by Susan Grant
Following the faint strains of a song only her ears could hear, she found her way to the shadowy bottom. She stopped, her hair swirling around her, her lungs straining for the air she could no longer live without, searching for signs. She almost missed the symbol carved into the rocks below. A trio of chevrons below a star. Waves and the sun. Adrinn. Her heart slamming, she dived down, her hair swirling, her hand swishing over the pattern. The current dislodged what she thought were scum-covered pebbles, until she saw them glinting silver. She snatched them and pressed her fist to her straining chest.
The prince was dead.
Blessed Heart of the Sea. Her chest convulsed, squeezing what little air remained in her lungs. A few bubbles escaped her lips. She followed the bubbles upward, exploding through the surface. Gasping out a sob, she floated on her back, gripping the earrings to her breasts. Her tears were indistinguishable from the water streaming off her upturned face. Adrinn… Adrinn…
When she’d loosed the last of her tears, she climbed out of the rippling moat. Reeve was waiting, his expression pensive. The sight of her nearly unclothed darkened his eyes, a look she’d seen many times before. And just like those times, he fought his attraction to her with clear frustration.
She shivered in his heated regard, then slowly closed the distance between them. “Treasure hunting?” he asked, confused by the earrings in her palm.
“It was my mission to find these,” she said, no longer afraid to let the lyrical accent of her people show. “They belonged to my prince. It is the belief of my people that with his earrings in possession of one of our own, his soul can finally rest. And,” she said softly, “I, too, have found the closure I sought, allowing me to go on with my life.”
A flare of panic in Reeve’s eyes told her he thought she might mean without him. She pressed a hand to his chest, stilling the question forming on his lips.
“His name was Adrinn. We are from the water worlds. There, we use a nano-particle that lines our lungs and allows us to breathe underwater. Once it wears off, we can no longer do so. I never knew how quickly, though.”
His eyes narrowed, memories of her apparent suicide attempt going through his head as he realized what she meant. “The night I found you trying to drown yourself, you weren’t,” he murmured.
“That’s right. I couldn’t accept the fact that I couldn’t fill my lungs with water and live. That I’d become landfolk.”
“Is it so bad, being one of us?” There was an edge to his voice.
She whispered, “Not anymore. Adrinn was captured by slavers. I thought I would die when it happened, and I volunteered for a mission to rescue him, against everyone’s wishes. They said I’d never return and they were right. Still, I had to try.” She rested her other hand on his cheek. “He was the only man I ever loved.”
A muscle in Reeve’s jaw jumped under her palm.
“Until you,” she whispered.
He went very still. “You love me?”
“I have for a very long time. But I had to know what happened to Adrinn first. I had to know in my heart. We were promised to each other. On my world, a promise to marry is not taken lightly.”
“It’s not on mine either.” He removed her hand from his cheek and pressed it to his chest. “I’ve waited for you, Ferren. I know you never asked me to, but blast it, I wanted to. I love you, girl, and am asking you to be my wife.”
“There isn’t anything else I’d rather be,” she said and answered his shining smile with a long and passionate kiss.
FRANK JOHNSON STRODE INTO the boardroom of the former Nezerihm Mining Headquarters and stopped at the sight of the table of men and one woman who glowered back at him like clouds poised to spit rain. It was a meeting of the clan captains. They’d invited him, but he couldn’t tell by looking at them.
“Look at all those cheery faces,” Frank muttered out the side of his mouth to Gwarkk.
The Drakken made a quiet snort.
“Well, we on the Unity aren’t in the happiness business, I suppose. We’re in the peace business. Let’s see if we can get this done.”
Six pairs of cool eyes watched Frank as he sat, waiting to see if he’d say anything about Nezerihm’s death during the rescue operation. As far as he was concerned, Nezerihm was out of the equation. Even if he hadn’t met a bad end, he would have been history after today.
“Well. Let’s get started.” Frank opened his data briefer. He felt Dake Sureblood’s razor-sharp, multicolored gaze on him, and Val Blue’s wary regard. She didn’t want to trust him, but had begun to, and for that he was thankful. It was the beginning of a future few in the Borderlands, much less the Channels, had ever imagined.
“It seems the treaty that Viro Nezerihm had held you to was as fresh as month-old milk.” Grumbles erupted at his statement, accompanied by the pounding of fists. “In other words, it’s expired. Twenty-seven years ago, to be exact. You own the mines. All the clans. Nezerihm Mining Company has no rights to them whatsoever.”
The drum of boots on the floor joined the pounding of fists. He exchanged a glance with Gwarkk. “Damn,” Frank muttered. He waited until the noise had died down and continued. “Based on this information, Prime-Admiral Zaafran has recommended that the Channels be considered sovereign, rendering Operation Amnesty invalid.”
Frank found that he was shouting now to be heard, but he didn’t mind a bit. It was a definite departure from the usual, mind-numbing meetings he was used it. “This will have to be ratified by Parliament, of course, but I see no barriers to that happening. Unless you find you can’t hold up your end of the bargain.”
“We sure as hells will hold it up!” one of the captains bellowed.
“Freepin’ right we will.”
“Aye, Cap’n. You’ll have so much zelfen, you’ll be buttering your toast with it.”
They all roared with laughter at that.
The Lightlee captain snorted. “Buttering their toast with zelfen? Calder, are you mad? Operating the mines? You’ve never done it before.”
“Neither have you!”
“Some of the Feckwith elders know how.”
“Digging tuber roots, you mean, not zelfen ore!”
“We’re going to rename company headquarters, too,” the Calder leader snarled, spurring a new debate. “I ain’t calling that planet Aerokhtron. It’s like that sound you make when you’re spitting.”
Dake Sureblood laughed, grinning at it all. The father of unity, Frank thought and felt damn humbled to know him. “Come, Lieutenant Gwarkk. Our job’s done here.”
Frank doubted anyone noticed when they left.
SOMETIME LATER, VAL AND Dake ducked out of the boardroom to check on Jaym. The roar inside was so loud that the door they had closed behind them did little to mute the noise. The warmth of love and pride filled Dake seeing his son, his golden head bent in concentration, coloring with crayons scattered on the floor while he waited out his parents’ return.
“The king of the pirates,” Val said softly.
Dake nodded. “In time…”
Jaym looked up and ran to them, joyful as he was hoisted into his papa’s arms. Standing with his wife-to-be and his son, Dake took time to savor the moment like he would after any successful raid. Every good pirate loved a prize, he thought. The prize for him and Val had been absolution. She’d come to accept that the blame for her father’s death didn’t rest on her shoulders, while he’d finally restored his clan’s pride and honor. Together, they’d realized the dream of uniting the clans: Blues, Surebloods, Calders, Feckwiths, Lightlees and Freebirds, together as one people once more. So long as the Triad recognized, and respected, the autonomy of the Channels, there’d be no threat to their unification.
They were a legitimate territory now, and that would take getting used to, from not stealing their new allies blind to choosing the unlucky sot who’d be sent off to represent them in Parliament on the Triad’s capitol in the central galaxy. Dake practically shuddered at the thought.
Beh
ind them the din grew even louder as the details of the clans’ new business were hammered out. Skiff drivers would train to be transport pilots, with armed-to-the-teeth pirate vessels providing protection just in case some in the Triad didn’t respect the new company ownership. But would they hire outsider miners, or mine themselves, keep some of Nezerihm’s workers, or not? Who would be forced to live in the Nezerihm palace, or would they ransack and demolish it? The raucous debating seemed to shake the very walls.
“Ah, the sound of freedom,” Val said, her golden eyes sparkling with triumph as she took his hand in hers.
“Aye, Blue girl, freedom,” Dake said, pulling her close. The pirates’ future was by no means settled, but for now, it was theirs.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6410-0
SUREBLOOD
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Grant
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