by Bex McLynn
“Purple menace?” Maude asked as she helped Seph hold her cascading curls away from her face and the mess in the sink.
Seph shook her head. “Alien vegetables. Don’t try them, Maude. They look like plums. Taste like sweet potatoes. But don’t settle in the belly at all. I told Zver this would happen.”
“You knew?”
Seph rinsed her mouth using water cupped in her hands and then snagged a towel for her mouth. “I told him, Maude. Only canteen porridge sits well with my stomach.” She shrugged. “But he’s concerned about my nutrition.”
“He cares about you.” Maude reminded her gently.
“Yeah,” Seph said as she stared at the mirror, but Maude could tell her cousin wasn’t looking, but thinking.
Sadness furrowed Seph’s brow for a moment, then she shook it off and gave Maude a side-eye look. Maude knew that sneaky look: the precursor to all of Seph’s crazy ideas.
Seph opened a cubby and snagged one of the two dental wands stored there. “I hate to say it, Maude, but we need to get Vedma in on this.”
“On this?”
Seph spoke as she cleaned her teeth, which garbled her voice. “On getting Therion outta jail. Well, the brig, really. We need her.”
“Why? The thane has this handled, right? He’ll get Therion back.”
“Zver’s a sneaky sneakster, Maude, but he’ll twist it all to keep it on the up and up.” Seph scrunched up her face in irritation and impatience. “He’s too anal to do otherwise. Vedma, though, she’ll break every law like a bullfight in Tiffany’s. That’s what we need right now.”
Maude hated to admit that Seph made a valid point, but she’d rather not encourage delinquency.
She returned Seph’s glance, testing the water as she said, “It never hurts to ask, right?”
Seph sighed and tossed her towel into the basin rather than returning it to the mounted hook. “You’re not going to like it, Maude, but whatever crazy thing Vedma recommends, we need to go with it. If you want Ther back, we need to do what she says.”
Maude shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I can promise that.”
“Why not?”
“What if her suggestion is to hurt people?”
Seph grumbled. “Fine. Good point.”
“We should ask her for several non-violent alternatives.”
“Non-violent, right.”
Maude’s hope sank. “She won’t have many of those, will she? Non-violent ideas?”
“Probably not.” Seph gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “But we’ll make it work.”
Maude swallowed and readied herself as Gummy looked her dead in the eyes. “See, what you gotta do is take over Fleet.”
“That was straight to the point,” Maude said, pleasantly surprised by the quick answer. “And awfully familiar. Therion said the same thing.”
Seph groaned. “That wasn’t to the point. That was bullshit. Double bullshit if Therion said it too.” She pointed a finger at Gummy. “What did I say about you and shit, Vedma? No one wants your shit.”
“Ech.” Gummy relaxed back into her seat as she waved Seph off. “You’re here asking me, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” Maude said quickly. “And we value your expertise and advice.”
Maude sat at the conference table in the Thane Hall with Seph and Gummy while a few members of Seph’s ever-present entourage lingered by the hatch. Mounted Cuneiform screens displayed streams of data. Most of the information was ship and military jargon that meant nothing to Maude, but her eyes kept drifting back to the live feed of the TerTac cruiser that held Therion.
Seph scrubbed at her face. “What the hell was I thinking? A hamster would’ve had a better idea than this.”
“What the hell is a hamster?” Gummy narrowed her eyes at Seph. “You tossing human names at me again, caroa? You want Therry back, you gotta take over Fleet.”
Seph leaned forward, readying to unleash another verbal volley, but Maude silenced her by placing a hand on her shoulder.
Maude turned to Gummy. “How?”
Therion’s grandmother flipped a hand toward her fuming cousin. “This one figured out how to takeover a spirenought, so you tell me.”
“I did not take Prykimis over,” Seph said each word with emphasis. “We cooperated.”
Maude perked up. “Oh, I like cooperation much better.” Good lord, that was a better solution than hurting people. “So, we just need to get Fleet to work with us and let Therion go.”
Gummy grumped. “That’s a caroa’s way.”
“And there is nothing wrong with that,” Maude gestured, indicating the world beyond the Thane Hall. “I mean, Fleet hasn’t left Sacana Turris yet. There must be something they’re waiting for. Something that they think will be handed off quickly.”
Seph gazed off to where Maude had gestured, her eyes glazing over as she got lost in her own thoughts. “Last time Fleet got involved, they tried to claim jurisdiction over Prykimis. Maybe they want Kora?”
Kora, who had walked herself into the Thane Hall, simply rippled her plates indignantly.
Maude seconded her friend’s irritation. “But Kora’s like Prykimis. She has moya. She can make her own decisions. Can’t she?”
Gummy frowned. “Maybe they’s wanting that thingy to decide to go with them.”
Seph shook her head and gave one dry chuff of laughter. “Right. Go with them. Like she’d choose to do that.”
Kora snapped her plates in agreement to such ridiculousness.
“Means you’re back to taking over Fleet,” Gummy said.
Seph rolled her eyes, her tell that she was reaching her limit. “Why do we have to take it over? I mean, what would we even do with it?” She glared suspiciously at Gummy. “Unless you want it.”
Gummy cackled and slapped the table in her glee. “Good one. Gimme command of Fleet. Dyr! You hear that?”
Dyr, who had been slouching in a chair with his eyes closed, simply said, “I heard.”
“What the hell would I want Fleet for?” Gummy settled back, crossing her arms. “Ships’re thanes’ business.”
Seph mirrored Gummy by crossing her arms and glaring. “Well, not anymore.”
“Aye, you got the damn ship,” Gummy said, cocking a brow. “Now what’re ya gonna do with it?”
Maude turned to Seph. Gummy, in a way, cut to the heart of the matter much better than Maude had thus far. The thane and Prykimis—what did Seph intend to do about them in the long run? Seph had responsibilities and ties here with the Teras, yet she firmly set her sights on returning to her son. Maude wondered if some part of Seph already knew that home was lost, and although Seph couldn’t admit it to herself, she’d started to form ties amongst the Teras anyway.
Seph pressed her mouth into a thin line as she shied away from Vedma’s hard, steady gaze.
Maude’s chest clenched. Poor Seph. She still wasn’t ready to accept her loss.
Wies and his men snapped to attention.
“Thane here,” Wies barked into the room.
Maude flicked her eyes to Seph. When they made eye contact, Seph huffed. “God, that pageantry thing they do gets so annoying.”
As a guard moved toward the hatch, pulling it open, Maude caught the rise of a blush on Seph’s cheeks.
“Really?” Maude batted her attention between Seph and the thane as he stepped through the hatch, trying to observe both at once.
Seph leaned in close to Maude, her breath brushing her cheek as she spoke in a rushed whisper. “No, I love it, actually. Don’t tell him.”
Seph bolted upright, her brow cocked in a bristling ‘now what’ arch, yet her eyes raked admiringly over the thane from top to bottom.
The thane’s eyes lighted on Seph, then scanned the room, assessing his surroundings. Somehow, Maude knew that although the thane settled his attention on his grandmother, he was very aware of her cousin.
“Athelas.” He gave Gummy a brusque nod first, before nodding to Seph and Maude. Then, he
turned to his grandfather. “Sir.”
Gummy grumped, huffing a breath through her nose, while Dyr, having cracked open an eye, nodded his head in greeting.
Seph looked expectantly at the open hatch and then back to the thane. “Did you get him back?”
The thane redirected his attention to Maude. Her heart battered, knocking painfully against the breath that she held in her chest. Kora thrummed supportively through her technopathy.
The thane studied her a moment. “No. I did not.”
Chapter Twenty
Therion sat in the brig on the TerTac cruiser and wallowed. It was bad enough that the thin mattress had his ass throbbing with numbness, but the shit acoustics fucked up his second G below middle C. Truly, the conditions were barbaric.
Prykimis was Therion’s stage. She resonated with his voice, letting the music sink into her metal bones, and she hummed back at him. Through the thrumming of the deck plates. Through the stuttering of the engines. Through the wheezing of her air scrubbers. Prykimis carried the harmony to his melody.
The TerTac Fleet cruiser buzzed rather than hummed, vibrating him at a frequency that set him on edge. The air pumped into his holding cell had the sharp tinge of antiseptic that burned his nose and throat. The overhead lights never dimmed, although he knew damn well that the surveillance monitoring him had zero-light spectrum lenses. Therefore, during the overnight shift—when he should have been exploring Maude’s body and having her make those adorable, breathy hitches that passed for Human’s moaning—he sat propped against the hard bulkhead.
They left him in uniform, but took away his WristCune and earpiece. They even scanned him for concealed devices. Therion had no pleasant means to pass the time. No AthNet to search. No ship with moya vying for his attention. Nothing but the grating buzz of the cruiser while he tallied each passing second, mounding time into a heap that would bury him.
“Commander Borac.”
Therion startled. The voice had caught him off guard. The damn buzz of the cruiser had become nothing but white noise, canceling out his sharp Teras hearing.
Therion regarded the man before him. He wore a Fleet subcommander uniform. Although he wasn’t the officer who had arrested him on the space station, Therion nevertheless knew the man.
He let a bright, brainless smile bloom on his face as he greeted him. “Crotch Rotter!”
Crotch Rotter glared at him. “It’s Subcommander Curumek.”
“They sound the same,” Therion said as he stood and walked to the brig’s energy barrier. A constant buzz indicated that the barrier was active. “You’ve come to bust me out?”
He towered over the scrawny Teras on the other side of the barrier, but Curumek’s shifty, skittish personae of Crotch Rotter was gone. Instead, Therion gazed upon hard green-gold eyes that had sharp, jagged edges.
Although they both wore uniforms, they weren’t regimented like true Fleet officers. They were too rough and ragged, covered in tattoos and scars. To them, wearing a uniform was no more than wearing another costume.
Therion cursed himself as an idiot. Just like people underestimated him as the house fool, he thought Curumek no more than a bottom-feeder amongst the Unsworn.
Gods. He was wrong. Curumek had the hard look of a killer.
“Bust you out,” Curumek repeated the words distastefully. Then, he flicked his barbed gaze over Therion. “Fleet wants to promote you to TerTac Command with prime accommodations.”
“Prime accommodations?”
Curumek was blabbing about elite base housing. Therion’s mind shot off in an all-out sprint, trying to get ahead of Curumek. To sort out what the man was after.
“Fleet knows your clutch, Commander,” Curumek said.
Of course Fleet knew. When he and Maude registered her clutch, Therion had submitted his request for official leave. His status in an Athela’s clutch gave him the right to accompany the Athela, crossing house boundaries as part of her entourage. That was the authority that TerTac carried throughout the Dominion. By awarding stewardship and issuing resources, TerTac ensured that the houses treated one another with some decency.
Unless a house gained too much power, like House Borac was amassing.
“You mean asking Maude to follow me instead? To prison?” He reared back, letting his incredulity color his tone. “Is your brain as rotten as your anthers?”
“Have Lady Maude follow you, and she’ll be following you to TerTac Command.”
Therion laughed. “So, rejoin TerTac and avoid a prison sentence?”
“From House Borac to House Jahat to Unsworn,” Curumek rattled off Therion’s dossier. “You change allegiances as often as I change my skivvies. What’s one more oath to you?”
By Unholde, if it were only himself strung over the pit, he’d swear any oath in a heartbeat. And his oath would mean as much as his next shit, something to be flushed away in the lav. His moral flexibility let him commit many hilarious and dastardly acts. A few maimings and murders, too. But not this. Not something that would place Maude into the maw of monstrous Teras Great Houses. Because the second Fleet had her, they’d offer her up to some bastard thane who’d sell the honor of his house to get an Athela into his Athel Hall.
He played the only card he had: the unshakable tenet of the Teras. “The Athela always chooses. Even if she comes with me, doesn’t mean she’ll stay.”
Curumek fired back, “It will be in your best interest to get her to stay.”
“Or I go back to prison? I was a prisoner a few days ago. You know. You were there. It was a fucking riot, wasn’t it?”
Curumek bristled, then arched his brow. “You only need to keep her near you.”
“Act the part?” TerTac couldn’t tell an Athela what to do, thus they planned to make him their puppet. Have him manipulate her like he’d done to countless others. Fuck that. “One problem here. I’m not an actor.”
How could TerTac not see that he’d willingly become the expendable Bane in order to ensure his house’s rise? That he deliberately removed his usefulness as a pawn by making himself a rogue?
Therion let a spiky silence entwine them, but Curumek’s razor-sharp stare carved through his guise of an imbecile.
“Of course you are an actor, Therion.” Curumek leaned closer to the barrier, peering up at Therion as if he studied him under a microscope. “People won’t take you for a fool anymore. You fixed an entire spirenought right under everyone’s noses. You’ve found two alien Athela. And you found an intriguing relic of Athelasan tech.”
With each achievement that Curumek listed, the toll of Therion’s past cons and manipulations—all the consequences and just desserts that he’d dodged over his lifetime—had finally caught and cornered him. His mounting comeuppance carved into him like a banquet roast. He either delivered Maude to TerTac or spend his life—which no doubt would be minimal in its duration and maximum in its misery—in a penal facility. Where fucks like Curumek would delight in being confined with him.
A chilling smile tugged at Curumek’s lips as his voice dripped with scorn. “You’re no longer the ridiculous Thanebanger. Not anymore.”
“Fuck. That sucks.” He exposed his neck. “All my ink has a tightly crafted ‘I bang thanes’ theme.”
Curumek stepped back. “Whatever trick you think you can pull while you plaster a fucking smile on your face won’t work. You’ve tipped your hand, Commander.”
“Are you sure? Like, really sure? ‘Cause this one says ‘Banes bang Thanes’ and now I’ll have to get ‘em all redone.”
Curumek stared blankly at his tattoos—written in Bulanii—and then sneered, the only emotion to crack through his reserve. “You’re not a bane. You’re Borac through and through.”
Maude jolted awake. Her entire arm shook with the chiming notifications of her WristCune. She shook off the cobwebs of sleep. WristCunes never vibrated, did they?
She opened her eyes to find Kora wrapped around her wrist, tugging insistently at her.
“[I
wake,]” Kora’s voice warbled in her head.
“Yes, I’m awake.” Maude rotated her wrist in order to pat Kora. “You can let go now.”
But Kora kept tugging, coaxing her from the bed.
She glanced back as Seph stirred and mumbled, “Stand down.”
Maude paused for a moment, trying to get the thread of Prykimis’s feelings rather than Kora’s urgent harrying. The spirenought shared Kora’s insistence, but thankfully, not riled defensiveness.
Kora walked on her spindly legs over the deck, clicking softly as she guided Maude from the private berth into the cabin that served as the Athela’s office. The hatch into the Athel Hall was cracked open, letting light and deep Teras voices seep inside.
Her WristCune pinged again, and both Kora and Prykimis rattled her with urgency. Kora, who had kept a vine encircling her wrist, moved Maude’s arm, placing her WristCune right under her nose. The screen lit up and her heart leaped. Therion was pinging her!
She tapped at the screen, too eager to connect the comm with her technopathy. “Therion!”
Maude gazed at him. The visual wasn’t enough. A pang of loss hit her because he wasn’t there, and when she inhaled, she didn’t drag his addictive scent into her lungs. Hell. She missed more than his smell. She missed the rumble of his voice and the protective way he tugged her close and curled around her as they slept.
Looking at Therion, drinking in the sight of him, she could see that he needed to sleep. Bluish bruises sat in the hollows under his eyes. Although he smiled at her, light didn’t spark in his gaze and his praal appeared angry and electrified next to his jaundice cheeks.
She ached to hold him, to shelter him. “What’s going on? Are you free? Did they let you go?”
He hushed her and shook his head. “This is just a comm, Maude. Nothing to get too excited over.” His smile dropped away as he canted his head and roved his gaze over her. “Damn, it’s good to look at you.”
On a silly, frivolous reflex, she ran her hand through her hair, snagging her fingers on the tangles. “I… I miss you. Are you okay? Are they treating you well?”