This he could do. The fact that his hopes for a future with the woman who meant more to him than anyone in the world had been shattered was going to be much harder to deal with.
And for the first time, he was grateful he hadn’t told her.
“COME EARLY? THEY would do that?”
Tark was staring at her as if in shock.
“I told you,” she said, drawing on her always-limited supply of patience. “Do not underestimate their liking and respect for you.”
“But—”
“Yes, the king and Dax would, were it not for the meeting of the High Council, be at your beck and call.”
How had this man, who by rights should have been a bigger hero here than even Dax and Califa, been reduced to such uncertainty as to his own standing? He was, after all, the homegrown hero, the Arellian who had single-handedly saved the Council, their families, and the citizens who had sought refuge in the Council Building during the Battle of Galatin.
Were Arellians truly so small-minded as to be repelled by his disfigurement, and so would reject him? Shaylah and Califa certainly were not that way. Califa in particular was not, having, she said, learned the lesson the most difficult way, carrying scars of her own.
Or was it something more than appearances?
The sound of laughter drew her attention for a moment, to the large group coming into the dining hall. She kept her gaze on Tark, but watched them at the edge of her vision, wondering if she would get her answer when they saw him. Would they recoil at the sight of him?
He had heard them, but didn’t look. In fact, he had stiffened slightly, and something like a wince flickered across his face. Was the sound of laughter, the presence of people without his shadows to carry, so painful to him? Or was it he who was painful to them, and he knew it?
Whichever it was, he didn’t fit here, didn’t blend; there was no carefree laughter coming from him, and she ached inside for him. But she sensed he wouldn’t welcome that, and made herself get back to the matter at hand.
“Now,” she said, needing to get a decision out of him, and needing it to be the right one, “will you agree? You know our holo system is secure.”
One corner of his mouth twisted slightly. “As much as is anything.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “But more secure than anything based here.”
“The king will really send a ship here just for this?”
“He trusts your judgment that much, yes,” she said, giving him the answer to the question he hadn’t asked. “It will be here tomorrow, unless you refuse him.”
“He presumes much,” Tark muttered.
“He is King Darian of Trios,” she said simply.
He looked at her, his brow furrowed slightly. The band that held the patch had caught a strand of his hair, pressing it against his good eye, and he tugged it clear with a gesture that hinted at long practice.
“Your home is indeed a . . . different place.”
“Yes.”
His brow lifted as she left it at that. “No account of her history, her gloriousness, the miracle that is Trios?”
“Why?” she said with a shrug. “You already know.”
Slowly, like dawn creeping over the mountains of her home, he smiled. And it warmed her just as that dawning did, only this went deeper, finding places she hadn’t even realized were chilled.
“Ah, Rina,” he said, and the sound of her name from him completed the warming. “Right to the crux. I’d forgotten how you truly are a woman of few words.”
“As you have become a man of even fewer.”
“I have little to say, and less that people want to hear.”
It was an offhand, detached, almost throwaway comment, a gibe aimed at himself, and yet Rina sensed there was more truth in it than he cared to admit.
“That is their mistake.”
He studied her for a long moment. “Tell me,” he said, “what do you do on Trios, now? In peace?”
She laughed. “Peace? With Dax and Dare and their offspring? Were it not for Shaylah’s calm and Califa’s cool, I would know nothing of peace.”
He looked as if she had given him more of an answer than she intended, just as he had earlier.
“You speak of your king and queen by their names, not titles.”
Her chin came up. “By their request. They are my family, and consider themselves so.”
“And any Triotian can obtain an audience with your king?”
“Yes.”
“And any child need only approach to be able to speak to him?”
“That has ever been the tradition, yes.” She had run through that limited store of patience. “And will stay our tradition. We fought too hard to get her back to let her slip away again.”
“Then you are . . . prepared?”
She frowned. “For what?”
“For whatever may come.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Dare is the most diligent and vigilant of leaders. Our forces are strong, our people trained, drilled, and reminded daily of how we were nearly destroyed. Yes, we are prepared.”
She heard him take in a deep breath, then release it slowly. “Good.”
“Tark. Tell me. What is it we need to be prepared for? This is more than a bad feeling for you.”
He looked at her sharply. “What makes you think—?”
“I am not a fool,” she snapped, cutting him off.
“No,” he agreed, something different coming into his expression. “You are many things, Rina, but a fool is not and has never been one of them. Your life was too hard for that.”
“My life,” she said with determined emphasis, “taught me not to never trust, but how to pick wisely who I trust. I wish yours had done the same.”
He winced. Lowered his gaze. “Teeth,” he muttered.
“What?”
“You’ve grown teeth like a bark-hound.”
“And you’ve grown a hide like a Carelian blowpig.”
“Not so tough, I’m afraid,” he said, not sounding insulted at all. And then, without warning, he stood up. “Let’s get out of here. Too many people.”
She glanced around at the dining hall. It wasn’t even particularly crowded this afternoon; the midday meal was past, and those who had come in for sustenance had returned to the party in the street.
But Tark was already headed for the door.
And assuming she’d follow, like some sort of pet? Or perhaps more as a cloud of annoying zipbugs who wouldn’t leave him alone? He seemed to react that way sometimes.
But he had assumed she would follow. Had he not wanted her to, would he not have just said his good-bye and left on his own?
She rose, grimacing inwardly. She’d never realized that her life with Dax, with all his secrets, would be preparation for dealing with the likes of Tark. She had learned to deal with Dax, had learned to read him, to sense his moods, and just how to bring him out of it when he got too far into the dark.
But Tark seemed even more lost, under all the sharp words and short temper. She had the feeling he had slipped so far into the dark it was blackness all around. And she wondered if anyone could pull him out.
Chapter 12
SHAINA DID NOT like this. And it wasn’t just the terrain.
The path had become steeper, and strewn with rocks of an annoying size, too large to simply step over, but too small to need climbing. More than once Shaina muttered about simply shoving them down the mountainside, but subsided when Cub pointed out they had no idea where the rocks—and the landslide they would likely start—would end up. Or what—or who—they might endanger in the process.
“We’re in no hurry,” he had said the last time she had kicked at a large rock.
“I suppose it might put a damper on your f
irst public appearance as the royal representative of Trios if you wiped out a large section of their main city,” she had admitted grudgingly.
Had Shaina realized it would change things so much, she never would have tried that tactic back down the mountain. There had to have been another way, it was simply that she hadn’t had time to think of it.
And now Cub was acting so strangely, barely even looking at her. He’d been angry, yes, that she’d risked herself. But it had all worked out—they had won. And now they were on guard. They would not be surprised again. She especially would see to that, by focusing that ability she had to sense threats, and never letting herself be so distracted again.
Yet Cub was silent. There was none of the usual banter, none of the far-ranging conversation they usually indulged in when off on an adventure alone. When they were younger they had, with the certainty of youth, solved all the problems of the galaxy in one way or another. From Daxelia to Zenox, they had sorted it all out, even though they occasionally had resorted to skipping a few of the galaxy’s problems when there seemed to be no answer.
They’d once, years ago, asked Cub’s father about those. He’d laughed and said that wiser men than he had been working on those problems for eons and had found no solutions. That some things must be left to future generations to solve, and perhaps they would be the ones to do so. He had turned serious when he’d added that the hardest thing to accept was that sometimes things would not be righted in your lifetime.
Leadership, they’d concluded then, was more complicated than they’d thought.
But Cub would manage. He had the right temperament, and the courage and intelligence needed. And he’d been trained by the best, learned from the best, and had long ago gained the kind of quiet confidence of a leader. So why this strange mood?
Perhaps he was ashamed of her, of what she’d done.
The thought hit her hard, sending a sort of hot and cold ripple through her that was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. She’d thought of it merely as a tactic, no different than any other diversion. Other ramifications had never occurred to her.
Until now.
She stewed over it as they paused for a midday meal, in a place chosen precisely because it would be very difficult for anyone to sneak up on them. Up against a rocky cliff that was high enough to make descending from above a complicated and dangerous affair, looking out over an unbroken expanse with little cover save a few trees ahead of them on the path, and with the rock of the cliff diffusing the smoke of their much smaller fire. They were shielded from view by the boulders that had over the years fallen from the cliff face; they felt they’d done what they could to prevent another incident.
And that had been the only discussion they’d had since they’d moved on from the scene of the attack. Which made her very uneasy.
She had never been one to dodge an unpleasant matter—except for her father—because dodging always seemed only to make it worse once the matter was finally, inevitably broached. Yet she was finding it hard to face this problem with Lyon directly, which only added to her restlessness. She got to her feet, planning to check the surroundings one more time, and to reach a decision on her approach by the time she got back.
“You just did that three minutes ago.”
She whirled at the unexpected comment. “So? You think I want to go through that kind of confrontation again? Even in daylight?”
“Nor do I,” he said. “But at least let us trade off watching, as we always do.”
“We don’t seem to be as we always were.” She hadn’t planned to say that, but there it was, out in the open, and she couldn’t help but be glad.
It was a long, almost painful moment before he said quietly, “No, we do not.”
He wouldn’t even look at her now. So she’d been right.
“So you are ashamed of me. Of what I did down there.”
His head came up sharply. “What?”
“It was truly all I could think of to do.” She tried to keep her voice level, reasonable, but heard the plea that crept into it anyway. Not surprising, since the very fabric of her life seemed threatened. “Perhaps because my mother and I had just had the discussion of it.”
“I’m not ashamed of you. How could you think that?”
“You’ve not looked at me or even spoken to me since—”
“If I’m ashamed of anyone, it’s myself.”
She blinked. “You? What have you to be ashamed of?”
“I should have spoken to you before now.”
“Spoken to me?”
He drew in a deep breath. Before he said a word, she was sure she wasn’t going to like it. She wanted more than ever to go back, to before, however childish the idea was.
“About you and I,” Cub said.
“No,” she said, “don’t. Don’t do this, don’t go to that place we can never go back from.”
“We are already there,” he said softly. “Can you not see that?”
“Because you are male and I am female, we are doomed now to lose what we have?”
A different voice spoke. “Not lose. Change.”
Shaina whirled, dagger already in her hand. As quickly, Cub had the disrupter and was on his feet, facing the man who had approached so silently out of the trees further up the path.
“Be at ease, children.” It was the old man, Shaina realized. With the brollet. Theon Talberon. He must truly know this mountain well, to move so quietly. “Although perhaps children is not the right form of address at the moment.”
“You,” Cub said.
“We meet again,” he said congenially. “I bring no meat this time, I’m afraid. But I do have something to tell you.”
“We can start with an explanation of why you are here,” Cub said, the disrupter never straying from its potential target. “Are you following us?”
“Actually, I was a bit ahead of you, so I could well ask the same.”
He had come from that direction, Shaina thought. He must move at a more energetic pace than she’d expected. She shouldn’t have judged him based on age and appearance alone—couldn’t Glendar put them all to shame on rough trails?
“You have chosen your site well,” the old man said. “It is good that you take care. Dangerous men abound.”
“You think we would be careless twice?” Shaina asked.
“Thrice, in my case,” Cub muttered, then stopped short, staring at the old man. “And just how did you know we encountered dangerous men?”
“I did not. I merely said they are about. And it would behoove you to stay wary, the Prince of Trios would be a valuable prize.”
Cub glanced at her. She read his silent question and shrugged. Despite his surprise reappearance, the old man still seemed harmless enough. But she would keep her dagger within reach.
At last Cub lowered the disrupter. “Join us. We have rockfowl roasting.”
“So I smelled,” Theon said.
Gathered around the small fire, they ate, Shaina taking care to go slowly since there would be less now that they were sharing with the old man. Not that she begrudged it, he had shared his brollet with them, it was only right that the generosity be returned.
“So, are you closer to the treasure?” he said when they had finished.
“How would we know?” Shaina asked. They had been merely proceeding up the mountain, with no clear path planned. Cub had made the decisions when they had come to a choice of directions. Since she didn’t really believe in this treasure it mattered not to her, so she had let him.
“The legends say the coffers are not simply the property of the Graymist clan, they are protected by them. The spirits are thick on this mountain, and they only bare their secrets to those who are of the blood.”
“We’ve just been . . . wandering,” Cub said, proving her ea
rlier thought accurate.
“So you may think,” Theon said. “But if the stories are to be believed, it is drawing you.”
Cub frowned. “Are you saying the path we’ve chosen is not random?”
“You, of the Graymist line, have chosen it, have you not?”
“But I’ve felt no such pull as you describe.”
“Or you have not yet, in your short time on Arellia, learned to recognize it.”
Shaina managed not to scoff. He was an old man, and she’d been taught to respect her elders. And if he was indeed an old friend of Cub’s mother’s family, then he deserved it even more. But while she had enjoyed these tales of wonder and magic as a child, she was beyond childish things now.
“It has been an interesting trek,” she said neutrally, “even if there are no riches at the end of it.”
The old man smiled at her. “Oh, the Graymist treasure is said to be much more than just riches. It is said to hold the future.”
“What does that mean?”
Theon laughed. “Full of such portent, is it not? And beyond my ken, I’m afraid. I’m just a simple painter.”
Shaina found herself smiling back at the old man. Cub was smiling as well, as he spoke, “From what my mother said of that mural, you were far more than that.”
Genuine appreciation glowed in Theon’s eyes. “I thank you for that, Prince Lyon of Trios.”
Cub’s mouth quirked. “I’m not officially that until the ceremony. Call me Lyon.”
“Ah, you have your mother’s charm. I remember when, as a little girl, she captivated even the frosty old Coalition delegate who had come recruiting. It was he who years later approved her application to flight training.”
Cub grimaced for a split second at the mention of their enemy, but then he smiled. “She told me of this. It pains her to speak of her time with the Coalition, but she so loves to fly.”
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