CHAPTER 3

"So you flew one of these fighters." Lisinthir watched the talon idly tracing a line down the inside curve of his hip. He kept his hand hooked idly on one of the Emperor's horns, not because he feared the talons, but because he enjoyed the trust it implied. Chatcaavan males did not allow other males to touch their horns. "I'm shocked you survived the experience."

"Such skepticism," the Emperor said with a chuckle. "I would think by now you had some grasp of my prowess."

Lisinthir snorted. "In some things. In this, I admit, not at all."

"Then you will have to accept that we fly well, and flying a fighter is just another form of flight." The talon skated up, made a circle around his navel. "It was a good time. I learned a great deal."

"About war?"

"About trust." At Lisinthir's look, the Emperor grinned lazily. "It does exist among us, yes. The fighters in a wing work toward one goal, and each has his role to play."

"Forgive me if I say I find that difficult to believe."

"That we might work together?"

"You find this a surprise? I have been here for almost a year now, Exalted. I've seen how Chatcaava work together."

"You've seen how the court operates." The talon traced the edge of his navel, and Lisinthir flicked it off the inner curve. "Ah, do I tickle?" The Emperor grinned, then continued. "The court is not the Empire. The Navy is not the system defense forces. Commoners are not lords. Females are not males."

"And wingless freaks are nothing."

"Less than nothing in this equation," the Emperor said. "You must understand, Ambassador... the Empire exists in a precarious balance between the winners of the last battle and the losers preparing for the next match. You and I have fought this dominance to a standstill, but now... we have a peace." He paused, as if savoring the taste of the word and finding it alien before resuming. "There is no such outcome among Chatcaava. This is a nation of predators, and to keep it as stable as it is, one must set the predators at one another's throats in ways that distract them from accomplishing anything more destructive."

Lisinthir turned onto his side and propped his head up on a palm. "And this is what you learned in the Navy."

"What I learned in the Navy is that it is possible to create solidarity against a mutually chosen target."

"Us—"

The Emperor snorted. "Hardly. No, I set the Navy against the system defenses and their petty lords. And that won me the throne." He reached out and trailed a talon down Lisinthir's nose. "We have never turned our attention to your Alliance. We had enough to occupy ourselves here."

"Should I fear that you will use us to unify your Empire?" Lisinthir asked, softer.

"Ah, my Perfection." The male's eyes dimmed. "No. The unity I could buy with a war against the Alliance would be a falsehood. Nor would it last long. The dispensation of plunder would prick all the seething factionalism awake and leave us prey to an Alliance victory. And much as I have grown fond of you—and even agree that you have ideas worth keeping—I would not be your slave, any more than you would be mine."

"The Alliance would not enslave you."

"But it could not afford to keep us as uneasy friend, either." The Emperor smiled, just a hint of teeth at the edge of a dark maw. "No, as always, things are more complex than we would wish."

When the dragon reached for him, Lisinthir let himself be rolled onto his back. "All this had its genesis in a sortie against another vessel. I can hardly imagine it. It seems too bloodless."

The Emperor rumbled a laugh against his cheek. "Oh, the fighters don't exist to destroy ships, Perfection... but to deliver us to them so we can board them. And then there is blood enough for everyone."

Waking in the care of a physician had become a hazy form of safety, a sign that he was among people Outside, that he could afford to be—briefly—weak. But Lisinthir preferred the relative autonomy of a Chatcaavan gel tank to waking up immobilized on his back. His first instinct, mercilessly suppressed, was to fight the force field; his second, to be perfectly still. There was someone in the room with him....

...ah, the Seersa. Pale, as Laniis had been, but without the soot points. He watched her move, saw the limp and the arm she held around her midriff, the wince as she shifted to the good limb. The digitigrade stance of some of the Pelted races made leg injuries difficult; they depended too much on muscle for balance and stability, and lacked a plantigrade biped's ability to rely on the joints to minimize movement.

He didn't need to know how she'd gotten her injuries. The room remained lit only by emergency lights, and he couldn't sense the low tremor of the Well drive. They'd taken significant damage, then, but survived it.

Turning toward the halo-arch, she checked the readings projected over his head and only then glanced down at him—and started, one hand flying to her chest. The motion disturbed her careful nursing of the leg and she hissed and touched a hand to the edge of the bed to steady herself. "You're awake," she managed. "I didn't notice."

It seemed impolite to agree. "How bad was it?"

"Ambassador?"

Did they all think so slowly, or was he too used to the adrenalized speed required by a court of violent sociopaths? "How many got on board?"

She stared at him, ears sagging. "You knew."

"I told you," he said. "Or at least, I was trying to as I fell."

Her pause then was longer, and then her pupils dilated. "You were right. About them using energy weapons on us."

"How many?" he asked, more gently.

"Four," the Seersa said, shoulders sagging. "They killed four of us."

He'd been asking after the boarders. Four of the Fleet personnel, however, entirely dead... interesting. He'd assumed the Chatcaava would want prisoners, but killing meant they were after something else entirely. Him, yes. But to advance some political aim. And since they couldn't drag him back on their single-person craft, they'd probably been hoping to reduce the number of personnel who could work on repairs. Lisinthir was cautiously optimistic—it could mean their enemy's reinforcements weren't as numerous as he'd feared. "I assume the ship is adrift."

That surprised look... he could grow tired of it. "Yes," she said after a moment. "Three of them came aboard. We killed two of them and the third... the third detonated his ship." She looked away. "It was clinging to the hull at the time."

The Chatcaavan had probably assumed he could make it off the Fleet vessel in one of the other fighters. They didn't incline to suicide no matter the naval commitment to a shared goal. There were limits. "Did the third die?"

"Yes."

He considered. Adrift by design. "I hope we ran in some direction they weren't anticipating."

She was studying him now with a frown. When he began to speak, she lifted a hand. "You... you are a very sick man, Ambassador. When you woke I was expecting questions about your own health, your prognosis, what your treatment plan should be. Or to ask when we'd be back. Instead I get... this? You're not well. You need rest."

Rest was for the dead—literally, because to allow oneself the luxury was inviting poison, or talons to the throat. He judged that somewhat too harsh for her, however, and said instead, "I can't rest unless I am certain of the safety of myself and my charges."

Her brows lifted. "Well, we're as safe as we can be, for now."

It was evident she wasn't going to divulge anything else, so he let her be. "Very well. I trust my health is in competent hands?"

"I like to think so."

"That would be you...." He glanced at her uniform, found the name badge. "Healer Borden?"

"Healer-assist, actually. And I'm not in charge of your case."

"Oh?"

She nodded. "That would be Healer-assist Jahir, and his partner, Vasiht'h. They were the ones summoned for you."

So they had names...first names at least. Not enough for him to know anything more about the Eldritch, certainly. Who had summoned them on his behalf? Fleet? Or the Queen? What were they doing in the Alliance? What were they doing partnered, come to that? He flashed to the corridor, to the sight of them moving in tandem as if anticipating each other's footsteps. Very closely partnered, it would seem. "Not a healer either. Neither of them?"

"No," she said. "They're xenotherapists."

That made his skin go taut with alarm. Psychiatrists. They had sent psychiatrists to him... had put him in the care of people who would be responsible for assessing his mental health? Why? So they could declare him insane the way so many other ambassadors leaving the Empire had been? What did the Alliance do with the insane? Would they fetter him? Would they try to fix him?

He didn't need fixing. He didn't want fixing. And he certainly didn't want to be subject to the meddling of two civilians who had no right to his confidences, much less to pass judgment on his mental state. They had not made his sacrifices, could not understand them. And an Eldritch! Living Air, to be condemned back to that life, one even more a prison than the Alliance? To the pampered suffocation of the role of an Eldritch heir, and one without power?

They wanted him to make answer for his deeds... to an Eldritch.

It was risible. He wouldn't do it.

This was all assuming that they survived the next few days. Lisinthir thought that not at all a given.

"So," he said at last. "Do tell me about my health, my prognosis, and the health care plan."

"I won't lie," Raynor said. "It's serious."

Vasiht'h and Jahir were sitting in their quarters, having finally retired there after the harrowing few hours they'd just survived—and they had. Others hadn't.

"So, if I have this right," Vasiht'h said, because Jahir didn't seem inclined to talk, "the engines aren't working, the chief engineer is one of the people who died repelling the boarders, and we're floating in the space between stars hoping no one will notice us while we make repairs?"

"Essentially."

"How far toward Alliance space did we manage?" Jahir said. "What is the likelihood of our being rescued?"

"We didn't run toward Alliance space," Raynor said. "We ran deeper into the border, because when those ships come sweeping for us, they're going to look along the path straight back to the Alliance. That's the bad news. The good news is that Fleet sends Dusted ships through these sectors fairly frequently, and we have a good chance of being spotted by one."

"If they can spot us, can't the Chatcaava too?" Vasiht'h asked, trying not to rub his forepaws together.

"A calculated risk," Raynor said with a crooked grin. He let it fade. "Look, the two of you have work to do and Borden will need your help doing it. You do your job, we'll do ours, and we'll all get back home in one piece. Sound like a plan?"

"I guess it's all we got," Vasiht'h muttered.

"Exactly. And I'll start by suggesting you get a couple of hours' sleep. It's been a long day and you'll need to relieve Borden."

"Right."

Jahir added, "Thank you, Captain."

"You have any questions, aletsen, you ask."

After he'd left, Vasiht'h looked up at his friend. /What do you think?/

/I think there is little we can do about events outside our expertise./ Jahir rubbed his face and pushed himself upright. /He's right. We have our work, arii, and we can't do it exhausted./

Vasiht'h followed him to the narrow bunk, trying not to sink his claws into the carpet. They kept flexing out of his toes. /Do you really think you can sleep after... all that?/ The mindline shivered: blood, screams, the stench of burnt flesh, the memory of the clinic door locking on its own as they huddled in it, torn between racing out of it to help the wounded and staying out of a fight they had no training to survive... and barred from making the choice because the clinic door had resolutely ignored any of their requests for exit.

"I think right now we have to try," Jahir said. "But I would very much like it if you would stay close."

"That I can do," Vasiht'h replied, subdued.

Surprisingly, they both managed to sleep—Jahir on his side on the bunk, legs tucked in to keep them from hanging over the end, and Vasiht'h with his lower body stretched on the floor and his upper propped against the bed's edge so he could rest his head on his arms on the mattress, beside his friend's face. He'd spent many an uncomfortable night sleeping this way. By now he figured he had a permanent kink in his upper torso.

Their dreams were uncomfortable, thorned with guilt and dim with breathless fear. But they never rose to the level of nightmares, and that was good enough for Vasiht'h. That they only lasted about an hour also suited him fine, though his headache seemed magnified by the short nap when Jahir finally nudged him.

"We should spell our colleague."

"Right," Vasiht'h murmured, and forced himself to straighten. He rubbed his back as Jahir stepped over him and made his way to the bathroom. The water the Eldritch used on his face braced Vasiht'h as well, though what he really wanted was a proper wash. /I don't guess the bathroom is big enough for me?/

"It is," Jahir said, leaving it. "But I'm not sure what the guidelines are on using it when we should be conserving power. We should ask."

"Great," Vasiht'h muttered.

Jahir smiled, and that emotion softened the spikes in the mindline. "I packed your long-handled brush."

Vasiht'h straightened. "Really?" And then shook his head. He smiled. "Of course you did, knowing I would forget. I am nervy."

"You have chafe marks on the insides of your wrists."

Chagrined, the Glaseah looked at his forepaws. /Not a habit I'm glad to have resurrected./

Wry agreement now, sour as a lemon but fleeting. /You will put it aside again when we are not in mortal danger./

Vasiht'h snorted. "Let's go see the patient."

The patient wasn't in the clinic.

"What... where..." Vasiht'h stopped, digging his toes into the carpet and flexing his legs. Borden was asleep on the second bed, and from the vital signs above her it was a normal sleep, one she'd obviously needed. He couldn't tell how long the first bed had been vacated, though Jahir was at the console, querying it.

"Two hours, about," Jahir said in response to the unspoken question.

"Should we wake her?"

"I think we must."

In response to Vasiht'h's gentle prodding, Borden rolled over and blinked bleary eyes at them. "What? Oh, aletsen. Are you early?"

"Maybe," Vasiht'h said. "The Ambassador is missing."

"He's not missing. I released him."

"Did his medical condition change enough to make that a wise course?" Jahir asked from behind him.

Borden glanced up at him. "He'd had all the fluids he could possibly retain. The tests said he wasn't likely to drop dead soon. He wanted to sleep in a real bed that he could turn in, so I let him. The ship's tagged him with a medical alert, it'll say something if he collapses."

"You could have retracted the halo-arch," Jahir said. "If being able to turn in bed was his primary concern."

"I think he just wanted privacy," Borden said. "And it's not like he can go far." She rubbed her eyes. "Sometimes you need to give people a little autonomy, or they fight you on more important decisions."

/I don't believe this,/ Vasiht'h said privately, his frown carried on the words like a low drone. /I mean, she's not wrong, but this is a little more serious a matter than 'if we push too hard, the patient might not be willing to talk about his trauma.' Why would she do it? It makes no sense. She's a professional./

/It doesn't, no. So the only answer that does make sense is that he talked her into it./

/The Ambassador. Talked a healer-assist into letting him leave a clinic while obviously still in need of observation./

Jahir looked at him, and if it wasn't precisely a chiding look, there was something in it to inspire chagrin. Vasiht'h flicked his ears back. /Right. The Ambassador just survived about a year with the Chatcaava, probably living by his wits./ He sighed and said to Borden, "Why don't you go back to sleep? It looks like you're still healing up your own ills. We'll go check on the Ambassador."

"Thank you, aletsen. He'll be in the other guest room."

Jahir wasn't sure what he was expecting of his House cousin. Intransigence, surely, because nothing less would have protected Lisinthir in the Empire. Anger he'd observed when shepherding the Ambassador off of the Chatcaavan vessel, though time should have put paid to that particular ailment. What was there left to be angry about? At some point, relief must set in: that Lisinthir was safe, that he need no longer fear the depredations of dragons. He'd undertaken a difficult assignment and had, by all accounts, performed magnificently. He had earned—deserved—reward, time away from duty.

That, at least, was the profile Jahir would have guessed at from what little he'd understood of the situation.

So the scene that confronted them when the door slid open on the Ambassador's quarters left him decidedly off-balance. Lisinthir was not resting, as one would have expected from his condition... or at least, not sleeping. He was lounging in a chair with his feet up on the coffee table, his hands laced over his chest and his head back on the rest. The dim lighting kindly hid the matte finish of his skin—it also obscured his expression.

The room smelled faintly of something acrid, a little sweet. And there was a tumbler on the end table at his elbow.

/Drinking,/ Vasiht'h guessed.

But Jahir thought of the lung damage and narrowed his eyes. /No. Smoking./

/And drinking./

/And drinking./

"My psychiatrists arrive. Please, come in. Have a seat if it pleases you."

/I can see how this is going to go,/ Vasiht'h said with a sigh. /How do you want to handle it?/

Jahir's first instinct was so powerful that the words it inspired almost escaped him. He stopped short at the door alongside his partner, surprised. Lisinthir was one of the few Eldritch who shared Jahir's membership in the royal House, and he was also heir to Imthereli's failing concern. But neither of those things gave Jahir the right to dress him down in this context, where he came not as an Eldritch noble to another behaving out of turn, but as a therapist, intending to heal. He ignored the unease clouding the mindline until he finished composing himself, then took the seat opposite Lisinthir, leaving Vasiht'h to settle alongside the chair. "Thank you."

"So," Lisinthir continued, eyes closing. "Jahir... what? We have somehow failed to have been introduced properly. Fancy that."

Of course, if Lisinthir insisted on dragging that context into the discussion... Jahir tasked himself to calm. Perhaps they could find some common ground in their shared experiences, and the duties and responsibilities that had shaped them both. "Seni Galare."

Lisinthir opened an eye. "Jahir Seni Galare. The northwestern estate. You have a brother."

"Yes," Jahir replied.

Lisinthir nodded, closed his eyes again. "I was sent to the capital to attempt to seduce your mother."

The sound in the mindline felt a lot like Vasiht'h groaning.

"I assume," Jahir said, picking the words carefully past the furor in his head, "this had something to do with Imthereli's fiscal and familial troubles."

"It did, yes. Something you never had any trouble with, well-bred and well-received as you were. One of the court's most eligible bachelors, and so much fuss that you'd left the world. No one corralled you with a list of eligible widows and insisted you chase them."

/How did this become about me?/ Jahir asked, half in irritation, half in fascination. This had to be how Lisinthir had secured his release from the clinic so easily. Jahir could understand somehow how Borden had given in.

/I don't know,/ Vasiht'h said. /But it's kind of interesting to listen to./

Jahir eyed him before returning to the discussion. "You should be in the clinic, Ambassador."

"Ambassador, am I. Not seluthiae? Far cousin? A request, then, from one professional to another."

"Just so."

Lisinthir reached for the glass. "And if I don't want to go?"

Jahir rose, stepped across the short distance and plucked the glass up before Lisinthir could take it. "This is not a matter of liking or misliking. This is a matter of a toxic body failing on you if you don't take the appropriate steps. Which include abstaining."

The look Lisinthir awarded him then was so brief Jahir almost missed it—

—but he hadn't. And the assessment, the interest, and the cold in them stiffened every muscle in his body.

But the other Eldritch didn't show any of that metal in his voice: he'd hidden it so completely that Jahir stopped short, wondering if he'd imagined it, and if not, how Lisinthir had concealed it so completely.

Lisinthir re-threaded his fingers on his chest and said, "So. How exactly is this going to go?"

"What 'this' do you mean?" Vasiht'h ventured when Jahir didn't answer.

"You were sent to attend to me," Lisinthir said. "Presumably you have some goal in mind to accomplish. As you are not physicians, it must be something else. What is it?"

"We're here to see to your mental health." Vasiht'h was using his most professional voice, which was also one of the friendliest. It had soothed many skeptical patients before. Jahir wasn't sure it would work this time. "Try to see it from our perspective, Ambassador... you just returned from the Empire and... well, your physical state isn't typical of people who've been treated well."

"Is it."

"You are addicted to two drugs that we know of, there's evidence of at least one session in a regenerative tank, you've been scarred on the chest, flank, back, torso and arms—and not by blades—and you're starved. Literally, as in you've been so long without healthful food that your body has wicked itself to the marrow." Jahir set the drink on the coffee table between them. "And those are the injuries the halo-arch could see." He folded his arms. "When we spoke via comm, Ambassador, you requested food because you couldn't trust the food that was prepared for you not to be poisoned. The ambassadors who came before you spoke of the violence of the Chatcaavan court, but none of them had been literally scarred by it. Traumatized, certainly. Or mysteriously dead by circumstances deemed natural by autopsy. None of them, however, marked.

"You have been marked."

Lisinthir was watching him with a gaze more akin to a raptor's than a person's: a predatory hyper-focus that made Jahir long for his staff or even a sword at his side. "We are all," the Ambassador said at last, "marked by our experiences."

"That's why we're here," Vasiht'h interjected.

"I don't want your help."

"You don't want the halo-arch, either, but you will need to return to it," Jahir said, giving up his fight against culture and habit. Did his cousin want to fight using their shared background? Then he would meet him on the field. When Lisinthir glanced at him, he finished, "And don't think you can maneuver your way out of it the way you did with Hea Borden. I know what you're doing, and it won't work on me."

/It won't?/

"And what exactly am I doing?" Lisinthir asked. He'd begun stroking his thumb up the side of his hand, an idle gesture that was, for no reason Jahir could fathom, appallingly sensual.

Jahir switched to their native tongue, shading the words black for stark violence. "Who attacks, controls the fight."

Lisinthir chuckled. "Very good, son of the Seni. I am impressed." He rested his head back again. "A compromise then. I'll let you bring your equipment here. This is a courier... most of its equipment will be portable since they don't have a full-sized Medplex."

"You know Fleet ship classes?" Vasiht'h asked, bemused.

Lisinthir opened one eye. "I was the ambassador to a political state with which we are almost at war."

/At least he used the right tense,/ Vasiht'h muttered.

Jahir sent wordless agreement before continuing. "And you'll submit to treatment?"

The reaction was instantaneous, and yet so subtle neither of them could tell exactly how they'd formed the impression... but within a heartbeat, their client had gone from relaxed to the cusp of violence.

"For your physical state," Vasiht'h hastened to add, and the anger seeped from Lisinthir's frame.

"Yes." Brusque.

"No more drinking either," Jahir said.

"Fine. But now I believe it's time for me to... 'rest.'" Said with a sneer that could be amusement or mockery or challenge, and was probably all of those things. As a response to a therapist it was appalling… but as a response to a dragon, Jahir suddenly understood its utility. That Lisinthir was using it on them didn't necessarily mean anything more than he was no longer used to dealing with civilized people.

Or it might mean that he'd decided they were his newest enemies.

Jahir rose, taking the glass with him. "Sleep well, Ambassador."

Lisinthir said, "You really will take the brandy with you."

"I will, yes."

The other man said, lazily, "You don't trust me?"

"I trust you to act in accordance with your priorities," Jahir said. "When you demonstrate that your own health is one of them, I won't feel the need."

Lisinthir laughed. "Fine. Good. Well said. Get out."

Outside the cabin, Vasiht'h said, "Goddess Unmaking, ariihir."

"I know," Jahir said, struggling to hide his unsettlement. He hadn't realized until that battle how much he'd expected Lisinthir to act like every other noble heir of the Eldritch—and every other Galare, at that. They were one of a very select elite, with shared experiences no one outside their cloistered world's miniscule crop of nobles could even imagine. He'd gone into the room expecting that background to work for him... not for it to be turned into a weapon, one tailored to his weaknesses.

"You realize he can just order a new brandy from the genie in the room?" Vasiht'h said, interrupting his thoughts.

"Not if we ask the ship's personnel to disable the unit."

Vasiht'h paused, looked up at him. "Entirely?"

Jahir walked past him, exhausted as if he'd just come from a long staff practice. "It's evident there's an issue there with his relationship with food, himself, his own body, and the alcohol. Until we've unraveled it, it would be best if he had to get his meals from us, or Hea Borden."

"And if he just chooses not to eat?"

"Then we'll bring the 'portable equipment' and do it the difficult way."

Vasiht'h sighed and jogged up alongside him, matching his shorter strides to Jahir's longer ones. "I guess we shouldn't be surprised that he might resent the implication that he's broken in some way. After all he's done, it's not unreasonable for him to expect a hero's welcome, not delivery to psychiatric care."

"He needs it," Jahir said, knowing the tone was too curt.

"Yes. Yes, he does."