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  “About why I am wanted?” He shook his head. “No. Suspicions perhaps, based on the attackers who attempted to prevent my flight to the border. But suspicions only, and as like to be wrong as right.”

  “Then about Jahir,” she said.

  That made him smile, a very private smile that piqued her interest immensely. There was something tender in it. And wicked too.

  “Let us say I have given him a dart or two to use in his own defense.” His smile lightened as he directed it at her, became mischievous. “Would you like to add anything to the message? It seems only polite, as your ship’s crew will be handling the boosting of it.”

  Why did the idea make her so nervous? It was nonsensical. Jahir had been her fastest childhood friend, and prior to meeting him again on the homeworld for the wedding, she would have thought nothing of appending a greeting of her own to him. Something wry or witty or welcoming, something appropriate for the youth with whom she’d spent so many summers exploring the forests bordering their provinces. He was, however, no longer that youth—nor was she that maiden. “I... can’t think of anything I would add.” Rueful, she said, “I... don’t know him very well.”

  “Do you not?” he asked. “I was under the impression the Seni and the Nuera were twined close as pleached trees.”

  “We were, when we were young,” Sediryl said. “Our lives parted after the formal court investitures. When a woman becomes an heir, she is no longer fit company for unmarried men.”

  Lisinthir snorted. “That sat well with you, I wager.”

  She managed a smile. “You know me so well already?”

  He patted her hand. “Your cousin knows you well. I know what I see.”

  “As well as what you’ve divined from what stories he’s carried you?” she asked, suddenly on fire to know. Had Jahir talked of her to others? And said... what?

  Lisinthir laughed. “He is the brother I never had, Lady. Even if he had said anything, you would hear no tales of him from me.” He canted his head. “I’ll borrow a data tablet to write that message. If you’ll permit me?”

  “Of course,” she said, hiding her frustration. “You will find me here when you’re done.”

  He left then, no doubt to beg a data tablet of his Fleet companions, and consigned her to the silence of the room. She presumed they were in the dormitory, or maybe the storage wing? If Alliance abbeys were built anything like the monasteries on her world, and who knew? She had never visited one, though there was a famous convent sited on the western border of Nuera’s lands. She sat on the bench under the lancet window and struggled not to fidget.

  To say that Amber had been unhappy with her arrival would have been understating the matter. The only reason he hadn’t attempted to send her away was that—unlike Millie—he’d known he wouldn’t succeed and was too distracted to waste the effort. She’d known he and Bethsaida were close, having seen their interactions at court… but had she been pressed, she would have predicted they would part ways. Bethsaida had been impetuous and high-spirited, but she’d also wanted a man far more than, say, Sediryl had. Knowing Amber, Sediryl would have thought he’d find that need distasteful, if only because at some level it made him interchangeable with his peers. Beth had wanted a man; if Amber would not have served, she would have found another. And who wanted to feel replaceable?

  Sediryl worried at the edge of a fingernail, thinking. Granted time and safety, Beth and Amber would certainly have drifted apart. This situation, however, had changed things. Amber was now as zealously devoted to the former heir as any woman who wanted a man could hope for. If, in fact, Beth would ever have him, and that small issue was no doubt on Amber’s mind as well. Sediryl was willing to grant him some latitude given the tumult of his outraged feelings, but not enough to leave because he’d decided that all women must suffer the fate of Bethsaida if they dared draw near the Chatcaava.

  Sediryl was certain she wouldn’t have crumpled in Beth’s place. Almost certain.

  She had hoped to be more effective on arrival, though. It disturbed her that none of the Chatcaava had been willing to move on from Sharsenne, since the plan had involved cells of them moving in separate conveyances back to Starbase Ana, where they could be consolidated in a less vulnerable location and moved from there to… wherever Liolesa wanted them placed. Assuming they wanted to be placed with the Eldritch and not the Alliance.

  Having them all here concerned her. But she couldn’t speak their language, Amber wasn’t fluent, and the people who could speak it weren’t capable of convincing the refugees that they needed to keep moving to be safe. It was hard not to be impatient with them.

  If everything went well, though, they’d finally be able to make some decisions tomorrow. And in the meantime….

  Cousin Lisinthir. She’d looked him up after the Queen had told her of his exploits in the Empire. They were related, unavoidably—the Galare House wasn’t that large—but the Nase family wasn’t as well-regarded as the Nuera, or the Seni for that matter; Malavi Nase’s decision to wed Korval Keldi Imthereli, while sensible from a pragmatic standpoint, had resulted in a marriage infamous even among Eldritch, who were often prey to scandalously unhappy marriages. Sediryl wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting on meeting Lisinthir. Someone embittered and cold, maybe, to have survived the depredations of the Chatcaavan court. Instead, he was warm and amused and far more willing to allow her to take risks than any other Eldritch male she’d met… or, come to think of it, any Pelted person.

  He was attractive, too. Not classically handsome, the way Jahir was. But there was something undeniably compelling about that air of danger that clung to him like cologne. That moment when his expression had softened…

  …while speaking of Jahir! Her curiosity refused to lie down at that. How did they know one another? It couldn’t have been long; Lisinthir had spent almost no time at court, and no one in the Seni or Nuera families would have wanted their impressionable children to associate with the rumor-stained Nase. They had to have met in the Alliance. Liolesa had said nothing of it, either. Why?

  She was still ruminating when he returned. She knew him by his footsteps: Amber walked... well, like a normal person. Lisinthir contrived to make almost no noise despite being in boots. “For you, Lady. If you would.” He offered the tablet, which, she saw, had the message spread on it.

  “Should I read it?” she asked.

  He grinned. “I don’t know. Should you?”

  Sediryl wrinkled her nose at him, then defiantly looked at the tablet. He’d written in the courtliest modes of their tongue, spangled with all sorts of colored writing: mostly silver and gold and white, so that the places where he’d shadowed or blackened the words stood out sharply, like the memory of nightmares after waking in a bed of morning sunlight.

  Galare—

  Do you come now to Sharsenne in the Duo Sector, as there is work to be done here for us. Arrive carefully: send your itinerary and we will have someone meet you in orbit to guide you to where we abide. They seek our kind, and me in particular. I suppose I have done something to distress them, alas.

  I have left you a tool. Use it, if you would. And I will see you anon, and look forward to it.

  —Imthereli

  There was a line beneath it in Chatcaavan. She looked up at him. “I don’t understand why you would use their tongue when ours is more secure. This message would have reached our cousin and then it would have been swept off the u-banks if it was only in Eldritch.”

  “I use Chatcaavan because it conveys information to him that I could not in our tongue.” His eyes grew mischievous. “Are you piqued because you cannot read it, cousin Sediryl?”

  “I wouldn’t eavesdrop on your private correspondence with Jahir,” she said, and almost convinced herself she meant it.

  She apparently hadn’t convinced him, though. “You’re certain of that?”

  “I can’t read Chatcaavan,” she pointed out.

  “No, but your friend on-ship could easily transla
te it.”

  Exasperated, she said, “It’s almost as if you want me to read it!”

  “Oh no!” Lisinthir shook his head with mock solemnity. “Had I wanted you to read it, I would have written it in a language you could understand.”

  “It would serve you right if I did ask Maia what it said.”

  “Would it, though?” He pursed his lips. “I wonder what you’ll do.”

  She couldn’t help it... she started laughing. “You’re impossible!”

  “I have been told.” He leaned against the wall. “Will you permit me a digression, cousin?”

  “I suppose,” Sediryl said, watching him warily.

  His mouth quirked, but the smile didn’t make it to his eyes. “You gave me to understand you spoke with the Chatcaavan Queen.”

  “I did, yes. Via Well-pushed stream prior to her decision to remain behind. After that, we had a text exchange, after she’d sent the others on.”

  “And... how did you find her?”

  She wasn’t sure what had inspired the question, as he’d donned the non-expression that all Eldritch learned so quickly. Some people hid anger under that mask, others fear, others tenderer things... inevitably it was something they thought made them vulnerable. What made Lisinthir Nase Galare, who’d brought down an Emperor, feel vulnerable?

  Come to that, he’d signed himself Imthereli. What was that about?

  “I thought her strong,” Sediryl said at last. “She had clear eyes. Lieutenant Baker said she seemed nervous, but I couldn’t see it.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he murmured. “Agitation is not something one displays in the court of dragons.”

  “I didn’t detect any hesitation in her, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sediryl said. “She made a choice and it wasn’t under duress.” She watched the other man, so still that the sunlight shaft against the panels of the blood-colored coat didn’t so much as quiver. “You’re concerned about her.”

  He smiled a little. “I care a great deal about her, yes.”

  “And you’re not desperate to ride to her rescue?”

  Lisinthir looked up at the ceiling a moment, arms crossed over his chest. “I would very much like her to be out of danger. If I knew that I could save her from it by racing to the throneworld this moment, I would in fact do so. But I know nothing about the situation that obtains there, cousin Sediryl... and I do know the Chatcaava are looking for me, in specific. In what way would I improve the situation did I ride there with banners flying?”

  “The way you normally work, I expected your method to be more like ‘sneaking in with skin painted,’” Sediryl said.

  His mouth flexed. Not much of a smile, that. “And perhaps I might pry her from her prison thus. But in a day we will have more information, and that information may mean the difference between our success and our failure. In the mean, I can only trust her to have made the best possible choice. I must, because she’s the one who knows the most about her situation.”

  “You have a great deal of faith in her,” Sediryl said, quieter.

  “The utmost.”

  Sediryl waited to see if he would elaborate. When he didn’t, she said, “I honestly expected you to be incapable of seeing other people endangered if you could singlehandedly save them. From what I’ve heard of what you’ve done.”

  “Our Queen has told you all she knows, I suppose.”

  Sediryl nodded.

  Lisinthir smiled. “And she is a good judge of character, Liolesa Galare. But therein lies a lesson for us all, cousin.”

  “That being?” Sediryl asked, skeptical.

  “She is too distant from the situation to know everything. Particularly the nuances.”

  Sediryl snorted. “We’re back to the ‘we need more information before we act’ thing, aren’t we.”

  That made him grin finally, one of those mercurial flashes of humor she’d found so arresting. “Yes. So perhaps you should send the message? I shall leave you to wrestle with your conscience.”

  “I do not read other people’s mail!”

  Lisinthir didn’t answer that, only awarded her a flippant look as he strolled off. She wasn’t sure whether to find it irritating or amusing, and some of that was no doubt in her voice when she touched the telegem earring. “Maia?”

  “Alet? Is everything all right?”

  Sediryl eyed the arch through which her cousin had vanished. “Yes. Just frustrated at our lack of progress. I have a request, if you’re up to it?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sending you a message...” She tapped the data tablet, linking it to the ship’s mail queue. “Here. Can you make sure it gets to the specified commtag without anyone intercepting it?”

  “A flat message? I can hide it in the outgoing traffic, sure. I can do that now, in fact.”

  “Please?” As she waited, Sediryl warred with her curiosity... and lost. “And do you know what the Chatcaavan part says?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  Maia sounded bemused. “It says, ‘The errand you wished to discharge can be done so here, my Delight. Be grateful.’ That’s all.”

  So cryptic... what errand? Why wouldn’t Jahir be grateful? And... ‘my delight’? She tried to imagine Lisinthir addressing Jahir that way and found her imagination seizing before she could properly pose them in her mind. Maybe it was meant to tease, because Jahir was so serious that someone like Lisinthir would find teasing him irresistible. But there was teasing...

  ...and then there was teasing....

  Sediryl cleared her throat. “Thank you, Maia. Is it off?”

  “It is, yes.”

  She nodded. “I assume you’ve been listening to everything?”

  “The telegem does record, alet. I can isolate the records if it makes you uncomfortable?”

  “No,” Sediryl said. “No, I think you should know everything I know. If cousin Lisinthir is willing to let me get into trouble on my own, I’d like to have one ally at my back who can read my mind. So to speak.”

  “Understood. And... if I may say... I agree?”

  Sediryl grinned. “I’m glad to hear it. For now...” She rose. “I should try to make amends with Amber.”

  “Good luck with that, alet.”

  She sighed. “I’ll need it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jahir had anticipated being the last one home, but Lisinthir had been recalled early, and Vasiht’h remained on Anseahla with his family as he’d planned. He returned to an empty apartment, thus, and found it novel: the silent rooms where he had expected his partner, and a homecoming. Perhaps that hadn’t been a bad thing, at that. The delta between the life Jahir had been living previously and the one yawning before him—before them both—was somehow manifested in the unusual quiet in the rooms they’d lived in together for so many years. He felt it on his skin as he toweled it dry after a shower; in his eyes as they grew accustomed to the dark in the bedroom, alone; in the taste of meals taken without conversation; in the gliding caress of a data tablet under fingers as he prioritized their case load by himself.

  In the weight of a pendant, resting on the cleft between two collarbones; and in the space in his mind, now broadened immeasurably by the power he’d learned to embrace and control beneath the knife.

  He did not send any message to Sediryl; it felt important to wait for Vasiht’h, that his first and dearest partner should know how he had changed, before he submitted to the second. Instead, he reported to his occasional shifts at the hospital, where he still did consultation work. He went shopping for a musical instrument he could carry, did chores, and brought out the Galare sword set to be serviced. He studied Chatcaavan, finding it slotting easily into place as if he now had a framework for all the missing pieces.

  And he sat quietly, and expanded, and rode his consciousness out into Veta. In their bedroom, in the quiet before sleeping, he spread out to sense the bustle and weight and depth of the ocean around him, of minds and hearts and thoughts
. When that proved too easy, he did the same exercise at cafes, surrounded by the distraction of people. He would have thought that would stretch him, but instead he found it centering. He could talk with waiters while holding the murmur of the entire city in his head, and instead of becoming disoriented he merely found their unique voice amid the surf and brought it into focus.

  His cousin would have been gratified at this fresh evidence of how well he was settling into this puissance. And perhaps he could admit that he found it satisfying, too; that he could finally be proud of something that he had considered shameful all his life. He could even look at that lifetime of shame from the perspective of a therapist and know the very good reasons the Eldritch had codified the response… because no one knew how to train the use of the esper talents, and without that training the ability was alarming and destructive. Lacking any other tool, the Eldritch had turned to social engineering to prevent themselves from exploring their gifts and perhaps destroying themselves in the process.

  They would have to fix that. Not all their people would be mages, but all of them could benefit from the lessons that would teach them how to keep from sensing one another’s thoughts unbidden. And then… perhaps… they might touch again.

  He should live to see the day. He would live to see it, because when all of this was over, there would be time.

  The day Vasiht’h was to return, Jahir prepared by setting a pot of kerinne on the stove to warm and making festival bread. The effort of kneading, the elastic feel of it under his fingers, and the sour and yeasty smell of it brought him back to their first days together at the university on Seersana. This time, though, he didn’t try to cut the butter into the topping by hand and saved himself a great deal of washing up. He could sense his partner’s approach with an entirely new ease; the mindline had always warned him when Vasiht’h was nigh, but it had always been a vague sense of presence, like the sun gliding behind clouds. It remained thus unless he concentrated on it, and then he could tell where his friend was in space—could have pointed out his location on a map, even. It was comforting, and the knowledge was so deeply integrated into his consciousness that he put the coffee on for himself without having to consult the itinerary to see if the Glaseah was on time.