by Lauren Esker
"Oh, shut up," the Legata said. She looked like she had a headache. "On top of that, there appears to be another complication. Do any of you know someone named Lyr?"
Skara stiffened. "Is he here?"
"He is in orbit around this planet, claiming to be a dragon prince of the Well of Stars," the Legata said flatly. "He claims, I understand, that if we don't release his bond-brother, his people will declare war on us."
Skara started laughing.
"This situation is not funny!" the Legata snapped.
"Oh, yes it is," Skara murmured. He wiped his eyes and took a deep breath. "Yes, that's my fr—er—my adopted brother Lyr, who apparently followed me. And yes, he is a dragon prince, and yes, he will call down the wrath of his people on your planet if you don't let us go."
Claudia glanced at Skara, trying to get a read on his face. Something about the way he said it ... she didn't think he was telling the truth.
"Do you feel like fighting a dragon army?" Skara went on. "You know just one dragon can wipe out an entire Galatean fleet all by themselves? You have any idea what a couple hundred of them can do?"
"Well, at the moment, there is only one. And we have a hostage," the Legata retorted. She folded her arms and regarded them through the forcefield. "So it appears that what we have is a standoff."
"You know, the easiest thing would be to just let us go," Skara said.
"You stole from us twice."
"And in the process, pointed out significant flaws in your security. I'm doing you a favor, honestly."
The Legata looked like she might be one more stray comment from ordering her guards to open fire. Okay, Claudia thought, whatever else he's good at, Skara is not cut out to be a diplomat. She cast wildly around for some line of argument that might help.
"What about my DNA?" she asked. "Birthworld, unmodified and pure."
"We've already got that," the Legata said, a bit smugly.
Crap. Right. That was a one-time-only sale.
"Well, what if we helped you as security consultants?" she suggested. "You're already hiring some of Skara's people, right? Couldn't we help with that?"
"She's right," Ilyx said quickly. "Hell, we'd gladly help with that. For the right price, of course."
"I was thinking free," Claudia said. "To make up for the theft thing."
"Free?" Ilyx said in horror.
The Legata grimaced. "I can't believe I'm seriously considering this, but I am beginning to think turning you loose might be the best solution, under the condition that you never set foot in this system again under pain of death."
"Just think about never having to deal with us again," Skara said hopefully.
"I am thinking about it, believe me. At least for you two." She turned her cool gaze on Ilyx and Kriff. "You, on the other hand—"
"All of us," Claudia said quickly. "We're together. If we leave, they leave too."
It just burst out of her. She was aware of both bounty hunters looking at her in surprise. But, damn it, Ilyx had helped them. If not for her, they wouldn't have been able to get a symbiont for Skara. Indirectly, he owed Ilyx his life.
"You sure about that?" Skara muttered. She nudged him.
"To be clear," the Legata said, "this is a one-time offer. If you return to this system, you will be shot, riders or no riders."
"We'll take it!" Skara exclaimed. His arm around Claudia tightened, his body warm against hers.
Twenty-Four
By the time they were portaled back up to the ship with their hands cuffed, Skara was starting to feel the first crawling twitchiness of drug withdrawal. They came out on the docks near the bounty hunters' ship, but just a few berths down was the most beautiful sight he could possibly imagine: the Discordia, in all its colorful glory..
Home sweet home.
And in front of it, surrounded by guards ...
"What in the twenty lost colonies of Murre are you doing here?" Skara demanded. He barely gave the Rhuadhi guards a chance to get the cuffs off him before he was marching toward Lyr.
"Rescuing you," Lyr said, raising an eyebrow.
"We don't need your help!" Skara snapped.
"Actually, we kind of did," Claudia pointed out as she caught up. "Thank you."
"Stop thanking him for interfering in my life."
"Don't you mean saving your life?" Lyr retorted.
"We were doing fine without you."
"We were in prison," Claudia said.
Lyr started to say something, then looked past him and frowned. "Oh, them. Why aren't they locked up?"
Ilyx and Kriff had trailed them over. "Oh," Skara said. "Right. We're sort of on the same side now. Kind of. The sort of business acquaintances who might work with you one day and stab you in the back some other day if they're paid well enough for it."
"In this business, you end up with a lot of those," Kriff said, not looking offended. "So, hey. We can't seem to use our ship's controls. What'd you do?"
"Oh, right. It's locked to my handprint," Skara said. "Which I guess means I need to go let you in."
"Not necessarily." Ilyx held up her hand and wiggled the fingers.
It took Skara a moment to figure out what she meant. He really wasn't used to being around other shapeshifters. He held up his hand, Ilyx placed hers against it, and there was a slow, strange crawling feeling on his skin as she adapted the curves and whorls of her hand to match his. When she lowered it, that hand was noticeably larger than her other one.
"You guys are so weird," Kriff said. He shook his head. "Hey, call us if you guys ever want to go in on a job. You get things done, which is more than I can say for some people I've worked with in the past."
He turned to return to their ship, but Ilyx hesitated, flexing her newly altered hand. "You guys got us out," she said, not looking at them. "You didn't have to."
"It was mostly Claudia," Skara said.
"Still ... Listen." She looked up, meeting his eyes. It was still deeply strange looking into another face so like his own. "When we get back to our ship, I'll send you a message. It's an address and a code. It'll let you know how to find the settlement where I grew up, if you want to." She smiled lopsidedly. "It's a small town on a Galatean-run planet. Nobody knows we're shapeshifters there. We just live quietly in secret, out in the country. At least ... most of us do. I guess you could say I wanted a more exciting life."
Skara's breath caught in his throat. More of his people. He hadn't even really had a chance to process that there were more of them here in the Rhuad system, and now ...
An entire village. Of people like him.
"The information will be there if you want it," Ilyx went on. "Up to you what you do with it." She lifted her hand in a small wave before she turned and followed her partner.
"Ilyx, wait." He took a few quick steps after her.
She turned to look back, face set in her usual scowl.
And Skara hesitated, because an entire lifetime of questions rose up and choked him. There was just too much. He wanted to know everything, and suddenly there was no time.
An entire village of my people.
What are they like? What are their customs? What language do they speak? Who are they? Who am I?
Who could I have been, if I'd grown up there?
"You got a question or what?" Ilyx wanted to know, tapping her fingers impatiently against her hip.
"This village, is it ..." Too many questions. He wanted to know everything all at once. And he was desperately afraid of the answers. Is it a nice place to live? No, he didn't want to ask that. Didn't want to end up comparing himself to the self he might have been, if he'd grown up with the family he'd been born with. "Can you tell me ... just one thing about it? About my people? Whatever you want to tell me. Any little detail. I don't know anything about my people at all."
Ilyx stared at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised. Then she said, "It's by the sea, my village. You can smell the salt. Every spring, there's a festival to celebrate the fish returning.
We'd have a big fish fry on the beach. There's a big bonfire and everyone dances, all kinds of traditional dances." She smiled a little. "I hated it. I hated the smell of fish and the salt in my hair all the time. Now I kinda miss it. That what you wanted to know?"
"It is," he said. It came out on a breath. He hadn't had anything, and now suddenly he had that: a tiny piece of his heritage, a mental image of purple-skinned people on a beach, dancing around a fire. People who looked like him. A whole village of people like him.
"Hey!" Kriff called down the docks. "Ilyx! You comin'?"
"If you go there, tell them I said hi," Ilyx said to Skara, her voice unusually gentle, and then she strode swiftly away.
"I will," he said to her back.
No goodbyes. She was very like him that way.
After a moment, he turned and headed back to the others. Lyr gave him a puzzled look when he rejoined them. "You trust them?"
"Not really," Skara said, looking after her. His hand tingled where her skin had touched his. A whole village of my people. Festivals on the beach. A culture. A heritage.
What a strange thought.
"Guys," Claudia muttered, glancing at the guards. "Can we just ... finish this reunion on the ship? Please?"
They went into the Discordia's cargo bay, where Skara discovered that Lyr hadn't come alone; Kite was just inside the airlock door, quietly covering them with her cuffs, wings mantled above her shoulders. A neat little pile of their confiscated belongings were also there. The door clanged shut behind them, and the tight feeling between his shoulder blades abated somewhat.
"No 'hi, Kite?'" the winged girl asked. "Thanks for rescuing us, Kite?"
"I'm mainly wondering how you found us."
"Educated guess," Lyr said, his voice dry.
"Oh, no," Claudia moaned, covering her face with her hands. "I gave it away. I knew I did."
Skara turned a withering glare on his foster-brother. "You read her mind?"
"I did not!" Lyr protested, a half-dozen subtle shades of anxious guilt flickering across his face. "I knew she was anxious about you; she was thinking it very loudly. Other than that, from what she had told Kite about your problem with the symbiont, we figured out on our own that you had to have come here."
"And you waited all of, what, an hour before running off to give us help we didn't ask for or need? I never should've given you access codes to my ship—"
"Skara, come on, they did help," Claudia protested. "Don't be mad at them for it."
Kite patted Skara on the arm. "I know you hate it when people worry about you, but we do anyway. Were the Rhuadhi able to help you?"
"Ask the dragon," Skara muttered. "Apparently he knows everything." He turned and headed up to the main levels of the ship, aware of Claudia at his back, and the others following.
"I know you're angry, and I'm sorry," Lyr said as they came out into the main corridor. "It was not my intention to pry."
"And yet, here you are."
"Stop taking it out on Lyr," Kite snapped. "Coming here was a group decision, because we care about you and worry about you, idiot." She punctuated this by punching him in the arm. "We wouldn't have had to sneak out after you if you'd just ask for help once in a while."
"Maybe we should have," Claudia said, slipping her hand into his. "I bet a telepathic dragon would've been pretty useful on this heist, actually."
"Heist?" Lyr said.
"And now you see why I didn't ask him."
Lyr's silver eyes narrowed. "Did you steal another symbiont?"
"No!" Skara protested. "Well! Sort of. Apparently you can't steal them. They choose people. And one chose me."
He hadn't really had time to process it yet. He had it back. He could go anywhere. Do anything. He was free.
Stepping onto the bridge of his own ship, with Claudia's hand still tucked into his, the full awareness of that freedom settled over him, and even his growing headache couldn't abate it. He'd done it. He'd stolen a symbiont from the galaxy's most reclusive planet, not once but twice. And he found more of his people.
He laughed out loud, and then stumbled into Claudia as a sharp spasm of pain caught him off guard.
"Skara?" she murmured, catching him.
"You know what?" Skara said to Lyr, keeping his voice casual. The dragon was watching him with a wary "I know you're up to something" sort of look. "Since you flew us here, you can take us out of dock. I don't see why I should exert myself when you're so determined to be helpful."
Kite frowned at him. "You look unwell. I thought they had helped you."
"I think he's in withdrawals from all the drugs he took—" Claudia began.
"Thanks! I wasn't going to tell them that!"
"Drugs?" Lyr said.
"Stimulants. Just ... get us out of here." He was starting to shiver. He really needed to get to the medbay before he crashed hard. "Someone tell me if there are any problems," he added, and strode out, chin up, back straight, not letting himself slump until he reached the medbay.
Then of course Claudia came in right after him.
Oddly, he didn't mind as much as he would have with someone else. It was ... relaxing, having someone around who you didn't always have to be strong for.
Still, he gave it a try. "I'm going to be a shivering, sweating mess for the next day or two. You don't have to see this."
"I don't mind," she said gently, stroking his arm. "If you don't mind having me here."
Saying I want you here was ... too much. The deck shuddered under them, and he tried one last time, halfheartedly. "You're going to miss seeing us leave Rhuad."
"I saw it when we came in. I'll have other chances to see alien planets." She smiled and sat on the medbed, swinging her feet, while he dug through the cabinets looking for what he needed. "Can I help?"
"I've got it." His hands were shaking, his vision blurring in and out ... "Actually, could you put some clean sheets on that bed? They're in the storage drawers underneath."
"Sure." She hopped down and got to work.
*Everything okay in there?* Lyr's voice, more tentative and uncertain through the telepathic connection than he seemed to be capable of sounding out loud.
*Fine. I just want to be left alone for awhile.* He hesitated, then, *Claudia is with me.*
*I know,* Lyr said. A pause. *We got a message from the bounty hunters' ship. A set of coordinates. I've saved it.*
His people. An entire village of his people. *Thank you.*
*Be well, brother,* Lyr said, and broke the connection.
"You okay?" Claudia said. "You zoned out for a minute there."
"Talking to Lyr. Sorry."
"My life," she murmured, shaking out the sheets. "Okay, lie down."
He gave himself a vitamin shot and an antagonist for the drugs, and then he did. Claudia curled up beside him, and Skara dimmed the lights.
"Should probably move back to my quarters soon," he murmured.
"How long will this take?"
"Couple of days? I probably won't be that sick. Just out of it. I'll sleep through most of it. It'll be boring."
"I'm not bored," she murmured, and turned her face into his neck.
Not alone. Some part of him couldn't quite believe it, and another part of him just wanted to hold on forever.
This trip wouldn't last forever. Couldn't last forever. They would have to make decisions about their future. She would probably want to leave. Go back to her planet. He couldn't blame her.
If he asked her to stay ... would she?
He could only poke around the edges of that idea. It was too much. Too huge.
Claudia gave a sudden laugh.
"What?"
"I just remembered that my suitcase and all the clothes I brought with me, except what I'm wearing, are over there on the bounty hunters' ship. I really should've listened to you and just left it on the Discordia."
"Sorry," he murmured. "I'll buy you more."
"Gonna hold you to that, buddy."
It go
t quiet again. Beneath them, the engines thrummed through the ship in a comforting lullaby, the song of freedom.
And inside him, the symbiont filled the emptiness. No one could ever trap him again.
"Hey ... Skara," Claudia murmured, and he cracked open one eye. "Was Lyr really going to send a dragon army against the Rhuadhi if they didn't let us go?"
Skara laughed quietly. "No. He can't. He's an exile. He doesn't have a dragon army because his people want nothing to do with him."
"He was bluffing?"
"Yep," Skara said with some satisfaction. "Lying through his teeth, 'honor' and all. I'm going to be holding that over his head for years. He's been spending way too much time around me." In fact, why not start now? There was always telepathy, after all ...
Claudia laughed. "Why don't you go to sleep. You can torment Lyr in the morning."
She did have a point. There was time. More time than he ever thought he'd have.
He held onto her, and sank into sleep.
Twenty-Five
Claudia woke lazily, wrapped around Skara. Soft fur tickled her nose, and she opened her eyes to sunlight streaming across the bed.
For a moment she was completely and utterly disoriented. This wasn't the Discordia ...
No. They were back on Haven.
They'd gotten in late last night, local time. The trip had taken a couple of days, with time to let the jump drive recharge. Skara had slept through most of it, as he'd said, and he was asleep now. She sat up, brushed her hand across his cheek, and got out of bed.
It was a strange echo of when she'd last been on Haven, just a few days ago: waking up in a strange hut, furnished in crude wooden furniture and colorful wall hangings. But this time, she was a guest, not a prisoner. There was a set of clean clothes folded on a chair at the end of the bed. She dressed and smoothed down her hair; the green dye was fading, but she knew from the mirrors on the ship that it still looked odd, like her hair was growing moss.
Well ... she was in a refugee village on an alien planet. It wasn't like they were going to expect her to look like she just walked out of a beauty salon. She lightly brushed a hand over Skara's cheek—he barely stirred—and smoothed down her colorful, borrowed skirt, and opened the door.
