The Dark Places (13 page)

Chapter Fifteen

I kept a transfixed stare on gently
rolling green hills and flat, cultivated lands of the open country, wondering
where we were going. Matt had been curiously silent as he guided the land
flitter out of the city limits. He hadn’t mentioned his meeting with his sire
while we’d dined upon tastefully prepared foods native to Drakis.

“Look over there, doll.” He took a
hand from the steering control, gently grasped my velvet-covered arm, and
turned me to the left.

I peered far across the lands until
I spied a sprawling gray stone edifice with several slender turrets and towers.
He guided the flitter off the narrow track road and stopped the engine. Matt
stepped out of the flitter, and I followed, looking about with bewildered
interest. The temperature outside was pleasantly balmy—I’d never been
surrounded by that much greenery—and yonder stood my first sight of a real land
hold fortress. There had been no landed gentry on Dearleth. The mining
corporations had owned the land.

I tried to imagine what it must
have been like for Matt to grow up on a land hold. Did he run across green
fields like those as a young boy? Dearleth had precious few green lands
coexisting in odd geographical places alongside the winter-locked continents.
And Harnaru had even fewer green oases, existing on its mostly desert-like main
continents.

We walked a short distance away
from the roadside into a nearby field covered with short-cropped grasses. When
my heels didn’t sink into the loose reddish-brown soil, I congratulated myself
for opting to wear the brown suede ankle boots with high, squared heels to
accompany my new burgundy velvet sheath dress. I’d even worn my amethyst necklace.

The sheathed dagger belonging to
Matt’s mother lay inside the small burgundy suede clutch that I carried. I
don’t know what made me grab it at the last moment and slip it between the
clutch’s silk
lining
.
My promise or mere superstition?
My gaze roved past the sprawling land fortress across the seemingly endless
verdant fields that spanned toward the horizon in all directions. I hoped we
didn’t have to range farther infield.

“That’s the Rakeda Hold fortress.
It was built four hundred and thirty standard years ago by the Rakeda family
when they settled here after the Great Expansion from the Terran System. Hostile
Drakisian provinces surrounded it, and the fortress withstood attacks from
warlords for almost three centuries until an Alliance Treaty stopped the conflict.
Everything that you see around us belongs to the
Rakeda
landholdings, which amounts to twenty thousand acres. Seven thousand of those
acres that aren’t visible from here have rich mineral deposits with mining
operations. Three thousand five hundred acres are forests and yield lumber. The
rest are towns and farmlands tenanted out in parcels to other settlers.”

My expression stayed blank while I
carefully swallowed a gulp. I began to understand the full extent of his
station in life. My family had been lucky to claim our fourteen by fourteen meters
unit in the underground colony residencies on Dearleth.

“I had controlling interest in one
half of the investments and land management after I came back fourteen years
ago. I returned that control to my father five years ago when my health
changed. Today, he surprised me by giving it all back. He’s also bequeathed
another one quarter interest in our son’s name under my control until he’s of
age. Drakis will be our home for a very long time, Kai, but I’ll build you a
new house on these acres. It won’t be like that huge gray fortress over there
where no one dared laugh, where I lived with A’lia. I’ll build you a home open
to the skies and the light, so that you may see Drakis, learn to love it, and
paint it. There shall be laughter in our house, Kai, and much love,” he said
with quiet intensity as he stared at me.

This forceful man who was dictating
my future frightened me, but I summoned a smile. “What of Matt Lorins, my lord?
What of the
Stardancer
? What will
become of my poet-trader?”

“He’s always here, Kailiri, as long
as you are with me. The
Stardancer
is
ours. She will be there to take us away when we wish to be completely alone
with each other again.”

I stared into Matt’s eyes and sent
thanks to the Great Creator for my Real Quiet One.

Matt stole a quick kiss from me and
then led me back to the land flitter. “We have to stop at the hold fortress to
see High Lord Markan Rakeda before we return to the hotel, doll,” Matt said in
a too-casual tone. “He’s harsh, but he cared for my mother in his own way and
has been bitter since her death. He demanded to know what you were like when I
visited earlier. When I told him you were like Lady Thais in spirit, he ordered
me to bring you before him immediately. Forget what he said about you in his earlier
message. Don’t let him intimidate you. And ignore anything said by my other
relatives there too, if we should encounter them.”

I should have guessed that he
hadn’t brought me there merely
to
sightsee! Panic made my pulse race.
Oh
no. I have to go meet that old dragon and convince him I’m worthy of his son?

Matt gave me a probing glance as he
guided the hovering flitter at a barely conservative speed across the fields
toward the gray edifice. “I’ll show you the picture in his study that inspired
the name for my first ship before you meet him. When you see the painting of
two lovers fleeing upon a horse before a holocaust event in their city, you’ll
understand that High Lord Markan Rakeda is perhaps not so very different from
me, except that he lost one love and never found a living treasure.”

I smiled politely while I gripped
the clutch containing Lady Thais Nevat Rakeda’s dagger.
But didn’t she choose a grim end rather than live on with the dread
Lord Markan Rakeda?
I fought my rising apprehension at the fast-approaching
meeting with his cheerless and graceless sire.

“I’ll have to buy you Crynishan
Dawns and Zyran Kickers soon, Matt, in order to judge whether your poetic
comparisons are better with or without them.”

“Not needed, doll,” he said,
touching my stomach where our child lay quietly developing. “You’re my
inspiration now.
You and our child.”

And my anxieties calmed. I would
ever again regret leaving Harnaru to walk in the bright and dark places of
Matt’s life and heart…

…until I entered
Rakeda
Hold and met High Lord
Markan
Rakeda
.

The oppressive atmosphere within
the compound clamped upon my awareness soon after I’d alighted from the
flitter. I stood on the gray inlaid brick pavement and stared at the dark stone-and-mortar
building that dwarfed me. A sensation as if someone watched me slithered along
my back. I swung around toward one wing where several neat rows of small windows
on five levels reflected the green skies and fields, but no one peered out. My
searching gaze instead found several surveillance monitors trained upon the
area that warned me security still rated high in priority here after centuries
spent resisting hostile neighbors.

Footsteps approached us off to the
side. A man of indeterminate age, wearing a muted brown uniform and reserved
expression, hurried toward us. “It’s good to see you again, Lord Mattin. Your
father is expecting you.” He spoke with a crisp accent and dipped his head in a
brief nod. “Would you like your flitter moved inside the vehicle port this time?”

“Ah—no.
Please let it rest here, Jaelston. We may need to make a rather quick exit.”
Matt gave him a disarming smile.

Jaelston
allowed his lips to bend several tiny degrees before his expression resumed a
reserved cast. “Yes. I
quite
understand, sir.” He glanced at me and dipped his head lower. “Welcome, my
lady.” Then he straightened and marched across the driveway, past neatly
trimmed landscaping, and disappeared into a side door in the building.

Matt grasped my chilled hand and
guided me across the large driveway to another entrance. This one was a wide
metal-girded wooden door beneath a shadowy overpass. He pressed his hand to a
scanner plate and entered a code sequence on the touch-plate underneath. The
heavy door slid away and we stepped inside. The heavy atmosphere inside the high-ceilinged,
wood-paneled vestibule rivaled the swamping gloom that surrounded me in the
large chilly room that it opened upon
.
How
much gloomier could this place
get?
It didn’t daunt me. Life deep inside an underground city, topped by an
iced-over mountain, had inured me long ago against fear of gloomy places.

Our echoing footsteps on the
polished black marble tiles intruded with loud disrespect upon the slumbering
silence and shadowy alcoves dominating the large room. Matt drew me over to one
nearby shadow-shrouded area and stopped. “I wanted you to see this, Kai.” He
waved a hand before him, and a soft spotlight somewhere above awakened.

The light revealed a panoramic, two-meter
wide by two-meter long wood-framed canvas upon the wall. Genuine, careful oil
paint strokes covered it. The definite texture told me the paint had been applied
by an artist’s hand, instead of the more common, too perfect digital
renderings.

I held my breath at the vibrant
images of the unsmiling but stunning hazel-eyed, olive-skinned woman standing
in formal pose, with a small child held close at her side. Her radiant auburn
hair cascaded along her shoulders down to her slender waist and accentuated her
long, dark green dress.

Mercy—please don’t let
this be A’lia!

“That’s the Lady Thais Nevat
Rakeda… and I’m there at her side. I was somewhere close to four standard years
old at the time.”

It became possible to breathe
again. My brain unfroze, and awe thrilled through me at seeing what Matt looked
like as a child. I focused on the small boy who stared out at the world with fearless
curiosity in his dark, gold-flecked eyes beneath the tumble of dark hair
gracing his head.

“Your mother is very beautiful, and
you
look like an adorable little
angel, Matt.” I pulled my gaze away to give him an admiring smile.

He gently cleared his throat, a wry
smile quirking his lips. “Well, actually, doll, the venerable Lady Thais
Rakeda’s very sharp fingernails were gripping my arm to force me into standing
still for that portrait, restraining me from running off. I have many distinct childhood
memories of collecting quite a few nicknames from her that usually included the
words ‘imp’ and ‘wild.’”

Is
it possible to fall in love with one’s mate again?
I did, while grinning at
the sharp intelligence glinting at me with wicked, teasing delight from his
eyes.

Then, like a light that had been
extinguished, his smile and amusement vanished, a frown replaced them. “Sorry,
doll. I very much regret that you won’t get the chance to see that painting I’d
promised to show you in my father’s study before meeting him. He’s on his way
down now… and he’s not in a good mood.” The frown marring Matt’s brow grew
heavier.
“Probably riled that it took me five hours to bring
you here.
He expects everyone to immediately comply with his orders.”

Wondering how he knew someone
approached since silence still reigned around us, I stared around the
cavernous, austerely furnished chamber. Viewing it again, I couldn’t help
thinking the place likely hadn’t experienced any woman’s attempt at making the
décor more hospitable in decades, although every highly polished surface
gleamed. The overwhelming, gloomy atmosphere remained the same. The place felt
like a prison—an expensive one, of course, but a prison nevertheless. No wonder
Lady Thais wore
no
smile in her portrait.

Heavy footsteps sounded on my
right. I glanced around in time to see a silver-haired, medium-height man
dressed in conservative gray descend a wide staircase I’d missed lurking beyond
a dimly lit alcove. His imperious dark eyes pinned me to the spot as he
approached. I wasn’t certain if the scowl he wore was perpetual or reserved
only for me. My back stiffened and my head went up.

“So,
this
is your chosen second bride whom you salvaged from some bar?
What makes you think she has a spirit similar to your mother’s,
Mattin
?
Nothing
about her reminds me of Lady Thais Rakeda.” He stopped four paces away and his
hard stare raked me up and down. His down-turned mouth expressed further disapproval.

He
knows nothing about me. Why is he attacking me?

I glared at the unpleasant man, my jaws
clamped tight.

Matt’s warm hand tightened on mine,
and he drew me close and then protectively anchored me with an arm around my
waist. “You’ve likely guessed already, Kailiri, that this is High Lord Markan
Rakeda.” Matt snarled as he glowered at his sire. “We’re leaving if your intent
is to insult my wife.
You’re
the one
who requested that I bring her here.”

Matt’s threat made High Lord
Markan
raise his heavy eyebrows, but his piercing stare
remained fastened upon my face. “My son told me you saved his life. I suppose I
should thank you for that, but I think you’re just an opportunistic little flirt
from a back-water colony planet looking for an easy life.”

My life among coldhearted people
had amply prepared me to withstand this hostile, flinty-eyed person’s venom.
But his accusations almost unleashed the unresolved guilt I’d harbored earlier
in my marriage.
Almost….

But
now life is meaningless without Matt
.
I
need him like I need air and water
.

“That’s it. We’re leaving. Don’t
expect me to return until you send apologies to
Kailiri
.”
Matt turned and pulled me with him, but I tugged back, standing my ground and baring
my teeth.