Unbound (16 page)

Romir buried his face in his hands, ashamed to the depths of his soul by his outburst. He thought he had nothing more left in him, but this illusion of freedom proved him wrong: some shred of foolish hope remained. Nevertheless, his fraying control was no excuse. He owed her an explanation.

“It felt as when the Mughelis controlled me. Those unnatural sensations where no hands could touch. That they did not hurt only made it worse.” When the vyziers commanded him, the touch on his prison bound his will, including the pleasure that swirled through him. His masters had used that pleasure against him, tormenting him for no reason other than that they could. He had not been a lover of men to welcome pleasure inflicted by their mastery. “And they did it while commanding me to destroy my people.”

Asrial inhaled sharply. “I apologize. I didn’t know.”

He bowed his head, weary with futile anger. If this form could have cried, he would have. “I am not free. I am still bound to the eternal death of a djinn. I will always be bound.”

Grabbing his shoulder, she pulled him toward her. When he resisted, she pushed forward to stand between him and the wall. “You mustn’t think that.”

“Must I not?” If the period of his enslavement could be counted in centuries—in millennia—as she said, freedom was a forlorn hope. The gods had abandoned him long ago.

Asrial stretched her
arms wide, her joints cracking as she worked through the tension from the last Jump. No matter how many times she’d brought the
Castel
through Jump, the suspense and the exhilaration remained the same. There was always the risk of something going wrong, especially in a ship as old as hers. She had yet to grow tired of it.

Beside her, Romir released the straps of his shock harness and got to his feet without any hesitation. He’d explained how such safety measures were unnecessary for a djinn but continued to use them—to placate her, she suspected. His face was bereft of expression, displaying none of the despair he harbored in his heart.

A green light on a corner of the board blinked to life: the comp notifying her of a task completed. She waited until Romir left; after each Jump, he went to the engine room without fail, to marvel at what he called a vortex. She couldn’t tell what he found so interesting about staring at a motionless piece of equipment, but that was what he did. That was all he did—just stare—he didn’t touch anything. Not that he needed to touch to do whatever he did to manipulate electronics.

Once the door of the pilot chamber sealed behind him, she accessed the comp, tilting her seat to lounge in comfort.

The translation of the badge’s inscription had run its course. The search had taken a while, since the comp wasn’t an AI and her mother’s library was extensive, covering both Inner World and Rim planets, and she hadn’t set any limits.

The comp had found similarities to first-century Lomidar script . . . and to Mougal script. From Majian texts. Two planets, one an Inner World, the other on the Rim, separated by nearly 25,000 light-years. What were the chances of that happening? Surely that was too small for coincidence.

Then there were the translations.

Almost exactly the same.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Two different planets separated by thousands of light-years. What were the odds of that? She hadn’t expected to find confirmation of Romir’s claim this easily.

Once again the magnitude of such a feat took her breath away. To bridge two points, not only separated by thousands of light-years but also located within the slopes of planetary gravity wells, and even more—within atmospheres—they should have failed. Yet here was evidence that they’d succeeded.

She slipped the badge from under her T-top and off her neck, turning it over to study the inscription on the reverse.

The slight roughness under her thumb didn’t register as she pondered Nasri’s words floating through the back of her mind. The entailment was a promise. Yet of all the Dilaryn jewels, the necklace with Romir’s badge was the only one so entailed. Was it significant that it bore the same word?

She activated the comp and opened her mother’s file on the necklace’s provenance. As she’d thought, its history was unbroken, stretching back to the founding of Salima and always in the senior Dilaryn line—from mother to eldest son’s wife or to firstborn daughter or niece. Nasri had been meticulous in her avocation; there could be no doubting her research.

So what could be so important that the badge alone of all the Dilaryn jewels was entailed?

Asrial still had not come to any conclusion when the door to the pilot chamber hissed open.

“What promise?”

Romir’s slight smile faded, his face going blank with confusion as the door slid shut behind him. “I do not follow.”

“Your badge.” She flicked a hand at the scan on the comp, directing his attention to the image as she slipped the badge back under her T-top. “The inscription includes ‘Promise.’ What promise?”

He tipped his head to one side as he peered at the screen. “That was not there when I had it.”

Asrial pressed her fist to her mouth, nibbling on a knuckle as she thought. It had been added later, after he’d given it to his betrothed? Did that make
Promise
in the inscription more significant?

“You think it is important.”

“Don’t you think it is?” It frustrated her that he wasn’t more excited. The inscription might be a wild jump, but it was a definite link to his people and a better lead than nothing and just searching at random.

“What I think does not matter.”

Her heart clenched at hearing such apathy couched in so simple an answer. She grimaced, irritated. Wanting to free him was one thing, just like using him to warm her sheets. She had to remember that was as far as it went. This heartache wasn’t part of it; she wasn’t going to get more involved. Once he was free, they would go their separate ways.

After all, she had other people to worry about.

But she was getting sidetracked. Convincing Romir of the importance of his opinion wasn’t the point; freeing him was. Maybe she was going about her questioning in the wrong way.

“What was she like?” Almost before the words were said, Asrial wished she hadn’t asked. She didn’t want to hear Romir describe the woman he loved, the one he’d planned to share his life with, but she needed to know. Her nails bit into her palm as she fixed her gaze on the screen.

“I . . . do not remember what she looked like anymore.” He closed his eyes at the admission.

Shock shattered her pretense of casualness, and she found herself staring across her shoulder at his tight face.

How could that be?
Romir wasn’t a shallow man who dispensed his affections wherever he would. The way he’d held off from the full cycle of intimacy proved it. How could he not remember the appearance of someone as important to him as his betrothed? And yet why would he lie?

Asrial bit her lip. She should have been relieved not to have competition, but her heart ached for his loss. “Not her appearance. What kind of woman was she? Would she have done this as a joke?” She managed to summon a brisk tone from somewhere. Romir didn’t look like he’d appreciate any sympathy right then.

His eyes turned distant, blurring with longing she didn’t want to see—that she shouldn’t have minded seeing. “No.”

Looking away, Asrial cleared her throat impatiently. “Then what would this promise of hers be? What’s so important that she’d have it engraved on your weaver’s badge? Your engagement?” If it was that, then her hope was futile.

“It could not be our betrothal.” His calm statement relieved her enough to allow her to look at Romir only to see him cross his arms, his shoulders hunching. Despite his control over his voice, he wasn’t as unaffected by the discussion as he pretended to be.

“Then what?”

His brow furrowed in sudden thought, but then he shook his head, dismissing it. “Impossible.”

“Tell me.”

“She vowed to learn how the Mughelis made djinn . . . and how to break that weave.” His right hand rose suddenly, going to his left shoulder to rub the tat adorning it, tracing the arc that gleamed dark blue against his golden skin with distracted strokes. No, not rub—scratch. He used his nails repeatedly as though he could dig out the ink. If he weren’t djinn, she would have expected him to draw blood before too long.

Romir stopped when he noticed her looking, jerking his hand down into a self-conscious fist. But after she turned her gaze back to the screen, in the edge of her vision, she saw his hand creep back to his shoulder to resume scratching.

“What is it about that tat? Why do you keep doing that?”

A grim look twisted his face as he jerked his hand away again. “This tat, as you call it, is the mark the Mughelis place on djinn—or so we surmised. I did not have this black star before my capture.”

She studied it carefully. There was nothing menacing about the design of the tat. When viewed from the front or back, all she could see was a dark blue arc with flares shooting out from it. She could see the complete design only when she stood on his left: a circle with wild flares in all directions. “Black star?”

“Yes, it is indigo, but
black star
is what we called the djinn mark. It seemed appropriate, a perversion of nature.” He pressed his fists together, their trembling betraying a struggle for control—a struggle she would be better off ignoring if she wanted to keep some emotional distance between them.

Sidetracked again. Frigging crap, she couldn’t seem to keep her mind on course. What were they talking about?

Promise
, that was it.

“So she was trying to free djinn. No,” Asrial corrected herself, raising a finger in emphasis, “she
promised
to free djinn?”

“She made it her life’s work, after her brother was captured. She would have known I was . . . alive and likely in Mugheli hands. But for it to mean she succeeded—” Running his fingers through his hair, Romir shook his head. “That is impossible.”

Frustration swelled at his hasty dismissal. “Why not? What if this promise really is the knowledge of how to break this djinn weave? Don’t you think it’s worth pursuing?”

“I would give anything to be free of this deathless servitude. But the best minds of the Academe spent years trying to unravel that cursed weave. We all tried—to no avail.” The fear in his eyes, that weathered look of failure and old disappointments that shadowed the silver to gray, weighed on her heart. In his time as a djinn, what had happened that he behaved like this? From what little he had slipped about the Mughelis and what she’d seen on Maj, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

But if Romir couldn’t hope—was afraid to hope—she would do so for both of them. It was better than the alternative. But now that she had a lead, what to do about it?

Asrial ground her hand on her chest, feeling the badge under her palm. Instinct said she had the right of it. She had until the auction on Lyrel 9 to decide her course.

“It is different—
neater than the other stations.” Leaning forward, Romir tipped his head to one side as he considered his screen. He had it set on visual as they approached Lyrel 9, and the station loomed large.

Little remained of the station of her childhood. Bubble cars replaced the speed seats that ferried people between the arms of the station. So much had been changed in the reconstruction. The maze of annex corridors she’d explored with her cousins were gone, relegated to history.

Asrial had to laugh at her nostalgia. And they wondered why she preferred the Rim where change came more slowly.

“Something amuses you?”

“It’s not important.” She shifted the
Castel
to a different space lane in obedience to Lyrel 9 control’s instructions, passing below a passenger liner undocking from the station in preparation for departure. The liner was an entirely different ship from the
Castel
, with entire stretches of bulkhead made up of transparent sapphire—much like the new Lyrel 9, now that she thought of it. They must give passengers an exceptional view of space, though. “It’s different because it’s new construction.”

“You do not approve.”

The astute comment had her glancing at him in surprise. What had he seen that prompted that comment? “I prefer the system it had before.”

His answer was a waiting silence—and he waited well with an expectant silence that was a demand in itself. All very polite . . . and something she couldn’t seem to ignore. He was good at that. His silence was worth several cubes of scholarly tracts.

“I don’t like the bubble cars. Sure, they’re safer than the speed seats in the event of a catastrophic decompression, but they’re slower, and you have to wait on their schedules. The speed seats were faster; you just got a seat and joined the flow in the tubes. The system zipped you to your destination and—it was fun.” She and her cousins had delighted in zipping around Lyrel 9, back when Jamyl and Nasri were still alive. The thought woke a pang of old pain, and she continued in a subdued tone, “It was the closest you could get to feeling the wind in your hair, here in space.”

The arms of Lyrel 9 stretched out like the radials of a spider’s web she’d seen on Gehna with the aforementioned bubble cars traversing the spaces between them in concentric rings, like mobile beads of dew. The larger ships docked perpendicular to the arms, almost as though caught by the web.

Rather similar to her situation.

Except those ships could get away. She was tangled in a web of love and duty, fighting to get ahead.