Well, I tried, he thought with a mental shrug. Too back I fucked it up. Guess I’ll just have to keep her now…
“Hello? I’m back,” the secretary said, breaking into his thoughts.
“Huh?” Need frowned at the viewscreen, which had come back to life.
“Forgive the interruption, I had to have your signal checked and make certain you weren’t with some watch dog agency or other,” the secretary said, rolling his fishy eyes. “They can be so tiresome and sensitive about issues that really don’t concern them at all.”
“I see.” Need nodded.
“Now, then, as I was saying, our official stance on drugs is to condemn them. Unofficially, however, the Senator is open to…shall we say…certain private opportunities. Providing they are kept completely confidential.”
“You can rely on that,” Need assured him. “My employer has no interest in rousing any kind of public attention.”
“Very good, very good. Yes, of course.” The secretary nodded and rubbed his long, white hands together—they appeared to have webbing between the fingers. “Just let us know when you’ll be arriving and I’m certain we can work out a deal,” he told Need.
“It’ll be a few days yet,” Need told him. “We have to pick up the shipment first, but our supplier is completely reliable and his product is the best.”
He named a day for delivery and the secretary nodded again.
“Very good—yes, we can do that. I don’t believe there will be any visiting dignitaries that day. We’ll see you then.”
He gave Need the coordinates for landing and was about to end the call when Need heard himself say,
“There’s something else.”
“Yes?” The secretary’s eyebrows rose again with renewed interest. “Another opportunity?”
“Of a sort.” Need swallowed hard and had to force the next words out. “I have…come across something I think might belong to the Senator. Something I found in a slave market on Yys.”
The secretary frowned.
“You must be mistaken. The Senator does not buy slaves—they’re too easy to trace and his constituents wouldn’t like it.”
“This particular slave was a girl who tells me she was earmarked just for him,” Need heard himself saying. “A real beauty with creamy brown skin and big, dark eyes with gold flecks in them. She was educated at the Twyleth Tigg Academy in the Trell’wick system. She told me she was meant to be the Senator’s new Primary Bride.”
“Oh!” The secretary’s fishy eyes flew wide. “I know what you’re talking about now! But the Twyleth Tigg Academy was raided by pirates—all the girls were either taken or killed.”
“They were,” Need acknowledged. “The pirates sold them to slavers and the one that bought this girl just happened to be selling her at auction while I was in the marketplace on Yys yesterday.”
Gods, had it been only yesterday? It seemed much longer ago that the girl had come into his life. Need told himself it only seemed like that because she had managed to worm her way into his heart so quickly—which was, of course, why he needed to get rid of her.
“So you bought her?” the secretary asked.
“I bought her,” he answered. “For forty thousand credits. But she’s saying that she belongs to the Senator.”
“Hmm…a most interesting happenstance.” The secretary nodded, rubbing his long, bony chin. “Let me speak to Senator Pouncenblast and see if he still wants her. Sometimes in these cases, when the merchandise has been damaged, it’s no longer quite so desirable as it once was.”
“I understand,” Need said, nodding.
And he did, too. The old bastard didn’t want Lan’ara if she wasn’t a virgin. As if her worth ought to be determined by something as stupid as that! The thought made him angry but he kept the emotion inside and made his face blank.
“I have not, er, damaged her myself in any way,” he said. (Which was technically true, since he hadn’t put his shaft inside her, no matter how badly he’d wanted to when she was writhing against him the night before.) “And the slaver I bought her from said she was a verified virgin.”
“Well, that’s very good to hear. Give me some time—I’ll call you back at these same coordinates,” the secretary said.
“I’ll be waiting for your call,” Need told him and killed the viewscreen.
As it faded to black, his insides were a mass of knots. Part of him was thinking that this was good—the senator would certainly want Lan’ara since she was still a virgin. So she could go live in the lap of luxury with him on his private island.
But another—much larger part—was wondering what he had done. And hoping against hope that the secretary could call back and say that Senator Pouncenblast didn’t want the girl after all.
Twenty-Six
“You’re very quiet this evening, my Lord. Is everything all right?” Lan’ara looked up at the big Kindred anxiously as they stood together by the counter.
She had been cooking and baking all day, making sweets for everyone. The small cakes had been finished an hour before noon and then she had tackled the Chieva brittle for Laxah. In the middle of that, Krax and Kreeva had stopped by and dropped off the recipe for jim-jams.