There All Along

by Dane, Lauren

  The woman.

  18

  It’s ridiculous.” Teila gripped her handheld communicator hard enough to turn her knuckles white before forcing herself to relax. “We can’t keep this up. It’s not right!”

  “Would it be better to tell him and risk triggering him into going over? Do you want to be responsible for that, when he goes mad and slaughters all of you?” The Rav Aluf was far less intimidating in the small screen than the large.

  Teila shook her head. “He won’t. I know he won’t.”

  “Let me tell you a story, Teila—”

  “About Lorset Deen? I’ve heard it,” she interrupted coldly. “Every schoolchild has. He was the soldier who came home from the war, suffering what seemed to be the mildest of injuries, after being rescued from one of the Wirtheran prison ships. How he returned to what seemed a normal life, only to go suddenly crazy and kill everyone in his housing complex before infiltrating capital headquarters. He was caught trying to access high security information before being shot down by the SDF. I’ve heard it.”

  “That story was propaganda. It wasn’t true. Lorset Deen was never held by the Wirthera. He suffered from a non-related mental break due to his addiction to opiates. He never made it past the capital’s front steps, and he didn’t kill anyone.”

  Teila’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  The Rav Aluf didn’t crack a grin. “His family was paid very nicely for the scandal. None of them have suffered any hardship.”

  “Except that their son, husband, brother and father is known throughout history as the first soldier to go over for the Wirthera!” She grimaced, sour bile rising in her throat at the thought of Kason upstairs, fighting demons only he could see.

  “Deen’s story wasn’t true, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. It does. The ones who come back are . . . damaged. Several cycles ago we had an internal attack at the capital much like the one in that story. The soldier, a former Rav Gadol, managed to get close enough to the Melek to get her hands around his throat. She could’ve killed him. Sent the entire government into confusion.”

  Teila didn’t believe the government could be so fragile. “But she was stopped.”

  “Of course she was. You think we’d let anyone kill our world leader?” The Rav Aluf snorted.

  “You let her get close enough to throttle him,” she pointed out.

  “He was fucking her,” the Rav Aluf said flatly. “He has a thing for the ones who come back.”

  Teila’s lip curled. “As if it’s not bad enough for them to be captured and held in prison ships, they have to put up with that sort of harassment after being rescued?”

  “We don’t get our men and women back from the prison ships.” The Rav Aluf rubbed at his temples in an eerie echo of his son’s habit.

  Teila propped the handheld on her desk so she could sit to talk to him. “I don’t understand.”

  “As far as we know, there are no Wirtheran prison ships. The only crafts we ever see from them are the hornets, their scouting crafts. Anyone who’s ever seen a true Wirtheran warcruiser—if they even exist, we have no idea—has never been able to talk about it. And the only soldiers who ever come back to us are never rescued. They’re returned.”

  Sickness twisted her guts. “What are you saying? The SDF doesn’t save our soldiers?”

  She thought he might be angry at her tone, but the Rav Aluf only looked grim. “Do you think we wouldn’t, if we could?”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “We fight a battle against an enemy we never see until they’re defeating us. The Wirthera remain hidden, always, except for their hornets. The best our troops can do is destroy the hornets before they can relay any information and alert the Wirthera about our presence.” The Rav Aluf sipped quietly from a mug of something steaming. He wasn’t in uniform, Teila realized uneasily. It was the first she’d ever seen him in civilian clothes.

  “But . . . if they capture our ships and troops, how is it that nobody’s seen them? Nobody escapes? Not ever?”

  “Never.”

  This stunned her into silence for a moment. “But . . . the viddy reports. The lists of our wounded and rescued, the stats about the numbers of Wirtheran warcruisers destroyed, the battles won . . .”

  “Fabricated. We win nothing except the defense of our borders from their hornets. They take our ships and our troops, and the only ones we get back are the ones they give us. My son was found in an escape pod, naked and completely shaved, evidence of their experiments all over him. He was alone. The rest of his crew, his ship, disappeared. No trace. They sent him back.”

  “But . . . why? Why don’t you go after them? Why don’t you look for any of them?” She could tell his answer before he gave it, but it sat no better with her than if she’d been unable to guess.

  “We suffer the loss of a few,” he said, “for the good of the many.”

  “You’re lying to all of us,” she whispered. “Having us believe the Wirthera are our enemies!”

  “They are the enemy.”

  “How do you know that?” Teila cried. “When you’ve never even seen them? All you hear are stories of other places they’ve conquered and destroyed—”

  “From within. The way they try to do with us, by sending our people back to us, ready to break. They seek to destroy us from the inside out!” The Rav Aluf’s shout sent a squeal of static and feedback through her handheld’s tiny speaker. “That’s how they do it, Teila! Believe me when I tell you, they’ve done it in other places. Entire planets wiped out in battle amongst themselves, their people triggered into homicide and rage! Even in Sheira’s history, we had in-fighting among our own people. But united against an enemy, we stand together.”

  “Everything you’ve ever told us has been a lie,” she said. “And you sent your own son into that knowing it.”

  “We’ve been keeping Sheira safe for the past decacycle, girl. Don’t you tell me we haven’t kept the Wirthera from breaking our borders.”

  She put her finger on the button to disconnect the call. “It sounds to me like they just haven’t decided they want us bad enough yet. And what will happen when they do?”

  She didn’t wait for his answer. The screen of her handheld went blank. A moment later it vibrated angrily, but she ignored the call from her father-in-law and went instead to gather her son in her arms and cradle him close.

  Stephin suffered the embrace for just a little while before struggling to get down. He was more interested in playing with his toy boats and whales than letting his mother cuddle him. She watched him play for a while, wondering what she would do if she ever had to watch him become a soldier the way his father had.

  Leaving him under his amira’s sleepy care, Teila checked the lamp room for the coming night. Downstairs, she made sure everyone had what they needed. Adarey and Stimlin were, as always, self-sufficient. Pera and Rehker were mysteriously absent, though when Teila passed Pera’s room she thought she heard the faint sound of murmuring voices from within. She didn’t knock.

  “Venga,” she said, surprised when she found him in the parlor. He usually preferred to sate himself on viddy programming, not read. “Are you all right?”

  He wasn’t overdressed today, and his gaze was clearer than she could remember seeing it in all the cycles he’d been here. “I had a wife, once. And a daughter. A son. Did you know?”

  “No.” Teila took a seat across from him. “But I’m glad you do.”

  “I have grandchildren.”

  She smiled. “How lovely for you, Venga. Would you like to contact them?”

  He shook his head. In front of him was his ancient handheld, a unit so old she was surprised it still connected to the transmissionate. “I looked them up. My children. I saw pictures. That might have to be enough.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. You know you’re not tied here.” Teil
a moved a little closer to him to cover his hand with hers. “If you like, I can help you get in touch with them . . .”

  “No. I’m a stranger to them. I’m a stranger to myself.” His expression was bleak, but in that moment she saw what a handsome man he’d once been.

  She squeezed his fingers. “You are not a stranger to me.”

  “You remind me of my daughter. She had hair like yours. Long and dark. And she laughed a lot, like you do.” Venga’s smile was tentative. “You’ve been kind to me, Teila. Thank you.”

  His gratitude moved her and made her uncomfortable, too. She hadn’t opened her home to these people out of the kindness of her heart. She was paid to take care of them.

  “I know it’s your job,” he said before she could answer. “But you don’t have to do it with as much concern and caring. I’ll guess there are many who, in your place, would be less than kind.”

  “Is there something I can get for you, Venga? Do you need anything?”

  He shook his head again. “I think I might lie down in my room for a bit. All of these memories . . . they were gone for a long time, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she told him gently. “A long time.”

  “Some I wish I still forgot.”

  She didn’t ask him which they were; she could guess there were many painful reminders. She gave his hand one more squeeze and got up from the table, but caught a glance of what he’d been looking at on his handheld. It was a government news page. Many of the interactive features wouldn’t work with Venga’s old unit, but Teila had seen the page before.

  “Venga . . .” She had to ask him. Had to know. In all the time he’d been here, he’d never shown any interest in the gov pages, only viddy entertainments. “Why were you looking at this? Is it what helped you remember, or did you look at it after you started?”

  “The handheld was on my bedside table when I woke up today. Set to that page. Looking at it, I started to remember.”

  “But why did you look at it today?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Teila. Maybe it was just . . . time.”

  She nodded, still curious but willing to let it go. He said something else as she was leaving that stopped her. “What?”

  “I said,” Venga told her, “that I do know one thing that isn’t a memory. Not something I remember, just something I know now.”

  “What’s that?” She thought he would tell her about his grandchildren again, or perhaps more about his daughter.

  But Venga gave her a narrow-eyed look cold enough to send a frisson down her spine. “They’ve been lying to us for a long, long time.”

  Chilled, Teila didn’t know what to say. Outside, she found Vikus and Billis to help her with the cleanup outside. The storm had done some minor damage to the lighthouse outbuildings, but it had almost ruined the boathouse and left behind a lot of debris on the shore.

  “There might be something we can use,” she told the grumbling Vikus. “Remember the time we found all that scrap metal and sold it? That bought you a trip to Salvea, Vikus. I don’t remember you complaining about that.”

  “Only when he came home,” Billis told her.

  Vikus frowned. “I should’ve stayed in Salvea. More people there.”

  “We’d miss you here,” Teila said mildly. “But you know if you want to go, Vikus . . .”

  Billis grinned and punched his brother on the shoulder. “I’ll go with you. We can get jobs in the viddy shows, Vikus. You can dance and I’ll sing.”

  Considering neither of them had any talent in either area, Teila laughed behind her hand. “Remember me when you’re rich.”

  At this, Vikus put an arm around her shoulders. Seriously, he said, “We could never leave you here alone, Teila. You and Stephin need a man here.”

  Her brows rose at this—both at the idea that she couldn’t manage on her own without a cock and balls, but also at how sweetly serious he was. Vikus and Billis had known her all their lives, though the fact they were likely her brothers had never been discussed even when both their mothers passed on.

  “Why would you say that?” There hadn’t been a man in charge of the lighthouse for years before Kason’s cruiser wrecked, and there hadn’t been one in charge since he’d gone, either.

  Billis looked embarrassed. “Vikus is right. We can’t go away from here.”

  “You certainly can,” Teila told them both sternly. “I’ve always told you that you could make your own way in the world, if that’s what you wanted. Go to school, get training. Go off to Salvea or anywhere else. I never meant for either of you to be stuck here forever, like . . . well, like me.”

  “I thought you loved the lighthouse!” Vikus looked shocked.

  His brother, too. “So did I!”

  Teila tipped her head back to look up at the stone lighthouse, rising so high against the backdrop of the pale sky and three bright suns. She did love the lighthouse. She’d lived in it for her entire life. That had never meant that she didn’t wonder what it might’ve been like to live in a city. To pursue an education beyond what she could learn herself through correspondence courses. When she was younger, it had meant imagining finding love . . . but the lighthouse had brought her that.

  “Of course I do. But that doesn’t mean you both have to. The lighthouse won’t be the same without you. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go, if you want.” She knuckled Vikus’ head, though he’d grown so much taller than her it was difficult to reach.

  He slowly pulled away from her. Billis had walked ahead just enough to reach the bleached bones of a whale jutting from the ground. They’d been there for several cycles, home to the nests of seabirds. Just beyond it the shore took a meandering curve farther out. Much of the debris tended to collect there after the storms.

  “You go on,” Teila told him. “See what you find. I’m going to start making a list of repairs we’ll need to handle.”

  Walking in the opposite direction, she put her face into the wind and let it whip her hair around her face. It felt good. Cooling under the suns’ relentless glare. In a few hours at sunsdown the wind would bite, but now it caressed her. So intent on looking over the damaged buildings, Teila didn’t pay attention to anything else until she rounded the base of the lighthouse and found Kason.

  Wearing only a pair of loose trousers low on his hips, he stood at the edge of the sea, facing out. He worked through a familiar set of motions, sweeping gestures with his arms and legs. How many times had she seen him do this, usually in the early mornings before the heat of the day? Every day that she’d known him.

  He was bigger than he’d been before, but too thin. The knobs of his spine jutted like the whale bones out of the ground. His hipbones looked sharp enough to cut. She watched the play of his muscles beneath his tawny skin and thought about what his father had said.

  Not rescued. Returned. The Wirthera gave up the ones who came back, but riddled them with nanotriggers before they did. It didn’t seem like the most effective method of infiltration to her, but what did she know? She wasn’t military.

  If he knew she watched him, he didn’t acknowledge her. She tapped notes into her handheld, taking stock of the worn paint and splintered bits of wood in places the wind had gouged on the lighthouse. The stone base would weather storms far worse than any she’d ever seen, but she checked them too for cracks or missing mortar. When she’d finished, she looked up to see him standing with his feet together, palms pressed against each other at chest level.

  This was the man she’d loved. Borne a child with, who he’d never had the fortune to know. She’d have done anything for him before and would do anything for him now to keep him safe. Sane.

  She thought of Venga, a man she’d have sworn would never return to his right mind, yet this morning he’d been clear as glass. And from what? An unexpected prompt. Had he opened the page on his handheld and forgotten it, on
ly to see it in the morning and set his own recovery in motion?

  Or had someone left it there for him?

  The idea disturbed and intrigued her. Who would’ve done that, and had it been on purpose?

  The Rav Aluf and the SDF and the Melek himself had lied to them all for years. What if they were wrong about the soldiers who’d been returned and the nanotriggers they all carried inside them? What if they didn’t need to remember all on their own, without any help?

  What if she could prompt Kason to come back to her?

  19

  You must be feeling better,” Teila said to him.

  “I couldn’t stay inside any more. The others just sit around doing nothing.”

  She laughed ruefully. “They do, indeed. I guess they feel entitled to a little rest.”

  He didn’t feel entitled. He felt restless and bored. He felt weak. The exercises he’d been doing had come from the data stream, the first good use of it he’d been able to make. He hadn’t had any more luck in muting it or controlling the flow, but he’d been able to pull something out of it that made sense, and that was quite an accomplishment.

  “They’d probably feel better if they worked on something other than their bad moods. You should make them help you out here.” He eyed her handheld upon which she’d been typing. “I’m sure you have a list of chores that need taken care of. Even old Venga could help around here.”

  She shrugged and tucked the handheld into the pocket of her robe. “It’s not Venga’s job, or any of theirs, to help here. They’re here to rest and recover however they choose.”

  He squinted to try and read her expression. Her tone held no hint of condescension or contempt. “Has there been a lot of damage from the storm?”

  “No. The lighthouse was built to withstand even the worst storms. The boathouse will need a new set of doors and nearly all of the windows will have to be replaced. The rest can be repaired, but I can’t fix or replace the scudder.”