by Hotter Edge
Icere studied her a moment, his jaw working. He took two steps toward her and kissed her hard. When he lifted his head, his pupils were huge and dark. “Your ruthless expediency terrifies me.”
She quirked her lips. “Yes, I can tell.”
He stepped gracefully away just as Kylara returned with Luac shuffling behind her.
Luac groaned as he lowered himself into the same chair Ky had occupied. “You’re furious with me, aren’t you?”
Rynn held the tablet against her chest. “As your mother or your Saya?”
“Either. Both.” He tilted his head back on the chair. “I don’t blame you. I blame myself.”
“Don’t,” Rynn said.
“At least, not entirely,” Icere added. When Rynn gave him a look, he shrugged.
Luac lifted his head. “What do you mean?”
“You were tricked.” Icere explained the highlights of what they’d found: the suspicious deal for the ni-malac balm, the tampered-with staves that had cracked just as Luac retrieved the sachet, his own long, sheerways-spanning pursuit of the raiders.
He left out any reference to l’auraly or the qva’avaq, skipping to the results of his investigation into the raiders’ plans for the aphrodisiac. Rynn let him talk; perhaps the mortification at being deceived might sting less coming from someone besides a mother.
As her son braced his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes grim and focused, she felt another punch in her chest, right through the tablet she realized she was holding like a shield. Luac wasn’t a boy anymore, hadn’t been for some time.
When Icere finished his recap, Luac nodded curtly. “Let me see the vid.”
She passed over the tablet, and Ky perched on the chair behind Luac’s shoulder, her brow furrowed. “Look at the time stamp. That’s only a few minutes after I delivered the sachet. They were watching, waiting.”
Luac tapped at the screen a few times before passing the tablet back to Rynn. “That is my private account. I had more personal conversations with the rep on the balm deal. In retrospect, her interest in some details of the Malac Festival seems unusual.”
Icere lifted one brow. “She?”
Kylara made a rude noise. “Women can’t be mercenary killers? Judging by the height and body mass, the individual who took the sachet could as easily have been female as male.”
“We’ll know soon enough.” Rynn scanned the messages, trying not to focus on the more suggestive ones. “Did she send you visuals of herself?”
“In the beginning, yes.”
Rynn found the earliest message and sent a few frames to the image recognition subroutine in the barge security system. She queried on a match for the message signals too. “If she’s here, we’ll find her.”
Luac rubbed his forehead. “I am so sorry I started this.”
Rynn stopped herself from going to him, but she couldn’t keep silent. “You didn’t start anything. There have always been people who want more power.”
“Power isn’t the problem,” Icere said. “Oppression, terror, greed. Those are the problems.” When Rynn and her children merely stared at him, he lifted one shoulder in a smooth shrug. “Fortunately, we don’t have to solve those tonight. Just find this thief.”
As if responding to his command, the tablet in Rynn’s hand chimed. “System found a match on the signal. It connects the ni-malac balm rep’s messages to one of the suspicious trails Icere discovered before he came here. And the origination is the same as one of the sheerships in orbit.”
Icere went predator-still. “Did the ship send a shuttle?”
She swept through the data. “Yes. One shuttle. Reporting four souls aboard; three men, one woman. Names and ident photos.” The tablet chimed again. “Facial recognition match. The woman is Luac’s contact. Name: Marsil Omel.”
Luac shook his head. “That’s not what she called herself to me.”
“Probably not her real name now, either.” Icere paced restlessly. “Why haven’t they opened the sachet? If they take the liqueur offworld, your tracking isotope won’t help us.”
“They aren’t going anywhere,” Ky said. “The storms make a mess of the troposphere. No shuttle would risk a launch.”
“And if they bring their sheership down instead?”
Rynn drummed her fingers on the screen. “We don’t grant planetfall to the larger ships for environmental and aesthetic reasons.”
“That won’t stop the raiders,” Icere pointed out.
“No, but it limits their landing options. Since we don’t maintain a port of sufficient size, they’d have to make do with the nearest large landmass.”
Icere looked up. “Your island.” Shadows lurked in his sea-violet eyes, and she knew he was remembering the devastation to his own world.
But she’d learned long ago to just hold her breath and dive past the deepest shadows. “Let’s force their hand.” She programmed her plan into the tablet as she spoke. “I’m posting Omel’s image on every screen on the barge with an emergency announcement. We’ll put everyone’s eyes to use. Luac, I want you to go door to door with a security detail.”
He nodded briskly. “I’ll bring an army.”
She held up one hand. “No, I don’t want you to find her. She needs to run, far away from our festival. I want no hostages, no injuries or deaths, not a single spilled cocktail.” She turned to her daughter. “Ky, put your engineering degree to work. Make sure all submersible vehicles are locked down, in use, or otherwise out of commission. Except one. That one must be too tempting not to steal. And I want it under our control at all times.”
Ky echoed her brother’s nod. “When I have the sub prepared, I’ll tell Lu so he can start his door to door.”
Rynn glanced toward the windows where the sky had brightened even though the water still held the dark secrets of night. “We have a few hours until full light and then the storms will be rising again. I want them on the run when they are at their most vulnerable. Also, we need time to bring in reinforcements.”
Icere shook his head. “There’s no one we can trust.”
“Your friends. Bring their ship.”
His brows furrowed. “The Asphodel had to destroy half a mountain to stop them last time. It can’t come to a firefight here.”
Her delicate world would be indelibly stained this time, its pure waters poisoned with fuel and fire, its vicious but precious malac endangered. And who would she execute for this affront?
Her gaze slid away from Icere, who hadn’t caused the trouble, only brought it to her attention. For the supposed good of her world, she had been made into a lethal, lonely creature. Could she be less than that with the freedom of the sheerways at stake?
Tetrodotoxin seemed to course through her veins, numbing her from the inside. “No choice. Call them. When the Asphodel comes, we strike.”
She was glad for the iceberg in her chest making her voice cold and steady, the euphoria of malac essence and qva’avaq finally dissipating to leave her head clear. But like the festival season storms breaking apart, that only made clearer to her the inevitable end of their aphrodisiac adventure.
Icere had been destined for greatness. Though that future had been stolen from him, this fight was his chance to shine. Not merely from the crystal that infused his skin, but to end the raiders’ threat to the universe and reclaim his dreams.
If they survived to win the day, she would sink back to the deep fathoms that had always been her solace, and she would send her lover back to find his place among the stars.
Chapter Eleven
Though he was still dripping on the floor, Icere swallowed against the sudden dryness in his throat. He barely noticed Luac and Kylara leave at their mother’s bidding. He had eyes only for her.
In the light of the rising sun, she seemed even smaller than he knew her to be, more fragile. He needed to go to her, to put his hands on her and assure himself that she would not fade on him like some lovely dream.
But when he took a step toward her, sh
e abruptly handed him the tablet and stepped away. “Send the message.”
Someone was trying to send a message, all right.
“Saya.” His words were rough, as if someone less practiced spoke with his voice. “We’ll call the Asphodel and have them wait in orbit. When the festival is over and the storms abate, we can let Omel and her crew escape without opposition. Let the Asphodel take them.”
“I’m relieved you have such faith in your friends. That gives me hope we will win the day.”
“Rynn—”
“No. As you said, if the raiders get offworld, we may lose them. And then we may lose the sheerways.”
“But you may lose this place too, your island.” His fingers tightened on the screen as the conflict within him tore at his convictions. For so long, he’d been focused on his hunt to stop the raiders; he couldn’t believe he’d want anything besides that. And yet he also knew—too well, too painfully—what it meant to face exile. “You might forfeit your throne.”
She gave him a smile as twisted and sharp as the edge of a malac shell. “Maybe I just won’t give it up. That would please my great-grandfather.” The smile vanished. “You came here with a purpose, l’auralyo. Don’t abandon it now, or you will have nothing to show for all your own loss, and you might as well have disappeared along with your crystal.”
He stiffened at the cruel reminder. And the implicit rejection. “I’d have nothing?” Letting the tablet fall to the chair where Luac had sat, he stalked her toward the window. Beyond, the water was still deep indigo, as if it held the last of the night. He stepped into her space. “I would have you.”
When she tilted her head to look up at him, her pale eyes glittered. “We shared an evening of pleasure. Don’t confuse the two.”
He stiffened, as if a malac had caught him between its crushing, edged lips. “For l’auraly, pleasure and possession are synonymous.”
“This is a vacation world. Pleasure lasts only until the storms end on the morning the ship comes to take you home.”
A faint mournful note in her words pierced him, but he wasn’t sure if it was for his own sake or hers. The l’auraly bond was forged in forever, deep as bedrock, strong as stone.
But she was the inexorable water that could wear him down and wash him away.
The l’auraly were no more—the legend of their ardent devotion to their one perfect lover diminished now to a one-night drunken encounter—and he couldn’t risk what little he had left. Besides, why would he think she’d even want the faded glory of what he might have been?
He stepped back without touching her. “I’ll summon the Asphodel as you request, Saya, but I have no home awaiting me, there or anywhere.”
As she turned from the window, shadows darkened her eyes. “Tell them to come quietly. The nearest sheerways node sees little traffic during the storms, but if they follow the atmospheric tides, they should be able to slip in unnoticed among the other orbiting ships.”
He bowed with stiff formality. He’d been taught his own wishes came second—just as he came second in the bedroom—and he struggled to make that control serve him now. “Anything else?”
“Your tech has been returned to your suite. Perhaps that would be the safest place for you when we confront the raiders. If they were to discover what you are, they would abandon the malac essence in a heartbeat and take you instead.”
He searched her face, trying to see past her brooding expression. Did she think she was doing him a favor, offering him a way to escape? Anger churned in his belly like the ache of a long hunger. “I did not come this far to hide in my room.”
Her jaw jutted with an argument, but he didn’t give her time to speak. “You need the Asphodel,” he warned. “Go interrogate the uninjured diver while I make the call, but do not move against Omel and her cohorts without me.”
She inhaled, fast and deep, and the violet rings in her skin flushed—annoyed as she was, no doubt, by his high-handed order—but she only nodded. For an instant, he was proud that she could put aside her feelings for the good of the sheerways. She was not the backwater tyrant her great-grandfather had wanted; she was her own woman.
Except apparently she could also put aside any feelings for him.
He stifled a renewed pang of denial. After all, if his qva’avaq key had been bid out, he would not have had any say in his potential a’lurily. At best he would have been allowed to meet with the top contenders to encourage them to increase their bids. For all the refinement of his upbringing that made him an object of desire, the harsh truth had been his people needed the credits more than they ever needed him.
After his sister and her sheership captain had destroyed the remaining qva’avaq, he had helped them embezzle the raiders’ intended payment for the attack against his world. Not the intended purpose of his education in technology and finance, but surprisingly useful nonetheless. That seized payment had endowed his people for the foreseeable future. Which only meant they didn’t even need whatever credits his key bid might have excited.
The legend of the l’auraly had already been fading. Now it was all but extinguished.
And here he stood, squared off with his first lover mere hours after what should have been his bonding ritual and the culmination of everything he was intended to be.
Could be worse, of course. He could be dead, drowned in the belly of a giant carnivorous aphrodisiac clam.
Somehow, the realization did not improve his mood.
“Summon the Asphodel,” she said softly. “This will be over soon.”
And here he had not believed his mood could dive any deeper.
They parted without another word. Back in his suite, he found all his tech laid out on the table as it had been the first night when she appeared at his door. Which had been barely one planetary rotation ago. How could he have chased back and forth across the sheerways for a sol-year, unchanged, and yet after one day—and one night—in her presence, he would never be the same again?
Morning sunlight sparkled on the waves outside his window, but already clouds massed on the horizon in preparation for the afternoon storms. While he waited for a secure link to the Asphodel, he made himself a quick meal from fruit and some salty, starchy root chips he found stocked near the tea Rynn had made for him, though he didn’t brew a pot. He’d had enough of Saya-Terce’s various liquids.
Though he did not hurry through his meal, the link still hadn’t connected by the time he finished; testament to the relentless power of the festival-season storms. He boosted the gain, running the signal on the back of the intra-system communications array, and recited a l’auraly calming mantra as he paced. How long had it been since he practiced the finer arts of his training?
And why should it matter when l’auraly no longer existed?
The defeated thought brought his pacing to a halt beside the knife he’d used to cut the fruit.
The legend of the l’auraly was dead.
But he wasn’t.
Fastidiously, he disinfected the blade and carried it to the window where the light was good, grabbing a towel from the cabinet beside the door to the deck. He crouched, his left leg straightened ahead of him, and set the blade to his inner thigh.
The shallow wound running parallel to the muscle tissue bled only a little. When he sopped away the crimson, the cut gaped, revealing raw tissue…and a glimmer of shining crystal within.
As hiding places went, the surgically inserted, scan-neutral pouch wasn’t exactly spacious or convenient, but he didn’t have much anyway. Wincing at the sting, he eased the bracelet out of his flesh.
The fine links of the bracelet had been carved simply and with exquisite precision to waste none of the qva’avaq and, more importantly, to preserve the key’s connection with the crystal sunk into his body. Flawed crystals had killed many over the centuries. Matched crystal sets—with two or more resonating stones that sang to each other across time and space—had always been exceedingly rare, but when he and his sisters had been promis
ed as l’auraly, the lone vein of qva’avaq had been all but exhausted.
He didn’t bother cleaning the bracelet; the qva’avaq had an affinity for bodily fluids and would hungrily absorb the smears of blood. Instead, he rubbed the links between his thumb and forefinger, counting out each curve as he’d done ever since he’d survived the ritual that made him l’auralyo, the perfect echo of another’s pleasure.
Saya-Rynn had said the raiders did not need to discover what he was.
But she did.
The tablet he’d left on the table chimed as it finally forged a secure connection through the storm, and he limped across the room with the towel clamped to his thigh. He settled on the couch and lifted the screen to key in his code.
Benedetta appeared, her brow already furrowed over her peridot eyes since he’d sent the connection request with an emergency signature. “What’s wrong?”
“Our old friends are here. We need the Asphodel.”
“We’re already en route. Changed course after your first message.”
He nodded. Of course she had. “I’m sending you the suggested course for a discreet arrival.”
Her slender fingers danced on the lower section of the screen in a flicker of qva’avaq silver. “Received and forwarded to navigation. Corso here counter-suggests—and I quote—guns blazing.”
Despite himself, Icere grinned. “Kiss your mercenary sheership captain for me. I know how much he likes that.”
Her lips quirked. “Troublemaker.”
His grin faded. “Not enough of one, I think.”
She looked him over and her gem-sharp gaze fixed on his hand holding the tablet. He realized she must be able to see the bracelet he’d clamped there.
“Icere—”
He shifted his grip so that links fell out of her view. “Don’t scold. It’s unbecoming in a well-trained woman like yourself.”
She actually stuck her tongue out at him, and for a moment, his idyllic childhood was once more alive. Until she reminded him, “I am not just that. Not anymore. And you’ve put yourself in a dangerous place.” She didn’t mean a world invaded by a domination-seeking entity of unknown origin.
