Drake nodded in understanding. “Then you have leave to undertake this whenever you feel it is time.”
She nodded in turn. She stood there silently after they’d gone, so lost in thought she was barely aware of someone’s approach until he was almost upon her. She turned to look at Mahko, who, now that he had been relieved of most of his healing duties, had turned his talent for cooking with minimal ingredients into an art.
He held out a plate to her with a thick slice from a freshly baked loaf, something he had rarely been able to manage back in the cellars. Beside it was a scoop of stew, rich, thick, and smelling delightfully unlike brollet.
“You have eaten too little of late,” the man said.
She took the plate and had to admit that although she had not thought herself hungry, her stomach responded to the aroma. “You are kind to think of me.”
“I am grateful,” Mahko said with a smile. “I ever felt lacking as a healer, and you have saved me from that.”
“You were not lacking, my friend. It was just not the calling of your heart.” He smiled at her. She thanked him again and walked to one of the long tables where she sat to eat, thinking it would be churlish of her not to. And foolish, for the stew did indeed smell delicious. She began to eat, but slowed when she realized she was eating much as Caze had at first, as if the food were simply fuel. But lately she’d noticed he’d slowed a little, and she put that down to Mahko’s ever-growing skill.
But it did little to keep her mind off her children heading once more into peril. And hovering was the knowledge that soon the battle would begin again.
“IT MUST BE SOON,” Drake said. “Brander says the cannons are due by the next full moons.”
Iolana did not ask how Brander had managed to obtain that information. He had no doubt risked himself yet again, going into Zelos. A glance at Eirlys confirmed this; her face showed no emotion at all, which for her daughter meant she was hiding all of what she was feeling.
“Have you decided?”
Drake drew in a deep breath and nodded. “And I pray to Eos I do not come to regret it.”
That sentiment could apply to either decision. She waited, silently. Just as her daughter held back her emotions about her mate risking himself repeatedly, she held back her own. She was not certain how she would feel if Drake’s decision was execution; she only knew it would scar her deeply. And yet she could hardly plead with him, not when Ziem’s future—or lack of one—was at stake.
And when she herself wasn’t even sure of what she would be pleading for.
“I will escort him myself.”
The instant protest broke from all gathered except Iolana. She was feeling too much relief. A warning, she thought, of how far she had fallen under the spell of the green-eyed officer of the Coalition. And yet she could not regret having come to know him as she had, only that it would end here.
But she wasn’t so overset that she didn’t notice that the protests were about Drake doing it himself, not that it was to be done. Apparently they had all accepted his reasons . . . and hers. And she felt a qualm of the same feeling Drake had professed. She hoped she did not come to regret it.
Drake held up a hand, and they quieted. “We will undertake the mission tonight.”
“Tonight?” Teal yelped, startled. “At night?”
All heads swiveled to look at Brander. For they all knew he’d been working on adapting the scopes on the rovers to night vision. He shrugged, but he was grinning, which from him was tantamount to a declaration that he’d succeeded.
“Your explosions will be even prettier,” Brander told Teal, who actually smiled for the first time since his brother’s death.
“That’s why you’ve all been flying so much,” Pryl said in realization. “You’ve been testing.”
“And training,” Kye said. “It’s a different sort of flying.”
“We will go over the plan as soon as I return.” It was the Raider speaking now. “Have any problems you foresee ready to present.”
“The usual problems of being massively outnumbered and outgunned aside,” Brander said jovially. They all laughed. Even Drake.
And more than ever Iolana was proud of her people and their indomitable spirit.
“If there is anything you wish to say to him, you will have a few minutes while I prepare,” Drake said to her after the others had gone.
Iolana would have thanked him, were she not wondering if somehow her son had sensed her inner turmoil. And more, the reason for it. But how could he, when she was not entirely certain herself?
She pondered this as she walked back to her residence. She had gradually come to accept that Caze had an unexpected and fierce effect upon her. But the impossibility of it had made her quash the feelings and sensations he roused. But every time she thought them thoroughly vanquished, she would glimpse something in him that set it all loose again. She fairly ached for the man he could have been.
And could yet still be?
Could he? She could do her part, she could break through the barriers the Coalition had built in him, she could set free what feelings he had. But what would it do to him? Would he be able to see that cool, rational logic was only part of the equation? That without the heart, it was a cold, lifeless thing, a pointless existence, just as emotion without rationality was a straight course to insanity? It took the balance to make life work as it should. He should see that, should he not? For balance was a logical, explicable thing. It would appeal to his nature.
But in the end, it was not her decision. It was not something she would do without his assent; he was not Jakel.
When she walked back in, he was standing near the shelf where his comm link had been, before he’d gotten strong enough to rise on his own. He was touching the shelf, as if testing to see if the illusion would hold, if it would feel different than it looked. She knew the illusion, both visual and tactile, would hold; as strong as his mind was, Ziem was stronger.
He turned as she stepped through the illusory doorway. She did not waste time with niceties.
“You will be leaving shortly. And this—” she gestured at the façade of his office “—will be real.”
His brows lowered. “I am to live?”
He didn’t sound surprised. She wondered if it was because were the positions reversed, he would wish to do the same. And she longed to touch him, just long enough to see if that was truth. Not that it mattered, for she knew the Coalition would not allow it. If he failed to execute the Raider if he had the chance, it would certainly guarantee his own demise.
“You are. Drake has decided.”
For a moment she thought, by the way he was looking at her, that he might ask what she had had to do with that decision. But after a moment he only lowered his gaze.
She crossed to the shelf above the cot where he’d slept and picked up his neatly folded jacket. The shirt she’d had to cut through when he had stopped breathing had been mended, rather nicely, by Grim who had an unexpected talent for it.
“I am sorry about the slice,” she said as she held it out to him.
He took it and looked at the open slash in the back. “You cannot heal it?”
Her gaze shot to his face. The corners of his mouth twitched.
She smiled widely. He was teasing her. The tough, strong, unflinching Caze Paledan was teasing her. And her earlier thoughts came back to her; surely if they had not managed to completely crush this wry humor out of him, there must be other things left? She knew there was restraint, for the twins still lived. She knew there was the capacity for surprise, for he had shown it here. But more?
“What are you thinking?” he asked, staring as if he’d never seen a smile before.
Her smile wobbled a little. “Wondering if you would survive the return of what should be natural to you.”
“That internal chaos?”
“What you call chaos, we call living. With all its joy, and pain, and vitality. The ability to fully experience the ecstasy because we have fully felt the agony.”
“I do not know that I would. Survive it, I mean. Is it your intention?”
“It is not my decision. It is yours. You need only ask.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I . . . cannot.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “Is there anything else you wish to ask of me, now that your time here is over?”
“I will not ask where ‘here’ is, for I know you would not tell me. But I will ask one question.”
“I will answer, if I can.”
“Your portrait,” he began, and her pulse kicked up. “Does the artist still live?”
She smiled widely. “Oh yes, the artist is alive and well.” The smile faltered a little. “Unable to pursue that calling, as things stand, but very much alive.”
“That is . . . good to know.”
“I thought art of no use to the Coalition was forbidden?”
“It is.”
“And yet that piece resides in your office.”
She didn’t think she mistook the trace of unease that came into his eyes. Something she very much doubted happened often to this man. But he said only, simply, “Yes.”
“Why?” She was determined to get her answer, finally.
He looked at her for a moment, his steady gaze both unsettling and calculating. “You meant what you said? I am leaving?”
“Yes,” she answered. “Does that change your answer?”
“It changes whether I will answer.”
“I see.” Oh, she would miss playing these games with words and meanings with him. And she wondered if that thought had shown in her face, for again something flashed in those green depths.
“What spoke to me was not the portrait itself, despite the amazing skill and perception of the artist. It is one of my failings that I can appreciate that kind of genius even in works of no aid at all to the Coalition.”
“Some would call that itself great perception.”
“No one in my world.”
“Contention, sadly, valid.”
“I did in fact keep that portrait because it spoke to me. But not of the artist.”
For an instant Iolana wondered if this man had some heretofore unknown power, for she felt as if she were about to be consumed by the vivid green of those eyes. And when he spoke again, his voice held a low, rough note that made her welcome it.
“I kept it because it spoke to me of you.”
Chapter 42
PALEDAN STARED at Drake, who had entered immediately after he’d utterly betrayed himself to Lana. It took him a moment to realize why the Raider had arrived. “You?”
“Why not?”
“Do you not have . . . other things to do?”
“You mean such as planning our next raid? That is already done.” Paledan would have sworn the man looked regretful. And with his next words he confirmed it. “I’m afraid . . . hostilities must resume soon.”
“I assumed,” Paledan answered. “In fact I am surprised you waited.”
“It did my people good to have respite, now that we are safe in a place you—and your satellite—will never find.”
So they knew of the satellite. He was not surprised at that, only that Drake was so certain they were beyond the scope of the best Coalition technology.
And he realized with a start that he had thought of the man as Drake, not the Raider.
“Are you ready?” Drake asked.
“Are you not afraid of what I will see?”
“No.” He looked at Iolana.
“I’m afraid that this, unlike the other things we discussed, is not up to your volition,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Caze.”
He frowned as she gave him a look that held sadness, resignation, and, he would swear, longing. She reached up and cupped his cheek. It was a soft, gentle, yet surprisingly heated touch, and his pulse sped up furiously before he realized. It was almost a caress, and it awakened sensations in him he did not even know how to fight.
Did not want to fight.
And then he felt an odd sort of dizziness, something different than what he’d felt when she’d touched him before.
He came back to himself in a familiar, yet unfamiliar place. The right seat of an air rover. At the controls sat the Raider—for that is who he was now—and there was no one else aboard. And outside was nothing but that bedamned Ziem mist, and he nearly laughed at his own question; of course they weren’t worried about him realizing where they were, for who could see beyond the reach of their arm in this?
Questions flooded his reawakened mind. He noted almost without surprise that he did not wonder how Lana had somehow rendered him insensate for a finite period. Given what else he had seen, it seemed a minor enough accomplishment for the phenomenon she was.
Finally he settled on the one of immediate interest.
“No guards?”
The Raider smiled, but did not look at him. “I thought you were no pilot.”
“I am not.”
“But I suspect you could learn quickly, given you know enough to design this craft. But,” he added with obvious amusement, “I think you might find this one a bit . . . different than your original design.”
He already knew that; had he not seen the stolen rovers do things that should have been impossible?
“For example,” the Raider said, and suddenly they were shooting upward, Paledan feeling the pressure pushing his back into the seat as they climbed at an angle that indeed should have been impossible. And suddenly they burst through the mist and out into clear sky, and he saw the dual moons shining beyond. They held him spellbound for a moment before he looked around and was able to orient himself. They were deep into the badlands, deeper even than he had guessed they might be, for only in the far distance could he see the back side of Highridge.
Then his breath caught as he realized they were rolling, over and over, and for an instant he thought they’d been hit, that somehow Coalition fighters had been in the area, spotted them and been able to fire.
But a split second later he realized that the craft was under the Raider’s complete and exceptional control. The craft snapped back upright, then soared upward again. Higher than should be possible. And then, even more impossibly, it hung there at the peak, motionless, apparently immune to the pull of the planet beneath in a way that made him feel weightless, as he only ever had in much bigger, space-ranging craft designed to pull free of such bonds.
And then the rover’s nose went over, and it dived back down into the mist as sharply as it had risen.
None of which the craft he’d designed had been capable of doing.
“Bragging?” Paledan asked mildly. “That was quite a demonstration.”
“It is different, from inside.”
“Yes.” He looked at the man at the controls. “You are an excellent pilot.”
“It is an excellent craft.”
“It was,” Paledan said dryly. “Now it is . . . superlatives fail me. I truly would give much to meet your engineer.”
The Raider glanced at him and grinned, and Paledan saw in that moment the full strength and depth of the man who had so bedeviled the Coalition since he had risen to fight for his world.
And again, he was thinking of the Coalition as “other,” a habit he must rid himself of, especially now when he was apparently returning to its confines. And even thinking of it that way, as confining, was an abomination in their eyes.
He felt a sudden tightness behind his eyes, a throb that made it difficult to think. He rubbed at his forehead as he felt it begin, the start of the tension that would overtake him once he was back
in uniform, once he was again Coalition to the bone.
But would he be? Would he ever be again? He had seen another way, had seen people who lived with those blood ties the Coalition decried, had seen that they were, in some ways, the better for them. The braver. The more determined.
And to his shock, he admired them. To have done so much with so little had already been impressive, but to see how they interacted, to see the fire in their hearts glow in their eyes, to see that they were alive and vivid in a way he’d never known before, had never even seen, seared him to the core.
How could he go back to that uniform knowing that his single, most important goal would be to destroy them? Destroy this man, who were he in the same uniform he would be honored to call a brother in arms. And the boy who had guarded him so fearlessly, despite his youth. And the twins . . .
His mind careened away from that which he had still not come to accept. It was impossible. It could not be. And yet . . . what she had told him had rung true in a place so deep inside him he did not know what to call it. And Lana had no reason to lie, not about such as that.
Lana.
He would be called upon to destroy her as well. Perhaps foremost, for if the man beside him was the heart of this fight, she was the soul.
He could not.
“We could turn around,” the Raider said quietly.
Paledan’s head snapped up, and he turned to stare at the man who was now looking directly at him. “What?”
“I know it is not in your makeup to betray, but my mother has told me you are capable of changing your mind, when the evidence forces it.”
“What,” Paledan enunciated carefully, “are you saying?”
“Simply that when what you are loyal to is proven false, then it is no longer a betrayal to turn away.”
Renegade Page 26