Lady of the Star Wind

by Veronica Scott

  “Grandmother never told me who betrayed us. She just told me you were dead. She said she had you executed.” Sandy unclenched her fists and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. She wouldn’t look at him. “Your punishment and death were all because of me, she said. On my head. My ‘escapade,’ as she called it, had cost her a good soldier. I never forgave myself for causing your death.”

  Mark didn’t know what to say. Her words certainly had the ring of truth. He held her closer as more details poured out.

  “I believed her at first. I wept and I raged. I demanded to see your body, but she said you’d been cremated. She assigned special guards to watch over me during my yearlong exile to her most distant estate. To consider my foolishness, she said. When my sentence ended, I stayed as far away from her as I could.” Now Sandy’s voice held a touch of proud defiance.

  “You cut your hair.” He felt like a fool the second after the words left his mouth, unable to block his memories of her long, silky blonde hair, falling around both of them as they lay together. Now he slid his fingers through the soft curls, massaging her neck.

  “One of my minor rebellions over the years. Princesses of the Blood are never supposed to cut their hair, but it interfered with my work.”

  “Work?” The word was incongruous in a discussion of anyone from the imperial family.

  “I’m a doctor,” she said with visible, quiet pride.

  It took him a moment to absorb the revelation. No member of the Zhivanov family had ever dabbled in real work, to his knowledge, much less undertaken something as demanding as medicine. Remembering his initial awakening on this new world of theirs, he laughed.

  Apparently taking offense at his amusement, she held herself rigid and shoved away from him. Hands on her hips, voice like ice, she said, “What’s so amusing about me being a doctor?”

  “Nothing, I promise you. I thought you were an addict. I’ve been watching for the shakes, waiting for you to start detoxing on me.”

  “An addict?” She raised her eyebrows as comprehension dawned. “Are you talking about the inject I gave you to put you out? You believed I shared my private stash?”

  “I apologize for misjudging you. I never dreamt you were a doctor.”

  “Oh yes, I can see how imagining me as a hopeless tranq abuser would be so much more in character for a Zhivanov.” She walked away. Seating herself on the ledge, legs and arms crossed, her body language was closed off.

  He walked after her, kneeling by her side. “I said I was sorry. My good luck to have you as my private doctor on this trip.” The remark won him a small smile. Encouraged, he pursued the topic of her career. “The empress allowed you to deal with the sick and injured?”

  “She didn’t pay much attention to me for a long time after she took you away. She’d made her point, and as you know, she had many potential heirs at that time. My name was far down the list. I don’t think she ever took my dedication to medicine seriously. Maybe she thought I was after drugs as well. She did say she found it politically useful to have the people see one of her heirs in a healing role.” Again, Sandy’s voice dripped acid. “In ’07 an epidemic broke out, some new virus we’d never seen before. The Imperial House proved especially vulnerable to it—genetic predisposition, we think. There’s research going on. I guess now I’ll never know the results.”

  “Why did you go with Portuc?” The choice puzzled him. She’d never been able to stand Portuc when Mark had lived at court.

  “What did Grandmother say when she had you kidnapped?” she wanted to know first.

  “Some cock and bull story about Portuc helping you in an attempt to find me. But you thought I was dead, so tell me your real reason.”

  She shook her head. “I told you. After you were gone, I was inconsolable at first. I stopped eating, lost interest in all the activities I used to pursue, avoided those friends who were still willing to associate with me. I was on a dangerous downward path.” A flush of embarrassment rose in her cheeks.

  Justifiably or not, he’d been completely self-absorbed in the tragedy of his life, the destroyed hopes and dreams. He’d bitterly assumed she’d continued her privileged life after he disappeared. If she wasn’t the one who’d betrayed him, maybe at best she might have cried a few tears. He’d had to believe Sandy indifferent to his fate or go insane. Confronting the reality now challenged his self-control. Needing a distraction and some distance, he went to tend the fire, feeding the flames a few sticks.

  She had more details of her story to tell, raising her voice to carry over the crackle of the renewed fire. “Whenever my grandmother talked about your death it was as if she withheld a secret, even as she forced me to hear horrific details. She could never meet my eyes when we talked about you, and evasion’s not Ekatereen’s style. When I conducted my own medical research, I also hunted for any trace of your medical records, any clue about what happened to you.”

  “Surely she had those destroyed.”

  Sandy shook her head. “Ekatereen is ruthless, not subtle. The men who did the experiment on you were killed. The records in their lab were destroyed, but it never occurred to her that the scientists would be proud of their work and make copies in defiance of her orders. Who disobeys the Outlier empress, right? The backup records were hidden deep in the Throne medical database. The researchers were clever about it, but I took care to learn how to search the nooks and crannies of all the data warehouses as part of my medical training. Told my instructors I might go into research and needed mastery of the databases.” She buried her face in her hands for a moment. “I wept when I read the details of what they did to you.”

  Silence fell between them for a few moments. Mark sat next to her.

  She rested her hand on his thigh. “Was it so awful for you, there in the Sectors?”

  He clasped her fingers. “Awful?” He considered. “No, once I got into the academy, I channeled my confusion into the training. I became one of the best damn Special Forces operators the Sectors ever had, doing nothing but wet work. Assassinations. I didn’t care if I lived or died, even after I got my true memories back. I had a hole where my heart should have been, which made me unstoppable. I’d take any risk. And every time, I came through. The medtechs would patch the physical damage, and I’d volunteer for another assignment even more dangerous.” He couldn’t stop the flow of words.

  “Was there—did you have someone in your life?”

  He put his free hand under her chin, gently tilting her face up to his. “Have I been with other women? Yes, I’m no monk. Could any woman compete with my memory of you? No. I formed no permanent attachments in the Sectors.”

  She blinked, and he took his hand away from her chin, embarrassed at his own vehemence.

  “I was getting blind drunk after Command mustered me out against my will, when four D’nvannae Brothers picked a fight with me in some dive bar. The next thing I know, it’s a week later, I’m sick as a dog from cryo-sleep lag, lying in your grandmother’s sitting room on Throne, listening to her ordering me to Freemarket to rescue you.”

  “But you did come for me.”

  Reluctant to say too much, he hung on to his self-control by a thread, unsure of himself. Unsure of her. This conversation had pushed a lot of buttons. He tried to lighten the tone. “My rates for rescue service are exorbitant. She paid. I’m a rich man if I ever get to Freemarket to claim the reward.”

  Head tilted, Sandy pointed her finger at him. “I’m on to you now. I see how you try to avoid the truth. I’m not going to let you push me away. You reappear in my life after twenty years, rescue me from Portuc and Barent—we need to talk, to figure this out. Figure us out.”

  Mark stood, stretching to unkink his back. Staring at the sky, dotted with stars but not in any formation he recognized, he said, “I couldn’t leave you on Freemarket, not with Barent Kliin on the scene, hatching his lethal schemes. My heart held nothing for you but hatred for a long time. I couldn’t keep my sanity
any other way. Your grandmother made such a mess of my life because of what happened between us.” He glanced at her. “Can you blame me?”

  “No. I hated her too. But we’re stuck here, wherever here is. I didn’t get the impression Lajollae planned to drop in on us with another globe to take us somewhere recognizable. We’ve both changed, that’s become obvious tonight. Can we take it one day at a time for now and see what happens?”

  He stuck out his hand. “All right, I can agree to those conditions.”

  Her handshake was surprisingly firm and matter-of-fact, not like a pampered princess with airs and graces.

  “What was the rest of your plan, back there on Freemarket?” she asked.

  “You mean the half-assed plan?” He gave her a lopsided grin. “Well, either I sent you to Throne on your grandmother’s preprogrammed ship, safely locked in cryo sleep, then made my own escape to the Sectors. Or—” His voice trailed off.

  “Or?” she prompted.

  There was silence. The faint breeze blew. Some night bird trilled a soft song.

  Mark blew out a gusty sigh. “Oh hell, some small part of me always harbored a faint hope. Depending on how things developed, I thought maybe you’d want to try your luck with me in a two-person starspeeder I’d bought with her tainted gold. I had it parked in a hangar off the beaten path on Freemarket. See if maybe we could make it across the Sectors border together.”

  “Claim veteran’s acres and homestead?” she asked after a surprised silence.

  “Get to know each other again, see if we had any common ground anymore. Well, what was your plan in going to Freemarket with Portuc?”

  “I couldn’t think of any other place where I might be able to get a rogue freighter to take me into the Sectors, if I paid enough. I didn’t plan much beyond reaching the Sectors, but I hoped I could—I don’t know, find you, somehow. I identified the planet you’d been taken to originally, to be planted as a sleeper spy. Obviously the trail started there.”

  The idea of her entrusting herself to the kind of sentients who flew smuggling runs back and forth through the DMZ made him shudder. He was glad Portuc had kept Sandy under lock and key, preventing her from carrying out her scheme.

  “And instead we’re here, wherever this place is.” He tried to divert the conversation away from the highly charged personal topics. “Maybe we’ve homesteaded an entire planet. Although our deed is restricted to this high-altitude oasis at the moment.”

  “The whole world can’t be deserted, can it?”

  “Until I find a way to get us off this mountainside, we might as well be alone. Ready to go inside?”

  She shivered a little, hunching her shoulders and glancing at the trees. “How long will it be before we know if there are other people, other sentients here? Will we ever know?”

  “Bored with my company already?” Taking his canteen, he smothered the fire, making sure the embers were well doused.

  She gave him a look he recognized from the old days, one of exasperation mixed with amusement. “Not yet.”

  “All right then, do your magic with the key, lock us in for the night, and let’s see what tomorrow brings.” He swung her to her feet, holding her for just a heartbeat longer than necessary.

  Settling in together on the large bed later had its awkward moments. He was acutely conscious of her lying so close, but she made no move that could be construed as an invitation to intimacy. Neither did he. He felt bruised from their frank conversation. Self-protective and uninviting, her body language spoke louder than words. He gave her the Kliin coat for a blanket and fell asleep on the opposite side of the mattress, taking care not to accidentally invade her space.

  Sandy slept later than he did the next morning, no doubt making up for her all-night vigil the cycle before. Mark took the duplicate key from its hook, eager to pursue his hunch about the fourth door, the one opening into an empty room. Gritting his teeth after the black key opened the portal for him, he stepped into the darkness. A sharp, hot pain flickered through his nerves, gone as soon as the sensation registered.

  The lights and ventilation responded to his presence. Striding into the huge space, he pondered the purpose of such a generous room. A garage maybe? Several hundred feet across the sandy floor from him stood a double door outlined in the stone wall. Holding the key in front of him, blaster drawn, he made his way to a spot that would be out of the direct line of fire. The portals slid open.

  He gazed across the arid wasteland he’d seen from ground level the day before. Walking a few paces out from the entry, all senses alert, he assessed the situation. Their door opened onto a narrow mountain pass, with another steep slope rising across the way. Only a few hundred yards wide, the valley ran to the right as far as he could see from his cursory inspection. Checking the compass setting on his wrist chrono, he confirmed that was west. There were no tracks or any other signs of sentient beings.

  I knew there had to be a way out.

  The day was already hot outside the confines of the Traveler dwelling, and there were no breezes stirring. He took another quick glance in all directions and then closed the outer doors, going “upstairs” to waken Sandy and share this welcome news with her.

  “What good does it do us?” Apparently, she was determined to be practical today. “You said yourself there’s no sign of other life out there. We’ve no idea how far we’d have to travel to find anything worth leaving here for. For all we know, the entire planet is deserted.”

  “We can’t live out our entire lives in this aerie.”

  “Why not? Can’t you relax and enjoy this for a while? It’s peaceful, we have food, water and total privacy. I don’t comprehend your insistence on leaving. I thought we wanted to get to know each other again. What better setting could there be? What’s your hurry to leave?” Tapping one toe, she glared at him. “Are you tired of me already?”

  “Of course not. We don’t have to leave today. I’m merely saying we can leave whenever we want. Come and see,” he cajoled, holding out his hand.

  Obviously humoring him, she grabbed a piece of fruit from the stash they’d stored in the “kitchen” area and followed him to the door under discussion. “Definitely Traveling,” she said with a sharply in-drawn breath as they crossed the threshold. “You’re right.”

  When they emerged in the hot and wind-blown pass, she did a slow 360-degree spin. “Did I really have to come down here with you to confirm how desolate the place is?”

  Hand in hand, they walked out into the flatter portion of the valley. Shielding her eyes, Sandy said, “What do you suppose is causing that dust cloud? Are we going to have a storm?”

  Unfastening one pocket flap on his utilities, Mark brought out distance viewers and scanned the area she indicated. “Tzerde. The question has been answered. We’re not alone.” Lowering the viewers, he grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the cliff wall where the opening to their temporary residence lay.

  Sandy yanked her arm from his grasp. Standing with one hand on her hip, she gestured with the other. “I want to see for myself.”

  Exasperated, he handed her the viewers and drew his blaster. “Look fast.”

  “Two groups of people,” she said a moment later, adjusting the focus. “One bunch chasing the other. What are those things they’re riding in?”

  “Low-tech civilization. Let me think.” Dredging up the memory of a long-ago class at the academy, he said, “I believe they’re called chariots.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I had an entire course of study on primitive peoples. Technology tends to evolve in similar ways from world to world. Sometimes we’d have to run a mission on a planet early in the civilization cycle, stuff like this, so we had to know how to survive, blend in. You can’t go around using your M27 indiscriminately if you want to stay undercover.”

  Still gazing fixedly at the horizon through the viewers, she said, “Seems I ignored a vital part of my education. I see this world has horses. I like that.”
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br />   “The Sectors exploration teams have found humans, whales, horses, cats, roses—a number of common-denominator species co-exist on the thousands of planets where our kind of life-forms hang out. Lots of theories, of course. Never mattered much to me. The people and familiar animals exist, along with a million unfamiliar ones, fact of life, end of story.” He grabbed at the viewers, wrenching them none too gently from her. “We need to get inside. We don’t want to be here when these people go careening through the pass.” Giving her no chance to protest, he picked her up and carried her to the base of the small incline that led to the opening in the mountain.

  As he set her on her feet, Sandy said, “You’re the one who wanted to find out if there were inhabitants here. Now you want to avoid them?”

  “There are no circumstances in which I’m allowing you to be seen by chariots full of armed warriors.”

  “There was a woman in one of the vehicles.” She climbed the slope, bare feet sinking into the loose sand.

  “I saw her.” Mark half turned, taking another look through the viewers.

  “The horses pulling the first three chariots are getting tired. Not going to be able to outrun the others much longer, even if their vehicles are lighter in build. And I doubt if they were meant to carry three people. Too crowded, no room to fight. Seven hells, one just crashed!”

  He swore again as one of the three chariots in the lead hit a buried obstruction and rose into the air, crashing down with bone-jarring force. The left wheel splintered. The chariot veered, throwing two of its occupants onto the hard plain. The driver’s face was taut with concentration and fear as he reined the two horses in. The panicked team managed to drag the broken chariot at least another hundred yards before coming to a stop. The other two chariots circled around. There was a rapid conference among the fugitives, with much nervous glancing at the oncoming enemy.

  The two good chariots rolled slowly away toward the base of Mark and Sandy’s mountain. The driver of the damaged vehicle cut the traces and pulled and tugged his spooked animals in the direction his companions had gone. One of the people who’d been thrown from the chariot scrambled to his feet under his own power and limped after the rest, stopping to make a cursory check of the other crash victim.