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.
HE WOKE WITH the echo of gunfire in his ears, and a searing sense of loss.
"Natesa!"
Someone nearby whispered her name, the voice unfamiliar—thin and ragged—and yet if there were a friend of hers nearby . . .
"Dammit, don't you start that again!"
That
voice was immediately identifiable: Cheever McFarland, and in something of a pet, to judge by the volume.
Pat Rin opened his eyes, gaining an immediate view up into the big Terran's face, which showed more worry than temper, despite the volume—and, just now, a profound and dawning relief.
"Now, why didn't I think of doin' that before?"
"Doing what?" Pat Rin asked, and heard the unfamiliar ragged whisper emerge from his own mouth. Other details of his condition were beginning to emerge: He hurt, comprehensively; and his left arm was immobilized.
"Never occurred to me to just tell you to shut up," Cheever was continuing. "Well, o'course, it wouldn't—when in your life have you ever done what you were told?" He frowned, trying for ferocious.
"You been layin' here for the better part of two days, out cold, and feverish—which would've been worrisome enough—
and
you been talkin' Liaden non-stop, except for the occasional hour when you'd yell for Natesa. Which is what happened to your voice. What happened to the rest of you is you took a pellet in the arm and another one in the thigh, and you're in Penn Kalhoon's personal house, being taken care of by his personal staff, none of who speak Liaden, by the way, which is probably a good thing, considering the little bit of it I could scan."
He did have some memories of . . . conversations; long, intimate talks with his dead kin, of the sort they had rarely engaged in. There had been those things that he had wished to say—most especially to his son; and also to Shan, with whom he had so often been out of charity, so often for such little cause . . .
"It was not my intention to disturb the staff," he managed now, his ragged voice waking the discomfort of a raw throat. He drew a breath, which also was also painful, but not beyond his ability to endure.
"Natesa."
Cheever grimaced and Pat Rin felt again the fiery pain of loss, as the pilot's face dissolved in a shameful wash of tears.
"Naw, now, don't go jumping to endings.," The other man's voice was unexpectedly gentle. Pat Rin closed his eyes; the tears leaked beneath his lashes and left cold, wet trails down his cheeks.
"Listen, Boss, she's gonna be fine. Caught a pellet in the shoulder—the jacket took most of it. If it hadn't been a custom load, it wouldn't've stopped her at all. As it is, she's gonna be outta bed and raisin' hell before what passes for the doctor 'round here lets you eat better'n oatmeal." He paused, then added, thoughtfully.
"Thing is, Natesa's some peeved about you putting yourself on the line like that—I ain't exactly happy about it, myself. We're your security—I'm sure we told you this, couple dozen times, maybe. We take the chances while you get under cover—which this time, you did, according to Gwince, but then what'd you have to do but
leave
cover and set yourself up as a target nobody who wasn't drugged outta their brains—which Ivernet's were, your luck—coulda missed."
"My oathsworn," Pat Rin whispered, eyes closed against the slow leak of tears, "are not expendable."
"
Yes, we are
," Cheever said, plainly exasperated. "That's the point—ahh, never mind. I'll let Natesa pound it into your head. Maybe she'll have better luck."
He lay there, letting the sense of it sink into his bones. Natesa was alive. She would be fine. Life went on.
"And Boss Ivernet?" he asked, recalling at last the why of placing himself and his—gods pity him—his beloved, into such danger.
"Wasn't enough of Boss Ivernet left to take to the crematory after the mob got through with him." There was a certain grim satisfaction in the Terran pilot's voice. Pat Rin opened his eyes and stared up into his face.
"Mob?"
"Right. See, after you went in and practically got yourself killed over this, wasn't much Penn Kalhoon could do but back you, not to mention Ivernet's own streeters suddenly understanding that there might be a way out and joining in . . . " He shook his head. "Wasn't pretty. Quick, though—it was that. Especially with the bosses on the other side of Ivernet comin' in to lend a hand. Turns out everybody wanted him outta there, but none of 'em could figure out how to go about it 'til you come along." He shrugged.
"So, you got the turf. Penn's second—Marj Fender—she's sittin' in the Boss Chair, temporary-like, tryin' to get everything sorted out and stable. Penn wanted me to make sure you knew they was just holding it temp, and not making a turf-grab. You bled for it—it's yours. That's his words."
"All honor to him," Pat Rin whispered, closing his eyes again. He was, ridiculously, exhausted, his face wet with more than the unabated run of tears.
"We will need to send word to our other territories and—"
"Done," Cheever interrupted. "
Some
of us been workin'."
And all honor to Cheever McFarland, who held the course, as a pilot should, despite near catastrophe.
His ears registered a sudden bustle across the room, and a brisk female voice, borne closer on the clatter of heels against tile.