“Dinner is ready,” he said. “Would you care to join me?”
She wrinkled her nose at him and asked, “Do I have a choice?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “You do. But I really hope you choose to eat with me, because I put considerable work into preparing dinner.”
She laughed, and then shook her head. Her wild riot of reddish curls bounced, then she stood up.
“Then I would be honored to join you,” she said.
He let her walk before him into the room, savoring the small sigh of appreciation she gave when she saw what he’d done.
“Jerred, this is amazing,” she said slowly, turning to face him. “It’s just like some kind of fancy restaurant!”
“Well, I figured that if we were going to eat the Emperor’s kvana, we should do it right. Of course, I don’t have servants to wash our hands for us, and I’ll have to bring out each course…”
She burst out laughing again, and sat down. He sat across from her, watching her face as she took a sip of the wine. Her eyes closed and she moaned in appreciation.
“What is this?” she muttered. “I’ve never tasted anything like it. It’s amazing.”
“It’s the Emperor’s private reserve,” he said. Her eyes opened, and she wrinkled her nose at him.
“It’s good, but it isn’t that good,” she said.
“Really?” he asked, lifting his glass and taking a sip for himself. His taste buds were overwhelmed with a symphony of tastes. It stole across him like a ray of moonlight, and he almost felt the coolness of an evening breeze along an ocean. The taste was rich and full, and as it matured in his mouth he could feel sparkles of sensation washing down along his spine. His loins tightened in response, and he felt himself harden slightly. He opened his eyes.
“I think you should take another sip,” he said, meeting her gaze. “It really is good.”
She took another sip, and her eyes closed again.
She didn’t moan this time, but a becomingly pink flush stole across her face, and her breath quickened.
“Okay, it is pretty good,” she sad, opening her eyes and giving him a sheepish look.
“What is this stuff, anyway? It’s not like any wine I’ve ever tasted.”
“I told you,” he said softly. “It’s the Emperor’s private reserve. It’s made by a group of monks sworn to the Goddess, and the last five hundred years they’ve only produced a thousand bottles a year. The emperor has first bid on it, of course. Some say it’s an aphrodisiac.”
“So how did you get it?” she demanded.
“That’s my little secret,” he replied with a smile. “Why don’t you try your food?”
She looked at him a moment longer, suspicion in her eyes. He could tell she didn’t believe him about the wine, which made it all the more fun to see the surprise in her face when she took another sip.
She reached down, and hesitantly cut into the mushroom. He followed suit, careful to watch her face as she took a bite.
“Oh, Goddess,” she said. “This is almost melting in my mouth. Where did you get these? They don’t taste like they’ve been in storage at all, but I know you didn’t buy them at on Transit Three. And we’re a long way from Gnoscanny.”
Now she had surprised him.
“You’ve had Gnoscan mushrooms before?” he asked. “Not many people have.”
She nodded and turned away for a second. Then she turned back to him and took a generous gulp of her wine. It didn’t hit her as hard this time, but she flushed and stayed silent for a moment.
“I can see how a person could get addicted to this stuff,” she said slowly. “It really has a way of making you feel better about things. I used to have Gnoscan mushrooms all the time. I grew them myself.”
“Really?” he asked, startled. “It takes a pretty sophisticated biosphere set up to grow them. No offense, but I have trouble seeing how you could afford something like that on a waitress’ income.”
She shook her head and laughed, but this time the sound came out bitter.
“They grow wild on Hector Prime,” she said, her face growing wistful. “I used to live there. I had my own bar, actually. Of course, it’s gone now.”
He nodded his head slowly, remembering. Hector Prime’s surface had been destroyed by Imperials several months after the cease-fire. They’d claimed it had been an intelligence error, a mistake of planet-wide magnitude. Millions had died, including the cream of the Imperial academic community specializing in biology.
“You’re Saurellian, aren’t you?” she asked. “I haven’t met many of your kind, but I think I recognized the facial features. Or kind of recognize them. It’s hard to tell with your scar, but the coloring is right.”
“Yes,” he replied, not quire sure where she was going with this. “I’m Saurellian. I remember when your planet was destroyed. I’m so sorry—did you lose family?”
“No,” she said slowly. “But I lost friends. And employees. I just happened to be off planet, meeting with a supplier on one of the moons. It was a fluke. Two hours earlier or two hours later and I would have been dead. Tell me something?”
He nodded, wishing he hadn’t asked. There was pain written all over her lovely face, and it hurt in him a way he never would have thought possible.
“Why didn’t your government do anything?” she asked, her voice anguished. “We were in the neutral zone. We were supposed to be protected. Why didn’t you do anything when they broke the truce and killed us?”
“We couldn’t,” he said slowly. “We had to pretend to believe their excuses, otherwise the war would have started again. We couldn’t afford to let that happen. Too many people had died already.”
“They killed our planet because they heard you had a secret base there, or at least that’s what I heard,” she said softly. “Well, one of the things I heard. Can you tell me if it was true?”
He closed his eyes, and shook his head. Damn Nicolai. It had been wrong to hide their resources among a neutral civilian population—it broke all the rules of war. But Nicolai had insisted that following those rules was no way to win, and he’d been right.
The war with the Imperials had almost destroyed them. He sighed, and then opened his eyes.
“There was no base—” he started to say, but the pain in her face was so open, so raw, that he couldn’t finish. He took another drink of the wine, but now it tasted more like water to him. Foul water, the kind that couldn’t quench a man’s thirst.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that we had a base there,” he said slowly. “But I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“You prick,” she whispered. She stood up slowly from the table. “You killed all of them, you and your fucking war. We were neutral—the entire planet was a damn ecological preserve. The people who died were students and teachers! What gave you the right to do that to us?”
He shook his head slowly, not knowing what to say. It wasn’t the time for an argument on the importance of checking Imperial power, or the fact that the Imperial rebels had asked his people for help long before the war started.
“I know we have a deal,” she hissed. “I know I have to fuck you. I’ll do it here and now if you want. But I’ll be damned if I’ll eat with you. Enjoy your wine alone.”
She turned and stalked out of galley with a dignity so frail it pained him to watch her.
Chapter Five
Giselle sat on her bunk, legs curled up to her chest, hugging herself. Damn him, why did he have to make her think of Hector Prime? She’d put it out of her head for months, almost a year. Why did he have to bring it all back?
She knew in her heart that whatever his flaws, he probably wasn’t personally responsible for the Saurellians’ decision to breach Hector Prime’s neutrality. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the memory of her lost friends and dreams.