CHAPTER 4

Sehvi smelled like tart citrus. It had been so long since Vasiht’h had been able to bury his nose in her shoulder fur that he’d almost forgotten the happy associations of fur shampoo and family. But after far too many years spent communicating almost entirely by telepresence, he was finally in her arms, and the memory was still vivid and present, spilling years of their lives together back into his heart.

“In my arms and in my home!” Sehvi added, leaning back just enough to look at his face. “Which you’ve never visited in your life.”

“It’s a nice planet,” Vasiht’h said. “But the only thing it’s got to recommend it is in this room right now.” He glanced over her second back. “Well, almost the only thing. Where are my nephews?”

“Over at a friend’s,” she said, chuckling. “They’re gregarious children. They should be home for dinner, along with Kovihs. Who is not with the children. He’s at the hospital overseeing some finicky bit of research in the lab that he insists couldn’t wait a day.”

“Of course it couldn’t,” Vasiht’h said, amused. And added, “Oh, but it’s good to see you, ariishir! And you look well. I’m so glad.”

“It’s good to see you too, big brother. Though I admit I want to know why.”

Vasiht’h set his messenger bag down on one of the low, softly-stuffed couches and started on the buckles holding the remainder of his luggage to his barrel. “It’s not enough that I wanted to see you and your kits? You don’t come back to Anseahla much anymore.”

“Call it mother’s intuition. Or sister’s, in this case.” Sehvi padded past him to the kitchen. “I’ll put kerinne on. Do you want biscuits or cookies?”

“Is both an acceptable answer?”

She snorted. “You sound like your partner. Where is he? Some sort of conference you didn’t want to attend?”

Vasiht’h set his second set of bags down and went to sit at the table with its legend of nicks and scrapes. “He’s off losing his virginity to a friend.”

Sehvi looked over her shoulder at him, incredulous.

Holding up his hands, Vasiht’h said, “Goddess’s own truth.”

“I’m not sure what’s more astonishing,” his sister mused. “The fact that he’s probably older than our great-grandparents and he’s still a virgin, or the fact that after staying a virgin so long he’s losing it to a friend. He doesn’t seem the type to hand something like that away on a whim.”

There was a small fat sugar bowl shaped like a whale on the table. Their parents had always had a sugar bowl at the table, but that one had been a plain battered pot. Vasiht’h wondered at the whimsy of this one, where it had come from, what the story was. Everything in this kitchen suggested a story. Turning the bowl in place to look at the tail, he said, “It’s not a whim on his part. Just complicated.”

He could practically see her rolled eyes. “Of course it is.”

“Eldritch,” he said, and she laughed. Having heard about Jahir since the moment Vasiht’h met him, Sehvi didn’t have to be told anything else. That was part of the ease of being with her, he realized: that she understood the relationship that defined his adult life better than anyone else he knew. He’d always been able to relax around Sehvi when they were growing up. That hadn’t changed, even now, and he was grateful as the tension shed from him like water from a shaken coat.

It was a sunny day, one of those days balanced perfectly between summer and fall in places with temperate climates, where the light falling through the flexglass doors to the patio had a golden clarity. Kovihs was only a semester from finishing the work that would confer a doctorate in genetic engineering research; Sehvi had graduated earlier as a fertility specialist. The demand for that job was so high she could have lived anywhere, but she had stayed on Tam-ley, where she’d met her husband, so he could finish his degree. It really was a beautiful world, from what he’d seen of it, and Sehvi’s salary had netted them a beautiful parcel in a small rural community, along with the Pad she used to commute to work. Looking at the large, open great room with its high-ceilinged kitchen and soft, well-used furniture, Vasiht’h couldn’t believe his little sister had grown up, and so completely. That they both had, really. When had that happened?

The smell of cinnamon and cassia wafted to him on a cross-breeze from the open window over the sink. Sehvi brought an entire pot of kerinne, along with a tray of assorted sweets: tart berries, true-almond cookies, meringues, little cracker rounds with white, sharp cheeses. “Pour for us,” she said, leaving it on the table, and as he did she returned to the kitchen for a chocolate cake. At Vasiht’h’s stare, she said, “You have no idea how many calories small growing boys go through.”

“No,” Vasiht’h said. “But I will soon.”

To her credit, Sehvi didn’t drop the cake. But she did gape at him over it.

“That’s where I’m going after this,” Vasiht’h continued, sounding far calmer than he felt. He spooned some of the berries onto his plate. “I think it’s time.”

“What prompted this?” Sehvi asked, still staring.

“Why are you acting so surprised?” Vasiht’h sipped from the cup. “You knew it was a matter of time before I made the decision.”

“Yes, but… I’ve been waiting so long that I’m suspicious. And you admitted to Jahir being off having sexual adventures too easily, so that’s not what’s bothering you.” She eyed him. “So confess already, ariihir. Why are you suddenly concerned with your biological legacy?”

Was he? Vasiht’h toyed with his cup. He’d never thought of it in terms like that. More like… he didn’t want to miss the experience of being a parent. “You’re right. I don’t care why Jahir and I are apart right now… in fact, I think it’s a good thing, what he’s doing. He was wound too tight. But….” He drew in a breath. “I do care that we might be apart in the future for other reasons, and I’m trying not to go magnifying my worries until they poison everything.”

Sehvi paused in the act of reaching for the cake server. “Goddess,” she said. “This sounds serious.”

“I’ve seen the Chatcaava,” Vasiht’h said abruptly.

His sister withdrew her hand. Folding it and the other on the table, she said, “When was this?”

“Just a few weeks ago.” He dragged in a breath. “I met them, and they’re terrible.” He thought of the Slave Queen, twitched at characterizing her that way. But he’d never met her. And Aksivaht’h knew her own people had mutilated and lacquered her wings. “Jahir owes fealty to his Queen, Sehvi, and he might be obliged to fight them.”

Sehvi exhaled in a hiss and pulled her hand over her brow, mussing her forelock. “Goddess Almighty, ariihir.”

Vasiht’h took another sip of the kerinne. His sister served it with water and made it nearly thick enough to stand a spoon in, so he dipped one of the almond cookies in it. He could feel her eyes on him as he ate.

“So, he’s going to war, and you have to stay home,” Sehvi said, quiet.

“Maybe,” Vasiht’h demurred.

“Maybe?” she repeated.

Vasiht’h rolled his lower shoulders, at the wing joint. “It’s not like a formal military. He has a choice. I think, anyway. And I don’t know if he knows what he wants. He hates violence, but he feels strongly about his duty. If he thinks he can do good fighting, he’ll want to fight. But hate it.” He took one of the meringues and broke it in half, brushing the sugar crumbles away. “If you ask him you’ll get a different answer depending on when you ask.”

“But?”

“But—” Vasiht’h thought of Jahir’s eyes, remembered him standing, bloodied, bearing up Lisinthir’s slack body. “He’ll go. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

Sehvi shook her head. “No wonder you want kits now. At least they’ll give you something of your own to concentrate on while he’s away.”

“That’s the thing,” Vasiht’h admitted, quieter. “I’m not sure that he should go alone.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I wonder myself.” He managed a wan smile. “But I managed to survive two fights against the Chatcaava, so maybe I could survive twenty or thirty? How many fights do you need to win a war?”

“A war the size of the one the Alliance and the Empire would have?” Sehvi asked sharply. “A lot more than twenty or thirty. You’re not a soldier, ariihir. What business have you got on a battlefield? Or a ship fighting another ship?”

“I don’t know.” Vasiht’h pushed the plate away as his stomach knotted. “That’s… that’s one of the reasons I’m here. Sehvi, I feel lost.”

She studied him, then said, “Well, then, we’re in the wrong place. Come on.” She stood and tugged on his arm until he followed her to the soft bag couch. Pushing him down onto it, she waited for him to settle before she wound herself around him. Vasiht’h knew many people who were unable to imagine how Glaseah managed to cuddle as much as they purportedly did, given their number of limbs and the awkwardness of their centauroid configuration. But his brothers and sisters had been cuddling so long, and he and Sehvi in particular, that they just fell into it as if they were still children. Vasiht’h inhaled the tart lemonpeel smell of her fur and shuddered.

“Now,” she said. “Tell me.”

“You’ve met Jahir,” Vasiht’h said, low. “You know how he is.”

“Gallant. Noble. Self-sacrificing to the point where you want to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him.”

Vasiht’h huffed a laugh. “Yes, that. Anyway. We were sent to pick up his cousin from the Empire’s border, from a Chatcaavan ship delivering him. His cousin was the ambassador.”

“An Eldritch,” Sehvi said, dubious.

“You’d believe it if you met him.” Vasiht’h inhaled, found the warm skin-smell of his sister beneath the fur now that he’d had his nose pressed up against her cheek for a while. “Anyway. I had… I had a complete meltdown on that ship, ariishir. I didn’t want to be part of the war.”

“And you think Jahir will want it. Or at least, that he’ll figure it out.”

“Jahir has to do it. It’s a… a feudal promise thing. And of course he said that he’d love me no matter what I decided, but he had to say it to me because I was exploding and it was… it was awful. I wasn’t what he needed me to be while facing what we were facing, and we might have died. It was bad.”

She pulled her head back just enough to be able to stare him in one eye.

“It was bad,” Vasiht’h repeated. He flinched, remembering. “But we made it home, and now… well. The war’s coming. No, I’ll be honest. It’s probably already started. And I still don’t want to be part of it, but I failed Jahir once already by coming apart on him on the shuttle. I don’t want to suck the strength out of him when he’s going to need it. And I don’t…” He hesitated.

“You don’t want to be the cowardly partner, either.” She fanned a feathered ear. “I could say that plenty of people say goodbye to their Fleet spouses while those spouses go to fight, and that doesn’t make them less worthy. But I’m guessing that wouldn’t help.”

“No,” Vasiht’h said. “I know I’m not a coward. It was hard for me, but I managed both fights. I was even useful. I guess that’s the problem. I know I can do it. But I still don’t want to. Not really.”

Sehvi didn’t answer immediately, and that more than anything made him feel better. If she’d had some glib response to his troubles, that would have proven they were petty. And the solid weight of her against his side was more comfort than he’d had in longer than he could remember. It wasn’t that Jahir didn’t give him everything he was capable of… but he gave… everything he was capable of. And an Eldritch, even as forthcoming an Eldritch as Jahir, couldn’t give his body freely, even in the most casual way. Every single one of Jahir’s touches was freighted with enormous meaning. It couldn’t be comforting because it was too busy being momentous.

But Sehvi’s hug was just a hug. It didn’t cost her anything to give it. And there was something wholesome about accepting it, knowing that.

Maybe, Vasiht’h thought, that was the instinct that had spurred him to detour here before continuing to Anseahla. For years now he’d been living on the terms he and Jahir had reached after compromise, and unavoidably those terms meant there was a dash of high-minded Eldritch poetry to his life. That there was a sense of great deeds and grand designs to it. He loved that about Jahir, that the Eldritch brought that romance to his life, and he knew Jahir needed the mundanities Vasiht’h offered in trade. Needed, and valued them. It was the best kind of compromise, because it gave so much to its participants.

But the Chatcaavan war and the Galare part in it was too much poetry. He needed to bury his nose in fur that smelled familiar, watch Glaseahn kits tumble over one another and get into too much trouble, and carry picnic hampers strapped to his back rather than medpacks. He needed grounding, and he was grateful beyond words that Sehvi had encouraged him to stay as long as he needed.

“You haven’t said anything,” he said at last.

“I don’t think there’s anything to say.” Sehvi shifted against him, and for once she sounded grave. “Whatever happens, you’re going to make the choice you can live with at the moment. Until the moment comes, you won’t know what it is… and no advice will prepare you for it. Prayer, maybe. But advice?” She shook her head. “I can’t give it to you. I’m not that wise.”

He slid his arms around her waist and hugged her tightly. “Would it be cliché to say that’s one of the wisest things you’ve said?”

She sighed. “Figures. The only time I can be accused of wisdom is when I’m busy denying I have it.”

Vasiht’h grinned.

“You’ll stay a while?”

“I’m in no rush. He won’t be back for two weeks.”

“Good. Because if I’m not mistaken…” Sehvi trailed off, ear fanning. They both heard the sound of a door opening. “…those are your nephews, and I haven’t told them you were coming.”

Which was all the warning Vasiht’h had before all three of them spilled into the room, saw him, and uttered shrieks of delight. The dense body of his first nephew bowled him over the couch, and then he had his arms full of exuberant children, all competing with one another for his attention and, apparently, his judgment over which of them could talk the loudest and fastest. He laughed through it and as he tried to calm them down he thought of the road he’d decided to walk. This was what he could expect at the end of it.

He found he couldn’t wait.

Many factors might have conspired to trouble Jahir’s sleep. The agitation of travel, certainly. The nagging guilt over having pushed Lisinthir into deflowering him ahead of schedule—could he laugh about the term now? And the astonishing revelation that he was apparently some sort of Church-damned mind-mage, who might also be unable to continue the work he’d devoted himself to in the Alliance without poisoning his own clients.

Jahir had expected to suffer a stream of nightmares. It would have been appropriate. But he woke instead beneath the arm of his cousin after a blameless night, refreshed in body, and before he could consider the state of his spirit the kiss on the back of his neck sucked all conscious thought to the skin beneath his cousin’s lips. Would he ever stop being so dazed by carnal distraction? Would Sediryl find it charming, if she decided to wed him?

Why was he so calm about all this?

“My cousin wakes,” Lisinthir said. “And I am grateful, for I have an errand to run and it will take me a little time.”

“An errand?” Jahir swam through the last ripples of desire toward clear-headedness. He thought his confusion might resolve into… offense that he was being abandoned so quickly? The idea amused him. “I am so easy to leave.”

“You are impossible to leave, which is why I haven’t yet.” A husky chuckle. This time it was not lips on the back of his neck, but teeth, pulling the skin over the vertebra away from it just enough to splash sparks across Jahir’s vision. “But I find I must arrange for our late morning and early afternoon. We have a great deal to do.”

“We do?”

More sober. “We do. There is the small matter of these unexpected talents we’ve manifested, which need testing.”

That doused the fire under his skin handily. “I see.”

“You do, yes. So I must make arrangements. While I am gone, you should call your beloved.”

The suggestion—command—caught him off balance. “I… thought you would have had other plans for our morning.”

“Like continuing your sensual education?” A hint of amusement leavened by affection. “I won’t lie… I was so tempted. But you need to talk to Vasiht’h, and I must run my errands and—” A pause then, and a firmer, quieter tone, “We will not have a repetition of yesterday’s precipitousness. I would like the next time I have you to be less fraught. And for that, we have a great deal to discuss.”

Jahir could almost hear Vasiht’h’s comment in his mind: something about relationships requiring communication to thrive. He sighed. “I don’t suppose I could seduce you into skipping the difficult parts.”

Lisinthir chuckled. “That, I judge, was a joke, which means you are well enough for me to leave.”

“Perhaps,” Jahir allowed. “Will you be gone so long?”

“I don’t think so. I have done some preliminary research already, and I think I know what I need. But you have time for a longish talk with your beloved and a shower, or bath. You will want the latter badly.”

Hearing it made him realize how very true that was. “And then?”

“And then dress as you usually do, and we shall have an adventure.”

The ripple of merriment Jahir felt through their skins made him smile despite himself. “You are enjoying yourself.”

“I am, a little.” Another kiss, this one small and apologetic, on the back of Jahir’s shoulder. He would almost have called it familial, except that there was no escaping the carnal promise in his cousin’s touch. “Ere you leave, my cousin, I will have made sure that you are as well.”

“Enjoying myself?” Jahir managed a lopsided smile and looked over his shoulder to share it with Lisinthir. “God and Lady, I hope so.”

“Then we’re decided.” Lisinthir kissed him between the eyes then, a whimsical kiss. “You to your errand and I to mine. Yes?”

“I suppose you have my leave to go, Imtherili.”

“So gracious, Galare. I’ll remember that next time I have you under me.”

Jahir shuddered and shoved an elbow back until it hit something. “If you aren’t going to tumble me, don’t tease.”

“I hear and obey!” Lisinthir laughed. “No, no, not the elbow again. I’ll be good, I promise.” He rolled out of bed, all liquescent grace. “And eat breakfast, cousin my dear. You’ll want it.”

When had he become not just cousin, but ‘dear’? But then, was that really unexpected given they’d been lovers? They had been… God and Lady. He was no longer an innocent. He couldn’t tell if he was glad, relieved, or appalled. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, vaguely aware of his cousin’s movements into the bathroom, out of it, dressing.

Lisinthir reappeared above him, hair spilling over one shoulder: once again the Eldritch prince, from the velvets and the sapphires braided into the hair alongside one ear to the faint scent of ambergris, sweet and musky and somehow erotic.

His cousin searched his eyes. Jahir let him look. Whatever he betrayed in that gaze moved Lisinthir to cup his jaw.

“All right?” he asked, quiet.

“I think,” Jahir answered in kind, but he was grateful to be asked. He felt seen again, and that comforted. Perhaps Lisinthir understood, because his cousin’s dark eyes softened, and that kiss was tender. There was something exquisitely vulnerable about accepting that sweetness, delivered while he lay bruised and naked beneath his cousin, with the knowledge of all they’d done together implied… and all there was to come as well.

But he felt safe, so he answered the tacit question by receiving the gift with open mouth and shared breath.

“I return anon,” Lisinthir murmured, burnishing the words silver. “Make your call, cousin.”

“All right.”

And then he was alone.

He did not rise immediately. He remained where he was, stretched and exposed on the bed, cataloguing his manifold pains and aches. Feeling the patches where dried sweat had stiffened his skin. Smelling the strangeness of the sheets around him, of the scent of his own sleeping mingled with someone else’s. He’d expected to feel either alienated from his body or seated more fully in it, and what he felt instead was some confusing amalgam of the two. He was at home in himself… and aware of things in himself that felt very new, very strange, and very dangerous.

He didn’t want to call Vasiht’h, but he did. He supposed that went hand in hand with the rest of his ambivalence. Shower first. Then the rest.

A picnic with rambunctious younglings was exactly what Vasiht’h had needed. With Sehvi strolling at his side, they’d ambled over the hills in a golden autumn afternoon, and his nephews darted here and there, bringing back treasures, demanding his attention, interrupting their own requests with sudden games of chase. His sister was unperturbed by their behavior, which made it easier to take it all in stride. And really, what reason did they have to rush? He was on vacation, with family, in an idyllic locale.

The lake that spread before them over the second hill was not just the perfect backdrop for a picnic, but obviously a familiar destination as well... as the boys demonstrated by launching themselves into it with confident yells.

“They swim?” he’d asked Sehvi.

“Oh, I threw them in while they were still wet behind the ears from being born,” she’d answered, unloading the picnic basket. “You can’t start too soon with drownproofing them. Particularly boys!”

They dragged him into the lake, too, and if their young blood didn’t notice the chill, his far older joints certainly did. He also found he didn’t notice that until after they were done playing, because he’d been too busy paddling after them to pay attention to anything but their delight. That was how it worked, then, he thought when he hauled his soggy body onto the shore. Or at least, partially. Children diverted you from your own woes. And magnificently too. He found himself wondering if he could prescribe playtime with children as medicine and was struck by the thought that people had probably been doing that without a prescription for time immemorial.

The Goddess thought of everything.

Nevertheless, Vasiht’h was glad of the hot chocolate, the repast, and the long ramble back. With Kovihs not due back until supper he took advantage of the lull to shower and unpack, and it was then that the comm alerted. There was a small emitter in the guest bedroom, so he sat in front of it and accepted the call.

“Arii!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t expect you.” And then he paused, and laughed. “All right, probably not the most tactful thing I’ve said.”

“Given what it implies?” Jahir said, a slight smile curving his mouth.

“Well, yes,” Vasiht’h said, embarrassed. But he really hadn’t expected Jahir to want to mix his sexual holiday with his very much asexual partner. He’d been prepared to hold that distance for the Eldritch’s comfort but he was glad he wouldn’t have to. “But now that I’ve finished applying paw to mouth… I might as well admit to surprise. Are you well?”

“Do I look well?”

Vasiht’h’s eyes narrowed and he folded his arms.

“I ask out of an honest desire to know, arii.”

“That would suggest an answer of its own, wouldn’t it?”

“And does it accord with your perception?”

Vasiht’h leaned back on his haunches. The emitter was showing him Jahir’s upper body—he was probably at a desk—and on the surface his partner looked much the same as always. Dressed in his usual caramel browns and creams, with his hair freshly washed and resting behind his shoulders, in every way as neat as he consistently presented himself. The local chronolog floating in the bottom corner put Starbase Alpha’s time at very early morning, and his partner liked mornings, so seeing him so well put-together so early was no surprise.

But there was something Vasiht’h couldn’t pin down about his partner’s body language, and without the mindline to suggest Jahir’s mental state he couldn’t decide what it was. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally. “You look calmer to me, arii… and shattered.”

Jahir lowered his eyes, then said, “I can read minds—”

Not news, there, he wanted to say.

“—from across the room, arii. And I can force people at that distance to feel my feelings as well.”

Vasiht’h’s brows rose. “Really?”

“Apparently so, yes,” Jahir said, low. “Very much so.”

For a moment, Vasiht’h could think of nothing to say and dearly missed the mindline’s ability to share, because he would have shared his exuberant jumble of awe and joy and astonishment and curiosity. Everything was fighting for the right to use his throat, and it took a while for him to put them in some sort of order. “What a gift…!”

“I… I beg your pardon?”

If he wasn’t mistaken, that had almost been indignation? Which was such an unexpected reaction that Vasiht’h really looked at the man he’d yoked himself to in a mental and spiritual communion closer than almost any other known in the Alliance. A rare communion, because so few people had the Goddess’s gifts in the strength necessary to forge it. Not all Glaseah could sustain a mindline, and of all the Alliance’s races, only the Glaseah and the Eldritch were known to produce espers at all. He’d been lucky, incredibly lucky, to be able to share what he did with Jahir. It had never occurred to him to think of the ability that made it possible as anything other than a gift from a loving goddess. But it was entirely evident to him now, looking at his partner’s face, that Jahir had other ideas.

“You… don’t think so?” he asked, struggling with his astonishment. “This is a thread of the Goddess’s mind, Jahir, that She is allowing you to share with Her. That’s something to be grateful for….”

“The ability to force my emotional state on others without their permission? From a distance?” Jahir asked. “Is a gift?”

“Why does it have to be about force?” Vasiht’h asked, confused. “You can rape people with your sexual organs, arii, but that doesn’t make sex inevitably evil or violent.”

“And the ability to read their feelings from a distance,” Jahir asked, low. “This invasion of privacy is always a boon.”

“I don’t know how it’s different from being able to read their body language, their eyes, their words—”

“I would think it very different, given one might be mistaken about body language but not about a direct read of their minds—”

“Of their feelings?” Vasiht’h asked, bemused. “When people rarely even know why they feel the things they feel? We’d be out of work if everyone was that self-aware, arii.”

“And if it becomes more than their feelings? If I begin to perceive their thoughts?”

“Then you don’t listen.” When Jahir stared at him, Vasiht’h said, “The way you don’t pay attention to people’s conversations in public? It’s not that you don’t hear them. It’s that you politely don’t notice them.”

“Just… that simple.”

“Of course?” Vasiht’h rubbed his palms together slowly, gathering his thoughts. “I take it that Eldritch think of things like this as… forbidden.”

“They are the province of villains in legends.”

Vasiht’h winced. “I can see how that would make you uncomfortable.”

Jahir’s stare resolved into a reluctant chuckle, one that trailed off too quickly for Vasiht’h’s comfort. His partner was deeply distressed, he thought. Unavoidably, if he had no appropriate role models. Perhaps there could never have been any such role models, at that… from what Vasiht’h had gathered about Eldritch society in the years he’d known Jahir, it would have been incapable of supporting any flowering of the Goddess’s talents. People who did not touch, who guarded their thoughts and their grudges and their hatreds, people who idolized isolation and xenophobia, could never have endured gifts that made them more aware of one another’s spirits. Anyone gentle enough to welcome that gift would have withered beneath what it revealed, if they had survived long enough once their fellows discovered the key they had to their enemies’ souls.

“Jahir,” he said, carefully. “I know that you probably grew up hearing awful things about this. I won’t try to tell you that you should cast off the chains your culture put on you. We both know how hard that is. But you are not just Jahir Seni Galare, heir to the Seni family and the Eldritch path. You’re also Jahir Seni Galare, xenotherapist and Alliance citizen. So maybe that part of you will hear me when I say that among the Glaseah, what you can do now and what you feel is considered just another one of your senses. Like sight, or touch. Just like touch, you need to learn the rules of when it’s all right to use or not. And just like sight, sometimes you’ll see things you didn’t want to see, or shouldn’t act on. But it is a gift, not a curse. A gift. And I’m thrilled you’re developing it.”

Jahir’s voice was soft, to go with the lowered eyes; it was a meekness Vasiht’h didn’t like seeing, because it suggested defeatism. “I don’t know how you can support such a feeling, arii. How can I possibly do our work when I can project myself into our patients’ minds? How will we know what their thoughts are, and what are reflections of my own?”

“By you learning to control your ability?” Vasiht’h said. His brisk tone lifted his partner’s face, and there was startlement in the honey-colored eyes. “Did you think you could get out of that part? That if you didn’t work out how to control your talent, it would go away? It doesn’t work that way, arii. If you pretend it doesn’t exist, it will run wild and take us with it.”

Jahir inhaled. “I don’t want—”

“Neither do I,” Vasiht’h said. “And it won’t happen, because we won’t let it happen.”

“And if I’m unequal to the task?” Jahir asked. “What if I fail, arii?”

“You won’t,” Vasiht’h said. He lifted his hand to forestall the protest. “You won’t,” he repeated more firmly. “Because the Goddess gives us no burdens we are unequal to. And if we have to take some time off to get things sorted, we will, and we’ll come back stronger than ever. Or…” He grinned. “Maybe we don’t come back, and we live on your princely salary while we raise both our families.”

Shocked, Jahir said, “You mean that. After years of bridling against my income.”

“I think I do,” Vasiht’h said, bemused. “Seeing my nephews has made me realize it’s probably easier to do the work of parenting when you’re not distracted. A reduced tempo at work might not be a bad thing.”

“Arii… I don’t know what to say.”

Vasiht’h cocked his head. “Say you’ll at least consider what I’m telling you.”

“I will. I promise it.”

Which was as good as gold, in the case of an Eldritch, and his Eldritch in particular. So Vasiht’h let his curiosity have its way at last and added, wistfully, “Tell me what it’s like?”

Jahir studied him with wonder in his eyes. “You really want to know.”

“Yes?” Vasiht’h asked. And laughed. “I half hope that being bound by the mindline to someone with those talents will develop mine too. But until we run that experiment, you can tell me about it so I can daydream…”

“This is something you would daydream about,” Jahir murmured.

“Yes!” Vasiht’h grinned. “Maybe only villains in your world can touch people’s minds across rooms. But on Anseahla, dva’htihts are hero-saints, and we used to play at being them when we were kids. Sehvi will explode when I tell her. She’ll probably want to send you a mind-flowering present.”

“A… a what?”

“You do that when children evince their mental gifts for the first time,” Vasiht’h said.

“God and Lady,” Jahir said, eyes wide. “We could not be more different!”

“No… so… would you mind telling me?”

“Only if you don’t mind hearing how I almost made my cousin nauseated enough to vomit…!”

“Oh!” Vasiht’h grinned. “So it’s going to be a funny story too!”

For a moment Jahir stared at him. And then he began laughing, helplessly. And that, Vasiht’h thought, was a great improvement. Even though the resulting story had more bittersweetness than humor. His heart ached for his distant partner, who had obviously been left unequipped to see himself through any positive framework. But he thought, as he asked questions and let his enthusiasm and awe leak through their conversation, that Jahir’s shoulders straightened a little, and some of the drawn quality of his face began to ease.

“Lisinthir has said we must practice,” Jahir concluded. “That is where we are supposedly bound when he returns.”

“If there’s one thing Lisinthir’s good at, it’s dealing with the practicalities without letting emotion stop him,” Vasiht’h said. “And much as I hate to admit it, he’s got a gift for teaching. In an unorthodox way.”

No doubt remembering their painful tutoring sessions on the courier, Jahir said wryly, “Unorthodox describes my cousin in totality.”

Vasiht’h grinned. “Yes. But that’s why you need him, and he needs you. He’ll take care of you.”

“I… do think you’re right. And on that note, I should eat ere he returns. He told me I would need it.”

“No doubt,” Vasiht’h said. “Using mental talents eats up as many calories as physical ones. Don’t skimp on your meals just because I’m not there to twist your arm into eating them, please?”

This laugh was almost natural, thank the Goddess. “I shan’t. And arii… thank you.”

“Always. Call me any time you need me.”

“Until we are together again.”

“Until that, yes.” Vasiht’h smiled.

That ended the call, leaving Vasiht’h sitting in front of the emitter. He mantled his wings, sliding them against one another, and savored the wonder of it. That he not only had a partner to love, but that the Goddess should gift that partner so generously… and that in Her wisdom, She might have placed them both in proximity to one another’s hearts to save Jahir for that talent. Because Vasiht’h knew that Jahir would never have accepted it had he been alone.

Your ways, he thought to Her. Are glorious. And then he trotted off to find Sehvi and tell her the good news.

Jahir did his best to do justice to his breakfast in a fashion Vasiht’h would have condoned, but he still found it difficult to eat. He could only imagine what his cousin would say did he return to find Jahir had done nothing but toy with dry toast and tea, though, so by the time Lisinthir swept through the door, he’d managed something like repletion and had retired to a chair with his chemistry journals.

“I find you in better spirits, I see.”

Jahir set the data tablet on his lap and gilded his response. “As you no doubt planned when you set me about that call. How did you know?”

“It did not take a genius,” Lisinthir replied, mouth quirking. “He centers you, cousin. And what you needed was a dosing of common sense to put paid to your abstractions. Yes?”

“There is nothing like a Glaseah for common sense,” Jahir allowed, smiling. “So you have accomplished at least one of your aims. Did you succeed in the other?”

“Indeed… and if you are amenable, we shall go forth to it now.”

Jahir put the data tablet on the table and stood, paused. “Will I need anything?”

“Only your glorious person.” Lisinthir grinned. “The rest your scapegrace cousin has arranged, and God help us both.”

“You fill me with confidence,” Jahir said, wry.

“You shadowed that! I am impressed,” Lisinthir said, leading the way out of the suite. “I would have glossed it red.”

Jahir ignored his blush, folding his hands behind his back and pacing his cousin. “Of course you would have. But mentioning it has gotten you what you would have wanted by serving me the innuendo yourself. I trust you are satisfied.”

“Are you?” Lisinthir asked, all innocently neutral.

“Not in the least,” Jahir replied, and did shade it red, for the carnal mode.

“Careful, cousin, or I might push you up against a wall and kiss you senseless. And in a public hall!”

There was no one in the corridor; Jahir had not seen anyone in the halls at all yet, come to that. Curious, he asked, “Would you so dare?”

He had the answer to that a few moments later, and was both chastened and pleased to fall back into step alongside Lisinthir with only a slight tremor in his knees to betray his reaction. Not that it mattered—from the mirth in the glance his cousin flicked him, Lisinthir knew very well what his kisses accomplished.

“I trust you have been enlightened?” Lisinthir said finally.

“Verily, I have been schooled into submission.”

Lisinthir laughed aloud. “Red and silver and white. Too much nuance by half, cousin. I will have to press you harder next time.”

“I look forward to it,” Jahir replied, stubbornly in the crimson still despite what it was doing to his cheeks.

“Delicious.” Lisinthir grinned at him. “But later for that. Come, we should not want to miss our appointment.”

Their appointment with what, he wondered? And knew better than to ask. Best to follow and see for himself.

Lisinthir led him to a central Pad station several floors down, where they joined a trickle of people in the outbound queues. When they reached the head of the line, Lisinthir said, “Two for the Park Dome, Splendor Station.” A chime sounded, a soft androgynous voice repeated their destination, and then they were passing over the Pad into a spacious building, its lines sleekly modern but somehow warmed by the sanded wood paneling that accented the enormous windows. The lodge overlooked a forested slope, its trees shivering beneath a sky the crisp blue of a new spring morning. Glancing out, Jahir could see the starbase’s spindle through the atmosphere of the dome, a faint tracery of white like distant clouds, but more regular by far.

“This way,” Lisinthir said. “We’re expected.” And led them outside, where the cedar scent of that forest struck Jahir like a blow, wafted to him on a cool breeze that blew in perfect contrast to the warmth of the artificial sun on his shoulders. He couldn’t imagine what sort of lesson Lisinthir had arranged for them that would require this, but it could hardly be a durance…!

“Are we meeting a teacher, then?” he asked, drawing abreast of his cousin.

“I’m afraid it’s just the two of us,” Lisinthir said. “And we’re doing nothing more strenuous than going out into the day to enjoy the weather.”

“And this will somehow contrive to teach us about our new capabilities.”

Lisinthir grinned again. “How skeptical you sound, cousin!”

“And I should know better than to question you by now?”

“No, not at all. I love that you question me. I find cowed people far less interesting.”

“If we have no teacher, then by whom are we expected?”

“By that Asanii there, in that office.”

That office was a small building adjacent to the larger lodge, in the same sleek wood-and-glass style. It was large enough only for the single office inside it, though a luxurious office it certainly was, and there was a curious flattop alongside it. If Jahir had thought Pads could be built to the size of a suite, he would have guessed it to be the same material.

There was no sign hanging above the door. Only a plaque with a silver horseshoe bisected by a thinned spiral flame he didn’t recognize.

The felid stepped outside at their approach and waited with all the patience of an extremely well-paid professional. Everything in her bearing implied the exclusivity of her clientele, and she wore her sleek silver tunic like the livery it apparently was.

“Lord Nase Galare,” she said. “I have your keys for you in the paddock.”

“Excellent, thank you.”

“Will you require my services?”

“No, I can make my cousin’s adjustments.”

The woman did not so much as glance at Jahir, and her supreme self-control impressed. Most people would have wanted to stare at an Eldritch, much less two, and related. But all she said was, “Enjoy your ride, aletsen.”

“We will, thank you.”

“Our what?” Jahir murmured, following Lisinthir toward the flattop.

“Our ride. That was a representative of the Maven Herd, which I am guessing you have never heard of before today because I haven’t either.” Lisinthir grinned at him and shook back the hair the breeze had blown over his brow. “And we shall be riding their product.”

“Their… product,” Jahir repeated, dubious.

“I’ve examined it, and I assure you, it’s worth the money. Or my cursory examination suggested so, anyways.” Lisinthir found a post and examined the bands depending from a hook on its apex, one blue, one multicolored. “And here are our mounts.”

“You have not found us solidigraphic horses,” Jahir said, dismayed. “I’ve ridden solidigraphic horses, cousin. They are nothing like the real creature.”

“Most aren’t, no. But these are apparently the finest solidigraphic horses in all the Alliance.” Lisinthir tossed him one of the bands, which he caught by reflex. “That one is yours. Over your wrist, cousin.”

Resigned, Jahir slid it over his left wrist and watched it tighten to conform to his skin. It was blue and purple in cloudy patterns, but narrow enough to be unobtrusive and flexible enough not to cut. “I would hate to suggest this will be an unsatisfactory way to spend the morning….”

“Which you are, anyway—”

“But you probably will be disappointed.”

Lisinthir shook his head. “Cousin, cousin. Look at the sky. Feel the wind on your back. Breathe—” He inhaled, face tilted upward. “And tell me it matters if these creatures end up being digital nags.”

Jahir paused, and chuckled. “Point taken.”

“Good. Maven Herd, arrive!”

Two horses shimmered into sight, and what small hope Jahir had been treasuring on his cousin’s behalf vanished at the sight of them. “God and Lady, surely not.”

Lisinthir laughed. “The look on your face, Galare! Go on, then. The starfield one is yours.” A twinkle of irrepressible humor, then. “His name is Nebula.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Jahir replied dryly, and approached the frozen shape of his steed. He admitted it had a noble enough conformation… certainly more of a paragon than any horse he’d had at home, given the weakness of the Eldritch horse strains. But it was almost seventeen hands of cobalt blue and deepest purple, and the gaseous patterns on its flanks were actually moving, revealing pinprick stars of dim red and silver. What he’d taken for soft feathering at its fetlocks were actually streams of cloudy vapor. “Nebula,” he said, repressive. “My, I can’t imagine where they found the name.”

“It is less mysterious than mine, at least.” Lisinthir walked to his mount, which was two hands shorter than Jahir’s and far more compact in build, but just as beautifully proportioned and sporting an equally unnatural coloration. A black with a noticeably green sheen, particularly near the extremities, and across its buttocks a white blanket spattered with unlikely splotches of emerald, red, blue, yellow, black… colors that ran in streaks down its hindquarters as if the paint hadn’t dried in time. “My mount is Jackson Pollock, if you will.”

“I will if I must.” Jahir looked up the long way to his creature’s back and sighed. Starbase Veta had solidigraphic horses, but they were disappointing simulacra without the vagaries and personalities of real animals. One session had been sufficient to put him off the idea of maintaining his proficiency in the saddle. He was out of practice riding now, and he knew very well that the muscles developed while swimming would not save him from the atrophy of those particular to riding. Ruefully, he pulled himself into the saddle…

…and the horse woke beneath him with shiver, and suddenly there was a creature beneath him, a warm and responsive creature, and when he shifted in the saddle it gave every appearance of paying attention to his center of balance and his confidence level. He was so startled, in fact, that the solidigraph sidestepped beneath him, as if concerned he might take a tumble. “Good God!”

“Yes,” Lisinthir said, amused. “That was my feeling when I rode Jackson in front of the office this morning.” He patted Nebula’s uncanny shoulder and ignored the nose that came around to nudge him. “Up with the knee, cousin, and let’s adjust the stirrups.”

Nebula calmed under him as instincts he’d forgotten decades ago returned. Jahir watched Lisinthir let out the stirrups, bemused. The horse, he thought, was considering them both with every appearance of benevolent curiosity. “That’s good on that side, thank you.”

Lisinthir walked around the horse’s head to the other side and began anew. “I asked them to find you a reliable mount. Not too frisky. Does he feel steady to you?”

“Now that I’m no longer lurching in the saddle like a drunkard.” Jahir pet the horse’s neck before he remembered the horse wasn’t real. “I admit to astonishment.”

“The maven of the Maven Herd is apparently a human equestrian with a passion for horseflesh and programming. Every horse is a hand-designed individual, constructed in much the same fashion Alliance D-pers are.”

Jahir eyed him, torn between skepticism and awe. “Digital personalities are rare, complex, and expensive to create.”

“So much so that there aren’t many of them, yes? Apparently there aren’t many Maven horses, either, and paying for their licensure is quite expensive. Alpha has a license for several individuals, but it is apparently one of only three starbases in the Alliance that does.” He grinned. “Fortunately for us. You are solid in the saddle now?”

Jahir shifted: hips, knees, ankles. He flinched before resigning himself to the inevitable. Between his cousin’s attentions and their afternoon ‘adventure’ he would be nothing but a series of aches by the time nightfall came, and God and Lady knew what Lisinthir had planned for their evening. “I am steady now, thank you.”

“Good,” Lisinthir said, and crossed to his smaller horse. With a creak of leather he was up himself, gathering the reins, and when the paint-spattered mount woke, it was far less patient than its solidigraphic herdmate. Lisinthir rode, Jahir noted, with the focused ease of someone who lived very deeply in his body. He would have thought it breathtaking before. Now it was also erotic. How had he not noticed?

“Shall we try one of the forest trails?” his cousin asked.

“After you,” Jahir said, forcing himself to concentrate.

The day was already idyllic; once they crossed into the forest, it became sublime. The rustle of the leaves overhead, the shifting patterns of sunlight, of coolth and warmth on his head and arms, the steady rhythm of his astonishingly convincing solidigraphic mount… even the woods themselves seemed perfect, predominantly tall trees with little underbrush to foul the horses, but owning a sufficiency of rills and rumpled folds and naps in the earth to make the ride engaging.

“So,” he said at last. “This is contributing to our lesson how?”

Lisinthir looked up at the canopy. “By allowing me the opportunity to ask your advice on the proper use of these new talents.”

Surprised, Jahir guided his mount alongside his cousin’s. “I’m not sure why you would want it, given how I reacted to our revelation.”

“Who else shall I ask?” Lisinthir said. He smiled a little. “You are a xenotherapist, are you not?”

“But not a priest.”

“And we are so near to any priest I might consult.” Lisinthir shook his head. “No, you are what you are. That was good enough for me on the courier, and it is good enough for me now. So tell me, cousin. I am trying to convince myself that using this ability to stop someone’s heart is somehow less moral than using an arrow, a sword, or a palmer. I am failing, though. There surely is such a reason, isn’t there?”

“I would think,” Jahir said.

“So would I. And yet I cannot find one.”

Tempting to riposte with some flippant response, and yet it was a valid question, one that, now that Jahir considered it, had no simple answer after all. So he offered first, carefully, “Perhaps we should ask first whether it is necessary.”

“To go to war with people who would kill, enslave, and annex us?” Lisinthir cocked a brow at him.

That, at least, he could answer without qualm. “No. It is our duty to defend ourselves and our homes. The question is whether we should respond to war with potential atrocity.”

Jahir had expected a swift parry; receiving none, he glanced at his cousin and was startled at the grimness of his countenance.

“You have not seen it, I imagine,” Lisinthir said, low. “The recordings of the carnage that happens on the border worlds when the serious raids descend.”

“No,” Jahir admitted, surprised.

Lisinthir looked at him and Jahir’s breath caught in his chest at the rage and the anguish that flickered there, visible and then gone so swiftly behind the mask of his cousin’s self-discipline.

“It’s bad,” he surmised.

“They have already perpetrated atrocity,” Lisinthir said, switching to their language so he could shroud every individual word in the black mode. “No. I do not at all cavil at the thought of turning this weapon against them. That is why I must ask again whether to do so is immoral. If I am missing something in my zeal.”

Sobered by the exchange, Jahir said nothing for a time, letting the warmth of the sun and the scent of the duff soothe them both. At last, he said, “Some would say if kill one must, then it should be with the least cruelty possible.”

“We stray now into imponderables. One man might prefer a moment of blinding pain and then nothing—another would rather a long, wretched death from infection. Most would prefer not to die at all, at which point I’d think commanding someone’s heart to stop beating would be less of a cruelty than bleeding to death from a gut wound,” Lisinthir said. “Have you seen someone die from blunt trauma?”

“I have worked in hospitals,” Jahir said, low.

“Then you know.”

He had not worked for long in urgent care, but he hadn’t needed to. “I do, yes. But there are weapons that kill cleanly—”

“Even the best-designed weapon can still inflict a glancing blow,” Lisinthir said. “No. Tell me a better reason why the exercise of this talent to defend our homeland and our people would be unethical.”

Jahir urged his horse over a folded ravine; the seat came back to him, at least, though his legs were no longer accustomed to holding him so easily above the saddle. He heard Lisinthir’s horse hop after him and they resumed their amble. “Perhaps,” he said, “because it cannot be defended against.”

Lisinthir snorted. “You have not met Alliance snipers, then. A palmer from several hundred feet away? You die, unless God loves you.”

“Point taken.” He thought of using his own… talent… in an offensive capacity. “Then mayhap it’s wrong because it’s barbaric. There is a basic dignity all creatures are owed, and one imagines control of one’s own body and thoughts is part of that. To have that stripped from you is monstrous. Maybe even an offense against God and Goddess.”

“Any more offensive than stripping the life from that child of God?” Lisinthir asked. He sighed. “I am not intending to be obstreperous, cousin. But there is a great deal at stake in front of us. I would like my soul to remain as clean as I can keep it, but the truth is that I have killed people, not just to preserve us, though it did, and not just to free slaves, which it did, but out of anger and a desire for vengeance. And those deaths were not cleaner than one I could obtain by claiming a victim from across the room by stopping his heart.”

“Or by shock,” Jahir murmured. He saw his cousin’s glance from the corner of his eye and said, “People do survive heart attacks. Massive anaphylactic shock may be more certain a death. Aneurysms might suffice as well, if you could learn to pop blood vessels. Or clot them. Though all these ends are terrifying and painful, they have a better chance of being over more quickly.”

Lisinthir barked a laugh. “You would be far more dangerous with this talent than I shall be!”

“Maybe that’s why you have it, and not I.” Jahir sighed. “I can’t think of a use for my talent that does not involve the invasion of privacy, or spiritual voyeurism.”

It surprised him when his cousin had no ready reply, given his cousin’s usual response to anything that bordered self-pity… or self-flagellation. Jahir was about to say something to that effect when Lisinthir rolled his shoulders and said, “Do you trust me, cousin?”

It seemed a strange thing to ask, and a stranger thing to realize that there was only one answer, one that bypassed all rational thought. He simply knew it, the way he knew Vasiht’h loved him, and the God and Lady did. He shaded the words white for truth. “Yes. Always.”

Lisinthir seemed to receive his reply with the solemnity the words deserved. They rode in a cocoon of quiet.

And then his cousin flashed him a grin. “Good. Then I believe it is time for our afternoon’s entertainment.”

“Our…what?”

“Our entertainment. In which, cousin, I give you the task of catching me. Keep up if you can, Galare! YA!”

Nebula shied as the paint lunged forward, showing them the spattered blanket, his heels, and a streaming tail, and then Lisinthir was out of reach and dwindling quickly.

Jahir mastered his shock and sent his own mount lurching in its herdmate’s wake, and only when the horse had stretched into a gallop did he wonder what he was doing. The terrain had been fine for a ramble, but the headlong pace Lisinthir had set was insane. Could a solidigraphic horse break a leg? Even if it couldn’t, a real man could break his back falling off of one!

Nor, he realized, was he anywhere near Lisinthir’s equal as a rider. His cousin pulled steadily ahead of him, and the smaller horse seemed to pour over obstacles and up embankments, threaded trees as if blessed with a cat’s spine, and on the few straight courses showed speed to shame a stooping falcon. Merely keeping them in sight was exercising Jahir harder than he’d ever ridden, and it was too difficult to split his attention between the terrain and their quarry. If Nebula had been a real horse, he might have trusted it not to run into a tree. But a solidigraph, no matter how clever? He couldn’t possibly take the chance. He fell further and further behind, cursing his cousin’s suicidal dash. What was he thinking, taking such risks? And yet—God and Lady!—how magnificent he was! Slow down! he thought, and also, Go on! Go free!

Some part of him yearned to have that total trust in his own perception. To be, briefly, as puissant as his cousin, whose abilities allowed him to navigate unfamiliar and uneven ground at breakneck speed without flinching. No matter his steed’s superior size and stride, there was no winning this without Lisinthir’s supernal skills. Jahir concentrated merely on not losing sight of him through the trees, on the heat of the animal beneath him, on the shock against his seat as they scrabbled down another ravine and up it again, the raw effort of it, all of it became him, and he reached—

Reached—

He was not aware of the connection at first, but there was a taste in his mouth like wine, and he found he wanted to laugh. And then he twitched Nebula around the flaw in the terrain before he saw it. Another obstacle: again surmounted, hands and legs confident. The knowledge came faster and faster, until he found himself riding hard at Lisinthir’s flank and there was nothing in him anymore but the communion, the one that wedded him to the earth and the beast and the man who made their headlong flight possible. Lisinthir was steering them both as if they were one body.

It was impossibly dangerous, insane. It was exhilarating. It was perfection.

They burst from the woods onto plains gilt with warm sunlight, scaring a flock of… birds? Butterflies? Something with bright yellow and white and orange wings, vibrant as stained glass. The drum of hooves on the back of the world spurred his heart and he drew abreast of his cousin until they were sprinting together for the horizon. He was lost there, smeared between sky and grass, aware only of flashes of sensation. The cool trails running straight back from eyes watering in the wind. The quickened sough of breath from the exertion of holding his seat, and the tremor in his thighs. The scent of sun-warmed grass.

The sound of his cousin’s laughter.

Glory.

They slowed by tacit, mutual decision. Jahir’s mount dropped back to a walk, tossing its starfield mane. Lisinthir’s paint loped a few more measures ahead, curvetting and dancing in place beneath the hand that steadied it. The twain suited one another: quick-tempered, eager to move, agile and high-spirited. Watching them walk back, Jahir wondered anew what would have happened to his cousin had he not been given to the war. Men like Lisinthir did not belong to idleness and civilization. They throve on challenge and danger, and lacking it, made their own risks. Like, he thought suddenly, throwing themselves through an unknown forest to force their cousins to use their unwanted talents.

“It’s why you did it,” he said. “God and Lady, cousin. Madness!”

“Glorious madness,” Lisinthir said, drawing abreast of him with another laugh. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“You are insane,” Jahir repeated, and suffered his hand to be caught and kissed like some noblewoman’s. He flushed at the warm breath Lisinthir blew across his sweating knuckles. And quieter, “That was you, wasn’t it. The elation.”

“It was.” And gently, “Not all sharing is violation, cousin.”

Jahir lowered his head, his hand loose in Lisinthir’s. “No. I suppose it isn’t.” His cousin smiled, squeezed his hand and let it drop. As they fell in together, Jahir added, “It was… amazing.”

“Yes.”

Jahir glanced at him. “For you as well?”

A chuckle. “Yes. I could tell you were ‘listening’ in the beginning, but when you started letting me guide you… that was…” He inhaled, sighed out. “A rush. Enchanting. I love all the ways you submit to me.”

“No teasing without a bed,” Jahir muttered, but he was smiling.

“We will see a bed soon enough.” Lisinthir shifted in the saddle. “And I will be glad to be on my feet. It has been more years than I like since I rode so hard.”

“But you have hunted forests before,” Jahir said.

Lisinthir eyed him, brow cocked. “Ah?”

Jahir sorted through his impressions. There had been impressions, he realized now, hiding beneath the confidence, and the rush. “Yes. On a horse very like your paint there.” The feel of a large wooden haft in his hand, familiar, rolling it against gloved fingers. “Did you hunt thicket boar? God and Lady, cousin!”

“You had that from your communion!” Lisinthir said. “Fascinating! But yes. I did. Alone, too. It was a wonder I didn’t die.” He chuckled. “My mother had a hunting lodge on her lands in the north. I used to kill game there for the tables.”

“By yourself?” Jahir glanced at him, appalled. “Not wonder that you lived, but miracle.”

“We were very good at hunting, my ugly cob and I.” Lisinthir glanced at him. “A useful talent yours, if you can pick out memories with the emotions.”

“Not… memories, exactly,” Jahir said. “But… patterns? Sensations? I’m not sure how well that would work did we not share our background so.”

“No thoughts?”

“No. It’s nothing at all like the mindline.” Jahir watched the wind turn the blades of grass in ripples. “The mindline gives me thoughts and emotions. But it’s…” He trailed off. “This is far more visceral.”

“A thing of the body,” Lisinthir said. “Perhaps it was inevitable that you find it in my arms, then.” A sly smile. “I shall have to push you a little further, see if we can refine your talent.”

Jahir stilled his shudder before it communicated itself to his mount: successfully, he thought. He had no idea what expression betrayed him, but something must have. Lisinthir reined in, reached over and grasped his reins as well, stopping them both. Setting his fingers on Jahir’s chin, he said, “I expected discomfort, but this is closer to revulsion, I think.”

“No,” Jahir said. “At least… I don’t think so. But I want what you offer, and don’t want it.” He managed a wintry smile. “Which has been historically my problem, has it not?” He kissed the fingertips resting near his lips. “But I recognize this is as a wound that needs lancing, and I want the healing.”

“Always with the knives, cousin,” Lisinthir murmured. “There now. That shudder I like better.”

“Incorrigible,” Jahir murmured.

That won him freedom and a grin as Lisinthir urged his horse back into motion. “Ah, it is only because I love you so.”

“Do you?”

“Love you? Of course. Come about now, cousin, we should be returning.” As they began to make an arc back toward the forest, Lisinthir continued, “As a brother, I think. The one I never had.”

Jahir snorted. “What we have done together, and the way you keep touching me, is not at all fraternal.”

Lisinthir grinned. “Agreed. We are not literal brothers, you will note.” He sobered. “I do love to touch you. I ask no forgiveness for that. But I mean that… what I feel for you is familial. Does that make sense? You would know better. You have a sibling.”

“I do, yes.”

“Younger, if I recall?”

Jahir nodded, the abbreviated nod of their kind. Old habits reasserting primacy, perhaps, because of the subject matter. “Sernataila, who cast off that mouthful fairly quickly for a nickname, Amber.”

“A nickname. Like a commoner.” Lisinthir lifted his brows and said, dry, “How outré.”

Jahir chuckled. “Of the two of us, he was always the more unorthodox. He cared little for convention.”

“The more unorthodox. Says the man who left the homeworld for the Alliance, there to take on an alien partner, an alien mindline, and a practice as a psychiatrist to aliens?”

Jahir smiled. “I don’t deny I have my heretical leanings, and when I was younger there were times…” He paused, remembering past frustrations. “There were times I might have hated our world. Because I loved it so, and it seemed determined to doom itself.”

“Passion,” Lisinthir murmured.

Jahir glanced at him, nodded. “Yes. I have never been ambivalent about where we’ve come from, and that in itself should be telling.” He drew in a long breath, tasting the cedar duff smell of the forest on the roof of his mouth. “But there has always been something in me that longed to go home again, cousin. To bring the gifts of the Alliance back to our people. To be part of its evolution. I’m here, yes, but I am a traveler, and one day I will book my flight back. In that, my brother and I are very different. Not a single letter Amber’s sent me has ever mentioned homesickness, and when I’ve asked whether he plans to return, he always tells me that I’m the one saddled with the responsibility of inheriting the estate, so he will just leave all that to me.”

Lisinthir glanced at him sharply. “Your brother is abroad?”

“He made a study of architecture,” Jahir said. “And afterwards went on a grand tour. Last I heard, he’d been planning to see all the Pelted homeworlds, and maybe Earth besides.”

“And when exactly was that last hearing?”

Jahir reined in the horse abruptly. “What are you implying?”

Lisinthir stopped his paint, folding his hands on the pommel of the saddle over the reins. “You know why I was sent, do you not? To the Empire?”

“To serve as Ambassador, yes?”

“And because so many of those who left our world ended up slaves to dragons, Galare, when first we were new to the Alliance. I had a list before I left of all the Eldritch emigrants. You were on it, but there was no other Seni Galare listed.”

The chill that gripped him nauseated. “That’s not possible. Amber left a few years after I did. My mother knew about it, so there was no possibility the Queen did not. He’s mentioned receiving a stipend, even, so she had to have known. If he’s not on your list…” The cold clamped his gut. “Could he be missing?”

“When was your last letter from him?” Lisinthir asked again.

When had it been? He hadn’t been keeping track. The letters from Amber had begun shortly after Jahir had established his practice with Vasiht’h on Starbase Veta; that was when his brother had begun his studies. Once Amber had graduated, though, he’d begun traveling, and the letters had grown more sporadic. Jahir had thought nothing of failing to receive any for long stretches. “God and Lady. I don’t recall, cousin. Almost a year, though. Do you think… please, not the dragons! Wouldn’t you have heard?”

Lisinthir had nudged his mount back into motion, his expression an absent-minded frown. “I would have thought so, yes. But the Empire’s not small, cousin. If there is anyplace an Eldritch might be lost… I can believe the Empire large enough for the task.”

“Maybe… he just hasn’t had time to write,” Jahir murmured. “He was never a consistent correspondent.”

“Maybe,” Lisinthir said. “But the matter bears investigation. Many of the Pelted homeworlds are distant from the border, but some of the most important aren’t.”

“I know.” Jahir cleared his throat. “Is there something you can do?”

“I’ll ask Fleet. You should ask the Queen and your mother.” Lisinthir glanced at him. “When we get back, write a few letters. If there’s one of our kinfolk missing, I want to know before I go back into the Empire.”

“One of our kinfolk,” Jahir repeated, soft.

“He’s a Galare. And he’s your brother. That makes him kin… does it not?”

Years of listening to people’s voices for the nuances that betrayed their emotional state had trained his ear… and this, this was a genuine question. He answered it so, shading the reply white and gold. “Never doubt it.”

Lisinthir smiled, and if it was a tighter smile than they’d shared before this conversation, surely the change was merited given the turn it had taken. “Then let us go back and see to that, and then we might have lunch before we move on.”

He wanted to linger in his worry. He wanted desperately to be distracted from it. “And what will we be moving on to?”

“Ah!” Lisinthir chuckled a little. “Later for that. You react so favorably to surprise, cousin. I wouldn’t want you bracing yourself for impact.”

“God and Lady help me.”

With a flash of a grin, Lisinthir urged the paint into a trot, and Jahir followed. But he looked up at the sky and despite the cloudless beauty of the afternoon, he felt the shadow of the war on their shoulders.