The House Prime halted his footsteps as the exotic notes weaved their way through the vast hall. The woman was humming a broken melody which was probably much more elaborate in her head, as everything else was. Having forgotten what she sounded like after so many months of being held hostage to her silence, the deep raspy tone held more surprise for him than the fact she still had a voice.
The infant gurgled noisily over his mother's tune. For the first time, the man cursed the child who could draw those sounds from her when he had been unable to make her even scream despite his best efforts.
It was that voice that had attracted him in the early days, breaking through the clouds of ennui and banality which accompanied him everywhere he went. The welcome smiling tone whispered at him from the vidscreen of his ship, like a sweet breeze over deep ocean. She was so hopeful of a quick resolution to what she considered a simple misunderstanding as her small ship crossed the vast territory his House held without paying proper due. An error from her part, she explained at length, apologising with offers of trade when he met her face-to-face in her ship's so austere, so impersonal briefing room. He'd said little then, increasing the stakes at every meeting just to be within a few steps from her, breathing in her voice like one imbibes a rare wine.
Her ship was far from home, and the long journey begged many sacrifices, he soon learnt. How great the sacrifice, he wondered, indifferent to her tales of the crew's courage and fortitude.
It was hers he wanted to test, he told me, his hand clutching my shoulder in the darkness of the hall.
Not hiding his interest in her—that was not his habit—he ignored the dark glares, tense jaw and terse greeting words from the tall man at her side. She banished the self-appointed chaperone out of his sight after one tedious confrontation at a dinner she'd invited him and his entourage. He saw a lingering hand on the man's chest, silent words spoken without a sound. He thought nothing of it, discarding all but her from his awareness.
Once her second-in-command was gone, she made the mistake of thinking she should reciprocate his attention to win her ship quicker passage. The Prime had no need for her lashed eyes, the leer on her lips, and her hips askew as she sauntered ahead of him to the plain table and its meagre offerings. The coy banter, the velvet voice, the soft angles of her bare breasts beneath the thin fabric of her dress might have entertained others, but he was Prime of the House: he could pick and choose from plenty of the same among the planets of his realm. He sipped the tasteless drinks and returned to his ship, promising little.
Before long, he heard her command voice, outrage seeping through every word as she refused to bow to ultimatums that he made harder and harder for her and her crew to meet. She blustered her way through, escaped into the depths of space, or so she thought. He let out more line only to reel her ship into the shallows of a vast asteroid field bordering his territory and dotted with the remains of spaceships far better armed than hers. There she made a stand, fought a final battle. Her ship, her beloved pint-sized ship, didn't last long against his well-honed armada. It ran aground on a lump of rock like a small wretched sea creature wheezing under the strain of maintaining life within its broken walls.
And yet, he wasn't done with her.
Ice and frost greeted him when he entered the ship, her voice as biting as the frozen ocean—an omen of what would come much later, the Prime spurted in my ear. He should have left her and her crew to disappear into the night beyond, he told me. But he was smiling, and I knew he regretted nothing.
They had fought well—for barbarians—and there was nothing they could provide that he did not already have ensconced somewhere in the vast halls of his House, built as it was on six generations of conquests and plunder. His was a time of unrivalled wealth and power. He ruled dozens of worlds and millions of subjects. A small ship from the end of the galaxy held little of worth, he said to her as he glanced at the scorched bridge.
But there was so much more of her he had not tasted yet.
He remembered a game his father had told him about, a blind man game he played inside her ship's cargo bay. The dark-haired man with his dark eyes and his dark thoughts was the first to cross the width of the echoing space while he sat at the other end, shooting into the depths of the pitch-black room. He often missed but not always, as one by one her officers followed their commander and ran the gauntlet.
She pleaded, eyes wide with horror, questions, always questions on her lips. What do you want? What are you after? What can I do to make this slaughter stop?
He listed some pieces of technology he did not care less about, crewmen to add to his army, women to feed to his troops. The ship for target practice. He smiled when she refused, and waited.
Those who survived his little game got to line up the following day, and again the days after until there were more bodies filling the room than senior crew left standing.
He listened to her shattered voice until she said take me. The same day, he escorted the ruins of her ship through the asteroid field to the border as proof he was holding his side of the bargain. When her home disappeared into the beyond, she looked at him with her steely blue eyes and said thank you, before he tore the uniform and captain's pips off her and ordered his soldiers to take her away.
The Prime gasped and coughed, interrupting his tale, fingers like talons on my arm. "How was I to know?" His voice was slurred. "How could I have known that for twenty years I would only listen to the silence of the sea?"
'Le Silence de la Mer' was written by Jean Bruller and published in 1942 in German-occupied France. It tells the story of an old man and his niece who refuse to speak to the German officer who boards at their house. The book became one of the symbols of French resistance.