Page 3 of Prima
"Of course you were, my lady,” he murmurs.
Did she show up equally naked across the paths of his brothers, representatives of the other two factions? To shock? Or was that the fastest way to find out whether any princes of Dawan, not a realm known for allowing women in the public sphere, are capable of working with a woman who might not only decide their fate, but do so without a stitch on her person?
She smiles again. Her dimples reappear, deep and alluring. “In that case, I opt for a wash first, before I sample your other delights, Your Highness.”
* * *
Before Lady Sun proceeds to her wash, she springs back onto her raft, opens a hatch in the middle of it, and descends into an unseen understructure.
The raft, though primitive-looking, is the size of a small room. And until it slowed as it neared his boat, it traveled at nearly the same speed asThe Blue Sampan, goingagainstthe wind. He knows it must possess a hidden propulsion system, but he’s not sure he suspected this large of an underwater hull.
She reemerges with a large valise and tosses it at him—it’s heavy. Then she detaches the line that binds the raft toThe Blue Sampanand returns aboard.
“It’s…blue,” she says as she descends below deck. “I thoughtThe Blue Sampana bit of a misnomer for a grayish vessel. I see now that it is, in fact, truth in advertising.”
Mostly the interior features neutrals and muted blues, but one curtain and the striped cushion on the bench pop in the most vibrant possible shade of nautical blue.
She glances over her shoulder. “Is blue your favorite color?”
“In general I prefer green.”
“Yet your boat is blue, both in name and in reality.”
Every watercraft that matters in his life is blue. “We all contain multitudes, I suppose.”
She laughs softly and asks no more questions on the décor. He shows her to the cabin—perfectly clean because he hasn’t had time to sleep in it—and then to the wet room. Once the shower inside turns on, he slips back into the cabin to investigate her heavier-than-it-should-be valise, which she has left open, as if deliberately inviting scrutiny.
Most of the weight can be attributed to a compact beige device that has only an on/off button and a dial that goes from min to max. There are no other words, numbers, or markings anywhere on its smooth, porcelain-like surfaces.
The device was protected by a knitted blanket. There is a similarly wrapped item, which turns out to be an adjustable ring approximately thirteen centimeters in diameter, its exterior fabricated from the same beige, fragile-looking material. A collar?
Unease grips him.
The shower in the wet room turns off. He swears. Excessive consumption, in no small part, brought about the End and waste of any kind has been abhorred in the near millennium since. But he made sure to tell her that his solar batteries and desalinated H2O tanks are both full, practically asking her to be lavish in her water use.
Hasn’t worked.
He put everything back the way he found it and clears out of the cabin. By the time he steps on deck again, her raft is more than a klick away, disappearing into the last shimmer of twilight.
Scholars, engineers, and laymen alike squabble over the technological re-progress of their era. Some deem that they have reached a comparable level of development to that of the interwar period of the twentieth century. Others insist that, except for the absence of nuclear weapons, their time is at least as advanced as the early years of the Cold War. Still others scoff at the validity of any such intellectual exercises, pointing out that while in terms of materials science and renewable energy their technologies rival those of the early twenty-second century, they lack anything on a par with the globe-spanning telegraph networks of the Victorians, let alone the fast and furious advances in communication in the ensuing decades.
The world, the debaters are often forced to conclude, is fragmented into much emptier and more localized places than it was at those moments of history they like to trot out as points of reference. Without easy and constant transmissions from the other side of the planet, knowledge tends to be regional. But even inside a given region, along the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, say, neighboring realms may know little of one another.
Certainly the general population of Dawan has long regarded New Ryukyu as a bacchanal of an improbability, a place where women run free that somehow hasn’t collapsed under the weight of that very degeneracy. But few ever bring up the fact that the founders of Dawan and New Ryukyu came from the same great Pacific flotilla; the majority-female engineers and agronomists, after falling out with the militarists, went north to establish their own realm. Perhaps their descendants do hold orgies nightly, but only after they’ve spent their days in workshops and laboratories.
The raft that is gliding away—Ren strips off his clothes and dives overboard. In the water he can discern the mass of the raft’s understructure. It seems too small to hold an operator inside, after he subtracts the space needed for Lady Sun’s valise and Lady Sun herself, when she was down in hatch. So the raft is either being steered remotely or traveling autonomously—the latter Dawan’s engineers can’t manage yet and the former, nowhere as well.
He turns his attention south, the direction he came from. Ten klicks behindThe Blue Sampan, a submarine is on its tail. And has been since before he reached Dragon Gate. Does the minister plenipotentiary know—and should he say something if she doesn’t?
He vaults back aboard. The air cools with the arrival of night and the sea grows choppier; he unfurls more sail to punch through the waves. After checking the autosteering, he rinses himself off under the deck shower, scanning the horizon every few seconds even though now that Lady Sun is aboard, they should be safe—from sharks as big as his boat and suicidal sea serpents, at least.
For his meeting with the envoy, he puts on some clothes befitting a diplomat negotiating a tricky new alliance—or a prince about to be sacrificed to a sea monster: Most Dawani, including a fair number of his brothers and perhaps the High Potentate himself, do not believe in the existence of the Secretariat. They view that as fiction for the gullible, crafted so that the population of New Ryukyu would not panic at the thought of being ruled by a centuries-old monster.
Ren is agnostic on the rumored gruesomeness of the Sea Witch. What he knows is that every year hundreds of Dawani—women and girls, especially—risk their lives to cross the Disputed Waters into New Ryukyu. There is no similar flow in the opposite direction.
He has just set a plate of nibbles on the small table in the lounging area when he hears Lady Sun. She emerges wrapped in a—for her—surprisingly modest dress. It has a slightly scooped neckline but covers her upper arms and reaches down to her calves. Yet its unusual color, somewhere between warm peach and light brown, stirs up a carnal heat that turns him lightheaded.
Not that the hunger from his first sight of her ever dissipated.
