“He saved my life,” Alexia said, meeting Damon’s eyes.
They gazed at each other, and Damon felt as if they stood alone again in their hilltop camp, speaking as equals, bickering and threatening and making love.
“You owe him nothing,” Emma said. “Whatever you need you will find here.” She tried to take Alexia’s arm again, but Alexia backed away.
“Why should I trust you?” she asked. “You’re from Erebus. I was taken...” Her lower lip trembled. “All of you are alike!”
“You’re wrong.” Emma held out her hands, palms up. “We want to help you.”
“Then let me go!”
“That would be too dangerous for you, Ms. Fox,” Emma said. “But you will not be treated as a prisoner here.”
“Do you speak for the rest of them?” Alexia demanded, gesturing toward the Opiri who had gathered around them. “For
“I swear you will be left alone.”
“I’ll go with you,” Alexia said, “if you
Frowning, Emma looked at Sergius, who inclined his head.
“He won’t be harmed,” Emma said. “Come, now.”
With a last, hooded glance at Damon, Alexia went with the other woman, her feet dragging with reluctance. Damon knew she was afraid for him. She understood that both their positions were precarious, and the colonists were making no secret of their hostility toward him. But she knew that she would better be able to gain intelligence if she pretended to cooperate.
Damon couldn’t blame her. But their separation was doing something to his heart, threatening to pull it through his ribs and out of his chest.
“Where are you taking her?” he asked Sergius.
“That is no longer your concern,” the Opir snapped, abruptly switching to the ancient Opir tongue. “Emma may have promised that you would not be harmed, but ‘harm’ is a matter of interpretation.”
“I don’t expect you to abide by the word of a serf,” Damon said with unfeigned scorn.
“I see you will have to be taught to speak with respect.”
“To you?” Damon asked with a curl of his lip. “An Opir who will not accept the challenge of a Darketan?”
Sergius seized Damon’s arm in a punishing grip, jarring Damon’s nearly healed wrist.
“You aren’t worth it,” he said. He removed a short, dark rod from his belt: a prod, used on uncooperative or rebellious serfs. “Move ahead of me.”
Damon knew that resisting would be worse than foolish, yet a familiar anger was festering inside him, the anger he had felt when they had taken Eirene away, when he had believed Alexia might die, and again when he had found her with Lysander. It made his fists clench and his muscles harden, his vision grow sharper and his sense of smell become so acute every scent was like an assault.
“Get going,” Sergius said, poking at Damon’s spine with the prod.
Damon moved, looking for Alexia. The women had crossed the perimeter and were walking toward one of the dormitories. Sergius steered Damon toward a small wooden building that stood apart from the rest.
“Where are you taking me?” Damon asked.
“To a holding cell.”
Digging his boot heels into the dirt, Damon came to a halt. “Tell Theron I am here. He will see me.”
Sergius pushed his visored face close to Damon’s. “You have a choice, Darketan.
You’re less than nothing in Eleutheria, and my authority overrides Emma’s. Do as you are told.”
Damon hardly heard him. Eleutheria, he called this place. It meant “freedom.”
Freedom from Erebus. But not for him, or Alexia.
“You have one more chance,” Sergius said. “If you—” Before he had finished speaking, Damon was spinning, striking out at the least protected part of Sergius’s body. The side of his hand slashed into Sergius’s neck in a disabling blow. The Opir staggered back, choking and coughing as he reached up to protect himself. Damon ripped the prod out of Sergius’s hand.
He had no chance to use it. There was a flash of movement behind him, and he felt a stunning blow to the back of the head.
After that there was nothing but darkness.
Damon woke up with a head as heavy as the great statues of the Sires in the Grand Concourse and a clot of intense pain at the base of his skull.
“Get up,” a masculine voice ordered.
Faint light seeped through Damon’s half-closed lids. The floor on which he lay was hard, and the room was dark, but that dim glow gave him a sense of the details before his eyes came into focus.
The holding cell was perhaps two by two meters, bare except for a wooden chair in one corner and a heavy door, currently blocked by the Opir—Sergius—standing over Damon. The sliver of light came from outside, where the door must open onto the commons. The smells were those of night, and Sergius wore not the protective daygear of before but a long, loosely belted tunic and close-fitting pants tucked into high boots.
Damon struggled to his knees, gasped as a white lance of pain plunged into his skull, and planted his hand on the wall for support as he stood. His formerly broken wrist protested the incautious movement with a deep throb of discomfort.
“I see you have survived,” Sergius said in a dry voice. His eyes reflected red in the darkness, and though Damon’s vision was slow in returning, he knew that the Opir was smiling. More or less.
“How long?” Damon asked, resisting the urge to rub the back of his skull.
“Six hours,” Sergius said.
Blinking several times, Damon struggled to make out the Opir’s face. Though the details remained blurred, Damon recognized the long elliptical shape and finely sculpted features typical of high-rank Opiri. Sergius wore his hair cut level with his shoulders and swept back from his forehead, held in place with a small silver circlet that might have represented a dragon. Everything about him exuded elegant disdain.
It was difficult to believe he was the same man who had behaved so roughly before.
Sergius’s stare suggested that his opinion of his prisoner had not improved over the intervening hours. Damon was keenly aware of the fact that his vision had not yet recovered, but he had no intention of letting Sergius know he was vulnerable.
“Where is Alexia?” he asked.
Sergius sighed. “We’re back to that again? Nothing has changed.”
“Are you taking me to Theron?”
“Not like
You stank even before you came through the gates.”
Damon bowed mockingly. “I will endeavor to correct my condition.”
Without comment, Sergius indicated that Damon should precede him out the door. If he was armed, he made no attempt to advertise it, and he offered no threats. He followed Damon out onto the commons, lit with lanterns hung on sturdy poles spaced just closely enough for night-blind humans to find their way from one area of the settlement to the other. The windows of the several dormitories were mostly dark, and only a few Opiri were abroad. Vague shapes—sentries—moved along the battlements.
At the end of one of the dormitories was a lavatory, where Damon and Sergius met a human coming out. The human, a young male, raised his hand to Sergius, glanced at Damon and continued on his way without any
