Joined: Book One

by Mara Gan

  My Protector snorted. “If there’s anything I learned this morning, Princess,” he said, heating up the grill, “it’s that I don’t think I want you to make me breakfast.”

  “Hey,” I said, frowning, “I could cook something.”

  He began frying the meat. “I don’t think I’m ready to take that sort of risk.”

  “You’ve faced down warlords and crime leaders,” I said, exasperated, “and you’re willing to take a bomb for me, but you won’t let me cook breakfast?”

  “No.”

  I threw up my hands and leaned back against the counter, watching the meat sizzle as he added the eggs. I glanced around his apartments, noting the simple, clean, efficient style he lived in; unlike my apartments, his were the very picture of order. I tended to leave jackets and data pads around, and my apartment was also strewn with toys for Myrtilos and little knickknacks that people had given me over the years.

  My Protector’s apartment, however, looked like a hotel room, with almost nothing to indicate his personality or even that he lived here.

  Interesting.

  I inhaled the delicious aromas of real, home-cooked breakfast, and I swear I felt my stomach smiling in anticipation. “Fine, but I did offer.” Actually, I really couldn’t blame him. I’d probably set his kitchen on fire.

  “Duly noted.”

  “Do I at least get points for offering?”

  He chuckled. “I thought I was the one with the bad behavior,” he replied, flipping the contents of the pan.

  “I’m sorry I said that,” I said, sighing. “I didn’t really mean it. Your manners are excellent within the context of your profession.”

  He chuckled. “Very diplomatically stated, Princess.” He shoveled steaming food onto a plate and handed it to me. It smelled amazing. It was a simple meal—bacon and eggs with toast—but when you live on popcorn and granola bars like I do, anything cooked was sheer heaven. I wanted to melt into a little puddle of happiness right there on the kitchen floor.

  I poked at a piece of bacon and marveled at the aroma, and Perseus laughed at me. “For goodness’s sake, Princess, you’re the one always chiding me for bad manners.”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  He grinned and gestured toward the chairs in the living room. “You can sit and eat, you know.”

  I blushed and followed him toward the couch. My manners were not always so good, either, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I sat in a simple but comfortable chair while my Protector sat on the longer couch across from me.

  Perseus blew on a piece of egg to cool it down. “You’re right, though. You do need points.”

  I paused, confused, fork full of food poised at my mouth. “I do?”

  He eyed me silently for several long moments, his gaze suddenly stony and less lighthearted than mere seconds ago. Those black eyes held mine and I felt very much like a mouse before a cat. A very big cat. I gulped. What had I done now?

  He held my eyes for a moment longer—a trick, no doubt, that he used on his interrogation subjects. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t work on me, but I couldn’t read his emotions, so he succeeded in making me nervous. “When, exactly, were you planning on telling me about your little trip to the NTA?”

  Oh. That.

  I swallowed thickly and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “How did you find out?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Princess, did you honestly think you could keep that from me?”

  I sighed and sat back. “No.”

  “Have you decided when this trip will be?”

  “In a week,” I said hesitantly. “Are you not angry?”

  “I think I burned up a few days’ worth of anger on Durga,” he said dryly. “Besides, while I loathe the idea of you going and being in a room without me, the Protectorate, even Kos or the Mousai, I tend to agree with your noninterference policy.”

  I sat forward, excited. “You do?”

  “I do.”

  I smiled a little, relaxing. That was oddly more flattering than all the compliments I’d ever received on my appearance or abilities. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, little girl,” he said. “I plan to make this slightly miserable for you in the hopes that you’ll never do it again.”

  I laughed. “Don’t count on it. I get to fly my ship again? Be off station, away from the endless telepathic flotsam bombarding my brain? Six glorious days without people following me everywhere? I get to actually travel? It will be heaven.”

  Perseus chuckled. “You’re crazy if you think you’re going alone.”

  My mouth opened to argue, but then I realized there was no way anyone—Synie, Perseus, Kos, even King Cepheus—would ever allow me to leave the city unescorted. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought that far ahead, and thanks to Gi, we hadn’t gotten that far in our first trip meeting, either. My planning had all revolved around the negotiations, not the logistics of travel. “Oh,” I said, “yeah, I know. You’re probably going to send the entire Protectorate with me.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” he repeated. “Just me.”

  I paled. “You’re coming with me?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “N-no,” I stammered. “I just thought… you might have other things to do here.”

  He snorted. “Princess, you are my job. It stands to reason that I should be with you, yes?”

  Lord help me. I was going to spend a week alone with my Protector? The prospect made my insides jittery. Spending time with him was fine; I couldn’t sense him, which was a wonderful anesthesia to the usual telepathic noise in my head, and conversation with him was never boring. But he always made my emotions run so wild that I would probably end up saying something stupid. He had a delicious way of gazing at me so silently that I kept talking to the point of ridiculous babble.

  I just hoped he kept his shirt on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I couldn’t keep it from him forever.

  Today was my other dark secret: the city Dískos tournament. I hadn’t played a game since my Protector had arrived on the station, and I had done everything I could to prevent him from finding out my favorite form of exercise.

  I was absolutely not going to miss this tournament. My team and I had planned for it months ago, and I couldn’t let them down. Besides, there weren’t a lot of people in the city who even knew how to play, and as the team captain, I would be difficult to replace.

  I’d rather risk the wrath of my Protector than miss this game.

  He had not been pleased at the news. I hadn’t told him about the tourney until this morning, and being ever resourceful, he had already learned just what Dískos was and why I was keeping it from him, but he didn’t prevent me from playing. Yalan probably would have broken my arm to keep me out of the game, but Perseus was just going to sit in the bleachers and scowl.

  He was good at scowling.

  I didn’t get the impression he had ever played sports. He rarely talked about his past, but from what I could glean from him and Gi, it had been mostly about survival before becoming a mercenary, and the life of a mercenary hardly left room for recreation. Most of his exercise probably came from beating people up. To play sports, friends and rules were needed, neither of which mercenaries had in abundance.

  But from the look of his muscles, he certainly had plenty of people to beat up.

  I shook my head. I loved sports. The teamwork, the camaraderie, the goal, the rush of adrenaline, all of it. My job had left little time for it lately, but I loved it nonetheless.

  And it was good to see my teammates again. Most of them had odd jobs around the city, and our paths didn’t cross much. The city was huge, after all.

  The game required a disc to be passed from player to player down the length of an enormous field. If the disc dropped, it passed to the other team, and the player holding the disc was not allowed to move. Aside from that, there were no rules.

  I smiled. Perseus should
appreciate that part.

  The game involved an astonishing amount of trickery, deception, agility, and endurance. Oh, we had the basics in place—no killing, maiming, or otherwise permanently damaging the opponents—but that was it.

  I stretched, breathing through my nose to clear my head, and began tossing the disc with my teammate Pyshka, the green-skinned woman from Tumbuhan who Gi had noticed in the tavern some time ago. Because of her photosynthetic skin, she had to spend time in the sunlight for several hours every day, so the artificial sunlight on a Dískos field was almost medically necessary for her.

  She threw the disc high, and I leaped to catch it and toss it back, landing nimbly on my feet. I loved how playing this game made me feel so agile; I had enjoyed gymnastics when I was growing up in the monastery, and this game enabled me to use all sorts of tricks I’d learned on the floor mats. Balance, jumps, even the occasional flip were all huge assets in Dískos.

  Wasanni leaped into the mix and snatched the disc out of Tiyu’s reach. I chuckled when he tossed it back to me, and sensed Thorn coming up behind me. I turned, grabbed his wrist, and knocked his feet out from under him, then turned back just in time to catch the disc.

  Thorn grinned up at me from his place on the grass. “I see that a few weeks away hasn’t dulled your abilities, Princess,” he said amicably, flipping to his feet.

  I shook the disc at him. “You just better hope it hasn’t dulled your abilities, Thorn.”

  He swept a mock bow. “I have been here ever since, waiting and practicing for this very day.”

  I grinned back. Thorn was so likeable. He was a freighter pilot on one of the cargo ships that stopped at the city once a week and had joined our team because, like most of us, he wanted exercise, something that was understandably difficult to get when serving as a pilot. He was easy for me to read, but that never bothered me; Thorn was always in a good mood, and being around him generally put me in one too.

  The referee blew his whistle, signaling that the game was about to start. My team assembled on the starting line, at the far side of the field. There were six of us, plus two people on the sidelines as substitutes in case of injury or fatigue, both of which were common in this game.

  Not for me, though. I loved running. I could do it all day. I didn’t like treadmills, despite Perseus’s suggestion; they made me feel like a lab rat, running nowhere for no reason. Give me a ball or a disc or a person to chase, though, and I would run until my feet bled.

  We sized up the other team. They were mostly Zagasian, a large, pale-skinned people who I swore always smelled vaguely of fish. Zagas was a planet distant from Galaxia, one that was perpetually cold, and its people were just as much so; unimaginative and stubborn, they made Mathans look friendly. The planet itself had few interesting natural features and even less of a recorded history. It had made little progress aside from the most basic of technological advances and just as little in the way of art, culture, and music. Zagasians only ate for nutrition; none of their food was sold off world because no one would eat it. At least Mathos had a culture, angry though it was; Zagas was just stark, bleak, and to be perfectly honest, dull. Mathos had an attitude, an undeniable lust for life, and its people were known for their passion and irritability. They had also produced a variety of art and music devoted to war.

  The other two members of their team were a Velurian woman who looked remarkably like Rania on the far end, and a furry Harige positioned in the middle.

  I frowned. The Harige would be one to watch. They were small but incredibly fast, and had a slight tendency to bite.

  But, aside from that, there were no special abilities on that team, unlike on our team.

  Aside from me, who could sense approaching opponents’ thoughts and moves, we had Tiyu, a Jardinite, who possessed superior speed; Paol, a Corvian like Thal, whose prehensile tail was an added means for catching and throwing the disc; Miely, a witch from Dina’a who could temporarily charm the disc; and Hedrin, a Scossan like Skore, who could produce an electrical current from his fingertips. Wasanni could temporarily blank anyone’s mind with a touch, Pyshka had better vision that the rest of us combined, and Thorn was simply enormous, strong, and fast.

  A Jorellian man, dressed all in blue, walked to the center of the field and turned to face the crowd. He held his hands high and beckoned for both teams to get ready. I took up my position on the left side of the field, preparing to sprint.

  The referee clenched his fists and raised his four arms directly out from his shoulders. Everyone on the field tensed, and after a quick glance around the field, he opened his fists.

  Bolts of red and white fireworks blazed out of his hands, exploding toward the skylights and spiraling into beautiful patterns of flowers, birds, and dragons.

  The crowd burst into a raucous cheer, and we were off.

  I sensed the adrenaline from everyone on the field and homed in on Pyshka; she was always the first to see the disc, and sure enough, she was motioning to Tiyu. Tiyu took the cue and sprinted toward the far bleachers, clearly having sighted the disc. She dove at the wall to the side of the bleachers, clung to it briefly like a lizard, then vaulted sideways off to the left, twisting midair to catch the disc before landing

  She froze as she landed, quickly spotting Hedrin, and flipped the disc easily to him. Hedrin rotated swiftly, only to be blocked and thrown a few feet by a Zagasian he hadn’t noticed sneak up on him. The Zagasian snagged the disc and flicked it downfield.

  I sprinted after it, leaping to catch the disc out of the air before it could reach its intended target, and rolled to a somersault. I sensed the Harige behind me and dodged before he could bite, flicking the disc to Thorn and sprinting away from the furry creature.

  I ran past Thorn in a zigzag motion and he tossed the disc back to me. A flood of anxiety washed over him a split second later, and I realized the Velurian woman was directly behind me. I caught the disc and turned to slide feetfirst between her legs, using my forward momentum to carry me through, and hammered the disc from my sitting position. Paol caught it with his tail, never taking his eyes from the finish line, and was about to toss it to Tiyu when the Harige appeared out of nowhere and tackled him. They rolled, and a Zagasian dived for the disc in the fray. He came up with it in one hand and quickly scanned the field for a teammate.

  Wasanni flung himself on the man’s back, touching his hands to the man’s temples. The other player had moved to fight him off, but the most peculiar look crossed his face as he dropped the disc and relaxed, his expression blank.

  Meanwhile, Pyshka scooped the disc up and hurtled it downfield toward Thorn, but it another Zagasian intercepted it. No sooner had he lain hands on it than Hedrin vaulted onto his shoulders, delivered a wallop of an electric shock, and leaped forward to catch the disc that fell from the Zagasian’s trembling hands. He flicked it, a long shot, toward Tiyu, who was already sprinting toward it.

  Tiyu caught it, landing deftly, and saw me charging into the end zone.

  I could feel a Zagasian closing on me, fast, but he’d be too late. I was going to make it.

  I leaped into the air, snagging the disc, and landed in a roll in the end zone.

  We’d scored!

  The crowd roared, clapping and stomping, as the Zagasian came to a stop beside me. His stony face didn’t look pleased, but he nevertheless reached a hand down to help me up.

  He was radiating all kinds of irritation, but his kind was always—

  The moment my hand touched his, a slight wave of nausea swept over me. It passed almost the instant it hit. I shook my head and breathed through my nose, clearing my senses, and focused on the fluttering in my stomach.

  “Great catch, Princess!” Wasanni exclaimed, coming to join me.

  The nausea forgotten, I grinned at him. “Couldn’t have done it without all of you! I was in the right place at the right time.”

  Thorn snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  The referee called, “Losers walk!” and
the Zagasian team trudged to the far side of the field to begin the next point.

  “Everyone okay?” I asked, tossing the disc to Thorn. “We have a sub if you need a break.”

  “Not on your life,” Paol said, whipping his tail back and forth. “I’ve just begun.”

  “I’ll sit for a moment,” Tiyu said. “We could use Miely for the pull.” I nodded and she jogged toward the sidelines, tagging Miely to come in.

  I smiled. Playing sports was the one time I occasionally felt almost… bloodthirsty. Bloodthirsty wasn’t really the word, I suppose, since I hated causing injury, but I loved competition.

  “Ready, Miely?” I asked, as our team moved into position again.

  She nodded and narrowed her eyes, concentrating on the disc.

  At her silent command, it floated above her hand and shot far into the air, almost to the finish line. We were, essentially, tossing it to the other team; the game required us to throw it down the field, and where the other team would pick it up and cross the field back toward our side in order to score a point. The farther we tossed it on the pull, the less we had to run to cross the finish line— assuming we intercepted the disc quickly enough.

  A Zagasian snatched the disc and Hedrin dove at him, shocking him with electricity. The Zagasian dropped to his knees as the Harige flew in out of nowhere and tackled Hedrin. Another Zagasian snagged the disc and hurtled it downfield toward the Velurian woman, who was ready.

  Pyshka was on it, sprinting after her faster than most humanoids in the galaxy could. She was still unlikely to make it; the Zagasian had a wicked throwing arm and had tossed it far and fast.

  My team except for me and Thorn all charged down the field as fast as they could, while Miely wiggled her fingers and the disc slowed, as though floating through thicker gravity, and Pyshka pushed harder. She tackled the Velurian woman and, retrieving the disc, flicked it downfield to me.