“No,” Ari repeated. “I am answering the question you don’t have the courage to ask. The one at the heart of this set of faulty assumptions you and your precious cousin have made. No. I am not some super spy sent here to deceive you. Believe me. Don’t believe me. I don’t care.”
The pressure against her increased. Movement beside her. She looked. V’kyrri. He’d alerted Seaghdh to her lie. “I don’t care.” The man was reading her, like the Chekydran had tried to do. Only he’d succeeded. That, along with the sharp-edged pain that had been her heart, infuriated her.
“Get off,” she growled at him. Mentally, Ari flung him from her as hard and as violently as she’d always wanted to fling the Chekydran.
V’kyrri jolted back in his seat. The chair went over.
Shock and icy fear obliterated anger. Ari rushed to his side, righted the chair, and offered him a hand but pulled it back before he could refuse it.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “V’kyrri, I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .”
He levered himself back into his chair, his nose streaming purple blood.
She blanched. “I didn’t mean . . . I didn’t do that, did I? Please, tell me I didn’t do that.”
She got a wan smile from underneath his hand as V’k pinched his nose closed and tipped his head back.
“We need to get you some training,” he said.
Awful awareness washed over her. She’d hurt him. V’kyrri had trespassed. Yes. The worst he’d done was to tell Seaghdh she cared when she swore she didn’t. He hadn’t harmed her, didn’t want to harm her. And she’d injured him. With a thought. Horror pressed hard against the inside of her ribs. Ari bolted for the bathroom and lost not just her breakfast but what felt like every breakfast since time began.
CHAPTER 22
AFTER an eternity, a cool, sure hand applied a transdermal medication patch to the back of Ari’s neck. Several seconds later, the dry heaves subsided and she curled, shaking and miserable, into a ball on the floor.
“You’ll feel better in a minute,” Dr. Annantra said.
“No,” Ari rasped through a raw, swollen throat. “I’ll have just stopped throwing up.”
The doctor looked up at someone. Seaghdh. Ari could feel him there in the doorway, watching. Listening. Impatient.
“Hey,” V’kyrri said. He brushed past Seaghdh, knelt, and put a hand on her ankle. “It’s okay. I’m all right. Nice throw, by the way.”
Is that what she’d done? She glanced at him. No blood. They’d cleaned him up before treating her. Good.
“What am I?” she pleaded.
He withdrew his hand as his troubled gaze met hers. “Besides frightened and feeling more alone than you did even in Chekydran captivity?”
Ari closed her eyes and pressed her lips tight against the surge of grief his words touched off.
“I don’t know,” he finished.
“V’k, don’t,” she croaked.
“I’m not reading, Ari,” he said. “I don’t have to. I can see it in your face.”
Damn. She opened her eyes.
“Have her drink this,” Dr. Annantra said. She handed V’kyrri a cup.
Gingerly, Ari slid around and propped her back against the wall. Hell of a start to the day. She was getting tired of ending up on the floor. Marshalling the fortitude to rise, she shook her head when V’kyrri offered her the cup.
She paused in the doorway beside Seaghdh. “You want an interrogation? Do it. See how it works for you. But I have to say. Aside from hurting V’kyrri, which was a masterful stroke if you planned that, your mind baxt’k doesn’t hold a candle to what I’ve already been through.”
A barren, bereft-sounding laugh escaped her. Ari desperately wanted to stop talking. She couldn’t. “Problem is you had me believing you gave a damn. Worse, I fell for you. Hard. Or hadn’t you noticed I would have answered you anything if you’d only asked?”
He looked staggered. “Ari.” His voice cracked.
Heat rushed behind her eyes. She had to walk away before she fell weeping into his arms. It would have felt good if she’d been capable of it. Easing into a chair, she noticed that Turrel had left his post at the door, favoring a seat at the end of the table.
“Assassins don’t barf at the sight of blood. You ain’t here to hurt anybody,” he grumbled when she raised an eyebrow at him. “Except maybe yourself. And him.” He frowned at Seaghdh. “I’m wondering if he doesn’t deserve it.”
“I’m not entirely innocent,” Ari admitted. “And it wasn’t the sight of blood.”
“Captain,” Sindrivik interrupted. “I’d like to take your excellent advice and simply ask. What did you do to the computer systems?”
“Nothing. I accessed data regarding the alleged alliance between Armada and Chekydran,” she replied, “merged it with my observations and data taken from the Sen Ekir and from Kebgra. I loaded the aggregated data to my handheld and backed up a copy in the Auhrnok Riorchjan’s file share, being, as I was, under the impression that the Empire might value the data.”
“Nothing else?” Sindrivik pressed.
“Not that I’m aware of.” She glanced at V’kyrri. “Read. If you put a hand on my arm, it’ll help keep me from flashing back on you again. I want to know if the Chekydran are controlling me without my knowledge.”
“No,” Seaghdh commanded.
Her hands knotted into fists. “I am not here to murder your personnel, you orhait’s ass.”
“I am attempting to recreate the sequence of events that led to the security breach, Captain Idylle,” Sindrivik went on as if he hadn’t heard a word. The flush in his face told Ari he’d heard just fine.
“You know how I accessed the file systems. Your boss all but handed me the control panel. If the Claugh nib Dovvyth intends to file charges so you can use me to declare war on TFC, do so. I am bound by an oath to protect the citizens of Tagreth Federated. I have served that oath and will continue to do so to the best of my ability per the verbal truce your queen and I agreed upon not twenty-four hours ago. For the record, I was left alone, unbound and unguarded in the Auhrnok Riorchjan’s office for over an hour. He knew I was studying the language. Yet he did nothing to secure his workstation even after I’d watched him sign in.”
Sindrivik started and Seaghdh took a step closer to the table.
“You recorded his sign in?” Sindrivik clarified.
“No,” Seaghdh replied, eyeing her with an assessing light in his face. “I had the handheld.”
He’d been uploading new language files for her.
“That’s a sixteen-character code set,” Sindrivik said.
Seaghdh spun on his heel and strode away from the table, obviously deep in thought. When his pacing took him past V’kyrri’s seat, he returned with the cup of tea she hadn’t drunk. He plunked it on the table in front of her.
She ignored it.
Sindrivik cleared his throat. In a rush and with an apologetic sideways glance at her, he switched to Claughwyth. “Your pardon, Auhrnok. Her father says that since her imprisonment, she will accept nothing, not even water, from another person’s hand.”
Seaghdh stopped short.
So did she.
He stared at her.
Ari could see him thinking it. She’d taken food and tea from him. What in the Three Hells did that mean? That she’d trusted him with her life long before she’d trusted him with her heart or her body? Twelve Gods.
Something warm and human thawed the icy mask he wore. He removed the tea, leaning closer to her shoulder than was necessary. “I do need you to tell me everything,” he said, his tone carefully nonchalant and notably powered down.
The nonthreatening tone didn’t fool her. She still had the spymaster on her hands, but a spymaster who knew he held every advantage since she’d admitted she’d fallen for him.
“Everything,” Ari echoed. Her voice sounded dead. “What everything would that be?”
“You began learning Claughwyth twenty-four hours ago.”<
br />
“I had a few lessons in the Academy,” she said. When she’d dreamed of someday meeting the first-ranked blade master and taking his title. She’d wanted to thank him for the match in his own language. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I began brushing up seventy-two hours ago. Give or take.”
“We’re speaking it now,” he said. “Did you know?”
Cravuul dung. She was so busy guarding against the ache in her chest, she’d forgotten. She opened her eyes. Might as well. She’d already lost this round.
“You understand every word,” he said.
“Not every word.”
“That’s quite a memory.” Seaghdh placed a cup of soup before her. “Especially if you memorized a sixteen-character series having seen it only once and in a language you didn’t know.”
Ari blinked. He’d hit on something no one else had worked out. The Chekydran had amplified her memory. She’d only noticed once she’d been released and discovered by accident that she remembered every code and every name associated with each medi who’d walked through her secured door in the hospital. Seaghdh couldn’t have worked out how her memory had gotten so good. Could he?
“What is my code?” He touched a button on the table. A panel lit in front of her. “Enter it. Please.”
Wrapping suddenly chilled fingers around the mug, Ari wracked her brain for a way out. She sensed a trap, could almost feel the bite of the jaws, but she couldn’t see it. She did not want him asking how she could remember so much. She didn’t want to face the fact that the Chekydran had succeeded in modifying her.
He sat in the chair next to her. Too close. She smelled his spice and musk scent with every breath, felt his heat, desperately craved his touch. As if he’d heard the plea, he put his hand on her wrist. The contact shattered the ire she’d so carefully nursed as a defense.
“It’s important.”
Taking a drink of soup, she sighed as the warm liquid soothed the shredded feeling in her throat. She stared at the panel a moment, recalling the pattern of Seaghdh’s code and then entered it. She shrugged when she looked up to find him staring at her.
“Spawn of a Myallki bitch,” Turrel muttered. “Recruit that woman or I will.”
“Ari,” Seaghdh said. “I think you speak Chekydran.”
The entire room held its breath. She let hers go. He hadn’t asked why or how she could remember so much.
Cold sweat gathered on her skin. She shook her head. “No one speaks Chekydran.” She was being deliberately obtuse, but she didn’t like being herded into Cullin Seaghdh’s snare.
“Three months, Ari. Three months to lie in a filthy, cramped, cold hole and hear them, to tear apart grammar, to codify structure and intonation. You understand their spoken language without need of a translator.”
“You do know that not every language is comprehensible by our species base,” she countered. “We simply don’t have the same sensory range as other life types.”
That gave him pause. He frowned, decided she was distracting him, and that he’d better stick to point.
Ari smiled, amazed that she’d become such an authority on the Auhrnok Riorchjan’s impenetrable expression.
Her smile seemed to fluster him, but he insisted. “You understand the Chekydran.”
“Sometimes,” she allowed and swallowed hard.
“Sometimes?”
She rubbed sweaty palms against her fatigues. The line of conversation made it difficult to think straight. “Not via com,” she said. “Only in person.”
Seaghdh swore.
“Why?” Sindrivik asked.
“Their language encompasses more than you hear.”
“Explain,” Seaghdh ordered.
She glanced at the hard lines of his face and saw the concern in his eyes. “There’s hum and vibration as well as the clicks and whistles you hear. The language is felt as much as heard. Humanoid com technology is calibrated to filter extraneous, nonauditory noise.”
“Like vibration and low-level hums,” Seaghdh finished. “Baxt’k. Can we recalibrate com systems to accommodate a fuller range?”
Sindrivik nodded.
“Ask whether you should,” Ari prompted.
They looked at her without comprehension in their faces.
She shivered. “It’s been nearly four months since I lay in a cell, captive audience to everything they said and did. Just saying that . . .” She broke off and forced a slow, measured breath out through pursed lips. “Brings it too close.”
“With your permission, Captain,” Seaghdh said slowly, his voice telling her he was reluctant to continue, “with Nwyth Okkar, I could implant a block triggered by a word or a gesture, something we agree upon. You need never suffer another flashback.”
“You could do that?”
He met her gaze with trouble behind his eyes. “I could.”
“Thank you,” she said, touched by the offer. “No.”
He frowned.
“I’ll find my own way out.”
Lights flickered and the Dagger shimmied. Ari stared at Seaghdh. Weapons fire? Who would be stupid enough to take a potshot at the Dagger? No one. The Dagger bristled with weapons and fighters. But the Sen Ekir? It had to be in range. She swore and spun to the control panels. She’d logged into the computer systems with Seaghdh’s access code. Convenient. She punched up a communications panel.
“Ari.”
“I read the language, Seaghdh,” she said, keying in her father’s com codes. “It took me a day to remember that I did, okay? Should I have said so? Sure. Just like you should have told me from the outset who you were. Where’s my father?”
“Get that ship inside the shields! Now!” Eilod commanded, marching into the room. “And get that woman off of my ship and out of my computers before she finds my middle name.”
“Incoming com, Your Majesty,” Sindrivik said.
“On-screen,” Seaghdh commanded, nudging Ari to one side.
She gave him her seat.
“On your screen, Auhrnok.”
The screen flashed. Ari raised her eyebrows. Scales and teeth. Ykktyryk mercenaries. Nice.
“Give us the girl,” the Ykktyryk hissed. “We split two million FedCreds and let little ship live.”
She whistled through her teeth. “With a million Federated Credits I could buy my own ship. Do you provide Wrate Leaf on that tub?”
It sounded like Seaghdh sighed.
The Ykktyryk eyed her. “Who are you?”
“Me?” Ari shrugged. “The one you’re offering to buy. You do know that FedCreds have no value in the Claugh monetary system, right?”
Turrel chuckled. “Recruit her.”
Ari grinned. This was not how she’d imagined an interrogation by the Auhrnok Riorchjan ending.
“As you were, Colonel,” Eilod growled. She strode across the room. “Confine the spy to the brig, Auhrnok, before I order her gagged or rendered unconscious. Weapons control?”
“Weapons standing by, Your Majesty,” a voice responded via com. “Targeting Ykktyryk mercenary. Requesting permission to fire.”
The Ykktyryk hissed and began barking out urgent stand-down commands.
Ari had to suppress the urge to cheer.
Seaghdh took her arm. “Captain Alexandria Idylle, you are under arrest for crimes against the Claugh nib Dovvyth Empire.”
“No Wrate Leaf. Again,” she said, noting the distinct lack of anger in his tone. They were playing. To what purpose?
He marched her out of the conference room, his lips twitching. He stopped and tapped his badge.
“Prep the Lughfai. Intraship teleport. Two at this signal to the Lughfai cockpit,” Seaghdh ordered.
Confusion rocked her. “Wait,” she protested.
“Acknowledged, Auhrnok. Two for teleport. Stand by. On your mark, sir.”
“What the . . .” Ari squawked.
“Mark.”
Teleport distortion always made Seaghdh dizzy. He shook it off the moment the shutt
le cockpit solidified around them. Before she could pull away, he swept Ari tight into his arms and pinned her against the bulkhead so she couldn’t slug him. He wouldn’t blame her if she tried.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “I am sorry. Three system failures and so many bits of partial information aligned . . .”
She nodded. Her arms crept around his waist. “I know. I’m sorry, too. I should have asked first.”
A tightly bound-up place within him unknotted. Need rushed in to fill the void. He kissed her, ruthlessly launching an assault on her senses. Her body arched against his. He broke the kiss. She murmured a protest.
“Tell me again,” he commanded, desperate to hear the words. “Please.”
Fear shot into her eyes. It didn’t carry the edge of senseless terror that glazed her eyes during a flashback. It was simple, comprehensible fear that drove a jagged stake into his heart. Her uncertainty stung.
This is what the Chekydran had robbed her of; her ability to trust herself, to anyone or anything. Yet she’d accepted food from him when she’d refused it from anyone else. And then the transponder. He closed his eyes. She’d trusted him. With her life. With her body. With her nascent emotions. Then, when it mattered most, he’d failed to return the favor. He swallowed a bitter knot of regret and prayed he hadn’t destroyed her trust.
“I—” she essayed.
“Get that shuttle off this ship!” Eilod’s voice ordered from the com panel.
They leaped guiltily apart and bolted for the helm.
“What the Three Hells is going on?” Ari demanded.
“The arrest was for show,” he said as he buckled into the pilot’s seat and woke panels.
She fastened in next to him. “I gathered. Mercenaries must be on the run, too, or I doubt you’d let me off the Dagger.”
“Damned right,” he answered. “You’ve got too much vital information in your head, and I have specific interest in keeping you alive for our next rematch.”
She flushed and spent a moment scanning her console, before keying the instruments to standby. “Awaiting authorization codes.”
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