Price of Ransom Read Online Free PDF

corridor and the Ridani guard, “but I may have no choice.”
    And she was gone.
    “Lily,” Hawk began, sounding annoyed and imploring at the same time. He lifted a hand to his hair, pulling his fingers through the coarse strands with a movement more troubled than angry. After a moment he dropped his hand and abruptly swiveled to look directly at Gregori, who was still huddled in the corner.
    Gregori emerged cautiously from the shadows.
    Hawk smiled, a little wryly. “You don’t need to look so apprehensive.”
    Gregori moved forward now to peer at the shifting stats at the base of one of the couches. “I’m not scared of you.”
    “Thank you,” murmured Hawk with an irony that Gregori did not understand and so ignored.
    “I just don’t want you to think I’m a sneak.”
    “You’re not a sneak, Gregori. You’re just a solitary child.”
    And Gregori felt that with those words, their understanding was complete.
    “Can we go run the topo … topograph program in the geography folder?”
    “I’ll bring it up for you,” said Hawk, beginning to sound distracted again, “but I can’t stay with you today.”
    Gregori sighed ostentatiously.
    Hawk smiled and reached out to ruffle the boy’s golden hair with surprising tenderness. “It’s a hard and lonely way to grow up, Gregori. Just remember to be true to yourself.”
    Gregori looked up at him. “Can I try the advanced program again?”
    Hawk chuckled. “Don’t push your luck. Yes, you can. Come on.”
    Hawk followed her trail to the mess, but by the time he got there she had already left.
    As had most of the others: Jenny lingered at a table, turning a ceramic mug slowly round and round with one hand as she waited for Lia to finish up in the galley.
    She looked up as Hawk came over to her. “Eight-hour rest shift, and then we’re going in.”
    “Going in?” He was distracted by the slow dissolution of Lily’s scent on the air. The monotone whirring of the ventilation system hung like the merest whisper over the sounds of Lia busy at the counter.
    “To Forsaken,” answered Jenny.
    The com chimed, and Finch’s voice came over it, repeating what Jenny had just said.
    “Ah,” said Hawk. He nodded at her, still preoccupied, and moved away, continuing his hunt.
    He ran her to ground in the captain’s suite on gold deck. The outer room was empty but easily accessible; the door to the inner had a special lock that could only be keyed in to a single person, so he had to wait, and identify himself, before it slid aside to reveal the captain’s most private sanctum.
    For some reason the designers, or the original captain, had chosen to make the room circular. The walls shone a burnished, deep gold, somehow inobtrusive, hiding closets, a terminal, and other arcana he did not know of. Two chairs, a dark wooden table—looking strangely primitive and yet complementing the tone of the walls—and a large bed completed the room.
    Lily was lying on the bed, ankles crossed, head resting on her linked hands. Her black hair spilled out across the pale coverlet that draped the bed’s surface. She was staring at the ceiling, and did not speak as Hawk entered and the door whispered shut behind him.
    He prowled the room a moment, touching a closet pad so that the wall slipped aside to reveal empty cupboards and two plain white tunics hanging from a bar. Lily’s scent had not yet permeated the chamber, but after three weeks it was beginning to. Machiko had not used this suite; perhaps he had found it too imposing, but in any case the only lingering aroma was of a woman, long dead, who smelled of a dry wit, deep cynicism, and unshakable courage. They lingered all over the ship, faint but unmistakable: the fragrance of the Forlorn Hope ’s original crew, slowly being overlaid by its new inhabitants.
    Hawk turned from the closet and went to the bed. He lay down on it, next to her, on his side, propping his head up on one hand. “Where is Bach?”
    “On the bridge.”