She tasted the renown hospitality of his prison, silent even as he took her and marked her as his. The Prime revelled in her, fascinated by the sheer exoticism of her hair, her freckled skin which so easily retained the imprint of his gloves, her eyes like a storm in the sky, her long fingers gripping the sides of the thin dirty mattress. He returned often, the lingering savour of her tantalising all his senses.
He closed his eyes, a rictus on his lips. Only his ragged breaths told me he wasn't dead yet, memories from a time long past keeping him alive for a while longer. After a moment, he continued her story.
When he learnt she was with child, he put her in one of the summer lodges dotting the vast garden nestled between the two palace wings. He ordered round-the-clock patrols outside the bungalow walls, a taster in the kitchen and a matron in the antechamber. He knew too well the
During his visits, the matron stayed, blending into the wall as he led her mistress to the four-poster bed. The woman who would become the Lady submitted to him without a sound, her belly swollen, her eyes empty.
He attended the birth as was the custom of the House, listened to the screams and watched the waves of blood, so much blood and screaming because she was much smaller, said the hurried doctors, than the abiding heifers crowding the palace.
A day later, the midwife presented him with a squirming baby boy, his one and only son, after twenty years and dozens of barren trollops had left the House without an heir. But the infant's face was too smooth, his eyes too dark. This was the son of another, the child of a sombre tall man always in the shadow of the former captain, and now lost to her. A man who had died in the cargo bay of a doomed ship, his body riddled with phaser holes.
She would not bear another child, he was told, but one was enough. He looked into the woman's eyes, grey as a sunless day over the northern waters, and said thank you. Understanding passed between them. He would recognise the child as his, and she would divulge nothing of her son's true origin.
Once she had recovered from the birth, he bestowed her the West wing of his palace, opposite his lodgings, and instated her as his one and only consort. He crushed the rumours about the child's descent, made the insinuations and their mouthpieces disappear, shielded both son and mother. The young boy grew intelligent if prone to brooding at times.
The Prime kept the Lady at his side. She accompanied him on his travels, stopping his hand when before he would have lashed out, showing a different path to constant warfare and looting. Peace trickled, a small rivulet at first, then it blossomed among all the worlds under his rule. The young men stayed in their villages and towns instead of being sent to their deaths in far-flung wars and leaving empty women to grow old and bitter. Art and science flourished under the Lady's patronage, the land bloomed, and its people breathed a sigh of relief. To celebrate this new era of prosperity, the Prime threw great parades, built huge monuments and public works, had giant statues carved in his likeness and that of the Lady.
And still she never spoke, he said, his own voice wavering.
The summer his son turned twelve, the Prime took him on a grand tour and showed him the realm which one day would be his to rule. The boy learnt about power, might and hard-heartedness, all things expected from a future House Prime. When he came back from his first term at the military academy the following winter, he saluted his father and bowed his head stiffly at his mother.
Where once only conquests would feed the House coffins, heavy taxes ensured its opulence continued to grow, even if few shared its wealth. Protests against the Prime's iron control and profligate regime were swift to emerge and as swiftly quashed. Like fires in a swamp, they were never totally extinguished though. Unrest spread from world to world, in the shadows of the House rule.
On his son's sixteenth birthday, the Prime sent him to quell an uprising two hundred parsecs away. A man came back six months later, with a province pacified and more booty than the House knew what to do with. Stories of his courage and tactical cunning made the rounds of the palace as the festivities lasted well into the weeks following his return.
Each time he was sent away, the dark-haired man came back stronger, a growing band of ships and men following his command. Unease gnawed at the Prime even as the young charismatic soldier kneeled at his feet in obedience.
He thought of recalling his son to his side to better keep a lid on the man's nascent rise and cut him off from his troops. A misinterpretation about dues levied from a seedy system close to the border put his plan on hold. For his last assignment, the Prime sent the Prince to a place of sleazy trade posts and dubious loyalty that needed to be reminded which side of the asteroid field they had pledged their allegiance to.