The Traitor's Son by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan [Duncan, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989398920
Publisher: Shadowpaw Press

At last, Doig was free to go in search of Babette. He found her in her own room, wearing one of her barely visible gowns and folded into one of the palace’s froth-soft chairs. She looked up at him with an expression that somehow combined homicidal fury and molten desire. A bottle of bubbly wine waited in a dew-beaded ice bucket.

“And just where have you been?

“I was summoned to a meeting with Chi Brigham. It’s on—it all looks workable.”

She smiled. “Then you’re forgiven. Open the wine, and let’s celebrate.”

He sat down on a straight-backed chair safely out of reach. “I take it that you wish to begin the unseemly behaviour?”

“I consider it a matter of absolute priority.”

His own desires were moving rapidly in that direction. “Are your motives hormonal or political?”

“Both. If my mother gets an inkling of our intentions, the entire Dattu family will descend on us in a lynch squad, with you as the intended pendulum. Including in-laws, they can probably muster a posse of a dozen.”

“Then we need to have a serious discussion.”

Babette purred. “What is there to discuss? I want action!”

“Plenty to discuss. Babette, I love you madly, and I can imagine nothing I want more than having you at my side for the rest of my life. But you are crew, and I am cargo, and we must talk this out. Do you truly realize the change this will make in your existence? Can we be happy if I am burdened with guilt for having dragged you down and you are soured by resentment?”

She frowned and shook off the rainbow mist. “My father ordered me to enrol in Only U because he was horribly in debt as usual and had been bribed by someone to have me spy on you and report what you were doing. Undoubtedly, the Board was behind it. My real status would have frightened you away, so I adopted a cargo name. I learned what it’s like to be a dreg. I didn’t like it, but I put up with it for two whole years, and to be your wife, I am perfectly willing to put up with it for all the rest of my days. So, throw off your guilt and your clothes and let’s unite.”

“I can’t cook. Can you? How much can you earn? Cargo wives work to keep food on the table. Can you be happy in a one-room pit with a stone roof? That’s all we’ll be able to afford. The plan is that I will spend the rest of this year and January organizing an expedition into the interior, and then I shall be gone until June, with a very low chance of ever returning. Your friends won’t have anything to do with you after you marry a cargo bum, remember? Crew women will laugh at you behind your back. Or maybe in front of your back, and oh shit, why am I saying this? I love you!” He wanted to ram his head into a wall.

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