Married. Wait! What?

by Virginia Nelson

  Jordan placed a hand on my shoulder. “We were absolutely not there with any intention to buy a wife. We’d stay away from that hellhole if we could. The problem is the only marketplace in the area is located there. We have to unload our… goods… there.”

  Why couldn’t I remember anything? How hard had I been kicked in the head? “I… I don’t know what happened.”

  “Long story short,” Bo answered, “we saw you go down, we saw you get hurt. The slave masters, bastards that they are—may they get put out an airlock—got frantic because of the chaos. All the women were down. Authorities look the other way on the illegality of…”

  River interrupted him. “Ha. There are no laws out here.”

  “There are so called laws,” Bo interrupted him right back. “Selling women, selling anyone, is frowned upon everywhere. They look the other way because the traders pay them to, unless it gets way out of hand. They started taking miniscule amounts of gold for all of you. Normally, we’d mind our business. There’s not a damned thing we can do.”

  I waited for more of an explanation. I knew quite well how little could be done to fix the situation. I’d been prepared to be sold for as long as I’d understood what that meant. Any pleas to the contrary went unheard, or worse, led to a good beating.

  Finally, when it was clear they weren’t going to say more and we were all standing around not speaking, I had to continue. “Why did you this time? If you wouldn’t normally intervene.”

  “They were going to sell you to a man named Davin Xavier. He wouldn’t have made you his wife,” River answered. “He buys women for more… nefarious purposes. We couldn’t let that happen.”

  I opened and closed my mouth. The idea of being sold was bad enough—I’d lived twenty-two years knowing it would happen—but to not be as a wife… That made me shiver, hard. I rubbed my arms. “Thank you.” A new thought blossomed. “Did he end up buying someone else?”

  Jordan nodded then looked away. “We couldn’t save everyone. We didn’t have enough gold on us to buy more than one of you. I’d have freed the whole lot of you if I could have. As it is, we had to marry you. Xavier pays the slavers for them not to care what he does with you, but we don’t have that kind of arrangement with anyone. The slavers insisted we follow protocol. We had to sign the marriage contract before we could leave with you.”

  River nodded. “So, we are married. But marriage, everywhere other than the slave-mart, requires consent. You didn’t consent. You were barely conscious. We can give you a ride to wherever you’d like.”

  They were being so reasonable. Tears flooded my eyes. This was… too much. In a universe where there was one woman born for every two hundred men, we were chattel as much as anything else. I had thoughts, opinions, dreams—at least until I’d known better—and yet, the only thing I was good for was marrying to increase my father’s fortune. There were all kinds of marriages, singular and plural, and yet I’d almost been sold to a man who wanted me for something far worse.

  I’d never expected kindness.

  “Hey.” Bo leaned to the side, catching my gaze. “You’re okay.”

  I nodded and wiped at my eyes. “Sorry. I know crying is… not the thing. I am so grateful to you three. Unfortunately, I have nowhere to go.”

  River rocked back on his heels. “Let’s have something to eat.” He extended his hand. “This way, Priscilla.”

  At the mention of food, my stomach grumbled. “How long was I in the machine?”

  “Just over twenty-four hours, enough time to get away from that station.” He shook his head. “We’re on our way toward Gamma Three.”

  I sniffed. “I don’t know where that is.” No one had ever thought it was important for me to learn space topography or universal lanes. They’d set me up to be a good, steady wife who could handle things.

  “Well.” Bo laughed. “It’s far from that hellhole space station.”

  The ship seemed smaller than the one the slavers used to retrieve me. It took us no time to get from the medical bay to the mess hall, with only one ride in a lift that was barely big enough to fit all four of us. Getting anywhere on the slaver’s ship had taken forever. Bo escorted me to a chair, and then they all disappeared into the kitchen area before returning with something that looked and smelled close to the recipe my mother used to cook chicken. River placed it in front of me before he handed me a napkin and some silverware. He was meticulous, as though it really mattered to him exactly where he placed each item.

  “Bo cooked. He’s the best of the three of us. When I cook, you’ll wish you didn’t have to eat.” As River moved away, Jordan placed a glass filled with water in front of me.

  Discomfort made me hang my head. They were being way too nice to me. No one had waited on me since I was a toddler. Anything I ate I either made or got for myself. “You don’t have to wait on me. You can point me to where everything is. I could even cook for all of you. I’m okay at it.”

  Bo returned from the kitchen. “We don’t usually have guests—or a wife for that matter—on our ship. We’re not really sure what to do with you. We’ll take care of you because it suits us to do so, and we’ll stop if it doesn’t.”

  They sat down around the table, each one with a plate in front of them. I took two bites. It was delicious, better than anything I could have made. Maybe he’d teach me the recipe. “So what do you do? On this ship? Some kind of trade?”

  River set down his fork. “Trade, of sorts. Honestly? I’m going to tell you the total truth because you’ll figure it out anyway, and we might as well get any scene out of the way now. We’re pirates. We rob the large conglomerates that make their money off the backs of the population out here in the middle of nowhere and give those they’ve practically stolen from nothing in return. We then take a share of our profit from it.”

  I waited for him to finish that thought. “And?”

  He looked at Jordan then back at me. “And what?”

  “You give the profit back to the population?”

  Bo set aside his fork and sighed. “I’m afraid not. That would be nice, but we’ve got to eat, we’ve got to live. We take our profit off the worst guys we know. That doesn’t make us good guys. But we were there to rescue you yesterday, and it turned out we do have a line we can’t cross. We had the chance to save one person from hell. We did it. So you have nowhere to go? What about back to your family? Kidnapping doesn’t have to be a disgrace. I’m sure they’d take you back.”

  It took me a moment to understand what he said. “Did you think I’d been kidnapped?”

  “The slavers took you from your home, like they do all the women they sell off. Poor planets, no one to protect them.” River took another bite of his chicken. “Where are you from?”

  I hated to tell them about me since they made my situation out in their version of the truth much more palatable than it actually was. “My father sold me to the slavers. He has eight—yes that’s real—daughters. He had us specifically to sell us. At eight, they stopped. I mean, I guess they didn’t have my older sister or me with the idea we could be money for him. It dawned on him at some point. This was always planned for us. So I’m afraid I can’t go back.”

  Okay. I’d said it. For the first time in my life, I’d told someone the truth of my existence and doing so hadn’t made me explode into flames.

  Jordan finished his food. He raised his eyes to meet mine. “Then you stay. Here. With us. On our ship called Malice.”

  “Now wait a second.” River shook his head. “We should all talk about this first. She doesn’t know us. We don’t know her. She might not want to stay here. It’s not necessarily safe for her to do so. She’d be what? All of a sudden our actual wife? There are plenty of places we could drop her off where she’d be safe.”

  Bo leaned back in his chair. “Where is this mystical safety, River Sandler? Do tell. Why haven’t you brought us there before now?”

  A low throb formed between my eyes. They’d saved me, and although I c
ouldn’t remember it, I’d always be grateful. Now I was going to be a huge burden. “I could earn my keep. I don’t need much. I cook, not as well as you did, Bo, but well enough. I clean. I can manage gold. I can fix just about anything. If I don’t know how, I can learn. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  Jordan shook his head. “That’s not how this’ll work. You’ll stay. The rest of it will figure itself out.”

  “Why do you suppose that will happen?” River shouted at him. “When does anything work itself out?”

  “She’s our wife.” Jordan raised his dark eyebrows.

  River stood. “In name only. We married her to save her. Not to have a wife.”

  “Well”—Jordan tilted his head to the side—“maybe it’s the wind spirits bringing us to our destiny.”

  Bo rose and started clearing the table. I wasn’t quite done, but I wasn’t going to tell him that either. He took the plates and, without a word, stomped off into the kitchen.

  “I’m not going to get into the wind spirit thing. I’ve always told you if you want to believe in the spirits from your homeland messing with your destiny you can go ahead and have at it. But in Sandler space, we don’t have destinies; we just have pain. We’re pirates. It’s no place for a woman.”

  His chair fell backward as he stood and stormed toward me. I swallowed. What was going to happen? Was he going to yell? Hurt me? Put me out the airlock? Instead, River extended his hand. “Come on, Priscilla. I’ll show you to your room.”

  I took his offered hand and let him lead me from the kitchen. He opened the door like I needed him to do it for me, waited till I walked through, then exited without saying a word. I stood, stunned. What had just happened? I was on this strange ship with three men yelling at each other about whether or not they should keep me.

  I straightened my shoulders. I would survive this. I would figure out what to do, somehow. Things could only get better. Okay.

  The room River left me in was small but clean. A bed that looked more like a cot stood in the corner, made up with a green blanket and what looked like black sheets poking out slightly from underneath. A closet was open with empty hangers swinging slightly from the breeze in the room. I didn’t know much about ships. Was that supposed to happen? Did they have some kind of environmental system? The temperature on the slaver’s vessel had been stifling. There was a table next to the bed with a small light sitting in the center.

  I’d never had a room to myself before, and even though I might not have it very long, I was going to appreciate every second of it.

  A knock sounded followed by a beep. I walked to the door, opening it to find Jordan on the other side. He smiled at me. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  I stepped out of the way so he could come in. Jordan wanted to keep me as his wife. What would that mean? “I think so.”

  He looked around the space. “I haven’t been in here in forever. River set this up for you. I can see his housekeeping skills have not improved in the last twenty years.”

  “Oh, it’s more than fine. Thank you.”

  He nodded. “You have the softest voice, Priscilla. Do you ever raise it?”

  “I’ve never seen a situation that improved by me losing my temper.”

  Jordan laughed. It was a hard, sudden sound, and it made me grin. “That’s true. But sometimes it makes us feel better just the same, right? Anyway, that whole scene must not have been comfortable for you. You see, those two men are like my brothers. We came together in a dangerous time and have been watching each other’s backs ever since. We have different backgrounds.”

  That much had been obvious. “The winds of your homeland.”

  “Right.” He crossed in front of the closet. “I’m from a small planet on the edge of the Dark Planets. It borders Sandler Space. It’s called Beta Delta One. But we call it Bertram. The winds are so loud they blow and blow. Even the local populations can’t really tune out the sound. Sometimes we can hear voices in the winds, and we think of them as spirits of our ancestors helping to shape our destiny. My other two brothers out there don’t have such beliefs.”

  “We don’t have them at home, either. At least not in my family. Father shaped our destiny. That was pretty much it.” I tried to picture his life and couldn’t. “What do you do on Bertram? What do your people do to survive? Where I’m from, it’s mostly farming and they have oil that the barons sell to the corporations.”

  “I see. One of the oil planets. Yes, I know them well. On Bertram, the winds blow and blow, and in the brief times that they don’t, we all find these.” He pulled a crystal out of his pocket. It was white and purple, every few inches changing in color. I gasped. I’d never seen anything sparkle in quite the same way. “Have you ever seen one?”

  “No.” I wanted to put my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out to touch the beautiful crystal. “It’s lovely.”

  Jordan took my hand and opened it. Without a word, he placed the crystal on my palm and closed my fingers. “It’s called vestibulum. All the richest women in the universe wear it around their necks or on their hands. Very rare. Very hard to get. More of our people die finding it—thanks to the winds and the animals or the sand storms and feuding war lords—which makes it even more expensive to have. It can also power a ship for brief periods of time if the fuel cells die. But its main use is jewelry.”

  It was hard in my hand, sharp. I imagined it would have to be shaped and smoothed before anyone could wear it. I opened my fingers to hand it back to him. “Thank you for showing me.”

  “That’s yours.” He backed up slightly. “For you. From me. I always said I’d give it to my wife.”

  “But I thought…”

  He shook his head, interrupting me. “Sometimes the winds lead us where we’re supposed to be. I’m going to choose to believe. Welcome to Malice, Priscilla. All of this is going to work out.”

  I was stunned by his kindness, my feet practically glued to the ground. He thought we were meant to be? And he was giving me the beautiful purple crystal? And he was so sweet I could barely stand it. I cleared my throat. I hadn’t asked the first time I heard the name because it hadn’t seemed the time. Now, I did. “Malice?”

  “That’s the name of this ship. Every smart man and woman in the quadrant fears us.” He winked. “You never will. Get some sleep.”

  I wasn’t sure if I would ever sleep again. How could so much have happened in so little time?

  2

  Three Weeks To Decide

  The next morning, I woke feeling more rested than I had in, well, ever.

  I didn’t know what time it was or how long I’d rested. The crystal Jordan had given me was on the table next to the bed. It shone slightly, one edge of it seeming to glow then the other. I’d never been around wealthy women, so I’d never seen it used as jewelry. I almost thought it a shame that they got smoothed and shaped at all. Maybe it was better to leave these things as they were when we found them.

  But what did I know?

  I got out of bed. With no clothes except the ones I’d been in for the auction, I was bound to get pretty smelly in no short amount of time. If I couldn’t find the washer, I’d have to ask someone where to clean my clothes. My attire was awful. Short black skirt, red V-neck sweater that showed off just how round I was everywhere… They’d been picked out by the slavers to make me more attractive to whomever wanted to buy me. The black high-heeled boots completed the look. Everything about my outfit was detestable. I was a simple girl who liked to be outside, not dolled up to attract sexual attention. A solid, steady shoed kind of a person. I’d taken the shoes off when I’d gone to bed, but now I had to put them back on. It wouldn’t do to wander around this ship barefoot.

  Sliding the crystal in the pocket of my skirt, I stepped into the corridor. As much as I was certain I couldn’t keep it, no one had really ever given me anything before. Everything seemed quiet, but farther along the corridor I could hear music.

  I followed the sound. The c
loser I drew, the more overpoweringly loud the beat of the rhythm became. Rounding the corner with my hands over my ears, I nearly collided with Bo. We banged into each other, and I almost went down, but he caught me in his strong arms.

  “You okay?” He laughed. “I’m like a wall unto myself. Knock into me, and you’re going down.”

  His wording sounded so strange, so foreign, and not at all how anyone on my planet spoke. It was kind of… adorable. Why had I thought he was so scary? “I guess I’m used to being the wall. I’m not small. Usually when people bump into me, they go down.”

  He shrugged. “You’re small compared to me. Did you sleep okay?”

  “Very well, actually. Surprisingly so.”

  “Did you eat?”

  I hadn’t yet, but I wasn’t hungry. Food in the morning was not always my best friend. “I’m okay. Actually, I was hoping to find a place I could wash these clothes. Or some soap to do it with in my bathroom.”

  His gaze traveled the length of my body as though he was checking out what I wore. It must have been a sight.

  Still, as his gaze took me in a heat started in the tips of my toes and traveled up my body, settling in my cheeks. Given my pale complexion, they probably turned bright red. The heat didn’t dissipate then either, but seemed to find a home in my core. My breath quickened and my heart rate sped up. I was…turned on by his perusal.

  It was impossible to grow up on a farm and not know the way it worked between men and women from a very young age. My parents constantly rutted, which was why I had so many sisters.

  I’d never felt the urge, myself. My mother had sat my sister and me down the night before the slavers came and given us a talk about it. Truth was, I’d been half paying attention, wondering if it was possible to run for my life and determining that it wasn’t. Still, she’d hoped we’d find our husband situation a pleasurable one. She’d been matched to my father without meeting him and had always found him attractive.

  I had hoped for kind, not sexy.