The phrase piqued Antonio’s curiosity. This would be a good opening to test his theory. He leaned over and touched the other man’s face delicately with one hand. Paznowski held very still as Antonio stroked his short beard and subjected him to a speculative glance. “I wonder, Sergei,” Antonio said in his silkiest voice, “if I were to send for you some night, if I would find that there’s a limit to your devotion after all?”
Paznowski waited until Antonio had leaned back in his chair, and then he bowed his head and spoke with abject humility. “I am Your Excellency’s servant, and I will serve you in any way that you wish.”
Antonio put his head back and laughed. He had been right. But it wouldn’t do to give Sergei any ideas. “Now that’s devotion! You needn’t worry. If I had any inclinations in that direction, I wouldn’t start with you—not with Peter Barranca in the house. He’s not only younger, he keeps his body in excellent shape.”
Paznowski looked up with a troubled expression on his face. “I’m not in the least worried, Excellency. You may command me in this, as in all things. But I would urge Your Excellency to look elsewhere than your brother-in-law if you feel a need to experiment. I must confess I find Count Barranca to be a disturbing influence on my sense of security. The man is too controlled.”
Antonio waved a hand with negligent unconcern. “Don’t worry about Barranca. I tell you frankly he won’t last more than a year.”
Paznowski sighed. “I’m glad to hear it, Excellency.”
Bored with Paznowski’s desires, Antonio brought the subject back to his own. “Now, have you thought anymore about Cassandra?”
The counselor bowed his head in defeat. “I have given the matter a great deal of thought, Excellency, but I haven’t been able to determine any means of finding her.”
Antonio indulged in a brief sulk. “Don’t let me down, Sergei. I want that bitch back here where she belongs. I don’t intend to let some double-crossing peasant of a guardsman enjoy himself with my sister.”
“I am cognizant of the need, Excellency, but I am still stymied as to the method by which Lady Cassandra can be recovered.”
“Well, work on it,” Antonio ordered crossly.
“Yes, Excellency.”
The door chimed, and Antonio smiled, his pique forgotten. “You can go now, Sergei. Is Vinitra ready?”
“I believe so, Excellency.”
Paznowski opened the door and revealed four guardsmen standing there with a very young woman in their midst. She was very beautiful. She had red hair, a deep, dark red with coppery glints, and her eyes were a brilliant green. Her skin was creamy and her features both regular and pleasantly proportioned to her face. Even Paznowski stared at the lushness of her figure.
“Come in, my dear,” Antonio said in a pleased tone. “Sergei was just leaving.”
The woman didn’t speak but stepped into the room silently. She kept her head down and waited until the others had gone and she was alone with the Emperor before she lifted her eyes.
“Charming,” Antonio said appreciatively. “Come sit down a moment.”
She advanced cautiously into the room and took a seat on a chair. Antonio continued to study her covetously. He had started to come across the room toward her, when there was a sudden click from the wall behind him.
Antonio wheeled around at the sound. A dark hole loomed when the hidden door opened, and then Vinitra du Plessis stepped out of it.
He smiled happily when he saw his sister. “You can go now,” he said without even looking at the woman in the chair.
She rose and walked swiftly past him to the hidden door and slipped through it without a word.
“Vinnie,” Antonio said with satisfaction. “I’m glad you’ve come. I’ve had a terrible day.”
She stepped up to him and kissed him passionately. “My poor, Antonio. What can I do to make it better?”
He smiled at her. “Take your clothes off, Vinnie. Let me look at you for a while, and then we’ll go into the bedroom and you can lie down on the bed and put your knees up while you make yourself ready for me. I like to watch you do that, and it’s all right for you to touch yourself so long as I tell you to do it.”
“Yes, Tonio,” she said, slipping off her gown. She really was lovely, her body rounded in all the right places.
“You did see the doctor?” Antonio demanded suddenly remembering that he had never asked her that question. “You did as I told you?”
Her smile told him she was happy to be able to please him. “Oh, yes. He gave me a treatment the day before the wedding. He assured me if I become pregnant within the next month, the baby will almost certainly be a boy.”
Antonio was pleased. She might well be pregnant already. “You’re a good girl, Vinitra. I think perhaps this time we’ll try something a little more . . . exciting.”
“Yes, Tonio,” Vinitra said, in the same obedient tone.
Her complaisance didn’t satisfy Antonio, as he grabbed her suddenly by her shoulders and held her tightly. “Who owns you, Vinnie? Tell me again!”
She lifted her eyes to his. “You do. You own me—body and soul.”
“Body and soul,” he said with satisfaction. He looked her naked body up and down. “Don’t ever forget it, my dearest.”
• • •
Alexander waited in the graveyard in the shade of a cluster of trees. It was a cool day, and he didn’t feel a need for shade, but he was reluctant to wait out in plain sight.
His father’s grave looked well tended, and Alexander was certain that whoever had been caring for it would show up sooner or later. After a day of watching his family’s farm, he was certain that neither his mother nor his sister lived there. The fields were planted in crops, but no one seemed to live at the house.
Alexander had thought of checking the graveyard mostly as a way of determining that neither Junia nor his mother had died, but the sight of the neat plot of well-trimmed vegetation that grew over Benjamin Napier’s final resting place suggested the idea of simply waiting to see if anyone would come to visit the grave. This was his third day watching, and Alexander was debating how long he should give this alternative before he tried approaching someone else, perhaps one of his school friends, to ask after his family.
There was a noise from down the hill, as if someone had parked a skimmer, and Alexander pulled back behind the tree. His own skimmer was parked much farther away, so that no one would see it and wonder who was already visiting the graveyard. Several people had come during the last three days; Alexander had recognized some of them but others were strangers to him.
This time it was a woman alone, a young woman by her gait. She walked briskly up the path from the bottom of the hill and headed straight for Benjamin Napier’s grave.
It was Junia. She hadn’t changed much. Alexander recognized her immediately. She approached the grave with a small potted plant and a trowel. Alexander waited until she had knelt and dug a hole before he stepped out from behind the tree and approached her.
She looked up as his shadow crossed their father’s grave. She looked surprised, but not shocked, to see him.
“Hello, Alex,” she said, shading her eyes against the late afternoon sun. “I thought you’d come back sooner or later. You’ve grown a good deal.”
“Hello, Junia. Is Mother well?”
“Yes. She had a bout of pneumonia last winter, but she seems to have recovered. She lives with me now—me and Pierre and the children.”
“You’re married?” Alexander glanced at her hands to look for a ring.
She nodded. “A little over two years after they took you. Pierre Bigod came back from the army after his twenty years were up. His father died shortly after, and Pierre took over the farm.”
Alexander remembered the Bigod family had lived on a farm adjacent to his own. “Does he farm our land, too?”
“Yes. We’re holding it until you come back to stay.”
Alexander shook his head. “I won’t be coming back.” He rea
ched up and ripped the bandage from his face. Junia stared at the gleaming hologram in surprise. “I’m a deserter,” Alexander said baldly. “I can’t come back. But I had to know if you and Mother were well.”
This made her get to her feet in alarm. “You’re in the Corps?”
“I was.”
“So that’s why you never sent any more messages?”
“Yes. The regular army lets you have a family, but the Corps considers that what came before you joined it isn’t important.”
She frowned anxiously. “But you deserted?”
“Not exactly. I was assigned to the palace in Montmartre. I tried to help one of Emperor Lothar’s concubines to escape, and they caught us. She’s dead now, and they think I am, too.”
Her eyes opened wide in fear, and she gave an anxious glance around the graveyard as if she expected Imperial guardsmen to jump out from behind the headstones.
“Don’t worry,” Alexander said. “I’ll go away and not come back again. I just had to know if you were both well.”
“We are. I have three children, now. Ekhardt is five, Lior is three, and the baby is only a few months old.”
“All boys?”
“Yes. We named the baby after you. Mother insisted.”
“Make certain they know where to hide when the press gangs come.”
“We will.” She gave him a searching look. “Why did you do it, Alex? Why did you trick me into hiding in the barn cellar, and then go off and let yourself get caught?”
He smiled a little bitterly at her wording. “I didn’t mean to get caught. I just knew if I went in there with you they’d find us both.”
“You should have hidden there and let me cover your tracks. They would never have taken me with this.” She touched the scar on her cheek. It had faded with time, but it was still a noticeable ridge across her face.
“They might not have taken you away,” Alexander said, “but they might well have raped you on the spot. They do that sometimes when they’re angry at not finding whoever they’re looking for.”
“I would have gotten over it in time,” she said.
“Perhaps. Ask Mona Sandowsky about it when she comes home—if she does come home.”
Junia flinched. “Is it true they made her into a whore?”
“Yes. She was on Space Station du Plessis when I saw her.”
Junia shuddered.
“Don’t act as if it were her fault when she comes back, Junia,” Alexander said. “It wasn’t.”
“I won’t.”
“Good. I’d better go now.”
“Can’t you stay around for a little while? I could bring mother here tomorrow. She’d like to see you. She talks about you all the time.”
The thought of seeing his mother one more time tempted Alexander. It might well be the last time. “All right,” he said at last. “Can you bring her very early tomorrow morning? I have to get back to Montmartre. There’s someone depending on me.”
“Yes,” Junia said, standing almost on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and embrace him warmly. “We’ll both come. I won’t tell Pierre until after you’ve gone. He doesn’t like it when I do anything risky.”
“I’ll see you then,” Alexander said, returning her embrace. For just one brief second as she put her arms around him, he felt as if he were the old innocent Alexander Napier again, the Alexander who didn’t know what it was to be abused and brutalized, who would never hurt someone else willingly. And then she pulled away and the years came flooding back to him, and he knew he could never again live in this peaceful landscape.
• • •
After several days alone, Cassandra was bored by herself. Alexander had left her the com set, as well as enough food for at least two weeks, but she was restless. When he didn’t come back on the fifth day, she was quite certain she would never see him again. She tried to think of where she could go where Antonio couldn’t find her, but every idea that came to her only pointed out how unprepared she was to support herself.
Finally, she went into the downstairs bedroom and lay down on Alexander’s bed. The sight of the calendar on the wall made her wonder how long it had been since she had left the palace. She started to count the days, but a sudden, loud noise from the kitchen made her jump to her feet. At the same time, the crash of breaking glass sounded from upstairs, and the sound of many booted feet resounded throughout the house.
Cassandra knew what it was. There was only one thing it could be. They had found her. She had made her plans, and she was ready.
The closet in the downstairs bedroom locked from the outside. Cassandra ran into it, locked the door and then pulled it shut.
She was cowering on the floor when the door opened a few minutes later. She was glad for the time, because it allowed her to practice what she would say, and to disarrange her hair and smear her face with dirt from the closet floor.
Two tall imposing men stared down at her. Cassandra looked up at their black uniforms and the familiar gleaming tattoo, and her heart quailed. Antonio would get her now. The only good she could accomplish for anyone would be to save Alexander.
“Thank god!” she said fervently. “Did you catch them?”
• • •
Antonio du Plessis was jubilant. “Good work, Colonel. Excellent work!”
Roger Beaumont was so pleased with himself, he actually gave Sergei Paznowski credit for the initial idea, even while he accepted his Emperor’s praise.
“Don’t be so modest, Colonel,” Paznowski demurred. “You and your men stuck with a difficult task, and the result is that Lady Cassandra is now safely restored to her brother and sister.”
Beaumont stood a little straighter. “Thank you, sir.”
“Now,” Antonio said, “what did my sister say happened?”
“It was the traitorous guardsman, Excellency. She said they called him Sentinel. He found her hiding in the woman’s quarters and then he drugged her and put her into a bag. She doesn’t remember that part at all, but she thinks from what they said later that he put her into a trash cart.”
Paznowski smiled smugly as Antonio gave him an admiring glance.
“Anyway,” Beaumont went on, “when Lady Cassandra awoke, she was in the house at the edge of the city—although they made her think she was in Orainne. She didn’t know where she was until our men told her. She wasn’t allowed near the windows, and they kept her confined in the closet during the days, and only let her out at night.”
“Did any of them say why they had kidnapped her?” Paznowski asked.
“Not exactly, no,” the colonel said. “But she gathered from an angry quarrel she overheard between Sentinel and the rebel leader that they had intended for him to kidnap Princess Vinitra instead of her. The leader was incensed that Sentinel had blundered so badly. He said that this one was no use to him; he needed the real princess for his plan to work.”
“But there was no one else around when you found her?” Antonio asked.
“True, Excellency. She said that yesterday the rebels seemed alarmed about some news they had received. They put her into the closet and told her to keep quiet or they would kill her. She could see the daylight fade under the door, so she knew when it was night. Until we found her, she feared that she would die there.”
“How many rebels were there with her?
“Three, most of the time. Sentinel, the guardsman, left after the first day. The leader was a man they called Governor, but he came to visit only briefly. The rest of the time it was a woman called Wizard, and two men known as Champion and Ace.”
“So we still don’t know who this Sentinel is?”
“No, Excellency. But we’re going over every centimeter of the house. If he left fingerprints or anything that yields DNA, we’ll find him.”
“Very good,” Antonio said in a pleased tone. “Where is my sister now?”
“She should be arriving any minute, Excellency. She asked to use the bathroom, of course, and she wanted to bathe and change into some
proper clothes, as she was quite dirty and the rebels had given her rough trousers and a shirt to wear. No one had thought to bring anything of that nature, and she was rather shy about being seen as she was.”
Antonio frowned heavily. “Did they rape her?”
Colonel Beaumont looked embarrassed. “It’s possible, Excellency. My lieutenant tried to ask her about it, but she started to cry, and he didn’t pursue it. She refused to see a doctor.”
When Antonio’s frown grew to alarming proportions, Sergei Paznowski intervened.
“Thank you for bringing us the happy news, Colonel. I think His Excellency needs to talk to me now. He needs to plan what would be best for Lady Cassandra. Perhaps you could go and make certain that she’s brought here as soon as she arrives at the palace?”
Beaumont took his dismissal with good grace and bowed himself from the Imperial presence.
“Well, Excellency,” Paznowski said, “it seems that it was good news, if not the best news.”
Antonio shrugged. “It could have been much worse. In any event, I have her back now, and she won’t escape again.”
Paznowski’s eyelids flickered at the implications of this pronouncement. “It would be well to consider palace sensibilities, Excellency. You’ve done very well at concealing the circumstances of Princess Vinitra’s marriage. It would be a shame to spoil that by letting everyone discover your reasons for wanting to keep Lady Cassandra here. It might well make them suspicious of your relationship with the Princess.”
Antonio bit back an angry retort and thought it over. He could see the logic of this warning. And after all, Paznowski had a perfect record. “What do you suggest?”
“Don’t do anything hasty, Excellency. As you say, you have Lady Cassandra back again. You can take your time and savor the moment later.”
Antonio seethed at the thought of yet more waiting. “How much later?”
“In a few days,” Paznowski said soothingly, “we can make arrangements to be more discreet. Lady Cassandra has resided in the family part of the women’s quarters for the last few years. She can continue to do so while we plan the best way for you to have access to her.”
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