Had he become so accustomed to blushing around Lisinthir that it no longer jangled his nerves? But the teasing had dragged him from the melancholic drift of his thoughts; behavior that is rewarded, he thought ruefully, is apt to be repeated. "The riding I will not gainsay. But I insist on being dried and curried properly before you shut me up in my stall for the night."
"Like the most priceless stud in the stable," Lisinthir promised, his amusement palpable. The kiss that lit on Jahir's neck then was gentler, and no less than the first disordered his thoughts, if in an entirely different way. "Sleep, cousin."
The warmth they'd created beneath the blanket, the persistent sense of safety he felt near Lisinthir, and his own exhaustion conspired against him. He slept.
Vasiht'h's arrival woke him much later, an arrival heralded by the widening of the mindline and the muffled noises of the Glaseah's paws on the carpet. Instantly he was clear-headed, in that way that came only in emergencies... and was it not what they were going through a crisis? And he still didn't know if they would survive it, his cousin's reassurances notwithstanding.
His partner settled alongside the bed and met his eyes in the dark.
/Arii?/ Jahir whispered, hoping for something.
/I'm here,/ Vasiht'h answered. Softer, with the calm that comes after long prayer and longer nights, /I'll always be here for you./
In the link between them was all of the Glaseah's conviction: he had found the one truth from which all others proceeded, and it was enough: for him and for Jahir both. From that foundation they could stand upright, find some way through everything else, and Jahir could feel Vasiht'h's belief in that. Jahir found his hand in the dark and held it while the Glaseah arranged the pillows so he could fall asleep with his head on the bed alongside Jahir's and his torso draped over the edge. And that was how they slept: close and quiet, their heads near one another's on the pillow.
The shiver that ran through the deck and the bulkheads woke all three of them. Jahir's eyes flew open: it was still dark, and the utter silence of the room made the pounding of his heart feel as if it would expand to fill every empty corner. Vasiht'h's hand tightened in his, bringing him the pressure of his partner's fear through their joined fingers.
Lisinthir lifted his head, alert but calm; Jahir felt when the muscle tension drained from his cousin's body moments before Lisinthir put his head back down on the pillow. In the quiet, his low words carried to them both. "They've deployed their reconnaissance platform." Settling back in, Lisinthir murmured, "Sleep, ariisen. We won't have much opportunity soon."
Jahir brought Vasiht'h's hand to his lips, brushed the knuckles. /I'm here also./
/I know,/ Vasiht'h whispered. Ruefully, /I'm glad, because I'm terrified./
Jahir allowed a curl of tired amusement to color the mindline. /I am also./
Vasiht'h smiled and put his head back down on his arm. Somehow they managed to fall back asleep.
CHAPTER 14
Did he wake up again with a sense of dread? Was that fair after a night spent prostrate in front of the ship's altar? Vasiht'h lifted his head, groggy, and frowned. No, this wasn't about him and Jahir; he glanced at his partner, still sleeping alongside him, and his heart tightened in his chest. No, things there would be all right, somehow. That he didn't know how yet was immaterial. He would have to trust that the Goddess had a purpose in Her ineffable mind for their link and it didn't involve teaching Vasiht'h to cope with the trauma of a broken one. He chanced a touch, the way Lisinthir did so often, and ran a finger up Jahir's cheekbone: no response, just the same easy fullness in the mindline that whispered of dreams and rest. His partner was fine, if tired.
But Lisinthir was gone.
Cautious of a midriff gone sore from the odd position he'd slept in, Vasiht'h pushed himself to his feet and went into the front room. Nothing there, though there was a partially smoked cigarette, no longer lit, lying on some sort of small kit. The room still smelled of the drug, though, which meant he'd been using it recently….
That noise from the bathroom Vasiht'h knew intimately. He'd grown up with too many younger siblings not to recognize it; children inevitably picked up every possible virus they could find and some of his sisters and brothers had been 'vomiters,' as his elders so charmingly put it. He trotted to the door and waited for any other noise, then called, quiet, "Need help?"
The door didn't open for so long Vasiht'h almost tried the override, but Lisinthir finally stepped out just far enough to lean on the frame, arms folded and head bowed. Nothing on him smelled like blood or sickness—or at least, no more than it had when they'd first received him from the Chatcaavan vessel. In fact, he'd filled out a little: his skin was not quite so hollow under the ribs, though Vasiht'h could still count them.
"I'm fine," Lisinthir said, and sighed. "I may in fact be better than I was, excepting the seizures."
"But you're still throwing up."
"Yes. But not blood anymore." A faint smile. "That I did more than once in the Empire, toward the end, and I am relieved to be quit of it."
"How often?" Vasiht'h asked, frowning. "It can't be too often, or Jahir would have noticed." And fretted. "You're hiding it from him?"
"What can he do about it?"
Good question. Vasiht'h worried his lower lip, then shook his head. "Okay, good point. At least sit. I'll get you…" He stopped and flattened his ears. "Goddess, I'm so sick of not having a pot I can make tea in."
"Water would be welcome," Lisinthir said, and took himself to the couch. He sat and drew in a breath, then picked up one of two swords that had been lying on the cushions. Vasiht'h had missed them, probably because the scabbards were near the same black as the fabric. He watched as Lisinthir unsheathed the first and set it on a cloth covering his lap, then leaned over it to open the kit.
"Will it be soon, then?" Vasiht'h asked.
"Best to be prepared no matter what comes."
Sensible. Vasiht'h could grant that without too much distress after the night in the chapel. He went to the bathroom to fill two tumblers, one for each of them, and returned to the sight of the Eldritch doing something to the sword's edge with a rod. He sat to watch: the man as much as the process. What had Jahir said to him seemingly so long ago? Evaluate the client using his own senses, his instincts? Not easy, given how close Lisinthir kept his emotions. Was that in the way of a bandage holding in a bleeding wound, or was it honest-to-Goddess health? Could someone be healthy after what Lisinthir had been through?
"Thank you," Vasiht'h said, without planning it.
"For?" the Eldritch asked, absent.
"For what you've been doing for Jahir."
Lisinthir did look up then, one brow lifted. Something in Vasiht'h's expression must have spoken, though, because his eyes softened. "It was a needful thing. There will be no Seni heirs to follow him elsewise."
Vasiht'h nodded. "I could never talk to him about it. Not really. The one time I tried…." He thought of the moment on the Eldritch homeworld, and his partner's desperate rejection. His flanks twitched. "He couldn't bear to contemplate it."
"No, I imagine not." Lisinthir turned the blade, considering it, then set it back down on the cloth before resuming his work. "And what about you, then? Will there be Glaseahn kits to tumble over my cousin's boots?"
The domesticity of the image struck Vasiht'h so powerfully he couldn't speak; it spilled yearning into every crack that had been sucked dry by his emotional crisis, flooding him. Lisinthir let him gather his thoughts, filling the silence only with the scrape of steel against steel. "I'd always planned to," Vasiht'h said. "I think… maybe I've put it off long enough. Except the war's coming, and it would be cruel to leave the kits behind."
"So you will go with Jahir, if Jahir goes."
Vasiht'h said, quiet, "I have to."
Lisinthir nodded. "He is heart-lamed without you. I'm glad that you accept that." He glanced at Vasiht'h over the sword. "You will have to put more of your heart into what you do from now on, if you
are to ensure both your safeties."
"I know." If he looked he could see a hazed reflection of Lisinthir's neck and jaw on the surface of the steel. "But if the Slave Queen can survive enslavement in the Chatcaavan Empire, I can survive fighting it." He drew in a shuddery breath. "I hope."
"You will," Lisinthir said. "You have your beloved to bolster you, just as she does hers."
"And you?" Vasiht'h wondered. "Who will hold you up?"
Lisinthir said nothing, setting the rod aside and taking up a cloth. He polished the blade and when he finally spoke his voice was husky, though there was nothing broken in it, nothing in it but resolve. "I live for the day I see my lovers again. As you would, were you parted from Jahir."
"Is it really like that, how you feel?" Vasiht'h asked, ears sagging back. "For two aliens, one of whom abused you?"
"If you could have felt his remorse…." Lisinthir paused in the polishing, then resumed. "And seen how he behaved after…" He shook his head a little. "He became Greatness."
Something about the word suggested a density of experience and meaning Vasiht'h couldn't begin to guess at.
"Besides," Lisinthir said, grinning. "Do you not have this passion for an alien yourself? Strange Glaseah."
Vasiht'h snorted. "You can't know Jahir and not love him."
"On that we are agreed." Lisinthir sheathed the sword. "And on that note, I dress." As he rose, the wall near them chirped.
"Bridge to Ambassador."
Vasiht'h glanced at him sharply. Lisinthir said, wary, "Ambassador here."
"We need you up here now. Looks like our visitor's arrived."
"On my way." Lisinthir was already stepping through the door to the bedchamber, catching up the clothes lying on one of his packs. "Wake your beloved. It begins at last."
The last set of clothes Lisinthir had were Imthereli's, and the reason they'd remained whole was because he'd hated to wear them. Partially because the colors were unkind—whatever ancestor had decided black on a white field would be fine colors for the House had been blind—and partially because they were his father's colors. But they were all the armor he had left, and he dressed hurriedly in preparation for the battle... because he didn't think there would be time later. The swords went at his hips, and the claw-knives he worked on, finger by finger, on his way to the bridge. The weapon was illegal in the Alliance, but he was not technically in the Alliance yet, and never would be if they didn't win this fight.
No one gave him a second glance on the way, which was significant not just for the blind eye they turned to his contraband, but for the fact that there were people in the corridors, and they were busy, working with the concentration of people doing very finicky work, but very quickly, affixing something to the walls near the deck. He was not the only one expecting to see the fight soon.
"Ah, Ambassador," Raynor said when he reached the bridge... and instantly Lisinthir knew something had gone very wrong. The man hid his tension well, but the very flawlessness of his control revealed him. "Your dragons have arrived."
"Prompt, as you hoped."
Raynor grinned, all teeth and no humor. "Maybe you can have a look at the sensor data for us. I have an idea of what's out there, but your intelligence is more recent." He waved toward the station where Cory was sitting... and there, hanging in the air, was a ship, hazily glowing in yellow.
"Well," Lisinthir said after a heartbeat. "This should be interesting." He stepped closer. "The measurements seem to be fluctuating?"
"Those are best estimates," Cory confirmed. "We're reading this off passive sensors: mostly the drone's right now, since they're too far away for us to use ours as effectively. I'm refining the picture as much as possible but it's not going to be as good as what we could get going active."
"Which we can't," a Tam-illee foxine said from the station alongside hers. "Because it'll warn them we're not the derelict we advertised ourselves to be."
"What do you think, Ambassador?" Raynor asked.
"I think," Lisinthir answered, "that I like a challenge."
That startled a laugh out of several of the people on the bridge, and while it hadn't been his intention, he did ease some of the tension that had been thickening the air.
"But yes," Lisinthir finished. "You are thinking it is larger than the last vessel, and you're right. That vessel carries sixty people, and unless it's been significantly damaged I don't think we can expect those numbers to be much reduced. Is it very far away?"
"No more than an hour out now," Cory said.
"Alas," Lisinthir said to the Captain, "You will have no opportunity for your drills, I fear."
Raynor was staring at the projection with narrowed eyes, one hand clasping the back of the chair he was standing alongside: his own, Lisinthir thought, from its central position. "Tell me... how likely is it that they'll really, really want prisoners?"
Lisinthir canted his head. "What are you asking? If they will try to take us, rather than destroying the ship outright? If they'd wanted to destroy us, they could have made their shots already, yes?"
"True." Raynor drummed his fingers on the chair. "What I really want to know is how many of them do you think we can lure over here? Because if we can get enough of them...."
"Then?" Lisinthir asked.
"Then we'll all cross over and I'll blow the ship myself."
Perfect, Lisinthir thought. The Chatcaava would never expect it: they knew the Pelted to be capable of self-sacrifice, but since they did not hold such acts to be virtuous they rarely remembered to plan for them in their enemies. He hadn't expected Raynor to be so decisive, and he wasn't the only one; there wasn't a set of Pelted ears that hadn't flattened at the Captain's declaration.
Cory said, careful, "You want to scuttle the ship, sir?"
"If I can get at least half that ship's complement over here, chasing us? Hell yes. That'll near even the odds. And honestly at this point, Lieutenant, we're all in now. It's be bold or die."
"He's right," Lisinthir said. "And there's a good chance we can lure enough of them over to make the ship's sacrifice worthwhile. Even if we don't, there won't be any escaping on it. Our only choices are to take them or pray to be rescued after they've taken us prisoner. I would prefer to die fighting."
Raynor nodded. "If we barricade ourselves somewhere and attrit them while they work on getting inside, will they keep throwing people at us?"
"Or will they just wire a bomb big enough to blow the bulkhead?" the foxine said, frowning.
"It's more likely they'd just try to Pad in." Cory's brow furrowed. "There's no good way to lock them out unless we can use a portable shield generator or a sensor scrambler. At that point, it's going to have to be a very small room. We won't have a lot of power to run one for long."
Lisinthir studied the glowing effigy. "If they're thinking the matter through, they won't waste people against a hardened target. They'll try to find some other solution. Which means it is to our advantage to ensure they are incapable of clear thought."
Raynor lifted a brow. "I recognize that look. All right, then, Ambassador. Let's hear your thoughts on how best to enrage a ship full of Chatcaava when we're outnumbered three to one." After Lisinthir explained, the human leaned back, considering him. The crew was studiously silent, though he could tell some of them were uneasy. Finally, Raynor said, "You think you can pull it off?"
"Captain," Lisinthir said, "I used the same strategy when I was in the court of the Thorn Throne... and I was outnumbered several million to one."
A tense silence... and then Raynor guffawed. "Yes, I see where you've come by your arrogance, sir. And I like it. All right, let's knock our heads together, see if we can't put together a route. If you want to play matador to a ship full of bulls, we'll make it possible and stay out of your way."
"Until it's time to cross over," Cory added, ears flat. They both glanced at her, found her teeth bared. "This is our fight too."
"Yes...," Lisinthir said, surprised by her fervor. He believed her
, and that made some part of him whole that he hadn't noticed was lamed. To find these people worthy enough to fight for, yes, he needed that. To fight alongside them, to believe them capable of it.... "Yes. It is most certainly your fight, alet. And you're all welcome at my side, any time."
"Good," Cory said, her ears relaxing. "Then maybe we can start with the safe room. We'll need one large enough to fit everyone, but not large enough to tax the scrambler...."
Lisinthir found a chair close enough to the floating projection to see it in his peripheral vision, a necessary reminder of what was coming. His heart sped for joy, and hunger.
His partner's urgency broke him from sleep with an abruptness that felt like a blow. Jahir opened his eyes to Vasiht'h's hands on his shoulders. "...up, wake up—"
"I'm awake," he managed, and then shoved the blanket off at the crushing pressure in the mindline. "It's come."
"They're here," Vasiht'h said, ears flattening. "You need to get dressed, get ready... Lisinthir's gone to the bridge to have a look at what we've caught."
Jahir started shedding his nightclothes on the way to the bathroom. The mindline was pushing adrenaline to him in pulses, timed no doubt to the beat of Vasiht'h's doubled hearts, but that was far better than the misery he'd been expecting. Perhaps his cousin had been right: having too much time to dither over the situation was far worse for them than actually living through it.
At least, Jahir hoped so. The alternatives did not appeal.
He hastened through his preparations, found that he was reaching for a sword belt that wasn't there, and that startled him. He had hated the sword; had been disturbed buckling it on for the wedding at home, disliking its weight and the reminder of what he'd done with it. That he could now long for it felt surreal—
"Jahir?"
"Coming," he said, and left the bathroom.
"What should we do?"
"Arm ourselves for what comes," Jahir said.
"But what do I take?" Vasiht'h asked, anxious.
"We'll find something," Jahir said, and led him out.
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