by P. J. Fox
Aria shook her head slightly. “I’m not,” she said, realizing as she spoke that she was telling the truth.
He held her against him, the scent of his cologne mingling with that of the night-blooming roses. Naomi looked back and forth between them. “So that’s that—you don’t care?” Her tone was disbelieving. “You don’t care that your so-called husband has been screwing around with other women?”
Aria met her eyes. “No,” she said tiredly, “I don’t.” And, then, before she even knew what she was doing, she was speaking. Some inner dam had burst, and the torrent of rage, frustration and just plain disgust it released would not be denied. “Naomi,” she continued, straightening, “you accuse me of not knowing my mind, but you’re the one who doesn’t. My questions, from the beginning, were about whether I could accept a new culture; I had concerns that you didn’t, because I understood better than you did what there was to accept. You claim to be so comfortable with our new world, but your frame of reference hasn’t changed at all!
“The issues you’ve raised and the conclusions you’ve drawn are Solarian. Kisten has other women in his life, so he’s not being faithful to me; if he loved me, he wouldn’t want to sleep with other women. Only a Solarian would think like this. Don’t you see, Naomi?
“Our morality is different than yours—which doesn’t mean that we’re immoral. Our disagreement isn’t over doing the right thing, but about what the right thing is. You can’t go around judging people based on what might—or might not—be acceptable on Solaris. He can have as many women as he wants, and he can still love me and want to be married to me.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath, astonished at herself for saying all she had. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand this,” she finished, “not me.”
Naomi held her gaze. No one spoke. What had made it so easy for Aria, herself to abandon the culture of her childhood? Most likely, she thought, the fact that following along with its implied rulebook had never made her happy. Being confronted with such a different set of standards had forced her to examine what she truly valued; nonviolence, chastity and equality of the sexes were certainly not things the Bronte valued. But what they did value—commitment, responsibility, mutual dependence—barely existed on Solaris. Aria wanted those things; she wanted to be protected, taken care of. She wanted to feel safe. Finally.
What she’d given up was worth the trade. Kisten was not, by Solarian standards, a good person; but he’d been better to her than anyone ever had been. Anger made her face flush, and her fingers tingle. Solarian standards were wrong. Why shouldn’t she accept certain things if, by accepting them, she could be happy?
“Moreover,” Kisten interjected in his slow, cultured drawl, “you’re being a bit of a hypocrite.” Naomi would have recognized that tone, if she’d known him better. “It’s something of a straw man, isn’t it dear, to prattle on about love and loyalty while you try to seduce your friend’s husband?” Naomi stared, for once at a loss. Kisten arched an eyebrow. “My personal life is not on trial and I won’t even ask how you’ve become such an expert, although I can guess. But it’s not as though”—he chuckled softly—”you were out here lecturing me on how concerned you were for your friend’s emotional welfare and urging continence in the interests of love. You were begging me to let you suck my cock.”
Naomi flinched, and Kisten’s eyes glittered. He was, Aria saw quite clearly, relishing her pain; not simply because he enjoyed inflicting it, although he did enjoy inflicting it, as Aria herself had discovered, but because Naomi had hurt Aria. Just as nothing would wound Aria more than being betrayed and abandoned—which Kisten knew—nothing could ever penetrate through Naomi’s defenses like this humiliation.
“However Aria feels about me,” he continued, “I think we can both agree that she has every right to be upset with you—you, who preach loyalty while displaying none. She, in her generosity of spirit, has seen fit to explain herself to you; and given you some excellent advice about the conditions of life in your new home that you would do very well to heed.
“I feel no such compunction. Your only place in my household has ever been as Aria’s friend and, as you’re clearly content to cast her friendship aside, there’s no reason for you to be here.”
Naomi opened her mouth and shut it again, an awful realization dawning in her eyes. “But…” she finally managed, the word dying on her lips.
“Go home.”
Naomi turned and fled.
SEVENTY-TWO
Neither Aria nor Kisten said anything for a long time. They stood together in the garden, listening to the noises of the night.
It hadn’t been lost on Aria, either, that she was supposed to be upset with Kisten for supposedly being unfaithful when Naomi, self-appointed champion of morality, was encouraging him to be unfaithful. That Kisten might have admitted to sexual dalliances was beside the point; if Naomi thought that he was guilty of such bad character, then why did she want to be with him? Did she presume that Kisten wouldn’t do the same thing to her? Either she was pretending that she wouldn’t care, Aria decided, or she thought that Kisten would be faithful to her if she were in Aria’s place.
Except, of course, by Kisten’s definition he was faithful.
The din of revelry seemed very far away, drowned out by the croaks and chirps and faint rustlings all around them. Something darted out onto the path, froze and was gone. Laughing, singing, the faint strains of music—it might as well have been coming from another world.
“Are you upset with me?” he asked.
She didn’t look at him; her attention was fixed on the pond in front of them. She thought long and hard about her answer, and he waited. She’d thought that seeing Naomi rejected would make her feel exultant, but all it made her feel was sad—for Naomi, and for them all.
She sighed. “No. I thought I would be, but I’m not.”
“You said our,” he responded carefully. “Does that mean that this is your culture, now, too?”
She turned, faintly surprised. “Isn’t it?”
“I want it to be.”
She smiled slightly. He offered her his arm, and they began to walk. The further they got from the house, the more peaceful the world around them became. Their silence, too, was a comfortable one.
Eventually Kisten began to speak. “I imagine that Naomi still keeps in touch with Grace. Grace is employed by an old friend of mine.” Aria nodded; she knew this. Grace was, by all accounts, making a modest name for herself as a courtesan at the aptly named Savage Club.
“Renta was…kind to me after I left Charon II.” After he escaped from the prison camp, he meant—the period of his life that he’d so far refused to discuss. Not that Aria had pressed him, she knew better. “She nursed me back to health, I suppose you could say.” He smiled that strange, sad smile. “It wasn’t love; it was friendship.” He paused. They continued walking. “I’ve seen her once or twice since we arrived. And the others….” He made a half-dismissive, half-hopeless gesture.
“She sounds like a kind woman,” Aria said sincerely.
Kisten stopped, and turned. “Aria,” he began, but went no further. His eyes were luminous in the moonlight. “I would never…have anything to do with any woman who wasn’t kind to you.”
She understood what he was telling her. She nodded again, thoughtfully.
“You don’t care—is that because you don’t care about them, or because you don’t care about me?”
That strange note was back in his voice. He stood perfectly still, his eyes on hers. Shrill laughter rang out in the distance. Studying him, Aria was once again struck by how young he was. Too young to be ruling an outpost kingdom of fifty million souls, too young to be so alone. He’d done so much in such a short amount of time that it was easy to forget—easy to forget, too, that he’d lost almost everything. At an age where many Solarians were, quite frankly, still living at home, he’d already risen to dizzying heights and been cast down. His parents, his siblings, his friends—everyo
ne who loved him was gone, ripped from him by death or simply by the sheer estrangement of distance. His own twin brother was a galaxy apart.
If he sought some form of affection, of recognition where he could find it, then so what? He’d grown up, she thought, in a bizarrely loveless environment. His relationship with his grandfather, even, while close was not warm. She slid her fingertips over his glamorous coat, and he shut his eyes briefly.
For the first time, she saw not the terrifyingly confident man who’d rescued her, wooed her with poetry and proposed marriage, the governor whose very presence in the room made people tremble, but a lost little boy who desperately needed someone to be kind to him; to love him, and to accept him, and to want him for who he truly was. How many people even saw him for who he truly was, instead of what he was? He was arrogant, and spoiled, and could be both demanding and cruel, but he was also so much more.
“Aria,” he said thickly, “I’m not normal.”
She couldn’t define the emotion in his eyes, but it hurt her. She withdrew her hand from his chest, that simple action enough to charge the air. His eyes held hers, the sense of expectation growing breathless. She could hear nothing except the sound of his quiet breathing and the beat of her own heart. Acting on overwhelming impulse, she reached up and, tangling her fingers in his hair, pulled his head down to hers. Her lips sought his as his arms closed around her, and she felt utterly lost in his touch.
She didn’t care; nothing mattered; she only wanted.
What, even, she wanted she couldn’t say—only that he was here and he needed her, and she needed him and in that sweet moment of abandon lay oblivion. He wasn’t the governor and she wasn’t his consort and there were no politics or parties or would-be mistresses. They were, alone in the garden, two painfully lonely people who had no one but each other.
His lips were cool and firm and his kiss itself was intoxicating as she sank into the warm circle of his arms and let herself be overcome. He held her against him, his fingers sliding up into her hair. She felt a delicious heat begin to spread through her and, oh, God, she wanted this man. She hadn’t thought it was possible to feel like this, especially not now. But she wanted him to take her and, more than that, she wanted to make herself a sacrifice to him. She wanted to worship him; she wanted to be the lover, the partner he so desperately needed.
“Naomi is wrong,” she breathed. “I do know what I want.”
He kissed the corner of her mouth, the soft underside of her jaw, the hollow of her neck. She startled, stiffening, as the first fireworks exploded in the sky. Pulling back slightly, still caught in his embrace, she stared up at them in wonder. “Oh,” she cried, “they’re beautiful.”
Explosion after explosion of color lit the sky, perfectly round balls like dandelion puffs and jets with streamers like sea anemones and everything in between: red and white and gold, purple and yellow and green. She’d never seen anything like it in all her life, and she said so.
“I love fireworks,” she said.
“I’ll remember that,” he replied with a trace of amusement.
She looked up him. “Do you promise?”
“Aria,” he said seriously, “you’re never going to escape me.”
Taking her hand, he led her out through the garden gate and across the lawn. The fireworks were still going off and she kept turning to look at them, anxious not to miss a thing but worried that she’d lose her step. They crossed from the lawn to one of the paths and she realized that Kisten was leading her to the other side of the compound. God was on their side, because they ran into no one. A few times they heard voices, Kisten pulling her into shadow until they’d passed. Neither of them was anxious to be spotted, and the whole production felt deliciously naughty.
“I’ve had enough of our guests,” he murmured into her ear, after one particularly raucous group had passed.
“Me too.”
They both chafed under the restraint of never being alone. They were alone now, creeping across the grass like a pair of teenagers. Aria looked around with interest; they’d come to a part of the compound she didn’t much frequent. These were, she knew, the bungalows assigned to junior officers—most of whom, being single, were assigned two or three to a bungalow as roommates. Which, naturally, made for a variety of entertaining complaints. Generally, dealing with such things was below Kisten’s pay grade, but a few of the more amusing—or horrifying, depending on how one regarded the situation—complaints had made it up to his office. No one, she supposed, liked living cheek by jowl.
He pulled her up the steps to one of the bungalows and produced a key from some inside pocket. She stared from it to him, astonished. “The house is between occupants,” he said.
“Where are they?” she asked stupidly.
“Dead,” he replied shortly, and turned the key in the lock.
The door swung silently on oiled hinges, revealing the abyss that lay beyond. The fireworks had ended in a heart-stopping finale, the most amazing that Aria had ever seen, and now the compound was cloaked in deep gloom. A few of the other bungalows still had porch lights on, but most of the houses had been abandoned and the guard towers and paths were never well lit for fear of destroying night vision. What ambient light there was couldn’t penetrate the depths of the house, though, into which Kisten now vanished. With a shiver, she stepped over the threshold and followed him.
SEVENTY-THREE
He took her hand and she jumped, squeaking like a kitten. He continually forgot how poor her eyesight was, at least at night.
“They’re…dead?” She sounded worried.
He smiled slightly. “They’re not still here,” he pointed out.
She frowned prettily, put out. Humor still sparkled in her eyes, though, like the reflected glow of fireworks. She’d loved them, and she’d laughed, and her reaction had been worth the cost—which had been outrageous. Still, he was realizing that he’d do almost anything to see her laugh.
The bungalow’s former occupants had expired, of course, during the same mutiny that killed Nan Jhansi—in Kisten’s opinion, no great loss. He knew nothing about the two subalterns who’d shared this space, though, only that their replacements were due to arrive on the next transport.
He led her up the stairs and into the back bedroom. The house had been cleaned, and all the linens changed, but it still smelled vaguely musty. An unoccupied house felt different than a merely empty house. He threw back the curtains, revealing a wide stretch of park and letting in the moonlight. There was just enough light, now, to move around in. Aria vanished into the bathroom while he stood in front of the window, staring out at his domain.
It was strange to think that he lived here now, that this was his home and these were his people and he was responsible for their welfare—their lives. The prince at last, his birds come home to roost whether he wanted them or no. The thought brought a wry, unpleasant smile to his face. He was still lost in thought when Aria reappeared, slipping his arm around her without thinking about it. She was patient, and he valued that about her.
“I miss the stars, too,” he said. “When I was younger, I used to lie awake in bed at night and name the constellations. They represented freedom—and still do. Only now there are no stars.”
There were, of course, but they were very rarely visible through the thick cloud cover. But Aria knew what he meant; she usually did. He pulled her to him, gently, and wondered if she felt trapped—by him, by life on Tarsonis, by a whole host of circumstances that neither of them could control. He sometimes thought that, if he could leave this place and take her with him, he would. But then he asked himself, what kind of life could they possibly have? He only had one skill, and that was command. He’d be useless as a householder; all he knew how to be was a prince.
He remembered, years ago, sitting with Setji in the infirmary. Not because he had any fondness for his roommate—he didn’t—but because he felt honor bound to do so. And he’d been vaguely worried that Setji’s tormentors might try to
finish the job. Their success would reflect poorly on Kisten. Setji, his hands bandaged and his eyes dilated from the morphine he’d been given, had remarked caustically that Ceridou prepared men to lead the empire—and rendered them absolutely useless in every other regard.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That I wanted a new life, and I got it.”
So, of course, had he. He wondered now if he’d been as content with his old life as he’d led himself to believe.
He’d had a pleasant enough interlude with Renta, when he’d visited her. Mainly they’d talked—and Grace, of course, must have seen him or at least heard that he’d been there. He hadn’t recalled seeing her. Renta was sensuous, and lovely, and he’d told her about Aria. She, in turn, had expressed satisfaction that he’d found someone to love and mentioned that she’d love to meet her. Kisten had wondered if it was usual on Solaris for a man’s consort to take tea with his mistress and determined that it likely wasn’t.
There had been one or two others, no one interesting. A great deal of the business of the empire was conducted in places where polite women weren’t: clubs, private dining rooms at inns. Men lounged around and talked and drank and made decisions that would effect millions while watching feather dancers tickle themselves in inappropriate places.
That he’d have the feather dancer afterwards was almost a given. Men tended not to respect men who ran home to their consorts like nervous toddlers being tugged along on apron strings. Which wasn’t to say, of course, that he had no appreciation of feminine charms; he was hardly trying to pretend that the same social conventions from which he’d benefitted all his life were some sort of onerous burden, or that his motives were for other than personal gain. However, he was at the same time a realist and understood that there was little room in the Bronte social hierarchy for what a Solarian would call fidelity—his personal inclinations aside.
He recognized how hypocritical this was; he wasn’t blind to the faults of his own culture, even if he believed in that culture and believed it to have tremendous value. The only man he’d ever consider sharing his consort with was his brother. Otherwise, he had a strong desire to kill any man who so much as looked at her wrong. The thought of her in another man’s arms was unbearable.