Shadow
Zemma carried the tea service to the low table near Don and excused herself long enough to peek in the bedroom. Riddick was no longer in bed at least. Zemma walked to the bathroom, leaned against the doorjamb and listened to the sounds of running water.
"Did you hear all that?" She asked him.
"I heard it yesterday."
Zemma didn't reply. She felt anxious, but knew she couldn't hide in the bedroom. "Tea is ready when you are." She walked back out, composing her face, and sat opposite Don.
"Riddick should be out soon."
"You don't call him Richard?" Don asked.
"He hasn't asked me to. Do you?"
Don chuckled, the first time Zemma had heard him do so. "No." He looked as if his tongue would fall out at the very idea. Zemma smiled in return.
"Do you know why we're having this breakfast meeting?"
Don looked faintly curious. "He didn't tell you?"
"I didn't ask."
"Jaron wants another party." He sounded amused.
Zemma smiled bigger.
"He was a rich man before all this. I think sometimes he misses the gala."
"I didn't know that." Zemma tried to picture Jaron a Furyan Lord, but simply lacked the experience to see him in anything but his 'Monger armor or his favorite lounging clothes. She knew the basic history of Fury, and it's social makeup, but could remember none of it.
"What was that like? Before the 'Mongers?" Zemma sipped her tea.
Don looked at her, as if deciding what was worth telling.
"Well, despite our rather cutting remarks, we didn't really live in the stone age. We had technology. But it was a running argument how much more we needed and how much better it might be without it."
Zemma nodded, and waited to see if he would continue.
"Jaron owned quite a nice place. Member of parliament. His own personal army. He was a good leader, the towns under his direction flourished. He enjoyed it all."
"Was he married?"
"Yes." Don looked a little sad. "She's dead. No children."
"Ferrin said we lived in a city, a republic?" Zemma hoped he would keep talking, this was interesting. Her father had talked a lot when she was young, teaching her Furyan history. And Jaron's dead wife suddenly felt sacrosanct to her; she wouldn't ask Don to tell her what Jaron hadn't.
"There were several autonomous governments, city-states, mostly. They wanted to band together and form one government. The landlords wanted to keep their independence. Your father stood for a middle ground, for technology's sake rather than power, greater bargaining control with other planets, and a mutual defensive network. We voted him in as a sovereign president. It's too bad the 'Mongers chose that time to invade." Don paused and looked at Zemma.
"I can see now that he only tried to do the right thing in a situation that must have seemed hopeless to him. He did right by you. Jaron tells me it's likely that J'Pheth killed his own men, and may have never passed on any order from your father to begin the revolt."
"I never knew anything about that, Sir. But in the last few years my father became very depressed and uncommunicative. I have often wondered since meeting you if that wasn't the very reason. And why he killed himself." Zemma had to stop and focus on her breathing.
"I didn't know that. I thought the Lord Marshal killed him."
"I think he sent Riddick, to do what he couldn't."
To save me?
"To take command," Don nodded as if this made perfect sense to him. "And to keep what he killed?" Don looked at Zemma as if seeing her clearly for the first time. He had the same thought as she did. Zemma counted heartbeats and commanded herself not to blush.
The door call chimed again. Zemma was glad for the interruption. She didn't need to go to the door to answer it but she did. She caught sight of Riddick finally making his appearance from the corner of her eye.
About damn time.
Gotta learn to talk to people, old girl.
It wasn't Jaron and Jack, it was breakfast. Zemma wondered if Jack was giving him fits about what to wear. Something caught her eye down the long hall, something out on the main concourse. A shadow in a shadow? Zemma kept her eye on the dark spot while servants brought in two carts of food and hastily worked to unload it on the table. Critical crew and servants were nearly all that was left that weren't Furyan. Zemma wondered if the seamstress was considered critical crew. She certainly thought the cooks were! Breakfast smelled lovely.
Zemma decided someone was hiding in her hiding place, but the bright lights between here and there foiled her blue lenses and she dropped them. She told the door to close behind the departing, and nervous, non-Furyans. Probably Jack had escaped Jaron. She turned back to the table. Don and Riddick exchanged the briefest hello in history; Riddick nodded his chin up, Don nodded down once, and they both began picking at the food. Zemma smiled. No wonder these two got along. Zemma joined them.
Before Zemma could sit back down in her chair with her breakfast treats the door chimed again. This time she just called it open. Jack preceded Jaron with a painfully artificial smile on her face. She was dressed in one of Jaron's long silky shirts, belted like a dress, and her boots. She looked annoyed. Zemma controlled her need to giggle. No one else said anything either.
"Good morning. Food's on the table." Zemma heard long striding footsteps outside the door before she called it closed. Lord Vaako rushed in. Ah, so it wasn't Jack that caught her eye in the shadows.
"Good morning, Commander. Would you like some breakfast?" She asked him levelly.
"What's going on here?" He demanded. He hadn't come around the curve of the room to see Riddick yet. "If there is to be a meeting of the Commanders, as First, I should be here."
Jaron turned towards Vaako, anger showing on his face, but Zemma spoke first.
"Do you have something to report about the upcoming battle, Commander?" She stood and used the voice she had tried on him before, in his suite.
Vaako turned from a confrontation with his rival to 'Lady Zemma.'
"We're 40 hours from the proposed landing site. Everything is in order."
"Excellent. Then join us for breakfast." She pitched the command voice into an invitation and waited to see what would happen. Riddick waited as well, hand on one of his stashed weapons, still out of sight by the curve of the wall.
Vaako hesitated, he had been looking for the fight with Jaron, in front of the Lord Marshal, probably to have his status repudiated, or recognized. Zemma made a beeline for him and took his arm.
"I'm thinking we should have a state dinner, Lord Vaako." She dropped her voice to an intimate level, "I hope your wife will be well enough to attend this time?"
Risky move, Zem, maybe you shouldn't knock him too far off his feet bringing her up in public?
Zemma raised her voice to conversational level. "Lord R'Ghnell has been kind enough to offer his advice to me this morning." She glanced at Jaron with an eyebrow raised. Thankfully he nodded.
"Have you met, Jack?" Zemma led Vaako into the room.
Vaako barely glanced at the girl but Zemma didn't care for the look on Jack's face.
It was predatory.