Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Pleasure's Foehn (7 page)

Scrubbing himself down with the lime-scented soap he had Seamus import from
an
Ghréig
, he savored the feel of real water cascading down on his body. Sonic-wave showers would do in a pinch but there was nothing as calming and relaxing as hot water running over his flesh to soothe him.

“Want some company?”

Cair jumped and dropped the soap as Amethyst insinuated herself into the tight stall. Before he could order her out, she pressed up against him and ran her hands behind him to cup his ass.

“We wouldn’t want you to start your day tense and—”

“Get out,” he said, a muscle working in his cheek. “Now!”

Though his voice had been as low and as soft as his obvious anger could make it, Amethyst understood the warning in it. The man upon whom she was draped might well have been her lover but he was also known throughout the galaxy as a feared Deathwielder, a scythelord of the highest degree. The merciless glower in his eyes was an indication of his growing fury—a fury no sane person wanted to experience. She jumped out of the stall so fast she fell on her shapely ass, staring up at Cair as he slammed the shower door on her.

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Pleasure’s Foehn

“Aren’t you going to help me up?” she called out and when she received no answer, scrambled up from the floor and cursing a blue streak in her native
an Iodáil
language, stormed into Cair’s sleeping chamber and began throwing on her clothes.

“It’s that female doctor that has him so fucking out of sorts,” Amethyst snarled as she jerked on her long silk skirt. “The stupid bitch has ruined everything!”

Sighing, Cair bent over and retrieved the soap. He hadn’t planned on washing his hair but now he had no choice. He lathered the thick black curls quickly then stood with his hands braced on each side of the showerhead, his chin to his chest and let the hot water flow over the suds, his eyes closed. The muscles in his neck and upper back were taut and not even the pulsing of the water could rid his body of the sudden tension that had gripped it.

“You have to do something about that wench,” he said aloud and as he spoke the last word, a slow, evil smile stretched his chiseled mouth. But which wench? He questioned himself as he turned off the shower and sluiced the water from his arms and chest arms with his palms.

That his mother was responsible for having the female healer sent to the
Foehn
, Cair had no doubt whatsoever. He didn’t believe in coincidence and upon learning Shanahan was related to the infamous Cat McGregor, he had known immediately who was behind the healer’s assignment.

He lifted his legs and pushed the water from them then ran his hands through his wet hair to comb it back from his high forehead.

“Oh, yes,” he said as he opened the shower door and hooked the plush body sheet from the hanger. “You had her sent here as surely as snuel peas make me fart,” he grumbled.

His mother, he knew, had a way of manipulating assignments and this was surely one of her nastier moments. Perhaps this was not as nasty as her last attempt at arranging his life to her satisfaction, but spiteful all the same. Five years earlier, he had been stunned to find orders to the
Foehn
awaiting him when he returned from a tour of the front. The shame of it had been almost more than he could bear and when he’d confronted his mother—knowing full well she had been responsible—she had laughed at him.

“Didn’t I tell you that if you refused to accept Arlana Byrne to wife you would suffer the consequences, Cairnan Douglas?” his mother had purred. “Running off to the front only prolonged the inevitable.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” he had dared to yell at his mother. “Once this assignment gets out, I’ll be a laughingstock among the other warriors!”

“Ask Arlana to wife and I’ll make the assignment to that little whorehouse go away.”

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

It had been on the tip of Cair’s tongue to agree but he knew his mother well enough to know that if he gave in now, he’d be forced to give every time she made demands of him.

“No,” he said. “I can’t stand the sight of that silly twit and I’ll not be shackled to her or any woman the rest of my life!”

“Suit yourself,” his mother had said sweetly and the Vid-Com screen went black. And stayed black until he reported to duty onboard the hated pleasure ship. The first familiar face he’d seen aboard the
Foehn
had been his mother’s, smirking from the Vid-Com in his quarters.

“Did you enjoy your trip from Aduaidh Quadrant to your new vessel, Cair?” she asked in a smarmy tone that set his teeth on edge.

This time it had been he who broke the connection, refusing to take his mother’s uplinks for well over a week until Seamus Rawls had appeared on ship, a scowl on his ugly face.

“Her Majesty sent me to be your new Chief of Supply. Do you ken how much I hate this, boy? Being pulled away from the war to baby sit the likes of you?” Seamus had snarled in his thick Astráil brogue. “You’d best call her else she’ll redline your scrawny little ass here for another five years and me alongside you!”

Realizing his mother had drawn out the big guns in sending the warrior who had trained him as a boy, Cair had hung his head in defeat.

“Call your mother,” Seamus barked before trundling off to make himself familiar with his new—and despised—posting.

Tossing the towel aside, Cair stood there for a moment with his hands on his hips. He was already late to take the bridge but he really didn’t care. The ship practically ran itself anyway, for most of the crew had been marooned there even longer than he.

“You really have to fuck up to get sent here,” Freemohn had once observed when he and Cair were deep in their cups. “Some think it’s a cushy assignment but it isn’t. It’s boring as hell and I wish I’d been blown to bits on Sasana instead of just getting wounded. Taking my R&R here was one major, major mistake.”

“Stop complaining or I’ll engage you to that twit Arlana. You’ll learn what boredom is then, boy,” Cair had warned him. “Besides, you’re the only one I know on this hellship who can play chess.”

Cair chuckled as he thought of his XO. He had liked the young man as soon as he’d met him and for once his mother had been cooperative in getting Freemohn assigned to the
Foehn
. Since Seamus refused to sit still long enough to play chess—or any other game he considered too tame—Cair finally had someone with whom he could share a few moment’s of intelligent dialogue.

When the two of them weren’t stinking drunk, that is.

Dressing in the black uniform he had worked so hard to acquire at the Academy, Cair took pride in the collar insignia he pinned to his shirt. The silver crossed war 38

Pleasure’s Foehn

scythes superimposed upon a grinning skull marked him as one of the elite, a warrior tested by the best of them and chosen from among a field of a thousand hopefuls. Only the man graduating at the top of his class was ever awarded the scythes and only then after passing a stringent hand-to-hand combat test, pitted against five other warriors. The rank of Scythelord was not easily won.

The Vid-Com chimed again, drawing Cair’s attention. Frowning, he hoped it wasn’t his mother again but when he opened the channel found Seamus grinning at him.

“She found the eggs?”

“Aye, lad, that she did,” Seamus said with a chuckle.

“And?”

Seamus’ ugly face turned red with his laughter. “Best you come by my office on your way to the bridge and take a look-see. This you don’t want to miss!”

Cair left his quarters with the sound of Seamus’ hoots of laughter ringing in his ears. It wasn’t often the old soldier laughed and when he did it usually boded ill for Cair Ghrian. Seamus took great delight in taking the young man down as many pegs as he felt was necessary to keep the prince grounded. That he had been given permission to do so by the queen didn’t sit well with Cair. The two were always in cahoots and that knowledge rankled. What one knew, the other knew, and there seemed to be no secrets between Queen Meg and her burly henchman from Astráil.

Seamus was sitting at his desk with his booted feet propped atop, leaning back in the formfitting chair that had been Cair’s gift to his mentor on the older man’s sixtieth solar year. In front of Seamus’ desk was a large Vid-Com with an image frozen on replay.

“It’s from a camera to the right of the wench’s door,” Seamus said. He thumbed the control in his hand and the image moved backward, pulling out until Cair could see the eggs laid out in front of the healer’s door.

“Now watch this,” Seamus said with a giggle.

The door opened and the healer took one step into the corridor before freezing. She looked down. The camera moved also and zoomed in on the healer’s shoe caked with egg yolk. Quickly, the camera lens shot upward to catch the look on Dr. Shanahan’s face.

“Were you controlling the camera?” Cair asked.

“Not me,” Seamus denied. “Young Freemohn was.”

“Freeze it.”

The lens was trained directly on Davan Shanahan’s face and the anger just beginning to build.

“Actually, she’s a right nice-looking wench this morn,” Seamus said. “Got that hair of hers under control, she does.”

Cair didn’t respond to his mentor’s remark although he had to admit the woman staring back at him was more attractive than when he’d first met her. 39

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“She’s Cat McGregor’s kin,” Seamus said. “Did you know that?”

Knowing all too well how Seamus had learned such information, Cair slowly turned his gaze from the Vid-Com to the old man’s grinning face. “No,” was all he said.

“No you didn’t know or are you saying no to something else, lad?” Seamus inquired, his eyes twinkling.

“Not her. Not Arlana. Not any woman,” Cair stated.

Seamus shook his head. “Lad, you can be as stubborn as a Meicsiceo mule, you know that?”

“You tell my mother to stop playing matchmaker, Seamus,” Cair warned, “or I swear to the Goddess I’ll join the monkhood!”

A short of derision spluttered from Seamus’ rubbery lips. “Now you’re just plain being silly. Take a whiff of that little wench, lad, and if she ain’t to your liking, we’ll find you another.” The humor left his face. “Either way, you’ll be wed before you get off this ship or you’ll die here a bitter, old man.”

“I don’t want a wife!” Cair shouted at the top of his lungs. “A Scythelord doesn’t need a wife!”

Seamus ignored the outburst. He nodded toward the screen. “Look how she settled the matter and tell me that ain’t one resourceful little wench.”

Despite the fury roiling in his gut, Cair looked back at the screen as the image began to play again. He saw the healer curse then hop back out of the camera’s range.

“I near ‘bout split my sides when I saw what the little darling did next,” Seamus said and Cair could hear admiration in the old man’s gravelly voice. When next the healer appeared, she was carrying her uniform shoes in her hand and was wearing the hip waders Cair recognized as having belonged to Doc Rabishu. Oversized on the woman’s slender legs, she was having difficulty walking in them but had no problem at all stomping the eggs lying outside her door to smithereens. Every last one of them.

“Ain’t that the rat’s pecker?” Seamus asked—laughing so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “She squashed them all then look…”

The healer glanced up at the camera as though seeing it for the first time and saluted it with the universally recognized symbol of defiance as she turned her back and stomped off, hip waders dripping egg all the way down the corridor.

“I’ll be damned,” Cair whispered, his insides doing a funny little squeeze. He leaned against Seamus’ desk. “Where is she now?”

Seamus thumbed the Vid-Com’s remote and the next picture that popped on the screen was the healer examining one of her patients.

For half an hour Cair watched the Breasalean healer as she worked. From one patient to another she moved with no breaks in between. She seemed to be handling her job with an ease he hadn’t witnessed since the battlefield on Arabach. Certainly Rabishu had never exhibited such professionalism.

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Pleasure’s Foehn

“Seems to know her job right well,” Seamus commented as though he had read the younger man’s mind. “Ain’t had no complaints as yet, but I think they’re mostly checking her out more’n anything just yet.”

“Seeing what she’ll allow?” Cair asked.

“And how much of their sass she’ll take.” He scratched his rough chin. “Heard the girls ain’t been showing her all that much respect.”

“Aye, well, that’s probably Amethyst’s doing,” Cair complained.

“I heard she told you to get rid of the little darling,” Seamus said. “You still gonna try to do that?”

Cair speared his mentor with a narrowed look. “You know gods-be-damned well the wardeness will have made sure that is impossible. Don’t sit there and pretend you don’t know I have no choice in the matter, Seamus!”

Seamus put his hands behind his head. “Ain’t pretending nothing, lad,” he responded. “You might as well stop fighting it ‘cause I have a feeling this wench is gonna be your undoing.”

Cair pushed away from the desk and stormed out of the room, Seamus’ laughter once again following him every step of the way. The prince’s hands were clenched into fists and when he took the bridge, he ignored everyone there, plopping down in the command chair and bracing his chin in his hand as he glared at the navigational screen. 41

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Chapter Five

Davan looked around and found the red-haired vixen who she suspected was the reason she’d been having problems with the girls standing in the door. The whore lounged there as though she owned the ship, her arms crossed over her ample chest.

“Cair is trying to find a runabout to get you out of our hair,” Amethyst sneered.

“Well, I wish he’d hurry up. I’m in as much of a rush to get off this flying cathouse as you are to see me go,” Davan said.

“You don’t fool me,” Amethyst scoffed. “You think you can entice my man to your bed but you are badly mistaken. A Deathwielder needs a real woman, not one who pretends to be.”