Page 82 of Hot Zone

Artemesia visibly preened for a moment, but then turned her formidable mind to the problem at hand. “Shout word to the next ship that the Queen of Halicarnassus has tidings of great import for the emperor. At his earliest convenience, I request an audience to relay my news.”

Obediently, the ship’s captain bellowed to the next vessel over. In retreating volume over the next several seconds, Tessa heard the message shouted from boat to boat. Hopefully, the meaning wouldn’t get too mangled by the time it reached Xerxes’s ears.

“Now what?” the captain asked.

Artemesia shrugged. “Now we wait.” She cast a speculative glance at Rustam. “And in the meantime, my slave shall attend me. Come to my bed, slave.”

Tessa had to clench her jaw—hard—to stand there and listen to Rustam being called that. He was such a magnificent, intelligent, powerful man, a star navigator, for heaven’s sake. It was obscene to hear his name and the word slave in the same sentence. And she didn’t even want to think about him in Artemesia’s bed.

Tessa couldn’t help herself. Her aura surged, flying around her in shades of violet and angry purple.

Easy, love, Rustam warned. Artemesia can sense a strong enough energy field. Do not give her a weapon like your jealousy to wield against you.

Tessa had to dig her fingernails cruelly into her palms to distract herself, but she managed to wrestle her emotions back under control by sheer dint of will.

She counted backward from ten to one, forcing her expression to go blank as Rustam stepped away from her, following the queen toward the hatch that led below deck. And it was a good thing she did so for, without warning, Artemesia cast a triumphant look over her shoulder at her.

Go ahead, Your Highness. Pretend you’ve won and the man is yours. I am the one he named his consort and put his child into.

A cobalt-blue wave of amusement so strong it nearly made her burst out laughing slammed into Tessa.

As Artemesia disappeared down the hatch, Tessa scowled fiercely at Rustam, who was grinning back at her like a cat with a big, fat canary in its mouth.

Petulantly, she flung at him, I hope she makes you have sex with her.

No, you don’t. Do not be ashamed of your jealousy. It pleases me.

Go to he—

He cut her off. Search the ship for your map while I’ve got her distracted, my love.

The Karanovo fragment. Her mission. She’d completely forgotten why she was here, in her irritation at Artemesia taking her man to bed.

Tessa froze. Her man? Since when was Rustam her man?

Grimly, she turned to face the ship. She glanced over at the captain, who hovered unhappily on deck. He looked as if he would love to go back to bed but wasn’t sure he had permission from his queen to do so.

“My dear sir,” Tessa said sweetly, “would you do me the honor of showing me your most excellent vessel?”

The man looked relieved to have something to do. Tessa reached out with her mind to search for the medallion…and realized all of a sudden that she was getting absolutely nothing. No pinprick of energy, no general direction, nothing. Dammit. As soon as Rustam had left, he’d taken every bit of her skill with him. Well, she could always do it the old-fashioned way and hunt with her eyeballs. With a sigh, she turned to follow the captain.

At night, with no moon, and no torches nearby, she didn’t stand a chance of spotting the medallion. And it didn’t help that her stomach was roiling and queasy in short order. She’d never been prone to seasickness before, but then, she’d never been on a tiny Persian ship in the middle of the Aegean Sea with her lover below her feet, in bed with another woman. She had every right to be seasick, thank you very much.

It was a long night. As Artemesia had made no provision for her to have quarters, the ship’s crew wasn’t inclined to offer them to her. She eventually dug Rustam’s big cloak out of his pack and wrapped herself in it, but it wasn’t quite enough to stave off the damp chill as the wee hours of the night came and went.

It was silent below deck, but her mind still conjured any number of lurid scenarios involving Rustam and Artemesia. And every successive one made Tessa a little crazier.

It shouldn’t matter to her that Artemesia had reclaimed her lover. Tessa knew they’d slept together before, and she also knew that Rustam wasn’t particularly fond of the woman in bed. He’d expressed respect for the woman’s mind and her leadership abilities, but a closed, unpleasant look entered his gaze anytime the subject of Artemesia’s sexual proclivities had come up in conversation. Not that it had more than once or twice.

Still, Tessa was miserable. She paced the decks, swathed in Rustam’s voluminous cloak, surrounded by his scent and residual bits of blue energy that clung to the coarse wool and suffered the torments of hell.

Eventually, a single thought coalesced and took root in her brain. This had better not be love, because if it was, it sucked.

But as the stars wheeled about overhead and the Aegean Sea slapped the sides of the vessel, she gradually came to accept the truth. Somewhere along the way, she’d fallen in love with the big lout.

And without a shadow of a doubt, that was an enormous mistake. He was Centaurian, the enemy. From what Professor Carswell had told her, the Centaurians were actively trying to interfere with mankind’s progress toward space travel. For all Tessa knew, Rustam was one of those sent to Earth to impede mankind’s progress!

A person did have to wonder why his spaceship was even in this corner of the galaxy when it crashed in the first place. Without his overwhelming presence to distract her from rational thought, she actually chewed on that question seriously for the first time.

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