Hector fumbled through his pockets. She produced a tissue from a pocket in her dress.
“Here. Now clean yourself up and leave.”
“Not until I’ve said what I came to say,” Hector replied nasally, holding the tissue against his nose.
“Keep your head up, don’t bleed on the floor.”
“It’s hard to talk like this.”
Despite herself, Geri smiled. “Well, it’s your own fault. You can’t come swooping into people’s gardens like … like….”
“You wouldn’t see me. And I had to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
Putting his head down, his neck cracking painfully as he did, Hector said:
“Well … blast it, Geri, I love you. But I’m not going to be your hired assassin. And if you loved me, you wouldn’t want me to be. A man’s not supposed to be a trained pet … to do whatever his girl wants him to. I’m not….”
Her expression hardened”I only asked you to do what I would have done myself, if I could have.”
“You would’ve killed Odal?”
“Yes.”
“Because he murdered your father.”
“That’s right.”
Hector took the tissue away from his face. “But Odal was just following orders. Kanus is the one who ordered your father killed.”
“Then I’d loll Kanus, too, if I had the chance,” she snapped angrily.
“You’d kill anybody who had a hand in your father’s death?”
“Of course.”
“The other soldiers, the ones who helped Odal during the duel, you’d kill them too?”
“Certainly!”
“Anybody who helped Odal? Anybody at all? The starship crew that brought him here?”
“Yes! All of them! Anybody!”
Hector put his hand out slowly and took her by the shoulder. “Then you’d have to loll me, too, because I let him go. I helped him to escape from you.”