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He nodded. “Yeah, we came back here off and on. Once we stayed here for nearly five years.” He got up walked to the window of the cottage, staring outside. “The money was always spotty out here. It’s a colony world, and most of the customers are men who spend all their time on a ship. Sometimes, there’d be too many, sometimes we practically starved.” He turned to look at her. “Not just my mom and me. All of the women here. My mom wanted to stay, because it was stable. She thought it was better for me. But we never could stay for too long. Still, I always liked it here. Some of the other women had kids. I had people to play with.”

  Ariana considered Keirth’s childhood in a brothel. It sounded extremely inappropriate for a child. But she wasn’t going to say that. To say that would insult Keirth’s mother, and she knew Keirth loved her very much.

  “Lilla’s a good person,” said Keirth. “I know this place makes you feel uncomfortable.”

  “Not because of Lilla,” said Ariana. She sighed. “I guess the whole profession leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

  “I’m not saying I’m particularly fond of it either.”

  “I think there are certain things that shouldn’t be sold.” For the first time in her life, she tried to put herself in the position of the women here. Letting men do what they wanted to her body for money? She shivered. Ugh. No, it would be like Risciter’s hand on her breast in the forests of Kush. Every night. But she’d have to pretend she liked it.

  Keirth returned to the bench. “Growing up around prostitutes, you start noticing things. It’s all this kind of twisted power play. Women who are prostitutes enjoy the fact that they can use men’s weaknesses against them for money. They tell themselves they’ve got the power, since they’re the ones who are profiting. And men who come here enjoy the fact that they don’t have to think of these women as anything other than servants. They think because they can tell the women to do whatever they want that they’ve got the power. It’s all about power.” He studied his hands. “It sickens me.”

  “But you brought me here?”

  “This place is safe,” he said. “I wish there weren’t prostitutes, but there are. I wish people weren’t power hungry, but they are. And it gets muddled anyway. When you’re starving, you’ll do things you wouldn’t do otherwise. It can be worse, too, you know? There are places where women who work there are treated really badly. Lilla runs a tight shop. And she protects these women. If my mother had stayed here, she’d still be alive.”

  “Safe,” she mused, unsure if she believed him.

  “No one would look for you here,” said Keirth. “You’ll be okay.”

  “So you’re still planning on going? On leaving me here all alone?”

  “I promised Lilla that I’d stick around for a bit, and I will,” he said. “But eventually, I do have to go after Risciter. Once he’s out of the picture, everything gets easier.”

  Ariana did not want to be left alone in a brothel. At all. But she guessed it was better than being sent back to the sector. Maybe it wasn’t. She wasn’t sure.

  Keirth stood up. “Look, I’ll show you around. I’ll take you for a walk down in that valley.” He pointed out the window. “There’s a stream down there, with a little footbridge. When I was a kid, I used to play down there for hours, making little boats out of leaves and floating them under the bridge. Then I’d drop stuff on them from on top of the bridge and try to sink them.”

  She had to smile at that. “You made boats just to destroy them?”

  “Absolutely,” said Keirth. “Is there another reason to make things?”

  “I guess not if you’re a little boy,” she grinned.

  “I suppose you never had to make your own toys, seeing that you were so rich and spoiled. You probably got new ones every week, the minute you got sick of the old ones.”

  “We weren’t encouraged to play a lot, in fact,” she informed him. “We were mostly meant to be quiet and look pretty so that people could speculate on whom we’d marry when we were old enough.”

  “Sounds boring,” said Keirth.

  “A lot of the time,” she said. “Show me your bridge.”

  They trooped out of the cottage together.

  Upon arriving at the bridge, Keirth stripped off his socks and shoes, sat on the bridge, and dangled his bare feet in the water.

  “Is it cold?” Ariana sat down with him.

  “It feels divine.”

  Ariana took off her own shoes and tentatively dipped a toe in the water. Not too cold. She eased both feet in.

  “So, no playing when you were a kid, huh?” Keirth asked.

  “Well, not no playing,” said Ariana. “My sister Maga and I had a nanny once that used to take us out to the park and let us run wild. She’d devise all these interesting games for us, have us pretend to be pirate princesses or wild horses or...all kinds of things. She was a lot of fun.” Ariana paused. “Of course, I suppose my mother had her dismissed because she was always making Maga and I look sweaty and untidy.”

  “Nannies,” said Keirth. “I guess you didn’t spend much time with your mother, then.”

  “Well, my mother wasn’t much for playing, that was for sure. She always seemed beautiful and poised and untouchable to me when I was young,” said Ariana.

  “I get that. My mother didn’t seem untouchable to me, exactly, but I remember being somewhat awed by her as a little boy. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “I guess you spent a lot of time with your mother,” said Ariana.

  “When I was very small, I did. Back then, it was like me and my mother against the world, and she protected me with this kind of fierce intensity. Back then, she seemed so strong.” Keirth looked at his fingers. “But I don’t know if she changed when I got older, or if I just realized that she was actually very fragile. In the years before she died, I felt more and more as if I was the one who was protecting her. She seemed desperate and sad most of the time. I always feel like I failed her. If I’d been quicker. If I’d realized something was wrong earlier.”

  She put a hand on his arm. “Keirth, you can’t blame yourself. You were only a boy.”

  “I was fifteen,” said Keirth. He stared out over the small stream, not facing her. “We were on Hallon. I stayed away when she had...company. At least I tried. But if I did come back when she was busy, I had this little hiding place I used to crawl into, someplace where she couldn’t see me, but I could see her.”

  Ariana sucked in her breath. He was going to tell her about the murder, wasn’t he? Did she want to hear?

  Keirth seemed to misunderstand her reaction. “Not because I wanted to watch her.” He turned to face her. “I didn’t watch. I mean, maybe I... maybe I sometimes sort of kept watch, just to make sure she was okay. But that was all.”

  No wonder he didn’t want to lie with women. No wonder Keirth saw the relationship between men and women the way he did.

  Keirth turned back to the stream. “But that night, by the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late. He had a knife. He was so quick. She never even had a chance to scream.” His fists clenched. “I wanted to kill him then. I tried. But he knocked me out. He was too strong for me. I...”

  Ariana grabbed one of his hands, prying his clenched fingers apart to put her own into them. She squeezed his hand, and they were quiet for a long time.

  “She hated the nobility, you know,” Keirth said. “Sometimes other women she worked with would be reading the nets, looking at the gossip over who was marrying who or what matches were good ones, and all of that. And she wouldn’t listen to it. She’d get up and leave. She said it was all chintz and lies. She said the whole lot of them cared about nothing except the way things looked, but that underneath, everything was rotten.”

  Ariana bit her lip. Maybe that was an accurate assessment of the nobility.

  “Once,” Keirth said, “she got very upset when she found out the prince was on planet. She made us catch the first ship off world we could. Said she didn�
�t want to be anywhere near Gulien.”

  “She called him by his first name?” Ariana said. That was a little odd, wasn’t it?

  “I think so,” said Keirth. He shook his head. “That’s what I mean, though. She was unbalanced in some ways. I loved her. I never wanted her to die. I would have done anything to protect her, but sometimes I think the life she lead, nearly starving, giving herself to all those men... It damaged her. And then it killed her.”

  Ariana gripped Keirth’s hand tight. “I’m sorry.” Even though she knew the measly phrase was hopelessly inadequate.

  * * *

  Night had fallen on Scranth. Risciter moved quietly in the shadows, tiptoeing up to the makeshift cottage he’d seen Miss Gilit enter an hour or so ago. The darkness felt like a comforting blanket. Risciter liked the darkness. He liked to move easily, without being noticed. He felt safe in the shadows.

  It was actually sort of laughable, the fact that they’d gone to a brothel. Risciter wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He’d feared that he’d overestimated Miss Gilit’s pride, and that his leaks to the nets wouldn’t keep her from home. He’d worried that he’d follow the tracking signal on the ship right back to the planet Wendo. He wasn’t sure what would have happened if she had gone back, and if she’d told the universe what she knew about him. Most likely, she wouldn’t have been believed. But she might have been. And, in any case, if stories like that were floating around about him, it would be damaging. And it would make what he did harder.

  Risciter had learned a long time ago that it wasn’t what he actually did that mattered. It only mattered what it appeared that he did. He’d become quite good at appearing to be the model duke. He knew that his reputation was his best defense against anyone discovering what he really was. People were quite easily duped. They believed what was in front of them. The right attitude, the right dinner conversation, a smile and a wink, and they thought him charming and harmless. They were like pawns in a game of chess. He moved them where he liked, used them to distract from what his real moves were.

  The darkness and the remote setting reminded Risciter of his home planet. His family had an estate in the country. It was where he’d perfected his real moves. He’d started small, he remembered. His younger sister Ritra was in possession of a little dog. The dog yapped a lot, and the servants thought it was annoying, but Risciter hadn’t had emotions towards the dog one way or another. It was perhaps the fact that he once heard the butler muttering something to himself about drowning it that gave him the idea. But perhaps the idea had simply bloomed in his mind of its own accord. Risciter wasn’t sure. He was young then, couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. Once the idea occurred to him, he couldn’t get it out of his head.

  He didn’t want to capture the dog and have it make a lot of noise, because his yaps were so piercing it would likely bring people running. So his first step was to make friends with the dog. That had been easy. Dogs and people were very much the same in that regard. They were eager to believe you were friendly. They wanted to trust you. He brought the dog scraps of food. He learned where to scratch behind its ears to make its tongue hang out of its mouth and make it grin stupidly.

  And then one day, he and the dog simply strolled out of the mansion and into the woods surrounding it. The dog had been so confused when he’d slit its throat. He remembered the betrayed look in its eyes, the last whimper it had let out. It had been Risciter’s first triumph.

  Dogs got boring pretty quickly, though.

  He was thirteen by the time he was dreaming of cutting the throats of people. Of women. He was fourteen when he did it the first time. She was the lady’s maid of a visiting guest to the Risciter household. Risciter had plied her with wine, and been as charming as a fourteen-year-old boy could manage. Which wasn’t very, at the time. The maid, utterly unsophisticated, had fallen for it completely.

  She’d been his first, and he had bumbled it a bit. He wasn’t nearly as strong back then, and didn’t know how to drug his victims to make them pliable. He was eager too, in his childish desire for her body. He’d been so overwhelmed at how pleasurable it had been to sink his cock into her that he’d lost his grip on her. She’d fought him off, nearly gotten away. He’d had to club her over the head to stop her from running. And that had killed her.

  He hid her body well. No one ever found it. But the loss of a lady’s maid wasn’t the same as the loss of a dog. People had been concerned over her. They hadn’t stopped talking about the missing maid for weeks. Risciter, even then, knew he had to try it again. He had to get it right.

  But he did have his first trophy from the woman. He’d never taken things from the animals, but to mark the occasion of his first person, he’d taken something, and ever since, he’d been doing the same thing. It was a tuft of pubic hair. He kept them tied with little pieces of string in a cloth bag he always kept in his breast pocket, close to his heart. Sometimes, these newfangled whores wanted to remove all their pubic hair. Risciter didn’t care for it, but he often didn’t find out until he was so committed to the act that he had to finish what he’d started. He’d been known to cut other things off when he saw it, furious at the woman for denying him his trophy, wanting to punish her for ruining it all. He didn’t keep the flaps of skin he removed, though. Skin didn’t store nearly as easily as hair.

  Gazing at the group of houses here, Risciter wondered how many of these whores had removed all their hair. He smiled to himself again at the fact he’d been led here. To a brothel, when they were on the run from him. So many women, all kept out here away far away from everyone else? The things he could do...

  But he mainly wanted Miss Gilit. That was why he was here. And that annoying brat who’d escaped from him on Kush. That boy needed to be taught a lesson once and for all.

  Risciter tugged a pair of gloves over his hands. They were thin enough that he could feel through them, but they should keep him from leaving evidence behind. No matter how ruined Miss Gilit was, her death would raise questions, and he needed to be careful. He tried the door of the cottage. It was unlocked. Like an open invitation. He smiled.

  It was so quiet inside the cottage that he could hear Miss Gilit breathing. Ariana. He’d call her by her first name when he fucked her. And he didn’t want her too drugged when it happened either. He’d been careless last time, leaving her tied and waiting for her to wake up. He’d been too excited thinking about the way she’d struggle against him, wondering what she’d look like if she screamed. He should have made sure she was secure. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  He crept to the bed, peered down at her face, relaxed in sleep. Ariana Gilit. He remembered the first time he’d seen her. She’d been young then, only a girl, at some dinner party on Wendo he’d attended right after his father had died and he’d received his title. But he remembered how pretty she’d been then, even in that funny stage that girls went through as they changed into women. He thought of her budding breasts, and her high-pitched voice. The arrogant way she’d tossed her head.

  Truthfully, he’d never thought he’d be so lucky as to add her to his special girls back then. She’d been untouchable. But her status made her a possible wife. And Risciter had waited. He’d waited for her to come of age. For a brief span of a year or two, it had seemed her family was set on marrying her to the Earl of Girici, an obviously inferior match, but he supposed they’d wanted to keep her on planet.

  He’d heard rumors that Ariana had refused the offer of marriage in the end. It was to be expected, he supposed. The Earl of Girici was practically the age of her father. Though Risciter himself was nearly thirteen years older than Ariana, he was young enough to entice her.

  Risciter carefully pulled the covers back from Ariana’s sleeping form. Would it have been enough to marry her? Would it have satisfied him? She was wearing an obviously borrowed shift from one of the whores. It was lacy and see-through. If it hadn’t been so dark, Risciter might have been able to better see round curve of her breasts.
As it was, he could only make out a hint of her nipples. He was struck by the urge of turning on a light to see her better.

  But he needed to be patient. He’d see all of her soon enough. He’d have her soon enough. And when he sliced his knife through her soft, white skin and felt the hot rush of her blood on his hands... Risciter shivered in anticipation.

  He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and a small bottle that contained the drug he’d slipped in her champagne before. It was a versatile substance. It worked when ingested or inhaled, if it were inhaled in great enough quantities. He began to douse the handkerchief with the drug.

  A scream rent the air.

  Ariana stirred.

  Risciter froze.

  Another scream.

  Ariana’s eyes fluttered.

  Risciter backed away from the bed, melting into the shadows. He wanted it to be perfect. He didn’t want to fight her again. He wanted to make sure that he got it right.

  Ariana sat up in bed, looking around, fear in her eyes.

  Had she seen him? She couldn’t have.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  Risciter didn’t move.

  Ariana got out of the bed. She pulled a cloak that was hanging in the wardrobe over her skimpy shift and hurried out of the cottage.

  Risciter waited until he was sure she wouldn’t see him, and then he followed.

  * * *

  Keirth was sleeping in the narrow bunk bed he’d slept in as a child when he heard the scream. Because his mother had often used her quarters to entertain men, he hadn’t stayed there with her often, only in the case of her not having a client, when they’d snuggle together on her large bed. And as he grew older, he didn’t even do that anymore, but always slept in this small room off the kitchen of the main house. It was lined with bunks, and there was still a battered toy box in one corner. There was even one small little girl who’d been asleep in one of the other bunks when Kieran came in. Lilla had clucked at him for sleeping there and made more offensive inuendos about him and Ariana. Keirth ignored her.