“Can we come inside and talk to you about this?” Maxon questions.
“Oh, of course.” I step back and let them in.
Ines and I both sit on a rug on the floor and the two males sit side by side on the edge of the bed. And for the better part of an hour the three of them take my memory apart piece by piece.
Scar wants the names of the researchers. He keeps circling back to them, the names I pulled, the ones paid through accounts scrubbed of the House’s fingerprints. “These shipments,” he says, scrolling. “The untraceable ones. You said the coordinates weren’t on any registry you had access to, but you remember the coordinates.”
“I remember everything I read. I have an excellent memory, which is why I’m good at my job, but that’s the curse of it. I can’t un-see a thing once it’s in front of me.”
“Say them.”
I repeat a string of numbers I read once, eighteen months ago, in a file I wasn’t supposed to open. Scar’s claws go still on the tablet. He looks at Ines. Something passes between them.
“That’s dead field, past the shipping lanes. There’s nothing out there but?—”
“Dead rock,” Scar finishes. “Old played-out claims. Nothing anyone would ship to.” He looks at me, and there’s a new weight in it. “Unless you wanted to do something to Illibrium where no one would ever think to look. The experiments aren’t theoretical. They’rehappening, somewhere out past the edge of the maps, in a place chosen precisely because no honest being would ever fly there.”
“And the name,” Ines says. She’s working a different thread, the journalist’s thread, the one that goes through the public record instead of the private one. “House Vaszneth keeps itself clean. Officially they’re a respectable, with stakes in a dozen legitimate operations. Nothing connects them to any of this on paper. But you—” she taps her tablet — “you put a name in your write-up. A male who signed for the House on three different documents you handled.”
“He thought I couldn’t read the seals,” I say. “They all thought that. The little human who keeps the ledgers, what would she know about which Royal Pigment crest means what.” My mouth twists. “I knew all of them. I memorized every crest in the Four Sectors my first month, because nobody bothered to teach me and I wasn’t going to be caught not knowing.”
“Kryzon?” Scar questions.
“I told you. I don’t know anyone named Kryzon.”
“No. But the factor you named — the one who signed for House Vaszneth — I know whohereports to. And it’s the same residence in the Royal Pigment district that Kryzon visited, the one I could never put a name to. For rotations I’ve had half apicture. The half that starts here, on Timbur, with my family. Our parents death and then our brother banished. A demotion dressed up as discipline. I knew it connected to Chronos and I could never prove the bridge.” He looks at me like I’m something he can’t quite believe washed up on his porch in the rain. “I assumed the bridge was Grytel, but now I see that it isn’t. You’re the bridge. You’ve been carrying the other half of my picture around in your head this whole time, and you didn’t even know it was mine.”
“I just didn’t want them to destroy a whole colony of miners just so they could make sure that Illibrium was controlled solely by one single Royal Pigment House. It’s wrong and literally against the Scales of Xylan Law. This whole plan disgusts me.”
“Thank you,” Ines says. “Thank you for being brave and coming here. I know you had to plan far ahead to get out of there with your evidence. You gave up your job and put yourself at risk. You had to hide for three whole days before making it here. The way you left was super sneaky. Impressive. So again, just in case you don’t know, we all think you’re pretty amazing. Everything you’ve brought to us can mean the difference between life and death for all the Minecorp employees on this planet. And we’re doing our best to get the information you gathered in the right hands.”
“Or remain out of the wrong hands,” Scar cuts in.
“Yes, we’re being careful,” Ines agrees. “And that’s why we’re insisting that for now, you hide out here, in the compound with Maxon, to ensure your safety.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, my eyes hot. “That’s nice of you to say.”
“There’s one more thing,” Scar says. “You should know before you hear it some other way.” He glances at Maxon, and then back at me. “Someone’s been asking questions at thetransporter station. Quietly. About a recent arrival, a human, traveling alone on a Minecorp work visa.”
The cold spreads all the way out to my fingers.
“When?”
“We don’t have it exactly, but one of the station techs owes Grytel a favor and flagged it.” Scar’s eyes don’t leave my face. “It’s nothing yet. A being asking careful questions is not the same as a being who knows where you are. But it means you stay here, out of sight, exactly where you are. You don’t go near that mine and you don’t exist as far as Timbur is concerned.” A pause. “Do you understand me?”
“We understand,” Maxon rumbles.
Three hours later,after dinner is over, Maxon walks me back to my room.
It’s a short walk and we both know the way. Neither of us needs an escort, but he falls into step beside me and I’m thrilled to have him. Every moment I spend with this miner causes heat to form between my thighs. My mind is full of images of the two of us in bed together and me, kissing those lips with abandon. I have trouble keeping my eyes off his perfect ass and those thick, muscular arms.
Maxon sat next to me at dinner again. I’m beginning to understand that he meant it when he said that he thinks I’m his future bride. He fully believes that if we performed a hand clasping ceremony it would prove valid and that would lead to a claiming ceremony. Which, according to the Scales of Xylan Law, would make me, a human, his bride.
And every minute I spend with him causes me to think this sounds like a terrific idea. It’s too bad this is all happening at the exact same moment I’ve got House Vaszneth to deal with.
“You did a hard thing in there,” he says when we reach the end of the hallway, nodding toward my bedroom door.
“Eh, I read some numbers off the inside of my own skull. It’s not exactly heroic.”
