Sea of Stars (19 page)

“But what if things get really, really bad?” I ask.

“Then you fight, like you always do, and we’ll pick up the pieces of us later.”

“We will?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says without a hint of doubt.

I exhale a deep breath. “Okay.”

“If you want to learn to defend yourself, then I’m definitely the person to help you do that. Everything is a weapon,” he says. As he nears me, he takes his shirt off. I don’t have a thought in my head for a second. He pushes the chairs out of our way so that we have room to move around. When he stops in front of me, he looks down at my face. “The problem you have is with your height. You’re short.”

“I’m not short. You’re all freakishly tall,” I retort.

He smiles and I lose the fight I had immediately. “If you were taller,” he amends, “I would advise you to go for the throat or the face. They’re both vulnerable, you can grab the larynx—” he mimes grabbing the front part of his throat “—or strike the cartilage here.” He demonstrates a fake chop to his own Adam’s apple. “This will gain you some time to get away, but not much.”

I listen closely as he explains all the most vulnerable points on the body. He shows me how to exploit them in the most efficient ways, although it’s difficult to concentrate, because his body is ridiculous in its perfection. He really needs to put his shirt back on if he wants my full attention. When he demonstrates several ways I can take him down, my focus becomes razor-sharp. He lets me stalk him, as we practice different moves to incapacitate my enemies.

After rehearsing a takedown move at least a hundred times, I finally manage to get Trey flat on his back. Breathing heavily, I pounce on his chest triumphantly. Straddling him, I ask, “Did you just let me beat you?”

He hesitates. “No,” he lies.

“Ugh! Little white lies are beneath you, Trey. I need more practice.”

“You’re doing fine. I’ve been fighting for a long time. I don’t know what kind of practice you can do now that will make up for that.”

“I need an equalizer.”

I see the reluctant agreement in Trey’s eyes. “Yes. You do. But it has to be one that your enemy can’t easily take from you and then use against you.” His words remind me of the incident in the Beezway with Kesek Alez, when he took the harbinger away from me like he was taking a toy from a child. “I have an idea,” he says.

He sits up and lifts me up as he gets to his feet. Playfully, he tosses me on the bed before he moves toward a display console built into the far wall.

There’s a menagerie of crystal figurines on the shelves. Some of the cut-glass images are of animals and some are Etharian forms—dancers and musicians. Trey touches a drawer and it slides open. He extracts a long, black lacquer box. Tucking it under his arm, he closes the drawer. Then he selects a few of the crystal figurines from the shelves and brings them back with him to the bed.

Sitting cross-legged on the middle of the bed, I scoot over to make a little more room for him to join me. He does. Sitting cross-legged too, he sets the black lacquer box in front of me.

“What’s this?” I ask him, looking at the box curiously.

“What you’re looking for.”

I try to lift the lid, but it won’t open.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot that it’s security locked.” Trey places his hand on the lid of the box. A blue light scans it. A decisive
click
sounds as the catch of the lid unlatches.

“How come you can open it?”

“I gave this to Charisma,” he says, like it’s no big deal.

Instantly, I’m irrationally jealous. “Really,” I respond by snapping the lid closed again. “Maybe I shouldn’t be looking at it then.”

Trey frowns. “I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. I gave these to Charisma as from one
friend
to another. She wouldn’t mind if you use them. She’d want you to be safe.”

“Why do I get the feeling that you know very little about how women think?” I ask him.

“I know Charisma very well. You, on the other hand, are often a mystery to me.”

I don’t know whether to be offended, jealous, or flattered by that statement. As it turns out, I’m a little bit of all three.

He places his hand on the lid again, letting the security program scan it. “You need this, so whether or not either of you likes the fact that you’re borrowing it doesn’t really matter that much to me.”

When the lid unlatches once more, Trey opens it without preamble. Inside, the box is lined with lavender-colored satin. Resting in the center of the bed of satin are two silver cuffs. The jewelry is Gothic in design; each resembles the framework that holds panes of stained glass in a lavish church window, but without the colored glass itself.

I raise my eyebrow at Trey. “If these are some kind of freaky, sexy restraints—”

Trey’s shoulder nudges against mine as he chuckles softly, like I’m joking. “No,” he replies, before grinning and showing all his perfect teeth. “Sweet furroo, I love you. But, no, these are weapons, though I like where your mind is going—”

I have no idea what
sweet furroo
means, but a part of me wants desperately to hear him say it again with the same sexy groan. Instead, I nudge my shoulder against his arm to stop him from whatever he’s about to say. “Just show me what you have here.”

Lifting one of the cuffs from the box, I see it’s clearly made to fit a feminine forearm. I depress a small groove in the side of the cuff, and it opens with the spring of a hinge.

“This is a sonic sayzer, Kricket,” Trey says. He lifts my wrist with his other hand and pushes back the silky material of my robe. Delicately, he clasps the cool metal device to my forearm. It’s heavier than I expected, weighing at least a pound. “It can kill things—”

“—with sound,” we say together.

Trey looks up at my face. “That’s right. How did you know that?”

“Defense Minister Telek explained it to me when he was showing me Manus’s wounds. He had Manus in a tank in his office.”

“Telek’s one sick Etharian,” Trey replies grimly. Looking back to my wrist, he adjusts the cuff so that it’s properly balanced before he closes it over my skin.

“Well, the poison I gave him probably didn’t help with that either,” I reply.

A small, reluctant smile forms on his lips. “You’re so intelligent. You probably don’t even need this weapon. You just need time to assess a situation to find the best solution.”

“I’d feel better if I had something like this, though. So, how does it work?”

Trey flips my hand over so that it’s palm up. He touches the metal column of the device, stroking the metal plate over my wrist. A lavender-colored beam of light shines on my open palm. The light projects a keypad on my hand. Trey begins entering codes to the prompts. After he enters the first series of numbers, letters, and symbols, the metal on my wrist warms and becomes malleable, shrinking to fit me like a snug sleeve. The metal takes on the feel of stiff fabric as it moves to just below my elbow. The cuff grows over the top of my hand, threading through the gap between my index finger and my middle finger, my middle finger and my ring finger, and again between my ring finger and my pinky.

I turn my hand over several times, examining the fit and structure of the weapon I’m wearing, or is wearing me, depending upon how you look at it. “They’re going to love me at the Robotic Renaissance festival this year,” I say softly, admiring the arching metal design. It’s engraved with scrollwork that resembles Trey’s tattoo.

Trey doesn’t laugh; he only looks confused. “Any festivals you were planning to attend have probably been canceled, Kricket.”

I nod, not wanting to explain. “You’re probably right. How does this work?” I ask instead.

Trey rises from the bed and moves back to the display cabinet where he retrieved the sonic sayzer. He opens a different drawer and extracts a small, black conelike apparatus. He takes it and moves back toward the window wall at the far end of the room. Setting the conelike apparatus on the floor, he squats down and touches a few buttons. Light pours up from the machine on the floor, projecting holographic stars over the room in that area. “Dim lights,” Trey orders, and the room darkens, allowing us to see the galaxy of stars more clearly.

From his pocket, he extracts a few of the crystal figurines and tosses them into the cone-shaped sea of stars. Instantly, the figurines float in the air as if they’ve entered zero gravity. It does something else to each one. The figurine shaped like a spix animates and rears up on its hind legs, pawing the sky like a wild mustang. The saer opens its saber-toothed mouth, stalking the other figurines and swiping its paws at them, but it never quite seems to actually touch any. The elegant couple in formal attire dance together. I recognize the moves as the dance that Tofer taught me to do for my debut swank with the Regent. Those memories scare me, so I clear my throat and ask, “What are these things called?”

“Targets,” he replies with an evil grin.

“You mean we’re going to shoot them?” I ask.

“Oh, we’re going to destroy these targets,” he breathes like he’s been waiting for this day all of his life.

I roll my eyes. “What are they
really
called?”

Trey searches his mind. “Sacred Moments? Special Moments? Crystal Moments—Crystal Clear Moments!” he says, excited that he remembers their name. “They were really popular about seventy-five floans ago, before the war—the Terrible War—the war before this one,” he amends.

“Really? You don’t seem to be a fan of them.”

“I’m not. They annoy me. That’s why we’re going to use them for target practice.”

“You can’t do that, Trey!” I say, “They’re not yours!”

“They’re not going to make it through this war, one way or the other, Kricket. We might as well learn something from them before they’re destroyed,” he replies. “Charisma didn’t like most of them anyway. She only kept them because they were gifts from family. This one”—he points to the elegant couple—“was supposed to be us at her coming-out swank. She hated it. She thought it looked nothing like either of us.”

While he goes back to the display cabinet for more figurines to murder, I walk closer to the dancing crystal couple. They’re perfectly matched as they spin in synchronization through the stars; the female holds her billowing crystal dress while the male’s capable arm at her back holds her frame close against his powerful chest. The crystal male figure bears a strong resemblance to Trey, although he’s much stronger and more muscly looking at present. The male bears more of a resemblance to Victus than Trey.
I still hate it for what it represents—Trey and Charisma forever entwined in each other’s arms.

When Trey returns, he tosses a mastodon into the mix. It raises its noble, crystal snout in a defiant posture. “A mastoff to represent her first trip to the Forest of O,” Trey says. He tosses an expensive-looking trift into the air; it catches in the zero gravity pool. “Gets her license.” The Stealth-like trift flies around the galaxy in twisting, fantastic maneuvers, avoiding the other crystals by centimeters. “Graduates from Robard’s Academy for Blushers,” he tosses a pointed-toed ballerina-looking dancer into the mix.

“The school wasn’t really called Robard’s Academy for Blushers, was it?” I ask him with a smile.

He shakes his head, grinning again. “It was Robard’s Academy for Accomplished Young Fays, which really is just code for ‘pampered blushers.
’
”

I watch the ballerina-like figurine circle the rest in a hypnotic spinning motion.
I like her.
I relate to her solo dance—I used to always dance alone, just for me. “What was the spix for?” I ask, as she passes by it.

Trey squints at the spix, watching it rear up again and paw the air. “Best in Show. Charisma trains spixes—breeds them for competition. She also rides them in tournaments. That’s why I bought her these sonic sayzers; she uses them to shoot targets while riding her competition spix through a course. The competition itself is called Biequine. She’s quite skilled at it too—a perfect shot.”

My eyes return to the spix.
I like that one too.
It reminds me of Trey—the Knight. He dumps several more crystal statuettes into the Milky Way pool. When he turns to gather a few more, I rescue the crystal spix from the sea of stars. Quietly, I palm it, feeling an instant connection to it. I then slip the spix into the pocket of my black robe.

Trey moves to the bed, extracting the other cuff from the box. He quickly calibrates it, adjusting it to fit his much larger arm. Then he joins me in front of the menagerie of Stolen Moments, or whatever they’re called.

“We need to move back.” He pulls me back to the far wall. From the side of my wrist, he touches an empty windowlike arch in the metal. It opens a compartment that contains a small earpiece. He extracts it and pushes it into my ear. A mouthpiece slides out from the earpiece and positions itself in front of my mouth. “It’s not armed yet,” he says, “but when it is, make sure that your sayzer isn’t pointed at anything important—like me.”

I nod solemnly. “I understand. How does it arm?” I ask.

“We’ll have to enter a sequence of finger movements that will arm it. It will be personal so that only you can use the weapon. I’ve overridden Charisma’s settings with the master code I used to set it. I’ve got this on a practice setting. It will only shoot short-frequency bursts. They’d sting if they hit skin, but it would be more like a small pellet—not lethal.”

“Okay.” We come up with a combination of finger movements that Trey says will become a muscle memory response the more I practice with the weapon.

He walks me through the basics of how to use it, but when I raise my wrist Spider-Man style and say the words that are supposed to fire the weapon, the rotten thing does nothing but vibrate.

“Seriously?” I ask after Trey strikes two more crystal figurines without even trying by using the word
fire
. But when I say it, nothing happens!

Trey examines the weapon, checking and rechecking it. “It’s working. Maybe you just need to try different tones of voice.”

Trey uses his sonic sayzer, hitting a couple more crystal figurines with the words “knob knocker.” He’s so good at it—he never misses.