AllFreeNovel
Share Us
To my horror, Major Harrow’s smile changed from patronizing to sympathetic.
“From what I understand,” he said, “your president tried to make that an essential pillar of the treaty. She failed, however, and so I know that you have more or less actively avoided all the information the federation seeded your infonet with, concerning our culture.”
I blinked, a frown taking hold of my brow.
“You probably thought the number of stories about Magisteria you saw in your newsfeed simply had to do with the war,” the major continued. “But I’m afraid the federation infiltrated the Artemisian infonet some months ago, both in service of making the negotiations easier and as a way to gather information from the reactions we recorded to those stories. That’s why Lieutenant Withers and I are here, rather than in some other girl’s apartment. And it’s why I know how complicated a thing it is for you to undress in front of us.”
My lips parted. “Complicated?” I whispered, after I had closed them to gather enough moisture in my suddenly dry mouth that I could utter a syllable.
Major Harrow nodded, his face so compassionate that I had a sudden urge to lash out with one of the fists I had moved defensively almost to my chin.
“Let’s just call it complicated for now, Sara,” he said, matching his voice perfectly to his face.
“Why are you calling me by my first name?” I demanded, flailing mentally to find something to say that might interrupt whatever horrible train of thought the officer clearly wanted me to follow. “You were… you were polite before, at least.”
He nodded again, as if he had fully expected this challenge. The man’s arrogant smugness seemed truly amazing; I tried to focus on the question of whether he might win some sort of pangalactic arrogance competition rather than the dismaying effect the expression on his much too handsome face had on me.
“I’m afraid that from now on you can’t expect courtesy until you earn it, Sara.”
The sound of my own name started to grate on me. Again I tried to lash out with my intelligence and my own unrivaled power—the ability to put words together to make them do what I wanted them to do. It had fled, seemingly, at the appearance of these Magisterian assholes, but I tried desperately to haul it back.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Major?” With an act of will I drew myself up to my full five foot two, feeling a little silly doing that in my sweats and bare feet as if I had on a business suit and heels, but still taking some defiant energy from the movement. “Are you suggesting that Ihaven’tearned respect through my role in my planet’s government? Through my career as—”
Major Harrow cut me off.
“Enough, Sara. It’s time to obey me or face the consequences.”
My eyes went wide and all the composure I had mustered a moment before evaporated into what felt to me like the hottest blush of my life. The urge once again to repeat every outrageous thing the officer said with a question mark after it—consequences?—nearly overwhelmed my proud refusal to appear so terribly weak in front of him. Nor would I even demand an explanation.
You know, my mind told me.You tried to avoid it, but you know very well what a Magisterian means by ‘consequences’ when he’s speaking to a woman.
I shook my head, looking from the major to the lieutenant and back, plastering a sneer on my face.
Obey him?He had literally saidobey, like in the old, old Earth marriage ceremony.
Feeling like every bodily movement I made cost me dearly in emotional energy, I folded my arms across my chest. Again I turned my attention from Major Harrow to Lieutenant Withers, fixing the junior officer with the coldest look I could muster, as if to say to him,Clearly your boss is too old and arrogant a man to understand how monstrous his actions seem not just to me but to you as well.
The lieutenant, to my horror, crooked his mouth into a smile of what seemed to me suppressed laughter. The idea that the younger man had the same ancient attitudes about the relations between the genders as his superior shook me, but I looked back at Major Harrow and kept my face as impassive as I could.
“As a citizen of the free planet of Artemisia, I demand my right ofhabeas corpus,” I said, glad at least that my voice didn’t waver as I spoke the words I knew would get me nowhere.
I thought for a moment the major would laugh at me. I almost wished he would, rather than keeping the horrible patronizing, sympathetic look on his face. Then, when he didn’t laugh, or react immediately at all, I thought—wildly, fearfully—that he would give me another chance.
He gave one final nod, and the smile on his face, worst of all, seemed to grow a little sad, as if I had disappointed him. The flutter that smile sent through my insides—my body’s, yes,complicatedreaction to it—threatened to draw my attention and to force me to consider the parts of what the major had said that I absolutely refused to think about.
The next thing Major Harrow did, however, at least diverted my focus enough to prevent me from following that train of thought. He looked around my spacious living room.
I felt my face crease into a frown. I looked over at Lieutenant Withers, who seemed to find his superior officer’s interest in my furniture not at all interesting. Was the major in search of a place to sit down? Or—the absurd thought floated into my consciousness—had he suddenly become impressed by the admittedly impressive collection of attractive pieces I had managed to accumulate?
He turned to the lieutenant.
“The arm of the sofa, I think,” he said, clearly giving an order in a way that vaguely smacked of many centuries’ weight of tradition and privilege. A masculine military culture so ingrained, I thought with a sudden fearful shiver, that a Magisterian general, speaking to an army of men about to perish for the glory of the federation, would probably say something like, “The fort on the hill, I think, at all costs.”
I looked at my sofa. I didn’t see anything remarkable about it, beyond its being upholstered in a deep shade of blue in a fabric with a pretty, slightly rough weave. This momentary lapse in my attention on the Magisterians, though, meant that Lieutenant Withers’ swift movement toward me took me entirely by surprise.
Suddenly the blond officer stood right at my elbow, with his hand on that joint in a position that told me instantly and dismayingly that he had a good deal of training and perhaps experience in controlling the bodies of others. He had already begun to turn me toward the sofa with that grip on my arm alone before I could start to struggle.
I twisted hard, pulling my arm as forcefully as I could away from the Magisterian’s hand. In return for my defiance I got only what felt like a steel pincer closing down on a part of my body I had no idea had such an integral connection to my central nervous system.
