DarkShip Thieves (30 page)

"And he offered you asylum?" Doctor Bartolomeu asked.

"No. He tied me up," I said. I heard laughter from the audience. "And told me to stay out of his way till he was done collecting." The laughter redoubled. Kit had come all the way down and into my field of vision, on the right. He stood in front of the front row of the amphitheater, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He'd let his beard grow and it hid the lower half of his face. Above it, his eyes were half lidded.

"And in response?" the Doctor asked.

"I tried to garrotte him and scare him so he would take me to Earth."

This time the laughter was so loud and lasted so long that even though Kit turned to Doctor Bartolomeu and asked something, I only caught the tail end of it, "—unwarranted invasion of privacy."

Doctor Bartolomeu shrugged. "So? Challenge me to a duel when this is over?" and after Kit's noise of derision, he turned back to me. "To your knowledge, did you somehow bring persecution on Eden's power collectors?"

"No."

"Is there some way in which you might have?"

"Not that I can imagine, and I've tried to figure out the logistics of how this would happen."

This time there was no laughter, but just a continuous murmur of discussion in the background. The Klaavils, I noted, got up and left, wending quietly between amphitheater rows.

"So," Doctor Bartolomeu said. "You are not in communication with anyone on Earth?"

"No," I said. "I am not."

"And you have no intention of being?"

This one was confusing and my drug-befuddled mind had trouble unwinding it. "Not unless I somehow find myself back on Earth and have a need to talk to someone. It would be very strange to not communicate with anyone in the world if I were there."

The laughter returned, and I thought even Kit's shoulders shook, though his arms remained crossed at his chest.

But the doctor said, "Somehow find yourself on Earth—does that mean you have no intention of returning now? Do you prefer Eden?"

""I do not prefer Eden, but I also have no intention of returning to Earth."

"Why not, if you do not prefer Eden?"

I moaned because I knew what was going to happen the moment I figured out what he was going to ask. Kit was there, staring at me with those half-lidded, unreadable eyes and I couldn't see his mouth through the wild calico beard.

To my horror, I heard the words coming out through my lips and could neither stop them nor call them back, "If I returned to Earth, I would endanger Eden. To achieve it, I would probably have to endanger Kit. And then I would never see Kit again and that," I heard my voice say, uncaring of the fact that I wanted to make a hole on the ground and hide. "Would be unbearable."

Kit's expression didn't alter but a strong, dark red blush climbed from beneath his beard and up to his forehead.

This brought absolute silence, the sort of horrified silence that falls on a party or a social occasion when someone says one of those things that never should be said in public. I swear there were shuffles from the upper rows as people left.

Kit turned to glare at Doctor Bartolomeu. But the doctor, after centuries of life, was perhaps tired of it and had a death wish. As he entered my field of vision carrying a delicate, pink injector, he gave Kit a big smile. "Would you help me help Patrician Sinistra to the recovery room, Cat Klaavil?"

I'm fairly sure that Kit said yes, but perhaps it was the effect of the injector touching my wrist, because I would also swear that yes meant
just wait till we're alone.
Even as my body became more controllable—not normal, but closer to me, like it had been a balloon unsteadily tethered a long way off and had now come closer and therefore easier to push and pull—I wondered just how furious Kit was going to be. One thing I knew about Kit was that he despised having his affairs aired publicly—or at all.

Even with his family, who doubtless knew most of what there was to know, he spoke in half-sentences and veiled references. I wasn't sure if the reason he hadn't told me what he was had been not so much fear of my reaction as a genuine, gut-felt reaction to having to tell anyone something he considered private. Kit Klaavil hoarded secrets like a miser hoarded coin. And I'd just aired his secrets for all the world to hear. More the pity, I'd also aired mine.

I felt his arm come around me, just under my arms, warm and strong, lifting me. "Up you come," he said. I fully expected him to say
and down you go,
and fling me from the stage. But even as Doc Bartolomeu approached to help me on the other side, Kit's other arm came down under my knees and lifted me up. My face came to rest on his chest just sort of his shoulder, against the red stuff of the uniform, just beside the emblem with the apple and the serpent and the words
Je Reviens
. Still half in a dream, afraid of how furious he was going to be, savoring his warmth and strength, I said, "Je Reviens. I'm glad you did come back."

Something that might have been laughter rumbled through his chest. "So am I," he said. "It's ever so much better than the alternative." As he spoke he was carrying me to the one side of the stage not surrounded by seats, and through a small door there.

On the other side was a narrow corridor, and Kit carried me after the doctor, down the hallway and through a door to the left, into a very small room empty save for a single white bed, a white armchair, and an array of medical equipment.

I expected Kit to drop me, or at least to set me on my feet, but he didn't. He carried me all the way to the bed and laid me down upon it. He patted at my shoulder—half absently, as if I were a child in need of reassurance—and then crossed his arms on his chest and turned to the doctor. "Of all the despicable—"

"Can it."

"You had no business—"

"No. But something I have learned, Christopher. When the people who do have business don't take care of it, it falls to those who
don't
to resolve it." The doctor's back was turned, as he poured something from a bottle, but the way Kit was glaring at the spot between the Doc's shoulders I fully expected for the doctor's shabby dark suit to start smoldering and smoking.

However, when he turned around he looked completely unconcerned, and Kit's next foray of "I could not do this. Not without giving away secrets that aren't—"

"So we took care of it," he said, as he approached me and brought a cup of clear liquid to my lips. "Drink now, Thena."

"But you had no right!" Kit said, looking very much like he would have liked to say much stronger words.

"You're very welcome, Christopher."

Kit turned towards the wall nearest him, and punched it—hard. The sound echoed through the room. The doctor looked at him, a smile forming on his wrinkled face. "Oh, come," he said. "You know if you break your fingers I'll charge you top money to fix them. And you'll want me to fix them, so they're in shape for piloting."

Kit turned around, his other hand holding the one that he'd punched with. "You're the most infuriating, the most meddling, the most exasperating old man I've ever had the misfortune to run into."

The doctor smiled. He took the glass away from my nerveless fingers. "I said you were very welcome."

Kit let out a long, exasperated breath. "Thena," he said. "Let's go home."

It wasn't that easy or that quick. My legs felt exactly as if they were balloons full of water and my eyes kept insisting on crossing. It was the worst—or the best—drunk I'd had since Ettiene and Fuse and I had highjacked that liquor transport in Olympus Seacity.

However Kit observed a dignified silence the rest of the time we were in the room, as though by pretending he was no longer there, he could act as though he were on his way home, and therefore didn't really have to acknowledge the presence of Doc Bartolomeu. The doctor either respected this or decided to go along with it, because he too was silent, though a smile kept touching his lips now and then.

He gave me another glass of white stuff that tasted like sugared water, then a glass of green stuff that tasted both hot and vile, like the distilled sins of humanity, and finally a glass of violet-colored stuff that tasted like burnt sugar.

By this time my eyes had uncrossed enough that I could see clearly and was starting to believe I might be able to stand up without falling. Even then, as I started to stand up, Kit put his arm around me to prevent my falling. He led me out of the room and through a long maze of corridors.

Though we were not at the center, the corridors were full of people I knew from the center—cats and navs and mechanics. Most of their glances still slid away from Kit, after looking at him, but it was a different sort of slide. It was a
I'm sorry to intrude
glance away or a
oh, I didn't need to know that
look or—twice—the sort of half amused smile that denoted they remembered what I'd said about my feelings more than what I'd said about the death of Kit's wife.

Kit didn't slow down for the glances or the smiles. And I was too dizzy to even reply to Darla's rather guilty, "Hello, Thena."

In the garage, Kit helped me into the passenger seat of his flyer, and buckled me down, before he jumped into the pilot seat and buckled himself down. He tore out of the space with every impression of wanting to get out of there as fast as humanly possible, and paying very little attention to any other flyers that might get in his way. Of course, he didn't hit anything. He just twirled and ducked and made my stomach feel like it would come out through my mouth.

"I suppose," he said, after a while. "That I should thank you."

Oh, please, don't overwhelm me with gratitude,
I thought, and almost said, but the drugs had worn out of my system, and besides I could fully understand how embarrassed the poor bastard had to be, having heard the Earthworm that had forced herself on him more or less declare love in front of all his associates. I mean, what was he supposed to do now? Any way he behaved he would seem ungentlemanly.

I found my hands pleating the silk skirt of my dress, while I said in a voice that seemed entirely too small and feminine, "I'm sorry. I had no idea it would be such a detailed description, or so personal."

Kit muttered a string of unintelligible words, as the flyer spit out of the garage and into full midday artificial sunlight. The only part I caught was "
He
knew better."

I cleared my throat. I thought, from my reading—particularly of Kit's old fashioned Earth books—that this was the type of situation in which one girded one's loins, and if there had been the glimmer of a gird around, I would have done just that before I said what I had to say, "You know, I think he only did it because he was worried about you." A sideways glance showed me that he was frowning intently as he wound through the traffic around the judicial building at a much higher speed than could possibly be necessary. "I think he thought he was doing it for your own good because . . . I think he loves you as a son, you know."

"I know," he said. He said it as if it were a curse. "I am perfectly aware the low-down, amoral bastard loves me. Would have shot him otherwise."

I nodded as though this made perfect sense, cleared my throat again and tried to reach for something soothing to say.

I realize that I was the daughter of a Good Man and that in theory I had been trained in saying the right thing in diplomatic situations. I'd been taught, from birth, just the right word to smooth over a quarrel that might become a trade war; to quiet animosity among guests at a party; to make the servants do my will with a smile on their lips.

This is why in all disciplines there is a class in theory and one in practice. I knew the theory very well. What I had was absolutely no practice in social chit chat or peace making. I did best at Daddy Dearest's parties by keeping my mouth shut and looking pretty and then tearing out of there, putting on my leathers and speeding to my broomer's lair.

Soothing and polite simply wasn't in my repertoire. So I did the next best thing and changed the subject completely, "You didn't have any problems in the powertrees?"

He shrugged and jabbed something hard at the controls, which caused us to drop in what seemed like freefall, before stabilizing and diving under a cargo flyer, then above a family one.

"Eber told me that you and my mother and my sisters were at the judicial building, and I thought I might as well come and see what they'd got into." He gave me a sideways look, frowned. "Sorry I didn't shave or bathe . . . I was afraid . . ."

What on Eden could he have been afraid of that was worse than what he'd actually heard? And then I realized it. "You were afraid I'd killed someone?"

"Well . . ." he said, as he jammed the lever up. "At the center, you know, I didn't exactly ask and no one exactly talked to me but I heard something about you and Joseph Klaavil and a duel."

"I didn't use weapons," I said, aware even as I said it that my voice sounded sulky. "I just punched him out."

"Ah, yes," he said. "But you see part of no one talking to you is that you can't ask logical questions. You just hear whispered words and you assume—."

We tore off down the side road headed home, and I glared at him, "You assumed the worst."

He didn't say anything for a long while. Instead he looked out at the road, even though he couldn't possibly need all his attention to fly here, where there was almost no traffic. Finally he sighed, then gave a dry chuckle. "Well, Princess . . ." he said and smiled a little, an infuriatingly sweet smile.

"Don't call me princess," I said.

"
Princess
, you know, considering our acquaintance . . . what else could I assume?"

I bunched my hands into fists. "Land," I said. "Land now."

"What? I know you're still dizzy but we're nowhere near home."

"Land, damn it. Let me out. I'll walk home."

"What? While still recovering from the effects of the hypnotic?"

I fumbled with my seat belt, unbuckled, then reached for the door unlocking button. He reached for the door lock a second too late. I'd already unlocked and was holding the button down. I pushed at the door and would have opened it too, if it hadn't been for the air pressure. By that time I was shaking and there were tears rolling down my cheeks. I knew half of it was shock and confusion and tiredness, but the other half was that he'd heard me declare my love for him and he was lording it over me.