CHAPTER 1

“So you want permission to fly off to the contested border on the eve of an intergalactic war and dig around until someone notices and decides to kill you,” the Night Admiral said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the sideboard.

Lisinthir watched from his chair, fingers laced over his breast and legs crossed at the knee, a pose he suspected conveyed more arrogance than attention. He knew the wolfine on the other side of the room had read the cue as there was nothing about the Night Admiral that suggested he was insensible to subtlety. But Lisinthir was curious how he would respond to it, particularly when combined with the Eldritch’s request, the one that had netted him this private appointment with a phenomenally busy man. The Night Admiral oversaw the entirety of Fleet’s investigative, intelligence, and black ops arms. He was not ordinarily someone whose schedule was amenable to abrupt rearrangement.

But he’d been asked a question. So he answered. “Yes.”

The Hinichi glanced over his shoulder and cocked a brow, and that expression surprised Lisinthir, and amused him, and he knew that he had discovered an unexpected ally. “All right.”

Lisinthir chuckled, sitting up. “Just that.”

The Hinichi ignored the comment, stirring cream into his cup, the tinkle of silver against fine porcelain carrying in quiet of the large office. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please. Black, if you would.”

The Night Admiral nodded, added a second cup, and poured. He brought both cups on a tray—very civilized, that—and set it on the small table in front of Lisinthir. He took the chair across from him, rather than retreating to the desk... which was, after all, quite a distance from this less formal arrangement, tucked against the window wall overlooking the water. Lisinthir wondered at the water. He hadn’t been told where he was being transported when he stepped over the Pad to come here. He suspected that, like other things, the view was a lie.

Relaxing, the Hinichi said, “Are you surprised, then?”

“That you said yes?” Lisinthir turned the cup until the handle faced him, slipped his fingers through it. “I didn’t have any expectations. I came to learn something and I have. I’m pleased that you made the decision you did, of course, because had you not I would have been forced to pursue the matter on my own recognizance.” He quirked a brow. “Which is why you said yes, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” the wolfine said, unperturbed, but there was a crinkle at his eye that suggested the cheek under it had mounded in a smile hidden by the darkness of his pelt. “It was the only way to have any visibility into the situation. Besides, while I’m sure your Queen could have outfitted you for the job, we can do it better. And better tools will make it more likely you’ll come back with information we can use.”

“A pragmatist,” Lisinthir said. “I approve.”

That brought a laugh from a man, Lisinthir decided, who laughed often… if more frequently with his very interesting eyes than with his mouth. The Hinichi sipped his coffee. “My job demands a certain measure of pragmatism, Lord Nase Galare.”

Strange that the title bothered him. He would have preferred Ambassador. Or, if he was forced to admit, Imtherili. Jahir’s mode of address was growing on him. “I imagine. Shall we discuss the specifics then? I don’t want to tarry overmuch, for reasons you might be able to imagine.”

“That would be best. Though you’ll forgive me if I begin with some parameters I feel can’t be negotiated?”

“If you forgive me for wanting the answer to an impertinent question.”

That brought both the wolfine’s brows up, letting more light into his yellow eyes. “This should be interesting. Go ahead.”

“Is it a technological solution that makes you black with golden eyes? Some sort of glamor? Or have you dyed your fur and filmed your irises?”

The Night Admiral put his cup down and deliberately folded his fingers in front of his chest. That was an obvious bid to put him off the question, but Lisinthir could outwait anyone’s intransigence. He found waiting restful, to be truthful; it was pleasant not to have to lunge into action to secure his safety or his objective. He had learned the skills that had saved him in the Empire first in the forests of his homeworld, and a hunter knew the value of patience.

At last, the Hinichi said, “What makes you ask this question?”

“There was a hair on the cushion, when I sat. It was silver.”

“Which could have been my last guest’s.”

“Possible,” Lisinthir granted. “But unlikely. You’re not the sort of man whose office would be left untidy. You have a staff to keep things clean for you, do you not? And probably machines.” He tried the coffee, found it aromatic and complex, without the bitterness of burnt or cheap blends. A touch floral, perhaps. Maybe a Heliocentrus varietal. “Besides, before coming I did what research I could on your person.”

“And found nothing,” the Hinichi said with a snort.

“Only a chance photograph in a news archive,” Lisinthir said. “Your predecessor. Who was also black with golden eyes.”

“A coincidence.”

Lisinthir couldn’t read the wolfine’s tone: amusement? Caution? He was speaking casually, but his unblinking gaze bespoke a dangerous intensity. “Perhaps. But there is one more thing.” He leaned forward and set the cup on the tray. “You do not carry yourself like a black wolf with golden eyes.”

At last he penetrated the other man’s glacial calm. “What?”

How could he explain it? He couldn’t even explain it to himself. But something about being in danger for so long, riding the edge of his talents where the touch-empathy melded seamlessly with every other more natural sense, heightened his intuition... and all of it agreed. “I read it off you, alet. I couldn’t tell you how. But you move, you act, like someone who is wearing a mask. My guess is the coat color and the eyes, because you meet people’s eyes like someone who does not fear being recognized. And who has that luxury in our arena?” He stretched out a leg on the dense, blue carpet. “So, then. Am I correct?”

There was a world in which the Night Admiral declined to reply—or lied—and their relationship branched from that choice into something that Lisinthir would have found... less tenable. Manageable, but not optimal. But the moment passed, and Lisinthir could see the Hinichi making the decision, answering with a hint of mischief, but without the resignation he’d expected. “Silver. And brown.”

“Brown eyes are lovely.”

The Hinichi chuckled. “And it’s technological. A projection. More reliable than dye. We’ll get you one of the devices since you’ll be slinking around the border worlds. An Eldritch won’t come back from those, no matter how good a fighter he is.”

“Can it make me look like something else, then?” Lisinthir asked, curious.

“Look, feel, smell, and taste like something else,” the Hinichi said. “Like someone shorter, or taller. Furred, feathered, what-have-you. You could present yourself as one of the Akubi and people would be able to touch your head nine feet up from the ground.”

“I don’t imagine I’d feel that touch,” Lisinthir replied, startled.

“Ah ha.” The Night Admiral grinned, white teeth stark against dark muzzle. “You can be surprised. No, you won’t feel it unless the shape is closely mapped to your own skin. It’s best to change as little as possible—that’ll preserve the illusion in other ways. The device can extrapolate your motions to the body language of your target shape, but they’re... mannequins, we’ll say. No matter how good the algorithms are, they won’t be perfect. Which is why I’m not sure how you saw through mine. This really is just a color overlay. There shouldn’t be any discontinuity.”

“I am what I am, alet.”

“I thought you had to touch to do what you do, though.”

“I do,” Lisinthir said. “But my intuition has been... rigorously exercised, shall we say, on a field where to guess incorrectly would have been fatal. It concentrates the mind wonderfully.”

The wolfine snorted, but his eyes were thoughtful. “I can see that.”

“And I would appreciate having one of these items. I imagine there aren’t many of them available.”

“There are consumer models, but... no. One that can do the things a Fleet version can do? The technology isn’t trivial. Even for us.” Another grin, but more genial. “Don’t worry. You won’t be able to lose it.”

No doubt it attached to a person intimately. He was certain he would discover exactly how soon enough. “You were saying then, about the task, and items not open to negotiation?”

“I’m picking the personnel,” the Night Admiral said.

“Did you think I would insist on doing so? Without knowing so much as a name?” Lisinthir asked, unperturbed.

“But you do know a name, don’t you.”

A pause made suddenly electric.

“You were thinking about her, weren’t you,” the Night Admiral said.

“Not… perhaps… until this moment,” Lisinthir replied, and interestingly enough wasn’t sure if it was a lie.

The wolfine eyed him.

“The truth,” Lisinthir said. “I so swear.”

“I’m picking the personnel,” the Night Admiral said again.

“Of course.” Lisinthir sipped from his cup, feeling the other’s gaze as if it could warm his skin over his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose. “You expected me to object?”

“Yes?”

Lisinthir snorted. “Send who you see fit, alet. Allow me to tell you if one of them seems unsuitable, though.”

The wolfine paused, then nodded. “All right. That’s reasonable.”

“And,” Lisinthir added, quieter, “Let her make the choice.”

That earned him a bona fide glare, but there was a time for nonchalance… and a time to answer challenge with defiance. As important as the Night Admiral’s input into the mission was, the wolfine wouldn’t be there, wouldn’t be leading it, and wouldn’t be the one taking the wounds, and that was where Lisinthir drew the line. He met the wolfine’s gaze full-on, let his own implacability surface like fire from banked embers. His lip flared, just a little, over a canine, and it mattered not at all that it was less pointed than the Night Admiral’s.

The Hinichi didn’t back down, which pleased. Yielding was one thing. Weakness, another entirely. “I won’t let anyone go on a mission this sensitive who might become a liability.”

“Fine. But let her make the choice. After your doctors say whether she can return to duty. Or…has she already?”

“We’re not discussing this,” the Night Admiral said with a touch of a growl.

“Fine,” Lisinthir said. “So long as we have an understanding. Do we?”

Another silence, this one tense with the contest. Lisinthir enjoyed it entirely, and that, he thought, was why he won. The Night Admiral found no pleasure in such wars. Which led him to another piece of the puzzle, one he hadn’t even known he’d been assembling.

“Yes, we do. I’ll put the question in front of her… if the healers say it’s safe for her to go.”

“That’s all I ask,” Lisinthir said, knowing that it wasn’t, and they both knew that as well. They were understanding one another quite comfortably now. Which is why it was the right time to add, “You’re a woman, aren’t you.”

The Night Admiral stopped short in the act of reaching for his—her—his cup. “What the hell? How—” He bared his teeth. “There is no possible way. None.”

“As I said… I am a special case.” Lisinthir picked up the wolfine’s coffee, handing it over with a benign smile. “Aren’t you glad I’m on your side?”

A pause, then the Night Admiral laughed reluctantly. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“Thank you, I do try. So… you were saying about timing?”

“Fine, we can change the subject.” The Hinichi lifted a finger. “But as far as you know—”

“The Night Admiral is what he seems, as he should be, and as he has always been since he was first hired for the job,” Lisinthir said. “And we shall do our best to ensure that no shapechanged Chatcaava borrowing an Eldritch’s abilities will ever get close enough to you to divine otherwise.”

Timing had turned out to be the most difficult of the topics, not just because the Night Admiral needed to muster his resources before he could field them on Lisinthir’s behalf, but because on the broken Chatcaavan vessel where he’d almost died, Lisinthir had dreamed the Emperor’s command to stay clear until he was called. Nothing else could have held him back from the conflict, knowing his lovers were in danger, but he believed in the veracity of the dream… and that put him in the uncomfortable position of having to wait, no matter his personal preferences. Normally he would have found the situation intolerable.

Normally. Because another of the Hinichi’s demands involved him reconditioning a body only recently rescued by surgery and released from nearly a year of abuses, and this he could bow to with a good will. He would be of no use to the Emperor weak. And that, he thought, would dovetail nicely with his promise to his cousin’s education. The weeks the Night Admiral had requested—required—felt excessive. But he could use them to convalesce and train, and have his cousin at his knee, and the end of that particular holiday would see him prepared for whatever was to come. Too, he had work to do before—gifts he wanted for his cousin, and supplies he needed to buy himself given how much he’d lost in the Empire. As ridiculous as it seemed, he had almost no clothes or luggage to his name anymore: what little had survived his tenure on the throneworld had been lost with the Quicklance.

All that could be done at Starbase Alpha, where his confederates would be gathering; missions were not launched from his location: in orbit around Selnor with its significant civilian build-up, Fleet Central was an administrative hub, limited in the amount of military traffic it could support. As soon as he could book transport, Lisinthir would be decamping for the much larger base at Alpha. But he had one errand first, which was how he came to be sitting in the waiting room at Fleet Central Hospital, hands clasped on one knee. He imagined he’d earned the curious glances he was ignoring. Bad enough to be one of the few, rare Eldritch seen in the Alliance, but the coat Jahir had had made for him was a showy thing, particularly with the sword at his hip visible against its folds, resting its scabbard’s tip on the floor.

His quarry came through the doors some half hour later and paused at the sight of him. “Well, they told me someone was waiting for me, but I admit I didn’t think my luck was going to be this good.”

Lisinthir grinned. “So if I say I am here to buy you a drink, will you faint from shock?”

“I’d think about it,” the Harat-Shar pard said, grinning back. “But I can hardly enjoy you unconscious, can I? A drink sounds great, thanks. I know a place if you don’t?”

“Lead, I follow.”

“Oh, Angels!” the other said, rolling her eyes heavenward. “If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me.”

That is how he found himself sharing a table in the back of a dusky bar with one of the Harat-Shariin healer-assists who’d helped him through his initial acclimation to the Alliance’s environment. Elena Dovin and her brother Kazimir had run him through more tests and physicals than he cared to remember, but he owed that medical team his ability to function at higher gravity and in good health…and he hadn’t forgotten the assists who’d been at his bedside most of the time, ready with an off-color joke or a steady hand. Elena was the one he’d been able to find on-duty, so she was the one he’d requested, but he would have taken either, or both.

“I’m flattered that you’re here,” Elena said. “Don’t mistake me. I’d be glad to look at your face any day, though frankly you’ve done some damage to yourself; I assume that’s why you’re drinking tonic water instead of something more recreational but toxic. Do I even want to know why you’ve got those hollows under your cheeks?”

“No,” Lisinthir said with a chuckle. “And I’m not sure I’d be allowed to tell you if I wanted to.”

“Naturally,” the Harat-Shar said, shaking her head. She turned her beer on the table, breaking the circles of condensation on the surface. “So, I’m assuming you’re here for some reason. Are you?”

“I am.” Lisinthir grinned. “You’ll laugh when I tell you.”

“I will! This should be good.” The woman put her cheek in a palm and said, “Hit me.”

“I am making a probably unpardonable assumption about your sexual preferences based on the jokes you enjoyed shocking me with when I first arrived. I need someone to teach me those things.”

Elena had pale green eyes; it made the abrupt dilation of her pupils obvious. “I really am dreaming, aren’t I? An Eldritch is asking me to induct him into sexual perversity? That can’t possibly be anything but a wet dream I’m having right now. But no, you’re serious? You can’t be serious.”

Lisinthir hid his amusement in his tonic water.

“You are serious,” Elena breathed. And then frowned. “Why? Why me?”

“I’m surprised you haven’t yet said something about your stunning attractiveness?”

“Not a joke,” Elena said, and covered Lisinthir’s drink with a hand. “No, don’t use that to hide your expression from me. You cover them too well without props. Talk to me, alet.”

“I have a friend I suspect needs rough treatment,” Lisinthir said. “And I have no idea how to give it safely.” He tilted his head. “I don’t know that you are the person to instruct me, but I had the notion that you would be able to refer me to someone who did.”

“But?” Elena asked, frowning. “I sense there’s a but.”

Lisinthir inclined his head. “But I hope it will be you, or your brother, or both. We have established some level of body-trust already, since you saw me through the regimens when I first arrived. And you are healers-assist… I must imagine you have an understanding of injury and healing that might be difficult to find elsewhere. I don’t have as much time here as I wish, but I’m hoping what time I do have will be enough for the basics.”

The Harat-Shar slumped back in her chair and blew out a breath. “My. You really are asking.”

“I am, yes.”

Elena folded her arms, chin lowered and ears twitched back. She had one of the more feral-looking faces Lisinthir had seen: almost a true animal’s muzzle, with arresting black stripes framing her mouth and leading back to streaks around her eyes. Her body was nearly androgynous, as hard as a man’s in some ways; her brother, oddly, was softer. They were a genial pair, and he hoped one of them would consent to aid him.

“All right,” she said. “You raise good points. And… angels, how could I say no?” She scrubbed a hand through her hair, putting tufts of it awry. “Who would?”

“If you’re busy—”

“No, it’s all right,” she said. “Kazimir’s on vacation this week and my supervisor’s been pushing me to take some time off. This one is a pretty big ‘hey, Elena, stop working so hard’ sign; I wouldn’t want the angels to decide they needed to find a bigger stick.” She grinned at him, lopsided, all her whiskers arching. “Besides, as presents to Kazimir go, ‘hey, brother, let’s go demonstrate kinky sex for a handsome Eldritch’ can’t really be beat.” She sighed and laughed. “Actually, I think I’m going to ruin every gifting holiday for years to come. There won’t be any topping it. Pun not intended.”

“That’s a ‘yes’, then,” Lisinthir said.

“That’s a yes,” she agreed. “And sorry about smudging your glass.”

Lisinthir chuckled. “Your instincts were good. And interested me.” At her glance, he said, “You moved to control the situation. Is this the part of your personality that makes you attractive to those who would kneel?”

Her eyes widened again. “I see that teaching you is going to be….”

“Interesting? Irritating? Difficult?”

She let loose a peal of laughter. “Fun! It’s going to be fun. So let’s arrange to meet, ah? Somewhere more private. You can tell us both what you need and we can tell you how long it will take to dump all that knowledge into your head, or where you can finish learning it on your own. If it’s as short a time as you’re suggesting, I’m going to assign you a lot of homework in simulations and reading... and I’m going to expect you to do it before you touch anyone.”

“You have my promise.”

She nodded and took out a pocket data tablet. “All right. Let’s talk schedules then.”

“Excellent,” Lisinthir said. “Whenever you’re free, I am at your disposal, alet.”

“Better call me arii,” Elena said, reaching for her beer and thumbing through her calendar. “If I’m going to be talking you through the fine points of kink, we’re going to be on more intimate terms than ‘hi, alet’ and ‘greetings, alet.’”

“Arii, then,” Lisinthir said, amused. “Let us make a plan.”

The first thing the Ambassador had needed, and the thing he had never ceased to thirst for even after he had come to her for other things, was information. Information was also what drove the Emperor’s endless curiosity—why ask so many questions if the answers weren’t useful for something? So, left to herself, the Slave Queen decided that she, too, would try to learn what she could and see what use she could put that information to. The Emperor had helpfully left her a tool for that purpose, so she settled in front of the rarely used console in her suite, slid her talons into it, and woke it.

The interface wasn’t unfamiliar, thanks to her upbringing. She’d had some freedom in the cage she’d inhabited as her sire’s offspring, before she’d become the pawn to be denied to the enemy and later the Slave Queen; while she hadn’t been able to do much with the computer available to her, she’d at least been able to use it to listen to music or look at pictures. The Emperor, though, had given her every access possible, and she found the limitless potential of it paralyzing. What should she do first? She’d spent her life starved for the outside world and this little square inset into one of her walls... this was a window out of her prison. She trailed her claw tips over her mouth, thinking. He’d given her more than the tools. He’d given her a suggestion for a beginning, and the gift of the Knife had implied another avenue of inquiry. This tower was now hers to oversee in his name, so... she began with that. How many inhabitants did it have? How many females shared this gilded cage? How many children?

When the Knife arrived in the late morning, as was becoming his habit, she was waiting for him. “What does it mean?” she asked. “When a number has scratches?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Here.” She brought him to the console and woke it so she could point to the data, still shining green where she’d left it. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, it is an estimate. The number of scratches gives you a sense of how poor an estimate. Three scratches are the most a number can carry, so those numbers have very poor confidence. You shouldn’t rely on them.”

“I don’t understand,” the Queen said, sitting back. “Those are the population numbers for the females and children in this tower. How can there not be an exact count? How can the males know if they’re all accounted for?”

The Knife lowered his head and wings, as if he was... embarrassed? “They can’t know, my Queen. Nor do they care to.”

“But... these individuals are the Emperor’s property!”

“Yes.”

“Surely someone would want to keep track of that?” the Queen said, bewildered. “Why, any of them could escape or be stolen by some other male....”

“And it would be accounted no great loss, I’m afraid. There is property that matters, my Queen, and then there is property that consumes resources, food, attention. Here, females and children are considered liabilities, not valuables.” Perhaps her expression was telling, because he said, “It is not like where I’m from, my Queen, where females and children are necessary to ensure the continuity of one’s livelihood and property. Here they are of questionable utility. Males come here to contest for power over multiple worlds, not just a small farm; females and children would be a distraction to them. The uses for females here are limited: a male can sate themselves with them, as all males have physical needs. He can lend them to allies to try to distract them with carnal adventures. Or he can give them out as rewards to be sent back to a male’s home: a male needs, at some point, to have an heir, and better his own blood than someone else’s, or so most of the system lords would tell you.”

It was nothing more than she had heard all her life, in some form or other, but somehow seeing it represented in cold green letters made it real to her in a way an entire life in captivity hadn’t. The Slave Queen stared at the console and drew in a careful breath, setting her dismay aside. It didn’t matter what the court thought of the females and children in the tower, if the Emperor now considered them something worth guarding. And he would not have given her a Knife if he hadn’t believed it.

She had proven it to him herself, hadn’t she? She had shown everyone that females could be more than decorations. She had a brain, thoughts of her own...

“So the system lords would tell you?” she asked, puzzled. She waved a hand at the pillow across from hers. “Do others disagree?”

“The Emperor’s navy is different,” the Knife said, sitting across from her cautiously. “There he allows the sons of lords and the sons of crofters to rise according to their ambition and ability. In such a system, your heir might not be your blood, but a protégé with whom you share something more important: your beliefs and your goals.”

Had it only been a matter of time before the Emperor remade the Empire in the image of the navy he’d already reshaped? Perhaps before it all ended, they would not call him Emperor, but Change itself. “That is....”

“Outrageous.” The Knife smiled. “And yet it works.” He hesitated, then offered, “It is so with the aliens, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. But... more so there than for us, yes. That I believe.” She studied him. “The Emperor says only the best of the Navy draw the duty here, to guard. That it is a reward.”

“It is so, yes, my Queen. The duty is limited: usually we serve only a year before we return. But it remains on our record. We earn more pay because of it, and are promoted faster because we have shown we can be trusted.”

“With the Emperor’s property,” the Queen said, frowning. “Which is considered so valueless it isn’t even properly counted in the records.”

“It doesn’t make sense from the surface, does it? But if you see it from overhead, it does, particularly in the context of history and its changes. It isn’t that we have guarded the property that makes us trustworthy. It’s that we respect that it is the Emperor’s and neither touch it nor allow it to be touched by others.”

As usual, it was about the males. And yet... “The females and children in this tower are no longer valueless by the Emperor’s reckoning, Knife. He wishes them guarded because they may become assets.”

The Knife leaned back. “That is... that is revolutionary, my Queen. And yet, it makes perfect sense.”

She eyed him. “Yes. I am surprised you think it so.”

“It is how he has always worked,” the Knife said with enthusiasm. “Taking what other males assume to be useless, looking at it differently, and discovering how it can become a tool for domination. He is a brilliant thinker, my Queen. Do you know what he intends for the harem populace?”

“No.” And then, seeing the Emperor’s face searching hers in memory, she added, “He intends me to decide what they can be used for.”

The Knife’s fingers tightened on his knees. “And what have you decided?”

“I have decided that I do not know enough about the tower, the palace, and the throneworld,” the Slave Queen said. “The Emperor has granted me access to the computer so that I can mend this fault.”

“Information is always important,” the Knife agreed. “One cannot win wars without information... information, and logistics.”

“Logistics,” she murmured.

“The details of how things are accomplished,” he said. “It’s no use to command a thing to be done. You must know how to do it.”

“And to know how to do it, you have to learn,” the Slave Queen finished. “So perhaps you can begin my education?”

“Gladly, my Queen.”

A beginning, she thought, with a final glance at the console. Perhaps not the triumphant one she’d hoped for, to divine all the information she required without external aid. But if the Ambassador had not scrupled to accept the help of a slave, she would not turn away a male eager to serve her need. There was more than one way to fly a storm, and given the size of the one facing her, she would use every tool at her disposal...

...as her Emperor did. She smiled and bent toward the Knife to listen.

The summons came late, but come it did. Jahir was working through yet another lesson on Chatcaavan grammar on the day it arrived, and after reading it went to the kitchen to place a pot on the stove. There was not a day he was not grateful for the full kitchen in their apartment…and while he had initially used cooking and baking as a tool to help his partner past personal turmoil, habit had long since solidified the association in his own head as well. The kitchen was safety. Looking at his reflection in the bottom of the empty pot, Jahir wondered what his household would have thought of it: the future lord of the Seni Galare, cooking like a menial, and preferring it. If he looked at his hands in the right light—he twisted the left one until he could see it—he even had a burn scar from handling a pan, there in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. A minuscule patch of skin slightly less bright a pearlescent white, so easy to overlook… unlike the ones he now had on his side. The healers on Veta had offered to abrade those off and resurface the skin, but he’d declined. Partly because after Lisinthir’s near death in surgery, he no longer trusted Alliance medicine to know enough about Eldritch physiology to address even the most casual of issues, and partly because… they were his scars.

He touched the worst of them, between his ribs. Shifted the topmost layer of fabric, felt it crinkle. Then, resolute, went for the cream.

Fifteen minutes later, when Vasiht’h padded in the door, the kerinne had been simmering long enough to have perfumed the air with the scent of cinnamon. Jahir had tried adding a little cocoa… then a little more… then he’d given up and started a second pot of kerinne because the first had become something like hot chocolate, if hot chocolate started with a cream base and became denser from there.

Stopping short, Vasiht’h said, “We should dip something in whatever it is I’m smelling.”

Lifting a spoon from the pot and turning it upside down, Jahir watched the chocolate cling without dripping. “Some sort of pastry?”

“Beignets? Churros? Sweet bread?” Vasiht’h shucked off his messenger bag and hung it by the door. “We’ll have to genie it.”

“Whatever you think would work?” Jahir offered him the spoon.

The Glaseah trailed a finger through the chocolate, licked, squinted. “Mmm. Churros. The cinnamon is barely tangible after everything else you’ve added to it, so I bet it would be good to have the flavor in the dough to pull it out.”

“Churros, then,” Jahir said. He hesitated. Nothing in the mindline suggested his news should wait, but….

“He sent for you?” Vasiht’h asked, pulling the plates out of the pantry.

Jahir exhaled. “I thought you would be distressed.”

Vasiht’h snorted. “I’d be more distressed if he hadn’t. He’s overdue, isn’t he?”

“Somewhat, yes.”

“I’m hoping there’s a benign reason.”

“It is probably administrative.” Jahir ladled the chocolate spread into a bowl and checked the kerinne. Too heavy for him—he brought down a mug for Vasiht’h and said, “Would you ask for an espresso for me?”

“Black, I assume.”

Looking at the contents of the pots on the stove, Jahir said ruefully, “Nothing less will serve.”

Vasiht’h chuckled.

Over drink and churros dipped in chocolate cream, they spoke of normal things: the errands they needed to spread between them, their caseload, the gifts they were to send to Vasiht’h’s nieces and nephews for the cluster of approaching birthdays. It was only after they’d put paid to the meal that Jahir broached the topic. “What will you do while I’m gone?”

He’d been expecting discomfort. The level of uncertainty that clouded the mindline surprised him. Looking up, he said, “Arii?”

“I thought I’d go home while you were away,” Vasiht’h said, threading his fingers together on the table. A deep breath, more felt via the mindline than heard. “And talk to a priestess.”

Impressions of children. Of babies. Of his partner’s babies. Stunned, Jahir straightened. “You want to start a family?”

“I think it’s past time,” Vasiht’h said. Shyly, “You don’t mind?”

“No,” Jahir said, his gladness swamping them both, and his shock. And pain, that too. He wanted very badly for his partner to have children, when he’d always been so good with them. That it would change their lives bothered him not a whit; it was for lack of change that his people had been strangulating, and he’d fled the homeworld in search of change because he’d known it to be difficult but necessary for growth. But these… these would be the children who would help him bury Vasiht’h, and their arrival inevitably heralded that future, no matter how far over the horizon it lurked.

“I know,” Vasiht’h said, voice husky.

Jahir reached over and set his longer hand over his friend’s clasped ones. “How will it work?”

Clearing his throat, Vasiht’h said, “I go there and apply at the temple. That might take a while; they have to work me into a queue, and how long I wait depends on how many people are in line in front of me. After that, I find a priestess whose genetic profile works well with mine, we make arrangements, and when she’s done gestating I end up with children. Everything else we have to figure out. I’m thinking I just want to raise them here with you.”

“You can’t marry this priestess,” Jahir guessed.

“No. They’re there to… well, to breed. Our priesthood is basically a network of surrogates, serving Her by creating in the flesh on behalf of those who can’t bring themselves to do it.” Vasiht’h freed one of his hands for his mug, but left the other under Jahir’s, palm up. “After I sign up I have to stay for the educational program, which is about taking care of children and… basically a how-to for being a parent. Since that takes a few weeks, I thought that would be a good thing to do while you were gone.”

“And then I’ll be… an uncle? A… foster father?” He found the idea wondrous and strange. He had only barely begun to understand who Jahir the future husband might be. Jahir the parent was an entirely new frontier.

“I know,” Vasiht’h said. “Me too.” And then added, with a humor that did not obscure the cautious note that shadowed the words in the mindline, “But Sediryl might like having a suitor with experience raising children. It’ll look good on your list of marriageable qualities?”

“I don’t even know if she wants children,” Jahir admitted. Not just to the obvious question, but to the tacit one as well. He had never been willing to acknowledge his desire for Sediryl, even to Vasiht’h, who’d met her. Especially to Vasiht’h, who’d met her. But confessing it to Lisinthir had made it ridiculous not to admit it to his dearest friend, and saying it now made him wonder why he’d waited so long. It felt natural. A relief.

They looked at one another in silence, savoring the strangeness of the ease of it.

Vasiht’h sighed a very, very long sigh. “Goddess, Jahir. We really did come out of all that changed.”

“For the better, I hope,” Jahir murmured.

“I think so.” The Glaseah curled his fingers around Jahir’s. “When are you leaving?”

“There’s no urgency, or at least, none that I can read from the note. We have time to arrange our caseload. A few days?”

“Sounds good. I can leave at any time too. My sister wants to see me, so I’m going to stop by Tam-ley before I head home to Anseahla.”

For a long moment, Jahir savored the warmth of those fingers in his, the brush of the alien palm, so familiar after so many years... and so unlike the one he would shortly be touching. Vasiht’h was the beloved Other who had drawn him from his first stasis, the one inspired by his homeworld’s calcification... the partner who had given him a stable base from which to grasp the stars and make them home. Lisinthir was the beloved Known, and from that touch, he thought he would be ready to launch into sharing that home with an extended family. A wife, if Sediryl would have him when her human lover passed away. Adopted children, when Vasiht’h returned with his kits. Eventually, he hoped, children of his own.

“It’s going to be great,” Vasiht’h said suddenly, and from the champagne fizz in the mindline he was as surprised at his comment as Jahir. They grinned at one another.

“The Goddess speaks?”

“Maybe!” The Glaseah chuckled. “What about your pattern sense?”

“Does not seem to disagree, but it was never so strong as to speak with authority.”

“Then we’ll just have to make do with self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“The best kind,” Jahir said.

“The only kind,” Vasiht’h said, amused. “As far as I’m concerned anyway. We should start working out our client schedule around our vacations. I’ll wash the dishes if you clear the table.”

“Done.”

They spent a profitable evening thus, and began their respective packing, and a peculiar thing it was, to be preparing for separate trips. Jahir didn’t linger on it. Their times apart were rarities, and what he needed to learn now was best learned alone. Stretched on his bed while the Glaseah showered, he woke the data tablet and brought up the message again.

 

Cousin—

                I await your pleasure.

—L

 

Handwritten in their tongue, and in the aggressive neutrality of the gray mode, which left him the blame for immediately reading the innuendo into the invitation... save that he knew Lisinthir had been smiling when he wrote it. With his eyes, in that sly way of his, all dangerous intimations and urbane masks. Jahir rested the corner of the tablet on his brow and chuckled. His cousin, the Nase Galare heir, Ambassador, duelist, and lover of dragons. And now, perhaps, teacher of recalcitrant family as well. I await your pleasure, indeed.

It wanted a response. He handwrote his in kind, and shaded it white for the purity of the spirit, of holy vows.

 

Imtherili—

                I come, at your request.

—J

 

Let him read all the innuendo into the title and the promise and the words, and shade it with the beauty of what servitude became in their people, at its best. That was their relationship: holy, carnal, gentle and cruel, sanctuary and challenge.

“You’re amused,” Vasiht’h observed, padding into their bedroom, freshly washed.

“Composing my response to my cousin,” Jahir said. “As in everything between us, it becomes a complexity.”

“It becomes Eldritch, you mean.” Vasiht’h dropped onto his nest of pillows alongside the bed and yawned.

Smiling, Jahir reached for the lamp. “Yes. Shall I...?”

“Please. We’ve got a few long days ahead of us, moving things around.”

Jahir tapped the lamp off. As they settled, Vasiht’h added, “We might need to find a new place to live. Someplace with more rooms.”

The mindline was rigid with anxiety. Jahir tasted it, touched it, rolled it in mental fingers that felt more acute, somehow, since their experience on the courier vessel. “Then,” he said, “we’ll find one.” The rush of relief was warm as a blanket, and he could use it as one and did. Tucked under it and the real blankets in all their layers, Jahir added, “Did you think I would say aught else?”

A smile he felt rather than saw. “No. But I still worried.”

Jahir closed his eyes. “We are moving on, arii. No less can we do and remain faithful to They who made us.”

“Amen,” Vasiht’h murmured. And softer, on the memory of a warm nocturnal breeze, Love you.

And you, Jahir answered, and they slept.