"I think we'd better watch what we do unless Zealon is busy with her other lessons," I said cautiously. "She wandered in here yesterday without so much as a knock."
As if on cue, the door opened, and Zealon entered, followed by Refdeck with breakfast. Tychar made a quick move and now appeared to be straightening the sheets, rather than lying on them. I don't know if Zealon saw him or not, but I was thankful that his normal attire was something he didn't take off while he slept—or made love.
Looking past them into the corridor, I noted that the guard appeared to be off duty. "Anyone else coming?" I inquired, thankful that I'd already put my gown on. "The Queen, perhaps?"
Zealon appeared to be slightly taken aback. "She's having breakfast with Wazak," she replied. "She always does; they go over any security problems from the day before."
"Never mind," I said, waving Refdeck over to the table.
"Just set that down and have a seat. I'll be right back."
Disappearing into the bathroom alcove—which was something of a misnomer, because there was no way to take a bath in there—I returned to find all three of them standing around like they didn't know what to do.
"So, what's on the agenda for today?" I asked brightly, taking a seat at the table and hoping they would all follow my lead.
"Well, we're having some other guests for dinner tonight," Zealon ventured.
"Not Dobraton again, I hope!"
"No, some offworld entertainers," she replied. "It's a traveling show of some kind. Mother didn't say, exactly."
"Did she by any chance mention that they are all blue-skinned with red hair?" I asked hopefully. Zealon shook her head, and my heart sank just a bit. I missed Nindala quite a bit, especially since landing on Darconia.
She
would have no qualms about, well... just about anything, actually. Of course, if she ever did show up, I'd have to sic her on Trag, because I didn't want her messing around with
my
tiger. I wondered how she would smell to them—probably even better than a human. Trag would be pleased.
"Well, I'm sure it will be an interesting show," I said, diplomatically, remembering some of the weird things I'd seen during the trip to Darconia. I decided to take the opportunity to be even more diplomatic. "Refdeck, these fruits you brought are simply delicious! Have some, won't you?"
"I have already eaten," he said in an odd, high-pitched voice.
"Oh, well, then. You guys must have really wolfed it down quick, 'cause you haven't been gone very long." Glancing at Zealon, I casually mentioned that the slaves had spent the night in the music room. "It was quite a surprise to get back from dinner last night and find them here. It's fairly obvious that the Queen didn't want Dobraton to see them, but I wish she'd warned me, though Tychar tells me they've been kept here before."
Zealon looked as though she'd have liked to have an answer to that, but couldn't come up with one. "I just came to see how you were this morning," she said hastily. "I hope the slaves didn't keep you awake."
"Oh, I didn't mind having them here," I said with a quick look at Tychar. "Having a guard posted at my door was a little disturbing, but all in all, I passed an excellent night. I might even be adjusting to the heat, finally. I feel almost"—I paused there to stretch and sigh contentedly—"normal today." Actually, I felt better than I had in recent memory—distant memory, too, for that matter. My eyes connected with Tychar's again, and he turned away slightly, barely suppressing a chuckle. "So, when are you coming for your lesson today?"
"The same time as yesterday," she replied. "I'll see you then."
Zealon left after that, followed by an oddly relieved-looking Refdeck, leaving me alone with Tychar again. I wondered briefly if Refdeck was afraid I was being too chummy and would try to get him in bed, too. I toyed with the idea of explaining it to him, but decided against it. Then something else occurred to me.
"The same time as yesterday," I repeated. "Just when
is
that?"
Tychar glanced at the window before taking a seat opposite me. "Not for a while yet," he replied. "You will have ample time to rest before she returns." Judging from his expression, his definition of "rest" was probably a bit different from mine.
"I figured that much," I said, ignoring the innuendo.
"I just want to know what time it will be. I haven't seen anything remotely resembling a clock around here. How do the Darconians mark the passage of time?"
He pointed at the window. "With that," he replied.
"That? You mean the sun? No device?"
"No," he said patiently. "That."
I looked at the window again and didn't see anything there to tell me what time it was. "I don't get it," I said, shaking my head.
"The stones around the window," he said. "They're also in the corridors."
Taking a closer look, I saw that part of the design around the window appeared to be highlighted. "Oh, don't tell me they've got clock rocks, too!"
He nodded.
"And how do they work?"
He shrugged.
"So, they're like the glowstones, then?" I suggested.
"No one knows?"
"I believe they are similar."
I hadn't seen a calendar yet, but, God knows, they probably had a rock for that, too! "Do they have more portable models? I mean, how did Wazak know when to meet my ship?"
Another shrug. Obviously, with clock rocks on every wall, no one had much use for wristwatches.
"Perhaps the ship contacted him before it landed." I mused. "Maybe they all have to report to him—after all, he
is
the security chief. It's possible that he meets every ship that lands here. I don't suppose there are very many of them."
Tychar apparently didn't know.
"Oh, that's right. You don't ever get out. Do you even remember the spaceport?"
"Vaguely," he replied. "It was a very long time ago."
"Might even be a different building by now," I said.
"Tell me something, if you ever wanted to escape, where would you go?"
"The mountains," he replied promptly. "There is water there."
"Not a whole lot, though, I'd expect," I said. "And you'd have to cross the desert to get to it." Then I nearly choked on a piece of fruit as an image of Tychar, in flowing Bedouin garb and riding one of those camel-creatures across the desert, popped into my head.
Lawrence of Arabia had
nothing
on him!
Leaning my cheek against my fist, I gazed at Tychar, wondering where he would be and what he would be doing if it hadn't been for the war tearing his world apart. Somehow, pleasing me for a living seemed... in-adequate. He was overqualified for the job and should have been off somewhere doing great, heroic deeds—or even singing for a living—but instead, he'd gotten stuck here in a desert palace catering to the whims of a big lizard, just as he was now catering to mine.
"What did you do before the war?" I asked.
He looked up at me as though surprised by my question.
"I have never been anything but a soldier," he replied.
"Oh," I said blankly. "Yes, I suppose so." In a world besieged, there was little else for a strong, healthy male to do, was there? I waited a moment, still mulling it over in my mind. "But before you knew you would be a soldier, was there anything else you wanted to do?"
He shook his head. "The war was already being waged from the time I was young. There was never a chance for me to want to do anything else."
"Well, what about now?" I persisted. "If you could go anywhere, do anything, what would it be—or did you think you'd spend the rest of your days here, pouring Scalia's wine?"
"It seemed pointless to think about doing anything else until you came."
It was reasonable that he would think about other things now that I was there, but in all reality, looking after me couldn't be that much different than serving Scalia—except for the sex, that is. "But when you're out there, sleeping beneath the stars, what do you dream about?"
His glowing blue eyes met mine. "You, Kyra," he replied. "I dream about you."
This was a sweet sentiment, but rather unlikely under the circumstances. "Oh, how is that possible?" I scoffed.
"You've only known me for two days! How could you dream about me?"
For a moment he was quiet, glancing away toward the window and the brilliant cobalt sky. "Many years ago, I had a vision," he replied, "and I knew that one day, you would come, we would be lovers, and my life would change."
"A vision?" I echoed in surprise. "You have
visions?"
"Sometimes," he replied. "They are different from ordinary thoughts or dreams—I cannot tell you how.
Many of my people have this ability, and though such visions are not common, we know them to be true."
"Uh-huh," I said doubtfully. "And you're saying that you saw me, specifically? You mean, you
recognized
me?"
He nodded, smiling devilishly. "I've been waiting for you for a
very
long time, Kyra."
"That's fairly obvious," I said dryly. "Whether you had a vision or not." I was finding this extremely difficult to believe. I'd run across a few oddities in my day, but certainly no one who ever had visions—especially visions concerning me. "And just how will your life change, now that I'm here? Will you be freed?"
Shaking his head, he replied, "I don't know, but I believe it will be a change for the better."
"That doesn't sound too hard. After all, you
are
a slave!" I declared. "It's no wonder you seemed so glad to see me!"
His seductive smile nearly took my breath away. "I was," he said,
"very
glad to see you."
And Trag hadn't been—which at least partly explained the difference in their reception of me. "Does Trag have visions, too?"
"If he has, he's never told me about them," Tychar replied. "But it is possible. Some of our people have more of this ability than others." Just as Trag had said that some of them tasted sweeter than others.
Interesting...
"Did you tell him about your visions?"
"No," he replied. "I kept it to myself, only knowing it was true when I first saw you."
"Maybe you should tell him," I suggested. "It might convince him to stop hitting on me."
"He hit you?" Tychar exclaimed, obviously aghast at such a notion—though just when he thought Trag would have done it when he, himself, had been with me most of the time since my arrival, I couldn't begin to guess.
"It's an Earth expression," I said, laughing. "Meaning that a man is
really
interested in a woman and keeps making comments to that effect. It isn't painful, and in this case, it's actually rather flattering. I mean, here I've got two of the most gorgeous men I've ever seen, and both of them are—"
"—hitting on you," he said, contritely. "I'm sorry if I seemed too... anxious."
If it had turned out to be any less fabulous, I suppose I might have been irritated, but, as it was, I had nothing— and I do mean
nothing
—to complain about except, perhaps, that it had taken me this long to find him. Still, he'd been waiting at least as long as I had and had been a slave for many of those years. I tried to imagine what it would have been like to have dreamed about Tychar and then arrive on Darconia to find him there, and I decided that, yes, I would have been quite anxious, to say the very least.
Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I
had
been looking and waiting for him all my life; I just hadn't had a vision to show me who he actually was. Then there was the fact that, despite a boatload of discouragement, I had come to Darconia in the first place. Me, who rarely left my hometown, had crossed the galaxy to find the man I was destined to meet.
Destiny. Prescience. Kismet. Fate. All these things, which I had certainly heard about before but had never truly believed in, were now proving themselves to be real. Suddenly, I felt the cold, hard finger of fate touch the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine, despite the growing heat of the day, and I knew that it wouldn't turn out to be as easy as asking Scalia to let me keep him with me all the time. There was more to it than that, even though asking for anything was always a challenge for me. I could have told her about his vision, told her how we felt about one another, but still, deep down, I knew it wouldn't be quite so simple.
Sitting there, staring off into space, I probably would have gone on pursuing that train of thought if Tychar hadn't recalled me to my current surroundings with an uncomfortable-sounding clearing of his throat.
"What?" I said before I remembered that he had apologized for being too anxious—and I hadn't responded.
"Oh, an apology isn't necessary," I said quickly. "I was a little... anxious, myself."
Then I realized just how anxious I was. I wanted to get as much of him as I possibly could before he was taken away from me. The reality was that Scalia probably wouldn't keep a piano teacher around forever, and I knew that if I ever left Darconia, it would be without Tychar, unless something else happened to change that.
I would have to buy him, or win him, or earn him in some way. Then there was the problem of the bounty on Zetithians. What if we ran into bounty hunters on the trip back to Earth? I was pretty sure he would be safe once we arrived, but there could be dangers along the way.
I hated to admit it, but Tychar and Trag were probably safer right where they were than anywhere else.
Perhaps Scalia had the right idea after all.
Tychar cleared his throat once more.
Poor Tychar! My mind had raced away again. Smiling apologetically, I leaned over and kissed him. "Yes, I was anxious. You're pretty hard to resist, you know."
Toying with my glass in a nonchalant manner, I said, "So, would you like to sing for me this morning, or would you rather do something else?"
The smile he aimed at me was anything but apologetic. "I don't mind singing, but I would prefer to do...
other things."
Which is exactly what I might have expected him to say, the little devil. After all, a guy doesn't break a twenty-year dry spell and then just forget about it for
another
twenty years! "That's right. You
did
say you wanted Trag to go away, didn't you?"