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.
Boltiko had come from Matuko for three watches exactly, to get Saba settled into the Prima Suite. Paula had made her color this bedroom white. There were six ruby-laser paintings on the walls, streams of color constantly changing. She sat cross-legged on the end of the bed and watched a red line curl and curl across the wall. Just when she had felt in control, her life was breaking apart again. The flying colors on the walls made her nervous. Putting on her coat, she went out into the city, to the new White Market in the Steep Street.
She had arranged this market, the first in Vribulo, worked by free people, not Styths. Morosely she walked around the rings of stalls. This was the only practical thing she had ever done. Gradually it was doing more business. People wandered from booth to booth, and a crowd kept her away from the jewelry, the metalware.
Under a sign advertising fabric a vendor in a long apron was stacking bolts of cloth on a table. Nobody seemed to be interested. Paula stopped and put her hand out toward a shining red silk.
“Not that.” Saba pushed her hand away. “That would look terrible on you. I don’t think you have any sense of what you really look like.” He waved to the vendor, who stooped and brought up more cloth. Paula smiled up at the big Styth, pleased to have company.
“Where is Tanuojin?”
“I just saw him get on a bus to Yekka.”
“To Yekka.” She straightened, turning away from the cloth. “But aren’t you taking the Luna Agreement into the Chamber next watch?”
“I don’t need Tanuojin for that. Look at this.”
She looked down at the table again. The textured surface of a panel of black fabric drew her fingers. Woven into the material was an abstract design of gammadions, the good luck sign.
“Give her this,” Saba said. “And that.” He stretched across to reach a bolt of black cloth glinting with silver threads. He faced her again.
“This stuff is Martian fiber, dyed in Venus, shipped in Styth hulls. The Luna Agreements only say the obvious. How can they reject the obvious? There’s one system, that’s the way the system works.”
She paid the vendor and told him to send the cloth to the man who made all her clothes. Everything was twice as expensive as before the war. She clinked the coins in her fist.