Orion's Price (Loralynn Kennakris Book 6) Read online

  Arianna was responsible for managing all this varied domestic economy, as improbable as that first seemed, but Kris had detected she was quite sharp, detail oriented, quick and accurate with figures and had an unusually retentive memory. She had also mastered, or at least achieved some fair degree of competency, in almost all the tasks she oversaw. How this fit together (or didn’t) with the eternal concerns of adolescent girls was not a mystery Kris was equipped to plumb.

  More practically, Kris’s resolutely undomesticated nature had so far frustrated Arianna’s attempts to integrate her into this somewhat excessively ordered ménage. Her status as a POW was an obvious constraint on tasks she could fulfill—a suggestion that she join the legion of olive pickers had been vetoed by Caneris’ head of security because it meant taking her outside the main compound—but Kris had the distinct impression that the girl had never faced this situation before. Women here (so it seemed) just naturally grew up knowing how to do things. But yesterday had ruled out attaching her to the kitchen staff when she proved incapable of cooking an egg in any way that wasn’t scrambled. The day before that had been the silk-drape fiasco. And today knitting, for fuck’s sake! Tomorrow, gawd knows what.

  Before Kris could follow that thought to its conclusion, Arianna reappeared, wearing a loose-fitting exercise outfit that hung awkwardly from her gangling frame. She wore a pinched expression too, at odds with her earlier affectation of superiority, and carried a wad of garments in one hand and a pair of nondescript running shoes in the other.

  “This is all I could find that might fit you. Grandfather’s not here and we can go out by the west portal.” So saying, she put down the shoes and handed Kris a gray tank top and matching shorts.

  Why the admiral’s whereabouts should matter and what the significance of the west portal might be did not impress itself on Kris, beyond a vague idea that he may not approve of her accompanying his granddaughter on her daily run for some reason.

  Stripping off the standard-issue jumpsuit, she started to put the outfit on before looking up and pausing at Arianna’s violently pink shocked face.

  “What?”

  “You shouldn’t do that!”

  “Do what?” Kris asked, half into the shorts. They were alone in this part of the house. She’d checked.

  Arianna’s lips clamped in a pale, disapproving line. “Get . . . undressed. That way.”

  “Sorry.” Kris tugged the shorts into place. “I didn’t know there was another way.”

  “I mean here. Girls don’t do that!”

  “They do where I come from.”

  Cheeks expanding with a force of her trapped breath, the girl glanced hurriedly right and left. “Come with me”—letting it go in a rush. “Before they see us.”

  Puzzled, Kris allowed herself to be herded through a hall full of ancestors; their likenesses, that is, carved in alabaster and lit from behind, men of the left-hand side and women to the right, amid pots of flowering roses. Some were young and some were old; none looked happy. Cool distant reserve (rather like the admiral himself) mixed with sour disapproving scowls and a few intense, narrow-eyed angry glares. It occurred to Kris that the age of the masks must approximate the age at death, and the faces—particularly of the women—became progressively younger as they went back in time. It gave the spacious, high-ceilinged, well-lit hall a burdensome air, and Kris noted the complete lack of furniture.

  And no wonder. Who’d want to linger under the weight of so many centuries worth of concentrated opprobrium any longer than they absolutely had to?

  Stopping her with an upraised palm, Arianna consulted a display by the towering entrance; two dark, massively hinged imposing doors, flanked by fluted columns and decorated with martial figures. In the upper-right was a blank space, waiting for some worthy soul to occupy it, no doubt. Probably by meeting a spectacular death.

  “Quickly now.” Opening a much smaller door in the right-hand one, Arianna beckoned. Hustling Kris through, they went across the decastyle portico and down the basalt steps at a good clip. Only when they were jogging down the beaten-earth path under the shade of the gnarled pepper trees that grew along the purely symbolic outer wall did Arianna appear to relax.

  Taking advantage of this change in mood, Kris broached her question. “Can I ask what that was all about?”

  “Tros,” Arianna answered between breaths. Kris recalled an aged specimen of that name, bald as an egg and lank as a crane, hovering about at times. What he did had not been explained, but he and Arianna seemed to be at odds. “He’ll have the fit of the Mother if he sees you dressed like that.”

  “He’ll what?”

  “Have a fit.” She glanced at Kris sidelong. “Don’t you say that?”

  “Not the mother part. What is that? Like having a cow?”

  “A cow?” A giggle exploded past the girl’s lips. “You say ‘having a cow’? That’s ridiculous!”

  When Kris didn’t see fit to argue the point, Arianna added, “I’m in enough trouble. I don’t need Tros peaching on me.” She tossed her head. “I’m running now.”

  Her heels flashed as she sprinted down the lane, through the dappled shade, her slim figure seeming to spurn the ground. Kris gave her ten meters’ lead, and took off after her. Her longer legs quickly brought her abreast of the girl and she shortened stride to keep pace. After three hundred meters, Arianna glowered at her.

  “You’re holding back for me.”

  Kris glanced at her. Neither of them was breathing hard yet. “Your run. Your pace.”

  “This isn’t my pace. No one keeps up with my pace. You agreed to the whole circuit.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Show me your pace.”

  Arianna snorted.

  “Look.” Kris gestured with one hand at small domed building in a grove of trees crowning a far hill. “What’s that?”

  “Grandmamma’s temple.”

  “Can we go there?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll race you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Are you ready?”

  “Yes. Are you?”

  “Say go.”

  “Go!”

  Kris shot forward, a powerful thrilling burst of speed, reveling in the wind on her face, the surge of delighted energy through muscles yearning for this chance to break out, break free. To fly.

  Fly she did, long swift smooth strides that devoured the distance in great chunks, through the rustling shade into the hot sun; the rush of air into her lungs, the glow in her chest spreading through her whole body, borne by the sweet strong pulse of blood. Hitting the gentle incline up the hill, pale waist-high wheat-like grass waving on either side; the scent of dust and pollen; not slackening stride but reaching deeper, beneath the burn, arms pumping, tapping her reserves of strength and spending them with reckless prodigality.

  Coasting finally onto the crest; the circular temple with its dome of pure white marble supported by caryatids in attitudes of mourning, a marble bench ringing the simple unadorned raised bier at the center, and around all of this, a stand of what Kris took to be some variety of nut tree. Ignoring the bench, she jogged in place and watched Arianna labor up the slope. When she staggered onto flat half a minute later, her breath coming too fast and her face splotched with an unhealthy red, Arianna groaned and bent over her knees.

  “I . . . didn’t—didn’t . . .” A tenuous voice broken her fractured breathing. “Oh, Mother. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Whoa.” Kris put a hand on her shoulder. “Not on your grandmother’s nice marble, okay. Here.” She nudged the girl gently. “Breathe in through your nose. Try to hold it, then out through your mouth. That’s it . . . easy. Don’t bend any further—that makes it worse. Can’t you straighten? That’s good. Hold my arm. There you go . . .” Holding the girl erect, Kris smiled at her. “Better?”

  Arianna nodded.

  “Let’s go walk under those trees. Get outta this sun. That’s okay, isn’t it? Walking on the grass?”—
to make her meaning clear.

  Arianna nodded again.

  Together, they made their way into the shade, where a short, springy native grass grew, dark waxy green with violet edges. Kris kept her hand on Arianna’s shoulder until her legs steadied and her breathing returned to normal. Perspiration ran freely down her face, now a much less alarming color, and she unconsciously lifted the hem of her tunic to mop it. They walked together awhile longer, breathing deep the unfamiliar scent of the nut trees—it reminded Kris of the tea Captain Wesselby drank overlaid with an unnamable spice—until Arianna spoke.

  “I didn’t think you’d do that.”

  “Do what?” Kris asked.

  “Race me like that. I mean, not really.”

  “Why? People don’t do that here?”

  She swept a tangle of damp ginger strands back from her face. “No.”

  “Cuz you’re the great admiral’s granddaughter?”

  “Cuz he’s Lord OverHallin.”

  “Oh.” Kris hadn’t spent much time studying the pecking order of Halith aristocrats, but she gathered that title was at, or near, the top of it. “Does that make you Lady OverHallin, then?”

  Kris meant the question to lighten the mood, but Arianna scowled. “No.” Her gaze went to the bier and back. “She’s Lady OverHallin.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “That’s right.”

  With a grunt, Kris lowered herself to the ground beneath a tree and leaned back against the bole. After a moment’s squinting contemplation, Arianna sat cross-legged beside her.

  “So what does that make you?” Kris asked when they both settled.

  A distracted shrug. “Nobody.”

  “But you run the Admiral’s estate for him.”

  Another rise and fall of the narrow bony shoulders, dismissing the point.

  “How old are you?”

  Head down, Arianna gave her a brief challenging glare. “Fourteen.”

  Kris did some quick mental arithmetic. That made Arianna between sixteen and seventeen in Terran years. “How long have you been doing this job?”

  “I helped out Grandmamma ever since my parents . . . ever since I came here when I was little.”

  “So you took over when your grandmother died?”

  “No.” Arianna picked a blade of violet-edged grass and began to shred it into thin strips. “Tros took over. He was our overseer. But after a year, Grandpapa said I was ready and gave me the job. Then Tros worked for me, since we had a new overseer by that time.”

  So that’s why they didn’t get along: guy lost his job to a kid. Kris could see how that might sour his outlook. “So is that why you’ve got trouble? Tros is gunning for you?”

  “Uh huh.” Gray eyes focused on the shreds of grass like they were shreds of something else. Old Tros might do well to watch himself.

  “What happened?”

  Arianna flicked the shreds away. “You’ve seen Adam?”

  “Adam who?”

  That brought the gray eyes to bear on her. “Adam.”

  Kris could think of only one person who’d bring out that stare from a teenaged girl. But here? On Halith Evandor? “You mean Adam—the singer?”

  “Yes!” Hands balled into fists, Arianna waved her suddenly outstretched arms and actually bounced. “Don’t tell me you don’t know him! You’re from Terra!”

  “No.” Kris shifted against the tree trunk. “I’m not.”

  “But you’re with Commander Huron. He’s Terran.”

  He was. Most emphatically. “Yeah. But I’m not.”

  “Really?” The out-flung arms wilted. “You’ve never seen him?”

  Her crestfallen look actually gave Kris a twinge. “Just once. He came to a party I was at.”

  “Adam . . . came to your party”—wide-eyed; plainly amazed, nearly dumbfounded.

  “It wasn’t my party.” The way Arianna was looking at her, like she had personal authority over the Second Coming, made Kris want to squirm. She did—slightly. “He sang at my friend’s party.”

  Oh shit . . . That was the wrong thing to say. She couldn’t tell what Arianna might do with all the tension singing through her but it probably wouldn’t be pretty. “Ra– Commander Huron, he set it up.”

  “Oh.” Some of the tension visibly dissipated. Even here, Rafe’s was a name to conjure with.

  “Uh . . . So what happened with Adam?” She’d had no idea he’d jumped markets. That almost never happened.

  Arianna heaved a sigh that could’ve moved mountains. “He was gonna tour here. During the peace. It was a major deal. We all had advance tickets. It was my birthday.” Drawing a short breath through dilated nostrils, her eyes glittering ferociously. “They canceled it.”

  Because Jerome felt the need to attack Regulus. Kris could imagine the birthday they’d planned for the granddaughter of Lord OverHallin. Seats front and center, backstage passes . . . the works. Hell hath no fury like a teenage girl done out of a chance to meet her own personal deity.

  This Jerome guy had much to answer for.

  Kris waited for the fires of hell to fade and the young face to resume a more human expression.

  “Anyway . . .”

  “Anyway?” Kris coaxed.

  “There’s a recording. His whole tour—every concert.”

  “Sounds sweet,” Kris offered into the pregnant pause.

  “But you need a VR chamber to play it! A good one!” That got Kris’s ears to perk up. Most virtual reality technology was illegal in the League. Flight simulators were the only exceptions Kris had personally encountered. “I saved for a year and half to buy one. But Tros found out somehow and he told Grandpapa and now I’ve been forbidden to have one. And I know he’s watching me.”

  “You can buy those here?” asked Kris cautiously.

  “I can’t. I’m not old enough. I was gonna have Lady Gw—one of my friends—get it and she was gonna set it up so we could use it. But now that Grandpapa knows all about it, that’ll never work. He doesn’t like VR, he says it’s addicting and damaging, and he’ll never change his mind!”

  He’s got a point, too. But Kris stifled any expression of that thought.

  “And the way things are going I’ll never get to be at an Adam concert!” A small, hard-clenched fist unleashed its fury on the guiltless grass.

  Kris sought for some comfort to offer the girl. Sought in vain.

  Arianna slumped, shoulders rounding as if the blow had deflated her. Gray eyes looked bleakly at the far horizon.

  “Wars are stupid.”

  Kris, studying the young girl’s face, could not bring herself to disagree.

  Chapter 12

  Okanogan Range

  Washington Province, Terra, Sol

  The doorway Mariwen stood facing did not look like it should belong to one of the richest and most powerful men of this, or for that matter, any other age. That was, she felt, undoubtedly the point. When the Huron family re-emigrated to Earth from Karelia, they settled at Oscoda, in Michigan, and built a modest estate. As their wealth and power grew, so did their estate until it reached its present palatial proportions, a grand demesne that many likened to Versailles, though in reality, that was nine-tenths hyperbole. Mariwen, herself, tended to find it overpowering, as did Rafe and his youngest half-brother, Marc. Only Charles, the middle son who now ran the family business, spent appreciable time at Oscoda, and even his visits were primarily to conduct business, and to ‘entertain’ (a polite term for using the estate to impress or intimidate, as the case may be), not to reside; not in any sense as a home.

  This tendency to view Oscoda more as a valuable symbol of the family’s position rather than a dwelling seemed to have begun quite early, for it was the second Rafael Huron—Rafe’s great grandfather and the principle architect of the family astronomical fortune—who, at the zenith of his power, set about vastly expanding the Oscoda estate while at the same time casting his eye far to the west, to Washington Province. Liking what he saw, he acquired a t
housand hectares of the rural Okanogan Range and built thereon a ‘cottage’.

  It was the front door to this ‘cottage’ that Mariwen was looking at (the estate still owned that name, and while it was now a sizeable mansion, in comparison to Oscoda, it was modest enough to fit), with Trin standing beside her, waiting to visit the man inside. Rafael Leonidas Huron IV, retired Grand Senator for Terra and the longest serving Speaker of the Grand Senate, had chosen this of his many properties for his retirement, liking the climate, the surrounding orchards and vineyards, and perhaps—or so Mariwen suspected—the lack of strong family associations. Rafe’s father had lost both his wives: Rafe’s mother to preeclampsia while she was pregnant with him, and the second in a botched assassination attempt. Mariwen had met him on a handful of occasions, and it was instantly apparent where Rafe got his charm, his drive, his intelligence and his often biting wit, along with his stubbornness and a number of his other more infuriating habits. But also his boundless store of compassion, though you had to get past the inveterate smart ass to truly appreciate it. It did not strike her as odd that such a man would choose to retire to a modest dwelling that was relatively free of ghosts.

  The door opened, revealing Vaishali Kriesel-Roth, Rafe’s father’s chief of staff, a short woman with fine straight black hair, tilted eyes, and slim translucent hands. Her features, now lit by a welcoming smile, were delicate but expressive of great latent strength, unsurprising in someone who’d been the Grand Senator’s political partner and confidant for over thirty years.

  “Trin,” she said, “Ms. Rathor.” They clasped hands in a brief greeting. “The senator will be overjoyed to see you. He’s waiting in the north parlor. Will you follow me?”