Earthly Crown (7 page)

Sparks flashed around Diana’s feet as she crossed back into the passageway. The seam shut behind them, leaving the two women alone in the corridor. Suzanne let out a great sigh. Her face shone; she looked replete with satisfaction. Diana felt weak in the knees, but she also floated, so amazed, so elated by what she had just experienced that she hardly needed to touch the ground in order to walk.

“Which reminds me,” said Suzanne suddenly, “before they get back, and because you look like a sensible girl. Let me give you some advice about Marco.” The older woman might as well have slapped her, for all that the friendly tone of the words stung Diana, for all that they brought her hard down to earth. “He’s not arrogant, he doesn’t count coup. He just likes women. He never sets out to deliberately hurt anyone, but he lives rather at the mercy of his…appetites. It’s the same urge that makes him go exploring. He just can’t stand to see virgin ground go untouched. He just has to see what lies over the other side of the hill. He’s charming and attractive, and he is sincere, in his own way. Just don’t think that you’re going to be any different than the other ones—that’s the trap.” Then she shrugged. “Sorry. I’m sure you didn’t want to hear that. Just remember that we were all at university—that we were your age—well before you were born.”

Before Diana could respond, the other seam opened and Marco and David and Soerensen emerged, escorted by four stewards. A tangible scent of sulfur wafted from the duke. Marco blinked at Diana, offered her a smile, and then walked on with the Chapalii escort, clearly preoccupied by this major turn of events. Diana followed the others meekly, endured their taut silence in the lift that shaded to pink and dumped them off in the passenger levels, and then escaped to make her own way back to the stateroom she shared with Hal and Quinn and Oriana.

“You smell funny,” said Hal as she came in.

Quinn looked up from the game of Go they were playing. “Where’ve you been? Off assignating with the intrepid explorer? Oh, don’t think we haven’t noticed him nosing around.”

“Oh, be quiet,” snapped Diana. She flung herself down on the bunk and stared at the wall. “I just witnessed the birth of a Chapalii lord’s heir.”

Oriana snorted, and Hal and Quinn laughed. “That’s good,” said Quinn. “Try another one.”

Diana buried her head in her arms and wished that they would arrive on Rhui, and at the city of Jeds, as quickly as possible. But then she smiled to herself. What did she care if they believed her or not? She knew what she had witnessed. And this was only the beginning of the adventure.

D
AVID CAME OUT TO
the battlements of the palace to get away from the audience room. He couldn’t stand stuffy rooms, and he particularly disliked the obsequiousness with which the Jedan nobles treated Charles. Not that Charles seemed to like it, mind, but it grated on David after a while. He leaned against the sea wall, letting the spray mist his face and hair, and pulled his cloak around himself to ward off the cold. Clouds hung low over the crowded harbor of Jeds, off to his left. Beyond the harbor, the city crawled up and down the hills like a rank animal—or at least, that was how David always thought of it. They had been here two months now, and he saw no reason to change his opinion.

He slipped his sketchpad out from under his cloak and opened it to the page he had just been working on: a sketch of Charles seated in the audience hall, with Marco at his right and two Jedan guards behind him.

“Oh, hello, David.”

He turned to greet Diana Brooke-Holt. She also wore a cloak, but it billowed up from her shoulders, lifted by the wind, lending her entrance a dramatic flair. “Coming out to take the air?”

But her gaze went immediately to the sketchpad. “You drew that! That’s wonderful!”

David shrugged. He was always embarrassed when people admired his sketching, because he knew he had a dilettante’s skill, not a true artist’s. But Diana’s interest was infectious.

“Is there more?” Without really asking for permission, she flipped the pages back. “That’s the north front of the palace. Look how wonderful the architectural details are. You’re really good.”

“Thank you,” murmured David.

She paused too long on a study of Marco, got a self-conscious look on her face, and hastily turned to another page. “You can record the expedition this way, can’t you? Out in the open.”

“It’s true,” he agreed, and then she turned another page and there found—herself.

“Oh,” she said.

“Do you like it?” asked David, feeling violently shy all of a sudden.

Diana did him the honor of studying the sketch for some moments in silence. But then she got a grin on her face, and she struck a pose and pressed a palm to her chest. “‘Oh, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! and yet again wonderful! and after that, out of all whooping!’”

David laughed. “Which reminds me. How is the acting business in this town?”

She laughed in turn. “We’re a great success. A sold-out house every night. Lords and merchants showering the actresses with gifts, flowers and jewels and gowns and expensive baskets of fruit. Poor Yomi has to tag and catalog and return the nonperishable items.” She rested her back against the stone and brushed her golden hair back away from her face. The sun, behind her, set into the bay, casting a golden-red echo across the waters, staining the clouds pink. Was she unconscious of the effect she caused, of the way any man might linger to watch her, to wonder? Diana had a bright face, full of warmth, and the cut of her tunic and skirt, while conservative, lent her figure a pleasing grace. David was not surprised that Marco—in the limited free time that they’d had—put himself in her way. Not that he’d had any success, that David had heard of. But there is pleasure given freely and with a whole heart between friends, and there is a subtle form of coercion that some people see fit to call romance. David did not believe in romance, but he suspected that Diana did. Diana grinned at him; was she aware of the way his thoughts were tending? She was, in some ways, quite as young as she looked, but David did not think she was a fool. “And Hyacinth fell in love with some dark-eyed, perfumed young lordling, if that’s what they call them. He managed to sneak out every night for two weeks before Yomi caught him at it and slapped a curfew on him.”

“And he obeyed it?”

“Only because she threatened to tell Soerensen.”

“Ah,” said David. “I’m sorry I haven’t had time to attend any of the performances. How is the experiment going?”

She turned her shoulders just enough so she could see both him and the sunset. Light spilled out over the bay, chopped by the waves into splinters. Jeds fell into shadow, and the distant hills marking the east grew quite black. Stars began to fill the darkening sky.

“Shakespeare plays well. We’ve done a condensed repertory schedule:
A Midsummer Night’s Dream; King Lear; The Tempest; Peer Gynt; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Oedipus Rex; Berenice.
Ginny’s translated some; others we’ve done in the original. I don’t know. Maybe Owen is right. Maybe some human emotions and gestures
are
universal. They certainly communicate to these people, and they know nothing of Earth.”

At times like this, David was reminded that he was talking with a fellow professional. He wondered if Marco ever saw this side of Diana, or if he only saw that she was pretty, that she had a warm, attractive personality and the ability to listen. “How
do
you memorize all those lines?” he demanded.

She rolled her eyes. “I refuse to answer that question. Why doesn’t Charles Soerensen ban debt-slavery in Jeds?”

“Debt-slavery?”

“Haven’t you been in the city at all? Owen has already been approached by three brothel owners and two wealthy merchants to buy my debt from him, because they want to own me, you can imagine what for. It’s been the same for Oriana and for Quinn and Anahita. And Hyacinth, of course. He holds the record: he’s had four brothel owners, three merchants, and eight veiled gentlewomen bargaining through stewards try to buy him. Owen kept trying to tell them that we weren’t slaves until Yomi finally told him just to tell them that we aren’t for sale.”

“Oh, my,” said David, amused and horrified at the same time.

“Of course, we found it funny at first,” she went on, her expression darkening. “But the native girls and boys aren’t so lucky.” She hesitated, and David had a sudden premonition whose name was going to come next to her lips. “Marco took me down into the town last week. It had never occurred to me that they might look them over and sell them off like furniture. Those poor girls looked so terrified, and one actually—” She choked on the next words, faltered, and lapsed into silence.

The waves beat on the rocks below. Faintly, from the audience room, David heard the sound of trumpets.

“How can he let it go on, when he could stop it?” Diana demanded suddenly.

“It
is
an interdicted planet.” The words sounded weak. “Well,” he added apologetically, “if he uses his real strength, it would rip apart the fabric of this society. What right do we have to interfere?”

“What right? It’s
wrong,
what they do. It’s wrong for those children.”

David sighed. “Diana, someone is always going to be hurt. I know that Charles is well aware of the contradictions inherent in his situation.”

“You’re a fool for going, Charles. Let the company go, and I’ll go with them. Send Cara, if you must. But don’t go yourself. It can’t be perceived as anything but a threat. You forget, I’ve met him.”

Like conspirators, David and Diana both froze. David wondered if this was how an actor felt, who has forgotten to exit and so, inadvertently, is stuck out on stage for the next scene, in which he does not belong. Diana pressed herself closer against the wall, as if she could sink into the stone and thus hide herself. The voices, accompanied by footfalls, came closer.

“It is time for Tess to return,” said Charles, sounding cool. “It has been four years, Marco.
Four years,
since she left Earth. I would have come sooner, but how was I to know it would take two years to finalize the Keinaba alliance? Damned chameleons. One needs the patience of Job to deal with them.”

Marco chuckled. “Which you, have. I’d much rather deal with barbarians. Quick to anger, quick to friendship. Not this years-long game playing the Chapalii love. Years? Hell. Decades-long, centuries, for all we know of them. Still, I say you’re better off letting me talk to Tess first.”

The footfalls ceased. The curve of the wall, and the twilight, still hid them from the two men. Alone, David would just have gone to join the others, but Diana looked utterly embarrassed. And anyway, he was curious about the tenor of their conversation.

“No.”

“Charles—”

“No. In any case, the rendezvous is already arranged. We sail in two weeks. Baron Sanier will act as regent until my return. I’ll leave him the scepter of office, although I’ll keep the signet ring and the prince’s chain just in case he gets ambitions. Tess will meet us at Abala Port in about six weeks.”

“And?”

“And the Company can travel on into the interior with the jaran, if that’s still their wish.”

“And you?”

“We’ll see.”

“Yes, we’ll see because you have every intention of turning straight round and coming back here with Tess, don’t you?
Merde,
Charles, don’t do anything rash.”

Charles laughed, short and sharp. “When was the last time you’ve known me to do anything rash?”

“A damned long time ago, as you well know. Let me say it this way. You’re getting used to things going your way. This may not be your choice to make.”

“Tess has a duty—”

“Yes, I know all about her duty, and I’m sure she does as well. In any case, it’s not Tess I’m thinking of now. In the words of that ancient song, I think an irresistible force is about to meet an immovable object, and I’m sure as hell going to get out of the flash zone.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Charles Soerensen. David was shocked to hear such coldness in his voice; this was Charles, who always listened, who could always be counted upon to be open-minded. Diana clutched a fistful of cloak in one hand. Footfalls sounded again, but moving away from them, and they were left in silence but for the sea surging below and the distant sound of carriages leaving the palace.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said a woman’s voice beside them.

David gasped, starting round. Diana sagged back against the wall.

“I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The woman smiled.

“Cara!”

“Oh, not you,” said Cara Hierakis dismissively. “I meant Diana.”

“Dr. Hierakis,” said Diana in a small voice. She glanced guiltily toward the right and then back. “Oh. I…”

“Yes, we were all eavesdropping, weren’t we?”

“Speak for yourself,” said David, affronted. “We came here by accident.”

“Oh, not on purpose, I know,” said the doctor mildly. “Or at least, not on your part, Diana.”

“Thank you,” said David, but he laughed.

“Is she really alive?” Diana asked. “Terese Soerensen, that is? We heard rumors, but I didn’t know if they were true.”

“Yes, she’s alive.”

Whenever he heard Tess mentioned, just that simple fact set against the official announcements proclaimed by the Chapalii Protocol Office, David felt a warm glow start up inside him. Tess
was
alive, and he would be seeing her soon.

“But why did she come to Rhui? Diana asked. “Oh, I know I shouldn’t ask, but…” She trailed off, and David turned to look at Cara Hierakis because it was a question he had never gotten a satisfactory answer to.

Cara laughed. The breeze off the bay stirred her black hair and she squinted out at the distant islands that rimmed the western horizon like glass beads shot through with the last red fires of the sun. The barest trace of crows-feet showed at her eyes. Her face looked not young, yet not old, that mature mask that most humans between the age of forty and ninety now wore: ageless, smooth, and healthy. That David himself wore, although it was by now an ancient joke that folks with the darkest skin stayed the youngest looking for the longest time; there was not four months in chronological age between Charles and David and Marco, but people often mistook David for younger.