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I swing around to see a pair of amber eyes staring at me from the shadows of the sitting room. “Jove in hell!” I flick on the glow lights to reveal a woman sitting on my sleeping mat. She watches intently as I scramble to put my robe back on. “Seraphina?” She’s at home now, her prisoner jumpsuit gone, and wears the garb of the Io. A gray wool cloak held together with a charcoal sash. She peers up at me, amused.
“Do all Martians have such dreadful hearing?”
Her eyes rove as I pull tight my robe. She wears rubber-soled slippers and two heavy rings—on her left middle finger a dragon eating a lightning bolt, on her right a simple iron Institute ring of House Diana’s stag’s antlers. I should have guessed she’d be a hunter.
“Are all Moonies as rude as you?” I look at the door, and know it made no sound, and, more impressively, neither did she. Must have come through the walls, then. A secret door. “Are you lost?”
She frowns. “Lost?”
“Well, you do seem to be in my room.”
“Your room?” Her sudden laugh is surprisingly girlish. Then the drawl comes back. “You are in my city, gahja. On my moon. There are cameras in the stone. What does it matter that I watch you through the camera or here? This is more honest, no?”
“Well, it is entirely eerie either way,” I say with a smile. “Most inhospitable.”
“If I remember correctly, you are a watcher too. I saw you looking at me on the table….”
“You were injured,” I say. “I was checking your—”
“Tits?”
“Your wound. The one on your—”
“Breasts.”
“Stomach. You’re clearly still insensate. Took a knock on the head, turned a bit mad. Or do your kind all talk like gutterborns?”
“I have manners,” she says with a smile. “The dust is a hard teacher.” She hurls a package at my face as she stands. I barely catch it. “Clothing. Yours was soiled from the journey.”
“Charitable of you.” I open the package to don the clothes. “Our pilot,” I say. “You said she’s alive and well. I want to see her.”
“No.”
“No negotiation? Very well.” I thumb the clothing she brought. She doesn’t turn away or leave. “Do you mind?”
“Mind?”
“Yes, I’d like to change now.”
She cocks her head in challenge. “I have seen naked men before.”
Unlike her own, mine was a solitary upbringing. “A Sovere
ign is an island,” my grandmother would say.
“It’s just carbon. Are you ashamed of your body?” she asks. “Or perhaps you are embarrassed you do not know how to use it?”
“So that’s why you sent the Pinks. So you could watch?” I find myself unusually pleased by the revelation. “Why so curious?”
Her brow wrinkles. “Were you injured? Is that why you turned them away? Does your manhood not work?”
“That…is absolutely none of your concern. Thank you for your interest, however. It works just fine.”
“I am sorry,” she says. “I did not mean to offend.”
“Well, you’re quite accomplished at it. Compliments to whoever taught you.”
“Would you be at ease if I were naked again too?” Even under the folds of her loose tunic, I see the subtle rise of her breasts, the length of her muscled legs, and…
