Coalition 02.5 - The Kingbird (7 page)

Lyon went on with his calm explanation. “I didn’t realize the chair was holding up that box. That’s what made all the noise, when it fell. It was heavy.”

“Who keeps a box of rocks, anyway?”
Shaina
muttered. She looked up at what had been her goal, clearly perturbed that her exploration had been curtailed.

“Maybe these papers say,” Lyon said, digging into the items—mostly rocks, as
Shaina
had observed—that had spilled out of the small wooden box. “No, they’re just some strange drawings, like
Paraclon’s
diagrams only on old paper,” he said after a moment, in obvious disappointment. He went back to slowly gathering up the rocks.

“If you want to inspect those, gather them up for in the morning. It’s time for you two rascals to get some rest.”

The usual complaints came, especially fervent tonight given that they had to return home tomorrow.

“We don’t have to leave until afternoon, so you’ll have all morning. Unless you get confined to quarters, of course.”

With mutual sighs they gave in.
Shaina
put the chair back out of the way as Lyon picked up the box. She had the feeling he would be inspecting those rocks yet tonight, in the bunk room they were sharing, but since she knew it took a while for his ever agile mind to slow down after an exciting day, that seemed as good a way as any.

“Tucked in, although I’d wager they’ll not be sleeping for a bit,”
Shaylah
said when she was back downstairs and settled happily in Wolf’s arms before the fire. She found herself thinking of him as Wolf again here, away from it all. She didn’t think he’d mind. She called him that in their most intimate moments, and it only fired him to further heights of passion.

“What broke?”
Califa
asked resignedly.

Shaylah
laughed. Even
Rina
chuckled. “Nothing, actually. They knocked over a box of rocks someone collected.”

“Rocks?”
Dax
asked.

“Yes.” She held out the folded papers to Dare. “These were in with them. I think I recognize the hand.”

Dare took them, looked at the first one, then let out a quiet breath. “Yes. My father. He was always foraging about up here and making notes. He seemed to like doing it the old way, with scriber and paper.”

No one spoke. Likely,
Shaylah
thought, because no one could think of what to say about the king who had been so brutally slain as an example to the people of Trios who had refused to accept that they had been conquered by the Coalition.

“I will look at them tomorrow,” Dare said after a moment, setting them aside. “Not tonight.”

Shaylah
sighed inwardly in relief. He truly had gotten into the spirit of this, setting aside all cares for this short interlude of peace.

There was a burst of laughter from upstairs.
Rina
got up. “I’ll go say goodnight. Perhaps I can get them to settle.”

When quiet finally reigned from the children’s room,
Dax
made a rather obviously manufactured excuse and took his clearly willing mate up to the room they were to share. They stopped to look in on the children,
Dax
leaned back to give Dare an all clear signal, then the pair vanished.

“I believe,” Dare said with a barely suppressed laugh, “my Defense Minister has designs on that woman.”

“I think it is the
flashbow
warrior
Califa
will be dealing with tonight,”
Shaylah
said with a smile, leaning against him in pure contentment.

Dare slipped his arms around her, drawing her closer. “This trip was a very, very good idea, my love.”

“Thank you.”

“I had not realized how much it was needed.”

“And when would you have time to?”

“I have much more time than I would have if my stalwart queen was not by my side.”

“As she always will be, my king.”

He lowered her head, pressed a kiss to her ear. “Tonight,” he suggested huskily, “I would prefer to simply be your Wolf.”

“Oh, you are always my Wolf,” she whispered back, and turned to press her lips to his.

* * *

“WHAT WAS HE working on?”

Dax
spoke quietly. The subject of Dare’s father was always painful. He had grown up knowing what a good and noble man he was, and his ugly, brutal death and desecration was a painful memory for all
Triotians
. For
Dax
the pain and loss was more than that of most
Triotians
. The royal house of Trios and the
Silverbrakes
had long been aligned, and the man had been like a second father to him. They had become even closer when he’d become the next
flashbow
warrior.

And that brought him to the guilt. If he hadn’t been gone—

Stop it. You did what you thought you had to at the time.

He almost smiled as
Califa’s
oft spoken words echoed in his head. And she was right. Guilt was a useless emotion, unless it drove you to make changes. And his certainly had.

“It appears to be in two parts,” Dare said, looking at the drawings spread out across the table. “One some sort of extractor, the other a power converter. But I can’t tell what it’s converting.”

Dax
leaned over to scan the diagrams. “Any ideas? You know if it doesn’t fly or shoot, I’m no help.”

Dare gave him a sideways look, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. “Then it’s fortunate you’re so
bedamned
good at those.”

Dax
grinned. “Makes me worth keeping around.”

“Many, many things accomplish that.”
Califa
spoke from behind him, and the low rumble of a well satisfied woman in her voice made him smile.

“I’d be happy to demonstrate again,” he offered as he pulled her into his arms, fighting the urge to take her right back to bed even after the night they’d had. For the moment he settled for a kiss, which only strengthened the urge.

“Don’t let me get in the way.” Dare’s voice was laced with dry amusement.

“Before you laugh,”
Califa
said with a wide smile, “I should tell you I have seen your mate this morning. She looks like a
leecat
who’s found a permanent patch of sun and a lifetime of sweet milk.”

Dax
burst out laughing at Dare’s expression. “Oh, you’ve done it now,
snowfox
. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to embarrass a king?”

“If we don’t, who will?” she asked lightly. “Besides, he looks rather smug, don’t you think? For that matter, so do you.”

“As well they both should,”
Shaylah
said as she approached them.
Dax
had glimpsed her coming downstairs, but had said nothing when she had paused to simply watch them. He knew how much it meant to her that
Califa
and Dare had so thoroughly put the past behind them. The exchange he’d overheard shortly after they’d returned from
Arellia
flashed through his mind.

Your mate is the most forgiving of men.

He is, but you have earned it. And he knows this.

He didn’t quite understand it, but he knew that friendship between women was a different thing, fluid, requiring maintenance and effort. He’d told
Califa
once he was glad men didn’t require such work.

“I see,” she’d said, in that tone that he’d learned early on meant he was about to get a sizeable lesson. “Is that why you take such care never to laugh at old
Paraclon
? Why you never forget
Glendar’s
birthday? Or
Rox’s
,
Larc’s
,
Nelcar’s
? Why you make sure every man who was ever on your crew is well and not in want, even if they no longer fly with you?”

He tightened his arms around her now, as
Shaylah
went to stand behind Dare, draping her arms over his shoulders.

“Have you deciphered your father’s intent?” she asked.

“I see what it is meant to do, but not with what.”

Shaylah
studied the papers for a moment. “Some kind of power system?”

Dare flashed his mate a smile.
Shaylah
was,
Califa
had always said, very clever when it came to mechanical things.

“So it appears. By these figures, it would seem to be quite efficient, creating a great deal of power out of a small amount of raw material. But there’s nothing here that indicates what raw material it converts.”

Shaylah
scanned the diagrams again. She reached out and tugged at one that had slipped behind the largest. She frowned at the sketch on the page. It was of an irregularly edged three-dimensional object spattered with dark shapes.

“It’s a rock,”
Dax
said helpfully. “Not much help.”

“And yet King Galen felt strongly enough to draw it, in some detail,”
Califa
said. The respect in her tone when she said the late king’s name earned her a smile from Dare.

“And the rest of it,”
Shaylah
said. “He came here for respite, did he not? And yet he spent much time on this.”

“Yes.” Dare turned back to the drawings. “So he must have thought it important.”

Dax
wondered for a moment what it must feel like for Dare, to look at these things drawn and written by his father’s hand. He had little left of his own family, their home had been destroyed and most of their belongings with it. He had a hologram or two, and of course the little white
snowfox
he’d recovered, carved exquisitely out of
Triotian
marble by a delicate hand. He—

“Fair warning!”
Rina’s
words echoed down the staircase as she ran lightly down. “They’re up and about, and ready to go at the world anew.”

Dax
looked at her. She seemed to have shaken off the melancholy, and her laughter made him grin back at her.

“What’s all this?” she asked as she halted beside them, giving
Califa
a morning hug and him a warm smile. For an instant the image of the child he’d found in that
cave
, cowering against the dank wall, bruised, dirty and frightened, with the image of her father sacrificing his life to allow her to escape still haunting her, flashed through his mind. That was, he thought wryly, the bad side of time to relax. It also meant time to think. Too much time.

Dare explained the drawings to her.
Dax
felt anew the tightness in his chest at his king’s demeanor. He had accepted
Rina
from the moment he heard her story, and learned she was the only survivor of her family.

All
Triotians
are your family now
Rina
. But I would take it as a great blessing were you to consider us your home.

Those words, spoken so gently to a wary, skittish girl, had told
Dax
more than anything just how far Dare had come. Had told him he would be a king perhaps greater than his father, who was counted among the greatest.

He had,
Dax
thought now, underestimated.

The noisy clatter on the stairs proved
Rina’s
warning true. The energy in the room suddenly changed as two livewire, excited children raced over to see what all the adults were clustered over.