And he supposed it was yet another measure of how much he’d changed in such a short time that this mattered more.
Chapter 54
“THEY WOULDN’T HAVE sent the message if they weren’t safe, you know that.”
Iolana nodded but didn’t look at Brander when he spoke.
“They would have passed Runner off as merely a pet,” Eirlys said. “They have always known to do this.”
Again she nodded, but kept staring at the small curl of paper.
At falls. Caze saved.
Caze. He had done it yet again.
“They call him Caze,” she said, almost to herself. “He has ever been the major to them.”
She heard someone take a quick breath. Eirlys. She looked up as her daughter pushed her heavy, golden braid back over her shoulder. “You think . . . he has turned?”
“I think they believe he has,” she said, not daring to agree even though she felt it in every beat of her pulse. “And it explains what I’ve sensed.”
Runner, perched on her beloved Brander’s shoulder, let out a quiet warble of sound. An instant later a second, lighter-colored graybird came out of the mist, circled once, then went straight to Eirlys. She gave the bird a welcoming stroke as she freed the message it carried.
“Drake,” she said. “There is bedlam in Zelos. He says to avoid it if we can. They are searching madly.”
“For the twins?” Brander wondered aloud.
“Or a traitor,” Iolana said softly.
“You do believe it, then.” Brander’s words were not a question.
“Are we going to discuss this until their searching reaches the falls?” Pryl asked pointedly, then turned and started moving through the trees.
“Contention valid,” Brander said briskly and started after him.
Eirlys lingered for a moment, and Iolana felt her gaze. She looked up to meet her daughter’s eyes.
“I hope it is true,” Eirlys said softly. “For your sake.”
Iolana’s breath caught. “Your father,” she began, but stopped when her daughter shook her head.
“I have learned a great deal about what it is to truly love. And more about what it is to love a hero. Both pay a price, and you and my father paid the ultimate one. If you can find comfort now, after all this time, I would never begrudge it.”
The way it came out made Iolana think it had been practiced, but there was no doubting the sincerity in Eirlys’s voice and eyes.
“I thank you, my daughter, more than you can know.”
Eirlys smiled at her, and it brought the brightness of sun season to her. “Let’s not let those two get too far ahead of us. You know how they’ll mock us.”
The small force made their way through the mist and trees quickly, quietly. When they reached the point at which they could see the characteristic swirl of mist rising that told them they were nearing the river, they stopped and let Pryl creep ahead. None of the three remaining beyond spoke, and the long minutes spun out tensely.
When he came back, he was sliding his spotting glass back into his pack. He looked at Iolana. “They’re there. The three of them. They did well; they’re in the trees in a spot I might have missed if I’d not known of it already. No sign anyone’s yet found them.”
Iolana let out a long, relieved breath. “They’re all right?”
“Like miscreants on a picnic,” the old woodsman said with one of his rare smiles. And then, with one of the most direct looks the man had ever given her, he added, “And there’s something different about Paledan. I could see it even in the way he held himself. He’s still alert, aware, and no less dangerous, I fear, but still . . . different.”
“Thank you, Garnon,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. The old man flushed, but smiled. Whether at her use of his given name or the tiny rush of genuine gratitude she sent through the touch, she did not know.
They edged forward, slowly, quietly. And then she could see the river, the narrow, slower current closer in, and the curve of the shallows where they had seen the signs of the twins’ kidnapping. Pryl led them through the trees, along the edge of the muddy bank, until they reached the side where they could look back up the river. Where they could see anyone approaching from the river. Caze must have chosen the spot.
And then she could see them through the branches, and although they were still too far to hear, she could tell the twins were laughing, delightedly. Caze was looking at them seriously, but even from here she could see what Pryl had meant. He had changed. She could sense he was holding back amusement at them, but overlaying it all was something else, something darker, something . . . painful.
Iolana held up an arm, and the others stopped. She supposed the others thought she was being cautious, making certain this was not a trap—for it would do the twins no good if their rescuers were captured along with them— but she already knew Pryl had been right; there was no one else around. And because of that, she allowed herself this stolen moment just to watch them, these two children who had made her work so hard to earn their trust and acceptance, and the man who, in his own way, had been an even more difficult battle. Difficult because a different part of her heart, a part she never expected to hear from again, had awoken to him.
“You could probably stay back and out of sight,” Eirlys said to Brander.
“If your mother is right, it will not matter if he sees me. If she is not, if this is an elaborate trap, his fate is sealed anyway.”
“It is not,” Iolana said, hoping her certainty sprang from her Ziem senses and not the hopes of that newly reawakened part of her heart.
“In that case, a bit of warning would be in order,” Pryl suggested. “He’s still armed, and a warrior.”
“He will ever be a warrior,” Iolana said. But she nodded at Eirlys, who was the best at imitating the long-extinct trill.
“Then may he now be ours,” her daughter answered, squeezing Iolana’s hand. She thought she might burst from the joy of it, her family regained.
And almost—almost—complete.
She turned her gaze back to the man who watched over her other children.
Caze saved.
And she wondered if that pain she sensed from him had been the price he had paid to do it.
BOTH TWINS TURNED their head at the odd, up-and-down tremolo of a bird’s call, one he had occasionally heard before. They had already been smiling, but now the smiles widened and they started to get to their feet, Nyx stopping only to roll up the cloth the food had been wrapped in.
“They’re here,” Lux explained at his questioning look.
His gaze flicked in the direction the sound had come from. “That wasn’t a bird, was it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“No. Trills have been—”
“Gone from Ziem—”
“For an age, but—”
“Their call is—”
“Easy to make.”
He couldn’t stop the upward curve of one corner of his mouth, or the slight chuckle of wonder. If the Coalition knew the scope of what these people had achieved with such simple tools and ruses, they would . . . refuse to believe it. Just as they had refused to believe that twins were not abnormal, but instead a wealth of potential.
He turned to face the direction the twins were looking, his hand on one of the blasters as a precaution. If by some slim chance those who approached were Coalition, they would likely blast him on sight. If he engaged them, it would give the twins time to run. It was unlikely troopers would have come this way, through the trees, but he had not survived this long on assumptions. They could—
All thought was blasted out of his mind as a woman with flaming-red hair stepped out of the mist. It swirled around her as if it had created her, which at the moment seemed no less fanciful than everything else he’d h
ad to learn to accept on this strange planet. His fingers curled up and away from the weapon, instinctively.
She smiled at him, in a way that reminded him of the day they’d kissed, the day he’d carried, emblazoned in his mind ever since. He was only vaguely aware she wasn’t alone. On the edge of his vision he saw another woman. The other daughter, he thought, barely registering the golden hair.
But then someone else strode out of the mist. A tall, rangy man with a small, gray bird perched on his shoulder, rubbing its head against his neck. The bird the twins had released less than an hour ago.
Kalon.
“I should have known,” Paledan said as Kalon stopped in front of him, a crooked grin on his face. “It never did make sense that you would not be one of them.”
“And yet you let me continue the façade,” Kalon said, sounding more relaxed than he’d ever heard him. Only now that it was gone did he see that under all the insouciance had been an undercurrent of tension.
“I did not wish to believe you were with them,” he admitted.
Kalon looked puzzled, but Lana said in understanding, “Because then you would be forced to do something about it.”
He didn’t deny it. Not only was it pointless, he would not lie, not to her.
The twins had apparently been silent as long as they could, and erupted into their half-sentence staccato, telling them what had happened since the troopers had caught them.
“How . . . fortuitous that you were there,” the younger woman said, her voice holding a tinge of suspicion.
“What is it, Caze?” Iolana asked softly. “Something has changed.”
“Many things have changed,” he said, not caring that his tone betrayed his bitterness.
“But something . . . awful has happened. I can feel it.”
He hadn’t thought about sharing this, but now realized that they would need to understand. “My . . . aide searched some Coalition files, to confirm what you had told me.” His gaze flicked to the twins, then back to her. “About . . . what I am. Or was.”
“I knew you must have found some material proof,” she said, not looking at all offended that he had been unable to simply take her word.
“They . . .” His jaw tightened as he fought a welling up of a sensation he neither recognized nor could put a name to. He tried again. “They slaughtered him for it.”
Lana paled slightly, and he heard a quick intake of breath from someone else. The daughter, he thought.
“Brakely?” Kalon asked, his voice sounding tight.
“Yes.”
“What happened to ‘I was following orders?’ Isn’t that the usual out for the lower ranks?” Kalon asked, in that same tone.
Paledan shifted his gaze to his one-time chaser opponent. “He refused to tell them that I had asked him to do it.”
“Then I had his measure right,” Kalon said. “Loyal to you, not them.”
“And it cost him his life.” He didn’t even try to mask the bitterness this time. “They blasted him for merely accessing files above his level.”
“I am sorry, Major. He seemed like a good man, despite the uniform he wore.”
“He was.” His mouth twisted. “And you can drop the rank, Kalon. It no longer applies. I had no desire to return to High Command for a trial whose outcome is already set.”
“Caze . . . it is you they look so desperately for,” Lana said.
It amazed him how much that simple use of his name, and the touch of anxiety in her voice, eased the billowing inside him. He looked back at her, every newly granted emotion she’d given him shifting now, focusing. And he could not help the upward quirk of one side of his mouth.
“I’m certain they are. I left four of them lying in the dust of your son’s former taproom.”
A sharp bark of laughter made him glance at the older man who had remained silent until now. “Only four?”
Paledan shrugged. “I believe since they had disarmed me, they thought me helpless.”
“Deserved what they got, then,” the old man said.
From Lana’s smile and Kalon’s lifted brow, he gathered that this was the highest of praise from the old man.
“We had best beware, then,” the golden-haired woman said rather dryly, “for there are only four of us.”
He shifted his gaze to her. And again had trouble suppressing a smile. “But I understand you have all the creatures of this place at your command. I’m sure a swarm of—” he glanced at the twins, who were watching raptly “—buzzers would do the job.”
They grinned at him. And he smiled back. Then he looked back at Lana.
“Those four guards had no chance of holding me. You do.”
“With Ziem’s help, I could hold you,” she agreed, and there was an undertone in her voice that made him think of all the ways those words could be taken. And a fire as fierce as the flame of her hair licked to life anew inside him. “But caging a wild thing is no mercy,” she said. “It must stay by its own choice. Have you made that choice, Caze?”
He held her gaze, that uncanny, bottomless blue gaze. And at last said what he knew had been hovering since the first time he’d set eyes upon a portrait hanging on a taproom wall.
“I have.”
Chapter 55
IOLANA FELT HER heart leap, for she read in those two simple words everything behind them. She sensed rather than saw Pryl turn, lift a hand to hold them all in place, then head down toward the water. But she spared it only an instant, for what she saw in Caze’s green eyes was overwhelming her.
“Drake will be glad,” she whispered, “for he did not wish to fight you.”
“Will you?”
She didn’t speak, in fact could not, her throat was so tight. So instead she reached out and touched his hand, sent him what she could not say. His eyes widened, and she saw him draw in a deep breath. For an instant his eyes closed, and she wondered if she had sent too much. But then they opened again, and everything she could ever have wished to see in the green depths was there.
“I see you were right.” It was Eirlys, speaking rather bemusedly. Iolana glanced at her daughter, saw her looking up at Brander, who only shrugged. But he was grinning.
“Can we—”
“Talk now?”
Iolana looked at the twins. “You have been remarkably quiet.”
“This is—”
“Because this—”
“Was important.”
“But now that—”
“He is—”
“One of us—”
“We can—”
“See him—”
“Anytime—”
“Can’t we?”
“More importantly,” Brander said dryly, “you won’t have to sneak down to the compound to do it.”
Iolana saw Caze’s eyes flick to Brander. “You knew that they did this?”
“We knew.”
v“And yet . . . you let them?”
“We trusted you,” Iolana said quietly.
“Why?” he asked, sounding bewildered. She wondered how he was doing with what had to be never-before-experienced feelings. “I am—I was—a Coalition officer.”
“But now—” Lux began, clearly impatient to get their question answered.
“You are not.” Nyx finished it, but his brow furrowed. “But,” he began, glancing at his sister. It took only a moment for her eyes to widen. And then she looked at Caze.
“You are—”
“Not the—”
“Major anymore.”
“So what are—”
“We to call you?”
She thought her heart would overflow when the one-time most celebrated hero of the mighty Coalition dropped down to crouch before two children.
&n
bsp; “I think,” he said, “I would like it very much if you would use my name, as your mother does.”
They grinned happily. “We already—”
“Did in—”
“Our note.”
“Then we are agreed,” Caze said, and straightened.
“Drake will want to speak to you,” Brander said, almost warningly. “Probably at great length.”
Caze looked at the man who had faced him across a chaser table so often. “He would not be the leader I think him if he did not.”
“What would you do, if the situation were reversed?” Eirlys asked, with genuine curiosity in her voice.
“What I would do now, I find is vastly different than what I would have done when I first arrived here. Perhaps even different than what I would have done this morning.” His countenance darkened, and Iolana knew he was thinking of the man who had died simply for fulfilling a request. A request for information Caze had every right—more than anyone—to know. “But in your brother’s place, I would make very sure of both my certainty and intent. Whatever and however long that took.”
“But you,” Iolana said softly, “went with your instincts with the twins.”
He looked startled, as if he’d never thought of it in quite that way before. “That was . . . different.”
“Because some part of you already sensed the truth,” she said.
He shook his head. “No.” Then he met her gaze. “Yes.” He let out a breath that sounded weary, almost broken. “I do not know any longer.”
Iolana saw Eirlys move slightly. “Then you need time to think it all through,” her daughter said, and for the first time her tone was gentle, kind. A glance at her face told Iolana that Eirlys was responding as she ever did to a creature in distress, and in that moment she was as proud of her daughter as she had ever been.
“Not going to have that time right now.” Pryl’s voice came in the instant before the man stepped out of the mist. He looked at Caze. “They’re coming.”
PALEDAN’S GAZE shot to the old man. The deference the others showed the man told him much of the esteem they held him in. And he knew enough of the Sentinels to know this would not be granted without cause. So in an instant he accepted the assessment.
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