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  “I will take care of him.”

  Second turned his head toward the first—the male who must be the new Emperor, Jahir thought—and widened his eyes. “I thought you preferred to leave that sort of thing to me.”

  “I will take care of him,” the first male said. And, with narrowed eyes: “I wish to examine him.”

  The second male tossed his neat queue behind his shoulder. “I’m sure that’s what Kauvauc wanted as well, and look where that led him.”

  The first male drew his lips back from his teeth. Very fanged teeth. “I am not Kauvauc, to allow this creature to seduce me with the power of his flesh.”

  “And you think his thoughts any less parlous?” Second resettled his wings. Agitation, perhaps? “You’d be better off just killing him.”

  This would be the point where Lisinthir interjected, Jahir thought. But it was not Lisinthir’s bravado that informed his carefully accented offering. “He’s right, you know. The Emperor couldn’t handle me. You think you’re capable? I doubt that sincerely.”

  The first male’s eyes narrowed. “Your master is dead, freak. I, myself, ordered him killed and took his throne.”

  “Ordered him?” Jahir asked, and he didn’t even need Lisinthir’s knowledge of Chatcaavan culture to hear the problem in that one word. “You didn’t kill him yourself?”

  “I did kill him myself,” the male said. “By having him killed.” He mantled his wings. “You should appreciate such methods, given your pacifist culture.”

  Jahir laughed. “So you weren’t male enough to duel him and win by right of strength?” He glanced at Second. “You, maybe. You might have beaten him. If you’d been lucky.”

  Second’s bright eyes slitted as he stared at Jahir. Then he ignored the Eldritch to say to the new Emperor, “Kill him. He’s still dangerous.”

  “Do you think me incapable of handling him?” the new Emperor—the Usurper—said. “I am the Emperor.”

  “So was Kauvauc,” Second said. “These creatures are a sickness, huntbrother. Just slay this one and be done with it.”

  “You are concerned about a race of powerless aliens?” the Usurper showed his teeth briefly. “Call off the search for any others, then. We have the only one that matters.” He studied Jahir. “I intend to keep him.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “That’s obvious.” The Usurper twitched his wings, settled them neatly against his back. “Because if you’d been thinking, you wouldn’t be treating this wingless catamite as if he was a Chatcaavan, to be feared. He is a pet, Second. And I have decided he shall be my pet.”

  “You have no pets,” Second said.

  “Which is why I should take one, yes? Everyone is very concerned about my lack of interest in the harem or the acquisition of new slaves to the replace the ones Kauvauc lost. Let this be a reassuring symbol.” When Second didn’t respond, the Usurper said, “It is something of a coup to have captured him. You should be pleased.”

  Second eyed Jahir, then said, “You should kill him.”

  “So you’ve already said. Several times now. I have heard your opinion.” The Usurper waved to the guards. “Take the freak away. Have him prepared for service.”

  The chime sounded in his ear again. Reminded, Jahir said, “It was rather a long journey. You should feed me.”

  “Feed you!”

  “And wash me,” Jahir said. He could hear his cousin’s voice in his ears, the intonation, the careless insolence. “I’ve become rather dingy. I can’t imagine being much of a decoration like this. Particularly if I’m not allowed to tend to the body’s needs.”

  “The only needs you’ll be tending—”

  “He means evacuation of his bowels,” Second said, dry.

  The Usurper’s nostrils flared. “Fine. Then feed and wash and see to his... needs... and then finish preparing him for service.”

  “So gracious,” Jahir said. “You might at some point manage to sound like an Emperor instead of a lackey. At some point.”

  The Usurper stared at him, eyes intent, almost as if there was something behind them, something unstable... but the moment passed. The Chatcaava said to the guards, “Take him away.”

  And he went with them, very aware of the conversation the Usurper and Second were resuming as he was marched from the room.

  At least he knew now why he was here. The Usurper was a ball of conflicting emotions, anxieties, and insecurities. Presented with a straightforward physical attack, he would respond with all the celerity and authority of an imperfect male who’d learned to survive among his more violent and stronger brethren. He’d spent his life figuring out how to win such contests of strength, or out-maneuver his opponents so that they died in some other way, the way he had apparently done with the Emperor.

  But without the clarifying influence of a purely physical attack... allowed to simmer in his own insecurities, perhaps abetted by the right comment at the right time....

  Jahir didn’t want to be here. If he’d had any choice at all, he would have preferred to fight this war at his cousin’s side, to use his talents in concert with Lisinthir’s and see their enemies laid low on a battlefield where there were no ambiguities. But he was not with Lisinthir. He was here, alone, on the Chatcaavan throneworld... with a Chatcaavan male who was perfectly positioned to crumble if someone undermined his psyche. A Chatcaavan male who was in charge of the entire Empire, and the war it was preparing to undertake against the Alliance.

  In no universe should he be contemplating what he was contemplating now. He had sworn oaths, not just to those who’d licensed him to serve the health of his clients, but as an Eldritch to God and Lady, to serve life. And yet, being here, now….

  This was a fight a therapist could win, if the Usurper would let him start it… and if he was willing to use the tools of a healer to destroy.

  God and Lady, Jahir prayed. Help me now.

  If he’d lived through a worse moment in his life, Vasiht’h couldn’t remember it, and he’d lived through Jahir almost dying from wet-induced coronaries; being trapped in a storm he was sure was going to kill him; and of course all the hateful events on the Quicklance where they’d almost died—again. But being trapped in a Chatcaavan hold destined for someone’s harem, surrounded by the oppressive misery of his fellow captives, and being steadily carried away from the person he loved most in all the worlds....

  His breathing was growing shaky. He pressed his palms together and made an abortive attempt to pray, but he couldn’t concentrate. The strength of his headache was receding quickly because Jahir was growing farther away and the mindline was attenuating with that distance. He didn’t want to be getting clearer-headed. He didn’t want to be here. This was not how this was supposed to be happening, and Goddess be damned!

  Vasiht’h gasped in and pressed a hand to his mouth. The tears that spilled then... he let them fall, and he wept softly into his cupped palms.

  I’m sorry, he told Her. I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean that. I’m just so scared!

  Nothing. But not the nothing he’d experienced on the Quicklance, the emptiness that had felt like the breath of the Goddess withdrawn. This was a patient silence. Which had to be a sign, didn’t it? Vasiht’h wiped his eyes with the butt of his palm and looked around the cargo hold. Even if it wasn’t… he was a therapist, and there were people here who needed help. The least he could do was make the attempt.

  So that was what he did, as best he could. He was no priest to offer the sort of counsel that most of the prisoners needed, and his own faith in the Goddess, while stone-steady, had grown complicated with his understanding that sometimes Her aims were larger than any one person’s needs. But a shoulder to cry on, and a listening ear… those things he had practiced all his life, and he put them to use in the hope of doing at least some good. And, to be honest, to distract himself from how miserable he was himself, and how frightened. How long he spent at that, he didn’t know; he slept several times, but didn’t know for how long, and his
metronomic digestion might have given him a clue how long it had been between meals, but it failed him with anxiety robbing him of his appetite. But finally the hum under his paws stopped and the Chatcaava came for them.

  He thought about fighting them until one of the passengers tried and was shot for his troubles. Not dead, either; he was trussed and hauled off, none-too-gently, with the other captives. Nothing in Vasiht’h’s experience suggested the Chatcaava liked to shoot people when they could physically engage them, so their willingness to do so had to indicate something. What, he didn’t know, and continued not to know when he and the others were herded over a series of Pads and onto a new ship. This one had corridors Vasiht’h recognized at least, not the weirdly cramped ones common to Chatcaavan vessels. And the people awaiting them on the other side weren’t dragons.

  Of course, that left only one possibility. Had he and Jahir saved them from pirate furriers, only to be delivered back to them by the Chatcaava?

  They were sorted by these new people, who were talking with the Chatcaava—unfortunately in the dragons’ language, not anything he could understand—and Vasiht’h found himself alone, being harried to a door. It opened for him, they shoved him in, and it locked behind him with a chime all the more ominous for its cheery similarity to every piece of technology he’d ever used in a kinder time and place.

  Why had they separated him? What were they planning to do with them? Were they furriers or just common variety slavers? And where were they being taken?

  The rustle behind him warned him he wasn’t alone. He turned on his paws and sat back, startled, at the woman who was facing him, sitting on the floor with her hands folded on her lap.

  “I know you,” he gasped.

  The Slave Queen of the Chatcaava lifted her face, furrowed her brow.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The work of sneaking into one of the most secure sectors in the entire Chatcaavan Empire Lisinthir left to the FIA team. The sifting of its networks for useful data, he left to the Chatcaavan specialist. That set him too much at loose ends and with too much to brood about, for while he trusted Sediryl to look after herself, knew Amber would do his part no matter how much he complained, and had faith that he had done everything in his power to prepare Jahir for his trials, still he hated having so many hostages delivered into the hands of fortune… and that was before he counted his lovers. The Emperor had been born to the fight. But the Queen….

  Oh, how he honored her for her courage. And yet, he hated the thought of her alone and without ally.

  So, he did as he did always when deprived of the ability to act decisively. He took his swords to the ship’s small gymnasium and practiced until sweat plastered his clothes to his body and dripped off his nose. And then he kept going. Meryl had been unable to give him a definite travel time—“We’re going to have to assess the situation as we go”—so who knew how long he’d be trapped here in abeyance, awaiting the moment he could take his fate into his hands again.

  This business of delegation was fraught.

  The second day of his self-imposed practices, the door to the gymnasium opened. He turned, clawing his hair from his face, and straightened, interested. “So,” he said in Chatcaavan. “You too find yourself with too much time on your hands and too little to do, do you.”

  The Knife grimaced. “I’m not used to being idle.”

  “Neither am I. And so you see me.”

  “Fighting with weapons,” the Knife said. He hesitated, then gestured toward the room. “May I….”

  “By all means.”

  The male padded in, tail held in a low curve. Lisinthir observed with amusement that the Knife kept his gaze warily trained on Lisinthir while walking in a long curve around him, as if the Eldritch was some wild creature that might do something unexpected. Which was well, as it was not entirely untrue.

  “I assume Uuvek is at least keeping you informed of what he’s doing?”

  “He is, yes,” the Knife said. “But it is not… the way you are making it sound. As if he is my subordinate. We are huntbrothers, but I am not his captain. If he decides not to report anything to me, the most I can do is clout him on the head and tell him he’s annoying me.”

  Lisinthir laughed. “Does that work?”

  “Not as often as I’d like,” the Knife said. “He has a hard skull.” Another pause. Then, “This fighting with unnatural weapons. You do it because it increases your reach?”

  Startled, Lisinthir said, “Partially, yes. I did not expect you to guess it, though.”

  The Knife eyed him with a grim smile. “I am a soldier, Ambassador. If I can’t assess the utility of a weapons system… if we couldn’t assess the utility of weapons systems… we would never have come up with the weapons that allowed us to conquer the Empire.”

  “True,” Lisinthir said. “Why then do you suppose so many of your kind dismiss them?”

  “I don’t know that we do,” the Knife said. “Or at least, it’s not that simple. We do have personal weapons. The ones we use shipboard—they are like armored covers for our own claws, designed to slice through the body armor we wear to protect ourselves from vacuum. But we use them because we want to make it possible to engage in the single combat we are accustomed to.” He flexed his fingers, the claws gleaming under the overhead lights. “We cling to tradition. And… we cling to our identity. We are Chatcaava. We have to know what that means. If we don’t, then what holds us together?”

  Thinking of the poor choices the Eldritch had made in order to maintain their own cultural identity, Lisinthir said wryly, “Yes, I can see how that would be a pressing question.” He considered the Knife, remembering the claw-knives he’d used and wondering. “Those armored claws…”

  “A Naval weapon,” the Knife said, sober. “Used only on shipboard. To use them elsewhere would be unfair. We want to pit like strength against like strength. To do otherwise is cowardly.”

  Lisinthir thought of the former Second’s outrage over the use of the claw-knives. ‘An assassin’s weapon.’ “I see.” And smiled crookedly. “You obviously do not dismiss the value of a weapon wielded by a clawless, wingless race. Shall I teach you to use one, then?”

  “Those?” The Knife eyed his swords. “I am curious.”

  “And bored?” Lisinthir guessed.

  The Knife looked away with another grimace. When he brought his gray eyes back to Lisinthir’s, he said, “I am agitated. He is my Emperor. She is my Queen. It was my Empire, and my Navy.”

  “Yes,” Lisinthir said, quietly. “So let us embark on this distraction. Perhaps we will learn something from it we might use.”

  Instructing a Chatcaavan on the rudiments of swordplay involved challenges Lisinthir had not anticipated. The claws themselves explained why the Chatcaava had not embraced any weapon that required a handle, which led him to ask how most Chatcaava grasped anything. “Most males,” the Knife said, “Keep their claws shorter. It is a way of signaling they are not interested in climbing the ladder of dominance.”

  Lisinthir lifted his brows but chose not to pursue that. Since the Knife had chosen that path—at least, enough to make grasping a narrow hilt difficult—he improvised with the gymnasium’s computer and managed an entirely solidigraphic sword the Knife could use to at least learn the rudiments. Once they’d dispensed with that issue, the teaching was not as difficult as Lisinthir had anticipated. All the Chatcaava in the Navy learned unarmed combat, since their fighters existed to deliver them to other ships where they could indulge in it. Having knives on the ends of their fingers meant they had learned some of the basic reflexes. The Knife knew not to put himself in the way of anything pointy, understood the importance of lunging and the maintenance of one’s balance, and had excellent hand-eye coordination and situational awareness. The rest of it, Lisinthir thought, was details… but then, God and Air were in the details.

  They did drills first: lunges and basic attacks, parries. Lisinthir explained the principles, was fascinated by the concepts th
e Knife grasped easily versus those that took him time. It passed the hours better than single practice had, though when they were done with that first session, the male waved his sword back into the aether and said, “May I see it?”

  “See…”

  “What it looks like when someone who fights well with these implements does so. Do you have practice holograms?”

  Lisinthir remembered fighting with a cousin at his back and all the exhilaration of that perfect communion fueling their battle. His mouth quirked. “We do, yes. If you would stand back? I wouldn’t mind the chance to drain the last of my energy.”

  The Knife withdrew to the far corner, putting his wings and back to the wall, and folded his arms. Lisinthir smiled a little, then said, “Resume simulation, please.”

  “Resuming.”

  The playback the Knife had interrupted flashed back into life around him. It was set to increase the number of foes as he defeated them, and he had been on three simultaneously. Three was pleasure, was a good workout, but it didn’t empty himself of anything but the fight, didn’t drain the worries from him and leave him clean, a creature of body and air and steel. He didn’t start thinning out until six opponents, and he stopped at the seventh only because the guard protocol he’d selected allowed moderate contact and his limbs were beginning to suffer from the multiple bruises.

  He would look a sight before the abbreviated clinic saw to him. But at least there was a clinic.

  The Knife had not moved from the corner, save to widen his eyes so much there was a rim of white around the irises. The Chatcaava had enormous irises.

  “Swords have their uses,” Lisinthir said, wiping his brow with the side of his arm.

  “I would have thought they would get in the way,” the Knife said. “But I see wielded by someone who understands them....”

  “Yes. That is the key, isn’t it? A tool is useless unless understood.”