“Thank you.” Chauser nodded politely at Hinks as he took charge of the tiny instrument of torture. “Now, Jameson, you may approach.”
I came forward slowly, my heart pounding and my stomach rolling. I was afraid I might faint or be sick or both but I forced my legs to keep walking anyway. This is the only way, I reminded myself. The only way to save Kristopher. I have to do it.
“All right. Place you wrist on the chopping block,” Headmaster Chauser commanded.
The block itself was made of cold, black metal. I shivered as I laid my hand, palm down, on its chilly surface. It’ll be all right, I tried to tell myself. It will only hurt for a minute. I hoped, anyway.
“This is your last chance, Jameson,” Chauser intoned. “I don’t like taking a hand—it’s the only part of my job I truly loathe. But I won’t be made a fool of. Tell me where your brother is now or face the consequences.”
I was shaking at that point, shaking and sweating with fear but I forced myself to keep my hand on the block. “Please, sir,” I croaked. “I…I’ll take the consequences.”
“As you wish,” Chauser said. “On the count of three, then. One…two…” The laser beam blade was already in motion as he said, “Thr—”
“Stop!”
Headmaster Chauser cursed and pressed the terminate button as the door to his office burst inward. The glowing beam cut off abruptly and the last person I had expected to see walked in—my father.
“What the hell is going on here, Chauser?” he shouted, coming to stand over me. Father was a big man and he towered over the headmaster as well as myself. “What’s this I hear about you having admitted my daughter instead of my son to your God forsaken school?”
“Admiral J-Jameson?” Chauser stuttered, turned pale. From the look on his face, I could tell that he hadn’t yet contacted my father and hadn’t expected to have to deal with him so soon. So then, who had called Father? Hinks? I looked at the headmaster’s assistant who was wringing his hands in agitation—probably not. Then who?
The question was wiped from my mind by the shouting match that began between the headmaster and my father. Both of them held the other to blame and neither wanted to admit any culpability at all.
“Your daughter willfully and deliberately infiltrated The Royal Academy with the express intention of defrauding us all,” Chauser accused, pointing at me.
“You idiot! She couldn’t have ‘infiltrated’ this damn place without you letting her in the first place. She’s a girl for God’s sake. Are you telling me you’re too stupid to tell the difference between male and female?”
The headmaster’s face went from white to red. “She was very convincing. She wore her brother’s clothes, cut her hair… She fooled everyone.”
Father snorted contemptuously. “Everyone without half a brain in their head. Tell me, Chauser, if someone put a saddle on a cow would you try to ride the damn thing?”
Chauser’s face went even darker. “Now look here, stop trying to put the blame on me. The Academy is innocent of any wrongdoing. It is your daughter who has perpetrated fraud. I was just about to enact the punishment for her actions when you burst in and stopped me.”
“And a damn good thing I did, too,” Father said icily. “Just look at her.” He gave me a disgusted look. “All her hair cut off, and…is that a piercing I see in your ear, young lady?” He looked at me in disbelief. “Isn’t it bad enough you’ve been living unmarried among males all this time? You had to go and brand yourself a prossie too?”
I flushed and put a hand protectively to the silver and onyx stud North had given me. “That’s not what this means. It was a gift.”
“From who?” he roared. “One of the males you serviced while you were here?”
“Now, wait a minute, Jameson.” Headmaster Chauser stepped forward. “I must take issue with that. As far as I’ve been able to discern, there has been no improper, er, sexual conduct here. Your daughter managed to keep her identity secret from everyone here—even her roommate—through extreme modesty.”
“That’s right,” Hinks said, stepping up to stand beside the headmaster. “She may be a liar but she’s not a whore.”
I flashed Hinks a look of gratitude but clearly the good word he and the headmaster were putting in for me wasn’t getting through to Father. He was looking at me as though I was something he’d scraped from the bottom of his boot.
“It doesn’t matter if she is or not, that’s how she’ll be seen in Victoria. She’s been living like a harlot and that’s how she’ll be perceived.” He glared at the headmaster. “And now you want to amputate a limb—as if I won’t have a hard enough time finding a husband to take her off my hands.”
His words broke the ice which seemed to have frozen me to the spot. “I don’t want to get married, Father!” I said, looking up at him. “I want to navigate a starship.”
“Don’t expose your ignorance, Kristina—that’s no occupation for a female,” Father snarled.
“Maybe not in Victoria,” I countered. “But I could get a commission in the private sector. I’m at the top of all my classes here. Just ask the headmaster.”
“He, er, she does consistently outscore all her other classmates in every subject,” Headmaster Chauser admitted reluctantly. “In fact before all this, er, came to light I was going to recommend Jameson here for early placement into The Corps.”
“See?” I rounded on Father. “I’m smart, Father—not just some stupid little female you can dismiss because I don’t happen to have the right set of equipment between my legs. Why don’t you just disown me and let me be? I can—”
Father’s big hand came out of nowhere, slapping me so hard I saw stars. The impact knocked me off my feet and I lay on the floor, stunned, my ears ringing.
“You listen to me, Kristina,” he growled, in a low, menacing voice. “You are just a stupid female and you’ll do as I say. I’ll find you a husband all right—one who’ll take you far from my sight and beat you every day if he pleases. Then and only then will I wash my hands of you.”
“Father, please,” I gasped but he hauled me roughly to my feet and shook me.
“Until I find a man willing to take you, you’re to shut your mouth and keep it shut. Is that clear?”
His breath was hot and rank on my face and I had never seen him so angry. I was glad that Kristopher wasn’t here. Glad that he was beyond my father’s reach. But it was clear Father was going to make sure I was miserable the rest of my life in order to pay for my deception and my brother’s freedom.
“I said, is that clear?” Father barked, shaking me again.
“Yes.” I lifted my chin and looked him in the eyes. “Yes, it’s perfectly clear, Father. You hate me and you want to make me pay.”
He didn’t even try to deny it. “You’ll pay all right, missy,” he snarled, wrapping one hand around my wrist in an iron grip. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll wish you’d lost the hand instead. Now, come on.”
He jerked me out of the headmaster’s office, leaving Chauser and Hinks behind with grim looks on their faces.
Father dragged me down the long hallway and out into the outer lobby area. There, sitting on a chair, apparently waiting for an audience with the headmaster was North.
He gave me a startled look. “Jameson?”
“North!” My heart leapt in my chest. “North, I wanted to say—”
“Come on.” Father jerked on my arm when I tried to stop and talk but I resisted. This would be the last chance I had to set the record straight—I didn’t want to leave The Academy without trying to explain myself.
“No,” I said, leaning back against Father’s punishing grip. “I have something to say to North.”
“No, you don’t.” Father’s face was growing red with anger again. “I told you, you’re to keep your mouth shut.” He turned an unfriendly gaze on North. “Who is he, anyway—one of the boys you serviced? What do you want to say to him?”
“Whatever it is, it’s
nothing I want to hear.” North gave me a look of disgust that seemed to cause my heart to drop down to my feet. Getting up, he walked back toward the headmaster’s office.
“North?” I whispered. And then louder, “North, please!” With a superhuman effort, I yanked free of my father’s punishing grip and ran to stand in front of my roommate. “Please,” I repeated. “You…you said you loved me.”
North’s pale blue eyes were cold. “That was before I knew how you lied. Go away, Kris—go home. You’re not the person I thought I knew.”
“I’m the exact same person,” I protested. “I know I lied about who I was but I never lied about what I felt. Please, North, if you’ll just—”
“Get back here, young lady.” Suddenly my father was beside me, pulling me away again. I wanted to struggle against him, to break free again, but the look on North’s face told me it would be a wasted effort.
I felt all the determination leaking out of me, like air from a balloon. There was no point in struggling now, no point in fighting. North had already turned away from me, as though he couldn’t even bear to look at me.
Feeling like my heart would burst, I went with my father willingly, allowing him to jerk me through the door of the Administration building without another word of protest.
It was over. My entire life was over but somehow I couldn’t make myself care. All I could see was that last look in North’s piercing blue eyes.
The look that said he hated me for my lies and would hate me forever.
Chapter Thirty-five
“Well, well, so today’s the big day.” Anna, the maid/jailor my father had hired to look after me, bustled around my room, tidying up.
“Yes. A big day,” I said dully without bothering to look away from the window. The view from my window seat was the same as it had been for the past six months. It showed our quiet, well-to-do Victorian neighborhood where nothing ever happened.
Of course today something was going to happen—I was going to meet my new husband. I had no idea who my father had found for me to marry. Presumably it was a man from outside Victoria. No one in my home province would have had anything to do with me, even if I had been allowed outside the house—which I wasn’t. I had made several halfhearted attempts to escape but to no avail. My father had hired guards posted around the house both day and night. It must be costing him a fortune but apparently all he cared about was making certain I didn’t run off before he got me properly wed.
Not that I would have had anywhere to go if I had managed to escape. My dreams of working in the private sector were over. In order to get to a spaceport where they would have me, which is to say someplace other than Victoria, I would need credit. And the first thing Father had done was cancel all my accounts. I was a penniless prisoner in my own home—a prisoner to my own apathy as much as I was to the guards who stood outside our doors and windows and Anna who was still cheerfully humming as she straightened my room.
I pressed my forehead to the cool window glass, trying not to think. Sometimes little children came to stand on the street outside my home and stare up at the 'bad woman' as they called me. They threw small stones and stuck out their tongues, sometimes hanging around for hours. If their mothers or nannies caught them, they were quickly dragged away but the children always came back. I was a true novelty—a member of the upper crust who had fallen into sin. I didn’t mind their jeers and taunts—in fact, I didn’t mind much of anything. I was too busy being miserable.
Inside the confines of the house, time dragged as it never had when Kristopher and I had lived here together. My brother had tried to contact me once, but the communication had been cut just a few minutes after the call was established. There was barely enough time for me to find out he was safe and beg him to stay where he was—away from the Prometheus system—before his beloved face vanished from the screen.
Other than that one brief distraction, I had no other entertainment or diversion. I was entombed in the house with nothing to do but think of how badly I had ruined my life. Sometimes I took out my brother’s old textbooks and read through them, wondering how North was doing in Astro Navigation without me. But I tried not to think about that too much—it was such a painful memory. Already everything we had gone through together at The Academy seemed like nothing but a very vivid dream—something that might have happened to some other girl in another life. Some things were still very clear though—try as I might I couldn’t get his last words out of my mind. Or that last look which told me how he hated me.
“Oh North,” I whispered, putting my head in my hands. “I’m so sorry. So terribly, terribly sorry…”
“Come now, none of that,” Anna said brightly, taking me by the arm. “In just a few hours your new husband will be here. It’s time we got you ready. And put a smile on your face—you don’t want him see you moping like that.”
I didn’t much care how the man my father had picked saw me, but I allowed Anna to bathe and dress me as though I was a doll. She brushed my hair, which had quickly grown back well past my shoulders, until it shone. Then she put me in a dress of crimson velvet.
Pink was the traditional marriage color in Victoria but due to my dubious past, I clearly wasn’t fit to wear it. I told myself defiantly that the deep red suited my pale complexion and dark hair and eyes better anyway—even if it was the color of harlots and whores. Besides, my husband-to-be ought to know exactly what he was getting—used goods. The crimson dress advertised that very well indeed.
I didn’t object to Anna’s primping until she tried to remove the silver and onyx stud from my ear. We were sitting in the drawing room, waiting, and Anna was putting the finishing touches on my outfit when she remarked, with studied casualness, that the earring didn’t really match the rest of my wedding outfit. “It should come out,” she said, moving to take it.
“No!’ I put a hand over it protectively as she tried to get past me to take it out. “No, I won’t take it out. I won’t.”
“Think of your new husband,” Anna pleaded. “He’s coming to collect a wife—not a prossie! You mustn’t let him see you with that thing in your ear.”
“I don’t care how he sees me!” I shouted. “North gave it to me and I’m not taking it off.”
“I think it looks charming.”
The gruff, unfamiliar voice from the doorway of the drawing room made Anna and I both jump in surprise. There, standing just behind the butler who had clearly let him in, was a tall, imposing figure dressed all in black.
I examined him, wanting to see what my future husband looked like but unfortunately I couldn’t tell—he was wearing a plague mask. I bit my lip at the sight of the formless white shield which had only a long narrow slit for the eyes to look out of. Those who wore such masks were horribly disfigured by a space parasite which ate the flesh, leaving only the stark bones behind. 'Skelly heads' was the slang term for such unfortunates and they normally kept to themselves, only going out when necessary and never without their masks.
“Lady Kristina,” the butler intoned before I could say anything. “May I announce Lord Aldus Wanerite of Midas, your husband-to-be.”
“I…I…” I didn’t know what to say as Wanerite paced slowly forward and bowed over my hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you, my Lord,” I said at last.
He rose gracefully and regarded me through the narrow slit in his mask. I wished I could see his eyes but they were hidden, too far back for me to catch anything but a faint glitter behind the featureless plague mask.
“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Kristina,” he said, in that gruff voice of his.
“And I, yours, my Lord,” I said, trying not to shrink away from him.
“Yes, extremely pleased—I can tell,” he said dryly. “I am afraid I’m not the type of husband you had dreamed of but I must say, you are everything I could wish for in a wife. I’m sure we’ll be very happy together.”
I bit my lip. “Y-yes, my Lord,” I managed to say.
�
��Why so glum, my dear?” he asked softly. “Do you think it impossible to learn to love the inner person, even if the outer appearance is not what you might wish it to be?”
I felt my cheeks go hot. “Of course not, my Lord. I’m…I’m sure that’s possible.”
“Quite possible, I assure you. Now come, let’s sign the papers and be on our way. I have a busy schedule to keep and my ship leaves at dawn.”
Since I was in disgrace, none of the clergy of Victoria would deign to preside over my wedding. A civil ceremony would have to do for now with a more formal one, my new husband promised in his gravely voice, when we got back to his home moon of Midas.
We stood before the viewscreen in the sitting room. It was the same place my ill begotten adventure had begun, with father ordering Kristopher and I around. My new husband-to-be took my hand and we waited until the screen came to life, showing a magistrate with my father, staring savagely over his shoulder.