Broken Vision (5 page)

"Have you talked with your parents lately?"

"No." What did that have to do with anything? Except layer on guilt.

"Have you heard of the Match Key?"

"Is this an interrogation? Because if so, by law, there needs to be an arbitrator--"

"If you feel a need to confess, we can open up a vid screen."

She definitely was in no shape to deal with him. But she took comfort from the fact that the
muscle in his cheek was going crazy again and his eyes had narrowed to thin, gleaming slits.

"My conscience is as clear as a mapfly's wing," she said blithely.

"We'll deal with your conscience in good time. Answer the question."

She couldn't remember what he'd asked. "Is that a threat? Because, if so, an arbit--"

For such a large man, he moved fast, invading her personal space. He planted large fists on
either side of her shoulders and, Sortor save her, there was that hypnotic blue gaze again boring into
her. Her stomach came alive with lots of little bedring creatures flipping and jumping and
spinning.

"When you were younger," he said softly, as his gaze bored ever deeper, "I admired your
spirit, your courage to challenge. What others saw as rebelliousness and anti-establishment, I
saw--sometimes, not always--as the epitome of a necessary and healthy evolution for a nation struggling
to integrate with others in a unified galaxy. Did you know that the academy is using your thesis, the
one on education, to experiment with mixed classes at the very youngest levels? That's a huge
departure from conventional thinking."

Her stupid brain couldn't focus on anything but the word "admired". Alerik Mariltar
admired her? He'd noticed her enough to admire her?

He shoved his face even closer. The faint scent of tiug leaf again teased her nostrils. "That
doesn't mean I didn't think you'd benefit from a good old-fashioned discipline session." He leaned
back. "Several, in fact."

"You are threatening me," she croaked. It was all she could think of to say. "I demand an
arbitrator."

"You haven't answered the question."

"I don't remember the question."

"Do you know what the Match Key is?"

She did. She wasn't about to admit it. "What happens when I answer you? Do you leave me
alone?"

Alerik narrowed his eyes, and propped himself on one fist. He flexed his other hand above
her face. "Discipline. Can take so many forms. Wonder what would be the most effect--"

"I don't feel well." It was a cowardly move, but the heat under the thin cover was
unbearable.

He replaced his hand at her shoulder, which brought him a hand's breadth away from her
face again. He ignored her lie.

"You don't know, do you? But true to nature, you won't admit it. The Match Key," he said
with too much relish, "is one of those ancient Mariltar institutions you really despise."

His eyes were wide open, sucking her into their hypnotic depths. His mouth curved in a
smile she instantly mistrusted.

"From time to time, under certain circumstances, the Match Key is used to select a
lifemate. Your name came up."

"For what?" The bedring creatures were going crazy in her stomach. She really was
beginning to feel nauseous. Maybe this was just a bad dream and she'd wake up soon in her own
bed safe and sound without even a memory of this madness.

"For whom, would be the correct question."

Blazing starpits, he couldn't be serious and she had had enough. "Listen and listen
carefully, Governor. When I take a life partner, it will be by my choice. No one or no thing,
hallowed ancient custom or not, is going to dictate my mate. Now do be a good boy and run along.
Please. I have an ache in my head." Not to mention other parts. Her whole body was beginning to
feel like someone had taken her and whacked her against the wall.

"Don't you have any curiosity about with whom you've been matched?"

"No, not at all." She squinted, trying to block out the hypnotic call of his eyes. She truly
was developing a bad headache. "Because it doesn't mean a thing. Anyway, it's probably some
stuffy bureaucrat in the gov--"

Heat exploded in her body followed by chills that chased from her scalp to her toes and
raised goose bumps as they went. Even her eyebrows felt like they stood straight up.

"Blazing starpits!" she whispered.

"Language," he chided and shook his head. "So much work to do. So many misconceptions
to overcome--stuffy bureaucrat, drug push--"

"Don't you think," she said through her teeth, "for a nan, not even a nanonan that I'm going
to become your life partner. My parents will stand by me. There's no law in the galaxy that can
enforce such a ludicrous custom."

Alerik straightened, relieving her of his immediate proximity and his hypnotic gaze. His
face settled back into its stern lines. "The Match Key, when consulted, has chosen the mate of
countless Mariltar heirs back through the old times."

"Then unconsult it," she snapped. "That's just pathetic. It's time to break with
tradition."

His dimples showed briefly, but there was no humor in his expression. "Unfortunately,
Green Eyes, the Match Key cannot be challenged. There is nothing you, nor I, nor your parents, nor
mine can do about it. It's done. Now get some rest, because the next time we talk I intend to find
out why and where you were attacked by a batriel, and where it is you're hiding a star vessel.
Wife."

Margaine Confluence:/First Rising
Pallas Five

Alerik strolled into the command center on Pallas Five feeling unaccountably pleased with
himself. Nothing about that conversation with Maegan had gone the way he'd planned. She had
managed to aggravate nerves he thought had long been desensitized under the rigorous demands of
leadership. But the exhilarating rush he had come to expect from encounters with her was still
bubbling through his veins.

He had intended today to interrogate her about the mysterious star vessel, which had
appeared twice in the air space over Pallas Four. They were positive it had launched from and
landed on Pallas Four, but something had interfered with their trackers and they still hadn't located
it.

Curious too that Maegan had been found unconscious in her habitat unit by Coryon at
some point after the star vessel incident. He didn't believe in coincidence.

He had not intended to bring up the Match Key. It was a discussion meant for a private,
intimate setting, not a healing room, and it was certainly far too early in the plan he had devised,
which now was completely blasted to asteroid dust. So he'd listened to his own words with a sense
of disbelief that he'd been driven to act so completely out of character.

How did she do that him? And do it so quickly?

Sharm intercepted him. "How is she?"

"Completely unaware how lucky she is to be alive, and too full of feistiness for her own
good."

Sharm snorted. "Didn't get anything out of her, did you?"

Alerik stuck his hands in the pockets of his breeches, and eyed his friend. Time to confess
and face the swift, merciless blade of Sharm's judgment. No one else had guts enough to tell him
like it was.

"No, but I will. Right now she's busy digesting the concept of the Match Key."

"Balls of Sortor!" Sharm's too-pretty features became a rigid mask. "What have you--?
Would you like to step into my office and explain that one?"

"Not really, but it's better than having you grind my bones in front of a room full of
subordinates."

Levity was wasted. Grim-faced, Sharm stepped to one side and gestured politely. Feeling,
not for the first time, as if their positions were reversed, Alerik sauntered across the room, greeting
members of the security team on duty as he went. "Where are Drakal and Corenna?"

"Out sweeping the jungle of Pallas Four for signs of the slieking star vessel."

No doubt about it, Sharm was working himself up. He rarely cursed. "Didn't you tell them
it won't do any good?"

"It's keeping them busy and will quite probably do more good than your visit with Maegan
Shale apparently did."

"I'm not done with her yet," Alerik said mildly. In Sharm's office he dropped onto a hard
chair.

"Privacy!" Sharm commanded as he followed Alerik in. The clear plexiwalls of the office
space turned an opaque blue. He didn't wait for the door to completely close before he launched his
attack. "You actually went and did it, didn't you? All those reasons not to, and yet you still
consulted the slieking Match Key. Are you out of your tiny trill brain."

Alerik leaned back and stretched out his legs. Hard to tell how long this would take and
Sharm had yet to address the worst of it. "My father used it to find the love of his life," he pointed
out.

"Your father was under Coalition orders to find a mate from another race. The Great
Conflict was over, and a united galaxy was being born. He had little choice. You, on the other hand,
do. Or you had. Balls of Sortor, Alerik, what were you thinking?"

"That it was time to take a mate?" he said, straight-faced. It was nothing less than the truth.
And like everything else that influenced his life, the Match Key was a time-honored and time-tested
ancient institution. No one would question the results. Trained to high office as he was, his life
partner had to be an impeccable choice.

Which made the Match Key's selection so shocking, so spectacularly inappropriate for a
Mariltar heir. And so very exhilarating.

The bonds that had tethered him to compliance all his life unraveled in the blink of an eye.
In the relative quiet of Sharm's office, with his friend looking on in stern disapproval, he
experienced a too-brief moment of heady, unfettered freedom. A realization had begun to slowly
surface that a new, completely unexpected course for his life lay wide open to him.

"A mate? Since when? Have you been sniffing shlil dust? One day you have your choice of
prime female companionship, without any pressure for commitment, I might add, and the next you
decide you have to be bonded for life?"

"I think I felt an urge to create miniature Aleriks."

He watched with interest as Sharm's eyes popped, his face turned bright red, and his mouth
worked soundlessly.

"And the Match Key is how you do it?" he finally spluttered. "If you had to have such a
demented disconnect in your slieking synapses, you could at least have made your own decision.
You could have had your choice. Any woman. Any unmated woman in the slieking galaxy."

"That's an exaggeration. There's at least one exception."

Still red-faced, Sharm screwed his pretty-boy features into what, for him, was a ferocious
scowl. "Sagar's sacred crystals! I don't believe it. Did you rig the Match Key? Why would you do
that?"

"Of course I didn't rig the Match Key. It's not possible." But looking back on it, he had
probably quite unintentionally given a fair description of Maegan. Her face and behavior stuck in
his mind more than any other. Not that it would have made any difference to the Match Key.

Sharm began to pace in a wide circle. He made one full rotation before he shot Alerik a
grim look. "I don't even want to ask what Maegan Shale has to do with any of this, but this
lasersting tearing at my gut tells me I already know."

Alerik relaxed and clamped his lips together to stop himself from grinning. A fool Sharm
wasn't. He crossed one booted ankle over the other. "Interesting choice, isn't she?"

"Interesting is not the word I would use. Unsuitable? Yes," Sharm snapped. "She's not the
right lifemate for you, Alerik. She's too...unpredictable, too slieking unruly."

Cold, hard reason had no argument. With the exception, interestingly, of the Match Key,
Maegan Shale was not anyone's definition of a perfect choice of a lifemate for a Mariltar heir. And
maybe that was part of the attraction. From many, many rotations ago, he held a clear memory of a
young Maegan, barely into puberty, jumping into an adult conversation to vociferously denounce
the exploitation of bonded entertainment house workers. Not that he'd agreed with her position at
the time. He'd just admired her conviction and envied her the freedom to express an uncommon
point of view.

Sharm stopped pacing and leaned against the side of his workstation. He folded his arms
and glowered. "Alerik, she's involved in something. You know she is."

"No doubt."

"So find a way to refute the Match Key results."

The thought had crossed his mind numerous times. Curious that he had never acted upon it.
Shocking that Sharm would suggest it.

"I'm a little confused. Are you upset because I used the Match Key or are you upset about
the results?"

"What difference does it make? The decision was asinine, the result disastrous. And this
isn't about me. Start taking this seriously. When you make a mistake, it's volcanic."

Alerik raised his brows. The more Sharm objected, the more unshakable his conviction
became. "Tell me what you really think. Neither set of parents had any objections whatsoever."

"They don't know what we know."

"Which is what exactly? They do know Maegan. And they know me. I'm gathering a
quorum, Sharm, to legitimize the partnership. This is going to happen."

He knew that now as surely as he'd recognized it the moment he'd seen the results of the
Match Key--that one shining moment of pure, absolute rightness, far more intoxicating than the
best fine Mariltar blue ale. The doubts had come afterward.

But the gods of the Mariltar nation had sent a powerful message that day, and the memory
of that moment had charted the first change of course in his life. It was the reason he had chosen the
Grogon governor's assignment with all its problems over the more prestigious seat on the Coalition
Council. It was a choice he hadn't had to make. He could have accepted the council seat and
demanded Maegan join him.

It would not have been conducive to a successful partnership.