Octavia Girl

Chapter Twenty Eight

Whisper in an Octopus’s… Ear?

That evening, Jenna had dinner with the candidates. More of them were drunk than on the first night.

The best part of the evening was that Favel had opted to join them and sitting next to him was more pleasant than speaking to the Adamis nominees who were embarrassments to themselves.

Favel had a little to drink, but it didn’t turn him into an idiot. It just made him chattier than he would otherwise have been. “Jenna,” he said, letting a sucker on a tentacle cling to the table enough to let it make a sound when he let go. “It’s a terrible idea for you to be a diplomat with no companion of your own. My seven wives have been such a comfort to me. I don’t think I would have made it this far without them. I’d find you a husband myself if I had any idea what humans like in a mate.”

“What are your wives like?” Jenna asked, getting interested.

“Well, they are quiet. None of them can speak. Do you know how many arguments you get into with someone who doesn’t talk? Like none. I’d just show my wife I was unhappy by throwing a few shells and rocks and she’d wrap me up like a present. In a moment like that, I knew the work I was doing was important because I was protecting someone so perfect who couldn’t speak to defend herself. How could you be happy with a person who does nothing but talk? No offense to you, Sardius,” he said to the air surrounding him since Sardius could hear him over the speakers/microphones that were installed all over the palace.

Jenna wanted to reply, but the ruckus being made by a few of the candidates was making intimate conversation difficult.

“Sardius, get Vash to take Mr. Butric and Mr. Cimphis back to their rooms. He doesn’t have to do anything but get them in the room and lock the door. The one is catatonic and the other is very loud.”

Once a few of them were removed, a few others got the idea that the party was over and returned to their rooms. As the room cleared, Jenna felt more and more comfortable talking to Favel, hearing about his life under the water and in the stars as a pilot.

Finally, when they were alone and very comfortable with one another, she pulled out Sardius’ earpiece, leaned forward and so quietly, only Favel could hear, she told him how she felt about Sardius.

Favel’s face was not overly expressive, but his eyes took a startled shape as he slumped back in his goblet chair. “I didn’t think of that,” he admitted morosely.

Jenna clicked the earpiece back into place.

“I can’t believe you just did that after all the times I told you not to do that,” Sardius said in shock on the other end of the line. She couldn’t see him, but she knew he had fallen back in his chair and he was shaking his head in horrified disbelief.

She’d hear more out of him on the subject later.

“Sorry,” she mouthed, glancing at a camera.

“There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.” Favel was so caught up in her revelation that he hadn’t realized she was talking to Sardius and replied as though she was talking to him. “I’ll call the council tomorrow and explain the situation and make arrangements for your marriage to him immediately. It will take some time because of the nature of space travel and where the prison is, but I looked into it already and it is possible. The prison is willing to supply Sardius’ DNA and they’ll include a blood sample as part of the marriage certificate. If I request it tomorrow, I don’t know how long it will take, but when it gets here we can prick your finger and make it official. I am more sorry than I can say. We really didn’t think it through when we tried to set you up with Armen. If Sardius is happy to marry you, we can get that sorted as soon as possible.”

“When can I expect the recordings to stop?” Jenna asked seriously as that was the most crucial aspect of her plan.

“Tomorrow night at the earliest. I imagine the council will not want to hold you up any further. You did such a good job with Excelyn. I spoke to her earlier today. She’s like a spry sixty-year-old again. All thanks to you. I’d hate for you to not have the support you need. Sardius,” Favel said, leaning back even further and shouting at the speaker above his head. “Do you want to marry her?”

Sardius’ voice came over the loudspeaker. “I’m a little windblown by all this, but I don’t feel like I can refuse.”

Jenna rubbed the spot between her eyebrows in frustration at his lukewarm answer. “He’s mad at me for taking out my earpiece.”

“Jenna is a talented negotiator. That’s all she did. Are you going to hold it against her? Do you want to marry her?” Favel persisted.

“I’m not going to be told what she told you?” he fumed in irritation.

“No,” Jenna said firmly. “That’s why I took out my earpiece.”

There was no sound from Sardius.

Favel made one of his tentacles a spiral, held it for a few seconds, and then released the hold. “I guess he doesn’t.”

“Well, I can’t force him,” Jenna said, getting up from her chair. “I’m sure he’ll let you know if he changes his mind.”

Favel glared at the nearest camera before turning back to Jenna. “I’ll see what I can do about the recordings regardless.”

“Thank you,” Jenna said with a serene smile. “Occasionally, I feel like he’s close to telling me something invaluable, but he can’t because of that stupid feature of his employment.”

“As you wish, Lady,” he said before slipping out of his goblet and sliding across the floor to the ocean entrance he used.

Jenna waved at him over the surface of the water as was her custom when bidding goodbye to her underwater guests before straightening and returning to her bedroom.

It was quiet over her earpiece as she removed her jewelry in great snaps from around her wrists and throat.

“I know you didn’t appreciate that and I’m sorry,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror and talking to Sardius.

“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, eh?” he said, his tone low and sardonic.

“I know you feel betrayed because you want us to be the closest of conspirators, the type who tell each other everything, but if I didn’t do that, I wasn’t going to get what I want. I have been very clear about what I want.”

“But not why you want it,” he objected.

“You don’t need to know why. What I told Favel tonight, I’m never telling another person. If anyone asks me, I will say I have no idea what they’re talking about. Tonight, I exchanged my most vulnerable parts for you. You’re mad because it wasn’t for your sake. It was for my sake. Our marriage can’t mean to you what it can mean to me. If you didn’t want me to use you, then why did you sign up for this? I’m using you, thoroughly. If you don’t like it, say you want out and go do whatever else there is to do in your prison.”

He was quiet.

She undid the back of her dress. What was happening now was not a strip tease. How she removed her clothing had nothing to do with stripping for the viewing pleasure of another person. She stripped down to her bra and panties and threw her dress across the room in a heap. She cracked her neck, tossed a shapeless nightgown over her head, pulled her bra through her sleeve, added it to her pile of discarded clothing, and went to the bathroom to have the fun of peeing and pooping out what remained of the liplo fruit. In a lot of ways, that was the worst part of the whole ordeal, as it wiggled its way out of her.

When she was finished, she washed her hands, splashed water on her face, and suctioned out her mouth instead of brushing her teeth since they didn’t do that on Octavia Prime.

She got into bed and closed her eyes.

“They’ve stopped recording me,” Sardius whispered.

“Just now?” Jenna asked in surprise.

“Yes.”

“That’s a relief. Please let me know if you ever suspect someone is recording you.”

“Jenna, that was unbelievably fast. They were going to get me to sign all sorts of new agreements with you. They didn’t do it. What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t say anything to him,” she denied with a voice so steady, it sounded like she was telling the truth.

It was quiet for a minute before Sardius said humbly, “I want to make up with you.”

She opened her eyes. “Are you going to let me use you?”

“Since I have no cards in my hand, I’ll wait until they approach me for the DNA sample.”

“Could you please inform Favel of your decision?” she said stiffly.

“You’re being pretty cold, Jenna. Aren’t you asking me to marry you?” he complained.

She rubbed her eyes. “You know very well that our union has nothing to do with the reasons Octavians marry or humans marry. You’re not going to be able to offer me political connections like husbands one and two are supposed to. You’re not going to be able to be my love slave like husband number three. I don’t even know what slots four through eight are for. It seems like they’re there ‘just in case’. What’s happening between you and me is different. You know I’m not an Octavian. I’m not really an Adamis either, not politically, and yet I have to be at the center of their negotiations. Neither one of those groups necessarily has my back and if the Octavians are monitoring you that carefully, you can’t do your job of protecting me, informing me, and giving me an unbiased perspective on what I’m supposed to do. Even if they were only recording you, and not me, they were still violating the freedom I need to do my job. They had to get out of your face if you were going to help me at all. I said what I had to say to get what I wanted. Have you got a problem with that?”

“No,” Sardius said and, for the first time, the military man in him shone through in his voice.

“You must know by now that I am not a supremely pleasant person. I apologize that I can’t frame all of this in a nicer way for you. I was taught as a little girl to be cold, to keep people away, and to protect my secrets. In those cases, it was all about the crown on my head that wouldn’t come off. Now it feels like I have to be that way to do this job. It’s just not all sunshine and roses. It was never going to be. I know a part of you understands.” Jenna rubbed her head under her scalp and thought of an example. “Cats have the personality of their owners. You remember what Charm was like, right?”

“She scratched that girl’s skin off,” he said, half-amused.

“Yeah. That’s my baby. Give me what I want over and over again and maybe I’ll live through this.”

He chuckled, having gotten on board. “I’ll see what I can do. Go to sleep. You have to send those drunkards off in the morning.”