“Tea with milk and two sugars, please,” I said. “And black coffee for my guard.” Ian glanced up in surprise, though I didn’t know if it was because I knew how he took his coffee or because I’d remembered him in the first place.
The girl bobbed a curtsy and disappeared behind a curtain. A few minutes later, an older woman glided into the room. Her graying hair was pulled back into a sleek chignon. She was impeccably dressed in slim trousers and a tailored jacket in a soft shade of blue that complemented her deep brown skin.
“Lady von Hasenberg, I apologize for your wait,” she said with a pleasant lilting accent. “I am Madame Blanchard, the owner. It is my pleasure to assist you. You need a new dress?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least one.” Her eyes lit up. “But time is of the essence. It must be ready today, preferably by the time I leave.”
She inclined her head. “What sort of dress are you looking for?”
“Devastating,” I said simply.
“Stand, if you please,” she said.
I stood and spun in a slow circle. This wasn’t my first time in a boutique, and making her circle me would just waste time.
“You are tiny,” Madame Blanchard murmured to herself. “The dress must not overpower you. But perhaps if others underestimated you, that would not be so bad, no? A dress is a weapon. I have just the thing.” She disappeared with a brusque command to strip.
Ian moved closer to the room’s entrance and turned away from where I stood without a word. I stripped out of my clothes with brisk efficiency. The girl returned with my tea and I sipped it for warmth while I waited. My stomach was still uneasy, but the tea didn’t make it worse. Perhaps I would be able to eat lunch.
Madame bustled back into the room, followed by another fair young woman in yellow carefully hauling an armful of dresses. The young woman hung the dresses on the rack and waited for direction.
“The silver, first, I think,” Madame Blanchard said. She looked at my bare feet. “Do you normally wear heels?”
“Yes. I’ll need a new pair.”
“Very good.” She murmured to her assistant and the girl disappeared, only to return a minute later with a box of heels in various heights, all my size. “Pick your preferred height and we will figure out the exact shoe later.”
I picked the height that I was most comfortable in. It wasn’t the tallest option, but I could move faster in these shoes. I’d give up the extra couple of centimeters of height for the ability to run.
Once I had the shoes on, Madame Blanchard’s assistant helped me into the silver gown. It was gossamer-thin and flowed over my body like water. Before the young woman had even zipped me into it, Madame Blanchard shook her head. “Take it off.”
Two more dresses suffered the same fate before we tried a dress in deep teal. It had heft from the intricately beaded bodice. The neckline plunged deep and a slit up the side rose from the floor to almost the top of my leg. The color made my skin look alabaster.
As I walked toward the mirror on the wall, my thigh flashed with every step. The dress enhanced my modest bust and made my figure look amazing.
“Stunning,” Madame breathed.
I turned in the mirror, checking the back, what little there was. The dress was open from my shoulder blades to the small of my back. If dresses were weapons, this dress was a grenade—designed for maximum damage and impossible to ignore.
I stalked toward Ian, swinging my hips. He glanced at me and froze. His gaze slid down my body like a caress before returning to my face. Desire heated his expression before he remembered to hide it.
“I will take it,” I said, turning to Madame Blanchard. I heard Ian suck in air as he caught sight of the back.
I also bought a more conservative dress in a dark gold that complemented my hair, slacks and a matching blouse, two full sets of undergarments, two beautiful half-face masks, and two pairs of shoes, which had to be sourced from another store. I added a generous tip to the total and directed that each young woman who helped should get 15 percent. Madame inclined her head in agreement.
The dresses were carefully folded and packaged while Ian went to wait for the transport. When I joined him by the door, he took the package from me. “Do you have everything you need?”
“I’m set for clothes. We won’t be allowed to take weapons into the party, but walking around Matavara unarmed is just asking for trouble. I have a few weapons in the supplies you pulled from Aurora.”
“Party invites include a berth in a secured spaceport adjacent to the venue. Guests are encouraged to remain within the confines of the property.”
“Do you have an invite?”
“Not yet. Do you?”
“No. My contact is in Matavara.”
“Absolutely not,” Ian growled.
I shrugged in indifference. “I’d rather not venture out into the city if we don’t have to but time is running out. We’ll barely have time to recon the party location.”
“You’re not going to be reconning anything,” Ian said.
Correcting him would just give him more time to argue, so I let the comment go. Our transport appeared outside and Ian ushered me out to meet it.
We returned to the spaceport, but rather than boarding Persistence, we boarded its mirror image, Fortuitous. All three High Houses had ships like these scattered across the universe to facilitate high-priority travel.
Two people, a man and a woman, stood in the cargo hold, blast rifles casually in hand. Both were tall and fit. The man had light brown skin and dark brown hair, longer on top than the sides. He was more heavily muscled than Ian, stopping just short of bulky. The woman had ivory skin and strawberry blond hair pulled up in a ponytail that reached past her shoulders. She was lithe, with the kind of supple strength that was easy to underestimate.
Ian clapped both of them on the back with a smile. “Thanks for coming,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” the woman said. The man nodded.
Ian turned to me. “Bianca, meet Alexander and Aoife.” He pronounced the woman’s name EE-fa, and he did it carefully enough that I knew it wasn’t a mispronunciation of Eva.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said. Neither of them echoed the greeting, and they both stared coldly at me. Okay, then.
Clearly these two were not House von Hasenberg employees, which begged the question of where Ian had dug them up. I made a mental note to look into it, though Ian had been careful not to include their surnames.
Ian shot the two a warning look. A wealth of silent communication passed between the three of them as they all ignored me. I told myself it didn’t matter, but being excluded still stung, just a little.
I sank into my public persona as I looked around the cargo hold and pretended indifference. The cargo had been moved from Persistence, and an additional crate of supplies had been added. I moved toward the new supplies, but Ian cut me off. “We need to get in the air,” he said.
“I’m not stopping you,” I said.
“You should be clipped in on the flight deck in case we run into trouble after we jump to CCD Six.”
“You think someone will attack a registered House ship?”
“It’s a possibility. We don’t know what kind of defense the Syndicate has set up.”