“They are at least more amenable to group efforts. So, if that’s acceptable to you, I shall tell you what I believe our next step should be and you tell me how it accords with you?”
Meryl Osgood, the brindled gold Hinichi wolfine charged with the leadership of the FIA team, was sitting back in her chair with her arms folded. He’d liked her immediately on meeting her, and that had made the thought of using her group as a glorified taxi unpalatable. Besides, he could almost hear his cousin’s genteel rebuke: Would you do this alone, Imthereli? Why, when you might have help?
“I admit that’s more than I expected out of you,” Meryl said finally, a smile plucking up the corner of her mouth. “You didn’t sound like a team player, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Ambassador.”
“No need for it. You’re correct; I’m not used to relying on others. But then, you are no mere others, are you?”
“Hell no,” the dark-skinned human woman sitting on the other side of Meryl said. “We’re the best damned hold this side of the border. And by this side I mean the rough side.”
“Yep,” Na’er agreed.
“As you can see, we have some swagger of our own,” Meryl said dryly.
Lisinthir grinned. “We shall get along fine, I suspect.”
“So your plan?” Meryl asked.
“The refugee flight,” Lisinthir said, sobering. “The Queen would not have arranged it had she not felt it necessary. We must find out those reasons.”
“By sneaking into the Chatcaavan throneworld system and hacking the computers or interrogating prisoners stolen from outposts?” Na’er said jauntily.
Lisinthir glanced at him, trying not to smile at the twinkle in the Aera’s eye. “I was thinking more that we might simply ask the refugees.”
“You said he was going to be more exciting than this,” Na’er complained to Meryl.
Laniis, at the end of the table, smothered a noise that sounded suspiciously like a giggle as Meryl said, “I said, sure. I didn’t promise.”
“Get it in writing next time,” Dellen said.
Ignoring the laughter, Meryl said, “So you’d like to meet up with them? I assume it’s the Slave Queen you’ll want to interview, or will any of them do?”
“Shouldn’t matter,” Na’er said. “All of them are getting funneled through the abbey. I don’t think the charity’s picked up any of them yet. If we head there, we should be able to intercept all of them as they come through.”
To see the Queen again… Lisinthir measured his breathing, suspired the yearning. “That would be ideal.”
“Good enough,” Meryl said. “It’s not like we don’t have plenty of experience doing insertions there. And since you’ve so kindly decided to put our expertise at your disposal instead of riding roughshod over us, Ambassador… my strong suggestion—which might actually constitute an order—is that you follow our instructions on how you approach this rendezvous. The Chatcaava are trying to scoop up any Eldritch they can get their hands on, and the picture they’ve got on those bulletins as an example is your portrait.”
“Is it?” Lisinthir asked, bemused.
“You’re famous,” Shanelle, the human woman, said.
“In the very worst of ways,” Meryl agreed. “We have procedures for making contact with the people arranging the Chatcaavan flight. They’ll work for most of us. For you, if you insist on going personally—” She paused to evaluate his expression and nodded. “Of course you are—then you’re going to need that roquelaure FIA gave you.”
“You have a roquelaure?” Shanelle said, eyes wide. “They gave a civilian a roquelaure?”
“Yes,” Lisinthir said, demure. “About that. I may have misplaced it.”
“They gave a civilian a roquelaure and he misplaced it?” Shanelle said. “You misplaced it.”
“I may have done, yes.”
“May have?” Meryl asked, arch.
“In point of fact,” Lisinthir said, “I… most certainly did, yes.”
The one member of the hold who hadn’t yet said anything did now: Patrick, a bicolor Karaka’An male who served as data analyst. “Did you lose it? Or misplace it?”
He felt skin beneath his fingers again, tasted kisses close and familiar. “I left it elsewhere for insurance.”
That silence was puzzled, perhaps. Considering. Meryl broke it by sighing. “Well then, we’re going to have to give you the one they issued us. And this one, Ambassador, absolutely can’t be left anywhere, misplaced, or lost.”
“Understood,” he said. “I shan’t misplace it. No doubt because you will implant it before we leave, yes?”
“Yes,” Meryl said firmly. And chuckled. “You know, I know your kind, Ambassador.”
“Oh?” he said, interested. “What kind is that?”
“People like you… you’re very accommodating. Until you’re not.” She grinned, showing teeth. “I can appreciate that in a person.”
“Ah. Yes.” He inclined his head. “There is a line past which I will not go, alet. Up to that point, I am remarkably open to suggestion.”
Meryl snorted. “I’m sure you are. Come by the clinic after supper, we’ll start setting up the roquelaure. It’s three days to our destination. Laniis, will you settle him in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“After dinner, then,” Lisinthir said to them.
The Silhouette was smaller than the Quicklance, but as usual there was extra berthing for guests; more such cabins, in fact, than the Quicklance had boasted despite the latter ship’s larger size, as the agents of Fleet’s investigative and intelligence arm were more likely to be hosting specialists or freelance agents. No Chatcaavan vessel, outside the ones intended to ferry passengers, had the amount of empty space typical to a Fleet ship. Ordinarily he would have thought it unnecessarily luxurious, but Lisinthir trailed his hand along the bulkhead as Laniis stopped before the hatch to his new quarters, and nothing beneath his fingers felt like overfed luxury. There was menace and purpose in the bones of these vessels. They had only to wake to the necessity of warfare, and when they did....
“Here, alet,” Laniis said.
Inside, Lisinthir set his case on the bunk and popped the latches. “So,” he said to her in Eldritch, though he stripped all the modifiers for the sake of clarity, “you trust these people?”
“With our lives,” she replied seriously.
Her accent was poor and all the nuance of the language was absent, but it was a pleasure to hear his tongue again. Jahir had made him cognizant of the utility of being able to speak without being understood. “Good.” In Universal, “And did they also send you into the bosom of psychiatrists?”
The Seersa’s ears sagged. “Oh, alet. Don’t tell me they handed you off to them! You?”
He chuckled. “I take it your time with them was... not productive.”
“Not that,” she said. “So much as... they were desk-drivers who’d never seen a fight. They could imagine my feelings, but they couldn’t understand my motivations. Not in their bones. They did their best. It’s just... they didn’t know what makes me feel whole.”
Lisinthir made a noncommittal noise.
“They didn’t know what to do with you either, I’m betting.”
He chuckled, remembering Jahir’s frustration. “No. Not initially at least.”
She nodded, ears flicking back. Then, quieter, “Ambassador, I have to ask... the Queen... she said the Emperor had appointed her a head of security.” Laniis leaned forward. “What happened after I left?”
“I made him see the error of his ways,” Lisinthir said. He turned, found her staring at him, but not in disbelief. “You seem remarkably unsurprised by this, alet.”
“Arii,” she corrected. “Please. If it’s not presumption?”
He smiled at that, gently. “No. Not you, Laniis.”
She flushed, ears darkening. Then, “He taught me to say ‘hello’ in seven different dialects.”
“I... I beg your pardon?”
The Seersa fold
ed her arms. “He raped me. You know that. So did some of the others, and it was because he allowed it. From them... they were eager to grind the aliens down, teach them their place. Him, though... he did it for some other reason I never understood. And rarely. I never figured out what he wanted from that. Sometimes I thought he did it because it was expected. Sometimes I think he did it because I happened to be there. But it never felt the same.”
“No, I imagine not,” Lisinthir said, low.
“But one day, he brought four guards with him.” She fell into her memories, eyes distant. When she looked at him again, there was something there: some shadow. “I thought I was going to be a prize to be shared for good service. But instead, he asked them questions, had a conversation with them about something mundane... I can’t even remember what. They left, and he asked me if I could duplicate their accents. If I had even perceived them.”
How well he could imagine the scene. The Emperor-before, nursing the curiosity that would become the crack Lisinthir exploited to pry open his soul, wondering if the famed Seersan ability for languages was truth or hyperbole. “You surprised him.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I could never read him. I don’t think I was impartial enough to be able to. But when I reproduced those accents accurately, he asked me if I knew the difference between a handful of different words. I didn’t. He told me that these were greetings unique to different subcultures of the Empire. He wanted me to reproduce them in the accents, once he’d taught them to me, to see if I could. And after that...” She rubbed a shoulder, absent. “After that I don’t think he thought to use me unless I happened to be there. Which for any Chatcaavan male in the imperial harem was as much kindness as you could expect.” She lifted her eyes. “He was a bastard, a rapist, and a murderer, Ambassador. But he wasn’t typical of the Chatcaava. And ordinarily, I’d love to see him dead. But seeing him changed... that’s worse than dead. Is it true?”
“He assigned the Queen a head of security,” Lisinthir said.
“Yes,” Laniis murmured. “And she looked...”
What? he wondered, hoping.
“She looked whole,” Laniis finished. “Worried about whatever was going on, but there was hope in her. In all the days I was with her, arii, I never saw her hope. I never saw anything like agency.”
“The situation is complex,” Lisinthir said. “And I suspect we have not yet understood the breadth of the complexities. This is part of what I wish to accomplish by consulting with her when we meet her.”
“That’s another thing you need to know,” Laniis said. “This place we’re going to? The abbey? The person who’s running the planet-side of the operation? He’s an Eldritch.”
“Is he!” Lisinthir exclaimed, feeling the revelation cresting toward him with the inevitability of a flood tide.
“And the charity-side, too. A different one, a woman. I don’t know if you know them...”
“Oh,” Lisinthir said. “I’m entirely certain that I do.”
The world’s name was Sharsenne, and the procedure by which he was to arrive at this remote abbey involved convolution worthy of an Eldritch. Even wearing the roquelaure, he was not permitted to simply Pad to his endpoint; instead, in the company of Laniis and Na’er, he “arrived” to the orbital station from a disreputable—and microscopic—vessel the Silhouette was carrying in its launch bay. The Silhouette itself remained Dusted, invisible to all but the most canny of sensor technicians and the most powerful of equipment.
From the orbital station, they Padded to the surface, to the fringes of one of the larger cities on the major landmass. Following his Fleet guides, Lisinthir passed through the anonymizing crowds in the guise of a human, the roquelaure sheathing him with a seeming that he reinforced gently with his own abilities. He felt Jahir’s absence like an empty socket, waiting for power; without his cousin’s touch, he remained unable to reach into people’s minds without touching them. The reading of auras, however, was not beyond him, and physical pressures, gentle or harsh, remained easy. It was novel to realize how much he could do on his own now that he knew he could and had practiced the use of it.
Their journey to the abbey involved a ride on a beast enough like a horse to make him nostalgic, and from there a walk which Laniis sighed over reprising, inspiring much teasing from her Aera friend. She liked him, Lisinthir thought, and smiled to see it. So much the Chatcaava ruined; so much they prided themselves on ruining. And yet here was the Alliance in all its unexpected fortitude, like true steel hidden beneath too many gauds.
“There it is,” Na’er said. On the horizon, tucked into the lee of a wood, was a structure that could have come from his homeworld’s earliest architecture, with a dome of solid stone supported by thick walls and flat buttresses. It had a presence there amid the pastoral vista, was just right. “As Laniis will tell you, they have good cider.”
“Do they,” he said politely.
Na’er glanced at Laniis, who flicked her ears sideways, unperturbed. “His mind’s elsewhere.”
“Stay in the game, alet,” Na’er said.
Lisinthir snorted. “I am nowhere else, I assure you.”
But Laniis was right. As the abbey grew before them, all he could think was that he would soon see her again: touch her face, feel the unexpected beauty of her spirit beneath his fingertips… watch her look up at him with those earnest orange eyes, and smile.
He’d been barely gone, and it had been too long.
The bustle of the abbey did not surprise him; did the Alliance wish to support such an antiquated establishment, it would often choose to do so for the purpose of returning to manual labor as a path to contemplation and simplicity. Perhaps the Eldritch had once done the same. Unlike the Eldritch, however, the Pelted would not make the mistake of eschewing that technology irrevocably and ubiquitously. The Abbey of St. Jasmine of the Stars would remain a quaint anomaly, and the Alliance would continue on around it.
There were geese, though. That did surprise him. Had he been given the choice of animals to import, he would have selected something less annoying.
They were greeted by a cowled acolyte, a friendly Asanii felid with gray and orange fur and bright orange eyes. Either she’d been expecting them or she was unsurprised by Fleet visitors, for she greeted them with aplomb as she ushered them inside, telling them they would be seen soon.
There were catacombs, perhaps expectedly, and they were escorted to a dim room underground where it was safe to deactivate the roquelaure. Lisinthir found he appreciated the coolth after the long walk in the summer sunshine. And the cider, too, which was as delicious as advertised, served with thick, sour bread with herbed butter, and slabs of white cheese alongside the wet globes of foreign berries, clustered like cabochons. Neither Laniis nor Na’er availed themselves of the victuals; he would not have known the Aera well enough to read him, but a mind-mage’s expanded abilities edged Na’er’s movements with a friction that suggested agitation. Laniis, of course, he knew, and she too was nervous.
Lisinthir was neither. He sat at the wooden table, legs crossed so that one ankle rested on his knee, and slouched. Either the Queen was here already and he would see her shortly, or she was still in transit and he would instead have the entertainment of the acquaintances he was about to make… either way, he looked forward to this respite before the work.
Bootsteps on stone. Too heavy a tread for a woman. A few moments later, a tall figure, hooded and robed, ducked into the room and straightened. “You arrive betimes, and bring a guest, aletsen—”
Lisinthir said, “Amber Seni Galare. You may drop your disguise.” At the shocked stillness of the figure, he added in Eldritch, “I am your brother’s fast companion, and a cousin of yours. Lisinthir Nase Galare, at your service.”
The other man threw off the hood of his robe, the glamour fading with it, and there was Jahir’s brother: like the man, but narrower through the chest and shoulders and jaw. Taller also, with darker eyes, almost a honeyed hazel to J
ahir’s clear deep yellow. But the similarities were otherwise eerie… or would have been until this stranger strode to him and went to a knee, speaking all white and silver and subdued shadows. “Then to you I owe the rescue of my beloved. Korval Keldi’s Son, you have done what was mine to do, and I am in your debt for it.”
To be knelt to in gratitude was the last thing Lisinthir had expected out of a stranger, and he found it distasteful in the extreme… and yet it was hard to fault Amber for feeling the necessity. Had he been in the other man’s position, he would have felt so constrained. “I did our Queen’s bidding, cousin, even as we are doing now.”
“And yet,” Amber said. “If there is ever aught I may do for you…”
“I will ask it, I pledge it you.”
“Then I am content, insomuch as I may be.” Amber rose and switched to Universal. “I beg your pardon, Na’er-alet. I did not realize you meant to bring me a member of my own family.”
“Did I?” Na’er said with interest.
Amber said, “You did, yes. Though I had not had the honor of meeting him. You said you knew my brother, though, alet?”
“I do, yes,” Lisinthir said. “Rather well.”
“Perhaps you have met our other cousin, then?” Amber said. “If I am not mistaken, I hear her on the stairs.”
“You do,” said a woman’s voice in crisp Universal. “And I don’t appreciate you trying to leave me out of this, Amber.”
“I didn’t leave you out of it,” Amber said. “I was the one who invited you to this tangle, if you’ll recall.”
“Only because you had no choice.” She came into the room with the splendor of an erupting fire, and Lisinthir found her inevitability satisfying in the extreme. “Obviously you resent that necessity because when Fleet sent these two no one came to find me.”
“I thought I’d see what they needed first,” Amber said.
“You thought you’d keep me out of trouble. You can take that and shove it in a dark hole, cousin. I’m the charity’s liaison and the Queen’s ambassador to the Alliance. Stop treating me like Nuera’s marriageable heir.”
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