by P. J. Fox
She swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes wide.
Abruptly, he stepped back. “Don’t apologize,” he said. He sounded upset, but whether with her or himself she couldn’t tell. They looked at each other. She wished she knew what he was thinking. “We’re almost at the observation lounge,” he said, changing the subject. “There’s something I’d like to show you, if—that is, if you’d like to see it.”
After a minute she nodded. “Alright.”
She walked along beside him, her breath catching every time she felt the brush of his uniform. Something had—changed at dinner, and she didn’t know what. She thought about telling Kisten that he was a little high-strung and decided that might not be such a hot idea.
They reached the observation lounge. She stepped inside, and what she saw took her breath away. “Oh!” she exclaimed.
“I’m glad we didn’t miss it,” Kisten commented.
“But it’s—raining!”
Rivulets of water streaked the window, illuminated by the ship’s running lights. She felt like she was behind the wheel of a car, plunging through a storm, or in some kind of deep sea submersible.
“It’s a reservoir,” he told her. “It holds 140 trillion times the mass of water in all of Brontes’ oceans. Water is pervasive throughout the universe, although most of it is in frozen form. This particular vapor cloud is somewhat unique in that it’s emitted by a quasar.”
“A quasar?” she asked. Science had never been her long suit.
“A quasi-stellar radio source. Quasars aren’t stars; they’re luminous objects that inhabit the centers of very young galaxies. The bright radiation comes from the accretion disks surrounding the supermassive black holes at their centers.” He saw the look on her face and tried again. “We see quasars when black holes, which are sort of like enormous vacuum hoses, feed on the material around them. This black hole, which is hundreds of thousands of light years away, produces matter instead of consuming it.”
“Oh.” Walking forward, she pressed her fingertips to the window. Her touch was almost reverent.
“There’s lightning in space, too,” he offered.
“I didn’t know this could happen,” she said wonderingly.
“A lot of strange things happen in space.” It sounded almost like he was referring to something else entirely. He joined her at the window. “On Brontes,” he told her, “it’s monsoon season now.”
Aria had always wanted to see a monsoon.
“I want to go home,” he said quietly.
“Your home sounds interesting,” she replied, “but I’m not sure I’d like the food.”
She might as well have slapped him, so sudden was his change in demeanor. He tensed. She’d intended to make a joke. “Aria,” he began carefully, “there’s something I need to ask you.”
“Yes,” she replied, “speaking of questions, there’s something I need to ask you.”
He turned back to the window, not responding.
If he was going to keep acting so strange, then she was going to ignore him. She had a great many things weighing on her mind, and if she didn’t bring them up soon she feared she never would. Over the past week or so, Aria had grown too comfortable simply ignoring the things that worried her. There was so much to learn and see and do that, should she so choose, she could put them out of her mind indefinitely—a fact of which she’d grown painfully aware. And then there was Kisten, and his treatment of this situation as normal was oddly seductive. It would be the easiest thing in the world to let herself be pulled down the path of least resistance, until she lost herself altogether.
“The girls,” she began firmly, “I really think that—”
“The girls!” he spat, furious. “Always the goddamned girls!”
“They’re my responsibility,” she replied defensively.
“No, Aria, they’re not.” His tone was firm. “They’re their own responsibility and you can’t live your life based around what they may or may not want. Let it go; you’re not their mother. They’re all adult women and—”
“Autumn is not an adult woman, and neither is Isabelle!” Aria resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “I have every right to know what’s going to happen to them—and to Hannah, too!”
“Hannah?” he echoed, plainly confused.
“Yes, Hannah.” Aria turned away from the window and walked across the small observation lounge, putting some much-needed distance between them. “She and one of your officers—”
“Yes, I know.” Kisten sounded perfectly calm.
She whirled. “What?”
“Dan has proposed and she has accepted. It’s a bit quick, but they’ve spent more time together over the past week than most couples would spend together in two months on Brontes. She’ll be staying aboard Atropos for now, and when Dan transfers back to Nemesis she’ll move to one of the residential cantonments.”
“And you knew about this?” she breathed, feeling betrayed.
“Yes, of course,” Kisten replied, unmoved. “Dan is under thirty, which means he needs his commanding officer’s—my—permission to marry. I know his father, actually; Dan is a good man from a good family.”
“I can’t believe this!” Aria listed off what were, to her mind, both reasonable and obvious objections: Hannah’s age, the fact that she and this man barely knew each other, and the fact that, based on what she knew of Bronte culture, he might already have three or four women at home! And God, Kisten was so patronizing! How could he think that Hannah’s life had no relevance to hers?
“People come to know each other quickly in stressful situations,” he pointed out. “And Hannah is an adult, and capable of knowing her own mind.”
“She’s nineteen!” Aria crossed her arms. “Were you ever planning on telling me about this so-called engagement?”
“She’s barely a year younger than you are. Are you too young to know your own mind?”
Aria glared. She wanted to kick him.
“Your problem,” he added, “is that you’re a bigot.” There was a new and unpleasant edge to his tone.
“What?” she cried, scandalized. “I am not!”
“Would you still have the same objections if Hannah were marrying a Solarian?”
“Yes!” she cried. “Of course.” That her—entirely truthful—response surprised him enraged her further. She let him know what she thought of his assumptions. “This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that I think she’s making a horrible mistake, you fool! No woman, under any circumstances should get married in such ridiculous circumstances!”
“Even if they’re in love?” he asked, strangely quiet.
Her response was acidic. “There’s nothing a man can love about a woman after a week that isn’t superficial.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he replied. He hadn’t moved from the window and now he was regarding her strangely. Well, he’d been acting peculiar all night—and she still didn’t know what he’d called her at dinner, a fact that irked her more and more.
“What would you know about it?” she demanded. Was he now some kind of self-proclaimed expert in other people’s relationships?
He flinched.
“And as for Autumn, she is most certainly not an adult!”
“Yes,” he agreed, “I know. I’ve arranged for Autumn and Isabelle to live with my uncle.”
“Your uncle who tried to kill you?” Aria honestly couldn’t believe her ears.
“It’s not my uncle I’m sending her to be with,” he countered. “There’s someone I think she needs to meet.”
Aria paused, temporarily taken aback. “Who?” she asked.
“My brother.”
“Your brother?” she repeated incredulously.
Kisten nodded. Behind him, gilt-edged rain streaked the windows.
“And how old is he?”
“My age. He’s my twin.”
“What?” she gasped. “And you’re not consulting her?”
>
“No.”
Of course, why would he? Kisten never consulted anyone about anything—such as whether they wished to live on Tarsonis. “She’s thirteen years old! That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting.”
“And when she’s eighteen, he’ll be thirty-seven—which is hardly an unreasonable age difference. I’m not consulting her now, because she is as you point out thirteen. Or are you suggesting that I abrogate my adult responsibilities entirely and let a child decide matters with no proper guidance and no understanding of either her situation or the world at large?”
“You think I’m a child!”
“No, I do not!”
“You’re not letting me make up my own mind!”
“When Autumn is eighteen,” he replied, “she’ll be capable of making up her own mind. In the meantime, nothing will happen to her. She’ll grow up at court and be given every advantage. But,” he added, “I think she and my brother would be good for each other.”
“Life at court.” She laughed mirthlessly. “All these advantages—look what they did for you! You insufferable, spoiled, high-handed man! You can’t just arrange other people’s lives for them! They have a right to choose for themselves, whatever you may think. The fact that you’re high and mighty bloody Kisten Mara Sant is irrelevant! You might have the power to force people into doing things, but nothing gives you the right to use it!”
He absorbed this rebuke in silence.
“Moreover,” she continued, “I demand that you tell me what dulhan means!”
“It means intended,” he said flatly.
“Oh, I see!” Her eyes flashed. “And when were you planning on telling me? Or is my knowledge of this arrangement irrelevant as well?—and my consent, I suppose?” She laughed mirthlessly. “But you haven’t needed that so far, have you.”
“Tonight,” he said, still in that same strange tone. “I was going to tell you—ask you, I mean—tonight.”
She didn’t respond. She was too stunned.
“I didn’t intend…I had to say something, to explain that you weren’t a prostitute. Setji was…he made an unfortunate but, I suppose, entirely reasonable assumption.”
“Reasonable?” Blood pounded in her temples and she was developing a splitting headache. “That I’m a prostitute?”
He held up his hand. “No!”
“If you think that calling me a prostitute is going to impress me, Your Worshipful Holiness, then boy are you barking up the wrong tree! Maybe where you come from, it’s entirely normal to take a woman out to dinner, introduce her to people who treat her like a slab of meat and then justify it to her by telling her that of course they thought she was a prostitute—what else could they possibly think she was?—but on my planet we have a word for men like you: disgusting son of a bitch!”
“Aria, that’s not what I meant. I—”
“Or is it that you consort with so many prostitutes that he just assumed?”
That, she thought, from the look on his face, hit closer to the mark. “Aria—”
“Apparently you think I’m a prostitute, too!” Her anger was, at that moment, the only thing holding back her tears. “It certainly explains a lot of your behavior toward me over the past week!”
“Please,” he said, “let me explain.”
“The men on my world do not treat women like this!” Except she knew perfectly well that they did. But it certainly wasn’t normal. “The men on my world—”
“You mean your precious Aiden!” he exploded.
“Yes! He would never—”
“Then how come he’s there and you’re here?” Kisten demanded, rounding on her. “If he’s so wonderful, tell me that!” His eyes flashed with ill-suppressed heat. “You know what I think, sweetheart?” His voice had taken on an ugly tone. “I think that, for all your talk of the Union and social justice and these girls and how much they need you, you ran away from him. You don’t care about these girls; then and now, they’re an excuse.”
“That’s a hateful thing to say!”
“What, did you think he’d follow you? If he’d loved you, he never would have let you leave in the first place.”
“Maybe he’s not a jailer, like you!”
“Then I repeat: how come you’re here? What the hell kind of hold does this man have over you?” He ran a hand through his hair. “You ran away from the man you call a mistake, and what? You’re going to spend the rest of your life pining for him and talking about him in your sleep? Or is it that you intend to spend the rest of your life punishing every man you meet—or, worse, yourself—for his sins? Whatever those sins may be? Because you know you haven’t exactly been forthcoming about why you’re here. Even the girls don’t know.” He saw the shock on her face, and laughed. It was a hard, hateful sound. “Yes,” he confirmed, “I asked.”
Aria burst into tears. “You’re the cruelest man I’ve ever met.”
He took a step toward her. “Aria—”
“I hate you!” she cried.
Dashing the tears from her face, she turned and stormed out.
TWENTY-SIX
She was still fuming when she got back to her room.
God damn that horrible man! Her eyes blurry with tears, she fumbled the code for the cabin and bit back a curse when the door refused to open. His cabin, the toad. She’d been right: he was a jailer and he was keeping her prisoner. She didn’t want to be here, and she most certainly didn’t want to be here with him. How dare he tell people that she was his—and what else had he been telling them?
She was sleeping in his room, she didn’t think that fantastic powers of deduction were required for that one. The thought made her flush with shame—and something else that didn’t bear thinking about. She remembered the touch of his hand, and how he’d made her laugh, and felt disgusted with herself. She could almost still feel his fingers on her arm.
She stumbled through the door, exhausted. Garja had waited up for her, and was sitting at the table. “What,” she asked without preamble, “is a dulhan?”
The slave’s eyes widened. She put down her book, some syrupy yarn about duty and forbidden love. “You have…?”
“What does it mean?”
Garja considered the question. “As you know, our marriage customs are very old and, some would say, outdated.”
Aria snorted.
“Originally, we practiced marriage by capture and this, in the theoretical sense, is still the ideal. A man proves his worthiness of a woman by…winning her hand? Would that be the term?” She shook her head, debating with herself. “In reality, though, this is highly impractical. What if the woman dislikes the man, or there is no opportunity for them to marry at present? Then,” continued Garja, answering her own question, “there is a problem. So, in theory marriage is spontaneous but, in practice, there is usually some discussion.”
Aria nodded. She knew this.
“When a couple decides to marry but cannot, for example due to the woman being underage or some such, or sometimes when they make an arrangement….”
“What kind of arrangement?” Aria sat down at the map table. Her feet hurt. Her heart hurt.
Garja chose her words carefully, sensing a problem. She and Aria had passed any number of hours teaching each other about their respective cultures, so Garja sensed something of the divide that separated them when it came to matters of the heart. Still, despite being a slave—Aria had not yet managed to convince Garja that she was, in fact, oppressed—she seemed anxious to present her own culture in a positive light. Perhaps because Garja was fond of Kisten; not in the sense of a romantic interest, but as one might regard an older brother. Kisten’s entire household staff seemed to have an odd attitude toward him, treating him with a sort of fond tolerance and encouraging Aria to do the same.
Garja’s family had been owned by Kisten’s for generations. Garja’s parents, who still lived on Brontes and had been married for decades, met when her mother came out to the stables to find out why one of the grooms was
stealing halwa for the horses. The groom in question, Garja’s father, had had no explanation to offer other than that they liked it. These, he’d told the astonished pastry chef, were not drudges but the finest race horses on Brontes.
She brewed them both tea and joined Aria at the table. “When a man has not yet convinced a woman of his intentions, or worthiness, sometimes she—if she’s a very kind and generous woman—gives him a chance to do so. Perhaps a week, or even a month or two, during which time she gives him the right to—court her? I think that would be the correct term.”
Aria frowned.
“My mother did not wish to marry my father, at first, and it took him a long time to convince her!” Garja giggled.
The Bronte system of class and caste had, Aria had discovered, nothing to do with Solarian notions of slavery and freedom. By Solarian definitions, no one on Brontes was a slave and yet everyone was. Everyone had a prescribed role, and duties; people didn’t spend time finding themselves like they did on Solaris. But, at the same time, everyone had certain basic rights: to food, shelter, medical care, and education. Garja, like her parents, had the right to marry whomever she chose. If she married another slave, Kisten would either have to purchase that slave or sell Garja. The decision would be Garja’s and her new husband’s, and no one else’s. And if and when they had children, Kisten would be bound by law to support them, too. If, on the other hand, Garja married someone who was not a slave then she herself would become free. Not a citizen, because she already was one, but free.
Which confused Aria most of all. So-called slaves on Brontes couldn’t buy or sell goods in their own name but they could—and did—vote. The term slave, to Aria, had always conjured up visions of wretched non-entities. But Garja had a better lifestyle than Aria’s parents.
Aria dropped her head into the curve of her arm, resting her cheek against the cool surface of the scarred, pitted wood.