She trembled, rage shivering in the curl of her upper lip. "Kill him!"
The older man slowly picked himself up off the floor. His nose, mouth, and eyes bled. The lean psycher stared at Ven.
"Kill him!"
"They can't, dear," Ven told her, his lips a few centimeters from her ear. "You can't fight me with your mind. We've tried that, remember? If your cousins attack me, they'll have to spend time breaking through my outer shield. My blade will end your life in half a second. And then I'll kill both of them, and if I don't, your father will."
Castilla growled, a purely animal sound suffused with helpless fury.
"So sweet and refined," Ven said. "As always, a true blossom of the Provinces."
"Fuck you!"
"Perhaps later, if I decide to go slumming." Ven nodded at the lean psycher. "Pelori, let her go. Now."
The hold on Claire's mind vanished. Her heels touched the ground. "Thank you," she said to Ven. "Shall I alert the authorities?"
"There is no need. We're finished here." Ven let go of Castilla and the woman shoved away from him.
"You'll regret this," she snarled.
"I had to touch you — I'm regretting it already."
Castilla spun and walked out of the lobby. The older man followed. The lean psycher lingered, looking her over, and walked away.
"Are you alright?" Ven asked, his mind probing hers gently, searching for damage.
"I'm fine." She forced calm to flow through her outer thoughts. "Shall we go up?"
"No. I've changed my mind." He leaned closer. "We won't get to Sangori now. He had too much time to prepare." Aloud he said, "Will you join me for dinner instead?"
"Of course."
"Excellent."
They walked out. The moment they boarded Venturo's sleek silver aerial, the force of his mind flowed over hers, like a shield. "Will you let me scan your mind for injuries?"
"I would rather not."
"Why?"
"We're not that close," she told him. "I like to keep my thoughts private. I ask you to respect this boundary."
"Very well." Ven punched the code into the aerial's console, pulling his mind back. "Where would you like to eat?"
Claire considered it. She could tell him to take her home. In all likelihood, he simply wanted to observe her to see if her mind unraveled. But he was right here, next to her, and he was offering her an evening of his undivided attention. It wasn't in her power to turn it down.
I'm so pathetic.
If she was going to do this, she would make the best of it.
"Somewhere private," she said. "I think I've had enough excitement for today."
The aerial's engine hummed as they rose into the air. "I know just the place," he said.
Claire had no idea that the top floors of the Guardian Building housed a garden. In this part of the structure the outer exoskeleton of plasti-steel beams sloped, forming the upper curve of the flower bud, and the space between the diagrid and the inner core of the building was only about twenty-five meters. Those twenty-five meters were occupied by a tiled deck. Ornamental shrubs and flowers formed green barriers, slicing the deck into small private sections. Ven brought her to the larger of these sections.
Three comfortable wicker chairs with burgundy-red cushions waited in the center of the deck, each with its own side table, arranged around a large metal brazier. Past the chairs, the solar panels of the sloping diagrid had turned transparent, reacting to encroaching darkness. The sky spread before her, vast, endless, tinted with purple and blue, the stars distant points of light. Little white flowers bloomed in the flower beds, filling the air with a refined perfume reminiscent of peaches.
Venturo took an ornate bin behind one of the chairs, dumped a small heap of uniform black stones out of it into the brazier and added wood chips.
"What's this?"
"Charcoal."
"Fossil fuels? Really?" How quaint.
"It's a provincial tradition." He drenched the coals in some fluid and lit it with a flick of a spark stick. The coals ignited. A wave of heat washed over Claire. She smelled smoke. It wasn't an unpleasant scent.
To their right, the glass doors opened and a smiling man came forward, followed by an computerized trolley.
"Ah. Here comes our food. Thank you, Ertez."
"You're welcome. Enjoy."
The man departed. The top of the trolley opened like a flower, revealing half a dozen larger dishes, each supporting long skewers threaded with vegetables and meat.
"Pick one."
She puzzled over the choices and chose a skewer at random. "This one."
Ven lowered the skewer into the openings cut in the rim of the brazier, picked out his own skewer, and placed it next to hers. Flames licked the meat.
"Do you feel lightheaded at all?" he asked casually, plucking a bottle painted with icy lace of frost from the trolley. "Any strange vision problems, like tiny glowing threads flying about?"
He was trying to check if she suffered any mind lesions. Claire smiled. "I'm fine."
Ven opened the bottle and poured shimmering pink liquid into two glasses. "I'm sorry. I should have never put you into that position."
Ven would have never attacked a civilian. In his mind, that sort of action was filed under It's Just Not Done. His mind-shields were down — probably so he could scan her mind at the first sign of trouble — and his emotions leaked out. He was intensely worried about her well-being.
Claire smiled.
"Am I funny?"
"No."
"Then why are you smiling?"
"I find your customs — Dahlia customs — antiquated. Charming, but antiquated."
"We're a very violent society," he said, turning the skewers. "We have to have customs and ceremonies, otherwise we'd constantly offend each other and soon none of us would be left. Some things are not done. Attacking a civilian is one of them."
"Were you worried?" She sipped the pink drink. It was sweet, tart, and refreshing, with a trace of alcohol. She realized it must be wine.
"Yes," Ven said. "I was worried. I didn't want you to be hurt because I was caught off-guard."
"I wasn't worried," she told him.
"I noticed. You handled the whole situation with the poise of a seasoned kinsman." He laughed. "A violent psycher paralyzes your mind, and when he lets you go, you calmly ask if you should alert the authorities. You kill me, Claire."
Kill. A dangerous word. "I considered screaming in blind panic, but I didn't want to break your concentration."
"Was that a joke?"
"Possibly."
He raised his glass. "Congratulations."
"Thank you." She grinned and drank her wine.
Ven frowned. "I don't know what Castilla has on Sangori, but I called a friend of mine in the Provinces, Celino Carvanna. The man is a financial shark, so if something is going on with Sangori, I will soon know about it."
Ven took a plate from the trolley, used a fork to slide the meat and vegetables off the skewer onto it, and passed it to her. Claire took a bite. The meat tasted smoky and tender and completely delicious.
"This is great."
"There is something about food cooked over the open flame," he said. "I don't know if it's a racial memory from the time we huddled around the fire in animal skins, but there are few things as flavorful."
He raised his glass. She raised hers and he clinked it against hers. "Do you like the wine?"
"I love it. This is my first taste."
"No wine on Uley?" he asked.
"No. Occasionally we would be issued grain alcohol, but no wine." She bit the meat and chewed, savoring the taste. "Do you and Castilla have some sort of prior history?"
Ven sighed. "Yes. Yes, we do. My father was an off-worlder. He came to Rada with nothing except the clothes on his back, but he was a very powerful psycher and my mother's family took him in. He became a client It's the next step up from the retainer. When you're a client, you are almost family. My father fell in love with my mother and she fell in love with him. They married. He took the Escana name, because our family had status and name recognition, while his surname meant nothing. They were both older at the time, so it was a surprise when I came along."