CHAPTER THREE

Jahir had anticipated being the last one home, but Lisinthir had been recalled early, and Vasiht’h remained on Anseahla with his family as he’d planned. He returned to an empty apartment, thus, and found it novel: the silent rooms where he had expected his partner, and a homecoming. Perhaps that hadn’t been a bad thing, at that. The delta between the life Jahir had been living previously and the one yawning before him—before them both—was somehow manifested in the unusual quiet in the rooms they’d lived in together for so many years. He felt it on his skin as he toweled it dry after a shower; in his eyes as they grew accustomed to the dark in the bedroom, alone; in the taste of meals taken without conversation; in the gliding caress of a data tablet under fingers as he prioritized their case load by himself.

In the weight of a pendant, resting on the cleft between two collarbones; and in the space in his mind, now broadened immeasurably by the power he’d learned to embrace and control beneath the knife.

He did not send any message to Sediryl; it felt important to wait for Vasiht’h, that his first and dearest partner should know how he had changed, before he submitted to the second. Instead, he reported to his occasional shifts at the hospital, where he still did consultation work. He went shopping for a musical instrument he could carry, did chores, and brought out the Galare sword set to be serviced. He studied Chatcaavan, finding it slotting easily into place as if he now had a framework for all the missing pieces.

And he sat quietly, and expanded, and rode his consciousness out into Veta. In their bedroom, in the quiet before sleeping, he spread out to sense the bustle and weight and depth of the ocean around him, of minds and hearts and thoughts. When that proved too easy, he did the same exercise at cafes, surrounded by the distraction of people. He would have thought that would stretch him, but instead he found it centering. He could talk with waiters while holding the murmur of the entire city in his head, and instead of becoming disoriented he merely found their unique voice amid the surf and brought it into focus.

His cousin would have been gratified at this fresh evidence of how well he was settling into this puissance. And perhaps he could admit that he found it satisfying, too; that he could finally be proud of something that he had considered shameful all his life. He could even look at that lifetime of shame from the perspective of a therapist and know the very good reasons the Eldritch had codified the response… because no one knew how to train the use of the esper talents, and without that training the ability was alarming and destructive. Lacking any other tool, the Eldritch had turned to social engineering to prevent themselves from exploring their gifts and perhaps destroying themselves in the process.

They would have to fix that. Not all their people would be mages, but all of them could benefit from the lessons that would teach them how to keep from sensing one another’s thoughts unbidden. And then… perhaps… they might touch again.

He should live to see the day. He would live to see it, because when all of this was over, there would be time.

The day Vasiht’h was to return, Jahir prepared by setting a pot of kerinne on the stove to warm and making festival bread. The effort of kneading, the elastic feel of it under his fingers, and the sour and yeasty smell of it brought him back to their first days together at the university on Seersana. This time, though, he didn’t try to cut the butter into the topping by hand and saved himself a great deal of washing up. He could sense his partner’s approach with an entirely new ease; the mindline had always warned him when Vasiht’h was nigh, but it had always been a vague sense of presence, like the sun gliding behind clouds. It remained thus unless he concentrated on it, and then he could tell where his friend was in space—could have pointed out his location on a map, even. It was comforting, and the knowledge was so deeply integrated into his consciousness that he put the coffee on for himself without having to consult the itinerary to see if the Glaseah was on time.

By the time Vasiht’h walked in, the apartment smelled of cinnamon and more-almond and sugared pecans and oranges, and the work was worth it for the glow that flooded the mindline, like sunrise. And this time… this time he could answer the happiness the way it deserved, and with no cost to himself. He went to a knee and opened his arms, and the Glaseah dove into them and buried his nose in Jahir’s shoulder. Pulsing between their bodies, Jahir could sense his partner’s glee and shock and curiosity, that they could touch so freely and spontaneously. He just smiled his welcome and listened to the racing of Vasiht’h’s heart through his skin.

“I missed you!” Vasiht’h said at last, leaning back enough to look at him.

“I missed you too,” Jahir said.

Vasiht’h snorted. “Are you sure? I would have thought your cousin would keep you too busy for that.”

“You should know better,” Jahir said, finger-combing his friend’s forelock out of his eyes.

“I guess I do.” Vasiht’h sighed. “Oh, I want all your news, and I have so much of my own! But there was no food on that flight and you’ve made feast bread….”

“And kerinne to go with it,” Jahir said.

“A man after my own heart,” Vasiht’h said. “I’ll get the cups if you get the plates.”

The bread steamed when they broke it apart with their hands because the feast bread should never be handled with a knife. The topping dripped sugared nuts and candied orange peel, and the aroma was divine. Jahir poured the kerinne for Vasiht’h and took his coffee black and bitter to offset the glaze. They ate, and renewed their commitment there over the table.

Perhaps that was why Vasiht’h began the conversation by saying, “Sehvi and Kovihs would like to household with us.”

“Your sister and her family? That sounds delightful.”

“That’s all?” Vasiht’h asked, his bemusement puckering the mindline like the juice of a lemon. “I was expecting… I don’t know. A more cautious response?”

“Lemon does not go well with this bread,” Jahir said sternly.

Vasiht’h laughed and the sensation tamped. “Sorry. But I am serious. I know we’ve been thinking about… our next step. And you were fine with me having children. But this is more than my children now. This is the imposition of two more adults and their children.”

“It would be easier, I imagine, to raise multiple children with more than one adult? At least, I’m imagining so.” Jahir tilted his head. “Did you think I would object? We are giving ourselves to this new phase of our lives, arii. It will require rearrangement.”

“There’s rearrangement, and then there’s upheaval!”

Jahir chuckled. “I think you are more concerned about that than I am.”

Vasiht’h eyed him. “Apparently. Is there anything you’re concerned about? To make up for my apparent overabundance of concern?”

What wasn’t he concerned about… Jahir managed a rueful smile. “Beyond getting to the other end of this war… I think I wonder where we will live next. Your sister and her husband will need work. And so will we, though perhaps we might consider other avenues for our talents.”

“Such as?” Vasiht’h picked up his mug.

“I thought… perhaps we could go to the Eldritch homeworld. To stay. And teach my people how to use their abilities, rather than be used by them.”

Vasiht’h choked on his sip of kerinne, and the mindline happily told him it wasn’t serious because it meant he could enjoy, just the tiniest bit, having surprised one of the people who knew him best.

“Stop that,” Vasiht’h said, eyes watering. “You’re gloating!”

“I do not gloat,” Jahir said, prim.

Vasiht’h started laughing. “Maybe not. But that glee is unholy and it feels like carbonation and that doesn’t go with the bread either.” He shook his head. “Are you serious? You want me—and my sister and husband and nephews—and my kids!—to relocate to the Eldritch homeworld? Would they even let us?”

“Oh, I think they will.” Gentler, Jahir said, “You have always known that I would go back. And when you came with me for the wedding… you knew you would return as well. That you had work of your own there.”

“I guess that’s true,” the Glaseah murmured. And then, with a crooked smile, “Though I didn’t think I’d be back so quickly.”

“Nor did I,” Jahir said. “But it is a beautiful world, and one where there is work for us to do. And I believe by the time we arrive it will be ready for alien residents.”

“You think? Because... I don’t think I’d want to live on a world where I was the only alien. Even if I brought some of my own family, it would be...”

“Lonely,” Jahir finished. “Yes. I know just how you feel.”

Vasiht’h’s blush was soft, burnished in the mindline with the acceptance of his own misstep. “I suppose you’ve been dealing with that a lot longer than I have.”

“Perhaps not as much as I thought I had been.”

“Ah?” Vasiht’h canted his head. “Why do I hear music when you say that?”

“Because I bought a lute.” Jahir waited, contented with the saw of emotions through their link: the humor, the curiosity, and most of all the patience taught by years of such exchanges. What eventually swelled through those initial feelings, though, was happiness.

“All right,” Vasiht’h said, shaking his head and grinning. “I admit, you caught me with that one. I have no idea how that relates to what you just said and it’s distracted me from puzzling it out because I never thought you’d do it. But… not a piano?”

“I love the piano,” Jahir said. “I shall have one, in the fullness of time. But it has occurred to me that I packed a great deal of my life prior to arriving here into a box and put it away, good and bad. All of that was for shame, arii. Not just the shame that drove me from Sediryl, either… but the shame of having sprung from such a backwards people. The shame of leaving them and feeling relieved to have escaped. The shame of having the resources to do so when so many of my people don’t.” He smoothed his fingertips over the petite coffee cup, remembering how Amber had liked to fidget with cups as a youth. “Lisinthir might have pried open that box believing that only my romantic feelings were bound up in it. But I have concluded that my world entire was packed there. And if I am to be whole, I cannot leave it thus.” He smiled lopsidedly. “My life here has brought me a great deal of joy and taught me so very much. I don’t regret a moment of the time I’ve spent in the Alliance. But to go home, I have to admit to all those things.”

“So you bought a lute,” Vasiht’h murmured.

“And brought out the sword set,” Jahir said. “Which I handed over to a smith here to be aligned and sharpened.” He managed rue. “That was difficult, to give it over. But that is who I am. A man with Eldritch blades, and the responsibility to use them… who has access to Pelted weaponsmiths who can service such antiques better than the men who made them.”

Vasiht’h was watching him, leaning back with his hands resting lightly on the edges of the table. Jahir let his friend study him, raised his eyes. The scrutiny through the mindline felt like a vacuum, pulling him out of himself… but he recognized that pressure now, and flowed into it. To this first and deepest friend, he owed that offering, and now he could make it without reservation.

“You know,” Vasiht’h said at last, “when I left you behind to go on this trip, I thought you’d come back healthier. I didn’t think you’d come back like this.”

“And this is?” Jahir asked. And added, meekly, “Better, I hope.”

Vasiht’h laughed and reached over as if to swat him, the way the mindline revealed he would have done spontaneously to a sibling. Jahir ducked accordingly, and felt the sharpness of surprise like the slap he didn’t receive.

“I wouldn’t have tried that before either,” Vasiht’h said, wide-eyed.

“You know what you feel through the mindline,” Jahir said. “And you trust it. What else, then? I am different, arii. I am no longer conflicted. And I can touch you without being whelmed by the strengthening of our communion.” He pushed his plate aside and threaded his fingers together. “Though I hope this will not inspire you to cuff me too much more often.”

His partner chuckled. “No! Or at least, not too often.” His wonder suffused the mindline, gentle as mist. “It’s amazing from this side. I wish you could see it.”

“I do, a little. In the reactions of those around me.” Jahir smiled. “I find it rewarding.”

“Then I’m grateful Lisinthir leaned on you,” Vasiht’h said firmly. “I’ll have to hug him for it next time I see him. Which brings us to… what comes next.” The Glaseah’s clear brown eyes met his steadily, and his voice was quiet when he said, “Which is that the mind-mage Jahir goes to war. Isn’t it.”

“Yes,” Jahir said.

“The mind-mage Jahir… seems to have made peace with his powers?” Vasiht’h asked. “I accept your lack of conflict… I can feel it myself. There’s nothing in the mindline that whispers to me of horror anymore. But it seems an extreme change, and a sudden one.”

“It must seem so,” Jahir said. “And yet, it happened.” His smile was winsome and merry and sudden. “I believe Lisinthir beat it out of me.”

The Glaseah hesitated, then chuckled. “I probably don’t want to know that you mean that literally.”

“He said something about my obstinacy,” Jahir demurred.

Vasiht’h grinned as he tore one of the remaining pieces of bread into two, setting them on opposite sides of his plate. “I bet he did. So. When…?”

“Soon,” Jahir said. “He’ll send for me.”

“And I guess you’ll know then what you’ll be doing.”

Jahir nodded, said nothing. The mindline remained warm between them, even given the nervousness that made it shiver. His partner’s resignation was stronger than that anxiety, though, and twined through it was a silver rope of acquiescence to the Goddess’s will that glimmered like the memory of moonlight on a clear summer night. He could smell the perfume of tropical flowers, sweet and heavy.

“And then, I guess, I’ll decide what I’m doing.” Vasiht’h was still tearing the bread into pieces. The mindline did not speak of anxiety, though. That nervousness was more that of an athlete before a contest than that of fear.

Curiosity piqued, Jahir said, “You don’t know yet?”

Vasiht’h grinned. “No. Is that all right?”

Jahir laughed. “Of course it is. And perhaps you should cease with the tormenting of your bread?”

The Glaseah looked down and shook his head. “For once, you ate your entire serving and I only went through half of mine!” He put his plate on Jahir’s empty one. “Granted, you had only one serving and I had two....”

“I am trying to be better about eating!”

“For you that’s positively amazing,” Vasiht’h said, amused, but approving too, as warmly as the embrace of a mother. “This was good for you, even if you have come back talking three times as courtly as usual.”

“Only three times?”

“And teasing!” Vasiht’h laughed. “Let’s do dishes and see what we can do about our cases. If we really are going to leave Veta—after how much trouble we took getting into it!—then we need to make some decisions about how to transition our practice into other hands.”

“A reprise of the adventure that saw us settled here,” Jahir murmured. “That feels... apropos.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” The Glaseah stood. “It feels right to me too. That’s usually a good sign.”

“From your mouth to Her ear, arii.”

“Maybe after that…” Vasiht’h tilted his head. “You could play for me?”

“I could so do,” Jahir replied, rising already to collect the plates. “In fact, I could sing as well, if you wished it.”

“Oh!” Vasiht’h exclaimed. “Yes.” And then laughed. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you to say something like that.”

“Then you need wait no longer,” Jahir said.

It was as close to an idyllic day as Jahir could remember their having. An afternoon spent over their schedule, discussing their clients; some quiet time apart while Vasiht’h showered off the travel dust and settled back in. Then, as promised, he brought out the lute and played, and that was an intimacy he couldn’t have imagined before he tried it with his partner. He’d wanted a smaller instrument because it imposed less of a distance between performer and listener, and in particular because while Lisinthir had been able to sit with him on the bench, Vasiht’h would have had far more trouble doing so.

An instrument small enough to tuck under an arm, though… the Glaseah sat where he usually did, beside the couch and leaning on it. Jahir sat alongside him, and they leaned close, and he sang quietly. After a while, Vasiht’h hummed along, not because he was a musician himself and could improvise a harmony, but because he could borrow that knowledge through the mindline the way Lisinthir had borrowed his ability to sense other people’s feelings. The revelation that his talent could be used for such a potent sharing, and outside the intense and very unique relationship he had with his cousin…

“I could do this forever,” he admitted when at last they quit.

Vasiht’h had his head on his arm, eyes closed. His sigh had a sweetness of contentment that Jahir had not heard in a long time. “Me too. But I guess we should get to bed. Or at least, I should. It wasn’t a hard day, but it was a long one.”

“I understand. And I am tired also.”

Vasiht’h raised his head and rubbed an eye. “So are you going to tell me about the new jewelry?”

“Was it so obvious?” Jahir asked, curious.

“Not at all,” Vasiht’h said. “I’m just lying at a weird angle, and you’re leaning forward and to one side, and it happened to let your collar gap open at just the right place. It’s remarkably discreet.”

And he had never told his partner about the gift that had inspired Lisinthir’s. Jahir opened his collar enough to let the disc of ivory out and leaned toward the Glaseah so Vasiht’h could examine it. “When I was asked to procure the chest we were to send to the Empire to Lisinthir, I also arranged to send him a token we use as prayers for safety. You recall I mentioned something about it on the homeworld when we went?”

“The bit about the medallion I had being some kind of pattern for a different thing?” Vasiht’h peered up at him. “I barely remember.”

“Those different things are known as amulets rampant, and they are supposed to protect their wearers. They all involve the depiction of a unicorn rampant, thus the name: rampant rampants are brightly enameled in colors meant to attract attention. Secret rampants, though, are white, in order to do their work without being noticed. The one I gave Lisinthir with the jackal chest was destroyed in a fight that almost—but did not quite—kill him. I suppose he remembered it fondly, since he had one made in the Alliance for me.”

“It’s amazing,” Vasiht’h murmured. “Can I…?”

“Yes.”

The invisible string pulled against the back of Jahir’s neck as Vasiht’h gently moved the talisman closer. “This one has a dragon on it, thou—oh, right. Of course it does.” He chuckled. “You Eldritch. You baptize your babies in symbols and drench yourselves in them for the rest of your lives.”

“One must go with one’s strengths,” Jahir murmured, to the Glaseah’s burbling amusement.

“The workmanship on it is amazing,” Vasiht’h said. “I have no idea how they made the ivory that translucent without chipping into the back more. There’s only one place it seems to have been thinned out at all.”

“It’s more comfortable to wear thus, I imagine,” Jahir said. “Too much deviation on the side facing the skin might chafe.”

Vasiht’h shook his head and tucked it back into Jahir’s collar. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he’s got every Eldritch’s highly developed aesthetic sense.”

“I have a highly developed aesthetic sense,” Jahir said, amused, setting the lute aside. “Lisinthir has style.”

Vasiht’h snorted and rose, stretching. “I don’t know. I happen to think my particular Eldritch has plenty of style on his own.” He canted his head. “Am I allowed to ask now?”

“About?”

“Sediryl?”

Sediryl. Jahir inhaled. “Now that you’re here… tomorrow, I’ll call.” He managed a smile. “It would be deeply satisfying to simply arrive on her doorstep and sweep her off her feet, but Starbase Ana lies on the other side of the Alliance from where I need to go. It would be ridiculous to show myself only to discover her away.”

Vasiht’h chuckled. “I suppose there’s that.” Quieter: “I’m glad you’re not waiting.”

“I could not,” Jahir said. “Not anymore.”

That seemed to satisfy his partner, which was well… Jahir himself didn’t think there was more to add.

They were preparing for bed when the chirp distracted them both. Jahir finished pulling his pajama shirt on and found Vasiht’h sitting up on the nest of pillows, wings half-spread.

“That’s him, isn’t it,” the Glaseah said.

“He is one of the few people on the emergency list, yes,” Jahir said.

“I hope it’s him,” Vasiht’h said, flopping back onto the cushions. “Because if it’s the Queen again I’ll have to ask her whether she times things on purpose to catch us asleep.”

Jahir chuckled and left their dim bedroom. His data tablet was on the kitchen table; he eschewed the wallscreen in favor of the more intimate interaction and sat there to spread the message. Not a real-time request, for the chime would have been more urgent then. A flat file, which was suggestive of... what? Danger, perhaps? The need for security?

The message itself was all Lisinthir, and he smiled through it all the way to its signature... and then he read the final line and all his body clenched.

/Ariihir?/

/A moment./

/Of course?/ The worry faded from the mindline and left him alone in the dark, with only the glow of the tablet and the faint nightlight strips along the walls to illumine the room. Chatcaavan had become their love language, which made the errand Lisinthir was referring to obvious. But his stomach was trying to knot itself into a rope at the implication. What was she doing there? Why? His cousin’s last admonition was clearly a warning not to arrive in high dudgeon over her having imperiled herself. Jahir didn’t share Lisinthir’s notion of necessary risks—few people did, given Lisinthir’s high fear threshold—so it was useless to guess if Sediryl really should be there, or if Lisinthir merely felt she should be.

None of which mattered, of course. The question he had to ask was whether he trusted Sediryl’s competence more than he feared for her safety. And was that not an impossible question? She had navigated the Alliance for years, though, and taken far more risks in those years than he had. But that was not the same thing as forcing herself into a war with dragons...!

Still, the warning resonated. He spread the message reply option and wrote back in Eldritch:

 

Cousin, I come, and shall so attempt in the proper spirit.

 

He signed his name and left off the endearments. He could commit them in person. That left only the planning, and he began it at once, researching the location of this world and what sort of transports ran to it.

Once upon a time, that exercise would have left him prey to the surprise of Vasiht’h’s approach, even with the mindline to warn him. Now, though, he sensed his partner rolling from his cushioned nest and shaking out his wings, heard the pawpads in the back of his mind while he skated through the flight options. When the Glaseah finally dropped his haunches into an untidy seat beside him, he was ready for the question.

“So what did he say?”

“He says I am to meet him on this world.” Tapping the data tablet, he showed the Alliance’s map to him. “Sharsenne. It is in one of the border sectors but settled long ago and not subject to much piracy or instability. Few ships fly there directly, but it is less a matter of safety and more of convenience and coordination of schedules. There are many flight plans that involve only one transfer.” Jahir handed the tablet to Vasiht’h. “Less than a week, most of those plans. Some as short as four days.”

“Four days,” Vasiht’h murmured.

Jahir smiled whimsically. “We may have been spoiled by our last conveyance to the border of the Empire. Fleet ships go deeper into the Well than commercial liners.”

“And Fleet won’t volunteer this time?”

“If they would have, Lisinthir would have arranged it.” Jahir let his eyes rest on the glow off the tablet as he set an elbow on the table and used his hand to prop up his head. “I think, perhaps, he might prefer some of our enterprise be free of Fleet’s oversight. Private individuals may do aught that governments would find… imprudent.”

The skepticism in the mindline was so sharp it could have served a surgeon as a scalpel. “And a mission that Fleet is abetting with a ship they’ve lent Lisinthir is somehow a private thing?”

“For all their help,” Jahir said, “he is an ambassador, not a soldier.”

“He’s the Alliance’s ambassador to the Chatcaavan Empire,” Vasiht’h pointed out.

“But a foreign national, on loan from an allied government,” Jahir said. “The waters are murky. And if he invites me personally, then there is some freedom there as well. I become a confederate from an allied nation rather than a resource subject to assignment by Fleet.”

Vasiht’h set the data tablet down and folded his arms. “And you would be comfortable doing something shady enough that a government wouldn’t want itself associated with it?”

“No,” Jahir said, slowly. “But something the Alliance might not want to do, but that my Queen would… that I could countenance. And must. I am a citizen of the Alliance, arii. But my duty lies with my homeland. And I have no doubt that Liolesa is… more willing to exact final justice on those who would kill or enslave us, shall we say.”

Vasiht’h wrinkled his nose. “All right. That makes sense.” He smiled a little. “I’d believe summary justice of her. I wouldn’t even blame her, I think.”

“You… think?”

Vasiht’h shrugged, and the mindline whispered of muscles seeking relief from tension more than from ambivalence, or dismissiveness. “I’m still what I am too, arii. I was born here, and violence will never come easily to me. Even as a response to violence. Maybe particularly so.”

“I know.” Jahir reached over and rested a hand on the knotted shoulder, pressed fingers into it. Vasiht’h twitched in surprise and then hung his head to grant better access. Thus encouraged, Jahir continued. “I mislike it myself. But God and Lady willing, we will put paid to this—or at least, close the chapter on the immediate threat—and be able to return to our lives. Different lives, and perhaps more vigilant ones, but also more consonant with the life you prefer.”

“That is nice,” Vasiht’h mumbled. “I had no idea you could do massage.” A peep of humor through the mindline. “I bet you didn’t know either.”

Jahir laughed. “No. There you have me fairly caught.”

Vasiht’h grinned at him, then grew somber. “So, you’ll go talk to Sediryl, head for this Sharsenne place, and… Lisinthir will go with you somewhere else, I’m guessing?”

“No doubt,” Jahir said. “I cannot imagine them doing anything other than staging from such a world; the conflict is further in the Empire, or up along its border. Sharsenne looks too settled a planet for anything else.” He inhaled. “And I’m afraid Sediryl is… already there. So I suppose I am leaving as soon as I book transport.”

“Sediryl’s there?” Vasiht’h asked, incredulous.

“You are about to ask me why and I’m afraid I have not the first notion,” Jahir said ruefully. “Only that Lisinthir has encouraged me to bridle my reaction. She must have her own reasons for having come.”

“If she has her own reasons for going, you definitely won’t endear yourself to her by showing up to tell her to go home!” Vasiht’h shook out his now looser shoulders and managed a smile. “And to be honest, I don’t know why she should. I haven’t spent long in her company but that was still long enough to know that no one’s going to get in the way of anything she wants. She’s an independent soul, arii. If you want her to marry you, you’re going to have to be willing to accept that.”

“I learn one lesson, and the Divine offers me another,” Jahir agreed, rueful.

“That’s how it usually works.” Vasiht’h sighed. “Well, book two tickets, then. I’m not going to traipse after the two of you—the three of you—into the Empire, but I’ll at least see you off.”

Jahir glanced at him. “You’re certain?”

“If it’s as safe as you’re suggesting…” Vasiht’h shook his head. “I know my limits, ariihir. I can’t go into a war like that. But to at least wave you off as you ride to war… that I can do.”

“And while I’m gone?” Jahir’s voice softened.

“I’ll probably close up shop here and go back to Sehvi’s. We apparently have plans to make.”

“Yes,” Jahir murmured. “We do.” And wrapped his arms around his friend’s shoulders, drawing him close. Against Vasiht’h’s cheek, he said, “Thank you.”

“I love you,” Vasiht’h said. “I can’t do any less.”

“You could and I would never blame you for it,” Jahir said. “Don’t demean your own courage. You have it, and more than you know.”

The Glaseah hmphed, but the mindline tightened with his apprehension and his decision not to surrender to it. “Just make sure I get at least four hours of sleep before we go.”

In fact, Jahir let him sleep eight hours, but not much more than that. They were packed and boarding the first transport the following afternoon. It helped that they were traveling lightly. Vasiht’h’s return ticket was already purchased; he’d be home again within a week. Having no idea how long he’d be gone, Jahir had brought only as much as he needed for the journey to Sharsenne, along with the Galare sword set. He would resupply where he could, and what he and his own fortune couldn’t provide, he was sure Lisinthir’s Fleet allies would.

Their first flight was on a passenger liner that delivered Core citizens to an out-sector hub home to several cruise companies. It had bemused them both to learn that many of the worlds on the border were popular tourist destinations, whether for tourism, culture, food, or spiritual retreat. “I never thought of myself as an Alliance elitist,” Vasiht’h had told Jahir as they ignored the ads for those destinations being played on one of the walls in the dining mess. “But it honestly never occurred to me that anyone would want to see anything in the border sectors. I assumed it was all pirates, destitute colonies, and abandoned worlds.”

“A perhaps unavoidable assumption given how many Fleet members we’ve worked with,” Jahir said. “But the Alliance must grow somehow, and presumably it does so when its borders are expanded by the success and productivity of its colonies.”

“Its colonies facing away from a potential war with an obtruding Empire,” Vasiht’h said, wry. “Not the ones that might get enveloped by the Chatcaava!”

“And perhaps the war was inevitable, given that,” Jahir said. He smiled whimsically. “Will you avail yourself of one of these cruises in my absence?”

“Goddess no!” Vasiht’h laughed. “I don’t care how fancy these places are, or how breathtaking—”

“Or how good the food is?”

“Or… all right, that’s the one thing that might have made me curious enough to go,” Vasiht’h allowed. “But if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll wait until after these places have become official Alliance sectors, with a real starbase and military presence, before I go wandering off on a tasting tour.”

Jahir grinned. “If I have the chance, I’ll bring you a few perishable souvenirs.”

“The only perishable souvenir I’m interested in is you. So make sure you bring that back first.”

Their second leg of the journey was also their last, from the hub to Sharsenne. This was a smaller vessel, with fifteen crew and a maximum of twenty-five passengers. The flight was also shorter: a day and a half, compared to the three the first had taken. “We could practically sleep the whole trip away,” Vasiht’h had commented when they’d checked into their cabin.

“And no doubt we will, given the lateness of the hour,” Jahir said. “But dinner first.”

They’d eaten through the ship’s departure, lingering over the meal and cups of chocolate swirled with kerinne. The crew moved with brisk efficiency, but the rhythm of this flight was noticeably less hurried than their first. Jahir enjoyed his sampling of the passengers’ relaxation. He could inhale it like the bouquet of a wine and did, and something of it surfaced in his eyes across the table, because Vasiht’h met them and smiled with watering eyes.

/A matter of time before you see the flowering of your own talents, surely?/ Jahir had murmured privately.

/The way I’m learning just by being yoked to you?/ Vasiht’h shook his head. /I can’t describe it, arii, except to say that… it’s amazing./

/Thanks be to the God and Lady for Their gifts,/ Jahir said.

/Yes./

After that they’d wandered to the observation deck and then back to their rooms to sleep. Unlike the Fleet ships they’d taken to the border previously, the passenger liners had luxurious cabins with more than enough space to turn around in, and a full bath in every suite. Vasiht’h hadn’t even needed to make up his own bed; having booked as a Glaseah, he’d arrived to a sloped couch with a cache of moldable pillows and bolsters.

Fortunately such couches were portable. He’d dragged it over to Jahir’s side so he could sleep alongside his partner the way they were both accustomed to, and testing it he found it so comfortable that he mentioned buying something similar for home. Contented, they both saw to their ablutions and retired, and the mindline softened into the warm, low presence that had been a part of their lives for over a decade.

The ships that plied space were not like those that did water, or even air. Under normal circumstances, they hummed, a low-level vibration that almost never rose to the level of conscious perception. But they didn’t buck, tremble, or twitch. They certainly didn’t heave so hard they flung their occupants out of their beds. Jahir grabbed for the bedframe in vain as he plunged off it, knocking into Vasiht’h and skidding almost to the other side of the room. The leg of the other bed stopped them both… with Vasiht’h on top of Jahir, and the Glaseah was much, much heavier—

—but not as heavy as the air around them, thick with confusion and unexpected pain and panic. Jahir struggled to surface through the physical and mental oppression, thrashing against Vasiht’h’s side. /Arii!/

/Sorry! Let me… my foot’s trapped, I—/ Vasiht’h jerked it free just as the ship wrenched to the other side and they rolled apart.

The vibration of the deckplates stopped.

“What’s going on?” Vasiht’h asked, ears flattening. “Did something fail? Some part of the engine maybe?”

Jahir clawed himself free of the twined blankets and sat up, shaking his hair back. The passengers’ turmoil was so powerful he needed several breaths to separate it from the crew’s… and once he had, he shamelessly skated ghostly fingers over their auras. He was expecting alarm, irritation, worry.

What he felt, like a punch to the gut, was terror.

“No,” Vasiht’h whispered. “You can’t tell me that. Don’t… don’t tell me that!”

Jahir ruthlessly rode the feelings of the crew until he found their captain and plucked the surface thoughts free.

Pirates.

He pushed himself upright and went for his sword case. /You are about to ask if I am going to fight them,/ he said. /The answer to that is yes. Because I can fight them… and win./

Vasiht’h’s head jerked up. They could obfuscate the truth through the mindline, hide things from it… but lie? That was impossible. Jahir knew the steel in his mental voice, the impassioned certainty of his response, would convince his partner the way nothing else would.

Vasiht’h inhaled shakily, then managed a wan smile. “I’m good with this plan. And I’d rather not be here alone! Let’s go.”

Jahir dressed in haste. One of his daggers was already in his boot; the remaining dirk and sword he belted on before entering the corridor. Unlike a Fleet vessel, with its unmistakable emergency sirens, the passenger liner’s sole indication of its status was a demure strip of red and white lights where the floor met the wall and the occasional repetition of a message ‘to please stay in your cabins until the crew gives you further instructions.’ Jahir ignored it and skated past the minds bound up in panic and fear on their vessel to reach for the minds in the new ship alongside them. He couldn’t count them: more than their ship carried, fewer than the full concert hall on Alpha where he and Lisinthir had conducted their final test. Too many, and he didn’t have time to evaluate the exact number because some number of them had just arrived here, close. He started jogging.

/Let me guess,/ Vasiht’h said. /We’re heading toward the dangerous parts of the ship./

/That would be where our quarry is,/ Jahir replied with a flicker of distracted amusement.

/Of course./ The disgust in the response almost made him laugh. But the boarding party had arrived, and it was at least twenty people strong. How to take them down, when surely they would be using palmers? And his sword was not a good weapon for corridors this size: too long by far. Nor was he altogether certain he could channel his memory of his cousin’s fighting skill.

You are not me, he could almost hear Lisinthir saying. Fight like you, Galare.

And that meant something entirely different. He stretched out for those minds. Was it fair to invade them? But they meant the innocents on this ship violence. They had to be stopped, or at least, convinced to turn back. Still heading their way, Jahir sank into the first few minds he’d sensed.

Pirates, he’d expected. What he found instead…

Jahir was not well-acquainted with anger. Despair, yes. Fear, certainly. But he was more prone to melancholy than choler, was more comfortable making peace than exacting justice. He would do it—he no less than any other Eldritch male had been trained to it—but it was an effort. Even the joy he’d learned, fighting with Lisinthir on Starbase Alpha, had been an exhilaration born of their skill, not from any love of the contest.

He had never learned the tools to fight the fury that washed through him at what he found in the minds of those men. It hit him like the backblast of a missile, so raw it roared through the mindline and staggered Vasiht’h. Jahir couldn’t stop to steady him because he was running now for those invaders, one of the House daggers already drawn. He sensed more than saw the dead body he passed, because he was already turning the corner and confronting the ten who were moving steadily forward, checking all the compartments, weapons ready.

“Here you find me,” he called. “Unless you are afraid of a lone man.”

The rearmost turned and twitched in surprise.

“Not what you were hoping?” Jahir said. “Not enough fur, I assume.” He lifted his empty hand. “You should kill each other.”

The puzzled looks as they finished facing him and tried to understand the words gave way beneath sudden panic as he pushed on them, flattening their thoughts beneath the pressure of his mind. He had never tried this on people actively resisting him; it was harder than he’d anticipated.

But not hard enough.

The palmers flashed but did not squeak the way legal models should have. Jahir held his opponents in an iron grip until they finished obeying his orders, and only after they slumped did he realize he was crying.

Vasiht’h caught up with him, glanced once at the bodies, then wrapped his arms around Jahir’s torso. The mindline filled with a cooling wave, like sea water, desperate with froth. /What’s wrong? I’ve never felt anything like this out of you! What happened? You… you killed them?/

/I made them kill each other,/ Jahir answered, flat. Harder then, as sword’s edge. /They’re not just pirates. They’re furriers./

For a moment, the mindline hung tense between them, blank.

Then Vasiht’h wobbled. /You don’t mean… PEOPLE furriers?/

“They kill the Pelted and skin them and sell their pelts,” Jahir whispered. He was not just weeping, but sweating from the effort of what he’d done. But just saying it aloud made the anger rise again, and this time, for all his incredulity, Vasiht’h held him steady and did not back away.

“This way,” Jahir said, sensing the remaining ten. “Before it’s too late.”

They ran, then. Palmers could burn on a high enough setting. The boarders had no intention of marring their merchandise with unsightly marks, so there was a good chance he and Vasiht’h could save the Pelted. The humans would die, like the one Jahir had run past, but most of the crew were Pelted as well—

He caught up to the next set and didn’t warn them this time. He just lunged for their minds and told them they were among enemies, forced the impression into them until they believed it and shot one another down. Jahir staggered to one side until his shoulder hit the wall of the corridor, accepting the chest that buoyed him up from behind.

/You used to it being this much effort?/ Vasiht’h asked. The matter-of-factness of his question didn’t diffuse the rage, but somehow put it in a context in which he could live through knowing a sentient fur trade existed.

/No,/ Jahir admitted. /But I’ve never used the ability offensively before. Lisinthir could control bodies. All I have is… psychologies. I didn’t know compulsions could be resisted so effectively by those without talents like ours./

Vasiht’h bent alongside one of the bodies, gingerly moving the head from side to side. /That shouldn’t surprise either of us. If people weren’t capable of resisting any thought they deemed foreign, even their own, we’d have long since been out of work./ He straightened, holding a gem. /They have telegems./

/That means it won’t be long before they’re missed. We should find the crew and tell them what we know./

Vasiht’h looked at him. /What about their ship? Can you do anything about that?/

Could he? When controlling ten minds at a time against their will had been so wearing? But then, did he need to control ten minds, or ten hundred? If he could find just one over there and tell it to sabotage the vessel…

Don’t be me, Galare. Be you.

But how can I be me when all I feel is rage? he asked that memory of Lisinthir, trying to breathe through it.

You would tell me you cannot feel rage?

Fine, he answered. But what do I do! I can’t kill them all no matter how much I want to!

Be you, Galare.

Jahir flung himself from the voice. Then I shall be myself! And shoved the anger out, and out, and out. Let it build and thicken, let it expand like lava plunging from the sides of a volcano. Put his shoulder into it and pressed from the inside until he emptied himself out and the wrath sped from him like the corona of an exploding sun, dragging his energy after it. It skated to a halt just outside the ship and there it spit and howled, a magmatic shield that poisoned everything it neared. Holding it steady, Jahir felt it stretching tendrils toward the pirate vessel, trying to ensnare it, and sensed, just barely through that barrier, the terror it was inspiring.

/Goddess!/ Vasiht’h whispered, trembling at his side.

/Beloved,/ Jahir said, straining. /I need your help./

/Anything!/

Jahir tugged the mindline, drawing the Glaseah’s attention to the weight he was holding up. /This. Can you bear it for a few moments?/

/I… think?/ An impression of someone moving alongside him that did not come from their physical bodies. Then the weight rose off him. /Yes. Goddess, ariihir, what is this!/

But Jahir was already using the freedom to thin himself out and stretch toward the pirates. Somewhere on that ship was someone in charge. He bounced off a wall of fear and panic, so heavy it had to be the product of a mass of minds, walked himself along its borders, hunting, clawing, scrounging. Somewhere… there. In a knot amid the terror, there was someone whose identity was bound up in the memories of authority. How far was he from them? Did it matter? Jahir felt attenuated, as if he might come apart. But he refused and wrapped his hands around that heart. He was not Lisinthir to control a body. But a mind he could influence. He sucked the terror from the surrounding mass and shaped it into a lance and then he smashed it into that single person’s mind… and felt the heart stop from shock.

That one death set off a tidal wave of panic, and Jahir slid back down the link to put his effort into maintaining the shield that was fueling it. Using his anger as the medium for that shield had deprived him of its power, though, and he was beginning to feel the physical effort of it, in sweat sticking his clothes to his body, a cramping hunger and thirst, in the increasing tremor of muscles responding as if he was holding up a real weight. He didn’t like to think how long he would have lasted without Vasiht’h at his side… but he didn’t have to. They stood fast together as they always had, and there was a joy in that which transcended the peril and the horrors they would have to face when they finally let it go.

/I feel it too./

Jahir smiled, pained, eyes closed.

They both felt it when the vessel moved off, though neither of them believed it initially.

/Is that really happening?/ Vasiht’h asked, awed.

/I think… yes./ Jahir tentatively groped past the shield, found… nothing. /They have left./ Neither of them moved. Then Jahir added, /The shield, we can drop it./

It went out like a match falling into water, and both of them went with it, collapsing to the deck. Fortunately they were near enough to the wall to slide most of the way down, but it was an untidy situation all around.

“Did you just drive away a pirate vessel by terrifying them into fleeing?” Vasiht’h asked, low.

“I had to do something,” Jahir said, slumped. His wrists and ankles were trembling, and the rest of him felt… very vague. Not even in his defense classes had he ever been so sodden with sweat, enough that his hair was dripping slowly onto his pants. He felt not just exhausted, but depleted, as if he’d used up something vital that needed replacement. Food, he thought. Or juice. He found himself latching onto the memory of Nuera’s sparkling verjuice, tasting it on his palate as if he could swallow it down.

/Ugh, stop that,/ Vasiht’h said with an audible groan. “I can’t tell whether I never want to eat again or I want to eat everything. No one warned me how much work being dva’htiht was.” He pressed his shoulders up and let them drop. “We should talk to the crew and find out what happened. Before we got involved. How many people got hurt.”

“Two dead,” Jahir said, without thinking, eyes closed. “Many unconscious, but only two dead.”

“I guess they’re human,” Vasiht’h said, subdued.

“Given what the pirates intended?” He glanced at his friend. “Did you know?”

“About the fur trade?” Vasiht’h grimaced. “No. I thought that was something teenagers came up with to scare each other at overnight parties. I guess you’re sure?”

“If you could have seen what I saw….”

“Don’t—” Vasiht’h held up a hand. “Don’t show me. That’s one thing I don’t want in my head.” He pushed himself upright and smiled wryly. “The one time being Eldritch wasn’t worse for you than being Pelted would have been.”

“Unless I’d been cousin Lisinthir,” Jahir said, and stopped abruptly.

“That reminds me,” Vasiht’h said as he finished gaining all four feet. “Do you always hear his voice in your head that way now? I couldn’t catch the words of the conversation, but it was definitely a back-and-forth. Almost as if he was there. You must have a very clear sense of his personality for that… arii?”

Jahir slumped back to the ground, grabbing for his collar and opening it to fumble for the medallion. “You have better eyes than I do,” he said. “Look at the back more closely and tell me… could you have fit a chip in it?”

Vasiht’h eyed him, then sat alongside him and bent close. “Move your head, you’re blocking the light.” The Glaseah twisted the amulet on the strand, pulling it taut against Jahir’s neck. For a very long moment he said nothing, squinting at it. Then, “There’s a very small part of it that looks like it reflects differently.”

Jahir put a hand on his partner’s wrist.

It becomes you. And it will serve you in your need.

I have left you a tool. Use it, if you would.

“I need a medkit,” he said.

Vasiht’h’s eyes narrowed.

“Please,” Jahir said. “And something to eat. And then we must find the captain and the crew.”

“All right,” Vasiht’h said. /But only because I think you need the medkit. And you’re going to tell me what this is about./

/I so vow./

The Glaseah nodded and left, footfalls unsteady at first and then firming. Left to himself, Jahir let his head rest back against the wall and breathed. If he was right—but he was right. There was no other reason, when his cousin did nothing without planning several steps ahead. The only question was: what next? Where did he belong, to best move the Pattern to the place where it would breed success for them all? Survival?

Had he really driven off a pirate vessel with the force of his anger alone?

His penchant for not looking too closely at those things that might distress him was, by now, all too clear to him. What he’d done… he would have to sit with it for some time, when he was on Sharsenne and had the leisure. For now, he bowed his head forward and felt for the amulet’s catch. Removing the pendant felt wrong, but he would have it back in place soon enough.

When Vasiht’h rounded the bend, Jahir was already holding out his hands for the kit. He received instead a protein bar, which he eyed with resignation.

“Eat,” Vasiht’h said, opening the kit.

Obediently, Jahir took the first bite.

“Scanner?”

“No,” Jahir said. “The AAP.”

The Glaseah’s look then was speaking; the wash through the mindline, thick with suspicion, even more so.

“And the tweezers.”

Vasiht’h scowled. “Arii—” But handed both over. “At least finish the bar.”

“In a moment.” Jahir turned the pendant and held it up to the overhead lights. Lisinthir wouldn’t have designed the amulet to be broken, as that would have invited poor fortune and destroyed a work of art besides. There had to be a way….

“Ah,” he murmured, and used the edge of the tweezers to press along the tiny patch until he felt something give. A slot opened and revealed the chip he’d been expecting, and he couldn’t help his low chuckle. “Imthereli,” he murmured in their tongue. “Mind of a drake, thou hast.”

“What is that?” Vasiht’h asked, perplexed.

“Hold this for me… just thus, don’t move.” He set the pendant on his partner’s palm and checked the AAP. It had a saline vial, so he set the syringe to use it and carefully touched the tip of it to exposed chip. It stuck—thankfully—and he rested it against the vein in his arm.

“This is safe, I’m assuming.”

“It is how it’s meant to be implanted,” Jahir said. “More or less.”

“More or less!”

Jahir depressed the button and watched the saline level drop. Unlike a normal injection, it hurt, but then normal injections weren’t pressing something macroscopic through skin. It was a small chip, but when he lifted the AAP a thread of crimson blood had spilled into the inside crook of his elbow.

“I know that’s not supposed to happen,” Vasiht’h said, disturbed.

“It’ll pass.” Jahir set the pump aside and drew in a breath. And then he laughed and touched his hand to his brow.

Vasiht’h had sat back on his haunches and had his arms folded. “So?”

How would Lisinthir have programmed it? He and Vasiht’h had attended a party once in dominos, the consumer cousins to Fleet’s roquelaures. Those models had been cheap, with few interface options… but the high-end versions they'd investigated had all had the option to be activated via subvocalization. He tried commanding it in Universal first, and was unsurprised when it failed. Chatcaavan… no. Not the language that could be understood by their enemies. Which left only Eldritch.

In that tongue, he told the roquelaure to wake, and that he would be a Seersa, and found himself looking down at his own foot now furred and four-toed and bare, in the way of most of the digitigrade species.

Vasiht’h’s shock was cold as peppermint, and lemonade. Peppermint lemonade?

“Really?” Jahir asked, in a voice higher than his own. “Have you had such a thing?” He re-considered. “It sounds delicious, come to that.”

“Goddess of Dreams!” Vasiht’h exclaimed. “Even your voice pitch is different!” He reached for Jahir’s arm and recoiled. “The fur is furry!”

“It would hardly be a useful disguise otherwise.” He repressed the urge to find his partner’s expression amusing and instead tied the amulet rampant back on. “Will you permit me one more test?”

“One more?” Vasiht’h said, astounded. And added, “Can you walk like that?”

“It feels no different to me on the inside of the seeming than being myself,” Jahir said. The bar had seemed to settle his stomach, so he resumed eating it, much to the Glaseah’s bemusement. “But yes. One more test.”

“Go ahead?”

Jahir swallowed and drew in a long breath. Roquelaure, he commanded the implant, careful not to make the sound aloud. It was harder than he thought to speak that way. Normal form, uninjured. And then he looked up at Vasiht’h.

“That’s… not possible,” Vasiht’h whispered. And then, indignant. “That’s not even legal!”

“I assume you see my cousin,” Jahir said, quiet, and even he heard the difference in his voice.

“That’s not how dominos work,” Vasiht’h insisted. “You’re not supposed to be able to mimic a specific person.”

“It’s how they work when Fleet makes them,” Jahir said, and pushed himself upright. Mask off. “There. Better?”

“Yes!” Vasiht’h stared at him, ears sagging. And then, speculative. “Why?”

“Did he give it me?” Jahir shook back his hair… or tried, anyway. It hadn’t dried yet and was sticking together in a way he found disagreeable. “I think it was a way of giving me options.”

“Options,” Vasiht’h said, tasting the word.

“To keep me safer,” Jahir offered. “It will allow me to look like any species, believably.”

“He got it from Fleet, for you?”

/I suspect,/ Jahir said, wry, /that he stole it from Fleet, for me./

“Why?” Vasiht’h asked.

To that, Jahir had no response… for he feared the only one that would answer was that his cousin expected him to go into worse danger than he himself would see. And Vasiht’h, knowing him too well, did not press him to admit it.

“Well,” the Glaseah said at last. “I’m glad he’s looking out for you.”

“I am also.” He managed a whimsical smile. “Surely together the two of us cannot fail.”

Vasiht’h snorted. “Let’s find the captain.”

The captain of the passenger liner was an Asanii, one of the felid races, and putting a good face on his distress to the crew on the bridge when they arrived and the first mate tried to turn them away. The first mate continued trying until Jahir said, “There are twenty dead pirates on the vessel in the passengers’ quarters.”

“You were supposed to stay in your cabin,” the first mate, a shorter Karaka’An felid, snapped.

“If he’d stayed in his cabin, those pirates would be alive and killing people for pelts,” Vasiht’h said, and silenced everyone.

“Let them in,” the captain said.

Explaining that he was responsible for the pirates’ flight was one of the more interesting exercises Jahir had attempted in recent years. He had always considered the Alliance’s technology magical; certainly it routinely achieved miracles in ways he couldn’t have described, much less duplicated. And yet the masters of this technology, who themselves probably couldn’t have explained or duplicated it either, were deeply troubled to learn that “real” magic had routed their enemies.

“It’s not real magic any more than a Glaseah’s ability to talk mind-to-mind is magic,” Vasiht’h said for him, and Jahir let him carry the battle while he stared out the windows at space and wondered what else he could eat. He rarely remembered being so hungry.

At last he interrupted to ask, “How did they catch us?”

The captain was leery of him, but also obviously tired of engaging with Vasiht’h. “It’s a bit of a gamble, but there’s a way to bounce a ship out of Well if you know its vector and engine harmonics.”

“So are the engines broken?” Vasiht’h asked.

“Just jarred a bit,” said the third member of the bridge crew, who was sitting at the systems station. “We can be back underway in a couple of hours.”

“And we’ll have to be, to report our dead and the attack,” a fourth muttered.

“Go see to the passengers,” the captain said to the first mate. Facing Vasiht’h and Jahir, he said, “I’m grateful for what you’ve done, more than I can easily express. But there’s nothing you can do from here. I advise you to return to your cabin and rest, see to any… wounds… you might have taken in the fight.”

“That’s a good idea,” Vasiht’h said, taking Jahir by the sleeve. “We’ll do that. How soon do you think we’ll reach Sharsenne?”

“We’ll probably only be a few hours off our original ETA,” the captain said. “Call it three to five hours, maybe—”

The world around their vessel skewed in Jahir’s perception, cramping with hunger so acutely he thought for a moment that it was his stomach, and that the roquelaure, or his mind-magery, or both, were finally collecting their overdue payment. He would certainly have preferred that to what he sensed when his mind cleared.

/No,/ Vasiht’h hissed. /After all this—/

“What is it?” the captain was saying, leaning over the chair of the third crew member. “Someone notice our distress call?”

“Yes,” the woman said, her skin gone ashen. “Chatcaava.”

The captain glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t suppose you could magically dispose of this vessel too, alet?”

Jahir reached for the ship and almost fell against Vasiht’h. How had he become so depleted? But there was no choice. If he didn’t fight…

One mind. Two. Dozens. More than that. They flooded his awareness like a toxic spill, and unlike the pirates they weren’t disturbed by rage: they liked it. They were dragons: rage was fuel, was an invitation to run down a predator and challenge it to a contest of strength. Nor was exhaustion and fear any better bait, for they mistrusted fear and exhaustion drew them like the bleat of wounded prey.

/What do we do??/ Vasiht’h asked, panicked.

/I don’t know,/ Jahir whispered.