Catalyst

by Fletcher DeLancey

  She glanced at Lhyn, who was gazing at the open doorway with a slight frown. So she wasn’t the only one who thought this was out of character. Salomen’s expression indicated concern and bafflement, and nearby, Lanaril merely looked troubled.

  But not confused.

  Yet Salomen was the one who had full access to Andira’s emotions, so what could Lanaril know that she didn’t?

  It hit her like a shuttle then, and she was out of her seat instantly. Stupid, stupid, what had she been thinking? She should have known.

  “I’m a little tired myself,” she told the group. “Must have been all that sunlight—we don’t get much of that in space. I think I’ll head out as well. Good night.”

  Colonel Micah smiled at her and took up the conversation, effortlessly redirecting the others as Ekatya made her way to the door. She didn’t think for a minute that he was unaware, but he was smooth enough to cover for her. Or, more likely, to cover for Andira.

  She escaped onto the deck and was enveloped in warm, perfumed darkness. The owners of the resort prized their night sky and had minimized lights, setting up a system in which tiny, hooded ground lights along each path were activated only when a person set foot on it. Andira’s route was obvious since it was the only one lit, and Ekatya could just make her out, walking briskly toward the Bonding Bower.

  She set off in pursuit, but Andira was moving fast. By the time Ekatya reached the trunk of the giant delwyn tree, her friend was already on the deck.

  The wooden steps winding around the trunk also conserved light, with three steps lit at a time. The next step lit up as her foot left the last one, creating a moving unit of light that led her upward.

  When she emerged onto the deck, Andira was coming out of the cabin with a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other. She did not say a word as she crossed to the table, sat down, and poured grain spirits into the glasses.

  Taking the silent invitation, Ekatya sat perpendicular to her. Andira nudged over one glass, picked up her own, and tossed it back in one swallow. Ekatya followed suit, humming as the familiar burn worked its way down her throat. It had been nearly two years since she had tasted Alsean grain spirits, but that particular flame was memorable.

  She refilled their glasses and watched Andira stare at Pica Mahal, its brooding mass interrupting the silver moon path that Eusaltin made on the water. At the moment, she thought, Andira and that volcano had a few things in common.

  “You are nothing like him,” she said.

  Andira shook her head. “I am exactly like him.” She drank off half the glass and resumed her contemplation of the volcano.

  “I wouldn’t be here if that were true.”

  “Then tell me how we differ!” Fury flared in her eyes when she turned. “I would have used your tyree bond to force you to do what I wanted. He used it for the same thing.”

  “Not the same thing at all. Your whole world depended on you, and how many options did you have? Sholokhov’s little game—the only thing at stake was his ego. He had so many options, an entire spy organization at his fingertips, hundreds of people who would have been better at that job than I was. It wasn’t a last resort for him. It was a power play to prove his superiority.”

  “Ah, so it’s all a matter of degree.”

  She ignored the sarcasm. “Of course it’s a matter of degree. Your legal system is a matter of degrees; so is mine. Commit this act and you pay a fine; commit that related act and you go to prison. Societies are built on those slopes.”

  Andira raised her glass in a mocking salute and drained it, but Ekatya noted that she wasn’t refuting the point.

  “It’s also a matter of intent,” she said. “Sholokhov took pleasure in using Lhyn as an axe over my neck. He didn’t even know she’s my tyree; he thought she was just a lover. If I hadn’t had Lhyn, he probably would have dug up something on my grandparents and used that, and he would have enjoyed it just as much. Did you enjoy it?” She put a hand on top of the bottle as Andira reached for it. “Because it looks like you still feel so guilty that you walked out on the family party you’ve waited half your life for. How drunk do you plan to get?”

  Andira pulled the bottle out from beneath her hand. “Drunk enough to not feel anything when Salomen turns me away tonight.”

  “You still haven’t told her.”

  “No. But I’ll have to now, because she’ll want to know why I’m feeling this way. She would have followed me out if you hadn’t. Fahla, what a day.” She set the bottle down and picked up her glass. “I also had to tell her about my first tyree bond today. Might as well get all the secrets out at once, eh? By the way, thank you for that bad advice about waiting to tell her.”

  “What? I didn’t tell you to wait until after your damned bonding ceremony!”

  “Perhaps you should have been a little more specific, then.”

  “Stop,” Ekatya said sharply. “I know you don’t mean that.”

  Andira went still, then closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

  She didn’t seem inclined to say anything more, so Ekatya tried to lighten the mood. “You’re not Sholokhov. With a single exception, I never followed that asshead out of a room by choice.”

  That got a faint reaction. “I would, but only to teach him a lesson.”

  “I’d pay to watch it.” She spent a moment fantasizing.

  “I can feel that, you know.”

  “I’m well aware. It’s not as if I couldn’t dump him on his flat ass myself, but it would be so much better coming from a woman he’s convinced is barbaric.”

  “Wouldn’t that reinforce his belief?”

  “Yes, but he loves being proved right. So it would be satisfaction all the way around.”

  Andira’s expression relaxed, a hint of a smile playing about her mouth. “Thank you for that.”

  “Making you feel better? That’s what a friend does. Especially after I made you feel bad in the first place.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” She looked back to the volcano.

  “I rather think it was. I got caught up in the story and forgot the implications.” After a pause, Ekatya added, “Lhyn has a story that ties into this. It’s not a good one.”

  “Is that why Lanaril keeps looking at her like she wants to give her a warmron?”

  Ekatya nodded. “Speaking of that…I noticed that she knew why you left, even though Salomen didn’t.”

  “She knows.” Andira sipped her drink.

  “I’m glad you’ve had someone else to talk to.”

  The silence that followed felt…off, somehow, and Ekatya’s senses sharpened. She watched Andira, so focused on a volcano that could barely be seen, and that niggle at the back of her mind raced to the front and blew itself into full, bright color.

  “Stars and Shippers,” she whispered. “She was the one.”

  She knew that Andira had delegated the job of empathically forcing Lhyn but had never really thought about who the task had fallen to. Some faceless high empath, a warrior involved in the war effort.

  But of course it would have been Lanaril.

  “That first Sharing,” she said. “In the temple. It was going to be then.”

  Andira nodded jerkily, refusing to turn her head.

  “Oh, that fucking—” She shoved her chair back, walked to the rail, and leaned over it to catch her breath. The canopy of trees beneath her rustled slightly in the breeze, a soothing sound that only served to highlight the tension in her body.

  Lanaril had always been there. Lhyn’s first real friend on Alsea, the one she had kept in touch with while they were gone. The one she couldn’t wait to see when they landed again.

  The one she trusted.

  The more she thought about it, the more Ekatya realized that some part of her had known. No matter how much Lhyn wanted them to be friends, she had
always been wary of that woman. Now she knew why.

  She was so upset over this revelation that it took several minutes to realize how Andira must be reading her reaction.

  “Shek,” she said softly. Then she tilted her head back, took a deep breath, and turned around. “I don’t know how to explain to you that it’s different, but it is.”

  Andira held up her glass. “Well, if you can’t explain it, I certainly cannot.” She emptied the glass, slammed it on the table, and rose from her chair. “Go back to your cabin, Ekatya. I have a hard conversation coming up, and you shouldn’t be here for it.”

  Voices rang out in the clearing, and Ekatya looked down to see Salomen stepping off the main cabin’s deck. The path to the Bonding Bower lit up as she walked toward them.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not leaving. I can’t trust you to not make yourself look as bad as possible.”

  “This is between my bondmate and me.”

  “No, it’s not! But do you know who should be here? Lanaril. That’s why it’s different. Because you told me the truth, right from the beginning, and she never has.”

  Andira watched Salomen’s approach. “When would she have done that?” she asked in a weary tone. “When you and Lhyn had midmeal with her? During any of the quantum com calls that you never had? She has been Lhyn’s friend, not yours.”

  “And that’s not likely to change now.”

  “Has it occurred to you that perhaps that’s the reason she’s not your friend?”

  Actually…no, it had not. But then why was she Lhyn’s friend?

  Salomen reached the tree and began climbing the steps at a rapid clip. No words were spoken on the deck until she stepped onto it, her worried gaze moving across both of them.

  “I thought you were resolving whatever this was,” she said. “But it suddenly became much worse. I cannot stay down there when you’re feeling like this.” She glanced at the table and then lifted the bottle. “Good Fahla. This was full when we left. What happened?”

  Andira looked at Ekatya, who crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the rail. “I’m staying.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “Well, I do,” Salomen said. “Both of you sit down. Now.”

  It wasn’t until Ekatya was in the chair that she realized she had responded to that order as if it had come from an admiral. She looked at Salomen with new respect.

  Salomen waited until they were both settled before taking her own chair and fixing Ekatya with a questioning look. “Something about your story upset Andira, and you knew what it was.”

  Startled to be the first one asked, Ekatya said, “She thought—mistakenly, may I add—that Sholokhov’s threat against Lhyn was similar to what she did before the Battle of Alsea.”

  “You threatened Lhyn?” Salomen looked at Andira in surprise. “You were going to tell me about this. You mentioned it in the transport—something you did to make sure Ekatya stayed to help in the battle.”

  Andira closed her eyes. “Ekatya. Please leave.”

  There was a desperation in her tone that made Ekatya more determined than ever to stay.

  “I think I need to tell this story,” she said. “Here’s the simple version: Andira asked for my help in the battle, but I had orders to destroy my ship to keep it out of Voloth hands and then abandon Alsea to the Voloth. And I was going to do it.”

  Salomen sat in stunned silence. Ekatya could hardly look at her.

  “Those orders were terrible and I tried everything I could to avoid them, but the weight of Protectorate politics was too much. Nothing I said, nothing Lhyn said changed their minds. We convinced Fleet, but not the Assembly—not the people in charge of treaties. They were prepared to sell Alsea to the Voloth in exchange for an agreement on borders between our two territories, as well as five other civilizations that were in danger of being enslaved or destroyed. When Lhyn realized that I planned to obey my orders and she couldn’t talk me out of it, she…left me.”

  She poured a new drink, needing the delay. It heated a pleasant path to her stomach and fortified her for the rest of the story.

  “I only saw her once over the next three days, and it ended with a big fight. The next time I saw her, I was leaving with my crew and she refused to go. I had to leave her behind, on a planet I was abandoning to war and slavery.” She gave a short, unamused laugh. “I didn’t get very far. Right before giving the final order to destroy my ship, I came to my senses and cancelled the ship’s self-destruct. Then I found out that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Andira had used empathic force on Commander Kameha and he had disabled the self-destruct. It was never going to work.”

  Salomen looked at Andira with wide eyes. “I had no idea.”

  “It gets better,” Andira muttered.

  “Then we learned that our shuttle wouldn’t even make it to orbit. It was the nanoscrubbers, but none of us knew it then. I thought Andira had set me up in that, too. And when we landed in Blacksun, she informed me that she had warrants for using empathic force on my entire crew. Which in my mind explained why Lhyn had left me. That’s why we fought that challenge.”

  “Because you empathically forced Lhyn?” Salomen asked slowly. “To leave her tyree?”

  “No,” Ekatya said before Andira could respond. She could hear the horror in Salomen’s voice and just knew Andira would make it worse. “She didn’t force her. Lhyn really did leave me. She knew I was doing the wrong thing, that giving up Alsea was a catastrophe that could not be allowed, and she was willing to die for her beliefs. She hoped that if she stayed, I would too.”

  “Of course you would. She’s your tyree; there was never a chance you would abandon her to the Voloth.”

  “I didn’t know that. Neither did Lhyn. And I really did try to leave. I just changed my mind partway through.”

  “You didn’t change your mind,” Salomen said with certainty. “It simply took you that long to understand yourself.” She frowned. “This does fill in some holes about what happened then, but not about what’s happening now.”

  “I didn’t know Lhyn would stay,” Andira said. “But I needed her to. She was the leverage I had to keep Ekatya here and make her willingly fight for us. So I procured a warrant, and I planned to do exactly what you thought a moment ago: empathically force her to leave her tyree.”

  “Great Mother of us all.” Salomen slumped back in her chair with a shocked expression.

  “And you know what kind of force that would have taken,” Andira finished bitterly. She poured one more drink, tossed it down her throat, and shoved her chair back. “Go ahead and talk all night if you wish, but I’m done.” She stalked into the cabin and slid the glass door shut behind her.

  Salomen stared after her, then back at Ekatya. “And you knew this.”

  “Yes. We, er, talked about it during our fight.”

  “Then how—?” Salomen shook her head and sat forward with her hands on the table. “Do you understand the implications of what she was planning to do?”

  “I think so. It may have been legal, but it would have meant taking away Lhyn’s consent and her will. I know it tore Andira apart, and she still feels guilty now, even though she didn’t do it. I know she believed she would never Return if she went through with it—that Fahla would not accept her.”

  Salomen inhaled sharply. “How do the three of you have such a bond with that between you?”

  “Lhyn doesn’t know. She can never know. I need your promise that you won’t tell her.”

  “Do you not think—”

  “No, I don’t!” Ekatya leaned over the table. “She needs to feel safe here. I won’t allow anything to ruin that for her.”

  Salomen had drawn back slightly, but now a small smile touched her lips. “Indeed you are tyree. You could power half of Blacksun with that much emotional strength.”

 
“Good to know, but I haven’t heard a promise.” She was beginning to worry.

  “I promise. I’m not fond of secrets, but I do understand why this one should stay buried.”

  Reassured, Ekatya slouched back in her chair. “Thank you.”

  “But I’m still astonished at your bond. Andira should have been the last person you would befriend.”

  “I did try to kill her first,” she said with a shrug.

  After a startled pause, Salomen smiled and shook her head. “And that’s how I know you for a warrior, even though you have no castes.” She sobered. “Please tell me one thing. Lhyn doesn’t know, so she cannot forgive, but have you forgiven Andira?”

  “I don’t need to. She didn’t do it.”

  “That was not my question.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, but I would if she needed it.”

  “And if she had done it?”

  “I’d still forgive her.”

  “That was a very quick answer.” Salomen did not look convinced.

  “Not when you consider how much time I’ve had to think about it. Yes, it’s easier to forgive what never happened, but I know her. I know what it would have done to her. I’ve thought about what I would do in a similar situation. How dirty would I get my own hands if it meant saving my world?” Ekatya hesitated, realizing that she had never said this out loud. “The closest thing we have to that kind of empathic force is rape. So I’ve—”

  “That kind of empathic force is rape,” Salomen interrupted. “It’s a violation. Holding a warrant doesn’t change that. It only changes the legality of it.”

  This was not at all what she expected from Andira’s tyree. “If you’re trying to defend her, you’re not doing a very good job.”

  “I’m trying to understand whether you know what you’re forgiving.”

  She needed another drink for this conversation. Refilling her glass, she said, “Andira told me about these arguments.” She held the bottle over Andira’s abandoned glass and lifted her eyebrows in question.

  Salomen tapped a fingernail against it, halfway to its top. “She never wins them. But I’m not arguing with you.”