CHAPTER 8

Under the bone growth accelerator, Raena drifted off again. For a change, her sleep was untroubled by dreams. When she woke at last, the burning in her ribcage had simmered down to a nice toasty warmth. She remembered not to stretch just in time.

She opened her eyes to find an unfamiliar man about to touch her shoulder. He wore a crisp cream-colored shirt beneath a brick-red jacket. His sandy hair had been trimmed close to this head and his eyes were an unremarkable brown in an unimpressive face. He swallowed audibly. “Are you really awake?”

She nodded. “Have you come from the consulate?”

“I’m the Deputy Consul on Kai.”

“Did Ariel send you?”

He looked down at his manicured hands. “Ms. Shaad is well known for her work on humanity’s behalf,” he said. “You’re the first of her wards that it’s been my honor to meet.”

Raena smiled, thinking that he was not the first diplomat she’d met. Instead, she said, “So far, I haven’t been officially charged with anything. I haven’t seen a defender. I haven’t been able to contact my shipmates. And I’ve been hauled from one pleasure planet to another without any explanation. How will the consulate help me straighten this out?”

“Apparently, your arraignment was scheduled for this morning. I got it postponed, since you are unable to attend.”

“Thank you,” Raena said.

“There does seem to be an added level of drama to your case, Ms. Zacari. And the legal system on Kai is often full of drama.”

“That doesn’t bode well.”

For the first time, the Deputy Consul smiled. “I will petition the court to reschedule your arraignment as soon as possible. You can’t begin to prepare a defense until you know what you’re being charged with.”

“Thank you.”

“Ms. Shaad’s Foundation is arranging a defender for you. I’m not sure where he’s traveling from, so I’m not sure when he will arrive. Therefore, I will accompany you to the arraignment, if he is unable to attend.”

Raena wondered what that was costing Ariel. Clearly this all required some extra special making up to her sister, once things were settled.

“I’ve also spoken to the jail commandant. When you are transferred back to the jail, you will be placed in a solitary cell. He has been made to understand that your safety is his personal responsibility.”

“I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

“The Shaad Family Foundation is a powerful ally,” he said.

Raena nodded. She had clearly underestimated her sister when she thought of Ariel as simply insanely wealthy. She hadn’t realized Ariel had any political power, but that came, no doubt, of heading up a humanitarian cause that no one could argue with—and having a hot temper and the money to see your will done.

“One last thing,” the Deputy Consul said. “Kai doesn’t have much of a broadcast entertainment industry, since most of the populace are transient visitors. Because of that, they record their legal proceedings for galactic broadcast.”

“What?” That was an unexpected twist.

“You have the right to say no, but they would like to broadcast your trial.”

“I don’t want to become a spectacle.”

“Understood. They will record the arraignment, but we can block its broadcast. Recording is not optional.”

“I see. Thank you for warning me.”

A different nurse came in. This one was a delicate lizard with limbs as thin as a bird’s. She checked the readout on the bone accelerator. “I think you’ll be out of here soon,” she said cheerily.

“Then I’ll take my leave,” the Deputy Consul said. “Keep your head down and we’ll try to get your case settled as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The nurse leaned over Raena. “I need you to take the deepest breath you can.”

Hesitantly, Raena breathed in, waiting for the pain to resume. It didn’t.

“Good as new,” the nurse chirped. “I’ll go start the process to get you released back to the jail.”

*   *   *

Her new cell was smaller than the first, but if that meant that it was hers alone, Raena decided not to mind. She stretched gently, making sure that everything inside her was really as good as new. From stretching, she progressed to a handstand, then to climbing the walls. This cell also had a high window. This time, she decided to find the path up to it in advance, in case she needed it again at a moment’s notice.

Once she’d accomplished every time-killer she could think of, that left empty hours ahead of her. It was hard not to dwell on the last time she stood trial.

When the Imperial guards removed her from Thallian’s torture device aboard the Arbiter, she had believed the end was nearly upon her. She hadn’t eaten or slept in days; how many days, she wasn’t sure. She could no longer stand on her own, so the guards carried her.

Treatment in the Emperor’s private prison was much better. The prison guards fed her by hand until she could feed herself. They allowed her to shower. She could dress, finally. And best of all, Thallian could not touch her. She began to feel less like a scarecrow of herself. It didn’t make sense to her that they treated her so well when all that stood ahead of her was a firing squad, but she savored every slight pleasure she had left. She so looked forward to escaping her life.

They brought her uniform to her at last. She dressed with care, polishing her boots and brushing her long straight hair. She knew this would be the last time Jonan ever got to see her, so she fixed herself up for him. She prayed he would be tortured by her memory.

The Imperial guards returned to escort her. She assumed they would take her to the prison square for summary execution. Instead she was marched into an auditorium and put on display as an example of what happened to those who flouted the will of the Empire.

The list of charges against her took most of the morning to present. Some of those things she regretted now: she wished she’d found some way to evacuate the prisoners from the mining prison, rather than leaving them to die when she vented their air into space. Of course, the Empire wasn’t accusing her of the prisoners’ deaths, only of destroying the prison. Despite her remorse over her mining prison escape, she didn’t regret scuttling the quasar-class Avalanche. Those butchers deserved to die for what they’d done on Zaja IV. If any of them survived Raena’s demolition of their ship, they would have found themselves on the wrong side of the tribunals after the Templar Plague. One way or another, they were all dead now.

During her show trial, Raena was relieved no one had calculated the civilian casualties for which she must certainly be responsible. Most likely, the Empire didn’t care about them. They had enough evidence to kill her several times over, without worrying about all the collateral damage.

She claimed full responsibility for her crimes. Execution should have been inevitable. Her chief hope was that Thallian would be required to watch it.

It surprised her, then, that Thallian went so far out on a limb to plead for her life. He kept trying to present mitigating circumstances, to blame others as her instigators or accomplices. He argued that she was too young to understand what she had done, that she was too damaged to be truly responsible. Every word led him farther into the trap they’d set for him.

Raena didn’t understand until much later, after the slab had closed on her tomb, that she had only been the bait. Her trial had never been about her guilt—only about Thallian’s.

It was paranoid to think the same might be true now on Kai. Even so, Raena could not honestly think of any crime she’d committed since she’d walked out of the tomb that would require this level of multi-planetary collusion. No innocents had been hurt, either by her actions or inaction, since she left her tomb. She had damaged no property, except the Thallians’. As far as she knew, she hadn’t even broken any laws, other than forging her new identity. If anyone was ever going to try her for war crimes committed in the service of the Empire, it wouldn’t be a pleasure planet like Kai.

Despite that, Kai wanted her in jail badly enough to put a price on her head. The guys in gray had now chased her across three worlds. Given her history, Raena could not help but think those things were merely theater, distractions from whatever was really going on in the galaxy. She wondered how long she would have to wait to see the curtain pulled back.

That day and the next day passed in a haze of boredom, broken only by the arrival of meals. As prison chow went, the food here surpassed any she’d had before. Something could be said for being locked up in rich people’s prisons, she thought.

*   *   *

Coni and the crew of the Veracity gathered with the other passengers in the yacht’s lounge to look at Kai before they landed. The planet burned in shades of ember and coal against the blackness of space. As the ship came around, Kai City shimmered like a gaudy spill of jewels at the edge of the ocean.

Coni had liked Kai all right when she lived there. Her job as a social worker, checking on the humans employed in the service areas of the tourist city, had been interesting. She felt she had really been able to help people with the contradictory regulations and bigotry they encountered.

When Mykah suggested she run away with him, she hesitated. Who would help the clients she was leaving behind? But Mykah made it sound so tempting: to apply what she knew to helping more people on a grander scale, to change the galaxy, to become a pirate for good. It would be an adventure.

And it had been. She was proud to have had a hand in revealing the Thallians’ hideout to the galaxy. She was relieved to have helped expose the Messiah conspiracy before it destroyed any more governments. She hadn’t been able to do much social work aboard the Veracity, but she had helped Raena settle in to her new life. She was proud to call the reformed assassin her friend.

She understood why Mykah had come back to Kai, even though he’d said he never would. He was offended that they’d stolen his ship. He was outraged that they’d picked on Raena, who had done so much good for the galaxy, even if her credit for it wasn’t widely known. Haoun was here because he’d become infatuated with Raena. He was more concerned about her as a person than as a symbol. Coni saw nobility in that. Vezali might have only come along for the ride. Sometimes it was difficult for Coni to understand why she did things.

Coni hoped this experience would cement them more together as a team. It could just as easily blow up and scatter them all farther apart.

At least, if their time on the Veracity had ended, she would be back on Kai, where she knew she had work to do. The trick would be persuading Mykah to stay with her there.

*   *   *

After Raena showered on her fourth day in jail on Kai, a quartet of guards showed up to escort her down to the court. She spent the walk counting cells along the hallway, the floors down in the elevator. Then she calculated how many prisoners the jail could hold if it was full.

She couldn’t imagine that there was much serious crime on Kai. It wasn’t like you could fly in, knock over a casino, and leave without Planetary Security getting in your way at some point. With only one city, it wasn’t like you could land elsewhere on the planet without them knowing about it. Whether you went through one of Kai City’s spaceports or not, they would have a record of you.

So who were all the other people locked up here? Was Kai arresting people on trumped-up charges, simply because they’d look good on camera? What was to stop the Business Council from jailing anyone they took a fancy to?

She didn’t bother to ask the guards, none of whom were human. They were simply doing a job. To them, more prisoners meant steady paychecks.

The guards escorted her into a holding area near the courtrooms. They led her to a chair where she could wait. After she settled, they activated a forcefield around her. It spat and sparked, on the verge of shutting itself off. If she stumbled into it, she could probably short it out. Instead, she tried to look meek, a model prisoner.

She wondered if the Deputy Consul would come to her arraignment as he’d promised or if she’d be left to defend herself.

An hour or so passed. Other prisoners were taken in to their hearings. Raena watched them go, trying to assign crimes to them. None of them looked like hardened criminals. She saw no other humans.

The Deputy Consul breezed in at last, greeting her with a wave. Today he wore a burnished copper suit. “Nice to see you up and around.”

“Thank you,” Raena said. “I’m feeling much better now that I have a cell of my own.”

“Good to hear it.” He stared toward the courtroom door, as if he could hear something she could not over the forcefield. Raena noticed he had a line down his jaw where the shade of his makeup didn’t match the color of his throat.

“Were you able to prevent them from broadcasting this hearing?” she asked.

He nodded unhappily. “As I told you, it’s your choice about whether to broadcast or not. Sometimes they will offer you a bribe to reconsider.”

They hadn’t. Maybe that should surprise her more, but she was merely relieved.

She realized that the Deputy Consul might not get many chances to have his image broadcast across the galaxy. He’d dressed up for his big moment, just in case. She consoled him by saying, “Maybe they’re waiting to see if I give them a good enough show today.”

A bribe wouldn’t change her mind, but he didn’t need to know that.

Finally the bailiff summoned them into the courtroom. The guards seated her in a defendant’s chair surrounded on three sides by a low wooden box to hold it separate from the rest of the courtroom. It faced a single magistrate in a shining white robe. The creature was an Eske, a little curry-colored rodent with big membranous ears. Raena had run across a shipful of them before, when the Veracity transported food to Capital City. Those Eskes hadn’t liked humans very much.

“Raena Zacari,” the black-feathered court clerk read, “you were welcomed as a visitor to Kai City six standard months ago, correct?”

The Deputy Consul looked to her to answer, so Raena said, “Yes.”

“You were traveling with two other humans, Ariel Shaad of the Shaad Family Foundation and Gavin Sloane of Sloane Incorporated, a dealer in Templar artifacts.”

They had been staying on Kai under aliases, but clearly someone had blown their cover. Raena considered briefly whether to deny it, but the Deputy Consul already knew about Ariel. As long as she needed his help, she wouldn’t get him into trouble. “Yes,” she admitted.

She expected the avian clerk to bring up the fight with Thallian’s merry band of kidnappers, but instead it skipped straight ahead to, “When you left Kai City Spaceport, you kidnapped a young human and stole the Imperial-era transport on which he had been traveling.”

“No,” Raena said emphatically. It was a lie, but she committed to it wholeheartedly.

The magistrate came alert in his chair. “You deny the charges?” he squeaked over his translator.

“I do,” Raena said.

“Consul?” the magistrate prompted.

The Deputy Consul stood up. The camera zoomed over to him. He posed to show off his good side. “Ms. Zacari, you understand that if this case goes to trial, your friends may be subpoenaed to testify.”

Ariel was counting on that, Raena suspected. She always liked a good fight.

The consul added, “They may be subjected to charges of their own.”

“Sloane is already dead,” Raena said. “His corpse was broadcast around the galaxy on Mellix’s last documentary.”

At the mention of Mellix’s name, the magistrate jumped back into the conversation. “If you plead guilty now, the fine is very reasonable. If we proceed to trial, the fine increases exponentially every day you are in court.”

So this was all about money. “What happens if we go to trial and the Business Council can’t prove their case against me?” she asked.

“They pay you,” the Deputy Consul explained. “They reimburse you for the time you’ve been inconvenienced.”

“Does that include the time I was locked up on Lautan, hauled across space by bounty hunters hired by Kai’s Business Council, and traveling alone through Kai’s desert?”

The Consul had a slight twinkle in his eye, but he turned to face the court clerk.

It said, “Yes. If the Business Council is found to have brought frivolous charges, you will be reimbursed for the sum of your inconveniences.”

She was guilty as hell, but Raena finally understood what Ariel wanted her to do. “I demand a trial,” she said.

“Very well,” the magistrate said. “I’ll leave it to the clerk to put it on the schedule. Next case.”

*   *   *

Haoun had never been inside a jail before. He assumed that Raena would be brought down to meet him in some common area, but instead, after he was passed through a screening machine, guards escorted him up to her cell.

The bare black stone room had nothing to brighten it except the small black-haired woman in her short blue dress. Haoun rushed over to take her in his arms. Raena grinned as if genuinely relieved to see him. He buried his nose in her throat. She smelled of sweat and worry, absolutely intoxicating.

She twisted to slip her tongue between his lips. He shuddered happily and clutched her closer.

“I missed you,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?” He set her feet back on the floor. “Are they treating you all right?”

“Yes,” Raena said. “It’s a constant party in here.”

She led him over to the stone bench that protruded from the wall. Once they’d settled, he noticed she was barefoot.

“No boots allowed?” he wondered.

“They confiscated them on Lautan and no one’s bothered to find me a replacement.”

“Shameful,” Haoun said. “I’ll get on that.” He took one of her little feet into his hands and massaged it. It was filthy with black dust and cold to his touch.

His hand wandered up her thigh.

Raena dropped her hand on his and nodded toward the camera above the door. “I’m not opposed to an audience,” she said, “but they have a creepy desire to broadcast the things they record. You have a family to think about.”

He stared at the camera. “Have they been watching you all the time?”

“As far as I know.”

“Even when you shower?”

She shrugged, not particularly upset by it. Maybe it was one of those things she had gotten used to, having spent so much time imprisoned.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he told her.

“Thank you. At least I finally got arraigned today.”

“Finally?”

“They haven’t seemed in any great hurry to start my trial. Do you have any idea when I’m getting out of here?”

“No. Ariel’s supposed to arrive tonight. She says she’ll take care of everything. Oh, and while I’m thinking of it, Mykah says you must insist on having your trial broadcast.”

“No.”

“It’s imperative, he says. And it’s your right.”

“I don’t want my life on the intragalactic news,” Raena insisted. “That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”

“What got you into this is a pleasure planet’s greed,” Haoun argued. “Kai has been looking to shake someone down to make up for the downturn in tourism. They could find you. They couldn’t find Mellix.”

“Mellix’s documentary is what led them to me.”

“Mellix’s documentary isn’t connected in any way to your arrest. It’s just a coincidence.”

“I wonder.” She offered Haoun a little smile and slipped her other foot into his lap. He rubbed it as well.

“How did Kai know where to look for me?” she asked. “We hadn’t been on Lautan for long.”

“Apparently your defense of Mykah at the beach triggered Planetary Security to find your warrant from Kai. It just took them a little while to negotiate the price of your extradition. And it led to them seizing the Veracity. They seem to have mistaken it for some other ship.” His eyes darted meaningfully at the camera. “We got here as quickly as we could.”

Raena sighed. “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Haoun changed the subject. “Have you been able to sleep in here?”

She nodded. “The dreams have been bad, but nothing unusual has happened in them.”

“That’s a relief, isn’t it?” Haoun asked.

“Yes. If I have to be locked up, at least I’m not under attack.”

A guard tapped on the door.

Haoun sighed. “I wish I could stay longer.”

“No, go,” Raena said. “Plan my defense. I want to get out of here in the worst way.”

*   *   *

“We’re on Kai finally,” Ariel commed. “Come to Kavanaugh’s docking slip. We need to talk.”

So Mykah and the rest of the Veracity’s crew traced the coordinates she gave them to the battered retro-futurist Earth-made hauler. Kavanaugh’s Sundog looked, as always, as if it had seen better days.

“I thought Kavanaugh always did his business in a bar,” Coni said.

Mykah shrugged. “Guess they don’t want to discuss the trial in public.”

Kavanaugh waited for them at the hatch. He shook everyone’s hand—even Vezali’s tentacle—and ushered them onto his ship. He drew Mykah aside at the back of the group to ask, “How did you heal up?”

“Good as new, thanks to you. I kept the scar, though.”

“Thought you might.” Kavanaugh looked past Mykah after the Veracity’s crew. “How are the kids holding up?”

“It’s been hard for everyone to have all our stuff stolen out from under us.”

“How’d they get onto your ship?”

“The dockmaster on Lautan let them in. Never occurred to me to booby-trap it.”

“I can show you how to set a password on the external lock,” Kavanaugh offered.

“I’d appreciate it.”

Once again, Kavanaugh’s manner impressed Mykah. Tarik offered his expertise without making Mykah feel self-conscious or stupid. He hoped to grow up to be as cool as Tarik someday.

In the Sundog’s lounge, Ariel was holding court at the card table, glasses of green poured for everyone. It always startled Mykah that Ariel’s skin was the shade of sunlight on the water, a lovely gold that looked like leisure, like money. Until you compared her with Eilif, Ariel looked perfect. Eilif, though, was so symmetrical she had obviously been engineered.

“Nice to see you again,” he said gently.

Eilif dropped her gaze, rather than meet Mykah’s eyes. “And you as well, Captain Chen.”

“Sit down and have a drink, Mykah,” Ariel ordered. “I want to hear what you know about the charges Raena is facing.”

*   *   *

When Mykah finished telling her everything the Veracity crew had learned so far, Ariel asked, “So you’re sure we can refute the theft charge?”

Mykah looked to Coni, who nodded. “The Veracity’s provenance is seamless.”

“Good. Then it’s just a matter of making the court think that the dockmaster’s office scrambled the recordings of two very similar Imperial transports. Can you do that?”

“Already have,” Coni said.

Relieved, Ariel sipped her green. She wasn’t sure how Raena had befriended these kids, but she’d done well for herself. They were first-class.

“What about the kidnapping charge?” Haoun asked.

“Since no one reported the boy missing,” Ariel said, “Kai is simply hoping to make that charge stick. On Kai, Raena will be considered guilty until she demonstrates she’s not, so it’s all on her to prove she didn’t capture the boy. Luckily, I have the solution to that,” she promised.

“Are you going to defend her?” Vezali asked.

“No. One of my attorneys should arrive tomorrow. Corvas is on retainer to the Foundation to protect our kids when needed. Since Raena’s new identity kicked in, she’s under the Foundation’s aegis. Corvas is scary smart. He’ll know how to game Kai’s legal system.” Ariel topped off their glasses of green and said, “The only thing that worries me is the murder charge.”

“When did they charge her with murder?” Haoun asked.

“They haven’t yet, but they will.” Ariel sipped her drink. “Have you ever watched the courtroom show from Kai?”

Only Mykah had.

“I’ve been studying up,” Ariel said. “The Business Council broadcasts their trials, as a way to shame anyone who acts up on Kai. If they bring charges that can be proven to be unfounded—and the judges rule against them—the Business Council pays out to the defendant. So once they get you in the system, they keep throwing charges at you until you can’t rebut something. They can prove Raena killed Revan Thallian and some of his guards the day you all lit off in the Veracity.”

“We’ve seen the fight,” Coni said. “It was broadcast everywhere afterward. All that talk about how weapons-free worlds didn’t keep people safe made Raena laugh.”

“But you and Sloane,” Mykah argued, “clearly you were attacked. Raena simply defended you.”

“If she’d merely gotten us out of the fight,” Ariel answered, “Kai might not be able to make the charge stick. But she moved on from the guys who grabbed us to subdue the whole party of Thallian’s soldiers.”

The Veracity crew protested, all voices raised at once. Ariel smiled. The ruckus reminded her of home.

“You’re right,” she said over them. “There wasn’t anything else she could have done. If we’d run, the Thallians would have followed. They weren’t going to let her go just because she cracked a couple of skulls. I know that—and you know that—because we know whom those soldiers belonged to. Kai still hasn’t officially identified them.”

Silence followed that announcement.

“If we name Revan,” Mykah asked, “are we going to have to explain why he was after Raena?”

“Raena’s daughter,” Ariel reminded. “Since Raena’s posing as her own daughter, we’ll have to explain why the Thallians wanted my sister’s daughter.”

“They’d tracked Raena and Sloane to Brunzell,” Coni said. “Raena left a dress behind in Sloane’s apartment there. The Thallians found it and brought it onboard the Raptor. Raena found it in Revan’s closet.”

“There are probably Security recordings of the Thallians on Brunzell, then,” Ariel said. “With those, we could prove they were hunting her before they came to Kai.”

“I’ll find them,” Coni promised.

Mykah asked, “Are you going to connect Jain with murdering the guy who helped get Raena out of her tomb?”

Kavanaugh interrupted quietly, “His name was Tom Zhao Lim.”

Mykah had forgotten Kavanaugh had been the boss of the grave-robbing crew. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I never knew his name.”

Ariel shook her head. “I’m sorry, too, Tarik. As much as I would like to solve Lim’s murder for the galaxy, I don’t think we need to bring it up in this court at this time. The galaxy hasn’t connected the murder to the Thallians or to humanity at all. I don’t want to add any fuel to the ‘humans are violent and dangerous’ debate. Jain was punished for his crime.”

Haoun interrupted. “Raena said he hung himself.”

“That is true,” Eilif said quietly.

Ariel touched Eilif’s hand in sympathy. “We should keep Jain’s crimes separate from Raena’s. If she’d killed him on camera, we might need to justify her, but since she only took him home—where his father meted out the punishment—that’s beyond the scope of Kai’s justice.”

Mykah slid a surreptitious look at Eilif. What would it be like, he wondered, to know someone you considered your son was a savage murderer? To watch him die, condemned by your husband—whose crimes were even more monstrous and extensive? Eilif was so guarded that the depth of her pain might never be known.

“All right,” Ariel said. “Kai allows one visitor per prisoner per day to their jail.”

“I’ll go back,” Haoun said. “I want to make sure she’s okay.”

“You’ve seen her already?”

“I went this afternoon. She looked better than I expected. The sun comes in her cell, so it’s warm in there, but they’re feeding her well. She’s sleeping and able to exercise. She’s still wearing the dress she had on when she was arrested, though. And she’s barefoot. They confiscated her boots on Lautan and she hasn’t gotten anything to replace them.”

“I don’t think Kai has jail uniforms,” Ariel said. “I’ll get her some clothing, so you can deliver it tomorrow morning. Where are you staying?”

“There’s a boarding house near the delivery docks,” Mykah said. He pulled the coordinates up on his handheld and sent them to Ariel’s comm bracelet. “Haoun and I have stayed there before.”

“Is it rough?” Ariel asked.

Mykah met her eyes. “Not if we’re together.”

She nodded, understanding what exactly he meant by that: humans were tolerated in mixed company. “I would be glad to put you up someplace more centrally located,” Ariel said.

“Let us talk it over,” Mykah said. “We’re okay where we are, but if the trial drags on . . .”

“I’ll do what I can to get things expedited,” Ariel promised, “but not until Corvas gets here.”

*   *   *

The advantage of being confined alone was that she had her own shower. Kai rationed water, so Raena couldn’t stand in it all day long, but she treated herself to killing time under the water as often as she could.

Today the shower cut off before she was done luxuriating in it. “You have a visitor coming up,” a guard said over the comm.

Raena rubbed her head dry and wrapped the towel around her body. The blue dress she’d been wearing when she was arrested on Lautan was getting threadbare from being worn so often, but she shouldered into it anyway.

When Haoun strode across her threshold, Raena melted gratefully into his arms. “How long can you stay?”

“I’m just making a delivery,” he said. “They’re going to call you for your trial today, but Ariel wanted you to have something decent to wear.”

He handed her a clear plastic shopping bag. It held a shimmering metallic blue dress. Raena tugged off her old dress to slip into the new one. Haoun stood back out of her way, but watched her avidly.

The dress wrapped around her in such a way that it implied more curves than Raena actually possessed. The loose skirt fell past her knees. She spun around to make it swirl. Ariel always did have nice taste in clothes.

“No boots?” Raena asked.

“Apparently, boots are proscribed. Or maybe only for you, I’m not clear. It feels like they change the rules whenever they choose to.” He handed her a pair of soft black slippers.

Can’t kill anyone with these, Raena thought, but didn’t say anything aloud. She looked up to see Haoun was probably thinking the same thing. He laughed at her.

“Brush your hair?” he asked. “Or is it meant to look like that?”

“Don’t you like it?” she teased, petting it upward.

“I like it, but you’re not dressing for me.”

“Pity.”

*   *   *

After she’d groomed herself, Raena came to sit in his lap. Haoun petted her back gently, careful not to snag his claws in the fabric of her new dress. “Nervous?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said, but he felt the flutter of her heart beneath her thin, soft skin. He wished he could do something to make the waiting easier.

“Have you ever been in jail?” Raena asked.

Haoun was surprised they hadn’t had this conversation before. “Never.”

“Never been caught?” she teased.

“You know how cautious I am.” Caution had cost him his mate and children, but he hadn’t really thought caution was a bad thing. He’d always been cautious, up until he asked Raena if she’d play the jet scooter game with him on Lautan.

She rested her head against his chest. “Regretting anything?”

“Only that I should’ve taken up with you sooner.”

“My bunk’s too small,” she pointed out.

“Vezali could fix it.” After the words left his translator, he wished he could call them back. What if she didn’t want to be with him on the Veracity? What if this didn’t mean anything to her, if she was only glad of his company because she’d been trapped in solitary confinement and she was lonely, bored, and frightened?

“I’d rather come sleep in your nest,” she said. “Much more comfortable.”

“Really?” he asked hopefully.

Raena said decisively, “Really.”

He wove his long fingers between her short ones. “No regrets,” he promised.

Their moment was ruined by a voice announcing over the comm, “Prisoner Zacari, the court is preparing for you now.”

Raena stood up and shimmied the dress down into place. “Do I look scary?”

“You look nice,” Haoun said. “Good luck today.”

“Thank you. Will you be there?”

“Coni is saving me a seat in the courtroom.”

“I haven’t met my defender yet,” she said abruptly.

“Ariel said he is on Kai,” Haoun soothed. “He’ll be there for you today.”

“What if he is attacked by those soldiers in gray? What if someone prevents him from getting to me on time? What if—”

He cut her off. “You aren’t alone. Ariel is here. If the defender gets held up, we will think of something. We are all in this.”

Raena’s breathing grew choppy. Haoun thought back over the time he’d known her. Before she went alone down to the Thallian homeworld to wipe them out, before she’d gone to Capital City to protect Mellix, before she led the assault on the Outrider androids: before any of the attacks, she had been calm, relaxed, in her element. Only when she’d fled the New Bar after seeing herself in Mellix’s documentary had she seemed anxious. This was even worse.

“This will be over soon,” he promised. “Then I owe you a bubble bath.”

A voice said over the comm, “Prisoner Zacari, stand away from the door.”

Raena snatched up Haoun’s wrist and pulled him with her to the opposite side of the cell. She turned around to face the wall and put her hands up on it at shoulder height.

“Do I need to turn around, too?” he asked, as nervous as she had been.

“No, you’re fine.” She seemed calmer suddenly. “Just keep your hands where they can see them, step out of their way politely, and don’t make any twitchy moves.”

Four guards came into the cell. Three carried stun staves. One of them moved to cover Haoun as another advanced on Raena with an old-fashioned set of shackles. She submitted docilely as he bound her wrists and ankles, then attached the leads that prevented her from taking a long step or raising her hands above her waist—or would have done, if she hadn’t been so tiny.

Raena kept her face blank, as if she hadn’t noticed she was barely hobbled. Where nerves had made her fluttery before, now she looked very, very still.

It made Haoun think of a yaska, a fuzzy little prey animal from his home world that froze when it became aware you were hunting it. It let you think it was frightened, before it leapt up to bite at your eyes. They could burrow into your brain and kill you in the space of a breath.

The guards formed up around her and marched her out the door. Haoun followed, but one directed him back to the visitors’ elevator. He hoped Raena wouldn’t kill the guards on the way to the courtroom.

*   *   *

Once Haoun had lumbered out of earshot, one of the guards—a twiggy tree creature—asked, “Who’s that?”

“My boyfriend.”

The guards burst into laughter. Raena just smiled to herself.

“I think she’s serious,” the canine guard pointed out. He reminded her of Skyler, who had traveled on the Panacea with Kavanaugh, when they were young.

“That’s just sick,” the frog-faced guard said. “You humans will throw yourselves on anything, won’t you?”

Raena didn’t bother to point out that she hadn’t made the first move. She also didn’t point out that the galaxy had done a pretty thorough job of spreading humans thin across space. No matter what she said, people like these would find a way to be disgusted.

She just hoped that whatever magic Ariel was preparing, they could all get out of here soon.