her instruments 02 - rose point (41 page)

“Right,” Reese said. “Everyone through.”

The Pad was still on standby when Reese flipped the carpet up to check on it. She brought it to full power, watched the lights well as the tunnel stabilized. When it chimed she said, “Bryer, go!”

Bryer jogged across the Pad. The twins followed. The young novice hesitated, then re-shouldered his master’s arm and the two of them tottered over it together. Reese brought up the rear, and the last thing she saw was Beronaeth bending to the Pad... and then she was home, amid the familiar smells and sounds of the
Earthrise
. Bryer was gone already, no doubt on his way to Kis’eh’t and the lab/clinic. But the twins were waiting for her, with Malia and a blonde Tam-illee woman—Taylor Goodfix, Reese assumed—and next to them—

“Your Majesty—”

“Liolesa.”

“Liolesa,” Reese said, and sighed. “Now what?”

“Now what” was actually not an easy question to answer. They met in the mess hall to discuss it over one of Kis’eh’t’s apple pies: not fresh, but leftovers from the trip in. It reheated well, but Reese had no appetite and pushed it away in favor of the coffee. Blood, but she’d missed coffee.

“So the next step is for you to call for help from the Alliance, right?” Reese said. “You can do that, you’re an allied power.”

“That’s correct,” Liolesa said. Like Hirianthial had always seemed to be, she was completely at ease in the
Earthrise’s
humble mess... but that didn’t make it feel any less surreal to Reese, to have an Eldritch Queen sitting on one of her battered chairs, her pale beige satin overflowing it with pearl-encrusted folds.

“Fleet’s stretched thin if my sources are right,” Malia said. “My Lady, there may not be much they can do for us.”

“Even one ship will be enough,” Taylor said. “It doesn’t even have to be very big. Or they can just ship us weapons. We’ll do the rest.”

Malia nodded. “Bring the family in. Nine generations of us have been waiting for this moment, my Lady. You need only say the word.”

“And I may call on them yet,” Liolesa said. “But let me see what my ally might do for me first.”

“So we head back, is that it?” Reese said.

The door opened for Kis’eh’t, who padded in and said, “Did I hear someone say something about leaving? Because Hirianthial needs a real Medplex as soon as possible.”

“He’s not—” Reese half-rose.

“He’s stable,” Kis’eh’t said. “Not because of us, mind you. Someone did a job on him before we did. Someone with modern medical equipment.” She glanced at Reese. “You know what that implies.”

“That we were right about someone on the world selling him to someone off it?” Reese said. She sank back into her chair and rubbed her eyes. “Fine. So the decision is pretty easy, right? We zip away, grab help, come home.”

“Can you do that?” Irine asked Liolesa. “I mean... you’re the Queen. Can you just leave your planet like this? Wouldn’t that be... I don’t know.” She glanced at her brother, who said, “Abdication in favor of the rebelling government.”

“My chancellor remains on-world with my heir, whom I have not yet formally set aside,” Liolesa said. “Neither of them have yet been slain or taken prisoner by the usurpers. So long as they remain on the world and at large, Surela cannot make her claim to the Alliance. Particularly not with me there first, asking their aid.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sascha said. “When should we—”

The intercom sounded, the triple-buzz of an emergency. Reese jumped from the chair and struck the button. “Yes?”

“Pirate has arrived. Am moving now.”

Sascha hissed. “Battlehells. Tell him I’m on my way up!”

“Hide us somewhere!” Reese said, but the Harat-Shar was already gone. Taylor was quick on his heels.

Irine grabbed her tail, eyes wide. Reese leaned over and touched her shoulder. “We didn’t come this far to end up slavebait at the end, all right? Go help Sascha. Kis’eh’t—”

The Glaseah was already jogging out the door. “I’ll go keep the vigil. Malia? Can you help? Have you had first aid training?”

“I’m with you,” Malia said.

The room, emptied of everyone but herself, still didn’t seem large enough to contain an Eldritch Queen. Particularly not this one, who reacted to the crisis by calmly sipping her coffee and setting the cup with deliberate precision on its chipped saucer.

“You’re not worried?” Reese asked.

Liolesa said, “Not about what you are, no. They’re not here for us. So long as your men get us out of the way before they notice us, they won’t have cause to seek us.” She looked up without lifting her face, and even shielded by her lashes, her eyes burned. “Over a thousand years, Theresa. Over a thousand years since our Settlement and we have remained hidden all this time. Our world isn’t even in your navigational database. All these years, and now our secret has been revealed... by a traitor, to our enemies. There is a pirate heading for my world.” She inhaled, like a dragon about to stream fire. “Yes, I am worried. About how far I’ll go to destroy everyone and everything that has endangered my people.”

Reese remembered to swallow, though her mouth had gone dry. She offered, “That... sounds... like a good thing to me.”

“Does it?” Liolesa asked, glancing at her sharply. And then she chuckled, though the sound was bitter. “We shall see if you still think so ere the ending.”

“I don’t think I’ll change my mind,” Reese said. “I have a temper myself. A little one.”

Liolesa snorted. “Then we are well-matched.” She paused as the humming under the deck-plates changed. “We are moving?”

Reese tapped the intercom again. “Hey, bridge.”

Irine answered. “They’re still at the edge of the system, so we’re getting out of the way before their sensors can pick us up. Malia says her people don’t have a ship in-system that can do anything about them, and unless they head for the moon, the permanent base can’t help either.” A pause, then dry, “They have a base on the moon, by the way.”

Malia’s voice now: “It’s debatable whether the moonbase could take on this thing anyway. It’s half weapons. The other half’s engines. Our outpost is an outpost; it’s got room for ten people and only six people sleep there at a time.”

“If the pirate’s half engines and half weapons, where do they keep the crew?” Reese asked.

“I’m guessing in EVA suits strapped to the outside.”

Reese smiled despite herself. “So they’re definitely heading for the world?”

“Straight for it,” Irine reported.

Reese looked now at the Queen. “They’re going to meet the person who summoned them.”

“Yes,” Liolesa said, watching her now.

“And you... you have to go,” Reese said. “Not only that, but you have to take my ship, because it’s the only one here now.” She turned to the intercom. “Right? Malia, you Tam-illee don’t have one of your courier ships here right now, or due soon?”

“No,” Malia said, sounding pained.

Reese looked at Liolesa. “The
Earthrise
is it. Your only ride out.”

“Yes.” Quieter now.

Reese swallowed. “Someone should stay behind. Find out what’s going on.”

From the intercom, Irine said, “Reese!”

Ignoring her, Reese asked the Queen, the Queen to whom she had just sworn an oath: “Yes?”

“I will not make you do this, Theresa,” Liolesa said. “But if you were to remain and give our allies a flag to rally to, coordinate their efforts...”

She was crazy to even be considering this, and yet she was. To let someone else take her ship, bring Hirianthial to the help he needed...

That it upset her more that she wouldn’t be there to make sure he’d be all right no longer surprised her, but it did make it very clear how much had changed. She could say a temporary goodbye to her ship. To trust other people with Hirianthial’s safety had become far more difficult.

“I lost the deed,” she said suddenly, because it hurt, because she was feeling her way through the responsibilities she’d accepted only a few hours ago and they felt too real to be so new. She’d been reading novels of epic romance for all her adult life, but she’d thought she was clear on the difference between fantasy and reality. So why did all this ring through her like a bell, rise in her like song? “It’s somewhere in the gallery of your ballroom. If Hirianthial’s brother didn’t rip it up while I wasn’t paying attention.”

“The deed can be duplicated,” Liolesa said. “And it is only a piece of paper. The property is yours, Reese. You and your own have paid for it already in blood. And make no mistake, you will pay for it with more, ere the end.”

Again, like a song, like the distant sight of banners…like blood in the soil. She shivered, swallowed and forced herself to composure. When she was sure she could talk without her voice cracking, she said, “I’d need a few telegems.”

“You’ll have them.”

“And I could really use a Pad...”

“If you coordinate with the Swords, they might be able to bring mine free of the library and on to you,” Liolesa said.

Reese frowned, thoughtful. “And some of your Tam-illee? We need more people who understand the technology.”

Malia’s voice now, through the speaker: “We’ll all volunteer. There are only seven of us in-system, but we’re yours.”

“And I’ll come too,” Irine said.

“Irine, Sascha can’t stay with us,” Reese said. “The
Earthrise
has to take Hirianthial to a doctor and he’s the best pilot we’ve got.”

“I know,” Irine said. “And I’ll miss him. But he’ll be back. And he’ll get Hirianthial there faster than anyone else.”

“And in one piece,” Sascha promised, his voice thinned by his distance from the pick-up.

Reese rested her brow against the wall beside the intercom. The cold metal stuck to the sweat on her skin; she could taste the salt when she licked her lips. It all came down to one thing: had she meant it when she’d said she would help? Had she really been willing to commit to a world full of far too beautiful, far too perfect, irritating, elitist, xenophobic princes and princesses?

No, that wasn’t the question, was it.

Was she willing to stay, even if Hirianthial didn’t?

...if he died?

The thought pierced her, stole her breath. He could die. Right now. On the way out of here. Hundreds and hundreds of years older than her, with centuries yet to live and he could die and leave her without his frustratingly beautiful accent, the distracting and infuriating way his hair never seemed to need care, the precision and grace of his movements, the terrifying understanding of how much he knew—about her, about life, about everything—that she would never have time to learn.

And it could all be snuffed out in the next few hours.

She could outlive him.

“Nothing is certain, is it,” she murmured.

“Not in this life, no,” Liolesa said.

Reese shuddered and forced herself upright. Squared her shoulders, staring at the smudge she’d left on the bulkhead. She wiped it with her sleeve and turned to Liolesa. “I’m still your woman, Liolesa.”

Liolesa rose and joined her by the intercom. “It takes a rare heart to make the choice you are making now, Theresa.”

“Yeah, well... my family always told me I was a misfit.” Reese lifted her chin. “Tell me what you need me to do while you’re gone. We’ll get it done.”

“This world won’t know what hit it,” Irine said through the intercom.

“You know it, fuzzy.”

The body standing at the window fascinated Baniel. It was a perfect mimicry of an Eldritch: the skin was right, even to the glow gathered from the reflections of the sun off the snow. The height, the build. The clothes hung on it correctly. Even the hair fell a proper length for a nobleman, nearly to the waist in a long sheet. But the face, when it turned in profile, revealed eyes like drops of water, colorless, subject to the alien shape of their pupil... just a little too oval for the species the Chatcaavan was duplicating.

It was a good copy. The imperfection was jarring.

“So these abilities.” The alien studied his long-fingered hands, flexed them. “You will educate me in them?”

“Such education is a matter of more than a few hours,” Baniel said. “Is your ship not approaching orbit now?”

“It is. But I am considering a change of plans.”

“How so?” Baniel asked, growing very still.

“I think I might stay.”

Baniel studied the alien. “Is that so.”

“I do not yet have a planetary fiefdom,” the Chatcaavan said. “I like this world. I think I shall keep it.”

“And the people?” Baniel asked.

“Oh....” The Chatcaavan waved a hand. “To be sold, or used. I will bring enough people to keep them cowed. While they last, anyway. I have heard your kind are fragile and die easily.”

“Won’t your superior be displeased? I thought your purpose was to bring back word of the location of the world to him.”

“My superior wants Eldritch captives,” the alien said. “I shall deliver them, beginning with the one who supplied me with this... very enticing... shape. But I doubt he will much care that I am claiming the world for my own given how far it is from the empire. We’d have to cross the Alliance to reach it, which makes it far too distant to be easily managed without an overseer. Someone to breed the stock.” He lifted one brow and smiled, and that smile looked alien on his face: his eyes remained a reptilian blank despite the creases around his mouth.