Chapter 21
SEREYA
Roemary had asked to see her before the evening meal.
Sereya said no.
For several minutes that was the end of it. She stood in her own room, with her own door locked, and finished dressing. Dhomhes had said he would join her if he could. She chose the dress he had noticed in the gallery, then stood looking at herself because she had chosen it for that reason.
She was smiling when the guard called again.
“She's left a message for you at the visitor room. She says it's about a personal document.”
“Send it to Gol-Vett Dhomhes.”
“I'm sending him a copy. This one is addressed to you.”
Sereya went cold before she reached the corridor.
The guard brought it to her. Inside the fold was a sketch of a house with a roof terrace and four columns across its front. Roemary had drawn it badly. She had still included the little balcony over the side entrance, the one Sereya's youngest brother had used to drop things on arriving guests.
Underneath it was one word.
Naliese.
“Is something wrong?” the guard asked.
“Yes.” Her own answer surprised her. It came before she could prepare an excuse. “Please tell Dhomhes she's threatening me.”
He touched his comm immediately, reporting the threat and asking for the duty officer. Sereya waited while the officer ordered Roemary kept in the receiving area and the message preserved.
Sereya breathed once, carefully. Someone had believed her.
“I won't go into a room alone with her,” she said. “But I need to hear what she means to do.”
The officer heard her through the open channel. He allowed her to identify the personal record Roemary claimed to hold. She would stay at the doorway while the guard collected it; there would be no private visit.
“I'll take you to the receiving side,” the guard said. “You stay outside the room. I stay between you. Then you come straight back.”
He brought her through the guarded junction separating the guest wing from the receiving rooms. Roemary's escort was waiting beyond the visitor room's locked rear service door.
He checked the room himself, then kept Sereya at the corridor side of its open front doorway, with the route back to the junction clear.
Roemary was waiting beside the visitor room's table. She wore dark clothing under a loose wrap, with none of the ornaments she normally chose for dinner. When she saw the guard, her mouth tightened.
“I asked for a private conversation.”
“This is the conversation you can have,” Sereya said.
Sereya stayed on the corridor side of the threshold, the guard beside her.
Roemary glanced at the guard again, then turned a small display toward Sereya. A page of text appeared. Her old family name stood at the top. Beneath it were the Galactic Alliance program name, a recent image of her, and the name of the planet on which she now stood.
At the bottom was an unsent message addressed to the Korvath syndicate.
There had been no word that the relay had stopped Roemary's calls. Sereya stared at the waiting message, unable to look away from her own face beside that name.
Sereya's breath caught.
“Closer,” Roemary said softly. “Unless you want him to read it too.”
“Put the device down. This conversation is over.” The guard stepped between them. “Sereya, back into the corridor.”
Roemary held it toward Sereya instead. Her thumb rested against the edge of the message.
Sereya stepped back, keeping one hand against the doorframe. Roemary raised her voice to follow her.
“Adryel. Bring her to the east loading bay. The freight apron beyond the stacks. You can tell her you want a walk, or that you need to speak to her without her mate listening. You managed it on the transport.”
“She's already been attacked.”
“Which makes her less likely to argue with a frightened friend. Bring her, then leave. You don't have to be there for what comes after.”
The guard moved around the table to take the device. Roemary backed away, keeping its width between them and the display raised toward Sereya.
“Your father. Your mother. Both brothers,” she whispered. “The Korvaths missed one. You told me that yourself. Don't make me correct their mistake.”
“Detain her,” the duty officer ordered through his comm. The guard caught the far end of the table and shoved it against the wall, closing off Roemary's path to the rear door. The near end swung toward the open doorway.
“No,” Sereya said.
Roemary blinked.
“I won't bring Adryel to you.”
“You think he'll keep looking at you that way once he knows what you are?”
Her voice sharpened as the guard came around the table.
“You were supposed to stay where I put you.” She snatched her arm away from him. “Instead you let him trail after you. Taking your hand. Coming to your room.”
Sereya's pulse hammered against the edge of her jaw.
“I wanted him to.”
Roemary stared at her.
Sereya had imagined admitting it to someone would be embarrassing. She had not expected it to feel quite so much like opening a window.
“I wanted him to,” she repeated. “That had nothing to do with you.”
Roemary darted toward the open doorway, past his reaching hand. She thrust the display at Sereya, her thumb sliding across its face.
Sereya caught her wrist with both hands and slammed it against the table's near edge.
The communicator struck the edge. Roemary cried out. Sereya hit her wrist again, and the device fell. She kicked it toward the guard.
“Take it! She's threatening to send my location to the people who killed my family.”
The guard caught Roemary's arm as Sereya kicked the device clear.
“Both of you, move away from the table.”
Sereya let go at once. The guard twisted Roemary's arm behind her and moved her toward the inner wall.
“She's unstable,” Roemary said. “You saw her attack me.”
He ignored her and called for restraints, keeping his body between them. Sereya pressed her palms against her skirt. They were shaking so hard she could feel the cloth move.
He had the communicator. Roemary couldn't send it now.
Sereya almost laughed.
Then the visitor room lights went out.
The emergency lamps came on red.
A shout came from the service end of the corridor. Sereya heard a weapon discharge, then the crash of a body against metal.
The guard released Roemary and lunged back to the doorway, pulling Sereya behind him. Two figures in maintenance coats came around the corner.
“Stop there. Hands where I can see them.”
One raised a weapon. The guard fired as the male did. His shot struck the wall; the answering charge threw him against the doorframe. His comm gave a hard electronic squeal as he went down.
Sereya ran toward him.
Roemary seized the back of her dress.
“That was expensive,” she said in her ear.
Sereya drove her elbow back. It connected with something soft, and the grip loosened. She got one hand to the door before the second male caught her around the waist.
She kicked the table. A chair fell across his shins. He swore and hauled her back hard enough to lift her feet from the floor.
Roemary bent over the fallen guard and took her communicator.
“Leave it,” the male holding Sereya snapped.
“It has my records on it.”
“Then move.”
They had done this before. Sereya heard it in his voice, in the way the other male checked the corridor while Roemary tucked the damaged device away.
This had been arranged before Sereya said no.
The male dragged her through the service door at the back of the visitor room. Its lock hung out of the frame. Beyond it, the second guard lay on his side, his arm trapped beneath him. Cold air struck her face as they passed machinery and a staircase marked with yellow lines.
Behind her, the guard moved.
His hand reached for his comm.
Sereya shouted the only thing he still needed.
“East loading bay!”
The male clamped a hand over her mouth.
She bit him.
His grip slipped, and she got one more breath.
“Roemary!”
He slammed her against a wall. Pain burst along her shoulder. She kept her eyes open.
The guard had heard.
Dhomhes would come.
They took her down two flights of service stairs. The male's grip stayed cruelly tight, but he had to slow whenever she let her weight drop. She did it at each turn. Once she caught a railing and held it until he pried her fingers loose.
Roemary kept looking back.
“You should have done as you were told.”
Sereya tasted blood where she'd bitten the inside of her cheek.
“You brought them before you knew what I'd say.”
Roemary walked on.
At the lower door, Sereya let her knees fold again. The male swore, reaching to lift her properly, and she twisted out of his hands.
She ran toward the light.
It was a floodlamp above the freight apron. Beyond it, tall stacks of containers cut off any view of the housing wing. A cargo skiff waited with its rear hatch open.
No workers. No one coming to load it.
She stopped so abruptly that her shoes skidded.
A male stepped away from the skiff. She recognized the face Dhomhes had shown her, the marks around his mouth. Roemary looked toward him as though he had been waiting for them.
Burk.
Sereya backed toward the nearest container. The two males from the visitor room spread out behind her. Roemary climbed the short stair to the raised observation walk, putting distance between herself and the apron.
Roemary had brought them a captive even without Adryel.
Burk looked Sereya over and smiled with his damaged mouth.
“He'll come for this one.”
“Put her aboard,” Burk told the males behind her. “Dhomhes can reach whoever has the chip. He gets her back when we get it.”
“After we clear the refinery,” one of them said. He raised his weapon toward the service lane. “Move.”
The cold seemed to move beneath her skin.
Dhomhes.
She looked up at Roemary, who had reached the railing and turned to watch.
Of course. Roemary had watched him take her hand. Had counted each visit, each smile, each time he had chosen Sereya instead.
She had found a use for it at last.
Sereya pressed her back against the container. There was a camera above the bay door. She turned enough to give it her face, then pointed at Roemary on the observation walk.
“You won't get to say you weren't here.”
Burk came toward her, one hand reaching for her arm, the blade held low in the other.