Orion's Price (Loralynn Kennakris Book 6)

by Owen R. O’Neill

Her soft words sounded unnaturally loud in the narrow space and Sonja jerked as if stung. “I have people looking for you!” she hissed.

  “I know.” Although Sonja had purged her xel to the bare metal and restored it from an authenticated secure backup, Trin’s bots were not so easily defeated, and they could still her track her. Mariwen also knew her husband had left that morning to be with his dying father, giving her the opportunity to send Sonja a very private message.

  “Why did you—”

  “Not here.” Mariwen stepped alongside her. “Please. I need to tell you. But inside.”

  She guided Sonja out the doors and across the compound to the apartment she’d vacated after their night together. Opening it, she ushered Sonja inside. Nothing had been touched. Even the scent of Sonja’s perfume lingered, a kind of olfactory haunting.

  “Nigel got a message day before yesterday.” Kat’s eyes stabbed her as soon as the entry shut behind them. “Said it was urgent—and very anonymous—asking where his wife had been! It was—”

  “I know. That’s why I asked you to come.”

  “Then it was you!”—her voice caustic and just above a whisper.

  “No, I . . . I didn’t send that message. I know who did. And yes, it was because—”

  “Who?”

  Mariwen moved over by the couch. “I can’t tell you. For your protection. Please believe—”

  “What did you do?”

  “I made a recording. Of the whole evening. Everything.”

  “You—you recorded us?” Sonja’s hands were gripping the back of one of shabby chairs, manicured nails biting deep into the padding. “How could you—? Why—”

  “And I collected DNA samples. Both of ours . . . together.”

  “Our DNA? You collected our DNA?”

  “Kat—”

  “DON’T! Don’t fucking call me that! Don’t you ever fucking call me that again!”

  “Sonja . . . I told you to leave. I said I’d do anything.”

  “But not to me! I never did anything to you! I love you!”

  “You’re the only chance I had. You wouldn’t . . . talk to him. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You didn’t have a choice?! You brought me here with your bullshit story! You played me like a . . . like a fucking violin! You kissed me—let me hold you and then—then—you fucked me! You made me . . . made me feel like you really—oh dear God—” She collapsed into the chair and began to sob hysterically. “And . . . you were recording the whole thing—everything, so you could—could fuck me again—”

  “No, Sonja. Please, listen. I need to—”

  “He doesn’t fucking listen to me! I can’t make him do that! Why can’t you understand?”

  “Please, Sonja—”

  “He’ll denounce me! He can’t go against Heydrich! Don’t you see?”

  “Sonja—”

  “It’s not like home! You don’t . . . don’t just sign a form and go on your way! Do you know what they do to women like us here? I’ve got nowhere to go! I’ve got no family here! I’ve got nowhere else to go!”

  “Sonja—”

  Sonja’s hands were gripped between her knees, the bones showing yellow through her white skin. “Why’d you do this to me, Mara? I only ever loved you. But it’s always like this, isn’t it? Every time I see you! I’m just your little fuck toy. You—you . . . take me out and you make me . . . love you . . . and then—then—you do this to me!” She curled forward and the sharp, wracking sobs filled the little apartment.

  “Just listen—”

  “Fuck—you! I can’t even—still can’t even—”

  “Sonja, please.” Mariwen’s legs were unsteady and it had become a terrible effort just to stand. She had her xel in one hand and was trying to pop the chip out with the other. It took three tries. “Here. Take it.”

  “Don’t . . . don’t . . .” Sonja’s face was pressed into the fabric of her skirt as the spasms rocked her from side to side.

  “It’s the recording. Take it.”

  “Don’t—” She lifted her head a couple of centimeters. “What?”

  Mariwen held the chip out, her hand trembling. “It’s the recording. It’s everything. The DNA scans. Everything. This is why I asked you to meet me. Take it.”

  “Wha—why?”

  “Please just take it.”

  Sonja straightened, painfully, like an imperfectly articulated doll. When she wiped her mouth on the back of hand; it left a thin streak of blood behind. “I . . . I don’t—understand.”

  “Please, Kat. This is all of it. No copies. No one knows. Tell . . . tell Nigel whatever you want.”

  Sonja reached out hesitantly and accepted the tiny wafer. “What . . . are you gonna do?”

  Mariwen dropped her hand. “Just go. Please. Just take it and go.”

  Sonja’s hand curled around the precious chip. Her jaw worked silently and Mariwen desperately wanted her to just leave. Sonja got unsteadily to her feet. Their eyes met for an instant and Mariwen shook her head. A new burst of sobbing broke past Sonja’s bleeding lips and she whirled about, rushed for the door, yanked it open and was gone.

  The door hung ajar for a few seconds, then the hinges swung it gently shut. The soft click of the lock engaging echoed through the apartment like a gunshot.

  Chapter 29

  Devere-Heydrich Residence

  Kosteletzky District, Halevirdon

  Halith Evandor, Orion Spur

  Children wrestled dragon’s tail

  “We will fight you all!”

  Star-eyed dragon breathed

  Black rain

  And put his foot down.

  Sighing, Lady Gwyneth Devere-Heydrich set down her stylus with a frown distorting her aristocratic features. Beautiful features too, few more so, and perhaps best suited to a calm, appraising smile, matured beyond her years and a touch cool to those who did not know her well (those who did, being few in number). Here in private, however, she could set aside the public mask, so vital in her position, and indulge a much fuller range of emotion, including vexation over this bloody poem.

  That epithet was, she could admit, unfair. The fault lay not in the poem, but her weak grasp of it. Written at the dawn of the atomic age by a Japanese poet trying to capture the unprecedented cataclysm that had engulfed his world; his personal world and the wider one, sending reverberations down the centuries that echoed even today. But faint distorted echoes, and while Lady Gwen could detect their first blush in the kanji she was looking at, how to translate them adequately eluded her.

  Her mastery of the ancient and venerable Japanese language (an eccentricity she’d acquired in the dark years of adolescence) was considerable and the sense of the poem was clear, yet so much was missing. It went beyond the shock of two cities razed in an eye-blink, each by a single object of insignificant size, marking the beginning and the end of times. It went deeper than the bewilderment of waking from the blow—that strange living vacuum of consciousness in which one moved and spoke and assumed all the manners of humankind but none of the substance; a shattered, memoryless interval that nonetheless made an indelible mark on memory.

  It teased her, and if she tried hard enough, she could almost see the poet, lit by a single candle perhaps, sitting cross-legged, looking down, head tilting to one side, the tip of his brush just above the sheet of paper, shivering with all weight of these feelings.

  Yet she could not—could not—find the proper words.

  Finding the proper words mattered, it seemed to her, mattered greatly. Not merely for the sake of art, though those considerations were not trivial, but because of the sense of foreboding that had grown on her these past months. For all the calamity it suffered, ancient Japan had not just survived, but thrived in the new age that calamity gave birth to.

  Halith might well have a star-eyed dragon in its own future—all the signs were there. Did her world possess the same phoenix-like qualities?

  A growing warmth against the side of her hip,
distinct but not unpleasant, alerted her, and banished the frown. Opening a hidden seam of her jodhpurs with the stroke of a finger—riding habit being height of fashion for the season—she pulled out a calling card. These useful articles were quite illegal within the Dominion, as they violated the encryption statues, but those with sufficient privilege and connections could still obtain them. The Heydrich family obviously enjoyed both to a most eminent degree, but in Lady Gwen’s case, the personal consequences would be severe if her uncle discovered that she owned several, and especially this one, for it was from Lady Sonja Geris.

  “Hello, Sonja. What can I do for you?” Something out of the ordinary, she guessed, for it was evident the other woman was struggling to hold back tears. Copious tears.

  “Can we meet? Privately?” Sonja asked in a grating whisper.

  “Certainly . . .” and paused as her mind started to whirl with the possible complications. “I’m afraid it will have to be here, however. Does that present any difficulty?”

  “No. Nigel left again for his father’s this AM. I don’t expect him back until . . . afterwards.”

  “Is it that serious?” Councilor Lord Geris’ father had been in poor health for months now and they’d cut the adventus tour short because of it, but Gwen had not known he was at death’s door.

  “It is. He is not expected to last the night. Nigel is preparing to be invested tomorrow.”

  “His mother?” The Councilor’s mother was known for her dutiful, if somewhat rigid, piety. Quite unlike her son.

  “She hasn’t made her election known. Nigel hopes to talk her out of it. If she decides that way.”

  Privately, Gwen believed that would be so much breath wasted. But she said, “May she be guided by a kindly Fate”—reciting the ritual words with every appearance of conviction.

  “Thank you.” An automatic response, nine-tenths distracted.

  “I have to make a few arrangements. Would an hour suit?”

  “Perfectly.” Another distracted response.

  “Until then.”

  “Yes.” A tremulous smile; the threat of tears returning.

  With a solemn nod, Lady Gwen killed the call.

  A few arrangements. First and foremost, that meant dealing with Svärd, nominally the head of her security team but actually a spy for her uncle. Accessing the day’s roster on her xel, she found the usual mix of reliable people and her uncle’s minions. One name caught her eye: Karla. He was listed as going on duty at noon, but Gwen had not seen him report in yet. Mentally filing that for the time being, she picked up her xel, set it to voice mode and made a call.

  “Dr. Van der Poel’s clinic,” the human receptionist answered promptly.

  “Please get the doctor for me.” Gwen had sent her credentials as well, and the receptionist sounded a little breathless in her reply.

  “Yes, ma’am! At once.”

  Dr. Van der Poel’s well-remembered voice came on the line. “Lady Gwen. Such a pleasure. What may we do for you?”

  “Mother is overdue for her next appointment, I believe?” The doctor had been treating her mother for some years for what they euphemistically termed a “nervous condition.” Part of that included a growing disinclination to leave the estate. This had led to the last scheduled visit being postponed, and until now Gwen has not seen fit to press the issue. But anything that had Sonja in tears was most certainly cause to press the issue.

  “She is. Though not markedly overdue,” the doctor temporized. “Have the symptoms increased?”

  “I think it would be well to have her seen.” A pointed evasion. “Today, if at all possible?”

  “Certainly. That will perfectly convenient.”

  Maybe not for those who were about have their appointments canceled, Gwen thought inwardly. Nor for the clinic staff who would now be staying late. Since her husband’s death, her mother had developed a horror of traveling suborbital (another part of her “nervous condition”) and Svärd would have to fly her, a trip of some four hours. A benefit, in this case.

  “Thank you, Doctor. I am entirely grateful. Mother will leave directly.”

  “We shall have everything in readiness, Lady Gwen.”

  “Of course. Good day to you, Doctor.” With a tap and a satisfied smile, she ended the call and pinged her mother on the household net.

  “What is it, dear?” Her mother looked up with a wan curve of the lips, a skittish expression in her sky-blue eyes. The famous beauty had worn out long ago, effaced by her husband’s appetites. Never strong to begin with, but endlessly pliant; a plaything to be shaped and reshaped, at once jealously guarded and contemptuously ignored, then suddenly freed, or rather just cast adrift.

  They had never been close. Pliancy Gwen could excuse. Doting servility towards a man like her father was another thing entirely.

  “I spoke to Dr. Van der Poel. He has time to see you today.”

  “Today?” Her mother’s brows creased.

  “It would be best, I think. Svärd can fly you. You can visit Wolfram afterwards. It’s been an age since you’ve seen him. He asks about you.” Perfectly true. Wolfram, an old family friend, had estates upcountry. A visit would easily occupy her through tomorrow.

  “If you’re sure, dear. This does seem a little . . . sudden?”

  “Your appointment is overdue, mother. And Wolfram will be overjoyed. You know how he dotes on you.”

  “As you wish, dear.” The smile fluttered at the edges. “Thank you.”

  “Of course, Mother. I’ll send Helva to pack your things.”

  The maid dispatched, Gwen summoned Svärd. This meeting would go better face-to-face. The security chief tended to be uncomfortable in her presence and she meant to amplify that today. Answering her call, he walked in, a professionally nondescript man of medium height with the grayish complexion and shocking white hair of a native Pindaran.

  “What service, ma’am?” Svärd’s disagreeable voice had a nasal edge that betrayed his unease. Gwen also noted he was working hard to keep his hands still.

  “Mother is going Dr. Van der Poel’s now. You will fly her. She will visit Lord Wolfram afterwards and spend a day there. Possibly two. Take five men, but leave Mulder, Jain and Karla with me.”

  “Now, ma’am?”—spoken with a grating edge, and his eyes wary.

  “Did I fail to make that clear? Helva has her luggage packed. You will leave as soon as she comes downstairs.”

  “Of course, ma’am. But . . .” He wrinkled his chin, intensely vexed at being caught off guard. Gwen arched one eyebrow. “I am uncomfortable leaving just Jain and Mulder with you. Such an arrangement is unsatisfactory. Allow me to select an additional man.”

  Unsatisfactory in that Svärd knew where Jain and Mulder’s loyalties lay, and they were not with him. Karla, she was unsure about. The handsome young man was new, charming and cocksure, and Gwen had not yet taken his measure.

  “What of Karla?”

  “I regret that he is unavailable at this present time.”

  “Why is that? And why did you not in inform me or update the duty roster?”

  “I regret to report he had an . . . accident. I had hoped—believed—he would be fit for duty despite that. I only just became aware this is not the case.”

  “Svärd, it is not your duty to report based on your hopes and beliefs.” She dropped the words one by one, like saltwater in an open cut. “If a man on your team suffers an accident, you tell me immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Perfectly clear.”

  “Then be ready to leave at once.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But about that additional man—”

  “Svärd,” she cut him off, “if your arrangements are so defective that I am not safe in my own house for two days with Jain and Mulder onsite, I shall be forced to conclude your services are no longer required.”

  The security man drew a sharp breath through dilated nostrils. “With respect, ma’am, your uncle—”

  “Does not tolerate in
competence.”

  A glance into her eyes subdued him, and his chin jerked in an abrupt nod. “Understood, ma’am.”

  “Very good.” Gwen turn at the sound of a light, quick step entering the room. Helva dipped a knee to her. “Is Mother ready?”

  “She is, ma’am. Descending as we speak.”

  “Excellent.” Gwen allowed none of the satisfaction she felt to alter her expression. “Helva, you will accompany Mother, of course. Go with Svärd and see she is comfortable. Carry on, both of you. There’s no more time to be lost.”

  Thirty minutes later, Sonja arrived. Gwen met her at the car park, gave her a lingering hug and conducted her inside. They managed to make it to the south parlor with every appearance of old friends sharing no more than a mid-PM chat. Securing the door, Gwen set the alarms and scanned for bots while Sonja collapsed into the chair nearest the entrance. Pulling over a matching chair—one of several, all elegant but fragile moerwood glimmering in the soft light filtering through the frosted dome that roofed the parlor—she leaned over her knees and held her hands out to Sonja, palms up.

  “Now tell me what happened.”

  The story came out, piece by jagged piece: fractured and halting. Gwen listened, silent for the most part, sifting the details, waiting out the tears that choked the narrative.

  When it was all over, Sonja, hollowed-eyed with exhaustion, held out the chip Mariwen had given her like a token of surrender.

  “That’s it?” Gwen nodded to the thin wafer Sonja cupped in her shaking hands.

  “Yes.” A tear-strangled whisper. Sonja cleared her throat. “I thought . . . hoped . . . maybe you could check it for me.”

  Retreating a few telling centimeters, Gwen pursed her lips. “Check it for you?”

  “You . . . know people. I thought they might be able to tell if it had been . . . copied. Accessed.”

  Holding a breath back with her teeth, Gwen reached out and gently closed Sonja’s fingers around the precious chip. “No. I can’t do that. You can’t give that to me—not to anyone.”

  “But . . . why?”

  “Listen. The instant that chip leaves your hands, it’s gone. And you won’t know where. You’ll have to trust me and whoever might check it and wherever the data might be stored. It never ends, Sonja. Once you let that go, it never ends.”