Jetta looked her over more carefully. The Healer bore marks where the wolf’s teeth had gripped her, but aside from the blow to the head she didn’t appear to be seriously injured.
Jetta considered her options carefully. She couldn’t stay here much longer. From the Lockheads’ map, they held a fairly large territory, and she wasn’t sure what kind of transportation they might have. She hadn’t seen any other domesticated animals, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have other stables or working machinery somewhere else.
And now Jetta couldn’t risk Triel becoming conscious.
“You’re afraid of sharing any kind of feeling with me—unless, of course, I completely force it out of you. I need it, you know—positive psionic, emotional, and physical interactions are part of how my species regenerates after healing.”
Triel’s words circulated inside her head as she resisted the most obvious course of action. She had already done it before, inadvertently, in the intensive care unit. Triel’s dissembling power had stripped her bare and laid her out in a million jigsaw pieces. Impossibly exposed and unprotected, she should have been killed—but when Triel’s mind descended upon her, the terrible something inside her had stopped the Healer from destroying Jetta in one poisonous swipe.
The silent, internal war had started the moment Jetta’s body had prematurely morphed into that of an adult. The feelings she had resented—they were unreasonable, impractical, and certainly unwanted—were suddenly pressing hard and hot against her sternum. But she would not acknowledge them, nor would she assign them a name or description. She swallowed hard, pushing her fist against the bullet wound in her shoulder, letting the pain drown out her conflicted feelings.
There had to be another way. She could not connect with Triel on that level. She could not share herself with anyone like that ever again. She and her siblings had unconsciously done it when they were little, but back then there hadn’t been anything to hide. Everything was different now. She was different now, had become something hideous, something so repulsive she had to hide the septic truth from herself just to keep going.
Bumps rose on her skin. Victor’s voice called to her like it had on Jue Hexron, bidding her to take her place at his side. Together we can overcome our torments. We can take control of the Starways. We can be free.
She recoiled, remembering the reflection in the mirror from her dreams. It wasn’t her—it was always Yahmen, it was always the monster inside her. No, she resolved. Never again. She would never show herself to anyone else—not Jaeia, not even Jahx. No one.
Still, this was her friend, and when Jetta felt the waning pulse in the Healer’s wrist she knew her window of opportunity was rapidly closing. And when she saw the blood still leaking from her own wounds, she knew that she needed Triel just as much as Triel needed her.
The gray-pawed wolf whined softly and nudged her from behind, pushing her closer to Triel. Jetta’s wild friend saw something that she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—and he too sensed the imminent danger.
Jetta leaned heavily on her good arm, suddenly aware of her own exhaustion. The pain of her fresh wounds was sapping the last of her reserves. Without thinking, she rested her head on Triel’s chest.
“Please—I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.
Jetta thought of all the times Triel had healed her, doing so much more than realigning flesh and bone. Triel was interested in her, and when the Healer reached for more than her injuries Jetta just wanted to hide.
Normally eager to deconstruct and analyze what problems came her way, she locked down when it came to the issue of the Healer. She didn’t want to think about the routes their relationship might take, nor could she even begin to fathom what she herself wanted from it. She longed to pull closer to one of the few people she truly cared for, but the thought of actually allowing herself to do so made her cringe. Triel was so beautiful—her long, dark hair; her eyes, bluer than a cloudless winter sky; her lips, full and sweet, parting to reveal just as sweet a smile. Even during their first rocky encounter Jetta had known her feelings for the Healer were somehow different.
But I am a monster, Jetta reminded herself. I do not deserve her friendship.
With a heavy sigh, Jetta found herself at the same impasse she had been revisiting for months. She was frozen inside, the ice wall holding back a flood of emotion she couldn’t access.
“We’thera?” Jetta whispered.
The gray-pawed wolf nudged her again, this time pushing her completely over to sprawl on top of Triel. Her face was only centimeters from the Healer’s. She was going to yell at the wolf, but she found herself unable to take her eyes off Triel, who she could still see traces of beneath the grotesque gray-green of her skin.
Something inside her pleaded with fervency: Let go.
Before she could think twice about it, Jetta’s lips pressed against the Healer’s with a force she couldn’t have stopped if she had wanted to. For the first time in her life she lost herself in the complex simplicity of the moment, reveling in the softness of her lips. Not minding her own psionic distance, Jetta sunk beneath Triel’s skin and into new depths of the Healer’s mind. Awaiting her there was something she hadn’t expected.
By the arrangement of the constellations she was on Algar, but this was Triel’s memory of long ago. It was nighttime in late summer, and a full moon illuminated the thicket of trees. Her hand was in her father’s. His touch was warm and strong as he led her down a path to a hut within the wooded valley. Inside the hut was a crackling fire, and a potent blend of spices steamed from the cauldron hanging in the hearth.
“Triel, you must obey.”
Triel drew closer to her father despite his tone. That seemed to be his choice phrase these days. Something had changed. Her soft-spoken father was suddenly more authoritative, more strict about the rules she had always liked to bend—or break. Now everything mattered, even the most archaic rituals in Prodgy history, and to violate any rule of his house or the tribe meant swift punishment.
“Do as she says, Triel.”
She was no older than seven, her markings just beginning to show on her skin. She did not like this place; the other children whispered of the dangers of entering the witch’s home.
“Bring her closer,” the old woman said. She was sitting in the corner leaning on her cane, wrapped tightly in a black cloak that revealed little of her figure or face. When she looked up, Jetta saw that her eyes were a striking violet and set deep beneath her wrinkled brow. Her expression was stern, as was her voice when she called for Triel again.
“Triel, you must obey,” her father said more sharply, this time pushing her forward.
Her name was Arpethea, and she wasn’t a witch but a Seer, a Prodgy with the ability to perceive the realm of Hetaqua, the mortal world, and that of Cudal, the Otherworld of the Gods. Unlike other Prodgies, who rarely ventured outside their tribes, Seers would take extended trips into the backcountry to isolate themselves and better communicate with the Gods.
Arpethea was rumored to have lived for centuries, and as far as Triel knew, her family had been coming to her for the last three generations. Her grandparents had consulted the Seer when her father first began to show the markings of his people, and as they famously claimed, everything Arpethea had predicted about his life had come true: his early ascension to chieftain, his blessings of many children, and his global acclaim as a Healer.
Now it was Triel’s turn. Her parents had been arguing when they thought Triel wasn’t listening for weeks after her first markings appeared, and on the way to the hut the fear was plain in her father’s eyes. They had not reacted this way when her older siblings gained their markings. Something was different about her. But then again, it had always been that way.
From a very young age Triel had known that she was not like other Prodgy children. Her abilities were no greater or stranger than her peers or elders, but her psionic source was. She drew her powers from somewhere intangible and inexplicable to her teachers, som
ewhere beyond her physical body, and it frightened everyone around her. Some tribesmen refused to heal with her, whispering that her unknown energy source could indicate the instability that predisposed a Prodgy to Fall. A few postulated that her unusual healing style was divinely inspired, a sign she was the next Great Mother. All she knew was that people stared at her in the streets and walked a little faster when she approached.
“Let me see your hands, child,” Arpethea said.
“Do as she says,” her father ordered.
Unexpected embarrassment reddened her cheeks as she presented her hands to the Seer. Arpethea took them without hesitation, her lips moving silently while she traced Triel’s markings from her palms to the backs of her hands and up her arms.
Arpethea pursed her lips and sat back, gazing at Triel for a long moment before speaking. She did not look at Triel anymore, only at her father. “Your daughter will go against you one day. Her heart will not rest here.”
Her heart will not rest here. From the look on Triel’s father’s face, Jetta inferred that it was the worst news possible, but only when the rest of the memory, and Triel’s thoughts, unfolded did she understand why: Prodgies believed in the unity of Algar, that every being was part of the great living rhythm of the world. To turn against her people, to abandon her world, meant that she was an aberration—an anathema—and the rumors of her propensity to become a Dissembler could be true.
Her father’s face turned to stone, and he commanded her to wait outside as he consulted the Seer in private. Triel’s fear was as fresh inside Jetta as if it were her own, gnawing at her belly and pounding at her chest. Should she run away or stay and face her father’s shame? Was she doomed not only to Fall, but to poison the rest of her tribe? She would be hunted and slain if the others found out. No one would protect her then—not even her family.
As Jetta’s mind and body churned with the Healer’s conflicted emotions, she realized her friend’s worst fear. She reached through the memory, past the frightened little girl and into the core of raw emotion bubbling beneath the surface. Isolated behind a pulse of electric fire was her friend’s familiar rhythm. Anger, pain, and loneliness saturated every fiber of her being, but Jetta pushed through, knowing what she had to do to save her life.
(Triel—can you hear me?) she shouted. Triel’s silhouette appeared in the distance only to dissolve under Jetta’s gaze and re-form into something inhuman and disfigured, fluctuating as she pressed closer.
(Do you know why I come to visit you all the time?) Jetta yelled over the raging torrents of psionic energy. Triel was unraveling, and it wouldn’t be long before she became unrecognizable.
Jetta stifled the fear that made her belly hot and her voice unreliable. It was now or never. She had to tell her.
(Don’t you know?) she screamed, suddenly angry. (You can’t tell me you don’t! All the times I visited you—all the times I brought you the things you liked or needed—you couldn’t have thought that was coincidence?!)
Triel’s voice came at her from all sides. It was guttural, rasping, full of menace. (You’ve always turned away from me.)
Jetta’s voice rose without her even realizing it. (I’ve never turned away! I’m just—)
And there it was. The truth. One she had shied away from for as long as she could remember having these feelings.
Outside psionic limbo Jetta felt herself dig at her injured shoulder, trying to quell her emotional pain with the physical.
Jetta shrank into herself but did not stop. (Even when we first met, under terrible circumstances, I still knew; there was just something about you. On some level I knew you were okay, that I could trust you. I can still trust you—and I don’t trust many people. You may have been different from the other Prodgies, but it’s not because you’re poisoned or any gorsh-shit like that. There’s something special about you. You’re more than just a Healer, and you’re more than just my friend. I—I...)
The world around her shuddered and groaned like an old building about to collapse. The gray specter had rematerialized centimeters from her face, its cold, slippery presence creeping under her skin.
Jetta closed her eyes and let go.
(I love you.)
The gray thing seized her, cutting through her like the sharpest blade. She screamed at pain’s embrace, forgetting herself—
“Jetta...”
Jetta opened her eyes. She felt her chest, expecting to find it carved open, but found only the bullet wound in her shoulder. The pain was gone, in its place a curious serenity.
She looked at the woman caught up in her arms. Two blue eyes shone back her, and a gentle smile that conveyed great thanks. Her skin was a healthy pink, and the lump on her head had resolved into a bruise. The Healer ran her fingers along Jetta’s cheek. “Thank you.”
Jetta had longed for this moment, but found herself quickly falling back into old habits. “Come on,” she said, offering her hand, “we need to keep moving. It’s not safe here.”
Triel’s brow knitted in confusion. “Please, Jetta—don’t—”
The gray-pawed wolf whined, and Jetta snapped her head back in the direction of their escape. The distinctive stink of the Lockheads and their sickness bore down on their trail. “No time—let’s go.”
Jetta helped Triel up as best she could onto the white-necked wolf before mounting the other. “We need to reach the safety of the mountains before sunrise. Can you ride?”
Triel stared at her in bewilderment and didn’t answer. After an uncomfortable moment she gave her wolf the back of her heel, and the two sprinted off toward the mountains. Jetta followed, grateful that the pain of her physical injuries was severe enough to let her ignore what she had just done.
NAGOOR WAS STRANGE to Damon Unipoesa. The ice, snow, and tundra that covered the frozen planet was unforgiving in its primitive beauty. Mountains like broken teeth scored the land to the south, and what water remained liquid in the silver lakes to the north sparkled in the pale sunlight. Most of its blue-skinned inhabitants were shy and soft-spoken, unlike his friend Pancar, and seemed to prefer roaming the inhospitable land rather than the comfortable confines of the military base.
“You’re the only human-like I’ve met that seems to enjoy our climate,” Pancar said, coming up from the dugout shelter.
Unipoesa scanned the horizon, his eye catching the V of migrating birds to the east. He followed them for a while, listening to their whistling calls as they traversed the cloudless sky.
“I studied environmental sciences as an undergrad. This reminds me of the place on Old Earth that used to be called Alaska.”
Pancar joined him at the railing on the deck but did not look him in the eye. He watched his men loading a hovercar full of weapons and supplies as one of the ground teams went through their daily calisthenics. It seemed like eternity passed between them before the Nagoorian finally spoke.
“The results came back, Damon. I thought you’d want to know.”
For some reason this made him look at his hands. His eyes followed the creases and folds, and he wondered to himself how he had gotten so old.
Damon followed Pancar down into one of the private offices in the shelter, and his friend told him the results of the lab tests. He expected some kind of reaction from himself, as did Pancar, but none came. Either it was too soon to know how he was going to feel, or a part of him had known all along.
“I have to go back,” Unipoesa said, looking his friend dead in the eye. “I’m no good here. I need to get back at the helm.”
“My friend, that isn’t an option. The Alliance is finished. Whatever Victor has done to the defense network looks irreparable; the remainder of the Fleet are sitting ducks. It’s best to regroup the remaining systems and start a new rebellion.”
“There isn’t time for that. We need to act now,” Damon said, searching the top of Pancar’s desk for something he couldn’t name.
Pancar kept his cool and folded his hands behind his back.
“I k
now what Li is capable of,” Unipoesa said, rubbing his unshaven face with tired hands.
It was the first time Damon had seen Pancar visibly upset. “Rescuing you was not easy, Damon. Please don’t throw away what Jaeia and I have done.”
“I’m not,” Damon said, resting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’m going to set things straight. It will require more than military tactics to bring him down. It will take someone who knows his blood and his upbringing.”
It took everything he had to argue the point to his friend, and in the end Pancar never conceded. But he and Damon had been friends a long time, and when he boarded the Alliance ship Pancar had reassembled from an old wreck, his blue-skinned friend knew that nothing would stop him.
“I wish I could talk some sense into you, Damon,” Pancar said as Unipoesa climbed into the cockpit. “Leaving now will only dissolve our last chance to fight Li and Victor.”
The sun was at its zenith, but the air still carried a frosty bite. Unipoesa pulled his jacket tighter against his body. “I’ve always respected you, Pancar, and I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me. You’ve saved my life, and countless others, many times over. I owe you more than I’ll ever be able to repay. But I promise you that I know what I’m doing.”
“So does Li,” Pancar said, but it was too late. Damon had already closed the hatch and fired up the engines.
His head was still reeling with the news and the fight with Pancar as he shot out of the planet’s atmosphere and prepared to jump. They had disagreed about matters before, but Pancar never displayed such ferocity in his arguments. Unipoesa’s plan was mad—how could he reason with Li? The young commander had been bred to be the jackal he was, and negotiations and treaties were impossible with someone like him.
Because I made him that way.
Unipoesa sighed heavily and looked again at his hands.
Tarsha. Li.
Triorion Omnibus Page 104
