“Could that have been what happened?” she asked, curious.
“Yes,” he said. “But... I have seen nothing about it. My security contact might be able to find out, but even for him it will take time.” He exhaled. “It will all come down to your allies, my Queen. If their resources stretch all the way into the Empire... but the likelihood of that is small, and dwindling with every day we spend at this high alert status. I would not raise your hopes.”
“I prefer them not to be raised,” she said. “Thank you. Will it be safe to make the call?”
“Yes. That much, I can guarantee.”
She nodded. “Good. Thank you. You may go, then.”
He inclined his head and turned. On the threshold, he paused and added, “Why were you looking at the vase?”
An observant male. That boded well for her purposes. “Every day since I have been immured, someone has brought fresh flowers to the harem. Except today.”
The Knife frowned and padded back to the table to stare at the vase. “It must be a servant who already works here who does this. I have allowed no one new access to this tower.”
She had seen the servant assigned the duty of cleaning and delivering linens once, and only once; such servants were expected never to be seen. Why had she never thought about his plight? A male consigned to such base servitude must be miserable. Perhaps castrated; she had heard servants were, if they were male.
“Perhaps we have run out of flowers?” the Knife said, but he sounded dissatisfied with the suggestion. No doubt it had not occurred to him that something as trivial as the décor in her suite might need scrutiny. It had not occurred to her, either, so she could scarcely blame him.
“Flowers are also delivered to the harem proper, and the gift harem,” the Queen said. “If there are flowers there, then this is an omission.” Before he could ask, she said, “I do not know who orders them delivered. I assumed it was the Emperor’s wish. The harem is to be beautified; flowers smell good, delight the eye.”
The Knife’s expression now reminded her of a stormfront gathering. “Someone decided not to deliver your flowers.”
“So it would seem.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is there some other reason that occurs to you?”
Was there? “Many reasons occur to me, Knife. I would not want to come to hasty conclusions.” She managed a faint smile. “Perhaps my enemy is the servant who cleans my suite, who is expressing his displeasure at how I keep it.”
“You do not think that,” he said.
She canted her head. “No?”
“No. If you had, you would not have been staring at the vase when I entered.”
That observation startled her. “Perhaps I missed the flowers.”
“I don’t doubt that you do,” the Knife said. “But when you are hurt, my Queen, you don’t show it. You are not in pain. You are puzzled.”
She stared at him. “How... how did you come to this conclusion?”
“You are Chatcaavan,” he said. “And we do not show pain or weakness.” He bowed to her, wings lowered. “I will investigate the matter.”
She let him go, mostly because she couldn’t find words after his confident assessment. He had called her Chatcaavan as if females were worthy of the appellation. He had assumed her behavior to be like that of a male. He’d done all that he could to safeguard her and the tower, but as he himself had said, any male would have done so, given the assignment to ward the Emperor’s possessions. It was in the small ways that he betrayed his belief that she was a person as worthy as any male, and despite seeing it more than once it continued to shock her... and hearten her.
And she needed it. Because she knew he would find the flowers in the other harems. She didn’t know who had decided to send her a message, or why, but it didn’t matter. What did was the sudden sense that she was no longer safe.
Find a way, she whispered to Laniis, hoping the words would bridge borders, be heard in dreams. Please. Find a way.
CHAPTER 7
“This is fantastic, isn’t it?” Na’er said, striding through the hip-height grasses with a staff in a hand like some sort of wizard from a 3deo. “Bright aquamarine skies! Warm air, brassy sunshine! Peeping of weird and unknowable alien insects! Spies and saboteurs lurking in every shadow!”
“Na’er!” Laniis hissed, hurrying after him. “Hush!”
“Relax, arii.” He grinned, all glossy teeth. “There’s no one around but us and the people at the abbey. No one in their right mind traipses out all this way.”
Which Laniis well-believed, given the difficulties they’d undergone to ‘traipse’ to this particular location. Their journey had involved skirting the borders of the one large city on this continent of the colony world, riding—on the top of beasts!—to yet another locale, and then hiking out into the middle of Speaker-Singer knew where. And they weren’t even there yet! She understood now why Meryl had told her five days; it had taken almost two to reach this place, and for what? So she could suffer Na’er’s excitement at ‘real field work’ and have herself repeatedly slapped in the face by tassels of grain. Hip-height on an Aera was somewhere around a Seersa’s chest. With a sigh, Laniis said, “At least tell me we’re close.”
“We’re close!”
She slicked her ears back. “Did you even check?”
“You didn’t ask me to tell the truth!”
Despite herself, she chuckled. “Na’er…!”
He laughed then. “We’re close. Another hour.”
“Another hour,” Laniis repeated, glum.
“They make amazing cider, though?”
Laniis squinted and pushed away more of the grass, or wheat, or whatever it was. “It had better be the best cider I’ve ever had in my life.”
An hour and a half later, she conceded that the cider went a long way toward redeeming the trip, though she would never have gone to the Abbey of St. Jasmine of the Stars just for a cup of it. A foxine girl in a robe had served it to the two of them alongside a plate of hard white cheese, a slab of honeycomb, and slices of dense, brown bread; Laniis couldn’t remember eating anything as delicious. Maybe it was the vigorous exercise, or her anxiety over the Slave Queen’s dilemma, or the abbey itself, but not even her first meal home after the Empire hadn’t tasted so elemental, so real.
In that, it was a lot like the abbey: a stone building with a steeple surrounded by many smaller buildings and overrun with children, adults, geese and chickens and things more alien than either but occupying the same niche. For a remote “retreat center” it was more vital than many Alliance cities Laniis had visited. And yet there was something to the place, some sense of… timelessness. Laniis couldn’t figure out if it was the rough-hewn stones that made up the walls, or the independence implied by the farm animals and the way the entire community could afford to shut out the world, or if there was something she was missing… but beneath the bustle there was a serenity, the way a noisy stream could still tranquilize the person drowsing alongside it in the sun.
“I hear we have guests.”
Laniis looked up sharply at the sound of the honeyed tenor, accentless and yet giving the sense of cultured sophistication. Maybe it was the pacing of the words? Or the crispness of the diction? Whatever it was, she found herself very interested in the man who ducked through a narrow door leading into the stairwell, and her scrutiny only enflamed her curiosity. He wore the same plain robes used by the rest of the abbey’s brethren, save that he had the cowl up, and it was deep enough to shroud his face. Nor was that his only subterfuge, because unless she missed her guess he was using a domino: she could hear their host’s voice, but when she looked up into the hood she saw only his eyes. They’d been leeched of color, even.
Na’er stood and bowed. “Alet.”
“Sit, please. I interrupted your meal.”
Laniis rose when Na’er did and watched their byplay, perplexed. She’d seen the Aera interact with a great many people since her assignment to the Fleet hold, enou
gh to know that jocularity was his standard interface with just about everyone. This...this was nearly deference. She wouldn’t have suspected he had it in him.
“Are you the abbot here?” she asked as they sat.
“I am a caretaker,” their host said. “For now.”
“This is Laniis Baker,” Na’er said. “She was a prisoner in the Empire for almost a year.”
She glanced at the Aera, ears splayed in dismay.
“He has to know,” Na’er said, apologetic. “If you want your friend to have her help. He’s the one who might be able to give it.”
Laniis turned her attention back to the shrouded figure, frowning. “You? Forgive me, alet. I don’t know you at all. This location is remote, I’ll grant. But we’re closer to the Empire’s border here than we were on Akana Ris. Surely that makes it more dangerous to deposit anyone here?”
“Perhaps you should begin at the beginning,” their host said. “You don’t come without cause, I know. What brings Fleet to our door today?”
“Tell him,” Na’er said. “He’s cleared for it. And this won’t be the first time St. Jasmine’s helped someone escape the Chatcaava.”
And the abbey was still here? Laniis eyed their host. The domino was a good one—might even be a Fleet issue roquelaure, given how good it was. From most angles, one could mistake its work for deep shadows; it was only a direct stare that made the obfuscation obvious. And their host had allowed them to see it.
She was nervous, but if she didn’t ask, then she’d have let Meryl drag her out here for nothing. So she drew in a breath and said, “The Slave Queen of the Chatcaava has asked me if I could arrange some way for her and some of her allies to get off the throneworld and into the Alliance, at need.”
The eyes widened beneath the lip of the cowl, and their host leaned back. Glancing at Na’er, he said, “After all this time.”
“You’ve been waiting for something this big, I know,” Na’er said. “Nothing less would have done.”
“Waiting for what? And why?” Laniis asked, ears flattening. “Tell me what I’m missing, already!”
Long hands rose, pushed back the hood. As Laniis watched, astonished, their host shook back his shining hair—his shining white hair, braided with droplets of amber and topaz—and smiled at her. “Alet. My name is Amber Seni Galare… and I have been seeking a way to avenge myself on the Empire.”
What followed was one of the most astonishing afternoons in her life. Sitting at a wooden table as the light turned coppery, she listened to a completely new Eldritch tell her how an accident had brought him into the ambit of the twenty-second Jasmine of St. Jasmine of the Stars, whose mission was to enable the safe flight of refugees from injustice. In this sector of the galaxy, if that didn’t mean pirates, it meant the Chatcaava. But this was a mixed population world. Its cities, which she and Na’er, she suddenly realized, had assiduously avoided, were part Chatcaavan and part Pelted, and the intermingling of cultures had produced households where people of disparate races found their viewpoints narrowing to a single vision. Unlike the monolithic microculture of the capital and its palace, here there was dissent among the Chatcaava over the beliefs they deemed fitting. And those disaffected dragons maintained contact with family members still in the Empire proper... were, in fact, seeded throughout the Alliance-facing sectors, including the throneworld’s.
“Which is how we have our way into the Empire,” Amber said. He had a cup of his own now, though Laniis hadn’t observed him to drink from it. It was a prop for his hands, which seemed poorly suited to stillness. “Those avenues must be used carefully, particularly if we activate several in the same vicinity.” He glanced at Laniis. “There have been many rumors lately, rumors that suggest the routes between the throneworld and the border are no longer safe. Something’s happened. We need to be more careful now. But if we can send your refugees on a more circuitous route... bring them out further coreward or spinward than expected... they’ll have a longer journey to safety, but paradoxically they might have a better chance of escape. How many refugees will your Slave Queen want to evacuate? And is it only the one flight or does she intend to create a more permanent passage?”
“Unless I miss my guess, she’s only going to send one batch,” Laniis said, her hopes rising. She’d trusted Meryl, certainly, but she hadn’t believed the Hinichi would be able to produce a solution to the Slave Queen’s problem. “I’m not sure she’ll have more than one chance to smuggle them out of the palace.”
“A batch,” Amber repeated. “That sounds like more than a handful.”
Laniis thought of the Imperial harem. “I’d guess between a hundred and a hundred and fifty.”
“A hundred and fifty!” Amber exclaimed, his hands stilling on the cup.
Na’er said, anxious, “Too many?”
The Eldritch frowned, looking away. “Almost two hundred people... I won’t lie, aletsen. It won’t be easy. We might use up all our favors moving that large a group.”
“But?” Na’er pressed.
“It’s not getting them off the throneworld that’s the problem,” Amber said at last. “We can get them out of the solar system. The problem is where we take them from there. We’re not set up to route that many refugees, and we can’t keep them here. We’d draw attention to the abbey, and that would endanger not only your friends, but the network we’ve built here. And this network... this network is worth more than two hundred Chatcaava.”
Laniis looked away.
But Na’er was undaunted. “Are you sure? We’re talking about the Slave Queen of the Empire, alet. Can you imagine the coup it would be to get her safely out of the Empire? With whomever she wants to bring?”
Amber turned the cup. “I grant it to be a significant coup. It doesn’t change that they couldn’t come here. Even if it was only her, now that you put it that way. She’s a political target, alet. She’d need real security, not the sort of security through obscurity that has often served the abbey.”
Na’er tapped his chest. “Hello? Fleet here. That’s why we’re here.”
“You can’t secure this location,” Amber said, firm. “You start doing what you have to do in order to ensure her safety and you’ll set off every sensor in orbit. And I won’t be responsible for the welfare of a head of state. Don’t ask me to.”
Na’er’s ears deflated. They were large enough that the sight was almost comical. Laniis was grateful she could find anything funny. To have come so far…!
Amber’s cup scraped against the table as he turned it. “But.”
Na’er leaped on the word. “But?”
“If I provide the leg of the journey out of the throneworld system and into the contested areas,” Amber said slowly, “there’s no reason you have to bring her here.”
Laniis lifted her head.
“There’s an Alliance-wide charity network that does work on the borders,” Amber continued. “And I have a cousin on a starbase who contributes to its coffers. Enough to sit on its board.”
“And they might be able to plug those two pieces together?” Na’er exclaimed. “Alet, you are the Wind’s own asset!”
“I’m not making any promises,” Amber said. “I don’t know much about the charity network. I know they’ve done large relief efforts on the border before, but that doesn’t mean they do them still.”
“It’s enough to go on.”
“Then I’ll write you a note of introduction.” He smiled wryly. “I’m not the best of correspondents, so I’m sure the letter will come as a pleasant surprise until they open it and discover what we’re about.”
“Which is?” Laniis asked.
“Involving them in potentially very dangerous intergalactic politics with a species that particularly wants us for its harems?” Amber said.
“The opportunity,” Na’er corrected, and for once he sounded like the Fleet officer he was, “to save lives, and change the balance of political power in one of the most important conflicts the Alliance has
ever faced.”
Both of them stared at the Aera, who took no refuge in his trademark humor. Laniis looked into his eyes and really saw him, saw the steel under the glib façade of comedy and mimicry... and felt herself flush from nose to ears.
“Well,” Amber said. “Put that way, who could say no?” He pushed away from the table. “I’ll get you that letter immediately.”
In the quiet that descended in the Eldritch’s wake, Laniis did her best not to stare at Na’er and failed. He met her eyes, somber… and then grinned and drawled in the voice of a famous torch singer—a famous female, Harat-Shariin, torch singer—“Well, darlin’, we couldn’t let that little fishie get away, now, could we?”
Laniis gurgled and pressed her hands to her mouth, but it was too late. She was laughing, and it was good, it was all good.
“We’re gonna do this thing, arii,” Na’er finished, fierce. “You watch.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Bet on it.” He reached over and set his hand over hers. He brought out that steel voice again, the one that had put prickles down her back. “Laniis... what happened to you... we’re never going to let something like that happen to anyone again.”
Her eyes prickled and she blinked quickly. “That’s... an ambitious goal.”
“Yeah, well... we didn’t join Fleet to aim low. Did we?”
She curled her fingers around until they touched his. “No.”
“Good.” He squeezed her hand then leaned back. “Meanwhile, might as well fill up on the cider—”
Laniis groaned and pressed her hand to her forehead. “Don’t tell me...”
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