Chapter Twenty Five

Another Octavian Gift

Irid opened the third door for Sardius before he could remove the bolts. She stood with her hands up. “Okay,” she said, in the attitude of surrender as the Boneman doctor scuttled by to help with the missing finger and the shredded kneecaps. “I went to the office and spoke to our Octavian contact.”

“Who is that?” Jenna questioned crossly.

“Mirr,” Irid answered levelly.

Jenna nodded, remembering the purple and black Hipposyphis from their undersea conference.

“You know who that is?” Sardius asked Jenna in a hushed voice between his fingers.

“Yeah. She’s a much bigger fish than Favel,” she whispered back.

“Mirr says,” Irid started. “That they will cover the cost of you taking Conrad.”

“Why?” Jenna wondered blankly. “Why should she care?”

“She said you told Favel that there was nothing the Octavians could do that would compensate you for what they had done to you. She is covering the cost of Conrad’s removal as a gift to you. Let me escort you to your ship.”

Jenna looked at Irid. The warden was freaking out, but she had done the right thing. When she couldn’t reason with Jenna and Sardius on her own, she had gone to ask for permission rather than trying to stop them. Now she was just trying to get them off-world as quickly as possible to get them out of her hair.

“What about Conrad and what he did?” Jenna hesitated, asking one more question before they moved on.

Irid leaned in and Sardius came closer to hear her in case Jenna wouldn’t be able to. Jenna couldn’t hear Irid’s whisperings. When they were finished, Sardius took his place beside Jenna and hurried her through the remaining corridors.

He explained as they moved. “The Octavians have said that they will take responsibility for Conrad and since he’ll be under surveillance in the Crescent Bell Palace, they aren’t worried anything will happen with him. If anything weird does happen, apparently, they’ll use the built-in rail guns to shoot him dead. However, you should know that the prison is somewhat happy to be rid of him because he represented a risk, being the only man in an all-women’s prison.”

At hearing that, Conrad snorted. “Like any of them would be interested in me.”

“All of them would be interested in you,” Jenna corrected him strongly. “All of them. Maybe not as a potential mate, but they’d all be interested in you. I want to put you on my bed and comb your hair.”

“Sardius, don’t let her do that!” Conrad shouted in his deep voice.

“I make no promises, Yarn Man. If she wants to treat you like her dolly, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Conrad frowned and wiped his bloody nose on Jenna’s bare arm.

She didn’t even blink in annoyance. She had to get him out of there!

“One more thing,” Sardius said as they arrived in the room with the rail transport. “They say they won’t be able to give you another PA to replace him at night. You’re going to have to make do with Ixy.”

“That won’t be a problem with all the new security officers you’re providing me, will it?” Jenna asked.

“It should be fine. I’ll give you an evening PA from my own staff if you want.” Sardius helped Jenna and Conrad into the back of the train car and he jumped up to the front to sit beside Irid.

Before long, they were back in the loading dock and the promised Octavian pod was waiting for them.

***

Jenna wasn’t woken until her pod was on the dock outside the Crescent Bell Palace. Groggily, she opened her eyes and checked on Conrad. He was sleeping. She put him over her shoulder like a sleepy child and looked for Sardius. He was gone. Jenna was about to get up when Ixy’s voice came over the loudspeaker of the pod. It was strange because she wasn’t talking to Jenna through her earpiece. Jenna had none.

“Sardius says you have to stay put. He’s doing something,” the snarky PA told her.

“He’s doing what?” Jenna asked, annoyed. She wanted out of the pod.

“He’s doing whatever he needs to do so that you can walk around freely in your own palace. Remember your force field? Remember how Sardius cracked the code? Remember how much you need Misha to do your makeup?”

Jenna got a grip. He was just walking around getting hair samples from Misha, Vash, and Smoothie. Jenna’s brain went back a step. Smoothie didn’t have hair. What was he going to get from her? How could he get anything from her without it being super obvious?

When he came back, he took her ring off her and turning his back to the camera in the pod, he added Misha and Vash’s hair to her ring. She guessed he hadn’t been able to find a proper DNA sample from Smoothie. “I’m going to make you a better piece of jewelry for this. I’ll make up some security-related excuse to get what I need from each person so that everyone who is on the floating palaces can enter your bubble without becoming an amputee.”

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“Great,” Jenna praised, before backtracking utterly. “Now let’s never speak of it again. I know what you have to do. You know what you have to do. It’s radio silence from here on out.” They couldn’t be talking about it if they were going to keep the Octavian’s secrets.

Sardius nodded and gave Jenna back her completed ring.

“Did you tell Misha about Conrad?” she wondered, patting Conrad on the back.

“No, I didn’t…” Sardius hesitated as he watched her hand on the yarn boy’s back. “You are way more maternal than I thought you were. It suddenly makes me really sad we can’t have a baby together. I’d think all was well and good, and Conrad could be your baby, but I’ve worked with him many times doing security tech work and I’ve got to tell you, even if he looks like that, it’s not an accurate expression of who he is on the inside. He’s a very grown man, committing genocide and everything.”

“He’s doing what?” Ixy asked over the loudspeaker in the pod.

“Dude is a little bit of a murderer,” Sardius answered, looking at Jenna and Conrad affectionately. “Didn’t they tell you that you might have to gun him down if he didn’t behave?”

“They did,” Ixy said with a yawn, “but I didn’t believe them. Now that I see him, I believe them even less. He looks like a cat toy to me.”

“I would have loved to have him working for me back in the day,” Sardius said pleasantly.

“Well, he’s not going to be working for you,” Jenna said sternly. “You brought a whole army for you to play toy soldiers with. Conrad is mine. I already have an idea for what job he should have on the floating palaces, but he needs to heal first. I asked if you had talked to Misha because I was hoping she was all ready to play nurse to him. Wait, did she go on vacation?”

“She didn’t,” Ixy supplied. “After you were abducted, the orbital security team locked the floating palaces down. No one was allowed to leave. Actually, at this very moment, one of Rold’s ships is in the area asking to pick up Harlee. The orbital security team is refusing them access. They’re blocking communications and pods from both the Rainmaker Palace and Rold’s ship.”

“Okay,” Jenna said firmly. “Get Misha to meet me in the guest room and tell her to bring her nurse kit.”

“You don’t want Excelyn or Philip?” Ixy asked curiously.

“Misha can call them if she thinks they’re needed, but she’s a Stickman too, so she might not need any help treating him. What do Excelyn and Philip know about Stickmen? They’re Octavian doctors. They get fussy when they’re being asked to treat Adamis.” Jenna stood up and carried Conrad into the palace.

Misha met her in the hallway on her way to the guest bedroom. “Who is that?” Misha asked, completely startled by the sight of Conrad’s orange yarn hair.

“It’s Conrad,” Jenna told her.

Misha ran alongside them. Her eyes were even wider with concern as she saw his limp scrawny body. “Who’s going to take care of him?” she asked suddenly.

“You are,” Jenna said, coming into the bedroom. “He has radiation sickness and he needs treatment.”

Misha ran ahead of her and parted the bedspread to put him inside.

“Get Smoothie to help you with making meals and medicine and anything else you need. You’re welcome to call a doctor if he needs one. I need to go deal with Rold and a scad of other things. Can I trust you with this?” Jenna asked, putting a hand on Misha’s shoulder.

Misha nodded gravely and Jenna turned to leave.

Sardius was waiting at the doorway. He was leaning against the frame and giving Jenna a look that could have meant a hundred different things. Then he stepped forward. “Misha, what he really needs is a blood transfusion. Call a doctor now and get them to bring the equipment. You’re lucky you’re both Stickmen. You all have the same blood type. If you’re willing, they can give him your blood. Other than that, you need to stop him from vomiting and he needs a round of antibiotics. That’s for a start.”

Misha started talking to Ixy on the loudspeaker, making the arrangements Sardius suggested.

Jenna caught his arm on her way out and pulled him into the hall.

“You just got your toy and already you’re giving him away?” Sardius asked when they were away from the door.

Jenna frowned. “I know he’s not my baby. He had actually expressed romantic interest in Misha before this. He asked me if he could talk to her when he wasn’t busy taking care of stuff for me. I gave him permission.”

“So, you were thinking of Misha and him getting together when you pulled him out of the jail?”

Jenna smacked Sardius’ chest with the back of her hand. “I did no such thing. I was trying to save him. I’m still trying to save him. Do you think they’ll be able to cure him?”

“They’ll have to. You’ve already given him a job,” he smirked.

Jenna was not amused. “No, seriously. Do you think he’ll live?”

“If Irid thought he would die whether we took him or not, I don’t think she would have caused the stink she made. She made an interdimensional phone call to make sure the incident wouldn’t come back to bite her in the ass, so yeah, I’d say his chances are good,” Sardius said reassuringly, in a way that only he could.

Jenna breathed a smile. “Thank goodness. I love that little guy.”

Sardius’ face went weird again. He was thinking something.

Half of Jenna’s smile dropped. “Are you thinking about us not having a baby again?”

His eyebrow twitched. “I can’t help it. I really never thought you wanted something like that and now I’m conflicted. Should I have made you fall in love with me at all?”

Jenna reached up and kissed him. “Shut up, Sardius. This isn’t the time to deal with that. Compartmentalize. Misha didn’t notice that my force field let her in,” Jenna said softly as she pulled him down the corridor after her.

“We’re just going to tell everyone that your problem is fixed once I get the necklace ready for you. Naturally, it won’t be and anyone who comes here without our permission will get their fingers hacked off.”

“Are you still going to try to remove it?” she whispered.

“If you want me to, I will. I have a few ideas already.”

Jenna sighed and stopped to lean against the wall. “It’s not like I don’t want protection and it’s not like the jewel didn’t save me from a world of hurt when I was in the Xypher Zone. I just wish that it was a choice whether or not I could wear it, and I wish that it wasn’t connected to such dangerous secrets. I don’t want the responsibility and I don’t want to be used in this way. Being a diplomat with a walking target on my head was bad enough, but with the jewel, I’m something else. It’s too much. I would never have agreed to it.”

Sardius looked at her with a blue intensity that wasn’t yet familiar to her. “I’ll get rid of it. I promise and when I do, I’ll become your first husband.”

Jenna groaned with her tongue out. “We’re still doing that?”

Sardius made a face similar to hers. “I don’t want you telling anyone I’m your third husband unless I say it’s okay… which I would only do out of desperation. I still have all those people looking up to me.”

“Blah…” she moaned.

“Agree to it or I won’t take you to bed tonight,” he threatened.

Jenna put her hands up in automatic surrender. “I agree. I agree to all your demands. Let’s go take care of Rold.”

“He’s really not the sort of man you should be taking care of, Darling. Leave him to me.”

“Yeah… I have to or you won’t take me to bed tonight.”

He took her hand and led her to her bedroom. “I’m glad you understand. Come on. We need to pretty up before we call him over the communicator.”

Jenna let him tug her along behind him, a little flush on her face. He was going to get out of his clothes in her room? Joy!