“They…they did?” Lan’ara could hear the hope in her voice but she couldn’t do anything to quell it.
Need had forgiven her! He must have! There was no other reason why he would agree to pay for her again and come down to get her. Maybe now she would get a chance to explain herself a little better and he would learn to care for her and they would get along!
Maybe she would be allowed to stay aboard The Dark Star and keep cooking, which she loved to do, and learn the med tech trade from Laxah and have a life as something other than a sexual plaything for someone else to use and abuse and toss aside whenever they were tired of her.
“I’m very glad they saw reason,” Senator Pouncenblast said with a sniff to his secretary. He had changed into his second favorite breeding robe and was apparently in the act of choosing another concubine to use for his sexual pleasure.
“Mustn’t waste the effects of the performance medication,” Lan’ara had heard him muttering to himself.
She felt sorry for whichever girl he chose to service him. She—whoever she was—would have to lay there and let the liver-spotted, bushy-eyebrowed old Senator do whatever he wanted to her. Lan’ara, on the other hand, was going back to a ship she wanted to call home with a handsome Kindred warrior whose touch she craved.
But when the chiming came from the front door and the secretary went to get her savior, she didn’t hear Need’s voice outside in the echoing marble hallway. Instead, there was some deep, rasping speech too low for her to make out.
Lan’ara began to feel uneasy. What was going on? Where was Need? Why didn’t she hear him? The secretary’s part of the conversation was audible, at least.
“…very glad you lot are willing to see reason,” he was saying. “A tainted bride is no good to the Senator, of course.”
There was a low, rumbling reply that Lan’ara couldn’t make out.
“Yes, indeed,” the secretary replied. “And it was good of you to offer an extra two thousand credits on top of the forty to make up for the Senator’s trouble. We’re glad you stand behind your business decisions.”
The low rumbling again.
“Yes, quite,” the secretary said.
Lan’ara began to feel fear—a deep, coldness that started at the base of her spine and spread through the rest of her body like ice spreading on the surface of a freezing lake. This was bad, she somehow knew. If Need wasn’t out there, ready to take her back to The Dark Star, then who was?
She got her answer all too soon when the secretary finally flung open the door of the harem. It wasn’t Need, standing there beside him, all ready to take her away.
It was Drung.
Fifty-Two
“Can’t sleep?” Psoas asked, his head coming around the corner on his long, stretchy neck, which was followed shortly by the rest of him.
“Just not tired, that’s all,” Need muttered, pouring himself another shot of fireflower juice. He was sitting at the dining table alone and would just as soon keep it that way. He started to get up but the engineer said,
“Stay awhile, old friend. I won’t bother you—except to ask for a drop of whatever it is you’re drinking.”
“Get yourself a glass, then,” Need growled, resuming his seat.
“Sure.”
Psoas’s long arm stretched to the cup cabinet and secured a shot glass even as his tall, thin body seated itself across from Need.
“Hell of a Last Meal tonight,” he remarked, as Need poured him a shot of the fireflower juice.
Need had to agree. It had been Laxah’s turn to cook and, though she was usually a very competent chef, tonight it was almost as though she had been making a point.
Her bista-beans had been dry and crumbly and almost flavorless and the flugel bread that went with them was hard as a rock and burned on one side. Need—and probably everyone else at the table—hadn’t been able to help thinking about how Lan’ara had made this exact same meal for them just a few days before and how delicious and flavorful it had been.
Laxah still wasn’t speaking a word to him and Kreeva and Krax weren’t saying much either—though that was nothing new since the Duplo pilot mostly talked to his/herself. Even Captain Glo’ll had been silent and morose, shedding brown leaves and withered flowers all over the table as he remarked that he missed the sweet soil treats Lan’ara used to make him. Only Drung seemed to be in high spirits, spitting and spraying his food as he laughed to himself over some private joke and asked for seconds and thirds of the awful food.
Nobody but Laxah had come right out and accused Need of being a bastard for selling the girl to Senator Pouncenblast, but he was sure he could see it in all their eyes when they looked at him. He felt accused by the entire crew and in truth, he also felt guilty.