Clan and Conviction (Clan Beginnings) (48 page)

Krijero was alive.

For the first time in his life, Wynhod’s knees wobbled.  The weakness lasted only an instant, and he didn’t know if anyone noticed.  He didn’t care if anyone noticed, nor if they heard the catch in his voice.  “My Imdiko.”

“He’s still with us.”  Gelan’s tone had a suspiciously choked sound too.

Wynhod gathered his strength.  The one thing he couldn’t do was look away from Krijero.  He told Gelan, “He saved your life.  If he hadn’t fought at that moment, Benor would have shot you.”

“I know.  And we’re going to repay him by clanning him and taking care of him the rest of our days.”

Still not taking his eyes off Krijero, Wynhod grabbed Gelan in a brutal hug.  The Dramok returned it.  From the corner of his eye, Wynhod noted Gelan also looked at their Imdiko and nowhere else.

The pair walked over to remain as close to their fallen lover as the medics would allow.  When the hover stretcher took him out, Utta wisely said not one word to call them back as they followed him.  No one demurred when they boarded the emergency shuttle taking Krijero to the hospital either, though they were not his official clanmates.  It could have been no one felt foolish enough to challenge the pair covered in the blood of their enemies.  It could be Wynhod and Gelan were simply too savage looking following the heinous event they’d just been through.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t ferocity that filled Wynhod as they took the ride to the hospital, sitting where he could see the medics working on the battered Imdiko inside the clear-paneled isolation chamber.  For someone of his breed, nearly losing not one, but both his lifemates should be making him crazy with anger.  Yet neither Gelan nor Krijero had been killed.  He still had them both.

After coming so close to losing everything that mattered and now knowing they would all go home in the end, it was almost enough to make even a Nobek cry.

Chapter 16

Krijero’s road to recovery was excruciating in its slow progress.  He’d been smashed from head to toe, sliced, stabbed, and cut to the point that the doctors agreed another hour would have seen him bleed to death even with no further trauma.  Internal injuries were numerous.  He required a kidney transplant, along with cellular regeneration on many other organs.

He was so demolished that the medical team kept him in recovery stasis for the first two months.  Finally, they thought he’d reached the point where he wouldn’t require such heavy pain inhibition as to make him insensible.  At that point they took him out of the stasis chamber and placed him in a medi-bed.  Medications continued to feed directly into his body but he would finally be able to interact with others.

However, Krijero didn’t wake.  He sank into a coma for no reason any medical professional could diagnose.  Gelan, Wynhod, and the parent clans of all three men gathered around his bed, waiting for his eyes to open.  He lay still and unresponsive, the steady movement of his chest as he breathed the only outward sign that he still lived. 

“It can take a few days,” they were reassured.  “He just needs some time.”

Days slipped by and became a week.  Another week went by, and Krijero’s mother, as self-effacing and sweet as her son, suddenly became as demanding as an angry Dramok.

“Why is he not waking?  Why is he still not talking to us?  What’s wrong with him?”  Matara Dir cornered the doctor, turning an alarming shade of near purple in her upset.

The doctor in charge of Krijero’s case could only answer unhappily, “Sometimes the body determines it needs more time to get over the shock it’s been through.  I assure you, we’re doing everything to get him well.  We simply can’t rush whatever internal timetable he’s on.”

Krijero’s parents, with the support of Gelan and Wynhod, fired Krijero’s medical team and hired another.  After another month passed with still no sign of the Imdiko recovering consciousness, they fired that team too.

The doctors and specialists came and went.  Krijero slept on.  The ravages of the torture he’d taken faded from his face and body, leaving him as he was before, though a little thinner.

They were a week into the third month after he’d been taken out of stasis when his eyes finally opened.  No one was looking at him at the moment he woke, and he blinked to see so many people surrounding him, people he loved and the people they loved.  His eyes moved about the unfamiliar room he lay in, taking them all in.  His parent clan.  Gelan’s parent clan.  Wynhod’s two surviving fathers.  Some had their heads together, muttering quiet conversation.  Some stared into space.  Some watched the vid of the latest news report playing, like his mother who sat next to the strange bed he lay in, holding his hand in hers. 

His gaze slid over to the other side of his bed.  A smile touched his lips to see Gelan and Wynhod standing so close that they practically loomed over him.  They were also watching the vid, but as he looked at them, it was as if they felt the weight of his gaze.  Both heads turned in his direction.  Two pairs of eyes caught his.  They widened.  Lips parted and curled in hopeful smiles.

“Krijero?”  It was Gelan who spoke.

The Imdiko’s voice creaked, sounding old and disused.  “Hey.”

His mother cried out, and his fathers rushed forward in a wave.  The sobbing and words that came afterward were confusing to Krijero.  He didn’t understand much of what was happening or had happened.  At first only Gelan and Wynhod seemed to get that he wasn’t quite himself.  They stood there, solid, quiet, and comforting in their mere presence.  When the Imdiko felt overwhelmed from the noise, he only had to look at them to know everything was all right.

A little at a time, his parents also comprehended he was a bit lost.  Things were explained to him, but most of it didn’t make sense.  Even the few things he understood, he forgot much of minutes later.  He could see joy mixing freely with worry on the faces of everyone except Gelan and Wynhod.  They kept their gazes firm, their demeanors confident. 

At one point Wynhod said in a very quiet tone, “You’re going to be okay.”  And smiled.

Krijero thought he could believe that.

Days passed.  With each one, Krijero’s memory and awareness of the events that had happened grew.  The dazed fog that had eclipsed so much slowly dissipated.  In its wake came nightmares, horrible fantasies in which he was held down helpless while Gelan and Wynhod were tortured and killed.  He woke gasping, tears streaming down his face only to see them both very much alive, standing over his bed and whispering comforting words to calm him.

The pair rarely left the hospital the entire time Krijero recuperated there.  Wynhod had been given an administrative leave of absence from work.  The unpaid leave served as punishment for his overbearing brutality to Dramok Benor, who took several weeks to recover from his injuries.  It was the first black mark on the Nobek’s outstanding record.  That the precinct didn’t bring him up on actual charges showed its understanding of the situation.  Gelan had been granted voluntary leave under the Empire’s Emergency Clanmate Care Policy, though Krijero was not officially his Imdiko.  Many concessions were made for the trio in the aftermath of Krijero’s abduction and torture.

Benor finally healed sufficiently to stand trial for heading up the Delir and Frenzy drug rings.  The Empire also indicted him on a list of murders and disappearances that took the court nearly an hour to recite.  The three-week-long case was broadcast over the news vids.  Gelan and Wynhod were the first two witnesses for the Empire, which parted them from Krijero for the first time since he’d been hospitalized.  As soon as their testimonies were completed, they returned to be with him.  They, Krijero, and their parent clans watched the rest from his hospital room.

Nothing had swayed Benor’s astounding ego or the firmly held belief he was untouchable.  Even the earlier conviction of his chemist brother who had created Delir and Frenzy, along with others in connection to the drug ring, couldn’t sway Benor from believing he wouldn’t be found guilty of his crimes.  He represented himself in court, alternating between laughing and sneering at testimony against him. 

In the end he told the judges, “You know who I am.  Everyone does.  All the service I’ve done, all the businesses I own and run for the good of the Empire.  No one here wields more power than I.  Kalquor needs me.  That’s why we can push aside all this nonsense about deaths of those who did nothing for anyone.  Who cares about those who took up space and contributed only pain?”

The head judge called for an immediate vote at the end of the trial.  Without deliberations or arguments, the verdict of guilty passed unanimously.  The execution date was set for two months later.  Benor seemed unimpressed.

A month after emerging from his coma, the doctors sent Krijero to a rehab center to continue his recovery.  Gelan and Wynhod returned to work, and their parents went home.  Gelan’s mother commed Krijero several times a week to encourage him, and the rest kept in touch as well.  Krijero’s parents took a temporary place near the rehab facility and spent much of their time with their son, as did Gelan and Wynhod when they were off duty.

Krijero’s rehab went slowly.  His body still struggled to adjust to the repairs and the long time he’d been physically inactive.  His balance disorder and overall clumsiness plagued him as he worked to build endurance and strength.  The only part of rehab he found any pleasure in was swimming in the facility’s pool, where he found some measure of grace.  Yet he didn’t complain about his sluggish progress or the exhaustion and pain that accompanied most of his treatments.  He didn’t talk much at all. 

He overheard his mother Dir worrying over his state of mind with his fathers and Gelan and Wynhod.  They stood just outside his door in the rehab center’s hallway, talking in low tones.

Dir fretted.  “Krijero has never been this quiet around me.  He stares into space half the time, looking like he’s contemplating the problems of the entire Empire.  Something is not right.”

Krijero’s Dramok father Tasja told her, “The psychologist says that’s to be expected after what happened to him.  We know Krijero’s particularly sensitive, even more so than most of his breed.  We have to allow for extra adjustment time.” 

Gelan added, “I made some subtle inquiries, Matara.  The truth is, he’s doing better mentally than they anticipated he would at this stage.  He’s testing stable across the board.”

Imdiko Oyal’s voice brightened to hear that.  “That’s something, at least.  I confess, his lack of engagement had me worried as well.”

Dir sighed.  “It sets my mind at ease a little.  Thank you, Gelan, for everything you’ve done for Krijero.  You too, Wynhod.”  Then, hesitantly she asked, “Do you still hope to clan him?”

A long silence spun out, one Krijero feared to hear end.  At last Gelan answered, “It doesn’t matter if it ever becomes something I can put on an official document.  Your son is our Imdiko.  He has been for some time now.”

“I’m glad.  Much better you and Wynhod than that crack-skulled fool Pertak and whatever excuse of a Nobek he picked up.”

Krijero’s Nobek father Rotak snorted.  “I confess I was elated when that relationship ended.  However, the way Pertak left my son had me wanting to hunt him down and separate his head from his body.”

Wynhod sounded happy to hear that.  “You didn’t like him?  Because from what I know, I’d still like to see his head and body part company.”

Krijero could practically see Tasja’s scowl, though the group was out of his sight.  “Pertak was a lazy, unmotivated, goof-off of a creature.  I think the only reason they classified him as a Dramok was because he wasn’t aggressive enough to be a Nobek or caring enough to be an Imdiko.”

Rotak added, “Sometimes I think Krijero was ready to settle for Pertak because he didn’t think he could do better.  I’m glad you two came along to prove him wrong.”

“He’ll come around,” Dir added, her tone certain enough to raise Krijero’s eyebrows.  “You’ll see.”

It was an interesting conversation for Krijero to hear for many reasons.  Learning how worried his long minutes of contemplative silence made his mother, he made more of an effort to smile and speak to her after that.  It seemed to make her happy.

Benor’s execution date arrived.  Tasja and Rotak attended, but Gelan and Wynhod elected to stay behind to keep Krijero company.  The Imdiko thought it must have been a tough decision for them to make, but neither seemed to mind.  Indeed, Dramok and Nobek kept Krijero, Dir, and Oyal laughing as they told stories on each other. 

Gelan started by describing one memorable time he and Wynhod had gone climbing.  Halfway up the peak, the Nobek lost his balance.  One of his lines tethering him safely from a serious fall had a flaw that caused it to give way, leaving him hanging upside down from the other line.  In the final act of mortifying synchronicity, his pants split from the waist down the length of one leg, leaving him blatantly exposed to a party of hikers on the next ridge.

“Everything that could go wrong, did,” Gelan told his hysterically laughing audience.  “But he got a nice round of applause from the hikers once I pulled him up.”

“Which you accomplished very slowly,” Wynhod snarled, but his eyes twinkled.  “Now let’s talk about the time the mighty hunter Gelan ran screaming from a ronka.”

“There was a zibger chasing the ronka, which ran towards me!” the Dramok yelled, his face reddening.  “I was gathering firewood, and I didn’t have any weapons on me to defend myself.  Plus, I did not scream.  I yelled to warn you.”