"Who'd have guessed about Urdolus?" Norian sighed.
"I guessed about Urdolus." Gavril stood in the doorway to Norian's office. "If you'd read the message I sent on your comp-vid two days ago, you'd have known, too." Gavril looked as if he were ready to cry. He ran down the hall.
"How did he?" Norian lifted his comp-vid and scrolled through unread messages. Selecting the one from Gavril, he opened it. "Fuck," Norian shouted.
"What?" Lendill came over to look. He found a list of all the fruit Lendill had given him, combining those elements with the green nuts and palaca meat, then listed all the planets where those items were available in the same location. Six held too much population to harbor drakus seed fields. That left only Urdolus. Gavril had sorted it out—Lendill had ignored it.
"Fuck," Lendill sighed.
"I don't have any tools to bury Xiri," Teeg knelt beside me. I nodded; I wasn't able to speak at the moment.
"Farzi, I'm so glad to see you're alive, my friend." Arvil's blustering voice came from behind. Teeg pulled me to my feet. Arvil's eyes widened as he saw we'd made it, too.
"The river, Master Arvil," Farzi stepped over piles of ash and rubble to reach Arvil, who was (no surprise) surrounded by all his wizards. "That one," Farzi indicated Teeg, "pool saves him." Farzi included me with the river jumpers. Just as well; I couldn't explain how I'd gotten to the pool the night before.
"My brother?" Arvil knew the answer before we told him. He didn't sound heartbroken.
"Reah, we'll find more help for you," Arvil was back to bluster. "We can go home, now—I hear the Alliance is looking elsewhere. Better to be away from here, anyway; they may come to inspect their work."
Arvil didn't even ask Farzi and the other reptanoids if they wanted to go back to Campiaa; his wizards took us there before we had time to think.
"Take two days off—we'll eat at the casino," Arvil told us. I nodded blankly, feeling numb. Teeg, who kept a hand and a close eye on me, herded me through the door. We got plenty of stares as we made our way to his apartment.
"Reah, we only frightened small dogs and babies on our walk here—they'll rebound." Teeg's head appeared above mine as I stared at myself in the mirror. "Come on, sweetheart, let's get cleaned up and go to bed."
I don't think I'd ever appreciated clean sheets and a soft bed so much in my life after spending the night on burned and cracked flagstones. I must have been unconscious most of that time—I couldn't remember anything other than pain and discomfort. My lungs still felt coated in soot, and I coughed at times. Teeg didn't—I suppose he'd gotten it all out of his system already.
"Go to sleep, baby," Teeg's words were whispered against my skin. My eyes closed immediately.
"Sweetheart, your stomach is growling." That was such a romantic statement to wake to.
"Is it keeping you awake?" I stretched against Teeg—he was leaning on an elbow and looking down at me.
"Reah, I'm tempted to ignore our hunger and love you instead."
"I'll fix you something." I sat up in bed. It hit me, then. All those people. Still just as dead.
"Don't think about it," Teeg pulled my hand away from my forehead and slid me across the sheets until I was huddled against him. "It'll be all right," he soothed. I hoped he was right—even if I had no idea when everything might be all right. "You don't have knobby knees," he smoothed a large hand down my legs. "You lied to me."
"Teeg, I was trying to keep everybody from knowing I was a girl." I slid off the bed.
"I know." He was right behind me, running his hands beneath my sleeveless pajama top. We ate soup after thawing it in his zapper. With crackers. "We can go to the market later," I said. I felt too weary to move after we'd eaten.
"We'll go later." Teeg carried me back to bed.
The eight-day that went by after I returned to cooking (and bodyguarding) for Arvil went without mishap. I found a flower shop in Campiaa City early one morning, bought a bouquet of blossoms and tossed them in the ocean. "For you, Xiri," I whispered. "Wherever you are." I wiped tears away while I walked to Arvil's palace.
"Arvil wants to see you," Delvin came into the kitchen on seven-day afternoon. Almost asking what Arvil wanted, I decided not to put my worries into words and followed Delvin up two levels of stairs and into Arvil's private study. His private office was enormous and decorated with every luxury one might imagine or wish for. I wished at that moment that Teeg had mindspeech—I was worried about what Arvil wanted.
"Sit down, Reah." Arvil sat behind a desk large enough to serve as a bed for two people. Richly carved in dark wood and polished until it shone, the desk was still dwarfed by the size of the room. A comp-vid lay on one side; otherwise, the desk was clean.
I sat on one of the chairs in front of the desk. "Her feet barely reach the floor," Arvil pointed. Delvin snickered at Arvil's attempted humor. I wanted to get up and hit him. He'd gotten me into this mess and I still owed him for that. Not in any good way, either.
"Reah, you know I lost my family," Arvil began.
"I'm very sorry about that, Lord Arvil." I was. Even if they weren't the best family, they were family. I'd feel sad if one of my brothers died. Well, actually they were my uncles and not my brothers. I'd still feel sad. Mostly for what could have been, but it would grieve me, just the same.
"I know you are. That's why I asked you here. Because you seem to care about things like that." Arvil rose from his chair and stared out a rather large window behind his desk. It overlooked the pool and gardens on the spacious grounds below. "Do you know how old I am, Reah?" Arvil's back was still turned toward me.
"No, Lord Arvil."
"I am more than two hundred. While I come from a race that lives to be three hundred or more, well, things happen." He was right about that—his brother and cousins had been wiped out in a blink. Even though he'd told me to kill them if they threatened him, he'd felt something, I suppose.
"I know how old you are, Reah Nilvas." He turned around, lifted the comp-vid in his hand and scrolled through information. "Conscripted by the Alliance. Fell in with the drug crowd—involved in a drug war—considered a traitor now. See, I have your information. You don't have to hide it anymore." He turned the comp-vid around so I could see that he did indeed have my records. The false ones. I still flushed and lowered my head.
In my entire life, I would never do what those records said I did. Lendill had done this to me. He and Norian Keef. I wanted to slap them. Call them names. That was childish. How was I going to get out of this? How? Even if my records were cleared when I returned, there were too many people who'd seen the newsfeeds and found these records. They'd still think I was criminal, even though I wasn't.
"Teeg is here as requested, Master Arvil." His new housekeeper—a male this time, showed Teeg through the door. I shrank back in my seat. Arvil was going to show that garbage to Teeg and he was going to think I'd done all those things, too. I wanted to weep.
"Teeg, sit down," Arvil nodded toward the seat next to me. "This is information on our little girl, here." Arvil handed the comp-vid to Teeg. His mouth was set in a frown as he read the information. The comp-vid was handed back as soon as Teeg finished reading. He didn't look at me.
"Teeg, I no longer have family. They're dead now." Teeg lifted his eyes to stare at Arvil San Gerxon. "I've gone looking through the people I know. The ones who work for me. The ones who seem loyal. Tested all of them, at one time or another. Teeg, I want you to marry Reah here. This afternoon. I've had the papers pulled already. I'm naming you and Reah as my heirs. Don't cross me in this. I don't think either of you are greedy, as my brother was. I'm depending on you to help me in my business and treat me fairly and keep me alive. Be straight with me and I'll be straight with you. Deal?"
I must have been gasping like a fish. Teeg just looked grim. Well, he'd received two shocking pieces of news, one right after the other. He wouldn't want to marry me—not after what he'd seen on Arvil's comp-vid.
"When and where?" Were the only words that came from Teeg's mouth. I stared at him. He couldn't be serious.
"Right now if you're ready—I have the authority to marry anyone on Campiaa."
"Do it," Teeg said. "Before I change my mind."
Arvil pulled papers out of a desk drawer and slid them across to us. "You're married. Just sign at the bottom." I looked over the standard marriage contract. I'd never seen one before, never having married anyone before.
"Reah, just sign," Teeg's voice was clipped. I accepted the pen from Arvil and signed my name.
"Now, for the adoption papers," Arvil slid another stack of papers toward each of us. Teeg and I scanned all of them. They stipulated that if we caused or attempted to cause Arvil's death in any way, the adoption would be voided. It also voided the adoption if we did anything untoward, such as stealing from Arvil. That one I was pretty sure I could keep. The other one—not so much.
"Sign it, Reah," Teeg elbowed me after a while. I signed. What else could I do? I cursed Lendill Schaff and Norian Keef while I wrote my name and initialed many lines on many pages.
"Now, we'll have your things moved to the family wing," Arvil said when we'd handed the papers back to him. "Starting tomorrow, you'll both get your feet wet on running my businesses. Reah, you'll be in charge of all the restaurants in all my casinos. I think some of them are skimming off the top. Find that out for me, baby girl. Teeg," he turned to my new husband, "I want you to go through all the accounts for the casinos. Let me know if you find anything. You've never handed me any accounts from the construction side that weren't perfect and accounted for every penny you spent." Teeg nodded at Arvil. "You're my family, now. Reah, I hope you'll still cook for us occasionally. Hire somebody else for us, in the meantime."
