I woke early. The light was bright, clear and golden. I stood at the window in my room, watching the shadows streak across the desert. I tried to open the window but it was sealed. I wondered, if Vance's mother hated the desert so badly, why did she live here? The grounds of the house were artificially watered. The green stopped abruptly at the fenceline. The desert stretched away in shades of gray and brown and pinkish orange.
I wondered what I was supposed to do that day. The night before had been bad enough. Vance's mother had insisted I was tired as soon as we finished dinner. She'd sent me to my room like an errant child. She wasn't going to push me around so easily today.
I dressed and went looking for trouble.
I found the dining area. Breakfast was laid out on a side table in self warming dishes. I helped myself to a plate. I was alone, other than a server who may as well have been carved from stone. He stood, silent and impassive, near the kitchen door.
"You're up early," Vance commented as he entered the room.
"I couldn't resist the sunlight pouring through my window."
"You can opaque it."
There was a wariness buried in his words that warned me he was expecting me to attack. I smiled sweetly instead.
"But I enjoy it," I said truthfully. "I wanted to open the window but it's sealed."
He sat across from me at the polished, expensively carved table. He ate carefully, watching me as if I were an unpredictable animal prone to leaping onto people with fangs bared.
"Do I have something in my teeth?" I asked, when the tense silence finally got to me.
"No, not that. Mother was talking to me last night after you left. About the wedding. She thinks we need to alter our plans. What works on Linas-Drias just wouldn't be right here."
"I'm looking forward to spending hours with her," I said, lying through my teeth. "I would love her opinion on how we should plan this. If we're going to have the ceremony here, in her lovely garden, then we really should let her help decide everything."
"I'm so glad you feel that way. Mother also invited some friends to stay a while. Some of them arrived last night. We didn't want to disturb you, you looked so tired." He wouldn't look at me. That was warning enough that I wasn't going to like his friends. "Mother felt we needed more young people around here. She really isn't up to entertaining guests much, but she wanted us to feel at home."
"I'm perfectly capable of entertaining myself."
"Speaking of entertainment," Vance said, switching the subject, "I have a surprise for you. Are you finished?" He gestured at my plate.
"I was just waiting for you, dearest."
"Good." Vance took my hand, pulling me to my feet. "You are going to love this." He hauled me through the house.
I would have loved to linger in the garden. The area behind the house was lush, breathtaking in its simplicity. Vance hurried me through it. But not fast enough.
"Vance," a very feminine, very familiar voice called out before we had crossed into a fenced area at the back of the property.
Vance pulled me to a stop and turned to face Charise. He smiled at her. "Good morning, Charise."
She ignored me, which was fine with me. I would have been tempted to say something very rude.
"Are you going riding this morning?" she asked.
"Yes, in fact we were," Vance said.
"Would you mind terribly if I joined you?"
"No, not at all," Vance answered.
Charise clamped her arm around his. She leaned around him to talk to me. "He told me it was a surprise for you. You are going to love it."
"How sweet, a surprise." I wondered at her apparent change in attitude. She was pretending to like me now.
We passed through a high wooden gate at the back of the garden. We were at the top of a sheer cliff. Below us was a narrow valley with a matching cliff only a few hundred yards away. The bottom of the valley was wide and level and very green. A shimmering ribbon of water threaded through the trees below. I wanted to stay and admire the view but Vance kept going.
We walked a path carved into the side of the cliff. It was smooth and wide enough for all three of us. There were buildings at the bottom, clustered near the base of the cliff. They were big but didn't look like houses. Vance led us to the biggest one. Wide sliding doors were open to the cool morning air.
I took a deep breath. The plants down here were pungent, a pleasantly clean smell. What I got from the building wasn't. It smelled of animals, big ones. I looked closer into the dim interior. Horses watched us curiously, their heads pushed over the tops of waist high doors. I stopped in the doorway.
Charise kept going, dropping Vance's arm to hurry down the row of horses to a spotted one.
"You are going to love riding these beauties," Vance said.
"I tried riding a horse before," I said. "I didn't care much for it."
"Dace, you can't possibly have ridden a real horse before. This valley is one of the few places in the Empire where they thrive. The climate is perfect for them."
Horses were rare in the Empire. They were very expensive to own and even more expensive to keep alive. The reason Vance's mother lived here became clear to me. If horses thrived here, the land was extremely valuable. It didn't make me appreciate them, though. They were big and they were animals and I really had ridden horses before. I remembered the horrible aching in my muscles afterwards. I remembered way too much about Dadilan, where the economy was heavily dependent on horses. Horses on Dadilan didn't seem to know they were supposed to be delicate. They were everywhere.
"Vance, I am not getting on one of those animals."
"They're really gentle, Dace."
The closest one showed me teeth the size of decking plates. I shook my head.
"Dace, humor me. Just come riding. I promise you'll love it."
"I'll hate it, Vance. I speak from experience. Nothing you say is going to get me onto one of those creatures." I turned away, headed back for the trail up the cliff.
"Dace," he tried one more time. I didn't stop or turn around.
It didn't occur to me to think about his real motivations until it was too late. I stopped, halfway up the cliff. What if he wanted me to come with him so he could talk freely? What if he wanted to tell me something he didn't think he could in the mansion? I turned around and looked out over the valley.
I saw him, on a white horse, with Charise next to him on the spotted one. They were headed into the valley along a broad trail.
If he wanted to confide in me, about treason or anything else, why had he let Charise join us? Why was he riding out alone with her?
Secrets inside of secrets. I hated the trapped feeling. I trudged up the rest of the path. Why was I really here? Someone near to Vance was involved in treason and I was supposed to find out who. I was farther from the truth than I'd ever been. I was losing track of what was a lie and what was real. I paused at the top of the cliff, near the gate. I could just see Vance on his white horse.
I could easily find myself marrying him and pretending to live this life. I was losing touch with myself. I pushed through the gate and crossed into the garden.
I couldn't face the house and the possibility of running into Lady Candyce. I wandered into the garden instead.
It was carefully tended, but allowed for a bit of wildness. The flowers were pretty, but not overblown or too presumptuous. The paths were wandering strips of grass and moss. One led into another.
The farther I got from the main back door, the less formal the gardens were. The flowers were smaller and more ragged. I finally came to a wide garden, screened by a hedge of flowering bushes. It was dedicated to vegetables instead of flowers. Neat rows of plants marched down the length of it. The path here was shredded bark. A gate at the far end beckoned me.
It was utilitarian, not decorative. It was also unlocked. I opened it and went through.
I was in a courtyard, paved with plascrete. A series of sheds along the side away from the house sheltered automated carts. At the far end of the line were three flitters. The head butler was there. He frowned at me.
"This area is off limits." He radiated disapproval.
"I'm sorry, I must have gotten lost," I said as innocently as I could.
I hurried out of the courtyard, into the formal gardens at the front. The gate was shut behind me firmly. I got the message. I wasn't allowed anywhere near a means of escape.
I sighed and started walking again. The front door wasn't far away. I wasn't ready to go inside yet. It was getting hot as the sun rose. I spotted a bench in a shaded spot under a spreading canopy of trees.
There was a brownish bundle on the bench. It looked like a carelessly dropped fur muff until I got closer. A head popped up suddenly. I was looking into a pair of very suspicious green eyes. I stopped. The bundle was a cat, an old one to judge by the raggedness of its ears. The cat stood warily, ready to bolt.
I backed off a step. I didn't want to frighten the cat any more than it already was. It slowly sat back down, its tail twitching and its ears constantly moving.
I wanted to talk to someone, I needed to talk to someone who wasn't going to suspect every word. I wanted simple companionship. I sat in the grass.
"I have a cat," I said quietly. The cat's ears twitched towards me. "She used to sleep on my bunk. She also used to leave dead things on my pillow. I haven't seen her in almost two years. I miss her."
The cat yawned and made a sound like a rusty can opener. I took it for a sign of encouragement.
"Her name is Ghost. I wonder what yours is."
The cat blinked.
"She's gray, a ship cat. She had kittens a while back. Five of them."
I fell silent, staring out at the desert. Memories of who I'd been before filled my mind. I wasn't the same person. Something on Tivor had changed me irrevocably.
The cat surprised me. It rubbed against my arm, purring unevenly. I looked down into green cat eyes. The cat bumped my chin with its head. I slowly lifted my hand. The cat took off into the bushes in a blur of brown.
"Miss Zeresthina?" The diffident voice came from behind me.
"Yes?" I answered without looking.
"Your presence is requested in the drawing room."
Lady Candyce must want to sharpen her claws again. I stood, brushing grass from my back end.
The servant led me into an airy room decorated in shades of pale blue. Lady Candyce was not in the room. A man I didn't know was there. He gave me a somber look.
"There has been a terrible accident," he informed me. "The Lady Charise was thrown from her horse this morning. The family has gone to the hospital with her. They send their regrets that they will be unable to attend to you today. Please amuse yourself."
He left, brushing past me without further comment.
I stared unseeingly at the pale blue furniture. Charise was thrown from her horse? The one that was meant for me? I felt a sudden chill shiver up my spine.
Was Vance's mother trying to kill me? I didn't want to believe it, but I couldn't dismiss the idea. Did she suspect why I was really here? Or did she believe that Vance and I were getting married? The idea seemed ludicrous to me now. The deception had been much easier on Linas-Drias.
I'd been a lot safer on Linas-Drias. Everything that happened to me there was out in the open, in the public eye. Every event that kept me on the front page of the news sheets had kept me safe. I realized that now. I felt naked and exposed here. I was at the mercy of Vance's mother and whoever else knew I was hunting them.
I shivered again. The game was more intricate than any I'd ever played. I was feeling my way blindly. I had no idea where to even look for the information I needed. I had no escape. I was trapped.
I'd done it to myself.