Jai nodded and lowered his arm, to avoid drawing any unwanted attention to the fact.
“So how do you feel about that?” I asked, trying to suppress a simmering panic. “Most dimari who find out they’ve been found, rather that bought, have something of an existential crisis about their worth or their place in life. You said you figured this out on Saturday? You seem remarkably calm about it.”
Jai chuckled, with what seemed to be genuine amusement. “Before I knew you had found me, my worth was that of a plaything that would be discarded once it no longer had a use. With you?” He shrugged. “I genuinely don’t know. I have a clean slate to start again. I have…” He trailed off, a more sombre expression on his face. “I have certain fears. But I’m also able to entertain certain hopes. I’ve seen the way you treat Kade. Does he know, by the way? That you didn’t buy him as well?”
“Yes, he knows. He was quite shocked when he found out, but we worked through it, and he’s fine with it now. And yes, I want to treat you the same way I treat Kade. I’d have largely the same expectations of you, allowing for differences in training and temperament. But from the moment you arrived here, you’ve been going out of your way to be as disobedient as possible. And while there were certainly reasons for that, it’s still extremely unusual behaviour for a dimari. So I have to ask; do you care what your master thinks of you? Does pleasing me mean anything to you at all?”
Jai was silent for a while as he thought that over, and I was glad he was taking the time to think about it, rather than giving me hasty but insincere reassurances. “I don’t know yet,” he said finally. “I spent a long time being told that I would fall in love with my master, and that he would love me. And I think it’s natural to want to please someone you love. But I also believedfor a long time that it was highly unlikely that my master in particular would ever truly love me. It seemed he was far too sadistic for that. So I learned not to expect to love him either, and to resist large parts of my training.” He looked me over critically. “I’m rapidly learning to respect you. But I’m a long way from being in love with you. So perhaps we shall have to wait and see.”
I nodded and fell silent. It was a most unusual answer from a dimari, with a frankness that even Kade would struggle to match. He’d said he’d spent a long time – perhaps years, even – practicing resisting the training the Eumadians had been putting him through. That could potentially lead to all sorts of problems, but even so, it was good to have a solid idea of where Jai was at.
A minute or two later, the guard outside our door suddenly spun around and stood up straight, staring at something beyond our field of vision. Jai and I both clambered to our feet, Jai being more graceful about it than me. We went forward to peer out of the window. To our left, the door at the entrance to the storage room had opened again, and I cursed as I saw another team of pirates marching a new group of captives into the room – this time, in military uniforms.
“They caught another one of our teams,” Jai muttered, sounding disappointed. I watched as Major Tolvorez was escorted past our cage, with his team shuffling along behind him. He saw us, already captive, and his initial look of surprise was quickly replaced with resignation. He shrugged at us as he passed, a look that carried disappointment, but not blame. These assholes were simply too well prepared for us to re-capture the ship, it seemed.
“Not a surprise,” I said, as the team marched on up the row. “The four of us were supposed to be the ‘specialist’ team, the ones who got shit done when the others couldn’t. And yet here we are, behind bars like the rest of them.”
After the new arrivals were safely stowed into two crates, the pirates gathered out the front of our crate for an impromptu discussion. We couldn’t hear anything they said, and given that they would be speaking a different language, we couldn’t even try to lip read. But once they’d made whatever decision it was they were talking about, the entire group – including the two Fentons who’d been guarding us – all exited through the door they’d come in.
I waited a moment, watching the doorway. Surely they weren’t just going to leave us all to our own devices?
“Are they coming back?” Jai asked, more speculation that real inquiry.
“Dunno. It seems a little negligent to just leave us here.” But then I snorted. “But where exactly are we going to go?” I kicked the glass in demonstration. It was designed to withstand a complete depressurisation of the ship, so it was in no danger of breaking from any force I could exert.
Across the aisle from us, Bryce and Carver had also got to their feet to watch the new team be brought in, but they were returning to their seated positions against the back wall. I headed back to our own wall, intending to sit down again, but then I noticed that Jai was still standing by the window, his body language tense and expectant. I opened my mouth to ask him what he was doing… but once again, that stray instinct told me not to question him. Jai was awfully good at noticing details that the rest of us had missed.
Another minute ticked by, with no movement from outside the room. Jai finally stepped back from the window. But rather than settling himself by the wall, he sat down abruptly in the middle of the floor, managing it with far more grace than I would have had. Then he threw himself over onto his back, and I had a brief impulse to ask him if he was okay. Was he in pain? Or, Ithought, as he began to perform a series of contortions, was he having some kind of seizure?
But then I figured out what he was trying to do, though I didn’t think there was much chance that he’d…
Holy fuck, he was doing it. He managed to get one of his knees up and under his armpit, then slide his foot through the loop of his arms… and then, after a little more thrashing, he was suddenly uncoiling himself again, his hands now miraculously in front of him.
“Fuck me, you have got to teach me how to do that,” I said, awe in my voice as he rose gracefully to his feet.
He gave me a funny look. “Now, or once we’re back home?” he asked, with a sceptical raise of his eyebrow.
I realised what I’d said, and quickly backpedalled. “Oh, shit, no, that wasn’t an order,” I corrected myself. “I just meant I’d like to learn it one day. Not now.”
He smiled, looking a little relieved. “Good to know,” he said. “I didn’t think now was an appropriate time.”
That was something I’d learned to be careful of, working with Kade; phrasing things so as to not inadvertently give him an order that I didn’t intend. I was slipping a little now, which was due to a combination of working with a partner I wasn’t used to – for all that Jai was still a dimari – and the unsettling reality of being held captive by a bunch of space pirates.
“So now what?” I asked Jai.
He took another quick glance out the window, then reached into the hip pocket of his pressure suit and pulled out a small, electronic device, a flat, circular disc about the size of his palm. I stared at it, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. It was a hacking device, the kind that was used by pirates to access docking bays and airlocks that they had no right having access to.
“Where the fuck did you get that?” I asked, my voice hushed, though there was no way for anyone to overhear us.
He shot me a wry smirk. “I stole it from the Anicrian I started that fight with.”
My eyes went wide, as the pieces suddenly slotted into place. Thank the stars I hadn’t ordered Jai to cooperate, or he would have missed that golden opportunity!
He manipulated the object in his hands, struggling to hold it in the right position, then he tapped a few keys and his cuffs released with a faint click. He deftly caught them before they hit the floor, then set them down gently. He gestured towards my cuffs. “Would you like me to…?”
“Yes, absolutely,” I said, turning around so he could get to them. A few seconds ticked by, and then I felt the cuffs click open. My first instinct after that was to leap into freeing the others – Bryce and Carver, but also the other military teams – but I forced myself to stop and think. “We can let the others loose,” I said, “but none of us have weapons. And pirates can use the crew as hostages, if they want to, and…” Once again, I trailed off. Jai was standing there, listening, but I got the distinct impression that he was just waiting for me to shut the fuck up, so he could tell me what we were going to do next. “I’m sorry,” I said, a wry voice in the back of my head reminding me that Jai would likely think it odd for his master to be apologising to him. “Did you have something to say?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
