AllFreeNovel
Share Us
SIX
Naked, Rance left the bridge and stalked aft, looking for the head. Her Imperial Highness was right; he needed a shower.
What the hell kind of game was she playing?
Assuming she was playing a game at all. He couldn’t reconcile the woman who’d come to his defense against Casus with the feckless party girl he’d always believed Zarifa to be.
And why was she so determined to talk to Kuarc? What information could be so important that she’d risk her life to communicate it? And why not just get on the comm and call the man? Going to him in person virtually ensured she’d end up dead or a hostage, and there was damned little one werewolf could do to protect her.
Unless she was trying to set some kind of elaborate trap, with herself as bait. Which, frankly, struck him as nothing short of stupid.
Even if Kuarc didn’t kill her, the regent was going to be out for her blood. Whatever she had to tell the Bastard was guaranteed to be something Umar wanted kept secret. He’d send every man he had after her.
Frowning, Rance found the ship’s main head and walked in, rubbing at the ache he could feel growing between his eyes. A transparent cylindrical shower stall occupied the center of the room, and he headed for it. Its door slid open, and he stepped inside. “Ship, full jets, thick foam, thirty-eight degrees Celsius.”
Hot soapy water sprayed from the stall’s countless tiny nozzles, hitting his body from all directions. Rance sighed in pleasure. He’d had nothing but sonic showers since his capture, and he’d missed the pounding heat of real water.
He’d missed so many things.
An image flashed through his mind: Zarifa’s slim body rising against his, meeting his thrusts with an endearing, clumsy eagerness. Rance frowned. She certainly hadn’t made love like the borderline slut she was reputed to be. More like someone who was all but a virgin.
Which made no sense at all. The media had linked her to countless men, including her fiancé, Gerik Natalo, the regent’s son. A woman like that would know her way around a man’s body. Why would she pretend otherwise?
Rance stayed in the shower, brooding, until the nozzles started blowing hot, dry air over his skin, sending his hair whipping in the miniature windstorm.
By the time he stepped out, he was clean and dry again. No trace of Zarifa’s scent remained on his body. To his surprise, he found himself regretting the loss.
He padded into the next room, which turned out to be the captain’s quarters. Zarifa’s, judging by the suit of female armor that stood in one corner.
Again, the room wasn’t what he’d expected. Instead of clothes strewn over every surface, the cabin was as neat as a nun’s cell and about that stark. A bunk barely wide enough for one curved from the deck, covered in a walnut veneer that gleamed softly under the overhead lights. The bed had been made with such obsessive neatness, he could have bounced a gold imperial off the dark blue spread.
A matching desk and chair occupied the opposite corner from the suit of armor, both seeming to grow organically from the deck in curving walnut shapes. In the center of the room hung a simmie globe, currently projecting a superspace image of streaming stars in a rainbow of colors.
Rance ignored the globe in favor of the suit of armor, which featured the same striking red and black color scheme as his own. The chief difference was the heraldic coat of arms that marked the suit’s right shoulder. Though the imperial arms featured a lion gripping a starship between its paws, this design was unfamiliar: a dragon rampant on a field of stars.
“Ship,” he said aloud. “Whose coat of arms is that?”
“The arms of House Lorezo.”
Not the kind of suit you’d wear in an effort to hide who you were, then. So why not wear the imperial arms?
A flash of gold along the suit’s right glove caught Rance’s attention, and he crouched for a better look. Something was written up the length of the gauntlet in a language he suspected was Latin; like their nineteenth-century role models, the aristos were big on ancient languages. “Ship, translate the sentence on her glove.”
“‘I will no longer endure dishonor.’”
Interesting. “Is that the motto of House Lorezo?”
“No.”
Rance straightened from his crouch and turned to sit down on the bunk. If the empress took exception to his making free with her cabin, he’d find out soon enough.
In the meantime, he intended to make the most of the opportunity. “Ship, display the most recent media file concerning Empress Zarifa Lorezo.” The Empire’s media reported on every move she made with an obsessive interest.
Two gossiporters appeared in the simmie globe, clad in velvet and lace in cheerfully eye-straining colors.
“Any word on our party girl empress, Corvin?” the female of the pair inquired brightly. Her eyes were surrounded by an intricate pattern of glittering blue face paint that shimmered against her pale skin.
“According to the palace, she’s in deep seclusion preparing for her wedding to the regent’s son, Gerik Natalo.” Corvin, a burly man in lime-green stripes, gestured with beefy fingers. An image appeared: Zafira, standing next to a hulking man who wore his long blond hair tied back in a club.
