From Ruins

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Saying it out loud made it real. That they were together again, when they almost hadn't been, when so much could have gone wrong. Vasiht'h found himself crying, and pressed into the Eldritch's arms again. /Safe, we're safe./

  /Yes,/ Jahir promised, stroking the fur on the back of Vasiht'h's head. /Here we are among friends./

  Which reminded Vasiht'h that they were. He lifted his head and discovered that the footsteps he'd heard had in fact been... /I brought you some, too. Look, ariihir./

  Jahir opened his eyes and spied Sediryl standing by the door, and the revelation of her presence was so powerful that Vasiht'h felt her image reflect into his own mind, hallowed by all his partner's emotions, crowning her like a halo: disbelief, yearning, wonder. The already-too-palpable muscles in Jahir's body stiffened.

  Sediryl hadn't been able to keep her eyes from welling at the sight of the two. She hadn't been able to look away either, despite feeling like she was intruding on a private moment. Was it still private if it was being witnessed by other people? Because the Queen joined her, and Qora, and there were at least two other Chatcaava in the room. If she left, would it matter? Because she didn't want to leave. She wanted to hold this moment to her forever, because she'd never seen a purer expression of happiness in her life than Vasiht'h with his arms around Jahir's shoulders and her cousin with his face pressed into the Glaseah's neck.

  She was staring when Jahir looked up at her, and her heart skipped a beat. It kept skipping them too, because Jahir straightened, facing her, and just the sight of him... he was no longer the callow boy who'd accompanied her on her jaunts through their shared forests, but he was also more than the man she'd been so fascinated by on her visit back to the homeworld for the wedding. He looked worn and far too thin and there were darknesses in his eyes, and kindnesses, that made her completely sure that she didn't deserve him. But that she wanted to, very badly. She wanted to wake up every day and try to be her best self, so that she would be proud to roll over and find him smiling at her.

  He held out his hands and she stepped forward, just enough to rest her fingers in his. When he kissed them, his breath warmed her knuckles, and she shivered. The mind-mage Jahir Seni Galare... she wondered if he knew what she was thinking. She wondered if he could explain her feelings to her.

  But all he said, in that gentle, low tenor, was: "Sediryl."

  "Jahir." She flushed, far too aware that he hadn't dropped her hands. "I'm so glad you're all right."

  "I cannot tell you how happy I am to know that you are, as well."

  She wanted, very much, to touch him. Those... scars? That Vasiht'h had found so distressing. Would they have a different texture if she trailed her fingers along them? They detracted from his attractiveness not at all, though she thought he'd look better once the hollows under his cheeks filled. But she couldn't touch him, not yet. She barely knew him. This tender feeling in her was too new; she didn't trust herself with it. "I hear our cousin made it in one piece as well."

  "Yes," Jahir said. "I owe him an apology." How she wanted to ask what for, but he was continuing, smiling down at Vasiht'h. "You just arrived?"

  "Yes," Vasith'h said, sitting by him and leaning against his side. "With the Queen of the Chatcaava." He nodded past Sediryl's shoulder. "There. Alet, this is my partner, Jahir Seni Galare."

  A rustle of fabric. The Queen joined Sediryl, and her voice was soft with wonder. "I know you."

  Jahir's gaze gentled. "So you do, dreamer."

  "You are the Guide," said the Queen, staring at him, wide-eyed. "I knew you to be real, but I did not imagine I would ever see you outside of the Pattern."

  "You've met?" Sediryl asked.

  "We did, in a true place," the Queen said. "Where the crown of patterns spins all possibilities. When I was lost, he helped me find my way to my body."

  "Of course he did," Vasiht'h said, leaning against Jahir's side with a laugh. "Of course."

  "I assume this means you will be depriving me of my assistant soon," said a voice behind them. One of the Chatcaavan males, who joined them and studied Sediryl and Vasiht'h with clinical interest before halting abruptly at the sight of the Queen. His eyes widened. "You have returned."

  The Queen smiled. "I have. It is good to see you, Surgeon."

  "You... you are whole!"

  "I Changed," she said. "That is what Chatcaava do." Looking at them all, the Queen said, "We must confer with the Emperor so that we might leave as soon as possible to succor your nation."

  "We're going home," Jahir said. There was wonder in his voice.

  "Yes," Sediryl said, hoping they would be glad of what they found there. "Finally."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The capital system was the busiest in the entirety of the Alliance but Laniis had never seen the activity level that erupted across Shanelle's tactical panel when they coasted out of Well past heliopause. Her commboard flooded with lights from multiple challenges, and she hastened to transmit a verbal confirmation of the ship's automatic beacon response before someone could shoot them down. There were a lot of someones available to do so.

  "God Almighty," Meryl said. "It looks like the entire Fleet's parked here."

  Behind her, Lisinthir murmured, "Yes. And why is that."

  "Not another dramatic revelation," Shanelle said. "I can't take another dramatic revelation. What did we miss?"

  "That there shouldn't be so many people here." Na'er's long ears had flattened to his skull. "If the Chatcaava are attacking other places, the Fleet should be scattered. We shouldn't have the hulls to concentrate in these numbers if we're holding them off elsewhere." He swiveled in his chair to look at the Eldritch. "Is that what you're afraid of?"

  "Yes."

  Shanelle bit her lip, squinting at her display. "It's not literally all the Fleet. We could have penny packets in other places."

  "And perhaps the Chatcaava have dispersed so much that such packets would be sufficient to the task."

  "But," Meryl muttered.

  Laniis glanced at her, trying not to find her tone ominous.

  "But," Lisinthir agreed.

  "Let's get in-system with our guests and wrangle this treaty," Meryl said. "Just in case we're about to need it badly."

  The journey to Selnor's orbit was harrowing in a way Laniis would never have dreamed possible, even having been employed by a Fleet that had known a war was coming. The Silhouette glided past enormous builder-wreckers hovering over the ruin of four major stations; in one case they weren't even attempting to put it back together, but ripping the remains apart for reclamation. Comm traffic was so dense she flipped from channel to channel, trying to grasp the enormity of the damage and failing... but she started crying when she heard a freighter requesting berthing, stating they had hastily converted their space to take on refugees, though not in as much comfort as the luxury cruise ship that was passing by, carrying its own load from Tam-ley. The cruise ship skipper had bounced back, "You're doing more with less than we have. TLV-Queen of Diamonds salutes you."

  Laniis pressed her fingertips to her eyes and gulped back the nascent sob, hoping no one had noticed. Guessing no one had, because everyone was glued to their own displays. She could only imagine what Shanelle was seeing at tactical.

  By the time they reached orbit she was grateful she had a job to do, calling them in and accepting orders. Her voice steadied and her nose and throat stopped feeling too tight. At least, until she started talking. "Fleet Central says... welcome home."

  Meryl set a hand on her shoulder. "Tell them it's good to be back. Inform them we're carrying the Ambassador's party and some citizens we'd like to repatriate."

  And how grateful the rescued slaves would be to set foot on Selnor's surface! Dominika had them in hand in Andrea's absence, and even devastated by the news of Tam-ley they were one and all ready to be done with their exile.

  Laniis spoke briskly with her contact, listening to instructions. "The rescues can come down immediately. Wherever they want to go. I guess t
hey don't want to debrief them. Ambassador, they want you as soon as possible at Fleet Central."

  "Then I will collect my goodwill guests and be gone."

  "You want to join him, don't you," Meryl said after the door closed on the Eldritch. Laniis glanced up at her. "Go, Lieutenant. You were assigned to help him. They won't be surprised to see you. And one of us should be there. This was a wild ride even for Intelligence... it'll make them feel better to hear the story from our perspective."

  "It was crazy, wasn't it?" Laniis said softly.

  "And not over yet." Meryl squeezed her shoulder. "Go on. And if you decide you liked the taste of our work, come back anytime."

  Laniis looked across the bridge at Na'er, who was watching her with a sobriety so intense it startled her when he grinned and flipped her a casual salute. "See you around, sailor girl?"

  She couldn't help it. Despite the magnitude of the loss and the horror and the terror of what might still be to come, the callback to their charade on Akana Ris made her laugh. "Absolutely, wrenchboy."

  "Hop to it, girl!" Shanelle added. "That Eldritch moves fast when he decides to go."

  Laniis sprang from her chair and went.

  "They are going to kill us," Kuuvel said conversationally from the window, where he was staring at the world revolving beneath them.

  "They're not going to kill us," the Knife replied, but he sounded uncertain.

  "They're absolutely going to kill us." Kuuvel turned from the view. "Did you see the damage as we came in? And that's in this place, which apparently wasn't the worst hit?" He made a noise. "We are dead."

  "You're not going to die," Lisinthir said, belting on Imthereli's swords and arranging the coat slits around them. "I will not permit it. You should know why."

  "You think the system lords are massing somewhere for an attack." The Knife was sitting on the arm of the couch in Lisinthir's quarters, looking as if he was about to vibrate into pieces.

  "I'm hoping when we arrive we will hear that we have fended them off in other places," Lisinthir replied. "I am not anticipating being so fortunate."

  "You think the system lords would work together for that?" Kuuvel asked, curious. "They're fractious sorts. I wouldn't have thought them capable of putting aside their differences."

  "They will if they see the size of some of these systems, if they're like this," the Knife said, his voice a staccato.

  "But there are thousands of warships in this system. Why would they not choose a more poorly defended target?"

  "Because this one is rich," Lisinthir said, grim.

  "Many planets are rich," the physician said.

  "This is their throneworld, isn't it?" the Knife said to Lisinthir before addressing Kuuvel. "They may think it is like our Empire. That if they take the throne here, they will become the ruler of all the Pelted."

  "Patently ridiculous," Kuuvel opined. "The aliens are not like us. Even I know that, and I've only been observing them for a few days."

  "No," the Knife agreed. "They're not like us. They look soft but they'll fight until they die, to not be slaves. But it's not about what the aliens think. It's about what the system lords think. And Chatcaavan males use thrones to indicate who deserves obeisance, power, treasure. They will want this throneworld because the male who takes it is the male all the others will have to honor as the lord of all this new territory."

  Lisinthir looked at the Knife, brows rising.

  "I am not stupid," the Knife said to him. "Just because I understand a little how the Pelted think, doesn't mean I have forgotten how our people think. And the ways they're wrong about it."

  "Remind me to tell the Emperor to keep you, Knife," Lisinthir said, and the Knife looked away, abashed. "But we are wanted, and time is wasting."

  When Kuuvel clipped his medical kit over his shoulder, the Knife said, "The Ambassador just finished saying we weren't going to die."

  "I know. But I am a Surgeon, and these are my tools." Kuuvel flashed his teeth, eyes sparkling. "Maybe it will keep them from killing me first."

  Lisinthir shook his head and opened the door for them, and there found Laniis with her hand lifted toward the chime. The Seersa halted and straightened, chin lifting. "I'm coming with you."

  "You must," Lisinthir agreed. And smiled, saying in Eldritch, "You have been part of this from the beginning, and belong in its ending."

  "Is this its end?" she answered, and even shaded the final word, clumsily but with determination, in the grim uncertainty of the shadow mode.

  "No," Lisinthir said. "But we are approaching it." He indicated the hall with a flourish, switching to Universal. "After you, arii."

  As they followed, Lisinthir heard the Knife tell Kuuvel, low, "There, see? Now I know we won't die. That is my huntsister, who will speak for us."

  Given the urgency of their errand, the process that followed was enough to drive Lisinthir from the rooms they'd assigned him at Fleet Central to a salle where he could pummel enough imaginary enemies to dispel the ghosts of the real ones he knew were coming... for he'd been right. The few incursions Fleet had handled since Second's passage had been minor and rare. Lisinthir knew the count that had been missing from Apex-East when they'd arrived, and he knew the count that had departed during the fight. That force was insignificant compared to the navy the Chatcaava had fielded in total. It was more than enough to shatter the Alliance Fleet. They might win the battle, but they'd do it over so much wreckage they would be easy prey for whomever might come next... pirates, perhaps. Or Second, whom Lisinthir did not trust to remain afield faced with such tempting vulnerability.

  But the Alliance wanted to discuss the matter. They trusted Lisinthir as the emissary of an allied power, but they weren't sure what to make of a man with so many competing priorities. They'd sent him to the Empire with plenipotentiary powers, which he'd used on their behalf to secure the revisions to the treaty they'd found so impressive. But he had returned with the Emperor's seal and the self-confessed ability to promise the Empire's aid, and that confused them. Was he on the Chatcaava's side? Or the Alliance's? Or, come to that, the Eldritch's? Because the Eldritch Queen had sent them a separate missive, stating Lisinthir had her every confidence. That had come with another seal. Lisinthir thought it disappointing that he couldn't don all three and sign the mutual self-defense pact himself.

  He thanked God and Lady and Living Air repeatedly for Kuuvel, who fit no one's conception of an ambassador. The Knife, with his Naval credentials and serious demeanor, the Alliance could fit in a box, and did, much to that male's frustration. A joke-cracking physician who wanted to demonstrate all his tools to his peers in the Medplex confounded them. Maybe it helped them believe not all Chatcaava desired their subjugation.

  But it was Lieutenant Laniis Baker who did the bulk of the work, because she was one of their own: a Fleet lieutenant rescued from the imperial harem, who nonetheless treated the Knife as a friend and a colleague, and who insisted he was right when he said the Chatcaava were coming: both the bad ones, and the good.

  Lisinthir hoped she would succeed in convincing them... and that it wouldn't be too late when they finally accepted both their peril, and the only way to stave it off.

  "This isn't working," the Knife growled, pacing in Lisinthir's quarters.

  "It is working," Laniis said, struggling to keep her ears up. "It's just not working quickly."

  "We don't have time!"

  "We have not been gone long." Lisinthir was sitting at the desk with a polishing cloth, examining the surface of one of his swords. "The Emperor had his own challenges on the throneworld. He may not have left yet."

  "His timetable doesn't matter," the Knife said. "It's our enemies' that's worrying me." He faced Laniis, spreading his hands. "Why are your superiors so timid? You're not timid! You're fierce!"

  "It's different once you get higher in the echelons," Laniis said, but she was having a hard time convincing him because she wasn't convinced herself. "They have to look at the big picture-"<
br />
  "What do pictures have to do with anything?"

  Laniis stopped abruptly. She had to be upset to be translating literally instead of finding in-language metaphors. "They are looking at the strategic overview, Knife, one that includes more than the military situation."

  "And how does anything but the military situation matter when that's the one that's going to kill them all?" The Knife stared at Lisinthir. "You are too calm about this, Ambassador."

  "It would serve no purpose to be overwrought," the Eldritch said.

  The Knife pressed his palm to his forehead. "What do we have to do to make these people act?"

  "I don't think we can." Lisinthir plied the cloth on the edge of the sword. "We have presented everything we know. Belaboring the point won't change their minds."

  Laniis's heart hiccupped. "You're calm because you're waiting for the Chatcaava to show up."

  "Disaster!" the Knife exclaimed.

  "But why are you here?" Laniis said to the Eldritch, urgent. "If you think they're coming, and you know it's going to be awful. Why haven't you left?"

  "Because," he said gently, "This is my fight, arii."

  And it had been, she thought. From the moment he touched down on the throneworld. Maybe even before then-what had they told him when they'd prepared him for that mission? He'd fought for the Alliance. He'd freed her, and the slaves. He'd stayed to keep doing that, and in the bargain he'd mined the foundations of an interstellar nation and toppled it so that it could no longer continue raping planets and stealing their populations. He was sitting at that desk, draped in a coat the color of blood embroidered in silver and black arabesques, cleaning a set of antiques that looked natural in his long-fingered hands, and all that fell away beneath the truth hiding beneath that unlikely surface. He was a killer, and a prince, and this was his war.

  "I'm here," Laniis said to that man. "This is my fight too."