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But then he surprised her yet again.
“You are quite a beautiful female,” he remarked casually.
The heat returned to her cheeks, his compliment disarming her. The small cup of resentment and injury she had been filling was overturned by that simple statement.
She was really behaving like a crazy person.
“I… that’s very kind of you,” she stammered. But she was suddenly acutely aware of the imbalance of power between them, emphasized by her own state of undress compared to his stuffy clothing.
He cast another long glance at her. It was so long, so probing, that she felt compelled to look away.
“I hope you’ll forgive me for the indignity of what you had to endure back there,” he said.
She blinked, not understanding. Her heart was definitely beating faster. “Uh… it was expected,” she managed to say. And then, feeling ungrateful, she stammered, “Not that I don’t… thank you.”
What in the hell was wrong with her? She sounded like a total idiot.
He startled her by clearing his throat. When she glanced at him, he rubbed his face with what seemed like embarrassment. “His Excellency explicitly asked me to perform your cleansing in public. Please understand… I have no standing to refuse such an order, though I find the cruelty of these ancient practices to be quite barbaric.” He paused, looking at her. His gaze was burning through her skin. “Sometimes old thinking must be appeased.”
She nodded carefully, not wanting to run her mouth. He seemed like a reasonable man and that was reassuring, but disorienting. She stiffened further when he stood up and walked a few slow paces across the room, still unsure of his intentions.
“Tell me, Quaia, do you have a trade?”
Okay. She could answer a question like that.
“Private solo captain of the merchant ship Silent Falcon,” she said. Her hand rose instinctively to her forehead in a salute. A split second later and she was blushing again. How could anyone take a salute seriously with what she was wearing?
He saluted back, a lazy version of the crisp greeting he’d given High Mother. “Solo captain?” he remarked. “Unusual for a female of your age?”
“The ship was bequeathed to me by my grandfather, sir,” she said. She was running her mouth, sure, but he’d asked the one question she hadn’t in a million years expected, and it was easy to talk about flying. “I’ve been a dock-rat since I could walk. Never imagined doing anything else.”
He nodded, pensive about her reply. “Fearless about the great deep black then?” he asked.
“Fearless would be foolish, sir. I have fear. But I’ve learned to manage it, as do all solo pilots. I’m nothing special.”
“That’s yet to be seen,” he muttered.
A warmth formed in her chest and sank to her belly. She chided herself for acting like a schoolgirl around an unrequited crush, but it didn’t change the reaction in her body. The warmth spread out from her chest to her limbs, and lingered between her legs.
A silence followed, Quaia growing uncomfortable as the moments ticked by. Could he see the effect he was having on her?
He cleared his throat again. “Forgive the more probing questions I have to ask. They are required by his Excellency’s chief medicist. They will be recorded and noted in the Great Datum. Your answers are not binding in any way. They will be compared against actual events during your life course.”
A quick snap of his finger and thumb made Quaia jump, and brought a small, circular drone buzzing from the ceiling. It spun, training its glowing blue eye on Quaia. “Quaia Sangsen,” he said, nodding toward the drone. “I am Captain Torian. I will be performing your Ripening,” he said as the drone trained its shining blue light on him. He turned to Quaia again. “Do you consent to this?” he asked.
She stared at the drone and wondered what it was she was consenting to. She didn’t trust herself to parse the question, though. “And if I don’t?” she finally asked.
He nodded. “A fair question,” he said. He walked up slowly to where she was standing and came to a stop in front of her. “His Excellency acknowledges that, in the past, women were given no choice in their Ripening. Consent was not required. Submission was compulsory. The Imperator puts little stock in these poorly aged views. However, there are still many who cling to the old ways. In an effort to extend an olive branch to those who consider the ritual a matter of faith, as your High Mother so eloquently put it, he has suggested the following solution: authorizing the use of corporal punishment as a sort of currency. You are free to object to any act I might perform upon you. If you fail to consent, I am required, by law, to administer a punishment commensurate with the act being refused.”
It only took a few moments for Quaia to see the logical fallacy. “So… if I do not consent to being whipped, I will be whipped for it?” she said, resisting the smile that tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Some reform.”
Torian’s lips parted but he said nothing. He drew in a breath, then turned to the drone and waved at it. Its blue light shut off and it floated up to the corner of the room, turning its eye toward the wall. Torian turned back to Quaia. He studied her for a good long time. As he gazed into her eyes, and only for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw the beginnings of a smile flicker at the corners of his mouth.
“You’ve a keen mind,” he said quietly. “Additionally, you are free to walk away from the ceremony at any point in time. I am to warn you though, that the Imperator’s progressive benevolence might last only during his reign. Once power is transferred to the next house in line, your… status, without a Ripening, might become dubious.”
Her eyes wandered up to meet his. It was an absurdly illogical proposition. Consent to the Ripening or be whipped. Walk away and forever worry about an uncertain future. It paid lip service to an individual woman’s right to choose her own destiny while effectively enforcing her compliance by giving no good choice whatsoever.
But she had already played this game in her own mind, thousands of times. There was no real choice here, and there never had been. She had barely even felt a flutter of hope when Torian started to speak. There was always a catch in this world, and she already knew that.
