“And you don’t want him?”
Klym looked around the room, at all these women who did want him. How easy his life would have been if he’d taken them. If not for her, he could have. “I don’t understand him.”
Janna was quiet for a long time, staring at her. “Then no one does, because since he came home, his own people surely don’t.”
The loneliness of that statement robbed Klym of breath. She looked around the room at the felanas sitting in their clusters, with women they’d befriended, shared a life with, made a family with. Women who would be forced apart soon. She looked at Janna, waiting to be told that her brother had betrothed her to some distant and unknown Prime.
At his mother in the corner of the room, mourning a husband and a son.
She thought about her father, and the woman he’d never been able to forget, to whom he’d devoted his whole life.
Of Spiro, bleeding on the floor.
Of Agammo and Malina, Bonded now, and her non-existent life back on Argentus.
And Tor, who’d run away from here ten years ago to be a bounty hunter, free to do as he’d pleased whenever he wanted, only to be handed the weight of a kingdom, for a people who didn’t understand him.
Maybe that was how she could help, because in a weird way, she did understand him.
She thought about the look in his eyes as he’d told her to make up her mind when he got back.
And she knew the answer.
She’d made up her mind. And she knew exactly what she was going to do with all the holo-vid she’d been taking since they’d left Spiro.
“I need to find Staria, Monna and Sylese,” she whispered.
Janna made a face. “Monna and Sylese have been sent to their fathers.”
Guilt sat heavy in Klym’s stomach at that. “Will they be allowed to come home?”
Janna cocked her head to the side. “This isn’t their home anymore. They are home. And as to Staria, you shouldn’t trust her.”
Klym tossed her napkin across the table. She’d have to figure out about Monna and Sylese later. “She said the same thing about you.”
THE DUNGEON could hardly be called pleasant. The air carried the sort of cold and damp that settled into the bones. And the darkness. There were twenty cells, ten stretching in each direction, each dimly lit with the same horrible flickering bulbs that only stayed on for a minute after motion.
She’d sent Janna in search of a steward with keys, so now here she was, alone in a place she’d hesitate to see her worst enemy. She walked cautiously, on her freshly bandaged feet.
A person down here would need to stay in constant motion or be swallowed up by darkness.
Klym wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but certainly something more modern than this medieval dungeon.
“Staria?” Her voice came out as little more than a whisper.
The darkness could drive a person mad. “Staria?” she tried again. “Staria, are you down here?”
“Selissa?”
“Call me Klym.”
Staria’s arm jutted through a set of bars at the back of the dungeon. Her bony fingers wrapped around them.
“Have you been harmed?” Klym stopped before the bars and couldn’t stop the twinge of pity. The cell was far from hospitable.
“No.” She looked so tired, shadows below her eyes, making Klym wonder if she’d slept at all. A glance around the dungeon was enough to make Klym assume she hadn’t. It would have been impossible for her to sleep down here.
“Did you do it on purpose?”
“What?”
“Get me lost down there?”
“No.” Dark eyes met hers. “Though, I did consider trying to get you to wear something ugly.”
Klym couldn’t pretend to be surprised. She glanced around the darkened corners of the dungeon. Argentus had rats and giant centipedes in dank places like this. She shuddered to imagine what Vesta might have. “Are there any animals down here?”
“I’ve heard things, but seen nothing.”
The stones gave off a magnetic pull of their own, ebbing darkly. Klym paced a quick line to ensure the lights didn’t turn off. “Is the outfit I chose ugly?”
“No.”
“Is it inappropriate in some way?”
“No.”
“Is there anything at all wrong with it?”
“Monna wouldn’t have let me do it, even if I’d tried.” Staria shrugged. “I never knew Tor anyway. It’s not like I love him. And I hate his mother. I won’t be sad never to see that lizard again.”
For a moment Klym was transported straight back to the Institute when she and Malina used to snicker behind their hands about Tutor Heilani. She laughed. “Will you give me your word you won’t repeat what I’m about to tell you?”
Staria surveyed her dingy, empty cell, then leaned her face between the bars. “I did have plans to tell the toilet. But if it’s really important, I won’t.”
“I want to make a holo-vid. I’m the first person from Argentus to come here. I just want to show them that you aren’t all that bad.”
Staria cocked her head. “Why?”
“If Tor and I have any hope of making a life together, I’d like to know that I tried my hardest to make peace between our planets.”
Staria pushed her lips out, and her eyes took on an almost feral gleam. “If we do that, will the Argenti come here?”
“Would you want that?”
“I hear they have magic cocks.”
Klym laughed. For the first time since her father had given her to Spiro, and she’d left the Institute and Malina behind, she felt like she had a friend. “It’s not the cock,”she said. “It’s the serum. And it isn’t magic. It’s science.”
Staria sank her teeth into her lip and gave her a sneaky smile. “Give me Argenti science serum over Lasseron’s bunions any day.”
33
Some secrets really are
better than others
JANNA ARRIVED as requested with the steward, Renalli.
He babbled about the rules regarding prisoners, and Klym remembered what Tor had said. Three rules.
“Let her out, please.”
Renalli used a set of keys swinging from a long rope on his belt and opened Staria’s cell.
Staria walked through the bars of
