The Diamond Deep (14 page)

Nothing else happened on the screen. The ship continued to hang in space, and no more pieces broke off. “Can it hurt us?” she whispered.

No response.

She spoke into the microphone. “Ix! Can it hurt us?”

“I'm calculating.”

Onor and Marcelle had come closer to her. Ani was with them.

The screens went dark, as if to signal that the show was over. Ix spoke. “I believe we have damaged the other ship enough that we will be able to pass it and continue on our way. It may or may not be able to repair itself. For now, we are safe.”

Ruby sat at the head of the bed, naked, her legs curled up close to her, her body a ball she held together with her interlocked arms. Exhaustion and relief warred in her nerves. They could have died. Winning felt like exhilaration and abomination all at once, like victory tinged with a feeling she couldn't quite put a name too, but which was like the way she felt about what Joel had done to her enemies. Power used because there was no other easy or comprehensible way to survive.

Joel moved around the room, putting things away, organizing. His jaw was tight and stiff, his face unreadable. Usually he relaxed in here, with her. Even though he had refused her entry to his councils, it seemed like so much had happened since then that they were already different people than the ones who had started the argument that still lay between them.

She forced herself to stretch, used breathing techniques KJ had taught her to let go of the fears and exhaustion gnawing at her. She spoke quietly. “I could add value to your councils.”

He stopped and stared at her, his face softening a tiny bit. “You will not add any value if I am not able to hold onto my power. I may have disposed of one enemy, but there are more.”

Ruby winced but kept her voice as soft as she could. “You need representation from my people.”

“It wasn't possible, not today. Save this fight for a time when it won't distract us from more important things.”

Ruby bit her tongue.

“Besides,” he continued, “If you didn't press in public, I wouldn't have needed to turn you down in public.”

Damn him. She held her temper and her hurt as far away from her heart as possible. “My people have good strong voices. They're brave and they know how to work together.”

“Are they your people?”

Joel's words made Ruby flinch.

“Even now when you're here, with me?” he added. “How long can that hold true?”

The implications of his thought made her angry. “Of course they are. I grew up with them. I went to them when you wouldn't let me join you. I sat with them in the common room and we waited for the ships to win, sure they might not. I sat with them, waiting to die.”

His voice rose a touch and got more commanding. “If I had let you into our council, you wouldn't have gone to
your people
. Maybe that was the right decision. For you to be there.”

That stopped her for a moment. “Maybe so. But everyone needs a voice in your councils. If Ix had failed to blow up that ship, we would all have died.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, still standing in one place, one hand on an open drawer. “What would have changed about the decision if you had been there? Or if more people had been part of it? A crowd makes a decision impossible.”

She turned her head to hide the frustration that must be visible in her eyes. Not to acquiesce, never to acquiesce. “It was a good decision. Almost all of your choices are good. But decisions made in the dark aren't always fair. You and I—we can be a symbol. We can be the mother and father of our people, united. We can stand side by side and represent the balance of work and command, the joining of man and woman, the beauty of song and the strength of a ready warrior.”

He laughed and she realized how exaggerated her words were—something meant for lyrics instead of to heal an argument. But they were true. She didn't try to take them back.

He pushed the drawer shut and continued stripping, standing there long and lean, marked with old scars from years spent training and fighting, but nonetheless whole and vibrant. Even when she was angry with him, he drew her. Maybe even more then. She opened an arm toward him.

He came to lie beside her.

She let her fingers play through his short, graying hair. He had not acknowledged what she asked for. “I love you,” she said. “Remember before? The first time we met? I told you that I needed to matter, that I needed to be more than a lover.”

“You do. You are.”

She ran her hands over his shoulders, her touch light.

“The best lover,” he murmured. “So strong, so perfect.”

For a few moments touch was the only conversation between them. Then he whispered, “You have more power than you know. But there are places others are not ready for me to allow you to go.”

“But they will be. You can help them to be ready for me.”

He reached a hand up and caressed her cheek. “In the meantime, I am happy to listen to you.”

“I'm valuable for more than bedroom advice.” She took his hand in two of hers and began massaging his palm, using her thumb to draw strong circles in it. Perhaps she had pushed far enough for this moment. He would think about it. He was like that often, listening to her with no reaction and then evaluating what she said. “Ask me a question.”

He smiled, his blue-green eyes bright in a face paled with exhaustion and slightly reddened by arousal. Such a hard life he led, so much pressure. She wasn't sure he was going to answer, but he finally asked, “What do you think it means that the only greeting from home so far is an attempt to steal from us?”

“That we must be very, very careful.”

He sighed. “Yes. There may be no need for any of us at all now that the ship is back. Perhaps we were always slaves.”

She drew in a sharp little breath, and then let it out slowly. “It cannot be like that. We are too brilliant, too creative, too strong to waste.”

“But we were wasting you, even inside this small ship.”

She put a finger over his lips. “At least you know that now.”

Yet he had wasted the people who followed Ellis and Sylva. She slid to her knees and straddled him, her naked body touching his in as many places as she could manage without dropping all of her weight onto him. “Perhaps we should make sure not to waste this night. Tomorrow is getting even more uncertain.”

In answer he pulled her down, kissing her so hard that she felt her lips bruise. It felt good.

Onor finally found Ruby in the cargo bar, chatting with Allen. Colin's fight leader had become one of a handful of heirs-apparent after Colin and Par's deaths, but in the three days between then and now, no decisions had been made. Ruby smiled up at the man, her head cocked, her face fully attentive.

Onor hesitated: Ruby twirled a glass of wine in her hand and a hint of red flush stained her cheeks. She turned her head as Onor approached, and it became too late to back away.

Besides, he didn't want to.

Clearly she was able to read his mood. She stood up, her face instantly gone from soft and teasing to tense. “What happened?”

“I need to talk to you in private.”

She looked torn, but this wasn't a conversation he was willing to share with Allen. “This won't take long,” he added.

Ruby whispered something to Allen, kept her glass, and followed Onor as he turned and led her out of the room, and into the same private space where he and Haric had told Colin and Allen about the approaching ship. Unsurprisingly, Ruby ignored the table and sat on the worn blue couch. She gestured for him to sit beside her.

“I prefer to stand.” Now that he had her in a private place, he didn't know how to begin. Angry sentences piled up behind his lips, unwilling to emerge.

She waited him out, twisting her hands in her hair and pulling out clips, letting it fall.

He turned away. He tried to modulate his voice, but failed. “I know what happened to Ellis and Sylva. And the others.”

She didn't say anything.

The silence dragged on until he couldn't help himself, and he turned to look at her. Her pale blue eyes showed no remorse at all. Her muscles had tensed, and her lips thinned. Some of the other sentences he'd been holding back came out, sounding disjointed. “It was murder. Turning off life support. How could you? Do you know how horribly they died?”

She nodded, controlled calm to his storm. Her words came out slow, as if she were on stage talking to a group of children. “They were trying to take over the ship's command. Right when we were being attacked by an enemy.”

“That doesn't make it honorable.”

“They would have killed us.”

“Maybe. But you could have locked them up. They could have been killed in a fair fight. Most of their followers were just blind; we could have saved them. KJ and his people could have taken them. I doubt they
could
have gotten in to command.” He realized he had moved to stand over her.

She smelled of wine and spices, and her face stayed cool and collected. She took another sip of wine, holding the glass to her lips for a second too long. When she finished, she said, “They were your enemies, too.”

“I wouldn't have done that to them.”

“Even to protect me?” She stood up, her gaze meeting his evenly. “Joel did it to protect me, so he didn't need to worry about me and the ship all at once.”

Her words felt like punches in his chest. Not because they were wrong. Because they were wrong for her. She lived for fairness, fought for fairness, and now she was defending cold-blooded murder. He stepped back, and the wall stopped his movement too fast, the room too small to contain them both. “We did this—we fought this fight—for justice. For everybody. You can't just become like Garth, and kill people because they . . . they
inconvenience
you.”

Ruby took another sip of wine. She had become so much better at controlling herself than she used to be, so much more . . . theatrical.

He slammed his fist backward into the wall, the sharp thud and the pain both good. “You're not the same anymore. You would have hated yourself.”

She closed the distance between them and her hand came up and slapped his left cheek hard enough to shift his balance so that he fell against the wall and had to shuffle his feet to keep them under him.

Her cool had gone completely, her voice high and tight. “You cannot know what we have to deal with, what it's like to be responsible. Every day Joel and his people have to make decisions they hate. I do fight them, some of them. I fight more than you can possibly know.”

“So tell me how you fought this one?”

She met his gaze for a moment, and he finally saw guilt and confusion on her face before she turned away. “I didn't. I didn't know about it. Not until after it was done.”

He stood behind her, close enough to smell her again, and he put his hands on her shoulders. Her shirt was so thin that he felt her bone and muscle beneath his hands, even felt the warmth of her body. A single multi-colored strand of beads hung around her neck, visible from behind only because she'd tugged her hair all to one side. Her muscles tensed under his hands. He tried to shift his weight and turn her, but she shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes. “Why do you protect Joel?” he asked her.