the room, pausing only a few feet away from the screen that showed the aforementioned paragon. The image from the security camera was grainy and small, but she made out a human male of about her father’s age, only built on a far grander scale. Lestan Fels had been a slim man of middle height. This Rafe Darlester would have topped her father by almost a head and was proportionately broad, though not fat. He wore dark, elaborate robes that were ridiculously inappropriate for the Iradian climate and was surrounded by a group of thugs only marginally larger than he.
“Nice,” she commented. Then she noticed the empty pot of coffee sitting on the desktop next to a stained mug and a plate decorated with a few scattered crumbs. “Have you been in here all night?”
He shrugged. “You need to be alone to work, and I wanted to finish this up. Seemed like a reasonable allocation of resources.”
She tried to estimate how many hours he’d been up straight without rest. At least thirty-six, as far as she could guess, which was far too long for a man who should have still been convalescing in bed. She knew better than to remonstrate with him, however, and said only, “Well, I’m up now, so if you want to catch a few hours’ sleep, go ahead.” At his brief hesitation, she added, “Don’t worry—I promise I’ll come get you if any other wandering thugs come by.”
The dark eyes watched her carefully, and Miala felt a small flush start to her cheeks. She could only hope that her desert tan would hide most of it. What he saw in her face she couldn’t begin to guess, but he gave a small nod and stood. Positioned so, he was very close to her—closer than he had ever been, and Miala remained frozen in place, wondering what he would do next and trying not to notice his peculiarly male scent of soap and clean sweat.
Then, without another word, he left the room.
Miala hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath until he was gone. Then she let it out slowly, wondering if she would ever be able to completely control her reactions around him. That brief second when he stood—when he had been so close to her—had been enough to start her heart pounding. Again he had given her no encouragement, no reason to think he had meant to do anything but rise and exit the chamber. But still—
Stop being a girl and get to work, she thought, grimly pulling out the chair that faced the main computer console. You don’t have time for this romance-vid bullshit!
To her relief, however, this time she was able to concentrate well enough. Whatever the reason—whether it was the fact that Thorn had absented himself before she began to work, or whether he had at least put a name and a face to the threat which had confronted them two nights ago—she could feel that familiar sensation of sliding into the endless numbers, feeling them almost like a living force as she picked through one data stream after another, searching for the anomalies, looking for the one microscopic piece of data that seemed out of place.
To her surprise, after a few hours of this Miala actually found something. It was tiny, only one letter, but it was not where it should have been. She pushed herself back in her chair, staring at the screen, then leaned forward and tapped a few keys. The data flowed past, again with that tiny blip in the center of the complicated stream of numbers and symbols.
“What were you up to, Father?” she murmured. It had to mean something, of course. This was often how her father programmed in his back doors, by putting in random word associations known only to him and his daughter. These combinations had ranged from arrangements as simple as the letters of her own name to the name of her favorite vid-star, spelled backward. All she had to go on now was one letter, which she had to admit wasn’t much. Still, it was more than she’d had a few hours ago.
“B,” she said aloud. She did that occasionally, usually while trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle. Her father had teased her for the practice, but somehow the sound of her own voice was reassuring. Besides, it wasn’t as if anyone could hear her now anyway. “Well, you put that in every possible combination with every other letter in the alphabet and get, what? A few hundred million possibilities?”
Still, she refused to be deterred. Of course, it wouldn’t be something random out of those hundred million possibilities. It had to be something of importance to Lestan Fels...or possibly his daughter.
She tried to think of things that started with “b,” hoping all the while that her father hadn’t reversed the order of the letters or turned the entire word inside out. Otherwise, she’d be here forever. “Box, bacteria, Bethany—” Miala smiled briefly, thinking of the kind-faced older woman who had run Aldis Nova’s one reputable dining establishment. The smile faded, however, as she remembered how Bethany Larsen had been pushed out of business by several of the seedier cafés, probably with the backing of Mast’s thugs or people connected with them. At any rate, she somehow doubted her father would have used a woman they barely knew as the code word for the back door into Mast’s security system. “—Box Canyon, Barris Jax—”
Now that was even more unlikely, although the irony of having Mast’s right-hand man as the key was not lost on her. She scrolled through more data, looking for an i or an e on the simple assumption that the word had to have a vowel in it somewhere. It didn’t take long for her to locate the e.
Big deal, she thought, only the most used letter in English. But she could tell she was getting closer.
It had to be something important. So who or what had been so significant to Lestan Fels that he had used the letters of their name as the code-breaker for the toughest piece of security he had ever written?
The answer came to her suddenly, in a piece of insight as blazing as the first rays of Iradia’s sun when it broke over the horizon each morning.
“Belissa,” she breathed. Of course, who better—what better—to be the hidden piece of code than the name of the woman who had betrayed him and left him here on this barren piece of rock twenty years ago?
With fingers that shook only a little, Miala brought up the login screen for Mast’s private security system. At the prompt, she typed in Belissa, and watched the login screen fade away, to be replaced with a graphical interface that allowed her access to the vaults, Mast’s personal files, his off-world accounts—everything she’d pursued relentlessly for the past few months and had begun to think she would never find.
She wasn’t sure where to start, but the vaults seemed the best bet. After all, even with the codes that allowed her access to Mast’s off-world accounts, it would take some work to do anything with the funds—she would have to set up her own accounts, come up with plausible reasons for the transfer of large sums of money from one account to another, and who knew what else. But the vaults were here, and they held tangible goods. And it was really a half share of the contents o
f those vaults that she had pledged to Eryk Thorn.
Thorn, she thought, and glanced up at the chrono on the wall. A little more than three hours had passed since she had begun her work, which meant it would be scorching high noon outside and far too soon to comfortably rouse the mercenary. She doubted, though, that he would appreciate her solicitude in letting him sleep while she went to inspect the contents of the vaults. The last thing she needed was for him to suspect her of hiding any goods from him.
She unlocked the vaults remotely from her workstation and then rose, leaving the security station and heading upstairs for the guest room on the second floor of the compound where Eryk Thorn slept. Of course the door was locked, but it had a courtesy page system, and she pressed the button and waited.
He was at the door sooner than she would have thought possible. “What’s the matter?”
He must sleep in that jumpsuit, Miala thought irrelevantly, and then wondered whether she was disappointed that he hadn’t been a little less...clothed.
She cleared her throat. “I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Broke the code. The vaults are open.”
For a long moment he only stared at her, almost as if he wasn’t quite sure he could believe her words. Then he said, “Show me.”
So she led him down the stairs, past the security station, past the kitchens, and then down another flight of steps, this one narrower and more dimly lit. They were now in a sub-level of the palace, not far from where Mast had once kept his prisoners. The air still stank slightly of stale sweat and another darker, more subtle smell—the scent of fear.
At the end of a short corridor was a set of three heavy doors composed of overlapping metal plates. Next to each of the doors was a control pad where one could type in the access code if necessary. Since Miala had already unlocked the doors from her workstation in the security chamber, the light on each control pad glowed green.
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