CHAPTER 2

What Lisinthir most wanted in all the worlds—after the one thing he couldn't have—was to be left alone to mourn his exile. That solitude would have dovetailed nicely with his need to recuperate from the physical challenge of surviving the past season and a half while addicted to alcohol, poisoned by hekkret, and unable to eat enough to keep himself healthy... in a climate where at least half an alien court had wanted him dead, and been willing to use methods both covert and obvious to secure that demise. The withdrawal in particular was finding him rather unequal to its demands despite his rationing out the hekkret he'd packed and the alcohol he'd demanded (and received). Perhaps had he been healthier he might have managed to weather its crawling onset with more grace? As it was, he was wondering if Chatcaavan vessels even carried physicians, much less any with experience in analyzing the metabolic catastrophes of wingless freaks, when the deck dropped from beneath his feet.

This was, he thought at first, some new manifestation of his ailment. In the stretches between doses, he'd had palpitations, faints, nervousness, vomiting, and fits of trembling... and now, perhaps, hallucinations? But the shudder that ran through the wall beneath his sweating palm was distinct. His wracked neurons were trying for a very complete experience: he was imagining the ship bearing him from the only life worth living was under attack. Very convenient.

Perhaps too convenient. He forced himself from what passed for a Chatcaavan head and groped for his sword belt. Claw knives—yes? No? Yes, he thought; they could lie dormant unless needed.

Out of the cabin he'd been assigned he found the corridors empty but the alert lights embedded at waist-height flaring sickly yellow-green. His body still felt vague, but the rush of adrenaline, so familiar, steadied his nerves. On reaching the bridge compartment, he ducked to fit through the hatch and his eyes were drawn to the rush and swoop of the vessels on the screen—no, vessels. More than one. Intelligence whispered into his ear while grappling in bed flooded him on a rising crest of excitation: not just the adrenaline now, but the memories of violence and sex, twined through the information like rivulets of blood on fevered skin. Chatcaavan fighter craft had to ride through Wellspace on carriers, and the smallest of those carried eight. He couldn't spy the carrier to assess its size. How many enemies did they face? This vessel was not meant to fight off dedicated attack. He grabbed one of the handles set into the bulkhead as the deck shook again.

"We have lost integrity along the port flank," one of the Chatcaava reported.

"Find out if they shoot to destroy or breach," hissed the male on the center dais. As he turned, he caught sight of Lisinthir and arched a wing out of the way as he whirled, glaring at the Eldritch with enormous and very angry cobalt eyes. "You should be below."

Ignoring him, Lisinthir nodded at the attacking ships. "My fault, I assume."

"They will be happy to kill you, yes."

"Why?"

The ship shivered around them. The sirens began ululating. "Why? Is it not obvious?"

"No," Lisinthir said. "If they kill me, what will it accomplish? What is their aim?"

"Perhaps they wish to start a war with the wingless freaks."

"They've killed Alliance ambassadors before without prompting retaliation." Lisinthir frowned. His instincts snarled warnings, spurred by the adrenal stimulus and the nerve-stretched jangle of withdrawal. "They should know better."

"Maybe they wish to deliver the Emperor's catamite back to him in pieces."

"Maybe. Second would have done it to force the Emperor to return to the business of governance. Third would have done it to spite him. But Second and Third are both dead, so who would bother? Who would make an enemy of the Emperor after the Emperor slew his own Second to demonstrate his ruthlessness?"

The analysis erased the dismissive sneer from the vessel-master's long face, and the male's brow ridges lowered.

"They are attempting to breach," came a staccato report.

"So they come not to kill me? Or do they want my body?" Lisinthir tried to rein in his sudden hungers, but the words came out more purr than statement. "Perhaps we should find someone to question."

The change in tone did not go unnoticed. The male eyed him, brooding. Then said, "You are welcome to try," and turned his back on the Eldritch.

Which was honestly more latitude than he'd expected to receive. Lisinthir departed without taking anyone's leave, and as he strode his balance returned, his nausea receded, and the withdrawal headache's pounding seemed less like pain and more like the beat of a wardrum. He drew one of Imtherili's swords and went in search of an enemy on which to vent his rage, and more importantly, his hurt. His lovers' enemies had forced the Emperor to send him away... and now they thought to come and take him? Perhaps they wanted to sell him as ironic underscore to the events of the past year. Or to bring him back to the capital in pieces to break the heart of the Slave Queen and the spine of the male upon whose whim they lived.

Let them try. O God and Lady. Let them try, so he could cut the vanes from their backs and slice off their horns, so he could humiliate them utterly before destroying them. He wanted to rip the titles from their mouths and leave them dying named, nobodies before their own kind. He wanted to annihilate. He wanted.

"Is the ship supposed to shake that way?" Vasiht'h asked, his fear like caltrops in the mindline. Jahir avoided them, eyes closing a moment to center himself.

"I have not the first notion," he said. "We will have to trust these people. This is their work."

"Ours didn't involve being driven into a war zone!"

Jahir couldn't help a look of fondness and resignation, and meeting it his friend managed a weak smile, one feathered ear up and the other sagging.

"At least we've learned something," Jahir said, noticing another of the faint changes in air pressure that hinted at strains to the environmental systems.

"That being?"

"The Ambassador is still in play, as far as the Chatcaava are concerned." He felt the Glaseah drink the metaphor through the mindline with skills honed by over a decade of practice, then the rush of agreement and fear.

"That means they might come after us?"

The ship fell from beneath them, just enough to knot Jahir's stomach. Then the comm panel sang. "Bridge to xeno team."

Jahir touched the accept. "Here."

"We've been informed if we want our man we need to go over and get him, since our friends are too busy fighting off boarders to fish him out themselves. You're a licensed healer-assist?"

"I am—"

"Get to the Pad room and go with the team. The corridors will light the way. Bridge out."

The panic that stabbed him through the mindline was enough to stop him in the act of lunging for their luggage to find his medical kit. /I have to go—/

/—the hell you do!/ Vasiht'h leaped to his feet, the pounding of his heart slamming in the line between them so powerfully it was accelerating Jahir's. /If you're going to throw yourself into it, I'm going with you!/

He wanted to argue that his friend had no training in any martial arena, and didn't. Jahir was no better suited to violence for all the tutoring he'd had in his own youth, nor the defense classes Vasiht'h had insisted he attend afterwards. But the implication that they might have to abandon his House-cousin if they didn't fetch him out—that in fact, he was so deeply embroiled in the fighting already that he would require extraction—was galvanizing, enough to push him past his own fear. /Then come,/ he said, as he grabbed the kit and pulled the strap over his head. /We have always done better together anyway./

A flush of gratification, beading on the terror like gold plating on lead. Jahir forced himself to ignore it and ran.

The Pad room was a scramble of personnel assembling. One of them asked as they entered, "Either of you use weapons?"

"He uses a staff," Vasiht'h said before Jahir could speak, and the woman was already conveying that through the telegem. Ignoring her, Vasiht'h said, "Give me the medical kit."

/Are you mad?/ Jahir asked, fighting his mounting anxiety. /I am not qualified to fight an actual battle!/

/If not that, what have you been training for?/ The tartness of Vasiht'h's reply stung his palate. /The whole point of you going into self-defense classes was because it was real, not a sport, not a game. This is not a game, right? Now's the time, ariihir./

No matter how he felt about it, someone was handing him a staff, some gratuitously alien model that was mostly energy and color and could be flicked off with a slider. He took it, half-fearing his numb fingers would drop it, and then the Fleet personnel were running over the Pad. What could he do but follow?

His first impression of a Chatcaavan ship was of the improbability of its low ceilings and cramped corridors. This was the craft of a flying species? And then there was the clamor of battle: cursing, the wet sounds of wounds, the hiss of flesh burnt by modern weapons. The stench of it, of gore and something acrid that filled his mouth. The flashing lights were a sickly yellow-green, strobing uncanny shadows across the too-close bulkheads. Vasiht'h was so fast to his side they brushed, and that kept him focused. Their escorts were already in motion. He followed, wishing he had the kit and loathing the weapon in his hand.

/This is nonsensical,/ he said. /Why do they not send him across?/

/He must not want to come,/ Vasiht'h replied, the words wire-tight, enough to cut.

"Down!" the woman in front of him yelled, and they ducked the streak of light, and then there was little time for talk. In the back of the group, they did little more than keep out of the way, but the Fleet personnel took their share of wounds—true wounds, because their attackers preferred talons to energy weapons. They fought their way through the clump and then were running aft, dodging the groups more concerned with one another than with them.

The corridor spilled them into the cargo hold where the battle was fiercest, and there inevitably they found him, a smear of white and bloody red and silver weeping gore. Beset on all sides, Lisinthir Nase Galare was reaping his enemies, and Jahir had never seen the like in all his years, not among the Eldritch, nor in the Alliance. There was no distance in it, no dispassion: it was savagery made manifest, its elegance subsumed to a purpose so vicious and so vital the witness of it flushed his skin, the blood beneath it throbbing.

"God and Lady," Jahir whispered.

"Come on!" Vasiht'h said, grabbing him by the wrist. /And for Goddess's sake keep your head DOWN!/

Their escorts were carving a path to the Ambassador, and his staff raised itself, bleeding purple sparks, hissing irritated songs. Vasiht'h loped alongside, tail and wings low, the kit bouncing on his withers. There would be no taking Lisinthir out of here without dispensing with this group, so he committed himself to it.

He thought to protect his House-cousin and knew it to be useless impulse. The only reason Lisinthir's enemies were alive was because he wanted them to be, because he was snarling words at them in Chatcaavan that they forbade to answer, and for their pains they took great sweeping wounds that separated their wings from their backs or their hands from their wrists, and there was no remorse for the cruelty, only a calculated ferocity that could not be judged, could only barely be grasped.

The Fleet personnel were clearing a broadening circle, and left Jahir an opening. He crossed it to Lisinthir and called, "Ambassador!"

A wild look, flung over one shoulder. And then that predatory gaze narrowed and Lisinthir grabbed him by the shirt and said something, curt syllables, swift and ardent. Jahir began to ask and stopped, shocked, when Lisinthir cupped his face with hard fingers, wet with blood, and leaned toward him. His body shook with the force of his racing heart.

Lisinthir stopped short of his lips, eyes focusing, losing their bloodlust, becoming calculating. They narrowed suddenly. He murmured something, then grimaced, twitched, said in an accent that had become all angles and thrusts. "Who are you?"

"Your far-cousin," Jahir managed, breathing hard through shock. "Come to get you."

Vasiht'h pressed in. "We can't talk! There's another wave coming. It's this way, Ambassador, follow the uniforms!"

"I can't go!" Lisinthir said, lips drawing back from his teeth. "I need to know who sent them—"

"There's no time," Vasiht'h said. "We have to go now, before they decide the ship we came on is a more interesting target than this one!"

An Eldritch—Lisinthir couldn't make sense of it. Far-cousin... was this the man who'd sent him the jackal chest? Here? Why? And why were they trying to drag him off? He wasn't done killing yet. Hadn't found someone he could choke the words out of. Had to know who his enemy was, because his enemy was his beloved's, and he couldn't bear to leave without knowing what new peril they faced. And he very much wanted nothing to do with this Eldritch, who for a moment had fooled him, had made his heart leap with hope that the Emperor had returned for him... because what other Eldritch had he known for months, save the one who'd taken the skin to feel him with it? This Eldritch looked nothing like his Emperor, except, a little, the yellow eyes... but warm, not with that hint of nocturnal eyeflash green. And there was no male impulse reflected in them, not widened with that much fear and horror and shock. He'd become too good at reading the signs of fear on humanoid bodies. He could smell it off the stranger's skin.

But the Glaseah jerked him from his fugue. The Pelted, the humans, they were to be protected, not endangered. Lisinthir glanced past the furred shoulder at the 'uniforms,' saw the Fleet, had flashbacks to Laniis. If they stayed, someone would drag those people off, drag them all off and make slaves of them, and then who would rescue them? The Emperor would not keep slaves again, but who would stop the millions of Chatcaava in the Empire from buying Alliance freaks from those willing to sell now that he had been forbidden return?

He ached to stay and exhaust his rage. But duty pulsed in him, unwelcome but stronger than blood or steel.

"Fine," he said, and the words in Universal tasted strange still. He wanted to lick his teeth free of their candy. He'd extoled it as a language of equality and love to the Queen, and yet they had found better words of their own in Chatcaavan, hadn't they? Treasure. Beauty. Perfection.

"Fine," he said again, forcing it from unwilling lips. "Let's go."

He brought up the rear, not trusting it to either of them... but noted as he harried them from the hold to the narrow corridors that they moved as if yoked. They swerved together, flowed around dead bodies as if they knew each other's path without confirming. What did that mean, he wondered from a distance, his eyes sweeping the blood-spattered hall behind them. Did it matter? It couldn't, not while his mind was so busy. The fighters had worn down the ship's defenses, making it possible to Pad over. There had been far more people in the cargo hold than he'd anticipated from a single eight-fighter carrier. Were there more carriers? Or was there one, and larger than he'd thought? The corridor filled with slim shapes, leaping for him, and he killed them—efficiently, not maiming them for their temerity. If there were more ships... how big was the Alliance vessel that had come for them?

They were in danger.

The Eldritch and Glaseah were hanging back to cover him. He ignored the former and said to the latter, "Stop giving me multiple things to protect."

The Glaseah frowned, then grabbed the other Eldritch's elbow and lunged down the corridor.

Lisinthir sighed relief, hated the relief, hated any interruption of his rage. The headache was getting worse. He dispatched the last three, ignoring the bleeding swipes on his arms and sides. He'd had worse in the Emperor's bed. As he joined the Fleet personnel in the cabin that housed the Chatcaavan Pad, his limbs seized. Once he crossed over, he would be giving up the life he'd been clinging to, the one that had given him reason to rise from bed (or not to, some part of him whispered with sensual memory). Once he crossed over, he would be good and exiled.

If they survived.

There was one Chatcaavan there, heaving his luggage over the Pad. "Go," the male hissed. "Finally. We are quit of you, freak."

"Don't make me crack a horn off you," Lisinthir said, feinting toward him.

The male leaped back, baring his teeth. "Tell your friends to run or die."

He wanted to ask how many enemies they were fleeing, but someone was pushing him toward the Pad, and past the wrath and resentment and the killing hungers he felt someone's panic and need. He had innocents to protect. That was part of his duty. He let them shove him over and onto the Fleet vessel, where the corridors felt vast and clean and impersonal and wrong.

"Take me to the bridge," he said, discovered he was speaking the wrong language. He switched to Universal, said it again. Someone said something about him needing a halo-arch and he gritted his teeth and repeated himself. He was no longer used to being questioned, much less by people who wanted to smother him with their concern. As if he was something to be coddled and cossetted—Living Air! "Take me. To the bridge. Now."

One of the Fleet personnel met his eyes and started jogging, so he followed her. When they arrived, he said, "Who do we fight?"

Everyone on the bridge turned to look toward him.

"We're not fighting anyone yet," said a man who had an air of authority. "Ambassador Nase Galare, I presume?"

"How many fighters do you count?"

A hesitation he found infuriating. His blood was pounding beneath his skin and the air was too cold on the sweat soaking his clothes. But the Captain nodded and someone reported, "I'm counting twelve. Wreckage sufficient for another two, maybe. There's a ship keeping out of range of the transport."

"Can you show me?" Lisinthir said. The other Eldritch had followed him, and the Glaseah. He ignored them as the ensign brought up a schematic. He flicked over the length measurements, converted them, made a mistake, reconverted them while his body was trying to list to one side and something he thought was blood drained down his side.

"Looks like one of their standard—"

"Flee now," Lisinthir interrupted the Captain, who stared at him. "That vessel—" He wiped his brow impatiently with the side of his forearm. "That vessel is too small for the number of fighters harrying the transport. There must be another hiding. Run—"

Their ship shook so hard his knees buckled. Lisinthir grabbed the bulkhead to keep from pitching to the ground.

"We're under attack!"

"Respond!" the Captain barked. Over his shoulder, he said, "Get that man to a halo-arch and secure for action."

The ship fell from under his feet, made the warm gout that rushed down his leg more noticeable, made consciousness more tenuous. A Seersa was grabbing for him, so he must be falling. "They're going to shoot you," he said, because it was of paramount importance that they be prepared.

"They already are," she replied, soothing.

It made him insane with frustration because they weren't listening to him and it was going to get them killed. "No," he said, struggling for the words. "When they come, they won't be using claws—" And then he lost his fight to stay on his feet. Lisinthir's last memory before losing consciousness was anger that if he had to die, it was here, on alien soil.

/Aksivaht'h's Breath, he doesn't need a halo-arch, he needs a Medplex with a surgical team!/

Jahir ignored the coronal flares of panic sparking off the mindline and helped the Seersa healer-assist push the Ambassador onto an antigav pallet. He followed her once she set off, stopping only to lean against the bulkhead when the ship leapt to one side like a shying horse trying to unseat him. How bad was the fight that the ship was actually shaking? Not the shivers of effort they'd felt before, but true teeth-jarring wrenches?

At his side Vasiht'h was a steadying presence despite the horror sopping into the mindline like cold fog.

In the bright clear light of an Alliance ship, no longer animated by consciousness and the animal vitality that had carried him through the fight, Lisinthir Nase Galare was a revelation. He was past lean and bordering emaciated, skin stretched tight over muscles that had gone wiry and hard where they hadn't been streaked with the deep hollows of cannibalization. His skin was no longer the pearl-pale glow of a healthy Eldritch, but a dingy grey that was almost translucent in places. Jahir was shocked he still had hair, given the brittle finish on his nails; as it was, the growth near the scalp the same dull color as his skin before becoming abruptly lustrous in visual testament to the recent degradation of his House cousin's health.

/What happened to him?/ Vasiht'h asked, his voice sharp as needles.

/The Empire did./ Jahir shook himself, pushed off of the wall and joined the Seersa in the small ship's clinic. He helped her load the Ambassador onto one of the two available beds and together they watched the halo-arch activate and the readings begin to spring onto the displays. In the back of his mind he sensed Vasiht'h borrowing his knowledge to interpret them.

"Speaker-Singer," the Seersa said at last. Borden, he remembered.

"What did you specialize in?" Jahir asked as the blood tests began rolling up the display. He was aware of his body growing tenser.

"First response nursing," she said. "And I can treat a head-cold or food poisoning. This...."

This was beyond her. Well and again, it was almost certainly past him in some arenas. In others....

/He's been drugged?/

/No,/Jahir said, fingers trailing over the readings. /This is not a drugging, ariihir. This is drugs, in plural./

Flash of screaming halo-arches, failing bodies, minds melting. Vasiht'h shuddered at his side. "But not that, because he's still alive."

"Barely," Jahir conceded, and the Seersa was looking at them now, ears splayed.

"Something I missed?" she ventured.

"Why's his digestion such a mess?" Vasiht'h asked. "You think it was ingested?"

"Maybe," Jahir said, flipping through the medical tests as the halo-arch ran them. Liver didn't bear speech—God and Lady knew how Lisinthir had survived with it in such a state. Neural response was strange... he didn't recognize the pattern. Enteric was excited, parasympathetic depressed. There were signs of adrenal exhaustion, but it hadn't killed the man yet. Where was the oxygenation number? Results for lung function? "It could also be that whatever it was had a secondary effect on it, however." To the Seersa, he said, "Has the bed started him on fluids?"

"Yes—"

Jahir glanced at the readings. "Is it running the nutritive solution via parenteral?"

She shook her head. "It defaults to enteral, gastric via halo-push."

"The results should be interesting," he murmured. "Can you run a separate test for foreign substances?"

"Like toxins?" She nodded. "It's already on the plate."

"Not just toxins. For anything that might be suggestive of their having been present at some point. Some sign of chronic inflammatory response, or humoral immune response."

"Coming up."

"He's also bleeding," Vasiht'h observed.

He was, and that needed tending. And yet Jahir couldn't bring himself to strip another Eldritch to see to it. "Can you expose the wounds?"

The mindline brought him a careful consideration that felt like a storm pending. He bowed his head and murmured, /We will discuss it, I so vow./

Vasiht'h nodded and went to work.

The wounds were not inconsequential. How had Lisinthir ignored them? Borden helped Vasiht'h seal them while Jahir ran through the test results as they came, trying to make sense of them. Alcohol abuse, that was obvious. But that didn't explain most of the results. What had the Ambassador been exposed to? Something inhaled, if the lung damage was any indication, but nothing in the Alliance u-banks matched the results. They had tried to poison him... with something he had to inhale? How did that make sense? Except that there was evidence of something amiss in the digestion. Perhaps it had been ingested, then? Had that caused the malnutrition, or had the malnutrition accelerated the effects of the drug? Had it even been one? Perhaps it had been two, one ingested, one inhaled… Jahir rubbed his brow, braced himself against the bed as the ship lurched again.

Vasiht'h finally said, "Is it supposed to shake that way?"

Borden's ears flattened. "No."

"That makes me feel a lot better."

Her chuckle had the gallows humor hint characteristic of the profession. "You did ask." Smiling, she added, "A little shaking isn't bad. It means we're diverting power to more important things than the internal stabilization."

The lights flickered, swelled back to full.

"And that?" Vasiht'h asked, the fur along his shoulders bristling. "More diverting power?"

She was looking up at the ceiling, tail low and fingers clenched on the edge of the bed. "No, that was bad—"

And then the lights failed entirely. When they came back up, it was to a red dimness that made the lights on the halo-arch display smolder like dying coals.

"Can you handle things here?" Borden asked. "I need to go fore."

"We'll be fine," Jahir said, and she was gone before he could finish speaking.

Vasiht'h backed away from the bed until he was standing near a wall. "Maybe we should sit for the duration of this fight."

"The Ambassador—"

"Will be immobilized by the bio-bed," Vasiht'h said. "You and I don't have that kind of guarantee, and we won't be much use if this ship bashes our heads against it during one of Healer-assist Borden's diversions of power." He sat, tucking his paws close and wings tight. "Jahir? Please?"

Jahir joined him on the floor beside the bench bolted to the wall.

"Can you conclude anything from all that?"

As distractions from the low red lighting and the constant shivering of the deck beneath them, it wasn't much. Jahir rubbed his arm, bunching the sleeve. "I'm no healer, arii."

"No, but you've been in hospitals now for six or seven years, and training in chemistry for a decade."

Jahir sighed. "I haven't seen anything like it. I have to hope he can make some report on it when he wakes. He was poisoned, perhaps, or drugged. And abusing alcohol."

Vasiht'h slowly looked up at him, the mindline dense with dread.

"I know."

"Maybe alcohol was the only thing that made the situation tolerable," the Glaseah said, careful of the words.

"Maybe," Jahir agreed. He flinched as the ship shivered. "We are being chased, it seems."

"I don't guess your pattern sense has anything to say on whether we'll live through this."

Jahir managed a smile. "I fear my own desire to live makes it rather hard for me to attend to its rather subtle whispers."

"Figures. Lift your knees?" When Jahir had, Vasiht'h slid his forepaws beneath them. "Is it okay if I say this seems like the sort of situation where a hug is called for?"

"No, I think a hug is very much called for." Jahir allowed the Glaseah to arrange himself, then curled his arms around Vasiht'h's shoulders and let his partner rest the length of a furred upper body against his side. The touch strengthened his perception of the breath-starved sense of panic Vasiht'h was fighting, but not enough for true discomfort.

"You have blood on your face, you know."

Jahir touched his cheek, felt the flake of it against fingertips gone far too sensitive, remembered the grasp that had streaked his skin. He frowned, sorting through impressions. A wild joy... and desire, hot as blood from a wound. Why had those things been foremost in Lisinthir's mind at the sight of him—no, not him. The sight of another Eldritch? Were there others in the Empire? The Heir, yes, but the Heir was sped, and female besides. Was it some memory from before he'd gone to the Chatcaava? He knew so little about Lisinthir's life prior to his assignment.

His sigh ruffled Vasiht'h's forelock.

"I wish they'd tell me what's going on."

"I do too."