Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [57]
Liegeus came out onto the terrace. “Your Excellency,” he greeted her gently. She hadn’t meant to speak of what she had seen—hadn’t meant to let him know she knew anything—but with the sweetblossom it was difficult to remember any kind of resolve.
He looked so pale, his dark eyes so haunted, that she said, “You’re as much a prisoner here as I am.”
He flinched a little, and looked aside. He reminded her of an animal that had been mistreated and would shy at the raising of any human hand. Compassion twisted her heart. “You seem to have the run of the place. Couldn’t you leave?”
“It isn’t that easy,” he said. He came over to the bench where she sat, looked gravely down at her. The synthdroid, Leia could see, still stood on the lower terrace, the pallid sunlight turning its dead, doll-like hair to gold. “How much of that did you hear?”
“I … Nothing.” Leia fumbled, and she cursed her own weakness for not being able to do without some of the drugged water every day. But she knew that most people were not aware of how their own voices carried. “I heard you and Dzym talking, that is, but I couldn’t hear what you said. Only the way you shrank away, the way you fear him.”
Liegeus sighed, and his shoulders slumped. A wan smile flickered over his lined face. “Well, as you can see for yourself, Your Excellency, even should I leave—and I’m being very well paid for my work here—there really isn’t anywhere for me to go.” He gestured around them, at the wild crystalline landscape, the dazzling gorges and razor-backed ridges of glass. Then he was silent a moment, looking down at her, helpless grief in his eyes.
“Do you spend much time out here on the terrace?” he asked abruptly.
Leia nodded. “I know it probably isn’t a good idea. It makes my skin hurt …”
“I’ll get you some glycerine,” said Liegeus. “Did you hear what I said to the synthdroid? It’s convenient to have them all operated from a central controller but it means you never can tell them apart.”
“The only thing I heard was that it’s supposed to spend fifteen minutes a day standing on the terrace.”
“I’d like you to do that, too. More, if you can.”
“All right.” Leia nodded. It couldn’t be sunlight that was a cure for the Death Seed, she thought. Billions had died of it, daytime or nighttime, on worlds across half the galaxy. “Liegeus …”
He was starting to leave; he turned back within the shadow of the house.
“If there’s anything I can do to help …”
The minute the words were out of her mouth she felt like a fool. The drug, she thought, and cursed it again. Here she was a prisoner, her very life under their control—for it looked to her like Dzym was able to call the Death Seed into being and to take it away again—and she was offering to help him.
But something changed in Liegeus’s eyes: Shame and gratitude for even that small kindness, replacing the fear. “Thank you,” he said, “but there’s nothing.” He disappeared into the shadows of the house.
The house Luke sought lay deep in the heart of the Oldtimer quarter. In many respects it bore a rather surprising resemblance to Seti Ashgad’s, which Arvid had pointed out to him that afternoon on the way into town. Like Ashgad’s, this house was built at ground level—something that surprised Luke until he remembered that Ashgad’s house had been built forty years ago by Ashgad’s father—and like Ashgad’s was now, this one had evidently once been surrounded by a luxuriant growth of plants, not just the standard vegetation common to low-light terraformed planets, but rarer growths and trees watered by a complex of droppers and pipes.
But while Ashgad’s dwelling still supported this arrogant display of wasted water, this house bore only the detritus of former glory. Broken pipes crossed the dirty white stucco of the walls. A few dessicated stumps