Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [5]
Not so the Principe.
Fresh fear spurted through Mira’s veins. If the Cavaliere found her, she would be trapped, and though a small part of her mind struggled to be rational—the Principe may simply want to offer me handsome recompense—her stronger instincts could accept only one assumption: gene transference.
‘Please,’ she implored. ‘The ‘cast... it is the Cavaliere. They have an escort for me.’
Alba unwound the high neck of her fellala. Her skin was soft and puckered like worn suede. Mira forced herself not to avert her gaze; she had never seen old skin before. Nor had she seen anything like the myriad of finely etched lines on the woman’s breasts. They might have been fine age wrinkles save for their violet hue and intricate patterning.
Alba Galiotto traced some of them with a blunt finger.
‘Women are forbidden to mark their bodies,’ said Mira automatically.
‘Baronessa, when you see these marks again you will understand why I choose to help you.’ Resting in the crease of her breast was a biometric stripe—her badge of trusted seniority. She peeled it from her skin without flinching at the pain and handed it to Mira. ‘This will enable any general transport. Take any one from the loading bay behind the cucina.’ She placed a small towel over her bleeding skin and deftly rewound her robe to keep it tightly in place.
Mira slipped the stripe onto her arm under her sleeve. It burrowed into the crook of her elbow with a slight sting. ‘They’ll know you helped me.’
Alba shook her head. ‘Even the Principe would not dare disrobe me in a search. There are some compensations for age, Baronessa.’ She gave a hollow laugh and returned to her folding.
Mira stood for a moment, uncertain.
‘You should go now. The Cavaliere are not patient,’ said Alba gently, as if prompting a ragazza.
‘Blessings, Alba.’
‘Blessings, speranza.”
* * * *
In her travelling fellala and light boots, Mira was able to lift her knees to run. She flew along the floor of the lengthy portico, past the aristos’ chambers and the helicoidal staircase, to the far end of the building. The servant’s stairs were narrow. Food spills crusted the rough hessian stair-matting and the stairwell smelt of rancid cooking oils. The Cipriano crest, inlaid to the wall, had been spattered with red wine. No one had been reverent enough to wipe it clean.
At another time this lack of respect might have surprised Mira but the lesser Nobile seemed well contented enough. So might she have wondered at Alba Gallioto’s actions and the strange vivid markings on the woman’s breast but instead her mind was locked into two tunnels of need—escape and Insignia.
By the time she had reached the ground floor and located the door to the cucina . . . the two desires had coalesced into one.
* * * *
Sole
manifestspace
yearn/seek seek amid/among light b’long farway
look’m secrets cross’m void/ find/amid amid liquid swirl halo dust little creatures/many many how’m function?? * * * * TEKTON Tekton was not accustomed to such a solemn vista. Seen from space, his home planet Lostol was a twirling topaz with pristine polar ice at either end like virgins’ caps. A jewel suspended in space, elegantly looping a Type B star. Belle-Monde’s closest star was Mintaka, the last notch in Orion’s Belt. Tekton’s trip there had been by resonance shift to the Bellatrix system, then on to Alnitak and Mintaka, followed by dreary sub-shift propulsion to Belle-Monde. It had given him plenty of time to absorb all available information on the discovery of Sole Entity and the subsequent placement of the pseudo-world Belle-Monde in its vicinity. The screeds of speculation and the smaller amount of fact led him one conclusion. The Entity had wanted
Belle-Monde was named in the inimitable vein of sarcasm that marked the humanesque species apart from others. Far from being a beautiful world, it resembled a corroded iron ball.