her instruments 02 - rose point (6 page)

“It needs—” Reese stopped, then grimaced. “I guess if I’m a mess from that ride, so is the horse. Thanks.”

He inclined his head. “Think nothing of it.”

With the Kesh seeing to the animal, Reese walked until she found a likely-looking rock far enough from the group around the firepit for privacy. She sat on it—gingerly—and tapped the telegem Sascha had given her. “
Earthrise
, this is Reese.”

Kis’eh’t’s voice answered. “Reese! We were wondering where you were.”

“Who’s we?”

“Right now? Me and Allacazam. He’s in my forepaws here. Turning blue.”

Reese smiled. “What shade of blue?”

A pause, then, bemused: “Light blue. Is that good?”

“Probably,” Reese said. Her smile faded. “We’re camping for the night. No sign of these people yet.”

“Goddess,” Kis’eh’t said. “Still?”

“Still,” Reese said. “Did Sascha find out anything? I assume he got back fine.”

“Sure, a while ago. In fact, he was up here with me for a while, entertaining himself by bouncing comm signals off the moon. I’m pretty sure he’s sleeping with Irine now...should I wake him?”

Given what he and Irine were probably actually doing—”No, it’s fine. Have him call me when he’s free.”

“Right,” Kis’eh’t said. “I don’t think he found out anything useful, or he would have waited for you, or called you directly.” She paused, then said, “Have you... you know. Heard from Hirianthial?”

Reese frowned at the telegem, even though the connection was audio-only. “I’m sort of on this ride because he’s been missing for most of a day, Kis’eh’t. Of course I haven’t heard from him.” Her frown became more pronounced. “Why do you ask?”

“Well, we were talking... you know, the twins and Bryer and I. That maybe he could... you know. Reach for your mind. Maybe tell you where he was that way.”

Reese stared at the telegem.

“I know you don’t like the telepathy business, Reese, but this is an extenuating circumstance. Right? So has he?”

“N-no,” Reese said. She thought of Ra’aila and her mimed ear-flattening and grimaced. “No. He hasn’t.” Kis’eh’t’s pause made her say, “What? I’m not... not trying to block him or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t even know how I would. I didn’t even think of the possibility before you mentioned it—”

“It’s not that,” Kis’eh’t said. “It’s just... I hope it doesn’t mean he’s really hurt.”

Or dead—Reese shuddered. “Maybe he’s just being polite because he knows I wouldn’t appreciate it.”

“Um, Reese? Extenuating circumstances?”

“I know!” Reese said. “I’m not saying I would ignore it if he was trying, I’m saying maybe he thinks he shouldn’t.”

“Because you might rip his head off?” Kis’eh’t huffed. “Well, yes. All right, I could believe that.” She sighed. “Are you okay? Really, I mean. One of us could...”

“Come with me?” Reese shook her head. “We’re up in these craggy hills right now and I have no idea how we got here, to be honest. Just stay with the ship. I’ll break Hirianthial free and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

“We’re all on board with that plan.”

“Good,” Reese said. “I’ll call in tomorrow, all right?”

“All right. Goddess keep.”

“Yeah,” Reese murmured to the telegem after it closed the connection. “I hope she will.” She sighed and looked up at the sky, steeling herself against the sight of it... but at night it wasn’t as intimidating as it was during the day. It looked too much like the view outside the
Earthrise’s
ports. She’d never had any trouble with the vastness of space. Maybe that was her issue: not agoraphobia, like she thought, but claustrophobia. Planets were too finite for her, maybe... or she’d learned from Mars’s zealously-maintained artificial habitats not to trust them.

“Now that’s a look I recognize,” Ra’aila said, appearing out of the dark to offer her a bowl. At Reese’s quizzical look, she added, “It’s dinner.”

“Thanks.” Reese took it, found it warm to her touch which is how she learned that the air was cooler than she was expecting. “What look is that?”

“Looking out, wanting to go there,” Ra’aila said, nodding. “A very wanderer sort of look. You must have a nomadic heart, captain.”

“How do you figure that?”

The Aera smiled. “You run a merchant ship. It’s an itinerant life. Who but a nomad could want it?”

“I’m not really a nomad by choice,” Reese said, moving the spoon around in the bowl. “It’s more like... it was a way to get away from home. Maybe find one of my own.”

Ra’aila snorted. “I know that look too.” At Reese’s narrowed-eyed glance, the Aera said, “It’s not home you were getting away from, was it? It was the people, the expectations, the roles you didn’t fit into and didn’t want to fill. What you’re looking for isn’t a home, it’s a chance to find out who you are when you’re not being smothered.” She leaned forward, eyes luminous in the dark. “Let me share with you some hard-won wisdom from a fellow wanderer, Captain. The moment you set down roots again? You end up with the same old problems. Just look at this place. All fine on the voyage here... five years into landing, having fights.” The Aera stood and rolled her shoulders. “Better to stay on the move, I think.”

“There’s got to be a place worth settling for,” Reese said, startled.

“There’s never a place worth settling for,” Ra’aila said. “Not unless you’ve got the right people, anyway.” She smiled wryly. “And it’s so easy to fool yourself into thinking you’re with the right people. Particularly if they’re family.” She nodded. “That’s why I left Flait.” Leaning over, she tapped the edge of the bowl. “Don’t just play with it, eat. You might not think you’re hungry, but you are... and morning will come before you know it.”

Reese stared after the woman after she left. Since the bloody, grueling war that had emancipated Mars—and killed most of its men—the women of Mars had been making use of artificial insemination to continue their families. What had begun as necessity had eventually been enshrined as tradition. Seven generations of Reese’s family had lacked a father, and the women had been content to keep it that way. Better that than to live with the fear of losing a husband, a fear that had never quite evaporated with the blood from the soil.

But she had never been comfortable with the path that had contented her family; had not wanted to live out her life in that house without ever having seen anything beyond it. The Alliance had beckoned from beyond Sol’s doorstep, and the monthly romances that had been Reese’s sole escape had filled her heart with the hope that she could maybe find her own way, if only she could summon the courage to leave.

So when she’d hit her majority she’d taken the money set aside for her and left... and her family had never forgiven her for it.

No, Reese could not imagine hating her family, though they’d disowned her after her last trip home. Her dream of building a family business hadn’t been shared by the elder Eddings women. That she might have wanted to do something for herself, something that she could have used to better their situation, hadn’t factored at all into their belief that she’d betrayed them, left them behind. Their belief had created reality.

Reese drew in a long breath of the strange air and licked her lips. The faster they got off this horrible world, the faster they could find some more civilized place to trade. Coming here had been a mistake. She only hoped Hirianthial wasn’t paying too much for it.

The next time Hirianthial woke, they offered him the one thing he couldn’t reject: a drink. Except it wasn’t water, but something sour that burned an already dry throat, and he would have coughed it back up but they shoved the gag back in first. Every time they stopped they dosed him with it; he wondered what the drug was, or did when he could think past the pastiche of phantasmagoric images it inspired.

But the trip did end finally, and he was ushered out of the drugged fugue by the lances of pain that stabbed up the wall of his ribcage with every breath he drew. He was on the ground again, but under a purple shadow; when he rolled his eye upward, he saw the ripple of fabric. A tent? And he was on a rug, it appeared; he could feel it against his skin.

His skin. Which he noted was very exposed. Where had they taken his clothes? And his hands were still tied behind his back. His mouth was so dry he hadn’t noticed the gag was still in it.

So then. Bound, gagged, naked and... he shifted experimentally, winced. Yes, at least two cracked ribs, and something near the sternum that was either another hairline fracture or a separation from the costal cartilage. No crepitus, though, and no symptoms other than pain... not a serious injury, then. Thank God and Lady, as he could only imagine what medical intervention was available to people who were choosing, willfully, to use arrows in defiance of Alliance alternatives.

He couldn’t tell what time it was, but the sunlight suggested his captors had ridden through at least one night. Hopefully not more than one.

Reese was going to be furious. He smiled despite the situation. Perhaps he could save her the coronary and rescue himself this time.

The tent flap lifted for a woman with a tray in one hand: human, with a tumble of chestnut-colored curls and hazel eyes rimmed in dark gray, set wide in a strong face with a narrow chin. She paused at the sight of his regard, then said in Universal, “You wake.” When he didn’t move, she sniffed and set the tray down. “I have water here. No food, you will throw it up.” She tilted her head. “So. If I untie the gag, will you spit poison at me? Or bite me? Because I am not interested in coddling my husband’s newest toy. If you are going to be difficult, I will happily leave you to rot. Are you going to cooperate? Nod if so.”

Slowly he inclined his head, keeping his eyes on her.

“Fine,” she said, and walked around behind him. He felt her hands on the sash and with them the brush of her aura: supremely uninterested in him, save as a possession to be maintained.

The gag had to be peeled away from his face. She did it carelessly and tossed it aside. “Now. Sit up.”

Hirianthial flexed his wrists and ankles.

“Today,” she said, her tone bored. “I have things to do, and ministering to you is the least important.”

He hid his grimace beneath a dipped head and rolled himself awkwardly onto his knees, hair spilling into his lap. He would have been glad for that, except that she didn’t seem to care that he was nude. Her disregard made him feel like a piece of meat. Like, he thought, a horse. Not the same species. A thing to be owned.

He did not welcome the flicker of red anger that licked up his spine and clouded his vision. After spending months tracking down the people stealing Alliance citizens to sell for slaves, he had become very familiar with rage. It always reminded him too powerfully of the very first time he’d felt its spurs. He remembered the way sweat and blood made his flesh adhere to the hilt of Jisiensire’s House sword—

When he opened his eyes, the woman was watching him warily. Could she feel it radiating off him? He wondered.

“The water now,” she said, and drew a knife from her sash, showing it to him. “I’ll have this in the other hand, so don’t try anything.” When he didn’t say anything, she bared her teeth and said, “Tell me you agree.”

“I can hardly kill you with my hands and ankles bound together behind my back,” he said, and his raw throat made a ruin of his baritone.

“True,” she said, but she’d hesitated. She took the bowl from the tray and brought it warily to his lips. He kept his eyes on hers and drank, slowly, measuring his own queasiness. It was, sadly, some of the best water he’d ever had. Under any other circumstances he would have enjoyed it.

When he’d had the full measure, she backed away and tucked the knife back into her sash. “You are in one of the Rekesh’s tents,” she said finally. “There are guards outside it. Don’t think of running. You belong to him now.”

“I thought perhaps he would kill me, for having killed his men,” Hirianthial said.

She smiled. “Maybe he will, when he tires of you.”

“You are his wife,” he observed, “…and care not at all that he might spend himself elsewhere?”

That made her laugh, a low, husky laugh. “I chose
him
, pretty prize. I knew his habits. But he is the Rekesh, and marrying him gave me status and opportunities. That he prefers to pass his time elsewhere is a bonus. We both have our separate interests, and dislike interference.”

“That does not seem like much of a marriage.”

She snorted. “What, you would marry for love?” She picked up the tray. “No matter. Not to you, anymore. Put it out of your mind. You belong to us.”

That made him smile. “For now.”

She paused. “Don’t think of escape—”

“I don’t have to,” he said. “I will outlive you by several hundred years. And if you think your children can keep me...” He trailed off, then looked up at her through his hair. “Then you have no idea how long I can wait for you to make a mistake.”

“Hundreds of years,” she repeated.

“I only look human,” Hirianthial said. “But you don’t know what I am or what I’m capable of.”

She glanced at his bruised sides, her eyes traveling his naked body, and contempt welled back into her gaze. She lifted her chin and said, “What I see is that ropes can hold you, drugs can weaken you, and your skin bruises just as easily as ours.” She stepped through the tent flap, and as it swung shut he saw a glimpse of one of the men standing guard outside it.

With her safely gone, he hung his head, licked his dry lips, sighed. It was not precisely bravado to threaten her—he could outlive the entire tribe, even though he’d lived half his own span already—but he didn’t want to stay on Kerayle that long. And Reese would be beside herself with worry, which would undergo the instantaneous alchemy that seemed her specific talent, from fear into anger.

And it mattered to him, that she might become angry. And that the twins and Kis’eh’t and Bryer would worry. And that Allacazam would not know what became of him.

He would have to find a way to fight his way free. That he couldn’t see a way how yet was of no moment. At some point there would be an opportunity, and he would take it. Closing his eyes, he composed himself to wait. Stripping him, his captors had missed the one thing he hadn’t wanted them to steal: the hair dangle the crew had made for him, which they’d braided in at the back of his neck where it might lie hidden. He let the whispered impressions woven into the strands and decorations in it center him. First he would recover from the drug. Then he would explore his options.