“It did,” she answered with a wide smile. “Mara was slightly injured by a fragment of Teal’s explosive, but it is minor.”
Iolana turned, ready to go to the woman. “Does she need me?”
“It would not be amiss, but there is no hurry.” Kye looked at her as if she were considering saying something else. Then, “You knew Eirlys was with them?”
“Yes.” She thought she managed to speak rather evenly, considering.
“It was Eirlys who healed Mara enough for her to get home safely.”
Pride burst within her. “She has learned so much!”
“Once she opened her mind and heart to it, yes,” Kye said.
“All of my children have heart beyond imagining,” Iolana said, rather fervently. “And I include you, and Brander, in that number.”
“And we both feel the welcome and are thankful,” Kye said.
Once more she seemed to hesitate. “Surely since we are then family, you can speak your mind?”
“It was only a thought, and perhaps a wrong one.”
“Out with it, m’girl,” Iolana teased.
“You . . . when the major was here . . . you reminded me of . . . me.”
“You?”
“Before I knew Drake was the Raider. I was so torn. I loved Drake, I always had, but . . .”
“You thought him a coward,” Iolana said softly.
Kye nodded. “As he intended, in my defense.”
“Yes. And it nearly ate him alive inside.” But then what she’d said truly registered. “And I . . . remind you of this?”
“You are torn about him, aren’t you? In a different way than Drake is. Or my cousin.”
“I see . . . what has been done to him, and what he could otherwise be, and it is . . . difficult.”
Kye studied her for a moment, with the wise eyes of someone who had walked a very difficult path. “You came to care for him.”
Iolana sighed. But she could not lie to her son’s mate. “I neither expected or wanted that. But he is the most intriguing man I have ever met.”
Kye gave her a wry smile of understanding. “And if he intrigues the Spirit, that says much of the depths of the man.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “Torstan was open, his heart in full view, all knew where it lay, with his family and with Ziem. Caze . . . I don’t believe he has ever truly known what he feels in his heart. It was never allowed.”
“I cannot imagine living like that. Although,” Kye added wryly, “I can see where it might sometimes be less painful.”
“But is it still living?” Iolana asked.
Kye smiled. “Contention valid.” Again she studied Iolana for a moment before saying, “That thing you thought might . . . change his thinking. You told him?”
“I did. I am not certain he yet believes, however.”
“Will he?”
“I think he will try to verify it. And if he is able to find some bit of proof— his kind of proof—that it is true, then . . . I don’t know, but I will say it could shake his perception of his entire life. And now,” she added, “I will go check on Mara. And express my pride in my daughter.”
“Do that. It will gladden Eirlys. But . . . if I may?”
“You have as free a rein as your mate. Speak what you will.”
“Be aware when you speak of him, it shows. Especially when you use his given name.”
Iolana’s cheeks were still warm when she reached the infirmary, where Eirlys and Mara were both inspecting the gash on her left leg. It was nearly healed already; only a reddened line remained.
“You did well,” she said approvingly.
“Thank you,” Eirlys answered, smiling. “But it is good you are here to finish the job.”
“I think you can manage,” Iolana said. “I will just give you a little boost.”
And for the first time it was Eirlys who did the healing, while her mother channeled her just a little extra through the pathway. And when it was done and her daughter turned to her with sparkling eyes, her heart filled anew.
Yes, life might be less painful cut off from all blood ties.
But it would be a cold, joyless thing.
PALEDAN OPENED his eyes, looked into the darkness, and was for a moment disoriented. Reality snapped back. He was in his quarters, not his office. Or rather, that illusion of his office. A flame-haired, vividly alive woman would not be momentarily appearing. The woman who fascinated him, in part because she felt so much, while he felt nothing at all.
Or at least, he once had felt nothing at all. Now he’d had a taste of what she called “normal,” and he wasn’t sure he could handle any more. He thought if it were true, that what she’d given him was but a trace of what Ziemites felt every day, that it was a miracle they weren’t all insane. But weren’t they? Wasn’t it insanity to go against the Coalition in such small numbers, with such minimal weapons?
Perhaps not, if I measure it by their relative success.
He sat up, then went still, still savoring the novelty of the absence of pain. And thinking. Thinking of things he would never have dared consider before. Questions that had no answers tumbled through his mind.
He thought of the dead end he had reached in his search of his own records. His birth document showed the names of the contributors—what Ziem called parents—and the date and time of his birth, and statistics on his size. The only other things of note were the label “special attention” at the top, which he had been told meant he’d already been headed for officer training thanks to the status of his contributors, and the check mark in the box labeled “Acceptable.” He had always assumed that to mean he had been born without visible defects. But now he wondered if the placement of that box next to his birth length and weight meant something else.
Meant that he was the larger, stronger of two.
He picked up his handheld unit from the table beside the bed. He didn’t think about the ramifications; he’d been through all that in his mind repeatedly. If he used this, he could then destroy it, report it stolen, and while they would still have the record of inquiries they would not be able to prove he had made them, although his personal inquiry would cast suspicion.
This path of thought was always followed by an inward jab of a strange sort of amusement; since when had the Coalition required actual proof? In which case his original inquiry was likely already being questioned, in some dimly lit room full of monitoring equipment. A second round might set off an alarm he might find it hard to quell.
Oddly, he was having difficulty caring.
He sat there in the dark for a while, pondering not for the first time the possibility she had done something to him, something that made it difficult for him to think about the things he once had, and all too easy for him to think about things he should not. If that small blast of normal Ziemite feeling had permanently altered him. He had not thought to ask if she could remove what she had so easily given.
He did not use her name in his thoughts, did not have to, for there was only one she in his mind. If he were as honest as he tried to be when the Coalition allowed it, he would admit at least to himself that she occupied far too much of his mind.
When he first realized some small part of him was wishing he had not left them, those insane rebels, he was almost certain she had done something, planted something in his brain that was corrupting his thinking. And yet . . .
He pulled himself out of the fruitless thinking and snapped on the handheld unit. He would do this, and it would resolve both problems. He would prove her wrong about this, and then his life could proceed. Of course if he did, it would make her a manipulative liar, and he could not make his mind accept that.
Because you do not wish to.
The words formed harshly in his head, with an almost angry ferocity. He who
had always been honest with himself wanted to deny this, but he could not. He did not want to think of her in that way. And it was only now that he was away from her that he could even entertain the idea; when he’d been in her presence, when he’d looked into those vivid, almost glowing blue eyes, he could not even question the truth of what she was. Had he not felt the very miracle of her? Had she not done what the very best Coalition doctors had claimed impossible?
He realized he was twisting his body, as if driven to test yet again that she had indeed accomplished the impossible. There was no pain, not even the faintest trace of a lingering ache at the site where that shard of planium had once hovered. She had given him back his life. Not only had she saved him when he should have died on that hillside, she had removed the ever-present threat he’d lived with for over a year.
And then, unbelievably, they had freed him. The highest representative of their mortal enemy on their world, and they had freed him.
He remembered when he had wondered if this was some exquisitely chosen torture, to give him back the strength and body that had been irretrievably damaged, only to execute him. For in truth, had the Raider done what he would likely have done on that hillside, Paledan would have welcomed it. And not simply because his death would have been long, slow, and horrible had they left him there, but because he had begun to wonder how long he could tolerate living with that ever-present threat.
It struck him then that even that had changed. That if she had merely—merely?—saved his life and left the shard, then they had freed him, he would still have wanted to live, if only to solve the mystery that was this planet and its people.
The mystery that was the woman known as the Spirit, a mystical legend he had scoffed at, only to be confronted with the absolute truth of both her existence and her capabilities.
They truly believe in her. They trek up to that barren edge to seek her, in the full faith she can heal them.
Brakely’s words, forgotten until now, came back to him. Issued in the first days of their time here, when at Paledan’s behest he had been venturing out amid the people to learn what he could of them, his aide had delivered them with a laugh of disbelief. He himself had shaken his head at the preposterousness of it.
And now he found himself wondering if perhaps this strange world made up to its inhabitants for its inhospitable nature by providing them with strength and endurance and other powers unknown elsewhere. Which led him to wonder if there were other planets like this, perhaps ones he had even been to, where he had never known or questioned, only followed orders to destroy if they would not capitulate. Which led him further, to wonder if those planets they had destroyed had held things of great worth they had not known about; after all, the properties of planium had only been discovered in the last century although it had always existed.
When he realized his idle thoughts were, in essence, questioning the entire Coalition mission and protocols, he knew he was out of control. He turned the handheld back off and stood up. That he did so without the familiar pain unsettled him even more.
He ordered the lights to full, pulled out fresh clothing. And then reached for his civilian jacket before he remembered. He held it before him, staring at the back, thinking of that moment when he had asked if she could not heal it. He did not joke, he never joked, and yet he had made a joke with her. And she had seen it, immediately. It had made her smile.
It had made her smile, and he felt as much sense of accomplishment as after a successful battle.
He felt an odd sort of hollowness inside, as he’d never felt before. When he realized he’d pulled out this jacket because on some level he wished to be back there, wherever there was, he tossed it into his travel locker and slammed it shut.
And spent the rest of the day weighing the logic that Iolana had done something to him to scramble his mind against the instinctive disbelief she would do so. He knew which one he should believe.
He just couldn’t seem to do it.
Chapter 45
“WELCOME BACK, MAJOR. For a while there, I thought you’d escaped this dreariness permanently.”
Paledan looked at Brander Kalon, whom he’d encountered on his circuit of the compound. The man was sitting under one of the larger trees near the wall—one Paledan had once found the twins sitting in, peering into the compound. The twins. He pushed them out of his mind by staring at Kalon, who appeared to be blithely carving something out of a long piece of wood with a small knife.
“I very nearly did.” Not quite how you mean, but nevertheless true.
The man raised a brow. “They recall you?”
“No.” Not yet.
“Word is you’ve been out hunting rebels personally.”
“Is it?” he said in a tone of mild curiosity.
“Find any?”
The most amazing of them all. “Would I be back here alive if I had?”
Kalon held his gaze for a moment, almost pointedly. He had often wondered how this man could not be one of those rebels; he was far from beaten down. Yet he seemed to care so little, about the fate of not only his friends but his entire world.
“Tell me, Kalon, how do you stay so . . .” Oddly, a description failed him.
“Indescribably me?” Kalon said with a grin.
Paledan couldn’t help the way his mouth twitched upward at the corners slightly. It was strange; never had he ever had trouble maintaining an impassive visage before coming here. And he wondered how many times he had prefaced thoughts about this place with the phrase “It was strange.”
Or perhaps he should be wondering more about why he was having such troubles now.
“That will do,” he said.
“What use is being downcast all the time? What does it change?” Kalon asked. He made what appeared to be a final long sweep with his small knife, then folded the blade back into the handle and slipped it into a pocket. No doubt troopers had let him keep the thing, as it was much too small to be used as a serious weapon.
Or perhaps he had simply charmed them into it.
“Contention valid,” Paledan agreed. “But what does your world have left to inspire such cheer?”
Kalon stood to meet his gaze steadily in a way no one except Brakely had since his return. The way those with the Raider did. “It is true, the Coalition has not left us much.”
“It is their way.” Their. Yet again he had done it.
“And when you have all of our planium, what then?”
“If the people of Ziem cooperate, cease this useless rebellion and accede to Coalition rule, ‘they will be allowed into the Coalition on a probationary basis. If they do not, they and their planet will be destroyed.’”
Kalon arched that brow again. “Well, that was straight out of the Coalition rulebook.”
“Quoted exactly,” Paledan said, realizing he’d said it by long practice, not belief.
“Tell me, Major, don’t you ever feel smothered by their rules and demands?”
Again he fell back on one of the mantras. “The Coalition has given me everything I have.”
“No doubt,” Kalon said softly. “But what have they taken away from you?”
With that the man handed him what he’d been carving, nodded, and walked away. Paledan stood staring in the direction his one-time chaser opponent had gone long after the man had sauntered out of sight, by all appearances carefree.
But what have they taken away from you?
The words, spoken now by both the woman who bedeviled him and this scapegrace gambler, echoed in his head. And when he looked down at what he now held, saw what it was, they echoed even louder.
A small but near perfect replica of a Ziem saber.
IOLANA SAW DRAKE draw in a deep breath before he spoke. “It is a fine line we walk. While I agree we might, given enough time, see him break free o
f those bonds, I am certain that the Coalition will only allow even Paledan so much of that time without sending that order to annihilate us all.”
“Including Ziem itself,” Brander said grimly. “I’ve heard they have a way to cut up a planet and leave pieces big enough to extract what they need.”
“Planium mining on an asteroid?” Kye asked.
“Only if their destructive process doesn’t push the planium and quisalt together,” Iolana said.
The three looked at each other rather as the knowledge Brander had gained in his experiments hung over them like a grim, particular dark bank of mist.
“Fine choice, is it not?” Drake muttered. “Suicide soon, if we continue to fight and push them to destroy, or suicide later, but perhaps striking a crippling blow first.”
“One that none of us would live to see,” Brander said, “and which would end the same way, in Ziem’s destruction.”
Kye let out an audible breath. “There is no true Ziemite who would not die to save her. But die to save other worlds, populated by people we do not and will never know? That is a mighty sacrifice to ask.”
Drake looked almost pale, and Iolana sensed it was from the dread of having to ask for that sacrifice from the people he had risked his life time and again to save.
“This,” she said firmly, “like all else on Ziem, must be a free choice for her people. If it comes to this, you must present the situation as you just did, and let them decide.”
After a moment, Drake nodded. For thus had it always been on Ziem.
And what, she wondered as she made her way back to her home, would Caze think of such a method? She knew what the Coalition would call it; primitive, ridiculous, born of ignorance of the simple fact that only the elite should be allowed to rule.
Yet had been the way of Trios, even with her king, for it was a title earned, not inherited, and could be revoked at any time by the Triotian people. And the Triotian people had beaten the mighty Coalition on two different worlds.
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