Cecelia Holland - Floating Worlds

At the top was Bokojin’s house. He kept her waiting long minutes at the door, and David fumed.

“I’m not leaving you here alone.”

“The Prima gave you orders.”

“They didn’t know what this was like. You’ll need help.”

She remembered Tanuojin’s closed eyes: he knew what was happening here. She glanced at Junna. Tanuojin’s son went down the steps that led from Bokojin’s door to the street. David lingered. His inch-long mustaches bristled. “Vida,” Junna called, and the boy said a very colorful oath and followed him.

A few moments later Bokojin’s slaves let her into his house. Bokojin, Machou, and two other rAkellaron were waiting for her in a room of blue and green lights, rippling in slow sweeps through the room. The walls were decorated with a network of knotted ropes. When she came in, the four men stared at her, moveless in their chairs, each with an aide behind him like a standard. She went inside the arc of chairs.

“Mendoz’,” Bokojin said. He sat with his feet together before him, his knees apart. “The talk was that you were dead.”

“I was visiting another life.” She looked at Machou on her left and the two men on her right. Even sitting they were taller than she was. Machou looked drunk. To Bokojin, she said, “The Prima is tired. He wants to come home and rest. Why are you putting yourself in his way?”

“We all know Saba,” Bokojin said. “He’s always had exotic ideas. We want assurances he isn’t coming back with any strange notions of walking all over us just because he’s taken the Middle Planets.”

There had to be more to it than that. She looked at the other men. “How well do you know Saba?” From the fold of her coat she took the Primit cuff and dropped it ringing on the floor.

They straightened in their chairs. Their eyes followed the cuff. Machou leaned forward, his hands sliding off the arms of his chair. Paula backed one step away from the cuff on the floor.

“The Prima says if any of you thinks he can hold that metal, let him take it.”

They all stood. Machou took a step toward the cuff. Paula tasted their scents, personal as faces. Bokojin said sharply, “Stand back, Akellar.” Machou’s head rose, his teeth showing behind his gray mustaches, and his thick shoulders set. Bokojin thrust his chest out.

“Back off!”

Machou shot a fierce look at Paula. “Don’t be a fool—you’re doing what she wants.” He bent to pick up the cuff.

“Leave it,” Bokojin said. “Leave it where it lies!”

Machou’s thick throat worked. The cuff lay at his feet. He looked from Bokojin to Paula and back to Bokojin, and when Bokojin advanced a step toward him Machou backed away. He turned and marched out of the room, his soldier behind him.

“Go,” Bokojin said to the other men. “I’ll tell you later what she says.”

Paula tucked her hands into her sleeves. The other two men began to protest, both at once, and Bokojin drove them out. The door shut behind them. Bokojin sat down again. The cuff lay on the floor between him and Paula. His handsome face was taut; his nostrils flared. Paula went up beside his chair.

“Put it on, Bokojin.” She leaned on the arm of the chair.

“What is he trying to do?” Bokojin said to himself. She watched his face. He had a thin scar down his cheek. His jaw was finely shaped, almost delicate. It was not a sensual face: sexlessly beautiful.

“Why don’t you take it?” She nodded at the cuff on the floor. That was Saba’s idea: Make him put it on . Like Nessus’s shirt. Her fingers grazed Bokojin’s knee. “Do you need help? I’ll help you.”

Bokojin left the chair like a man bolting a trap. His lip curled at her. “I don’t take other men’s wives.”

“I’m not Saba’s wife,” she said.

“Then you’re just a dirty woman, and not worth my time.”

She felt the heat flush rise through her throat and cheeks. She told herself she hadn’t really wanted him anyway. She sat down in the chair he had just left.

“What do you want, Bokojin?”

“You don’t sit down in my presence.”

“Tsk. I sit down in the presence of a Prima whose name reaches from here to the Sun.”

“My grandfather was the Prima,” he said. He stalked toward her. He wore a heavy collar of rectangles linked together: a family emblem, Gemini was sacred to his house. “Saba has been making a loud noise among people who are natural slaves. Let him come back here, where his equals are.”

“He is back. You won’t let him home.”

“Get out of my chair.”

She stretched her arms along the arms of the chair. “I like it here. I’ll stay.”

He was standing with the cuff at his feet. She watched his expression settle. The cuff defended her as if Saba still wore it. He said, “I don’t dirty my hands on niggers. Get up or I’ll call my slaves.”

“Oh, you won’t do that.” She drew her hand over the smooth arm of the chair, admiring the inlaid decoration. “Not while I’m your only line to Saba.”

“Then maybe I should open another—” He wheeled. A man in the chevron badge walked fast through the door.

“Akellar. The Prima is in Vribulo.”

Bokojin spat out the same oath David had used earlier, and Paula laughed. He said, “Then arrest him.”

The patrolman said, “I’m sorry, Akellar, we can’t—there’s such a mob around him, you can hear them cheering him all the way up to the House.”

“Get Machou—”

“Machou says to do it yourself.”

Bokojin’s face shone with heat. He wheeled toward Paula. She sat in his chair, the cuff on the floor between them. “Illini,” she said, “we are giving you half an hour to get out of Vribulo. That gives you no time to do anything to me.”

He took a step toward her. She stayed in her place, watching him. He kicked the cuff across the room and strode out. Alone in the room, she let herself relax. The cuff lay against the wall. She went over to it and picked it up, shining in the blue and green light streaming through the room. She put it on her wrist. Even over her coat sleeve it was too big. She wondered how he could wear it all the time; it weighed so much it hurt her arm. She sat down again in Bokojin’s chair, to wait for Tanuojin.

“You agreed to it in the Middle Planets,” Paula said, angry.

“That was a long way away. And a long time ago.” Leno lifted his hands off the desk. “I’ve changed my mind.” His broad hands dropped solidly to the desk.

Paula glared at him. She went off around his large, empty office, turned on the far side of the room, and glared at him again.

“Don’t you give me that look,” he said.

She marched back up to his desk, chest high to her. “Or you’ll do what?”

There was a long silence while they stared at each other. Paula laid her forearms down flat on the desk. Like everything else in Styth it was too large for her.

“Be realistic,” Leno said. Carefully he straightened his braided mustaches. “You aren’t one of us. You can’t do an Akellar’s work. There are plenty of other niggers who will be happy to go between us and the rock-worlds.”

“So you don’t need me any more.”

“You’ve done your work,” he said. “And I honor you for it.”

“Merkhiz—”

“You have a lot of enemies.”

She left.

The message from Newrose filled eight pages. She read it in the coderoom on the second floor of the rAkellaron House and read it again in her bedroom of the Prima Suite on the third floor. Rereading it made it no sweeter. Newrose was full of gloom. After months of almost Talmudic debate, even his own party had rejected the Luna Agreements, and the Council had voted to stay in session past the date when they were supposed to shut off the lights and go home. Paula balled the thick papers up and flung the wad across the room.