The Sardonyx Net (30 page)

“Or me,” Dana pointed out quietly, “for letting it happen. I'm your body-guard.”
 

“Even Zed could not expect you to throw yourself between us,” Rhani said tartly. Sweat slithered from beneath the wig and dried on her neck. “I hadn't planned to tell him.”
 

The air tasted coppery with the intense heat. The house banners hung limply, looking sodden. Three people, arms about each other, stumbled slowly down the Boulevard. One of them, a woman with a blue bottle in her hand, was singing. The tune wavered, off-key. “Drunks,” Rhani muttered, disgusted. She watched them fold up onto the pavement, giggling. The singer peered at her as she and Dana came abreast of them; she was moaning the words of a popular song.
 

“Rhani-ka,” Dana said, his voice clipped, “let's walk this way—” Gently, he tugged her to the center of the street. The drunks were still staring at her. Suddenly the woman raised her arm and brought the bottle smashing down on the stone. The sound was shocking. Dana shouted as the woman leaped to her feet. She no longer looked drunk. The jagged glass gleamed in her right hand.
 

Rhani screamed. Hands gripped her shoulders; Dana half-lifted her and threw her to one side. The woman was coming toward her. She caught her balance in time to see Dana kick the bottle into the air. It glittered in the sun and shattered to bits on the ground.
 

Dana dived at the woman and brought her to her knees. He hit her on the side of the head, hard. The other two drunks were on their feet and running toward him. One of them swerved and came at Rhani. Gasping, she dodged his outstretched hands. The man's features seemed huge and monstrous in the distorting light. She heard Dana swear, and the sound of someone falling. The man grinned and came at her again, and she turned and ran, frightened and furious that she had to run, that she had never learned to fight.
 

A weight hit her back. She slammed down on the stone. Pain skewered her right shoulder, and she screamed. Her attacker cursed her and pinned her wrists behind her, and she screamed again at the agony lancing through her right shoulder and arm.
 

“Yago bitch!” the man growled. She heard footsteps near her ear. The man yelped and released her wrists. She heard heavy breathing and the scrabble of feet on stone. She sobbed, not daring to move. Something clinked beneath her: it was the pendant with the stunner that Zed had given her. I could have—I should have—her thoughts moved slowly. A shadow stooped over her, and she stiffened.
 

“It's me,” Dana said. He was breathing hard.
 

“Where—?” she asked.
 

“They ran,” he said. “They're gone. Are you hurt?”
 

Rhani tried to turn. She couldn't use her right arm. It seemed strengthless, sickened with pain. She sat up. There was a bleeding scrape on Dana's cheekbone. “My shoulder hurts,” she said, and gagged as Dana's fingers probed lightly along her neck and down her collarbone.
 

“Dislocated,” he said. Without warning, he grabbed the shoulder with one hand and with the other pulled and twisted the dangling useless arm. She screamed again; tears sprang into her eyes. The shoulder throbbed. Dana put his arm around her. “All right, that's done.”
 

“What did you do?”
 

“Put it back in place.” She wriggled her fingers. They moved. Tentatively she swung the arm. “Can you stand?” he said. He helped her to her feet. The brooch on her shoulder had opened, but miraculously it had stayed in the cloth instead of driving itself into her flesh. The careful folds of the sari had unraveled. Fingers trembling, she wound them back about her. Dana said again, “Come on.”
 

“Your face—” She reached to touch the blood.
 

“It's nothing, it'll keep. Damn it, Rhani, stop shaking and walk! We've got to get you home.”
 

She had lost her sandals. Barefoot, she staggered. Dana kept his arm around her. She couldn't stop shaking; it was noon on Chabad and she was shivering with cold. It's shock, she told herself. The blood made a starry pattern on Dana's cheek. She would have to call the police. Her stomach churned. Anger overwhelmed fear. She had been attacked in Abanat, her city, on a street whose contours she knew as well as she knew her own hand. Her breathing steadied. She wondered if, by some luck, Zed would have finished at the Clinic early. He might even be home.
 

They rode the movalong to Founders' Green. At the edge of the park, looking into that soft green wildness, Rhani's fear returned. “I can't go in there,” she said. “I won't go in there.”
 

Dana nodded. Tersely he said, “Better not.” They climbed the steps. Rhani's feet were sore. She was shaking with fatigue. The door opened before they reached it, and Corrios came out to the step. Before she could speak, he bent and swept Rhani up in his arms. She put her head on his shoulder. His bulk was comforting. Swinging around, he carried her into the front hall.
 

The feel of the house restored Rhani's strength. Corrios seemed ready to carry her to her room. “Put me down,” she said. She ignored the dull throbbing pain spreading in her right side. Amri and Binkie hovered near her. “I'm all right. Dana has a cut on his face. Amri, bring us something to drink, and run a bath for me. Binkie, leave a message at the Clinic for Zed. No specifics, just say that I want him to call. And then get me a line to Officer Tsurada of the Abanat police.” She walked upstairs without help. Binkie babbled fatuously beside her:
Was she hurt, had she been alone, did she want a medic?
“Of course I wasn't alone,” she said. “Dana was there.” She stripped off the torn, dirty sari and put on her robe.
 

The pendant bounced on her neck. Stupid, she told herself. You could have used it, at least. Irritated, she took it off. Amri brought a tray with a pitcher and glass, and went to run her bath. She was snuffling. Binkie leaned over the com-unit, struggling for self-control.
 

“Rhani-ka,” he said huskily, “I have Officer Tsurada on display.” Rhani went to the screen. Sachiko Tsurada looked grimly back at her.
 

“Domna,” she said. “My deep sympathy and regrets. I hope you are not badly injured.”
 

“No,” Rhani said. “I was simply shaken up.”
 

“Can you tell me what your attackers looked like?”
 

“I'll try,” Rhani said, sitting in the chair. “There were three of them, two men, one woman.” She tried to picture their faces, but the features she had seen so intimately in the strong sunlight came back to her now impossibly blurred. “Wait,” she said, and told Binkie to find Dana. After a few moments he came to the bedroom. There was a white gel patch on his cheek. “The police need to know what those people looked like,” she said.
 

He nodded. “I'll try.” She let him have the chair. She was aching now, as if every muscle had been strained. She half-listened to Dana's description; “Fair skin, dark hair, nose broken to the left. She was right handed. There might be some fingerprints on the shards of broken glass.”
 

Amri said, “Rhani-ka, your bath is ready.”
 

Rhani tottered to the washroom. The mirrors were steamy. She slid her robe from her shoulders and handed it to Amri. The slave gasped. “Rhani-ka, your side!” Rhani looked at herself in the clouded mirror. Her right side was blue from shoulder to hip. She lowered herself into the hot water, and had to clench her jaw tightly to keep from crying.
 

The heat eased the soreness. She leaned forward to let Amri soap her back. Her legs stung; they were scraped from her fall on the pavement. She lifted her hands to free her hair from its coils and remembered the wig. It was not there. She did not remember when, during the struggle, it had gone.
 

“Rhani-ka,” said Amri, “your beautiful dress is all torn.”
 

“It doesn't matter,” Rhani said. She leaned against the wall of the tub. She stayed in the bath until the water cooled. At last, moving slowly, she eased herself from the washroom. Her skin was reddened where it was not black and blue.
 

She drank a glass of fruit punch, savoring the sweetness of the cold drink. Probably, she thought, it would be good to eat. But she had no appetite for food. Amri opened the bed for her, and she climbed between the sheets.
 

The face of the woman with the bottle slid waveringly into her mind.
 

“Yago bitch,” they had called her. She pictured the police hunting them through the streets. Tears sprang traitorously to life beneath her eyelids; she lay weeping, furious at her body's weakness. She was Rhani Yago,
Domna
Rhani Yago, what was she doing, lying in her own bed crying like a child?
 

Amri crept in. “Rhani-ka, are you in pain? Can I get you something?”
 

“No,” Rhani said. She rubbed her face. “Has Zed called yet?”
 

“Not yet, Rhani-ka.”
 

“Is Dana there?”
 

“I think he went downstairs again,” Amri said.
 

“I want him,” Rhani said.
 

“I'll go find him.”
 

“Thank you, Amri,” Rhani said. She struggled up. She wanted to be sitting up when he came in, sitting, and not crying.
 

The door slid aside. He came into the bedroom. “You sent for me, Rhani-ka.”
 

“Yes,” Rhani said. The traitor tears began to run down her nose again. She didn't know what she wanted from him. Reassurance ... the knowledge that he did not think less of her because she was helpless in a fight? “Damn it, I—” She had to stop, and blow her nose. He turned, and vanished into the washroom, to emerge carrying a wet cloth and a dry towel. Sitting on the bed, he wiped her face with the cloth and patted it dry, just as if she were four years old.
 

“Better?” he said.
 

There was neither reproach nor scorn in his voice. Rhani put her head back in the pillows, and her heart, which had been knocking against her rib cage like a demented pendulum, regained its equilibrium. Measuringly, she gazed at him. She knew what she wanted. “Close the door,” she said. He left the bed and shut the door. She pulled the blanket to one side. Walking back to the bedside, he stood gazing at her. She moved in the big bed, making a place for him there. “Come inside.”
 

He stripped. In the soft arrested daylight behind the curtains, his body looked hard and cold. But against hers it was warm. He touched her gently, cautious of her bruises. He wasn't clumsy. His weight on her was uncomfortable; she gestured, and he rolled, pulling her on top of him and easing himself into her in one motion. His hips lifted to meet her. Lowering her head, she began to stroke his chest with her hair. He teased her nipples with eager fingers, and she saw his lips soften and sigh with pleasure as she began to ride.
 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

 

After the loving, Dana rose and opened the curtains.
 

Light filled the dark room, spilling down the paneled walls. The afternoon bustle of tourists through the streets came faintly upward, noise without words, like the distant rushing of a river. The house was quiet, except for the labor of the aircooling machine. But, Rhani thought, why do I think of rivers? The rivers run underground on Chabad.
 

Dana came back to the bed. He leaned over it to kiss her, and she stroked his hairless yellow chest, feeling for the heartbeat beneath the skin. The room smelled of sex and semen.
 

“I must go,” he said.
 

“Yes.” He bent to her, kissing her eyelids, cheeks, nose, ears. She captured his mouth and brought it to hers, enjoying the taste of him.
 

When she let him go, he dressed. Noiselessly he slid the door ajar. He closed it behind him. Rhani stretched and rolled onto her belly. She could still smell him in the creases of the sheets.
 

Her bruises ached. She watched the sunlight move on the dark wooden walls. Finally she rose, went to the washroom, and stepped into the shower. The water felt good except on her scrapes. She returned to the bed and pulled it into some sort of order, straightening the covers and plumping the pillows. Then she got into it, knowing that she should be up and working, and not caring. The stillness of the big house was soporific.
 

Zed's step on the stair woke her from sleep. He was coming two at a time. The room was cool. The sky outside the windows was a brilliant shimmering purple.
 

Zed slid her bedroom door aside without bothering to knock. He crossed to the bed. She lifted her hand to him. “Zed-ka.”
 

He sat on the edge of the bed. He was wearing a green gown, tied at the throat. “Did you come through the streets like that?” she asked.
 

“Yes. Clinic garb. Are you all right? I came as soon as I could. All the juniors are on Needle Row, or at the Barracks. I was working Emergency.” His face was drawn.
 

“I told Binkie not to tell you!” she said. “He was only to tell you to call....”
 

“I have been calling,” he said. “And calling. There's been no answer for six hours.”
 

“Oh.” Rhani glanced at the com-unit. The message light on its side flashed steadily. “I—I was asleep.”
 

“City Computer said the line was not malfunctioning. I was worried. I came home. Binkie told me there was a second attack. Three people, one of them with a bottle?”