Queen of dust, p.18
Queen of Dust, page 18
“Dannos has it covered.”
He stumbled backwards as she passed him, leaving the bathroom. She pushed him onto the bed and he fell like dead weight.
“Mara?”
“Yes, Cal?”
The blankets muffled his response, but she caught three words clear and undistorted—“lie to me.”
Behind her ribs, Mara’s lungs compressed. How did he know that she—
“Will you lie to me? When it’s time? Tell me you’re with him for the power or the money. I could understand that. I could take it—I can’t offer you either of those things. Just don’t tell me it’s him.” He stopped rambling and she thought maybe he’d passed out. She was at the door when he spoke again, desperation clear as the words. “Lie to me, Mara.”
Her heart pounded and it took effort to peel her lips apart, sticky with manufactured coating.
“Sleep, Cal.”
Outside the bedroom she stalled, needing to collect herself.
Everything was fine. Calvy was drunk, talking like that because his brain was addled and loose. That hadn’t broken the rules. It had come close but—no, it hadn’t. There was nothing to worry about.
She pulled her attention back to the factory, what she would say to Dannos. But it was Harper who snapped to attention when she entered the hall.
“Where is Dannos?”
“Indisposed. As is your private, judging by the state he was in upon entry.”
Mara huffed air out of her nose as Harper studied her.
“Were you going somewhere? Another hour or two staring at the docks? I confess I had my fill this morning.”
Could she know? Had she somehow seen Iola? Or was she just...being Harper?
Moons, Mara needed to get a hold of herself and stop being so paranoid.
“No. I—Dannos was going to—I’ve developed a sudden interest in arms production.” She’d had all day to work out an excuse and that’s what she managed to say under pressure. But she hadn’t been expecting Harper’s shrewd consideration. She’d been prepared for a shrug and a nod from Dannos.
“Huh,” was Harper’s reply.
“I want to go to the Pent factory. Across the canal. I thought Dannos could get me in.”
Harper uncrossed her arms. “You thought wrong. He can’t do it.”
“Look, Harper—”
“But I can.” Her stone was already in hand, her mouth moving to compose a message.
Mara’s face creased with surprise before she smoothed it flat. “You can?”
“I know one of the foremen.”
“You do.”
“I handle many things for Mr. Pent.” Then Harper clamped her mouth shut and raised her eyebrows.
Mara sighed impatiently. “Oh, just say it.”
“You’re digging a hole you won’t be able to get out of. You can’t manage the damage you’ve done with D’Aldiern by showing an interest in Mr. Pent’s business. He’s going to bury you.”
“I guess I asked for that.”
“You did.”
“Then can we get going?”
“Yes. It’s a long walk.”
“We’re not walking. I’ve a hoverbike,” Mara said. Harper blinked at her. “I asked the private to—”
“Sure you did.”
They stood side by side in the elevator. Harper was capable of eviscerating Mara in an argument. But she was loyal to Pent above everything else. Knowing she had Liam’s protection was the only reason Mara was confident enough to ask, “What do you have against Private D’Aldiern?”
“It’s better for a woman to know when to—”
“It’s better for a woman to speak her mind. Instead of stewing like—like prison yarrow.”
“Prison yarrow? Because I’m from Theos?”
Mara coughed. “No—I didn’t realize—”
Anger tightened Harper’s eyes and loosened her tongue. “We may not be known as a natural paradise—but we are as proud on Theos as you Balti pleasure seekers. Your private confessed to procuring counterfeit weapons. The only thing worse would be if he made them himself.”
The doors opened and they exited. “He was lying—to protect his soldiers.”
“Then he should have stayed out of it. Let us find the real culprit.”
“It was the Dern army who supplied them.”
“So a Dern prince could have paid the price. He still robbed us of justice.” Harper stopped walking. “What does it matter to you—what I think of D’Aldiern?”
“It doesn’t,” Mara said.
“You’ll remember, won’t you? When Mr. Pent stands above you with the shovel, that I tried to throw you a rope.”
“I’ll remember that I didn’t need it.”
Because Harper had it all wrong. Liam knew about Calvy. Calvy had been Liam’s idea. So why did Mara feel her heart sinking like a rock tossed into the sea?
On the hoverbike, Harper leaned away from Mara. Her hand on Mara’s waist ghostlike, barely there. Mara huffed out another breath. Really. It wasn’t like she was contagious, like Dern-sympathy was catching. Mara turned to throw a look over her shoulder, but Harper wouldn’t have seen. Her eyes were closed. Her head back. Her free hand twisting this way and that in the wind like a leaf. She looked like she was flying—she looked like she was enjoying herself. Mara almost missed the turn after the bridge, focused on Harper’s reaction to the hoverbike.
A planet dedicated to small pleasures. Shared pleasures. That’s what she was trying to protect, she reminded herself as they pulled to a stop. And she wasn’t betraying anyone.
“I can ask Calvy where he got the bike—”
“When I want something I get it myself.”
Me too, Mara thought, but she didn’t say it, because a man was approaching them. He was lanky in a too-short jumpsuit—brown, not the grey kind she’d seen on the weary workers as they made their way to and from the factory each dawn and dusk. His face was lined, sporting a patchy stubble and a scowl.
“Her? Can’t do it, Harper.”
Harper walked forward as though she hadn’t heard him. “Gibbs, Ms. Leanor; Ms. Leanor, Gibbs.”
Mara offered a nod that Gibbs ignored.
“It isn’t happening. Why would you even bring one here? Do you know how much trouble they’re causing? That fire on the rig was just the start of it.”
Harper kept going. “Ms. Leanor is—”
“I don’t care who the dyejob is—”
“—Mr. Pent’s personal companion. She’s recently developed an interest in the details of the business and I know he’d appreciate you letting her take a look. She won’t be any trouble. Mr. Pent trusts her implicitly.” Even if I don’t. Mara read the rest in Harper’s eyes.
Gibbs crossed his arms, his head shaking.
“My hair? That’s the issue?”
A nod from Harper and a grumble from Gibbs confirmed it.
Mara pulled up the hood of her cloak, as she’d been doing each time she met with Iola. What had her people done on the oil rig? As long as it was bad for the Dern, Mara didn’t care. If Iola could run the Dern off their planet, Mara was all for it. But Iola had only tasked her with getting into the factory. She wasn’t leaving until she’d done it.
“Will this do, Mr. Gibbs?”
Harper scoffed at her formality, but Gibbs offered a gruff reply and nodded towards the wide door he’d come out of.
The stench of chemical waste and hot metal made Mara’s eyes burn when they stepped inside the factory. But she smiled at Harper’s foreman friend and took the hand he offered her, helping her onto the walkway above the factory floor.
“Grinder, crowning, rifling, finish.” He rattled off the stations, shouting above the clang of machinery. “Ratchets, down there.” He pointed across the area. “All the finesse work. You know, Harper.”
Mara took her time on the walkway, trailing behind the other two. She didn’t know exactly what she was supposed to be doing. Iola must have people outside the factory, people who’d report that she’d gotten in. That she’d passed the test.
“Does that do it? Enough to satisfy her curiosity?” Gibbs leaned on the railing, looking back at Mara, but directing his question to Harper. At the end of the walkway was a closed door and a set of stairs leading down to the left.
Harper was already at the bottom, turning a finished firearm over in her hands, inspecting it with her Theos-born commitment to detail. “Yes, Ms. Leanor can now report to Mr. Pent that she’s shown an interest in his work.”
The foreman barked a laugh, beginning his descent. Let them laugh, they didn’t need to understand what she was doing here. Mara reached the door at the top of the stairs and paused, looking through the window to the other side.
“Can’t take you next door. It’s where we make the rods,” Gibbs said.
Mara decided to flex a little of her knowledge; she hadn’t picked up nothing from Liam. “And the ore—do you import it from Mi-isk?”
“Some,” the foreman said with a hard look. He wasn’t laughing now. “But heating the raw stuff—that’s the nasty part. Mr. Pent wouldn’t want me taking you in there, miss.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.” Mara smiled. But the man wasn’t looking at her, he was leaning over the railing, shouting at the workers to get back to work. They’d been looking up at where she stood. Free of watching eyes, Mara tested the panel with her palm and the door slid open.
She didn’t need to go any further. She’d passed Iola’s test. But what if Iola wanted more before completing their deal? Maybe, maybe Mara could find something small. Something she could use to ensure that Iola held up her end of the exchange.
Mara stepped through, into an office between the buildings. The foreman’s desk was covered in papers, some with the seal of Theos, others stamped by Mi-isk and Dern. Production schedules, graphs, schematics.
Mara crossed the room to the door at the other side and pressed that panel too. A blast of heat met her and she coughed in the smoke and metal dust that filled the air. Mara had only managed a step when the foreman caught her arm. Her hood fell back as she turned. She yelped in surprise and men and women in face masks looked up to see the foreman dragging her back into his office, the red glow of fire reflected in their safety visors. The door panel hissed shut as she wrenched her arm away from him.
“I told you not to go in there,” he spat.
But Mara had her own concerns. “There’s too much dust in the air—”
He waved a hand dismissively. “Vents broke this morning.”
“So why didn’t you send everyone home?”
“Mr. Pent wouldn’t appreciate losing a day of production—”
“Mr. Pent wouldn’t appreciate losing a factory to a preventable explosion.”
“The building is built to withhold blasts, all Pent factories are. It would be contained—”
“But the people working in there—”
“We have quotas to meet—”
“You have lives to protect.”
The foreman grabbed her arm again, his fingers digging into the bone. But then Harper was behind him, twisting his other arm around his back so he was forced to let go of Mara.
Mara’s breath came quick and hard. “Shut it down.”
“I don’t take orders from you. You don’t tickle my prick.”
Harper increased pressure and the foreman dropped to his knees. “Take it up with Pent,” he gasped.
“I will.”
Harper released him. She kept close to Mara, ushering her from the building as quickly as she could.
“What were you doing in there, Mara?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing. What did you drag me into?”
But Mara couldn’t answer, her throat was too tight.
“You know that rope I offered you?” Harper said, settling behind Mara’s seething form on the hoverbike. “It’s not long enough to reach how deep you are. Which is fine with me. It’s not my grave.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
A groggy Calvy sat with his head bent between his knees while Dannos relayed the news. Something had happened. At the Pent factory across the canal. His head throbbed. Whose idea had it been for him to go drinking with Shef? Right, Mara’s. She was full of good ideas. She was—his balls tightened thinking about her, like her hand had just gripped his sack.
She was devastating.
She’d do something, like scrunch up her nose in response to some inane thing he’d managed to say to her, and his lungs would empty of air the way sponges empty of water when wrung out. He’d be fine and then he’d look at her and be breathless. Useless. Devastated.
He had to remember that it was almost over. That he wouldn’t be the one to press his mouth to that soft skin, to have his fingers slip through those silky curls. He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t for him. She was trained to lure someone in, he wasn’t special for falling for it. He was a fool. And he was acting like it—he’d been a jealous idiot during the full moons. If there was someone he should be jealous of, it wasn’t that doctor who’d smiled and laughed with Mara. It was Liam Pent. But Mara had confessed she wasn’t thinking of Pent when she was with him.
He was a fool.
Because the thing he’d felt hearing that was hope.
He had to remember. He had to remember that it was almost over.
“You said you wanted to know, if the climate seemed charged.”
Calvy sat up and nodded. He gulped at the scalding coffee Dannos had provided with the news. “When was this?”
“Half an hour ago. The news is moving fast.”
“And Ms. Leanor?”
“Out with Harper.”
Where? Calvy was about to ask—but the hotel room door opened inwards and the couple in question came into the room. Mara had a fierce look about her—fiercer than normal, he amended. And both of them reeked of soot.
A chill shuddered through his body.
“What are you two doing in here? Don’t you have your own quarters?” Mara said, seeing him with Dannos in her room. Calvy eyed her closely, watching for the moment she relaxed the tension in her face, tried to hide the agitation that ran under her skin like a current.
Her eyes lingered on his for a moment and—there. She’d done it.
“There was a disturbance,” Calvy said slowly, fitting the pieces together. He had access to the daily security briefings, littered with words like Resurrection and dyejob. But she couldn’t be one of them, could she? He couldn’t have been so distracted that he’d miss something that big? Her hair was loose and wild, dancing over her shoulders as she unbuttoned the clasp at her neck and flung the smoky cloak over the couch. He was suddenly alert, adrenaline and understanding making him rise to his feet.
“A disturbance?” She didn’t meet his eyes, smoothing the cloak where it lay.
“At one of the factories. Something set the workers off—sparked a riot. The mid crew refused to go in.” He stared at her and Mara lifted her chin. “Where were you, Mara?”
“Sounds like you already know.”
“You went to the factory?” His head swung to Harper. “And you took her?”
Harper crossed her arms. “I did what I was told. You should try it.”
“I—”
“Cal—”
His nickname rebounded through the room.
Mara glanced at Harper. At Dannos. But there was no use in pretending. Everyone in this room knew what was going on. At least as far as he and Mara were concerned. Mara seemed to draw the same conclusion, continuing despite their audience. “Cal. It’s not her fault. And what’s the problem? I wanted to see what Liam’s built here. Where’s the harm in that?”
Her face was drawn in a careful, easy calm, but her eyes—those two grey moons that haunted his nights—her eyes gave her away. They refused to dull.
All he needed to know now was whether it had been an accident—or if she’d done it on purpose.
“You didn’t do anything?”
“What could I have done?”
“You tell me.”
“I’ll tell you why they refused to work—the conditions today were terrible.”
“The conditions are always terrible. Something set them off today. Something made them think it was worth it to fight back.” Calvy’s fingers drummed against his thigh. She was lying. She was lying to him. “Why are you pretending you don’t know what’s going on here, Mara?”
“That’s my business, Cal.”
“Your business? It’s all of our business.” He swept his hand around the room. “We all report to Pent. What are we supposed to say? What will happen to us if we don’t tell him about it? You think he’s going to sign my papers if I cross him?”
“A little late for that,” Harper muttered.
Mara’s eyes burned. “Report what, Cal? What exactly goes into your reports? How many times I come?”
Dannos choked, coughing a mouthful of coffee back into his cup.
Calvy pressed on, refusing to let her derail him. “He’s going to know you were at the factory—he’s going to hear there was a riot.” Liam Pent was no fool. He’d catch on faster than Calvy had. He wouldn’t be distracted. “He knows you better.”
“What does that—”
“Mara. What did you do?”
“Nothing.” She drew out each syllable, as he had emphasized the last four of his.
“Nothing? More nothing?” He turned away from her, one hand on his hip, the other gripping his jaw. “He shouldn’t have left you here. It would be safer on the outskirts.”
“He didn’t know—”
Calvy spun back around. “Mara. I doubt there is anything Liam Pent doesn’t know. He knew my contract was up for grabs before my own father—the leader of the Dern Empire.”
“Yes, and he secured it with me in mind—installed you here to make sure I was safe. So do your job—”
