HE WAS TOO LATE.
Swearing, Val Con went to his knees beside the still form huddled beneath the curtain edge of the forest. Carefully, he turned her over, wincing as he uncovered the contorted face. Beldyn chel'Mara. She had been a scout, once.
The wound she had taken in the firefight was serious enough, though not by any means a death-wound. No, the agony recorded in the dead face told the tale: Agent chel'Mara had understood that she was being followed—and by whom. Her Loop would have presented the calculation demonstrating that he would catch her before ever she reached her ship; and would further have elucidated her odds of winning an encounter with him, depleted and panicked as she was.
So she had obeyed the implanted orders, and accepted the Loop's Final Routine, suiciding to avoid capture.
Damning the Commander to the torments of twelve dozen hells was futile from this distance—and he had no spare seconds to waste.
Quickly, fingers swift and steady, he went through the dead Agent's pockets, belt and hidden pouches, stripping out everything, even the coins and her licenses. Cramming his harvest helter-skelter into the pocket of his vest, he rose and backed away. Any moment now . . .
"Who is it?" Miri's voice was breathless. He held up a hand, warning her away, counting: One, two, three, four, five—
Beldyn chel'Mara's body blazed into white radiance. Val Con threw an arm over his eyes, felt the heat and the stench of burning flesh wash his face, heard the roar of incineration, and—nothing.
Cautiously, he lowered his arm.
The thin grass upon which the Agent's body had lain was lightly scorched. Nothing else remained.
"Who," Miri repeated, from the approximate vicinity of his elbow, "was that?"
He looked down into frowning gray eyes.
"Agent of Change Beldyn chel'Mara."
"Suicide?"
He nodded, and hesitated before he asked his own question, seeing once more in his mind's eye the gate slamming open, hearing the first shots snarl over his head as he hit the ground, rolling; the long body crumpling . . .
"My father?"
"Clonak's got him in a 'doc by this time. Didn't seem too worried. My turn to worry, I guess." She used her sleeve to mop her damp face.
"If we're gonna have this lifemate link—and I ain't saying it's a bad thing, necessarily—then we need to fine tune some stuff. All I knew is you was scared, you was mad, and you was gone. Clonak said it was the Department, and I lit out, thinking they'd managed to snatch you."
"That argues for fine-tuning, indeed. We have a project to embark upon during our unencumbered hours."
"Of which it don't look like we're gonna have that many for a while. These people ain't gonna give up, are they?"
"No," he said, slipping his arm around her waist in a brief, absurdly comforting hug. "In fact, Clonak's news indicates that, far from giving up, the Department is moving into Phase Two of the Plan."
"Phase Two? What's that?"
"They move more openly, dispose of their enemies, disband the Council of Clans, and establish themselves as a government."
Miri's eyes widened. "Are they serious?"
"Very serious," Val Con assured her. "And—much worse—the odds are good that they will succeed." He stepped back and pulled the assorted jumble of Beldyn chel'Mara's belongings from his pocket. "And somewhere in this is . . . ah." He held it up; Miri squinted, and sighed.
"Ship key. Great. Now all we gotta do is find the ship."
"That is not a difficulty," he said, depressing the appropriate button. The device came alive in his hand, quivering with the desire to be re-united with its ship. Val Con closed his fingers loosely around it, and spun, very slowly, on one heel. Three-quarters of the way through his revolution, the key lunged against the prison of his fingers.
"This way," he said softly, and moved off, the key bouncing in his hand, Miri walking silent at his side.
"NO." SHAN said firmly. "We are not going after them."
"Shan, the nadelm and nadelmae of Korval are—"
"What you don't seem to grasp," he said, raising his voice to interrupt his sister and his First Speaker for the second time in an hour. "Is that the nadelm and nadelmae of Korval are extremely fierce individuals. Miri Robertson is a captain of mercenary soldiers. She has within recent memory led soldiers into war, survived several battles, retaken an airfield held by a hostile force—oh, and attached an Yxtrang explorer to her command.
"You will recall that Nadelm Korval holds rank as a scout commander. While this is not of itself a guarantee of ferocity, I will tell you that I have it on his authority and on the authority of that same Yxtrang explorer that Val Con yos'Phelium bested a soldier twice his size, and desperate besides, in single combat, each of them armed with a knife."
"Shan—"
"All of which means," he swept on, making his third interruption on the night, "that the universe is more in peril from them than they are from the universe; and that the enemies they cannot vanquish with a glare and a wave of the hand are no one that we want to meet, out strolling in the dawning forest. Furthermore, Erob has dispatched actual soldiers in pursuit of the remainder of this enemy—who and how many they might be. And I will remind you that you are Korval-pernard'i. As your subject thodelm, referencing Chapter Eight, Paragraph 15 of the Code of Proper Conduct, I forbid you to risk yourself while the nadelm is unavailable to us."
He took a deep breath, in preparation of even more forceful arguments, if need be, but she stood silent, staring at him out of a face rather paler than usual.
However, if Nova was speechless, there were others present who were not.
"Bravo!" Clonak ter'Meulen brought his palms together in appreciative applause. "Well acted, sir! Yes! Well acted! I'll have the tape, by the gods!"
"Clonak," Shan said, warningly. "I am—"
"No, no, darling, don't speak! You have delivered yourself of a masterful performance. Recruit your strength. Allow me to carry on in your stead." He came forward and bowed, all correct and very High House: Honor to a delm not one's own.
"Lady Nova, how delightful to see you again! Did you enjoy the war?"
She glared, which deflated Clonak not one bit. "Alas, that I missed the more robust episodes. I arrived only hours ago."
"Is that so? Then you will not have met dear Lieutenant Nelirikk! A jewel of the first water, is Lieutenant Nelirikk. I am persuaded that you will like him extremely. As you have heard, he was defeated by your foster brother, the inestimable Shadow, in hand-to-hand combat, winning, thereby, a place of service to your House. A man of many excellencies—and so fortunate that he was with us, when we picked up the others yesternoon. It is of course too soon to predict their own worth to the House of Korval, but I feel certain that they will strive to give good service."
"Others?" Shan repeated, stomach suddenly cold. "What others?"
Clonak turned a beatific smile upon him. "Why Hazenthull Explorer and Diglon Rifle, none other, who have only an hour ago given their oaths of service to Lord and Lady yos'Phelium."
Shan closed his eyes.
"Tired, darling?"
"Exhausted, if you will have it," he said, and sighed. "Line yos'Phelium holds service oaths of three Yxtrang?"
"I don't doubt but they'll be found useful to have about the house. Indeed, Captain Robertson waxed eloquent upon the point." He paused to smooth his mustache. "I doubt it's occurred to Shadow as yet, though it will—awake upon suits as yet undiscovered, your foster brother!—but I'm certain Daav had the possibility of a breeding pair in his eye." He moved his shoulders. "Well, he would, you know. We are all but products of our training."
"A breeding pair," Shan repeated faintly, but Nova was after other game.
"If you believe for one moment that I will accept that man as Daav yos'Phelium, no matter what sort of hoax you and he have been able to foist upon my brother—"
"Ah!" Clonak cried, slapping his hand to his forehead. "Forgive me! You put me in mind of why I had come to seek you out. Wait, I know I have it here . . . " He made a show of searching his pockets, and eventually produced, with a flourish, a much folded sheet of printout.
"While they had him in the 'doc, I asked the techs to do a gene match. I knew you would care, dear Lady Nova, and sought only to put your mind at rest."
Frowning, Nova all but snatched the proffered paper, unfolded it—
"Korval," she read. "Out of Line yos'Phelium."
"Which is precisely as it ought to be," Clonak said, and turned toward the door. "It has been delightful chatting with you, children, but I must be off now, to find how Shadia goes on. Ta!"
The door slid closed behind him.
"JUST A LITTLE arrogant, ain't they?" Miri asked, settling on her belly under the bush they'd chosen for cover. "No guards, no whistles, no man-traps. Just . . . " She waved a hand at the ship nestled against the wooded hillside, in full sight of anybody who cared to look for it, now that Val Con had puzzled out the key combo and turned off the invisibility routine.
"They depended upon the cloaking device to hide it," he murmured. "And there are no guarantees that the ship itself is free of traps."
"Huh." She glanced at him. "It's probably set up to report back to base, ain't it?"
"There will certainly be a trans-light locator, as had been hidden on Agent sig'Alda's ship," he said, brows pulled together in a frown. "Also, it will be programmed to dispatch a distress call, if it is left too long alone. The Commander is not a fool. He will doubtless have discovered by now that Agent sig'Alda's ship never was in orbit about Waymart. It may be expected that he has caused this ship to carry . . . upgraded security."
"Terrific." Miri glared at the ship, but it refused to dissolve like a bad dream in the brightening sunlight. "We can't just let the damn thing sit there—it's a bomb waiting to go off."
"Agreed." He nestled his chin onto his folded arms, eyes on the ship. "It might be possible to disarm it," he said eventually. "I have Beldyn's license. Using it, I should easily be able to access maincomp and initiate a complete systems shutdown."
"The word 'easily' is bothering me, here."
He turned his head to smile at her. "Of course it is. However, I cannot easily envision another course of action, given that the ship is here, four of its Agents are dead, and it is almost certainly going to apply to the Department for assistance when its countdown is done and no one has reported in." He looked back to the ship.
"I suggest that you await me here, with the most of Beldyn's belongings. I will use her license to access maincomp. If I cannot trigger a systems shutdown—if maincomp requires two or more licenses to validate the order—perhaps I can at least reset the timer."
"And give us time to get the other licenses and come back to try again," Miri said. Silently, she went over the plan. It was a nice, simple plan; it had some play in it, and a built-in contingency scheme, which the gods knew wasn't standard for either of them. Still, she didn't like it much and said so.
"Alternatives?" Val Con asked, which she might've known he would. She sighed and shook her head.
"I can't even think of a good argument to support us going in together, instead of splitting up," she said. "Must be getting old."
He smiled. "We are decided, then." He looked at her, green eyes serious. "I will be very careful, cha'trez."
"You always say that," she complained, and sat up, wary of tangling her hair in the near branches. "Guess we better move on it, then."
"Indeed. The best path to finish is through begun."
He came to his knees, fishing in his vest for the stuff he had taken off the dead Agent. Most of it, he handed to her, reserving for himself the ship key, a metal card that was the late Beldyn's piloting license, and a flatish, notched piece of long metal.
"Interior key," he murmured. "For unlocking chests and inner hatches in times of disrupted power."
"Right," she said, and pocketed the jumble as Val Con ghosted out from under their bush and moved toward the Agents' ship.
THE HATCH ROSE in response to the key's command, and Val Con entered the ship of the Department.
The cabin lights came up as he proceeded, alert for traps and trip-beams. He achieved the center of the piloting chamber without mishap, and paused there to look about himself.
The board was locked down, screens blanked; the status lights showed all systems at first level standby—primed to leap into complete wakefulness at the touch of a pilot's hand. A prudent measure, Val Con thought, for a pilot who had chosen not to land at a port, where he might command the luxury of a hotpad, and who could not know if he would depart hotly pursued by enemies, or at leisure and in his own good time.
Well. Quick and silent, he went through the rest of the ship, satisfying himself that he was alone, then returned to the piloting chamber, pulling Beldyn chel'Mara's piloting license out of his pocket.
MIRI SHIFTED under the bush, her eyes on the ship. The hatch had come up without any fireworks going off and Val Con had walked on in. Inside her head, she saw the particular pattern that meant he was being careful, and thinking in small, tight steps. There was no sense that he saw anything that struck him as odd, or dangerous, or—
Silhouetted against the wooded hill, the ship's hatch descended, inevitably and with dignity. Miri flung herself to her feet, heedless of the scratches inflicted by her passage through the bush, her shout swallowed by the accelerating whine of engaged gyros.
The Agents' ship hurtled into the sky.
HIS HANDS flashed across the board, calling for an abort. The ship ignored him.
He slapped up navcomp, which obligingly displayed the laid-in and locked course, the coords of which were all too familiar.
The Department's ship was taking him to Headquarters.
Val Con bit his lip, letting the force of the ship's rising press him into the pilot's chair. His hands on the board—the very keys had recognized his fingerprints, he thought, and gave a wry mental bow to the Commander, who was, after all, no fool.
The ship hurtled upward. Maincomp allowed him to activate the screens, so that he could see the ground falling away beneath him, the bush where he had left Miri already indistinguishable in the blur of green.
Headquarters, he thought, and then thought of the Commander, and of the likely fate of one who had broken training, to the several-times loss of the Department.
Returning to Headquarters was not an option.
Val Con reached to the board and opened a comm line.
A CHIME SOUNDED. Priscilla, more than half of her attention on the systems report cluttering her main screen, reached absently across the board to hit the toggle.
"Mendoza."
"Priscilla, this is Val Con." His voice came out of the speaker, calm and clear, immediately recognizable, though she had not heard it for more than three Standards. She sat up, staring.
"Already?" She demanded. "Shan said it would be days yet—"
"Shan was mistaken," he interrupted. "Attend me now. There is a ship rising from Lytaxin at longitude 76.51.33 west, 39.24.17 north, at an acceleration of 7.8 local gravities. Acquire it, please."
Her fingers danced over the board. "I have it."
"Good. Destroy it."
She blinked; checked her instruments. "Val Con, you're on that ship."
"Indeed I am. Fire at will."
"No."
"Priscilla, if you refuse, you will destroy the clan. The ship will not obey me and the course laid in will deliver me into the hands of our enemy." Calm, so calm, his voice. It was his very calmness that convinced her that his order was right and necessary, though, Goddess, what she would say to Shan . . .
"It would be best," he said. "If you fire while we are in atmosphere."
She smiled. "Yes, of course it would." Her fingers moved on the board again, unhesitant and certain. "Beam up," she murmured. "Target locked."
MIRI CRANED up into the brightening sky, watching the ship that was taking him away from her. It was at the edge of her vision, now, a speck against the white clouds of morning. Soon—
Slashing through the white clouds came a slender radiant beam. It touched the speck, surrounded it, pulsed.
The ship blew up.
Miri screamed.
REN ZEL WOKE, suddenly and entirely.
A glance across the dark room at the glowing ice-blue digits of the clock proved that he had been asleep just over an hour. Despite this, he felt extraordinarily alert, even a bit restless. A walk, he thought, would be just the thing to put him restful once more.
So thinking, he arose from his bed and dressed rapidly in the near darkness. Stamping into his boots, he reached out and plucked his pilot's jacket from its hook. His fingers caressed the worn, scarred leather, running over the tiny seams that each marked a place where the leather had been torn and, later, mended.
He smiled, there in the darkness, and swung the jacket up and on. The next instant, he stepped into the hallway beyond his door and strode off toward the right.
The hall bent sharply to the left, then to the right. Ren Zel moved out with a will, senses wide open, more energetic with every step.
The hall bent again to the right. He rounded the corner and walked into a garden, stepping from carpet to grass and pausing at last, his face turned up to a sky silvered with starlight. He took a deep breath of fragrant air—and felt something bump against his shin.
Carefully, he looked down, his vision tainted with silver, so that the large gray cat making a second, even more robust, pass at his leg seemed for a moment to be outlined in light.
"Gently," Ren Zel murmured, bending down to offer a forefinger in greeting. "That leg has already been broken once—and very thoroughly, too."
The cat blinked up at him and touched its nose, dainty, and slightly damp, to the offered finger. The demands of courtesy having thus been satisfied, it pushed its head hard against Ren Zel's hand, startling the man into a soft laugh, as he obligingly rubbed the sturdy gray ears.
A small wind moved among the leafy things, bearing sweet, unaccustomed scents. Ren Zel drew another deep breath, and straightened with a final chuck of the cat's chin.
"Come now, let me walk through this garden. I have been—long away—from gardens."
He strolled forward, boots whispering across the grass, smiling as his sleeve brushed the leaf of a misty night bloomer and released a scent as sharp and as satisfying as cinnamon. Precisely such a small treasure might have been found in the garden maintained by the House into which he had been born, years and worlds away.
Directly ahead, the grassy route he followed dead ended in a opulent sweep of greenery, but before one reached that, one came across the roots, and then the trunk, of a monumental tree.
Ren Zel picked his way across the surface roots. Glancing down to be certain of his footing, he saw that the cat companioned him still, gliding silently over the irregular ground.
Arriving at the tree itself, Ren Zel steadied himself with one hand flat against remarkably warm wood, and craned upward.
Above him, he saw shadow, sketching, perhaps, the shapes of leaf and branch. The stars were quite obscured, and the brilliant, silvery sky. He squinted into the vastness of the shadow in vain; details eluded him, though he gained a vivid impression of strength, of . . . age . . . and . . . warm regard.
From the high branches came a sound, as of something come loose and falling swiftly groundward. Pilot reactions flung Ren Zel back half a dozen paces, which was well, else the small plummeting object would have struck him squarely on the head.
Instead, it smacked in to the dark grass and was immediately leapt upon by the cat, who planted both white front feet firmly on its prize and looked up at Ren Zel with unmistakable challenge, as if to say, Well? I've caught it for you, Master Timid. Are you too fainthearted even to look at what it is?
Ren Zel stepped forward and bent down, not without a certain amount of wariness, recalling the antics of tree-toads in the garden of his youth. The cat stepped back, tail high, and flicked out a negligent paw, moving the object sufficiently for his eye to find it.
No tree-toad here. Frowning slightly, Ren Zel bent and picked up what proved to be a seedpod—two seedpods, connected by a thin branchlet. He looked at the cat, sitting primly, tail around toes, its gaze very much on Ren Zel's face.
"Your tree is throwing things at me, eh? Am I to infer that I am unwelcome?"
One quicksilver paw came out, passing lightly over the whiskers, then the cat was walking away, tail high. Ren Zel moved his shoulders, thought to drop the seedpods, and then did not: they felt warm and comfortable in his hand and it came to him that he would have need of them, later.
Halfway across the glade, the cat paused in its purposeful perambulation and looked over its shoulder. Again, Ren Zel had the distinct impression that, if the animal could speak, it would this moment be saying something rather sharp to one Master Timid Sandfeet and urging him to come along quickly, now.
Thus gently persuaded, Ren Zel stepped forward. The cat watched him for a moment, then, apparently satisfied that he would do as he was bid, took up the lead.
PIECES OF WHAT had once been a ship fell, tumbling, out of the sky.
Miri, stirring beneath the shelter she did not remember taking, watched them fall, and gingerly, ready to snatch back at the first cold shock of emptiness, extended her thought to the place where his pattern should have been.
It was—there. Pre-occupied right this second, but displaying no signs of attenuation like she'd seen when he'd been dying on the Yxtrang fighter. In fact, he seemed quite amazingly busy for a man who ought to have been vaporized when the beam pierced his ship.
Carefully, not wanting to disturb his concentration, she pushed her thought a little deeper into his pattern. Her vision side-slipped crazily, and she was seeing the ground from high above, turning gently and rising slowly beneath her as—as?
Escape kite, Val Con murmured in her ear. The manual key opened the emergency drawer, and triggered the escape hatch.
She closed her eyes, which didn't quite get rid of the disorienting far-view of the ground. Even more carefully, she withdrew her thought from his pattern, and opened her eyes to the sky.
High up against the clouds, she saw a long, black wing, spiraling lazily downward.
THE PATH culminated in a door. The cat stopped and looked at him over its shoulder.
Ren Zel surveyed the situation. The door was set into a section of wall. The section of wall was part of a greater wall, which formed, so he was persuaded, part of the first story of a clanhouse. He glanced down at the cat.
"I am afraid I'm no use to you. My print will not open this."
The cat yawned, sauntered over to the door, stood on its back feet, braced itself with one paw against the lower door and stretched toward the latch with the other. Ren Zel sighed sharply.
"Understand me, it's useless! This is a clanhouse—I am clanless. There is no door on all the worlds of Liad which will open to my hand."
The cat stretched higher, its paw questing well below the latch.
"Merely disobliging, am I? Well, the proof is easy enough." He went forward two steps and snatched at the knob, already hearing in his mind's ear the blare of bells as the house took alarm from the touch of an intruder.
The knob turned easily in his hand. The door swung wide, silent on well-oiled hinges. The cat strolled inside, then stopped and looked over its shoulder in a way grown far too familiar.
"No." Ren Zel stared down into glowing eyes. "I cannot."
The cat came back, stropped itself one way and the other, soft and caressing, against his legs, then moved on again, down the dim hallway.
It was risky—even given the malfunction which had allowed him to open a coded door. He did know the risk. Yet the house lured him, with its promised glimpses of the life he had been denied. Surely, he thought, just a short stroll down the hall, a glance into a room or two—surely there was no harm in that?
Knowing his peril, Ren Zel stepped inside, closing the door carefully behind him, and being quite certain that the lock had caught before he followed the cat into the deeps of the house.
Time and route blurred. He thought they might have crossed a dark, deserted kitchen, he and the cat, and gone up a thin flight of stairs insufficiently illuminated by night-dims, and down another hall, or possibly two . . .
Time righted itself. They stood before another door. The cat stroked, long and sensuous, across Ren Zel's legs, then stretched high on back feet, reaching for the palmplate set far above its head.
"This is the private apartment of someone who belongs to this house," Ren Zel said, his voice barely a whisper. "Surely, my hands are useless to you here."
The cat did not even deign to turn its head. Ren Zel sighed, stepped forward and put his hand with absolute certainty against the coded plate. His palm tingled as the house scanned him. His shoulders stiffened beneath his many-times mended jacket, as if tensed against the grip of a hostile hand.
Silent and stately, the door slid back on its groove. The cat made a pleased burble and all but leapt within, tail held tall, fairly quivering with joy.
Ren Zel took a step back. That is, he meant to take a step back, to retrace the half-remembered path through private, richly carpeted corridors, to descend the back stairway, cross the kitchen, and gain, first, the starlit garden, and shortly thereafter the familiar, beloved halls of Dutiful Passage.
He went forward another step, clearing the beam, and heard the door slide shut behind him.
It occurred to him, somewhat belatedly, that he had lost his mind.
Mad or sane, his traitor feet kept on, walking him softly and without haste through a pleasantly cluttered parlor, 'til he crossed yet another forbidden threshold, into the very sleeping room of one who was clanheld, alive, and joyous.
The inner room was spacious, the center held by a bed of noble proportion, set directly beneath a skylight, from which silver beams illuminated the rumpled coverlet, and wove stars into the long, dark hair of the woman asleep against the pillows, one rounded arm flung high over her head, a frown disturbing the smooth expanse of her brow.
Sanity returned, quick and cold, freezing his feet to the carpet. They would kill him, the people who belonged to this house. Truly, they would kill him—and justly so—a stranger who had forced himself, alone and uninvited, into the very sleeping room of one of the clan's precious children.
Biting his lip, he half turned to go—which was the moment the cat chose to leap upward from the floor, landing solidly on the stomach of the sleeping woman.
"Ooof!" The lady jack-knifed into a sitting position, snatching the cat into her arms. "Horrid creature! First, you refuse to share my sleep and now you refuse me solitary slumber! Unhandsome, Lord Merlin! I had thought you for the garden all the night—" She stopped, hearing her own words, so Ren Zel thought, and put the cat gently to one side, staring across the rumpled blankets to—himself.
"Oh," she said, and tipped her head to a side, as one puzzled, but in no wise terrified to find a stranger standing at the very foot of her bed. "Good evening, Pilot." Her voice was slow, the tone oddly reverberant. She spoke in the mode between equals.
By the Code, he should throw himself on his face and despoil her no further while she got on with the business of screaming for her agemates, or her elders, or her delm to come quickly and dispose of him.
Ren Zel inclined his head, matching her grave, unfluttered attitude. "Good evening, Lady."
In the starlight, she smiled, and tossed the coverlet aside, sliding out of bed and coming toward him on silent, naked feet, her bed shirt floating 'round her knees.
"Now, you," she said. "I confess I had not expected you. May I know your name?"
He did bow then, very gently, in the mode of introduction. "Ren Zel."
She smiled again, and shook her hair back. He thought it threw off sparks in the starlight.
"A brief name, but well enough." She paused, standing so close that he could see the color of her eyes beneath the winsome dark brows—silver, like the starlight.
"My name," she said, "is Anthora." She held out a hand, the lace of her sleeve falling gracefully back along her arm. "May I hang your jacket away? We are all pilots here."
"I—" His throat closed. He took a breath. "I should not stay."
"What—when you have come so far? At least take your ease for an hour before the exertions of the journey back."
She swayed forward another half-step, the silver eyes wide in a face not precisely beautiful, with its sharp cheekbones and pointed chin. It came to him, as if from a distance, that he had seen a like face—then lost the thought in horror as he found his hand rising, drawn as if by a magnet toward her silken cheek.
Her eyes flickered, following the motion, and he used the moment to go back a step and to lift his hand higher, displaying the twin seedpods, still attached by their branchlet.
"A gift," he managed, his voice sounding unsteady in his own ears. "If the lady pleases."
"A gift?" For an instant she merely stared, then threw back her head and laughed, fully and without artifice. Ren Zel felt his mouth curving into a smile, his eyes following the perfect curve of her throat down to the rounded thrust of her breasts against the thin stuff of her shirt—his breath caught, blood heating; and in that moment she met his eye, still grinning, and reached out to pluck up the pods.
"A handsome gift, I own, and perfectly suited to the occasion! Come, let us share."
He blinked at her, tongue-tangled with mingled desire and dismay. "Lady, I do not—"
"No, have a care!" She raised an admonishing finger. "You have brought the gift; our duty is plain. So!" She broke one of the pods from the branchlet. It lay for a moment on her open palm, then neatly halved itself, showing a plump, sweet-smelling kernel.
"Thus, for the guest." She extended her palm, and perforce he took up the offered nut. "And now for me." Again, the pod lay quiet for an instant before falling apart in perfect halves. Daintily, she plucked the kernel from its nest, raised it to her lips, and paused. Silver eyes slanted up at him, mischievous and gentle, as if she perfectly comprehended his dismay—and his desire. "Eat, denubia. I swear that you will find it good."
Denubia. She should not call him so, he thought, plucking the kernel free of its nut-half. He was no proper recipient of a Liaden lady's endearments. Carefully, he slipped the kernel into his mouth—and gasped as a riot of taste exploded along his tongue, and exploded a second time—and yet again, so that his eyes perceived strange patterns in the aether and his ears heard music behind the silence, and his treacherous, traitor body cried out against its incompleteness.
He gasped again as the sensations faded, though they did not dissipate entirely. It seemed to him that he could still see lines of power and probability intersecting in the air all about; and that the low hum of music trembled just inside his ears.
"Gently . . . " Her voice was—and her hand was on his arm, which should not be.
"Lady, cry you mercy . . . " He could not allow this, whatever this was, to go on. If he was a-dreaming, he would wake. Now. Closing his eyes, he drew on—why, in someway on the lines he perceived about him, pulling this one thus, and this other one so . . .
"Sit the board serene, Pilot. Sometimes, it is wisdom to do nothing." She stroked his arm, tracing lines of fire on his skin through the much-mended leather. He made the error of opening his eyes and beheld her face before him, silver eyes worried and teasing at once. The threads he had gathered slipped from his grasp; the building surge of music settled back to a sweet hum. Anthora smiled.
"It is well," she said and stepped back, holding out both hands. "Your jacket, Pilot. You do not need it here."
True enough, he thought, and had it off, placing it in her hands with a lingering touch.
She held it for a moment, as if considering the weight of the leather, then looked back to him, her brow knit in puzzlement.
"This jacket carries many wounds."
"Healed," he told her, striving for some measure of lightness. "Both of us healed, well enough. That jacket saved my life, Lady."
"All honor to it," she said, silver eyes solemn, and shook it sharply, as if she snapped a rug free of dust, and moved away to drape it over the edge of a chair.
She was back in the next instant, and it came to him that the room was growing lighter, for he could see the full curves of her body plainly through the pale shirt.
"Time grows short," she said, moving close and smiling into his eyes. "May I have your kiss, Ren Zel?"
He had been born for no other purpose than to give her his kiss. And he came to her too late: dead and beyond them both to heal it. He shook his head, realized that she might not understand the Terran gesture, and murmured.
"No. Lady—I am clanless. You are—I should not be here . . . " he finished, helplessly.
"Poppycock," she said in plain Terran and grinned, lopsided and adorable. "Well. Let us try another face of the fortress. You will see that I am quite without shame—so: Since I am a lady and may mind my own melant'i—Would you spurn my kiss?"
He looked into silver eyes and knew that he should lie.
"Never."
Her grin softened as she closed the final distance between them, setting her naked feet carefully beside his boots. They were much of a height, and she easily lay her arms about his shoulders. Her breath was warm against his cheek and he held her waist between his two hands, cradling her closer still as their lips touched—
And the universe took fire.