Marco watched her, looking, perhaps, a little wistful. "I wish I'd known you when Charles and I started all this," he said softly. "I think you would have come with me, the first of us to set foot on Rhui."
She stared, entranced by the green of his eyes. "I would have," she said, sure that at this moment it was true. Though she knew he must be as old as her biological father, he did not look ten years older than her, an attractive man made handsome as much by the suppressed air of wildness about him as by any pretensions to beauty. A man who knew adventure, who knew real danger, who had felt death close at hand and looked it in the face. Her own life had been so-safe.
"Goddess, you're young," he said, and broke the spell.
Diana blushed, but she chuckled. "That's put me in my place." She laid a hand on the railing, a self-conscious pose, and looked down from this great height onto the stage. "Oh. That's what you meant, isn't it? About choosing these plays for our farewell performance. Tamburlaine was a nomad. Do you suppose the nomads we're going to travel with have a Tamburlaine among them?''
She said it lightly, but Marco's lips pressed together, and his gaze shifted from her down to the distant figure that was Charles Soerensen. Soerensen was speaking easily with several people that even from this height Diana recognized, the Director of the Royal Academy, the prime minister of the Eurasian States, a respected vid journalist, the assistant stage manager, an usher-he was a university student majoring in xenobotany-who had once made a pass at her, and one of the clerks from the box office who had brought her two children to meet The Great Man. A sudden swirl of movement in the box steadied and stilled to reveal one of the tall, thin alien Chapalii. The creature bowed to Soerensen, offering him the delicate crystal wand in which the Chapalii conveyed important messages from one noble to another.
"I must go," said Marco. "May I escort you down?" He offered her his elbow, and Diana placed her fingers on his sleeve. The contact overwhelmed her, and she could suddenly think of nothing to say. Walking this close to him, down the carpeted stairwell that led to the lobby, she could not imagine why he should be interested in her at all, except, of course, that she was young, pretty, and blonde. This man had explored a wild and dangerous world, alone most of the time, and he was the confidant and right hand of the most important human alive.
"Shall I introduce you?" Marco asked suddenly, and too late Diana realized she was being steered to the box from which Charles Soerensen had watched the play.
How could she refuse? She calmed her suddenly erratic breathing by force of habit and let him lead her there.
A cluster of people walked toward them down the corridor. A moment later they were swept into the retinue.
"There you are, Marco," said Soerensen. He held the crystal wand in his left hand. It shimmered and glinted under the hall lights.
"Charles, I've brought one of the actors to meet you. This is Diana Brooke-Holt, of the repertory company."
"Ah." Soerensen stopped. "M. Brooke-Holt. I'm honored to meet you." He looked ordinary enough, but his stare was intense: Diana felt as if she were being recorded, measured, and filed away against future need.
However much she wanted to collapse into a gibbering heap, she knew how to present a collected exterior. She extended her right hand, and he shook it. "The honor is mine," she said, careful to give the words no earth-shattering sentiment, only simple politeness.
"You played Zabina, did you not?" he asked.
"Yes."
"She comes to a rather bloody end."
Diana chuckled. "Yes, she does, poor thing. But I suppose that I've always felt more sorry for Zenocrate."
He looked suddenly and acutely interested. "Why is that?"
"Because once Tamburlaine had marked her out as his, she didn't really have much choice but to fall in love with him, did she? Not that he coerced her as much as-" She shrugged, and was abruptly aware that both Soerensen and Marco regarded her intently, as if she were revealing some long-sought-after secret to them. She faltered, realizing that the entire retinue had stopped to listen, some with polite interest, some with no interest at all, but none with the piercing attention of the two men. With an effort, she gathered together the shredding fabric of her self-confidence and drew herself up. "A man like that would be hard to resist," she finished, with dramatic flourish.
"Bravo," said Marco, sotto voce.
Soerensen smiled. "But I particularly enjoyed your performance as Grusha in the Brecht play. I look forward to seeing what Owen and Ginny come up with for their next experiment. If you'll excuse me." He nodded, collected the attention of his retinue with unconscious ease, and went on his way.
Marco lingered. "I must go," he said again, although he made no move to follow the others.
"I must, too," she replied. "Really."
"I'll see you on the ship, perhaps."
"Oh, we'll be rehearsing the whole way out. Owen and Ginny are rather dragons about that, when they're developing new material."
"Then in Jeds."
She smiled and finally disengaged her fingers from his elbow. "If there's time."
"In Jeds? Believe me, you'll have plenty of time in Jeds."
"For what? Sight-seeing, I suppose. I'm bringing a journal with me, real paper, bound, and pen and ink, to write down what I see."
"Pen and ink?"
"Rhui is an interdicted world. What isn't there already, we aren't to bring."
"Golden fair, you astonish me." He took her hand in his and bent to kiss it, his lips lingering longer on her skin than was, perhaps, warranted by the briefness of their acquaintance.
Diana withdrew her hand from his grasp and blew him a kiss as she retreated through one of the double doors that led into the house. " 'And if thou lovest me, think no more of it.' "
Marco laughed, delighted. "Do all actors quote?" he called after her.
But she let the door swing and click shut behind her without answering him.
"Di! There you are." From the stage, Yomi called out to her. "Double time, girl. No loitering. Where've you been?"
Diana walked swiftly down the aisle and up the steps onto the stage.
"Ah hah!" said Yomi, coming to meet her. "Isn't that Marco Burckhardt standing up there in the VIP box? Watch your step, Di. He's a notorious womanizer, that one is. So they say. Don't dive into water if you can't swim."
"I can swim," retorted Diana, affronted.
"Certainly, my dear. Come on. The meeting's ready to start. Anahita is howling about the lighting for the curtain call. And she was furious that Gwyn got called out alone. As for Hal-"
Diana followed Yomi out stage right. She risked one final look back, to see Marco standing in the box that Soerensen and his party had inhabited. He leaned with his hands on the railing, watching her go.
CHAPTER TWO
Under the circumstances, any human might have forgiven Charles Soerensen for taking a private aircar rather than using public lanes like everyone else. Any human except Charles himself. On Earth, in human space-what had once been human space-Charles never took advantage of the privileges granted him by his rank as a duke in the Chapalii Empire, as the only human elevated above subject status in the convoluted hierarchy by which the alien Chapalii governed the races and stellar systems they had absorbed into their empire. They never used the word conquered.
"Chattel," said David ben Unbutu to Marco Burckhardt. They took up stations on either side of Charles on the levitated train that in three hours would take them across the Atlantic Ocean from Portsmouth to North America. David braced himself for the shift as the train jolted forward. Marco, of course, seemed not to notice the transition at all. Charles was sitting down, crystal message wand laid across his knees, still talking with the prime minister of the Eurasian states. She was headed to Quito Spaceport in South America, and Charles had taken the opportunity to ask her to travel with him for part of the journey.