Bride (The Unity Book 3)

by Gilbert M. Stack

  Kole’s face grew solemn, reminding Jewel that there were questions remaining regarding his fertility. “Children and grandchildren would be a great blessing to both of our Houses. Let us hope that the Unity will grant them.”

  Jewel wanted children too, even though they had yet to work out all the details by which she and Kole would raise and educate them—Armenite customs were very different than Cartelite ones in this regard. She gave his hand a little squeeze. “Trust in the Stars, Kole. They’ve brought us together against great odds. They can give us children as well.”

  “It is our duty to give the Unity every opportunity to make our wish come true,” Kole told her.

  Jewel couldn’t be certain, but she thought from the twinkle in her new husband’s eye that he was making a little joke.

  The moment passed and Kole’s face returned to a typical Armenite solemn expression. “But our continued presence here is keeping the physician lieutenant from her duties. I should examine my new clients whom I gather are your former crewmates and brief them on my expectations for them.”

  Jewel felt a flash of guilt regarding those selfsame former crewmates as Kole escorted her from the room and back into the corridor. The Armenites had charged them with piracy for recovering abandoned armenium deposits in the former Ymirian colony of Valkyrie even though the Armenites had never been to the system before. Kole’s people cultivated the strange idea that all of the armenium in the galaxy belonged to them—thus the charges and the threat of imprisonment or execution. Jewel had successfully negotiated a stay of sentence but only under very limited conditions. All seven of the survivors of her old ship Euripides had been required to become citizens of the Armenite Hegemony and place themselves under the authority of her new husband in a role akin to that of bonded employee or indentured servant. Jewel wasn’t comfortable with this injustice and she wanted to make certain that Kole understood what she expected of him in his new role as parole officer. “I want them to be as comfortable as possible. I’m quite wealthy now and I’m going to take care of them.”

  “They have accepted status as thetes as alternative payment for their crimes,” Kole reminded her. “Comfort is not the operative concern here—security and punishment—”

  Jewel pulled her arm out of his. “They committed no crimes. They were coerced by your government on threat of immediate execution to accept this fiction—”

  Kole’s face hardened as he interrupted her. Any apparent willingness on his part to please her had just disappeared. “They are my thetes. That is not a fiction. However you think that this status came about does not alter the cold fact that it is now real. These former crewmates are now servants of our House under my guardianship. They will behave in an appropriate manner—”

  Jewel cut him off. “Some of these people are my friends.” One is my first lover, she screamed in her mind. “At worst we’re going to treat them as favored employees with a strict confidentiality clause in their binding long term contracts. We are not going to punish them for anything. The only people who did anything wrong here was you Armenites when you murdered the rest of our crewmates.”

  She was shouting by the time she finished talking but there was no give in her husband’s expression.

  “You are not their guardian.” He wasn’t shouting, but she was pretty certain he was as angry as she was.

  “And you aren’t acting as a guardian, you’re acting like a jailer.”

  “In situations like this, that is effectively what I am,” Kole snapped.

  There. He had said it right out. And Jewel was smart enough to realize an opening when she heard it and work it into her argument. She was a Cartelite after all. She knew how to negotiate. “And what is the purpose of prison in Armen? Why don’t you just execute everyone who commits a crime?”

  Two enlisted men turned the corner into the corridor, saw the Empyreal arguing with his new wife, turned on their heels and walked back the way they had come.

  Kole evidently accepted the decreasing volume of Jewel’s voice as a sign he could reason with her. He adopted a lecturer’s tone which she had heard other Armenites use when addressing those junior to them. “We only execute the prisoners who cannot be rehabilitated. We are not monsters—”

  “So why can’t you listen to me for advice on how to rehabilitate them? Jewel asked.

  Kole hesitated and Jewel pounced.

  “I have extensive experience with these people. I understand them far better than you possibly could. They aren’t Armenites and while they’re technically citizens of Armen now, they know next to nothing about the Hegemony and its customs. They were simply told that they faced execution for carrying out a salvage operation that would be viewed as completely legitimate by the rest of the galaxy. They’re angry and they’re scared right now. Let me guide them down the path to being productive citizens.” She hesitated for a moment, realizing that while productivity was of major concern in the Cartel Worlds it was probably less important to Armen. “Let me work with you on a plan to turn them into trustworthy citizens.”

  Kole mulled her suggestion over in his mind. She didn’t think he wanted to agree with her, but by all accounts he was a very intelligent man and he obviously saw some reason in what she’d suggested. “That sounds…sensible,” he finally agreed. “But be very clear, I am not surrendering authority over these thetes to you, I am simply agreeing to consider your suggestions in how to best rehabilitate them.”

  Jewel kept the sense of triumph as far from her eyes as she kept her feelings of disgust at the term rehabilitate. None of her seven former crewmates had ever been in the Hegemony before, much less been responsible to it. He didn’t want to rehabilitate them. He wanted to indoctrinate them. It was reprehensible, but Jewel was figuring out that Armenites could not be moved by head on clashes. They needed to be maneuvered by more subtle means.

  “What do you propose?” Kole asked her.

  “I don’t know yet,” Jewel conceded. “A lot depends on where you and I end up living. Apparently that’s not going to be in Armen like I originally thought so let’s just agree to move slowly with them. Lay down the big Thou shalt not rules so you don’t have to kill anybody, but let’s move more slowly on figuring out what role they will serve in our family.”

  “House,” Kole corrected her. “They will be serving our House through their service to us.”

  “House then,” Jewel agreed. She wasn’t completely clear on the distinction between House and family for the Armenites, other than that the House included a lot more people in it.

  “So shall we brief them?” Kole asked as they started moving down the corridor again.

  “I hate to say this,” Jewel told him, “but I think we ought to visit my parents first. I don’t like doing so, but under Cartelite customs, leaving the reception (such as it was) was poor manners and I think we need to patch fences there before my mother works herself into such a snit that she’ll feel the need to punish us for the next several decades. She’ll be difficult enough as it is.”

  “She’s a tempestuous personality,” Kole conceded with an unusually high level of diplomacy for an Armenite.

  “So let’s find out what’s happened to them,” Jewel suggested.

  ****

  “Luxora!” Alexandra Sapphira snapped when they caught up with her, Jewel’s father, and Nefer Reneb outside of the engine room of the Righteous Lighting. Jewel knew her well enough to recognize the combination of relief and aggravation in her expression. The five apparent diamonds that formed her bioware network glittered brightly on a temple two shades lighter than Jewel’s creamy brown skin. A king’s ransom in jewelry adorned her bright silks and light brown flesh. “Wherever have you been? If I have to listen to this boring self-important man explain the function of one more room on this tiny little military vessel, I think I’ll pull my ears off in protest.”

  Captain Sten Krell, commanding officer of the Righteous Lightning, bristled in indignation, but Jewel’s mother didn’t wait fo
r either him or Jewel to comment before she kept right on expressing her dissatisfaction.

  “And why are you wearing that drab gray prison garb again? What is it about these Armenites that insists on insulting our cartel at every possible opportunity?” Her mother’s voice rose to the edge of histrionics as she turned about to harangue Jewel’s father and Nefer Reneb. “Did we not provide them the hand of our beautiful daughter in marriage? Did we not fulfill our obligations under the contract? Did we not—”

  “Mother!” Jewel cut the woman off when she realized that she might go on this way for another ten minutes. “In most cultures it is considered a great honor for the captain of a vessel to take time away from his pressing responsibilities to give a tour of his ship.” She nodded solemnly to the man. “Thank you, Captain Krell, for endeavoring to entertain these ranking members of my cartel while my husband and I completed the principal terms of the agreement between Khaba and Delling.”

  A minute earlier, Captain Krell had looked to be on the verge of losing his temper, but now he bowed slightly to Jewel. “Duty requires us to show basic courtesy to guests even when they fail to respectfully reciprocate that obligation.”

  Jewel’s mother reared herself up to begin another round of indignant blather but Jewel cut her off with a flick of her hand indicating the gray coverall she was wearing. “And this is not prison garb, Mother. It is the generic clothing that men and women wear in the Hegemony when they are without rank.”

  “Without rank?” Jewel’s mother sputtered. “How could anyone suggest you—a principal shareholder of Khaba—are without rank?”

  “They have not,” Jewel assured her. She really didn’t know how she fit into the formal and informal social structures of the Hegemony yet, but her statement was still literally true. “But as my wardrobe, such as it was, was destroyed with the Euryipides and I have not yet had the opportunity to acquire replacements, I can hardly blame the Armenites for providing the only semi-appropriate garment they had onboard.”

  “I have brought you more than sufficient raiment,” her mother assured her as if she still couldn’t fathom how Jewel had put on the drab clothes.

  Jewel suppressed a thrill of excitement that flared up within her at the thought of getting into real clothing again for the first time since she ran away from home. It wouldn’t do to give her mother any opening through which to begin to dominate her again. “And those would be where?”

  “On the Heliopolis, of course.”

  “And you wanted me to walk naked through the corridors of the Righteous Lightning to the ship’s boat to travel back to your yacht to fetch the garments?”

  Jewel’s prodding only served to push her mother into making an even bigger ass of herself. “Well, if you weren’t in such a hurry to rush off and rut with your new—”

  “Alexandra,” Nefer Reneb interjected.

  Jewel’s mother turned on her. “I realize these Armenites weren’t holding a proper reception, Nefer, but there are still proprieties—”

  The chief negotiator of the Khaba Cartel cut her off again. “Alexandra, are you aware that there is one significant difference between a legal marriage in the Hegemony and a legal marriage in the Cartel Worlds?”

  Jewel’s mother hesitated. She obviously didn’t want to admit to her ignorance, but it was equally obvious that she had no idea what the woman was talking about.

  “In the Cartel Worlds,” Nefer explained in much quieter tones, “a marriage is complete and legally valid after the license is signed by all parties. If the bride and groom walk away after that moment and never lay eyes on each other again, they are still legally wed. In the Hegemony, the license is a formality. The marriage is binding upon the spoken oaths of the bride and groom followed by sexual consummation of the union by the newly joined. Lieutenant Delling and our Jewel, were completing their marriage vows and securing the future relationship between the Khaba Cartel and the House of Delling.”

  This information clearly surprised Jewel’s mother, but she wasn’t the sort of woman who conceded a point just because she gained more complete information that suggested her assumptions were wrong. “And is there some reason they could not have waited a decent period of time to consummate their marriage? We could have hosted them back on the Heliopolis where they could have bathed in ambrosia and started this marriage off in style.”

  Jewel was fairly certain that these ideas were not endearing her mother to Kole or the other Armenites present. Evidently, Nefer Reneb thought so as well for she once again diplomatically added her own thoughts on the subject. “Well, I for one, Alexandra, am grateful to the Lieutenant and Jewel for eliminating the last theoretical impediment to this union and securing the future of our two peoples.” She paused a moment before adding with a sly salacious grin, “and frankly, if I were in their shoes, I would have been anxious to get on with the more enjoyable aspects of the marriage as well.”

  She stepped over beside Jewel and slipped her arm into hers in a conspiratorial and friendly fashion. “Jewel, your new husband is simply scrumptious looking. I am simply dying to ask you about the full extent of his tattoos.”

  Jewel felt taken aback by the sudden shift in the conversation. Nefer Reneb appeared to be in her sixties, which for a woman of her wealth and station might well mean she’d passed ninety. It was strange to say the least to have her acting like one of Jewel’s girlfriends back on Luxor. Add to that that her parents were present and the conversation became even more impossible. At least the Armenites did not appear offended by the direction in which the talk had shifted.

  She wet her lips wondering how she should answer the woman. “They are…extensive,” she conceded. Then the absurdity of the whole situation overwhelmed her and she grinned happily. “And Kole is totally scrumptious, isn’t he?”

  “So is that Ren Farl,” Nefer confided referring to the Empyreal justiciar general who had worked out many of the details of the marriage contract with Jewel. “One thing you must credit these Armenites with is they know how to properly develop a man’s body.” She shivered in delight. “The muscles these Armenites sport, they may think they’re for military fitness but I find them deliciously decadent. What do you think, Lieutenant? Ren tells me that you and Jewel will be traveling to the Cartel Worlds for a time on a mission of cultural exchange. Do you think that you might show us how Armenites achieve such perfect bodies?”

  Kole inclined his head respectfully. “Like all worthwhile things in life, Madam, appropriately developed muscles result from hard work and discipline.”

  “Empyreals,” Captain Krell noted, “are perfect specimens of the Armenite species.” He said it in complementary tones, but the phrasing of his words reminded Jewel that Armenites consider the rest of the galaxy to be subhuman. Did that mean that they considered their Empyreals to be somehow more than human?

  The captain took a step forward. “And now honored guests, since your daughter and your new son-in-law have returned to your company, I must return to my duties.” He did not say this with any kind of genuine regret in his voice, although his words were polite. The expression of respect on his face intensified when he shifted his attention to exclude all but Kole and Jewel from his words. “And may I add that the honor of hosting your wedding will be cherished onboard the Righteous Lightning for as long as this ship remains in service.”

  Kole nodded solemnly but Jewel impulsively stepped forward and hugged the captain. “You have been very patient and most kind to me during my stay here. Thank you.” She tried to think of something Armenite to add. “May you and your crew always uphold the honor of the Righteous Lightning.”

  Captain Krell never returned her embrace but he bowed quite deeply when Jewel stepped back again. “I look forward to sharing with my children and grandchildren the honor of witnessing the early days of your ascension.”

  Jewel couldn’t help smiling. “You all keep saying things like that. I wish you would explain what it means.”

  Captain Krell briefly r
eturned her smile before snapping to attention, saluting Kole, turning on his heel and striding away.

  Jewel turned to Kole, an unspoken query on her face.

  “A little more patience,” he said. “It’s not a matter easily explained.”

  Jewel’s father, Amon Sapphira, had had enough of standing in the background. He strode forward and placed a fatherly hand on Kole’s shoulder. His skin was darker than his wife and daughter’s but still bleached in the fashion of their people. “So tell me, son-in-law.” His low voice rolled out across the corridor with what was probably genuine joviality. “Nefer tells me that you are to be an emissary of some sort to the Cartel Worlds. We had expected you and Jewel to return to the Hegemony after the marriage. What rank will you hold in the Cartel Worlds? Are you going to be the new Armenite ambassador?”

  This was yet another reason her parents had failed to emotionally invest in their daughter—if they were capable of such a thing. They had always expected her to effectively disappear after the wedding. Jewel wondered if they were pleased or disappointed to discover they were in error on this point.

  Kole took the question in stride, giving no hint at the negative context in which the Armenites viewed his coming visit to the Cartel Worlds. “I haven’t received my final briefing regarding my new responsibilities yet, but the Hegemony has decided to utilize my marriage to your daughter as an opportunity to increase our understanding of Cartelite views and culture. I suspect that my role will be rather less formal than ambassador suggests, but will involve meeting the elites of your society, examining your business models, and seeking out ways in which we can strengthen our relationship to the mutual benefit of both of our peoples.

  The smile on Jewel’s father’s face broadened. “Marvelous,” he enthused in a voice Jewel knew meant he smelled greater profits. “Absolutely marvelous! I’ll introduce you to all of my friends and personally show you around many of my businesses. This is a very welcome change in posture on the part of your government. There are so many areas in which your peoples and mine can come together to everyone’s profit.”