“What is this second matter?” he said, distracting her.
“Oh, right.” Reese cleared her throat. “Surela’s alive. We rescued her from the Chatcaavan.”
“Ah?”
To put the picture into proper perspective, Reese said, “She did it. Killed the Chatcaavan.”
“With my pick!” Irine added. The tigraine shook her head and crossed the floor, bending down alongside Araelis. “My own pick. Can’t you keep a single weapon a person gives you, Reese?”
“I have a knife now,” Reese protested, but not with much enthusiasm.
“Perhaps she was meant to heal with her hands, and not kill.” Hirianthial smiled a little for her, probably noticing her wide eyes. “Yes?”
“Honestly I feel like I haven’t done anything useful yet,” she said, crestfallen. “Except get thrown in a cell.”
“It happens,” he said, and was that a touch of humor? She hoped so, anyway. If anyone could say something like that about ending up in a prison, it was him. “So, you saved Surela. I presume you had good cause.”
“It’s complicated.” Reese dug the medallion out of her inside vest pocket and offered it to him. “She said to use this to get her guards to give up.”
“Did she,” Hirianthial murmured, lifting it from her palm. He turned it, frowned at the back. “I would not have expected surrender of her.”
“She’s changed,” Reese said. At the looks everyone gave her, she said, “Fine, she’s changing. It’s a process. But at very least, she should have some dignity before the Queen executes her.”
“We will leave that matter to her, then,” Hirianthial said. “We have enough work of our own to do, beginning here.” He touched Val’s chin, turning the younger man’s face and examining it. “Many of us are not well enough to help in that endeavor. Irine? Sascha? Has one of you a telegem?”
“I do,” Sascha said.
“Let us gather our allies and finish the work here. After that….” He looked drawn. “We will have grimmer duties.”
CHAPTER 22
Mopping things up in Ontine proved easier than Reese had feared they might. Surela’s pendant earned them the surrender of her remaining partisans and guards, and after that it was a matter of ferrying the wounded up via Pad to the waiting battlecruiser—battlecruiser!—and getting the refugees away from Rose Point and back to the palace where they could provide an occupying force and help with the clean-up. Reese finally got a formal introduction to the Fleet Intelligence personnel, and the story they had to tell her about what had happened in orbit….
Now and then, when their many errands brought them near enough, she considered her Eldritch healer and boggled at the things he’d managed to accomplish. And regretted, a little, ever condescending to him about needing rescue.
Reese hadn’t needed the halo-arch herself, but enough people had that there was a brief period of quiet, one where she could use a modern ship’s facilities to take an actual shower and request some fresh clothes from the genie. Half a day later in response to an invitation, she let herself onto the bridge of a warship, something she’d never thought to see in her lifetime, and found the Fleet people with Hirianthial. Stepping up beside him, she dared to glance up at him. She was not encouraged by the look on his face.
“Thank you for coming,” the Seersa said, her own expression grave. Solysyrril Anderby, Reese thought, but everybody called her Soly. “We have some relevant news.”
…hopefully good, Reese thought.
“Your Queen should be here in three days.”
That surprised Hirianthial out of the stillness he’d been holding at her side. “Three days? I thought she was not due for two weeks?”
“That was before we captured a battlecruiser,” Soly said, ears sagging. “There are a lot of vessels in Fleet, Lord Hirianthial, but most of them are smaller ship classes. We desperately need all the heavy hitters we can muster at the front. They’re scrambling a crew to man this one and get it moving; the Queen’s riding along with them, and the scout she was originally issued is coming along.” She glanced at Reese. “She’s in the company of two of your people, I’m told? A Glaseah and a Flitzbe?”
“Yes,” Reese said, grateful that at least two of their number had been spared the fight in the palace… but glad they would be here soon, too.
The Seersa nodded. “The scout will stay and free up the Moonsinger to head coreward. That’s the good news.”
“And the bad news?” Reese prompted.
“Is that we have better sensor data on your province, alet,” Soly said to Hirianthial. “And there’s not much moving down there. We’re ready to undertake search and rescue, though, and can bring a shuttle down so we have access to the portable medtech and a power plant to run it.”
A heartbeat pause. “And the army?”
“Hasn’t deviated,” Tomas said. “It’s still almost two weeks out, making its way north. They’re not going anywhere quickly as long as they don’t run into some tech down there that we don’t know about.”
Hirianthial was silent a moment longer, and she couldn’t tell from his face what he was thinking. “Ready the shuttle, then, if you would. Let us see if there is anyone left to rescue.”
“We should be ready to go in an hour, then.”
He nodded. “Summon us then, then. Captain?”
When had she become “captain” again? She followed him off the bridge, uncertain, and jerked to a halt when he stopped outside the door, turning his face from her. She wanted to say something, but knew better by now—finally—and waited instead for him to reassemble his composure. When he had, he reached and took her hand, folding her fingers in his and then resting the other hand over it. “Forgive me, Theresa, if I am numb.”
Since he very likely had lost his entire family and all the people he’d felt responsible for when he’d been in charge of Jisiensire, she couldn’t see how he could be otherwise. So she said, “Let’s get the rest of this done and then we can worry about… anything else.”
“Yes.”
She thought that would be all, but he brought her hand up, pressed her knuckles to his brow, and she almost had to go on tiptoes to let him though he ducked his head for it. Through that contact she could feel the fine tremor he refused to let develop into anything more visible.
“But I vow it you,” he said. “We will speak of what we are, and what we should become.”
Reese managed a shaky smile. “A real, bona fide relationship talk, huh.”
His mouth curved a little. “The very thing.”
A time and place for everything, she figured. And he already knew what was in her heart. “I look forward to it.”
That moment… Reese held it close in the days that followed. She’d never done search and rescue before, and while she’d run the usual shipboard drills after leaving Mars, the process in space was sterile: lonely and cold, something to make you aware of the vast distances the universe considered trivial when compared to the tiny spark of human life.
Search and rescue in wet wreckage, where the chill humidity had turned the ash into icy black slush that stained everything it touched, where you had to physically shove bits of charred wood aside only to be confronted with a streak of paint, a knob of gilding, something that made you feel, like a punch to the chest, that this had been someone’s home….
It was horrendous.
Everyone came to the task who could be spared, who had the strength for it. Reese, the twins and Bryer followed Hirianthial down, and so did all the Fleet people, even the doctor who said the patients on board the ship were stable enough to do without him. Olthemiel’s Swords came too—they didn’t volunteer, they just showed up, as if there was no question they would be a part of the operation. So did all the refugees from the palace who felt they could help, even children who put themselves to work running messages to people without telegems. Reese watched them darting through the ruins and wondered what it must be like to grow up in a world where a child could be inure
d to violence this obvious. But then, if Hirianthial and Liolesa were right, this was a world accustomed to untimely death. She shuddered.
The first day was bad. Somehow the second was worse, because they knew how little there would be to find. It was sometime into that afternoon that Reese straightened, trying to work the kinks out of her back, and heard a familiar voice say, “I pray you’re not afraid of the consequences.”
She turned to the figure wrapped once again in a gray coat, if cleaner than it had been when she’d seen it last. “I thought you’d be up on the ship still.”
Val smiled, but there was no humor in it at all. “The four-legged doctor yonder judged I am well enough and sent me away. Particularly once I started hovering over Belinor.”
“And Belinor.…”
“Will be fine,” Val said, softly. “But he has paid bitter coin for his defiance.”
Reese glanced at him. “Like some other priest I know.”
“Like some other, yes.”
Reese nodded, surveying the mess. “So. Consequences of what?”
“Of this.”
“I’d be more afraid if there weren’t consequences for this,” Reese said, but Val shook his head.
“You have seen your man kill yet?”
Thinking of the fight in Surapinet’s compound, Reese said, “Yes.”
“In cold blood.”
That gave her pause. “No.”
Val nodded. “He won’t be the same man afterwards, in every way but one.”
“Which one is that?”
“The one that counts.”
Reese scowled at him. “I thought you were more of a straight-talker than most Eldritch.”
Val chuckled softly, walking past her. “I am more of a straight-talker than most Eldritch. Most priests, now….”
She sighed and trudged after him.
By the end of that day all that could be excavated of the remains of Jisiensire’s country seat had been. They had found no survivors, and almost no corpses either: the fire at the estate had been fueled with too much eagerness to leave much of anything behind. What few bodies they did find were in pieces. Reese guessed the new esophagus Hirianthial had sewn into her had given her some unexpected resilience because she didn’t vomit the way a lot of the unfortunates working alongside her did. She was guessing they were able to think of the pieces as parts of actual people. Reese was having trouble with that: it was so horrible that some part of her was convinced what she was seeing were props, bits of molded plastic made to look like someone’s arm or hip.
Even knowing they were real, she didn’t do a whole lot to convince herself otherwise. Better to keep moving than to cripple herself when there was so much still to be done.
Afterwards, the team split into smaller groups and went by Pad to the two separate sites Soly had pinpointed in her orbital scans. These were the villages Athanesin had razed, and here they found bodies, and the looks on the faces of the dead….
That night, Reese took a break in a field far enough from the edge of the village to smell something besides the memory of ash in the air. She didn’t say anything when the twins joined her, or when she ended up with one head on each of her shoulders. It kept her warm, having them close. They didn’t talk, which for them was strange, and their bodies were slack with more than exhaustion. Depression, she thought, and couldn’t blame them.
Bryer joined them not long after, bringing a sticklight that left a trail of golden luminance in the purple twilight. That the Phoenix didn’t say anything as he crouched across from them didn’t surprise her either, except he broke his silence without being prodded.
“There will be a killing for this.”
“Angels, I hope so,” Sascha muttered.
“I know,” Reese said to the Phoenix. “And yes, I know he’s going to be the one to do it. I won’t take that away from him. That was his family, his life, the people he took care of, the way you people have insisted I take care of you.”
A quiet. Irine spoke into it. “But?”
“But it’s a bleeding army of four hundred people, and they’ve all got modern weapons,” Reese said. “I don’t want him to die.”
“I’m guessing they have some sort of dueling tradition here, from what I’ve heard,” Sascha said. “That would probably be the way he does it. One on one.”
“As if this guy hasn’t cheated already, by their standards?” Reese waved a hand back toward the village, almost knocking into Irine’s nose. “They’re not supposed to kill what they think of as peasants, either.”
“Bigger weapons,” Bryer said. When they all looked at him, the Phoenix flared his crest and articulated. “We have them.”
“I guess,” Reese said. “But at some point there won’t be any people left to use the weapons, if we keep just upping the power level.” She sighed and rubbed her face slowly, dragging her fingers up and down her cheeks. “I just want this to be over, so we can figure out how to live through the days that are coming after.”
“That part should be easy,” Sascha murmured. “One day at a time, and all that.”
That made her smile, and then her telegem chimed. She touched it. “Reese.”
Solysyrril: “Captain? Your Queen’s made it in-system. She should be in orbit within the hour.”
“Thanks, Soly, we’re on our way.” She tapped the telegem off and didn’t move, for long enough that Irine nudged her.
“Um, Reese?”
Reese shook her head. “Nothing. Let’s get back.” She pushed herself upright and ambled after the twins, listening to their subdued attempts at banter and thinking about Soly’s casual comment. ‘Your Queen.’
She had a Queen. And a castle. And a people deeply in mourning after the violence of this short-lived revolution, a planet now forced into permanent vigil against the incursion of pirates and slavers… and a man who’d beheaded his own brother and then lost almost all his family. Almost all of them: there was Liolesa. Thank freedom for small blessings. Reese caught up with the others and led the way back to the camp.
CHAPTER 23
The first thing Liolesa did on stepping through the Pad tunnel was scan for him, meet his eyes, and step toward him, extending her hands… and he took them, and with them her fury and horror and seething satisfaction at all they’d accomplished in her absence. He searched her gaze and let her study his, and then he let himself accept that she was home and that the greater part of the responsibility had at last passed from his shoulders. He sighed, judged that they were close enough to alone, with the people around them standing so apart, to use the more intimate name. “Lia.”
“Hiran. Walk with me and tell me how it stands. I want to hear it from your mouth.”
He inclined his head and let her pick the route. Inevitably, she moved toward the remains of the village. Two of the Swords detached from their posts near the Alliance shuttle and trailed them, and that was their duty and their diligence pleased him, in some distant place where he could be pleased past the numbness of the past three days. So they walked, and he told her of the pirate’s stolen warship and the battle to retake it; of the war in the palace, and the deaths of the Chatcaavan and his brother; of the attempt to salvage anything from the atrocity Athanesin had perpetrated on Jisiensire’s holdings and their estimation of how few of Jisiensire’s populace had survived. He spoke exclusively in black mode, and shadowed, until the dark of it clogged his throat and painted everything in hopelessness and exhaustion.
When he had finished she said nothing, staring into the distance. He let her have the quiet, standing behind and to one side of her, his hands folded behind his back. The wind was stiff and wet, sticking his hair to his cheek and numbing his nose. Three days of laboring in it, and he found he forgot that he was cold, though it made him clumsy. Too much to distract him. Too much shock.
At last, she said, “Lesandurel’s on his way with his fixed fortifications and enough engineers to go to work on them. That’s settled. And the scout will be staying aft
er the battlecruiser you liberated departs. They had not planned to leave it, but they need the cruiser more. We will have some protection thus, until we can push through any longer-term plans.”
“Of which you have many,” he guessed.
“Oh, one might say so.” She did not sound satisfied, however. “They are bearing fruit somewhat too late to have saved us this grief.”
He stepped up alongside her, feeling her awareness of him, her wariness, and her need not to accept any palliative words. So he did not give her them, and felt the prickliness of her irritation growing alongside the reluctant fascination that streaked her aura with tarnished silver. “Well?”
All he said was, “The chances of us living our lives without grief are nil. Our lives in particular.”
“Because they are so long? Or because of who we are?” She turned her face away, clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Never mind. It hardly matters, does it. This is the situation we have, and it must be faced.” She glanced at him, then. “You will kill Athanesin.”
A command, a question, a statement of fact? All of these things, perhaps. “Is that to be his sentence?”
She turned her face back to the ruins, and her voice was low and hard. “Need you ask?”
What other reply? “No.” Something else seemed important, and he remembered after a moment. “He has an army.”
“An army that Corel’s heir could not contain?”
Could he? Probably. While fighting a duel at the same time? Best not to push his limits, not when heartsore. “I have a better idea.”
“Good.” She considered the bleak vista for long enough that he became far too aware of the cold and the ache in his joints, in the fine bones of his fingers. “Tomorrow, you will finish this. And then we can begin the long process of remaking the world in its new image.”
“How does it find you?” he asked, quiet, allowing his words to glide into neutral grays. “To at last be free to do so, without political impediment?” When she glanced at him, he finished, “You have been waiting so long.”
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