Emerald Twilight: Bundled Edition

by Ashley, Celia

  Shane’s gaze drifted back to the open collar at Hallie’s throat. “Someone throttled her good,” he murmured. “Wonder why?”

  Burke had a reasonable expectation of who, but not why. Granted, it had been quite apparent to him how much Arad despised his wife, and yet he had gotten what he wanted. She was out of his life. Why send her off to prison with a final act of violence?

  Because he could. There was no one to stop him, no consequence of his action, just a reminder to Hallie, even after the bruises faded completely, of animosity, of contempt, of a power wielded at will and without regard.

  Perhaps it had even been meant as a warning to Burke, should he have the opportunity, like now, to witness the evidence of Arad Sterne’s hatred, his indiscriminate malice.

  Burke’s hands clenched against his thighs. His stomach knotted, forcing bile to the back of his throat. Sterne, I will kill you. I will tear you into bloody pieces if you harm my daughter.

  Of course, with the bruises caused by the critical exertion of the man’s large hand visible on Hallie’s throat, Burke considered he might kill him anyway, on principle.

  “What happened?” Shane questioned, peering around Burke for another look.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No, I don’t mean her throat. Why is she...like this?” He indicated her unconsciousness with a sweep of his narrow hand.

  “She was upset, angry. You know how the cybernetics deal with that.”

  Wordlessly, Shane nodded, tipping his head to regard Burke from the corner of his eye. “I see. Angry with you?”

  “Why would you think that?” Burke countered, aware of Shane’s scrutiny but not looking up. At the foot of the berth Shane shrugged.

  “She asked your name. When I told her, she flew out of the canteen in quite the state.”

  “And you didn’t stop her?”

  “Figured it was your ass on the line,” Shane muttered.

  And so it was, but it was Hallie who kept paying the price.

  A growl rolled low in his throat at memory and he bent to shove everything back into Hallie’s bag. The feel of soft fabrics in his hand, the knowledge of garments worn intimately to the body, made him cringe with self-loathing. He had been attracted to her, physically attracted to her, from the moment he saw her on the screen in Sterne’s office. Knowledge of that did not make him feel any better about himself.

  As he stood, his eye caught the gleam of the sphere in the drawer. He picked it up.

  “Any idea what that is?” Shane asked.

  Burke had actually forgotten him for a moment. “No,” he said, shaking his head. Turning the object several times between his palms, he felt the cool surface beginning to warm in his hands. It was only a sphere of some clear material, perhaps vitrine. Why on earth would she choose to bring such a thing with her? What importance did it have? If he asked, she wasn’t likely to tell him. The last thing she would want to divulge to him was anything of personal significance.

  At the rustle of cloth behind him, Burke turned to find Shane seating himself on the edge of the berth at Hallie’s feet. In two swift strides Burke was back beside her. Discovering the sphere still in his grasp, he lifted the blanket and placed the object in the crook of her bent elbow, tucking the blanket back into place with care. Perhaps she would sense it there and find comfort in an article from home.

  “So,” said Shane, looking hard at him, “who’s going to stay with her?”

  “Stay with her?”

  “She can’t shut the door, remember? Someone ought to stay with her, just as a precaution.”

  “A precaution against what?” Burke demanded. If she needed protection from anyone, it was from Shane, whose lust was evident in the deepening hue of his eyes.

  Shane shrugged. “I could do it. I don’t sleep most nights anyway.”

  Despite his best efforts, Burke visualized the possible content of those sleepless nights. “The hell you will,” he said.

  Shane seemed unperturbed. “Calypso, then?”

  Burke envisaged the tiny island dancer defending Hallie from any male with lascivious intent. There were only three of them, three men, in this sector. He couldn’t vouch for Skelly or Emil, although he sometimes wondered if Emil’s attachment to Shane might not be entirely for the sake of friendship. However, he knew his own judgment. He had made mistakes in his past, most recently this one, and choices that were sometimes less than sound, but he would not physically harm Hallie. He would engage anyone who offered to do so in a battle he was likely to win. He was in no position to promise the same consideration from the other two.

  “I’ll stay with her,” he said.

  The noise in Shane’s throat could have meant anything. “Perhaps we should both stay,” the redhead suggested.

  Burke didn’t trouble himself to dignify the proposition with a reply. He stared at Shane wordlessly. After a moment Shane stood up. He nodded at Burke in a form of truce and left the chamber without another word.

  At the man’s departure, Burke’s breath escaped in a rush. He pulled the chair from the desk and brought it over to the side of the berth. Seated, he leaned his arms along his thighs, folding his hands between his knees, listening as Skelly Shane’s footsteps receded in the corridor. The tension between his shoulder blades eased.

  “Hallie.”

  She didn’t stir. Burke pushed his fingers through his dark hair and then scrubbed them across his jaw where the stubble of a day’s growth of beard chafed his skin. He felt tired. Tired and calm, more calm than he had been in a long time.

  Even though she had not responded to the calling of her name, he thought she might hear him, that some part of her subconscious would be aware of his presence, his voice, his earnest intent in standing by her. Also aware, of course, of him, what he had done.

  He couldn’t erase her anger, her sense of have been betrayed by her husband and by a perfect stranger, but he could talk to her while she slept, while the understandable barrier of her pain and her bitterness and the perpetration of treachery was in drugged abeyance. He could speak to her of things that might make her understand. He would confess matters of his life he hadn’t revealed to any other in all the years since his wife had died. And if when she awakened she did not remember what he had confided, then so be it. But this was his chance to try.

  “Hallie.” He tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear before he folded his hands once more between his knees. “Hallie, let me tell you about my daughter...”

  VI.

  SYMPATHY and SECRETS

  Opening her eyes, Hallie felt as if she had been struck by a large and particularly jagged rock at the base of her skull. For several minutes her eyes watered in the harsh light as she struggled to recall where she was. Vision adjusting to the point where she could discern her surroundings, she wasn’t quite able to remember how she’d gotten there. The last memory she could retrieve was…was, what?

  She sat bolt upright, the room careening wildly in front of her watering eyes. Burke Conlan and those robotic units. That’s what she recalled. He’d tried to protect her from them, and then he had just…given up, blast him.

  She couldn’t focus. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it—an act which only served to make her want to vomit—she bent at the waist, pressing her brow against her knees.

  Hmm. Blankets. Someone had taken care to see she was kept warm. Someone had brought her back to her cell. Not Conlan. It didn’t seem likely a man who continually caved to contemptible action would be the type to exercise any great concern on her behalf. Perhaps the cybernetics were programmed to follow through with rudimentary medical care after sedation. Or perhaps it was that fellow Shane. He had appeared decent enough.

  Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Hallie sat up again, coughed to clear her throat. The door stood wide. Why wasn’t it shut? Surely, the cybernetics could override any voice-security. Of course, if her rescuer had been Skelly Shane, he wouldn’t have possessed the ability to close the door. />
  Recognizing her vulnerability throughout what might have been hours of unconsciousness, she glanced uneasily around the cell. Although it was not exactly as she had left it, all seemed in order. Hallie slipped out from beneath the blankets and padded over on bare feet to peer into her carryall. Someone had definitely rummaged through her things, but everything was accounted for. Even the sphere was there, nestled with care in a cocoon of fabric. Bending to touch her fingertips to its cool surface, she suddenly remembered more.

  She had dreamed while sedated of home and…a child. She’d dreamed of a young girl with hair nearly as white as sand, and who communicated with her hands, fingers flying in a language without spoken words. Dreams rarely made sense upon awakening, but this one seemed obvious enough, upon consideration. She had dreamed of herself, manifesting in slumber her feelings of vulnerability, of helplessness, her inability to communicate the truth of her innocence to anyone who could have aided her.

  Puffing out a breath of air, the sensation of shredding fog lingered in her brain, making it impossible to gather her thought processes together. Perhaps if she slept a little longer, she might awaken somewhat clearer in her mind. First, however, she needed to close the door. Turning on her heel, she opened her mouth to speak her name, and stopped.

  “Who are you?”

  She hadn’t meant to blurt the question, but her disconcert precluded courtesy. Standing just inside the door was the tiniest woman Hallie had ever seen. She possessed a bountiful head of long, curling hair as white as the dream-child’s had been. Maybe the woman had been in her cell earlier and a glimpse of her through unfocused eyes had laid the foundation for Hallie’s subconscious to build on. The woman’s ill-fitting prison uniform did nothing to allay the impression of child-like stature, nor did her skin, quite pale, nearly translucent, the subtle bluish tinge alleviated only by the pink washing her cheeks. In contrast, the woman’s eyes were very dark, circled by white lashes. In her hand she held a tray.

  “Tea. Marro root,” she explained in perfunctory but lyrical tones. “You feel better.”

  “No, actually, I don’t feel any better. Oh, you’re saying the tea will make me feel better?”

  “Yes, that is it. Tea make you better.”

  The woman entered the room, moving in a way that would have seemed unnatural in anyone else, swaying slightly as if in time to some music circling in her head. Setting the tray down on the desk, she planted her tiny fists on narrow hips, lifting her gaze to Hallie expectantly.

  “Drink,” she said.

  “Am I to trust you so readily?”

  “Not poison. Not believe me? I sip first.” The woman snatched the mug and swallowed a mouthful. Returning the mug to the tray, she grinned. “See? I still alive.”

  How quickly the woman’s mind jumped to poison was no reassurance. Hallie observed her a moment for ill effects, although if she’d put anything in the tea the concoction didn’t necessarily have to be fast-acting and a small sip might not be enough to affect her at all.

  Suddenly the woman collapsed to the floor in a graceful heap. Hallie leaped from the berth. As Hallie stood over her in disbelief, head spinning from the abrupt movement, the woman opened her eyes and let loose a child-like roll of laughter.

  “No poison. I tease.”

  “Not funny,” Hallie answered angrily. She stalked back to her bed, pausing only to grab the mug of tea. Seated, she held it beneath her chin, wrinkling her nose as she breathed in the aroma. The scent was sweet and slightly earthy, the warmth soothing even without consumption.

  From the floor, the tiny woman watched her, eyes wide. “Hallie mad?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “That redhead tell me.”

  “Did he, now?” Hallie took a tentative sip of the brew. Frankly, if it killed her, would it matter? “You must be Calypso.”

  “How you know?”

  “Process of elimination.”

  Calypso’s eyes changed color from nearly black to the yellow of a cool morning, then back to black again. Hallie’s own eyes widened. Calypso laughed.

  “You smart girl, Hallie. How you get so smart?”

  Hallie recognized sarcasm when she heard it. But it seemed without malice. “So, then we are introduced. Nice to meet you.”

  Calypso watched her, fine brows drawing together above the bridge of her nose. The color of her eyes changed again, although Hallie couldn’t quite discern the shade. They appeared the color of a fresh bruise.

  “You pretty girl, Hallie. The men, they get lonely, understand? Run through them like fire, all at once, every one. Keep in cell then, okay?”

  Hallie frowned through the steam rising from her cup. These men, or had she been in another Sector? She decided not to ask. “Of course. Thanks for the warning.”

  “I get lonely for company, someone to talk to. Glad you are here.”

  Calypso gleaned the inappropriateness of her statement at the same time Hallie opened her mouth to retort. Calypso starting giggling like a toddler. The infectious noise caused Hallie to respond in kind, until her eyes watered.

  “Sorry,” Calypso managed through her giggles.

  Hallie wiped her eyes with a forearm, waving the hand that held the mug. “No need. I understand.”

  Calypso leaned back on her hands, draping herself like a wilted flower. Every movement was perfected without appearing practiced or forced in any way. Hallie wanted to ask what she’d been in her life outside prison, but was prevented from doing so by Calypso’s next words.

  “Why you in here, Hallie?”

  Hallie drank another mouthful of the tea and lowered the container to her thigh. “I’d rather not say.”

  Tipping her head to the side so that her pale hair drifting like down on the wind, Calypso nodded. “Me? I make the love to wrong man. His wife very rich. She think he tell me thing I should not know. You get what I mean?”

  “I believe so.”

  “But not what she think. She think he tell me gover’ment thing. Not so. He tell me how strange wife is in bedroom. I wish I let her know, to pay her back.”

  Hallie snorted in amusement, sobering a second later. “Do you think you might get the chance to do that?”

  Calypso shrugged, a movement as graceful as all her others. “No time soon.”

  No time soon. Hallie closed her eyes.

  “You tired. I go.”

  “No!” Hallie set the mug aside, leaning forward in earnest. “Don’t go. Tell me more. How long have you been here?”

  “Long time. Longer than I know anymore.”

  “How can that be? Is there nothing with which to track time here?”

  “Don’t want to. Hurts.”

  “Of course it hurts. I’m sorry.”

  “No apologize.”

  “Right. How old are you?”

  Calypso thought a minute. “Twenty-two passes of the island sun. Soon. You okay?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “Tea good?”

  “Very good.”

  No one appeared to be guilty of any real crime. No one but Burke. Even though he hadn’t been imprisoned for the crime to which he’d confessed, albeit falsely, unlike the rest of them he was still guilty of committing a deed that had caused irreparable harm.

  “My problem is,” Hallie whispered, “I didn’t make love to the wrong man, but was punished for it anyway.”

  Calypso said nothing, her eyes fading to a green like new grass.

  “Where are you from, Calypso?”

  “Me? Tansi Islands. On Lucas. I am island dancer.”

  Well, that explained a lot.

  “The redhead, that Skelly, is from Lucas. Did you know?”

  Hallie nodded. “The subject came up. Do you have Code on Lucas?”

  “Code?”

  “Like traditions and law combined.”

  Calypso nodded. “Traditions, yes. We have many.”

  “Well, in Talia on Citadel—that is where I am from—Code is like that, but the
se traditions can be, and often are, enforced to the fullest. Life can be made quite uncomfortable for those who break Code. Of course, there are those who do and get away with it, but the more elevated your position in society, the more you stand to lose.”

  Hallie climbed from the berth and sat on the floor in front of Calypso, arms wrapped around her knees. “One of the ‘traditions’ of Code is for a girl child to be bonded with a male within five years after birth––”

  “What is this ‘bonded’?”

  “Bonding is to be promised to the male as his wife when she reaches adulthood. Sometimes, the male is already grown but sometimes he is a child. Either way, the pact is always made for some type of gain.” Hallie willed herself to be calm, thinking of her mother. When Hallie had been very young, her mother used to sing her a lullaby promising a girl-child felicity and a boy-child––what? She couldn’t remember. She shook her head.

  “When the Pact was made for me, no one dreamed that the man to whom I was bonded would someday reach High Office. He was, and is, an ambitious man. Eventually he no longer had need of me and, to be honest, came to hate me. However, because of his position he could not break Code to be rid of me, so he arranged it that I would.”

  Calypso was intrigued, if the changing hue of her eyes was any indication. “How did he do that?”

  “He paid a man to claim he was my lover, salvaging his own. It was a perfectly valid excuse to shed me without total disgrace to him. The penalty for infidelity, especially in Pact, is quite stiff. In fact, it is a criminal offense against a holder of High Office.”

  “I see,” murmured Calypso. “Me, I understand.”

  The tea started to turn in Hallie’s empty stomach. She hadn’t eaten in at least a day and a half. Even now, she hadn’t much of an appetite. However, eyeing the evident bones of her more than normally slender wrists and fingers, she recognized the necessity of sustenance. In a bit. For now, she was content to sit with Calypso.

  “Who is he?” Calypso asked.

  “My husband—former husband? No one you would know on Tansi, I don’t think.”