Kinsman's Oath

by Susan Krinard

  "You do plan to die," she said. "You want revenge, but you don't want to take me down with you. So you gave me the means to protect myself while you remain vulnerable."

  "Forgive the deception," he said hoarsely, "but it was necessary. When VelRauthi comes for us, which he must do very soon, you will agree to give him whatever he wants to know. You have the means and understanding to share only what you wish, and the intelligence and courage to succeed."

  "Not without you."

  He shook his head. "No time. Hold VelRauthi's attention and distract him from me. You know how. I will get to the communications console and send a message to those who would help you."

  She cursed, and he smiled. "You will do this, ina-ma. If I succeed in sending the message, I will probably not survive. VelRauthi will quickly realize that I am too weak to resist him, but I will engage him long enough to allow you to escape the bridge. Make yourself unseen and find a place to hide." He stopped her protest with a twitch of his hand. "Either the ones I call will come, or VelRauthi will find you and take you to Kinsman headquarters."

  "Why should they?"

  "With the abilities you display, they will believe that your importance to the Concordat must surely be greater than they imagined. But your shielding is also greater than ever before. All you must do is delay them until allies come to find you."

  "Allies? In the Shaauriat?"

  "Yes, even here. They will hear you if you tell them you are the lifemate of Ronan Kane VelKalevi Challinor, for my parents' sake."

  "But I'm not your lifemate, am I? If I were, you wouldn't leave me." Her voice broke. "What good will they do us if you're dead?"

  "You will survive to return to the Concordat, and you will work for peace with shaauri-ja."

  "Why should I?" Bitterness scorched her throat like tears. "I owe nothing to the shaauri."

  "But you want peace and freedom for your own people. I know your heart, ina-ma."

  Ina-ma. Her new Voishaaur vocabulary supplied the definition.

  My breath. My soul. Beloved.

  He didn't touch her, offered no caresses to prove the sincerity of the word. But he meant it. God help them both, he meant it utterly.

  "It will be your vengeance against the Kinsmen for my life," he said. "You have all the knowledge you need to do this, Cynara. You already possess the courage."

  "You're wrong. We're both cowards, Ronan."

  "I will live on within you."

  He was right. He'd live as a part of her, like Tyr, but not only in her troubled imagination. Everything he was lay encoded in her cells, never to fade or vanish until her own death.

  It wasn't good enough.

  "Very well," she said with a fierce new calm. "I will survive."

  His jaw worked, and he whispered shaauri words like a prayer. She held up her hand to silence him.

  "They're coming," she said. She couldn't hear the enemy's approach, but her brain's own proximity alarms told her that Kinsmen had sensed the mental turmoil within the cell.

  Ronan lunged across the deck and pulled her close. She wrapped her fingers in his hair. They kissed with frantic urgency, but it was as if she embraced him through the unbreachable layers of an environmental suit.

  The cell's door opened. Four Kinsmen entered, two aiming weapons while the others dragged Ronan and Cynara to their feet.

  Artur Constano VelRauthi was waiting on the bridge. Two other high-ranking Kinsmen stood with him beside the captain's chair. A pair of the guards took posts just outside the bridge door.

  "Ah, Ronan," VelRauthi said. "I hope you appreciate the privacy we granted you and Captain D'Accorso." He smiled at Cynara. "Sacred Kinsman law forbids entering an unwilling mind. Unfortunately, your shouting was impossible to ignore."

  Ronan stared through the Kinsman as if he had chosen to keep silent rather than grant VelRauthi a single word in response. But he had no defense, and soon his enemy would know. He had become a hollow man, a creature stripped of the only strengths that made him VelRauthi's equal.

  But he still had some small worth. Cynara's anger ate at him like the corrosive sap of a kek plant, but he was glad of it. Anger would keep her alive. And if hatred failed her, Sihvaaro's wisdom would teach her acceptance, as it had once taught a small and very frightened boy.

  Sihvaaro would be avenged. Cynara would live.

  Ronan smiled.

  "I apologize for the disturbance, Ser Constano," Cynara said. "I agree to your terms. I'll tell you whatever you wish to know."

  VelRauthi and his Kinsman aids gazed at her intently. One of the subordinates gave a stiff half nod.

  "Very wise, Captain. I can see that you did not wish to surrender Ronan to our less tender ministrations, but it was inevitable. There is always a chance he may survive."

  "I will not fight you," Ronan said.

  "Also very wise. I misjudged your mutual affection when we first met. Still, there was no other reasonable conclusion you could—"

  "Get on with it," Cynara said coldly.

  "This is hardly the place. However…" He conferred silently with his aides. "Very well." He signaled to the guards, who flanked Ronan to either side. "Please sit, Mes D'Accorso. Make yourself comfortable, and this will be far easier to endure."

  Cynara sat. Ronan maintained the stance of Watchful Stillness. The silence was absolute. Ronan sensed nothing of what passed between VelRauthi and Cynara, or between the Kinsman traitor and his aides. He was deaf and nearly blind. All was in Cynara's hands.

  It was a testament to her skill that he knew the precise moment when she had her Kinsman interrogators' full attention. He moved as Sihvaaro had taught him. One Kinsman guard went down with a single well-placed kick. Ronan caught his weapon in midair. The second guard turned as if in slow motion. Ronan disarmed him and clipped the base of his skull with the butt of the gun.

  He knew exactly where to go. He reached the communications console and punched in the codes Sihvaaro had passed to him with his thoughts.

  VelRauthi spun around. Ronan aimed both guns at the Kinsman's belly. His subordinates froze. One glance at Cynara was all Ronan dared risk.

  She vanished. Ronan's keen eyes could not detect her, nor his other senses fix on her presence. The Kinsmen were equally blind. The bridge doors opened and shut again on the sight of struggling guards.

  Farewell, Beloved.

  Ronan laughed aloud. VelRauthi had blanched the color of bone.

  "She deceived you, kek'ko ne'lin," Ronan said. "You thought her skills were of no consequence, but she is the strong one. You will not find her quickly."

  "One woman against all of us, VelKalevi. She can't win. And you are dead."

  "I know." He angled one gun toward the Kinsman Second, who seemed about to move. "I have sent a message to those who will aid Captain D'Accorso and stand against you as traitors to shaauri-ja."

  "You're the traitor. You have nothing."

  Ronan's mind sang with joyous certainty as Cynara sent him a parting gift, so strong and clear that even he could hear it. "My teacher Sihvaaro learned part of the truth, and I know the rest. You planned to use the Archon's death as a means of returning to Concordat space and regaining your power there, regardless of the consequences in shaauri-ja. That was always your intention—to rule humans rather than serve shaauri masters. Cynara knew the location of the world where the alien drive technology was discovered. You would steal it and keep it to yourselves." He showed his teeth. "Did you believe we would give ourselves up to you without plans of our own? Word of your treachery has already been sent to the War-Leader, ne'lin."

  "Your claims against ours," VelRauthi said. "Even Ain'Kalevi will not speak for you."

  "I will fall first, but you will fall with me. You believed the Concordat would collapse without the Archon, but your own fears set you on the wrong Path. It is your people who must decline when you are gone."

  VelRauthi's expression grew blank, but not out of fear. Ronan's ravaged mind felt the attack, a barrage of men
tal power turned against his hands and his grip on the weapons.

  He had wanted this final battle to be a true and proper challenge, but VelRauthi would never permit it.

  "For Sihvaaro," he said, and squeezed the triggers. But his fingers had lost their strength. One gun clattered to the deck, and the beam of the other went wide, catching one of VelRauthi's subordinates on the shoulder. He shrieked and spun away.

  VelRauthi held Ronan paralyzed while he snatched the second weapon from Ronan's hand. Immediately he aimed it at Ronan's heart.

  "You've lost your power," he said, almost wonderingly. "You're completely helpless."

  "Finish it."

  "You do want to die, don't you? Ah, yes. I remember Sihvaaro. He never trusted us and spoke against our plan. It's fortunate he's dead as well."

  "Face me in honorable challenge, ne'lin."

  "Oh, no. I was put in that position once before, and it did not end to my advantage." He cocked his head. "Since you have no defenses, it will be a simple matter to drain your memory of any useful knowledge."

  "You may take everything," Ronan said, "but you will never use what you learn."

  "Like your parents, you have a fatal tendency to underestimate your enemies." He glanced behind him. One of the guards was stirring, and the Kinsman who had been shot lay groaning on the deck in the arms of his companion. "Belloq, the man you wounded, has a peculiar fondness for the suffering of others, both mental and physical. I've found him useful in the past. I'm certain he'll be pleased to take charge of you. We may even lure the versatile captain from hiding."

  "She will not come."

  VelRauthi turned his back in contempt. The recovered guard attended his fallen comrade while a medic entered the bridge with another armed Kinsman, who went directly to Ronan. The medic set about treating Belloq's shoulder. As soon as she was finished, she and his comrade helped him to his feet.

  Belloq came forward, clutching his shoulder. He nodded to VelRauthi. "Bind him," he commanded the guard.

  For a moment Ronan was free to act. He lunged. The guard shoved his gun barrel into Ronan's stomach, forcing the air from his lungs. Someone bound his hands in steel cuffs. Belloq stared into Ronan's eyes, emotionless.

  Pain. At first Ronan could not tell if it came from within or without, for it filled his skull and spilled over into his veins like liquid fire. His eyes threatened to burst from their sockets. His empty stomach attempted to turn inside out.

  Then the pain stopped, and the guards picked him up from the deck. Ronan heaved and tasted blood. Belloq smiled.

  "I think the captain will come," VelRauthi said.

  The agony resumed, and for a time Ronan was senseless. Blurs that might have been human figures passed in and out of his vision. Sound bored into his eardrums like bone nee-dles. Once more the pain stopped. He tried to breathe with a throat skinned raw.

  The hands on his arms fell away. He became aware that the movement around him had ceased. His legs collapsed from under him. Sometime later the noises that made no sense began to take on definition, and Ronan pushed to his knees. His wrists were no longer bound. Aside from the lingering shock to his body, he could function again. He could see.

  All the places where Kinsmen had stood were empty. The bridge was clear except for a lone figure bent over a monitor. A stack of weapons of various sizes lay on the workspace beside her.

  Cynara abandoned the monitor and ran to Ronan's side, dropping to her knees. She embraced him gingerly, hands stroking with a healer's touch. He could not have borne any touch but hers.

  "It's about time," she said. Her voice shook. "VelRauthi assured me—after some persuasion—that you would recover, and I had to leave you for a little while. I'm sorry."

  "No." Ronan thought better of standing up and let Cynara support him. "You shouldn't… have come back."

  "I could feel what they were doing to you." She seemed to have some difficulty speaking. "VelRauthi counted on that. He didn't have a very good idea of what I was capable of."

  Even mild shaauri laughter hurt Ronan's throat too much. "You have suffered no ill effects from the use of your new abilities?"

  "None that I'm aware of." She peered into his eyes. "It's you I'm worried about."

  "I will recover. Where are the Kinsmen?"

  "All confined to the briefing room, with the medic to tend the wounded, and I've sealed off all other quarters and cabins to isolate as many of the crew as possible. I've also sealed the bridge—no one else is getting in. At least not until our guests arrive."

  Ronan tried to isolate the sounds in his memory: shouting, a few sharp cries, and then the wail of alarms indicating the approach of an unidentified starship.

  The alarm was silent now.

  "They have come," he said, sick with relief.

  "They're sending a shuttle as we speak. I told them to expect resistance, but I don't think that should prove a problem for them." He thought he detected moisture in her eyes—tears from a woman who never wept. "You believed in my strength, and I had to believe in yours."

  He began to rise, and she took his weight. For the first time he had a clear view of the bridge's main screen. On it was the image of a ship—a very large ship of unequivocal shaauri design. The markings painted on its hull were equally distinct.

  "You never did tell me whom you intended to call," Cynara said, her lips brushing Ronan's cheek. "I trust these are the right shaauri, since they asked for you by name. They were certainly quick in getting here."

  "Arhan," Ronan said. "My father's Line."

  "But still shaauri. I hope—" She broke off as a new alarm sounded, indicating the shaauri shuttle's approach to the Kinsman ship.

  Ronan gathered his feet under him. "I should go… greet them—"

  "You'll stay here. We both will. They'll come to us." She steered him to the captain's chair and made him sit, then examined him minutely for injuries. Belloq had barely begun, and he hadn't bothered with mere flesh.

  "I see that VelRauthi told the truth," she said. "I think I convinced him that it was a very bad idea to do otherwise."

  Ronan felt such pride and awe that only the sharing of thoughts could express them. He had not regained that ability. "Ska'eival Aho'Va," he said, bowing his head.

  She snorted. "Save your humility. We aren't out of this storm yet." She took his hand, and they waited until a shaauri voice hailed them on the intercom. Cynara unsealed the bridge doors.

  A shaaurin walked in, va'laik'in flanked by two Arhan warriors. He stopped, stared at Ronan and Cynara with calm curiosity, and gave a small salute.

  "I greet you, Va-Captain Cynara D'Accorso of the Nine Worlds," he said in heavily accented Standard. His whiskers rippled with emotion. "I greet you, Ronan, son of Jonas VelArhan, kin of my kin. I am Hraan, Aino'Ken Arhan, brother of your father. We come to take you home."

  It took many hours for Hraan and Ronan, speaking in rapid-fire Voishaaur, to sort matters out between them. Cynara was able to ascertain, with her growing fluency in Voishaaur, that Hraan intended to deliver Ronan and Cynara to human space—something to do with an understandably touchy political situation among the Lines and Clans, Arhan's ambiguous position as a prohuman Line, and the need to find solid proof of the rogue Kinsmen's plots.

  Cynara kept her thoughts private, but she watched Ronan come back to life and wondered if he would return with her.

  That was the moment when she realized that all her resolve had been for nothing, that she had made assumptions she had no right or reason to entertain. She had sworn her love and said she expected nothing in return.

  How well she had deceived herself.

  She retreated to the cabin assigned to her and Ronan, sitting hard on the double-sized bunk. Coldness filled her lungs and ran in her veins. When had she learned to be so sure of the future? There had been times when any future had seemed impossible. She and Ronan had escaped death by the width of a shaauri whisker. It had been enough to survive, to feel victory within their grasp. />
  Enough until she faced an enemy far more subtle than destruction.

  The Arhani accepted Ronan as the Kalevi could not. They welcomed him as a brother. They had known his parents. He was truly one of them. And he, among all humans, was uniquely suited to the human-shaauri negotiations that would soon become necessary.

  That was the future she could not deny him.

  There was no certainty. There never had been.

  After a while Cynara got up and assembled the ingredients for the shaauri tea Ronan so loved. It was ready when Ronan returned. He exuded such vivid happiness that she was able to put aside her grief for his sake.

  "So we've won," she said, pressing a mug into his hands.

  "An Arhan skeleton crew has taken possession of the Kinsman ship," he said, grinning over the steaming arao, "and the Kinsmen are prisoners aboard the Suhtaara." He tugged her down beside him on the bed and kissed her, filling her mouth with the taste of alien spices. "Hraan and his ship were on their way to Aitu. My message diverted them, but they had already been summoned by Sihvaaro before we arrived onworld."

  "Before Sihvaaro knew we were coming?"

  "He knew." Ronan smiled sadly. "I told you that Sihvaaro had certain gifts. But when he died…" He looked into his tea, struggling to mute his emotions. "Sihvaaro was a telepath."

  Cynara nearly dropped her mug. "But there are no shaauri telepaths."

  "There is much I do not understand. But it would explain a great deal about Sihvaaro… how well he understood me, and his readiness to accept all life as equal."

  "I'm sorry, Ronan." Cynara linked her hand through his, swallowing past the constriction in her throat. "I know how much you grieve for him. I wish I could take it from you."

  He kissed her knuckles. "Good has come even of this, ina-ma. Hraan has heard tales of shaauri with abilities only humans are said to possess. He said that my father—before he and my mother disappeared—had been hunting legends of ne'li who claimed to speak without words and listen without ears." He shook his head. "If it is so, it is not an idea that will please many shaauri."

  "They've allied with Kinsmen."

  "But Kinsmen are human. That is the difference."