The Kinsmen Universe E-Book

Ilona Andrews

• Herausgeber: NYLA
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

** PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED - This is an anthology edition of the Kinsmen Universe, which includes SILENT BLADE, SILVER SHARK, plus a new short story, and three original illustrations.** Family is everything. Talent is power. And revenge is sweet. In a distant, future world Kinsmen-small powerful groups of genetically and technologically advanced families-control vast financial empires. They are their own country, their own rulers, and their only limits are other Kinsmen. The struggle for power is a bloody, full-contact sport: in business, on the battlefield...and sometimes in the bedroom. Silent Blade Old hatreds die hard. Old love dies harder. On the planet Rada, Meli Galdes' family is of minor rank, and were relying on her marriage to Celino, the razor-smart, ruthless leader of the powerful Carvanna empire. When he abruptly breaks their engagement, he ruins her family and guarantees that Meli will never marry, as no suitor will oppose the rich and influential Carvannas. But Meli has a rare, secret, lethal-and valuable-talent. As a melder of energy, she's capable of severing anything in her path. So she 'leaves' her family and trains to become one of the best and most lethal of assassins, all the while covertly guarding her family's interests. Now she's ready to quit; but she has one more assignment. To kill the man who ruined her life. Silver Shark Claire Shannon is a killer...and her weapon is her mind. Born on a planet torn by war for over 300 years, Claire is a soldier: a psycher, with the ability to read, control, and destroy the minds of enemy psychers and to infiltrate the biological network where they battle to death. When Claire's faction loses the war, she barely escapes extermination from both sides, as her talent brands her as too dangerous to society. By so-deeply burying her ability that she avoids detection, Claire is instead deported to Rada as a refugee, where she must find work to remain. She finds a job as personal assistant to Venturo Escana, a premiere kinsman; one of Rada's most wealthy entrepreneurs—and most powerful psychers. She thought she had left war behind, but now she must hide her skills and her growing feelings from Venturo...and this battle might just cost her everything... A Mere FormalityThe leader of the fierce Reigh people expires during an intergalactic summit, putting 30 million colonists' lives and livelihoods in jeopardy. When the new heir to the Reigh throne, Lord Nagrad, demands restitution, the phrase "'a life for a life" turns the intergalactic calamity into an arranged marriage contract between Lord Nagrad and sharply intelligent diplomatic analyst Deirdre Lebed... and the negotiation of terms becomes anything but formal!

Leseprobe

THE KINSMEN UNIVERSE

ILONA ANDREWS

This ebook is licensed to you for your personal enjoyment only.

This ebook may not be sold, shared, or given away.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The Kinsmen Universe

Copyright © 2018 by Ilona Andrews

Ebook ISBN: 9781641970693

Silent Blade

Copyright © 2009 by Ilona Andrews

Ebook ISBN: 9781641970617

Silver Shark

Copyright © 2009 by Ilona Andrews

Ebook ISBN: 9780983954613

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

NYLA Publishing

121 W 27th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10001

http://www.nyliterary.com

Contents

SILENT BLADE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

SILVER SHARK

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Epilogue

A MERE FORMALITY

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Also by Ilona Andrews

About the Author

SILENT BLADE

Chapter 1

In the course of space colonization, there arose a need for humans with enhanced abilities. Men and women who could survive harsh conditions, who were superb warriors, gifted hunters, and brilliant scientists.

Some enhancements were technological in nature: an array of implants with various functions. Their effect ended with the death of the person who carried them. Other improvements were biological and these enhanced capabilities persisted, lingering in the bloodline, changing and mutating into new abilities in the offspring of the original carrier. It was quickly realized that the advantage of these biological enhancements lay in their exclusivity. Thus, the biologically enhanced united and shut down all further biological modification.

Collectively known as kinsmen, these exceptional beings gave rise to several dozen families, which now form the financial elite of the colonized planets. The kinsmen strictly control their numbers and their loyalty to their families is absolute. Like the Sicilian mafia families and feuding Corsican clans of the old planet, the kinsmen exist in tense competition with each other. It is that competition that rules the economy, begins and ends wars, and drags human civilization to greater technological and scientific progress.

Chapter 2

“Place your hands on the panel in front of you.” The bodyguard, in a sleek grey uniform of Canopus Inc., nodded at the plasti-steel console that sprouted from the luxurious rug like a mushroom on a thin metal stalk.

Meli smiled. Four high-caliber gun turrets swiveled on their mounts on the ceiling, tracking her every movement as she rested her fingers on the panel, a thin bracelet sliding down on her right wrist. She had already passed through a number of metal detectors and submitted to a search and a chemical sniffer. Only one final test remained.

Light slid along her fingertips as a complex array of scanners feverishly assessed her temperature, heat, and chemical emissions, sampled the composition of her sweat and oil on her fingertips, and probed her body for foreign influences. A long moment stretched. A calm female voice with the crisp unaccented pronunciation of the computer announced, “Implant scan, class A through C, negative. Biological modification negative.”

The guard relaxed slightly. The tense line of his shoulders eased. A person like her had no chance against a bodyguard equipped with a combat implant that sharpened his reflexes and increased his strength.

“You may step down,” he permitted. “Follow me.”

She walked behind him to the large wooden door polished to an amber gleam. Maruvian pine, unthinkable luxury. The guard tapped a code on his wrist. The door slid aside, revealing a second, steel partition. The steel wall split in half and parted. Meli strode into a spacious office. The door whispered shut behind her.

Three people waited in the office: an older man behind a desk cut from a single block of malachite, and two bodyguards, a woman and a man, both lean and sharp, positioned at the walls on opposite sides of her.

She smiled at them as well.

The man behind the desk leaned forward slightly. Agostino Canopus, thirty-eight, a kinsman, fourth son of Vierra Canopus, Arbitrator Second Class. Of average height, he sat with the easy authority of a man completely confident in his position. His hair, a dark copper, was cut and styled with artful precision. His skin was perfect. His eyes, two dark chunks of green, fastened on her. In a split second she was evaluated, measured and approved.

“Sit down.” Agostino indicated a plain stool bolted to the floor with a casual sweep of his hand.

Meli sat.

“You came here to become a retainer of Canopus family,” he said. “Why?”

“Power.”

In the financial world, where most disputes were decided by arbitration, the arbitrators wielded unprecedented influence.

Agostino nodded. The answer seemed to satisfy him. “Your test scores are exceptional.”

She accepted the compliment with a nod. “So is my reaction time.”

His eyebrows came together. “What…”

She leapt off the chair. Obeying her mental command, a long ribbon of transparent green whipped from the narrow bracelet on her wrist. The ene-ribbon slashed the female bodyguard, whipped across the door, and kissed the male bodyguard across the chest. Before Agostino’s lips shaped the next word, Meli sat back onto the chair. Behind her two bodies slid apart, cleaved in two. The air smelled of fried electronics. She had disabled the control panel on the door.

Agostino surveyed the door. “You’re a melder.”

“Yes.”

Melders like her were an extremely rare commodity. The mutation that permitted her to operate an energy ribbon came along once in every fifteen million, and most possessing it never discovered their abilities. In the world of combat implants and biochemical modifications, melders were the extraordinary natural-born freaks.

Agostino leaned back, one leg over the other, pleating his long fingers on his knee. “What’s this about?”

“The Galdes family sends its regards.”

Ten days ago he had presided over the arbitration between Galdes and Morgans. He’d ruled in favor of Morgans, finding no wrongdoing in the hostile takeover of Galdes’s Valemia Inc.

“It was a fair arbitration,” Agostino said.

“You’ve falsified the evidence.” She kept her voice calm and pleasant. “You’ve altered the earnings estimates for the third and fourth quarters and assisted in hiding of Morgans' assets prior to takeover, creating an appearance of weakness. Your actions irreparably damaged the prestige of Galdes family and cut their income by one twelfth. You drove Arani Galdes, former CEO of Valemia, to commit suicide.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Nobody can blame me for her death.”

“I can,” she told him.

“Ah.” He inclined his head in a shallow bow. “So it’s personal. Your retina scans do not trace back to Galdes. You aren’t a kinsman. Why take a suicide so close to heart? Was she your lover?”

“My cousin.”

His eyebrows crept up. “You’re an excise.”

He turned the word into an expletive, saying it the way one might mutter “cursed” or “leper”. Even after twelve years it still stung a little. For a kinsman, family meant everything. Nothing could be worse than being disowned and cut off.

“Of course.” Agostino snapped his fingers. “Your family cast you out, so you can commit atrocities on their behalf, and none of your actions can be traced back to them. You still have fond feelings for your cousin. My apologies. I didn’t seek her death.”

His gestures grew animated. She could almost feel the wheels turning in his head. He thought he saw a crack in her armor. Meli sighed.

“Your sacrifice is admirable. But I could offer you so much more. Your parents, your siblings, they threw you aside. What kind of family does that? Don’t you want revenge?”

“It was my choice.”

He stared at her, stunned. “You chose…? Why?”

She reached into her business suit and produced a thin sheet of plasti-paper. On it a young dark-haired woman laughed, wearing a crown of flowers. Meli slid the plastic across the table to him.

“What’s this?”

“My cousin Arani. I wanted you to see her before you died.”

“Reconsider!”

“You’re my last kill,” she told him. “After you, I will retire.”

His face snapped into a hard mask. “There are six guards outside that door, not including automatic defenses. Even if you kill me, you’ll never get out alive.”

She gave him a bright smile as the ene-ribbon whipped from her wrist. She was still smiling when the top half of his skull slid to the floor.

* * *

No matter the hour, no matter the circumstance, Angel always looked perfect. Debonair in his tailored rust jerkin, with crispness to his lines and inborn poise so many spent years training to mimic, he seemed the very essence of a kinsman. His hair was a soft brown streaked with copper, his face was amiable and handsome, and his eyes were dark, just like hers. When he smiled from the display, it was as if the sun had risen. Fortunately, Meli had long ago become immune to his charm. After all, she had seen him in diapers.

“No more jobs,” she told him. “I’ve retired.” Two months had passed since Agostino Canopus died on the marble floor of his office. She liked her quiet and the sense of liberation retirement brought. No more jobs. No more death.

On the screen her brother leaned forward. “This is a personal request, Meli. From Father.”

Meli closed her eyes. Angel had interrupted her morning exercise and since his call wasn’t an emergency, she saw no reason not to continue. Around her the small house lay quiet, serene in the light of the early morning. A delicate lemony scent of brugmansia floated through the open screen door. She was aware of minute noises: water gurgling in the pipes, two bees buzzing in the small garden on her right, a faint whistling of the draft generated by the climate control system…

“Please, do him this favor.”

“I’m done, Angel,” she murmured. “We’ve spoken of this. The family has no right to ask me.”

“Father knows that. Believe me, he wouldn’t request this of you unless the need was dire.”

She said nothing. Angel, while diplomatic, suffered from an eloquent man’s malady—faced with silence, he felt compelled to fill it, even when it was in his best interests to keep his mouth shut.

Moments dripped by. Angel cleared his throat.

“Raban, Incorporated has dropped the price of the condenser units to below fifteen thousand standard dollars. It’s a calculated move to edge out the competition. The condenser production is still the main source of our revenue. We can’t underbid them. We can’t even match them. The profit margin is too narrow for us to survive. They can take a loss, but we don’t have the reserves to ride it out. We’re a small family. We’ll go bankrupt. And you know what happens to families that go bankrupt.”

Without funds, a family couldn’t pay its soldiers. The competition in New Delphi was too cut-throat for the family without soldiers to survive for long. The city housed twenty-one kinsman families of note, the metropolis divided between them like slices of a pie, in both economic and geographic sense. The Galdes’ slice was rather small, but their soldiers were renowned for their expertise and loyalty. Their martial prowess was what had kept the family afloat this long.

“Please, Meli. You’re still a Galdes. Even if you did retire.”

Why did she feel guilt? She owed them nothing. She’d spent twelve years murdering on their behalf. She just wanted to be free now. Free and alone. Her father knew this. She’d made it abundantly clear during their last communication.

She didn’t bend her rules, as the family learned the first time they tried to force her to kill a target without a sufficient reason. This job had to be special. Something she could refuse.

The curiosity got the better of her. “Who is the target?”

“Does this mean it’s a yes?”

Meli sighed softly. “The target, Angel.”

She supposed it had something to do with Raban, Inc., but she had excised herself from Galdes family years ago. Their business dealings remained a mystery to her. She had no idea who owned Raban, Inc.

She heard the barely audible click as Angel tapped the keys on his end of the screen.

A faint tug on her senses from the left. She didn’t hear it, didn’t see it, but felt it with some innate sixth sense, or perhaps an imperceptible combination of all five.

Meli struck.

Her eyes were still closed, but in her mind she clearly saw a ribbon of transparent green snapping from the bracelet on her hand. She felt the energy sear the target and smelled fried electronics.

“Good God,” Angel said.

She opened her eyes in time to see the manta ray shaped disk of interceptor crash to the floor in a smoking ruin. Quiet and equipped with small caliber cannon, robotic interceptor units had long become a favorite in security. Their state of the art sensory systems ensured that they located intruders quickly and the absolute silence of their flight made their detection nearly impossible until their ammunition bit the back of the target’s neck. She made it a point to kill at least one a month, to relieve tension and practice her strike on a moving target. It helped her stay sharp.

“It always rattles me when you do that,” Angel said. “Here is the file.”

A small icon ignited in the corner of the screen, indicating a downloaded file available for viewing. He hesitated. “I think you might enjoy this one. A bit of poetic justice, one might say. Give it a thought, Meli. Please. For me.”

Angel touched his fingertips to his mouth, pressed them to his forehead, and bowed his head. The screen turned neutral grey, signaling the end of transmission.

Meli sighed. “Open file.”

The icon grew to fill the screen with a facsimile of a manila folder. The folder opened. A picture of a man looked at her. Ice burst at the base of her neck and slid down her spine.

Celino Carvanna.

* * *

Two hours later Meli sat in the garden. Around her, dahlias bloomed in a dazzling display of a hundred shades. The delicate pink of Adelaide Fontane, the white frilly Aspen, the gaudy riot of orange that was Bodacious and her favorite, the Arabian Night, its sharpened petals a deep intense red of a Burgundy wine.

Beyond the small plot lay a narrow street, typical to Old Town, where streets were narrow, houses old, property values low, and residents still kept an occasional garden. Beyond the street lay a throughway. If she rose and approached the fence, she would see the steady current of aerials gliding through the air. A left turn on the throughway would bring her to the heart of New Delphi’s financial district. A right would take her to the Terraces, where tourist shops and cafes catered to the upscale clientele eager for a touch of the “old planet” and the memories of provinces that lay beyond the city.

The city was the center of the South, the technological and economical hub of the subcontinent. Divided into territories between kinsmen, it served as their battleground. But those who had grown up in the provinces surrounding New Delphi never forgot their true home.

Meli had bought the house for the garden and filled it with dahlias, permitting only a few brugmansias and two pink silk trees for fragrance. It was her bright, cheerful haven, her little celebration of life and color, and affirmation of her own humanity. Her proof that she could nurture life as well as take it.

The file lay on her lap, downloaded into her notebook. She had read it, committing every word to memory. She had printed Celino’s photograph. His face was a glossy smoothness underneath her fingertips.

She moved her hand and looked down on the god of her adolescence. He hadn’t changed as much as she expected. The years had sharpened his face, honing his features with a lethal precision. A perfectly carved square jaw. A crisply defined nose with a small bump. His cheekbones protruded, the cheeks beneath them hollowed, making the contours of his face more pronounced. His eyebrows, two thick black lines, combined with the stubborn set of his wide, narrow-lipped mouth, gave his face a grim, menacing air. But it was the eyes that elevated his appearance from merely harsh to dangerous.

Dark grey, they matched the fabled bluish steel of Ravager firearms. Perceptive, powerful, they betrayed an intellect sharp enough to draw blood but revealed no emotion. Not even a minute glimpse of his inner self. She vividly remembered staring into their depths, trying to gauge what he felt for her, if anything, and finding only a hard opaque wall.

Every time she looked into those eyes, a jolt of adrenaline tore through her.

Meli forced herself to look at him again, trying to separate herself from the adolescent flutter of her pulse. That flutter, the slight pain in her chest, the rapid chill, all that was but a bitter memory of a little foolish girl, hardly more than a child. Her little foolish hopes and dreams had long turned to dust.

She had to evaluate him for what he was—a target.

In her mind a younger Celino sprang from her memories: handsome, tall, with a lazy, self-indulgent smile, standing on a verandah with a short blade in his hand, inviting the party guests to throw polymer drink cans at him. He was barely seventeen then. He looked incredible poised against the backdrop of the flower beds that gave the province of Dahlia its name. As a barrage of the multicolored containers hit him, he sliced at them in a blur, severing them with his blade. When he was done, the tile around him was drenched. Celino, on the other hand, remained perfectly dry.

Carvannas had a reputation for their knife skills, superb even among the kinsmen.

The man who looked at her from the photograph now wouldn’t show off. Tempered by a decade and a half in the kinsmen family feuds, he would watch, calculating the odds, until the right moment came, and then he would seize it without hesitation and squeeze out every advantage. He had survived four known assassination attempts and likely a dozen or more that remained secret. She tapped the notebook screen, calling up the only recorded attempt. She had viewed it twice already.

The premiere of Gigolo. A brightly lit street. Red carpet stretching into the mouth of Miranda Theater. Adoring crowds shouting their worship at the stars and their escorts.

A sleek, bullet-shaped aerial slid up to the ropes. The door swung up. A metal step unfurled from the underside of the vehicle, permitting the passengers to exit in comfort. Celino stepped out. Tall, lean, and overwhelmingly masculine in the traditional Carvanna black doublet stretched by his broad shoulders. He had matured well. Too well, Meli reflected.

He bent lightly, offering his hand, and immediately feminine fingers rested in his palm. A woman stepped out. She wore a glittering silvery sari that stopped a shade short of vulgar. In spiky heels, she stood only a couple of inches shorter than Celino, six two to his six four. A fountain of blonde hair spilled down her back all the way past her butt.

Celino led her down the carpet. They seemed perfectly matched—her glamorous light to his brooding darkness. A painful needle pierced Meli’s chest. Old dreams, she reminded herself.

She sensed the attack a moment before it came. Celino’s head jerked as the crowd on the right erupted and four men dashed at him. The magnetic disruptors installed by theater security made any metal projectiles unusable, and the attackers opted for dark red monomolecule blades.

Celino thrust his date behind him with a powerful shove and attacked so quickly, he blurred. He was preternaturally fast. Meli tapped the screen, slowing the recording by twenty-five percent. He held a simple metal knife. His swipe drew a bright red gash down the first attacker’s throat—beautifully done. A vertical gash opened a bigger hole in the carotid without slowing down the strike. It was nearly impossible to hit the artery that way—like aiming at a piece of lubricated IV drip dancing around in the wind. Meli had factored in the enhanced strength and speed, but Celino seemed to have enhanced reflexes as well. Or perhaps a targeting implant. Or both.

The second cut grazed the second attacker’s arm pit, severing another vein. The third assailant received a sideways swipe to the kidneys. That strike took a quarter of a second longer than Celino had planned. She saw him change his strategy in mid-move, hammering a kick to the fourth man’s neck. She rewound half a second, slowed the feed to half speed, and watched Celino’s black boot connect with the man’s neck. She couldn’t hear the telltale crunch, but she saw the man’s neck line jerk sharply. Celino’s kick had broken the vertebrae of his attacker.

She shut down the notebook. In a purely physical confrontation, Celino would kill her. She had absolutely no doubt of that. She was a small woman—he towered over her by a foot, outweighed her by at least eighty pounds of hard muscle, and he had enhancements she couldn’t match. Judging from Celino’s performance, very few people would be able to match him blow by blow. Add to it bodyguards, who always accompanied him. And Marcus. One couldn’t forget Marcus. Only one generation removed from old planet, Marcus was ill-suited to traditional enhancements. Instead he had done horrible things to his body in the name of service. A walking poison, he killed with a mere touch. Celino had saved him years ago and Marcus was devoted to Celino like a dog.

To kill Celino Carvanna, she would have to get close to him and separate him from his guards.

Father was right. None of the people at Galdes disposal could take out Celino Carvanna. In fact, of all the millions that inhabited New Delphi, she alone was uniquely qualified to take him on.

Father, in his wisdom, also reasoned that she would do it. If not for the sake of Galdes, then for the sake of sliding the tomb stone atop her broken heart. He believed she would hate Celino Carvanna. After all, Celino had humiliated the Galdes family. He ruined her life, obliterating her future. Of course, she had to hate him.

Meli recalled the file. Celino chose to oversee a number of projects for the Carvannas, including Raban, Inc. and Sunlight Development. He was active and ruthless, and his leadership brought his family to its prominence. He made the Carvanna millions. For all practical purposes, he was the Carvanna family. His death would plunge his clan into chaos and destroy the value of their stock.

Angel had managed to obtain Celino’s calendar for the next two weeks, at astronomical cost, no doubt. Celino scheduled an inspection of the new development to the south. That meant a flurry of meetings and formal dinner engagements, which, if the new Celino was anything like his younger self, he would loathe with great passion. He was both too active and too smart. Time may have taught him patience with less agile minds, but it could hardly teach him how to escape boredom in their presence.

She had reviewed his recent development projects. Celino built beautiful places, full of sunlight and flowers, all of the modern technology seamlessly married with the provincial earthiness. Meli smiled. One could remove a man from the provinces, but one couldn’t take the provinces out of the man. He would strive to escape tedium of formality, which meant he would likely stay in his villa on the Terraces and lunch below, among the cafes.

Revenge was sometimes best served hot.

* * *

Celino strode down the tiled curve of the Red Terrace. Built into the side of a towering cliff, now honeycombed with metal and plastic-sheathed tunnels, the Terraces consisted of seven platforms, layered one under another, each about a mile long and two hundred yards at their widest. The platforms jutted in gentle curves from the former cliff, housing small shops and eateries. The bottom terrace sat roughly three thousand feet above the plain, while the Red Terrace, where he stood, was situated three levels above it. He wasn’t sure about the exact altitude, but the view was magnificent.

The residents of New Delphi were used to heights, but even Celino, as he stopped by the faux wooden rail, was momentarily overcome by the enormity of the landscape. Far below him a vast plain rolled into the distance and beyond it blue cliffs rose, made ethereal by the ocean of air.

Celino resumed his walk, aware of Marcus following like an unobtrusive shadow a few feet behind. Two of his men, Romuld and Ven, stalked behind Marcus.

The breeze brought a whiff of a shockingly familiar aroma. He stopped. He smelled crisp dough with a slight buttery taste and a tantalizing scent of roasted passion raspberry, the only variety of the old planet berry that grew in the southern provinces. The aroma swirled about him and instantly he was five years old, stealing the still warm cone of pastry from the dish and eating quietly under the table, thrilled at his own sneakiness.

“What is it?” Marcus asked softly.

“Passion cones.” Celino accelerated, heading toward the source of the scent, until he reached a small cafe with a red overhang. A sign proclaimed A Taste of Dahlia. He rarely entered unfamiliar places. Why risk an ambush?

Celino glanced past Marcus at Ven. “An order of passion cones.”

The bodyguard ducked into the shop.

Celino shrugged. Funny how the memory played tricks. He could practically taste the pastry from the scent alone.

Ven emerged from the cafe. Empty handed.

Celino stared.

“The owner says the cones aren’t his to sell,” Ven said. “I told him to name the price, but he refused.”

Celino growled. He wanted the damn cones. He strode into the shop.

The cafe was small, barely more than a counter and six tables. The floor was faux wood, the furnishings vintage Dahlia: sturdy old furniture that would last another century. Only two of the tables were occupied. The patrons watched him like terrified rabbits.

Behind him Romuld activated the scanner that sat over his left eye. A sheet of green light swept over the tables and people sitting at them. Romuld said nothing. The place was clean.

An older man hurried to Celino’s side, nervously wiping his hands with a towel. “Sir?”

“Passion cones,” Celino said.

The older man twisted the towel in his hands. “You see, the business is a bit slow. It’s a weekday and off-season.”

Celino frowned.

The man stammered. “There is a woman. She rents one of my stoves once in a while, because I have the old iron ovens. The old province kind. She pays well. She was the one who made the passion cones. So I can’t sell them. I’ve asked.”

The trip down memory lane suddenly became a challenge. “Then I will ask her myself.”

The man nodded and pointed to the back. “Through that door, sir.”

Celino crossed the floor and ducked through the low doorway. A spacious kitchen stretched before him, filled with the tantalizing aroma of freshly baked dough.

A woman sat at a large table, in a pool of golden light streaming from the window. She wore a sundress the color of burgundy. Her hair was gathered into a thick dark braid that glinted with copper in the sunlight. In her hands was an electronic reader.

She looked up at him, her dark eyes like two bottomless pools on a face tanned to golden perfection. Celino stared.

The woman blinked against the green sweep of Romuld’s scanner and raised her eyebrows.

“I’m told you made the cones,” Celino said.

“Technically, I’m still making them.” Her voice was sensuous and confident, and completely unimpressed with his surliness. She checked her reader’s clock. “Thirty seconds left.”

“I’d like to purchase them.”

“Are you a Dahlian?”

“I don’t see how that can be of any consequence.”

She rose. She was shorter than he, maybe five four. The thin dress hugged her chest, outlining large, full breasts and a narrow waist. The wide cut of the skirt hid her hips, but judging by the rest of her, her butt was round and plump. She grasped a heat-resistant towel, forced open the stove door and pulled a tray of cones into the light. They looked perfect, golden crispy brown.

“If you were a Dahlian, then you would know that passion cones must be baked with love and given freely. Mothers make them for their children, wives make them for their husbands, and young girls bake them for their lovers. It’s bad luck to sell them.”

She set the tray atop a stone block and used the tongs to transfer the cones to a small cloth-lined basket. He liked the way she moved, easy, graceful, gliding.

“That’s an old superstition.”

“Superstitions add texture to life.”

She picked up the basket and brought it to the table, and once again he stared, mesmerized by her curves and her bottomless eyes.

“How much?” he asked, and wasn’t sure if he was asking how much she wanted for the cones or how much she would charge to let him have a go at her ripe body.

“Not for sale.” A little sly light danced in her dark eyes.

Cones or you, he wondered. Her eyes told him the answer: both.

He changed his tactics. “By the same tradition, it’s bad luck to turn away a guest from your table. Especially one who arrives in the middle of the meal.”

She laughed softly. “So you’re from Dahlia after all. I’ll make you a deal. I will share my cones. But I have no pink wine to go with them. If you…”

He simply jerked his hand and the sound of rapidly retreating steps announced Ven’s departure.

“A bit imperious of you,” she said, amused.

He pulled out a chair and sat at the table opposite her. “It’ll save us time.” He glanced at her reader. A Chronicle of the Reign of Charles IX. “Prosper Mérimée?”

“Indeed.”

He didn’t think anyone except him read the long forgotten old planet author. “Stories of a more savage time. When men were men and women were…”

“Hauntingly beautiful bronze statues of Venus who crushed them in their sleep?”

Celino frowned. She didn’t simply read the novel, she had read the short stories as well.

“I’m afraid I prefer Colomba to Carmen,” she said. “So if you want to discuss the opera, you’re out of luck.”

He viewed opera as a garish and vulgar spectacle.

Ven entered and placed a bottle of Dahlian Pink on the table. He had activated the icer on the side of the bottle and a delicate feathery frost painted the glass.

“We’ll need mugs,” she murmured. “Ascanio! Can I trouble you for a couple of mugs?”

Mugs. How…provincial. He hid a smile.

The proprietor scurried into the room, deposited two heavy clear mugs onto the table, and escaped.

Celino popped the cork and poured the wine. A lush pink splashed into the mug. She tasted it. Her eyes widened. “Cerise!”

“Indeed.”

“Had I known you would pay for the cones with luxury wine, I would’ve surrendered immediately.”

“Surrendered” conjured an image of her naked in the sheets. Surprising. It had been a long time since he reacted that way to a woman. And she wasn’t even beautiful. She seemed to have none of the refined elegance he usually sought.

Where did she come from? What was she doing here? Besides baking passion cones.

He pulled his combat knife from the sheath on his belt and offered it to her handle first. “I believe it’s customary to share the first cone.”

She took the knife without care, gripped it like a hammer, oblivious to the fact that her fingerprints registered on the handle, and chopped a cone in two. Whatever she was, knife artistry wasn’t in her talents. She cut like a cook.

She returned his knife and pushed half a cone toward him. “May you prosper.”

“And you as well.” His mouth automatically shaped the response to the old greeting.

She bit into her cone. Celino tasted his, waiting for the three-second diagnostic. No alarms blared in his implant. No poison. He bit a piece, savoring it this time. It tasted like heaven. Neither too sour, nor too sweet. Perfection. He ordered passion cones from time to time and the premier bakeries of New Delphi had nothing on this woman.

His teeth caught something solid. “Lemon rind?” he said in disbelief. To the best of his knowledge, only his mother put lemon rind into the cones.

“You found out my secret.” Her pink tongue darted out of her mouth to lick a smudge of the filling off her bottom lip. He wondered if her mouth tasted of cones and pink wine.

“Would your men like some?”

“No,” he said.

“They’re on duty?”

He nodded and attacked the second cone.

He had eaten three before Marcus leaned over to him. The meeting with the land owners started in less than twenty minutes. Barely enough time to reach the conference hall within his hotel.

He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to sit with her in the sunny kitchen, drink pink wine, eat cones, and think of her in his bed.

“Ah. You have to run,” she guessed.

“Indeed.” He rose. “Thank you. The cones were divine.”

She handed him the basket. “Take them.”

He hesitated.

She rose and pressed the basket into his hands. “You’re leaving the wine with me. It’s only fair.”

Outside the sunshine made him blink. He slipped the knife out and handed it to Romuld. “Find out who she is.”

* * *

Meli sat alone in the kitchen. She poured herself another mug. The wine was perfect, delicate, its bouquet leaving a symphony of complimenting flavors on her tongue.

A small part of her had hoped Celino would recognize her. But he didn’t. That was how little her existence had meant. She was nothing but a forgotten speck in his past life.

Meli drank the wine.

It had started with a veil.

She vividly remembered it. It was a diaphanous indigo veil that hid the bottom part of her face, leaving only her eyes exposed. When her mother had slipped it onto her, adjusting the band to fit under the knot of her hair, Meli could still see her features in the mirror, but her face seemed broken in half. There was the tan half with her eyes and then there was the lower half under the veil that seemed to belong to someone else.

“Why?” she asked.

Mother sat on the bed. “You are betrothed. The veil lets everyone know that you’re off-limits.”

The enormity of it failed to penetrate. “But I’m only ten.”

Mother sighed. “I voted against it. I think it’s a critical error in judgment and I think it will come back to haunt us all. But I was outvoted by the family counsel.”

Even at ten, Meli knew that family counsel was law.

“Who am I marrying?”

Mother snapped her fingers. The display hidden in the surface of the mirror ignited. “Engagement,” her mother said briskly. A file appeared, opened, and an image of Celino Carvanna filled the screen.

“But he’s old!”

“Don’t be melodramatic. He’s only sixteen. In eight years, when you marry him, you will be eighteen and he will be twenty-four. See, the difference is much less pronounced. And when you’re twenty-two and he’s twenty-eight, you’ll barely notice it.”

Meli stared at Celino’s face. He was handsome. She had seen him a few times at the garden parties. But he didn’t know she existed. “But he isn’t interested in me in that way.”

“Darling, you’re ten. Trust me, if I had any inkling that he was interested in you in that way at this point, they’d have to kill me and your father both to go through with this engagement. He is a very young man. Right now woman to Celino means a set of breasts and a plump bottom.”

Mother took her hands into hers.

“You’re not a woman yet, Meli. But one day you will be. You won’t be beautiful, but you will be attractive and men will flock to you. Me, your aunt Nez, your grandmother, we all have that something that makes men turn their heads and do silly things to entice us into their beds. Don’t worry, darling. He will notice you one day. You will hit him like a brick.”

The veil itched her chin. Meli scratched. “But why do I have to do this?”

“Because our family and the Carvannas have formed an alliance. On our own, we’re both too small to be a significant player in New Delphi, but together we can be a force. Our territory will double. We’re sharing technologies and manufacturing facilities. And your betrothal to Celino cements it together the way seal foam cements sections of the spacecraft together.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Mother gathered her into her arms. They sat together looking at Celino.

“I will have to do it anyway, won’t I?”

“Yes.”

“What if he won’t like me?” Meli said softly.