"Are you really serving gishi fruit ice cream at Galedaro's?" Welt ventured to ask.
"Yes. We are," Zendeval's tone warned Welt not to ask any other questions. He didn't.
"This has been most helpful," Welt gave me a smile instead. He meant well, I just couldn't imagine that someone had trained him so poorly.
"I want you to contact Reah if you have difficulty preparing other desserts," Zendeval grumbled at Welt. "Come, Reah, we will go back, now. Do you want something else to eat before you go home?" We'd worked past the time for me to leave the kitchens at Galedaro's.
"I feel a little ill from eating too many sweets," I put a hand to my stomach. "Thank you for the offer, but no."
"But I have to make up for taking your dinner last night," he said. "Perdil was quite shocked that I didn't realize it at the time."
"It's rude not to offer food or refreshments to your guests," I muttered.
"Yes. You are correct. I will remember that next time." I blinked up at him. He was managing five of the highest rated resorts in the Reth Alliance, and was forgetting his manners? I wanted to shake my head and didn't.
"Where do you get your hair dyed?" he asked, fingering a few strands of my hair. I didn't N a ot34"like anyone touching my hair that I didn't know well.
"I don't. This is my natural color," I said, trying to move away from him.
"You were born with this?" He lifted the strands to his nose and sniffed.
"I imagine it smells like cake and pastry now," I said tartly. Likely it did—I'd been baking most of the day. "Can I have my hair back?" I almost jerked it from Zendeval's hand.
"You make me forget my manners, Reah. I have business to attend to. Perhaps I will see you tomorrow." We were at the bank of elevators and he stepped onto the one that would carry him to the penthouse. I watched as the doors closed on him, fuming silently. Of all the cursed luck, to get someone like him for an employer.
"Come on, you need protein," Ry placed a plate of chicken in front of me. He'd gone to get it downstairs. I told him I'd tasted too many desserts at Chrestin's, so this was his solution. "Just a couple of bites. Come on," he coaxed softly. "Then we'll put you to bed." I ate three bites and that was all I could stand. Heaving sounded good right then. Ry did put me in the bed after helping me undress, then dampened a towel in warm water and laid it across my belly.
"There. We'll get rid of that ache," he crooned.
He no longer remembered his name. At times, that bothered him. Now, he lifted and loaded, lifted and loaded. That was what they'd told him to do. When he slept—the few hours he was allowed—he dreamt of strange things. Wondrous, at times. Imagined that he was capable of things most people couldn't envision. But those were only dreams that evaporated upon waking, when someone kicked him and he rose again, to stand in the long lines to receive a small meal that wasn't fit for animals to consume. Then he'd be led to another waiting ship. There, he'd do his duty, unloading and carrying, sometimes for clicks without a break.
Some of his companions dropped while they worked, mostly from lack of water. Some of them were revived. Others were killed where they lay, begging for something to drink with their last breath. He paid them no mind; he was instructed to do so. Nothing mattered any longer, not even the absence of his name.
"I thought I would heave afterward, I tasted so many desserts. I do not wish to repeat that," I told Perdil the following day as I worked in the kitchen. No food looked good to me at the moment, and I'd barely been able to stomach a cup of weak tea at breakfast. Ry suggested that I call and say I was ill, but I dragged myself to work anyway. The gishi fruit ice cream had to be made and I was the only one who knew how to make it. That recipe wasn't leaving my head and I was careful that nobody saw the entire making of it.
"Tomorrow is Eight-Day and I will be off," Perdil reminded me. "You'll have the pastry kitchen to yourself."
"Of course, Master Cook Perdil," I nodded and continued with my work. I hadn't had a chance to speak with Ry for the past two days about Stellar Winds and ask whether he'd found anything or not. Hesitating to bother him with mindspeech at the moment, I concentrated on my work and hoped that Zendeval Rjjn would stay away from the kitchens and leave me in peace.
"What do you make of this?" Lendill and Norian sat in N Sriasizorian's spacious office in Ildevar Wyyld's palace, reviewing images from the many microscopic cameras that Lendill had given to Ry. They saw three men inside the voyeur booth, all holding comp-vids in their hands while graphic sexual activity went on in the room below.
"I think we should get identification on the girl and then watch what happens to her," Norian muttered, using the controls at his desk to zoom in on her image.
"Already done—Ry has the information in this. He shipped it to me using a bit of that power he has. I may have to try my hand at the same thing." Lendill held up the comp-vid that Pripps Electronics had given to Ry. "The girl went home to Hraede yesterday and I've already got an agent keeping tabs on her there."
"I wonder if Lissa's busy," Norian sighed as he watched the sex.
"Norian, we don't have these men in any of our databases," Lendill attempted to bring Norian back to the business at hand.
"What? None of them?" Now Norian was staring at Lendill instead of the vid-screen.
"None of them. I've run their images through everything we have and unless they've all altered their appearances, they're ghosts or from outside either Alliance. I checked Teeg's databases, too."
"We're on the same page, then," Norian agreed. "I think they're bidding on that girl, and the one with the winning bid wins the prize."
"Yeah. But Ry thinks there's a lot more going on than that, he just hasn't put his finger on it, yet."
"What does Reah say?"
"I haven't heard from Reah. Just as the rest of her mates haven't. I think she's angry with all of us at the moment, and Ry tells me through mindspeech that he thinks the one who runs the five best resorts is sniffing after her, now. Ry says that Zendeval Rjjn is rude and contemptible and Reah may punch him through a wall before the investigation is over."
"Good for her. She can work off some of that suppressed anger and aggression," Norian nodded.
I had Darletta Schuul in my sights. She and her father were still on Stellar Winds, apparently; I'd caught sight of them at the bar when I'd gone out to get a bottle of wine to carry upstairs. I wanted to wind down with Ry for a little while and talk a few things over regarding the evidence (or lack thereof) in the case so far. But Darletta and her father, sitting at the bar with Faldin Bierla, forced a change of plans.
Dantel had a lovely young girl at his side, likely drunk or drugged, I imagined. Her eyes were glassy and she giggled at everything Dantel said to her. I watched as they left the bar and walked toward the exit leading to the voyeur booths next door. Sending hasty mindspeech to Ry, he acknowledged it and said he'd find something for dinner while I tracked my quarry. I fended off hands that reached for me as I passed a knot of young ones cavorting on the dance floor.
Dantel and Darletta were aiming for the voyeur booths, all right, but I wasn't expecting them to all go into the same suite. Not to watch the ones below—others were going to watch them. I slipped inside the voyeur booth overhead. One other came inside with me. He looked very much like Zendeval Rjjn in my estimation, with black eyes and dark hair. The light wasn't the best inside the booth, but I took a seat at the window and watched what I thought to be one of the most perverted things I'd ever Sing="34">< seen.
Darletta and the girl were having sex with Faldin and Dantel Schuul. I wanted to gag. I'd been beaten by my father when I was small, and he'd broken many bones. He'd never done this, though. The man sitting across the booth from me hauled out a comp-vid and pressed several keys before putting it back in his pocket. The privacy screen was on, but I was too far away to have seen anything anyway. When Darletta went to her father and put her mouth on him, I stood and walked out.
Ry, that was the sickest thing I've ever seen. I sent mindspeech while sitting in a warm tub of water with a damp cloth draped over my eyes. Ry was kneeling by the tub, running a gentle knuckle over my cheek and swirling the water now and then with his hand, keeping the water at the right temperature with power. I wish I could do that. Ry's father, Erland Morphis, finally told me one day that a warlock's power worked around me as long as it wasn't meant to harm.
"I don't know how High Demon physiology knows how to sort out the helpful from the harmful," he'd given me the smile that Ry had inherited from him. "Yet it does," he'd added. Ry had inherited more from Erland Morphis than merely his handsome face.
"I have a shield up, so we won't be heard," Ry whispered. "Reah, do you know how beautiful you are?" he added softly, a thumb caressing my mouth. His mouth replaced the thumb. "Do you remember the first time we met?" he asked.
I did. I'd sneaked into his mother's palace kitchen to fix something to eat. I was recuperating from injuries and wasn't supposed to be out of bed. Ry and Tory had both appeared, having just completed a special assignment for the ASD. I'd cooked for them and for Lissa's Falchani twins who'd also shown up. "I remember," I said. I'd thought those times were difficult. I hadn't known difficult, back then.
"Reah, I used to lust after Jhase and Jehri, Jayd and Glinda's twins," he said. "But that was just lust. I think somewhere in my mind, I knew that I'd find the right one for me someday. The right woman. I found her one night in my mother's kitchen. But I took a step back, because Tory's eyes were filled with stars when he saw you. I didn't want to stand in my brother's way. And then I took another step back when Great-Grandfather declared that you were his. When Gavril disappeared, then showed up later as Teeg San Gerxon with his ring on your finger, I took another step away. My heart hurts, Reah. For you. Aches. For you. There hasn't been another who held me or my heart. Not that I've been celibate. I tried to push your image away, anytime I went to bed with someone else. But it was always there. I'm tired of stepping back, Reah."