Captive of the Red Vixen, Part Sixteen

[jeriendhal]

Three days of being with his family, three days of waiting. It was starting to drive Rolas vaguely mad, to be home but not able to do anything.

“Have we heard nothing from the insurance company?” he asked his father again. “We need that money so we can repair the Sallivera and buy a new cargo. Time is running short; we’ve got barely six weeks before the colony ships arrive in orbit.”

“It’ll come when it comes,” his father said. “The whole thing was pretty straightforward. The damned pirates didn’t even bother removing our ship’s flight data recorder, so it’s just a matter of reviewing the vid records and cutting our check.”

“Then what’s taking so bloody long?”

“We’ve waited two years for this, son. Do you mind if I’m not terribly eager to have you go haring off again after what happened? We still haven’t discovered who the traitor was that betrayed us.”

“I know, I know,” Rolas said, pacing back and forth across the rug in his father’s study. “It’s just that every day we’re stuck sitting here is another day that the Countess might figure out what we’re doing.”

“That’s the one thing that hasn’t happened, Den Mother be thanked. Whoever sold us out to the pirates at least wasn’t willing to sell us out to her.” His father let out frustrated sigh and shooed him out. “Go check on Salli, would you please?”

Rolas nodded. “Yes, Father.” Steeling himself, he went upstairs to the door of Salli’s suite, where a young serving girl was manning a settee in the hallway, a book reader in her hand.”

“She’s having a good day today, milord,” the serving girl told him as he approached. “She hasn’t wept at all this morning.”

"Thank you," he said, wondering how "not wept" could become anyone's definition of "a good day." He knocked softly on the door. When there was no answer, he risked opening it a crack and calling out gently, "Salli?"

"You can come in, brother," Salli said, her tone neither inviting nor dismissive. It barely held any emotion at all. He wondered how long it had taken her to learn to speak like that, to defend herself against triggering one of her husband's rages.

Stepping inside, he found her in the suite's sitting room, curled up in the conversation pit. The lamps were off, the only light a bare sliver escaping through a crack in the curtains. In her lap Salli held a thin leather bound book. Rolas recognized it as one of the half-dozen or so books of aphorisms, short parables about vulpine life that had been carefully hidden and preserved during the long centuries of the Subjugation. The particular volume Salli held looked like The Book of Growth, nominally about wise farming techniques, but more accurately it concerned matters of family, particularly raising children.

"You should turn a light on, Salli. You'll go..." He stopped himself before he made the mistake of saying you'll go blind. Instead he quickly recovered and substituted, "You'll give yourself a headache."

"Not really." She tapped the center of her artificial eye with a claw, a gesture that never failed to unnerve him. "I've got a low light sensor in here. I could read under the light of a single star if I had to."

"Well, you've got the advantage of me then. Would you mind if I opened the curtains?"

"If you wish," she replied, in that same dead tone. He threw open the curtains, letting light flood into the room. Salli seemed to shy away from it, drawing up her legs as the edge of the morning sunbeam reached across the room towards her.

"Comfort reading?" he asked, gesturing to her book.

"In a way," she said. "I had been wondering, if I'd become pregnant like Kev had wanted me to, whether he wouldn't have hit me so often. He really wanted children, I could tell because he talked about it an awful lot. It made him quite upset that he could never quicken one inside me, no matter how often he tried."

"I can think of nothing more horrible than a child of yours under that creature's roof," Rolas said, feeling faintly sick at the thought.

"Maybe if I'd had a child, someone besides myself to defend, I would have found the strength to leave him."

"Idle speculation, Salli," he said, wishing desperately he could change the subject. "Anyway, he can't touch you anymore."

"Can't he?" she asked. Salli closed the book and set it aside. "They say Whiteland is a cold place."

"Compared to Vulpine Prime, yes," Rolas said, wondering at the tangent in the conversation. "It's about five degrees colder on average. But we'll be on the equator. The seasons will be roughly the same as they are here."

"I hate the cold. It was never warm enough in the hospital it seemed like. The sheets on the beds were so thin."

"It won't be so bad, Salli," he said soothingly. “We'll build a new manor and a new town. One all our own, where you'll be able to trust everyone there."

"I don't want to leave," she said faintly.

"You know we can't stay, Salli, not as long as we must live under the countess. You know how she has been pressuring our commoners."

"Yes, of course." She lay back on the cushions of the conversation pit. "Could you close the curtain again, Rolas? I'm very tired, I think I'll sleep for a while."

"Whatever you wish, Salli," he said, closing them and retreating from her suite after wishing her a good morning. He stood outside her door a few moments, staring at his toes and ignoring the silent attention of the serving girl. After he'd regained his composure he went back downstairs, cursing Kev Highglider's name.

When he got downstairs he heard his father’s voice, muffled but undoubtedly raised in uncharacteristic anger, coming from his study. He opened the door just in time to hear him shout, “…intolerable! What kind of idiot do you take me for!”

A vixen in a business suit, shown on the wall’s display screen, gave his father an apologetic shrug. “I’m very sorry, Lord Darktail, but I can only tell you what the legal department told me. Your compensation for the loss of the Sallivera’s cargo has been indefinitely delayed pending further review.”

“What is there to review? It was stripped bare by pirates! You’ve got everything you need on the flight recorder’s memory!”

“I really don’t know, milord. Apparently there were some irregularities that they want investigated.”

“What irregularities? Tell me what information you need and I’ll provide it for you.”

“I’ll pass a message along to our legal department, milord,” the vixen said. “I’m sure if they need to speak to you they’ll be in contact.”

“When can I expect to hear from them?” he demanded.

“I really don’t know, milord.”

“That’s not good enough! Let me speak to your supervisor!”

The vixen let out a long suffering sigh. “I am the supervisor, milord. I’ll pass your concerns along to the relevant parties. Have a good day, milord.”

“Don’t you dare cut me--“ His father let out a growl as the vixen’s image disappeared and he slammed his fist down on his desk. “Bugger all!”

“What happened?” Rolas asked, his heart sinking.

“They’re refusing to compensate us for the loss of the Sallivera’s cargo. They say there are irregularities to be investigated. Which I’m betting is a translation of ‘we think you’re trying to scam us.’”

“Scam them? That’s insane! We fought the pirates as hard as we could! For the love the Den Mother, Dewclaw died defending our ship and cargo! What do they think we were going to do with it?”

“I don’t know. All I know is now I’m going to have to tell your mother what happened. I’m going to have to tell her we might not be able to pay for the colony ships,” his father said, his expression growing bleak. “We might not ever get away.”

TBC