Octavia Girl

Chapter Eighteen

From One Sucker to Another

“That was a bold move,” Sardius said in Jenna’s ear as she entered her closet after the meeting. “You’re more of a bad girl than I thought.”

Jenna pulled her sweater over her head and folded it on a glass table in the middle of the room. “Let’s not talk about that. You’re still being recorded.”

“Yes, wife, I’ll can it,” he drawled.

The corner of Jenna’s mouth pulled. She had not meant to ask the council if she could marry Sardius. A romantic attachment to him had not entered her head as she had already accepted that she would never be able to meet him. What she wanted was something else. How could she frame it? She honestly couldn’t explain it to anyone else until she had worked it all out inside herself.

Armen had left a bad taste in her mouth. Actually, she couldn’t swear that any of her past love interests had left a good taste in her mouth.

When she thought of people who had been good to her, people she wanted in her life, she wanted her grandfather. Without him, she wanted someone to guide her along. She couldn’t do what she had to do with no one backing her. And she felt that if Sardius was her family…like her grandfather… unlike Lucy… that somehow that would be enough to carry her through what she had to do. It wasn’t romantic.

She swore to herself that it wasn’t romantic.

Sardius was annoying. Sometimes, he was funny. Yes, sometimes he was hilariously sexy, but mostly he was a bug in her ear who didn’t know when to shut up.

Then she remembered him telling her that there wasn’t enough oxygen when she was stranded in the tank. She took a deep breath.

He could be all that she needed.

“I just want to know one thing,” Sardius asked, interrupting her thoughts. “Will you be able to trust me after what you’ve learned about me?”

“Well, they didn’t really explain anything. They danced around the important bits. You’re a prisoner?” she said, moving around the closet and taking an inventory of the clothes provided for her.

“Yep,” he said sourly.

“Can you tell me about your prison?”

“There’s not much to tell. I’m in a room. There are four walls. There’s a lot of stuff carved into and written on the walls. It was all here when they threw me in here. It’s probably not that different than if I actually was living in your ear, just on a larger scale.”

“Do they feed you?”

“No. They give us a shot once every four days that replaces all the nourishment our bodies need. We drink water. I haven’t eaten in years.”

“If you do a good job working for me, will you be able to eat again?”

Sardius clicked his tongue. “No. I’m serving seventeen life sentences. I know other prisoners can get a reduced sentence for working a job like this, but not me. I’m too dangerous for them to ever let me out. They don’t even want to pretend that if I do this I’ll get out. Seventeen life sentences are not something that can be worked off. That’s not why I’m helping you. Working for you is the only fun I’m ever going to get. There’s no reward, except joining in whatever trouble you get into.”

“That sounds dangerous. Even if you do a good job, you get nothing? If I were an assassin trying to find a way to kill me, I’d consider you the weakest link because of the lack of remuneration. For instance, would you sell me out for the promise of three square meals a day?”

He chuckled. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to go about eating something. I hadn’t eaten anything for years before I went to jail. You can’t do the things I have done if you’re obsessed with food. Deep space travel does not make for great dining. Besides, real food makes you fat and poor. I am poor because I’ve had all my assets stripped more times than I can count, but I am not fat.”

“Have you been dying to tell me that?” Jenna asked, bemused.

“A little bit, yeah,” he confessed.

“I hope it was satisfying for you.”

“You should know you’re not marrying a whale,” he said smugly.

Jenna chuckled. “What do you know? I’ll probably end up marrying an octopus. They recommend that, don’t they?”

“You’d do that?” he gasped.

“I have no idea what I wouldn’t do.”

“No idea?” he asked, his voice tantalizing.

Dressed for bed, she threw herself back on her bed. “That’s already what I like about you. I have no idea what your limits are. Hearing that you’ve already crossed so many lines should scare me, but it makes me feel like you would make a horrible snap decision in my favor if something terrible went down. I like it. It makes me feel safer with you than anybody else.”

“Jenna, I don’t mean to alarm you, but when you talk like that, it makes it sound like you actually do want to marry me,” he said with a pompous little snicker.

She scratched her scalp under her hair. “Maybe that’s what I want. What do soldiers do, terrorists, and others to make sure they’re all on the same side before they do something crazy? What kinds of oaths do they swear?”

“Huh…” he said slowly. “Now that you mention it, we have ceremonies. We do things to welcome new people to our ranks. When you’re a revolutionary, you can’t always pay your soldiers. If you’ve done a good job with them, they’ll be with you through sickness and health, through want and wealth, through victory and death. You’re right. We may not frame it exactly the same way, but it is more like a marriage ceremony than I originally thought. What do you think, Jenna, should we get married?”

At that moment, Sardius’ voice was cut. Jenna tapped on her earpiece twice with her finger. She had never had any technical difficulties with the pearl communicator in her ear. It didn’t have any buttons on it at all.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “That was the orbital security team. Apparently, I am not allowed to ask you to marry me. I have been warned, though not punished.”

“It’s okay,” Jenna said, relieved that there was nothing wrong with her earpiece. “We can work out the details later. Otherwise, I hate that I can’t talk to one friggin person without someone listening.”

“It’s for your safety,” he reminded her.

“I still don’t feel like I’m free to chat. I don’t feel like I can tell you what I thought of that meeting, what I thought of the councilors, our arrangement, or anything at all. Bah! Tell me what’s on the schedule for tomorrow.”

“As you wish. Tomorrow morning, you are scheduled to meet your three servants. Vash will be your butler. He will act as a housekeeper, maid, and waiter. He’ll also do the upkeep of the sixteen palace fish tanks. You should know that he used to be a nurse who worked at one of the hospitals. He was fired for misconduct leading to death.”

“Why am I getting a toilet scrubber who messed up so bad that someone died?” Jenna complained.

“Almost everyone on the planet who isn’t working in healthcare is someone who lost their position under similar circumstances. Vash’s list of crimes is tiny. We were lucky to get someone with such a relatively clean history to do housekeeping for us.”

“Go on,” Jenna encouraged.

“Misha is your stylist,” Sardius said, carrying on. “Normally, diplomats on other Adamis planets do not need a full-time stylist, but here on Octavia, you do. It’s because you have to switch between wet and dry looks and neither the Adamis nor the Octavians thought you had the slightest clue as to how to pull off a wet look. Not only that, but you’re entirely too important to look like a pauper.”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “Is Misha also a screwup from the hospital?”

“Nah,” Sardius laughed. “She’s a screwup from the morgue.”

“Fabulous,” Jenna said dryly.

“The last member of staff is Smoothie. She’s your cook. You’ll be delighted to know that at least the person who will be feeding you has no priors. Her last job was at a hospital, but it was a five-star hospital and I headhunted her. She’s never even put a toe out of line, mostly because she doesn’t have any toes.”

Jenna wanted to ask about Smoothie’s anatomy but was too nervous. If Sardius had headhunted her, there wasn’t likely to be an improvement available, even if the person was weird to Jenna.

“Where do these servants live? Do they commute?” Jenna asked hesitantly when the introductions were finished.

“They live in your palace. There’s a servants' wing. You can have up to five servants comfortably.”

“What other servants could I possibly need?”

“Bodyguards,” Sardius answered quickly. “I’ve been vetting them in my spare time, but I haven’t found one who is suitable. Right now, your palace is floating in a remote part of the Slipseed Ocean and no one besides the Octavian Council has any reason to be out here. For now, that’s the best protection we can give you, as you can easily be protected from orbit, but eventually, we’ll need to move you closer to shore and allow bodyguards inside and outside.”

“Any other business we need to address tonight?” she asked, getting under her covers and cuddling a pillow.

“We need to make arrangements to collect Charm from Octavia Three.”

Jenna scoffed. “I already told you that I want her sent to Octavia Five. Tell Armen and Lucy that they have to take care of her as part of their tenancy.”

Sardius hesitated. “Didn’t she almost rip Lucy’s head clean off?”

“Yeah,” Jenna said, remembering the bloody gashes with a dreamlike reminiscence. “Charm hates everyone but me.”

“Aren’t you worried your cat will fall in love with Armen and Lucy and the next time you see her, she won’t even know you?”

Jenna sighed. “That is a risk, but it would also be terrible if she scratched a visiting Octavian diplomat. As much as I love her, she’s not well enough behaved to be here just yet. Plus, there’s real work for her demon claws living with Armen and Lucy.”

“So, you would not like me to look into getting you another pet?”

“No. If I die out here, then I die out here alone.”

“I don’t blame you for being worried about the assassins, but you do realize you’re turning down the gifts Armen gave you on behalf of the Octavian council one by one?”

“Yeah. I know. I can’t really help it if they gave me terrible gifts.”

“If you could have anything, what would you have?”

“I’d have a man I like kissing me feverishly in the dark, but since that hasn’t happened for me thus far, it seems unlikely it will happen in the future. I’m over the disappointment.”

“Are you?” he asked, his voice clipped in the night’s silence.

“Yeah. Why shouldn’t I be over it? It’s not like I’m a maid of sixteen with stars in her eyes and passionate hopes knotted in her throat. I’m just a person. I’ve suspected you were a man for ages and I just kept whipping my shirt over my head.”

“I’ve appreciated it,” he said in a tone Jenna couldn’t quite identify.

“I hope you enjoy the one perk your job has,” Jenna said. She turned to the camera and blew it a kiss she hoped Sardius could see. “I wish our situation was fair and we both got perks.”

He whistled softly in her ear. “Are you saying your job has no perks?”

“It feels that way tonight. Potato chips? A scrappy cat I can’t have? Please.”

“More importantly, are you saying you’d consider it a perk if you got to see me naked?”

Jenna traced the magenta pattern on her pillow with the tip of her finger. “I think I’m saying that you and I are a couple of suckers.”

Sardius said nothing like the line on the phone was dead.

She didn’t wait for him to reply and the lights dimmed automatically as she relaxed in bed. The mattress was plush and the sheets were silky. She rubbed her eyes and touched the piece in her ear as if to say goodnight.

“I certainly feel like a sucker tonight,” he conceded as the rest of the lights went out. “Though not the kind you mistake me for.”

Jenna didn’t answer him, but let her breathing regulate until she fell asleep with Sardius on her mind and resting like a pearl in the shell of her ear.