The Bastard Prince (Blue Moon Rising Book 3)

by Blair Bancroft

  “You would have finished the job.”

  “I would have tried,” Alek said. “But the heart would have gone out of us, so somehow I doubt it.”

  Once again, Tal leaned back in his chair, frowning as he stared into the distance. “But what would Vaden gain? He could never take down Darroch on his own.”

  Not enemies. Torvik Vaden’s image materialized over Tal’s left shoulder. K’kadi’s voice spoke in their heads. The face of Darroch von Baalen appeared, gliding so close to Vaden that the ears of the two illusions touched. Much money. Friends now.

  “Get in here, K’kadi,” Tal snapped. The office door opened, and his brother-in-law strolled in. His deceptively lazy azure eyes focused on Tal, he assumed a parade-rest stance.

  “You’re saying Vaden is working for the emperor?”

  Yes.

  “All along?”

  K’kadi shook his head, waggled his fingers. Much money, maybe one year.

  “After Kass was declared ruler of Blue Moon.”

  K’kadi considered, nodded. Not like Kass. Not like you.

  “Vaden turned on us after he lost most of his power?”

  Yes. K’kadi added a vigorous nod.

  “Is he responsible for the bomb on Pegasus?”

  K’kadi made a face as he struggled to find the right words, resulting in the longest string of words he had yet put together. Not sure. Vaden clever. You talk, I listen. Know.

  After taking a moment to translate K’kadi’s cryptic words, Tal said, “Good. We’ll try that. Thank you, K’kadi. It looks like the captains and I are going to be stuck here for some time making plans to deal with this. Can you handle telling Kass our trip to Hercula has been delayed. And why?”

  Yes.

  As K’kadi disappeared out the door, Jordana shook her head. “You really trust that boy, don’t you?”

  Tal offered a rueful smile. “K’kadi is both a phenomenon and an acquired taste. Regs tend to find him scary, awesome, or just plain weird. Even some of his own people have their doubts. But after what happened on the trip to Regular Prime, he’s a hero. If he tells me Vaden’s betrayed us, I believe him. And if the rot begins as high as Vaden, there’s no way I can go to Hercula until we’ve rooted out the traitors.” Tal reached for his portapad. “Let’s brainstorm and figure this out.”

  “Liona Dann?” Kass put aside a letter from M’lani and looked at K’kadi as if he’d just turned into a krall. “I thought she was tucked away in a lab somewhere, declawed and forgotten.”

  K’kadi offered an apologetic shrug. Vaden remember.

  “But a bomb,” Kass murmured. “Attempting to kill us. That’s hard to believe.”

  K’kadi gave her such a skeptical look Kass was forced into a wry smile. “All right, all right, so she set a krall on me in front of the whole blasted Hierarchy. That doesn’t make her a traitor to the rebellion, just a female scorned and spitting jealous.”

  Not sure about bomb.

  Kass examined her brother’s face with care, noting the subtle changes with considerable interest. K’kadi was not only physically stronger, his confidence now was that of a man, not an erratic, thoughtless boy. He stood tall, disciplined, power radiating around him. Even his facility with words was improving. Thank the goddess! This was a stronger K’kadi than the family had ever hoped for. She must let her father know that her brother had saved them all in the airspace above Regula Prime. Which reminded her . . .

  “K’kadi, I’ve just received a letter from M’lani. Let’s read it together.”

  As in the early days of the Psyclid freedom movement, handwritten notes delivered by merchant ships were still the most private means of communication between Blue Moon and Psyclid. And now that ships went back and forth daily, the sisters were able to keep in close touch.

  Reading aloud, Kass passed along all the news from palace, city, and planet. Not surprisingly, Jagan and T’kal still had their battles over the best way to bring about Psyclid’s recovery from long years of occupation, with the building of the ridó an added bone of contention. Anton Stagg and Joss Quint, recovered from wounds suffered while protecting M’lani and Jagan, had returned to their roles as bodyguards. In spite of half-hearted sputtering from T’kal, L’rissa’s romance had progressed to her living openly with Anton. In a surprise development, Joss seemed to be developing an interest in M’lani’s one-time Psyclid bodyguard, Kaya Samadi. And best of all, something I’ve saved for last, M’lani wrote—

  Kass gasped. M’lani’s letter drifted to the floor. K’kadi bent, picked it up, not hesitating to read the final sentence. He frowned. Is not good? he asked.

  Kass shuttered her face, managed a smile. “It’s very good, of course it’s good. I was just startled, that’s all.”

  K’kadi congratulated himself on having enough sense to keep silent. Emotions were difficult to process. People’s thoughts could be so odd, so very different from what they were saying. Women the most inscrutable of all. And no one, absolutely no one, seemed to have thought processes like his own. But he was making progress—some inner sensitivity keeping him quiet at this confusing moment. He offered no illusions, no words, no sign that he knew his sister was lying through her teeth. Everyone was entitled to privacy, this sister who was closest to him, most of all.

  K’kadi held out the letter, offered a sympathetic smile to Kass as she accepted it. This was not the best time for Kass to endure an emotional upheaval, but perhaps a day already scarred by betrayal was a fitting time for one more crisis.

  He placed a hand on his sister’s shoulder then walked out, softly closing the door behind him.

  Supported by sandwiches and a bottle of ripka each, the three starship captains worked late, tossing out ideas and objections with equal vehemence, growling over “worst case” scenarios while hoping to cut the head off the monster before it grew any larger. “Pok,” Tal breathed, “I think I’m stuck to the fydding chair.”

  Alek groaned. “Somehow the day got away from us.”

  “Perhaps you should order some flowers, Captain,” Jordana suggested. “I suspect Dama Rigel is not going to be happy.”

  “Kass is a pragmatist, she knows the score.” Tal paused, frowned, glanced at his chrono. whistled through his teeth. “You could be right,” he admitted. “It must be eight hours since I sent K’kadi to tell her about Vaden.”

  “And Liona Dann,” Jordana inserted softly.

  Tal swore even more colorfully than usual.

  “Goodnight, Captain,” Jordana said as she levered herself to her feet.

  “And good luck,” Alek added, not bothering to stifle a groan as the bones shattered in Tycho’s crash protested his long hours of inactivity.

  After picking up the portapad he didn’t intend to let out of his sight, Tal paused, deliberately rearranging his face from grim to a nice mix of loving and contrite. Kass would forgive his neglect, she always did.

  After being told the head of the Hierarchy was a traitor who might have tried to kill them?

  After being reminded of Liona Dann and the krall?

  After receiving such messages and being ignored by her husband for the next eight hours?

  Pok, dimi, and fyd! This time he might really be in for it.

  Chapter 14

  Turning away from his desk, Tal walked toward what appeared to be a solid wall of books, a small portion of King Ryal’s priceless collection of antiquities. Only when he was within a meter of the shelves was it possible to see that the bookshelves nearest the corner were an intricately painted optical illusion that blended seamlessly with the real books beside it. He pressed his fingers to a two-dimensional green leather volume, and a door swung open, leading directly into the sitting room of the royal suite, where he expected to find Kass waiting for him, most likely stretched out on the sofa reading a book.

  She wasn’t there. He sensed an ominous quality in the room’s silence. Almost . . . yes, uncomfortably close to the tension just before a battle. Surely not eating supper
with Kass wasn’t that great a sin. He’d done it before and would again. Kass knew it was part of his job . . .

  Yet a cold breeze seemed to be blowing through the sitting room, enough to keep him anchored in place, sifting through every word he’d spoken to his wife since morning, most particularly what he’d asked K’kadi to tell her . . .

  What he should have asked K’kadi to tell her.

  Or had the voyage to Regula Prime stretched K’kadi’s good behavior past its limits and the blasted boy had wandered off, failing to deliver any message at all?

  A sudden burst of anger freed Tal’s feet from the floor. He charged across the room, bursting into Kass’s bedroom, only to find it dark. She was out?

  Not without leaving word—someone would have told him. And besides, he could feel her. She was here. Yet it was far too early for her to be in bed. Dimmit, was she ill? “Kass?”

  A faint hiccup, a sniff so soft he suspected it was muffled under a layer of bedcovers.

  Even starship captains and rebel leaders could get the chills. More by a homing instinct than the faint drift of moonlight, Tal raced across the room and sank onto the bed, one hand gliding into the dark hair above the pale oval of his wife’s face. “Kass, what’s wrong? Tell me!”

  “It’s nothing, just foolishness.”

  In all the years he’d known her, Tal had never heard her sound so forlorn. “Explain.”

  “No.” Another hiccup shook her.

  “Fine.” Tal leaned in, speaking into her ear. “I’m taking off my clothes, getting into bed, and then you can tell me. You have about one minute to make whatever mental adjustments are necessary to pour it all out.” His wife’s answer to that was to take advantage of his temporary absence by pulling the covers up over her head. Naked, Tal stood over her, glaring at the surprisingly small mound of cloth. “Ka-ass!”

  “Go away.” Even though muffled by several layers of fabric, the startling words were clear.

  Kass gasped as Tal ripped the covers away. An Orlondami to the core, she cried, “How dare you?” But he was already sliding down beside her, restoring the covers, and taking her into his arms.

  Gently, his lips found hers in a soft, lingering kiss that said more than words ever could. “Kass, whatever it is, we’ll fix it,” he promised, his mouth hovering over hers. “That’s what we do, right?”

  “Not this time.”

  “I’m not leaving, so you might as well let me help.”

  “The only way you can help is to do something you won’t do.”

  Which had to be the most obscure thing she’d ever said to him. “And that would be?”

  “I told you, forget about it. I’m being foolish, the problem impossible to solve. Just leave me to fight this through on my own.”

  Tal heaved one of the Kass-induced sighs he’d perfected over the years. “We fight our problems together, Kass, so let’s hear it.”

  “I’m embarrassed to be such a fragile flower,” she whispered. “And I don’t want to hurt you. Please . . . just let this go.”

  Tal tightened his grip, pulling her even closer. “If you’re hurt, I’m hurt. We share, wife. That’s how it is.”

  “But it’s such a silly, selfish thing. I’m making a mountain out of a mole—”

  “Now, Kass. If nothing else works, call it an order.”

  Five long seconds of silence. A small sniff. “M’lani is pregnant.”

  What? She’d lost him. Wasn’t pregnancy cause for rejoicing? Women loved babies . . . yet Kass seemed to have sunk into depression.

  It took him fully half a minute, frowning over the idiosyncrasies of females, before he got it. Kass was right. The only way he could help was by doing something he wouldn’t do. Pok, dimi, and fyd!

  “You’re not being foolish, Kass,” Tal said as gently, lovingly as he could. “Female, yes, but not foolish. You know I need your gifts—how many times have you saved us all? But I won’t risk the life of a child. When you’re pregnant, I’ll likely try to confine you to Veranelle for the entire nine months, but the one place I guarantee you won’t be is in a firefight.”

  “So says the high and mighty S’sorrokan!”

  “While Tal Rigel’s heart breaks right along with you.”

  “She’s my younger sister!”

  “And when this is over, you can have a dozen babies—”

  “I’ll be old and gray, and there’ll never be any children at all,” Kass wailed.

  “I’ll not let that happen,” Tal promised, his lips brushing her ear. “Just give me a little longer, Kass, please.”

  “Only a little,” Kass conceded, clearly begrudging every word, before adding a stinger. “Just long enough for you to adjust your Reg thinking to a rebellion that leaves room for humanity!”

  Tal groaned, his forehead dropping to touch hers. “Can we table this discussion for a later date?”

  “Only if you have something better in mind.” A concession. Faint but genuine.

  “Omni, woman, I thought you’d never say it.”

  It took just five seconds for him to strip off the handful of fabric Kass was wearing.

  Alala sat stiffly upright on the bench in the g’zebo, eyes closed, hands fisted on her knees, her lower lip jutting out in a display of stubborn disgust. Even here in this special place, tension gripped her by the throat. She, Colonel Alala Kynthia Thanos, daughter of the king’s chief military advisor, was expected to sit like a great lump and do nothing! She had been a prisoner, a fugitive, an honored guest, the object of unwanted attention from the strangest person she had ever met in her life, but at no time had she been asked to do anything! Except tolerate her exceedingly odd Psyclid stalker. And observe that he was even more terrifyingly strange than she had thought.

  Everyone said he and his sister had saved Pegasus, and she had to admit her own eyes told her it was true. Brother and sister had stood on the bridge in complete silence, K’kadi gazing into space, his eyes only occasionally glancing at the holomap and Kass never taking her eyes off K’kadi, who relayed steering directions with nothing more than the tilt of a hand.

  She’d seen it. She still didn’t believe it.

  Yet the thought of the solid, dependable, space-smart Captain Dagg Lassan staging such an elaborate charade as a near crash on Reg soil was impossible. As was any motive for doing such an outrageous thing.

  Which meant . . .

  There was a great deal more to K’kadi Amund than pretty pictures.

  It was possible, Alala conceded, that when she had shocked herself by missing his constant attention, her female instincts had been more clever than her soldier’s brain.

  A not-so-soft footfall shattered her musing. She glanced up, muttering a Herc curse. Ares protect her from being caught invading Kass’s special hideaway a second time!

  “Good morning, Alala,” called a cheerful male voice from the foot of the g’zebo’s steps. “May I join you?”

  “Of course.” Suppressing a purely feminine flutter of interest, Alala waved Kelan Rigel to a seat beside her.

  “A charming spot,” Kelan said with a grin, “and made even more so by your presence.”

  Mind blank, Alala could only stare at him. Flirtation was something she had seen other women practice, but all the men she knew were either soldiers of lower rank or gray and grizzled officers twenty or more years her senior. Flirtation had not been an option.

  “It’s all right, you know,” Kelan said, his grin fading to only the faintest hint of amusement. “Now that Tal is firmly off the market, I have to uphold the Rigel reputation for female appreciation. And I do appreciate you, Alala. And it’s not as if we’ve never spoken before.”

  The look he gave her was so penetrating Alala was reminded, not for the first time in the weeks she’d known him, that this designer of spaceships was just as astute as his father and brother.

  “You’re a warrior with nothing to do, and it’s killing you,” Kelan offered.

  Alala drew in a deep breath, pursed her
lips, and suddenly all her pent-up frustrations came pouring out. “Something’s going on, I can feel it, but nobody will tell me anything. I suspect it has to do with finding whoever put the bomb on Pegasus, but . . .” She pounded a fist on her knee. “I am a colonel, battle-tested, yet they treat me like some precious princess, a guest who must not lift a finger!”

  Into the tense silence, Kelan finally said, “It’s not your fight, Alala, at least not yet. I know Tal is hoping your people will join the rebellion, and they’re not going to do that if he gets you killed—”

  “What about Pegasus?” she demanded. “We nearly died.”

  “That was supposed to be a recce, I understand, with no chance of trouble as long as K’kadi held the cloak. No one was supposed to be in danger.”

  Alala poured all the skepticism she had into a long scathing look.

  Kelan turned his head away, studying the surrounding forest with seeming great interest. He sighed. “I guess Tal didn’t become leader of the rebellion without taking a chance or two along the way, but without the bomb all would have gone well.”

  True, she had to admit it.

  “And now, before Tal can go to Hercula, he has to find out who set the bomb.”

  “Yes,” she ground out. “And I have no gifts that can help.”

  A breeze nipped beneath the g’zebo roof, blowing Alala’s long black hair into a drift about her face. Birds twittered around them, a bluish purple flitterfly coming to rest on a tall golden flower only a meter from the g’zebo rail.

  “There is something,” Kelan said. “Forgive me for listening to gossip since I landed on Blue Moon, but from what I’ve heard, you and K’kadi have a history. A rocky one. I’m a Reg, Alala, brought up on phrases like ‘weird as a Psyclid’ and ‘don’t go all Psyclid on me.’ And, believe me, what I’ve heard about Kass and K’kadi stretches my credulity past its limits. But Tal, my big brother, is a believer. S’sorrokan, leader of the rebellion, considers sorcery a weapon. So I have to believe, right? And so do you.”