Ryker had imagined seeing Vera Nyx again in enough regrettable detail to know that none of his versions had included her stealing his ship.
In several, she apologized, though even his imagination struggled to make it convincing. In another, he walked past her without stopping, which proved there were limits to what a man could make himself believe. The versions he returned to most often began with shouting and ended against a wall, a table, or whatever surface happened to be nearest when nine years of fury collided with the memory of her mouth.
He had never pictured her in his pilot's chair with her black skirt fallen open over one long thigh, laughing as Ebon Steed climbed away from a burning saloon with three armed cutters in pursuit.
“Move,” he told her, reaching for the back of the chair just as she threw the ship into a hard roll. Ryker caught the headrest and braced himself against the console while the cockpit tilted around them. He'd taught her that maneuver himself, although he'd never been particularly fond of watching her perform it.
“You've always been impatient when I'm driving,” Vera said, correcting their angle as pursuit lights swept beneath them.
“You stole my ship while I was standing on it. I think I've shown remarkable restraint.”
“Most men would be flattered I remembered where they docked.” Her hands moved across the console with the same assurance he'd admired when they flew together. He braced one boot against the base of her chair as she banked again.
Two security cutters rose from the lower lanes, their blue pursuit lights flickering across the monitors, while a third swept around the ore refinery to block the departure corridor. Vera leaned toward the instruments, studying the approaching ships as she adjusted their speed. She'd always been a good pilot, though her methods tended to leave other people with strong opinions about her abilities.
“Tell me you improved the rear guns,” she said, bringing the targeting display onto the main screen.
Ryker glanced at the weapons readout and found all three cutters well within range. “I didn't expect to fire on local security today.”
“You never plan for the interesting parts.”
Another warning shot burned across their bow, close enough to light the cockpit windows. Ryker transferred weapons control to the upper turret and climbed the ladder while Vera dropped the ship beneath another burst. He caught the next rung as the deck lurched under his boots, the turret hatch banging against its stop above him. The nearest cutter was closing on their stern, and from the ladder he could hear its pilot demanding they surrender.
He settled behind the turret controls and swung the guns toward the nearest cutter as Ebon Steed plunged alongside the refinery. Its engine housing filled his sights, an easy shot, but two officers sat inside who had accepted their wages without expecting to die over Vera's evening. Ryker adjusted his aim and fired across their nose instead. The pilot broke wide and nearly struck the second cutter, forcing both ships away from Ebon Steed's stern.
Vera drove them into a maintenance channel crowded with pipes, storage drums, and docking arms. It had been built for loading skiffs, not a frontier cruiser equipped with a sword cabinet, a wine cellar, and a captain currently reconsidering every generous decision he had ever made. The port wing cleared a support column by inches. Metal shrieked somewhere beneath his seat, a sound Ryker knew well enough to recognize as expensive. Refinery workers flattened themselves against an observation window as the upper turret swept past.
“You scratched my ship,” he called down, checking the damage indicators while the next support column flashed past his window.
“Someone scratched your ship,” Vera answered over the intercom. “I was occupied with saving her.”
Ryker waited until the cutters cleared a fuel conduit, then shot it open. White vapor flooded the channel and swallowed the pursuit lights. Vera climbed blind through the cloud, rolled beneath the third cutter, and entered the departure corridor from the wrong direction. Cargo traffic scattered ahead of her while she slid between two ore carriers with enough room left over for optimism and very little else.
By the time they crossed the settlement boundary, the cutters had fallen behind. The lead pilot was still describing Vera's ancestry over the open channel when she shut him off and reached for the long-range drive. Ryker descended from the turret and reached the cockpit in time to catch her wrist before she engaged it. At her glance toward his hand, he released her and took his place beside the chair, between her and the drive controls.
“Out of the chair.”
Vera settled deeper into the leather and crossed one leg over the other. “Where would you like me?”
“Anywhere that isn't controlling my engines.”
She rose slowly, leaving him very little room to step aside. One blue crystal had fallen from her sleek black hair, and a thin line of blood marked her cheek where the booth had splintered. Her skirt caught against his knee as she passed, bringing saloon smoke into the cockpit with her.
“Your ship recognized me,” she said, close enough that the lace at her side brushed his shirt.
“I'm aware.” Ryker stepped around her, though she followed him with her eyes as he approached the pilot's chair.
“Nine years is a long time to forget a woman still has access to your bed, your weapons, and your navigation controls.”
“I didn't forget.”
That appeared to surprise her. She studied him for a moment before glancing toward the pilot's chair. “Sentimental of you.”
“You were listed as crew.” Ryker sat down, feeling the warmth she'd left in the leather, and opened the navigation chart. “Removing you required declaring you dead, dismissed, or hostile. I never decided which lie you would prefer.”
Vera turned toward the forward glass, studying the stars while he reviewed the nearby systems. “Take me to Bellweather. I can find another ship there.”
“You already found another ship. Mine.” He left the destination field empty and looked at her. “What did you leave aboard?”
“Something I left behind when I was in a hurry.” She leaned over the navigation display, her hair falling across one shoulder.
Ryker rested his hand on the arm of the pilot's chair. “You left it nine years ago.”
“Yes.” Vera returned her attention to the instruments. “Your talent for arithmetic remains one of your quieter charms.”
“You hid it here before you disappeared, waited nine years, and crossed half a settlement under fire to retrieve it. Whatever it is, you expected me to keep carrying it.”
Vera folded her arms, drawing the lace tighter over her breasts. “When you arrange the facts that way, I sound unreasonable.”
“I didn't arrange them. You did.”
Ryker selected an abandoned relay moon where they could inspect the damage and let the scorched plating cool before continuing to Bellweather. Vera watched him enter the coordinates, then bent to retrieve the blue crystal from beside the chair. By the time Ebon Steed settled into the moon's shadow, she'd disappeared from the bridge.
❦
He found her barefoot in the galley, opening cupboards with the assurance of someone who had never needed permission. Her shoes lay beneath the table, and her skirt brushed her ankles as she gathered dried fruit, salted grain, pepper paste, and the blue glass she had once insisted made gin look less lonely.
Vera held the glass toward the overhead light, turning it between her fingers. “You kept it.”
“It's a glass, Vera.” Ryker set his sword against the wall beside the galley door, where he could reach it without having to step around the table.
“Handblown Orinthian crystal.”
“Six credits from a market stall where you argued the woman down from eight.”
“She had poor business instincts.” Vera put the glass on the counter and opened the cold cabinet, inspecting the shelf she had once filled with sauces dangerous enough to strip paint. Ryker's wine lay in their place, and she turned one bottle to read the label before drawing it out.
She reached for the knife at her thigh. Ryker took the bottle before she could attack the cork, and their fingers met around the neck. Her thumb rested against his for a moment before she let go. He remembered reaching past her in this galley with his hand at her waist, her bare back warm against his chest while she disputed whatever he intended to put in the pan. The bottle had been easier to open on those occasions.
He drew the cork and set the bottle on the counter. “Sit. I'll make food before you decide wine is supper.”
Vera settled into the corner bench and stretched her bare legs beneath the table, looking perfectly at home in the place she had abandoned. “Do you still cook everything in one pan?”
“Do you still complain while eating twice as much as I do?” Ryker pulled smoked meat from the cold cabinet and inspected the vegetables, already deciding which would cook quickly enough to satisfy her.
“I have a quick metabolism.”
“You have theft in your blood.”
The blue stones at her wrists stopped chiming. Vera rubbed her thumb over a cracked bead, and Ryker lowered the packet to the counter. Kallipos had raised her among pirates, but the old captain hadn't been her father. She'd told Ryker stories about a hundred worlds and almost none about the first one, where she'd lost the family whose blood he'd just made a joke of.
“Poor choice of words,” he said, opening the packet.
“You've had nine years to collect better ones.” She reached for the wine without looking at him, taking the bottle from where he'd left it beside the cutting board.
Ryker cut the meat into a pan with root vegetables and bitter greens while Vera poured herself a glass. The drawer still stuck halfway, and she pulled it free with a practiced tug before giving the cold cabinet its customary shove with her hip. Behind the spice tins, a silver star remained fixed to the wall where she'd pressed it after declaring the galley hers. He'd spent years finding its glitter in places where glitter had no business being.
Her fingers paused over it. “I thought you hated these.”
“I hated finding them on my targeting screens. The gun sights were difficult enough to use without glitter.” Ryker stirred the vegetables while she caught one silver point beneath her nail, trying to lift it from the wood. The adhesive had fused to the surface, and when the star threatened to tear, she smoothed it carefully back into place. Pepper caught in the hot oil as she reached past him for the paste.
They ate at the table where they had once planned jobs, divided money, and cleaned weapons. Vera added enough pepper paste to make her eyes water, stole his wine when her glass ran low, and moved through the galley as though she'd stepped away the previous morning. She still knew which drawer held the spare cutlery and where he kept the good salt, although she complained that he'd rearranged the spice tins. He'd spent years eating alone at this table, sometimes with a book propped against the bread basket, and now he found himself watching her reach for things before she remembered where they were. He'd forgotten how much noise she made while eating, how she talked with her hands when she had something worth saying, and how frequently she helped herself to whatever happened to be on his plate.
Vera stole a piece of meat from his bowl and held it on the end of her fork. “What were you doing at the saloon?”
“I'd opened an Orinthian red. Then I decided to go out.” Ryker reached across her for the pepper paste. “The bottle was less trouble.”
“You told Brinn you'd heard I was in town.” Vera lowered her fork, the stolen meat still on its end.
“I had.” He didn't elaborate.
She ate the meat before he could reclaim it, then dipped her fork into her own bowl. Ryker refilled his glass. “What happened to Neptune's Nemesis?”
Her fork slowed, though she finished the mouthful before answering. “Someone stole her.”
Ryker put down his fork. “When?”
“Eleven months ago.” She scraped pepper paste from the side of her bowl. “Someone with more guns than gratitude.”
Vera had loved that ship with a loyalty she rarely admitted to giving anyone or anything. Ryker looked at the shoes she'd left beneath the table. “You've been crossing the frontier without her?”
“Rented skiffs.” Vera reached for his bread while he regarded the bracelets at her wrists.
“On what money?”
“Some rentals require less paperwork than others.” She tore the bread in half and used it to gather the last of the sauce. “I'll get her back when I'm ready.” Vera set the remaining bread beside her bowl and reached for her glass.
Ryker filled her glass. She watched him pour, then drank without looking at him. He returned to his food, moving the bowl out of reach of her fork.
After the bowls were cleared, Vera brought her wine to the chair opposite him and dealt rummy across the small table from a deck she'd found in the galley. By the third draw, she'd begun hiding queens against her thigh, apparently under the impression that nine years had done something to his eyesight. Ryker let her win the first hand, then waited until she'd tucked another card beneath the leather strap before reaching under the table to retrieve it. He placed the queen beside his run and took a sip of wine while she inspected his cards.
“You touched my leg,” she said, making no attempt to conceal her amusement.
“I recovered my card.” He straightened the queen with one finger, though he could still feel the warmth of her thigh against his knuckles.
“The card was closer to me. That suggests ownership.” Vera reached across the table to reclaim it, but Ryker covered the queen with his palm before she could get her fingers around it.
“Only to thieves.” He watched her consider whether she could steal it anyway, then picked up the next card from the deck.
She accused him of becoming rigid in middle age, gathered the cards for another hand, and asked how his father was doing. Ryker told her the old man still forged better blades than he did and still complained that his son wandered too far to pass the family tradition on to anyone. His father had never understood why Ryker preferred the frontier to a permanent workshop, though he hadn't stopped sending letters full of advice about steel, women, and the disgraceful condition of his son's sword collection. Vera had always liked his father, which was remarkable considering how frequently the two of them disagreed about nearly everything.
Vera squared the deck against the table. “You could go home.”
Ryker watched her deal the first card, then the second. “So could you.”
“I don't have one.” She dealt another card and paused with the next between her fingers.
He looked around the galley, at the silver star behind the spice tins and her bare feet tucked beneath the chair. She'd slept beside him on this ship for years, and there were still things he'd never bothered to move after she disappeared. “You did.”
Vera stopped dealing and placed the remaining cards facedown. “You weren't there.”
“I came back.” Ryker laid his cards beside hers.
“Three weeks late.” She pressed the edge of the deck flat against the wood, refusing to look at him.
“I was late, Vera. I know exactly how late.” He remembered her empty berth on Nysa's moon and the docking clerk who'd grown tired of seeing him at the counter. “I stayed another five days looking for you. Why hadn't you left a message?”
“I was trapped for twelve.”
Ryker leaned back in his chair and regarded her across the table. “Twelve days. And the other nine?”
Vera finally looked at him. “You think I haven't asked myself what happened to those messages?”
He pushed the unfinished game aside. “Where were you trapped?”
“Does it matter now?” She stood, her chair scraping against the floor. “I sent word the day I got a working relay. You never answered.”
“Because I never received it.” Ryker remained seated, watching her pace toward the counter. “I sent messages too, Vera. And when you didn't answer, I spent four months looking for you.”
Vera stopped beside the counter with one hand gripping its edge. “And after that?”
Ryker looked down at the cards she'd abandoned, remembering the day he'd finally stopped checking every incoming message before doing anything else. “I accepted what your silence made clear. You chose the job, and then you chose whatever came after it.”
Her fingers tightened against the counter. “You stopped looking.”
“You disappeared.” Ryker set his glass down beside the deck. “If you were waiting for me somewhere, tell me where.”
Vera returned to the chair and sat with one bare foot hooked around its leg. The cards remained scattered between their wineglasses. Ryker could still picture himself standing in the docking office on Nysa's moon, asking the same questions until the clerk refused to answer them. Across the table, she reached for his wine.
She drank from his glass and held it between both hands. “There was someone,” she said eventually. “A captain.”
Ryker had expected there to be other men. He'd found other women himself, kind and amusing women who understood what he could offer and never asked him to stay. None of those arrangements had lasted very long, and he'd always been careful not to make promises he couldn't keep. He watched Vera turn his glass by the stem. She'd offered him a captain when he'd asked for a place. The questions about Nysa could wait until morning. They would keep rather better than his wine.
“Did you love him?” Ryker asked, watching her face as she considered the question.
“No.” Vera rolled the glass between her fingers. “He wanted more than I offered, so I stole three crates of his jewelry when I left. He promised to kill me if he ever saw me again.”
Ryker looked at the bracelets on her wrists, wondering whether any of the stones had belonged to the unfortunate man. “That sounds healthy.”
“He still sends gifts.” She turned her wrist to examine a sapphire that caught the galley light, although he couldn't tell whether she meant to show it to him.
“Explosive ones?”
“Only once.” She lifted his glass and watched him over the rim. “Are you jealous?”
“I'm curious about his judgment.” Ryker reached for the bottle, found it empty, and set it aside.
Vera took another drink, leaving a dark red stain on her lower lip. “His judgment was questionable. His performance in bed was excellent.”
Ryker came around the table, and Vera rose to meet him with the glass still in her hand. He stopped close enough to see the tiny cut on her cheek and the loosened lace at the edge of her bodice. Her perfume reached him beneath the saloon smoke, dark and expensive over the familiar oil she'd worn when they flew together. He caught the scent as she tilted her face toward his, and remembered the hollow of her throat against his mouth.
Her gaze moved to his mouth. “If you're trying to punish me, standing that close is a poor beginning.”
“I came over here to kiss you.” Ryker glanced at the wineglass she was still holding, then back at her. “Unless you'd rather finish my wine.”
Vera put it on the table. “The wine can wait.”
Vera hooked one finger through his open collar and pulled him down.
Her mouth opened beneath his as if the lost years were an insult she meant to correct. Ryker caught her waist while his other hand struck the table beside her, scattering cards beneath his palm. Pepper lingered on her tongue beneath the wine, and at the sound she made against his mouth he lifted her onto the table. Vera drew him between her knees, one hand buried in his beard while the other closed around the jeweled locket against his chest.
Her skin had warmed the leather and lace beneath his hands. He slid his palm up her back and dragged his mouth along her jaw. Her fingers tightened hard in his beard. He kept his thumb below the cut on her cheek as her legs locked around his hips, his mouth finding the place beneath her ear. She opened three buttons of his shirt and spread her hand over his chest, her bracelets chiming against the locket. When she moved against him, he drew her to the edge of the table, her knees pressing into his sides as she caught his mouth again.
When her hand settled over his heart, however, she stopped pulling him toward her. Her thighs loosened around his hips, and Ryker lifted his head to look at her.
“If we keep going,” she said, her lips still close enough to brush his, “I'm going to want more than tonight.”
Ryker rested his forehead against hers. Wanting more had never been the problem. “You always did.”
Her fingers loosened in his shirt. She looked away, and he felt her withdraw before she asked him to move. Ryker stepped back, giving her room to slide off the table, while several loose cards slipped over the edge and landed around her bare feet. He left his hand on the table beside hers. “I want you, Vera. That hasn't changed. We still have Nysa to settle.”
Vera straightened her skirt and reached for the wineglass, then appeared to think better of it. “Which cabin is mine?”
“The same one.” Ryker bent to retrieve a card from the floor, though he didn't bother collecting the others.
She looked toward the aft passage, where her old cabin waited beyond the galley light. “Of course it is.”
Vera crossed the galley with her shoes in one hand, but she stopped at the doorway and rested her palm against the frame. Ryker was still beside the table when she turned to look at him.
“I didn't leave because I stopped loving you.”
He watched her disappear down the passage, listening until he heard her cabin door close. Then he sat at the table, turning the queen he'd recovered between his fingers. Both of them had sent messages, and neither had received a word. Someone had told her he was dead. He laid the queen facedown beside the unfinished game and reached for the wine she'd left behind. One lost message was bad luck. Two was a hand.