Stardancer (Tellaran Series) (5 page)

Several of the other slaves stood around watching with wide eyes. One weeping girl knelt at his Tellaran’s side, whispering fearfully for her to get up.

He took in the telltale swelling of a strike on the curve of his
Cy’atta’s
soft cheek and felt his nostrils flare.

“Come to join the party, Aidar?” she asked with a wan smile. “Looks like I’m going to have to sit this dance out, but you go ahead.”

He knelt beside her. “Let me look on it.”

“It isn’t pretty,” she said, her breath quick and shallow. “Wouldn’t want you to faint. You look like the fainting type to me.”

Gently he pried her fingers away, lifting the cloth to look at her leg.  The sight made him swallow hard. “Summon a healer.”

Barin frowned. “My lord?”

“Summon a healer!”

Aidar applied pressure to the wound as the man ran from the room. She made a strangled sound, clenching her fist, as he pressed hard to staunch the bleeding.

“It pains you much?”

Her brow was shiny with perspiration, her sky-colored eyes large and glazed. “Oh, you know, nothing us hard cases can’t handle.”

“How did this happen?”

“The fault is mine, my lord,” the young girl broke in quickly, wiping at her cheeks. “The honorable overseer ordered me to fetch the box. This one came to my side to help but the box fell.”

Aidar glanced at the girl, surprised that with her tiny size Barin had sent her to lift it down at all. She was barely more than a child. 

He looked back at his
Cy’atta
. “Was it your task to help her?”

“What difference does
that
make? She would have been crushed under this thing if I hadn’t helped her!”

“It is of no importance what happens to her.”

A tiny amount of color flushed her cheeks. “She’s a kid, for star’s sake! Of course it matters. Remind me not to help out when you have to lift down a box twice
your
size.”

He frowned. She was not making any sense and she was losing a lot of blood. 

Where is the healer?

He shook his head, changing the position of his hand to press the cloth harder. “You are the most disobedient of slaves, Tellaran. If this is what I might expect I do not think that I shall keep any of you.”

When this did not bring the scathing reply he expected he looked up to find she would not be answering him at all. 

Kinara came to, her leg aching and sore. The drapes were moving gently around her, the mattress familiar and comfortable under her.

From her place on Aidar’s bed she could hear muffled voices. She lay for a moment trying to make out the Az-kye words but they were too indistinct. 

She sighed. From her brief and stilted attempts at conversation with the Az-kye slaves it was clear that she could expect no help from them. Not even her whispered promises of asylum in Tellaran space moved them. They were a broken lot, willing to do whatever they were ordered and terrified of the overseer.

Well
, she thought, settling more comfortably,
can’t blame them for that
.

She’d suffered more than one blow from him. Each one for a suggestion she made for making the work easier and quicker.

Barin, full of his own importance, did not want the work easier or quicker.

Think you to trick me into softening your lot, slave? Get you to work!

Between how they treated their workers and the rigid way their society operated, it was probably just a matter of time before they destroyed themselves. 

“You are not asleep.”

Kinara looked up to see Aidar pulling aside the curtain. “I was. I just woke up.”

He looked her over. “You are in less pain now.”

“Actually it hardly hurts at all. But I don’t know how bad it really is,” she added, frowning. “I haven’t had the nerve to look yet.”

He snorted. “I cannot think you lack courage to do anything.”

“Well, Aidar, now you know my terrible secret,” she said with a mock sigh. “I’m squeamish.”

He pulled the covers down. “Look you now, then.”

Taking a deep breath, prepared to be completely appalled at the result of Az-kye medicine, she did. 

And blinked. 

Her hand went to her thigh to confirm what her eyes told her. Her fingers slid over smooth, healed unmarked flesh. She glanced at her other leg to be sure she was looking at the correct one.

“Stars,” she murmured. “That’s good work.”

“Our healers are very skilled. To be sure, you knew that. You have studied us so closely.”

Kinara looked up at his dry tone. “I hope you aren’t waiting for me to apologize. So far, I’ve been right about everything else.”

He gave her an annoyed look. “Think you so?”

“Yes,” she replied, carefully swinging her legs over the bed’s edge to sit up. “I certainly do.”

“What do you now?”

“I want to see if I can walk, if it’s all right with you.”

He gave a nod. “You have my permission.”

Kinara rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t really asking, but thanks anyway.”

“I do not understand you,
Cy’atta
. Even when I grant what it is you want, you are displeased.”

“I thought you didn’t care what a slave felt.” She stood awkwardly, wincing when she put weight on her leg.

“You try me sorely Tellaran,” he retorted. “I dislike how you use my words against me.”

“Let me guess,” Kinara said, gripping the bedpost for support. “It’s unseemly in a slave.”

“Most unseemly.”

She took a limping step, then another. “Stars, that hurts.”

He reached out a hand to steady her, cupping her elbow. “The gods punish your disobedience.”

“Oh, please, they do not! Anybody standing under a large, heavy object would get hurt if it fell on them!”

He shook his head. “You are impossible. The gods made you slave.”

“
You
made me a slave. Send me back to Tellaran space and I’m free again.”

This seemed to stump him. “Think you your clan would welcome you home?”

“If you mean, would my father be happy to see me back on Rusco?  Of course he would!”

“This cannot be so,” he scoffed. “You have shamed him. He would not look on you.”

Kinara gritted her teeth to take a more ambitious step. “You have some strange ideas about how families work, Az-kye. He’s my father, of course he’d want to see me.” She paused, considering. “Though right after he hugged me, he’d give me the yelling of a lifetime.”

“Think you he would only scold?” Aidar’s brow creased. “To an Az-kye there is no worse fate than to wear the white. Were I so, out of love my father would not have looked on me to spare me that pain. I would have gladly died before shaming him so.”

She hadn’t thought of that. That he might have a home and a family who loved him, one that he loved in return.

That Az-kye can love at all.

Aidar shook his head. “Tellarans truly know no honor.”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Kinara said sharply, pulling her arm away. “Tellarans hold our honor very highly, it just doesn’t include primitive ideas like slavery.”

At this his dark eyes got very round. “Have Tellarans no slaves?”

“Of course not! Slavery is savage and stupid. Only you Az-kye do it.”

“This cannot be so,” he insisted. “Who does slaves’ work? You have workers, do you not?”

“Actually, most of our work is automated but we have workers to run the machines.”

“And those are your slaves.”

“No, they get paid for their work and they can leave if they want to.”

“Do they leave, you will have no worker at that task.”

Kinara closed her eyes briefly, praying for patience. “Aidar, people don’t work all the time. The supervisor could call another worker in on her day off to take that place. Don’t you ever take a day off? Don’t you ever have fun?”

He looked at her quizzically. “I am a warrior, not a boy.”

It was Kinara’s turn to frown. “So that’s your life? You spend your time swinging swords and blowing up ships that don’t belong to you, and the next day you get up and do it all over again?”

“It was my ship to destroy,” he said, nettled. “And my duty to do so.  Az-kye want no foreign ships, nor foreign ways. And to allow the Tellarans to retake it to use against us again is foolish.”

“But you, Aidar,” she said slowly. “If it had been up to you, would you have destroyed it?”

He shifted his stance. “It would have pleased me to look on it more.”

“To look on—? You mean you wanted to get a better look at the inside?”

She could see the hesitation in his dark eyes. “Tellarans do many strange things. I think, perhaps, do I look on their ships I will understand why.”

“Wow,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were curious about us.”

His cheeks flushed and his brows rushed together. “I do not care for the doings of Tellarans!”

“Oh,” Kinara said with a nod. “Of course. My mistake.”

She circled the room once and the ache in her leg was starting to ease up. She found her balance against a wall and gently stretched the muscle.

“I think, though, Tellarans are strange, weak things,” he said. “They sit to perform their duties on their ships. They live in tiny quarters, like rodents.”

“I never thought them that small.”

“They are not large as these,” he argued with a gesture at their surroundings. 

“No, you’re right. These are much larger.” She changed her position at the wall and glanced up at him under her lashes. “Did you want something, Ad—uh, my lord?”

His face flushed again. “I wish to know why this is so.”

“Well, we conserve space for efficiency and we sit because it’s easier and safer.”

His frown deepened. “It is better to stand. It demands a warrior have strength and stamina.”

“Well, that’s great, but what you need to run a starship are smarts and an alert mind. Having people standing for hours just wears them out for no purpose.”

“Only warriors lead upon Az-kye ships. ‘Smarts’ will not replace the power of a warrior. Tellarans are weak, you have proved it.”

“But you don’t need physical strength! You need training and intelligence. If the Az-kye pick officers only from warriors who are physically strong, then you must have quite a few blockheads on this ship.”

“You insult the warriors of this ship,” he growled. “Such is not your place, slave.”

Kinara blew her breath out. “Okay, how about this? I’ll apologize for insulting your crew if you’ll admit that you’ve served with some pretty dumb warriors.”

His frown deepened. “I do not understand this that you say. You wish that we both admit to wrong, but we cannot both be wrong.”

“It’s called a compromise. Don’t your people do that?”

“No,” he said shortly. “One is wrong and the other right. That is simple enough for even for a Tellaran.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Wow, thanks.” 

His very posture was imperious and arrogant. “Az-kye ways are better. We hold our honor and traditions as sacred.”

“Traditions like having to assemble a starship crew from only the strongest warriors?” She put her hand on her hip. “You know, I bet even you’d see Az-kye ships run more like Tellaran ships if you could.”

His dark eyes sharpened. “What is it that you wager?”

“What?”

“You wish to wager with me. What do you wager?”

“It’s just an expression.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Besides, I don’t have anything to wager.”

“You have your willingness.”

What he meant, what he wanted from her, was plain. He didn’t want her just to submit, he wanted a receptive, even eager, partner. 

She wet her lips. “True,” she said slowly. “But what would you wager?”

“In return for you to open willingly to me?” His dark eyes ran over her and went hot. “What would you have?”

She swallowed against a sudden fluttering in her stomach. “How about sending us all back to Tellaran space?”

He stared at her then a smile touched his mouth. “You tease me,
Cy’atta
.”

“Worth a shot. Truth is, you probably know what I want.”

“You wish to converse with my other Tellarans. Do you win this wager, I will allow it.”

“You mean it? I can see them? I can talk to them?” 

He gave a magnanimous nod.

Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute, this all hinges on me convincing you
and
you admitting it. What if you cheat?”

He looked amused. “Cheat in a wager with a slave? Think you I hold my honor so cheaply?”

She bit the inside of her cheek, considering. If she won, she would be able to talk to her crew. She might even be able to gather intel to help them get to a shuttle or coordinate their escape.

Yeah, but if I lose . . .

“Okay, you’ve got yourself a bet.” Kinara studied him. “How long have you served on Az-kye ships?”

He instantly looked suspicious. “We are required to offer our service to the Empress beginning at the age of seventeen summers.”

“So how long?”

“Twelve summers.”

“Have you served on board this ship for the entire time?”

“No, a warrior will serve as he is needed. I have served on this ship and others as well.”

“For twelve years?”

He looked mystified. “Only as I am ordered so by the Imperial House. I have spent perhaps five summers total on ships like this one in all that time.”

She frowned. “Off and on?”
How starblasted inefficient!

“I had matters of my own house to attend to.”

“I forgot,” she said. “Clan leader, right?”

He looked annoyed. “I grow displeased, Tellaran.  Think you to stall because you cannot win?”

She pushed her hair back. “Fine.  In all that time, what was your greatest defeat?”

“Think you I should wear white?” His lip curled. “I have
never
been defeated.”

So much for the “let’s refight the battle” approach.
She pursed her lips. “Ever been onboard a ship during an accident? One bad enough to cause a ship-wide emergency?”

“Yes.”