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Lytaxin
Mercenary Encampment

CLONAK WAS ON the camp, engaging in poker with as disreputable a half-dozen card sharps as Daav had been privileged to behold in at least twenty years. He hoped, though without much optimism, that Clonak would allow them to retain their dignity, if not their pay.

Shadia, sensible woman that she was, had retired immediately after their release from Commander Carmody's dinner party.

Nelirikk—or Beautiful, as Commander Carmody had it—had chosen to remain with the fearsome duo he referred to, with no irony that Daav could detect, as "the recruits". The Rifle—one Diglon—appeared of a phlegmatic nature and would very likely follow Shadia's sensible schedule. However, the winsome and biddable Hazenthull had been another kindle of kittens entirely. She had been most displeased to find that she was not to be allowed to sit sentinel by the autodoc enclosing—and gods have mercy, healing—her senior, and had only reluctantly accompanied Nelirikk and Diglon to quarters.

Which left Daav, wide awake and content to be alone, sitting cross-legged on the bench by the 'doc containing the wounded explorer, eyes closed against the darkness.

It was at times like this that he could feel her sitting next to him, her knee companionably pressing his; her silence sanctifying his disinclination to talk. Aelliana, his lifemate. Dead these last twenty-five Standard years.

Daav sighed in the dark, and felt Aelliana lay her hand, comfortingly, on his thigh.

It came to him that he was as much a ghost as she: his brother was dead, and his brother's lifemate. Who of Clan Korval would remember Daav yos'Phelium, so long absent from kin and hearth ? Certainly not the so-formidable son referred to, by explorer and mercenary commander alike, as "the scout"—as if there were only one in all the galaxy. The small boy he had given, weeping, into the care of his cha'leket had in some way become a man revered as a lesser god by the Yxtrang soldier he had bested in single combat; lifemate of a red-haired rakehell no less beloved of Jason Carmody.

"What may we bring to these feral children, our kin?" he murmured into the darkness.

"Why a working Rifle," Aelliana answered, her voice warm inside the whorlings of his ears, "and a brace of explorers. It seems a gift they will know how to value."

Daav smiled and resisted the temptation to pat the hand that could not be touching him. "Why, so it does. And how fortuitous to have met them upon the road, to be sure."

Aelliana laughed softly and it was all he could do, not to open his eyes and turn to look at her. Instead, he smiled for her, and sighed, just a little.

"Commander Carmody has promised to send a message to our son's lady, desiring her to visit at her earliest convenience," he said. "Perhaps we may meet her soon."

"Will she accept the Yxtrang, do you think?" asked Aelliana.

Daav sighed again. "Commander Carmody thinks it . . . .possible. And we see that she has allowed our son to persuade her to one Yxtrang already . . . "

"Singularly persuasive, this scout of yours," she teased him.

"You will hardly blame him whole cloth upon me," he said, with mock severity. "Not only did I find you an enthusiastic participant during construction, but saw you thoroughly besotted with the result."

"You, of course, never named him 'Little Dragon', nor recited nonsense verses for hours on end to lull him to sleep."

"A man of my honors and position? I should think not."

"False, oh false, van'chela! A man of your dignity, indeed."

"Oh, and now I have no dignity?" He forgot himself and spoke aloud, rousing the tech on duty.

"Everything OK over there?" she called.

"Yes—" Daav began, opening his eyes, and then came to his feet, staring at the 'doc, which ought to be—which had been—aglow with readouts, and status lights.

"Something's wrong," he called to the tech.

She ran to his side, took one look at the somber 'doc and shook her head with a sigh.

"Nothing wrong," she said. "He's just dead, is all."

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Framed