That meant that in the eyes of his own people, this Tarian was no longer “true.”
“Hey Blue Eyes,” he greeted her, his voice sounding like a rolling rumble. His tone made it easy to imagine him riding a djit beast bareback over vast rolling prairies, his body bare and painted in tribal patterns. He would not be a simple farmer. No. She imagined him as nothing else but a warrior in defense of his own tribe. “Can’t imagine what you did to earn a stay in the emperor’s famous wet rooms.”
The guttural vibration of his accent made him almost impossible to understand, but in a few moments she caught on. Unlike most people her age on Ulrike, she had not been fitted with a standard translator in her preadolescence. Such things were expensive, and her father had seen to it that she couldn’t afford the standard tool. Even if she could have afforded it she imagined she would have been forbidden to get one. The more she was isolated from others, including alien others and outside sources of information or media, the more crippled she would be. He figured it would keep her from hearing what other worlds thought of Allay, or keep her from petitioning others for help.
“I’m here because I was born,” she answered him wryly. She sighed and leaned her forehead into the cold metal of her door. “I’m willing to bet you could say the same. Tarian’s are not treated well when they come to Allay.”
“Aye,” he agreed, momentarily curling his lip. “But I don’t imagine I helped things much by being caught smuggling a wee bit of this and that into the country.”
A wee bit of this and that? “There isn’t much outlawed in trade in Allay,” she mused aloud. “Certainly not much that would be considered enough of an infraction to earn you imprisonment in the catacombs.” But there was one thing. “Unless you’re a Delran smuggler.”
The supposition made him smile, and she felt her heart clench with a sudden rush of excitement. The one thing the emperor of old and, very likely, the emperor of new tried to keep a tight grip on was the entrance and exit of Delran platinum through the Allay borders. Delran platinum, mined most successfully and in the most abundance on Tari, was the most expensive and valuable metal in all the Three Worlds. And although it was the most beautiful decorative metal, known for its easy malleability and subsequent strength after being heated, it was also the most conductive and most widely used in just about any and all technology. To control the flow of Delran platinum was to control every single industry in Allay. In a complex series of trade agreements, tariffs, and controlled avenues of import and export, the royal house managed to earn a sumly portion of every Delran platinum purchase that took place.
Unless, of course, it was being smuggled into the continent and completely bypassing all federal fees. Under her father’s rule it was an offense punishable by public execution. An offense that the IM charter left to individual countries to adjudicate—unless, of course, that country asked for their help. Allay would never ask for that kind of help. It would open up the government to too much scrutiny—perhaps enough scrutiny to draw attention to the ways the ruling house used to dispose of its enemies.
“Allay does not take kindly to those who would take money out of its coffers.”
“Its coffers are fat and overflowing enough. Meanwhile, your merchants are being tariffed into starvation. Your technology is lagging behind because it costs too pretty to make new, innovative machines.”
“You sound very passionate about a land that is not your own. Far from it, in fact.”
He tried to shrug it off, but she was unconvinced. “I’m just about the money, Blue Eyes. And maybe a wee bit about the danger. It’s fun trying not to get caught.”
“With ‘trying’ being the operative word. You might work more on the succeeding part.”
That made him chuckle, whereas another man might take offense at having his skills called into question.
“You might be right about that. But it’s always about a weakness. Mine’s always been the damsel in distress. I stopped to help a woman in need and it turned out she was a damn cop. That should teach me a lesson. Next time, I won’t fall for a pretty face asking for help.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Ambrea scoffed. “You’ll be sentenced to death. And apparently whatever it was you were doing was enough to earn your being held in the country’s most notoriously inescapable prison, so you might put escape out of your head if that’s something you’re hoping for.”
“Ah. You’re a real cup-half-empty kinda girl, now aren’t you? Are you an expert on this place? How long have you been in here? You have some color to your skin and face, so you haven’t been underground that long.”
“This time, only a couple of weeks, I think. Time moves so differently in here, and they don’t exactly give us a clock to watch. Not unless they want us to watch it. It can be hard on you to see the minutes of your life slowly ticking away, or the moment of your execution quickly ticking toward you.”
“This time? You’ve been in and out of here before?”
Ambrea exhaled long and slowly. She didn’t feel like discussing her periods of incarceration. It was better not to think about it. It would only depress her. If she let her mood flag, it would make it easier for her uncle to weaken her. In a low moment, she might end up throwing it all away.
She liked to think she would never do that. That she was stronger than that. That she cared too much for the future of her country. But interminable darkness and wetness and having all your rights stripped away for no apparent reason other than the question of your birthright—it could wear on a person’s spirit. Honestly, she didn’t know how Suna could bear it. How she could volunteer for it. Perhaps it made it easier, her knowing that at any time she could just get up and walk away. Then again, so could Ambrea. All it would take is a signature and a retinal scan.
“Once you’re here for any length of time, it seems as though you are here forever. It never leaves you. I don’t think there is any such thing as freedom from this place.”
“I think that it’s all in the strength of your mind,” he said with a sudden soft seriousness, his eyes penetrating through the dimness and distance between them. It even seemed as though his accent lightened up and he spoke very clearly to her. “And whether or not you are willing to give up. Are you the sort to give up easily?”
She felt a flash of anger. He was talking about things he didn’t understand. Give up easily? Her whole lifetime had been about struggling to survive. She had fought for it in one way or another ever since her mother’s death when she’d been four. She was bone weary from it. But if he had any idea of who she was and what she had put up with, then maybe he wouldn’t be questioning if she were a quitter.
“I’ve never quit. I’ll never quit. There’s far more than my well-being at stake. It wouldn’t be right for me to just throw it all away and look for an easy out.”
And that was when she realized she would never sign that renunciation. She had questioned herself, had toyed with the idea, had gone back and forth about it in her head as she spent these hours pacing a dark, wet cell and staring her potential death in the eye. But when it came down to it, she would never give up on what was rightfully hers.
But neither would she sink to her brother’s level and do him any kind of harm. It would be up to fate to play out the cards that each of them held.
Unfortunately, in her passion, she forgot about the cameras watching them. It was one thing for her uncle to keep her alive when he thought prison might soften her resolve, might encourage her to sign the renunciation, but if he watched the passion in her declaration to this other prisoner, he might realize just how futile that hope was and be forced to take more drastic measures.
“I shouldn’t speak to you anymore,” she said to him, and went to push away from the door.
“Wait a second there now, Blue Eyes!” The call made her hesitate, and she leaned back into the window so she could see him.
“Yes?”
“I was just noticing, you’re not like the rest of your people.
You talk to me like I’m a person. Not an idiot or some dumb hunk of brutish muscle.”
“We’re all equal in here,” she said softly. “I can’t say how I would have acted if we’d met on the street.”
“You’re terribly honest. Even when it makes you look bad. You shouldn’t ever go into politics.”
She gave him a wry little laugh. “There isn’t much I can do about that.”
“And hand in hand with your honesty are your cryptic comments. You’re intriguing as well as pretty. Clearly a damsel in distress. You’re my downfall in a perfect package.”
“Only I don’t expect you to rescue me. Rescue would be a fool’s effort.”
“Call me a fool then,” he said sotto voce.
She barely heard him, but when it became clear what he meant, she felt her entire body clench with a combination of dread and exhilaration. She felt it well up in such a way that she was ready to burst with questions, wanted to demand he clarify, but they both knew that she could not ask any more than he could answer. All she could do was reach up a hand to grip the cold steel bar crossing the window. She watched as he reached into his mouth and, with a chilling pop, yanked out his tooth. Only it wasn’t a tooth. It was white and encapsulated and close to the shape of a tooth, but the bloodlessness of the extraction and the way he snapped it in half told her it wasn’t a tooth and he wasn’t performing random dentistry on himself.
She wanted to call for Suna, but the less attention she drew, the better. Great Being, was she actually entertaining the idea of the impossible? No. It was insane.
He disappeared behind his door for a second and then he was back.
“Back away. I don’t want you to get hit.”
Hit?
She did as instructed, but only to the edge of the distance that still allowed her to see out the window. Ambrea almost jumped out of her skin when a violent bang echoed into the hallway. She leapt forward toward the door instantly afterward, ignoring Suna’s exclamation of surprise. She could hardly believe her eyes when she saw that the locking mechanism had been completely blown out of his door. He kicked at the door, and only then did she realize that during their conversation earlier he had been working his way out of the cuffs they’d left on him. How had he done that? The electronic bracers were notoriously hard to decode, never mind doing so with your hands behind your back. His kick was resounding, the locking panel flying off the door and crashing into the opposite wall. He didn’t hesitate. He came straight to her door and then reached down to pull a seemingly decorative stripe off his pant leg. He carefully and quickly shaped the stripe around her lock.
“Back away, Princess. You’ve got five seconds.”
“And in three they’ll be pouring through the door,” she said as heart-choking panic began to grab at her. She couldn’t take part in this! Not in any way! When he was captured, and he would be captured, her uncle and brother would cite her escape attempt as proof positive of treasonous intent. For all she knew, that’s what all this was. A huge setup to coax her into doing that one thing they needed to justify giving her a death sentence.
And yet, like some kind of numb soldier, she stepped away from the door, grabbing hold of Suna’s arm and preventing her from going to the door to look out and see what the noise was all about. Coldness walked down Ambrea’s spine. He’d called her “Princess.” Though she had not identified herself, he knew who she was. Any ideas she might have that he was a random smuggler making a random escape attempt with a total stranger were utterly dismissed. He had come for her. He had purposely allowed them to catch him, to bring him down into this hole, to attack and shock him. He had orchestrated all of his behavior so they would place him on the top level, the level where she was being held. Then he had been forced to act quickly, she realized, for they were not going to let a Tarian remain in the upper levels for long. They would want to move him down and away from her.
Although the explosion around her lock was far more shaped and controlled, it also sheared it off completely from the rest of the door, as if someone had punched a hole through it and left burnt edges. The lock dropped to the ground with a clang. The Tarian shoved through the doorway, his bulky frame too big for it, forcing him to duck under to keep from hitting his head. Then he reached out one of those massive paws he called a hand, the palm raised upward as if he were the most refined gentleman asking to escort the heiress of Allay onto a dance floor. The idea of it on such a rough man was, of course, ludicrous. As was the idea of her willingly putting her hand in his, and effectively signing her own death warrant.
The Tarian saw her hesitate, saw her entire body draw back in fear, although by only a minute movement.
“One day you’re going to have to cross the line, Princess,” he said quietly, his eyes a deeply intense amber, an overall tinge of rose making them seem so rich and surprisingly beautiful. It was almost like looking into a warm, moving golden flame instead of the fiery orange that one might expect. His eyes were steady on hers as his accent lightened again by half. “You’re going to have to take action to get what you want. To claim what’s rightfully yours. Why not take that action today?”
“Ambrea, no!” Suna gasped, her shock at what was happening finally wearing off. “You’ll never make it out of here! If you do, you’ll be a fugitive! They’ll kill you on sight.” She must have realized she was sounding hysterical, so she ratcheted down her fear and narrowed her eyes on the Tarian. “What if it’s a trick?”
“And what if it’s the solution you’ve been looking for?” he countered.
“Who sent you?” Suna demanded, puffing herself up and pushing between the two of them as if her tiny stature could do anything to stop the Tarian. “This is Balkin’s plotting, isn’t it?”
“Nothing I say will convince you otherwise,” he said quietly, meeting Ambrea’s gaze once again. “Ask yourself one question.” He paused for a beat, a significant beat considering the jeopardy they were in. “Ask yourself, ‘Why has no one come through that outer door yet?’.”
That was when it sank into Ambrea’s head just how unhurriedly he had done everything so far. And he had done it with such a quiet, knowing confidence. He wasn’t alone. This wasn’t a random, impulsive act at all but something well thought out and well planned. So far it was well executed, but she could tell by the way he briefly glanced down the tunnel that they were quickly losing whatever advantage he felt they had. Had he been completely unworried, she would have known that this was something of Balkin’s staging. But although there was no denying his steady confidence, it was clear that time was ticking away in his mind.
What if he was right? What if this was her one and only chance to do something? To commit herself to her course? She was always thinking about how it would have to happen one day. What if that day, that moment, was right now and here? Even if she refused to take action against her brother, refused to throw the country of Allay into a civil war that made the people choose between siblings, she could at least escape the oppression of her long life of captivity. She wouldn’t be turning her back on Allay for good—she didn’t have the heart to do that—and she wouldn’t be signing away all of her rights to a throne she felt in her soul belonged to her, but she would be taking a step of strength. A step toward freedom. A step where she was putting her foot down and saying to all who watched that she refused to be treated this way any longer.
Ambrea turned away from him quickly, leaping for the devotional book resting on her cot and her mother’s picture within. She pressed the worn leather cover to her lips, the smell of it reassuring and comforting. Most carried around the thin, lightweight VidPads these days, the pocket-sized things resistant to wearing and aging and able to be used for multiple purposes rather than just containing Scriptures. But this had been from her nursery, from back when her mother had been alive. From back when she had been a fully entitled princess and had been treated as her birthright had demanded she be treated. Even now she recalled her mother coming to her bedside at night and
reading from the beautiful, thoughtful stories in the book. The night she’d been packed off into exile, she was told she could take a single favorite toy, and this book had been her choice.
She wasn’t about to leave it behind now. Not when she most needed the Great Being to look after her. Not when she needed her mother’s attention from wherever she was in the Great Beyond to focus on her and get her safely through this.
She turned to face the Tarian, whose presence seemed to overflow the tiny cell that had before been adequate enough for the two smaller women. Ambrea lifted her hand and placed it in his. She drew a soft little breath when she felt him snatch her up tight in his grip, the hard calluses of his palm so coarse and overwhelming compared to the simple softness of her own hand. His palm swallowed her entire hand, and she became immediately aware of the heat of his skin and the kinetic strength and power she had just turned herself over to. It somehow strengthened her decision, and she turned to look at Suna.
“Are you coming?”
Suna snorted at that. “Or get left behind and hung as a traitor in lieu of my mistress? Do I seem daft to you?”
“Ladies, we must move with haste now.”
Ambrea let him draw her out of the cell. Her heart thudded with a mixture of fear of what could happen next and the thrill of shaking off that damp, miserable hole.
Neither anticipation would prove worthwhile. To her shock, he drew her past the outer doors and the promise of daylight, and instead guided her into the guard elevator. He latched the door and rapidly yanked out the control panel and began to rewire it, whistling all the while as if he were busily going about a day’s work and didn’t have a worry on his soul. She tried to let his attitude infect her, especially when the elevator jolted into movement, and she tried not to question him when it was clear he had a distinctive plan in mind.