Dark Space - Marianne de Pierres [8]
When he’d been younger Trin had thought the finest off-world whisky was her perfume. She would lie on the edge of his bed at night and weep. Perhaps she thought that, in the dark, he wouldn’t know. He hated the wetness of her cheeks, the heaviness of her body draped across his legs in bed.
He’d sought his father’s company to escape the suffocation of the Principessa’s need but Principe Franco Pellegrini always dismissed him with the same excuse—a world to rule.
Trin sensed other reasons for his father’s lack of interest, only he dared not seek them out for fear of what they might tell him about himself. Instead he nursed his hurt and turned it on Jilda.
Tonight he chose his words with precision and delivered them like thrusts. ‘You should bathe more often, mother. It might make you more attractive to others. And besides, I am spending the evening with company of my own age.’
The Principessa pressed her tumbler to her mouth to stifle a sob. She turned and left without another word.
Trin dispatched his guilt to the same corner of his mind where he kept his anger, and finished dressing. Dismissing his valet, he flew his AiV down Mount Pell to Riso’s Bar. His friends were already there, crowding up the tables around the ginko-containment films: Thomasi and Kotta Pellegrini, the Silvios and the Elena cousins—his gang.
Riso’s was as daring a place as they would risk, even for graduation celebrations. In most of the Dockside bars familia were not welcome and not safe.
When he became Principe, Trin planned to drive all the familia-hating ginkos out of Pell. Only the ones that served or provided entertainment would be permitted to stay. Franco and Grandfather Aldo had been stupid to allow them entry to their new world.
Trin knew the arguments for it—he’d just spent three years in political science at the Araldis Studium. The immersion-texts were full of explanations of how the Cipriano Clan had purchased and settled Araldis and had then realised that they had neither the population nor the breadth of skills to sustain a mining economy.
But how short-sighted to accept just anyone. Hadn’t they learned anything from the cultural catastrophe of Latino Crux? The one time he had challenged his father about it he’d received a cold, unforgiving stare.
Trin strode towards his friends, putting Franco from his mind.
‘Trin!’ called out Thomasi.
‘Cousin! Pilot First, by Crux,’ said Kotta.
‘Don Trinder, you un-bastard, where have you been? We have had to drink without you. Congratulations.’
Trin soaked in the salve of their clamour for a moment before taking a seat between Chocetta and Lancia Silvio. They fell apart like halves of sliced moist-fruit, making room for him against their ample thighs. Lancia threw lima pellets at the containment film around the uuli, and clapped as the creature changed colour.
‘You know that it is the pain that makes them change,’ Trin commented idly.
Lancia laughed and threw another handful.
The uuli squealed, its membrane flaring luminously. Most eyes were drawn to it.
Trin looked away, annoyed. Its helplessness bothered him. How could the stupid creature allow itself to be treated so?
Chocetta slid her hand along his leg. ‘My turn tonight, Trinder?’
Picking up the jug of wine, he drank deeply from it. ‘If you say so. I have lost track.’
She lifted her aquiline nose in the air, mock-aggrieved. He’d been sleeping with the Silvio Marchesas on alternate nights, and sometimes with both of them together, during their last term at the Studium. He knew it should have been exhilarating, two women, but their constant need for reassurance and attention spoiled things. He could smell his mother on them and the same weak familia-women’s way. No doubt both wanted to bear a Pellegrini child. But it would not be them that he chose. Never them.
As if sensing his distraction,