CHAPTER 13

Dread fogged Vasiht'h's slide out of sleep, and opening his eyes didn't dispel it. The low lighting, the acrid scent of the Chatcaavan drug, the gnawing pangs of hunger... reality was almost more nightmarish than his nightmares. He rubbed his face slowly against the pillow, a halfhearted attempt at denial that didn't work, and then rested his cheek on it.

Lying near his eye was the Galare unicorn. Sometime in the night the knot he'd tied in the chain had loosened enough for it to rest apart from him, and staring at it he wondered how much he'd been tossing for it to wind up near his face where it could rear, its hooves pointed at him as if in accusation. You didn't mean it, when you vowed. You're willing to give everything, as long as it's on your terms.

Vasiht'h pushed himself up, fur bristling at the chill. Someone had thrown a blanket over him. Where was Jahir? He pulled on the mindline, and that brought his partner to the door into the sleeping chamber as if he'd tugged on a physical rope. The link welled with a gentle greeting, warm as any embrace, and startled, the Glaseah looked up.

His partner was exhausted. He was also... glowing. Like the ember at the tip of a stick of temple incense, promising a long, slow sweetness, perfumed like amber. And he brought that warmth and light to Vasiht'h with his approach, and when he went to one knee beside the mound of pillows. That was close enough that Vasiht'h could see the lines around his eyes, the fatigue that reddened the edge of their lower lids. And yet, that peace...!

"Ariihir," Jahir said, and from his voice he'd been up too late, a touch of gravel in that low tenor. What would he say next? Vasiht'h thought his heart would break open, waiting....

A smile, a hint of fondness. "You're hungry. You should eat."

The turnabout was so unexpected that Vasiht'h couldn't help a laugh. He covered his mouth.

"Better," Jahir said, and something about the way he said it made Vasiht'h think of Lisinthir. "Come with me? You really should break your fast. And then I fear we have work to do."

"More clients?" Vasiht'h asked, confused. "Did Hea Borden schedule us to cover the morning shift right after we did the evening?"

Regret, sounding like distant rain in the mindline. "Nothing so easy, I'm afraid. We are now at the point of planning for any... undesirable... outcomes to the transmission. And you and I must be part of it, because we will have to know where to go if there is trouble."

Every muscle squeezed in protest, as if to harden themselves into armor against the words. "Can't they just decide and tell us what to do?"

"They could, yes. And they will. But we need to be there. I fear it won't be as simple as 'hide in a storage closet.'" Gentle teasing now, like a breath blowing his fur against the grain. "We would not fit in one anyway. I am too tall and you are too long."

How could the Eldritch make jokes? Where did he find the strength? And this radiance... oh, how Vasiht'h wanted to bask in it. If he was certain of his welcome....

Goddess, what had they become that he was no longer certain of something so fundamental? How could he distrust—no, disbelieve—the evidence of the mindline? The love in it was as palpable as the light of the sun, and yet he couldn't bring himself to reach toward it.

And Jahir saw it. He knew. A shadow dimmed the mindline, and Vasiht'h looked away.

"How many ways must I say it, my love, before you will accept that it matters not a whit to me that you want no part of this fight?"

The 'my love' shocked Vasiht'h out of his guilt and shame. They knew their feelings for one another, but rarely did Jahir refer to them so baldly.

"You don't understand," he managed.

"Then explain it to me." A smile. "As we would say with our most inexperienced clients: we need to begin with communication. Yes?"

Vasiht'h slicked his feathered ears back. "Sometimes communication makes things worse."

"Before it makes them better."

The anguish in him threatened to break loose, flood the link between them. "Sometimes it breaks things, Jahir."

Those golden eyes met his, steady, but Vasiht'h could feel the compassion behind them, taste it in his mouth like honey. "It will not break us."

"I don't want to fight this war for your Queen."

"Neither do I—"

"You don't understand," Vasiht'h said, before he could lose the courage. "Jahir... you don't want to fight this war, but you will because you feel it's your duty. But I don't believe it's mine."

Like a sword laid between them, the violence implicit. The potential for a wound... worse, for severing. Even in Vasiht'h's heart, something changed. Saying it aloud had made it real. It's not mine.

"Then," Jahir said, hesitant, "what will you do?"

"I don't know!" Vasiht'h cried, and he could hold it back no longer: the agony of it, of being torn between his need to be true to the beloved, the Goddess-blessed union, the partnership they'd built together... and his absolute rejection of where that could take him. Was he crying? He at least knew he was shaking because his wings were scraping his back. "Oh, Goddess, Jahir... I don't know! Tell me, please, I'll listen to anyone who'll tell me what I should do!"

Jahir gathered him into his arms, and the answering pain from him was almost unbearable, and Vasiht'h shocked himself by wishing he couldn't feel it. Not that he could fix it, but that he couldn't sense it. Oh, Goddess, he was going to throw up—

/Sssh./

Somewhere in him, barriers were being woven between himself and his terror and grief. He knew Jahir was erecting them, that Jahir hadn't asked permission to separate him from his emotions, and he didn't care. He didn't even care that they would have told their own patients that pushing pain away only deferred the task of dealing with it. Maybe his partner knew that he couldn't work through it now when they might die today, or tomorrow. Everything was too close, too real, too much.

"If need be," Jahir said against his forelock, "then I will go to the fight and come back to you when it's over." Leaning back, the Eldritch said, "It will be no different than any other bonded couple who loses a love for a time to the warfront, only to regain him when the deployment is done."

"You might die without me," Vasiht'h said.

"I fight better with you at my side, I think," Jahir said. "But I learned to fight before I knew you, and I can fight that way again."

How to express his panic at the thought that Jahir could get on without him? Worse, that he might push Jahir into it with his own refusal to help? "I... I don't know how it would feel, to stretch the mindline across that much distance. We've done it once or twice and it feels—" Awful, is how it felt, and he caught Jahir's reflexive anxiety at the notion before the Eldritch suppressed it. And now, Vasiht'h thought, they were hiding things from one another. Because of him!

"Maybe the Queen will not send me," was what Jahir chose to say finally.

And if she didn't... would it matter, now that Lisinthir had involved them? Now that Jahir cared about what happened in the Empire? Now that Jahir cared about Lisinthir?

There was no way out of this. None. Vasiht'h choked back a moan. Maybe he should go with Jahir anyway. Surely going and being terrified but with Jahir was better than any of the alternatives—

"I would rather," Jahir said, the words slow to leave him, "that you remain at home, and safe... than to be consumed with worry and guilt at having dragged you into something you could not bear." His partner lifted a hand as if to touch Vasiht'h's cheek... then let his fingers graze the fur there under the eye. The caress of his concern, the aching love underlying it, was more real than the physical touch. "I would not have your sanity broken for the sake of a vow."

"But if I break my vows, how can I be worthy of you? Or anyone?"

Jahir shook his head, the minute little twitch of chin he'd mostly abandoned for more legible mannerisms adapted from the Pelted norm. "One broken promise does not make you unworthy of love, Vasiht'h."

"It is if it's this promise." Vasiht'h closed his eyes. The emotional blocks were working on him: what he felt now was numb. Numb and hopeless.

"Oh, my brother," Jahir said. "Please... please don't go from me. Not like this."

"I'm trying," Vasiht'h whispered. "But I'm afraid."

"We'll get through it." Jahir gathered both of Vasiht'h's hands and cupped them in his, pulled them to rest against his chest. "Vasiht'h... arii. We will."

What could he say? Save that he didn't believe it? So he didn't say anything at all, and he grieved. Beneath their joined hands he could feel Jahir's heart racing, and the mindline brought him the Eldritch's vivid worries, streaked red like blood from gashes. They'd been through so much, and yet it had always felt external, pressures that pushed them together. This was the first time Vasiht'h felt as if those pressures were pushing them apart.

"We will get through this," Jahir said again, quieter: as if speaking prophecy now, with that same calm assurance. "But to do that... we need to survive the next few days. We must attend these sessions, ariihir. Please."

Vasiht'h said, "Maybe... maybe you should go alone. You can tell me what they say later."

"No." Implacable. And then, pained, "I won't leave you alone. I don't think I should." An apologetic kiss on their hands, then. "Please come."

What could he do? How could he say no?

Would that be how it ended up working? Jahir would go, and he would follow because he couldn't deny him, deny the mindline, deny the gifts the Goddess had given him? Would it hurt less with repetition?

Vasiht'h said, "Let me... let me just clean up."

He endured Jahir's hovering while he ate, though the last thing he wanted was to put anything in his roiling stomach. And after that, he obediently followed his partner through the ship to the conference room where the Captain was already talking with Lisinthir and one of the women from the charade: Cory, the one who'd offered the Ambassador her lap. They were joined by several others from the ship, including Triona, and then the meeting convened.

What they said, Vasiht'h didn't know, though he had some sense of Jahir arguing for them both, as he had during the planning for the rite that had made the Glaseah family. He knew he should be participating, that it was important that he pay attention, but he couldn't; he felt hollowed, as if his skin was supposed to be wrapped around a great turmoil and wasn't, and yet nothing had filled the space. The sensation left him feeling strange and not entirely present, and that the meeting seemed to go on forever only made him all the more lost. By the time it concluded he was so disoriented he couldn't even react to his partner's quiet reminder that they were supposed to practice.

Vasiht'h would go. What else could he do?

In some kinder universe, he would have been oblivious to Jahir's fear for him, and his mounting grief. But the mindline that he himself had welcomed left him no illusions.

"You're off to the gym, I hear?" Triona said, stopping him as the crew began to seep from the room.

Lisinthir glanced at her. "To practice, yes."

"Cory's told me a bit about what you consider practice." The Seersa flicked her ears sideways, diffident. "Mind if some of us join you? We could use the exercise ourselves. We won't interrupt your private lessons."

"More than welcome, and it is I who should be thanking you for the use of the facility."

Triona shook her head. "It's nothing. I'm glad you're being diligent about it. How are your pupils coming along? Your countryman seemed engaged in the discussion in the areas that applied to him."

"He has no more desire to be caught unprepared as the rest of us," Lisinthir said, wondering why she was keeping him—because she was very obviously keeping him. "He is no soldier, of course. But he should be able to keep himself in one piece, and his partner with him."

"You sure about that?"

There, that was the crux of it. Lisinthir rested his hands on the back of his chair and looked at her.

"You know the sort of work we do on the border," the Seersa said, tail twitching. "And you know what I do, given my specialty."

"I have some notion, yes."

She nodded. "Then I hope my judgment will carry some weight with you when I say something's gone very wrong with the Glaseah, and if someone doesn't shake him out of it he'll be a liability—or a corpse."

Brutally presented, but he couldn't disagree. He'd known the moment his cousin and Vasiht'h had entered the room that the problems that had been fretting Jahir into insomnia had not been dispelled by the night's sleep. Worse, unlike Triona, he knew that if Vasiht'h couldn't be brought round, Jahir would be crippled too... and it would be not one corpse left behind, but two.

More than anything, Lisinthir wanted this transmission to bring the Chatcaava before it summoned their rescue. He needed the information he could derive from a visit to their attacker's vessel, and if he could secure a prisoner, so much the better for them all—him, the Emperor and the Alliance too. But wanting that increasingly meant putting his House cousin and partner in a danger they might not survive, and that disturbed him.

It wouldn't stop him—it couldn't, not with two lives pitted against the fate of nations—but it disturbed him.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "But for now, there is other work to be done."

She nodded. "I'll join you in a bit, then, since you don't mind."

"Not at all." He let her precede him out the door, then left for the gym. The nerve block seemed to be holding, but he was subtly aware that things were not well with him. It remained absurd that he was not regaining his condition now that he was being regularly nourished and protected from the depredations of the Chatcaavan court... but he wasn't, and that he could no longer tell how badly off he was concerned him. Perhaps he should ask his cousin to remove the barriers between himself and the pain? Except he would be of lesser use to everyone if he was incapacitated by it.

Raynor stopped him in the hall, drawing him from his thoughts. "Ambassador, a moment if you can spare it."

"Of course, Captain?"

"I'll need you tomorrow if you're up to it," Raynor said. "We're going to be running drills for the traps Cory's setting up with the partitions and since you've volunteered to be bait, we need you to be part of them."

"I'll be up to it," Lisinthir said. The lieutenant's suggestion that they use the emergency bulkheads to separate and trap large parties, if large parties they found themselves facing, had intrigued him. "I wouldn't miss it."

"Good. Bring the civilians if they're willing. They need the practice."

He had become his cousins' keeper? Interesting. Lisinthir also noted he was not, apparently, a civilian. "They may have prior engagements with Hea Borden."

Raynor made a cutting gesture with a hand. "This has to take priority. We're already working on borrowed time. I'm assuming worst case scenarios here: we send the message, we get maybe a day's warning if we're lucky before we have to deal with the Chatcaava."

"When will you send out the first?"

"Tomorrow evening at the latest."

"At the latest?" Lisinthir said, surprised. "Why so soon if you are concerned about the crew's preparedness? You could give yourself a few days to run your drills first."

Raynor shook his head. "I don't think we can afford to wait. Your healer tells me you're going to need a hospital soon, Ambassador... and our own reserves are dwindling. If we don't move now, the power we've got left coming from that second generator wouldn't be enough to charge the weapons for a single shot. No, it's got to be done as soon as possible." Raynor smiled without humor. "I'd send it now if I could, but we're not done siphoning the energy over to the main array. If we can light that panel up, I'll kick our last surveillance drone out and send the message tonight."

"It would be good for this to be over," Lisinthir murmured, flexing his fingers, remembering nails tearing flesh.

"The sooner the better." Raynor grinned. "Let's hope your dragons are prompt."

Lisinthir returned the smile, recognizing the hungers that motivated it. Raynor might not be pared to bone and nerve-edge battle instincts the way the Eldritch was, but he also wasn't the innocent to violence that some of his officers were. "I'll pray they are."

Less than a day before the transmission was released, he thought as he entered the gym. If the Chatcaava had been searching for them since... it depended on which direction they'd begun their search, of course. They could arrive within an hour of broadcast, or it could be days.

His students, barely willing and completely unwilling, were awaiting him. Two of the Pelted were also present, though they were already sparring against one another: close-quarters fighting, he saw, and approved. Chatcaavan ships did not have the long and roomy corridors their Alliance counterparts did, which greatly reduced the utility of the palmers the Pelted preferred.

That left him to his cousins, and what he saw did not fill him with confidence. Jahir was wearing a mask that would have rebuffed an entire court, one that encompassed his eyes; had Lisinthir not known him well enough now to guess how rare that complete non-expression was, he would have been hard pressed to know his cousin's state at all. But that much self-control had to be hiding too much pain. And Vasiht'h... Vasiht'h wasn't angry. At least yesterday he'd resented having been dragooned into these little self-defense courses. Today he didn't seem to care, and Lisinthir distrusted apathy far more than he did anger. Anger he could work with. Apathy....

Nevertheless, they had work to do. "We begin," Lisinthir said. "Different task this time. Stay away from me."

What followed was not a disaster, but only because the word implied emotional distress that his students simply didn't have the energy to invest. Vasiht'h was sluggish, distracted or clumsy, and did not seem to hear direction half the time; worse, he didn't seem to hear his partner's either. As if in overcompensation, Jahir was skittish and divided his attention between the Glaseah and Lisinthir with the inevitable results. Halfway through the session, Lisinthir stopped them and sent Vasiht'h away to fetch water for them both. The moment the Glaseah had crossed the mat, Lisinthir stepped close to Jahir and said in their tongue, black as earth over a grave, "Tell me now."

"He thinks himself unfit because he does not want to follow me to this conflict," Jahir said, shadows flying over the words, and his distress was so palpable Lisinthir wanted to pull him into his arms.

"And... he thinks that you will go to it, and so he must follow."

"Worse, he believes he will be forsworn for not going. Not just to me, but to himself and his Goddess."

Vasiht'h was on his way back, but Jahir had given him enough to mull. Triona was right: if the situation couldn't be healed, couldn't at least be stitched up in anticipation of a real healing, then they would both be prey for the first fight that found them. It was an irony that they had become like him, he thought: holding their wounds together but very much in need of enough peace and help to become healthy again.

What to do? He gave them the order to defend and resumed their training, and let the problem simmer while he worked the agitation from his own muscles and the fear from theirs. Exhaustion would help blunt some of their desperation, and that would make any discussion with them less fraught. Because the discussion was inevitable. He had only to see the rigidity of Jahir's spine to infer the panic his cousin was concealing.

When he judged they'd had enough, he sent them on, staying to talk briefly with Triona and the others who'd been working alongside them. The Pelted had questions about the preferred fighting style of shipboard Chatcaava, and he was glad of the chance to arm them with the knowledge he'd paid so dearly to learn. They returned to their own practice when he begged off, working out how they'd fight in corridors that narrow. They were soft for the work to which Lisinthir had become accustomed... but they had the benefit of their training and their confidence and their will to the fight. He'd become fond of them. Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him, given how he'd liked Laniis. But being here among the Pelted while they struggled through this crisis had helped him make some peace with having to live in the Alliance while seeing to his half of the work. He might begrudge the time he spent apart from his beloveds, who after all would not live even a third his span, but he did not plan to be away long if he could help it. And if he was to be here at all, it was a balm to find the people worthy of his protection.

He knew how to live in a world where the Pelted were wingless freaks, and that had kept him alive in the Empire. He could now slide back into a world where the Pelted were people... and this would keep him alive in the Alliance. A fair trade, he thought, and saluted them before he left. Cory tossed off a quick reply, fingers to brow, and Lisinthir smiled.

But now, to a different duty.

He found his two cousins in their cabin, dressed for bed but not in it and also patently not talking to one another. Jahir was sitting on the couch, his body language as tightly constrained as an Eldritch courtier's. Vasiht'h sat near him by the table, front paws together with one wrist cocked, as if he'd been scratching himself. There were uneaten ration bars in front of them, and untouched water, and the pall in the air was so distinct it seemed to depress the lighting.

He did not try to dispel it with humor or sarcasm. Sitting on the table between them, he threaded his fingers together, hanging them between his knees, and addressed himself to Vasiht'h. "One act changed the heart of the Chatcaavan Emperor. A single act."

The Glaseah looked up, which was more than Lisinthir had expected.

"I had given him the Eldritch shape, and with it the power to sense the feelings of others," Lisinthir continued, ignoring his cousin to concentrate on Vasiht'h. "And we had been spending... I don't know. Weeks. Months. Playing with that ability. This culminated in an evening where the Emperor insisted that he was the stronger of us both and I countered with the assertion that he was wrong, and that what proved this was my ability to bear the suffering of others."

How vivid that night remained in his mind, though others had smeared, their details lost.

All that you can bear, I can bear twice.

Prove it.

Lisinthir drew in a breath. "The act that convinced him involved my torture." He looked at Vasiht'h. "This he chose because he had forced me to undergo it before in order to prevent the death or torment of others. It was one of the few ways he had to keep me in check, because while serial rape I could live with—poorly, but I could, because it involved my fighting it—complete powerlessness undid me."

Vasiht'h drew in a breath but didn't speak. Lisinthir could feel Jahir's regard and thought, Later for you, cousin.

He continued. "Because I wanted him to know what I'd been willing to undergo to save others, I permitted the torture. He was to stay with a hand on my face, to listen through the skin. And this he did, and it lasted..." He trailed off. How long had it lasted? "I don't know. Several hours, I think they mentioned later. In the past, the Emperor himself had administered the torture, but in order to be free to witness, he summoned the Surgeon to act in his stead. As you can imagine—" His eyes flicked to Jahir, then back at the Glaseah. "—a physician who has no compelling reason to abhor torture is very good at prolonging it without killing."

Vasiht'h shuddered.

"And now you wonder why I am telling you this," Lisinthir said. "You have some sense, I think, that I love the Emperor, and you were willing to accept that on your beloved's word though no doubt you think it unbelievable. But I also love the Slave Queen. You would have more compassion for her, knowing that she was a lonely prisoner for all the years of her life, friendless and abused, her very wings mutilated to deny her the sky. She was kind to me from the beginning, who had no reason to be; though her culture did not teach her any context by which to empathize with aliens, she nevertheless saw the similarities between them and herself. She was my first ally in the Empire. She taught me, she gave me safe haven when I was exhausted and beset on all sides, she helped me free the slaves. In all ways, not only an exemplary person... but the Chatcaavan who showed the Emperor the path to what he should become."

Hesitant, Vasiht'h said, "She... she sounds amazing."

"She is," Lisinthir said. "And while I grew to love the Emperor once he changed, the Slave Queen I loved from the start, because she never needed any change to be worthy of it." He smiled. "The Emperor knows it also. He calls her his Treasure, which for Chatcaava is..." He trailed off, trying to decide how to explain it. "It is to call her an ideal of everything good and worthy."

"I can see that," Vasiht'h said softly.

"She was the one who suggested we have the Surgeon perform the torture on me for that final experiment," Lisinthir said. "She said he would be able to prevent injury, and that he would be properly dispassionate about it. The Emperor thanked her for the suggestion and offered to grant her any request. Do you know what she asked?"

Vasiht'h shook his head, a little twitch.

"She asked to leave so she wouldn't have to watch."

He heard Jahir's sharp inhalation, but didn't break his gaze from Vasiht'h's. The Glaseah was quivering. Very gently but with distinct emphasis on each word, he finished, "I don't respect her any less for that."

"She abandoned you," Vasiht'h whispered.

"She knew her limits," Lisinthir said. "And chose not to punish herself by staying... a gesture which I would not have thanked her for, knowing how it would hurt her."

The Glaseah was visibly shaking now. "She should have supported you. You needed her."

"What I needed was her whole," Lisinthir said. "Because when it was over, I could not have put her back together. I was in no shape to be of aid to anyone, and knowing that I had failed her in her need when I myself was near my own destruction... how would that have helped me?"

Vasiht'h's ears flattened.

"She chose the wise course."

"She was weak!"

There, at last, the hidden pain. "She was strong in ways I cannot approach, arii. But that did not make her invulnerable. No person is so strong as to have no weaknesses at all. But one flaw does not make you weak, and one flaw does not make you unlovable."

The Glaseah looked down, and Lisinthir reached over, slipped two fingers beneath his chin and tipped it up. Startled, Vasiht'h met his eyes.

"Had the Slave Queen not helped me in those first days, arii... I would have failed. The task would have been too much for me. And everything that happened after: the changes in the treaty, the freed slaves, the Eldritch heir returned, the Emperor's rebirth and with that rebirth a hope for a new Empire... all those things would never have happened without her choosing to help an alien ambassador in defiance of all acculturation, and the danger to herself. She had no stomach for torture and no taste for battle... but look at all she accomplished...!"

"If... if you're trying to make me feel better—"

"I am trying," Lisinthir said with a touch of a growl, "—to make you stop wasting the gifts of your Goddess, who did not give you the personality She did because it was flawed clay."

Vasiht'h's trembling stopped abruptly. His shock was palpable.

"You are unhappy at the choices in front of you? I cannot blame you. But you will not loathe yourself for not forcing yourself to become a meek duplicate of your partner. To do so disrespects your Goddess and your lover. You are supposed to be different, to complement one another. That makes the work before you harder, but it does not make it impossible."

"I don't know how to begin," Vasiht'h whispered.

"Nor will you," Lisinthir said, "until you are thrown into the thick of it. Then I think many things will become clear to you. Until then, you owe yourself and your beloved more than to let this develop into true self-hatred. Would you destroy what you have, when what you have is so rare?"

"No...!"

Lisinthir said, "Then I think your course is clear. The immediate one, at least." At the Glaseah's wild look, he said, gently, "Talk with your beloved." He smiled a lopsided smile. "I would say 'cuddle' but no doubt one of you will tell me that you don't."

"We do, sometimes," Jahir said, quiet.

"I leave you to it." Lisinthir rose. "I need my bed, given the ramshackle state of my temple."

As he was stepping through the door to the sleeping chamber, Vasiht'h called, "Lisinthir?"

He paused.

"You really cared about her."

He closed his eyes, saw again her face, the sweetness and the melancholy in her gaze, remembered the devastating and unexpected clarity of her insights, and oh, Dying Air, but the yielding of her body to his hands, his mouth. The kisses of dragons, and that dragon in particular. He drew in a careful breath, then said, very clearly, "I love her still, and will always."

He left the two of them to their rapprochement.

Everything in Vasiht'h's body was ringing, as if the space that numbness had hollowed into a Glaseah-shaped shell had been struck from without with a hammer. Just outside that shivering tintinnabulation he could sense Jahir waiting, vibrating in sympathy, wanting passionately to reach for him and no longer sure of himself, if his comfort would be welcome, if his words would not somehow make things worse.

So wrong. Lisinthir had been right about that much: they were no good for one another when held apart. Vasiht'h groped blindly for Jahir's knee, found it and tightened his fingers on it. A moment later, the Eldritch's palm covered his, brought with it a relief that felt like rain after drought, an image that also managed to evoke tears. Was Jahir crying? Vasiht'h looked up hastily.

"No," Jahir said, voice husky. "Not on the outside, anyaways."

"Oh, arii," Vasiht'h whispered. "What have I done to us."

Jahir didn't answer that, save with a warmth through the mindline that could not be denied.

"You think... he meant all that?" Vasiht'h said when he was sure of his voice, and to find some way of approaching the wreckage in his heart. "That it was true."

"I have absolutely no doubt."

Vasiht'h glanced up at his partner. "You're that certain."

"Aren't you?"

Was he? Lisinthir was convincing, but politicians had to be, and what was an ambassador if not a politician? It would be so easy to believe him when he'd been saying things Vasiht'h needed to hear... and yet, nothing in his training suggested that Lisinthir had been deceiving him. So hard to trust, when so much was riding on the results! "Did he tell you about her?"

A tremor beneath his hand. "He made her known to me, yes."

"What did she look like? The mutilated wings... that was real?" At Jahir's glance, Vasiht'h flushed, but didn't look away. It had become very important that the Slave Queen exist in his own mind, that she have a reality separate and tangible to him. For an interminable moment, he thought Jahir would pull away, find his request disrespectful or frivolous. But then:

"Here," Jahir said gently, and made him an image, gifted it through the mindline. A slim shape, not much taller than Vasiht'h himself, muted in hue like sleigh-bells in winter. Female, but shockingly androgynous: he'd been expecting breasts, but she was flat-chested, and her hips were not broad enough to read like a Pelted's body. It made him feel kin to her: did she feel not quite female amid the oversexed males of her species the way he felt not quite male amid the Alliance's many sexually active races?

The wings weren't just mutilated, but pierced in a decorative pattern, scalloped along the leading edges and pricked throughout their vanes in diamond shapes, and here and there with cut-out thorns. Winged, but unable to fly—again, like him.

She had orange eyes, and a mane that shadowed them. But in the image she was smiling.

/Smiling?/ he asked, tentative.

/In many of his memories, they are in one another's arms, and they are happy there./

The Slave Queen of the Chatcaava, Vasiht'h thought. A woman whose thoughts had helped shape an empire. There was something of the Goddess in that. How could there not be?

And this was the person Lisinthir had likened him to in response to his desire to run away from conflict?

"I don't know what to think," he said at last, because it was true and he could at least begin once more with that, between them.

Jahir's voice was very soft. "Do you trust me to make a suggestion?"

"Of course!"

"The ship has a chapel."

Vasiht'h paused, surprised.

"You have always found some peace when you have turned to Aksivaht'h," Jahir said, quiet. More hesitant, "I would make you a paper effigy to take with you, but I don't remember how."

The Glaseah's heart skipped several beats, and his chest clenched. "That's... that's all right. The effigy's not necessary. It's just... a focus. That's all." He looked up. "You found out about the chapel for me?"

Jahir's cheeks tinted; he looked down. "I saw it in the Hinichi's dreams. Kordreigh, on the first night. He uses it."

That prompted memory, brought with it a hazy sense for the safety of the place, and the intimacy of it.

"Will you go?"

And if he did? If he prayed and She didn't answer? Vasiht'h shuddered. Yet not to go was to turn his face from Her, and he couldn't do that. He wouldn't. "I think I will, yes." He stood, his limbs uncertain beneath him. Exhaustion? Emotion? He couldn't tell. "Arii...."

"Vasiht'h." Jahir met his eyes. "I'll be here."

Vasiht'h swallowed and nodded. Before he could lose his nerve, he left. Only after he'd reached the safety of the corridor did he allow himself the luxury of covering his face with his hands. He wanted so much to believe Lisinthir, but even if he did, what would that change? He would still have to decide whether to follow Jahir into a warzone or leave him to go alone. Assuming that Jahir would return to all this, and somehow Vasiht'h knew he would. How could he not? If the war was coming… and the war was coming. He had gathered that from Lisinthir just from watching him, because Lisinthir no longer moved like someone lost and angry, but like someone making preparations, purposeful, alert, focused.

No, there would be no evading it with a last-minute peace treaty. So what did that mean for him?

The computer guided Vasiht'h to the chapel, a room that surprised him with its size; from the Hinichi's dreams he'd assumed it would be barely large enough for him to sit in. Instead it had been designed for at least half the crew to use at a time. It had no pews, no doubt because there'd been no anticipating what species would need it. There was a single altar, unmarked, with a narrow altar cloth hanging over it. The back wall was bare but the cord stretched across the wall was probably used to hang banners for different festivals and religions, depending on who was officiating. Vasiht'h had no idea how such things worked on Fleet vessels; he'd had some sense that it did, but not that so much attention was paid to it, and that made him feel a little better: there were people here who understood the importance of the Divine. There was even a dim glowing sphere of light projected just above the altar, a meditation focus that replaced the candles that no doubt wouldn't be prudent on a ship, and even under their emergency power restrictions it burned.

Vasiht'h sat in front of the altar and looked at the light, barely large enough to cup with his hands.

I'm here, he whispered, finally. I'm not asking for answers.

That surprised him. He'd been expecting to say something else. He kept going.

All I'm asking is for the strength not to fail the people I love in what's to come.

Such quiet. Even the ship was silent beneath his belly, his paws. He waited, hoping for something, for some sign that he was doing the right thing. The light seemed to pulse, so faintly he almost missed it... but other than that... nothing. But something about the waiting... was it that he was putting himself in Her hands? Was it that he knew there was no guarantee of an answer? Maybe what was needful was the courage to live with that uncertainty, and understand that every child of the Goddess was one with him there.

Vasiht'h did not feel very courageous. But the chapel felt good to him, like a world insulated from the harsh realities waiting for him out the door. The peace of it was seeping into him, working at his fears. So he settled himself, wings folded and head bowed, and let it in.

Jahir wasn't sure how long he spent on the couch after Vasiht'h left. He was not conscious of making a decision to wait there, particularly since his instincts suggested that the Glaseah might be gone for some time, long enough that he should sleep long ere his partner's return.

It was just that he couldn't move.

As much as he wanted to believe that Lisinthir had reprieved them, he couldn't. Everything in him knew, knew with a certainty that felt like his deficient pattern sense at work, that this was important, and that it had not been put to bed yet. But what more could he do to reassure Vasiht'h that he did not have to become something he wasn't in order to be worthy of the life they'd made together?

The worst of it was... Vasiht'h was so certain that he was the one at fault for his desire not to engage with the war. But what if that was a lie he was telling them both in order to save them pain? What if Vasiht'h felt that his way was the only sane way, and Jahir's desire to embrace a duty that necessitated violence was the uncivilized path? What if he was right?

What if Vasiht'h repudiated him?

It was the cold that drove him to his feet finally, for his nightclothes were not thick enough for the chill that had become common on the ship. He stumbled upright and to the door, pausing there to let his eyes adjust to the dark. Then he headed for the pillows... and almost tripped over his own feet when Lisinthir said in their tongue, void of any mood inflection, "You're alone. I hadn't expected you to be."

"Cousin," Jahir managed, and no more.

Lisinthir sighed and caught his arm, pulled him to the bed and into it. Jahir had nothing in him to resist, though he was mutely glad his cousin didn't try to strip him, given his gooseflesh. But Lisinthir did nothing more wrap an arm around his waist and tuck him close, back to chest. With the covers over them both, their combined body heat stilled the tremors Jahir hadn't even been aware of suffering.

"Where is your beloved?" Lisinthir said after a time, his breath warm against Jahir's neck.

"I sent him to the chapel."

"That was well-done.  Though he has been gone a while."

"I did not expect him back soon." Jahir closed his eyes, fighting a disorientation made more acute by the darkness and the warmth.

Lisinthir's hand brought him very abruptly back into his body, though all his cousin had done was slip it up his shirt to rest it on his heart. Jahir could feel the smooth metal of the Imthereli ring against his skin, the callus the ring had worn into the flesh at its edge.

"Stay with me, cousin," Lisinthir murmured. "One half of you needs to be present, or there is no hope for you both."

"Cousin—"

"Yes," Lisinthir said. "Exactly that." He kissed the back of Jahir's shoulder, gentle. "So I am allowed to fret for you."

The notion of someone who'd very lately been concerning himself for the fate of nations spending some of that anxiety on him was endearing. It made him smile despite himself.

"Better." Lisinthir smiled against his shoulder, then said, "You have forgotten that I said something that disarmed you, but I have not."

Jahir glanced over his shoulder, saw only the edge of Lisinthir's jaw. "I don't recall."

"You are preoccupied." The hand on his heart caressed him, soothing rather than arousing. "But I spoke of preferring the fight to powerlessness, and you had a moment's unease. Perhaps I was implying something about the relative merits of being one way or the other."

The conversation seemed very long ago, but Jahir remembered that moment. "I thought it, yes. But... it didn't last. I didn't think you would think less of me for being what I am."

The hand on his chest paused. "You mean that."

Did he? "Yes." Saying it made him certain, brought with it visceral memory of all the times he'd felt Lisinthir's response to his... what should he call it? Ease with powerlessness? Eagerness for it?  "You love the Slave Queen, who has this yielding in her. You would not call her craven for it." He looked over his shoulder again. "Am I right?"

"You are." Lisinthir met his eyes. "You and she both must have a courage particular to your personalities, and so long as you exercise that courage, then you cannot be craven."

"And this courage," Jahir murmured. "Is exercised on what battlefield?"

A smile, wintry: it colored Lisinthir's voice as he said, "In choosing who to yield to, and in waiting until you are safe in the choosing. And then in the trusting, once you have given your allegiance... and again in the withdrawal, if it becomes clear there is no longer safety or honor in it."

Jahir tasted those concepts slowly, as if they were water and he too long deprived, not wanting to glut himself. At last, he said, "Those are significant difficulties."

"Thus, the courage," Lisinthir said. "I think I have the easier path, to be honest. But I would, as it is the path natural to me." The smile in his voice now was more genuine, warmed the words.

"A great deal of risk," Jahir mused. "To make such evaluations."

"Fortunate it is that you are a trained psychologist, mm?"

That amused him despite himself. He looked over his shoulder again, found the expected mischief. He also saw the faint etching of lines around his cousin's eyes. "Pain?" he asked. "Is the nerve block wearing thin?"

"It holds admirably. You merely see the evidence of my... concerns."

Jahir sighed. "We were the ones who were supposed to be worried about you."

"And perhaps you will be again when we return to an arena where you are comfortable," Lisinthir said. "But we have moved into an arena where my talents are necessary and yours must wait. We trade roles... that is the dance." A kiss on Jahir's shoulder, familial. "But fear less, cousin. There will be an ending soon."

The quiver that ran his length nauseated him, but he could not articulate his anxieties. Saying that he feared the ending he was approaching was that of the innocence of his relationship with Vasiht'h... he didn't want to make it that real.

Through his skin he felt Lisinthir's wordless reassurance, and he allowed that to lull him, that and the warmth they had made beneath the blankets. And after a time he said, because it was owed and true, "I have chosen you."

He felt Lisinthir raise his head, just a little, the pillow crinkling.

"To trust with my yielding," Jahir continued. "And I have faith in my own evaluation of your worth, and the quality of your heart." He paused, frowning. "Strange how that implies my own. It does, doesn't it?"

"That," Lisinthir said, his approval a warm hush in his voice, "is exactly what it implies. And is why you must value your soul as the God and Lady made it. There is no other way to give yourself safely, save that you respect the gift."

How simple that seemed, suddenly. Where had he read that the true solutions to problems revealed themselves because they were beautiful? "Remarkable."

"O my cousin." Lisinthir sighed, his relief tangible against Jahir's skin. "I think you will be fine. Just fine."

"Maybe," Jahir allowed.

"You will show him the way. Did I not say earlier? You have chosen to walk a path together and that is how you must learn. You have undertaken this lesson. He will come with you."

"You're so certain," Jahir whispered.

"Watch and see, cousin." Lisinthir kissed the nape of his neck, and that made him flush, made him aware of his body again… stung him to life. Such a small intimacy, to wake him so completely to the world. How he wanted Lisinthir to be right!

"Did you not say you trust me with your yielding?" his cousin said. "Then right now, in this moment, trust me my prediction, knowing that for months I risked the welfare of three nations on the strength of similar ones." The fingers on his chest spread, as if to cup his beating heart. "The two of you will come out of this, and it will make you stronger. Your love will permit you to do no less for one another."

That sounded so plausible he could not help but smile.

"Now," Lisinthir murmured, "Stay here, under my arm, and rest. We have a great deal to do tomorrow and I fear you will find none of it pleasant."

"More practice—"

"In the corridors, fleeing imagined dragons."

Jahir flinched. "Yes. I see."

"But not until tomorrow." A little nip, tugging at the skin just behind his ear; Lisinthir held it between his teeth and didn't let go, and all Jahir's thoughts fragmented over a haze of sensation until his cousin released him. "Yes?"

All Jahir could think of to say in reply was, "...what?"

Lisinthir laughed breathily against his shoulder. "God and Lady and Living Air, but I am going to ride you hard and put you away wet, when we are free."

Had he become so accustomed to blushing around Lisinthir that it no longer jangled his nerves?  But the teasing had dragged him from the melancholic drift of his thoughts; behavior that is rewarded, he thought ruefully, is apt to be repeated. "The riding I will not gainsay. But I insist on being dried and curried properly before you shut me up in my stall for the night."

"Like the most priceless stud in the stable," Lisinthir promised, his amusement palpable. The kiss that lit on Jahir's neck then was gentler, and no less than the first disordered his thoughts, if in an entirely different way. "Sleep, cousin."

The warmth they'd created beneath the blanket, the persistent sense of safety he felt near Lisinthir, and his own exhaustion conspired against him. He slept.

Vasiht'h's arrival woke him much later, an arrival heralded by the widening of the mindline and the muffled noises of the Glaseah's paws on the carpet. Instantly he was clear-headed, in that way that came only in emergencies... and was it not what they were going through a crisis? And he still didn't know if they would survive it, his cousin's reassurances notwithstanding.

His partner settled alongside the bed and met his eyes in the dark.

/Arii?/ Jahir whispered, hoping for something.

/I'm here,/ Vasiht'h answered. Softer, with the calm that comes after long prayer and longer nights, /I'll always be here for you./

In the link between them was all of the Glaseah's conviction: he had found the one truth from which all others proceeded, and it was enough: for him and for Jahir both. From that foundation they could stand upright, find some way through everything else, and Jahir could feel Vasiht'h's belief in that. Jahir found his hand in the dark and held it while the Glaseah arranged the pillows so he could fall asleep with his head on the bed alongside Jahir's and his torso draped over the edge. And that was how they slept: close and quiet, their heads near one another's on the pillow.

The shiver that ran through the deck and the bulkheads woke all three of them. Jahir's eyes flew open: it was still dark, and the utter silence of the room made the pounding of his heart feel as if it would expand to fill every empty corner. Vasiht'h's hand tightened in his, bringing him the pressure of his partner's fear through their joined fingers.

Lisinthir lifted his head, alert but calm; Jahir felt when the muscle tension drained from his cousin's body moments before Lisinthir put his head back down on the pillow. In the quiet, his low words carried to them both. "They've deployed their reconnaissance platform." Settling back in, Lisinthir murmured, "Sleep, ariisen. We won't have much opportunity soon."

Jahir brought Vasiht'h's hand to his lips, brushed the knuckles. /I'm here also./

/I know,/ Vasiht'h whispered. Ruefully, /I'm glad, because I'm terrified./

Jahir allowed a curl of tired amusement to color the mindline. /I am also./

Vasiht'h smiled and put his head back down on his arm. Somehow they managed to fall back asleep.