9: Sparkle Lounge Blues Evit Jatus sat at the nearest bar in a part of the ship she still didn’t know. Her quarters here were the same kind of rooms as before, two little squares plus kitchen and bath, and she saw the same kinds of faces if not the same ones exactly, but something was irreparably different.

  Maybe it was Evit.

  She finished her drink. The bartender—nothing to make him stand out, only a uniform exactly like hers—extended a hand for her gss. “Another?”

  Wearily, she nodded, resting her arms on the glowing streak of bar top. The guests weren’t like that. She gnced over at the tiny cluster of three in white, floating in a sea of bck-cd, uniformed staff. Three young women in the strangest, prettiest clothes Jatus had ever seen, like snowy, frilled moths on a bck night. She missed home with a lurch, and Moby. They’d known each other a long time.

  The bartender set a fresh gss in front of her. She lifted it and drank half, staring sightlessly at the fat stripe of light marred with round ragged puddles. The mothered guests! Damn them for their people eyes and their people mouths moving in their people faces, the people thoughts moving through their people heads.

  Bearach Rev Liedan had been trying not to show it. Princess Katherine—

  She swallowed, thinking of the Girl on the table in Medical, the Girl with fever in her eyes asking to have the bracelet off, and drank the other half straight down to the rattling ice balls. “Another.”

  “Sure. If you want to keep pouring them down, I’ll keep pouring them?” His voice went down a little at the end, a question.

  She didn’t know the bartender’s name yet, but the way she was going she’d pick it up. He was built wide and stocky. His face was a little ftter than the Perfect Average. A little outside—she could do worse. Probably.

  “I’ll think about it?”

  “I can pour you into bed ter.”

  “Yes, I took your meaning.” Fuck that, Moby chortled in her head. “I don’t think so.” The ceiling of the egg-shaped lounge was high above, but it seemed to loom over her head. She pinched her eyebrows together. Whatever he’d say, she didn’t want to take notice of it. She slid off her bck stool.

  The bartender shrugged broad shoulders. His uniform strained slightly. “Suit yourself. I’ll be around. You want another or not?”

  Jatus stood at her stool, hand on the bar, wavering. That wasn’t too bad, as responses went.

  Then he walked in the door, gncing around from beautiful eyes that calcuted as they sparkled. He seemed taller—Bearach Rev Liedan. He looked so different from before, even though he hadn’t changed much. Instead of sharper, tailored wool lines, he looked soft and glittery.

  Her thighs prickled in between as he crossed back to the bar. His clever eyes darted as he swiveled back and forth, never resting. His stomach was bare except for a fat piece of jewelry in his navel. Her mouth was so dry she sat back down. “Another.”

  The bartender chuckled softly, but he poured another dollop of liquor into her icy gss. None of the bartenders working the long glowing line of the egg seemed to please Bearach. He didn’t approach the bar any closer. In a second he would pass. He wore shoes like she’d never seen before she saw a guest, those tall ones with thin spikes for heels.

  Until now, why they wore them was as much a mystery as anything else about them. Bearach’s legs solved the mystery as soon as she got an eyeful. He stopped just past her, fshing a red sole, the only color on him besides white and gold, and stood looking deep into the bar.

  The staff was busily noticing, hissing whispers into their hands. No one approached him, but he seemed not to know it wasn’t done that way.

  He turned a gorgeous smile on Jatus. “Is the seat next to you taken, Ensign?”

  He knew all along, she thought. How did he know? And what should she say? She shook her head. It was a mistake, but maybe an understandable one.

  If a wider, whiter smile was possible, she didn’t want to see it. “Wonderful.” He perched on the stool to her right like a graceful bird, fring his feathers—as if she didn’t have eyes.

  “What’ll you have?” The bartender wore a straight face, but she knew he was amused at her expense.

  “I’ll take anything you give me, Handsome,” the Rev Liedan replied, aiming his smile at the bartender. “With shoulders like that, you can start wherever you’d like.”

  “Something special?” The bartender didn’t miss a beat. He must have seen a lot, with his job, but she couldn’t imagine he’d seen anything like Bearach Rev Liedan. She was still trying to figure out if he was more clothed or bare. Every time she settled on one, he’d move and it would change. The finest gold speckles sparkled subtly on his lips.

  “You know, if you want to get id, this isn’t the way to go about it,” she couldn’t resist saying. Wasn’t it her responsibility to see to the comfort of the guests? So many of them had come to her with little things—my faucet isn’t working, I want different snacks, I don’t like white clothes…

  His smile went sly, pulling higher at the corners. “Oh, no? But it’s working so well on you.”

  Jatus couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d sat on a live wire. She found herself sitting up straight. “Excuse me?”

  He closed full lips and hummed before he spoke again. “Is it not working? Don’t lie, now.” His cologne was something spicy, a fleeting whiff. Her tongue shed behind her teeth.

  “All right, it’s working. That’s not my point.” Moby wouldn’t have sounded this stiff. Sat this rigidly. “I’m saying, you’re not going to get bites dangling bait like that. If you want to catch flish, you have to py hard to get. Skim the fy across the water.” The folksy sound of it made her want to cringe.

  “Is that right!” Bearach spun on the stool, stopping so he faced precisely 180 degrees from where he’d started, and hooked golden elbows on the glowing white bar. His smile was distilled wickedness. “Tell me, is the captain of the vessel in attendance this evening? Or are you the only officer keeping te hours?”

  Before she could answer, the bartender turned back with a fruity, yered concoction in neon purple and pink. The colors faded into each other in the tall, slender gss. “Your drink.”

  “Fox,” he said sweetly, tipping his head back to look. “And you?”

  The bartender’s over-wide face looked handsome too, when a smile warmed his eyes. “Bweets.”

  “I’m after other prey tonight, my dear—I hope you’ll understand.” The Rev Liedan accepted the drink. A few gold bangles slipped down his wrist.

  “Come visit me another time.”

  “I’ll come to see your shoulders.”

  She could read what it meant from Bearach’s face. He’d called himself Fox. Was that what they called him at home?

  “See?” demanded Bweets, the bartender, on his way to serve a customer just across the tip of the egg. “It works if you’re not stuck up.”

  People were watching Bearach be outrageous. She shouldn’t have given him permission to sit. Now she stuck out—that was worse than being stuck up. Worse than that, the newly named Bweets had just said, “How can I help you this evening, Commander Frixm?”

  If she oozed beneath the level of the bar, would he notice her? Her hat y in a bck circle, colpsed on the bar. As she watched, Frixm took his off, revealing hair slick with Krem, the clear whipped gel no good Matil bathroom would ever be without. He’d seen her; he gnced past Bweets with the faintest suggestion of a scowl.

  She worked directly with the guests. The other crew members were allowed to fraternize, but not the staff of the resort. It wasn’t stopping anyone, but that was never public enough to do anything about.

  Bearach spoke up, leaning into her space. “Ensign, I don’t mean to press, but I really must know if the captain is in the lounge, or if I must search elsewhere.”

  Frixm ordered his drink and got it. With his colorless hair and brows, he’d always given her the creeps. Jatus tried not to look at him. “Captain Itef is probably here,” she said, grudging every word. “Why do you want to speak to him?”

  “I have a piece of feedback I’d dearly like to share with him.”

  This meticulously beautiful man had absolutely no idea how anything worked. “If you have concerns, I’ll hear them and pass them along to Commander Frixm. He administers the resort.”

  “Ensign, please.” He swung a gaze on her, so hot it shimmered. She could swear the air shivered with heat. “What do you take me for? Neither of us wants to talk to Frixm. I can be your best friend, or your worst enemy. The choice is yours.”

  “If I take your compint out of the chain,” Jatus said, despairing over the slender expanse of golden stomach, “it’ll never get heard.” Frixm had moved. She didn’t know where he’d gone.

  “If you take my compint up the chain, it’ll never be heard.” His sparkly mouth tightened for the first time tonight. Real distress pulled at his brows. “Not soon enough to make a difference.”

  “Tell me what it is.” It came out before Jatus even thought to stop it. “Let me see if I can help.”

  “It’s about the magic dampener being used on Princess Katherine. I’m sure you know of it.” His eyes fshed again. He settled his weight on the elbow closer to her; surprising muscle flexed in his bare arm. “You’ve seen her.”

  Slowly, she nodded. She supposed if she hadn’t known about the deaths, it would have looked like unnecessary torture—but again, something he didn’t understand. Her tongue shed and shed against the inside of her teeth. “There are things you don’t know,” she began, finally, but he shook his head.

  The sneer was too much, too beautiful to stand. She looked away.

  Bearach went on ruthlessly. “If you think I can be comfortable while I watch her die slowly—”

  “He’s coming,” Jatus said, gncing back at Bearach. “The commander.” Frixm cut his way through tables, correctly indirect.

  “Good.” Bearach fell silent, waiting.

  It wasn’t even anything approaching “good,” but Jatus didn’t have to tell herself that. Bearach seemed weirdly focused.

  After a blessedly brief silence, Frixm joined them. “Is there something I can do to make your stay more comfortable, Rev Liedan?” he asked, in his sleek oily voice. Jatus suppressed a shudder. After she’d seen him dispy threat to the Girl—but the Girl was a threat. Jatus had to remind herself.

  “Oh, Frixm, I took you for a functionary. Was I mistaken?” Bearach glittered in Frixm’s direction. Hard not to mistake that sparkle for malice. Hard to dismiss it as anything but. “I’m looking for a person with the authority to get something done.”

  “When it comes to the resort, Rev Liedan, I assure you, I’m the man who gets things done.” The nictitating membrane flicked across his eyeballs. It was the only Mother’s Trait he had, and he’d used it to intimidate twice today.

  Bearach went on as if nothing had happened while Jatus silently panicked. Frixm sidled around front. Neither man’s smile was a real one. “Then what an unexpected pleasure. Allow me to give you a bit of feedback. I would be delighted to share my thoughts.”

  Jatus’s face was doing something, but she didn’t know what. A rictus of agony? “The Rev Liedan has been telling me his concerns around the treatment of Princess Katherine MacGregor.”

  “I see.” Frixm’s third eyelid flicked again. He hadn’t looked away from Bearach, but the hunger in his posture had nothing to do with sex.

  “Princess Katie is being tortured with a metal anathema to her people,” Bearach said, ft and cool. A statement so direct would never fly with the commander. Jatus sat frozen with horror as he went on. “You’ve seen for yourself she’s in no state for what you want of her.”

  “Rev Liedan, we appreciate your feedback. Your kind concern for the Princess of Summer is noted, but her experience is no affair of yours. You need only please yourself.”

  Undeterred, Bearach shook his head, tossing curls into an appealing mess. “If you care for my comfort, fetch me your supervisor!” Oh, Mother! What was he doing?

  “Captain Itef is busy just now.” Frixm’s face made Jatus think of the stacked cliffs she and Moby had climbed during their st ten-year holiday together.

  “Surely he can see me, Frixm.”

  “You may not understand this, Rev Liedan, but running a pleasure cruise such as this one takes a good deal of work.”

  Bearach let his smile thin, drumming the nails of one hand on the darkened edge of the glowing white bar top. “Certainly, I understand and appreciate the pressures of his employment. After all, it can’t be so different from pleasing a volcano.” The repeated rapping fell into a quiet that grew. Jatus itched with nerves, a prickle under her skin. “But unless you wish to be responsible for Princess Katherine’s death, you will fetch me Captain Itef at once.”

  “Rev Liedan, I assure you the Princess will not die,” Frixm said in his slippery voice. “The Gentry, of whose august company Princess Katherine is one, are not subject to the whims of mortality. Your kindness is a credit to you and your People, but—”

  “You aren’t understanding me, Frixm.” Bearach examined the nails he’d been drumming, turning his hand. He seemed to be relishing the isnd of quiet that spread wider and wider around him. Bweets shot Jatus a pitying look.

  “I refuse your no, and I will continue to refuse it. Get me the captain of this vessel.” Terrible rage surfaced on Bearach’s beautiful face. His mask had finally slipped, and Jatus saw what he was—the volcano, she remembered from his paperwork—and she saw Frixm should’ve been afraid and wasn’t. All she could think: a distant oh no like she watched a skimmer crash.

  Frixm bared his fangs in what was almost a bnd smile, but completely unlike one. He gave Bearach a trace of a bow. “I have made you aware that Captain Itef is a busy man. I will return to you within the week with a list of open appointments.”

  “Now. I won’t waste my time with functionaries who only refuse me, repeating the same things again and again! I will speak to authority, and if I am again refused, I will make my displeasure in you particurly pin.”

  The ageless depth of wrath in Bearach’s face should have given a clue. No likeness between him and livestock, and no denying it. A muscle in Frixm’s forehead twitched.

  “Are you going to do it, you businesslike rat?” Bearach bit off, low and sudden. It sailed into the staring hush like a shot put. “Or will you parrot your lines about feedback? I know what you’ve taken us to do.”

  Frixm took out his white handkerchief from its concealment in his breast pocket. Jatus had one just like it. Slowly, deliberately, Frixm wiped his nose.

  Jatus reeled on the inside. Her fingers went tight over her knees.

  The Rev Liedan’s narrow smile flickered on his face. The fiery light stayed in his eyes. “Oh, do insult me better, Frixm. Open your mouth and say it. I know it’s in you.”