Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) (27 page)

The woman giggled. It was such a young sound coming from the elderly face that Wynne thought she might have mistaken the woman's age.

"Nix did wonder. The room fits her. Have we come into credits then?"

"Posy made the arrangements."

Nix beamed at the man and included Ish in her smile. "Posy is a good boy. Ish should marry him."

"Put her back in the sack," Ish muttered. She moved away to the door next to the one Chubo had gone through. Peeking inside, she called over her shoulder, "Truca and I'll take this one. Come on, tiger. You can have the cleanser first. I'll order up some food." She waved her hand over her head. "You four can fight over the rest."

"Order extra, if you please, Chubo and Nix have not been fed very well. Chubo is grumpy."

"When is Chubo not grumpy?" Ish called from the room.

Nix walked with a rolling gait to her room. She giggled again. "Ish is right. Perhaps grumpier is a better word."

There was no fight. Mohawk looked in the first door he came to on the opposite side of the room. "Two beds," he said to Posy. "I'm not sleeping with you."

"Nor I you, unless there's a woman between us." Posy ignored Mohawk's grin and turned to Tor. "Have you figured out what to do with them?"

Wynne had taken a seat on one of the sofas flanking a large central table. Her tastes were too simple to appreciate the extravagance of the decor. In her mind, it was gaudy and overdone, but she made an exception for the sofa. In her dream room, the sofa would be the centerpiece. Sinking into the soft cushions was like relaxing on a cloud. She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She only half listened to what the men said.

"I thought of it when Beso did your papers. I had their chips changed. Once this is over, they're yours."

"No."

At Posy's emphatic response. Wynne opened one eye.

"Yes." Tor's response was just as adamant. "They're Hukas. They had no choice. Look at them. They won't be charged with anything."

"But you still will." Posy sounded angry. "What happens then? You can't do this, Tor."

"It's already done and it won't matter in the end. Orax and Honarie are dead men. I swear that on my life. As soon as this is over, Chubo and Nix will belong to you."

Wynne turned her head to watch Tor hand over what looked like two gold coins to Posy who took them but shook his head.

"No."

"Who else is there, Pos? Ish doesn't have the patience."

"What in Hadrid's Harem am I going to do with them? I'll be going back to the tribe, Tor, back to what I'm trained to do. They won't be accepted and I won't either. It's against our laws. And don't tell me to find them a berth. You tried that, remember? There's not a trader out there who's going to hire a Basker pilot with papers or without. They sure as shit won't take on two Huka slaves."

"It could better your chances. Two pilots and a navigator for the price of a single pilot."

"All in name only. My papers aren't real and Chubo and Nix don't have any. They can't handle anything more complicated than straight hops between two points as long as nothing gets in the way. So no, Tor, give them their freedom."

"And doom them to what? They don't know how to do anything else."

"None of us know how to do anything else."

Wait! What? Wynne sat up. "Did you say slaves?"

She stood and faced the man to whom she'd given her heart.

Chapter 27

Tor closed his eyes. His face was stony with impatience. "Wynne, leave it. You don't understand."

"I don't understand? Well, let me see." She laid her index finger against her cheek and cupped her chin with the rest. "Chubo and Nix are slaves. Apparently, you own them. No papers, of course. This is a high tech society, so everything is on one of those little chips you guys are all so fond of. How am I doing so far?"

"Wynne."

Wynne's finger was in the air. She wasn't sure how it got there. She wasn't sure of anything but the burning anger inside her. Words were coming out of her mouth without thought.

"You told me from the beginning what kind of man you were, but I convinced myself I saw something else. I saw a good man. You're a smuggler, Tor, and you're talking to a woman who doesn't even jaywalk. I didn't like it, but I understood your reasons, and they were a good man's reasons. You want to make Honarie and Orax pay for what they've done to your crew, not just Digger and Lusomo. Every one of your crew. You know I disagree, but still, I thought you were blinded by love. Your motives were those of a good man. I accepted all these things because they are what you are."

"Kushma."

Her raised finger turned to a full hand. It didn't matter that the black gunk she'd used to darken her eyes was now running down her face.

"Don't," she said, sounding frighteningly calm. "I've listened and tried to understand. This time you listen to me. You told me you didn't deal in the slave trade. You wanted no part of it. Yet here we are with Chubo and Nix, sentient beings you own. You talk about them as if they're pieces of paper to pass off to Posy. That's something I can't understand. I won't understand.

"Our Nona used to say a cat can't change his appetites and a mouse can't change his fear. They are what God meant them to be. You and I are that cat and mouse. The one thing that saves the mouse from the cat is it knows when to run. I'm taking my heart back and returning yours."

Like the mouse she was, Wynne ran.

"Kushma, don't."

She slammed the door behind her and threw herself on the bed. It was then she started crying in earnest, burying her face in the pillow so her pain would not be heard.

"Use the head before you use the heart," Nona Donazetto had warned and Wynne had failed to listen. She'd given her heart to a man she didn't really know and despite her words to him, she couldn't take it back.

"The heart has no sense." Nona was right about that, too. It made no sense, but Wynne knew her heart would continue to pulse in tandem with Tor's for a long, long time. Even if she managed to break that connection, the scar it left behind would leave her with a lifelong reminder of the pain.

If the tight fit of her dress and the corset beneath were uncomfortable before, now they strangled her. Choking on her sobs, she wrenched at them as if they were the cause of her torment. Fabric tore and seams split. Knotted laces were ripped from their eyelets. It wasn't until the offending garments were piled in a heap on the floor that she realized she had nothing with which to replace them. Her bags were still in the communal area of the suite.

The ridiculous failure of her very first tantrum sobered her and dried her tears. This was the result of losing her temper. Naked, she walked to the bath and stepped into a cleanser large enough to hold four. She pressed the buttons and for the first time understood why her sister enjoyed a shower so much. With hot water pounding against her body, she could close her eyes and disappear beneath the soothing spray. Those few minutes of relaxation would go a long way in relieving the tension of body and mind.

As it was, Wynne was clean but felt no better than before. Her only consolation was finding two fluffy hotel robes hanging from hooks on the wall.

Robe belted and tied, Wynne emerged from the bathroom to find Posy sitting on the edge of the bed.

"You people really need to learn a few things about privacy."

Unaffected by her criticism, Posy smiled. "It wasn't locked."

"Did it ever occur to you to knock?"

"Would you have let me in?"

"That's the point, Posy. I wouldn't have."

"My point as well. Come, sit. I have something to show you." He patted the space beside him.

"If this is about Tor..."

"It isn't. It's about Chubo and Nix."

The black box he held on his knees was around a foot long and two inches wide. Wynne knew what it was. Roark used one at his desk at home, so she wasn't surprised when Posy touched the end and the image of a computer screen shimmered in the air. The band of light that spread over his robed lap was a keyboard. Curious, she sat beside him.

With a few taps of the keys, a 3-D image of the Milky Way appeared. "This is our galaxy." He touched the air where the image appeared. "This is your Earth. This is where we are now." Two tiny dots replaced his finger taps. "We speak of sailing the galaxy, but we haven't even begun to explore." He drew a circle and again, a red line appeared. "This is what we call the outer reaches." The circle looked very small compared to the vast expanse of stars beyond it.

The deep, lulling timbre of his voice eased Wynne's impatience. She waited for him to continue.

"Within the known galaxy, there are thousands of habitable planets and asteroids. Each has its own creatures and cultures, each its own evolution. Those creatures and cultures don't always agree. The Galactic Confederation does what it can to keep the peace, but it doesn't have the power to change cultures and traditions that have developed over thousands of years."

"Like the Baskers?"

"Like the Baskers," he agreed, "and like the Hukas, like Chubo and Nix. Their people have been slaves to the Macrin since time began. They're bred like cattle. They know nothing else. We'd heard of them, dumb beasts of burden that walked on two legs, but we'd never done business with the Macrin before. We never did business with them again, either. We aren't welcome." His smile was no longer charming. It was an assassin's smile, cold and calculating. "Did you listen to their speech? Chubo and Nix's?" he added to clarify.

Wynne nodded that she had. She'd thought it odd that they spoke of themselves in third person.

"The Hukas have no word for I, or me, or we. When Tor brought them aboard they referred to themselves as this one and that one. 'How may this one serve you?' 'That one has done as you ordered.' Names are only needed for purposes of ownership. The Huka have no personal identity or opinions. The Huka would never dare to speak to their masters the way Chubo and Nix speak to us. They've come a long way.

"They're both intelligent, freaks of nature according to them, and the source of great amusement to the Macrin who trained them as pilot and navigator. Much like teaching a bird to talk. See what my pet can do? But what happens when the bird begins to repeat things it shouldn't? Worse, what if it begins to reason?

"When we first saw Chubo and Nix, they were being punished for the crime of unnatural behavior. They fell in love, Wynne. They had sex. Worse, they knew it was forbidden and tried to hide it. That was the unnatural behavior. We waited for our chance. Ish cut them down from the posts while Tor and I persuaded their owner to sell them."

"A heated negotiation?" she asked now that she could see where this might be going.

"More than that. After he signed them over, we hung his naked body on the post that held Chubo. We were kind. We didn't do to him what he was going to do to Chubo. It was our way of leaving a message since dead men can't speak."

"But Tor kept them as slaves." She still couldn't get past that. "Whether the master is cruel or kind, a slave is still a slave. It's wrong, Posy."

Posy closed his eyes and looked as if he was searching for words. Wynne waited until he found them.

"They are and they aren't. They're full members of our crew. They earn their share of the profits. If they wanted to leave, Tor wouldn't stand in their way, but he also knows they wouldn't survive on their own even if they had the skills. The slave trade isn't always about women and sex, Wynne. Those ownership medallions they wear help protect them from slavers. Chubo and Nix know that, too. Ask them."

Wynne wanted to believe him, wanted to understand and forgive, but not yet. "He signed them away as if they were nothing."

Posy's shoulders slumped as he blew out his breath. "That's for their protection, too. Think about it. Next to Tor, Chubo and Nix are the guiltiest of the crimes. Their faces have been seen and recorded. Slavery is their only alibi. The courts will see them as slaves, born and bred to obey their master. The Galactic Confederation has outlawed slavery and this is a crime against the Confederation. The courts will set them free and lay the blame where it belongs – on Tor. He wants me to protect them when he no longer can."

"I see." Wynne would have cried had she any tears left. She leaned against the big man's arm. "I've screwed up, haven't I?"

"If you mean that you were mistaken, then yes."

"He's a good man, isn't he?"

"The best, and if I were you, I'd take the opportunity to tell him so before it's too late to save him from himself. We've done our best to convince him. Now it's up to you."

"I've already tried." But maybe not hard enough.

"Talk to him, reason with him, argue with him." Posy chuckled. Deep and sensual, that sound embodied every erotic fantasy. "You could begin by softening him up with sex."

Wynne lifted her head to look at him. "You and Mohawk are two of a kind. That's all you think about."

"It's a perfectly reasonable suggestion."

"For who?"

"For a man, any man." He gave her a smile that at any other time would have melted her insides.

"I think I'll try talking first. Let me get my clothes. I need to get dressed." Wynne started for the door.

Posy caught up her hand and kissed it. He didn't linger, but the warmth of his lips did.

"Ish is a fool to turn you away," she whispered.

"What makes you think she has?" He let her hand go. "You are dressed. You need to catch Tor while he is alone, before he decides to leave. He needs to know you still care. Otherwise he may not care about anything."

His message was clear. Tor wouldn't care if he died.

Wynne opened the door. The others were gathered around the low table in front of the sofa. It was covered with platters and trays of meat, bread, and fruit. Wynne's first thought was that so much food delivered to one room would draw the attention of the staff. Her second thought was that what happens in Imperial City stays in Imperial City. They knew that better than she did.

Tor wasn't among them, but before she could ask, Ish pointed to the bank of black glass that Wynne now realized weren't windows, but doors that led to a balcony. No light showed through the glass. Tor must be sitting alone in the dark.

Beyond the doors, the night had descended. The lights of Imperial City showered the darkness with color. Soft, shimmery flickers of it played across the floor and along the glass that enclosed this section of the balcony. If it wasn't for the reflection, she wouldn't have known the glass was there.

Wynne paused and closed her eyes. Her grandmother would be scandalized that her granddaughter, who'd all but forgotten how to pray, now chose this moment to reinstate the practice, but Wynne figured God would consider the circumstances and understand.

"
Thank you for this second chance,"
she whispered, "
I'm not expecting any miracles, but I wouldn't say no to a little help. He's worth saving and so are they.
"

Tor was reclining in an oval pool of bubbling water. It was larger than a hot tub, though not nearly as deep. He started to rise. "I'll leave you to your privacy," he said.

He was naked and in full view of the hotel across the way. No wonder Posy and Ish had no sense of privacy. No one did.

She raised her hand. "No, stay. I came to apologize."

"For what?" He eased himself back down. Arms propped on the tile edging, he stretched out his full length.

"For doubting you. For doubting myself. It's a personal flaw, but I'm working on it." Wynne lifted her robe enough to sit and dangle her feet and lower legs in the water. "You tried to explain and I wouldn't let you. Posy told me."

"I wish he hadn't. It's better that you should go with a more accurate picture of who I am."

"Why do you do that? Pretend to be someone you're not when everyone who really knows you also knows that it's a lie. You're a good man, Tor."

"Don't confuse loyalty with goodness, Princess. I sail my own course. I bend the rules to suit me. I follow no law but my own. I see an opportunity and I take it. That's how I got you."

"Really? How so?"

"You really don't know?" Tor shook his head, but didn't bother to hide his smile. "You have a bad habit of only seeing the good in people. You really need to break it. It makes you vulnerable to people like me, and Posy, and Ish."

"You forgot Truca, and Chubo, and Nix. They're terrible people, too, and a danger to us all." Wynne laughed to temper the sarcasm. "And don't forget Mohawk. The man's a womanizer, who drinks and swears too much, makes inappropriate comments, and thinks it's fun to feed people to the dogs. Literally. I'm guess I'm completely blind to what he is, too, but we were talking about how you got me." She swung her legs in the water and folded her hands in her lap like the innocent little girl she wasn't. "Please, go on."