“I order you to tell me how I might unintentionally kill or main you,” Sunniva said, having discarded a number of less direct alternatives. It got her another flicker of personality.
“You must order me to eat or drink,” Marcus said. “To sleep. To excrete. I will protect you from danger at the cost of my own life. I will volunteer information that directly concerns your wellbeing. I will kill humans for you.”
Comprehensive. And unnerving. Thrown by the implications, Sunniva took a few minutes to consider her next statement. Think of it as a technical problem, she told herself. It helped.
“The network requires at least ten active sensors be placed at locations throughout the highlands.” She gestured at the large map display taking up one wall of the hut, dotted with the red circles she’d used to identify possible sensor points. “I need help managing the installations and to act as security. I need you to be in reasonable condition — “ what was the phrase he’d used — “ for my own wellbeing. If your physical condition is compromised I order you to tell me rather than jeopardize this mission.” Would that work?
“Understood.” His face was unreadable again.
Sunniva checked the time. “We have about four hours before dinner. There’s a bathroom through that right hand door; the left is a supply cupboard with food. I order you to use those two rooms for whatever you deem necessary and wait for me to finish.”
Marcus inclined his head. “My lady.”
“Is there anything else I should know right now?” That considering look again, but this time he shook his head, and stood up smoothly. After picking up the plate and glass he disappeared in the direction of the bathroom.
Sunniva went back to her workbench. She activated the matrix, feeling the sensors spring to life, and then paused.
She worked through the afternoon, initially on her new project then, when the matrix was in its support bath, checking the sensors were ready for travel. Marcus came silently back with a plate he’d restocked with flatbreads, herb spread and dried meat, as well as a full jug of water and a clean glass. She nodded in acknowledgment and he vanished again. It wasn’t until her bracelet nudged her with a gentle warning of the time that she began to wonder where he’d gone.
She found Marcus in the small bathroom, curled up in the middle of the floor and fast asleep with his head on a neatly folded towel. Sunniva stared down at him. Use those two rooms for whatever you deem necessary, she’d said, and who knew when he’d last slept undisturbed? He looked more vulnerable like this, less perfect; a chunk of hair had fallen across his face, the strands stirring as he breathed and his nose was wrinkled slightly in a frown.
She could give him another half hour. As she turned to move away, he stirred, opening his eyes. For a second she saw him unguarded, his face open, almost on the verge of a smile, and then he leapt to his feet, visibly shaking off any residual drowsiness and putting the mask back in place.
“Time to leave for dinner.” Sunniva wasn’t looking forward to it. “It’s unlikely to be pleasant.” She realized how tactless that must sound. “I’m sorry. None of this is pleasant for you.”
“I rather thought that was the point.” Dry amusement, as much at himself as the situation, and the fact that he could even hint at that twisted Sunniva’s heart. The man revealed hadn’t lost everything, whatever Giels had done to him.
There was hardly any space in the room. His body was still relaxed from sleep, close and warm. It would be easy to reach out to touch him, to offer some hope —
It was easy to use the opal too, but it didn’t make it right. She couldn’t force anything else on him. Sunniva looked down, deliberately breaking the moment.
“Come through when you’re ready.”
Back at her bench Sunniva sent a query through her new matrix and watched the readouts change in response. What she was trying to do was create something that would act like the aerie matrix did with the other servants and take over control of the basic functions of Marcus’ opal, but the problem was flexibility. At the moment she had something that would force him to eat three times a day regardless of appetite or what food was available, and Sunniva could imagine far too many ways for that to go horribly wrong. She drained the solution and set up a second attempt.
Marcus came through and knelt down to put on his shoes, and Sunniva realized she’d forgotten to consider any more suitable clothing. By the time she located a slightly too small jacket in the back of the storage area they were running late.
The storm she’d seen forming earlier had moved away from the aerie, but a persistent drizzle remained. The wind whipped the droplets into Sunniva’s face as she hurried towards the path.
Good flying weather.
Sunniva could feel her dragon’s yearning. Soon, she said, but she stopped for a moment, tipping her head back to try to catch the gleam of starlight beyond the thin grey clouds. Marcus had come to a stop next to her. The aerie shield was a faint golden haze above them.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would finally be out in this new world, for however brief her stay was. She blinked rain from her eyes and started walking.
In the aerie Sunniva ducked into her rooms to change, pulling on one of her better gowns and stabbing hair pins into her mop of black curly hair in the hope of keeping some of it up. She sent a request to the aerie matrix for outdoor clothing and shoes for Marcus for tomorrow and hastened out of her suite. Marcus followed her to the banquet hall, an elegant shadow.
She’d seen the hall once before, although the memory was made dream-like by the effects of travel. Only dragon-form Dreki could access the worldgates that enabled them to leap light years between solar systems, but it was a draining process, requiring vast amounts of energy, and Earth was at the end of a very long series of jumps. Sunniva shifted back on arrival, disorientated and exhausted, and Giels with a face like a towering cumulonimbus, had insisted that she immediately had to meet all the available males he’d been able to round up (“Now?” she’d said, disbelieving, and he’d said coldly that he didn’t need her for anything else).
She’d stumbled down what seemed like an endless line-up of sneering well-dressed young men who all too obviously disliked her on sight, managing at most a few words of conversation with each one before Giels barked, “Anything?” at her and pushed her on to the next. Then he’d told them all to shift form, and done it again. Her dragon had rejected them all comprehensively.
It was Giels’ show-piece, a contrast to the low-tech that characterized most of the aerie, and built on draconic proportions. The walls and floor were made of chalcedony quartz, shot through with branching veins of gold, which caught and reflected the dazzling lights from the luminescent crystal globes that circled overhead. At the very center was the massive aerie matrix, grown from one in the clan’s base on the homeworld, sunk into a protective circle of faceted topaz. It loomed over Sunniva. Giels’ hoard, on display, the heart of his power. Her dragon pointed out that it was hardly fair he had all this and had yet to give Sunniva more than a single opal.
He’s worked hard, Sunniva sent.
So have you.
Sunniva’s heels crunched on crystal as she entered, three minutes late. Giels, standing to pour wine into the diamond goblet in front of his solitary guest, raised one eyebrow in mock surprise.