Renegade

by Justine Davis

  Iolana realized in that moment that she had just experienced something few mothers had, the novelty of seeing how her children—half of them anyway, she wasn’t about to risk showing herself to the twins just now—reacted to strangers. Interestingly, both she and Drake had responded in an almost identical fashion, cautious yet welcoming. Drake perhaps more wary, but that was to be expected.

  They did not react like a populace at war. At least not here in their strong­hold, and she felt a burst of satisfaction that this, at least, she had given them, this place to be as they had once been, a kind, welcoming people.

  “It appears you are nearly full, so it is as well I have not found you another creature in need of your special aid.”

  Eirlys smiled. Her daughter was truly a lovely woman, she thought proudly. But then her expression changed; the smile remained, but her brow furrowed anew.

  “I do know you,” she said, her tone that of one who is not quite con­vinced yet.

  Iolana decided more harm than good would be done keeping up the pretense, and her relationship with Eirlys was not so strong that she wished to risk any further damage. She spoke in her natural voice.

  “We are acquainted, Eirlys. But if even you are not certain, then my disguise is effective.”

  “Mother!”

  Just hearing the appellation, even in such a shocked tone, warmed her.

  “Your hair,” Eirlys exclaimed. “You’ve masked it. And your face . . . it is changed as well. What is this for?”

  “I am going into Zelos.”

  Eirlys stared at her. “But you have not been to Zelos since . . .” Her voice trailed off, and a doubt that struck pain deep into Iolana’s heart came into her voice as she finished in a whisper, “Have you?”

  She recognized the source of the pain immediately. “I have not,” she said quickly, firmly. “I dared not risk it, to be so close to you, and not come to you? I could not have borne it.”

  The look of doubt faded; in this, at least, her daughter believed her. “The price of your vision is high,” Eirlys said, her voice soft now.

  “Higher than I ever wished to pay,” Iolana admitted. While it had been her heart that had driven her to try to end the life she could no longer bear, it had been her vision, that blessed, cursed ability to See, that had kept her away after she had survived. Knowing it had been necessary, for her son to become the man he must for Ziem, had made it no easier. “But to have you understand this is a great relief.”

  Eirlys smiled. “I have understood much, since we worked together to save Brander. And more since he pledged to me. But why go to Zelos?” Eirlys asked. “And why now?”

  She chose the second question to answer. “We are in a quiet time just now, while your brother determines our course from here.” She smiled. “I think he did not expect the trap he set to work quite as well as it did.”

  “I think,” Eirlys said rather grimly, “he half expected to die.”

  “And yet he did it anyway.”

  “Because he is the Raider.”

  “The first son of Ziem.”

  “And that,” Eirlys said with a small sigh of understanding, “is why you left him alone, to become what he had to become. And now that we’re in such sweet agreement, will you answer the first question? Why go to Zelos?”

  “Drake wishes information on the state of things,” she said.

  “Mmm. And for that he could ask Brander. Or any number of scouts. With more experience at going unnoticed, and more awareness of what is needed.”

  Iolana didn’t take offense, for she knew it was true. “But perhaps not . . . certain abilities to deduce things others might be hiding.”

  “Does that not require physical contact, that skill of yours?”

  “Yes,” she admitted, “but only the merest brush.”

  “You ‘brush’ the wrong trooper and you will need that freeze-them-in-their-own-footprints skill,” Eirlys said with a grimace.

  “It is well that I have it then,” Iolana said lightly.

  Her daughter studied her for a silent moment. And then she said, softly, “I know your real reason.”

  Something in those eyes so like her father’s warned Iolana, but she kept silent.

  “You go to learn more of him. Paledan.”

  And so. Her daughter was as clever as she was beautiful. Or her inherited gift was expanding, now that she knew it existed. Iolana knew it would do more harm than good to deny the accuracy of her guess.

  “If the commander of all Coalition forces on Ziem kept a portrait of you in his office, would you not wish to know if you should be . . . concerned?”

  Eirlys’s mouth quirked. “I cannot imagine not being concerned, in such a case.”

  “Then you understand.”

  Eirlys sighed. “I should go with you. Two unarmed women of Ziem would seem no threat.”

  “Unarmed?”

  “Visibly,” Eirlys amended, to Iolana’s great amusement.

  “I cannot tell you how my heart rejoices to hear your offer. But you are too recognizable, having so recently lived among them.”

  She knew her point was valid, and before Eirlys could suggest she take on the same sort of disguise, she asked her favor.

  “I did wish to ask something of you, however.”

  “What?”

  “One of your birds as messenger, should I happen across something urgent.”

  Eirlys looked thoughtful. “Runner is the swiftest.”

  Iolana shook her head. “I do not want the responsibility of Brander’s darling. One of the others who has learned to return here will do.”

  Eirlys’s smile then was almost a grin. “She has good judgment, that bird. Although it took him a while to realize it.”

  “All in its own time,” Iolana said, her own smile showing she meant much more than Brander’s acceptance of a tiny creature’s adoration.

  Eirlys selected a bird, lighter in color than Runner, yet still a rich gray. “He is the next best,” she said. “And with his color he nearly vanishes in the mist.”

  “I can see he would.” She took the tiny cage. The bird had settled in with­out complaint, for it was lined with soft cloth and he had several seeds to work on.

  “He will be happy in the pocket of your cloak,” Eirlys said. “Have you the message paper needed to fit in his case?”

  Iolana nodded; she’d picked that up from the table in Drake’s quarters. “I hope that I will not need him to fly.”

  “As do I.” Eirlys gave her mother a steady look. “I have a wish for a long period of quiet before the battle begins again.”

  “As does your mate, I’m sure. Make the most of it, my girl,” Iolana said softly.

  She slipped the bird and cage into her pocket. As she made her way to the cave that served as a hangar for the air rovers, she was smiling. Hope filled her, that one day she would again be part of the family she had never stopped loving.

  Chapter 4

  PALEDAN DECIDED he would walk the distance to the landing zone. It would be more fitting of his rank to order a conveyance with a driver, but he didn’t even think of that. He needed all the exercise he could manage, to re­gain his full strength after his injury. He also needed the time, the distance, and the exertion to get his mind back under control. So he could stop thinking of peculiar things like the idea that if he ordered the crews repairing the landing pads to work around the clock, it might occur to them to wonder how, exactly, their lot was any different from the enslaved miners ordered to do the same.

  As he walked, he found himself looking at the destruction of what had once been a busy, if not Coalition-level efficient, city thriving on the success they’d gained by utilizing their resources. He knew life had been good here—despite the bedamned mist—by how easily they had fallen. They
had, as many before them had, been lulled into thinking that what they had needed no maintenance, no defense. The peace they had found had lulled them into ignoring the basic law of the universe, that those who were strong took from those who were not.

  And yet this place, this soft, unprepared place, grown lazy by feeding on its own success, had somehow produced one of the most magnificent fighters he’d ever come across. And that man’s success had emboldened even those he passed on the ruined streets to look him in the eye rather than show the usual cowed diffidence of a conquered people.

  This, he thought, was the difference. In all the victories to his credit, he had been at the head of the invading force, leading the battle, deciding, moving the troops like men on a game board. A much larger, more complex and risky game of chaser, played out with lives and land, the outcome of the gamble depending on the skill of the adversaries. Such as Brander Kalon, his one-time chaser opponent, another man from this shrouded world who had surprised him.

  Here, unlike the battles of his past where he was above it all, victorious and then moving on to the next, he was down among the people, not simply maneuvering troops indicated by markers on a map. They were not simply targets anymore, but living, breathing people.

  He was charged with keeping control while at the same time keeping the miners, the only ones who knew how to safely extract pure, usable planium, working. He had had to deal directly with the people of Ziem.

  He could not deny it was different. He refused to think this was a softening in him; it was merely that, different. And now that he’d realized it, it was only a matter of adjusting his thinking. That had ever been his way, and it had never failed him.

  And yet you cannot seem to stop yourself from staring at the portrait of a woman you never knew, a woman long dead. A portrait of no use, trumpeting no glory to the Coalition, and thus not allowed to exist in that world.

  He gave an inward shake of his head. It was only because he was now on the bridge over the river they called the Racelock, the river that had carried her away after her death plunge, that he thought of her.

  If he looked to the northwest he could see the Halfhead Scarp, where it had happened.

  Where she had done it, to herself.

  It still seemed impossible to him, that the life so vivid in that artist’s rendering could have been snuffed out of her own will. But then, neither could he conceive of an emotion as powerful as that thing some called love. How could a person allow another to become so important to them that they could not go on when the person was taken from them? It was, as the Coalition taught, illogical, irresponsible, and unlawful to value any one person above the whole.

  Perhaps it was that which truly fascinated him. It was a matter of study only, an analyzing of the oddity that had him so captivated by that image.

  It was a comforting thought, but Caze Paledan had never been one to lie to himself, and he knew it was more than that. What it was, he could not put a name to. He only knew that destroying the portrait would not cure him of it, for it was committed to his memory now, and he would ever be able to call it up in every detail, just as he could call up the map of a battlefield.

  Which is where you need to return. Much better to risk death by old wound or new than to languish here acting as no more than an administrator.

  He realized he had stopped at the bridge railing, with the rapidly flowing river below and the towering cliff of Halfhead in the distance. A sharp jab of inwardly directed anger made him turn on his heel and continue his crossing at a more rapid pace. One citizen stumbled on the uneven surface—the bridge had taken some hits as well, and would need repair—and brushed against him. The woman, dark-haired and wearing a long cloak, stepped back with a small gasp, lowering her head.

  Her reaction somehow jabbed him again. “Be at ease, woman. I do not condemn people for a stumble,” he snapped.

  It was only after they had both continued on that he realized he was rub­bing at his arm, as if the contact had been somehow charged. He stopped, turned, and looked back. Had the woman done something? Jabbed him with some poison-laden needle? It had been known to happen.

  She was nowhere in sight. Suspicion spiked, and he wondered if in a few more steps he would feel the burn of some lethal toxin.

  He wondered if he would care.

  But he felt nothing, and after another moment of fruitlessly scanning for the woman in the cloak, he went on.

  DEAR EOS!

  Iolana leaned against the one still-standing wall of the bell tower, drawing in deep breaths. She closed her eyes for a moment, willing her heartbeat to slow.

  Never in all the years she’d been privy to this reading of people had she felt such a thing. True, she had opened the channel and intended to take all she could discern, but the merest brush against that man and it was as if a flooding conduit had opened. It was the sign of a very powerful mind, and it would take her a long, quiet time to sort it all out. Then would come the assigning of meaning, and with someone she did not know interpretation of what she’d received was a tricky matter.

  But one thing she’d plucked from his mind had earned that label of urgent, and when she could move again she darted into the ruin of the bell tower. She carefully lifted the small cage from the pocket of her cloak. The bird cooed at her, giving her a bright-eyed look as if he knew he was about to be released. She drew out the paper she had taken, pre-sized to fit into the tiny tube. She wrote quickly, rolled the message as tightly as she could, and with an inward smile for the daughter who had revived this ancient method, she lifted the bird out of the cage and slipped the furled paper into the small cylinder attached to his leg. Then she walked to the gaping hole where the north wall had once stood.

  “To Eirlys, my sweet,” she whispered, and gently tossed him to the air. In an instant the graybird’s wings unfolded and he took flight. And an instant later he was indiscernible from the mist.

  The most crucial thing done, she turned back into the cover of the ruin. There was so much, more than she’d ever expected to gain from such a brief, brushing touch. Neither had she ever experienced the kind of snap and crackle that had come with the rush. Both Drake and Brander were warily admiring of the man, and it seemed they were correct.

  She would need Drake’s help with this, for amid the rush had been military matters, plans, protocols, and while she was certain they would be of use, her knowledge of that kind of detail was limited. Her son, she was sure, would be better able to interpret these. But she’d gotten enough to know that, insanely, this man was the only thing standing between Ziem and the Coalition’s worst. And that he had stood down even some of his superiors, who wished to destroy them and deal with the aftermath. What she didn’t know was why. It might be there, amid the rush, but she would need time to discover it.

  And Brander would need to know that he was in the Major’s mind, that there was suspicion there. He must take great care now. Thankfully, there wasn’t a trace of Eirlys in what she’d gotten, and she would tell him this as well.

  Not so the twins, however. They had been there, near the surface. But not in a suspicious way, more in the nature of a question he had not resolved, which in itself was irksome to him. But there were shadings to that as well, something she sensed was personal to the man. She stored that away to be examined when she was back at the stronghold and could retreat to a place of calm where she could analyze the flood she’d gotten bit by bit.

  But one thing she could not store away for future study, and it took her breath away. It had been so powerfully, clearly uppermost, so strong she knew it occupied a large, active part of Major Caze Paledan’s thoughts. And as clearly as if it were before her and she were staring at it herself, she could see it.

  The portrait.

  Her portrait.

  She had thought to spend more time, perhaps gather more information that might be of use, but
she knew her capacity well, and she had reached it. Likely overflowed it, with that unexpectedly huge burst from Paledan.

  In one way she was glad that she had all this now flooding her mind, for it left her little time to dwell upon or mourn the state of the city she loved.

  Chapter 5

  “USE THE RUBBLE from the council building,” Paledan ordered.

  The lieutenant in charge of the repair crew blinked. “Sir?”

  “Was I not clear?”

  “No, sir. It is only that the distance to transport the material will slow the process.”

  He marked the lieutenant—Stron according to his uniform—as another who perhaps had a functioning brain. “It will. Especially when you take the time to be sure most of Zelos sees that we are repairing our landing zone with pieces of their most revered building.”

  The lieutenant’s expression changed to one of understanding. “Understood, sir. I will see to it, by route and noise.”

  And a quick brain, Paledan thought. He would remember the name.

  He made his way to the hanger on the edge of the zone. Snapped an order for an air rover and pilot to head for the mines. The nearest, a man who had flown him satisfactorily before, threw a salute as he volunteered and headed quickly to the closest craft. Several other men stopped what they were doing, and the sergeant among them spoke diffidently.

  “I have only a half-dozen men to act as guards, sir. I can have a full pla­toon within—”

  “Not necessary, sergeant.” If he couldn’t deal with a mining crew with less than a full platoon, he truly had lost his touch. He glanced at the troopers beside the sergeant. Recognized one.

  “You were at the council building, the day of the bombing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You rescued several of your comrades.”

  “Many helped, sir.”

  “Why did you not pursue the perpetrators?”

  The man paled, but remained in place. “I had been in the compound, sir. I had no idea who or where they were. I did know where my comrades were.”