by Sharon Lee
"Necessity, captain," Anthora yos'Galan moaned, twisting beneath the knotted blankets. She gasped and abruptly sat up, silver eyes wide, staring toward the cat, but seeing something entirely else.
"Yxtrang," she gasped. "Suicide craft. Gods, oh gods—the Passage . . . " She blinked, eyes focusing at last on the cat, who met her gaze, looked away, and completed the suspended pass at his whiskers.
Anthora threw back the blankets and swung to the floor, the ribbons of her bed shirt fluttering with the speed of her movements. Barefoot, she went across the room, snatched up a white silk robe and shrugged it on, knotting the sash as she moved.
"Lord Merlin," she called as she passed from the room.
The cat shook out his paw, jumped to the floor and followed.
HE HAD BARELY closed his eyes when the battle-dream formed, horrific as ever, shaking him out of slumber, as it did every third or fourth sleep shift. Lina, the ship's Healer, assured him that the memory would fade in time and leave him in peace. Until that time, however, Ren Zel was left to devise his own strategies for outwitting the demon and gaining his rest.
With the room lights cycled to their brightest, he pulled a bound book of Terran poetry from the cache next to his bed.
The volume was a collection of lyrical poetry on the theme of sensual delight; a gift from one Selain Gudder, with whom he had enjoyed a liaison of pleasure three trade trips back. He smiled with remembered fondness and, opening the book at random, soon lost himself in the rich, evocative language.
Eventually, lulled by images at once alien and comfortable, he caught himself nodding and waved a hand to extinguish the light.
He fell immediately into sleep. At once his sleeve was snatched by—well, he was not precisely certain who, save that the touch and the voice seemed—familiar—and whose evident distress had root in the same horrific incident which haunted his own sleep.
"Peace, peace," he soothed her, for she was crew—she must be crew, mustn't she, who had such a memory upon her? It was no less than his duty as first mate to ease her.
"Peace," he said a third time, as she thrust the dream forward, shrilling a warning of disaster to come.
That brought him up for a moment, then he saw that she must be caught yet in the throes of the thing, where past and present were as one.
"We are beyond it," he told her, in the mode of Comrade. "We are safe. The battle is over. The war is ending. All is well." He extended a hand and touched her shoulder, lightly, as a comrade might. "Sleep now; you have no cause for worry." And with gentle firmness, he pushed her away.
He half-woke, then, sighed, and subsided into dreamlessness, the book slipping from his fingers to the floor. A few hours later, he drifted toward wakefulness once more, roused enough to feel the cat kneading his chest. Drowsily, he raised a hand and stroked the creature, feeling the plush fur warm against his palm, and the vibration of a purr—his eyes sprang open in shock.
"Cat?"
The room lights came up at the sound of his voice. There was no cat on his chest; no cat glaring at him reproachfully from the floor, or the comm shelf or the desk. There was, however, a long white whisker caught in the weave of the coverlet. Ren Zel worked it loose and stared at it for several heartbeats before throwing back the covers and swinging out of bed.
There was no cat under the bunk. There was no cat in the 'fresher. Truly, his cabin was catless. As it should be.
And yet . . .
He held the whisker up to the light, admiring its length and its sturdiness, then went over to his locker. A moment's rummage produced a thin glass sampling vial—another reminder of Selain—with a re-sealing top. The whisker slipped easily into the vial. He resealed it with care and glanced ruefully at the clock.
Two hours 'til the start of his shift; too late to court sleep a third time. Well, then, a shower and an early start, he thought philosophically, moving toward the 'fresher.
He showered longer than was usual for him, invoking the cold, needling cycle twice, but the cat whisker was still in its vial when he emerged.
THE SONG was everywhere; it filled the room, the planet, the infinite cup of space itself. At once a single note and wholly aside the song, Shan observed the bold, improbable and eminently correct pattern that was Val Con yos'Phelium.
In the course of the Healing, they had come across other leavings of the interloper responsible for the insertion of the calculation program. When they did, Shan had reached forth his will and made the interloper subservient to the greater pattern of his brother. Now, as the song rested within itself, he inspected the work, tested the bindings and the connections, observed the brilliant shine of integration, and was satisfied.
Shifting his regard, he considered the arc of living power flowing in unending waves of iridescence to and from the guarded center of the pattern, where Val Con kept his soul—and found it beyond anything he had ever before observed.
The thing is done, he decided; and it is good.
Gently, he brought his attention to the song, signaling completion. The note stretched, altered, quickened, and stopped.
Shan shook his head and blinked his eyes, focusing first on Val Con, covered with a thin blanket and deeply asleep, and then across and up, into the luminous eyes of the enormously old being called Edger.
"It is done," he said, feeling his voice rasp in a dry throat.
"It is done," Edger returned, and lifted a three-fingered hand in what seemed a salute. "And done well. All honor to you, Shan yos'Galan." He blinked. "Our brother sleeps now and will wake when the time is appropriate. We two should likewise seek our beds."
"That," Shan said, abruptly aware of aching back and the grate of exhaustion immediately behind his eyes, "is a wonderful idea." He hesitated, glancing at the figure asleep upon the gurney. "Should we—?"
"I believe we may leave him here in all safety," Edger boomed, moving toward the door. Shan hesitated a moment before bending and kissing his brother on the cheek.
"Sleep well, denubia," he murmured, and followed the turtle down the room.
ONCE, IN A TEASING MOMENT, Anthora had asked her brother Val Con how scouts were able to persuade savage persons to divulge sometimes quite secret information about their world and culture, all without being ritually murdered and eaten.
"Oh, there's nothing to that," Val Con had assured her, green eyes dancing. "It's only a matter of asking the right questions."
She had laughed then, as she had been meant to do. And it had only come to her slowly, over a course of years, just how often success in any endeavor hinged upon asking the right questions. Even when one was a dramliza at the height of her not-inconsiderable powers.
Especially when one was dramliza.
Now, as she sped along the path to the garden's center, horrific visions of the Passage beset by countless numbers of mine-bearing Yxtrang in tiny craft, she berated herself for her stupidity. Every evening since she had removed to Jelaza Kazone, just before retiring, she had gone out to the heart of the garden. Leaning thus cosily against the Tree, she had, bumblebrained, asked the question, "Are those most dear to my heart alive?" and flung her mind out into the void.
Every evening, she counted the fragile, brilliant flames of her kin, and was thereby comforted.
And never once had it occurred to her to ask who—if any—reposed in danger, who was their enemy and if there were any means known to the dramliz, or hidden in her own untapped talents, to aid them.
Of course, it was true that they all reposed in danger, with Plan B in effect. To Anthora's mind, however, there was danger and there was danger, into which latter category attacks by armed and desperate Yxtrang plainly fell.
The stone pathway ended at a glade dimly illuminated by the night-blooming friatha. Anthora did not slacken her pace, but sped across grass that chilled her feet and soaked the hem of her robe, straight to the faintly phosphorescent enormity of the Tree. She lay her hand against the warm bark.
"Good morning, Elder," she said, tho
ugh she hardly needed to speak aloud. "I'm an idiot."
Above her head, leaves rustled in a light chuckle, though the air elsewhere in the glade was still. Anthora sighed.
"Yes, all very well. But the Passage will be—or perhaps already has been!—under attack by an Yxtrang force. I must warn them, or—" She broke off, biting her lip. What if the attack were past? If the Passage was already an Yxtrang war prize; Shan—and his Priscilla, too—dead or dying of unspeakable tortures?
She felt a soft, reassuring pressure against her shin and glanced down, finding Merlin in the shadows at her feet. She looked up into the dark, attentive leaves.
"I must warn them," she said again to the Tree. The leaves directly over her head were still, though there was a commotion higher up, as if a squirrel had thrown a small stone forcefully groundward. Anthora stepped back and a seedpod struck the turf by her right foot.
"Thank you," she murmured, warmed. Bending, she gathered up the gift, skritched Merlin's ear and straightened. She cracked open the nut and ate the kernel, savoring the minty taste. Then, she set her back firmly against the trunk of the Tree, closed her eyes, and brought before her Inner Eye the construct of emotion, intelligence, and power that was uniquely in this galaxy known as Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza. Priscilla was a Witch, with talents and abilities uncannily close to those Anthora held, as one of Liad's few remaining wizards. If any on the Passage had the ears to hear her message, Anthora thought, it would be Priscilla.
Thought was swept away in the tide that drew her from herself into timelessness. Light flickered in tongues like flame, and there was wind, upon which souls strange and unsought swirled like so many alien leaves. Within the maelstrom, Priscilla's pattern flared, brilliant.
Anthora exerted control—but, instead of making the expected contact, she hurtled past her target, tumbling out of control—no. Control was there, abrupt and rather startled, as if she had someway stumbled and landed in the arms of a stranger, who now took care to set her gently upon her own feet. Puzzlement emanated from the one who had caught her; puzzlement and a dim, sweaty horror, doubtless the residue of an ill dream.
Anthora snatched at that hint, trapped it, wove it to her own dream—and even as she wove saw it shaken into another image entirely, accompanied by a brief, warm touch of comfort.
Contact was broken then, and not by her will. Blackness swirled, thick and comforting as a favorite blanket.
Anthora sighed, opened her eyes and discovered herself all a-tangle at the base of the Tree, her head resting on a moss-covered root, and Merlin staring down into her face.
Painfully, she sorted her limbs into seemliness and sat up, her back against the Tree. Across the glade, sunlight touched the bank of night-bloomers, which were folded tight in daytime slumber.
She had been asleep, Anthora thought in disbelief. Asleep for hours.
Beside her, Merlin settled, chicken-fashion, atop the moss-covered root, his eyes slitted in satisfaction.
Anthora let her head fall back against the Tree and spoke aloud, her voice breathless.
"It was not a foretelling—it was a memory. I don't know who—held like a babe!" She bit her lip, hard, curbing her baffled indignation. To be held like the merest novice, and then dismissed—put to sleep—as if her will were nothing—
"The battle is over," she continued, more or less calmly. "The enemy has been vanquished. The Passage is safe, and I—" Her voice broke here and not even she was certain if the cause was hysteria or fury—"I am not to worry!"
Lytaxin
Mercenary Encampment
THEY WERE GRANTED quarters by Commander Carmody; good quarters, with a shower in one corner and a corporal before the door.
Nelirikk, who knew the order of the Gyrfalks and how the soldiers were distributed in camp, understood that they were well-contained, surrounded by watchers, in case there should be trouble.
He did not anticipate trouble, himself. Less so, after watching the gusto with which the recruits wolfed the sandwiches sent from the mess tent—explorer no less ravenous than Rifle.
It was, largely, a silent meal. After, the recruits made use of the shower, brushed out and put on their battle leathers.
Clean and fed, Diglon Rifle sat unconcernedly on the floor, his back against a cot, and rolled out his kit, preparatory to stripping and cleaning his weapon. Nelirikk approved—it was a common soldier's duty to care for his weapons, as much among Terrans as among the Troop. More, the familiar task would soothe the Rifle, who must know as well as Nelirikk did that he was a single soldier, surrounded on all sides by those not of his troop, who had no reason to trust him.
No, thought Nelirikk, sitting on his own bunk, a piece of fancy-work in his hands, the Rifle was not his most pressing problem. His problem was Hazenthull Explorer.
She had argued against Daav yos'Phelium's order that she bunk with her troop, leaving her senior alone and vulnerable, in the care of those who had been their enemies. It spoke much for the abilities of the scout's father, that he had been able to enforce his will and see his order carried out, however reluctantly, while raising neither his hand nor his voice.
Now, denying herself the simple solace of caring for her weapons—or even of sleep, though he could read exhaustion in the muscles of her face—Hazenthull Explorer, dressed and ready for combat, prowled the quarters from end to end and corner to corner.
On her third circuit Diglon Rifle looked up from his task, tension growing. "Explorer?" he said, respectful and soldierly. "Duty?"
Hazenthull checked.
Head bent above his work, watching from the side of his eye, Nelirikk saw her understand the danger. Surrounded by those who had defeated them in battle, oathbound to a Liaden, soon to offer oath to another—it was unthinkable that these things be so. And yet, incredibly, they were so. It was the duty of command to accept these impossibilities as commonplace, with no breath of unease. For the good of the troop—large or small.
So. "At ease, Rifle," she said, firmly, but not too firmly.
Comforted, he saluted, and returned to his weapon.
From the corner of his eye, Nelirikk saw the explorer take a breath, turn cleanly on her heel and walk down the room, to where he sat, setting careful stitches in the gift he was making for Alys Tiazan.
For seven or eight heartbeats, she stood over him. Nelirikk continued his work without looking up. At last, she moved soundlessly back, folded her legs and sat on the floor before him. He raised his head and met her eyes.
Surrounded by the tattoos describing her honors and accomplishments, her eyes were dark brown; the shade, Nelirikk thought, of his captain's favorite beverage. She jerked her chin at his hands.
"What work?" she demanded, in the tongue of the Troop.
Nelirikk smoothed it on his knee before holding it up for her to see. Her eyes widened as she recognized the device he was working into the patch—the device of the troop that had broken the back of the Fourteenth Conquest Corps.
"There is a young soldier in the House of the captain," he said, also in the Troop tongue, "who is worthy of this."
Hazenthull's mouth thinned. "Soldier."
Nelirikk returned to his work, plying the needle with care. "As much as I am. Or you are." He glanced up, switching to the dialect of explorers, in consideration of Diglon Rifle's comfort. "Why do explorers march with common troop?"
Her eyes shifted. "Command had left planet. We fell in—"
Nelirikk tied off the green thread. "I meant," he said, interrupting her ruthlessly, "why were explorers fighting alongside common troop?"
She glared at him. "That is for the senior to tell."
As chain of command went, she was correct, Nelirikk allowed, threading his needle with crimson. It was . . . useful . . . that soldierly behavior made it impossible for Hazenthull to answer a question she would rather not; explorers not being always at one with soldierly behavior. Still, Nelirikk did not begrudge her the stratagem.
Needle at the ready, he glanc
ed up.
"The captain will require things. Things that run counter to the order you know." He moved his head, a short jerk toward the busy Rifle. "Far out of the order that one knows."
Hazenthull sighed. "She will take us out of context," she said, sounding as weary as she looked. "She is fortunate. Half her work has been done for her."
For what context was there, Nelirikk thought, for being abandoned to the enemy—the victorious enemy—while Command ran to save itself? He bent a moment to his work, concentrating on keeping his stitches small and even.
"The captain will require that the vingtai be erased." He raised his head again, giving her a plain sight of his naked face. "As you see. The healing units have an erasure program." He stopped short of telling her that the procedure was painless, though that was the truth as he knew it. Acquiring vingtai was excruciating; it seemed somehow wrong that they could be effortlessly and painlessly wiped away during the course of one brief sleep inside the healing unit.
"The captain requires this because her troop is the enemy of Yxtrang," Hazenthull said slowly, working out the process of Command's thought, as explorers were taught to do. "Soldiers who think they are Yxtrang, who wear the rank marks and hold the traditions of the Troop, will not fight strongly against Yxtrang." She frowned.
"Explorers can backtrack the captain's thought and understand the requirement. But, he—" she cocked her head toward her Troop—"he is only a Rifle. He will not understand."
"You are second in command," Nelirikk told her ruthlessly. "It is your duty—or the duty of your senior, if he is able—to make him understand. I suggest that the best strategy is to lead by example." He saw her draw a sharp breath, but did not allow her to speak.
"Captain Miri Robertson does not accept mediocrity. She expects superior performance. Occasionally, she demands more. You will adapt—"
"Or die," Hazenthull snarled, as if it were a challenge, and not a truth they both knew in their bones.