“This is Vashia.” Murrel leaned into her Shrouded husband and glowed like a candle. Rexr didn’t look away from her for a second.
“Your Highness.” His head inclined in Vashia’s direction, but his eye’s belonged to Murrel. “Murrel tells me wonderful things about you.”
“Thanks.” She looked over their heads and smiled at nothing. The big reels spun against the far wall, spooling out the chemical silk into giant skeins. They’d just seen the vats in the dyer’s sheds—the huge, dripping, colored masses that hung in row after row under the domed ceiling. Murrel hurried them through the buildings until they’d found Rexr. She’d summarized the processes as they went, and Vashia had to wonder how anyone could learn so much about the factory in such a short time.
Vashia scanned the reels and watched the sparkling lines wind around the smaller spools. Rexr looked a great deal like Tondil, with a lankier frame than Dolfan and shaggy, short hair. He acted like Murrel, swoony, as if his universe revolved around her sun. Would she have looked like that, if the Heart had picked a different man for her? If the stupid stone had made a mistake, why didn’t anyone speak up? She could understand why Haftan might keep quiet, but Dolfan? He certainly hadn’t spoken up.
Lucha watched the pair through eyes that grew dark and glassy. Vashia saw there the illusion that they’d tried to sell to her. Somehow, she hadn’t been able to buy it. Of all the brides brought to the Shroud, of course she’d be the only one dealt a scam instead of a deal.
“I’m going to take you to the weavers next.” Murrel faced them again. “So poor Rexr can get back to work. Tarren should be here soon, and then we can all go up to our rooms for lunch.”
“Tarren’s coming?” Vashia felt a flare of hope. That one, she’d missed more than she’d ever expected.
Murrel nodded and led them down the line of reels. She pointed out the extruders and confessed with a shrug that she knew nothing about the compounds used to form the fibers. Through the tunnel hall that led to the weavers, Vashia could see the landing pads. A second transport sat beside the one she and Lucha had arrived in.
“Is that Tarren?”
Murrel followed her gesture and nodded. “We sent the shuttle for her this morning. They’re taking a break in the tour, and I convinced Mr. Noll to let her visit.”
“I’m glad.”
“I thought you might want to see her too.” Murrel’s eyes dropped away, and she shuffled her feet. “Besides, you can help me convince her that she needs to cooperate.”
“Cooperate?” Vashia prickled. The last thing she’d do is encourage Tarren to join in on the happy-go-lucky act.
“Just help me tell her what she’s missing out on, what it’s like.” Murrel reached the end of the tunnel and looked back over her shoulder. “There’s something I want you to see.” She let her smile stretch naturally, wide and reaching her eyes for once. “I think you’re the only one on the planet who’ll enjoy it too.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, but turned and led them through the arch into the next dome. This one topped out a bit lower overhead, but the breadth of the floor stretched in all directions, and the air clattered and rang with the slamming of the heddles on huge looms. The machines hammered and thumped and swooped at either end of long warps, each in a pattern of colors so vivid, Vashia had to squint at them.
Murrel led them to the side, past the nearest weaving machine, into a side passage and a smaller dome. Inside this, the noise lessened, but a rhythmic staccato replaced it, pounding softly from a smaller, upright version of its massive industrial cousins.
“This is our personal house loom,” Murrel explained. “Rexr asked me to design some tapestries for myself.” She blushed outright and shuffled her feet again. “My sketches were rough, but I thought you might recognize this one.” She pointed up to the warp, where the design hung and shifted only slightly between the reeds. The majority had been finished, and only a small gap at the bottom still showed empty lines. “The workers did a great job from my awful drawing.”
Vashia did recognize it, but she couldn’t quite remember where she’d seen it. Two shadow cats posed on either side of the thick fabric. They faced off with a low Eclipsan moon setting behind them and a half circle reflection below. The design registered as familiar, and she stared at it and tried to imagine where she’d seen the black cats before.
“The original is in bronze,” Murrel said, “but I always loved the design, even as a child.”
“The library.” Once she pictured the piece in metal, she knew it. “The Wraith library has a frieze of this.”
“Yes.” Murrel reached up and ran a hand over the nearest shadow cat’s looping tail. “My father was the janitor there.”
Vashia blinked and frowned. The tone of voice Murrel used flowed naturally and without any bravado attached.
“I went to live with him when my mother died. She worked in the brothels, so it probably worked out better for me, you know? I got to play in the stacks all day, and I learned to read.”
“That’s where you learned all that stuff? About the Shrouded?”
“Yeah.” Murrel nodded and turned a smile on her, wistful, soft and totally unlike herself. “I read my whole life, Vashia, and I filled in stories where the books left off. So I always wanted to come here, to be a bride, but I never once could’ve imagined anything as wonderful as the bond for real.”
Murrel sighed and turned back to the library symbols, and Vashia couldn’t bring herself to speak at all. She would have bet anything that Murrel’s father really was a janitor, and that she really had grown up fantasizing about getting chosen as a Shrouded Bride. And if Murrel was now telling the truth, Vashia could almost believe her bonding had turned out the way it was meant too, that for Murrel, the Heart had actually done its job.
She could almost believe. The doubt whispered back to her. Murrel had painted the Shrouded in such a heroic light. Of course she hadn’t been disappointed. She’d been able to swallow the fairy tale hook line and sinker. It didn’t change the fact that Vashia was completely screwed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SYRADAN WATCHED the message scroll across the comm and fought to keep his hands from shaking. He was on his way to the throne room and only dropped in as a precaution. He might have missed the woman’s message completely. Worse, someone else might have wandered in and checked the screens.
He read the words again before sending his own message, not to the sender, but to the man now controlling everything on Moon Base 14. He punched the keys quickly and kept one eye on the door, one ear cocked for any sound of a visitor. Jarn should have had things fully in hand by now, but somehow, Madame Nerala had slipped his attention. Somehow, he’d left the woman in possession of a transmitter.
The bastard had damn sure better find it before she tried her distress signal again, before someone read it who might actually find it distressing. He watched his warning send and then toggled to Nerala’s call for help. The switch flipped under his touch, and her words shifted frequencies, blaring their message out into the empty atmosphere now, where they couldn’t do his plan any harm.
“So tell me the truth.” Tarren hung back with her as they crossed the hover pad. Lucha walked with Murrel ahead, leaning close and continuing their discussion of the tapestries the queen would order for her new, more modest, home.
Vashia happily let them chat. She’d enjoyed seeing Tarren more than she would have guessed, and a knot lodged in her chest the minute Lucha announced that the time for their departure had arrived.
“Is it like they say?” Tarren whispered. “Or is Murrel as full of shit as ever?”
Vashia stopped walking and looked at her. She let herself imagine, just for a moment, the two of them in a little, Shrouded house, selling at the market or opening a shop. It looked like the fairy tale now—that missed opportunity. Why rob Tarren of it just because she’d been snatched away by fate.
“Well,” she sighed and tilted her head from side to side. “
Let’s just say, I wish I’d stopped bathing when you did.”
“I knew it.”
“Yeah, you did.” A weight lifted and something in Vashia’s chest relaxed, letting the tension, the effort of withholding the lie, wash away for a moment. “You called it.”
“He’s not hurting you?” Tarren’s voice turned hard. She had no doubt the woman would take on the king bare handed if the answer was yes.
“No.”
“Good.”
“Come to the coronation,” Vashia said. “I’d like to see someone there that isn’t buying all the B.S.”
“Count on it.” Tarren’s face fell and she darted a menacing look toward the waiting transports. “We start the stupid touring again tomorrow, but I imagine if the queen asks for me, I can get away for a visit.”
“Then the queen shall ask.” Vashia stood tall and stiff and waggled her brows at her friend. Tarren dipped into a mocking bow, and all was right with the world—even if just for a second.
Lucha’s voice killed Vashia’s mood. She called from their shuttle and Vashia barely had time to roll her eyes at Tarren before scrambling away. She waved goodbye from the door and then tucked in and took a seat while the pilot closed the hatch. She fussed with her straps and avoided looking directly at Lucha. Part of her wanted to keep that feeling, the free, honest moment with Tarren as long as possible.
“Your Highness,” the pilot addressed Lucha from the cockpit. “The Gauss is a little squirrelly tonight. I’m going to use both probes.”
“Of course.”
The ship bobbled as the cushion flared beneath it. They listed to one side, then the other, and shot forward with little warning. Vashia peered past the cockpit to the strip of the front screen in her line of sight. They headed directly for the Shroud instead of back down the canyon.
“Peryl has already returned to the Palace.” Lucha answered her unspoken question. “Tondil came to fetch him after lunch. Apparently.”
“Oh.” What else could she say? Lucha’s tone left little question as to her opinion on the matter. She didn’t care to fight with the queen directly. Her close-minded ideas about her son just happened to set Vashia’s teeth grinding. “We’ll go straight back then?”
“Yes.” Lucha’s answer hovered in the air.
Vashia guessed she wanted to say more, but instead, a long silence stretched between them. The vehicle rose over the canyon lip, was swallowed by the Shroud before the woman spoke again. In the meantime, Vashia kept her eyes on the distant red blipping of the probes.
“Is Tondil my son’s lover?” The question invaded the cabin, too bold to be voiced out loud.
Vashia looked to the queen. She had no choice, the personal nature demanded it. Lucha’s eyes held hers. They blinked twice, wide and full of parental concern. Lucha’s eyes moved Vashia into answering though she detested the invasion.
“I don’t believe so,” she said. “I thought it, at first, but I’m convinced Tondil prefers women.”
Lucha’s shoulders dropped. She sagged forward and shook her head. “Peryl is in love with him.”
“I couldn’t begin to speak for your son. I don’t know him well enough, but if I had to guess, I would say no. Peryl’s affection for Tondil may have been more once, but now, I think, they are only the best of friends.”
“You think poorly of me.” Lucha waved a hand in the air, even though Vashia hadn’t been about to deny it. “I know. You think I judge him too critically, but it’s not true.”
Vashia remained silent. The queen didn’t answer to her, especially not in relation to the woman’s own child. She thought Lucha’s attitude stunk, but it was hardly her place to confirm that.
“I love my son,” Lucha continued. “I am not so backwards as you might think. I come from a very progressive world and background.” Her tone hinted at things even more personal. No wonder Lucha loved her Shrouded life so deeply. “But Peryl’s life here, his future, depends on a good bonding. Don’t you see that? He should have been the king.”
She stopped suddenly, and her eyes went wide. Her own statement scared her, the idea that the Heart had picked the wrong man, that she’d said it out loud. Vashia could see the self loathing cross the woman’s face. She was ashamed.
“Go on,” she said. “Peryl should have been king. Why not? Why didn’t the Heart choose a bride for him?”
“I didn’t mean to mock the Heart, or your place.” Lucha folded inward. If she could have shriveled into a ball, Vashia guessed she would have. The whole crazy Heart thing possessed them all.
“I’m not offended.” In Vashia’s opinion, Peryl was the only one who had a right to be offended. He’d never want a female bride and his people only brought the one variety. Had none of them the sense to see the flaw in their equation?
“But, of course, Peryl wouldn’t have been chosen. I know that. No bride would fill his soul the way the bonded must.”
“Then why not be happy for him? Why not let him find someone who will?”
“Because a mother wants her son to have the best. Because I want my son to feel the perfection that I share with his father. Is it wrong to hope for that?”
“Only if it makes him miserable, I suppose. Peryl seems fairly happy with himself.”
“How could the Heart possibly make him miserable?”
They stared off. The cabin rocked and danced as the Gauss shifted and fluctuated below them. The pilot kept his eyes on the gauges, though Vashia assumed he’d heard at least a portion of the conversation. That irritated her as much as Lucha’s attitude. Peryl’s choice in partners was his own private business, not something to be discussed like this, like some quirk that might be remedied by the great and mighty Shrouded crystal.
Vashia sat there and fumed for the rest of the trip. Occasionally the vehicle would bounce or list to the side, but she ignored the turbulence and let her thoughts boil freely. When their transport ducked down, back into the canyon and the safety of fixed roads, Lucha sighed and cleared her throat.
“I imagine you might understand someday,” she said. “You’ll have children of your own, and you’ll want them to have what you have.”
“I don’t want children.” Vashia watched Lucha’s face pale. She hadn’t meant it, certainly hadn’t meant to say it, but Lucha’s condescension grated. If she did want offspring Vashia had no intention of admitting it. And if they would have to be Haftan’s, then she hadn’t lied at all.
When they reached the royal complex, the hover car pulled gently into its home pad, settled as the cushion released it, and waited to be secured again. Vashia watched the door. She waited for Lucha to speak, to challenge her rough treatment of the most sacred thing on Shroud, but the door opened without further comment.
Vashia unsnapped her restraints and leapt from the vehicle. The winds smacked her back into the shuttle’s side, swirling and howling loud enough to drown out whatever the pilot shouted to her. She pulled her wrap up and ignored him, darting for the staircase without pause.
The Shroud frothed overhead. The force of the storm rippled her wrap and slowed her progress. She reached the hewn steps and started climbing. Leaning forward to lessen the force of the wind, she pressed each step up and kept her eyes on the stone.
She heard Lucha’s shout, heard her name wash away in the gale, but she didn’t understand why until her chest fluttered. She didn’t remember the breather, the device that rested under her shirt, until the fire bloomed in her chest. Her eyes flew up to the flags at the same instant her legs wobbled. A wave of vertigo tilted the staircase, and she fell forward into the dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
JARN CRUSHED his boots against the gravel, marching through the courtyard with two merc guards flanking him. The thick plants slapped against the mercenaries’ armor, echoing his footsteps with a wet staccato. Someone had slipped his noose and she’d almost ruined his plan without even knowing it.
He flipped open his scanner and waved it back and forth in the air. The s
ignal warbled and then pinpointed the saboteur’s position. The bitch had an emergency transponder. She’d hidden when his mercenaries rounded up the brides. Now she relayed her distress signal from some ferret hole in the women’s quarters.
Not for much longer. He followed the machine’s screech and turned left toward the nearest glass panel. The door slid open noiselessly, and he slipped into the room, waving the guards in and pointing to the interior door. One of the mercs remained fixed beside the glass, while the other crossed the room gingerly to take a post by the other exit. Jarn stood stock still and pointed the hand-scanner this way and that.
The room only had one other door; it sat open revealing the lavatory beyond. Yet the scanner whined and flashed a rapid succession of lights that swore his spy hid somewhere in the room. He stepped closer to the table, swung the scanner around toward the couches. There. A swath of wrappings draped over the farthest lounge, and he could have sworn they’d just jerked closer to the ground.
“You might as well come out.” Jarn sniffed and considered stooping to peer under the furniture. He didn’t care for the idea of catching a face full of whatever weapon the spinster might have snatched. “I know you’re there, and the boys don’t intend to let you leave the room.”
The fabric shifted. His eyes caught the movement this time, and he stepped sharply past the first lounge and slid between the next two. “Madame,” he said. “I’m certain you’d prefer to emerge with some dignity intact?” He pointed the scanner at the last lounge. It howled and flared like a supernova. “No? Fine.”
He kicked his foot out and pushed the couch over onto its side. The silk spilled into a pool against the carpet, and the scanner continued to sing. No one hid under the mess, however, and Jarn frowned as he reached his toe out and shifted the pile away. A transponder lay under the silk, abandoned, but still sending its useless message into the void.
Shrouded: Heartstone Book One Page 17