cortex, adding to the psychological impact of the simulation.
Charlie and Ell continued to circle, looking for an opening. At least her sparring suit treated her no better, though he knew his kick had been a lucky one.
Add coached from the sideline. “He’s gotten sloppy about his left side. Remember how long we worked to create balance? And now he’s forgotten it all. Give him a good lesson.”
On Ell’s worst day, and Charlie’s best, he was just barely a match for her, but not today. She came in low with a cut to the knees. He spun with a heel kick to her ribs, only to realize at the last instant her cut had been a fake. She sidestepped the kick and buried her knife to the hilt in his chest. He dropped to his knees, blood welling down the front of his sparring suit, a lance of pain in his chest so intense he almost lost consciousness. He fell forward to his hands and knees, lay down and curled up as darkness began to envelop him, thankful that with unconsciousness the pain would end.
In his last moments of consciousness Add stood over him shaking her head sadly. “You’ve forgotten everything.” She lifted a small instrument in her left hand, touched a switch on its face and the pain suddenly vanished from his body, though not from his memory. Charlie sighed and decided to lie there for a moment.
Ell took up Charlie’s defense. “He’s improving, Add. Don’t be so hard on him.” Ell sat on the mat rubbing her knee, slowly overcoming the psychological effects of her own sparring suit. “He’s only recently come back to his proper fighting weight. And he’s doing far better than he did even a tenday ago.”
The twins had begun torturing him only two days after he’d regained consciousness, and they’d been at him for a solid month while Cesare’s flagship drove toward Traxis, home planet of the de Maris ducal seat. The two breeds were bound and determined to see him properly fed, healed, and exercised, and spent about two hours every day beating up on him, or standing over him forcing him to eat what they considered a proper meal, which to Charlie seemed enough to feed ten men. Then Roacka would usually join them, and all three of them would beat up on him again for a few hours more.
Add grabbed him by the collar of his sparring suit and lifted him to his feet. Facing him, looking down at him from her commanding height, she grinned and said, “I suppose you’re right. And in any case, we can never expect too much of him—he’s so short.”
“Short, tall,” Ell said as she pulled herself to her feet. She leered knowingly at Charlie’s crotch. “That’s not the measure I’m interested in.”
Charlie blushed, but Add ignored it and spun on her heel, heading for the corridor. “Roacka’s got you next. Fighting staffs, I think, both powered and antique. Then after that you’re to meet with the duke.”
Cesare sat alone in his office and thought of the bargain he’d made more than twenty years ago when Charlie was only seven. It had been shortly after Gaida had murdered Charlie’s mother. Cesare had been furious, and the argument that ensued . . .
“Do not try my patience, woman. I know you were responsible for her death.” Cesare struggled to remain calm, but the loss of Katherine—the knowledge that he’d never hear her voice again, never hold her in his arms—ate at his soul and tormented him constantly.
The Lady Gaida, his wife, a cold witch of a woman, turned her head slowly toward him. As always, her face held no expression, and he wondered how he could ever have shared her bed. “You can prove nothing,” she said. “But even if you could, she was no more than a servant, and at most I’d have to pay some reparation to her family. And the only family she has is that whoreson—”
“Don’t call him that,” Cesare shouted. Gaida grinned, and he knew he’d let her get the better of him. They were alone in her sitting room after he’d dismissed her servants and ladies with a shout, and he realized he’d chosen his battleground poorly.
She spoke with an unnerving calm. “I speak only the truth, and he stands between my son and his rightful inheritance.”
Cesare suddenly understood, and he felt foolish for not having realized from the moment the marriage contracts were signed that Gaida was a viper. Granted,