Hellhole (9 page)

Ishop nodded nervously in spite of himself. “I . . . take your point, Administrator.”

“Don’t believe everything you read about me, Mr Heer.”

Ishop swallowed, tugged at his gloves again. “May I formally request an extension of your hospitality until such time as the weather improves?”

“If you insist. But once the storm is over, you can walk to town and find other lodgings there.” He let the man back inside, and closed the door behind them. His ears rang from the sudden silence. “As soon as the next stringline hauler arrives, I expect you’ll be on your way back to the Diadem with your report.”

S
onjeera was the loveliest world in the Constellation, beneficial to the harmony of the human spirit. Princess Keana’s favorite residence, commonly known as the Cottage, stood on the same expansive grounds as the Diadem’s palace, but set well apart from her mother’s home. More than eight centuries ago, Philippe the Whisperer, one of the most famous diadems in the old Constellation, had built the luxurious retreat on the edge of the Pond of Birds for his beautiful wife, Aria Ongenet, who met her numerous lovers there with careful discretion, so as not to embarrass the reigning sovereign.

Keana’s official obligations as the Diadem’s daughter were not exactly time-consuming – dedicating the occasional government building, opening orphanages, attending charity functions, cutting ribbons on new museums, making appearances at children’s hospitals, or christening stringline ships. It only amounted to a few hours or days here and there, so she had plenty of time to muse about the noble bloodlines and entanglements in the Duchenet family tree. She was required to do little else.

Keana had chafed for years at the limitations and expectations placed on her. A wasted life! She had felt sorry for herself and very much alone until two years ago, when she’d found Louis de Carre. After that, her life was filled with love and excitement, colors, possibilities. She was so tired of playing by the rules!

In the whirlwind of their passion, Keana and her exuberant lover barely paid lip service to keeping their affair a secret. If her own husband didn’t mind, and she had no political career anyway, why should Keana bother with the effort?

A tall, shapely woman, she was in her prime and quite pretty, with a young face, dark blue eyes, and shoulder-length auburn hair. Her handmaidens and advisers claimed she was beautiful enough not to need makeup, though her nitpicking mother (who spent more than an hour being “prepared” for each of her public appearances) disagreed. Diadem Michella had something critical to say on virtually every subject.

As the ruler’s only child, Keana had grown up on the royal estate, destined to be a showpiece, not qualified for any position of political significance. When Diadem Michella retired or died, Keana would be given a stipend and an estate, and she would finish out her life in quiet ennui. By law, no Duchenet could become Diadem again for at least another generation.

As a little girl, Keana had come to the Cottage often, riding in an old carriage drawn by a team of gaxen, a species of draft animal unique to Sonjeera. At the serene pond’s edge, she would listen as the carriage drivers told tales of intrigue and death. One of Aria Ongenet’s lovers, a nobleman half her age, was said to have thrown himself into the churning wheel of the nearby water mill, because she refused to divorce her husband and marry him. Keana thought that a passion so profound should have overcome the hurdle of a loveless marriage. Now, with sweet Louis, she comprehended true love.

More than a decade ago, her mother’s political machinations had forced Keana to marry Lord Bolton Crais, a dithering and lackluster nobleman from an influential family. She considered the man dull in the extreme, though sweet enough in his own way. Bolton had some military and administrative abilities, having served as a logistics officer in the war against General Adolphus. He hadn’t particularly wanted to marry her either, or anyone else, but he did as his family asked. Bolton was never cruel to her, never unpleasant, probably not even unfaithful; in fact, he wasn’t much of
anything
. And Keana didn’t love him.

Louis was quite different. Though almost twenty years older than she was, the widowed Vielinger nobleman had a full head of black hair and did not look or act his actual age. A charming, witty man of extensive education, Louis always managed to surprise Keana with his kindness, his humor, his tenderness.

With Louis, at least, she felt important. During his frequent visits to Sonjeera, supposedly on business, Keana would set up an assignation at the Cottage. Their relationship gave her the excitement she craved, a taste of true passion instead of dutiful inter-family alliances. She felt alive for the first time, and Louis actually discussed things with Keana – revealing to her an entire universe beyond Sonjeera . . .

At the Cottage, a series of small pools of varying geometric shapes formed a decorative necklace around the inside courtyard and central pool. Short tunnels connected the pools, allowing swimmers to dive into one and emerge from another; one long tunnel led all the way to the Pond of Birds. According to legend, two drownings had occurred as Aria Ongenet encouraged young noblemen to swim longer and longer distances as the price of her favors. After Aria’s death, the long tunnel to the pond had been sealed off for centuries, until Louis asked to have it reopened.

“You have nothing to prove – you’ve already won my love,” Keana insisted when Louis first suggested swimming all of the pools underwater. His daring impulsiveness was precisely the opposite of the staid, conventional Bolton Crais.

“It’s not for you that I must prove it,” Louis said. “It is for myself.”

He stood in his red-and-gold swimsuit, gazing at the pools and considering the route he had decided to swim: all of the pools at once without coming up for air, including a passage through what he dubbed the “Tunnel of Death.” Keana did not find the facetious name the least bit amusing. The dashing nobleman had a muscular body, but he was no longer as young as he thought he was.

Wearing a long blue summer dress with the Duchenet crest on the collar, she raised herself on tiptoes to kiss him. With a wink, Louis said, “I’ll think of a new love poem for you while I’m swimming.” Then he dove smoothly into the central pool and swam underwater faster than she’d ever seen him go.

She watched him traverse each pool, never missing a stroke. With nervous steps, she hurried along the above-ground path to follow his progress, frustrated with his impetuosity.

Their relationship was not much of a secret; poor Bolton pretended not to notice that he was being cuckolded, turned a deaf ear to the whispered gossip, but he wasn’t stupid. He and Keana had an “understanding,” and he was willing to overlook his wife’s activities.

But her mother knew that Keana and her husband kept separate bedrooms, even separate residences most of the time. The lack of children to carry on the Duchenet (and Crais) bloodlines remained a cause for friction. Diadem Michella had not borne her own daughter until quite late in her child-bearing years.

Once, in a heated argument, Michella had said, “If you can’t let Bolton give you a proper heir, you’d better not get pregnant by any of your other lotharios.” Incensed by the suggestion of promiscuity, Keana had stormed out of the Diadem’s palace and taken up permanent residence at the Cottage. There had been no one else for her besides Louis, not even dutiful sex with her husband for the past two years. Lord de Carre already had his own son and heir, the competent and reliable Cristoph who had recently taken over management of the Vielinger iperion mines so that Louis could devote his attention to her.

Now Keana stood over the entrance to the long tunnel, looking down with concern and excitement as her lover stroked across the last small pool and then entered the dark waterway. Unable to see him anymore, she ran the length of the tunnel above ground to the outlet at the pond. Even here in the open air, she felt out of breath, and her heart was pounding.

Why didn’t he surface? It was taking too long! Then she spotted movement just offshore in the murky pond, and Louis’s head and arms shot out of the water. He gasped for air, struggling to breathe. Not caring about her dress, Keana jumped into the pool and stood in the waist-deep water, holding him close. She felt his heart beating against hers, and she stroked his dark, wet hair. “Now will you stop being so foolish? There’s nothing you need to prove. Not to me or yourself.”

Louis wiped water from his face, looked at her with a bemused expression. “Your dress and hair are soaked, my dearest.”

She gave a rueful laugh, kissed him, then pushed away and swam across the pond. He caught up to her and said, “Here, let me help you with that.” In the warm water, he pulled at the wet fabric. She kissed his neck as he carried her to the grass, leaving her discarded dress to float in the pond.

Afterward, as they lay naked and spent from making love, he looked up at the willows and complained about having to do actual business while here on Sonjeera. “You so easily make me lose track of time, my sweet – not just the hours, but the days as well. I’ve just realized I’m supposed to be at an important vote regarding Vielinger this afternoon, or maybe it was this morning.”

She sighed, running a fingertip down his chest. “Politics. Do you really have to go?”

“I’ve probably already missed it, and I’d much rather be here with you, where I can forget all that nonsense.”

She brightened. “No one will notice you’re not there?”

“Oh, they’ll notice all right. They’ll make another attempt to weaken the de Carre family, and scheming noblemen have been trying to do that for centuries. Don’t worry, they never succeed.”

“Your son is managing the iperion operations,” she said. “Everything is in good hands.”

“The best.” He smiled at her. “The nobles will argue and they’ll vote, and then they’ll argue again. Nothing ever changes. The Riominis keep trying to take my planet away from me, with one scheme after another. Today will be no different, whether or not I’m there. And I’d much prefer to spend the afternoon in your delightful company.”

She laughed, knowing the Council of Lords would be upset by Louis’s lack of seriousness. Let them huff and puff!

A troubled shadow crossed his face, though. “Of late, however, their efforts have crossed a line. Someone is sabotaging my iperion mines, making Cristoph look incompetent, though he can’t possibly be to blame. Some of the citizens are even angry at me! How can that be? I have always been concerned about the welfare of my people. I think I’ll make a statement in open council session one of these days, just to set the record straight.”

Keana wanted to do something to help. “Would you like me to talk with my mother about it?”

Louis looked at her with a sad, endearing expression. “No offense, my darling, but your job is to grace Sonjeera’s social events with your presence and be decorative, not to twist arms.”

The remark stung, but Keana could not dispute the truth.

T
o the untrained eye, the cavern conditions might have appeared normal, but Cristoph de Carre knew otherwise. Tense mine operators and engineers in sealed worksuits hurried about their tasks, supervising remote-controlled machines. Extraction skimmers hovered over the blue-veined walls, peeling off raw iperion without damaging its delicate structure. The sensitive mineral was unstable before processing and had to be mined in micro-thin layers and kept very cold, otherwise it would be rendered useless for stringline purposes. The skimmers looked like fat bees with bulbous refrigerated storage compartments on their bodies to hold the harvested iperion.

“A few more veins and this part of the mine will be played out, my Lord.” Lanny Oberon raised his voice to be heard above the drone of the extraction machines. He adjusted a setting below the faceplate of his sealed suit, shutting off the taslight on top of his helmet.

Cristoph did the same with his borrowed work suit. Garish work lights and various improvised fixtures gave the cavern plenty of illumination. “Then we’ll just have to look harder for other veins, Lanny. Vielinger can’t possibly be wrung dry.” De Carre family fortunes had depended on the mines for centuries, and even the most conservative estimates suggested the supplies would last for another two decades at least. Still, it was cause for him to be concerned about his family’s future, knowing that the boom days of the previous century were past.

Cristoph stood with the mining foreman on an observation platform that vibrated underfoot. On the cavern floor below, one worker rolled a portable tool cart up to a control panel that flashed a red error light. “It’s still profitable to get the last harvest from the deepest tunnels, but let’s try to finish our excavations without any further accidents.”

Recently, there had been too many equipment malfunctions and workplace mistakes to be considered coincidence; he knew he had good people. Cristoph suspected outside involvement but couldn’t prove it. He had posted additional guards at the mine facilities, processing operations, and shipping warehouses, but some said it simply made him look paranoid.

Inside his suit, Cristoph coughed several times, finally clearing the tickle in his throat. “Stuff manages to get through even state-of-the-art filter systems.” The ultrafine deep-shaft dust, a byproduct of iperion extraction, was known to cause severe lung deterioration.

Oberon sympathized. “That’s why we get the big paychecks, my Lord. The men know the risks and still come to work. As the iperion gets tougher to extract, the value goes up . . . and so do our shares. I can put up with a little dust.”

“Of course, if someone found a new source of iperion on another Crown Jewel world, or even out in the Deep Zone, the bottom would fall out of the market,” Cristoph pointed out. “And maybe we wouldn’t be such a desirable target.”

“They haven’t found any other sources yet, my Lord. We’ve got to make the best of this one.” Looking weary, Oberon immersed his gloved hands deep in the pockets of his dirty gray work suit. “I’m glad you’ve come to watch over us, sir. Haven’t seen your father in some time. He’s away on Sonjeera again?”