“Odd, isn’t it? That an entity that utterly devalues blood ties will yet use them as a reason for such actions?”
“Exactly the contradiction I could not process.”
“I am sorry about your aide. My second speaks well of him.”
“Your second . . .” Drake smiled again, and it hit him. “Kalon is also your second in command?”
“He is.” It suddenly occurred to Caze that the man was revealing, and allowing to be revealed, a great deal about his Sentinels. “Something bothers you about that?” Drake asked.
“Only that you are letting me learn far too much,” Caze said warily.
“Figuring that means I plan to execute you after all?”
“It is what I would do.”
“I don’t think so. Not anymore.”
Caze realized the man was right. He’d lost the stomach for such Coalition actions. Perhaps I handed it over when I handed everything else to that flame-haired enchantress.
“You are right,” he said, sounding much like he felt.
“I realize you have a great deal of learning and adjusting to do,” Drake said. “But I’m afraid just now I cannot afford to give you time to do it before I must ask you something.”
“Will I completely turn and help you and your Sentinels?” Drake nodded, clearly unsurprised he had guessed. “I . . .”
“I understand what it must feel like, to a man of your honor.”
“I have been ‘feeling’ for mere hours, and I have no understanding at all,” Caze said wryly.
“Yet you are here. Voluntarily.”
“Apparently there is more than one kind of compulsion,” he said with a grimace. And to his surprise Drake burst out laughing.
“Welcome to my world, and all its joys and complications,” he said after a moment. And to his further surprise, Caze found himself smiling.
“I do not . . . regret my decision,” he said, finding yet more surprise in the fact that this was true.
“They will keep looking for you, will they not?”
“Yes.”
“What will their orders be if they find you?”
“I think you know that.”
“Kill you on sight? No returning you to their headquarters for some grand, show trial to further stomp down anyone who dares to have a thought of their own? For if the great hero Major Paledan can be condemned, they all will know their lives depend utterly on pleasing their masters.”
“That was their wish, initially.”
Drake studied him for a moment. Then a slow smile curved his mouth. “They’re afraid of you.” Caze blinked. He had not thought about it in such a way. Drake’s smile grew wider. “They are no doubt exchanging tales of your exploits even now, building an already formidable reputation even higher.”
“Into the realm of myth?” Paledan suggested dryly.
“If it gives them second thoughts, if it forestalls them at all, I am fully in support of any myth.”
Caze studied the man who had bedeviled the Coalition for so long. “I am not so certain that the myths of this world are truly that.”
“The Spirit, for example?” Drake said, almost blandly.
“Contention valid,” Caze said. “I can hardly deny what she is when she has proven it to me time and again.”
Drake smiled. Then asked, “How intensely will they search for you?”
“Very. Unless more important Coalition business arises.”
“Well, then, we must be certain they are kept too busy to devote much effort to it.”
Caze found his throat oddly tight, enough so that it was difficult to speak. “It would be much wiser of you to simply hand me over to them.”
“No doubt,” Drake said easily, clearly dismissing the idea.
And with those simple words the man who was the Raider told him he still did not fully understand these unexpected people. And on the heels of that thought came one he should have had long ago, would have had had he not been so distracted, so consumed by what he’d found in Iolana’s arms.
“If they hunt too hard for me, they will find you if I stay.” It wrenched him in a way that he would never have expected to say it. “So I cannot.”
“Someday soon,” Drake said, “we must discuss this urge you’ve developed to sacrifice yourself. It is not something we normally allow.”
Caze didn’t miss the implication that he would yet be with them to have that discussion. But that only tangled these wretched emotions further, so he focused on something else. “Normally?”
“On rare occasions, when death is already closing in . . .” A shadow darkened Drake’s eyes for a moment, and when he went on, it was the Raider speaking. “I believe you know of one occasion.”
It took him a moment. Everything seemed to be slowed by the mass of newfound feelings, and he wondered that the Raider was able to function at all. But then it struck him.
“The mine explosion . . . he was dying? The man who set off the explosion?”
“Yes. It was his plan and his choice.”
“So you did not order him to his death?”
“I would not. We value life too highly.”
“But sometimes it is necessary, is it not?” he asked, struggling to understand. “Fighters are killed in battle.”
“Yes. But I will have no one fight who does not choose it. I want only those who believe enough to risk it at my back.” His eyes narrowed. “And I do not accept self-sacrifice when there are other ways.”
“Such as fighting an endless holding action?”
“If that is the only course.” The Raider held his gaze. “Is it?”
Caze knew they were, in essence, back to the original question. If he would turn against a lifetime owned by the Coalition and help these rebels.
“They will never leave as long as there is planium to be had here,” he said honestly.
“I assumed as much. And what will they do when the supply is, at last, exhausted? Blow us out of the sky?”
Caze considered this thoughtfully. “I am,” he admitted, “having trouble putting myself back in those boots.”
“Glad to hear it,” the Raider said. “I would also be glad of your best assessment.”
“Frankly, as out of the way as this world is, and as much destruction as they’ve wrought already, I’m not certain they would bother, or expend the effort and resources to maneuver the necessary weapon to obliterate an entire planet.” He gave a sharp shake of his head. “But I cannot promise they would not, if they were angry enough.”
“Always a given,” the Raider said in the tone of a man who knew exactly what he was up against.
“If you continue to fight them,” he began, and then stopped.
“What?”
Caze shook his head. “It is pointless. I know you will continue to fight them.”
“Yes. The more resources they have to devote to that fight, the slower the path to our potential destruction.”
“Contention valid,” he said. “But also the angrier it makes them.”
“We will just have to hope continuing the supply of planium will restrain them long enough.”
“Long enough . . . for what?”
“For us to find another way,” the Raider said easily. So easily Caze had the strangest feeling that, perhaps, they already had.
Chapter 59
IOLANA HAD SPENT each night wrapped in Caze’s arms, feeling warmer and safer than she had in years. Even if he awoke before her, he did not leave, but stayed, holding her as if she were as necessary to him as breathing.
You are the only thing I am certain of in my life now.
She knew him well enough now to know what a tribute that was. These past days had been a struggle for him as he tried to deal both with
his new life and his new self, and free himself of the teachings of a lifetime. But she could almost see him rise, grow, testing the freedom of being out from under the Coalition bootheel at last.
Although a few of the Sentinels were yet wary of him, most had accepted him. Some because they had such faith in her, some because they saw the Davorins and Kalons had, many because of the twins. Drake had made sure the story of how he would have sacrificed himself to save the twins and give them all time to escape had gotten around.
She knew how much Drake had risked when he’d allowed him not only to stay, but allowed her to abandon all illusion. “The reasons for them not to destroy this place even if they found it still stand,” he’d said.
He’d also told Caze, almost conversationally, that were they discovered now, he would assume it was his doing and his fate would be sealed. This was the first time he’d allowed Caze to leave her quarters and see the rest of the stronghold.
“You cannot trust me with this knowledge,” he’d said to Drake, more in amazement than anything.
Drake had merely answered, “It is not yet you I am trusting,” with a look at her.
Once he had seen, Caze had understood with the quickness she had come to expect. And she sensed he had already figured most of it out. “It’s the mountain. It yet lives, and the heat of it masks your presence from the thermal satellite.”
She had smiled widely as he shook his head in wonder.
Tonight when she awoke in the darkness, he was not with her. But the moment she got up, pulling on her nightdress, he came back into the sleeping alcove from the main room and put his arms around her.
“I should have stayed, but . . . I heard something. A ship passing overhead.”
She went still. They rarely saw ships up here. “We are above the flight pattern for the landing zone. Except for . . .”
“Yes. It sounded like a High Command transport.”
“The general leaving, dare I hope?”
“Or making room for more ships,” he said, sounding as grim as if he were one of the Sentinels who would have to deal with it. She felt a quiver of hope that it was true, that he was already thinking of himself that way. But it faltered under the memory of the horrible images his words brought.
“I cannot bear it,” she whispered. “What they could do, Ziem in ruins, crumbled, her mountains leveled, what few of her people that may survive destined for a life nearly impossible to sustain.”
She felt him go very still. “How can you . . . want me? Forgive me? For so long I was a part of it, and I visited what you speak of on so many worlds.”
She fought down the rising tide of panic, pushed aside the visions of what might be to cling to the reality of the man holding her.
“I had to forgive myself for what I did when I was mired in despair. Forgiving someone trapped as you were, crippled by the Coalition and with much less choice than I had, is much easier.”
It was a moment before he asked, his voice rough, “What do you See, of us?”
That he even believed she could See in that way was a marvel in itself. “I cannot See to our future. But I See that we are right, as right as Drake with Kye, and Brander with Eirlys. Destined, in fact.” She heard him suck in a deep breath. “I know it is hard for you to accept.”
“It is like touching water and finding it solid,” he said. “My mind feels battered.”
“Perhaps it had to be. Perhaps the walls the Coalition built in you needed to be battered down.”
And then, because she simply had to, perhaps because she was so uncertain of how much time they would ever have, she kissed him. That quickly, the fire reignited, and he swept her up in his arms and carried her back to her bed. Their bed.
And later, in the darkness, he spoke. “I never thought there could be such a place in the midst of chaos. A place to rest, despite what goes on outside. To be . . . quiet. To feel warm. Safe. At ease. And . . . and . . .”
“Love, Caze. The word you want is love.”
She felt him go very still. Held her breath, waiting. And finally, after an internal battle she could practically feel, he battered down that last wall.
“Yes. Love.”
HE LOOKED AT THE fist-sized stone, thinking yet again of that day by the river. When she came up behind him, slipping her arms around him, he put his hands over hers and held them against him.
“The Stone of Ziem fascinates you?”
“What you did with it that day intrigues me.”
“I do not know how or why it works, not in a way that would satisfy your logic, I’m afraid,” she said.
“But it does work.”
“Yes. It amplifies what I call upon Ziem herself to do.”
“Your illusions.”
“Not only that. It once helped us find Brander and young Kade when they were in trouble, far away from here.”
“How?”
“They are of Ziem, and with the help of the stone Eirlys and I were able to send a signal centered around them.”
He shook his head slowly, not in denial but in wonder. He was vaguely aware of a small spark firing at the back of his mind, but his life now was such a constant process of untangling that he couldn’t quite get to it. He could only hope if it was important it would catch, and push its way through the chaos.
“I believe your afternoon amusement has arrived,” she said at a sound from outside.
He turned to face her, not releasing her arms, then leaned in, close to her ear. “I was rather fond of my morning’s amusement,” he whispered.
“As was I,” she said, nipping at his ear in turn.
The two sets of footsteps came to a halt outside the entrance. That much they had learned, he thought with an inward grin.
“Caze,” she said suddenly, rather urgently. “You must know I understand that you have so much to grow accustomed to. I would never wish for you to feel trapped all over again, in a new way.”
It took him a moment to understand. “By you? By what has grown between us?” He shook his head. “You are so rarely wrong I hardly know what to say except that I have never felt more free. Or whole.”
“I—”
“Can we come in yet?”
The impatient query in two voices made him smile despite the interruption. Of all the many things that had happened since he had come to this world, finding himself the center of attention for children . . .
“They are not . . . annoying you?” Iolana asked.
He reached up to cup her face. “I am not sure what it is that I am feeling about those two, but it is definitely not annoyance. It never was.”
“And they sensed that, from the beginning. And more, I think.”
He stared down at her. What she seemed to be implying was impossible, but he had come to believe in more impossible things than he ever would have thought . . . possible. He nearly laughed at himself, such a convoluted mass had his brain become.
“You think they somehow sensed I was once . . .”
“Like them? Yes, I do.”
“Please?” came the chorus from outside.
It was Lana who smiled then. “Ah. They have remembered that lesson at last.”
“Proper protocol?”
Her smile widened. “So is it you I have to thank for that? And for them waiting outside?”
“I may have . . . mentioned it would be a good idea to pause before bursting in,” he admitted.
And he had done so, after the morning they had interrupted something he wished they had not. But then again, it had been almost worth it to watch Lana rise naked from their bed and slip on that silky white gown to go and greet them. The scars she bore only made her more amazing to him; as she had once whispered in the night, they were both warriors who carried as many scars inside as out.
/> Later, as their party of three trekked along the flank of the mountain, Caze savored every step, every scramble, every reaching upward that he was able to do without pain. He had no idea where the duo was leading today, he only knew he had never regretted one of their expeditions. It also pushed him, to keep up with his two agile—and younger—companions, who had the habit of running ahead and vanishing in the mist.
When he finally commented on that, the two exchanged a startled glance.
“We are—”
“Sorry, we—”
“Forgot.”
“Forgot to slow down for your aged companion?” Caze asked.
Nyx scoffed. “You are—”
“Not aged.”
“Thank you,” he said dryly. “Then what did you forget?”
“That you—”
“Cannot see—”
“Through the mist—”
“Like a Ziemite. We will—”
“Go slower.”
They proceeded to do so, but it was a moment before Caze followed. For he was standing there, staring at the swirling gray as if a shaft of blinding light had just pierced it.
Of course. It only made sense. And in the way of the Coalition, they were too arrogant to even have considered the people of this backwater planet had a skill they lacked.
It all made sense now, how they managed to evade troopers so easily, how they appeared and disappeared so stealthily. They had produced a woman who could bring back the near-dead, heal injuries the best physicians had given up on, who could conjure a towering rock cliff out of thin air; why should this seem amazing?
When he caught up with them he asked, “Should you not have a care about revealing such things to me?”
They turned and looked up at him with earnest expressions that made him feel that strange sensation inside again, a warmth, a closeness, an urge to ever protect that startled him with its strength.
“Why?” Lux began.
“Do you—”
“Intend to—”
“Betray us?”
And he realized in that moment just how complete his conversion was, for he would willingly go back to carrying that death sentence shard of planium before he would betray these two, or their mother.
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