Prisoner

by Gilbert M. Stack

Tears started rolling down Erik’s cheeks again. “I just can’t believe you’re going to marry him.”

  Even though she had lived with the reality all of her life, Jewel couldn’t quite believe it either. She imagined Kole based on the last picture she had of him from before her escape to the Fringe. Physically, there were some similarities to Erik. They were both large men, physically imposing. But Kole had jet black hair where Erik was blond, and she had never seen even the flicker of a smile in her intended’s gray eyes or on his lips. There was no sharp clarity in her recollection either. She was going to marry a man that she had never met and couldn’t clearly remember. It seemed crazy to her, but she was still going to do it.

  “I have to,” she whispered back. “I don’t have any choice either.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Erik told her.

  “No, there isn’t,” Jewel insisted. “Not if I want to live with myself.”

  “There’s always a choice,” Erik repeated.

  Jewel repeated the justification she’d heard so many times over the course of her twenty-three years. “Hundreds of thousands of employees of the Khaba Cartel depend on this marriage for their continued livelihood.” The reality of what she had just said suddenly hit hard in her soul. “Do you understand how intensely selfish I was to run away from this? Jester, Falco, and the others see it only in terms of the wealth I turned my back on, but they’re wrong. Because I was angry at my parents and wanted to punish them, I put the jobs of every employee in the Khaba armenium trade at risk. That’s not only the refiners and the shippers, but all of the distributors spread out at Khaba depots throughout the galaxy.”

  Erik didn’t want to listen. “They’d have found other jobs. They can still find other jobs.”

  Jewel knew it wasn’t that simple. “Maybe, given time, after they’ve depleted their life’s savings and racked up crippling debt—after they’ve lost their homes and wrecked their lives.”

  Erik touched her cheek with the fingers of his healthy hand. “It’s not your problem. You’re not responsible for all of those people.”

  Part of Jewel wanted to believe him, but deep in her soul she had accepted reality and wasn’t going to permit inane platitudes to dissuade her. “And what about the banks that a Khaba bankruptcy will cause to crash? What about the stock markets that will plummet as the price of armenium soars? What about the billions upon billions of people that will see the costs of everyday goods rise because the price of transporting them planet to planet is rocketing toward the stars?” She shook her head. “Let’s not fool ourselves, Erik. I have to marry Kole Delling and he, who probably isn’t any happier about it than I am, has to marry me. And you have to accept the plea bargain the justiciar general is offering you because six other lives depend on your saying yes.”

  The expression on Erik’s face hardened, but other than that he ignored her final sentence. “The whole idea is just so barbaric,” he complained. “Who makes a business contract dependent on marriage anyway? The Cartel Worlds look so sophisticated from the outside, but underneath it all they’re savages.”

  Jewel felt a flash of anger over this gross mischaracterization of her people. “Who are you kidding? Money has always been tied up in marriage. Very few people wed solely for love, and those who do are fools. Marriage has always been a compromise between affection and practical needs. While an arranged marriage like this tilts the balance wholly into the practical realm, it isn’t all that different from the person who chooses his spouse because she makes a great income, or because she thinks he’ll make a great father, or even because she adores his gift for making her laugh. I can’t even claim that I’m doing this solely to fulfill other people’s needs. I’m securing my fortune as well tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” The word clearly shocked Erik.

  The overwhelming reality of it hit Jewel again and she sank down on the edge of the bed. “That’s right—tomorrow. Kole arrives tomorrow morning and we’re getting married four hours later.”

  “But that’s—”

  Without warning, Erik stopped speaking, pulled Jewel back to her feet with his good hand and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  Jewel was taken by surprise and responded without thinking, kissing him back with all the desperate passion bottled up inside her bursting forth in one final act of rebellion. Erik pulled her closer against him, wincing through his kiss when she brushed his hand, but not breaking contact with her lips. Her own arms tightened around him, feeling his shoulders and his back as she strove to remember every square inch of his body.

  An image of Kole—young, grim, strong—flashed into her mind but she forced it back out again. Tomorrow what she and Erik were doing would be wrong. Today she deserved one last moment of selfish joy with her man.

  Chapter Eleven

  It Sends a Totally Wrong Message

  “Luxora, darling,” Ife Gyasi gushed at her from the principal guest suite on Jewel’s parents’ private yacht. “How is it possible? It’s been more than nine years since I’ve seen you and yet you’ve hardly aged a day. However did you manage it?”

  Jewel didn’t even try and stop herself from rolling her eyes at the inane comment. Even if she noticed, her mother’s personal stylist would never acknowledge the insult—not and risk her cushy job flattering her mother and her friends. “It’s called cold sleep, Ife. You really should try it. You get in the tube, set the dial, wake up eight years later and the only thing that’s different is your hair and fingernails have grown a bit longer. And it’s Jewel now—Luxora’s been gone for a long time.”

  Her mother emitted a long-suffering sigh and frowned.

  Ife acted as if she hadn’t noticed anything—including Jewel’s correction of her name.

  “Well, Luxora, however you did it, it’s going to make our job fabulously easier. That youthful vigor just radiates out from you. Your eyes are bright, your muscle tone is firm, and your skin is supple and…what’s this?”

  Jewel’s mother sprang into action. “What is it, Ife? What’s wrong?”

  By well ingrained instinct, Ife began to ease Jewel’s mother’s concerns even as she continued to examine Jewel’s collarbone. “What could be wrong, Alexandra? Your daughter is perfect. It’s just…”

  She ran her finger along the top of Jewel’s shoulder. “Does that hurt, darling?”

  Jewel twisted her neck around so she could see what Ife was looking at, but the spot on her collarbone was too close to her neck for her eyes to focus upon. “No, it doesn’t. What are you looking at?”

  Ife pressed much harder. “You’re certain? Not even a twinge of pain?”

  “Well, yes, now that you’re trying to stick your fingers all the way through my shoulder it does hurt, but not any more than it should. What’s wrong?”

  Ife waved her hand dismissively. “What could possibly be wrong with such a beautiful bride? Has your mother shown you your wedding dress yet? Heta out did herself. It’s perfection personified. Thirty million solars—you’ll be the talk of the galaxy.”

  Jewel’s eyes bulged with a combination of shock and horror. “Thirty million solars?” That really did sound like her mother but Stars—the useful things that could have been done with that kind of money.

  Alexandra Sapphira beamed at her daughter’s shock. “It’s even more expensive than the dress Clea Lisht bought for her daughter, Bastet, two years ago. Of course, nothing is too expensive for my little girl on her wedding day.”

  “But thirty million solars, Mama.”

  Then another thought struck her. “And how would the galaxy know anyway? We’re on an Armenite warship—not at the Luxor cathedral back home.”

  “Well we’ll make a holo, of course,” her mother told her. “We’ve received a lot of bad press and nasty gossip since you…departed nine years ago, and it’s become absolutely brutal since the Armenites cut off our supply of armenium. There are official inquiries under way for Stars sake. Your selfishness has caused untold unpleasantness for so many of
us in the cartel. This wedding is an important step in rebuilding our social standing.”

  Jewel rolled her eyes again and didn’t care if her mother saw it. “You were building some sympathy in me Mama until you started talking about my selfishness. Seeing as you’ve never committed a truly selfless act in your entire life, I just can’t keep a straight face when you get upset about others acting in their own interests.”

  Her mother was emotionally incapable of taking a criticism to heart. “Where did we go wrong with you, Luxora? Why are you such an ungrateful child? You’ll be a fabulously wealthy woman in a few hours thanks to your father and me.”

  There was no way that Jewel was going to let that delusion stand. “No, I’m going to be fabulously wealthy because of my actions, Mama. You and Papa should have negotiated those shares for me decades ago—but then, there’s that lack of selflessness again. Obtaining Khaba shares for me wouldn’t have added to your own fortune now, would it? No, it would have lessened the value of your own portfolio by draining solars out of the cartel coffers and you’d never want to do that for me, would you?”

  “You’re just impossible, Luxora,” her mother complained. “There’s really no point in talking to you anymore.”

  Ife stepped in to fill the void. “Let’s look at the dress,” she suggested. “It will help us finalize our ideas regarding your hair and makeup. There really isn’t much time, and if the dress has to be altered at all, I just don’t know how Heta will manage it.”

  “That is a wonderful idea,” Jewel’s mother announced.

  She pushed a button on the wall console. “Heta, we’re ready for you now.”

  Almost before Jewel’s mother had finished speaking the main door to the cabin opened and the always stylishly dressed Heta Dendara swept into the room followed by a platoon worth of attendants carrying an elaborately flowing white dress and its accoutrements.

  “It is about time, Alexandra,” Heta announced. “Have you any idea just how few hours are left to us to perfect this garment before the ceremony. Luxora! Why are you wearing that hideous gray thing? Take it off immediately. At once I say!”

  “This little thing?” Jewel asked the fashionista as she plucked at her jumpsuit with her fingertips. It’s alternative prison garb, don’t you know? It’s what all the sharp looking convicts on Armen are wearing this year.”

  “Luxora!” her mother snapped.

  Jewel turned on her, eyes flashing. “How many times do I have to tell you? My name is Jewel now.”

  This time it was her mother’s turn to roll her eyes.

  “Off, off, off,” Heta said. “Get that ugly thing off of her.”

  Two assistants, as perfectly garbed and coifed as their employer, leapt to Jewel’s side and actually began to unzip her jump suit for her.

  Jewel thrust them both away. “Get your hands off of me!”

  “We have no—”

  “Shut up!” Jewel snapped at Heta. “Now bring out this dress my mother has spent thirty million solars on. I want to see what you think a fashionable Armenite bride is wearing this year.”

  “The Armenites are as foreign to fashion as your parents are to poverty,” Heta told her even as she waved her hands and her assistants brought the dress forward. It was a shade of ivory crafted from the finest quality Eridian silk and encrusted with pearls and diamonds. At a glance it looked to Jewel as if it weighed a hundred pounds and that was before she counted the twenty-foot train into her calculations. She wanted to call it gaudy but she couldn’t. In some respects, her mother had truly wonderful taste—at least when she let Heta guide her.

  She stepped forward, checked to make certain her fingertips were clean, and touched the almost frictionless surface. “It’s lovely, Heta, every one of my girlfriends would turn jade with envy.”

  Heta swelled with pride and Jewel’s mother actually looked pleased.

  “Unfortunately, I can’t wear it. It sends a totally wrong message.”

  “WHAT?”

  Jewel’s mother, Heta, and Ife all shouted the word at the same moment. The attendants who weren’t holding the dress scurried for cover as if expecting to be hit.

  “The Armenites detest ostentatious displays of wealth,” Jewel reminded them. “Wearing that dress would be an unforgivable insult to my new husband, his House and probably the whole Hegemony.” She began to look over the rest of the items the attendants were holding: shoes, veil, garters, jewelry, bra, panties, slip…

  She fingered the undergarment. “This might be something we can work with.” She shrugged out of her gray jumpsuit so that she stood in her very functional Armenite bra and panties. “I suspect the Armenites will still find it too fancy for their tastes but when they see the images of the wedding dress you brought for me they’ll realize it is very understated for Cartelite preferences.”

  “You want to wear underwear to your wedding?” Jewel’s mother gasped.

  Jewel opened her mouth to defend herself but Heta beat her to it.

  “Brilliant!” the fashionista proclaimed. “Jewel, darling, where did you find such insight?”

  Alexandra Sapphira turned on her dressmaker in fury. “What do you mean, brilliant? That dress cost me—”

  Hetta interrupted her. “That dress is the perfection of yesterday’s fashion, Alexandra. The galaxy has never seen its like, nor is it likely it will again. But what Jewel has suggested—”

  “Her name is Luxora!” Jewel’s mother screamed.

  Heta ignored her. “What Jewel has suggested throws all of yesterday’s designs into the trash bin. Elegant simplicity will rule over those gaudy has been concepts. And you and I, Alexandra, will be lauded across the Cartel Worlds, the League and the Confederacy for the genius of being first to perceive the future.”

  Jewel didn’t quite understand where Heta was going with this idea and she certainly didn’t understand why her mother deserved any of the credit for it. But she did know that a people that clearly detested displays of wealth would hold nothing but disdain for the elaborate gown and train that Heta had designed for her.

  “Think how sexy it will be,” Heta continued, “when your daughter steps down the aisle in an elegant shift which all will understand was the undergarment of yesterday. Women will cringe in jealousy, men will stiffen with lust. Note my words, Alexandra, we will put our mark upon the entire galaxy. They’ll be talking about this wedding for centuries to come.”

  Suddenly Heta became all business again. “Now get out of that hideous bra and panties. I have even less time than I expected to make this brainstorm reality. And, Ife, please tell me you can do something for these hideous blemish forming beneath Jewel’s skin. There is no way that I can use the new dress to conceal them now that we’re pursuing this wonderful new elegant model.”

  “Blemishes?” Jewel started to ask, but the word was swept away in a flurry of attendants stripping her down so that Heta could begin to work her magic.

  Chapter Twelve

  I’m Asking You to Be More Than You Are

  The doors opened and Jewel stepped forward wearing the pure white shift and simplified crown and veil that Heta had spent the last twenty hours perfecting. Ife had worked wonders with her hair, nails and skin, completely altering the elaborate coif of her earlier plans to accentuate Heta’s theme of simple elegance. The effect was quite radiant—allowing Jewel’s personal beauty to dominate, rather than that of the traditional dress and train. It would have been better, Jewel thought, if any of her personal beauty had been natural and not brought about by the surgeon’s laser scalpel, but those decisions had been made decades ago by her parents and there was nothing that could be done about them on such short notice.

  She stepped into the chapel, noting with no small satisfaction that she’d been right to choose the simpler dress. There was none of the pomp of the Cartel Worlds here. Even the music over the speakers was simple and pure, old-style orchestra without the electric glitz of modern symphonies. In an audience where even the women all wore
uniforms, Heta’s original design would have been a disastrous misstep, but this simple shift drew the admiration of every man and woman in the chamber.

  Beside her, Jewel’s father, Amon Sapphira, advanced in perfect step with her looking to all the galaxy as if this were the proudest day of his life. Perhaps it was. Today he secured the fortune that he had gained by treachery thirty years before, but Jewel didn’t want to spoil the day even more by thinking of such things now. She’d have to confront her father eventually, but today wasn’t the proper moment.

  She strained to see without craning her neck. Every Armenite naval officer on the Righteous Lightning and the Vigilance lined the center of the room forming an aisle down which she and her father would walk—garbed in their parade best from sharp hat to shiny shoes. At the end of the aisle, standing with his back to her as he faced the three Empyreals, stood the man she’d waited her entire life to meet. Kole Delling was tall in person, even in comparison to the other Armenites. He was dressed resplendently in a marine uniform and stood rigidly at attention. In no way did he acknowledge the fact that she had entered the chapel behind him. Evidently, he felt comfortable waiting another minute to meet the woman he’d been betrothed to for the past thirty years.

  Jewel stepped forward again, two feet closer to the fate her father had charted for her when he’d sold out the planet, Ymir, in exchange for an emperor’s ransom.

  Ana Yang, Meg Falco and Jester Carter smiled at her—evidently genuinely happy to be present at her wedding despite all of the trouble surrounding them. Did they understand the meaning of the oaths they’d sworn this morning? How could they understand? Jewel didn’t even understand, but somehow those three believed she’d do right by them in the end.

  She took another step and vowed that she would prove worthy of their confidence.

  Behind Ana, Meg and Jester sat the other survivors of the Euripides: Jewel’s old and difficult roommate, Vega Costa, Dawil Kwon and the doctor, Gunther Brüning, none of whom Jewel particularly liked, but who, through her new husband, were bound to her forever now. Finally, there was Erik Gunnarson, the only man Jewel had ever loved, sitting as ramrod straight as any Armenite soldier, refusing, like Kole, to turn and catch her eye. He’d agreed, sobbing in her arms, to swear the required oath of loyalty so that the others would not be imprisoned or executed, but it had killed a piece of his soul to do so and Jewel wasn’t certain he was ever going to recover.