“I wonder,” he said, clearly thinking again. “I don’t think they were simply robbers. They seemed more . . . specifically aimed.”
“You mentioned a ransom.”
He gave a slight shake of his head. “They didn’t seem to recognize us.”
“Perhaps they didn’t react because they already knew who they were following?”
“But perhaps not specifically me. I mean, they may have been after me, but not necessarily the visiting prince.” It warmed her somehow that he so completely separated the two. “And they did not recognize you.”
“They might look past me because I look Arellian,” she said. “It can’t be coincidence that you’ve been set upon twice since you arrived here.”
He grimaced. “I did think of that. But neither time did they seem to realize who I was.”
“So they don’t know. Which means . . . what?” she asked.
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think Triotians don’t quit.”
“Exactly.”
She grinned at him suddenly; this was her Cub, adventurous and determined. “We trek on.”
“We do.”
RINA ADJUSTED the earpiece for the comlink. Were she just making a personal contact with Califa or Dax, she might have left it as originally set, but this did not seem something she should make public, and there were others here in the interplanetary comm center. For that reason she chose audio only; the appearance of Dax Silverbrake’s face on a cinescreen would no doubt cause a stir.
Not to mention that what she was going to say could draw attention she would prefer to avoid.
“You have news already?” were Dax’s first words after the connection was established. He sounded surprised, but then she hadn’t been on Arellia for long.
“Not of the kind you mean, not yet.”
He didn’t miss the implication. “Then what kind?”
She glanced around. The others in the center were occupied with their own communications, and paid her no attention. As was her wont, she cut to the crux.
“Dax, Tark is alive.”
Even over the vast distance, she heard him suck in a breath.
“Alive? But—”
She explained quickly, ending sadly: “It was by his choice, Dax. He was badly injured. He wished no pity from . . . any of us.”
“Pity.” Dax nearly snapped it out. “As if anyone who has seen him fight could ever feel pity for him.”
Rina smiled to herself. She’d known what his reaction would be. Dax never changed, and she loved him all the more for that.
“Does he need help? We have better medical capabilities than Arellia.”
“He would not, I fear, accept it.”
“Still stubborn, then.”
She laughed, barely refraining from making the old pot/kettle comparison again. Dax laughed in turn, as if he’d heard the words she hadn’t spoken.
“Of course,” she answered. “He appears healed well enough. But he is scarred, and has lost the vision in one eye.”
She closed her own eyes as an image of him the first time she had seen him shot through her mind. Tall, rangy, full of an energy that rivaled even Dax’s, his hair Arellian dark and his eyes a deep, cobalt blue. He’d been the most amazing creature she’d ever seen, other than Dax.
And she’d reacted to him in a way she’d never reacted to any male.
She’d spent a long time telling herself that it was only because he was the first male near to her own age she had encountered at length. There had been such change in her life since Dax had brought her home to Trios that simply adjusting had taken most of her energy, and most Triotians were focused mainly on holding the Coalition at bay. But when the rebellion on Arellia had begun, and they’d joined it, it had been almost like being back flying with Dax, ranging across the far reaches in those wild skypirate days. And Bright Tarkson had been the personification of that feeling.
When he’d been reported killed, it had been as traumatic for her as the many times she had feared Dax dead, but in a very different way. And it was that difference that had told her she had lost control of her silly feelings, and would pay the heavy price of grief. Grief mostly for something that had never really been, for possibilities lost.
“—otherwise?”
She snapped out of her reverie. “I’m sorry, what did you ask?”
“I asked if he seemed well otherwise.”
“Physically, yes. He moves well enough, and if his vision gives him trouble, it is not obvious.”
“Physically?”
She’d known he wouldn’t miss that. Dax had spent too much of his life tortured by guilt and the past to take it lightly.
“Mentally . . . I’m not sure. He appears cynical, sharper, almost bitter.”
“With reason, it would seem. I remember they did not even try a rescue.”
“No.”
Now that she was over the shock, she was thinking she should have been much less polite to Bratus. And she remembered all the times Dax had risked his ship, and his life for one of their own. As a skypirate he hadn’t had many rules, but not leaving anyone behind was one of them, and it was unbreakable.
“His supposed commanding officer—who is the mayor now, revoltingly enough—simply looked at the odds and assumed. And was shocked when he and his men walked out of the northern pass weeks after they were left for dead.”
Dax swore under his breath. “I know we must accept that other worlds do not hold life as dear, but that is a hard one, Rina. I would be surprised if he was not much changed.”
“He does not quite trust anyone anymore,” she said.
“I’m not sure I can blame him for that, either.”
“Nor can I,” she said. “But there is more. Something he feels you and King Dare should know.”
“What?”
“I do not know.”
There was a brief pause before he answered. “He has truly lost all faith, if he won’t trust you. He was very fond of you.”
That simply, he blasted rational thought right out of her mind. “He . . . was?”
“Quite. I had to warn him more than once of your youth and inexperience.”
She smothered a gasp. “And who appointed you my guardian?”
“I did,” he said, sounding utterly unruffled. “Who else was there?”
She felt torn. He was right, there had been no one else. And yet she couldn’t help resenting that he’d interfered, that perhaps Tark had felt something of what she had felt, back then, and she had never known because of Dax.
She made herself focus on the reason for this contact.
“But he will tell you,” she said.
“And Dare, I presume?”
“I don’t think he expects that the king would grant him audience.”
Dax let out an audible breath. “He needs to come to Trios, then. Perhaps he would realize that even if Arellia doesn’t properly revere him, Trios does.”
“I’ve told him he should come.”
“And he said?”
“He dodged. He’s gotten very adept at it.”
“Hmm.”
He didn’t say it, but Rina knew Dax was remembering the old Tark, who had been direct to the point of bluntness and never hesitated to say what he thought, honestly.
Then she heard a voice in the background, recognized the deep, commanding voice of King Darian.
“Hold, Rina,” Dax said, and the connection went silent for a moment as Dax and the king conversed. Quickly—Dax also had the knack of cutting to the core of matters—he was back. “Dare wishes to know, if Tark will not come here, if he requests us to come to Arellia earlier than planned. Will this matter require much time?”
“I do not kn
ow,” she said. “It was effort enough to get him to agree that you should know. Perhaps you should command him, your majesty.”
She heard Dare laugh. Acknowledged the absurdity of the simple fact that she, Rina Carbray, sole survivor of her family and onetime navigator on the most infamous skypirate vessel in the galaxy, could speak so to her king.
But then, kings of Trios were a different breed.
“I have no authority over outworlders,” the king said, “nor do I wish it. Not, from what I know of him, that your Tark would listen anyway.”
Your Tark . . .
She quashed the shiver the words gave her. “I will ask him.”
There was a moment, and a brief exchange between them that she couldn’t hear. Then Dax was back.
“The meeting of the High Council begins tomorrow,” he said. “We cannot leave until it concludes. Dare asks if a holo conference would be sufficient. If so, he will divert a ship to Arellia.”
The closed-circuit, carefully secured holo system would allow them to converse as if they were in the same room. But it was only available on Triotian vessels of the military fleet, and except by order of the Council or the king, used only in battle or defense situations. She’d have to arrange a shuttle to get them to the ship, so it could stay at a distance; even with the Pact in place, a Triotian military starship docking at the Port of Galatin would require asking for permission and giving answers she didn’t want to have to provide, at least not yet.
“I will ask,” she said again.
“Send a simple blast message,” Dax said, “yes or no. If it’s no to the holo conference, then we will be there as early as we can.”
“Copy,” Rina said.
The king’s voice came through again. “And tell him, for all of Trios, that we are delighted he is alive. Enough to overcome our vexation that he did not tell us.”
And that, she thought, she would tell Tark with pleasure.
Chapter 11
“YOU’RE GOING TO fall down this mountain if you don’t quit looking over your shoulder all the time.”
Shaina looked as if she wanted to stick her tongue out at him, as she often had as a child.
“Someone has to watch your back,” she said.
“Let me worry about my back.”
“You don’t worry enough.”
“You worry enough for both of us.”
“Someone has to look out for the future king of Trios.”
“That is so far into the future neither of us should be worrying about it.”
It was thankfully so, he thought. His father was strong, and their best healers had said his time as a slave had only strengthened him, mentally and physically.
“But if that is what is behind these attacks on you, we’d best worry about it now.” She had, he couldn’t deny, a point. “Besides, I can’t stop thinking . . .”
“Of what?” he asked when she stopped.
“How we were followed. Watched.” She grimaced. “We should have been aware.”
“That,” he said dryly, “I can’t argue with.”
“I should have been aware. I should have sensed them.”
He didn’t bother to point out they’d been a bit distracted, because then he would have to admit he’d been distracted since before he’d even gotten here, that leaving home and her had done nothing to resolve his feelings. And her stunt with those men had only driven that new wanting home like a spike through his gut.
And then she said it herself, bitterly. “But I’ve been too wrapped up in . . . other things.”
As, Lyon thought with an inward grimace, had he.
He fought the memory of a lithe, curved body displayed with purpose. Shaina, looking utterly, temptingly female, using that femininity to distract and tempt. With great success. And why not? The curves of hip and waist and breast, coupled with the tautness of a body he knew was a match for his in fitness, made for the perfect combination, in his view. Some men preferred the softness of a home-building woman, and he could see the appeal, but not for himself.
He was getting better at quashing it, with practice. And he’d had a lot more of that since they’d set out from the camp where they’d left the four men, trussed up like rockfowl. They might even be loose by now. And perhaps flailing about, trying to determine which of the trails they’d intentionally left to follow. It didn’t matter; they were all false. They’d been trained by the best, and when they wished, they left no more trace of their passing than a whisperbird.
He flexed his arm, feeling the faint sting of where the disrupter fire had brushed his shoulder. That’s what he should be thinking about.
But those images from that encounter tormented him in an entirely new way. It was one thing for him to be aching for her, quite another for lewd, brutal thuggers to be looking at her in that way.
For an instant he wished he could go back in time. His life had been so simple, so glorious, and he had never appreciated it enough. Despite his status he had been allowed to run free, if he kept up with his lessons with Freylan and Glendar and the other teachers. He’d been allowed the carefree childhood of other children, although simply by being witness to his parents’ discussions at mealtimes, which often included his godparents, Shaina’s parents, he was more aware than most of the cost of that freedom from care. His father was unrelenting in his vigilance, and his godfather the same. And neither his mother nor godmother were any less so; it was often Shaylah or Califa who came up with the new tactical or logistical ideas.
But still, it was not his direct concern, he had been allowed that freedom, and only when he ran a little too wild—usually at Shaina’s urging—had his parents pulled him in a little.
If only he could go back, and freeze time.
If only is for children. Are you yet a child, son?
His father’s words from long ago echoed in his head. As they so often did. It didn’t help that whenever he spoke, it seemed worthy of being etched into Triotian marble.
But were he to be honest with himself, he would admit it was not so much that he wished to return to his childhood. He wished never to have to face the fact that his boon companion had turned into the kind of female who could turn men’s heads away from their task simply by being. And that she was not his and now never could be.
An odd sort of sensation shot through him, reminiscent of what he felt when he touched Paraclon’s lightning globe. Unable to stop himself, he paused on the upward track, turning to look at the woman keeping easy pace with him.
“What?” she asked, stopping as she nearly bumped into him.
She’d refastened the neck of her shirt, untied the knot, and let the bottom fall, covering her once more to below the waist. But that could do nothing to the picture he held in his mind.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, unable to stifle at least that much honesty.
She nearly rolled her eyes at him—he could see it. But for some reason, she stopped herself. Instead she looked him up and down, considering.
“And you are impossibly handsome, Cub.”
Her voice was oddly soft, almost contemplative. It made him wonder if she’d once been as surprised as he had been, if she’d had that moment when she’d suddenly realized the companion she’d grown up with was no longer a boy.
And then she spoke again, in that same voice, and stunned him even further. “In some ways, you are even more handsome than your father, who is held to be the standard on Trios.”
“I—” he began, then stopped, not knowing what to say to such a thing. He’d always thought of himself as an imperfect copy of an ideal. But Shaina thought the copy better than the original?
She was, perhaps, not unbiased, as close as they were, but . . . was it possible she wasn’t as immune to him as she seemed? The fierceness of the hope that kicked through him nearly kn
ocked the breath out of him. Maybe it wasn’t that she didn’t want him in the same way.
Maybe it was that she didn’t want him that way yet.
“That, I suppose, is owed to your mother,” Shaina went on. “Why should not the handsome king and beautiful queen of Trios have a most striking son?”
“And there are many who prefer the dark-haired Children of the Evening Star, such as your father,” he said. “And your mother is a match for mine in beauty, so it is no surprise you are as well.”
For a long moment she simply looked at him. And then, in a very different voice, she said, “It was a surprise to me. And not a welcome one.”
That startled him. “Not welcome?”
“Do you think I wish to spend my life never knowing if a man cared one bit about who I really am, or if it was merely the structure of my body?”
He had never thought of it in quite that way, but he understood instantly. “No more than I wish to spend my life never being certain if what appeal I have is based on my real self, or my position as prince.”
She blinked. Then smiled. Her grins were often warnings, but her smiles were like a sunrise, slow and warming.
“We’re a pair, are we not?” she said.
“We always have been,” he answered, not caring that his words revealed more than he wished her to know.
“We must not lose that. Promise me, Cub.”
She sounded almost anxious, a most unusual tone for her. He stared at her. Could it be that it wasn’t just the inevitable change in his responsibilities that had had her wound up? Could one reason for her unsettledness truly be that on some level she was starting to feel the same emotions and reactions he was? Hope, he realized, was a hard thing to quash once it arrived.
She’s the next flashbow warrior. It cannot be.
“No matter what,” she added, a fierce intensity in her voice
“No matter what,” he agreed, meaning the words with all his heart even as he acknowledged they were a promise that might be impossible to keep.
He was still edgy about the changes to come. He was much more comfortable with a blade in his hand, or at the controls of a fighter, than giving speeches. The ceremony itself was simple enough, but it marked the beginning of his official life of service to Trios, and his life would never be the same again. He must focus on this, this first task of his office, and if he managed to do it without embarrassing himself or his home, he would count it well won.
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