her instruments 03 - laisrathera (32 page)

Startled, Reese said. “I will.”

The other woman nodded and turned away, huddling into the blanket. It was Irine who retrieved the medallion, handing it over, because Reese couldn’t move; she stared at Surela, then shook herself when the tigraine tapped her shoulder. “Time to go.”

“Right.” And she did.

CHAPTER 21

In a people not given to intimacy or personal communion, Val knew how to throw wide the doors to his heart. He gave of his power unstintingly, seemingly without fear for the memories and attitudes that wound through it and all they revealed of him… and everything he gave, Hirianthial took and made a shield of it, because his brother had grown monstrous. The energy he’d stolen in blood and brotherhood a few moments past twined with the leeching of the Chatcaavan who, Hirianthial realized as he strove against that pressure,
was
him: his potential, his ability, the nerve-fire uniqueness of his own mind ripped from him by the alien shapechanger, and it was this pattern Baniel was using against him, his own strengths countered, his weaknesses magnified. That he could step toward his brother at all was victory, because the short distance Baniel had thrown him was nigh unto unsurmountable while beating that attack away, the one that wanted to writhe into him and make him give up, give in, die.

But he had to cross the distance. The sword in his hand was yearning to answer his need, hot against his palm. He had only to wield it, and they would be quit of this peril.

One step. Another. A third the distance.

One step. A next. Halfway there.

All of Baniel’s energy narrowed to him, and his limbs slowed. Grew weak. He forced them forward anyhow. His brother had not borne witness to the tribulations that had afflicted Hirianthial on his sojourns off-world. Did not know how they had tempered him, had made him insensible to pain and weakness. In what fight in his recent memory had he had the luxury of a healthy body, unfettered by wounds or sickness? His suffering had made him strong. He knew how to ignore it.

One step. Another.

Another.

Val collapsed, and the strength that had been bolstering Hirianthial vanished.

“Finally!” Baniel hissed, and the pressure crushed him. He fell to one knee. The sword’s tip hit the floor and gouged it. Liolesa would find that remarkable, he thought. Or irritating, depending on her mood.

“No more thoughts of her,” his brother said. “You won’t see her again. Now, let me see what you have left to give before I kill you.”

To deny him ingress would have taken power he did not have. His thoughts became a confusion as the invasion commenced: his personality, his brother’s, interwoven, melting. He retreated, hid himself behind a wall he’d learned to build from a Flitzbe who’d used it to safeguard his soul while he healed, but he knew the wall would not last.

O Lord and God
, he whispered, head bent.
O Lady and Goddess. Just one chance. One, I beseech you. Just one.

His memories began to dissipate. His spirit buckled. The onslaught was stripping him away, and still he held the sword, and braced his hand against the cold floor. His knees ached. His heart labored. But he held himself still, very still, praying for the moment.

Baniel was so deep in him that when the Chatcaavan died he felt the wound rip open, bright fountain of gore and golden hope. His brother staggered, and the attack wavered.

Hirianthial sprang from his crouch, lunged, redoubled. The sword sang as he swept it in an arc, and on that first cut it was barely visible as it passed through air and skin, but on the second it exploded from flesh in a mist of blood droplets that it flowed behind it in mist-draggled coils.

Baniel’s body toppled, the head rolling off the dais, leaving Hirianthial listing over it, breathing hard. Then he flicked the weapon off. Araelis was alive and breathing, but Val was fading. He ran to the priest and dove for that flickering spirit, and now he could open himself to the Divine and he did. He gathered the lax body into his arms, brought with it the failing soul… saw again that darkness wreathed in it and knew it for a clot of memories that had somehow adhered from history and myth. He thought to brush it away but a hand closed on his wrist.

“Leave it,” Val said, voice rough.

“And if I said to you that you were no Corel?” Hirianthial asked, gentle.

“I would still ask you to leave it.” Val managed a smile. “Call it my hair shirt.”

“Because you need one.”

The man grinned, a foxish look for all the exhaustion sucking the vibrancy from his skin. “It’ll come in handy if your Queen ends up appointing me high priest. And I’m not about to bet against that happening.”

Since Hirianthial wouldn’t have either, he left off, but to say, quieter, “Thank you.”

“Thank me by telling me this is over. Or almost over. Please God.”

“It is. Briefly.”

“’Briefly.’ Figures,” Val muttered, before his head rolled into Hirianthial’s palm and he fainted.

“Hirianthial!”

And there, just on time, he thought with pleasure, was Reese, sprinting for him with every intent of knocking him over if she didn’t pull up, and she barely managed. Hovering, she said, “What happened to Val? Where’s Araelis? And where’s—”

“Um, Boss, I think you shouldn’t look—”

“Oh,” Reese finished, staring at the dais. She looked for longer than he would have thought necessary; her pulse had accelerated, something he could taste off her aura, feel almost as if his lips were on it, on her neck. Then she swallowed and squared her shoulders, shaking him from the reverie. “So that’s that, finally.”

“On that count, yes,” Hirianthial said. “But there is another matter left to address before my cousin arrives.”

“Two, actually—”

He frowned, looking up at her.

“Yours first,” she answered, sheepish. “I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about mine.”

“Athanesin has sacked my land.” To say it out loud… he could barely believe it. Such things were not done. “If at all possible we should find what survivors remain.”

“And then kill him, right?” Sascha said from behind Reese. “Because we kill people who torch towns.”

“And then it is my right and duty to call him to account for it,” Hirianthial said, quiet. “And I shall.”

Reese didn’t like the look in his eyes, but… how could she blame him for it? She was hoping there were survivors from whatever Athanesin had done, but knowing how things had gone so far….

“What is this second matter?” he said, distracting her.

“Oh, right.” Reese cleared her throat. “Surela’s alive. We rescued her from the Chatcaavan.”

“Ah?”

To put the picture into proper perspective, Reese said, “She did it. Killed the Chatcaavan.”

“With my pick!” Irine added. The tigraine shook her head and crossed the floor, bending down alongside Araelis. “My own pick. Can’t you keep a single weapon a person gives you, Reese?”

“I have a knife now,” Reese protested, but not with much enthusiasm.

“Perhaps she was meant to heal with her hands, and not kill.” Hirianthial smiled a little for her, probably noticing her wide eyes. “Yes?”

“Honestly I feel like I haven’t done anything useful yet,” she said, crestfallen. “Except get thrown in a cell.”

“It happens,” he said, and was that a touch of humor? She hoped so, anyway. If anyone could say something like that about ending up in a prison, it was him. “So, you saved Surela. I presume you had good cause.”

“It’s complicated.” Reese dug the medallion out of her inside vest pocket and offered it to him. “She said to use this to get her guards to give up.”

“Did she,” Hirianthial murmured, lifting it from her palm. He turned it, frowned at the back. “I would not have expected surrender of her.”

“She’s changed,” Reese said. At the looks everyone gave her, she said, “Fine, she’s chang
ing
. It’s a process. But at very least, she should have some dignity before the Queen executes her.”

“We will leave that matter to her, then,” Hirianthial said. “We have enough work of our own to do, beginning here.” He touched Val’s chin, turning the younger man’s face and examining it. “Many of us are not well enough to help in that endeavor. Irine? Sascha? Has one of you a telegem?”

“I do,” Sascha said.

“Let us gather our allies and finish the work here. After that….” He looked drawn. “We will have grimmer duties.”

CHAPTER 22

Mopping things up in Ontine proved easier than Reese had feared they might. Surela’s pendant earned them the surrender of her remaining partisans and guards, and after that it was a matter of ferrying the wounded up via Pad to the waiting battlecruiser—battlecruiser!—and getting the refugees away from Rose Point and back to the palace where they could provide an occupying force and help with the clean-up. Reese finally got a formal introduction to the Fleet Intelligence personnel, and the story they had to tell her about what had happened in orbit….

Now and then, when their many errands brought them near enough, she considered her Eldritch healer and boggled at the things he’d managed to accomplish. And regretted, a little, ever condescending to him about needing rescue.

Reese hadn’t needed the halo-arch herself, but enough people had that there was a brief period of quiet, one where she could use a modern ship’s facilities to take an actual shower and request some fresh clothes from the genie. Half a day later in response to an invitation, she let herself onto the bridge of a warship, something she’d never thought to see in her lifetime, and found the Fleet people with Hirianthial. Stepping up beside him, she dared to glance up at him. She was not encouraged by the look on his face.

“Thank you for coming,” the Seersa said, her own expression grave. Solysyrril Anderby, Reese thought, but everybody called her Soly. “We have some relevant news.”

…hopefully good, Reese thought.

“Your Queen should be here in three days.”

That surprised Hirianthial out of the stillness he’d been holding at her side. “Three days? I thought she was not due for two weeks?”

“That was before we captured a battlecruiser,” Soly said, ears sagging. “There are a lot of vessels in Fleet, Lord Hirianthial, but most of them are smaller ship classes. We desperately need all the heavy hitters we can muster at the front. They’re scrambling a crew to man this one and get it moving; the Queen’s riding along with them, and the scout she was originally issued is coming along.” She glanced at Reese. “She’s in the company of two of your people, I’m told? A Glaseah and a Flitzbe?”

“Yes,” Reese said, grateful that at least two of their number had been spared the fight in the palace… but glad they would be here soon, too.

The Seersa nodded. “The scout will stay and free up the
Moonsinger
to head coreward. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad news?” Reese prompted.

“Is that we have better sensor data on your province, alet,” Soly said to Hirianthial. “And there’s not much moving down there. We’re ready to undertake search and rescue, though, and can bring a shuttle down so we have access to the portable medtech and a power plant to run it.”

A heartbeat pause. “And the army?”

“Hasn’t deviated,” Tomas said. “It’s still almost two weeks out, making its way north. They’re not going anywhere quickly as long as they don’t run into some tech down there that we don’t know about.”

Hirianthial was silent a moment longer, and she couldn’t tell from his face what he was thinking. “Ready the shuttle, then, if you would. Let us see if there is anyone left to rescue.”

“We should be ready to go in an hour, then.”

He nodded. “Summon us then, then. Captain?”

When had she become “captain” again? She followed him off the bridge, uncertain, and jerked to a halt when he stopped outside the door, turning his face from her. She wanted to say something, but knew better by now—finally—and waited instead for him to reassemble his composure. When he had, he reached and took her hand, folding her fingers in his and then resting the other hand over it. “Forgive me, Theresa, if I am numb.”

Since he very likely had lost his entire family and all the people he’d felt responsible for when he’d been in charge of Jisiensire, she couldn’t see how he could be otherwise. So she said, “Let’s get the rest of this done and then we can worry about… anything else.”

“Yes.”

She thought that would be all, but he brought her hand up, pressed her knuckles to his brow, and she almost had to go on tiptoes to let him though he ducked his head for it. Through that contact she could feel the fine tremor he refused to let develop into anything more visible.

“But I vow it you,” he said. “We will speak of what we are, and what we should become.”

Reese managed a shaky smile. “A real, bona fide relationship talk, huh.”

His mouth curved a little. “The very thing.”

A time and place for everything, she figured. And he already knew what was in her heart. “I look forward to it.”

That moment… Reese held it close in the days that followed. She’d never done search and rescue before, and while she’d run the usual shipboard drills after leaving Mars, the process in space was sterile: lonely and cold, something to make you aware of the vast distances the universe considered trivial when compared to the tiny spark of human life.

Search and rescue in wet wreckage, where the chill humidity had turned the ash into icy black slush that stained everything it touched, where you had to physically shove bits of charred wood aside only to be confronted with a streak of paint, a knob of gilding, something that made you feel, like a punch to the chest, that this had been someone’s home….

It was horrendous.

Everyone came to the task who could be spared, who had the strength for it. Reese, the twins and Bryer followed Hirianthial down, and so did all the Fleet people, even the doctor who said the patients on board the ship were stable enough to do without him. Olthemiel’s Swords came too—they didn’t volunteer, they just showed up, as if there was no question they would be a part of the operation. So did all the refugees from the palace who felt they could help, even children who put themselves to work running messages to people without telegems. Reese watched them darting through the ruins and wondered what it must be like to grow up in a world where a child could be inured to violence this obvious. But then, if Hirianthial and Liolesa were right, this was a world accustomed to untimely death. She shuddered.