CHAPTER 11

Watching Lisinthir coach the Fleet officers for their performance didn't make Vasiht'h trust him any less... but it was still appalling. "No," he said to Cory. "You're breathing too evenly. Spend a few moments jogging in place if you must, but you have to be fighting to keep from gasping in. If you can manage the faintest of shudders on the exhale, so much the better." And to Triona, "Can you pinch your ears? If their exposed skin is flushed, it will make you look frightened."

/Are the Chatcaava going to notice these things?/ Vasiht'h asked, struggling to pack his distress down where the mindline wouldn't find it.

/Since the beginning of time, predators have been reading prey for signs of fear and injury,/ came the subdued response. /Never doubt that they will know. Perhaps not consciously, but they'll know./ A flare of anger, low and wreathed with pain. /They have hunted us for prey long enough./

They were sitting at the back of the bridge, silent guardians over the health of the ambassador whose knowledge was worth more to the Alliance than any of their lives. That was as it should be, Vasiht'h knew, though it was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable thought. He recognized it because he'd picked it from the mind of every Fleet officer they'd ever helped in their practice: that they would die for the safety of the Alliance and its peoples. The Glaseah honored that conviction, and knew he should be feeling in his bones....

....but he didn't.

The worst of it was that he could sense that selfless core in Jahir. His partner might protest that he fled his homeworld to get away from that waste, from violence and pettiness and unnecessary death. But since their very first meeting, Vasiht'h had tasted the depth of the conviction in Jahir's soul. His partner could understand dying so that others might live, could see himself doing it. His partner had in fact come a little too close to doing that within a few years of their acquaintanceship. Jahir might not have a fighter's instincts, and his revulsion for violence was unquestionable to someone who shared his thoughts in a communion more intimate than anything short of the Goddess's omniscience. But there were things Jahir valued above his own life—abstract ideals, not just people.

Vasiht'h didn't think he'd realized until now just how different that made them. Oh, he could imagine doing anything to protect the people he loved. His family. Jahir. Even his patients. But to throw himself into a war between political entities because a queen had said they should?

He had promised himself to his partner's side, in life... and in death too, because he knew he would die long before Jahir did. But he'd imagined his service entailing something a little less dangerous. To build, rather than defend. To return to the Eldritch homeworld, maybe, have children, teach them how to look out for Eldritch of their own. That was work for a Glaseah, and this Glaseah in particular. Flitting around the border looking for trouble... Goddess, he hoped that wasn't what the Queen was expecting of him. Surely it wasn't; she'd seemed far too knowledgeable about the Alliance's races to think that a fitting use of his talents.

No, the problem was what use she thought would suit Jahir's talents. And where Jahir went, Vasiht'h had to go. For his own sanity.

It didn't help that his revulsion at Lisinthir's matter-of-fact manipulation was no obstacle to Vasiht'h's awareness of his magnificence. Jahir's cousin was a splendid predator, the wolf that defended his adopted bipeds from the bears in the woods. There was no mistaking Lisinthir for anything tame, and it was a relief to have a killer like that on your side. As Triona had observed days ago, the Ambassador had not yet stood down from the hyper-vigilance that had kept him alive in the Empire, and he was using those skills now to direct a play of staggering mendacity. How carefully he placed everyone in relation to each other, speaking authoritative words about how sitting closer together would make them seem more in need of comfort. His command of this particular psychology was easily the equal to anything Vasiht'h and Jahir had ever learned, and all of it was intuitive, taught in the most dangerous of classrooms, where mistakes had earned him wounds so egregious even modern healing couldn't erase the evidence of their creation. When at last Lisinthir stepped back and indicated they should begin recording, the results were shocking. Even Vasiht'h, poorly educated as he was in the predator's lexicon, could read the defeat and fear and nervousness engineered into the three women's performance.

"Well done!" Lisinthir said when they'd concluded. "But I think it could use adjustment."

So it went, and the two of them had to suffer through all the revisions. Bad enough when Lisinthir alone was doing the work. When the officers became intrigued and started adding their own suggestions, it became nightmare fuel. Vasiht'h resisted the urge to back away and instead did his best not to listen. This was what the Chatcaava wanted out of their prisoners. This is what they would be—really be, not acting, but feeling!—if they were themselves captured! How could they be so blasé about it?

/They're not./ Jahir's tone was gentle but there was no yielding in it. /But they've been trained to face this fear all their careers./

/It's horrible./

Jahir's face was impassive as he watched one of the women adjust the collar of Cory's uniform so it showed a little more of her throat. Even the link between them remained too quiet for Vasiht'h to sense anything. /Yes./

...but that's life, is how Vasiht'h imagined that sentence ending. Some other life the Glaseah had never been exposed to, but that was fundamental to other people, people who lived on the borders, people who lived in cultures like Jahir's. People who still knew privation and civil unrest and crime, who feared the sky above them because it contained pirates and slavers and dragons. Vasiht'h rubbed his arms, trying to smooth down the fur.

He wanted to ask Jahir if the Eldritch thought less of him for being unwilling to give his life up for any of this, but he was afraid of the answer. And had he been impatient with Jahir for being unwilling to admit to his own needs? The Goddess, Vasiht'h thought, pained, was a mistress of teaching through example.

Eventually, Jahir would find out. Little things, ephemeral things, those could be hidden from the depth of their link. So could old things, matters put to rest so long ago they no longer surfaced where the conscious, active mind could reveal them. But a problem this frightening and new....

Vasiht'h knew that Jahir would still love him. The possibility he couldn't bear was that Jahir would no longer respect him. As they waited for Lisinthir to finish with his task, Vasiht'h crossed his paws at the wrists to keep from chafing them together.

There was in these Fleet women a latent aggression that was deeply pleasing. Triona in particular, once he'd pricked it to the surface... her suggestions, fueled by her knowledge of trauma care, were quite inspired. The matter needed almost three hours, but at the end of it they had a good edit of a transmission that would lull any Chatcaava. Lisinthir would bet his life on it, and in fact was, and all the lives in his care.

He hoped they'd have time to send out at least one more; it would give them time to develop the story of the damaged courier, its plight growing more desperate and its crew more vulnerable. Perhaps some new flaw in the Engineering department could necessitate another cry for help on the heels of the first? He would have to discuss it with the Captain later. For now, he had an appointment. Stopping before his therapists, he said, "Now would be a good time, yes? You don't have your own duties for another few hours."

Jahir rose with commendable alacrity. Vasiht'h followed, but a heart-beat later, an asynchronicity that caught his attention. Usually they moved in tandem, their bodies reflecting the psychic link. In the past days when there had been pauses, they had been the result of Jahir's reticence... now it seemed the other way around. What new stress had arisen to disturb the Glaseah? Lisinthir hoped he hadn't catalyzed this one as well. He no longer liked the idea of causing his cousins—for so he must call them both, given Vasiht'h's adoption—distress.

"We're free for now, yes," Jahir said. "You orchestrated that well."

"I had good material to work with," Lisinthir answered, flashing a grin over his shoulder at the women, who laughed. They were flushed with their own success and fierce with pride and a hunter's eagerness. He found it delicious.

"I hope Fleet finds us first," Vasiht'h muttered.

"So do we all. But we must plan for the worst contingency as well as the best."

"Is it time for his feeding?" Vasiht'h asked.

"It is. I should fetch it—"

"I'll go."

Lisinthir watched the Glaseah jog away, then glanced at his cousin and lifted his brows.

"Yes?"

They were leaving the bridge, but Lisinthir switched to their tongue anyway, for the guarantee of privacy. "Usually that sort of conversation takes place without words. Is there aught amiss between you and your beloved?"

The skin near Jahir's eye tightened, a flinch Lisinthir glimpsed in his peripheral vision. In shadowed mode, his cousin answered, "This situation places new strains on us as people, as one must expect."

There was pain there he found he didn't want to disturb... and that, at last, told him how much he'd come to care for Jahir Seni Galare and his Vasiht'h. Lisinthir suppressed his sigh and found some humor in the situation. He was nothing if not a consummate survivor. To be purposeless was to court suicide, so he had not only resurrected the one he'd thought lost to him, he'd found people to cherish while he went about it in exile. Was it the Imthereli in him that made him so resistant to his own destruction? Or was it the Chatcaavan self he'd embraced that resulted in this indomitable will?

Perhaps there had never been much difference between the Eldritch and the Chatcaava at that. They were both savages in a world pacified by the Alliance. Their relationship had been inevitable, given that: they understood one another in a way the tame and rich Pelted never would.

In the gym, Lisinthir doffed the coat and stripped off the shirt before bringing Jahir the staff. Grasping it, his cousin said, "Do you really not feel the cold?"

Lisinthir kept his own grip on the staff just for the pleasure of holding his cousin near. "Once I start moving I'll be fine."

"You should eat first."

"As soon as your beloved arrives with the vial," Lisinthir promised. "Until then, you could nourish me with a kiss?"

Jahir's sigh held too much humor for true frustration. "Are you always so flirtatious?"

Lisinthir glanced at the ceiling, maintaining his nonchalance. "I was expecting psychoanalysis on my use of salacious commentary as a way to deflect attention or dispel stress... is it forthcoming?"

His cousin shook his hand loose from the staff. "You can't help yourself. Always with the positioning."

"Footwork is very important," Lisinthir agreed. "One must control the ground if one wishes to prevail over one's enemies."

"And those of us who are not your enemies?"

"Sometimes still wish to be prevailed over." He grinned and kissed his cousin on the cheek, very proper and very cool, as if they were rare friends of long acquaintance. Through the touch he could taste Jahir's frustration with the chastity of it.

"Tease," Jahir murmured, shading it carmine and carnal and putting a touch of a husk in it.

Lisinthir paused to enjoy the rush of want that elicited and chuckled, cupping his cousin's jaw. "How quickly you learn." Such a pleasure, feeling the warmth of skin beneath fingers. How had he lived before the Chatcaava had forced him to use all his talents to their fullest? "But first, we have this small matter to attend to." He tapped the staff. "Let us do so, then."

"Your meal—"

"We can stop once your beloved arrives with it."

They worked a good ten minutes before Vasiht'h padded into the room, and while Lisinthir didn't hear the apology he made to Jahir he could read it in their bodies. That it didn't dissolve the tension between them mystified him; he maintained a surreptitious watch on the Glaseah as Jahir loaded the pump and used it, and there was no mistaking Vasiht'h's discomfort. Why? When it had been the Glaseah who had pushed him into undertaking Jahir's continuing education?

He had his answer soon enough. Jahir put the tools away and took up the staff again, but instead of moving back onto the mat, he said, "I would make a request."

"Go on?"

"I would like you also to teach Vasiht'h."

The Glaseah froze in place like something nocturnal pinned by a spotlight. There must have been some frenzied communication there, but Jahir ignored it, saying, "If you are willing, cousin."

Lisinthir considered Vasiht'h's stricken expression. Obviously this request had not been made with the Glaseah's consent, which made it debatable whether it could be successful. He could not teach the unwilling. Remembering one of their first conversations, he said in deliberate Universal, "Teaching requires the consent of the taught."

Vasiht'h flinched, looked away and hugged himself. "I'm willing," he said with obvious reluctance.

Lisinthir glanced at Jahir and lifted a brow, received a slight head-shake. Would their language be transparent to the Glaseah through the mindline he shared with an Eldritch? The possibility must exist, or Jahir would have said something. He let the pause lengthen instead, and when he saw no change in their body language, said, "I will have water. If you will excuse me."

The moment his cousin left, Vasiht'h hissed, /I didn't mean now when I said I would do it!/

Jahir folded his arms, head bowed. When he was sure of his tone, he said, "If not now, then when?"

"Later. When we're home. Where we're—"

"Safe?" Jahir looked at him then. "Now is when we need it, arii. Not on Veta in a month when you have the luxury of confronting your distress at the necessity."

"It's not necessity!"

"It is now." Jahir flexed his fingers on his arms.  "Now, Vasiht'h, in this moment. When we might need the practice, the mindset, the recent muscle memory of the actions. Later you and I can both take on the training in a safe environment at our leisure. But the time between ourselves and our freedom is limited and growing more so, and between ourselves and that outcome there is the possibility of combat... and if we are not engaged in it, then we need to be able to avoid it. When, then, if not now?"

Through their link, the words squeezed as if past all his partner's desperate attempts to prevent them: But I don't want to!

Jahir shook his head and said, quiet, "Arii. We do what we must. Or we may not make it home."

"That sort of thinking might work for a Lisinthir," Vasiht'h said. "I don't know that it will work for me. I'm not like you. Either of you!"

"You would have me believe you are incapable of sacrifice?" Jahir said, tasting the frenzied fears behind the words. "This from the person who nearly bled out while trying to hide a dagger that would start a war?"

"That was a dream!"

"It was real to you," Jahir said, amazed that his partner could suddenly seem so alien to him. Had this been what Vasiht'h was feeling on seeing him evince his unnatural desires? And yet he could not love the Glaseah any less, and he let that soak the mindline, fill it with something warm and clean, sparkling with moonlight.

"It's not the same." Vasiht'h stepped back, toes splayed. Jahir could see a hint of claw at their tips. "That was for you. To save you and your family, because it means that much to you."

"Then I say to you what you said to me," Jahir answered, quiet. "If you love me so, then do this for me. I already contemplate a future without you. Don't make me live through that grief before time."

That rendered Vasiht'h speechless, wrung the mindline with anguish as if Jahir had stabbed him. It hurt so to feel it that Jahir was grateful when his cousin returned, wearing his Chatcaavan—Eldritch—mask of an expression, his emotions kept too close to reach even his eyes.

He was even more grateful that Lisinthir's first words disordered both their thoughts.

"Can you dance?"

"I'm... sorry?" Vasiht'h said, the mindline flecked with the sparks of his confusion as he tried to back away from their previous conversation and make sense of the new one.

"Dance," Lisinthir repeated, unruffled. "Can you?"

"I... yes?"

"May I see?"

Bewildered, Vasiht'h said, "Just... like that?"

"I'm sure we can order music from the ceiling or walls," Lisinthir replied. "The Alliance being magical as it is. Tell me a favored piece."

Jahir wanted to ask very badly what on the world his cousin was thinking, but held his peace. Better to see his partner jarred from his distress and rejection than to chance breaking whatever spell it was Lisinthir was weaving.

His cousin was at the wall, waking the interface with a splayed hand and looking back at Vasiht'h with one of those subtly challenging expressions, all lifted brow and canted head and ever-so-slight smile. "So? Music?"

"Ah... I... guess... there's a pronk channel out of Alpha that's fun—"

Jahir said, "I like that one."

"He dances too," Vasiht'h said, straightening his shoulders.

"Of course he does," Lisinthir said, paging through the interface now. "He was taught to dance the moment he left the nursery. So, pronk out of Starbase Alpha. We won't be able to reach Alpha without a Well drive to pull down distant streams, but there should be something stored locally in the ship...." His fingers played the display, though Jahir noted that at speed Lisinthir defaulted to something less like a quick stroke and more like the flex of claws. "Something like this?"

The drums came first, low and quick, more a vibration felt in the soft core of the body than heard. Everything else spilled onto it in swift succession, layers of rhythm and melody. Pronk was named for the springing of gazelles: happy music designed for bouncing and written to be looped with melody lines that evolved like DNA across generations. Jahir enjoyed it, but there was little music he didn't. If healing was what occupied his mind, it was music that whispered to him of the passions he kept constrained, carefully channeled.

Perhaps Lisinthir was destined to cut through all the channels they'd made and free everything in them to find a new equilibrium. He and Vasiht'h together formed a stable core, settling into peace and calm. A little disruption now and then... that was the story of life, wasn't it? The unexpected, the breathless, the unplanned-for, the unwanted. The challenge.

"Effervescent," Lisinthir observed of the music, head tilted.

"I like happy songs," Vasiht'h said, and then backpedaled when Lisinthir joined him and held out a hand.

"So teach me."

"Teach you?" Vasiht'h managed, ears flattening.

"To dance to this, if you would. I assume it requires bouncing."

"Ah... it's easier if you have paws—"

"I am sure my cousin makes do?"

"He does," Jahir said for himself, amused, arms folded.

"Well then, I shall as well." Lisinthir bowed. "If you would."

How tentatively his partner put his hand in the Eldritch's! But there was power in music, and an inevitability somehow to its working on them. Jahir backed off the mat and put his spine to the wall and watched, and thought that he would live many years and never forget the sight of a Glaseah stotting alongside an Eldritch heir. Vasiht'h's dancing was all the innocent happiness of a body in motion... Lisinthir's, informed by far more dangerous and sensual understandings. The mindline cleared of grief and fear and revulsion and sang purer melodies, and Jahir closed his eyes and drew it close.

"So... ah... I think you have it."

Lisinthir waved the volume down. "I do, yes. And I know too what I wondered."

"Whether Glaseah can dance?" Vasiht'h asked, finding a flutter of amusement.

"Whether you were aware of your lower body with the same precision you are the upper," Lisinthir said, strolling behind Vasiht'h. An abrupt motion, boot to the heel of Vasiht'h's back leg, and the Glaseah twitched away. "Excellent."

"You wanted to watch me dance to see if I could move my own body?" Vasiht'h asked, too puzzled to be offended.

"Not move it, but be aware of it even when it's out of sight." Lisinthir finished circling him, coming to a halt behind and to one side. "More than half of you is over your shoulder. If I stand here, you can't see me, but I can attack you—can, in fact, disable or kill you. Without situational awareness, you have a grave vulnerability. But I think you might, and in fact—" The Eldritch feinted toward Vasiht'h's tail and again the Glaseah recoiled. "In fact, you may be using your abilities to sense it in advance of the actual touch. That would make all our lives easier."

Appalled, Vasiht'h said, "You used dancing to see how good I would be at fighting?"

"Both begin with motion," Lisinthir said, unperturbed. He came around to the front, beckoned to Jahir. "Now we shall test a new assertion."

Obedient and curious, Jahir joined them on the mat, woke the staff in response to his cousin's nod. Perfectly at ease, Lisinthir waited, hands folded behind his back, the yoke of his shoulders without tension.

"Now," his cousin said in a tone conversational enough to lull them both, "Vasiht'h, defend!" And lunged for Jahir with one of those poured-water swiftnesses that Jahir found so disarming. Before he could react, Vasiht'h had slammed him out of the way—rather too forcefully—and ducked, then leaped back in alarm at Lisinthir's advance. Jahir went for his cousin then, tasting ferocity like bile, like some hint of hidden angers.

How long did they do this? He lost track. Lisinthir did not relent, not to allow them their wind or evaluate their performance or explain how to better it; he worked them until the mindline stretched taut and empty of words, filled only with a bone-deep cognizance of where Vasiht'h was in space, where he was in relation to that, what hurt on the Glaseah's body, what hurt on his own.

"Stop," Lisinthir said abruptly.

They did, panting.

"Drink something," their tutor said, voice a rasp. He wiped his hair back from his brow and chuckled. "Now that was proper exercise."

"You're... in... sane..." Vasiht'h said, the mindline finally filling with a trickle of something: anger, confusion, exhaustion. Jahir ignored it and went to get them both water, passing the cup to the Glaseah once he'd had a few tentative sips. Vasiht'h took it, drank, then asked, arch, "What was the point of that? Do you just like to beat people up?"

Lisinthir remained unmoved. "I was doing as your beloved asked."

"How was that training me to fight!"

"By giving you something worth fighting for, so you would no longer make protest," Lisinthir replied, unperturbed. "And to demonstrate that you cannot be trained alone. Neither of you can. Your greatest asset is your link to one another: what others need to communicate in words, or spend months training in order to simulate, the two of you can do effortlessly. You work together when attacked." He smiled thinly. "If you truly cared to, you could become frighteningly formidable."

"No, thank you!" Vasiht'h muttered, but his anger had transmuted into puzzlement, and just a little, into interest.

"I apologize for the unorthodox methods," Lisinthir said. "But I think by now it should come as no surprise to either of you that you must embark on most everything as a team. It is the path you've chosen."

/And I do not regret it,/ Jahir added, soft.

Vasiht'h glanced at him and flushed, wishing he felt worthy of it.

Lisinthir interrupted the moment, casual. "Cousin? I believe I am about to faint."

So successful had he been in sounding unperturbed that Jahir almost didn't catch him when he staggered. Almost. Wrapping his arms around the body, sliding to one knee, he called, /Arii!/

/Here!/

Jahir put an arm around Vasiht'h's shoulders, pulling him close, and tipped into Lisinthir's mind, and the disorder there, and it was... oh, it was extreme and vicious, chaos armed with fang and tooth, a savagery that promised an utter undoing. He was stunned by the magnitude of the work before him to calm it—

/No,/ Vasiht'h said behind him, bracing him. /We won't let the dark have him./

Jahir breathed out his acquiescence and gathered the screaming unsense into himself, peeling it forcefully from Lisinthir's mind, imposing himself on it over and over with his partner a silent bulwark behind. It became a battle—he felt the sword in his hand and didn't question the overlay his own consciousness had put on the fight—and in the blood-shrouded dark he cut away the demons until there was stillness and a cool wind blew over the field, carrying away the miasma of death.

When he found himself in his body at last he was trembling. Vasiht'h was behind him with his arms threaded around his waist, and that was well, it was keeping him upright. Lisinthir was in his arms, breathing... God and Lady, breathing. Had it been close? It had felt close.

/It was,/ Vasiht'h said, subdued. When Jahir wondered at the low tone, the Glaseah said, /I've been so angry at him for exposing something about myself that scared me. But in no universe do I want him dead./

Jahir sighed, his breath ruffling Lisinthir's hair.

Muzzy now: "...cousin?"

"Here," Jahir murmured.

"…feel rather vague."

"You had a seizure," Jahir said. "But you're safe now."

There was a faint smile in this answer, though Jahir couldn't see his cousin's face to be sure. "Brave healer."

"Say it in our tongue," Jahir said, using that language. "So that I'm sure of you."

"Brave healer," Lisinthir answered, voice low with fatigue. He had shaded it gold and white. "I saw you on the field. You had Seni's sword."

Jahir quelled his tremor. "You saw it?"

"I have the memory of it. Was it not real?"

Jahir kissed the pale head, tasted sweat. "Real enough," he said in Universal. "You should rest a while. We'll ask Triona to watch you while Vasiht'h and I see to the rest of the crew."

"And then?" Lisinthir asked, keeping to their tongue, all quicksilver changes of mode: pure white, bright gold, the hope of silver, the suggestion of red flesh. "Will you be what I need?"

He couldn't help himself in response to that complex a question so effortlessly couched... because of course, what could Lisinthir do anymore without twining the spiritual and the moral and the physical together? He laughed, soft, and it was delight in finding something new and unexpected in a people from whom he had come to expect stagnation. "Oh cousin," he said. "As if you could be denied."

Lisinthir pushed himself free of the embrace and smoothed his hair over his shoulder, each motion careful until he'd proven he could make them without falling. Then he smiled, and while the merriment didn't quite lighten his eyes, it did his voice. "You know I prefer my companions willing."

"Or bloody beneath you."

"But not you." Lisinthir touched Jahir's cheek once, then smiled and said to Vasiht'h over Jahir's shoulder, "And not you. So come more willingly to these practices, as many as we have left."

"All right," Vasiht'h said, meek. And to Jahir, resigned and rueful, /You were right./

/Then we are even, yes?/ Jahir replied, and touched the hands clasped at his waist. /Let's get our patient to a bed. We have work to do./

/Yes./