Suddenly, Lefwen felt the pull of gravity weakening, her body became light, weightless even, in a most unsettling way, and instinctively she continued to try to hold on to the hover car for fear of losing touch with it in the other direction - upwards. When she raised her head, she found herself looking straight at the strange woman's ice-blue eyes, and a moment later she felt the other's fingers once again close around her wrist. More gently now, they exerted only a slight pull and Lefwen floated forwards. When she was securely above the car, her stomach at the top of the backrest of the seat, gravity returned and she slumped over the seat, face-down, rather awkwardly.
Amilthi waited patiently until the girl had rearranged herself, then told the driver to move on. Finally, she turned to Lefwen, and only after another moment did she finally utter a word.
“You’re a good liar”, she pointed out. Yet her voice was free from judgement of any sort, as if she was simply stating a fact.
“Who are you?” It sounded more like a casual inquiry made out of curiosity than a demand for justification.
Lefwen sat awkwardly in the seat, feeling herself pushing against the side of the car, away from this bizarre woman. Without even thinking about it her hand began to fall down toward the knife at her waist.
“Who am I? Who the heth are you?!” she heard herself demand, her voice muffled and shaking.
“How did you get into my head? Why did you...” she trailed off, her face contorting into a frown behind the visor of her helmet.
A friendly smile appeared on Amilthi’s features.
“Oh, I don’t know why”, she said nonchalantly.
“I’m trying to find out. That’s why I’d like to hear your name. Mine is Amilthi Camlenn. And I want to know why those people are after you. And why you’re wearing that helmet.” There was a strange naiveté to her way of speaking, as if she were only reporting on someone else’s wishes, rather than putting herself behind her own words in a way that would have given them the force of a demand, or even a genuine request.
Lefwen cautiously allowed herself to relax. There was something soothing about the way this stranger spoke, something about the way she enunciated her words and the neutral tone with which every word was layered.
“Elessa Corsanda. My name is Elessa Corsanda. I don’t know why those people were…” she paused, trying to navigate her way through the next sentence.
“You were at the fundraiser,” she stated flatly.
“Madam, where should I…” interjected the driver hesitantly.
“Turn?” Amilthi looked into the distance ahead for several moments, seemingly considering.
“Landing pad L27-A West.” The man busied himself at a console, probably to interact with the computer to which he offloaded the humanly impossible task of remembering the myriad of landing pads all over the city and their locations.
Amilthi regarded the girl, or rather the helmet, with her head slightly tilted.
“You’re not that good a liar”, she pointed out slowly.
Lefwen sighed quietly. Amilthi could clearly get into her head; that much had been demonstrated already, it had been too much to expect that she could maintain the facade. She reached back and pulled the helmet off, blinking slightly at the brightness of the city now that she wasn’t seeing it through scratches and finger-prints.
“I’m Lefwen Claskier.” She bit her lip. Amilthi probably already knew, so trying to stay hidden now was a waste of time. She regarded Amilthi for a moment, noting her formal clothes and the distant yet warm expression on her face.
“You’re not with CTI?”
“Interesting”, said Amilthi, and appeared to consider for several seconds. “Nice to meet you”, she suddenly decided to say, and smiled again. “No, of course I’m not.” Again, a pause.
“Just how inconvenient are you? Will a change in accommodation suffice, will it have to be the next city, or the other side of the galaxy?” It might have seemed odd that her mind suddenly jumped to such a shrewdly pragmatic consideration, yet again without any gravitas.
Lefwen’s face returned to its previous frown.
“Inconvenient? You’re the one who got me to jump in this car!” The driver’s head snapped around as her voice rose.
“What am I doing here?” she demanded, her hand falling back down to the knife once more.
“You are getting away from the people for whom you are inconvenient”, explained Amilthi patiently, still smiling.
“And you won’t need that.” Nothing indicated what she was referring to. Lefwen was almost certain that the woman’s eyes had never darted so far down as to the knife at her waist.
This woman was infuriating. With a huff, Lefwen turned away and gazed out of the car. The city flashed past them in a stream of colours and lights. Every few moments the hover-car would lurch slightly, shifting between the indecipherable lanes of the skyway as the driver maneuvered them towards their destination.
‘I should have just bloody jumped’, Lefwen thought to herself grumpily. Her side was starting to ache now from her impact with the car, and she rubbed it idly while she thought. Amilthi was right about her being inconvenient for certain people, and it wasn’t like she had any choice but to humour this strange woman for the moment. If she really was just a kind benefactor then it would be foolish to turn down her help… a seat on a ship was certainly preferable to cramming herself in a container or hiding in the maintenance tunnels. She could always find a way to dispose of her later.
“Off-world would be best,” she stated flatly.
“I see”, said Amilthi with perfect earnestness. Again she looked into the distance, clearly not in the least afraid to leave Lefwen out of her sight, and thought. She could perhaps have convinced someone on the girl’s behalf to take her somewhere, but she did not intend to pay for it just yet, and wasn’t sure that Lefwen could. What was more, it would mean losing sight of the girl. Nor was she confident that Lefwen could keep herself and others out of trouble.
At the same time, her own ship was a single-seater starfighter ill-suited to the mission.
“There will be a way”, she offered reassuringly, but did not elaborate.
Lefwen allowed them to sit in silence for a few minutes, content to avoid looking at the woman and pretending that she was somewhere else entirely. Eventually, though, she couldn’t contain her questions any more.
“You never answered: why am I here? Why did you save me at the party? At the hotel? Why?”
Amilthi sat with her hands in her lap and seemed to have no problem enduring the silence. When Lefwen finally broke it, she turned to the girl.
“I've already told you: I don’t know yet”, she said simply.
“If you want to find out, you’ll need to answer some of my questions. So which is it? A wayward daughter? An estranged grand-niece? You're hardly someone's ex-wife”, she remarked with a quizzical look.
A lump was forming in Lefwen’s throat. For a moment she wanted to shout; scream so that this bizarre woman would stop talking. She swallowed the idea though, anger didn’t seem to phase Amilthi any more than Goros’ blaster had. She found herself picking at the scab on her hand, her fingers fidgeting as she tried to come up with an answer. Lying didn’t work. Anger didn’t work. And the truth was…
“I’m the daughter of Tamazin Claskier, current chief executive and founder of Claskier Technologies,” she stated with a resigned tone.
“Dad thinks I’m dead,” she paused.
“And if he knew I was alive…” she trailed off, the lump in her throat making it hard to swallow.
“Well, let’s just say I’d rather he didn’t know, not yet anyway.”
Lefwen Claskier