The attendant who would have screamed insult at any other time bowed and smiled at Carrik and scurried away for the delicacies.
‘How do you get away with that?’ Killashandra asked Carrik.
He smiled. ‘Try the wine, Killashandra.’ And his smile suggested that this was going to be a long evening and the prelude to an intimate association.
In protest Killashandra stood up, but she sat down again immediately, very hard, an action imposed on her by Carrik whose eyes glittered with anger and amusement.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, angry now.
‘I’m Carrik of the Heptite Guild,’ he repeated cryptically.
‘And that gives you the right to infringe on my personal freedom?’
‘It does if you heard that crystal whine.’
‘How do you construe that?’
‘Try the wine first, Killashandra Ree. Surely your throat must be dry and I imagine you’ve got a skull ache from that subsonic torture. That would account for your shrewish temper.’
Actually she did have a pain in her head. The sudden reseating had made that obvious. He was right about her dry throat ... and about her shrewish temper. But he’d modified that criticism by stroking her hand caressingly.
‘I must apologize for my bad manners,’ he said without genuine remorse but with a charming smile. ‘That crystal whine is so unnerving. It brings out the worst in us.’
She nodded as she sipped the wine. It was fantastic. She looked at him with delight and pleasure. He patted her arm again and gestured her to drink more.
‘Who are you, Carrik of the Heptite Guild, that port authorities listen and control towers order exorbitant delicacies in gratitude?’
‘You don’t really know?’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I did know,’ she said with a show of her characteristic acerbity.
‘Where have you been all your life that you’ve never heard of the Heptite Guild?’
‘I’ve been studying music in Fuerte,’ she said, spitting out the words.
‘You wouldn’t, by any chance, have perfect pitch?’ The question, both unexpected and too casually said, caught her halfway into a foul temper.
‘Yes, I do but I don’t-’
His face which was not unattractive in its most supercilious expressions became almost radiant with unfeigned elation.
‘What fantastic luck! I shall have to tip the agent who ticketed me here! Why this is unbelievable luck ...’
‘Luck? If you knew why I was here-’
‘I don’t care why. You are and I am.’ He took both her hands and seemed to devour her face with his eyes, grinning with such intense joy she found herself embarrassingly smiling back.
‘Oh, luck indeed, my dear girl. Fate, destiny, Karma, Lequol, Fidalkoram, whatever you care to call this coincidence of our life lines, I ought to order bottles of this wine for that lousy shuttle pilot for letting his crystals sour.’
‘I don’t know what you’re ranting about, Carrik of Heptite,’ Killashandra said, but she was not impervious to the compliments or the charm he exuded. She knew that she tended to put men off by her self-assurance and here was a well-traveled off-worlder, a man of obvious rank and position, genuinely taken with her, however inexplicably.
‘You don’t?’ He teased her for the banality of her protest and she closed her mouth on the rest of her customary rebuff. ‘Seriously,’ he went on, stroking the palms of her hands with his fingers as if to soothe the anger from her, ‘have you never heard of crystal singers?’
‘Crystal singers? Crystal tuners, yes.’
He dismissed tuners with a contemptuous flick of his fingers. ‘Imagine singing a note, a pure clear C, and hearing it answered across an entire mountain range?’
She stared at him.
‘Go up a third, or down, it makes no difference. Sing out and hear the harmony come back at you. A whole mountainside pitched to C, and another sheer wall of pink quartz echoing back in a dominant. Night brings out the minors, like an ache in your breast, the most beautiful pain in the world because the music of the crystal is in your bones, in your blood...’
‘You’re mad!’ Killashandra dug her fingers into his hands to shut off those words. They conjured too many painful associations. She simply had to forget all that. ‘I hate music. I hate anything to do with music.’
He regarded her with disbelief for a moment and then, with an unexpected tenderness and concern reflected in his eyes, he put an arm around her shoulders and drew himself against her despite her resistance.
‘My dear girl, what happened to you today?’
A moment before she would have swallowed glass shards rather than confide in anyone but the warmth in his voice, his solicitude, were so timely and unexpected that the whole of her personal disaster came tumbling out. He listened to every word, occasionally squeezing her hand with sympathetic understanding. But at the end of the recital, she was amazed to see the fullness in his eyes as tears threatened to embarrass her.
‘My dear Killashandra, what can I say? There’s no possible consolation for such a personal catastrophe as that! And there you were,’ and his eyes were brilliant with what Killashandra chose to interpret as admiration, ‘having a bottle of wine as coolly as a queen. Or,’ and he leaned over her, grinning maliciously, ‘were you just gathering enough courage to step under a shuttle?’ He kept hold of her when she tried to free herself at his outrageous suggestion. ‘No, I can see that suicide was furthest from your mind.’ She subsided at that implicit compliment. ‘Although,’ and his expression altered thoughtfully, ‘you might have inadvertently succeeded if that shuttle’d been allowed to take off again. If I hadn’t been here to stop it ...’ He flashed her that charmingly reprehensible smile of his.
‘You’re full of yourself, aren’t you?’ But her accusation was said in jest for she found his autocratic manner an irresistible contrast to anyone of her previous acquaintance.
He grinned unrepentantly and nodded towards the remains of their exotic snack, which the attendant had obsequiously deposited on the table at some point during Killashandra’s tale.
‘Not without justification, dear girl. But look, you’re free of any commitments right now, aren’t you?’ he asked, eagerly. When she hesitantly nodded, ‘Or is there a friend you’ve been seeing?’ He asked that almost savagely, as if he’d eliminate any rival immediately.
Later Killashandra might remember how adroitly Carrik had handled her, preying on her unsettled state of mind, on her essential femininity, but that tinge of jealousy was highly complimentary and the eagerness in his eyes, in his hands, was not feigned.
‘No one to matter or miss me.’
Carrik looked so skeptical that she reminded him that she’d devoted all her energies to singing.
‘Surely not all?’ He mocked her for such dedication.
‘No one to matter,’ she repeated firmly.
‘Then I will make an honest invitation to you. I’m off-world on holiday. I don’t have to be back to the Guild till ... well,’ and he gave a nonchalant shrug, ‘when I wish. I’ve all the credits I need ... Help me spend them. It’ll purge the music school from your system.’
She looked at him squarely, for their acquaintanceship was of so brief and hectic a duration she simply hadn’t thought of him as a possible companion. She didn’t quite trust him. She was both attracted and repelled by his domineering, highhanded ways and yet he presented a challenge to her. He was certainly the diametric opposite of the young men she’d encountered on Fuerte.
‘We don’t have to stay on this mudball either.’
‘Why did you come?’
He laughed. ‘I’m told I haven’t been on Fuerte before. I can’t say it lives up to it’s name - or maybe you’ll live up to the name for it? Oh come now, Killashandra,’ he said when she bridled. ‘Surely you’ve been jollied before? Or have music students changed so much since my day?’