by Jaleta Clegg
The tiny robot scuttled out and cleaned around me. I remembered Luke’s warning not to mess with anything in the room. I left it alone, watching its mindless cleaning for lack of anything else to watch. I didn’t want to go back in his cave. Madness crept too close in the utter dark and silence of it.
Rinth came at sunset again. He said nothing. I pulled on the first evening dress I touched, a froth of silver and blue lace. I grabbed a pair of shoes and blindly put them on. I wasn’t going to bother with cosmetics, until I saw my pale face in the mirror. My eyes looked huge with dark smudges beneath them.
I surveyed the dozens of bottles and jars. I read labels, trying to group them together by purpose. They were all soft pastel shades, pinks, lavenders, peaches, and delicate glittering gold and silver. I brushed them lightly on various parts of my face. It helped a bit.
I went with Rinth to the huge dining room, my heels clicking on the marbled stairs, sinking soundlessly into the carpets.
Luke had his back to us, facing a sky dark with thunderclouds in the distance, fading daylight gilding their underbellies. Lightning flickered along distant hills. I waited near the door, Rinth’s hand holding my arm, threat unspoken. Luke finally turned around. He wore a high collared tunic of burnt gold that caught the light in liquid ripples.
“Miya,” he greeted me, his voice neutral.
“Gentle Hom,” I replied demurely, looking at the floor. I was afraid he’d see the truth in my eyes if he looked too close.
He was standing in front of me before I knew it. The carpet would have made a whole division of ground troops silent. He lifted my chin with one finger, forcing me to look at him. My expression must have been cowed enough. He held my face cupped in his hand. I was scared, and let it show. He smiled and turned away, satisfied by what he saw.
“Come and sit,” he said, leading the way to the table.
Rinth followed me like a bulky shadow. I sat at the far end of the long table. White lace covered it, a delicate piece that costs thousands. A single low spray of flowers decorated the middle of the table, their fragrance wafting teasingly past me. The first course was served by a silent woman, tiny bowls of clear soup with fragile flowers floating on top. I waited, watching Luke and copying what he did. I’d never seen that many forks and spoons in one place in my life. I tried not to be obvious, but wasn’t very successful.
“Sweet Miya,” Luke finally said as the soup was cleared away by the silent woman, less noticeable than the furniture. “Your father shouldn’t have kept you in such seclusion. Didn’t they teach deportment at all of those exclusive boarding schools? Or has it been so long since you’ve been out that you’ve forgotten?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said carefully as the second course, a sprinkling of greens, was served.
“Don’t play coy. I would have kidnapped you years ago if I’d known where your father was hiding you. Probably to prevent just such an attempt at coercion.” He was cavalier about taking me, about keeping me prisoner. He acted as if it were a game, as if I should be flattered by his attentions. “It was pure luck that some business associates of mine saw you at the nightclub. Slumming with the lower classes, were you?”
I made a noncommittal sound and picked at the salad.
“Miya, please. Your sulking is in poor taste. What more could I offer you? My home has every luxury possible.”
“You could let me go,” I said before I lost my nerve.
He chuckled, low and rich. “Your spirit is as unbroken as ever, I see.” He leaned back, watching me over the flowers. “Perhaps I’ll keep you. After your father pays for your return, of course. My whole aim is to bankrupt him. Nothing personal against you.”
“Then deal with him and let me go,” I said, made bold by his genial manner.
“No, Miya. I think I’ll keep you here until you accept me. You’d make a lovely addition to my collection. Tell me, Miya my sweet, what do you think of Lord Dalbey’s proposal?”
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. I looked at him blankly and hoped I wasn’t giving myself away.
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t you follow the local politics? Oh, I forgot, how clumsy of me. You’ve been locked away in seclusion, which rather begs the question. Why do you object to your seclusion here? You should be well used to it.”
I looked down at the main course that had been served.
“Is it overdone? I will have the cook beaten.”
“No,” I protested. He would beat the innocent cook, I knew it. “The food is wonderful.”
“Then you object to the company?” His voice warned me to be very careful how I answered him.
“The days grow long,” I said and tried to smile, tried to pretend I was a bored spoiled rich girl with nothing to occupy her hours.
“You wish entertainment?” He smiled, pretending to be the congenial host I knew he was not. “I will see what I can arrange for you.”
The sunset faded outside. Flashes of lightning played along hills very far away, thin flickers of light. We floated alone in a pool of sourceless golden light. I picked at my food, too nervous to taste it.
Dessert was finally served, a shimmering frozen confection that melted on my tongue. I would have loved it, if I weren’t eating with a man who would kill me, no, make that torture me, without a qualm.
He finally rose from his seat. I stood quickly, relieved that the endless dinner was over. He frowned.
“Miya, though you look lovely, you really must try harder to be a better hostess.” He crossed the carpet to me, soundless and lithe as a jungle hunter. “Try to show some wit, some humor. I prefer my women with something behind their eyes.” I heard the threat hiding in his casual tone. It didn’t matter if I didn’t want to be his woman. He would hurt me in ways that didn’t show to get what he wanted. I saw the total ruthlessness in him and shivered.
Chapter Seventeen
The next morning I found a viewer in the sitting room loaded with a variety of magazines, mostly fashion and entertainment with a touch of politics and current events. I wasn’t familiar with anything they mentioned. I passed the day browsing through them.
Dinner was tense, at least on my part. Luke had invited a man he referred to as his second, a scarred, evil looking man called Lopei. He apparently understood Luke’s charade as the host of a social party. He played the part of the charming, slightly drunk guest. I was expected to be a charming hostess. I was a miserable failure and only cared because of the threat I read in Luke’s eyes.
The thunderstorms moved in close that night, streaking the sky beyond the window with bolts of fury that sent flashes of light across us. It was bizarre and unsettling, like a nightmare come to life.
Luke finally sent me away with Rinth, claiming he needed to discuss a few matters with Lopei.
The reader was gone in the morning, punishment for my failure the night before. I spent the day watching gray rain fall on the forests and fighting depression. It would be easy to slip into character, become the woman to fit Luke’s expectations. It would be easy to give up and know that no one would ever find me here.
I had no idea how long I’d been missing. The drugs they’d used had completely messed up my sense of time. It had been long enough that I had lost weight, not that I had much to lose. I was too thin now, and Luke wasn’t fattening me up. Meals in my room, breakfast and lunch, were light, and the dinners were too nerve wracking to allow me to eat much.
However much time had passed, someone should have been looking for me. Unless they thought I was dead. I sat on the plush carpet and stared at water dripping down the window, trying to dredge up memories of the kidnapping. I’d fallen off the balcony of the nightclub, high above the shallow ocean. No, I’d been dropped off. There was singing and a bright light that spoke to me. Or was that hallucination? Had I really fallen to the water? Try as I might, I couldn’t recall a thing after dancing with Clark that wasn’t suspect.
I sank into the couch, lying on my side and
staring at nothing.
Rinth came to fetch me for dinner. I ignored him.
“You wish the cave,” he said in his high monotone.
“No!” I scrambled up from the couch. Not the darkness, not the disorienting shifting. “I’ll come,” I said and went to change.
Lopei was there again. I glued a smile to my face and pretended to enjoy the dinner. The food was like rocks in my stomach, dust in my mouth. Luke nodded at someone, and a glass of the pink beverage was placed near me.
“Somay wine,” Luke said. “A very delicate blend. Impossible to get off this planet. It doesn’t ship well at all. It must be handled most carefully. Try it, Miya.”
It was an order. I didn’t dare refuse. Lopei watched me, his piercing gray eyes hooded behind thick brows. Luke smiled, his cold eyes watching every move, weighing every reaction. I picked up the glass and sipped. It was sweet, but lightly so, with a bite to it that tingled my tongue.
“What do you think of my wine?” Luke asked, eyes glittering behind his mask of good humor.
“Pleasant,” I said, unsure of what I was supposed to say. I had never had expensive wine before and had no idea what to expect. Or what Luke expected of me.
“Merely pleasant?” Luke said to Lopei. “A hundred credits a bottle and she says it’s merely pleasant.”
“Expensively pleasant,” I amended, trying to mollify the anger I sensed in him. “I have not had much experience with wines, Gentle Hom.”
He sat back, his ruffled outraged settling. “You have not had much experience of anything, except solitude.”
Lopei snickered at Luke’s insinuations. Luke shot him an irritated glance.
“I hope to change that soon,” Luke purred, watching me.
Lopei stopped snickering and watched me. I moved a fork a fraction of an inch across the spotless white lace. Luke heaved a theatric sigh.
“I suppose it was too much to ask for enthusiasm from you, Miya. Are you made of ice or is there fire underneath, hidden and only waiting for the right spark to ignite it?”
My face began to burn. I had a spark, all right, one that wanted to kick him where it would hurt the most then beat him until he screamed. I settled for squeezing my hands into fists, safely hidden under the table.
“I tire of your silence. Go away.” Luke turned abruptly, focusing on Lopei.
I rose and left as they began talking of shipments and collateral expenses. Rinth wouldn’t have let me linger even if I’d felt safe doing it.
The viewer was back the next morning along with a stack of recent news clippings, carefully edited. I was dismayed by the date on the most recent. I had been missing for more than two weeks. None of the papers mentioned a missing spacer. Half of them did have banner headlines on the kidnapping of the heiress to the Daviessbrowun fortune.
I read those with interest and learned a bit about the woman I was unintentionally impersonating. Her picture was included with one article, a tridimensional image that rose from the paper. It could have been me, with a very good haircut and skillfully applied cosmetics. She smiled at something beyond the camera, her hair a tumble of windblown curls that must have taken hours to arrange.
Arramiya Talieth Daviessbrowun was the only child of Brun Daviessbrowun, a businessman who had accumulated the largest conglomerate of shipping, manufacturing, and retailing businesses in over a hundred years. There was lots of information on him, glowing reports of his uncanny ability to pick what companies to buy and which to sell and when. Sketchy details hinted at a marriage that ended with the death of his wife in a tragic accident. Reading between the lines, I gathered his wife had been killed by a business rival, one that didn’t always play fair or by the rules. Brun responded by sending his only child off to a life of carefully guarded seclusion. She was seen rarely, always on her father’s arm at some glittering social event.
Rumors reported in one article, a gossipy social piece, were that Arramiya, Miya to her friends, chafed under the tight security. She was known as a bit of a daredevil, once stealing her father’s flitter to visit a friend halfway around the planet. She hadn’t been spotted for almost a year. She was reported to be on half a dozen planets, attending an exclusive private school or living at an artist’s retreat painting under an assumed name or possibly staying with several different friends. I wondered myself where she really was.
I made myself read through the rest of the articles. Luke would expect me to be conversant on them tonight, or the reader would disappear again and I would be left to listen to my own breathing. I read diligently until Rinth delivered lunch. The amount of food seemed directly proportional to the effort I spent doing what Luke wished.
After lunch, while the cleaning robot scurried around the spotless room, I pushed the furniture back and did my exercises. I could have done them easily in the bathtub, they were designed for spaceships with limited room, to keep muscles strong and reflexes sharp. I pushed and stretched, aching because I hadn’t been doing them regularly for a while. Then I took a long bath, soaking out stiffness and trying to figure out what my next moves should be.
For now, I would do what Luke wanted. I would try to play into his hands, get him to trust me enough to let down his guard. And then I would steal a flitter and escape. I had to get him to let me roam through his house. That was going to take some doing. My depression of the day before lifted with the storm clouds. No one was looking for Dace, captain of a small independent freighter, but they were looking for Arramiya Daviessbrowun, who had a very rich father.
I sat up too suddenly, floundering in the deep tub until I found my footing. Why was Miya’s father looking for me? He would know they had the wrong person. He had to. So why did all the papers report that he was distraught at the disappearance of his only child? Had someone else kidnapped her at the same time Luke’s associates had taken me? That didn’t make sense. Luke would have known about it and said something. He was arrogant enough that he would have made some veiled reference. No, the real Miya was safe somewhere. I would bet my life on it. I was betting my life on it.
So, who could possibly have known it wasn’t the real Miya who was kidnapped? Who could have the pull to make her father play along and pretend his daughter really was missing? I came up with one name: Commander Grant Lowell. He would pull strings, using me, in order to trap Luke Verity and probably his whole organization.
It was strangely comforting. I might hate Lowell, but I knew he wouldn’t give up looking for me. As long as I kept Luke convinced I was Miya Daviessbrowun, I would be safe until help arrived.
A thick knot of fear loosened. I took a deep breath, relaxing into the warm water. I was perversely grateful to Luke for the news clippings. He had meant them to upset me, to unsettle me. Instead he had handed me a weapon. I knew who I was supposed to be. And I knew who was looking for me.
I dressed for dinner, waiting until Rinth came. Fear and relief still warred in my head. Luke was dangerous, I couldn’t lose sight of that. I still had to be convincing. I had to appear upset and angry about my father; the news had said he was showing signs of physical collapse. He hadn’t been seen in his office since the demand for ransom had arrived. One interview quoted him as saying that he would give anything to have his daughter returned, unharmed. He had reportedly hired a physician to attend him.
I put on the first dress I touched, the same method I’d been using to choose my clothes. After I wore an outfit, it disappeared and reappeared a day later, clean and neatly placed back in the closet by invisible hands.
The act I’d prepared to feed Luke that night wasn’t the one I needed. When Rinth opened the door to the dining room, it was full of people. After so long in almost complete solitude, I was overwhelmed. I backed up and ran into the unmoving bulk of Rinth. Luke saw me and smiled, cruel and enjoying my reaction.
“Miya, my dear,” he called. All eyes turned to me. I swallowed very hard and stepped forward, away from Rinth’s furry bulk. Luke crossed the room. He moved like a cat, sleek grace
in action. His muscles rippled under his shirt, a sheer black that was open down the front, exposing smooth bronze skin and sculpted muscles. He knew the impact of his looks. His arrogant attitude showed in every movement. He took my hand and pulled me close to him. I smelled the spicy scent of expensive cologne.
“A gathering of friends,” he said and waved at the people in the room. “Come and greet them.” Or suffer.
He led me around the room, introducing me as Miya. They were mostly men, impeccably groomed and clothed, but still villains. I regretted my choice of dress. This one was low cut, held up mostly by gravity. Eyes inevitably dipped to my neckline. I struggled to keep my hands down and acted like I wore dresses like this one every day. Luke shifted his hand to my back, a gesture of possession that not one of the people present missed.
I did my best to memorize names and faces, not just to please Luke, which I obviously did, but also to use if and when I managed to escape. I had no illusions about who Luke’s friends and business associates must have been. They countenanced kidnapping, they had to be involved in other illegal activities.
Luke finally called for dinner to be served. The group moved to the table. Luke seated me next to him, Lopei on my other side. Talk was light, conversations touching on politics, on social gossip. No one mentioned the screaming headlines about the missing heiress. Dinner was a tense affair. I felt Luke’s eyes on me, I almost expected to see my skin burn where he looked, mostly down my neckline. I tried to breathe lightly.
“Tonight,” Luke announced when dessert was being cleared, “tonight we shall have a party. One like they write about in those social pages.” He lifted me to my feet, tucking my arm through his. I wanted to jerk it away and fought the impulse.
“Since my lovely Miya is dressed for dancing, we shall dance,” he said.
I was doomed. The only experience I’d ever had with dancing was that night with Clark, right before I’d been kidnapped. Luke would know I was a fraud as soon as we started.