Feeling right at home already, aren’t you, Thorn? Miala thought, but she only replied, “Steaks and red-eye crab. I assume that’s all right—or did you become a vegetarian over the past few years?”
He almost smiled. “Hardly.”
And he stayed there, watching as she busied herself in the kitchen and had Jerem set the table for dinner. That was one of her son’s usual chores. Although she had a housekeeper mech to make sure the house stayed clean, Miala had never been comfortable with owning an array of domestic mechanoids the way some of their neighbors did. Possibly it was simply because she had been raised to do for herself. Jerem occasionally complained about his chores, few as they might be, but she thought it better that he learn how to do these things himself instead of simply asking a mech to take care of them for him. Somehow she believed that Thorn would have approved.
It was impossible to ignore that watchful figure across the room. Jerem continued to pepper his father with questions as the boy went about his task, but Thorn somehow managed to remain noncommittal without actually seeming rude. And Jerem apparently didn’t notice how little information the mercenary was revealing. He seemed happy enough just to be spending time in his father’s company.
Not until they were all seated, and the first platefuls of food had been served, did Miala finally turn to Jerem and say, “Risa called this afternoon.”
Her son paused mid-bite, staring back at her with wide brown eyes.
Miala tried to keep a smile from pulling at her mouth. Jerem of course knew what she was about to say—they had been through this countless times before—but his face was pleading with her not to reveal anything in front of Eryk Thorn. However, she had already decided that she would not keep this from the mercenary.
“She told me an interesting story about that prank you pulled, Jerem,” Miala went on. “You really topped yourself this time, didn’t you?”
Thorn looked from Miala to Jerem, a forkful of crab halfway to his mouth. “What prank?”
“Why don’t you tell him, Jerem?”
Her son’s eyes—Thorn’s eyes—narrowed. “It was no big deal,” Jerem muttered.
“That’s not what Risa—or Dr. Chand—thought,” said Miala, before she took a sip of her wine.
“Dr. Chand?” Thorn inquired.
“The principal at Jerem’s school.”
“Who has no sense of humor,” Jerem complained. But then he glanced over at Eryk Thorn, who kept watching his son steadily, no expression on his dark face. It was fairly obvious he wouldn’t get any support there. With a sigh, Jerem said, “We reprogrammed the holo-sign at school to say something different. No big.”
“What did you program it to say?” asked the mercenary. His tone was even, betraying no curiosity.
Jerem dug his fork into a piece of steak and smeared the morsel around on his plate, staring down as if the pattern of juices it left behind fascinated him. “Well...”
Thorn said nothing, apparently content to wait however long it took for Jerem to reply.
With a sigh, the boy muttered, “It said, ‘Free Nova Angeles.’”
Miala thought she saw the faintest quiver of the muscle in Thorn’s cheek, as if he had just repressed the urge to smile. But she doubted that Jerem would have noticed the twitch—she’d been looking for it, whereas her son had immediately cast his eyes back down toward his plate after he’d made his confession.
A short pause. Then Thorn asked simply, “Why?”
“‘Why’ what?” Jerem said.
“What was the point?”
The boy scowled and then met Thorn’s bland stare. “We just thought it would be funny,” he said, his voice taking on the sulky tone Miala recognized from countless other confrontations.
“Ah.” The mercenary lifted his own neglected glass of wine and took a sip, then set it back down. Then he said, “Your ancestors weren’t the original settlers here.”
“Well, duh.”
“Jerem,” said Miala, her tone a warning, and the boy seemed to deflate a little.
“They teach you about the Angel’s Flight expedition in school?” Thorn asked.
“Yeah,” Jerem said, his tone wary, as if he suspected a trap but wasn’t sure from which direction it would be sprung.
Eryk Thorn speared a piece of steak on the point of his knife. “So did they teach you about how the original colony here was set up to be independent of the Consortium, only to have Gaia decide Nova Angeles was too rich a prize to let go that easily? They teach you about the property seizures and the internments?”
Jerem bit his lip. Suddenly he looked even younger than his eight standard years. “Ye—es,” he faltered.
The mercenary lifted the piece of steak to his mouth and chewed it deliberately before continuing. “So why would you think it was funny?”
Miala couldn’t help but feel for her son as he sat there, staring back at Eryk Thorn and looking suddenly stricken. It was quite obvious that Jerem hadn’t even paused to consider all the ramifications of his prank.
To his credit, though, he lifted his chin a little and met his father’s watchful gaze. “I don’t know,” Jerem said finally.
For a second father and son faced off, identical eyes staring back at one another in a face different only in the years it had lived. Then Miala saw just the slightest softening in Thorn’s features, even as he said, “Well, you’ll learn,” and stabbed at another piece of steak.
Jerem seemed to sag in his chair; it was no easy thing to be faced down by Eryk Thorn, even if he did happen to be your father. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, in a very small voice.
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to,” Eryk Thorn replied, and Jerem squirmed slightly in his seat. “Maybe the people whose ancestors were disenfranchised or downright murdered, or to your mother—or maybe this Risa, since she had to clean up your messes while Miala was off-planet.”
“Sorry,” Jerem said, and even though he uttered the word in barely above a whisper, he did sound as if he meant it.
“Accepted.” Miala spoke immediately before Thorn could say anything else. Jerem might be occasionally thoughtless, but he wasn’t cruel—she could tell that Eryk Thorn’s words had had an impact.
The years had taught her not to dwell on Jerem’s mistakes—once he realized what he had done wrong, he never repeated the offense. True, he usually came up with new and inventive ways to get into trouble, but as aggravated as she got at times, Miala always recognized his mishaps as being born from a soul that simply needed to test its limits. There had never been anything malicious in his actions.
She sent a beseeching look in Thorn’s direction, and the mercenary nodded slightly. He raised the wine glass to his mouth once more and drank, then said, “I got into trouble often as not, myself. Let me tell you about this one time I had a tangle with a crime lord called Gared Tomas—”
And he launched into a tale she would have thought highly unlikely if anyone else had told it. Knowing Thorn, however, it was probably no more than the simple truth.
The rest of the evening passed quietly enough. Jerem still had homework, although he protested mightily having to do it at all, considering Thorn’s presence in the house. But after the mercenary reminded Jerem that he had promised to stay for as long as he could and would most likely be here far longer than just this one night, Jerem had taken himself off to his room, looking very put upon.
His absence left Miala staring awkwardly at Thorn and wondering what on earth they would do next. The table had been cleared and the kitchen tidied. She had no other necessary tasks to distract her. On a normal evening she would have retired to her office if Jerem had his own schoolwork to occupy him, or, lacking that, they would have sat down and watched a vid together. But none of those homely pursuits seemed at all appropriate for Eryk Thorn.
He spoke first. “He’s a good kid.”
How had Thorn known exactly the right thing to say? Miala smiled. “I think so.”
“But a
handful,” he added.
“Were you any different?” she countered, and a corner of the mercenary’s mouth lifted.
An odd expression crossed Thorn’s dark eyes. “Worse. Much worse.”
“Care to elaborate?” Despite her diffidence, Miala moved closer to the mercenary. His expression—as much of it as there was, at least—seemed to be an odd mixture of bitterness and wry humor.
Thorn shook his head. “That’s a story for another night. Past is done, anyhow.” Then he looked over at her, and again she saw that quirk at the corner of his mouth. “What’s the kid’s bedtime?”
Puzzled, Miala slowly replied, “Usually around 21:00. Sometimes half-past, if he has a lot of homework.”
Thorn’s gaze slid past her to the chrono on the kitchen wall. “So about two standard.”
She nodded, and then her brain caught up to what he was driving at. No doubt the harsh overhead lighting in the kitchen illuminated her sudden blush perfectly.
“I didn’t rescue you from Murgan to worry about some kid playing chaperone,” Thorn said, and the sudden swift look he gave her made the blood flame even further in her cheeks. “I need to check on a few things. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Check on what?” she asked, but she knew he probably wouldn’t give her a straight answer.
But he surprised her. “My ship, for one. The rest isn’t important.”
“Of course not.”
Thorn pulled her to him then, and kissed her hard on the mouth. She didn’t have time to react before he released her and began to move toward the front door.
“Don’t you need the code?” she asked desperately.
“Sixteen two aught five, right?”
It was pointless asking how he had gotten the key code to her home security system. He’d only give her another one of those infuriating smirks. Instead, Miala watched him slip away into the night, feeling still the pressure of his mouth against hers, and forced herself to wait.
Hours passed. Jerem was finally put to bed at almost 22:00, protesting that he wanted to see his father before he went to sleep. It was only after Miala showed her son that truly the two of them were the only ones in the house that he settled down and at least pretended to go to sleep, although his sulky expression boded ill for Thorn. Her explanation that the mercenary had business to take care of had not sat very well with the boy, but it was the only excuse she could give Jerem. Truth be told, she wasn’t altogether thrilled with the situation herself. So the high and mighty mercenary couldn’t bear to spend a few quiet hours in the house with her? Too dull, perhaps? At least she wasn’t so boring that he didn’t want to spend the night with her!
Fuming, she returned to her own bedroom suite and prepared herself for bed. She was tired, and if Thorn thought she was going to stay up until all hours waiting for him to return, well, then, he was in for a little surprise. Her anger didn’t prevent her from donning an expensive nightgown of black synth-silk and Castopol lace, but she told herself it was just in case. After all, she’d been waiting for this night for more than eight years, and she wasn’t about to look like a frump just because Thorn had abandoned her for a few hours.
Sleep took its time in coming, but the feel of her comfortable, familiar bed soon lulled Miala away into oblivion. She therefore had no idea how much time had passed before she sensed movement in the room and sat up, blinking in the soft semidarkness. Ever since Jerem had been a baby she’d kept a small lamp on its lowest setting in one corner of the chamber in case she had to get up in the middle of the night and look in on him. It wasn’t difficult for her to make out Thorn’s form at the foot of the bed, where he seemed to have paused, looking uncertain.
This is a hell of a time for him to develop a sense of propriety, she thought, and pushed back at the quilted bedcover. “I’m right here, Thorn,” she snapped, wondering what in the galaxy he was waiting for.
He turned toward her. “Miala...” His voice sounded hoarser than usual, and she reached immediately for the button to turn on the bedside lamp.
As the light flooded the room, she looked back over at Thorn and gasped as he began to sag toward the floor. Heart beating a mad staccato in her breast, she hurled herself out of bed in a vain attempt to catch him before he collapsed completely. She caught him, but his weight was too much for her, and she fell to the floor with him, even as she realized the entire left side of his jumpsuit was stained with dark blood.
XIX
Shock didn’t prevent Miala from exclaiming, “What the hell—” as she began to pull at the fastenings on Thorn’s jumpsuit.
“S’all right,” he muttered. “Other guys look worse than me.”
Miala didn’t have a hard time believing that—it was Eryk Thorn she held in her arms, after all—but she didn’t waste time with replies. Instead, her fingers wrestled with the pressure tabs and snaps, slipping once or twice from the blood that soaked his garments. Once she had the jumpsuit removed, she could see the gaping wound that slashed from below the ribcage on the left and upward to the right. If they had come in at him from even a slightly different angle, he’d probably be dead. As it was, she didn’t know exactly what to do, but reached up and yanked one of the pillows off the bed, then hurriedly removed its case and pressed the wad of fabric against the wound in the mercenary’s chest.
“Damn molecular blades,” Thorn said, his eyes narrow slits in the half-darkness. “Bad?”
“You’ve probably had worse,” she replied. “But I need to get you to a hospital. You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“No,” he said immediately, clutching her arm with a grip that seemed unnaturally strong, given his current condition. “No hospitals.”
“So I just let you bleed to death in my bedroom? This isn’t exactly a scraped knee that I can just put a bandage on, Thorn!” Fear had sharpened her tone, and Miala lowered her voice before she went on, “One of my neighbors is a physician. Can I at least call him?”
The mercenary shut his eyes for a moment, and at first Miala worried he might have fainted. She should have known he was made of tougher stuff than that. After a few seconds he nodded, and said, “If you can trust him.”
I hope so, she thought. But although she knew Quin Lassiter slightly—his son Alic was one of Jerem’s best friends—it was one thing to let your son sleep over at someone’s house or share a backyard grill fest on Founder’s Day and quite another to go to that same person’s house in the middle of the night to patch up a wounded mercenary. Still, she knew she had no choice.
“He’s a friend,” she answered, after a short pause. “I’ll think up some story to tell him. But first we need to get you off the floor.”
She saw his mouth tighten slightly, but he didn’t protest. Keeping her right arm firmly placed around his upper body, Miala slowly staggered to her feet, pulling Thorn upward as she went. He was trying to help, she could tell, and luckily he still had some strength left in his legs—just enough to maneuver himself onto the bed, where he collapsed in a heap on top of the covers. She guided his left hand to keep pressure on the makeshift bandage she’d fashioned out of the pillowcase, then wrestled with the bedding until she had him covered as well as she could. Her knowledge of first aid was far from complete, but she knew he had to keep warm or risk going into shock.
“I’ll go downstairs to make the call,” she said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she said. “Whatever you do—don’t move. I’m locking the door behind me.”
“Gun,” he replied, with a weak gesture toward the jumpsuit.
At first Miala wasn’t sure what he meant, then realized there must have been a holdout weapon hidden somewhere in the garment. She went immediately to the discarded heap of fabric on the floor and searched it quickly, feeling the distinctive shape of a small sidearm in a pocket concealed by a seam. Fumbling with the awkward configuration, she drew it out after a moment and handed it to Thorn.
“Just a precaution,” he murmured. “Didn’t see anyone following.”
Miala uttered a silent prayer of thanks once she heard that, for she had already begun to worry that whoever had attacked Thorn had friends who might be along at any moment to finish the job. At least the mercenary had entered the house quietly, and her son had a tendency to sleep like someone pumped full of high-octane tranquilizers, so she thought she could slip downstairs without him noticing.
Quickly she leaned down and gave Thorn a swift kiss of reassurance, then hurried to her wardrobe and pulled out a loose long-sleeved tunic and baggy pair of pants, an outfit usually reserved for the rare days when she planned to stay at home. Not wanting to waste time with a proper pair of shoes, she slid her feet into a pair of sandals and then went out, making sure the door was locked behind her.
The house was dark and still, and Miala slipped downstairs quickly, her feet quiet on the carpeted steps. Then she went into her office, shut the door, and flicked on the lights.
Of course she already had the Lassiters’ number keyed into her comm, since Jerem spent a good deal of time at their home, but even as the readout displayed their comm code Miala hesitated, her finger hovering over the “send” button. She had to decide what would be the best approach. Obviously the complete truth was out of the question. On the other hand, she couldn’t hide the fact that Thorn had been sliced open by a molecular blade, the sort of weapon one didn’t usually encounter on Nova Angeles. Actually, crime of any sort was rare on this civilized and well-regulated world. The risks were too high, the payoff too low. The few lurid stories Miala had seen on Nova Angeles’ news channels usually involved crimes of passion, not underworld activity. It was better to engage in that sort of business on a world that didn’t possess such a well-trained, highly motivated police force. Not enough profit in it here.
Still, muggings did occur every once in a great while, and usually near the spaceport, which was where Thorn had been attacked. She thought it best to leave it at that, and give Quin Lassiter the mercenary’s false name of Galen Marr. He would be an old friend from Iradia, come to visit her, and some unknown thugs had jumped him as he left his ship in the dark hours of the night...
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