Текст книги "Barbarian Prince"

Автор книги: Kaitlyn O'Connor

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Ten

Noelle debated whether to say anything at all or not. Considering the way he’d dismissed her after the first time they’d had sex, however, she decided she shouldn’t consider the sex they’d just had in the shower as a gesture to make peace—and that he probably wouldn’t consider her enthusiastic response as her way of apologizing.

“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have interfered. I didn’t mean to. It’s just …. He looked frightened and I wanted to comfort him.”

Anger flickered in his eyes. “Coddling the child will not make him a strong warrior and weak men die young,” he said after wrestling with his temper for several moments.

Meaning he was tough for the child’s own good?

The comment roused her own temper. “My grandmother ‘coddled’ me, as you call it, and I certainly don’t consider myself to be a weakling,” she said tightly.

Her tone, she saw, angered him, but in a moment the glitter in his eyes was replaced with amusement. “You are a warrior?” he asked mildly.

Noelle narrowed her eyes at him. She knew she should just shut up, but impulse took over. “I use my brains.”

He caught her wrists in a swift movement. “And they help when you are overpowered?”

Noelle executed a leaping kick but had enough sense of self-preservation to stop before she delivered the blow with her foot to his scrotum. It wiped the look of supreme male satisfaction right off of his face.

The Prince stared at her foot for a moment and then met her gaze.

Releasing his grip on her wrists, he shook his head at her in amusement. “That’s a dangerous move to try on a man twice your size, little spitfire. Don’t threaten me again. You might not like the end results.”

The comment both unnerved and irritated Noelle, but she’d had time to regret the insane impulse. “Well! You can be sure I won’t try that again,” she muttered, moving away from him to dry herself at the hearth before she could lose all the warmth she’d gained from the hot shower.

The Prince tossed her a cloth to dry with and moved to stand beside her to wipe the excess moisture from his own body. They dressed in silence and then Noelle focused on finger combing her hair and separating the strands to help them dry faster.

The Prince pushed her hands away, placed his hands on her shoulders to keep her from turning around and then dragged a comb—she supposed—through her hair. She didn’t think it would have brought tears to her eyes if her hair hadn’t been so ungodly snarled from not being combed for god only knew how long now—a week? Two?

She hadn’t seen anything as civilized as a comb since the damned Amazons had taken her captive.

“Sorry,” he murmured, handing her the comb. “Maybe you should work on it yourself?”

Noelle felt her face redden. “It usually doesn’t look like rats nested in it,” she muttered.

The Prince uttered a deep chuckle that startled her even while it sent warmth flooding through her.

“It isn’t that bad.”

She found herself smiling back at him. “Well! Thank god! It sure feels horrible, though.”

Thankfully, she discovered it wasn’t quite as bad as she’d thought. She had the tangles out fairly quickly and her hair was mostly dry by that time.

Drak felt that smile like a forceful kick to his solar plexus. It knocked the breath from him, almost seemed to stop his heart. Fortunately, she was intent upon raking the tangles from her hair and by the time she finished he had managed to collect his wits.

Noelle stared at the bundle of furs she discovered Drak was holding when she turned to return his comb. He took it and tossed it toward the bed and then helped her into the heavy hooded cape he’d brought.

“Where are we going?” she curiously.

“Dungeon,” he said succinctly.

Noelle gaped at him. The word had roughly translated as the English historical reference to a place used for jailing captives and often torturing them. She hoped like hell that wasn’t actually what he meant. Unfortunately, it threw her into such a state of disorder that she couldn’t think of the word for jail to ask if that was what he meant.

He confused her even more when, instead of heading toward the stairs they usually took to reach the great hall, he turned the opposite way and led her down the long corridor to the far end where she discovered there was a steep, narrow stair leading down. Taking a torch from a holder on the wall, he lit it with something he took from his pocket and started down the stairway ahead of her. “Take care. These are treacherous. Make sure you hold tight to the railing along the wall.”

Nodding shakily, Noelle gathered the cape more tightly around herself with one hand and gripped the railing with the other, very carefully placing each foot on each tread. It seemed to take forever to reach the bottom—which convinced her that the stairs led directly to the basement, or dungeon. It was possible they passed a landing at some point along the way. Maybe two. It was so dark beyond the madly flickering flame on the stick that she couldn’t make out anything but ghostly shapes that might be nothing more than the stones that made up the wall or could’ve been columns supporting another floor. Eventually, they came to the end of the stairs, however, and followed a paved corridor that looked to have been hewn directly from the stone.

The corridor seemed to go on for a mile or more. It wasn’t entirely level. It almost seemed to roll, descending for a while and then climbing again, almost as if they’d gone under something.

“These look as if they were carved from rock,” she said after a little while when the eerie quiet that enveloped them was beginning to weigh on her nerves.

“Lava tubes.”

Shock rolled over Noelle. “Lava …. Oh my god! We’re in a volcano? You built the castle on top of a volcano?”

He made a sound that might have been of amusement. “Where did you think the hot water came from?”

“A hot water heater!” Noelle muttered irritably. “No wonder I couldn’t adjust it!”

He didn’t say anything for several moments. “The castle has stood here for six generations … that I know of. My father was not prone to reminiscing nor did he have any interest in antiquities. He didn’t actually have much interest in the future beyond his plans for the season.

“But we have a teller who keeps the history of the people. It’s his family’s calling—to speak the history so that the next generation knows the great feats of their father’s father and so forth.”

There was a trace of … almost of contempt in his voice that Noelle couldn’t figure out. Was it because he thought it was absurd to dwell on the past? Or was it something else that she didn’t understand because she didn’t know his history?

She leaned toward the ladder. He was clearly a very intelligent man and she hadn’t seen anything to suggest that he held the traditions of his people in contempt. It must be something more personal, she decided.

They came at last to a heavy door. Two men waited there. Noelle recognized both. She wasn’t sure of who they were or what their place was, but they were close to the Prince.

The Prince pulled a metal key from a chain he wore around his neck and fitted it into the heavy lock on the massive door. When he’d pushed it open, the two men who’d met them there moved inside first with the torches they carried. Noelle saw when she finally was allowed through the doorway that the two were moving about the room lighting lanterns. As the room was illuminated, however, her gaze was redirected to the objects within the cavernous room.

Curious, she moved to the closest without considering she might not be allowed to touch and lifted the object to study it.

It seemed almost as out of place in this setting as she was!

It was mechanical and made primarily of metal of some kind. She studied the gears when she discovered that time had frozen them in place. Giving up on solving the mystery, she glanced at Drak and discovered that he was studying her as intently as she’d been studying the artifact she’d picked up. “What is it?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Disappointment? “I have no clue. I thought you might.”

Noelle gaped at him and then lifted her head and scanned the contents of the room. These were relics from their distant past, she realized.

She assumed.

It might be that these things had been left by a different civilization entirely—or that their ancestors had stolen them in raids on other civilizations. Their ship might be antiquated now, and in dire need of upgrades and upkeep, but it had been a marvel of engineering, she didn’t doubt, in its time.

“These things are from before the rogue planet destroyed the civilization your people had built?” She said it questioningly, but she was certain she’d guessed right. Everything she could see was mechanical in nature and indicative of a civilization far more advanced technologically than those currently occupying the sister worlds.

She had no idea, naturally enough, of exactly when the rogue had wandered into their system and forced the planet out of its original orbit, but she knew it would have created catastrophic natural disasters and that it had probably wiped out more than their technology. It would’ve been disastrous enough to cause a widespread extinction event.

She returned her attention to the object she held, studying it more carefully. She was no engineer—mechanical or otherwise—but she was a techno junkie. She’d always loved playing with new technology and she was pretty damned good at figuring it out and using it. That was yet another skill that had earned her a place on the colony ship.

She thought she might be able to figure out what the device had been used for, but she wasn’t convinced it would work even if she managed to get the gears to moving again.

Vaguely disappointed, she set that piece down and began to study the next piece that caught her attention. She became so engrossed in studying it that it wasn’t until she began to feel cramped from standing in one position so long that it occurred to her that she’d been studying the thing for a lengthy spell. That brought her out of her trance enough to look around for Drak.

The Prince, she discovered, had abandoned her … to plunder, she assumed. The older man that was so frequently with him was standing guard at the door. The younger man—barely old enough to be considered a man in her book, was leaning against the wall, watching her. She recalled abruptly that he’d called Drak father—so another son? And the other man? Kulle? Not related to Drak, surely, or he would’ve been the ruler since he was clearly older.

“I don’t suppose there’s … a stool or something I could sit on? Tools of any kind? This looks like it might actually work.”

Instead of responding verbally, the youth approached her and lifted the device she’d been studying and carried it toward the back of the vast room. Noelle assumed she was expected to follow him and did, discovering to her delight that he’d taken the piece to a work bench in the back. She climbed on the stool while he lit lanterns to give her more light.

“Oh for a good florescent!” she muttered. “I may go blind in this dark hole!”

“What do you think it is?”

Noelle glanced at the boy-man when he spoke and grinned. “That’s the fun part!”

He looked confused.

Noelle chuckled. “Figuring out what it’ll do. That’s what’s fun about this kind of puzzle. I’m thinking it isn’t a weapon, though. Not saying it isn’t but I don’t see anything to suggest that it would shoot projectiles of any kind.”

He looked disappointed. “Maybe we should keep looking then?”

Noelle gave him a look of surprise. “Why? This could be something good.”

He studied her a long moment and finally shrugged, merely standing quietly and watching her and searching for tools to help when she couldn’t find something she wanted.

“Is this what you did where you came from?” he asked finally.

Noelle considered the question. “Well, sort of. I didn’t run across anything like this and it wasn’t my job, but I always did like tinkering with gadgets and I’m actually pretty good at fixing them and figuring out what they’ll do.”

“What was your job?”

“Xeno-biologist.”

“What’s that?”

“The study of extra-terrestrial or alien biology. Uh … study of nature—but in my case, on alien worlds.”

“Oh.”

She could tell from the way he said it that he still didn’t have a clue of what she was talking about.

She actually wasn’t sure it was something she should share. Who knew how they might feel about it if they understood? This was a completely alien species—regardless of how similar they seemed to humans—and they had a completely alien outlook on things and a completely alien society. They might burn scientists like humans did in the distant past because it conflicted in their belief in supernatural beings they referred to as gods.

“My name’s Noelle. What’s yours?”

He looked taken aback. “I am Prince Terl.”

Noelle stopped and turned to look at him in surprise. “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand the system here. You’re related to Drak, right? But he’s a prince …?”

His face reddened. “Prince Drak,” he said stiffly. “Or you can refer to him or address him as Highness, or Sire. Or my lord. He is the ruler over all of Alvarone.”

Noelle blinked at him, reddening with a mixture of anger at being corrected—by a kid no less!—and embarrassment at her screw up, and then paling with fear when it occurred to her that there might be ugly repercussions to not acknowledging a ruler with a ‘respectful’ title. “I beg your pardon,” she responded a little stiffly and then focused on her work again.

Neither of them spoke for a time. Finally, the Prince broke the silence. “I am his eldest. One day I will be ruler here.”

A jolt went through Noelle. “Sooo … Kadin and Jules are your half-brothers?”

He looked confused. “They are my brothers. Kadin is second in succession and Jules is third. My father sees no reason to beget more heirs. That is why you are here instead of warming his bed.”

Noelle felt the blood flood into her cheeks. It wasn’t as if she was a prude or unused to plain speaking. Her grandmother had raised her and she was not a prude and was notoriously plain spoken.

Beyond that, after generations and many centuries where sex was either taboo, or at least the discussion of it, and all sorts of strange customs and rituals surrounded the act, people had finally come to realize and accept that it was simply a part of nature and no more sinful than sneezing.

She supposed, to be completely accurate, the taboos had mostly vanished when people had outgrown the need for gods to blame for all of the problems with the world and accepted responsibility for their own actions. ‘Sins’ vanished. It the place of religion to set the parameters of acceptable behavior, a moral and ethics committee was established and the guidelines drawn up, voted on and accepted by the general populace, were taught to the young. And then laws were adjusted accordingly.

There was lawful and unlawful behavior, socially acceptable and socially unacceptable, but people had ceased to prose on about sinfulness.

Her discomfort stemmed from Terl’s intrusion into her privacy. It wasn’t his place to speculate on her sexual activities with his father—or anyone else!

And then there was the assumption that his father had no use for her and had deposited her in the junk room to see if she could make herself useful!

She shook the thought off, unwilling to allow the boy’s comments to ruin her enjoyment when she’d been so horribly bored before!

Now she had something she could really sink her teeth into! She could play with the alien technology and quite possibly develop an understanding of the species that had built it.

She thought it must have been Drak’s ancestors—Prince Drak’s.

She’d barely scratched the surface, of course, but it had clearly been built by a species that was physically similar to both humans and this species—two hands and ten fingers.

She got up to stretch the kinks after a little while and then looked around. “Why don’t we sort this by what looks like it can be repaired, what might be repaired, and what will never work again?”

The Prince looked dismayed. “I don’t think my father would like for us to move things around like that.”

Noelle frowned. “Well, we need some sort of system. Is your father more interested in weapons, then? Or maybe in useful tools? Or trade goods?”

Those questions seemed to throw the boy. “We have tools and weapons. I suppose he might be interested in things that we might be able to trade but we usually just raid and take what we need. And that’s mostly food. The winters here are long and very cold—unlike the seasons on K’naiper. We can only grow things that will reach maturity very quickly and even then the winter sometimes catches us by surprise and destroys the crop. So there is usually no one here to trade with or even to raid for food.”

Dismay flickered through Noelle, and pity. No wonder they’d become raiders! Not that their circumstances excused that sort of thing! They should have made more of an attempt to work out some kind of trade to get what they needed, but she understood, now, that it was a thing they did that was necessary to their survival rather than something purely for amusement or enrichment.

That changed things pretty drastically, or at least her opinion of them.

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about the climate itself, but technology could certainly improve things around here. Has anyone considered using greenhouses to grow food during the cold months? I mean, do you have them?”

There wasn’t a word in their language, that she knew, for greenhouse. That should’ve been her first clue that greenhouse technology wasn’t something they were familiar with. The blank look on Prince Terl’s face cinched it.

“Things will only grow during the spring and summer and those are not long seasons. It is cold in the fall and very, very cold in the winter.”

Noelle studied him for a long moment. “Do you have … something I could draw pictures with and on?”

He fetched her a pencil and a sheaf of crudely made paper. Fortunately, she was familiar with both because her grandmother had been prone to cling to the things familiar to her.

Settling on the stool once more, she struggled with the crude tools she had and made a drawing, explaining how the greenhouse would work as she went. Prince Terl didn’t seem particularly interested—at first—but when she explained that it would keep the snow off of the plants and allow them to grow food all year round, she had his undivided attention.

He leaned closer to study the drawing. “Your people have something like this?”

Uneasiness flickered through Noelle. She debated whether to admit that or not—fearing it might endanger the colony if she admitted it—and finally decided on a different truth. “When I was young my grandmother had one. It’s something my people have used over many, many generations—because it’s fairly simple and it works. The critical part is having glass or something like glass that will allow the sunlight to penetrate to the plants but keep the temperature inside constant. It’s like … making spring all year.”

Prince Terl settled his elbows on the workbench, studying her drawing, clearly thinking about what she’d said. “I don’t think our workers would be skilled enough to build something like this.”

“Well—it isn’t that hard. I guess if I’m still here in the spring I could show them how to do it.”

The Prince turned to look at her. “Why wouldn’t you be? It’s not ….”

The movement brought him a lot closer than either of them had anticipated since they were both hunched over the drawing.

“I see the two of you have … become friendly.”

It was really unfortunate that Prince Drak took that moment to arrive because they both jumped guiltily when they heard him and it just made the completely innocent situation seem that much more damning.

Drak’s expression was hard and his eyes glittering with suppressed anger when Noelle leapt from the stool and turned to look at him.

He dismissed Terl coolly and caught her upper arm, marching her from the room like a child he’d caught that was up to mischief.