A faint, bitter smile tugged at Assistant’s lips. “I do,” she said. “Your father will never let me go. I am too dearly bought and paid for.”
Ari blinked. “Huh?”
“Do you remember that I was the only survivor aboard the pirate ship?”
“Yes.”
“There were not many of your father’s soldiers left, either,” Assistant said quietly. “The pirates were vastly outnumbered. But I assure you they did not go down without a fight.”
“Oh,” Ari said, feeling something cold settle in her stomach and chest.
“And there was nothing worth keeping on the pirate vessel,” Assistant continued. “All the information had been destroyed in the databanks. There wasn’t even any loot.” She smiled again, and again it was bitter. “I understand they’d heard that someone important was on the ship. But again, they came up empty-handed.”
“Oh,” Ari said again. “Um. H-how many people died? From the station?”
“Thirty-two, so I hear,” Assistant said. Ari gasped. “Felled by only nine of Mír’s people. And I was the only thing they got out of it. No. Your father will not be in a hurry to let me go.”
Ari bowed her head. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I just thought I’d try.”
“Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.” Assistant’s look was inscrutable.
What was going on in that blade-like mind of hers? Maybe someday Ari would be able to tell. It looked like they were going to be together for a while after all. “But you’re… I know you don’t like it. Being a slave. Who would?”
“You know very little of how I feel,” Assistant said in her sharpest voice.
Ari flinched.
“But,” Assistant continued more gently, “I am fully aware that I could be much worse off. Much, much worse.”
“I guess.” Wasn’t that what she’d told herself a thousand times already? But somehow it was different when Assistant admitted it out loud. It made her feel a little better.
“I’ll try to be less boring,” she blurted.
Assistant looked stunned again. Well, she often looked stunned around Ari, so that was nothing new. But then she actually chuckled. “In order to be boring,” she said, “you must first stop surprising me. You haven’t done that yet.”
Huh? That was a weird thing to say. Ari and Assistant did the same thing, day in and day out: working in the garden, sometimes going to look at the stars. There was probably nobody in the whole Empire more predictable than Ari. “Okay,” she said doubtfully.
Perhaps Assistant was just being polite. There was a first time for everything.
~ ~ ~
Two days later, Ari made a decision. It was much harder and more painful than she’d thought it would be. But it was for the best. It was, she told herself.
At the fourth hour, Ari looked at Assistant, who was cutting samples from a young sapling, and said, “Hey, you know what? Why don’t we get cleaned up?”
Something in her voice must have alerted Assistant, because she instantly looked suspicious. “Why?”
“Oh. No reason. I mean, I thought we might go to the Observatory,” Ari said. “I’m getting kind of restless.”
“You have been jumpy,” Assistant acknowledged. “Very well.”
With relief, Ari said, “You go first.” They had to take turns using the only bathroom. “I’ll just finish up here. I won’t be long.”
As usual, Assistant was in and out of the bathroom in about five minutes, wearing her clean dress (she had two dresses, and rotated them in the laundry daily). She looked as immaculate as ever. But Ari couldn’t quite resist reaching up and pushing her silver forelock out of the way, so she could see Assistant’s eyes better.
Assistant looked startled. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Ari said quickly. “I just thought, you know, your hair… It’d be pretty if you did it like…”
“Pretty?”
“Yes,” Ari said, and tried not to blush. She failed. “You have, you know, blue nice eyes. I mean nice blue eyes.”
Assistant’s cheeks went distinctly pink.
Oh wow. Really? Ari’s heart jumped into her throat. Maybe she should find the courage to compliment Assistant more often. She added, “It’s good when people can see them.”
“People?” The pink in Assistant’s cheeks vanished as if it had never been. She narrowed her nice blue eyes. “What exactly is—”
The door chime rang. Ari jumped. Assistant twitched.
“Oh!” Ari said. “It’s still early!”
“Early? Early for what?”
Ari hurried for the door, narrowly evading the grab Assistant made for her arm, and pressed the ‘Enter’ key.
The door hissed open to reveal a tall, well-built man, about Assistant’s age, wearing the white tunic and black leggings of a male slave. He took in Ari’s tousled hair and dirty apron with wide eyes, but only said, “I’m Orin, Lady Ariana. I’m reporting for the work order you called in this morning.”
“Great! Great,” Ari said, and clasped her hands together, hoping her terror didn’t show on her face. She turned to look at Assistant, who was staring at both of them as if they’d grown wings. “Orin, this is Assistant. She, um, doesn’t have another name.”
Orin raised his eyebrows.
Assistant kept staring.
“Assistant, you’re, um, you’re going to go help Orin with the cooling unit,” Ari said. “You know, we haven’t been getting water flow in here for the garden like we should, and I thought, who better to fix it than…”
She glanced back at Orin, who was regarding Assistant with no small degree of interest. Ari told herself that this was absolutely fine. Then she looked back at Assistant and saw comprehension dawning in her eyes. Along with something that looked very much like horror.
“A-anyway, we don’t have any more work to do tonight,” Ari babbled, looking back and forth between the two of them and trying not to make any eye contact. “So, you know, whenever you’re done, you don’t have to come back right away.”
“What?” Assistant said.
“She, uh, worked on a small pirate rig,” Ari said to Orin. “I’m sure you two will have a lot to talk about.”
“Talk?” Assistant said.
“We’ll get the job done, Your Ladyship,” Orin said. “Never fear.” His eyes wandered back to Assistant again, and they gleamed.
“Well,” Ari said, trying very hard for “chipper” and fairly sure she only managed “deranged.” “You, um, off you go!”
Orin inclined his head politely at Assistant and stood to the side of the door, holding out his arm for her to precede him.
Ari was sure Assistant was looking at her as she walked through the door, but she couldn’t be certain because she kept her gaze on her feet. The door closed behind them, and Ari felt like her knees were going to turn completely into jelly. But they didn’t, and she returned to her garden with an oddly heavy heart.
It was the right thing to do. Certainly, it was the right thing for Assistant. She must be bored out of her mind, stuck here with only Ari for company. And Ari only talked about dull things, so that just made it worse. Walks to the Observatory couldn’t possibly be enough to entertain someone as smart and interesting as Assistant. Not every day. She’d need more than that.
And she was such a beautiful woman. She deserved to be with a man, to have that kind of pleasure in her life. Judging by the way Orin looked at her, it wouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish that.
Ari gulped around the rock-hard lump in her throat and told herself to stop being so selfish. To be happy for Assistant, who would no doubt enjoy herself more tonight than usual. Ari had just given her the entire evening off, after all, and surely it didn’t take very long to fix a cooling unit, did it?
Two hours later, Assistant still had not returned. Maybe it took longer to fix a cooling unit than Ari had thought.
Three hours. Maybe it took a lot longer.
Three an
d a half. Ari finally admitted that Assistant and Orin were almost certainly not fixing any cooling units now and curled up on her cot, needing the comfort of all her plants around her.
For the best. Really. It was.
CHAPTER 6
Ari woke up to someone shaking her fiercely and also the drip of water on her forehead.
When she opened her eyes, Assistant was looming over her, face twisted in rage, as she shook Ari back and forth like a rag doll.
“Wake up,” she snarled. “Wake up!”
Dizzy, confused, Ari thought that perhaps Assistant’s evening might not have gone well, and became sure of it when she saw that Assistant was dripping wet and covered in mud. “Oh!” she gasped, and scrambled to sit up, which was difficult, because Assistant was still grabbing on to her shoulders. “Oh, my gosh! Are you okay? What happened?”
“Cleaning the cooling unit,” Assistant said. “Have you ever, in your life, cleaned a cooling unit?”
“Uh…no?”
“It took five hours,” Assistant roared, and finally let go of Ari, who fell backward off the cot and landed in the dirt with a yelp.
“I—” she began, but Assistant charged on.
“Five hours! Five hours of mucking around in water that was alternately freezing and boiling…with that disgusting oaf trying to feel me up every chance he got—”
Ari whimpered and tried to scoot backwards on her behind, but Assistant reached down, hauled her to her feet, and shook her again. “What? What could you possibly have been thinking?”
“You didn’t like him?” Ari said weakly.
“No,” Assistant whispered, her voice as low and deadly as Ari had ever heard it. Their noses were about one inch apart. “No, I did not like him at all. And now he knows it.”
“H-he does?”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll tell his master that he got his black eye and lost all those teeth doing something very manly.”
“Oh—”
“And he didn’t even know how to do it. I practically had to do the whole goddamned job by myself—”
“I’m sorry!” Ari wailed. “I didn’t know—I-I thought you’d have fun—”
“Fun?” Assistant let go of Ari again, and Ari crashed to the ground again, because for some reason her knees wouldn’t support her.
She looked pleadingly up at Assistant. “You…when you asked me all those questions about why we never see anybody… I mean, aren’t you lonely? Aren’t you bored?” She gulped. “I just wanted to give you a chance to…” Then she hung her head, feeling like the most idiotic creature in the universe. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled again. “I didn’t know it’d be awful.” She kept looking at the ground.
After a moment, Assistant sighed heavily. “I am getting a shower,” she said.
“Okay,” Ari whispered.
“And I am sleeping in tomorrow. As late as I want to.”
“I’m sorry,” Ari said yet again. Then she looked up and blurted, “I’ll do better next time. I’ll find a job that won’t be terrible and someone who won’t—”
It must have been difficult to look utterly, completely terrifying when you were soaked through with water and mud, but Assistant managed it quite well. “Look at me,” she said softly, as though Ari could look anywhere else. “There will be no next time. Period. That’s all.”
“Oh,” Ari said, feeling about two inches tall.
“Go back to sleep,” Assistant snapped, whirled on her heel, and stalked away, still dripping.
Ari fled the cot and retreated to the safety of her bedroom, where she huddled under the blankets and squeezed her eyes shut. But sleep, as she’d expected, eluded her completely.
~ ~ ~
The next day, Ari apologized with practically every motion that she made. She knew Assistant didn’t have much patience with people who repeated themselves all the time, so instead she worked penitently in the deepest silence until Assistant woke up, asked her with the greatest meekness to do easy and non-dirty tasks, called for breakfast and lunch herself, and made sure that the mess hall sent up Assistant’s favorite kind of tea. And she made very, very sure never to meet Assistant’s eyes, although she constantly checked on Assistant when she wasn’t looking back.
Assistant did not speak to her. Not one single word.
But then, before dinner, Ari looked up, and saw Assistant looking back. Ari bit her lip and managed a tremulous smile.
Assistant sighed, closed her eyes, and rubbed her hands over them. “It’s like kicking a puppy,” she muttered.
“Um. What is?”
“Being angry. Being angry at you.” Assistant glared at her fiercely. “I have very little difficulty being angry with most people, for the record.”
“So, you’re not angry anymore?” Ari asked hopefully.
“I am no longer enraged,” Assistant said. “You may consider me downgraded to ‘peeved.’”
“Oh,” Ari said in enormous relief, because “peeved” was very near to “normal,” for Assistant. “Good. I really am sor—”
“Don’t say it. Do not say it.”
“Oh. Okay. Sor—okay.”
“And get those leaves out of your hair.”
~ ~ ~
The next day, Ari emerged from behind a bush and caught Assistant looking at the jars on the shelves. Specifically, she was looking at Cranli’s jar, where he rested on some leaves. And she was lightly tapping the glass and smiling at him.
Ari cleared her throat. Assistant twitched and turned around. It was the first time, Ari realized, that she’d ever snuck up on her. While she was awake, anyway. Ari grinned and nodded at the jar. “You like Cranli too, huh? He’s my favorite.”
“He’s just a bug,” Assistant sniffed, her cheeks going the tiniest bit red.
“Okay,” Ari said, still grinning.
“He reminds me a little of you,” Assistant said. “Hopelessly friendly and trusting, once he gets to know you.” She peered thoughtfully back at the jar.
Ari blushed with pleasure. “Do you want to put him on Mustopher illis?” she asked. “He likes her the best. But he always comes back to his jar at night.”
“Believe me. I don’t care about a bug,” Assistant said, but she opened the jar anyway.
“Sure you don’t.” Ari laughed as Cranli hopped out and buzzed away.
“I really don’t.”
“You do. You like a bug. Who’s your second favorite? I like Beliss. She’s that pretty iridescent cricket. Very sociable. You two would get along great.”
“Don’t we have work to do? As in, immediately?”
“If you want,” Ari said, and laughed again at the almost sheepish expression on Assistant’s face.
CHAPTER 7
Ari’s fingertip scrolled down her datapad screen. The latest quarterly issue of Botany Today was due for release on the booknets, and she’d already checked twice. Thankfully, right after the breakfast she’d been too excited to eat, it was ready.
“No digging around today?” Assistant said. “My fingernails might die without their daily helping of filth.”
“Today is for theoretical stuff,” Ari said firmly. She didn’t know what Assistant was complaining about, anyway. At her own insistence, they’d both started wearing gardening gloves. Ari glanced at Assistant and added, “Do you want me to read it out loud, so you can hear it too?”
A shudder ran through Assistant’s whole frame. That had probably been too much to hope for.
“What do you want instead?” Ari asked. Slaves weren’t allowed to access reading materials on their own, so Ari downloaded anything Assistant wanted.
“Newsfeeds will be fine,” Assistant said. “I do like to keep up with things.”
“Oh! Sure.” Ari typed in her code for three of the major newsfeeds. “You know, if you remind me, I can get these for you every day. I just forget about stuff like that.”
“Thank you,” Assistant said, sounding surprised. “I will.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ari absently handed her a datapad and settled down to read, already forgetting all about newscasts and whatever else. “Oh!” she said, as she skimmed the table of contents. “Dr. Phylyxas has a big article!”
“How exciting.” Assistant headed rather quickly out of the kitchen. “I’ll be reading in my alcove.”
“Okay.” Ari decided to save Dr. Phylyxas’s article for last, as a way of prolonging her enjoyment.
The Letters to the Editor section was always fun. Ari had even had a letter published there, two issues ago. That was how she’d caught Dr. Phylyxas’s attention, and why he’d offered to come visit her. After the Letters section, she read the News In Brief, and then an article about the very same conference Dr. Phylyxas had attended before visiting Ari. It sounded very exciting, Ari thought wistfully.
Maybe she’d go to the next one. Well…why shouldn’t she? It wasn’t nearly as dangerous to travel now, what with the pirates being so quiet. And Assistant was right—it was ridiculous to stay holed up in here all the time. Nothing said she couldn’t get out of the station for her own reasons, instead of just trailing around the Empire with her father.
Maybe Assistant could even go with her. She’d probably jump at the chance, even if botany didn’t exactly thrill her. That could be fun. A real adventure. Already tingling from the possibility, Ari turned happily to Dr. Phylyxas’s article.
And read. And read.
And read some more, sure that she had to be mistaken in what she was reading.
At some point, Assistant returned to the kitchen, still holding her datapad. “This newsfeed is run by idiots,” she said irritably. “Do we have any of that tea left?” Then she looked up and saw Ari sitting very still at the kitchen table. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong?” Ari said, unable to take her eyes off the datapad.
Assistant reached down and took the datapad from her. Ari felt too stunned to protest. Assistant glanced over Dr. Phylyxas’s article, brow furrowed in the same expression of blank incomprehension she always wore whenever Ari talked about botany. But then, as Ari watched, her eyes widened.
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