Stardancer Page 4

  “Be you silent.”

  That terse reply was all she received as he pulled her down a dark corridor. She began to struggle against his hold in earnest when with a quick movement he slapped his palm against the panel and opened the door.

  Kinara’s eyes widened at the sight of several Az-kye dressed as she was, cowering in the rank room. Huddled together, they did not even lift their eyes at the intrusion.

  Abruptly, Aidar pushed her toward a fat Az-kye dressed in gray tunic and trousers.

  “Another slave for your work detail, Barin. She is disobedient and difficult. I trust you will get work out of her.”

  The overseer looked her over briefly and gave a nod. “Yes, my lord.”

  “Set you the slaves to their work and attend me on the bridge.”

  Barin bowed and Aidar turned to go.

  It finally sank in that not only was he going to abandon her to this fat Az-kye, he was going to do it right now. Left to a work detail she’d have no opportunity at all to intervene for her crew.

  “Aidar!”

  Barin whirled on her, his pudgy face red with anger. “Be you silent!”

  “Aidar, wait! Don’t leave me here!” Kinara cried, pushing her way past.

  The door slid closed behind Aidar. Kinara yelped as the overseer suddenly grabbed from behind by the hair.

  He gave her a shake. “I command, you do!” he snarled. “I command silence, you are silent! I command work, you work!” His grip tightened painfully in her hair. “I command, you do not, I punish! Understand?”

  “Wait, what was work again?”

  He yanked her hair so viciously she gasped.

  Barin voice was low and dangerous. “Be you obedient, slave, or be you dead.”

  Her eyes tearing, Kinara nodded. He released her with a shove that sent her to the floor and skinned her knees.

  Her hand went to her throbbing head.

  You were right, Kyndan. I really need to learn when to shut up.

  Aidar stalked onto the bridge.

  He had hardly slept and had not eaten. The Tellaran tossed and turned in her sleep. Only when he drew her against him, soothing her with soft words and caresses did she settle. He cradled her, finally able to look his fill at her as she slept beside him. His gaze traced the soft curves of her face, her pink mouth parted in slumber, the purpled shadows of care beneath her eyes.

  By the standards of his people she would not even be considered pretty. Her Tellaran heritage made her too unusual, too foreign, not Az-kye.

  But since first glance when boarding the Tellaran ship he simply could not stop looking at her.

  He had never seen hair such a color before. Brilliant and fiery, it shone like shimmersilk and fairly glowed when it caught the light. He had stroked it in wonderment while she slept. Silky soft, he shivered with pleasure at the feel of the strands slipping between his fingers.

  He remembered her face absorbed with her talk of engines, her hands fluttering as gracefully as an Imperial dancer's fans, her eyes shining with intelligence. Wide set and fringed with lashes as russet as her hair, her eyes were just the color of the sky over the Empress’ City during the summer months.

  By the flickering light her hair was magnificent, the coppery waves falling down her back. Az-kye women had a warm, golden tone to their skin but hers was very pale, so delicate he could see the blue veins beneath the skin of her throat. She was taller, slimmer than Az-kye women usually were.

  He glanced over the firm roundness of her breasts, tantalizingly outlined under the thin material of her slave’s dress, her small waist that flared into gently curving hips. He could hardly focus on her words so distracted was he with remembering the feel of her soft mouth beneath his, how her breath had quickened as he kissed her.

  He wanted to see her eyes soften and her cheeks flush with desire, hear her cries as he stroked her to her pleasure. He wanted the shimmersilk of her hair through his fingers as he buried himself inside her.

  He wanted her to be as hungry for it as he was.

  He let his breath out through clenched teeth as he glanced over the ship’s instruments, drawing nervous glances from the warriors around him as he worked.

  Tellarans, uncivilized and utterly barbaric, scarcely seemed human at times. He had never had, nor wanted, one in his household and she was the most unruly, quick-tempered female he had ever encountered.

  He had bathed and dressed himself as she slept as bonelessly as a child in his bed. And in gratitude for more consideration than he had ever shown any servant, she stood and shouted at him!

  He found himself constantly glancing at the entrance to the bridge, growing more annoyed by the minute that the overseer had yet to make an appearance.

  Shouted! Heaping insults on him as if he were clanless and she the warrior! Meeting his eye as if she were not even a slave.

  He listened to the warrior’s reports with only half an ear. Even with Dael, his foster brother and closest friend, he found his voice sharp, his patience thin. Dael’s brow creased at his shortness and Aidar avoided his questioning look.

  She was nothing more than a chair or a goblet to be used as he pleased, kept near or taken away as he wished!

  It was far too long after he left her that the overseer came onto the bridge.

  Barin made a deep bow. “My Lord of the Az’anti.”

  “Barin, I was thinking you had forgotten to attend me at all,” he said, unable to keep the aggravation out of his voice. “I was about to send another in search of you.”

  “My regrets, my lord. I was delayed.”

  Aidar waved the apology away impatiently. “Tell me of your slaves’ tasks.”

  “They have labored in the food stores. If it pleases my lord, I will next have the quarters of the under officers cleaned.”

  “It pleases me greatly. Will it take many hours to complete?”

  “If it pleases my lord, I think it shall take the rest of the day.”

  Aidar finally felt his mood begin to lighten. After a day of such miserable labor she would sit a great deal more gratefully at his feet.

  Grateful. And welcoming of his attention.

  “Good. At day’s end, have that Tellaran slave retur-”

  The overseer shifted his eyes.

  Aidar frowned. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, my lord,” Barin said quickly. He cleared his throat. “It was her own fault.”

  An unexpected shock of fear clenched his stomach. “What was her own fault?”

  Barin’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water.

  “What has happened?” Aidar demanded, taking a step forward. “She is hurt?”

  “My lord, I—”

  “Answer me! She is hurt?”

  “Y-yes, my lord, I—”

  Aidar pushed past him. “Where?”

  “My lord?”

  “Where is she?”

  “In food storage, my lord. I left to—”

  “You left her?” Aidar demanded, looking round at the overseer.

  “My lord, I had to. Your command–”

  Aidar pace was unseemly quick leaving the bridge and increased as he made his way below. He broke into a jog when he saw her on the floor at far end of the storage room.

  Her sweet face was ashen, taut with pain, and her fiery hair stuck damply to her temples. She lay sprawled, a twisted, broken storage box open beside her, its ruined grain scattered on the floor. The filthy cloth she held pressed against her thigh was already soaked through with blood.

  Several of the other slaves stood around watching with wide eyes. One weeping girl knelt at his Tellaran’s side, whispering fearfully for her to get up.

  He took in the telltale swelling of a strike on the curve of his Cy’atta’s soft cheek and felt his nostrils flare.

  “Come to join the party, Aidar?” she asked with a wan smile. “Looks like I’m going to have to sit this dance out, but you go ahead.”

  He knelt beside her. “Let me look on it.” />
  “It isn’t pretty,” she said, her breath quick and shallow. “Wouldn’t want you to faint. You look like the fainting type to me.”

  Gently he pried her fingers away, lifting the cloth to look at her leg. The sight made him swallow hard. “Summon a healer.”

  Barin frowned. “My lord?”

  “Summon a healer!”

  Aidar applied pressure to the wound as the man ran from the room. She made a strangled sound, clenching her fist, as he pressed hard to staunch the bleeding.

  “It pains you much?”

  Her brow was shiny with perspiration, her sky-colored eyes large and glazed. “Oh, you know, nothing us hard cases can’t handle.”

  “How did this happen?”

  “The fault is mine, my lord,” the young girl broke in quickly, wiping at her cheeks. “The honorable overseer ordered me to fetch the box. This one came to my side to help but the box fell.”

  Aidar glanced at the girl, surprised that with her tiny size Barin had sent her to lift it down at all. She was barely more than a child.

  He looked back at his Cy’atta. “Was it your task to help her?”

  “What difference does that make? She would have been crushed under this thing if I hadn’t helped her!”

  “It is of no importance what happens to her.”

  A tiny amount of color flushed her cheeks. “She’s a kid, for star’s sake! Of course it matters. Remind me not to help out when you have to lift down a box twice your size.”

  He frowned. She was not making any sense and she was losing a lot of blood.

  Where is the healer?

  He shook his head, changing the position of his hand to press the cloth harder. “You are the most disobedient of slaves, Tellaran. If this is what I might expect I do not think that I shall keep any of you.”

  When this did not bring the scathing reply he expected he looked up to find she would not be answering him at all.

  Kinara came to, her leg aching and sore. The drapes were moving gently around her, the mattress was familiar and comfortable under her.

  From her place on Aidar’s bed she could hear muffled voices. She lay for a moment trying to make out the Az-kye words but they were too indistinct.

  She sighed. From her brief and stilted attempts at conversation with the Az-kye slaves it was clear that she could expect no help from them. Not even her whispered promises of asylum in Tellaran space moved them. They were a broken lot, willing to do whatever they were ordered and terrified of the overseer.

  Well, she thought, settling more comfortably, can’t blame them for that.

  She’d suffered more than one blow from him. Each one for a suggestion she made for making the work easier and quicker.

  Barin, full of his own importance, did not want the work easier or quicker.

  Think you to trick me into softening your lot, slave? Get you to work!

  Between how they treated their workers and the rigid way their society operated, it was probably just a matter of time before they destroyed themselves.

  “You are not asleep.”

  Kinara looked up to see Aidar pulling aside the curtain. “I was. I just woke up.”

  He looked her over. “You are in less pain now.”

  “Actually it hardly hurts at all. But I don’t know how bad it really is,” she added, frowning. “I haven’t had the nerve to look yet.”

  He snorted. “I cannot think you lack courage to do anything.”

  “Well, Aidar, now you know my terrible secret,” she said with a mock sigh. “I’m squeamish.”

  He pulled the covers down. “Look you now, then.”

  Taking a deep breath, prepared to be completely appalled at the result of Az-kye medicine, she did.

  And blinked.

  Her hand went to her thigh to confirm what her eyes told her. Her fingers slid over smooth, healed unmarked flesh. She glanced at her other leg to be sure she was looking at the correct one.

  “Stars,” she murmured. “That’s good work.”

  “Our healers are very skilled. To be sure, you knew that. You have studied us so closely.”

  Kinara looked up at his dry tone. “I hope you aren’t waiting for me to apologize. So far, I’ve been right about everything else.”

  He gave her an annoyed look. “Think you so?”

  “Yes,” she replied, carefully swinging her legs over the bed’s edge to sit up. “I certainly do.”

  “What do you now?”

  “I want to see if I can walk, if it’s all right with you.”

  He gave a nod. “You have my permission.”

  Kinara rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t really asking, but thanks anyway.”

  “I do not understand you, Cy’atta. Even when I grant what it is you want, you are displeased.”

  “I thought you didn’t care what a slave felt.” She stood awkwardly, wincing when she put weight on her leg.

  “You try me sorely Tellaran,” he retorted. “I dislike how you use my words against me.”

  “Let me guess,” Kinara said, gripping the bedpost for support. “It’s unseemly in a slave.”

  “Most unseemly.”

  She took a limping step, then another. “Stars, that hurts.”

  He reached out a hand to steady her, cupping her elbow. “The gods punish your disobedience.”

  “Oh, please, they do not! Anybody standing under a large, heavy object would get hurt if it fell on them!”

  He shook his head. “You are impossible. The gods made you slave.”

  “You made me a slave. Send me back to Tellaran space and I’m free again.”

  This seemed to stump him. “Think you your clan would welcome you home?”

  “If you mean, would my father be happy to see me back on Rusco? Of course he would!”

  “This cannot be so,” he scoffed. “You have shamed him. He would not look on you.”

  Kinara gritted her teeth to take a more ambitious step. “You have some strange ideas about how families work, Az-kye. He’s my father, of course he’d want to see me.” She paused, considering. “Though right after he hugged me, he’d give me the yelling of a lifetime.”

  “Think you he would only scold?” Aidar’s brow creased. “To an Az-kye there is no worse fate than to wear the white. Were I so, out of love my father would not have looked on me to spare me that pain. I would have gladly died before shaming him so.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. That he might have a home and a family who loved him, one that he loved in return.

  That Az-kye can love at all.

  Aidar shook his head. “Tellarans truly know no honor.”

  “Okay, that’s enough!” Kinara said sharply, pulling her arm away. “Tellarans hold our honor very highly, it just doesn’t include primitive ideas like slavery.”

  At this his dark eyes got very round. “Have Tellarans no slaves?”

  “Of course not! Slavery is savage and stupid. Only you Az-kye do it.”

  “This cannot be so,” he insisted. “Who does slaves’ work? You have workers, do you not?”

  “Actually, most of our work is automated but we have workers to run the machines.”

  “And those are your slaves.”

  “No, they get paid for their work and they can leave if they want to.”

  “Do they leave, you will have no worker at that task.”

  Kinara closed her eyes briefly, praying for patience. “Aidar, people don’t work all the time. The supervisor could call another worker in on her day off to take that place.”

  “Do Tellarans never work?”

  “Don’t you ever take a day off? Don’t you ever have fun?”

  He looked at her quizzically. “I am a warrior, not a boy.”

  It was Kinara’s turn to frown. “So that’s your life? You spend your time swinging swords and blowing up ships that don’t belong to you, and the next day you get up and do it all over again?”

  “It was my ship to destroy,” he said, nettled. “And my duty to
do so. Az-kye want no foreign ships, nor foreign ways. And to allow the Tellarans to retake it to use against us again is foolish.”

  “But you, Aidar,” she said slowly. “If it had been up to you, would you have destroyed it?”

  He shifted his stance. “It would have pleased me to look on it more.”

  “To look on—? You mean you wanted to get a better look at the inside?”

  She could see the hesitation in his dark eyes. “Tellarans do many strange things. I think, perhaps, do I look on their ships I will understand why.”

  “Wow,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were curious about us.”

  His cheeks flushed and his brows rushed together. “I do not care for the doings of Tellarans!”

  “Oh,” Kinara said with a nod. “Of course. My mistake.”

  She circled the room once and the ache in her leg was starting to ease up. She found her balance against a wall and gently stretched the muscle.

  “I think, though, Tellarans are strange, weak things,” he said. “They sit to perform their duties on their ships. They live in tiny quarters, like rodents.”

  “I never thought them that small.”

  “They are not large as these,” he argued with a gesture at their surroundings.

  “No, you’re right. These are much larger.” She changed her position at the wall and glanced up at him under her lashes. “Did you want something, Ad—uh, my lord?”

  His face flushed again. “I wish to know why this is so.”

  “Well, we conserve space for efficiency and we sit because it’s easier and safer.”

  His frown deepened. “It is better to stand. It demands a warrior have strength and stamina.”

  “Well, that’s great, but what you need to run a starship are smarts and an alert mind. Having people standing for hours just wears them out for no purpose.”

  “Only warriors lead upon Az-kye ships. ‘Smarts’ will not replace the power of a warrior. Tellarans are weak, you have proved it.”

  “But you don’t need physical strength! You need training and intelligence. If the Az-kye pick officers only from warriors who are physically strong, then you must have quite a few blockheads on this ship.”

  “You insult the warriors of this ship,” he growled. “Such is not your place, slave.”