Fated Blades, page 13
“Would you have helped the renegade?”
“For the seco generators? Yes, I would. I would’ve twisted my family’s arms until their elbows were turned backward.”
“Lobbying would’ve taken time. Drewery was a sure bet.”
“Just how did that conversation go? I will push a law through if you marry my daughter?”
“Pretty much. I knew he was dirty, although I had no idea how dirty. That I learned later. My initial plan was to bribe him. We met. He must have seen something he liked, because he offered me Cassida on the spot.”
She shook her head, and when she spoke, she sounded bitter. “At least I have an excuse, Matias. My father made me do it. But you, you did it to yourself.”
“No, I made a strategic decision. It didn’t seem like a bad deal. I would have to marry eventually. Cassida is beautiful, intelligent, and charming.”
Ramona threw her hands up. “Cassida betrayed you!”
“I didn’t say anything about her loyalty. I discussed things with her prior to the engagement. I explained that the life of a kinsman is filled with danger, that one day I might not come home, and if we had children, it might be up to her to raise them alone. I tried to be clear that I worked long hours, but I promised that I would make time for the two of us and if she was in any kind of trouble, I would do everything in my power to fix it. I told her that if she didn’t want to marry me, she did not have to. I would make sure her father wouldn’t force her, although five minutes of watching Drewery and his daughter made it painfully obvious that he has never forced her to do anything in her entire life. I asked her what she wanted out of the marriage.”
Ramona had an odd look on her face. He wasn’t sure how to interpret it.
“Believe it or not, she said she wanted me. She was enthusiastic about being my wife, in the traditional aspect of the term. We got along well.”
Ramona groaned. “Well, of course she was enthusiastic . . . never mind. Please continue.”
“It seemed like everyone would accomplish their goals. I got a lovely wife and the law I desperately needed, Drewery got a kinsman son-in-law, and Cassida got a husband who would keep her in the lifestyle she’d become accustomed to. It was only after we were married that all of us realized that nobody got what they wanted. Except for the agitators. We did get those.”
He shook his head. In retrospect, the whole thing seemed idiotic.
“Drewery proved a massive liability,” he continued. “Everything he touched was tainted.”
“And Cassida?” Ramona asked.
He looked at the stars above his head, feeling the familiar unpleasant tension flood his muscles. “I’m a disappointment to her.”
“How could you possibly be a disappointment?” She seemed insulted on his behalf.
“I thought we’d covered expectations before the wedding. Turns out that I wasn’t taken seriously. Cassida and her mother viewed me as a fixer-upper. A man who with proper guidance and direction would become everything they wanted.”
Her eyebrows came together. “And what did they want?”
“Something completely different.”
She waited for him to elaborate.
He took a moment to find the right words. He never discussed it with anyone. He never planned to discuss it, either, and putting the tangled mess of thoughts and emotions into complete sentences took effort. It hurt.
“I didn’t understand what the problem was at first, so when Cassida began complaining, I tried to make her happy. She said she wanted to do something worthwhile. I offered her a position with the company, but she refused it. She decided to do charitable work, so I gave her a budget. She spent some of it, but she was growing more and more unhappy. Looking back at it, there were clues, small things that at the time seemed insignificant. She complained that someone else got a seat on some charity’s board instead of her. I commiserated.”
He realized his voice was rising. He’d bottled the frustration for so long it was breaking through. He forced his voice into an even tone.
“She wanted me to attend a dinner with a provincial senator, but I was too busy. I told her to go by herself. She threw a fit, the first of many. She couldn’t go by herself, I had to be there. Why couldn’t I understand such a simple thing?”
Ramona shook her head. “She did comprehend the concept of running a family enterprise?”
“Only when it came to her family business.” His words dripped with bitterness. His attempts to achieve detachment were clearly failing.
“Politics?”
“Yes. She decided to sleep separately.” He paused. It still stung after all this time. He’d thought he was over it. “I gave her space. The longer this went on, the more I felt that there was something I was missing. Finally, she lost her patience and explained it to me.”
“Oh, I can’t wait,” Ramona said.
“Being the wife of a kinsman, even a prosperous one, wasn’t prestigious enough. Cassida wanted to be married to a man with ‘power.’”
Ramona burst out laughing.
Suddenly he felt lighter, as if her laugh had somehow crystallized the absurdity of that declaration and now it was all he could see.
Matias grinned back. “Her perception of power was shaped by her upbringing. For all of her outward sophistication, Cassida is rather sheltered. Her charity efforts were a way for her to enter the upper echelons of society, but she didn’t get the kind of reception her mother enjoyed. The best spots went to the spouses of politicians. To be valued, to be important, she had to offer useful access, and nobody who mattered to her wanted access to me. I had to become somebody, a man who could grant favors and pull strings. She wanted to make an entrance and have every head turn toward her.”
“Did she ever ask you what you wanted? Did you communicate to her that doing what she demanded would make you miserable?”
“Yes. I’m getting to that. About six months ago Drewery invited us for a family dinner, during which it was explained to me that a junior senator position was about to come open and I was guaranteed to take it. I told them I wasn’t interested. Cassida’s mother demanded to know when I was going to grow up and start doing what was best for everyone. I told her that if she spoke like that to me again, it would be the last time we would ever meet face to face. And then I walked out. Cassida caught up with me at our house. You know that saying, ‘flew into a rage’? Well, that night I got a visual demonstration of what it actually meant. She screamed, she threw things, she cried. I had embarrassed her in front of her parents. I was useless and stupid. And ungrateful for all the strings her father had pulled. She hated every moment she had to stay in the room with me because I was so unbearably dense that she wanted to hit me until I started bleeding.”
“She’s psychotic.” Ramona shook her head. “If she had done it to Gabriel, he would have given her anything she wanted. He isn’t built for that kind of relentless pressure. He would have just folded and gone along.”
He gave her a look.
“Oh.”
They shared a few minutes of silence.
“So what happened?” she asked.
“After she was done screaming, I told her that I’d chosen my path. I had responsibilities and goals. I worked hard at making my family safe and prosperous. I wasn’t a child. I didn’t need to be led or fixed. I wasn’t about to sacrifice the future of my family and my own peace of mind to please her or her family. If she wanted the trappings of power she so badly craved, it was up to her to achieve it on her own. I would support her in that pursuit. She told me that wasn’t what she wanted and that I was a horrible human being. I told her to expect divorce papers in the morning.”
He felt exhausted just remembering it. That was a night he never cared to repeat.
“And yet, you’re still married,” Ramona said, her voice resigned.
“She joined me for breakfast the next morning. She was apologetic and contrite. She said she was under a lot of pressure from her parents. She didn’t want a divorce. She loved me and wanted to make the marriage work. I agreed to give it six months.”
“Why?”
He’d asked himself that same question countless times over the last few months.
Matias let out a deep sigh. “Because she cried, and she was sad.”
Ramona stared at him.
“I was her husband. It was my responsibility to take care of her just as it was her responsibility to take care of me. Marriage is compromise. The least I could do was try to find some common ground. We agreed that I would place greater importance on her needs, and in return she would try to understand what made me happy. We reached a state of ceasefire. Things were calm.”
And he had settled for that calm. He saw that clearly now.
“Occasionally we had dinner together, sometimes we slept together, I made sure to make time for the invitations she wanted us to attend, and she stopped her unrelenting assault on the way I lived my life. We were cordial. I was . . . busy. Very, very busy. I knew Drewery would become an issue eventually, so I took the necessary steps, but getting the seco generator up and running mattered more at the time. I thought everything was settled until the morning you walked into my office.”
Ramona smiled at him. “You are a good man, Matias Baena.”
“But a terrible husband,” he said, his words half self-deprecation, half confession.
She shook her head. “No. Everything I’ve learned about the Drewerys so far tells me they’re a family that plans long term. Kinsmen command respect, but we don’t usually get involved in politics. Drewery’s family has been on the planet for only four generations. He thinks his roots are shallow. He was born and raised here, yet he doesn’t understand that it’s not how long you have been in the province—it’s how you conduct yourself that makes you a Dahlian. He wanted the authenticity of the old Dahlia family, and the only way to get it was to marry his daughter to a kinsman.”
“True,” he agreed.
“Unmarried kinsmen who are heads of their families are in short supply,” she said. “Most of us are engaged by the time we hit our late teens in the name of some family alliance. My grandparents even went to another planet to find a secare for my father to marry. And here you were, twenty-eight, at the head of your family, with a solid financial foundation and very few dirty secrets. You were a prize catch. I’ll bet you anything that you were discussed at their dinner table long before Drewery decided to suddenly care about tech-sector imports. You were weighed, measured, dissected, and found worthy, and then you were baited and trapped.”
He’d considered this possibility before but dismissed it. “Seems like too much trouble to catch me.”
The twin moons had climbed high into the sky, the large disk of Ganimede glowing with green and the smaller, brighter Silver Sister spilling pale light onto the woods.
Ramona leaned forward, her eyes open wide.
All around them star flowers bloomed, glowing with delicate white. Their petals curled outward, opening the large bell-shaped blossoms wider and wider. Across from them the largest flower shook once, and a fountain of glittering golden spores rose into the air, floating on the gentle night breeze.
Another flower released its spores, then another. The woods shone with gold. A single shiny spark landed on Ramona’s hair.
“You said it would be too much trouble.” Ramona’s voice was soft and wistful. “I would go through a lot more trouble to catch you. You have no idea how rare you are, Matias. A man who is competent, smart, considerate, loyal . . . a man who blocks a sonic blast so you can escape and throws his arm to shield you during a crash. What woman wouldn’t want you, Matias?”
All this time he’d told himself she was off limits. The chain he’d put himself on just broke. He wanted her more than anything, and he desperately hoped he didn’t screw this up.
Matias braced himself and went for it. “Do you?”
She raised her head to look at him, and he saw the answer.
Matias cleared the distance between them in a heartbeat. He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. Her body felt amazing, strong, flexible yet soft, the same way it felt when they danced. The mere touch of her skin overwhelmed him, cutting through logic and reason. Nothing else mattered except her. He buried his right hand in her hair, breathed in her scent, and kissed her.
The connection between them flared, bursting through him like an explosion. His senses shot into overdrive. He felt her melt against him, the warmth of her, the taste of her tongue, the fragrance of her hair . . . it felt like he had waited for her all his life without realizing it, and now that he’d found her, he’d never let go.
She pushed away from him. It was a small, gentle movement, but it cut him like a knife. He looked at her face and saw tears in her eyes.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “We can’t. We’re still married.”
He didn’t care.
“Let go, Matias.”
He did. It almost killed him, but he opened his arms and watched her rise and walk away into the shimmering woods.
CHAPTER 9
The city of Adra glittered like a jewel held near a flame. The sky above it turned the deep purple of late evening, the estates surrounding it surrendering to the twilight, but the city itself was bright as day. Countless lamps, simulated torches, and lanterns held the darkness at bay as the happy crowds flowed through its streets, munching on food from the vendors, flying glowing kites, and throwing brightly colored glitter that would melt into nothing by morning.
Ramona moved with the current, acutely aware of Matias beside her. She wore a translucent skirt that shifted colors like an opal, pale at her waist, flashing with green and red as it reflected the light, then darkening to a deep crimson at the hem. Her top, a matching white, left her arms and her midriff bare. Her hair streamed loose over her shoulders, held back from her face by a delicate diadem attached to a diaphanous crimson veil that overlaid her hair. She would have preferred a combat suit, but they needed the element of surprise. The city had assigned the kruga to Kamen Plaza. And the kruga called for veils, gradient skirts, and naked waists.
It was worth it to see Matias in the traditional garb. He wore a white shirt that clung to his chest, formfitting white pants tucked into knee-high crimson boots, and a long vest that resembled a trench coat without sleeves with its hem split into three pieces at midthigh. The light from the lamps played on the carved muscles of his bare arms, and more than one person had given him a long appraising look as they passed. She couldn’t blame them. He looked like the hero of some First Wave saga, except that his short hair ruined the illusion. It should have been in a ponytail that reached to his waist. Yes, the hair was definitely a problem, and so was the expression on his face.
“Will you stop scowling?” she murmured. “We’re supposed to be having fun.”
“I feel like a jackass.”
“You look fine. Smile, Matias. You might like it.”
He growled under his breath.
An alert sounded in her head. Karion calling. She took it, subvocalizing her words. “Yes?”
“They’re here.”
A still image unfolded in her mind—Gabriel and Cassida walking across Kamen Plaza, eight guards behind them. Her husband looked dapper in a dark-blue doublet. It set off his blond hair. She allowed herself half a second to scrutinize his face. Golden tan, bright smile, not a trace of worry in his light-blue eyes. Next to him, Cassida radiated tension, her mouth set in a narrow line, but Gabriel was having a lovely time. She could recite what was going through his head, probably word for word. What a lovely party, look at all the pretty people just like us, soon we’re going to get paid, and then we’re going to go somewhere new and exciting . . .
She gritted her teeth.
Another image. Cassida tugging Gabriel closer, exasperation plain on her face.
That’s it, dear. That’s all there is to him. Don’t worry, we’re on our way, and it will all be over soon.
They sped up at the same time. Matias must have gotten the same report from his people.
They had briefly considered setting a trap by the plaza and snatching their spouses off the street. But with the bodyguards, the risk of bystander casualties was too high. The Vandals would not give up. They wanted the seco tech, and the only way to stop them was to wipe them out. Letting Gabriel and Cassida join them gathered all their targets in a convenient location they couldn’t easily escape.
The street gently curved around a narrow plateau rising from the city like a stone sword. They wove their way through the crowd until they reached the Kamen Gap, a narrow canyon between two plateaus. The crowd thinned. All those without reservations would be barred from entering the plaza, and for a moment they were alone, marching full speed through the passage, round amber lanterns sprouting from the living rock illuminating their way.
All her worries evaporated. The last traces of tension that had settled on her shoulders since she watched the recording of her husband’s betrayal left her. It was simple now. Live or die. Succeed and win everything, or fail and lose it all. Either way, it would be decided tonight. She felt light, strong, and ready.
Matias caught her hand and squeezed it. She gripped his fingers, searching for that same connection she’d felt when they danced. It pulsed into her, binding the two of them together, true, honest, without any subterfuge or pretense, and she leaned into the powerful current, eager to test it.
The entrance to the plaza loomed ahead, the two walls on its sides thrusting out like the jaws of some great beast. They walked toward it hand in hand.
A kissing couple lingered on the left, a blonde woman and a man half-hidden by a long pale cloak. As they passed, the man raised his head, and she stared at Karion’s face. They kept walking.
“My brother has a girlfriend,” she murmured, bewildered.
“Or at least someone willing to kiss him,” Matias said.
The enormous stone gates towered before them. The dancing troupe was already here, the couples milling to the right, just outside of the gate, wearing similar clothes. Matias and Ramona joined the dancers. A dark-haired woman nodded to Matias.
