Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3 Page 8

  Anything useful or poignant to say vanished. He’d forgotten to breathe.

  The battle armor she wore was once a deep bronze, but previous owners had been careless or too busy staying alive to fix the pockmarks and dents left by battle. It did nothing to detract from the sense that she was one of Nyxa’s shield maidens come to escort dead warriors to the Bright Realm. He drank her in, forgetting everything and everyone else in the room.

  “I leave in the morning with Tove for Maxim’s territories. Once we cross over, I’ll take a drop-ship with the cargo,” she said. “Grith assures me the suit’s undetectable. It should be subtle.”

  “Cargo?” he scoffed. “Ty, you’re lots of things, but never cargo.”

  “Or subtle,” Corsair added. He walked around her, taking in the armor. “You sure you know what you’re doing in that gear?”

  “Happy to show you,” she offered, shifting to face him, granting a dangerous smile.

  “Can you be somewhere else?” Jon seethed.

  “I’m going to rack in,” Corsair murmured, shouldering between them.

  Sela stepped aside, allowing him to pass. He lingered at the entrance, purposefully recalcitrant, no doubt hungry for entertainment, waiting to see an argument, an altercation. A glare from Sela did nothing to speed him along.

  As she watched Corsair walk away, she spoke to Jon. “You won’t talk me out of this.”

  He breathed the words, leaning in. “I know. I could come with you.” But he knew the foolishness of that too.

  “Think. Your sister needs you to be cured. If you die too, this renders the entire endeavor pointless.”

  Life would be pretty pointless without you. He felt the words build in his throat but swallowed them. It would be useless. Sela Tyron did not do goodbyes very well, nor would she suffer more pleading from him. She seemed to feign sudden interest in the ammunition crates.

  “Promise me you’re not going to die,” said Jon. His sudden ferocity scared even him. He wanted to grab her, force her to look at him. “Say it. Right now. Promise me you’re coming back. You’ll be at that rally point, waiting for us to pick you up when it’s all done.”

  Her voice was barely a whisper. “I promise.”

  He knew it was her version of a lie. It was written in the twitch to the corner of her mouth and the way her eyes moved away.

  She shifted her shoulders. The cowl of the suit folded back into the raised yoke of the armor.

  “Your hair.” The words were out of Jon’s mouth before he could check them. The long, dark-blonde hair that she’d so patiently grown out these past years, despite her constant threats to hack it off, was gone. What remained was clipped to a fine fuzz. She caressed her scalp, ducking her head. There was the faint outline of the inception mark at the base of her neck, a code that permanently marked her as property of the Regime, something that wouldn’t have been visible since she was a booter, a newly minted soldier.

  It gave her a surreal, androgynous beauty, making her seem vulnerable and brazen at the same time. He felt a strange, sad pang at seeing her like this as if something had been reset and any changes to her since that time were gone.

  “It makes the contacts easier for controlling the suit.” Her shrug was hidden by the metal shoulders. “Grith says I’m a natural at it. For whatever that’s worth.”

  The mention of Grith, with such implied familiarity, brought a rare surge of jealousy. He reminded himself she was her own person, capable of making her own decisions. Who she chose to befriend was her own decision. But Grith represented an unknown variable. At best, Jon got a sense of badly veiled animosity from the man. Could he blame him, really? Tove’s ambitions rested in the hands of a perfect stranger, leaving Grith powerless to do more than watch.

  Jon moved closer, realizing that their heights were made equal by the suit.

  “Of that, I have no doubt.” His voice felt thick and slow, weighed down by a dozen different things that had occurred to him to say since their argument. Had it really been only two days?

  Now, seeing her like this, it felt far longer. Time had skipped ahead for her, and he had been stuck somewhere to the side, ignorant of it all as if all the chances to make things right had slipped past with it.

  She looked around the Wedge, hovering beyond his reach like some green cadet that needed to be invited to approach by her superior.

  When had things gotten like this? How did I let this happen?

  “Look, Ty—”

  “Grith told me I’m an idiot.”

  “I imagine he walks with a limp now?” He pulled a grin at her. Testing.

  Her own smile was a pale imitation. “No. But he did make a good point. You asked me to marry you once.”

  Jon blinked. His brain struggled to keep up with the new and startling direction of the conversation. “I was there. I remember.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “You…what?” he stammered. “What?”

  “There are additional elements of consideration.” She said it with a matter-of-factness. As if he’d been part of a prior conversation of which he had no recollection. Only from her. Only from Sela would this make sense. A strained hopefulness drifted into his bafflement.

  She plowed ahead, noticing none of his confusion. “On Hadelia I went to see a splicer before we left. I have been unable to conceive. Read?”

  No. He most definitely did not read…understand. He felt himself nod regardless, dumbstruck and trying to keep up with how her brain worked. It was a familiar sensation that he realized he’d missed greatly.

  “Why would you do that?” he asked.

  “Because you wanted us to be married.”

  “That’s not why I asked you.”

  She wasn’t finished. It was like some speech she had stored up. Nothing would keep her from finishing it. “My assumption was that our genetic stock was incompatible. However, the splicer told me I’ve been harvested. Most likely when Atilio was born.”

  Harvested. It was efficient and brutal in the same breath. An arbitrary decision made about chattel. After all, to the kennel masters, Sela was just another walking, talking bag of blood and organs, ready to take orders and kill on command. Her non-reg breeding, the result of an assault by one of her fellow cadets, was nothing more than a nuisance to them. Their solution had been absolute.

  Fury churned at his insides. “Sela, if I knew...”

  She canted her head. The flex to her eyebrows showed confusion. “Irrelevant at this juncture.”

  From her, it was like a declaration of forgiveness. It felt like something heavy slipping from his shoulders.

  “Does your original proposition still stand?” She was watching him with a nearly childlike avidness.

  “What?” It was a sound somewhere between a laugh and a choking noise.

  “Provided the new set of parameters, of course.”

  “What.”

  “Shall I repeat the question?”

  “Ty,” he sighed, both hands dragging down his face. He shook his head, more to rattle the quick turns of the conversation into a map he could follow than a denial of her offer.

  This is my life. This is a normal conversation with this woman.

  Fates, have I missed this.

  She shifted, looking uneasy with his silence. She began, “I realize that we—”

  He kissed her. If anything, to stall and let his brain catch up. The action, one done hundreds of times before, was made awkward by her new height and the unyielding surface of the powered suit. It was like making out with a bulkhead. He broke away, looking for a place to actually touch her.

  He twisted his hands in a frustrated gesture. “How do I get you out of this…thing?”

  “They call it a rig.”

  “How do I get you out of this rig, then?”

  The smirk was present in her voice, if not her expression. “What’s the magic word?”

  Eighteen

  The altar room was a small rocky enclave among the warr
ens burrowed into the belly of Tove’s mountain sanctuary. A dozen crevices stuffed with dusty amber-veined candles and crudely shaped totems of metal lined the walls. Jon recognized few of the statues that stood sentry along one wall, their shoulders dripping with dynasties of ancient wax candles. He guessed they were house gods, chosen by Tove and her forefathers to protect their lineage. Mystical beings that had abandoned her to the whim of a merciless brother.

  “Wouldn’t one god be enough? Why so many?” Sela’s breath was a frosty plume on the frigid air. Even the braziers of the fire, steeped with sugarvine and graceweed, did little to warm the space. They merely choked the air with sweet-smelling smoke thick enough to make his eyes water and his nose itch.

  “Who am I to judge? My Kindred worshiped four Fates.” Jon gave her a lopsided grin. He squeezed her hand between his, marveling at how warm her skin always felt despite the cold.

  “There are gods for every facet of life, child.” The voice was crusted and weary.

  The priestess—the oldest Eugenes he’d ever seen—entered the room without preamble, clad in a rough brown garment that seemed far too thin for this frigid world. Her eyes were a milky white, but she moved with a self-assured grace that suggested this space was a well-known domain. The sleeves of her loose garment were rolled up to reveal slender arms covered with heavy black inkwork of runes and icons. Some Jon could decipher; others were likely lost to all but the old woman.

  “My lady Tove sends me to bind you,” she announced without reverence. As if this were a daily affair, two strangers to her Guild seeking to be wed on the eve of battle. Perhaps it was.

  After ushering them to stand to either side of a great wooden stump carved into the shape of an anvil, the woman pulled a small knife from the threadbare folds of her cloak.

  Sela shifted her stance, the ingrained reaction to a stranger presenting a weapon that made her…her. She caught his gaze and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well?” the priestess grumbled. “Kneel. Both of you.”

  He nodded to Sela, going down to one knee. Then with one more wary glance at the blind, knife-wielding priestess, she copied him. Wordlessly, he slid his hand across the smooth carved stump. They grasped forearms.

  The woman’s High Eugenes brimmed with primitive words forged in a time when beasts consumed worlds and dragons brokered deals with warrior kings. She invoked gods and goddesses Jon had never heard of as she stood over them.

  “We do this in honor of Addis and Thrain—the first lovers,” the priestess intoned in a strangely musical lilt. “Their love so great it bound them as one. When one felt sorrow, the other shed tears. When one was wounded, the other bled.”

  The old woman moved with surprising speed, the knife in her hand a blur. Jon felt the prick of the blade against his exposed arm. Sela recoiled with an angry grunt, ready to lunge up. He tightened his grip on her elbow. Her eyes flashed a warning at the oblivious old woman, who made a similarly shallow cut along Sela’s arm.

  The priestess set the knife aside. Her hands worked with perfunctory ease, gathering the scant drops of blood from the shallow cuts into the carved bowl, into which she mixed an acrid-smelling black ink.

  All the while she spoke: “Soon the gods grew jealous of their love and so destroyed the two lovers. They scattered their ashes in the wasteland between the stars. But patient Miri gathered them up, her desire to restore them, not as separate beings but as one whole. Addis and Thrain forever dwell in Miri’s house, helping souls separated in life to be reunited in death.”

  With an effort that made his own back ache in sympathy, the woman lumbered to her knees between them. He felt Sela’s hand flex against his elbow. Her face was flushed, her eyes liquid in the glow of the lamps and candles. There was a softness in her expression he’d never seen before. She caught him staring and stretched a smile at him.

  “Now. Hold still,” the priestess murmured, leaning down with myopic intensity. Her frail hands held the inkwork needle over the bare skin of their arms. “My eyesight’s not what it used to be.”

  Nineteen

  Sela slipped from the bed, careful not to rouse Jon. He did not stir. He’d always been a heavy sleeper—a strategic disadvantage. But she envied him that ability to slip into oblivion and allow the universe to blunder on with its own agenda for a time. Sleep simply did not work that way for her. It was a reshuffling of that day’s events into her faultless memory. It was rest, while still being cognizant of the actual act of it.

  She paused. His hair had grown too long and was starting to curl behind his ears. It would be time to cut it soon. Her throat grew tight.

  Time to go. But she remained in place.

  Was it cowardly, not allowing him to say a farewell? The ritual itself made little sense to her: two people verbally reconfirming an anticipated parting.

  But it was important to him.

  Finally, Sela forced herself to move into the common passage of the Cassandra. Most of their clothes had ended up here. She shut the door to the bunkroom before activating the glowsphere. Finally, she found the slim-fitting single suit that served as a lining for the armor and pulled it on, sitting in the middle of the floor.

  Under the yellow glow, she paused to marvel at the new inkwork on the skin of her left forearm. It had been Jon’s idea. The symbol from some ancient myth—well, half of one actually. Jon wore the other half.

  Two halves to complete a whole. A romantic notion. Although she plainly doubted the veracity of the story the priestess had unfolded about two beings resurrected after being essentially cremated, she had allowed it anyway, largely because it pleased him. It meant that together they completed a whole. It made her part of his house, his family. His wife.

  “Congratulations…I guess.” Corsair was a hulking shape in the doorway. His tone was clearly mocking.

  Climbing to her feet, she ignored him and readied the pieces of armor in the manner Grith had trained her. It was pleasingly efficient. Corsair was still there, watching. It was plain the man had a purpose for being there, and it wasn’t to bid her farewell.

  “What.” She didn’t bother to look up.

  “Back on Narasmina. I saw you talking to Mim. She told you, didn’t she?”

  Sela began the complicated action of pulling on the lower portions of the armor. “The child told me many things.”

  He circled around until he stood in the middle of her carefully arranged armor’s components. “Cut the crap, Tyron. You know what I mean.”

  She straightened, snapping the gauntlet onto her left wrist. “About your procreation with Erelah. Yes.”

  Corsair edged closer after cutting a nervous glance at the closed door to the bunkroom. “Did you—”

  “Tell Jon?” She resisted a petty urge to toy with him but took her time answering. She retrieved the second gauntlet. “To what end? I considered it. He barely tolerates you as it is. It’s my experience that such news would motivate him to do something ill-advised and distracting to the primary objective of reclaiming his sister.”

  The line of his shoulders changed with what registered to her as relief. But his tone suggested surprise. “Good. Thanks…I think. I owe you one.”

  “It was not your personal welfare I sought to protect. It was Jon’s. But you do ‘owe me.’” She finished with the last latch on the chest harness and strode up. The suit gave her some height on him. She triggered the helm to close, regarded Corsair through the lowered visor.

  “Anything happens to him, and I’ll hold you personally responsible,” she said.

  “Don’t get killed.” He stepped out of the way. “You’re useful to have around.”

  She sniffed. “I’ll see you at the rally point, Corsair. Don’t be late.”

  Twenty

  Micro-pollinators, tiny machines the size of dust motes, swirled and danced on the shafts of light cast by a replicated early-morning sun in the garden. Deep green fronds framed the small arched bridge, the artfully designed brook filled with pink glass fish. Chips
of veined bluestone lined the path underfoot. An expensive choice; even the sound of its crunch underfoot sounded opulent to Kelta. The garden was a testament to orderly lines and contemplative elegance. She felt out of place, an intruder, even though the man that owned this place of carefully orchestrated serenity was expecting her.

  Master Hirano had always been a giant. In his youth, he towered over the men and women that served in the fleets of ships that patrolled Ironvale Guild territories. But it was his cunning that had garnered him victories and fame, not his stature. Kelta had been barely out of her teens when he’d been named Guild Master of Ironvale. Never did she expect to stand in his presence like this, awkwardly suppressing an urge to wring her hands.

  His back was to her as he examined a small bush with glistening, poisonous black berries. When he spoke, for one ridiculous moment she thought he was addressing the plant. “It never fails to amaze me that the concept of a private garden is so poorly understood by others. It means just that…privacy.”

  Kelta’s stomach tightened. This had been Yasu’s idea; his arranging. He must have known Hirano would see this as an intrusion. “Master Hirano, I do apologize. In his wisdom, Yasu understood this as a delicate matter, one that you would want to hear…privately.”

  Hirano straightened and turned a bemused grin at her. Kelta saw a ghost of the dashing young guildsman that had inspired such praise and adoration.

  “Yasu, the wise.” He snorted. “Let’s not share that with him. His presence is already intolerable at times.”

  The knot in her stomach loosened. Kelta tried out a pensive smile in response.

  Hirano moved with the practiced carefulness of old age. He was nearing his second century. Time was eating away at him as well. There she saw a glint of mischief in his deep amber eyes, so much like Ravinia’s. “Now, let us hear this ‘delicate matter,’ Kelta pra-Corsair.”

  “My lord.” She bowed her head. When she looked up into that etched face, her carefully scripted speech seemed so thin, trite. It involved the good of the Guild, the balance of justice in the face of love and sacrifice. It had been a fine speech. And, one, she realized, looking into those clever eyes, that was useless. Hirano was not a man to be swayed by speeches. That was not what had won him the victories of his life or made him Ironvale’s Guild Master.