by Loren Rhoads
“What happened between the two of you?”
“I started him on the Dart.”
Raena shook her head slightly.
“It’s a Templar drug. By coincidence, it mimics natural chemicals in the human brain. It helps you focus. You set your attention on something before you take it, and as long as the drug stays in your system, your whole life centers around the goal you’ve set. You’re aware of other things; you find yourself doing whatever you have to do to get them out of your way so you can get back to your project. The Templars used it to focus on their trade objectives.”
“I’m surprised we’re similar enough to them that it works on human chemistry.”
“That’s the odd thing,” Ariel said. “Turns out our chemistries were very similar inside their carapaces.”
Raena slurped one runny sea creature off a half-shell and licked her lips. “What were you doing with it?”
“My mother introduced me to some sculptors from Devonine. She’d commissioned a piece for the villa. She liked this couple and decided one or the other of them would make me a good husband. They, on the other hand, were so focused on their art, they saw making nice with a moneyed girl as a business proposition. So they gave me the Dart and let me weld sculptural pieces and we had a great time. Our relationship was pretty much mutual. I hooked them up to some art collectors, friends of my dad’s. I kept the Dart connections and went back to running arms. They went on to bigger sculptures and bigger sales. Everybody got what they wanted out of the deal, except my mother.”
“And Gavin?”
Ariel cracked open a shell and fished out a succulent green piece of flesh. “We’d been together on and off for a couple of years, doing business or just . . . having sex.” Ariel smiled at the memory. “When we weren’t together, I spent a lot of time thinking about asking him to marry me.”
Raena laughed. “What stopped you when you were together?”
“He’d say something stupid.” Ariel shrugged. “Or I would. You’ve seen how he is with me. It’s like he can’t forgive me for having advantages he wasn’t born with. He makes me work for every kind word. I always believed he loved me, in his way, but we weren’t ever going to have peace. Sooner or later, he’d push and I wouldn’t back down . . .”
“But you love him,” Raena observed.
“Yeah.” Ariel drained her drink, eyes closed against the truth. “I guess I still do.”
“Ari . . .” Raena touched her cheek lightly, just a feather’s brush. “Look. He loves you, in his confused, belligerent way.”
“But he loves you more.” The truth was sharp enough to cut.
“Did I ever have anything I didn’t share with you?”
Nothing but Thallian, Ariel thought, but that wasn’t true. She shivered so hard she knocked her water glass over. Raena picked up a napkin and helped mop up.
“I’ve shared everything because I’ve always loved you.” In Raena’s voice, it sounded like the most reasonable thing in the whole world. “So if I love Gavin enough to share him, and I love you enough to share you, does it matter who loves whom more?”
“It’s breaking my heart.”
Raena dropped her hand high on Ariel’s thigh and squeezed. “Stop thinking with your heart.”
Ariel forced herself to smile. “You think he’s missing us yet?”
“I doubt he’s awake yet, after the show we put on for him last night. But why should that stop us? Let’s wake him up if we want to play.”
Ariel turned the conversation serious once more. “I need to ask you one more thing before Gavin joins us.”
“You want to know about Thallian.”
Ariel shuddered. “Did you love him?”
“I thought so. But it was a survival instinct. I was completely at his mercy. Love was the only bargaining point I had, the only thing I could give him that he couldn’t coerce from anyone else. I think it saved my life, put him at my mercy somehow.”
Ariel stared at her, seeing instead Thallian as he’d entered her cell on the Arbiter. “Do you still—”
Raena cut Ariel off. “All I have left is the memory of how I used my body to manipulate him.”
Ariel wondered again what it must have been like for Raena imprisoned twenty years in darkness and solitude, knowing that Thallian would be waiting outside if she ever got out. Ariel considered whether anyone else would have survived the tomb, or if only Raena—with her ferocity and stubborness—could have pulled it off. Ariel rubbed her arms, chilled by the realization that there was much she didn’t understand—or even know—about her little sister.
As if she’d followed Ariel’s thoughts, Raena said, “I spent a long time asking what I’d done to deserve Thallian. You and I got into trouble when we were young, but it was never anything serious. Not really. If I killed people, I did it to protect us. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t especially unhappy following you around. So why did Thallian find me? Why did he fall in love with me? Why did I deserve to be hunted by him?”
A pause stretched between them. Ariel wondered if Raena was expecting an answer, or if she would confess something. In twenty years of soul-searching, you could pillory yourself for every sin, real or imagined, that you had ever committed. Ariel didn’t need that long to punish herself for mistakes she’d made in her life. One long sleepless night served her well enough.
But this wasn’t about her. “Did you ever understand it?” Ariel asked gently.
Raena’s smile was tight, as if her teeth were gritted behind it. Then she said, “Only recently. Doc helped me see it. The question is not why Thallian was in my life. It’s why was I in his? The answer is that I’m the only person who can hunt him down.”
“And do what?” Ariel asked.
“End him.”
* * *
After lunch, Thallian called a family meeting. The boys stood at attention, all gray eyes downcast. In front of them, Merin and Aten—the last of Jonan’s brothers at home—lounged. Aten’s chair breathed for him now, a steady sighing that echoed in the briefing room.
Thallian paced. “I need some numbers,” he said. “I need to know types and conditions of our stock of weapons.”
“As you command,” Eilif said.
“I need to know the number of staff we can expect to come to our aid should we be attacked.”
Sound rippled around the room as the boys assimilated that request.
“Of course, Jonan,” Merin said.
“And I need to know the capabilities of all the working craft at our disposal.”
“Give me a crew of boys and that will be done,” Aten agreed.
“Choose the ones you want,” Jonan conceded. “The rest can aid Merin and their mother.”
He was halfway across the room and headed out the door when Jamian called, “Father?”
Thallian spun on the boy, who did not meet his father’s eyes.
“Have you had word from Jain?”
“He was injured,” Thallian responded, lips curled into a grimace. “He’s on the mend. He and Revan have not been recalled yet. They still have work to do.”
Emboldened by the answer his brother had received, Jarad asked, “Are we at war, Father?”
“It won’t be war,” Thallian soothed. “But we need to be ready.”
* * *
Sloane let the hot water pound on his head. Gallons of flowing water: such a luxury after a lifetime lived aboard ships or on space stations, where every drop was rationed and recycled. Water temperature on shipboard was always too icy or practically scalding, never as adjustable as one would like. He tried to remember the last time he’d taken a vacation. On a planet. With real gravity and an atmosphere that didn’t burn his sinuses with chemicals.
The Dart had been in his system for such a long time, keeping him focused on finding Raena. He remembered jettisoning the last of the drug before he fired Kavanaugh. Stupid, stupid: fighting with someone like that who would’ve been glad to watch his back. Maybe he could have even invited K
avanaugh along on this vacation. One more gun was never a bad thing. And the kid had always seemed to have a thing for Ariel, a kind of puppy infatuation that might have worked out okay here while they were hiding out, leaving more time for Gavin and Raena.
As if in response to that selfish train of thought, the women bustled into the shower room, peeling off their running gear as they came. For a moment, Gavin considered chasing Ariel away, figuring she’d already gotten her share of Raena’s attention for the morning, but once the water struck her flawless golden skin, it was too late.
Raena watched his perfectly normal physical reaction to two naked, wet women with a hooded smile.
Sloane reached out and hauled her over for a kiss, pressing her back against the wall. Between the tiles and his body, Raena found enough leverage to climb up and hook her legs together in the small of his back. As he entered her, she broke the kiss to reach for Ariel.
On fire with jealousy, Sloane pounded into Raena harder, trying to win a smidgen of her attention back. Raena grinned into Ariel’s kiss and dug her nails into the nape of Sloane’s neck. She didn’t open her eyes or make a sound.
It took Ariel’s moan for Sloane to realize he had even less of Raena’s attention than he thought. Ariel quivered like she was going to lose her balance at any moment. The sight, and the memory of so many like it, triggered something in him. Hating himself, he could do nothing but surrender.
* * *
As Ariel skinned into her underwear, Sloane remarked, “Your family never formally adopted Raena, did they?”
She shrugged. “My mom did.”
“After your dad’s death?”
Ariel’s eyes narrowed. “So?”
“So Raena had been missing for how long by then?” Sloane didn’t give her time to answer. “What was the point of a posthumous adoption, Ariel? Why rewrite history?”
“We were raised as sisters. It should’ve been—”
He cut her off. “Is that really true? Or is that another revision?”
“Look,” Ariel said, “anything we wanted, my parents gave us. Me or Raena. If we wanted clothes, we went shopping. If we wanted guns, we picked them out of the shop. When I got a jet-bike for my birthday, Raena got one, too.”
“So she could keep up with you,” Sloane pointed out. “What’d they give her for her birthday?”
“Nobody knows when it is.”
“I know when it is,” Sloane corrected. “I looked up her birth record. Your parents didn’t bother.”
Speechless, Ariel fastened her bra. Then she recovered enough to say, “We always just celebrated it with mine.”
“I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, Ariel. Your dad was a businessman. You understand what that means. He knew the value of an investment. If you buy a bodyguard, you see that person is well-fed, well-trained, and generally kept happy. Because when it all comes down, you want to know that bodyguard is going to take a bolt that’s meant for you. An unhappy bodyguard is going to choose the wrong moment to duck.”
She wriggled into a fresh pair of slacks and tied the sash before asking, “What are you getting at, Gavin?”
He pulled on his own pants. Let her wait.
Finally, unwilling to drop it, he continued, “I’m saying that Raena was bought and paid for. Healthy human children, especially girls, they never came cheap. I’ll bet your dad didn’t forget that. I’ll bet he never let Raena forget it either.”
“Suppose you’re right,” she snapped, not really conceding. “What’s the point of bringing that up now?”
“It’s just that I’ve been thinking. When you said you were sisters, that formed an image in my mind. And then I watch you together.”
“The point?”
“I was wondering, back when you were kids, how all this got started. I wonder if Raena crawled into your bed, a slave doing what she could to please her mistress, or if you climbed into her bed—did she even have a bed of her own?—and she didn’t dare say no to you.”
Ariel didn’t answer while she tied her sandal straps. Then she asked, “Why are you being cruel?”
Sloane pulled his shirt on and began to button it. “It’s just that I lie awake thinking sometimes. And I wonder what the difference was between the relationship she had with you . . . and the one she had with Thallian.”
Ariel snatched up her blouse and thrust her arms into it on her way out the door. Sloane watched the door slam behind her. Was that what he’d wanted all along, to chase her away?
Lounging in the shower room doorway, Raena asked, “Was it something she did? Or are you just feeling mean?”
Sloane stalked over to pour himself a drink. “How much did you hear?”
“All of it.” Raena waited until he’d gulped the warm green, then took the glass from him and swallowed some herself.
“Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
She gazed at him placidly. “It was all true, once.”
“And it isn’t anymore?”
She passed the drink back to him and watched him drain it. “It’s changed for Ariel. Couldn’t it have changed for me, too?”
“Has it?” he demanded.
“Yes.” She took the empty glass from him and filled it from the bottle of water. “I love her, Gavin. I barely remember a time when I didn’t.”
She took the glass over to the bed and stretched out. Sloane grabbed the bottle of green and flung himself down in the armchair nearby.
Sipping her water, Raena asked, “Do you want her to give me up, Gavin? Go away and leave us alone?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. I just want her to think about how she sees you.”
“Have you thought about how she sees us? She will.”
Raena watched him suck the green straight from the bottle. Sloane couldn’t stand the scrutiny. “How does she see us?”
“You pulled me out of that tomb. I owe you my life, just like I depended on Thallian to protect me from the Empire. Just like keeping Ariel happy made my life as a slave bearable. You rescued me because you’ve obsessed over me for decades. What would you do if I didn’t pay you back the way you expect me to?”
He thumped the bottle down on the table. It tipped over, spilling expensive liquor onto the carpet. Sloane ignored it, shoving his feet into his boots. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he growled.
“Neither did Ariel.”
He stopped at the doorway, glaring back to where she sprawled on the bed, still naked. “You don’t owe me a thing.”
“Am I free to go?” Raena asked, not moving.
Rather than answer, Sloane slammed his fist down on the door lock and stormed out into the hallway.
Raena turned over onto her stomach on the oversized bed. She set her water glass on the alien-height nightstand. She reached the long way down to the floor to right the bottle of green. Then she got up and unrolled the computer screen.
* * *
The girl seemed too good to be real. Even through his excitement, Jimi realized that. But she was apparently an expert in antique single-person craft and wrote knowledgably about equipping them for short-range interplanetary trips. Jimi devoured her advice eagerly.
There weren’t any pictures of her up on her site, which he recognized as a warning sign. Jimi had crawled the net enough to know that she might be a troll or an older woman, maybe a mom herself and not the girl she pretended to be at all. She might not even be human. Then again, he understood how girls had to be careful sometimes, particularly pretty girls. He’d heard on the newsfeed about human girls targeted by slavers after they’d uploaded pictures of themselves. All it took was a buyer and then no one was safe.
Her page played the catchiest of modern jingles, though. She participated in all the latest memes. Her answers intrigued him, especially the quiz about her alignment. She fancied herself a bad girl.
When the IM pinged on his computer, Jimi jumped. “You’re creeping me out,” it read.
“Who’s that?” he sent back. His heart
fluttered in his chest.
“You keep coming back to my node,” she answered. “Least you could say hi.”
Jimi sat back from the screen. How could she have traced him?
The silence stretched out. Jimi worried that she’d gone away, so he typed, “Hi.”
“Hi back,” she wrote. “The log has been full of you checking back over and over and reading all my updates. Are you looking for something in particular, a specific kind of craft? I might be able to help, if I knew what you wanted to know.”
Jimi ignored the offer. His hands shook as he input, “Can you voice com?”
Another long pause fell. He cursed himself for panicking her. Then his computer speakers said, “Sure. Is this coming through okay?”
The voice made him jump again. She sounded exactly like he’d imagined, all business, her voice low and sweet. He wanted to hear more of it.
She obliged. “So, anyway, why are you lurking on my pages?”
“I want to get off this rock,” he said, surprising himself with his honesty.
“How are my little essays on twenty-year-old personal craft gonna help you do that?” she asked.
“I might be able to piece an old hopper together,” he hoped. “Everything else is too well-guarded.”
“Can’t you just shimmy down to the spaceport and pounce on the next cruise ship out?”
He laughed. “If anyone from my family went to the spaceport, it would be galaxy-wide news.”
Another delay, then she said, “Sorry. Didn’t realize you were anyone important.”
Her mocking tone stung him. “Not that important,” he said wearily. “That isolated.”
She waited, but he didn’t know what else to add. Desperate to keep her attention, he blurted, “What’s your name? Your real name?”
“What’s yours?”
He didn’t have anything made up, so he told her, “I’m sending you a picture. I’ll put it up on my page where you can find it. It’s me, last summer, when I caught a sabershark.” He made a couple of clicks and uploaded the picture.
