A great many Allayan people would see Ambrea as the rightful empress of Allay. To see her treated in such a manner would rub them very much the wrong way. They would do whatever was in their power, perhaps just shy of treason, to see to her comfort. Then again, there were those who were not afraid of taking even treasonous action. But Ambrea was not comfortable with putting others too much at risk. Perhaps there would be a time and a place for her to take part in the orchestration of a shift in power, but she had not seen the right opportunity and had never been comfortable with the idea of unseating her father who was emperor by birthright.
But now that her brother was emperor, that made for a very different game. For in her heart she knew she was empress of Allay. The hastily passed laws of a bitter tyrant could not change what blood had dictated. Since time was time the firstborn child of the emperor or empress in power was automatically and by right of that birth, heir.
Her heart beat in a rapid rush as she understood for the first time what her father’s death truly meant. Unless she was foolish enough to sign away all her rights, as her uncle and brother were demanding, she was empress of Allay.
Ambrea felt incessantly cold. Her clothes were always damp. She could feel the weight of the water the fibers now held. And after endless days of imprisonment, they smelled of the must and mildew that infused every corner of the catacombs. She hardly smelled any better. These cells were crafted when personal hygiene had not been taken very seriously. A vibratory shower had been installed against one wall, the small nozzle pointed in such a way that the bathers would have to shove themselves up against the mildewed rock in order to partake of its effects, thus defeating the purpose of the shower. However, the nozzle was faulty, and there were no curtains or privacy doors. She refused to strip herself before the cameras in her cell. She was certain the film would show up in some trashy VidMag faster than she could spit. When she was younger she had not thought much about it, but now she would not give her brother the fuel he needed to denigrate her in the eyes of their people.
One of the guards was kind enough to bring her a bucket of clean, warm water every morning, so she was able to fumble around her clothes with her back to both cameras and make a semi-decent job of maintaining personal hygiene.
Another of the gaolers had brought in a second cot for Suna. He had also brought them warmer blankets and plenty of them. It would perhaps help stave off the inevitable chill-colds that she and Suna would be subjected to during their incarceration in the wet rooms. She recalled that during her last visit in the catacombs she had not been able to shake the first chill-cold she had caught, and it had quickly morphed into something that had nearly killed her. Of course modern medicine would have quickly cleared up the whole thing but Emperor Benit had not seen fit to offer medical care to his daughter until it had become clear she was going to die. It baffled her, as it always did, that he had not simply let her die. Once again he had spared her life, keeping her around despite the threat he perceived her to be.
The guards had also taken to sneaking her VidMags. Normally she didn’t read that kind of fame-hounding trash as Suna was wont to do, but at the moment it was her only connection to the outside world. Of course most of them were only fifty percent accurate, so she had to choose carefully what to believe and what not to believe.
The topic of all interest, of course, was the death of the emperor and the ascension of his son to the throne. They were spinning him to seem older than he was, picking apart his behaviors in order to accentuate those that made him seem more mature and capable. No doubt these were her uncle’s machinations. The free press on Ulrike was not something even the regent could buy, but he had a cadre of public relations experts who could influence general opinion. And they were doing a bang-up job of it so far.
She felt sorry for her brother. Unlike when their father was alive, now he would not be as accepted for making mistakes as he had been. His childhood had been hard enough as a royal heir, with all the expectations due him, but now his entire adolescence had been stolen from him. That and the fact that their uncle was no doubt sitting on the boy’s chest, whispering words of fear and sedition to him. Perhaps the regent was even being abusive of his charge. There was no telling. Ambrea knew from personal experience that the former emperor had not been above laying a personal hand on his offspring. Why would his brother be any different? And if Balkin wanted to wield any true power, that would mean yanking the royal progeny completely beneath his reins, or eliminating him entirely.
The thought made Ambrea restless, and she began to pace her cell. She much preferred to project an air of quietness and peacefulness to the camera’s unceasingly watchful eye, not wanting to give her uncle the idea that she was frustrated by her captivity. In fact, it gave her great pleasure to sit peacefully with Suna playing a game or twist-stitching, especially when she knew it would miff her uncle to watch her behaving in so unruffled a manner. After all, it was a contest of wills. And she simply needed to prove herself the stronger will between them.
The very thought helped calm her, helped bring her into focus. She reminded herself that she could not spend her energies worrying about a brother who was by far better off than she was at that moment. Regardless of the pressures he might suffer, he at least was warm, dry, and, above all else, free.
Then a loud crash sounded in the catacombs beyond her door, the noise echoing forward and back, followed quickly by an uproar of shouts and cries. Ambrea couldn’t help her curiosity and quickly crowded with Suna to see out the small window in their door. The hand-excavated tunnels beyond the door had been shored up with steel frames, the walls covered in pitch and pyorite to harden them for centuries to come as well as those that had already passed. The yellow lights along the tunnels gave them a ghastly color, leaving them in more shadow than illumination.
But in the midst of all that darkness was a bright burst of daylight as the outer doors were opened, allowing a cascade of bodies to tumble down the short flight of stairs. It was a contingent of guards, all well armed and armored, and all being tossed about like tin soldiers. There were clatters and crashes as gun belts and shock vests banged against walls. In the center of the fracas, and the cause of it, was a tremendous brute of a man. He was locked into cuffs, his arms pinned behind his back. He was also well outnumbered, but clearly none of this mattered to him. Even the slam of the outer door and the clanging of its lock didn’t discourage him from gnashing at the nearest guard with the only weapon he had—his teeth.
Well, actually, he had his amazingly bullish size as well. He was easily double the size of any one of those guards, the straining of the arms locked behind him flexing an impressive display of muscle. He growled out a shout, then another, fighting his captivity tooth and nail. However, Ambrea couldn’t escape the feeling that he was playing with them, toying with the men and women milling around him trying to get him under control. The thought made her smile a little. He threw back his head and howled, his golden hair gleaming with sweat at its short ends. At some point he had lost the better part of his shirt, baring his chest and those massive arms, showing off the distention of the veins in his neck and, more distinctly, his biceps. Not to mention the tattoos that ringed them. One was very obviously a Tari tribal tattoo.
“Bad luck for you, my friend,” she whispered.
Tarians were not very welcome in Allay. The IM charter prevented any world or state from closing its borders to members of another world or state, but it was another one of Allay’s poorly kept secrets that they looked on Tarians as little more than savages. They were treated in such a way that Allay was not exactly considered a hot destination spot for Tari vacationers. This was the first time Ambrea had ever laid eyes on a Tarian … at least that she could remember. It was hard not to fear him as he savagely knocked about the gaolers. However, that fear was laced with a strange sort of excitement that doubled her heartbeat. He was clearly savage, yes, but in spite of that she found him strangely erotic, strangely compelling. Her skin
turned unusually warm over her entire body, and the most peculiar sensation of discomforting heat flooded through her. Discomforting, but not wholly unpleasurable. The understanding made her blush, and she ought to have moved away and composed herself; however, she did not. She couldn’t seem to pull her attention from the flex of fine muscles and the sculpture of a truly exquisite male body.
But then he looked up at her as he struggled, bumping and dumping those who tried to hold him. The moment he met her eyes, the corner of his lips drew up on one side, and amusement bled into his russet eyes. Part of her was afraid that he was somehow aware of her inappropriate thoughts toward him, but just the same Ambrea couldn’t help smiling back. He was, she had to admit, very handsome. With angular cheekbones and a rugged squareness to his jaw, he appeared roughly beautiful. The way his gaze held hers was stunning, and it felt as though he could see her in her entirety, straight through the solid door that kept her bound to her cell. Her hands reflexively came to her shoulders, her arms crossing her chest and protecting the racing heart that thundered beneath her breast.
But she wasn’t repulsed or offended. Just connected in a way she had not felt before. In a way that was utterly ridiculous. He was a stranger. A random, beastly man. She should not be feeling like this.
Perhaps it was because he was fighting so hard for his freedom, she thought. She very much understood how he was feeling as he was faced with the notorious wet rooms. Were she as big and strong as he was, she too would have fought tooth and nail against being brought into that place. Every time he threw off one of the guards, she wanted to cheer him on. It took everything she had not to shout out.
Then one of the guards got a clean shot with a stunner, and that big body jolted in pain and surprise. Anybody else would have hit the floor in a mewling ball of discombobulated pain, but not this Tarian. Instead he turned to the gunner and gave him the coldest, deadliest look that Ambrea had ever seen. It even outstripped those that her father and uncle had given her. Probably because their power had been an ephemeral thing, whereas this prisoner’s power was far more tactile and all but bounced off the walls.
“Come try that again, squirt,” the beast goaded the gaoler.
The young gaoler looked as though someone had just stripped him naked and thrust him into Blossom Square. He was still armed, still aiming the weapon straight at the prisoner, but his hands and body were shaking fiercely, and Ambrea wouldn’t have been surprised to see him standing in a puddle of his own wet any second now.
Fortunately for the frightened guard, his compatriots were not as scared. They began to take aim at the prisoner in twos and then, when that had no effect, in threes.
“Surely not even a Tarian can withstand three stunners at once,” Suna whispered. But the tone of her voice was eager and delighted. She, just like Ambrea, wanted to see the Tarian kick them all straight to the Great Being’s doorstep.
But there was truth to what Suna said. Stunners attacked the nervous system, discharging jolts into it that disrupted the electrical impulses of the nerves. Not even a savage Tarian could shake off that kind of disruption. When three stuns filled his body with electricity all at once, there was nothing he could do to withstand it. He staggered at last and fell to his knees, cussing in a garbled sort of way when he couldn’t even think straight enough to form words.
Ambrea hated to see him fall. It made her sad in a way that her own imprisonment had not been able to do. She leaned closer to the bars and could imagine she could smell the out-of-doors and the wild places of Tari on him, not this endless wet mustiness she knew too well. She saw the clench of his jaw, the ticking fury of what had to be an incredible amount of frustration. He was looking directly up at her again, so she clearly saw him make a conscious decision to stop fighting. His big body relaxed, even went limp. Strange, she thought, that it wasn’t already both of those things after being hit with three stunners. Sure, at the time of the stun all the muscles tensed up, and then immediately following would go lax when all normal impulse in the body disrupted the ability to flex or contract, but this was afterward by a good twenty seconds. It was clear to her that he went lax because he had decided to do so.
Oh, to be so powerful a man, Ambrea thought with no little envy. She had seen some strong, dogged women in her time, even female fighters who could excel beyond some of their male counterparts, but not a man like this. This giant was something Ambrea could only dream of being in another lifetime. She was willing to bet there were few others who could push him around or tell him what to do. He was, no doubt, in command of his own destiny.
Although, she realized wryly, he had still managed to end up in exactly the same place she was.
She watched as they quickly bundled him up into a cell only a couple of doors down and across from hers. They were afraid to give him too much time to recover by bringing him down deeper into the wet rooms. That was how the Tarian managed to spare himself the Allay torture chambers, for the time being anyway. Perhaps that had been the method to his seemingly wild madness. Perhaps that had been the source of that playful smile he had shared with her.
She wondered what his crime had been. Had he crossed a line legitimately, or had his tattooed arm and chest made a mark of him, goading the Blossom City guards into fabricating charges or provoking him into breaking city law? Still, not every common criminal or trespasser was given the inestimable experience of the wet rooms. Usually it was an experience reserved for those of higher rank or those who crossed someone of higher rank in a political gambit.
Ambrea’s curiosity ate at her, resulting in her lingering at the door long after Suna lost interest and went back to her twist-stitching. Ambrea got some amusement out of watching the guards regroup after their tussle with the Tarian brute.
“By the Great Being’s ass, he was a strong son of a bitch,” one noted breathlessly to another as he rubbed at a sore shoulder. “I don’t know how we’re expected to transfer him into the deep tunnels.”
“Going to have to knock him out, I guess. Maybe the feel of three stunners will mellow him a little bit.”
The eldest guard, one who was sympathetic to Ambrea’s situation and had proven to be quite wise and intelligent for his position in life, just smiled and shook his head at the younger, less experienced gaolers.
“The only way to mellow out a Tarian is to kill him,” he remarked. “I don’t know what it’s like on that planet, and frankly I don’t want to know, but that hell-acre spits out some of the worst and some of the toughest prisoners I’ve ever dealt with. But I’ll tell you this, if I was caught in a bad spot, I’d want a Tarian fighting on my side.”
“They’re savages,” a younger guard scoffed, looking at his senior coworker as though he’d lost his mind. “Just as soon eat you as fight for you.”
“Don’t be ignorant,” the older guard warned him with a frown. “You know all that crap about them being cannibals is just that. Crap. Don’t you?”
The younger man agreed halfheartedly.
The senior guard looked Ambrea’s way and noticed her at the door window. He gave her a gentle smile. “I guess for these few minutes you were actually glad to be locked safely away, great lady.”
“I doubt that would ever be true,” she rejoined. “I’d much rather be out amongst you fighting a Tarian than locked ‘safely’ away.”
He inclined his head and body in respect and then followed the guards back up the stairs, where they sent a shot of daylight into the darkness before leaving the floor abandoned. Well, hardly that, since they had cameras watching every nook and cranny of it and the doors were locked with the latest security devices. Besides, she knew that the guards weren’t far away. The exterior guardhouse was situated right at the mouth of the catacombs entrance. And there was only one way in or out of the wet rooms.
Even if every prisoner escaped their individual cells, the guards could lock down the catacombs at that single armored and reinforced door and wait for the mob to tire or starve to death. They could
shut down all the water and food dispensers. They could completely control the climate.
No one had ever successfully escaped the wet rooms, and no one ever would. Not even the brutish Tarian. Once they’d dumped him down those stairs, fighting for escape was a lost cause. Perhaps he wasn’t aware of that. Perhaps he hadn’t cared one way or another. He didn’t look as though he was much impressed by those finer details.
Before long, Ambrea’s persistence at the door paid off. The Tarian male stuck his face against the small aperture in his own door and began to look up and down the tunnel. Then he looked across to her and that smile came back, crinkling the corners of his eyes. She noticed then just how tan he was, as though he had spent a great deal of time under a hot sun. She imagined him to be from the plainslands of the planet Tari, where the only true savages might remain. Most Tarians actually came from the clannish space platforms. Like stepping-stones, these colonies were each successively farther away from the actual planet of Tari but still in the same orbit. The closer to the actual vastness of space, the wealthier the platform was, since space traders preferred to go the shortest distance with their goods and found the external colony the easiest to trade with. The goods would then be marked up and would filter from platform to platform, each step adding its own tariff, until by the time they reached planetside it was impossible to afford anything.
This was why Tarian natives on the actual planet—“true Tarians” they liked to call themselves—tended to live nontechnological lives and lived solely off the natural products of the planet. However, it also meant living without modern medicines and food cultivators, which left crops vulnerable to common blights and the ravages of insects and animals, and the populace vulnerable to the devastation of the simplest of diseases. It was said that a true Tarian never left his homeworld in his entire lifetime, so a true Tarian could not be found anywhere but on the planet Tari.