Rebel Ice (6 page)

Cherijo Gray Veil had been the Senior Healer before him. One did not follow in the footsteps of the best cardiothoracic surgeon in the galaxy without feeling a certain sense of inadequacy.

What had he said to her when she had selected him to succeed her?
I will get even with you for this
.

Dark blue, slanted eyes had rolled in an insolent fashion.
Dream on, Squid Lips
.

Beyond the stack of charts, the upper hemisphere of Akkabarr filled the bottom half of the exterior viewer panel. Many who knew nothing about Akkabarran slavers considered the remote ice world intriguing and beautiful. To Squilyp's eyes, the planet was as attractive as a pus-filled boil.

You care deeply for her, do you not
? Duncan Reever had once asked him, seemingly on impulse. There was something in his eyes, however, that told the Omorr that Reever had given much thought to the question.

Squilyp had tried to answer honestly.
She is my best friend. Of course I do
.

He had not been entirely truthful. He had cared for Cherijo, looked after her, and respected her. He had even grown strangely fond of her temper, annoying as it was. Yet he had also envied her, and had been regularly exasperated by her. No person he had ever known had possessed her talents, or had cared so little for them. Her capacity for compassion routinely shamed him, and then she would do something so blindingly stupid he would be propelled into shock.

Squilyp had acknowledged long ago that Cherijo had been one of the most important and influential people in his life. He counted himself fortunate for that.

He also wished that he had never met her.

She is down there
. She had to be; all the evidence Reever had uncovered indicated that she was. If she was still alive, Reever would find her.

If she
is…

Garphawayn, the Lady Maftuda, stopped a few feet from his desk and surveyed the clutter of charts. The meter-long, prehensile gildrells that covered her mouth flared like a nest of agitated white snakes. She was tall and elegant, a female Omorr in her prime, with healthy pink hide and strong, shapely limbs. A slight bulge beneath her sternum bones disrupted the elegant line of her torso, but the evidence of her unborn child's growth made her seem only lovelier to Squilyp.

He stared at her, the woman he loved. Garphawayn and their child were the main reason that he prayed Cherijo was dead. He loved them more than his life; surely he could be pardoned for wishing to keep them alive.

Cherijo, who had tried to kill herself more than once to save Reever and Marel, would forgive him.

Her dark, round eyes shifted to study his face. "Perhaps this is not the ideal time for us to discuss why you are still working, or the desiccated condition of the evening meal that I prepared for you several hours ago."

"Close the panel," Squilyp told his mate.

Garphawayn closed and secured the door. "Is this show of temper and reluctance to complete your shift a response to some offense I have unknowingly committed?"

Squilyp used the membranes on the end of one arm to rub his tired eyes. "Reever leaves within the hour for the surface."

"I see." His mate glanced at the viewer panel. "You are not accompanying him." That part was delivered as both a statement and a warning; Garphawayn had no qualms with asserting her rights as his mate and debating his decisions.

Squilyp could not go with Reever. He was the Senior Healer; he could not be spared to risk his life on a foolhardy quest that would likely end in disaster before it began.

That was the official reason, anyway. "I am not."

Garphawayn's expression softened. "I am glad to know it. You are needed here, husband." She turned her back on the viewer. "Do not misinterpret that remark as a show of indifference to the feelings of others."

"Your sentiments are known to me." A year of marriage had enabled Squilyp to learn precisely what lay beneath her proud, remote manner. Her capacity for understanding and affection often staggered him.

Just as Cherijo's had.

"I feel much sympathy for Reever, and indeed for Cherijo, too, if she still lives," his wife said carefully, as if she knew she was treading on sacred ground. "Yet someone must think of the child. Of both children."

Squilyp rose and hopped around the desk. "The children are always my concern. Marel is like my own daughter. As is Xan…" He couldn't think of the boy or look at the planet anymore. "It does not matter now. I do apologize for being inconsiderate and ruining dinner."

"It is only food. One can always prepare more." Garphawayn touched him in the way of Omorr mates: a "It is not that." Squilyp
had
blamed himself for months after the Jado Massacre, but when Cherijo did not reemerge and the standoff between Joren and the League stabilized, those feelings had grown into a shameful relief. "I pray that Reever is correct, and that she is down there on that planet. She was—is—my best friend." He would keep reminding himself of that.

"That is very kind, but that is not all you feel."

Guilt made his voice grow tight. "I cannot deny that it would be better for Marel—for everyone—if Reever fails."

"Squilyp." Garphawayn took a step back. "You cannot mean that. Reever would never recover from the loss, and neither would the child. As for Cherijo, what has she done to deserve such a fate?"

He shook his head. "You do not understand what it will mean if she is found."

"Of course I do," his mate snapped. "What her parent made her to be is not her doing. Cherijo deserves to live freely. Reever needs his mate; Marel, her mother."

"This is not about what Cherijo is, or what she means to those who love her," Squilyp said. "The Jado were slaughtered. The League has unequivocally stated that the
CloudWalk
attacked their ships and they were only defending themselves when they destroyed it. They provided a recording of the Jado ClanLeader giving his ship orders to fire on them."

Her gildrells became stiff spokes of outrage. "The League commander is a liar, and that recording was falsified."

"We cannot prove it. There has never been any proof that the League ships did anything but defend themselves, and every League officer has provided sworn testimony of the same. The recording has been examined by both sides and declared to be authentic. Reever and the children never saw or heard what happened." His shoulders slumped. "Cherijo is the only witness left who may confirm or deny the official version of the events."

Garphawayn made a disgusted sound. "You know as well as I that the League fired first."

"I know that the Jado had no reason to attack. They were there to negotiate peace." Squilyp remembered the strong, stoic expression of the Jado negotiator. "Unless they knew that the League had captured Cherijo before the firing began. She was—is—a member of the Jorenian planetary Ruling Council. If the Jado knew she was in danger, they would have immediately abandoned the negotiations in order to get her back."

"To get her back by attacking the ship on which she was held?" His mate sounded incredulous. "By destroying it? I think not."

"An enraged Jorenian does not often think clearly," he assured her.

"That may be so, but I still do not understand how it can be better that she is never found," Garphawayn said, her tone flat now. "She was there; she knows the truth. That truth must be told."

This was what everyone thought, what everyone felt. Cherijo, the ultimate truth seeker, had become a symbol of it. Everyone admired her and loved her; few thought of the practical matters, like the actual consequences of such a revelation.

"If the League fired first, they deserve whatever the Jorenians do to them," his mate stated flatly.

"It is not only the Jorenians." Squilyp touched the wall panel and switched the viewer panel from clear to opaque. "There are worlds outside the League and the Faction who want this war to end. They view the Jorenians as admirable for remaining neutral through it. If it is known that the League massacred the Jado, that will be the final outrage. Those worlds technologically advanced enough will use it as impetus to take up Joren's cause as their own."

His mate's eyes flared wide. "How many worlds would do so?"

Squilyp enabled the viewer panel, changing the magnification to show the dark, glittering expanse of the surrounding quadrant.

He left his mate staring out at ten thousand stars.

Chapter Three

Hurgot did his best to hide his anger as he stripped the rotted rags from the body of the unconscious ensleg female. It was a waste of his time, this examination, but the rasakt had ordered it done. There was no question of refusal.

Still, what was Navn thinking, showing such attention to a half-dead ensleg, and a female one at that?

He felt no pity as he studied her pathetic condition. Malnourishment or starvation had feasted on her flesh, leaving her with limbs like well-worried bones and a slightly swollen belly. She had not the intelligence or sense to cover properly before venturing out on the ice. Offworlders seldom did, which was why so many ended as stiff white blobs covered in snow. In the old days that stupidity alone would have earned her a slit throat, had she been Iisleg, to eliminate all possibility of her reproducing equally brainless offspring.

Before Hurgot touched her, he covered his hands with thin hide mitts.
Navn be sliced
, he thought.
I will not contaminate myself with whatever offworlder vermin she carries
.

Her skin responded to his prodding with more resilience than he expected. That she had suffered from waterlack rather than coldsleep was evident. Her lips and eyelids were swollen and chapped, but her belly felt warm. She had probably tried to eat snow for water, unaware that she could not afford to lose the body heat required to melt ice crystals in her mouth. Yet from wherever she had come, she had not traveled far; the snowbite on her fingers and toes showed a sickly gray that would heal, not the black that promised flesh rot.

"The gods smile upon you, ensleg." It was only another reason to resent her. She had shaleev, that rare As Navn had. Did the headman not remember that a healer's talent was supposed to be devoted exclusively to caring for the men of the tribe?

Hurgot parted the ensleg's long dark hair to check for parasitic infestation—if she was permitted to stay, one of the tribe's women would have to shear her properly—and frowned at a mass of scar tissue beneath a swath of shorter, silvery white hair that measured as long and wide as his hand.
Such a wound should have killed her
.

A soft groan emerged from the ensleg's mouth, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her eyes were tilted like an Iisleg's, and she was obviously human, but that only made her seem all the more unnatural. It was appalling to think that his people shared a common ancestry with such an ensleg being.

He waited for her to focus on his features before he gave her some water from a skin to moisten her mouth. "Tell me your name."

A line formed between her dark brows, and her lips pressed together, opened, and then closed again. The way she regarded him seemed to indicate that she did not understand his speech.

"Do you not speak Iisleg?" What a foolish question. She was an offworlder; of course she did not. It only made the situation that much more frustrating. The only manner in which he might communicate with her would be through a language translation device, such as those the windlords used, but the Iisleg were not permitted such things.

He tapped his shoulder. "Hurgot." He repeated the gesture and his name several times, and then nudged her shoulder and gave her an expectant look.

The ensleg appeared more confused and now perhaps a little afraid.

"Do you not remember?" The head wound she had suffered in the past had been grievous; he had known men with such wounds to lose all knowledge of themselves, their tribe, and the world. Some had been reduced to a perpetual state of infancy, unable to control their limbs or bowels. Those who were unable to care for themselves were removed from camp during the night and taken to the nearest jlorra cavern.

"Dahktar." The female struggled to sit up. "Dahktar."

The word held no meaning for him, but was uncomfortably close to
Raktar
. "Be still. You will only lose your wits again if you try to stand." He pushed at her scrawny shoulders with his hands to emphasize the words.

The ensleg peered up at him and pointed at his shoulder. "Hurgot."

"Yes."

She pointed at her shoulder and looked expectantly at him. It was a perfect mimicry of what he had done, but she wasn't mocking him. She was making the same request of him.

"I don't know who you are." He saw a flicker of disappointment cross her features, but that was the sole reaction she showed. The few ensleg he had encountered during his lifetime had been male slavers, but like other windlords they were as children and flaunted their emotions. It was one reason the Iisleg regarded their former masters with complete contempt.

He turned to see another woman standing inside the flap of the tent. Would the camp's females begin pestering him for a look at the oddity? "I am occupied."

"Even for word from our rasakt?" The female dropped her face wrap, revealing the vivid, sensual features that had once enchanted every male permitted to see them. Over time lines of petulance and malice had scored the beauty, but Sogayi was still considered the loveliest of women. Of course being taken by Navn as kedera had only made her seem more desirable; the headman had his pick of women for first wife, and had paid Sogayi the ultimate compliment of never taking a second.

Hurgot was more interested in being politic than being pulled under the spell of a female, particularly one with as much influence over Navn as Sogayi possessed. "Never, Kedera. How may I serve?"

Sogayi stayed where she was and let her gaze drift over him, lingering on his white hair, wrinkled face, and gnarled hands before she made a rude gesture toward the ensleg. "The rasakt would know the state of this thing."