Asteria In Love with the Prince (28 page)

“Oh,” said the Queen. She looked at me and…was that a smirk? “In that case, good luck.”

We left half an hour later, in an SUV driven by Arno and a separate car carrying four guards. I barely had time to throw some overnight things in a bag. Just before I left, Doracella thrust a second bag into my arms. “The prince asked me to make sure these were with you,” she told me with a wicked smile. I remembered the wardrobe and flushed; I had a pretty good idea of the sort of thing that was in the bag. Jagor and I really needed to have that conversation.

Jagor brought an extra bag himself: a squat suitcase the size of a large make-up case. The brown leather was faded, but I could make out the royal seal on the side. I guessed it was the mysterious
sarith
kit, but I had no idea what that was and Jagor wasn’t giving anything away.

The sun set as the big car powered along the winding highway. Snuggled in the back with Jagor, my head on his shoulder, I was utterly content.

I’d still only seen a small part of Asteria. I’d heard that the narrow strip of coastline was packed tight with hotels and marinas, but when we arrived, I saw only an unspoiled cove with a single yacht moored. “We own this part of the coast for about a mile in either direction,” Jagor told me.
For the first time, it hit me that the “we
”
would include me in six months’ time.

I knew nothing about yachts, but I could tell it was modest: as these things go. It wasn’t some floating palace you could land a helicopter on. “Four staterooms,” Jagor explained, “and cabins for the staff. But tonight it’s just us and the guards: I wanted privacy.” I hugged him. Some time alone was exactly what we needed: time to rebuild and reconnect after the last few days. He’d read my mind.

He gently put me down and led me through to the master stateroom. I threw myself onto the king-size bed, giggling. Jagor, a huge bed and the feel of the ocean under us. This was going to be fantastic.

Jagor looked at his watch. “Just time to get ready,” he said, almost thinking aloud. “They’ll be here soon.”

I stopped giggling. “Who?”

“I asked Sarik to stop by. Just for a little while. We need to talk to him about what happened to my father.”

I sat up. “That’s why you wanted privacy?”

“Given what happened, I think it’s best if we’re careful.” He frowned. “Why, what did you think?”

I stalked into the bathroom to change. “Sarik’s in intelligence,” I grated. “Why don’t you ask him?”

***

They arrived half an hour later, in a car Sarik drove himself. He’d brought his slave, Telessa – the same one I’d seen at the sex club. She wasn’t naked, this time: she wore a short white summer dress and her hair was in gleaming ringlets. She looked like a Greek goddess.

Sarik and Jagor embraced. I had no idea what the etiquette was for an exkella and an old friend, so I just stood there nervously until Sarik took the lead and kissed my cheek, while Jagor did the same with Telessa.

“Congratulations on the engagement,” said Sarik, looking at me. “An exkella. You do like to stir things up, Jagor.”

Jagor shrugged and smiled at me. “The public will get used to it.” We sat. Telessa took a cushion, intending to kneel on the floor, but Sarik patted the seat next to him and she sat there.

Jagor had explained that as an exkella – and eventually as his wife – there were a few norms I could ignore, kneeling being one of them.
Unless he orders me to.
Dark heat blossomed in my belly at that thought. For now, I brought wine and then settled myself beside him. I exchanged a smile with Telessa; it was a new experience, to meet someone in roughly the same position as me – a slave who was owned by just one man, as opposed to the palace slaves. Well, technically Ismelda was in that position too, but she still scared me too much to engage in small talk.

When Jagor was sure all the guards were safely above deck and the doors and windows were closed, he looked meaningfully at Sarik. Sarik brought out an expensive-looking gadget with a long antenna and swept it around the room, then nodded to himself.

“Your father was definitely
not
poisoned by crime gangs,” Sarik said, leaning forward. “We found traces of the poison at the home of the guy who supposedly did it, but there was far too much – whoever framed him really threw it around for our forensic team to find. No real assassin would be that clumsy: and they wouldn’t prepare it in their own home.”

Jagor nodded and waited.

“There really aren’t many people who had reason to do this. Foreign terrorists would have just shot him, or poisoned him with something fast acting. The only reason to use something subtle would be to make it look like it wasn’t murder. That’s the opposite of sending a message. So it’s someone who wanted him out of the way.”

“Someone who hopes I’d rule differently?” Jagor bristled. “They’d have been disappointed.”

“A foreign power is still a strong possibility.” Sarik glanced at me.

I had to ask. “You think it could be us? The US?”

“I’m not ruling it out. Unfortunately, there’s not much more I can tell you. About the only other lead I have is something passing around the underworld – just a rumor, really. A few people have mentioned a guy they haven’t seen before: someone powerful. Possibly a foreigner. He seems to have money and he’s got unusual hair.”

“Unusual?” I asked.

“Long and white. Not gray…bleached, or something.” He saw me blanch. “What?”

I was back in the sex club, being stopped by the stranger.

“I’ve seen him,” I blurted. “He was there that night – the night we met you and Telessa at the sex club.”

“He was
there?!”
Sarik said, aghast. “What happened?”

I looked at Jagor. “It was just before we left. When I was on my own, on my way back to you. He stopped me on the way back from the bathroom. Asked if you were.…” I flushed. “Lending me.”

I saw Jagor’s hands clench into fists. “He knew you were mine?”

I nodded. “He didn’t recognize me as your aide, or he would have said something. But he knew
you.”

Sarik had his head in his hands. “We were in the same building….”

“Do you think he was planning something – something against me?” Jagor asked.

“Did anyone know you were going, that night?” said Sarik.

Jagor thought. “No,” he said eventually. “Not even Hendel. Just Lucy, me and a few guards.”

“Then it may have been simple, blind luck. I’ll have a quiet talk with Hendel. This is one of those times I wish there
were
cameras in the club.” He chewed his lip. “In the meantime, I think the King should avoid public engagements and take extra precautions. They’ll try again.”

Jagor nodded. “I’ll do my best to convince him.”

“But we can’t ignore this guy being at the club the same night you were: maybe it’s not about your father, maybe it’s about all the royals. In which case, you’re a target too.” He turned to me. “You too, Exkella.”

We all sat there staring at each other. There’s nothing so frightening in the world as knowing something awful is coming and being utterly powerless to stop it.

Sarik tried to lighten the mood, talking about old times with Jagor. The two of them went back to their youth, when they’d attended the same prestigious college. As they started to get into tales of drunken misadventures, I beckoned Telessa to follow me.

We went upstairs and sat on the deck. The sun was down, now, but the air still held enough warmth to make it pleasant. We sipped our wine and listened to the sound of the waves slapping the hull.

“How long have you been with Sarik?” I asked. It wasn’t the most original opener, but it was all I could come up with.

“You mean…how long has he owned me, Exkella?” She blinked at me with wide, innocent eyes.

It was almost a shock to hear her speak after so long: the entire time we’d spent together in the sex club and so far this evening, she’d been silent. Her accent was strong northern-Asterian, to go with her high cheekbones and clear blue eyes. I nodded, blushing; the way she said
owned
so casually was still a jolt to me.

“Almost six years,” she told me.

“And you’re…I mean, Sarik doesn’t own any other slaves?”

“You’re asking…am I his wife?” She shook her head, but not unkindly. “Marriage collars are always jeweled. Slave collars – like yours and mine - are never jeweled, however elaborate they are.”

Good to know. I looked at her collar: a wide, polished band of silver with Sarik’s name engraved across the front. I wondered if it was heavy. “Do you get tired of it?” I asked.

She caught my eye and smiled, and I realized my question could be taken two ways. She glanced at the stairs leading below deck, towards Sarik. “No, Exkella. I never get tired of it.”

She was in love with him, I realized. “Does he….” I started. “I mean, are you….” She waited, moving her head slowly with my words as if listening to a child. “What are your plans?” I finished weakly.

“You’re wondering if it’s normal for a slave to be in love with her owner? Is this forbidden love, like a rich Roman and his slave?”

I nodded. That was pretty much exactly what had been going through my head. She laughed – but again, it didn’t feel like she was mocking me. She was just enjoying the simple pleasure of helping a foreigner understand. “Yes, it’s normal. The Romans
bought
their slaves – the slave didn’t have a choice. If any of them fell in love, it was by chance, or faked by the slave for better treatment. In Asteria we
choose
our owners and give ourselves to them – we’re in love from the start.”

I was new to all this, but I could still spot the hole in her story. “But that’s not what happened to you,” I said slowly. “If it had been, you’d be Sarik’s wife.”

He smile faded. “Yes.” She drank some wine, looking away for a few seconds.

“When I was twenty, I was in love with a man called Waslev. A good man, very clever – very good with computers. You would call him a geek, in America. I studied medicine; I planned to become a doctor. We were married when we were twenty-one.”

Telessa was staring off at the horizon now, her voice growing smaller. I edged closer.

“Waslev was always ambitious. Our economy was booming, but everything was about the palladium: there weren’t many opportunities in IT. So he started doing some things that weren’t quite legal: setting up websites that money could be filtered through. Money laundering.” She turned to me. “No-one got hurt!” she said defensively, and I nodded. “But as he got better and better at it, he fell in with some very bad people: the sort of people Sarik tracks now for the SSV. They wanted more and more money cleaned, and they wanted it stolen, as well. Eventually, something went wrong.”

Telessa stared off into the distance again. She wasn’t crying and that made it worse, somehow: that the memories brought such pain that they could numb her completely. She spoke as if she was reciting from a book, as if the words couldn’t hurt her if she remained impartial. “He lost a consignment of money. Millions. And so they killed him, and in part payment they took all his assets.”

It took a few seconds for the implications of
assets
to register in my stunned brain.

“I was going to have to work for them,” said Telessa. “Of course, they didn’t need a trainee surgeon. So they said they’d put me to work in a club. As a dancer…or worse.”

I slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.

“Before they could find a use for me, though, SSV raided one of their businesses and confiscated everything – including me. Since they were going to prison, everything they owned – their cars, their houses – would be sold. I would be sold to the slave market and the profits would go to SSV. It was certainly a lot better than being owned by the gang…but I still had no idea where I was going to end up.”

Telessa sipped her wine. “Sarik was climbing the ranks, even back then, but he was still fairly junior. He should have been looking for a nice, twenty year-old woman to marry, but instead he met me.” She was biting her lip, remembering. “I still remember the first time he saw me. He was meant to drive me to the slave market to negotiate my sale. Instead he marched upstairs and persuaded his boss to keep me on temporarily – filing, data entry, stuff like that. He talked to me every day, for months. He used to bring me things – chocolate, books, things he’d seen I thought I’d like. He thought he was wooing me, that I was falling for him. I wasn’t. I’d already fallen, almost as soon as I met him.”

She was smiling now, despite herself, but then shook her head. “But it couldn’t last forever: SSV knew they had a valuable asset on their hands. I was worth a lot of money as a slave; I was educated, pretty…good in bed….” My jaw dropped at the last, but she was completely serious – that Asterian openness about sex, again. “So eventually they told him they’d have to sell me.” She took a deep breath. “And so Sarik told me he loved me, and asked how I’d feel about him buying me.”

She turned to me. “Understand, back then Sarik wasn’t even in the same financial ballpark as the men who buy slaves. He could have just married someone for free.
Buying
your only slave is pretty much unheard of. He had to sell his house and his car and take out a brutal loan, but he did it. We moved into a one-room apartment until he was promoted. These days it’s starting to get a little easier, but he’s still mortgaged up to the hilt.” She smiled at me. “Any questions?”

I sat there and stared for a while. “Don’t you—I mean, didn’t you feel a little bit under pressure to go with Sarik – given your choices?”

She shook her head. “No. I’d fallen for him long before I had to make the decision. What I felt was guilt: allowing him to near-bankrupt himself so that we could be together. But he loved me enough to do it…and I loved him enough to let him.”

“Will you marry him?”

She considered. “I hope so. When we have the money. But marriage means something different, here. It’s a commitment and a transfer of ownership: for us, that’s already happened.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes while we finished our wine.