Without a Front: The Warrior's Challenge (Chronicles of Alsea Book 3)

by Fletcher DeLancey

  Salomen made an appreciative sound as she drank. “This is as good as it was in Meadowgreen. Better, I think.”

  “That’s because you’re used to drinking better spirits in general. I’m afraid you’re developing expensive tastes, tyrina.”

  “Good thing I chose a very well-paid warrior, then.”

  “All right!” Micah said. “You’re doing this on purpose. I’ve had my drink; now I want answers.”

  “Impatient, isn’t he?”

  “Tal,” he growled.

  “Don’t look at me. Salomen is the one who has something to ask you.”

  Micah turned to her. “What do you need to ask that requires a set-up like this?”

  “Something very important.” She set her glass down. “A few ninedays ago, I asked Andira who I could petition for inclusion into her family. She said her only living elder relative was her Aunt Sima.”

  “But I wouldn’t give Aunt Sima the power of granting inclusion,” said Tal. “She’s family in name only.”

  “So that left me at a loss. Until I realized that Andira does have real family, someone right here in Blacksun. But then you had to put yourself in the healing center, and there hasn’t been a tick since then where it really felt like the right time. We hoped tonight would be the moment. And it is.”

  Tal’s senses were wide open; she was reveling in Micah’s dawning comprehension. And when Salomen slid gracefully from her chair to kneel before his, comprehension turned into shock.

  “Honored Corozen Lintale Micah, I ask you to hear my petition. Under the eye of Fahla, who sees all, I speak so that all may hear. I love Andira Shaldone Tal. Her happiness is my ambition; her well-being is my purpose. All that is mine I place freely at her disposal, including my heart and my life, which I would gladly lay down to protect hers. This I swear in Fahla’s name. I am Salomen Arrin Opah, and I ask this gift of you and all your ancestors: Will you do me the honor of accepting me into your family?”

  Micah was speechless as Tal joined her on the floor.

  “You are my family,” she told him. “The only one left whose acceptance I would seek.”

  Taking Salomen’s hand, she recited the petition for the second time in her life. Not until she finished did she realize something was wrong. He was profoundly shocked, more than their petition could possibly explain. And he was…afraid.

  “Get up,” he croaked. “Please.”

  Tal and Salomen looked at each other in alarm. Without a word they rose and retook their seats.

  Micah passed a trembling hand over his forehead. “Great Mother of us all,” he murmured. “After all this time.”

  By now Tal was frightened as well. She could not imagine what could cause such a reaction. Salomen squeezed her hand, needing some sort of assurance, but Tal had none to give.

  At last Micah met her eyes. “Before you make this petition, you need to know something. Something I never imagined telling you. But as much as I want the right to respond to your petition, I don’t have it. Not unless you make it knowing the full truth.”

  He lifted his glass and took a gulp, steadying himself. When he replaced the glass, he nearly tipped it over, barely catching it in time.

  “You’ve asked me many times if I ever gave my heart away,” he said. “I always avoided the answer. But you have the right to know. Yes, Andira, I gave my heart away a very long time ago. To your mother.”

  “What?” she whispered.

  “She was like no one I had ever met, nor did I meet her like again. I loved her with all my heart and soul, and she…” He paused, took a deep breath, and finished, “She loved me as well.”

  Tal sat mute and stunned.

  Micah looked at Salomen and added, “She was already bonded to Tal’s father. I fell in love with a woman I could never have.”

  “Oh, no,” Salomen murmured.

  He gave her a tiny smile before returning his gaze to Tal, who by now had found her voice.

  “Did he know?”

  “Of course he knew. Do you think I could hold a front against your father? But he never spoke of it.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Tal realized. “You were his best friend.”

  “I don’t understand,” Salomen said.

  “If Father had ever acknowledged it, he would have been obligated to do something about it. By staying silent, he was able to keep Micah’s friendship. But that same silence was a tacit condoning of their affair.”

  “And we took advantage of that,” Micah said. “I know I should tell you I’m ashamed, but I’m not. I could not turn my back on her for honor; it would have broken her heart. And I would rather have Returned than caused harm to such a heart.”

  Tal was almost afraid to skim him, but her need to know was too great. Cautiously, she reached out—and understood that her mother had bonded with two men, though only one had been publicly acknowledged.

  Valkinon was meant to be sipped, but she drained half the glass in an effort to steady herself. It still took a moment to form the question.

  “Does your blood run in my veins?” she asked.

  He smiled at her. “Only in my dreams. You would have been all I could have wished for in a daughter. But no, we never had a creation ceremony. We both loved your father as well, and we could not betray him that way. So please don’t think she loved him less for loving me. She had a heart large enough for both of us. It hurt her in so many ways, but it would have hurt her more to give either one of us up.”

  Tal inhaled deeply, having forgotten to breathe for a moment. “Well, I have to admit, you’ve surprised me on this one. I don’t know what to think.”

  “Don’t think until you’ve heard the rest of the story.” Micah took another drink, his hand steadier now that he had gotten the worst of it out. “Things changed after your mother became pregnant. Not because of her. Fahla, no; her heart never changed. Because of me. I didn’t have the same capacity she did to share. I couldn’t bear knowing that she was carrying a child I had no part in creating. I knew that child would bury itself in her heart, and I didn’t trust her to have a heart large enough for three. I was jealous—young and full of passion and raging with a jealousy I could not control. I envied your father so much that there were times I could barely look at him. He had everything I ever wanted, and even his generosity in sharing that with me just made it worse. So I left. I found a posting in Redmoon, which was as far from Blacksun as I could get and still be on a career path, and I was gone before you were born.”

  “You left?” Tal frowned. “But there’s not a moment in my memory when you weren’t in my life.”

  “Because Fahla saved me from what would have been my greatest mistake. She sent me a vision.”

  A tingle ran down Tal’s spine. “The vision you told me about at Whitemoon. You said…” She searched her memory, trying to recall their conversation on the grounds of the Whitemoon Temple. “You said she showed you that you couldn’t avoid loss, but you could gain from it.”

  “I knew you’d remember. I made an offering to her in Redmoon Temple, begging her to destroy the love in my heart, because living with it seemed so much worse than living without it. And while I stood there, I saw a vision of you.”

  “Of me!”

  “Yes. You were already grown, already in the uniform of a Lead Guard. And you were standing in front of a dual funeral pyre.”

  Tal tightened her grip on Salomen’s hand. “My parents.”

  “I saw you standing by yourself, several paces apart from a crowd of mourners, with the torch in your hand and not a single tear on your face. I saw a woman who had lost everything and was utterly, completely alone.”

  “But I wasn’t alone. You were there with me.”

  “I was. But I couldn’t approach until you lit the pyre. That right belongs to famil
y, and I wasn’t family.”

  “Great Goddess.” Tal stared at him, but it was a younger Micah she was seeing. The Micah who had walked up to her after she had lit the pyre; who had gently taken the torch from her numb fingers and put it back in the stand; who had held her hands, grounding her with his touch as she finally broke down and cried. “I guess Fahla only showed you the part she wanted you to see.”

  He nodded. “I lost one of my fathers before my Rite of Ascension, and the other not very long after. I knew what it was like to be so alone. You were the daughter of the woman I loved and the man who had been my best friend for half my life. I could not let you face that kind of loss by yourself. And as I stood there in that temple, I felt all my jealousy and pain turn into something different. Suddenly, I was too far away; I had an almost desperate need to get back to all three of you. I resigned my post and was back in Blacksun before you were seven moons old.”

  “So you knew,” Tal said, trying to wrap her brain around it. “You always knew they would die.”

  “Yes, but Fahla’s vision never included any specifics. I didn’t know how or when it would happen. There was nothing I could do to protect them. I couldn’t even tell them. It wouldn’t have helped them prevent it, but it would have condemned them to live with the same kind of fear I felt. I wouldn’t have wished that on an enemy, much less the two people I loved. So I focused on being with them whenever I could and on building a relationship with you. It wasn’t difficult—you buried yourself in my heart before the end of my first visit with your parents. I understood then why your mother always said she had enough love for all three of us, because it turned out that I had a heart that big as well. I loved you as much as if you were my own daughter. Sometimes I almost convinced myself that you were.”

  The warmth poured out of him, a love she had felt all her life. At last it made sense.

  “You were a true blend of your parents, equal parts scholar and warrior. Your mother was sad to lose you to the warrior caste, but I was able to help her with that. After all, I’d known what your choice would be when you were just a few moons old. And your father nearly burst with pride when you made Lead Guard so young. But the day of your promotion was one of the worst days of my life.”

  Tal could not imagine it. To live with the knowledge of impending death, but never know when or from which direction it would come; to see it drawing nearer with every milestone of her life—her choice of caste, her decision to join the Alsean Defense Force, the early accomplishments, and then the promotion that gave her the uniform he had seen in his vision. And all the time he had loved her mother the way she loved Salomen, the way Shikal had loved Nashta—but he was never given the right to love openly. Not even at the funeral pyre.

  “I’m so sorry, Micah. You lost so much. So much you were never allowed to have.”

  He smiled at her. “Oh, but you haven’t heard the rest of it. I told you that Fahla had also showed me something else: that through loss I could gain. The vision had two parts. And in the second part, I saw you again. Older this time, and not in uniform.” He gestured toward the floor. “I saw you on your knees in front of me, and you spoke to me. You said, ‘You are my family.’”

  “Great Goddess above,” said Salomen. “No wonder you were so shocked.”

  “I didn’t know what was happening in that vision. I never dreamed it was part of a petition for inclusion. You weren’t in it, Salomen.” He met Tal’s eyes again. “But I knew that someday you would see me as your family, and that knowledge changed my life. I wasn’t alone anymore. I had you. I’ve always had you, from the very beginning. So don’t pity me; I didn’t lose what you think I did. I tried to; I tried to throw it away with both hands. But Fahla saved me. And yes, the vision meant I lived with a knowledge I never wanted to have, but it also meant that I cherished every moment with your mother and father. Every single moment. If I hadn’t had the vision, I would never have gone back. I would have missed your childhood and all those precious cycles of friendship and love with your parents, and when they Returned, I would have had no right to go to you, no right to comfort you. I lost nothing, but I gained a family.”

  “But who comforted you?” Salomen asked. “And all this time you never said a word to Andira.”

  “My relationship with Realta and Andorin was my own,” he said. “We made our choices long before Andira was of an age to understand any of them. And by the time she was of age, she and I had our own relationship, separate from what either she or I had with her parents. I never wanted to jeopardize that by telling her a history that could not change the past, but might destroy our future. Even now I was afraid to speak, but your petition made it impossible to keep my secret any longer. I could not give an answer when the question had been asked unknowingly.”

  “I always thought Father asked you to look after me,” Tal said. “That was the only reason I could see for the way you were always there when I needed you, no matter where I was or what was happening.”

  He shook his head. “Your father knew he never needed to ask. So did your mother. She once told me that if ever a child had three parents, that child was you. They shared you with me in the same way they shared each other. It was a complicated web, but for a man with no family, I was gifted indeed.”

  “So was I.” She was beginning to think more clearly. “I can’t deny you’ve shocked me. This is a whole different view of my parents. I thought I knew them, but…”

  His mounting dread made her trail off. He was expecting the worst.

  “The end result is, I still have a parent,” she said softly. “An unusual one to be sure, but a parent nonetheless. And that is a gift from Fahla.”

  The hot dread vanished, quenched by a wave of relief. He swallowed hard. “I should have known you would react this way. You have your father’s grace and generosity, and your mother’s heart and wisdom. You truly are an honor to them.”

  Her throat constricted. “That means a great deal to me. Thank you.”

  “I only speak the truth.”

  There was an awkward pause, until Salomen sat up straight and said, “Well, Colonel, I believe you owe us an answer.”

  He looked from her to Tal, who nodded.

  “She knows what I feel. Our petition stands.”

  His eyes reddened, and he quickly scrubbed at them before looking up with a beaming smile, the joy practically sitting on his skin. “Then I would be delighted.”

  Once more they slid to their knees, and he rested a hand on each of their shoulders. Tal smiled as she felt him squeeze.

  “Andira, Salomen, I hear your petition. Under the eye of Fahla, who connects our past with our future, and in the name of my…” His voice caught, but he cleared his throat and continued, “…my beloved Realta, my best friend Andorin, and all of our mutual ancestors, I say that Salomen Arrin Opah is now one of our family. May our descendants rejoice in this bond, which enriches our family beyond measure.”

  “And a unique family it is,” Tal said as they stood. “Thank you, Micah.”

  Salomen took his face in her hands and kissed both of his cheeks. “Thank you. For accepting me, and especially for looking after her.”

  “It was my pleasure. And if you’re going to be a part of my family, you should call me Corozen.”

  “I would be honored.”

  “Not me.” Tal held up her hands. “Not a chance. I’ve called you Micah my whole life. I’m too old to change.”

  “Dokshin. You’ve changed more in the last two moons than you realize. But since I would probably faint if you called me Corozen, I’m glad you’re so firm in your beliefs.”

  “And what would you like your grandchild to call you?” she asked innocently.

  His eyes widened. “You…but…”

  Tal sat back in her chair and laughed.

  “Don’t mind her,” Sa
lomen said. “That’s a long way in our future. At the very least, there’s a little matter of a formal bonding ceremony first.”

  “Thank Fahla,” Micah said, grasping at the arm of his chair as he sat down again. “I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “Neither am I.” Salomen shot Tal a glare.

  “A child from the two of you?” He shook his head. “I don’t think Alsea is ready.”

  CHAPTER 65:

  Flames in the temple II

  Lanaril looked over the glittering assemblage and wondered how many generations it had been since Whitemoon Temple had seen anything like it.

  Lancers were always bonded in Blacksun Temple, but Andira seemed determined to shake up any number of Alsean traditions. Had she not been Fahla’s Chosen, there probably would have been a great deal more grumbling in Blacksun, but all she had to say was “This is the temple where Fahla gave me her sign,” and the world spoke of nothing else for days. There were even betting pools on whether Fahla would offer a visible sign at the bonding ceremony. At least, that’s what Lanaril’s aide told her when he admitted that he had put down two hundred cinteks on “yes.” After all, he said, the odds were eleven to one against, and how often did a templar have the chance to simultaneously make money and behave piously? He was just backing up his faith with credit.

  Lanaril had secretly slipped him five hundred of her own.

  The soaring space of Whitemoon Temple was packed with guests from all over Alsea, a unique combination of the world’s most and least influential people. There were the caste Primes, all of the high-powered political, religious, and military figures, a good sprinkling of entertainment stars, the Lancer’s and Bondlancer’s Guards, warriors and scholars Andira had known for cycles…and a significant number of producers from the tiny town of Granelle, all of whom were bursting with pride as one of their own stepped into a role of such power. There had not been a producer Bondlancer for sixteen generations, but Lanaril knew that Salomen Opah would turn the world’s expectations on its collective ear. That woman carried at least three castes in her heart.