Lady of the Star Wind (6 page)

Her question broke a dam inside his heart, and the answer poured out. “Had me arrested, tortured, my brain scrubbed clean by her damn, clumsy techs, and then had me dumped in the Sectors as part of some half-baked sleeper-agent experiment. I was a seriously confused person for a lot of years, almost psychotic, with two sets of memories. A set on the surface making sense for the Sectors. One even more vivid set buried but trying to get out. I’d have flashes of recall at the weirdest times, couldn’t control it.”

“And you’ve been in the Sectors ever since?”

Rolling his shoulders, he said, “Her agents planted me in a destroyed colony, as if I was the only survivor of a Mawreg attack. I sure believed it for quite a few years. The Sectors authorities who process older survivors said I tested off the charts for military aptitude. Not surprising, since I’d been in training as a warrior in Outlier since I could walk. My body remembered even if my mind couldn’t. And of course Outlier human stock age somewhat differently, so the Sectors authorities pegged me as younger than I am. The bureaucrats recorded me as having been a cadet in the militia on the destroyed colony and sent me to the Star Guard Academy.”

Head tilted, she eyed him clinically for a moment. “But you obviously regained your true memories. How?”

“It happened the first time I underwent treatment in their rejuve resonator. I was in critical condition after a tricky mission, so the medics authorized the treatment. I argued with them about keeping the scar along my ribs. I knew the mark formed an essential part of my identity, a link to something, even without access to my memories. My commanding officer ordered the medics to comply with my demand just to get me to shut up. He wanted me to take the treatment before I bled out and died. I came out of the tissue-regeneration field with complete memories.” Instinctive caution had made him keep his mouth shut in that bleak moment even as his mind had reeled under the assault of his true Outlier memories.

She discarded a tiny bone on the side of the leaf. “And then?”

“Got sent on another mission.” He concentrated on filleting his fish for a moment to buy time. He never talked about himself. He kept those doors in his mind shut, and no good ever came of peeking behind them, in his experience. Yet how could he refuse to answer her questions? She was the cause of all his misfortunes. “I did my twenty in the Sectors Special Forces, got mustered out recently, in fact. The brass decided my skills and resistance to orders I didn’t like made me too spooky for them, too unpredictable. I didn’t know what to do next until your grandmother had me kidnapped. Ekatereen and I had a cozy little reunion – I’d have probably killed the old witch if she hadn’t had half the palace guards in the room. I hope the snatch-and-grab job on me cost her a solar system’s ransom.” Bitterness burned in his throat. He wanted the empress to suffer, even if nothing would ever compensate for all she’d done to him. “She set me up as a mercenary, thanks to your madcap journey with Portuc.”

Dropping her fish, Sandy recoiled. “She paid you to bring me to Throne?”

This discussion was veering perilously close to emotions he’d locked away in order to survive. Hurtful words came to his rescue. “Why else would I have bothered going to Freemarket? She offered more credits than I could spend in a lifetime.” He chewed his fish and hoped his surliness would end the conversation for now.

Sandy pushed away her plate.

“So, most of those years in the Sectors, you knew who you were? But you made no attempt to return to Outlier? To me? Until someone—my grandmother, of all people—paid you?”

Listening to the shock and pain in her voice made him remorseful, so he offered a piece of the truth. “I didn’t even know who the real Mark Denaltieri was until long after I graduated from the academy and commenced active duty, carrying out missions. If the Sectors authorities ever suspected me of being an Outlier soldier, I’d have been thrown in prison and never let out.”

“But you weren’t tempted to come for me before this?” Her voice was tight, and she eyed her dinner away as if the food had suddenly spoiled.

“I didn’t know what your situation was. News doesn’t filter from Outlier into the Sectors, especially not about minor members of the imperial family. You’ve no idea how impossible it is to travel from the Sectors into Outlier. Sectors citizens are expressly forbidden to cross the border. It takes huge piles of credits, connections, and sheer luck. Even if I’d somehow gotten to Throne, what could I have done? Empress Ekatereen would have had me executed the moment I crossed the Outlier border.” Why couldn’t she see he’d had no choices? He’d done what he had to do to survive. How could she blame him for all the things out of his control that blocked him from returning to her? “I made the best of my situation and persevered in the Sectors. At least I had a place there, a purpose.”
 

“You could have come for me.” Keeping her voice low, Sandy averted her face, contemplating the rising quarter moon, a glowing reddish dot, far over the horizon.

“You were the direct cause of my losing everything.” Mark tried one last time to explain. “My final memory of you was the fight we had because I wouldn’t join your household guard, remember? For all I know,
you
betrayed me to the empress. The secret police arrested me not two hours after I’d left our secret spot. The empress supervised my torture personally—did she tell you that? And one of the things she threw in my face while her men were doing their damnedest to break me was the information that you’d decided I wasn’t worth risking yourself and your status for any longer.”

“Do you really believe I’d betray the man I loved to her secret police?” A sob caught in her throat. “Why would I do such a thing?”

He couldn’t maintain his self-imposed distance any longer. Rising, he touched her shoulder, turned her around to him. Back straight, she remained stiff against his body, her fists pushing against his chest. His lips close to her ear, he said, “Once I had my true memories firmly in place, I thought about you all the time. In some ways, remembering what we shared hurt worse than your grandmother’s physical torture. If there’d been one single hope in seven hells of seeing you, of asking you to tell me the truth, I’d have found a way to get to Outlier, or died trying.”

“Grandmother never told me who betrayed us. She just told me you were dead. She said she had you executed.” Sandy unclenched her fists and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her head against his chest. She wouldn’t look at him. “Your punishment and death were all because of me, she said. On my head. My ‘escapade,’ as she called it, had cost her a good soldier. I never forgave myself for causing your death.”

Mark didn’t know what to say. Her words certainly had the ring of truth. He held her closer as more details poured out.

“I believed her at first. I wept and I raged. I demanded to see your body, but she said you’d been cremated. She assigned special guards to watch over me during my yearlong exile to her most distant estate. To consider my foolishness, she said. When my sentence ended, I stayed as far away from her as I could.” Now Sandy’s voice held a touch of proud defiance.
 

“You cut your hair.” He felt like a fool the second after the words left his mouth, unable to block his memories of her long, silky blonde hair, falling around both of them as they lay together. Now he slid his fingers through the soft curls, massaging her neck.
 

“One of my minor rebellions over the years. Princesses of the Blood are never supposed to cut their hair, but it interfered with my work.”

“Work?” The word was incongruous in a discussion of anyone from the imperial family.

“I’m a doctor,” she said with visible, quiet pride.

It took him a moment to absorb the revelation. No member of the Zhivanov family had ever dabbled in real work, to his knowledge, much less undertaken something as demanding as medicine. Remembering his initial awakening on this new world of theirs, he laughed.

Apparently taking offense at his amusement, she held herself rigid and shoved away from him. Hands on her hips, voice like ice, she said, “What’s so amusing about me being a doctor?”

“Nothing, I promise you. I thought you were an addict. I’ve been watching for the shakes, waiting for you to start detoxing on me.”

“An addict?” She raised her eyebrows as comprehension dawned. “Are you talking about the inject I gave you to put you out? You believed I shared my private stash?”

“I apologize for misjudging you. I never dreamt you were a doctor.”

“Oh yes, I can see how imagining me as a hopeless tranq abuser would be so much more in character for a Zhivanov.” She walked away. Seating herself on the ledge, legs and arms crossed, her body language was closed off.

He walked after her, kneeling by her side. “I said I was sorry. My good luck to have you as my private doctor on this trip.” The remark won him a small smile. Encouraged, he pursued the topic of her career. “The empress allowed you to deal with the sick and injured?”

“She didn’t pay much attention to me for a long time after she took you away. She’d made her point, and as you know, she had many potential heirs at that time. My name was far down the list. I don’t think she ever took my dedication to medicine seriously. Maybe she thought I was after drugs as well. She did say she found it politically useful to have the people see one of her heirs in a healing role.” Again, Sandy’s voice dripped acid. “In ’07 an epidemic broke out, some new virus we’d never seen before. The Imperial House proved especially vulnerable to it—genetic predisposition, we think. There’s research going on. I guess now I’ll never know the results.”
 

“Why did you go with Portuc?” The choice puzzled him. She’d never been able to stand Portuc when Mark had lived at court.

“What did Grandmother say when she had you kidnapped?” she wanted to know first.

“Some cock and bull story about Portuc helping you in an attempt to find me. But you thought I was dead, so tell me your real reason.”

She shook her head. “I told you. After you were gone, I was inconsolable at first. I stopped eating, lost interest in all the activities I used to pursue, avoided those friends who were still willing to associate with me. I was on a dangerous downward path.” A flush of embarrassment rose in her cheeks.
 

Justifiably or not, he’d been completely self-absorbed in the tragedy of his life, the destroyed hopes and dreams. He’d bitterly assumed she’d continued her privileged life after he disappeared. If she wasn’t the one who’d betrayed him, maybe at best she might have cried a few tears. He’d had to believe Sandy indifferent to his fate or go insane. Confronting the reality now challenged his self-control. Needing a distraction and some distance, he went to tend the fire, feeding the flames a few sticks.

She had more details of her story to tell, raising her voice to carry over the crackle of the renewed fire. “Whenever my grandmother talked about your death it was as if she withheld a secret, even as she forced me to hear horrific details. She could never meet my eyes when we talked about you, and evasion’s not Ekatereen’s style. When I conducted my own medical research, I also hunted for any trace of your medical records, any clue about what happened to you.”

“Surely she had those destroyed.”

Sandy shook her head. “Ekatereen is ruthless, not subtle. The men who did the experiment on you were killed. The records in their lab were destroyed, but it never occurred to her that the scientists would be proud of their work and make copies in defiance of her orders. Who disobeys the Outlier empress, right? The backup records were hidden deep in the Throne medical database. The researchers were clever about it, but I took care to learn how to search the nooks and crannies of all the data warehouses as part of my medical training. Told my instructors I might go into research and needed mastery of the databases.” She buried her face in her hands for a moment. “I wept when I read the details of what they did to you.”

Silence fell between them for a few moments. Mark sat next to her.

She rested her hand on his thigh. “Was it so awful for you, there in the Sectors?”

He clasped her fingers. “Awful?” He considered. “No, once I got into the academy, I channeled my confusion into the training. I became one of the best damn Special Forces operators the Sectors ever had, doing nothing but wet work. Assassinations. I didn’t care if I lived or died, even after I got my true memories back. I had a hole where my heart should have been, which made me unstoppable. I’d take any risk. And every time, I came through. The medtechs would patch the physical damage, and I’d volunteer for another assignment even more dangerous.” He couldn’t stop the flow of words.

“Was there—did you have someone in your life?”
 

He put his free hand under her chin, gently tilting her face up to his. “Have I been with other women? Yes, I’m no monk. Could any woman compete with my memory of you? No. I formed no permanent attachments in the Sectors.”
 

She blinked, and he took his hand away from her chin, embarrassed at his own vehemence.

“I was getting blind drunk after Command mustered me out against my will, when four D’nvannae Brothers picked a fight with me in some dive bar. The next thing I know, it’s a week later, I’m sick as a dog from cryo-sleep lag, lying in your grandmother’s sitting room on Throne, listening to her ordering me to Freemarket to rescue you.”

“But you did come for me.”