"I suppose you could say that things… took off." Sitting down, in a real chair, she could feel every tired muscle. She fought back a yawn.
"I'll be as brief as I can." Fleur shifted a little in her seat and then stared at a space on the floor between them. "In the hopes that we will have time later to fill in what I leave out now. " Sassinak nodded. "When Abe first met me, I had been captured, held hostage for my family's behavior and finally sold into prostitution." As a start, that got Sassinak's attention. She sat bolt upright.
"My family were wealthy merchanters, rivals of the Paradens. Or so the Paradens thought. I'd been brought up to wealthy, luxury, society, probably spoiled rotten, though I didn't know it. The perfect hostage, if you look at it that way." Another pause. Sassinak began to feel a growing horror, and the certainty that she knew what was coming. "We were taken," Fleur said, biting off each word. "Me and my husband. Supposedly, it was independent pirates. That's what our families were told. But we knew, from the moment we were locked in the Paraden House security wing. I never knew the exact details, but I do know they asked for a ransom that neither my family nor his could have survived independently. His family… his family paid And the Paradens sent him back, whole and healthy of body, but mind-wiped. They made me watch."
Sassinak drew in a shaky breath to speak, but Fleur shook her head.
"Let me finish, all at once. My family thought they had proof of the Paraden connection. They tried to bring them to justice in the courts. In the end, my family lost everything, in court costs and countersuit damages. My father died, of a stroke; my mother's heart tailed; my brothers… well, one went to prison for a vicious unprincipled assault on the judge the Paradens had bribed so well. The other they had killed, just for insurance. And they sold me to a planet where none of my family had ever traded."
Sassinak's eyes burned with tears for the young woman Fleur had been. Before she realized it, she'd moved over to grip her hands.
"Abe saved me," Fleur went on. "He came, like any other young man, but he saw… something. I don't know. He used to kid me that whatever training my governness had given me couldn't be hidden. So he asked questions, and I was wild enough to answer, for I'd just heard of my sister-in-law's death. The Paradens took care to keep me informed. And he swore he would get me out, somehow. In less than a year, he had saved out my purchase price. How, on his salary, I'll never know. He wanted to marry me but I knew Fleet was strict about identity checks. I was terrified that the Paradens would find me again. So he helped me set up my first dress shop, and from there…"
She waved her arm, and Sassinak thought of the years of grinding work it must have taken, to go from that first tiny shop to the fashionable designer.
"Eventually I designed for the best families, including of course the Paradens. None of my friends recognized me. I had gray hair, I looked older, and of course I took care to look like a dressmaker, not a customer.
"Abe and I stayed in contact, when we could. He was sure there had to be a way to bring the crime home to the Paradens, and started digging. That was really the beginning of Samizdat. I knew a few people. I helped those I could. Passed him information, when it came to me, and he passed some back. We built up a network, on one planet after another. Then he was taken, and I thought… I thought I'd never survive his loss. So I swore that if he came back alive, I'd marry him, if he still wanted me."
She patted Sassinak's hands gently.
"And that's where you came in. When he came back, he had you: an orphan, in shock from all that had happened. I heard through our nets that he was back. I came to Regg to talk to him. And he explained that until you were on your way, he dared not risk your future with any more disruption."
"But I wouldn't have minded," Sassinak said. "How could he think I would?"
"I'm not sure, but we decided to wait, on marriage, that is, until after your graduation. And that, dear Sassinak, is what he wanted to tell you that night. I don't know whether you noticed anything…"
"I did! So - so you were his big secret."
"You sound almost disappointed."
"I'm not… but it hadn't occurred to me. I thought perhaps he'd found out more about the planet pirates."
"He might have. But he'd decided to tell you about me on graduation night. If all had gone well, he'd have brought you to the hotel where I was staying. We'd have met, and you'd have been the witness at our wedding before you went off on your first cruise."
Like light pouring into a darkened house as shutter after shutter came off the windows, she had wondered so long, so darkly, about the secret of that night.
"Did you come to his funeral? I don't remember any civilians at all."
Fleur's head drooped; Sassinak could not see her face.
"I was frightened again. I thought it was the Paradens, that they'd found me, and killed Abe because of me. You didn't need that and you didn't know about me, you wouldn't even have known why I was there. So I left. You can call it cowardice, if you like. I kept track of your career, but I never could find the right time to try telling you…"
Sassinak threw her arms around the older woman and hugged her as she cried.
"It's all right," she vowed. "I'll get the job done this time."
She could hear the steely edge in her voice herself. Fleur pulled away.
"Sass! You must not let it fill you with bitterness."
"But he deserved to get you!" Now she had tears in her eyes, too. "Abe deserved some pleasure. He worked so hard to save me… and you, and others, and then they kitted him just when…"
She had not cried for Abe since her few tears the night of his death. She had been the contained, controlled officer he would have wanted her to be. Now that old loss stabbed her again. Through her sobs she heard Fleur talking.
"If you turn bitter, you've let them win. Whether you kill them or not, that's not the main thing. The main thing is to live as yourself; the self you can respect. Abe would not let me despair, the other kind of defeat, but he told me he worried that you might stay bitter."
"But they killed him. And my parents, and your family, and all the others…"
Fleur sighed. "Sassinak, I'm nearly forty years older than you, and I know that sort of comment makes prickles go up your spine." Sassinak had to chuckle. Fleur was so right. "And I know you don't want to hear that another forty years of experience means additional understanding. But!" Her beautifully manicured finger levelled at Sassinak's eyes. "Did Abe know more than you in the slave depot?"
"Of course. I was just a child."
"And if he were alive now, would you still respect his greater age and experience?"
"Well…" She could see it coming, but she didn't have to like it. Her expression must have shown that, because Fleur laughed aloud, a silvery bell-like peal that brought an answering laugh from Sassinak.
"So please trust me now," Fleur said, once more serious. "You have become what Abe dreamed of. I have kept an eye on you in the media, I know. But the higher you go in Fleet, the more you will need unclouded judgment. If you allow the bitterness, the unfairness, of your childhood and Abe's death, to overwhelm your natural warmth, you will become unfair in your own way. You must be more than a pirate chaser, more than vengeance personified. Fleet tends to shape its members toward narrow interests, rigid reactions, even in the best. Haven't you found that some of your difficulties down here arise from that?"
Put that way, some of them certainly had. She had I developed the typical spacefarer's distaste for planets. She had not bothered to cultivate the skills needed to enjoy them. The various gangs in the tunnels seemed alien, even as she tried to mold them into a working unit.