“No!” Ari said, before she could think better of it. Then she hunched her shoulders and repeated, “No.”
“No?”
“You—” Ari grimaced. “You couldn’t fight back. As far as he knew, you were just a slave. He didn’t have any right to hit you.” She swallowed hard. “That’s not how people should behave to each other. You know what I think about that.”
“Yes, I do.” Mír regarded her for a long moment, as inscrutable as ever. Then she said, “I can’t believe you gave me all your money.”
“Oh,” Ari moaned, and hid her face in her hands again.
“It’s come in handy.” Mír laughed.
“I let you go.” Ari choked. “I set you free.”
“And I do appreciate it.”
“You’ve been, you’ve been marauding again, and killing people, and it’s my fault. I was the one who—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Mír said, though not unkindly. “I certainly would have escaped soon. Your father’s death simply precipitated matters. I remain sorry for your loss, by the way.”
Oh, sure. Mír was sad that her greatest enemy was dead. Ari didn’t bother holding back a bitter laugh. “Yeah, I bet you do.”
“I do,” Mír said. “He was a formidable opponent, as I’ve told you before. I would have preferred to test my wits against his instead of winning by default, so to speak.”
“He could have beaten you at Q’heri the first time, I’ll tell you that!” Ari jumped up to her feet, unable to sit on the sofa for another second. She paced away from Mír and curled her hands into fists.
Stupid. She’d never felt so stupid in her entire life.
Mír looked wary as Ari moved away, but didn’t try to stop her. “I often wonder if perhaps I could have escaped sooner than I did.” For the first time, her voice sounded uncertain. Hesitant, even. “If I’d…tried a little harder.”
“I’m sure you could have.” Ari turned to look out the giant window again, at the space station that now seemed blurry. She wasn’t crying, though, thank goodness—but then again, she wasn’t sad, either. She didn’t know what this feeling was, except that the urge to scream was back. “You can do anything. You always could.”
She’d fooled Ari—or Ari had just been too blind to see the obvious. She’d even made Ari love her like it was easy, like it was nothing at all.
“You didn’t have to,” Ari said, finally telling Mír out loud what she’d thought to herself for weeks. “You didn’t have to go to bed with me.”
Then she turned and looked right at Mír as she said, “That was wrong of you to do.” Because it was. In spite of everything, it seemed like the most awful thing Mír, the pirate queen, had ever done: seduced Ari, made Ari think she was cared for, and broken her heart. For no reason at all. As if she wasn’t feeling bad enough, fury joined the pain in Ari’s heart. What right did Mír have to play with her that way? “That’s a terrible thing to do. I would have let you go anyway if you’d asked!”
“I know,” Mír said.
“What?” Ari stared at her. Mír’s face, as always, gave nothing away. “Then why—how could you?” Had she just done it for fun?
“I wondered that many times,” Mír said, and looked away again, this time gazing thoughtfully at the statue in the center of the room. “I always knew that you would free me, Ariana, if you were able. I realized that very quickly.” She tapped her lips with her be-ringed finger. “I knew that, if anything, making you attached to me would make it harder for you to release me. Not easier.”
“I did, though,” Ari said. “Because I…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “You said I don’t know anything about love. But I bet I know a whole lot more about it than you ever have.” She swallowed down a sob that was doing its best to work free. She wondered if her head was about to explode.
Mír walked to stand in front of Ari. “Do you love me?” she asked, as if it was the simplest question in the world.
No, Ari ought to say. I don’t. You’re an evil person. That was what she ought to say because that was how she ought to feel. Wasn’t it how she’d been thinking of Mír for weeks? Mír, who had killed and lied…
Mír, who had held her close in the night, who had dawdled in her own escape, who had been her only friend.
“I don’t know,” Ari said, cursing herself when the truth slipped out. “You’re not who I thought you were. And you—you said you didn’t want me to love you.”
“I never said that.” Mír reached out and combed her fingers gently through Ari’s hair, pushing it away from her temple. “I said many things, but never that.”
Ari ought to move away, ought to at least move her head, but she couldn’t manage it. She was having trouble breathing again.
“Let’s get this out of the way first. I’m the same person I was in your quarters. The very same. I knew it was a bad idea to make you care for me. And I knew I was doing exactly that.” Mír’s fingers kept stroking Ari’s hair. “I couldn’t resist.”
Ari trembled and looked away.
Mír’s voice was dropping into the low, hypnotic purr that only meant one thing. “I believe I’ve mentioned on more than one occasion that I find you irresistible, in fact.”
“Don’t,” Ari managed. “Not now.” Because she felt dirty. She felt dirty that Mír, who’d done so many terrible things and who’d deceived her so thoroughly, could touch her and still make her skin hungry. Something had to be wrong with her.
“No?” Mír inquired, her fingertips dropping down to stroke Ari’s cheek.
Ari bit her lip. “No.”
Mír’s fingertips paused. Then she pulled her hand away and cleared her throat. “As you wish. I do have more to say.”
“Okay,” Ari managed, breathless with relief at her reprieve. Maybe she could get her head together a little if Mír didn’t touch her, didn’t stand so close.
“I had not planned to come here so quickly,” Mír said. “I knew your father’s legacy would endure a while longer. I knew your station would not welcome me as the others have.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ari said, latching on to the new topic at once. She needed to put off thinking about…about the other thing for just a little longer. “How did you get in so easily? I know my father left better safeguards than that!”
Mír hesitated. “Do you remember that stack of your father’s documents? That you kept by the bed?”
This time Ari didn’t speak. She just wailed as she covered her eyes yet again.
“It’s not your fault,” Mír said. “You didn’t know that he’d left sensitive information on those chips. I’m sure he didn’t mean to. But his carelessness worked in my favor.”
“He wasn’t careless!”
“People are many things when they’re near death. Even the great ones.” Mír sighed. “Did you even notice what I’d taken?”
“No,” Ari said miserably. “I hadn’t looked through them all before you left.” She hadn’t had time.
“I thought not,” Mír said. Then she repeated, “It’s not your fault. It’s his, if it’s anyone’s.”
“It’s yours!” Ari cried out, looking up again. “You’re the one who stole them!”
“Mine? Oh, no,” Mír said, shaking her head. “I am not to be blamed for seizing a tactical advantage. Although…” She trailed off, before continuing in a slightly strained tone, “perhaps I am to be blamed for using it prematurely.” She tapped her foot. “I always intended to come for Nahtal Station. I can’t overstate how useful Exer’s ore mines are going to be to my enterprise. That’s why I was scouting there in the first place, though I certainly had no idea your father had such a close watch out.” She pursed her lips. “As I said…formidable.”
Ari remembered, suddenly, the way “Assistant” had stood before her father’s body and given it a respectful salute. Not a gesture from a slave, but from one foe to another. Her face grew hot, and her eyes pricked with tears she would not shed. She swallowed hard.
Mír had nev
er behaved like a slave was expected to. Not once, even when her independent attitude had gotten her into trouble. Ari had admired it, sometimes even been intimidated by it—very sensible of you, her inner voice whispered—but she’d never questioned it deeply enough. Mír had refused to speak of her past, but shouldn’t Ari have been able to put two and two together?
She couldn’t have expected that her beloved friend was a pirate queen, but she should have noticed that something was off, and then maybe this debacle wouldn’t have happened. But she’d kept her eyes closed. Like someone who didn’t want to see.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“Then there was that useful tidbit your colonel dropped in the mess about the forthcoming upgrades to the security system,” Mír continued, “I didn’t want to wait for those, naturally. And yet…” She glanced toward the window at the station. “It would have been wiser to delay a while longer before coming here. I know this.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Mír just looked at her. And kept looking.
Ari stared back, and then swallowed very hard, feeling like she’d never be able to move again. “Me?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well, either.” Mír glanced out of the huge window again. This time her chuckle was rueful. “I always slept well when you were there. You wouldn’t believe how often I’ve kicked myself for not bringing you with me when you asked.” She shrugged. “Though that would have been unwise at the time. I didn’t know what was going to happen. How safe I could keep you.”
“Lord Koll said I was all you were asking him for,” Ari said.
“So far,” Mír said. “I will have more from him. But yes. You were the first thing I wanted.”
The first thing. Not person. Thing.
“Am I your slave now?” Ari whispered as her anger—at Mír, at herself—vanished in a cold wave of dread.
Mír regarded her thoughtfully. “That would be a neat trick, wouldn’t it?” she said. “Our roles reversed. Very tidy. I began as your slave; you end as mine.”
“You were never my slave,” Ari said. How many times had she said so, to Mír and everybody else? “You were my father’s. I never thought of you that way, ever. I let you go—”
“Yes, I know, and yes, you did.” Mír’s gaze grew even sharper.
Ari shivered at the sight of it.
“What is a slave, I wonder?” Mír continued. “Certainly, I will never call you ‘Slave.’ I will never deprive you of your name. I will never force you to do anything—not even to be my lover, should you refuse. Will you, by the way?”
“I-I don’t know,” Ari stammered, wondering if she could refuse if Mír touched her again, and even if she should. It was probably a terrible idea to refuse pirate queens something they wanted. She remembered yet again the story of the mercenaries who had tried to deny Mír what she’d demanded—and how that had ended for them.
Mír never turned her gaze away. “Well, then,” she said. “You’ll keep your name. You’ll keep your will. You’ll have your own servants to attend you—you will have everything you ask for.”
This couldn’t be happening. “No, wait, I don’t—”
“Except one thing,” Mír said.
Ari froze.
“Don’t ask me to let you go,” Mír said. “Do you understand? Do not ask me.” She tilted her head. “Is that what truly makes a slave? The inability to come and go as you please? I haven’t decided.”
Ari tried to speak. She couldn’t. She had no idea what to say to that.
Mír’s penetrating gaze was turning into something else—something even sharper and more intent, more predatory. “I really can’t seem to do without you. Do you know what it was like? Realizing that?” She seemed angry, and Ari took an involuntary step backward. “Wanting you sexually—that I can certainly accept. If others could see you as I have seen you…everyone would want you. Everyone.”
“No,” Ari managed. “I mean, I really don’t think so.” She looked down at herself and realized for the first time that she had dirt from her garden on her nightgown and that her hair was probably a fright. “Um.”
“No?” Mír murmured. A shiver ran up and down Ari’s spine; the purring tone was back. “I disagree.”
“I…I…”
“But it wasn’t just that. No, that did not vex me at all,” Mír continued. “It was you. With those stupid leaves in your hair, and not knowing how to talk to anyone at all, and those damn plants you love like your own children—I’ve never seen anyone like you. Not in my life. Not with the way I live.” She suddenly looked bewildered as she said, “Are there many others like you? Even in some place far away from violence and fear—I can’t imagine it. And yet.” Her eyes suddenly gleamed. “You took so naturally to sex. You got yourself hit with a shock rod in my defense. And just how eager were you to brain my guardsman?”
“That’s why you want me?” Ari didn’t even know where to look. “Because I’m weird?” Because she was an exotic curiosity, an amusing plaything who could be discarded at a moment’s notice? She had thought, once that Mír—that Assistant—had seen her as she really was, and had grown to care for that person she saw, at least a little. But she’d been wrong about so very many things.
“I want you,” Mír said, “because you were going to plant my favorite flower—I trust now you know what that is—and you’re smarter than you know, and you are brave. Reckless, in fact. And if you protected me from myself, then it’s time I did the same for you. Doesn’t that seem fair?”
Before Ari could splutter that this was the least fair thing she’d ever heard of, Mír took both of her hands in a strong grip. “I have to have you,” Mír said, almost gently, as if she was breaking bad news to someone. “You have to be mine. You are mine.”
“Have me—” Ari closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. That’s not love. That’s not…”
“I don’t know if I’m capable of love as you define it,” Mír said. “I don’t think I love like that.” She stepped in closer.
Ari, who kept her eyes resolutely shut, felt the heat of Mír’s body against her own.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mír said. “I’ve tried to tell you this before—we don’t need love. You’re mine and I’m yours. That’s the way it works in here.”
“What does that even mean?” Ari said. “I don’t get to leave the room?”
“Do you want to?” Mír sounded both amused and astonished. “You?”
“I could always leave before, if I wanted,” Ari said, opening her eyes and looking straight at Mír. “That’s different. You know it is.”
“I do know it,” Mír acknowledged. “Of course you may leave the room. You may go anywhere you like on the ship. As for beyond the ship…we’ll work that out later.” She glanced toward the space station. “It’s certainly not possible right now.”
“Someone at least has to take care of my garden.” Ari bit her bottom lip. “Some other people have seen it now.”
Mír raised her eyebrows. Her voice was lower, almost cool, when she asked, “They have? Who?”
“Well, not many people, but sometimes the nurses stopped by when—” Ari cut herself off.
“Nurses,” Mír said, because she never missed anything. “I knew it. You have been sick. Were you hospitalized?”
“I don’t want to talk about it!” Ari yanked her hands from Mír’s grip. “I just want to make sure someone will take care of my plants!” She felt something hot and awful building up in her throat.
“I’ll make sure of it.” Mír sighed. Then she smiled, obviously trying to make Ari feel better. “We’ll bring a few of your more portable specimens here to tide you over.”
Ari took a deep breath and nodded, trying not to shake herself to death. Plants. Think about plants. Don’t think about how she’d handed Nahtal Station, the final achievement of her father’s life, over to his worst enemy. Don’t think about who his worst enemy was. Don’t think about how she’d ignored all the clues and how she
’d been lied to. Think about plants…
“I can even stand to have that praying mantis around my quarters,” Mír added. “What was his name again? Cridley?”
Ari clapped both hands over her mouth and finally burst into tears.
“All right,” Mír said after a moment, “evidently I shouldn’t have mentioned Cridley.”
“Cranli,” Ari moaned. “I killed him. I just woke up and I was in the dirt and I’d knocked a shelf on top of him—I’m a muh-murderer—”
“Ariana—”
“—and then I forgot to eat, and that’s when I woke up in sickbay, and he was my favorite, and why did that happen, why did I do that, why—”
“Oh, my.” Mír sighed again and stood, tugging Ari to her feet as well. She pulled Ari’s hands away from her face. “Take a deep breath,” she said, in the tone Ari automatically obeyed. The tone everybody automatically obeyed, apparently. “Exhale,” Mír reminded her sharply, and Ari did. “Now. Again.” Ari did it again. “Better?”
Ari nodded wordlessly, even though it wasn’t better at all.
“You need to get some rest,” Mír continued. “You appear to be a little overwhelmed. Understandable, I suppose.”
Overwhelmed? That was putting it mildly. Ari couldn’t possibly rest, not now, when she felt so worked-up.
But neither could she scream, stamp her feet, or do anything else she wanted to do. It wouldn’t accomplish anything with Mír—and it would make Ari look as if she had indeed lost her wits, as the female pirate had said. Crying over Cranli had been bad enough.
Ari needed to cool down, and then she needed to think, and she needed time and space to do both of those things. It seemed like Mír was about to give her some.
Ari nodded again and swallowed hard. Tried to sound calm when she said, “Sure. Rest.”
“And I must meet with your stationmaster, this so-called Lord Koll,” Mír continued. She sneered. “If he thinks he’ll be getting a ‘My Lord’ from me…well.”
“He told me I didn’t know anything about military tactics,” Ari mumbled, and swayed a little. She was so tired. She wasn’t thinking straight. I need time.
The Lily and the Crown Page 23
