The Seer (Tellaran Series) (25 page)

Twenty-six

She stared. “You can’t.”

“Arissa, this is a genuine, though admittedly poorly executed, offer of marriage.” He raised his eyebrows. “Look, I’m not above begging but I’d rather not put you through being embarrassed for me like that. Just say yes now so I don’t have to.”

“You already have a contract to marry, remember?”

Jolar traced her jaw with his fingers. “Jasa deserves a husband who loves her. So I’m going break off our betrothal and let her go find him. In Tano, if she’s still there. On Zartan, if she’s not. I want to tell her in person, though. I owe her that much at least.”

She shook her head. “Jolar, you’re a Zartani aristocrat. You can’t marry a commoner, an Apovian, let alone a—You
can’t
.”

He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “After all this you think I’m going to let a little thing like a death sentence stop us? You love me. I love you. ” He wound a ringlet around his finger, his mouth curving tenderly. “You’ve never seen me when I’m really determined. You might as well say yes now, Arissa, ‘cause I’m
going
to marry you.”

“You can’t.”

He put his elbow on the bed and propped his head on his hand to look at her. “I can. I will.”

“You’re going to break the promise you made to your father on his deathbed? Go against all Zartani tradition? What about your honor?”

“My heart, I’m going to spit in the face of a thousand generations of Zartani tradition and I’m not even sorry.” He gave a rueful smile. “There
is
no honor in lying, in pretending. That’s what I’d be doing if I married Jasa: lying. I’d be lying for the rest of my damned life. If my honor truly matters to me then ending a forced betrothal and making vows to the one I love is the only way to keep it truly intact. I’m going to do what I know is right, what I know is really honorable. Besides, it wasn’t two days ago I swore to the Goddess Arrena I would do anything to have you back. And you can bet if I break a promise to
her
the question of my honor will be the least of my problems.”

She rubbed her hand over her eyes. “You don’t mean it.”

“Is that what your Seer abilities tell you, sweet?”

But he did. He meant every word.

“What’s the matter?” He searched her face. “You don’t want to marry me?”

She wet her lips. “No, I don’t.”

He grinned. “Liar. Promise you’ll marry me. I’m not going to give up.”

“Ask me after you’ve broken with her.”

He regarded her with steady blue eyes and drummed his fingers lightly against her belly.

At last gave a nod. “Fair enough. I’ll break with Jasa first.”

“And we can’t—”

He groaned and flopped onto his back, plainly anticipating what she was going to say. “No.”

“You’re betrothed to someone else,” she said sharply.

“Oh,
hell!
” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “All right, but if the gods have any mercy in them, Jasa’s still in Tano and I won’t have to go all the way to Zartan to do this. Hold on—” His brow creased. “Can I still kiss you?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I’m going to take that as tacit permission.” His eyes lingered on her breasts then went lower, his smile hot. “Can I kiss you everywhere?”

She gave him an exasperated look.

He held up one hand. “Just clarifying the rules.” He gave her an appraising glance. “This is going to be even harder than sleeping next to you and thinking you don’t want me.”

“Is that what you thought?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“You didn’t act like you wanted me.”

“Because you’re betrothed to someone else!”

He took her hand and gently pressed a kiss to her palm. “Not for long and I’m already cataloguing what I want to do once I’m officially free.” He grinned, his joy white hot. “You love me.”

She ducked her head. “I shouldn’t.”

“Well, I don’t deserve you, that’s not even a question,” he agreed. He slid closer to cradle her against him, his happiness warm and tingly around her. “I love you, sweet.”

She rested her cheek against the smooth warm skin of his shoulder, while he stroked her back. His lips pressed against her temple, brushed her cheek, then lightly touched her mouth. He deepened the kiss, his fingers tracing lower to trace her breast, his breath quickening.

“Jolar,” she pleaded, already more than a little breathless herself.

Jolar made a low frustrated sound then rolled onto his back to look at the ceiling.

“Well, lying here with both of us naked isn’t helping,” he grumbled. “So let’s go through that computer while the groundcar finishes charging. I want to get back to Tano as soon as we can.”

A short time later Arissa settled next to Jolar at the computer terminal. She wrapped her hands around her teacup, trying to keep her mind from the feel of his thigh pressed against hers.

“The good news,” Jolar began, “is the thing isn’t locked down by ID scan or password. It came online along with everything else.”

“He didn’t lock it?” Arissa asked. “That seems pretty careless.”

Jolar shrugged. “The shelter is likely only keyed to Cenon and Danlen’s palm prints and well-hidden. If Cenon came here alone he wouldn’t want to deny her access because she’d forgotten a password and he wouldn’t want anything to go wrong with a scan. She had immediate access to weapons, cash, medkits and a groundcar. Clearly she was more important to him than safeguarding any information he might have on this thing.”

“So what can you access?”

“Well,” Jolar said engaging the screen. “I can look around outside the shelter, tell you the current weather conditions in Tano-Sertar, explore the latest fashions on Tellar, tell you the current tidal conditions on Lema . . .”

“So pretty much a whole uplink.”

“Yup. And incidentally, everything you could want to know about Danlen . . .”

Arissa’s eyes widened as he brought up the information. “Gods, look at that. Bank accounts, bank accounts held under access numbers only, passwords, company holdings—”

“Nice of him to leave it so well organized.”

“He left it for Cenon,” Arissa said quietly.

Jolar’s sense turned grim. “There was nothing I could do for her. She was already dead. I didn’t have much time but I did bury her. I said a prayer to Bathena to guide her to her peace with Danlen.”

“That’s good. I liked her.”

“She liked you too. Danlen told me so.” Jolar shook his head as he scrolled through the information. “Looks like Danlen had most of the officials on Sertar by the throat. He practically ran the planet. But his estate here was positively humble for what he had, why would a man that wealthy live so modestly for his means?”

“Cenon said it was her family’s home,” Arissa said. “I was saying how pretty the herbery was and she said it had been her grandmother’s. She grew up in that house.”

“Well, that explains that. But why bother with our paltry contract?”

“Maybe he was overextended?”

Jolar called up Danlen’s financial records.

“I don’t think that was it.” Jolar gave a low whistle. “This man was insanely wealthy. His statements—”

He went still.

“What?”

He pointed to a line on the screen. “Five hundred thousand credits—Kav de’Reaven.”

“Dacel’s other agent?” she asked. “The one he sent before us?”

“Danlen paid to have him killed.”

“So it was Danlen we were looking for.”

“If he knew de’Reaven was Dacel’s agent . . . Did he know about us?”

Arissa shook her head firmly. “Jolar, everything I felt from him and Cenon was friendly. He had no ill intentions toward us at all.”

“He wanted to come to an agreement,” Jolar said thoughtfully. “He wanted us to stay there longer. He offered me so much I couldn’t possibly turn it down. Why?”

“Maybe he wanted the crystals contract too?”

“But why? He didn’t need the money. Even he said the money didn’t matter to him.”

“He was in crystal refining,” Arissa reminded. “He had a good portion of the market, maybe he wanted to maintain his position.”

Jolar nodded toward the screen. “But he made ten times more from other revenue streams.”

“Maybe for the prestige of supplying the Fleet?”

“It’s not that prestigious. Certainly not worth ten million credits and that necklace you were looking at in Tano. Danlen said what mattered to him was that his crystals were on Fleet ships.”

Arissa stared. “He knew I was looking at that necklace? That was part of his offer?”

“Actually I’m the one that brought up the necklace,” Jolar said. “You liked it right?”

“It was beautiful,” Arissa said. “But it cost a—wait.”

“What?” he said, his brow creased.

“Kemma said the necklace had been made out of crystals with a fatal flaw. Danlen wanted his crystals on Fleet ships badly enough to bribe you with a fortune. If it wasn’t the money and it wasn’t prestige . . . What if there was another reason he wanted his crystals on Fleet ships? What if Danlen’s crystals had a flaw that would make them shatter?”

Jolar frowned. “They run tests when they swap out a crystal, Arissa. If a crystal shattered when the conversion matrix was engaged, they’d just replace it.”

“But what if it worked for a while? And shattered only when he wanted it to shatter?”

Jolar’s frown deepened. “You can’t decide when a crystal shatters.”

“But what if you
could?
” Arissa persisted. “What if you could send a signal or something? Input some kind of overload?”

Jolar was already shaking his head. “There are so many safeguards on a Fleet vessel that it would take most of the crew working together to make something like that happen.”

“But a sonic pulse at the right frequency can shatter a crystal.”

“Well, yes,” Jolar agreed. “But you would have to know what frequency that particular crystal needed in order to shatter it. The only way you could be sure to shatter more than one is if—” His face blanched. “Gods, if you had a way to alter them to fail . . .”

“Fail when you wanted them to fail.”

“A shattered crystal would cripple the ship without firing a shot. You could cripple the whole Fleet that way. You could bring the Realm to its knees in hours.” He shook his head again. “But the new contract I was supposed to be filling wouldn’t start for another three months. Even if Danlen intended to do that it would take years before enough ships switched out enough crystals to make a difference.”

“Who had the previous contract?” She started scrolling through the files . . . something she’d seen . . .

“A company called—”

“CenCorp,” she finished, pointing at the screen. “Look.”

“Gods,” Jolar murmured looking at the company information. “He went to a lot of trouble to hide his ownership of that company. That’s why he didn’t care about the new contract, he has the current one. If those crystals are flawed, he’s been providing the Fleet with flawed crystals for years.” Jolar passed his hand over his eyes. “CenCorp. Cenon—his wife.”

“But suddenly he cared very much about the new contract and then someone killed him.”