“Besides,” she said when she realized he was not going to speak, “I’m not here officially. Yet.”
“If they find who you gather with,” he said, his tone dry now, “you might not be so welcome.”
“Then I’ve made the right choice, haven’t I?”
Only after she’d said it did she realize there could be two interpretations of her words. But again something flashed in his gaze, that same heat she’d seen outside the meeting room, and she bit back an explanation that she’d only meant her choice of rooming options. But it made no difference, again the look vanished in an instant, leaving her wondering if she’d really seen it at all. And when he started walking again, apparently not caring if she followed or not, she was sure she’d been mistaken.
She caught up with him, spoke as if her internal foolishness had never happened. “Besides, I wish to stop at the comm center at the skyport to send a message.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “To Trios?”
“Yes.”
“About what we learned tonight?”
“Yes.”
“To the king?”
“Yes.”
He was silent for a moment. “You have suddenly become fond of one-word answers.”
“Yes.” His mouth twitched. She couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Now you know what it is like trying to converse with you.”
“I spoke at length tonight,” he protested. “And,” he added, “I speak to you.”
A warmth flooded her all out of proportion to the simple words. She fought against betraying herself; he would not welcome it, she thought.
“Yes,” she said again, only this time it was an effort to make it sound casual, level.
He grimaced, whether at her single-word answer again or at the thought he then expressed, she didn’t know. “We did not learn anything we did not already know tonight, merely more of it. More sightings of more high-level Coalition strategists in more places.”
“Names they will know were in that room tonight. Dax especially. People he fought alongside here. Although your name was enough, it will lend even more credence when Dare takes it to the Council of Elders.”
He still didn’t seem comfortable with the thought that his name was of such renown on a planet not even his. Surely he could not prefer the way he was treated here?
“It is this council that will decide? Not the king?”
“They decide together. Each has the power to say no, although it rarely happens that they disagree. Except perhaps on method, not on what needs to be done. Not,” she added, “that those disagreements don’t get a little . . . hearty.”
They threaded their way through a knot of carousers gathered at the base of Dax’s statue. Some were still upright and staggering about, more were sitting on the statue’s base, lifting their mugs of lingberry, and a group of about four were singing, or trying to. It was a bawdy song about Dax from his skypirate days, one she hadn’t heard in many years.
She gave them a glance, and grinned.
“Drunkenness amuses you?”
“When it is born of celebration, yes,” she said. “When it is to avoid truth, no.”
To her surprise he winced. “Some wish mightily to avoid reality.”
She wondered if there was too personal a note in that observation. “And some have every reason. You, for example.”
He let out a weary breath. “I tried, for a time. But whenever I stopped reality was still there. It seemed a pointless—and expensive—exercise.”
She ached for him, but knew he would not want to hear that. Tark would want no one feeling sorry for him, although what she felt was so much more than that, so much more complicated.
So complicated she couldn’t fathom it out herself. At least not when there was so much else at hand.
“Besides, that song takes me back,” she said. “I was merely wishing I had my vidcom unit on me, I would like to send a shot of that to Dax.”
Tark looked back over his shoulder at the revelers they’d now worked their way past. “How much of those . . . exploits they sing of are true?”
“More than he would ever tell me, I’m sure,” she said with a grin. “I was of very tender years in those days, after all. But I think he would laugh to hear it again now.”
One corner of his mouth quirked upward. “I have a feeling he would consider it the best use of that statue, as well.”
She laughed, startled by the observation and the fact that he’d made it. “You’re right. He would.”
He was silent until they reached the interplanetary center. And then, unexpectedly, he stopped and faced her.
“You love him, don’t you.”
It did not sound like a question, as it should not for something so self-evident. “Of course I do. I adore him. He saved my life, over and over. I loved him when he could not love himself. I love him still, and will forever. I would die for him, if need be.”
He lowered his gaze, as if her answer was too much. She didn’t care, it was all true. When he spoke again, it was softly, as he avoided looking at her. “Yet he bonded with a Coalition hero.”
“Califa was that, yes. That is why they understand each other so well, she knows much of hating yourself. She—” She broke off suddenly as the true meaning of his words struck her. “You think I love Dax in that way? God save me, I’m not that foolish!”
Or maybe I am, she thought as she stared at this man who had bedeviled her thoughts all the years she’d thought him dead, and tenfold more now that she knew he was alive.
His mouth twitched. “Careful. He is the hero of the week here.”
She snorted inelegantly, a habit picked up from the crew of the Evening Star long ago, and never quite shed.
“Dax is a brother to me. At times even a father. An annoying one.” She hesitated to say more, ask more, then realized she was hesitating, and wondered when she’d become so cautious. With the memories of those bolder days stirring, she leapt. “Why would you ask such a thing?”
He looked startled. He lowered his gaze once more, and she wondered in turn when the intrepid Bright Tarkson had become so hesitant.
“Perhaps I’m worried about your happiness,” he muttered.
“Perhaps,” she said with some sharpness, “you should worry about your own.”
His mouth twisted as a sour chuckle escaped him. “Not something that I aspire to any longer.”
“Then what did we fight for, if not every man’s right to find his path to his own happiness?”
That brought his head up sharply. He opened his mouth to speak, then halted. For a moment he just looked at her, and when he finally answered she was almost certain it was not what he had originally been going to say.
“Apparently we fought only to have to do it all over again.”
“As Califa would say, the most precious things require considerable maintenance. So we do it again.”
And she realized with her own words that she had accepted it. What she had heard tonight, and the people she had heard it from, made it impossible to ignore. All the denial taking place in the streets of Galatin and all over Arellia this week couldn’t make it go away.
She wished they were wrong, all of them, wished she herself was wrong for believing them. For believing Tark.
But she knew she wasn’t. Just as she knew he wasn’t wrong. He might be battered and scarred and not the same man he’d once been, but his deep-down instincts had never failed, and she knew they were not failing now. What she did not know was what to do next.
She looked at the man beside her, remembered the tactical session before the Battle of Galatin, when he and Dax had huddled over the projections of the city, planning, mapping, strategizing. Remembered the reckless, powerful energy and determination that had somehow overflowed to them all
. They had been determined to take the city back. And take it they had.
He should not have to fight again. Ever. He had paid so much, given so much to this world that didn’t appreciate it as they should. Yet here he was, trying to sound the alarm even though those fools would not listen. And when the time came, as she was sure now it would, he would fight again.
A chill swept through her as another reality struck.
This time, she very much feared he would see to it that he did not survive.
Chapter 24
“WHAT IF THEY decide against it?”
Dax was pacing the outer council chambers restlessly. He had run all the way from the palace to the skyport and back again this morning, yet he still felt as if he would fly apart from the unspent edginess building inside him. He was ready to go, his crew had arrived, the Evening Star was ready. He had only delayed to find out the results of this emergency session, and whether he and his crew would be going this alone.
It was taking too long. Things of state always and ever took too long. If Trios herself were under attack, there would be no delay, but it was Arellia. And there was, so far, no attack, just a lot of suspicion.
Would it be enough for that robed assembly?
As if she had read his thoughts, Califa spoke. “Dare is speaking, is he not? He has yet to fail to persuade them to his view, whatever the issue.”
“But this is bigger. It will take more to convince them. We have had relative peace for years now.”
“Thankfully.” She glanced toward the closed double doors. “But they know Arellia would be the prime base for attacking Trios. Surely they will not allow the Coalition to gain a foothold there again.”
“I hope not,” he said grimly, turning to cross the white Triotian marble floor once again.
“Do you truly think they would fall prey to the same thinking that allowed Trios to fall before?”
“‘Too much peace softens,’” he said.
“Geron.”
“Yes.”
“I know you are concerned when you begin to quote ancient Triotian warriors.”
Dax stopped in his pacing and turned to look at his mate. They had been through so much, each of them alone and then together. She had come to love Trios as her own. In the way of many who were here by choice, she loved with more fervor even than some born here. She had thrown herself into learning about her new home as fiercely as she had once fought for their enemy.
“I love you,” he said suddenly, warming at how she, once the careless, cool, and uncaring Major Califa Claxton, colored as he declared it.
“And I you,” she said softly. “And if it comes to it, I will fight beside you again, Dax Silverbrake.”
He frowned. “I—”
“Do not even say it. Nothing you can speak would stop me.”
He drew in a long breath as he looked at this woman who was his mate in all things. They had had their rough times over the years, they were both so independent and had led such different lives that it had been inevitable. But the bond between them had yet grown continually stronger.
“And what,” he said softly, “makes you think I would venture into any battle without the premier tactician in any system at my side?”
She smiled then, and that heated combination of pride, gratitude, and pure, deep love shot through him. Spiced with a jolt of the lust she never ceased to rouse in him, it had him wondering just how long they might have before the council rendered the decision.
“And what of the next flashbow warrior?”
The question drove the breath out of him as if she’d hit him with that driving fist of hers, something that had happened occasionally in the beginning, as they’d struggled to find their way together.
“No,” he said instantly, instinctively.
“Hmm.” Her voice was carefully even. “Our daughter is showing her father what it is like to live with one so stubborn.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding since the moment she’d planted the idea of Shaina actually fighting. The thought of the current state of his relationship—if there was one left—with his daughter brought tightness to his chest once more. And with that unerring sense of hers, Califa knew it.
“It will be fine, in the end,” she said quietly. “She will forgive you, and you will be . . . not as you were, perhaps, when she was a child, but as adults who love and respect each other.”
“Not encouraging,” he muttered.
“Did you wish to keep her a child forever?”
“Yes,” he said, knowing even as he admitted it the foolishness of it.
“Then it will be the only thing you ever fail at,” she said.
“I feel as if I have already failed her.”
“I doubt there is a parent alive who has not felt so.”
“You’re saying it is part of the process?”
“I’m saying it’s part of loving so fiercely.”
He turned then, came back to her. Reached for her. She went into his embrace as if she were a whisperbird coming home.
“You do not want her to risk herself, to be in danger, to be hurt,” she said against his chest. “Perhaps you should think more of what you do want for her.”
“I know what I want for her,” he said, his voice low and rough as he tightened his arms around her. “This. This is what I want for her.”
She made a low sound as she snuggled closer. “My skypirate. You always find the right words, eventually.”
He sighed. “Except with our daughter, it seems. Or she would be here now, instead of scarpering around the mountains of Arellia.”
“It is as well she is,” Califa said. “If what Tark suspects is correct.”
“You doubt it is?”
“No. I never chanced to meet him during that campaign, but I know you trust him.”
“Implicitly. Other than you, there is no one I would rather have at my side—or my back—in a fight.”
“Being severely wounded and abandoned, left for dead by his own people, could have an effect on someone’s thinking.”
“I’ve considered that. But Rina believes him”
Califa was silent for a long moment. Too long.
“What?”
She hesitated, as if considering what to say. “She . . . cares for him.”
“I think she is fuming on his behalf, over the way he has been treated.” Dax’s mouth twisted. “I’m not happy with your home world myself on that score.”
“Nor am I,” she agreed. “But I think it is something more.”
“It was, then.” He leaned back to look at her. “They fought side by side, at Galatin. They got on well, from the moment they met. A little too well.”
“As you’ve said. You also said she was too young for anything more, then.”
His brow furrowed. “Yes, I felt she was. Her life was so . . . different, she had no experience in such things.”
“But why did that even occur to you?”
“Because there was a zap between them. Everyone saw it . . .” Belatedly, he got there. And sighed. “You think it’s still there.”
“I know it is. I asked her. She did not deny it.” She looked thoughtful. “I have always sensed she was angry, and sometimes unbearably sad, after he was reported dead. I think she never got over grieving for him.”
“Perhaps she was merely remembering a youthful passion.”
“All I know is, had I met you when I did, or ten, twenty, thirty years later, it would be the same. And if I lost you, my aching over it would never end.”
She said it so simply, as if there could be no doubt, and as always, she managed to turn his insides to something molten and urgent. But noise from inside the chamber, the sounds of a vote being taken, brought him back sharply to the matter at hand
.
“If they vote no, what will you do?”
“I will still go,” he said. “Even if I go alone.”
“Your crew would never allow that. They would stand by you if you announced you were flying into Hades. As would I.” She said it simply, without reservation, and he knew she meant it. Yes, this was what he wished for his girl.
“Then we will go.”
“Some on the council would not be happy.”
“That also would not be new,” he said. “When I was Shaina’s age, they were fuming at me more often than not.”
She smiled. It still amazed him that this woman found such joy in his history, when others preferred to ignore what it had been.
“The flashbow warrior is the king’s to command.”
“Yes. He needs no approval for that. And I would go for Lyon. It would not be unexpected for me to be there to protect the heir, after all.”
“If they vote no, then they are not convinced there is anything to protect him from.”
“That,” he said flatly, “is not their decision to make. When it comes to protecting Dare and his, the decision is mine.”
“As it was your decision not to tell Shaina of her destiny?”
He stiffened. He knew she had never been happy about that decision, but she had accepted it was his to make. She never jabbed at him in the way of someone who could not let an issue rest, so he knew she meant it to make him think.
“And I would make it again,” he said.
She tightened her arms, pulling him even closer. “It gives me great pain to see the two people I love most at such odds. But I understand.” She sighed audibly. “You two are so very alike. Intractable, determined, short of restraint.”
“I—”
Noise from the council chambers saved him from making a denial he didn’t even believe himself. They broke apart, turning toward the chamber entrance. The heavy double doors swung open, and Dare strode out. He was clad today, for this speech, in the royal garb he eschewed most other times. And not just the black shirt embroidered precisely with the royal crest in golden thread that matched his hair, and the belt with the gold buckle that was also the crest, along with the ceremonial sword that had been handed down in Dare’s family for generations. But he’d gone full royal and added the cloak, the rich, full sweep of black velvet lined in shining silk, trimmed as well with the golden royal crest. It fell nearly to his heels, and made him look undeniably regal as it swirled with his long strides.
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