To The Princess Bound (11 page)

Victory narrowed her eyes at him.  “Or I could have the Praetorian string you up for the night.”  She gestured at the eye-bolt in the top of the headboard, which had been made for just that purpose.

Dragomir tilted his head back to look at it, then sighed.  “That, too.” 

But Victory’s curiosity was eating at her.  The idea of being able to heal someone with a
touch
was beyond anything she had ever been taught.  The doctrine of the Imperium was one of hard science and time-tested medicine—the romantic mind-over-matter philosophy of the Liberated Assemblage of Planets was one of the reasons why it fell apart.  Too much hand-holding idealism, not enough practicality and discipline. 

Yet this Emp was sitting not eight feet from her, telling her the Imperium was wrong, and claiming he was willing to prove it.

…All she had to do was pull the key from between her breasts and unlock his cuffs.

“What do you know of my past lives?” she asked, trying a new approach.  “Was I ever poor?”

Dragomir looked at her, then snorted.  “Most people ask if they were ever rich.”

“Was I?”

He looked at her a long moment, then sighed and closed his eyes.  “Only about a few thousand times,” he said, after a moment.  “Which life of poverty are you interested in?”

Victory’s eyes widened.  “A few
thousand?
” she breathed.  As a child, she had idly entertained the fanciful thought of ten, maybe a dozen.

Dragomir lifted his head to squint at her.  “You say that as if you are surprised.”

“I
am
,” she managed.  “I guess that’s why I was born a princess, right?  Because I’ve had so many?”

Dragomir snorted.  “Princess, pauper…  Your spirit gives you what you need at the time to grow.  You, apparently, needed to grow up wealthy and secure, then have your world shattered by a bunch of small-minded assholes.”

Victory’s mouth fell open at the sheer
audacity.
  “Are you trying to
insinuate
that I was…” she swallowed, unable to say the word ‘raped’, “…kidnapped because I
wanted
to be?!”

He gave her an analyzing look.  “Actually, you were probably pretty nervous entering this life, knowing what would befall you.  But we’re always growing, ever-changing, and we do what we need to do to keep expanding.  Like jumping in a cold creek because you know you need a bath.”

She gave him a dubious look.  “I’ve never jumped in a creek.”

He stared at her as if she’d grown bat ears.  “We’ll have to change that.”

“I thought you just said it was cold,” she growled.

“It is.”  He grinned.  “But it’s fun.”

Victory lifted her chin.  “They are infested with bacteria and protozoa.”

“Germs and whatnow?”

“Bugs,” Victory said, not about to try and explain the characteristics of an entire phylum of organisms to an uneducated post-colonial primitive.

He grinned.  “Oh yeah, there’s those, too.  Some as big as your toe.”  He wriggled his big toe and held it up for her to see.

“Your feet are dirty,” Victory said, disgusted at his black soles.

He set his foot down and gave her an irritated look.  “Well, normally I wear socks, but somehow I seem to have misplaced them, along with the rest of my clothes.”

Victoria stared at him, unable to comprehend his sarcasm due to the sheer audacity required to deliver it so perfectly.  “Are you
mocking
me?”

He gave her an innocent smile.  “You have an extra pair of socks?”

She snorted, despite herself.  “It would take half a rhino skin to clad feet like those.”

He gave her another bewildered look.  “A whowhatnow?”

“It’s a very large single-horned ungulate native to the Old Country.  Not many were exported during the Building Times due to their general bad temper and lack of serious domestication potential, so they’re considered an exotic and are protected under the Natural Species Act.  We have a pair in the menagerie, if you wish to see them.”  Then she caught herself, frowning.  “Well, we
had
a pair, but that was six years ago.”

He was still staring.

“I’m saying you’ve got big feet,” she said.  “And that there’s no way in the Twelve Pits of Hell that I’m going to let you destroy a pair of my socks.”

“Huh,” he said.  “Guess I’ll just have to destroy your blankets, instead.”  He pulled his legs up and started rubbing the soles of his feet on the covers.

“No!” Victoria shrieked, rushing forward, shoving his knees back down.  “Ugh!” she cried, staring at the streaks.  “That’s so disgusting!  I have to
sleep
in that!”  She grabbed a pillowcase, yanked it off, and started rubbing at the smear.

He chuckled and
thunked
his head back against the headboard.

Only then did Victoria realize she was within a foot of a large, naked man, and that she had left her golden mermaid on the floor behind her.  Panic surged within her, cold and icy, and she slowly put down the pillowcase, every inch of her screaming at her to get the weapon back in her hands.

“Not gonna hurt you,” Dragomir said, almost idly.  He wasn’t even looking at her.  “Now stop being a royal chickenshit and figure out how to get me something to eat.  Or you plan on starving me to death, as well as leaving me naked and sockless?”

Victoria frowned, indignant.  “You act as if you think this was all my idea.  I had
nothing to do
with your capture, and if I
had
had the choice, I would have left you in the wretched little hovel where you belong!”

“Good,” he said, “Then we’re on the same page, because personally, I find all the wealth you stole from this planet a little tacky.  I mean, hell, even your
toilet’s
got gems in it.  Who needs emeralds in their toilet?  That somehow help you concentrate?  I mean,
come on.
”

Victory found herself so furious she could only sputter.  “You—you—”  She froze, realizing that he was grinning. 

“Feel better?” he asked, still looking across the room.

Victory’s mouth fell open.  “You’ve been making me
angry.
  On
purpose.
”

When he turned his shaggy head to look at her, his blue eyes were dancing.  “How else you think I managed to keep you talking for three hours straight?”

She stared at him in utter flabbergastation.  “You were
provoking
me?  Trying to get me to
bludgeon
you to death?”

He was grinning widely.  “Better than you screaming and running away like I’m gonna somehow grab your head between my toes and twist it off.”

Victory glanced at his toes with apprehension.

“They’re big,” he said, giving the appendages an appraising look, “But not that big.”  He wiggled them, cocking his head to watch them with a small frown.  “I could probably only manage a small child, at best.”

Victory laughed, despite herself.  “You’re a cad.”

He blinked at her.  “A what?”

“A boor.”

He continued to peer at her.

“An oaf, a lout, a fool, a scoundrel, a heel, a rake, a rascal, a—”

“Okay,” he said, grimacing, “I get the point.”

“A barbarian, a buffoon, a churl, a philistine—-

“Oy!” he cried.  “Ignorant native gets lesson in humility by well-learned Imperial, showing off words he didn’t even know in his own language.”  Then he cocked his head.  “How do I even know that’s my language, and you’re not just making it up?”

“You want me to pick a different language?” Victory demanded, crossing her arms.  “Which one?  I know six.”  Then she cocked her head.  “Well, nine, if you consider Latin, Greek, and Mandarin, but no one but scientists use those these days.”

He sighed and thunked his head again, hard.  To himself, he said, “I want to go back home.  At least there, I could show off my big muscles and cool Emp powers to pretty girls and feel special.  Here, the pretty girl just thinks I’m an ill-informed, harebrained oaf with bouts of delusional schizophrenia.”

Victory narrowed her eyes.  “You knew what a cad was, didn’t you?”

“People have used it on me a time or two,” he said.  “Though most weren’t in this lifetime.”

Victory’s interest was piqued.  “Who were you?”  She cleared her throat.  “Last lifetime, I mean?”

“Me?”  Dragomir sighed.  “I was a violent, war-mongering bastard.  I needed to be an Emp this go-around to balance things out a bit.  Lots of black marks on my Karmic tablet, so to speak.”  He laughed disgustedly at the ceiling.  “Hell, I probably signed up to be dragged from my home by Praetorian, beaten within an inch of my life, screamed at by an asshole, and chained, naked and helpless, to a pretty young woman who hates my guts.”

“You’re not helpless,” Victory growled.

“Ah yes,” he said, lifting his head to look at his feet, “Completely forgot.”  He wriggled his toes.  “My secret weapons.”

She giggled, despite herself.  “You don’t really think I’m going to unshackle your hands, do you?”

He rolled his head against the headboard to look at her.  “How badly do you want to find out what I can do with them?”

Victory froze. 
I know what you can do with them.
  She repressed a shudder, the revulsion working its way back to the surface.

“I killed a rapist, you know.”  His eyes had never left her face.  “This Praetorian went on leave, decided to go on a hike through the Snowback chain.  Fancied himself a mountaineer.  He caught one of the girls in my village out in a meadow.  Had his way with her, continued on his hike.  Once I was finished repairing the damage, I went after him.”

Victory watched him with a wary look. 

“Tracked him by the energy he left behind.  Kind of like a wolf tracks a deer through the woods, except this deer smelled like pain and violence.  I caught up with him when he was camped up in the pass.  And, well, I’m here and he isn’t.”

“You killed a Praetorian?”  She couldn’t hide her disbelief.  Praetorian were trained from
birth
to be the Imperium’s best…

Dragomir gave her a sheepish grin.  “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m a big guy.”  Then his face took on a thoughtful look.  “Though it helped I shot him a few times, first.”

“You shot a man in cold blood?” she demanded, offended.

“Uh,” Dragomir said, “I wasn’t about to walk up to him and say, ‘Gee, I’m pretty pissed off about what you did to Meggie the other day.  Would you please engage me in hand-to-hand combat?”

Victory stared at him, utterly shocked.  “You really
are
a boor,” she said.  “That man trained his whole life—”

“—so he could go rape some girl in a mountain meadow?”

Victory shut up.

“The way I see it,” Dragomir said, “You’ve got nothing to fear, so stop pussyfooting around, unshackle me, and let me help you.”

The way he said ‘help you’ left Victory to believe he meant more than just her ankles.  “What are you saying?” she asked, wary.

“I said your ankles were the easiest,” Dragomir said.  “But there’s other gi blockages, some in some rather…uncomfortable…places.  So you’ll have to learn to trust me before I can work on those.”

Victory went utterly still.  “You mean you think I’m actually going to let you—”  She couldn’t finish.  Had to look away, clear her throat.  “
Touch
me?”  A squeak.

He snorted.  “You’re going to have to, if you want me to work on your ankles.”  He made a dismissive shrug.  “As for the rest…eventually, we’ll work up to it.”

Victory could only stare.

“Now,” Dragomir said, jingling the shackles behind his back, “Would you
please
take these off of me?”

“No,” Victory said.

He made a disgusted sound and thumped his huge body back against the headboard.  The bed shook with the impact.  “Fine,” he said.  “I’m going to sleep.”

Victory frowned.  “What about me?”

Without opening his eyes or turning to her, he said, “Sleep beside me or sleep on the floor or, hell, go get your Praetorian buddies to fling my huge ass outta bed and make me sleep on the rug, I don’t care.  I’m tired and irritated as all hell and my shoulders really hurt.  I dislocated them both doing something stupid when I was a kid and all the ligaments are torn and shredded and it feels like someone’s ramming stakes through my back every time I breathe.”  He heaved a huge, frustrated sigh.  “Good night.”

Victory nervously watched his breathing settle, watching the rise and fall of his big chest until it had fallen into a slow, easy rhythm.  He began to snore, and it was obvious as his body relaxed that he had been utterly exhausted, but doing well to hide it.  Feeling a bit guilty, she cleared her throat and asked, “How did you hurt your shoulders?”