by Jaleta Clegg
"Fair enough," he said and smiled. I could like Iniuri, despite what his son had just done to ruin my life.
He helped me to the end of the hall. It opened onto a private garage. A groundcar waited for us. The human driver opened the door and handed me in without once looking the least bit curious. Iniuri got in beside me. The driver shut the door.
I leaned back on the cushions, my hand pressed to my side. I concentrated on breathing slowly until the pain subsided. The motion of the groundcar was soothing, smooth and even. But the pain still burned. I could still feel the pressure of Vance's hand on my side. Something had torn.
I closed my eyes, leaning back, with my hand clamped over my side. Iniuri watched me. I wasn't in any shape to answer his questions. I almost didn't believe I was sitting here. I was with the second most powerful person in the Empire. And it didn't seem real, any of it, except for the pain.
"Doctor Himus, I have a situation that requires complete privacy." A pause. "I know I can trust your discretion. Will you meet me at my residence, in about ten minutes?" Another pause. "Half an hour, then. And yes, it does have to do with my son. No, not another duel. I think you'll find this situation intriguing."
I kept my eyes closed. The pain was intense. I almost welcomed it, though, it kept me from remembering the look of betrayal on Tayvis' face. Why had he kept his distance from me? Why the look of distrust in his eyes? To have Vance ruin everything with his stupid announcement was even more bitter. He told the Empire that I was going to marry him. And Tayvis believed him. That was what really hurt. I kept seeing him turn his back and walk out on me. He'd promised never to do it again, never to walk away again. He'd just broken that promise.
The groundcar glided to a stop. I opened my eyes. We were in a covered garage. A man in a black servant's uniform opened the door. He raised one eyebrow when he saw me.
"Are you collecting admirals now, sir?"
Iniuri chuckled. "Vance seems to be. There's something strange going on here, Olin. She's going to be our guest for a while until I find out what Vance is up to."
"Very good, sir." Olin held out his hand to me.
I gritted my teeth against the pain and let him help me out of the groundcar. I couldn't stand on my own. My knees buckled. Olin caught me. His arm was strong as steel. He looked too old to be so strong. His hair was white, his eyes faded blue. But the look on his face was kind as he lifted me.
"I think the jade suite," Iniuri said.
Olin carried me into a mansion, up a flight of stone steps then through a door of real carved wood. The room inside was a mix of pearly white and creamy greens.
Just breathing was agony. I tried not to think, especially about Tayvis. He was alive. I kept coming back to that thought. But why the hurt in his eyes? Why had he walked out on me? I had to contact him. I had to let him know Vance was lying when he said we were engaged. I was going to hurt Vance in any way I could next time I saw him.
They put me on a bed bigger than my entire cabin on the Phoenix. Olin asked me something. My ears buzzed. My side burned. Something sticky oozed across my belly. I blinked and tried to focus on Olin.
It didn't work. I floated away again.
I saw Vance in my mind, not the way he was now but the way he'd been on Serrimonia. He'd fought one of the Sessimoniss warriors with a spear and won. Vance had hidden talents. I couldn't afford to forget that.
The pain brought me back with a sharp jolt. Someone was tugging on my uniform. I gasped and grabbed for the hands causing me so much pain.
"Just calm down," an unfamiliar man told me. "I've got something for the pain right here."
"No," I protested. "Not pain patches."
He stopped pulling my uniform. He watched me as if I were not quite sane. Maybe I wasn't anymore.
"They make me sick." At least I think those were the words I said.
He went back to pulling my uniform off. It was glued to my side. He peeled it off carefully. It still burned. He clucked his tongue as he prodded at the messy scar.
"You should have been in the tank another week, at least," he said.
"It would have killed me." My voice was weak, breathy. I didn't have any strength left. I certainly didn't have the energy to argue with the man, whoever he was.
He started doing something that felt like he was peeling skin off. I bit my lip to keep from screaming. I watched Iniuri Shiropi instead, to distract me from the new pain. Iniuri stood in front of a giant wallscreen. He tapped a hidden control and the screen glowed clear blue.
"Admiral Dace," he said to it. He glanced at me while he spoke.
The blue flickered. A single line of text appeared. Iniuri read it and frowned. He looked back at me again.
"Voice override authorization, code on file," he said.
I knew why he couldn't access my records. I hoped he didn't ask me to explain. Lowell kept my information under top security. I couldn't even access my own files.
Iniuri had high enough clearance. The screen filled with text. He scanned through it, his face betraying nothing. If he was surprised by what he found, I couldn't tell.
"Her physiology reports are here, Guerin," Iniuri said to the man prodding me.
Guerin quit poking me to go read the report scrolling across the screen. I used the brief respite to try to breathe normally. It didn't work. The pain was worse than before. Guerin came back before I was ready.
"Definitely no pain patches," he said. "I have a new drug, though, that should work without the side effects. It may make you a bit sleepy, but considering the shape you're in, sleep is a good thing."
He and Olin stripped me the rest of the way out of my uniform. Guerin coated my scar with a foam that thinned and hardened to a flexible coating. The pain lessened. They helped me into a nightgown. Guerin stuck a patch on my arm. I reached to peel it off. My side cramped. It was all I could do not to curl up on the bed and scream.
"Leave it on," Guerin said. "It will help."
I lay on the bed and gave in to the inevitable. I started to feel fuzzy, disconnected from everything. The pain faded to a background twitch.
"So who is she?" Guerin asked. "You called me out in the middle of the night, the least you can do is explain why."
"Vance brought her to the party," Iniuri said. "He surprised us all by announcing they were engaged."
"Make sure she drinks plenty of water," Guerin said to Olin.
"She's one of Lowell's," Iniuri said. His voice was mellow, just deep enough to be pleasant. It buzzed in my head. "Although I don't know if I can believe his reports or not."
"She doesn't look capable of swatting a fly on her own," Guerin said.
"According to the record, she's the one who took out the entire Targon Syndicate and the Blackthorne Conglomeration."
"Her? You have to be joking."
"She's also the one who established contact with the Sessimoniss and the Trythians."
"Are you certain you opened the correct file?"
"Positive. Lowell mentioned her a time or two. He never answered questions, though. He squirmed out of them, as he usually does."
"So why is she here?"
"You'll have to ask Vance that." There was silence for a long moment. I almost drifted to sleep. "I think his announcement tonight was as much a surprise to her as the rest of us. He's up to something, but I can't figure out what."
"Intrigue runs in the family."
"True enough. Perhaps I'll corner Maximillius and ask him what game my son is playing. The two of them smuggled her out of a Patrol hospital."
"Which explains her condition. I can only imagine the gossip that will fly about this."
"Oh, it should be rich. Especially considering she was on the yacht Max borrowed."
"Alone and unchaperoned? Yes, they'll have a party with this. No one in the Empire will talk of anything else for quite some time."
I wanted to tell him he was wrong. No one beyond the Inner Planets would have cared. They had bigger problems. I was too
far asleep by then.
The rest of their conversation faded as I slipped under, lured by the drug into sleep.
My dreams were haunting. I searched for something I'd lost, but I couldn't remember what or where. Tayvis was there, forever turning his back and walking away. I woke myself more than once. Olin was waiting each time, with a glass of water or juice and a soothing word. We both pretended the moisture on my face didn't exist.
Chapter 9
"You've been staring out that window for hours."
Tayvis turned, enough to see his mother. She leaned on the back of the chair where he sat brooding.
She smiled and ruffled his hair. "Do you want to talk?"
"No," he said flatly.
"When you do," his mother said, "I'll be here."
She straightened, her dress swirling around her as she turned away. She paused, waiting to see if he'd change his mind. He stared out the window. He wasn't ready to talk, he wasn't sure if he would ever be ready. The betrayal went too deep.
He was sunk fully back in his black mood before his mother made it out of the room.
How could Dace do this to him? Lowell had promised, back on Viya Station. He would arrange for them to get in touch again. So where had she been for the last four months? He'd heard nothing from her despite Lowell's promises.
Dace had changed, maybe more than he knew. Maybe she no longer felt the same about him. She had been so cold, so aloof. Vance had been with her. Vance's announcement sounded in his mind, over and over, though each word only made the hurt deeper.
Dace had said she loved him. She wasn't the kind of person to say that lightly. He had believed her. He had given her his heart. And she'd thrown it back at him. She was just like every other woman he had ever known. Give them the choice of higher social position, money, fame, whatever, and they jumped at it. Why else would she be with Vance?
Vance Shiropi, son of Iniuri Shiropi, Speaker to the Council of Worlds, was a conniving, manipulative jerk. Didn't Dace see that? Or did she see it all too clearly and still preferred it? Vance was, after all, one of the most eligible men in the Empire. His mother was a member of one of the oldest aristocratic families, second only to the Emperor's line. Tayvis came from a family with no such connections. He had his mother, an aging vid star. His father hadn't had anything to do with him for years. He wasn't even sure where his father was. He thought at one time it was enough for Dace. He had been so wrong.
He closed his eyes, and still saw her, leaning on Vance in her silver uniform. The uniform was wrong. Lowell should never have let her enlist, even as an admiral. If he focused on that, then he could almost forget the way she leaned on Vance.
She had betrayed him.
Maybe you're wrong, a small voice in his head whispered. Maybe she has reasons for what she's doing. She still works for Lowell.
"Two days," he whispered to himself. She knew he was here, on Linas-Drias, she'd seen him at the party. Had the look on her face been shock at seeing him? Because she hadn't planned on him being there when she announced her engagement to Vance? What other explanation could there possibly be?
He'd give her two days to find him and give him something, some explanation. He didn't want to admit he was so wrong about her. He wanted to cling to any shred of hope he still had that she was playing some game for Lowell. He didn't want to believe she would really marry Vance. Not Vance, anyone but Vance.
Vance Shiropi had tormented him since military school when he was twelve. He'd thought he'd put it behind him. But the sight of Vance touching Dace, putting his arm around her, brought back all of the anger and humiliation he'd suffered for those long years until they graduated from the Academy. And Dace had let him. That hurt most.
"Malcolm," his mother said behind him. "You've been there for hours. Come eat something."
He blinked eyes that stung from staring too long. The sky outside had grown dark as he sat brooding. His mother opaqued the window, pausing uncertainly in front of his chair. She smiled brightly, falsely, in an attempt to cheer him up.
"I fixed your favorite," she said.
He made himself get up and follow her to the dining area. He couldn't hurt her, not his mother. She was only trying to help him in her own way. His mother was ditzy, capricious and elusive as a bit of fluff in a breeze. She tried, in her own way, to be a good mother. Just like she was doing now. But she didn't understand him, she never had.
He sat at the table and ate food that tasted like dust.
"You'll never believe the gossip," she said as he finished the first course. "It's all over the news. Vance Shiropi is no longer available. He found the most interesting girl to marry. But you were there, at the party. You'll have to tell me what she's like."
He froze, unable to force himself away from the pain his mother was about to cause him.
"All I heard," his mother continued, oblivious to his reaction, "is from Livia. She said the woman is an admiral in the Patrol. Can you imagine that? She's some kind of Enforcer as well, but she's really short. Is something wrong?"
Tayvis dropped his fork with a clatter. He shoved himself away from the table without a word. He couldn't bear this, hearing his mother gossiping about Dace. Knowing that everyone else would be saying the same things didn't help.
He left his mother's apartment, walking into the night without a word. His mother's worried questions followed him. He left her standing in the door, limned by the light behind her.
He walked for hours. It didn't help. The anger and hurt and betrayal were still there, reinforced every time he caught a glimpse of a news screen. Dace's picture splashed across every vid screen on Linas-Drias, and at her side was Vance, smiling his irritatingly smug smile.
Tayvis kept walking, seeking some part of the city where the news vids didn't constantly play. It didn't matter that he was walking into the seamy side of the city, where the crime happened and everyone outside pretended it hadn't. No one there bothered him, he looked too dangerous. His scowl kept even hardened criminals at bay.
He'd give her two days, though each minute was killing him. And then he was going to go as far as he could get. He'd escape the constant reminders even if it meant burying himself on a frontier world.
What of Jasyn and her friends? The thought crept in as he strode down a littered street lined by closed and boarded buildings somewhere under the high speed transport system tracks. Had Dace betrayed them, too, by dumping them for Vance? She loved her ship and her friends. How could she leave them behind?
She had changed. He had to face the truth. He'd seen it beginning on Trythia. Something on Tivor must have finished it. Dace wasn't the same person. He had to let her go. Just like Wirea. He'd loved her, or thought he had, until the night she betrayed him and left him for dead. He'd hunted her down. She'd left him no choice. He had to stop her before she compromised the others. He'd shot her, late one night. He'd only been twenty two, on his first assignment for Lowell. He'd held her while she died. He'd vowed then that he would never love anyone again.
Dace had caught him by surprise. He wasn't expecting someone like her to literally run into his life. She had been so honest, so open. He had a hard time believing anyone could be so utterly naive. And somehow, during the whole disaster on Dadilan, she had won his heart without even trying.
He still loved her. He always would, but he couldn't live with the hurt.
He kept walking, through the long night. He had no idea where he was going. He was trying to escape the pain. There was no escape. Dace had betrayed his trust.
He found himself outside the towering building where his mother lived as the sun was rising. He ached with weariness but he knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep. He didn't want to dream, not now that the dreams would be false.
His mother was asleep in a chair in the front room when he let himself back in. He paused, standing over her and watching her sleep. She wasn't young anymore. Age marked her face. She was still beautiful, graceful and elegant. She'd done her best for h
im, giving up promising vid roles if it meant leaving him behind. He'd grown up on the sets, always watching her pretend. He wanted something different in his life. He wanted it to be real.
He didn't fault his mother for the life she'd chosen. She was happy. And in a way, he'd chosen the same life. Wasn't working undercover for Lowell pretending to be something he wasn't?
That was what had attracted him to Dace. She'd been terrible at pretending. Or so it appeared. Maybe everything was an act. No, he couldn't believe that. He'd seen her at her worst, when she teetered on the brink of insanity. He'd seen her in situations that would have killed most people. And somehow she'd pulled through. There was a core of toughness and strength in her that amazed him. He respected her. And he loved her.
His mother's blanket had slipped down. He gently pulled it around her shoulders. She sighed and settled deeper into the chair.
He had to find a way to contact Dace. She wouldn't betray him this way. He couldn't believe that of her.
He went into the back office of his mother's apartment. It was the one room in the apartment that was truly private. Tayvis closed the door behind him.
He spent several hours with the city datanet. It took him a while to tease out the contact number for Vance's mother's apartment. He didn't even attempt to find the number for the official residence of the Speaker. Vance's father's number would never be listed.
Vance's mother lived apart from his father and had for years. There was no talk of divorce, it would be unthinkable in her social situation. Vance was the second oldest of six children. All of them had been shipped off to military school when they turned twelve. Before that, Tayvis had heard rumors that Vance lived at a boarding school for the very rich and very disturbed.
Vance had been arrogant and overbearing. He was a year older than Tayvis, but still in the same year at school. He'd gone to the Patrol Academy but he'd specialized in linguistics and socionomics. Vance found ways to sabotage him where he could. He spread rumors that kept the other cadets away from Tayvis. The Academy had been a lonely place, full of privileged rich children. Spoiled brats, most of them. Tayvis' mother had pulled strings and called in favors to get him admitted. He never had the heart to tell her what a miserable place it had been.