They burst from the woods onto plains gilt with warm sunlight, scaring a flock of… birds? Butterflies? Something with bright yellow and white and orange wings, vibrant as stained glass. The drum of hooves on the back of the world spurred his heart and he drew abreast of his cousin until they were sprinting together for the horizon. He was lost there, smeared between sky and grass, aware only of flashes of sensation. The cool trails running straight back from eyes watering in the wind. The quickened sough of breath from the exertion of holding his seat, and the tremor in his thighs. The scent of sun-warmed grass.
The sound of his cousin’s laughter.
Glory.
They slowed by tacit, mutual decision. Jahir’s mount dropped back to a walk, tossing its starfield mane. Lisinthir’s paint loped a few more measures ahead, curvetting and dancing in place beneath the hand that steadied it. The twain suited one another: quick-tempered, eager to move, agile and high-spirited. Watching them walk back, Jahir wondered anew what would have happened to his cousin had he not been given to the war. Men like Lisinthir did not belong to idleness and civilization. They throve on challenge and danger, and lacking it, made their own risks. Like, he thought suddenly, throwing themselves through an unknown forest to force their cousins to use their unwanted talents.
“It’s why you did it,” he said. “God and Lady, cousin. Madness!”
“Glorious madness,” Lisinthir said, drawing abreast of him with another laugh. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“You are insane,” Jahir repeated, and suffered his hand to be caught and kissed like some noblewoman’s. He flushed at the warm breath Lisinthir blew across his sweating knuckles. And quieter, “That was you, wasn’t it. The elation.”
“It was.” And gently, “Not all sharing is violation, cousin.”
Jahir lowered his head, his hand loose in Lisinthir’s. “No. I suppose it isn’t.” His cousin smiled, squeezed his hand and let it drop. As they fell in together, Jahir added, “It was… amazing.”
“Yes.”
Jahir glanced at him. “For you as well?”
A chuckle. “Yes. I could tell you were ‘listening’ in the beginning, but when you started letting me guide you… that was…” He inhaled, sighed out. “A rush. Enchanting. I love all the ways you submit to me.”
“No teasing without a bed,” Jahir muttered, but he was smiling.
“We will see a bed soon enough.” Lisinthir shifted in the saddle. “And I will be glad to be on my feet. It has been more years than I like since I rode so hard.”
“But you have hunted forests before,” Jahir said.
Lisinthir eyed him, brow cocked. “Ah?”
Jahir sorted through his impressions. There had been impressions, he realized now, hiding beneath the confidence, and the rush. “Yes. On a horse very like your paint there.” The feel of a large wooden haft in his hand, familiar, rolling it against gloved fingers. “Did you hunt thicket boar? God and Lady, cousin!”
“You had that from your communion!” Lisinthir said. “Fascinating! But yes. I did. Alone, too. It was a wonder I didn’t die.” He chuckled. “My mother had a hunting lodge on her lands in the north. I used to kill game there for the tables.”
“By yourself?” Jahir glanced at him, appalled. “Not wonder that you lived, but miracle.”
“We were very good at hunting, my ugly cob and I.” Lisinthir glanced at him. “A useful talent yours, if you can pick out memories with the emotions.”
“Not… memories, exactly,” Jahir said. “But… patterns? Sensations? I’m not sure how well that would work did we not share our background so.”
“No thoughts?”
“No. It’s nothing at all like the mindline.” Jahir watched the wind turn the blades of grass in ripples. “The mindline gives me thoughts and emotions. But it’s…” He trailed off. “This is far more visceral.”
“A thing of the body,” Lisinthir said. “Perhaps it was inevitable that you find it in my arms, then.” A sly smile. “I shall have to push you a little further, see if we can refine your talent.”
Jahir stilled his shudder before it communicated itself to his mount: successfully, he thought. He had no idea what expression betrayed him, but something must have. Lisinthir reined in, reached over and grasped his reins as well, stopping them both. Setting his fingers on Jahir’s chin, he said, “I expected discomfort, but this is closer to revulsion, I think.”
“No,” Jahir said. “At least… I don’t think so. But I want what you offer, and don’t want it.” He managed a wintry smile. “Which has been historically my problem, has it not?” He kissed the fingertips resting near his lips. “But I recognize this is as a wound that needs lancing, and I want the healing.”
“Always with the knives, cousin,” Lisinthir murmured. “There now. That shudder I like better.”
“Incorrigible,” Jahir murmured.
That won him freedom and a grin as Lisinthir urged his horse back into motion. “Ah, it is only because I love you so.”
“Do you?”
“Love you? Of course. Come about now, cousin, we should be returning.” As they began to make an arc back toward the forest, Lisinthir continued, “As a brother, I think. The one I never had.”
Jahir snorted. “What we have done together, and the way you keep touching me, is not at all fraternal.”
Lisinthir grinned. “Agreed. We are not literal brothers, you will note.” He sobered. “I do love to touch you. I ask no forgiveness for that. But I mean that… what I feel for you is familial. Does that make sense? You would know better. You have a sibling.”
“I do, yes.”
“Younger, if I recall?”
Jahir nodded, the abbreviated nod of their kind. Old habits reasserting primacy, perhaps, because of the subject matter. “Sernataila, who cast off that mouthful fairly quickly for a nickname, Amber.”
“A nickname. Like a commoner.” Lisinthir lifted his brows and said, dry, “How outré.”
Jahir chuckled. “Of the two of us, he was always the more unorthodox. He cared little for convention.”
“The more unorthodox. Says the man who left the homeworld for the Alliance, there to take on an alien partner, an alien mindline, and a practice as a psychiatrist to aliens?”
Jahir smiled. “I don’t deny I have my heretical leanings, and when I was younger there were times…” He paused, remembering past frustrations. “There were times I might have hated our world. Because I loved it so, and it seemed determined to doom itself.”
“Passion,” Lisinthir murmured.
Jahir glanced at him, nodded. “Yes. I have never been ambivalent about where we’ve come from, and that in itself should be telling.” He drew in a long breath, tasting the cedar duff smell of the forest on the roof of his mouth. “But there has always been something in me that longed to go home again, cousin. To bring the gifts of the Alliance back to our people. To be part of its evolution. I’m here, yes, but I am a traveler, and one day I will book my flight back. In that, my brother and I are very different. Not a single letter Amber’s sent me has ever mentioned homesickness, and when I’ve asked whether he plans to return, he always tells me that I’m the one saddled with the responsibility of inheriting the estate, so he will just leave all that to me.”
Lisinthir glanced at him sharply. “Your brother is abroad?”
“He made a study of architecture,” Jahir said. “And afterwards went on a grand tour. Last I heard, he’d been planning to see all the Pelted homeworlds, and maybe Earth besides.”
“And when exactly was that last hearing?”
Jahir reined in the horse abruptly. “What are you implying?”
Lisinthir stopped his paint, folding his hands on the pommel of the saddle over the reins. “You know why I was sent, do you not? To the Empire?”
“To serve as Ambassador, yes?”
“And because so many of those who left our world ended up slaves to dragons, Galare, when first we were new to the Alliance. I had a list before I left of
all the Eldritch emigrants. You were on it, but there was no other Seni Galare listed.”
The chill that gripped him nauseated. “That’s not possible. Amber left a few years after I did. My mother knew about it, so there was no possibility the Queen did not. He’s mentioned receiving a stipend, even, so she had to have known. If he’s not on your list…” The cold clamped his gut. “Could he be missing?”
“When was your last letter from him?” Lisinthir asked again.
When had it been? He hadn’t been keeping track. The letters from Amber had begun shortly after Jahir had established his practice with Vasiht’h on Starbase Veta; that was when his brother had begun his studies. Once Amber had graduated, though, he’d begun traveling, and the letters had grown more sporadic. Jahir had thought nothing of failing to receive any for long stretches. “God and Lady. I don’t recall, cousin. Almost a year, though. Do you think… please, not the dragons! Wouldn’t you have heard?”
Lisinthir had nudged his mount back into motion, his expression an absent-minded frown. “I would have thought so, yes. But the Empire’s not small, cousin. If there is anyplace an Eldritch might be lost… I can believe the Empire large enough for the task.”
“Maybe… he just hasn’t had time to write,” Jahir murmured. “He was never a consistent correspondent.”
“Maybe,” Lisinthir said. “But the matter bears investigation. Many of the Pelted homeworlds are distant from the border, but some of the most important aren’t.”
“I know.” Jahir cleared his throat. “Is there something you can do?”
“I’ll ask Fleet. You should ask the Queen and your mother.” Lisinthir glanced at him. “When we get back, write a few letters. If there’s one of our kinfolk missing, I want to know before I go back into the Empire.”
“One of our kinfolk,” Jahir repeated, soft.
“He’s a Galare. And he’s your brother. That makes him kin… does it not?”
Years of listening to people’s voices for the nuances that betrayed their emotional state had trained his ear… and this, this was a genuine question. He answered it so, shading the reply white and gold. “Never doubt it.”
Lisinthir smiled, and if it was a tighter smile than they’d shared before this conversation, surely the change was merited given the turn it had taken. “Then let us go back and see to that, and then we might have lunch before we move on.”
He wanted to linger in his worry. He wanted desperately to be distracted from it. “And what will we be moving on to?”
“Ah!” Lisinthir chuckled a little. “Later for that. You react so favorably to surprise, cousin. I wouldn’t want you bracing yourself for impact.”
“God and Lady help me.”
With a flash of a grin, Lisinthir urged the paint into a trot, and Jahir followed. But he looked up at the sky and despite the cloudless beauty of the afternoon, he felt the shadow of the war on their shoulders.
CHAPTER 5
The Seersa was paying for a cup of hot chocolate when the chime sounded in her ear: in her ear, not outside it, because the implant was hidden on the inside of her eardrum. The emitter’s location gave the sound a shocking immediacy, as if she was hearing it with her spine as well as her pointed ears, and her twitch almost slopped some of the hot chocolate out of the mug she’d just accepted. She’d known the summons might come at any time, but she was frustrated nonetheless... and not just because she’d come to enjoy the café’s snug little tables, cozy ambiance, and amazing drinks. “Could I have that in a portable cup, please? I’m sorry, I just remembered I have an appointment I can’t miss.”
The human behind the counter smiled at her and said, “Sure thing, Carol.”
A few minutes later, the Seersa trotted out of the bakery and started down the crowded street, her cup trailing steam in the brisk autumn air. She’d picked up some possessions while pretending to be a girl out of luck on the hunt for a job, but she would have to abandon them in her rented room. If her compatriots had wanted her to remain they would have contacted her through a normal channel. Using the emitter meant something was up, something important; they’d want her to answer the summons immediately. There was a Pad station nearby she could use to step up to the major orbital station serving the bustling colony world of Akana Ris. Her pick-up would be waiting there, and traveling without luggage would make her less noticeable, particularly once she picked up the courier service’s sash that would be waiting in one of the lockers. She would leave much as she’d arrived… with nothing.
Lieutenant Laniis Baker, formerly Fleet Proper and now on loan to Fleet Intelligence, hadn’t imagined she would one day end up drinking some of the worlds’ best hot chocolate on one of the Alliance’s most lawless colonies while trying without success to find some information that would let her help refugees flee the Chatcaavan Empire. But then, she hadn’t imagined she would lose a year of her life in the imperial harem, either, and that had happened… had happened, and changed her forever. Not for the worse, either, despite what the Fleet psychiatrists seemed to think.
No, her experiences on the throneworld had given her purpose, and that purpose had led her to request her current mission. She suspected the only reason she’d been allowed the transfer was written on one of her mental health reports somewhere: “needs to work through survivor’s guilt,” maybe, or “is obsessed with Chatcaava and needs to rescue others as a substitute for rescuing herself.” Laniis was grateful for whatever had led them to say yes, and maybe some part of those evaluations was true. But the larger part of it was that she’d begged Lisinthir Nase Galare to get her out of the Empire and he had. She had a debt to repay. Not just to him, but to the Slave Queen who’d made her escape possible, and who had understood so little and yet tried so hard to keep her strange alien possession sane.
Laniis had chosen her codename to honor the only female in the Chatcaavan Empire who’d dared to attempt to empathize with an alien. The Slave Queen had called her Khaska, after the child-like bell-ringers of the old Chatcaavan religion. Carol had suited.
Reaching the Dusted Fleet ship was more tedious than difficult. Everyone on Akana Ris was busy failing to notice the system’s constant infractions of law and protocol, venial or major. “Stay out of my business and I’ll stay out of yours” was the prevalent attitude even among the inoffensive residents, who lived with the pirates and outlaws and thieves by doing a lot of looking in the other direction. Seeing Laniis with her sash, people assumed she was either one of the criminals or working with them, and left her to her errand.
Had they known the truth they would have found her far more threatening, which grimly amused Laniis. She’d known intellectually that worlds like this existed on the fringes of the Alliance. Colonization was responsible for stretching the borders, and not all colonies throve; what happened to the ones that failed wasn’t always as simple as ‘everyone goes back home.’ But abstract knowledge shared very little with experiential, and if nothing else her brief stop here had illuminated just how porous the border was, and how easy it must be for the Chatcaava—and every other sort of pirate—to prey on the vulnerable populations clinging to these settlements.
Half a day’s travel across various connecting flights brought her to one of the solar system’s ill-maintained outposts, and there in a bar was an Aera in a grimy jumpsuit, sucking down something tar-colored like he had problems. His long ears were slicked down beneath a vac-suit hood, and somehow he’d managed to get grease streaked on the edge of his dark gray muzzle. Laniis suppressed her smile and slid onto the stool next to him. “Hi, wrenchboy.”
“Hi, sailor girl. Wanna see my ship?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
They linked arms—with some difficulty, because Na’er was a good foot taller and it was mostly leg—and headed for the nearest shuttle. He grumbled all the way there about life never going his way, a patter she listened to with genuine enjoyment when she wasn’t staring in unalloyed awe. Meryl’s field op specialist had a flair for
this sort of roleplay, and the fact that he could improvise convincing backstory and sell it with a change of clothes was nothing short of astonishing. She’d never met anyone as good at impersonations, either, and it was on Meryl’s ship, watching Na’er do a flawless stream of Fleet notables complete with accents, facial tics, turns of phrase, even vocal tone, that she finally found her ability to laugh again. Really laugh, until her sides hurt.
He was handsome too. She was glad that she could still notice after serial rape and abuse.
Na’er-as-taciturn-wrenchboy escorted her all the way to his “love shuttle”, which was as filthy and battered as anything else in distant orbit around Akana Ris’s sun. It was only after they’d been cleared for departure and launched that he shook off the hood, peeled himself out of the smutty jumpsuit, and offered her a hug. She took it, bemused.
“That was more for me than you, you understand,” he said with a grin. He dusted off the plain undersuit and dropped into the pilot’s seat. “Hope you don’t mind we’ve got a long haul back.”
“I don’t. Will anyone care that Miner Na’er’s about to go missing?”
He snorted. “No. I could die out here and eventually someone would think about investigating in the hopes of claiming salvage rights on what’s presumably left of my broken ship. They’ll enforce airspace around the outpost just to keep people from ramming one another, but they couldn’t care less once you’re out of their ambit.”
“That sounds about right for Akana Ris,” Laniis admitted. She perched on the co-pilot’s chair, which no longer swiveled all the way—at least it was broken in the direction that allowed her to face him—and folded her legs under her. “So why’d you recall me?”
“So early?” The long muzzle exaggerated Na’er’s crooked smile. Among the Pelted with their mostly flat faces, the Aera were exotic that way... or she’d thought it before she’d spent a year among the Chatcaava with their draconic noses. “You won’t believe it. We almost didn’t.”
“You’d be surprised what I won’t believe.”
Amulet Rampant Page 14
