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  “Arii,” he said. “Good night.”

  In the morning, he sent the guard to the Worldlord to ask permission to examine the human female. Half an hour later, the guard returned with her on a leash and left her. The guards had become uninterested in him, Lisinthir judged—suggestive either of the Worldlord’s trust, or a pragmatism that acknowledged a crippled flier was hardly capable of theft the usual way. They were complacent, the Chatcaava; it did not occur to them that his disability did not prevent him from climbing. So much of the Empire was thus, gone to rust in thought. Unable to Change.

  “The guard’s gone,” Laniis reported from the door in Universal.

  Lisinthir nodded, looked down at the kneeling woman. “Alet. You may stand if you wish.”

  Not a stupid woman; from her narrowed eyes she was not skeptical, but… curious, perhaps. Interested, but guarding that interest. She didn’t move, either, or speak, so he continued. “Laniis tells me you are an EMA?”

  Her brows lifted. “You know what that is. And you call her by a Seersan name?”

  “As it is her name, I would be remiss to do otherwise,” Lisinthir said. “She would not answer to ‘Delicate’ or ‘Adorable’, anyroad.”

  “Adorable?” Laniis said from the door, mouth quirking. “Really?”

  “Ask Na’er,” Lisinthir said. “See if he agrees with me.”

  She laughed, and Andrea started at the sound. The human was suspicious now, not wary. “You treat her like a person. But you keep her like a slave?”

  “He doesn’t,” Laniis said. “Since the Knife’s already gone and blown that part of the operation to pieces.”

  “We shall not say too much, still,” Lisinthir said. “We know the Chatcaava are fond of torture, and one says things under torture that one ordinarily wishes to die before revealing.” He sat on the divan. “I need your help, alet.”

  “And how are you going to extort it out of me?” Andrea asked, mystified.

  “I’m not,” Lisinthir said. “You are free to refuse. But I don’t think you will.”

  “Because?”

  “Because… you are a healer.” He smiled a little. “And there is a patient I would like you to see, one I don’t think you’ll mind treating.”

  “Not the Survivor…” Her eyes grew round. “Is it Simone? Do you know where she is?”

  “So that is her name? The Karaka’An?”

  “Yes.” Andrea’s hands fisted on her thighs. “The Worldlord took her away one day and didn’t bring her back. We assumed that he made a private pet out of her.”

  “He did,” Lisinthir said. “But she is dying, I believe from one of the Pelted’s genetic disorders from what she was capable of imparting to me. Could you ameliorate her symptoms, perhaps, if you saw her?”

  “I could try!” Visibly reining herself in, she said, “Why do you care?”

  “I could explain but it would be difficult to believe,” Lisinthir said. “Let it suffice that I do, because it hurts nothing to believe so. Your estate can hardly be worsened, can it?”

  “There is that,” Andrea murmured. More clearly, “Are you really here to rescue the Survivor?”

  “Maybe the less said about this the better,” the Knife said.

  Laniis rolled her eyes. “Now you say so.”

  “I did not realize how effective torture was.” The Knife rubbed his arms against the fur, fluffing it. “If it could bring the… Survivor… so low… what could it do to the rest of us?”

  “Would you like to trust me better?” Lisinthir said to Andrea, ignoring them. “If so, go into the bedchamber. You’ll find him there. You may see how he has suffered after a night with me. And no… this is not a trap to see if you will disobey me by rising and leaving my presence.”

  “God,” Andrea said, taken aback. “I don’t know what to make of you. You’re either the most terrifying Chatcaavan I’ve ever met or… the most terrifying Chatcaavan I’ve never met.”

  “You must have decided about him already,” Laniis said. “Because you would never have said something like that out loud otherwise.”

  “I guess I have.” Andrea put one foot flat on the ground, watching him warily. When he didn’t object, she pushed herself upright. After that, defiance appeared easier. She left them to go to the bedchamber, and Lisinthir disposed himself to wait.

  When the human returned, she wore an expression of uneasy wonder. “What did you do?” she asked from the door to the bedchamber. “Verbally abuse him?”

  “No,” Lisinthir said. And then, remembering the tears they’d both shed. “No. But he is… desolate. Not all I could say kept him from weeping.”

  “No.” Andrea sighed and dropped onto the couch beside him. “I think it was when he found out he couldn’t switch back. That’s when the deterioration accelerated. Before that he was symptomatic, but he wasn’t… emptied out of hope. By now it’s hard to tell whether it’s the concussion that’s causing the problem, or his belief that it is. We tell ourselves powerful stories about our own health and that makes a big impression on our bodies.”

  “Then I should not be concerned unless time under a halo-arch leaves him incapable of the Change,” Lisinthir said.

  “Right,” Andrea said. “Though the thing he’s most needed he hasn’t been able to get. Concussion patients should rest. Real rest, physical and mental: they shouldn’t even be doing anything mentally strenuous. He hasn’t had that opportunity since he arrived, and I can’t tell if it’s made things worse or not. It certainly hasn’t helped.”

  “Mmm. Rest.” Lisinthir glanced at the door. “Perhaps we might do something about that. In the mean, we have something important to do. Alet, if you will pretend to your current station?”

  “To help Simone?” Andrea slid off the couch onto her knees. “Anything I can do for her, I will. How are you planning to lure the Worldlord away?”

  “That is the crux of the thing,” Lisinthir said. “I’m not.”

  Best not to warn the male of his plans: what he didn’t anticipate, he couldn’t guard against, and above all Lisinthir wanted the Worldlord off-balance, open to the wound of new ideas. He secured an audience, then, a casual visit prior to the first of the scheduled entertainments for the day, and made his way up to the Worldlord’s tower… with Andrea. He didn’t explain himself to the guards, nor did they ask. And when he arrived and showed himself in, the Worldlord’s pleasure in greeting him was entirely unfeigned… as was his confusion at the sight of the slave, though he recovered quickly.

  “Sword,” the Worldlord said. “You come early. I was just watching the weather.”

  Lisinthir looked over the other male’s shoulder at the clouds thickening the horizon. “Looks like it’ll be beautiful soon. A fine storm.”

  “The storms here are magnificent, but not at all safe.” The Worldlord glanced at Andrea. “I am guessing you evaluated the slave? How did you find her?”

  “Quite acceptable,” Lisinthir said. “That is not, however, why I brought her.”

  “Oh?”

  “Andrea,” Lisinthir said, “is an Emergency Medical Assist. Among the aliens, this makes her a highly trained specialist, one responsible for responding to calls for help from those afflicted with urgent medical issues. She has offered to look at Simone, whom you call Gentle.”

  The Worldlord’s mouth gaped open at the start of this announcement, but by its end he had shut it and was staring at Lisinthir, trembling. He was not the only one shaking: the leash Andrea had insisted he use for both their protections quivered in his hand. He was the only calm one in the room... and how not, anticipating the hunt’s success? The Worldlord had revealed his vulnerability, had positioned himself for this final thrust. It was only a matter of seeing how he capitulated—that was what Lisinthir was waiting to witness. The delicious and individual nature of willing submission. What would the Worldlord’s look like? How long would it take?

  “This way,” the Worldlord said, voice a rasp.

  Andrea left them
the moment they stepped into the bedchamber and Lisinthir released the leash to let her stride to Simone’s side, bend over her, murmur something.

  The Worldlord, in contrast, was still alongside Lisinthir. Trembling yet, but silent, and so attentive. Thunder growled in the middle distance, and the breeze through the bedchamber’s abbreviated balcony gained a hint of moisture. The storm edged closer, seasoned the air with the freshness of lightning playing.

  Andrea spent several minutes at the Karaka’An’s side during which her patient did not wake. When at last she drew back, the rigidity of her spine warned Lisinthir of the shape of the conversation to come.

  “Andrea?” he asked.

  The woman tucked a blanket tenderly around Simone’s shoulders, then stood and walked to Lisinthir and the Worldlord, where she faced them without kneeling. Angry, yes, but not belligerent. She had that quality common to so many of the medical personnel Lisinthir had met: the compassion that became frustration at an enemy that would inevitably prevail despite all their efforts. Yet still they strove. And Jahir had tried to tell him that he was no fighter…!

  “It’s Beritt’s Disease,” Andrea said in Universal. “The fur falling out, the lesions on the skin, the corneal scarring… it’s an easy call, alet.”

  “Is it fatal?” Lisinthir asked, sensing the Worldlord straining to understand.

  “No one gets out of this life alive,” Andrea said. “But… no. It’s one of the few Exodus diseases that responds to management. She would ordinarily have had a monthly regimen, self-administered, with the dosage adjusted annually by her specialist. Beritt’s is subject to flare-ups, but those can be treated with high doses of anti-inflammatories. It’s an auto-immune disorder, but a person can live a normal life with it if they follow the protocols.” She turned her gaze to the Worldlord then, and some of her anger licked her voice. “She probably ran out of her medication a few months before arriving here; she was already weak, I thought. The decline would have been quick after that.”

  “Can she be saved?” Lisinthir asked, soft.

  Andrea grimaced. “I don’t know. Here? No. They don’t know the first thing about fixing something like this, and honestly I couldn’t tell them how to start. I’m not a specialist. I do triage.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, but if she got back into the hands of those specialists… they might have a chance.”

  “What is she saying?” the Worldlord interrupted in Chatcaavan, urgent. “I understand some of it, but these medical terms… they are medical terms, aren’t they?”

  “She’s dying,” Andrea said to him, in poor Chatcaavan. “A completely unnecessary death.”

  The Worldlord took a step back, wobbling. Then he turned on Lisinthir, his voice gone hoarse. “Did you… did you coach her in these things? Did you tell her to say things that would prompt my guilt?”

  “I told you what I believed to be the truth,” Lisinthir said. “And discovered that in your own slave annex you had the expertise to confirm my suppositions.” When the Worldlord stared at him, mouth working, Lisinthir finished, “In your own slave annex. If you had allowed Andrea to minister to her immediately, you might have delayed her death.”

  “No,” the Worldlord whispered. And then, firmly, “She is a pet.”

  “She is a person.”

  “She is a pet!”

  “She is a person,” Lisinthir said again. “Or your fondness for her is unnatural. Which sin would you prefer to embrace, Worldlord? Would you be a pervert, for nursing feelings for an animal? Or a heretic, for admitting that aliens are people?”

  “Dying Air!” the Worldlord exclaimed. “Neither!”

  “The choice of a coward.”

  The Worldlord gaped at him.

  “A coward,” Lisinthir said. “And I know you are not one, Worldlord. From our speech I have guessed you to be a male of unusual moral fiber, perspicacity, and insight. That male would not cavil from ownership of his own feelings, no matter how uncomfortable the paths they might lead him onto.” He looked toward Simone. “You know better.”

  “I—”

  “You know better,” Lisinthir repeated. “Or why would you have accused me of attempting to inspire guilt? There can be no guilt if you did not feel shame.”

  The Worldlord’s pupils had contracted so tightly they left his eyes the brightest thing in a room now dark with the stormcloud’s cover. The wheeze of the wind around the tower sounded like Simone’s breathing, labored and high and crying. Lisinthir held the Chatcaavan’s gaze and said, low, “Andrea. Wait in the antechamber, please.”

  He heard her depart and waited, but it was the wait of a hunter, drawing the prey. Come, he whispered to the Worldlord. Come out.

  “This is madness,” is what the other male said.

  “Is it?”

  Shaking himself, the Worldlord whirled and strode to the balcony, shutting it against the increasing gusts. “My... feelings... for Gentle... I have never discussed them with anyone. Except you, Sword, and the first opportunity you have, you use them against me.”

  Lisinthir snorted. “There would have been better ways to expose your weaknesses. Doing it here, in private, with no witnesses? How would that serve anyone?”

  “It would serve you handily, if what you sought was blackmail.”

  Fascinated, Lisinthir said, “And what exactly am I purportedly extorting out of you with this scene?”

  “The slaves. You want the slaves.”

  “I hardly think that a surprise to you,” Lisinthir said. “I’d already told you I was interested in purchasing the two humans.”

  “Purchasing... them,” the Worldlord said, his eyes skating to the door and then back to him. “Because you are their owner? I highly doubt that. Are those aliens with you your slaves... or your...”

  “Friends?” Lisinthir suggested, amused.

  The Worldlord shuddered. “No. That is too much, even for a male isolated from all our conventions. But companions, perhaps.”

  “Mmm. And will you blackmail me now with this knowledge, Worldlord?”

  “Would it work?” the Worldlord asked. “What do you have to lose?”

  Lisinthir spread his hands. “You could prevent me from finding a port anywhere, I suspect. I am not uninformed. You have power. If you decided you wanted to be quit of me, you could make my life impossible.”

  “Yes, I could.” The Worldlord was watching him. “But this prospect doesn’t frighten you.”

  “No.”

  “Then what good is this lever you have given me against you?”

  “Better to ask... what good is the lever you have given me against you?” Lisinthir asked. “Have you answered the question of what I want from you to your satisfaction? What do I need from you, Worldlord, that you would not be willing to give me with some negotiation? I have offered to buy the two humans, one of whom you probably find useless anyway. That leaves you with three slaves. One of them is dying. The other two... why the expense of maintaining a slave annex for two slaves?”

  “You’re right,” the Worldlord growled. “I could buy more.”

  “You could. But will you?” Lisinthir looked pointedly at Simone, then back at him. “Do you wish to risk losing your heart a second time? At least when she dies, you can pretend you never harbored desires a normal Chatcaavan would not.”

  “Agh!” The Worldlord threw up his hands. “You are... you are...”

  “Infuriating?” Lisinthir offered.

  The male glared at him, then choked on a laugh that grew and grew until they were both laughing, and they would have continued had the storm not rattled the shutters and sent a rumble of thunder through the floor. The Worldlord moved to one of the soft chairs near Simone’s box and dropped into it. “Do you truly find it... useful? To have aliens as... companions.”

  “Andrea could have helped Gentle,” Lisinthir said, quiet.

  The Worldlord looked away. Then: “Simone. That is her name among the aliens, then.”

  “They value names over
titles,” Lisinthir said. “It is one of the ways they’re strange.”

  “And you know so much about them,” the Worldlord marveled, his voice gone soft. “Would you tell me what you know?”

  “I could begin. But I would not be done anytime soon, and I do not know everything yet.”

  “You could stay?”

  Lisinthir cocked his head. “Is that what you wish? I am, after all, your blackmailer.”

  The Worldlord chuckled. “No. I don’t doubt that you are holding this information against your future need, Sword. We are what we are, no matter how remote we hold ourselves from the heart of the Empire and its culture. But if a knife you are planning on planting in me... I believe you would do me the courtesy of planting it in my chest, not my back.”

  “Then you have learned something very important about me,” Lisinthir said. “And yes. I will stay. For a while. I too have my errands.” He lifted his brows. “Will you sell me the humans?”

  “And if I said yes?”

  “Then I would keep the male in my rooms where he can heal from his head injury. The treatment he’s received from your guests thus far has delayed the restoration of his health. Andrea tells me he needs neither physical nor mental stimulation.”

  “A physician,” the Worldlord murmured. “In my own slave annex.”

  “Just so.”

  The Worldlord pierced him with a gaze so intense that Lisinthir froze, wondering if he’d miscalculated. But no, there was no aggression there. Just a steadiness of purpose he found intriguing.

  “You, who know these aliens well. You believe we will lose the war.”

  “Worldlord,” Lisinthir said, “Unless we change—I know we will.”

  The other male inhaled, and on the outbreath, lightning shattered the sky with a crash so intense it felt like a physical blow.

  “I don’t think we’ll be having our afternoon meal on the terrace outside the harem,” Lisinthir observed.

  The Worldlord laughed. “No. And knowing this... shall we tarry?”