"I will send up a maid with a bit of food, dama. You need nourishment."
Kass managed a full-blown smile. B'ram Biryani was indeed a treasure.
The old man paused with his hand on the door, turned slowly back. "Highness?" Kass looked up. "No one notices servants. I hear many things. And everywhere it was said the captain was obsessed by a woman locked in solitary confinement. He said it was because she could be a powerful secret weapon against the Empire. Others insisted his interest was personal. After all, why else would he give up Commander Dann? Now . . ." B'ram Biryani shrugged his scrawny shoulders. "Now I think perhaps both sides were right." The majordomo of Veranelle, the Psyclid summer palace, went out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Obsessed, was he? Kass fumed. So where was he? Lt. Anton Stagg carried her limp body up the stairs, B'ram Biryani brought her sustenance, as well as his concern. But where was Tal Rigel?
Abandoned again.
Kass resented being exhausted, powerless, and alone. Since the captain seemed to be in control of her life, the least he could do was be there when she needed him. Truth was, when she'd calmed her churning thoughts, she knew exactly where he was. Downstairs, doing his best to clean up the mess she'd made. Smoothing the ruffled feathers of the Hierarchy, the hysterics of Liona Dann.
At least no one would expect the great S'sorrokan to clean up the remains of the snake.
So why did she feel a tear slipping down her cheek?
Some powerful weapon she was if a few moments of concentrated power were all she could manage at one time. Kass Kiolani, secret weapon with no reload capability.
She refilled her glass, holding the ullali up to the window to see the light shine through the amber liquid only slightly darker than her eyes. Sunlight. She had only to turn the casement latch and she could breathe in fresh air. She was wearing the gown of a princess, sitting on a sofa of white and silver silk brocade. She was in the Round Tower of Veranelle, summer home of the House of Orlondami. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she should be burning incense to the goddess.
Kass took a long sip of ullali, then wiggled her way into the corner of the sofa, lay back against the tasseled pillows, and closed her eyes. He would come. Tal Rigel would come to her, and she would know her fate at last.
Chapter 9
"Sergeant?" Tal, standing on the top step of the spiral staircase, raised a questioning eyebrow as Kass's sturdy marine guardian blocked the doorway to her room.
"She's asleep, Captain," Quint told him. "I let the maid in half an hour ago with a tray of food, and there she was, sound asleep on the couch."
Ah yes, the urge to protect the fragile little Psyclid. Tal understood it well.
"Unfortunately, Quint, Vaden is coming to speak with her, and I need to talk to her first. So stand aside."
"Sir." With a glare that should have singed the shirt off Tal's back, the sergeant side-stepped to a position to the right of Kass's door.
Quint was correct, Tal discovered. Kass was sound asleep, her head resting on a mound of pillows at one end of the sofa, knees drawn up in fetal position, her only covering a turquoise gown that belonged in a ballroom and her long fall of straight black hair. One strand extended like a shining black waterfall all the way down to the thick blue carpet. Kass Kiolani. Fragile, vulnerable, so insubstantial she looked as if the first breeze could blow her away, and yet . . .
No wonder people couldn't see her for what she really was. But Tal was a believer. He knew. Yet standing here watching her slight figure curled in sleep, long black lashes dusting cheekbones sculpted of honey, a tempting mouth that invited love, not war, he still found it difficult to believe she was responsible for the havoc he'd just left.
He'd been in his suite when he got Stagg's frantic call. We have a situation. Conference room now! Supposedly, he was working on the plan for Astarte's next mission, but all he was actually doing was pacing his office, wondering what was happening at Kass's examination. After Stagg's call, he'd taken off, running, arriving just in time to see Kass disappearing around the bend in the corridor. He wanted to charge after her, but the screams, shouts, and general chaos coming from the conference room reminded him where duty lay.
It had taken more than an hour to deal with it all. The image of Liona's blond beauty covered in krall guts would be with him for the rest of his life. Of first importance, however, was finding out if any more venomous snakes were crawling around the palace. After that, he'd dealt with Liona. Rather summarily. Then the shocked Hierarchy. Well, a few were still shocked, but most were jubilant by the time he got to them. By Omni, what a secret weapon! Some even slapped him on the back, complimenting him on his daring in adding the feisty little Psyclid's talents to the rebellion.
A lot of palaver, soothing words, modest acceptance of congratulations. And, finally, Tal had swallowed his pride long enough to ask Torik Vaden for time to speak to Kass before the older man delivered the Hierarchy's decision in person.
Now, however, as Tal looked down at her, he could only feel the whole incident had been a chimera. This beautiful, delicate, innocent girl could not possibly have done the damage he'd seen.
That was his heart talking; his head knew better. What was it about Kass Kiolani? Even as a cadet, she'd intrigued him. And not just because of her "malfunctioning" trajectories. When she left Orion to return to her final year at the Academy, he'd been relieved. Temptation out of sight, out of mind. Only it hadn't worked that way. In spite of his many years of strict military discipline, the blasted girl insinuated herself into his dreams. An attack on his psyche that forced him to tuck her into the corner of his brain reserved for experiences too dangerous to be repeated. But there was no denying it, he missed her. And then, just when he thought he'd conquered her power to play with his mind, Mical told him about the students' plans to gang rape the little Psyclid witch.
Omnovah help him, there it was! For absolutely no reason that made any sense, he'd scrambled to help her, risking his father and friends as well as himself as they settled her into her velvet prison. That's all he intended to do-provide a safe place until she could be returned home. Except . . . somewhere over the green land and blue seas of Psyclid, he realized how much he didn't want to be here. How ridiculous it was for the Empire to be taking over a small star system with no strategic value. A nation so strongly pacifist they didn't even have an army.
Which brought up the question, what in the name of the nine hells of Obsidias was a girl from Psyclid doing in the Regulon Space Academy? Spying, said the admirals and the Council of Twelve a few weeks later, condemning whoever had whisked the Psyclid sorceress out from under their noses. And, not incidentally, turning Captain Tal Rigel into a traitor, even if only three people in the whole Nebulon Sector knew what he had done.
Tal's confusion and guilt deepened as he recalled following Fleet orders to fire on Psyclid passenger and merchant ships, not a gun or missile among them. It had been wrong, flat out wrong. The Empire didn't need a planet full of weirdos, as useless as they were defenseless . . . And finally, for the first time Tal began to question what had been ingrained since childhood-the complete devotion of the Rigel family to the aggressive expansion of the Regulon Empire.
Even if Regula Prime was in dire need of a planet's resources, what right did the Empire have to simply swoop in and take what they wanted? Often against opponents far more able to defend themselves than the Psyclids, resulting in extensive loss of life on both sides.
The seed of the rebellion, sown so carelessly when he rescued Kass Kiolani, swelled inside Tal's head, finally bursting into a new reality more than a year later. And S'sorrokan was born. S'sorrokan, rebel and traitor.
And all because of a little scrap of a female who had no idea what she'd started. Tal looked down at Kass's slight form, so peacefully sleeping, and wondered for closee to the thousandth time if he'd gone mad. Omni, what had he done? And yet . . .
Emperor Darroch could pardon him, offer him the position of Admiral of the Fleet . . . and still he would not go back. Here before him, lying on a white and silver sofa, was the future, though he had no idea how he was going to make that future real.
"Kiolani, wake up. Kass?" Only a whisper, but somehow he knew she'd hear him. She'd probably come awake fighting, furious with him for abandoning her yet again.
Instead, her eyes blinked open, focused instantly. A flare, a gratifying flare of welcome, and then the veil came down. Blank neutrality as she waited for the axe to fall.
"Not quite the way we planned it, Kiolani," he chided softly.