Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two (7 page)

H
ours later, Raena was still working out. At her request, Vezali had routed the heat exchangers to vent into the gym, just for the day. Raena had kicked over a tub of water, leaving a slick on the floor to evaporate into the air, making the room sufficiently steamy. She was trying to replicate jungle conditions.

Sweat plastered her short black hair to her head in clumps. She’d stripped off her shirt, leaving a breast band on for modesty’s sake. In general, the others left her alone while she was working out, but she was glad when Coni tapped on the door. She could use some distraction from worrying about her dreams.

“Wow,” Coni gasped as she stepped into the room.

“I can come out,” Raena said. “There’s no reason you should come in and be uncomfortable.”

“No, it feels wonderful,” the blue-furred girl said. “Like home.” She stretched, rolling her shoulders around, soaking in the heat. “What possessed you to warm it up in here like this?”

“I was bored of exercising at ship temperature,” Raena said simply. “Do we keep it too cold for you normally?”

“I’m used to it,” Coni answered. “It’s why I always wear a jacket.” She slipped the boxy black coat off now and hung it on the peg beside Raena’s top.

When she turned back, Raena realized she’d never seen Coni without her jackets before. The top half of the girl’s body looked genderless under its luxuriant blue fur. She looked upward into Coni’s face, but as always, couldn’t read her expression.

Coni said, “I think I have a good start on your identity. You’ve got a birth certificate now and transcripts through lower school. Did you want to continue on to trade school?”

“Would that make the most sense?” Raena asked. “Maybe I studied human computer systems or something? Don’t make it too technical or complicated, though. I don’t want anyone to challenge me on something I should know, since my knowledge is mostly out of date. Is there a way to have me be self-taught or home-schooled or something? Or a student of martial arts?”

Coni nodded. “What do you want to have done after school?”

“Bodyguard work? Something unconnected to legal security.”

“Got it.” Coni made a note on her handheld. Without looking up, she asked, “Do you want to take credit as the person who executed the Thallians? You could say you were avenging your mother or something.”

“No,” Raena said decisively. “Let the assassin remain anonymous. I don’t want my new identity connected to the Thallians in any way. I want a new life, free and clear.”

“All right, then. I can finish this up this in another day or two. I’ll send it back to your cabin.”

“That will be perfect, Coni. Thank you so much for your help.”

“It’s been fun.” Her voice fell back into the toneless pitch that Raena couldn’t interpret.

Raena tried to think if she’d ever heard Coni speak her own language, or speaking anything other than Imperial or Galactic Standard. Maybe she should do a little research on Coni’s species, about the way they communicated amongst themselves. Probably, if she put a little work into it, she would understand the relationship developing between her and Coni much better.

Raena crossed the gym to sip from her water bottle. She heard Coni’s deep, shocked intake of breath and spun back to see what was the matter. Coni’s eyes were round and wide above her muzzle.

“Sorry,” Raena said immediately. “I forget what my back looks like.”

“If you keep your scars,” Coni said cautiously, “we will have to write them into your biography, too.”

“You’re right. Thank you for understanding that. I do want to keep them. They’re a talisman to protect me from ever belonging to anyone again.”

“Are they from when you were a slave?”

“No,” Raena said. Then she added, “Those are love marks from Thallian.”

“May I?” Coni drew closer, one taloned hand upraised. Raena turned away and let the girl examine her.

“What did he hit you with?” Coni asked.

“They’re burns. He poured accelerant on me and set it afire.”

“It must have hurt like hell. He didn’t send you to the infirmary afterward?”

“He didn’t think the crew knew what went on in his cabin. Jonan thought that as long as I refused to scream, no one could hear a thing. No one would jump to conclusions. That alone should have made me realize how delusional he was.”

“How did you stand it?”

This was a longer conversation than she’d ever had with the blue girl before, and much, much more personal. Something had shifted between them. Raena was glad for the change, even if she didn’t completely understand the thaw.

“I stood it because he owned me,” she said. “Legally, of course, I had enlisted in the Empire’s diplomatic corps, but in reality I served as Thallian’s aide only at his pleasure. If I’d refused him anything, given him any provocation, he would have had me thrown into the cells on the
Arbiter,
where he could have tortured me to death for any reason or no reason at all. None of the crew would have cared to stand up for me. As long as Jonan thought I liked what he did to me, liked it as much as he liked doing it, he kept me around. I was the mirror that reflected his perversion and made it beautiful.”

The pads on Coni’s fingers were rough, but her touch was extremely gentle as she explored the ridges and troughs of scar tissue.

Raena asked, “You understand now why I killed him?”

“Yes.” Coni took her hands away and Raena turned to meet her gaze. “Yes,” she said again. “I think the galaxy would understand, too, but I respect your privacy in this.”

“Thank you.” Raena went to the door and retrieved her shirt, sliding it back over her head. Having someone touch her scar tissue made her feel chilled, despite the sweltering heat in the room. Those memories, apparently, were still too close to the surface.

She didn’t tell Coni not to say anything to Mykah. It would be interesting to see if the blue girl would want to get her boyfriend outraged over something that happened to another woman or if she really did respect Raena’s privacy enough not to share her discovery.

After Coni left her, Raena realized her fever to exercise had passed. She re-routed the heat exchangers and started mopping up the floor with a towel.

Mykah came into the gym while Raena was crawling around on all fours. His hair was an explosion of ringlets today and he was letting his beard go dark at the roots. “Wanna spar?” he asked hopefully.

“No, I’m done,” Raena said.

He looked disappointed.

“Go ahead and use the equipment,” she added quickly, “if you just want a workout.”

“Thanks.” He moved into the room listlessly, trying to decide where to start.

Raena paused in the doorway. “Can I ask you a question?”

Mykah turned from the equipment as if glad of the interruption. “Anything,” he promised.

“Do you remember your dreams?”

That was clearly not the direction he expected her to go. “Yeah,” he said, “doesn’t everyone?”

“I don’t know. I never asked anyone before.” She leaned against the doorframe, trying to steel herself to ask what she really wanted to know. “Mykah,” she said slowly, “do you ever dream about your past? Like reliving your memories?”

He frowned, thinking about it, before he shook his head. “Not really. I mean, things from my past turn up, like the day we disrupted the jet pack race. I remember what it was like to fly. But I end up flying out over green fields or above forests or the ocean, stuff we never did on Kai. The memory is kind of a jumping-off point for the rest of the dream.”

“Thanks,” Raena said, letting the door open.

“Why do you want to know?” he asked, before she could get away.

“I’ve been having a lot of bad dreams lately,” she said. “I wish they were as wonderful as flying over the ocean. Maybe, now that you’ve put the image in my head, I’ll dream of that next.”

Coni waited until Raena had gone into her cabin to shower, before she slipped back into the gym to talk to Mykah.

He also had stripped off his shirt to exercise. She came over to lick the sweat beading on his chest.

He laughed at her. “Did you come in just to get a taste of me?

“That, too,” she said, savoring the lingering salty flavor on her tongue. “But … no. I wanted some reassurance.”

He released the bar he had been hanging from and dropped back to his feet. “What’s wrong?”

“I came in here earlier, when Raena was working out. I saw … I saw her back. I saw what that monster did to her.”

Mykah rubbed a towel over his skin before he came to hug her.

“I know,” he said, looking up into Coni’s lavender eyes. “I’ve caught glimpses of them. We knew she’d been shot several times in his service …”

Coni interrupted him. “It’s her back. She said they were love marks. She said he’d set her on fire.”

Mykah squeezed Coni tighter. “You know he was crazy,” he reminded.

“How could humans do that to each other?” she demanded. “I know he was evil. I know all the things he was charged with. But to hurt someone you love …” She shuddered, smoothing the pads of her hands down Mykah’s muscled back as if to wipe the memory away.

“She said the crew she served with knew,” Coni reported. “They knew and no one helped her. She said she had to take his abuse because otherwise Thallian would have tortured her to death.”

Mykah reached up to take Coni’s face in his hands. “I know,” he said softly. “She’s withstood terrible things. But she’s avenged herself. He can’t hurt anyone any more.”

“It’s not that,” Coni argued, but maybe it was. “How does she get up every day, get dressed, face other people … How do you recover? How do you act normal? How do you … ?” She ran out of words, unable to articulate how deeply she was touched by all that Raena had endured.

“She’s able to do it, because she was shut in that tomb for twenty years,” Mykah reminded, “where she was safe from him. She couldn’t die, so she had to heal.”

Coni bent down to rub the top of her head under his chin.

“You’re welcome.” He scratched her gently behind the ear. “You know you can always come to me with your questions. I don’t know all that Raena’s survived—I don’t think she’s let anyone know it all—but I understand pretty well how she did it.”

There were times when Raena missed her bubble bath. When Kavanaugh had delivered her to Gavin’s moon base up above the Templar tombworld, the two men had adapted a rocket casing so she could have her first bath in decades. Even though the water had cooled faster than she would have preferred, it was still heavenly. Raena wondered if Vezali could rig some kind of bathtub out of the weapons the Thallians left behind.

In the meantime, she stepped into the shower in her cabin. She set the water to be practically scalding, but didn’t allow herself to luxuriate in it for long. No telling how many times that water had been cycled already.

Her thoughts had finally quieted. After she toweled herself off, she couldn’t think of anything she particularly wanted to do. So she crawled back into her bunk and let her eyes slide closed, hoping for the peaceful sleep that had eluded her earlier.

If not that, then some nice pastoral dreams about flying.

In her tomb, Raena experimented with turning the electric torch off for short periods of time. She knew the torch’s batteries were not going to last forever. As far as she knew, her imprisonment was intended to be for life, so she was likely to outlive the light. Whenever she considered what life would be like once the light was gone, she wanted to weep—but her tears had apparently used themselves up. Her inability to cry didn’t make the emotion any less intense.

She was trying to memorize the boundaries of the tomb. She started by walking to the cavern’s entrance, where she put her hand on the slab and switched off the torch. Then she paced forward slowly, counting her steps.

She wondered if going crazy was a choice. Could she choose madness? If she went crazy, would the darkness fill with ghosts? Would they attack her, gang up, avenge themselves on her? Would it be better to have company, any company, than to have the fear of the dark so clear in her mind?

She halted abruptly. She realized she had forgotten her count. She turned around carefully, one hand always on the wall, and walked back toward the tomb’s slab to begin again.

The fear began to spiral: how far had she gone? It seemed like she was walking back farther than she’d already come. Was she lost? Was it possible to get lost? Was the cave rearranging itself around her in the darkness?

Panting, unable to catch her breath, she snapped the torch on. The entrance of the tomb was a mere arm’s length ahead of her.

Raena sank to the floor with her back against the wall. She took a deep breath, held it as long as she could, then blew it out slowly. Then she switched the torch off again.

Sometime later, a huge boom shook the cave. Raena scrambled to her feet, her body on fire with adrenaline. Was it an earthquake? She wanted to race around in the dark, find somewhere to hide, but the cave was big and open and bare to the walls except for the catafalque where she slept. There was nothing inside the mountain that would protect her. Her hands clenched and unclenched, desperate for anything to hang on to. All she had was the torch.

A grinding sound set her teeth on edge. Raena couldn’t figure out what it was, why it wouldn’t stop. Any avalanche would be quicker than this slow, steady scrape.

Then she noticed the blackness around her had lightened subtly. Someone was opening her tomb.

Of all the people who knew she was inside, only one would come after her.

If she could drop dead in an instant rather than face Thallian again, she would have counted herself the luckiest girl in the galaxy. Instead, she swiped her clammy hands against the legs of her jumpsuit, then crept as quietly as she could to the far side of the tomb’s entrance. That was as much of a hiding place as any.

Not a moment too soon, either. A beam of light flashed around the inside of the cave. It did not find her.