A gift is already free.  That’s because it’s a present.

Click me!

I was sitting in my office, thinking my life was pretty good.   The magic was down, I had a hot cup of coffee and Great Big Sea on the old CD player.  The last couple of weeks had been awful. Well, that was a bit of an understatement.  Members of the Pack had broken my first law and joined Kate in the Midnight Games.  Derek got hurt, bad.   Kate almost died, and I have never been that scared, not since my family was murdered.  I had felt that same sense of helplessness as I held her limp form.  Still we won, the kid recovered his health if not his looks, and things had calmed down.

I even managed to put that fucking pervert in his place.  Such a waste, instead of reveling in the power of his true form, he hid like a coward behind beautiful masks and played seduction games.  Saiman was weak but very vain. I had stung his pride.  He would probably retaliate in some way.

I toyed with the idea of telling Jim to get rid of him.  It would be easy.  Saiman had no friends or family.  Who would miss him?  Besides Saiman dealt in knowledge and secrets, and I knew a jaguar who would love to spend some quality time with him and pry some information out of that pretty head.

I drank my coffee from my blue metal mug..  When I was a kid, after my parents died, I’d lived in the woods for a while and once I’d raided a holiday cabin.  They had a set of blue metal plates and mugs, the camping dinnerware.  I’d stolen it and their instant coffee and drank it by myself that night over my meager fire.  That first cup of coffee had tasted like pure heaven.  George, Mahon’s daughter, had found the same set of plates and gave it to me for Christmas.

A familiar scent and a knock on the door told me my head of security had arrived.

Think of the devil…

“Come in.”

Jim strode through the door, carrying a thick leather file.  At least an inch thick.  Great.  This would take forever.

Jim checked the hallway and closed the door behind him.  He was wearing his “we need to talk face,” which was quite different from his normal “I’m a badass don’t mess with me” face that Jim believed to be pleasantly neutral.  He wasn’t just physically imposing; he had the ability to radiate menace.  I think most of the time he was not even aware of it.  He would make a terrible kindergarten teacher, but he was perfect in his position as Alpha of Clan Cat and my second in command.  The rest of the clans did not necessarily like him but they respected his power and position.

“We need to talk,” he announced without preamble.

And there went my pleasant mood.  I braced myself.  “How bad is it?”  It sure as hell wouldn’t be good.

He put an old Polaroid down in front of me.  In it a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen,  with swollen eye and a split lip, stared back at me defiantly.  I would know those eyes anywhere.

“Kate,” I said.  It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”  Jim sat down into the chair.  ”The best we can figure this was taken in Guatemala, over a decade ago.  She won a bare-knuckle boxing tournament.  The rest were boys, some as old as 16.”

“Is that a big thing down there now?”

“Yeah, I guess it beats watching roosters tear each other apart.”

And humans called us animals.  “Why are you showing me this?”

He held up a finger.  Apparently there was more.  Jim opened the file in his hand, took another picture and put it down.  Kate older now, a gladius in her right hand and a bandage on her left shoulder.

“Rio,” he announced, “two years later.  She fought in and won a citywide sword tourney, sponsored by one of the big gangs.  A way of scouting new talent I suppose.  Matches only ended when one of the fighters was crippled or killed.  She disabled most of her opponents, but the last guy, twice her size and age, she sliced his throat open in thirty seconds.  They called her ‘pequena assassina’ and still remember her.”

The little killer.  Kate would love that.  So her childhood had been horrific.  A lot of people had less than perfect childhoods.  Why did he feel it was so important?  There had to be more.

“I thought she was raised by Greg.”  Greg was a knight of the Order, a diviner, and an ally.  He died a couple of years ago.  That’s when I met Kate.  She came looking for his murderer.

Jim shook his head.  “No, this was before that.  But it segues nicely into the next bit.”

He pointed at the first and then the second picture, “Look closely, notice anything?”

It took me a few moments but I found him, the same man in the crowd, staring at Kate with what might be described as fierce pride or approval on his cruel looking face.  He was big, dwarfing the men around him.  Tall, powerful, well muscled, despite being in his late forties or early fifties.  His graying hair hung limply down to his broad shoulders.  His features once perhaps handsome had turned coarse, thickened by scar tissue and time.  He looked like an old boxer who spent too many days exposed to sun and wind.  Still he bore no resemblance to the young Kate in the photos.

Jim put another photo down.  In this picture Kate and the man sat in a bar, a bottle of something between them, too out of focus to read the label.  Kate looked about fourteen.

“They traveled together,” Jim said. “They never stayed anywhere for very long.  Every once in a while they would show up, enter some sort of martial contest or take a hard job, win, kill, and leave.  This was Cuba.  They were spotted once more in Miami, then not seen again.  At least not together.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“I have a pretty good idea.” He pulled out a thin manila folder labeled “Voron” out of the leather file and opened it on the desk in front of me.

Inside was a picture of the same man, younger looking, maybe by a decade or more, in some sort of combat fatigues.  He held a black axe in one hand and a man’s severed head by the hair in another.  His face was demonic, twisted by elation, reveling in violence, like an ancient battle mask.  He seemed to be roaring toward the sky.  He resembled nothing more than bloody god of war.  Invincible and terrible to behold.

“Why is he dressed like a soldier but holding an axe?’

“Technically it is a tactical tomahawk.  It was known to be his weapon of choice once he ran out of bullets.  Our information leads us to believe that this picture was taken over fifty years ago.  Magic was coming back but it was still weak and guns were more reliable.”

“A pleasant chap,” I remarked.

“You have no idea. By all accounts he was a gifted commander but prone to berserker rages.  In hand to hand combat he would be overcome by bloodlust and tear into his enemies like an animal.”

“I think I already know, but why not tell me who held this beast’s chain?”

“His master was Roland, Builder of towers and Lord of the People.”

Fucking shit. Metal groaned in my hand.  I put the crushed clump of blue down on my desk and shook the coffee off my hand.  Jim said nothing, just waited.

“Now you are going to tell me why Kate was raised by this man and why I should give a damn.” Why could nothing with Kate be simple?  Why couldn’t Jim ever just come by to tell me that he had bowled a perfect game or benched a personal best.  Maybe finally asked that weird tiger girl out.

“I like Kate,” Jim said. “I’ve known her for years and we’ve even saved each other’s asses, more than a few times.  I didn’t care much then where she grew up or who she was related to, only that she was good with a blade and did what she said she would.  She talked a lot of shit, but she could mostly back it up.”

Jim leaned back.   ”At present everything is different.  Personally I admire her. You could do a lot worse, but it’s my job to tell you what you don’t want to hear.  Now, I’m going to tell you a story and you are going to listen to me because I’m in charge of Pack’s security and I’m your friend.”

Fuck you and fuck your story. “Proceed.”

“This here is what you call an urban legend or modern day fairy tale.  It involves a very bad man, king of the vamps and all manner of horrible undead shitheads.  People like Ghastek and even this Voron, they flocked to him.  He can keep them alive, young.  He is old, real old, like he’s in the Bible old.  He built a great tower and even, according to some, made the first vampire.  For most he is a legend, like Merlin or Heracles.  Real smart people, college educated types, will tell you that he is a parable or an analogy.  Same types will tell you that Cain and Able is about hunting gathering cultures being replaced by agriculture and the rise of cities.  That Roland represents rulers and their laws imposing order on chaos and anarchy.  That he is every fabled builder or city founder.  That’s all good and well I suppose, but the truth is he exists.  We both know that.  The rest is not as easy.  There are a lot of stories about him, some true, some not.  What we do know is that every one of his children has rebelled against him.  Some rejected him, some the less fortunate sought to usurp him.  Gilgamesh, for example, left and founded Uruk.  Abraham took him on and lost.  Everything…”

I interrupted him, “Jim, where did you get this shit?”

“I did some checking.  I got my sources.”

“You asked Dali, didn’t you?”

He broke into a rare grin, “Yep, she is damn smart, took her awhile but she dug most of this up.”

“Does she know you like her?”

“We aren’t talking about me.  We are talking about you and your… hunny bunny.”

“In that case, professor, I’m terribly sorry for interrupting your fascinating lecture on bullshit, please proceed.”

He shrugged.  “Thank you, I will.  Now before you interrupted me, I was explaining that Roland had bad luck with his children.  Very tragic.  Now fast forward to about thirty years ago.  The main man has a new consort.  She is beautiful and everyone loves her.  Especially Roland.  He is smitten, and soon his lady is in a family way.  At first Roland is overjoyed.  It has been centuries since he spawned any little monsters and he is feeling sentimental.  Everybody is happy.  Then out of nowhere he changes his mind and tries to kill his blushing bride and the child she is carrying.  She flees with his Warlord.  It’s like King Arthur, but Lancelot is a butcher and Guinevere is knocked up.”

This story was just getting better and better.

Jim kept going.  “The two of them take off to parts unknown.  Like any man would be Roland is put out and looks for them.  He isn’t any man though, and nowhere in the world is safe for them.  He finds them and confronts her, while Voron fled with the child.  Roland kills his wife but not before she takes out his eye.  Grievously wounded and heartbroken, he leaves.  Alone.  Now Voron being a hopeless romantic, raises this child to be as deadly a killer as he can make her.  They travel, they train and he hones her into a living weapon.  One he will wield against his former master.  He tells her how her father tried to murder her and killed her mother.  At some point, he got careless and had to leave the girl with another man.  The killers were close when he disappeared.  His whereabouts are currently unknown.”

“That is a great story Jim, but what does it have to do with me?”  I was daring him to say it.

“You know damn well what it has to do with you. There are more pictures, more testimony from witnesses, more legends.  It’s all in there.”  He pushed the file across the desk toward me.  I kept my eyes locked on his, until he looked down.

“I’m sorry, he said. “I didn’t want to tell you all of this and if you love her, I will stand by you.  Both of you.  But you have to know.  He’s going to come for her.  He always does.”

“Then we will fight him.”  No man would ever take from me what was mine.

“Yes, we will but we might not win.”

“Who else knows?”

“Me, you, Doolittle suspects, Mahon knows and likes it not at all.  He sees her as a threat to the Pack.  He is not wrong.  He always hoped you would end up with one of the girls, George maybe.”  He smiled, “Keep it all in the family, I guess.  Kills him a little that you chose Kate.”

“He will get over it.”  George was my sister.  Kate… I didn’t want anyone else.  Just Kate.

Jim nodded. “Look, you, Kate, I get it.  I just wish it could have been somebody else. If Roland comes… We aren’t ready for him yet.  Even if we win, most of us will not make it.  I hope she is worth it.”

“Roland is coming anyway,” I said.  “Whether Kate is part of the equation or not.  She made a third of a demon army kneel.  She has power and she will be an asset.” And I loved her.

“What if she runs when her daddy shows up?”

I stared at him.  “Kate? We’re talking about the same woman, right?  When other people are running away, she runs into the fight.”

“Roland is very strong,” Jim said.  “Look, I don’t know that much about how their magic works, but from what Dali said, Kate took that sword to the gut because it was made out of her father’s blood. She couldn’t control it by just grabbing it.  She had to dissolve it into her body.  That tells you something.

It told me Kate had a long way to go before she could face her father.  She would need help and I would be that help.

“I am going to see her in a week,” I said.  “She’s making me dinner.”

Jim sighed.  “So you decided.”

“I decided.”

“Okay.”  He chewed on that for a while.  “Well, it will make my life easier.  I guess my people can stop chasing after you when you go to visit her apartment.”

I simply looked at him.

Jim rose and walked to the door.  “One thing.  If I were Voron, I’d program her to hide who she is.  The man wasn’t a moron.  He would’ve drilled it into her to hide.  Does she trust you enough to tell you who she is?  Because if there is no trust, you know this won’t work.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said.

Wow, we were overwhelmed by the amount of entries for the contest, there were nearly 1200 comments.  Due to the sheer awesomeness of our readers, we had to rethink the plan of giving away 25 e copies and change it to 2 per page, for a total of 44 copies with an additional 6 bonus winners.  Given the fact that some who commented did not want to be entered, contestants actually had a better than 1 in 25 chance of getting a freebie.

So, if you did not win, have no fear, Silver Shark is available for purchase as an ebook at the following retailers:

Amazon

BN

iBooks (It’s not up right this second, due to it still being under review)

For internation readers: we are working on having Silver Shark being available at AR

Without further ado here are the winners by page and comment number.  Ilona should have already sent you the novella in your preferred format.  If you see your name and comment here but did not receive one, please contact us.

[clear]

Winners by Page &  Comment #

1) Jade-37 &  Kerri-49                                                                                     13) Wendy-43 & Tine-11

2) Maggie-19 & Mel Thomas-39                                                                     14) Lea-18 & Sam-4

3) Cardnoc-32 &  Zora-23                                                                                15) DLyte-5 & Pia Newman-48

4) Carol Jay-16 & Sue-6                                                                                   16) Onion-37 & Pfeffermintzee-12

5) Sarah N-47 & Angie-3                                                                                  17) Diane-25 & Ms Book Junkie-17

6) Barbie Doll-14 & Jage-38                                                                             18) Laura-20 & Steve-22

7) Colette-12 & Word Spinner-31                                                                    19) Nicole-7 & Amie-28

Kayley-22& Brenda Hyde-7                                                                        20) Shannon-7 & Gigi-40

9) Rebecka-6 & shewhomustnotbenamed-18                                               21) Nell L-25 & Bill G-12

10) Laura L-47 & Erin Richards-39                                                                22) Stephanie J-18 & Lindsey-3

11) Rista-6 & Cin-44                                                                                              

12) Amanda-9 & Rebe Loves Books-31

To celebrate its completion, we would like to give away 25 copies of Silver Shark.  Entering is easy, just comment and please specify if which format you would prefer:  prc (Kindle), pdf or epub.

Twenty five (or maybe more) winners will chosen by Random Number Generator on Friday and sent the file in their preferred format.  Contest is open to all.

All we ask is that you do not post it.  Please do not share it, it will go live this week at major e retailers.

If you like the story,  we would appreciate a  review  on your blog, Goodreads or even Amazon.

Contest is now closed two winners from every page will be chosen at random, thank you.

Angels have always fascinated us, in the Bible they are mentioned 108 times in the Old and 165 in the New Testaments; sometimes messengers, sometimes the instrument of His vengeance or wrath.  Seems to me that meeting with one would usually not be a good thing.  When I was a kid I thought that when you died you got wings and became an angel, probably as a result of watching too many cartoons.  Then later there was a TV series that portrayed them as benevolent, creatures, whose sole purpose was to fix all of our problems.  In point of fact I do think any of us would really like to be touched by an angel.

My view of them though may be biased, the  1995 film The Prophecy portrays them in a scary way that I feel is accurate.  If for some reason you have not seen it, you should.  Christopher Walken is great as Gabriel, but really Viggo Mortensen steals the show as Lucifer.  His performance is amazing.  Also, the excellent Lucifer comic is another great take on the devil.  But I know everyone may not share my view of angels as winged deviants and beautiful killers.

So how do you see them?  Is there a film, book or show that best reflects your view of Angels?  Tell us in the comments to be entered to win one of two signed Angels of Darkness ARCs.

Contest is open to North American (US & Canadian) Readers Only.

Contest will end on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011.  Winners will be chosen the following Thursday.  Contest closed, winners will be announced soon.  Thank you.

Warning: mild spoilers for Magic Slays.

It was Friday, eight o’clock on a warm spring night, and I was going out with the Beast Lord.   Considering that we’ve been mated for the last few months, this shouldn’t have been a monumental occasion, but it was and I was ridiculously excited about it.  Curran hated Atlanta with all the fire of a supernova.  I didn’t have anything against Atlanta in theory – it was half-eroded by the magic waves that washed over it at random and it burned a lot – but I had a thing about crowds.  Getting both of us out of the Keep and into the city for a dinner out was pretty much impossible.

This particular Friday hadn’t gone well for me.  I owned Cutting Edge Investigations, a private solve-your-magic-issues firm, which I ran with [toggle_content title="spoiler, don't click if you don't want to know"]my best friend, Andrea[/toggle_content].  Our latest job had come courtesy of the Green Acres Home Owners’ Association, who showed up at our door this morning claiming that a giant levitating jellyfish was roaming their suburb and could we please come and get it, because it was eating local cats.  Apparently the translucent jellyfish was floating about with half-digested cat bodies inside it and the neighborhood children were very upset.  The cops refused to make the jellyfish a priority, since it hadn’t eaten any humans yet, and the Mercenary Guild wouldn’t get rid of it for less than a grand.  The HOA offered us $200.  Nobody in their right mind would do the job at that price.

It took us all damned day.  And then we had to properly dispose of the cursed thing, because dealing with the corpses of magical creatures was like playing Russian roulette.   Sometimes nothing happened and sometimes the corpse did fun things like meting into a puddle of sentient carnivorous protoplasm or hatching foot long blood sucking leeches. By the time we packed seventy pounds of the gelatinous body into the magic hazard container and called Biohazard to pick it up, I was ready to fall off my feet.

The Biohazard finally retrieved the container at a quarter to seven and after I came out of the office shower, having successfully scrubbed all of the jellyfish goo out of my hair, Curran was leaning against my desk.  Apparently he got tired of waiting for me to come home and now we were going out to eat.

Funny thing about Curran: even at rest, like he was now, relaxed and driving, he emanated violence.  He was built to kill, his body a blend of hard, powerful muscle and supple quickness and something in the way he carried himself telegraphed a shocking potential for violence and willingness, no, entitlement, to unleash it at the slightest provocation.  He seemed to occupy a much larger space than his body permitted and he was impossible to ignore.

He caught me looking and flexed.  Carved muscles bulged on his arms.  Curran winked.  “Hey baby.”

I cracked up. “So where we’re going?”

“Arirang,” Curran said.  “It’s a nice Korean place, Kate.  They have charcoal grills at the tables.  They bring you meat and you cook it any way you want.”

Figured.  Left to his own devices, Curran consumed only meat, spiced with an occasional desert. “That’s nice for me, but what will your vegetarian Majesty eat?”

Curran gave me a flat look.  “I can always drive to a fast food joint instead.”

“Oh, so you’d throw a burger down my throat and expect making out in the back seat?”

He grinned.  “We can do it in the front seat instead, if you prefer.  Or on the hood of the car.”

“I am not doing it on the hood of the car.”

“Is that a dare?”

Why me?

“Kate?”

“Keep your mind on the road, your Furriness.”

The city rolled by, twisted by magic, battered and bruised but still standing.  The night swallowed the ruins, hiding the sad husks of once mighty, tall buildings.  New houses flanked the street, constructed by hand with wood, stone and brick to withstand magic’s jaws.

I rolled down the window and let the night in.  It floated into the car, spring and a hint of wood smoke from a distant fire.  Somewhere a lone dog barked out of boredom, each woof punctuated by a long pause, probably to see if the owners would let him in.

Ten minutes later we pulled into a long empty parking lot, flanked by old office buildings that now housed Asian shops.  A typical stone building with huge store-front windows sat at the very end, marked by a sign that read Arirang.

“This is the place?”

“Mhm,” Curran said.

“I thought you said it was a Korean restaurant.” For some reason I had expected a hanok house with a curved tiled roof and a wide front porch.

“It is.”

“It looks like Western Sizzlin.”

“Will you just trust me?  It’s a nice place…” Curran braked, and the Pack Jeep screeched to a stop.

Two skeletally thin vampires sat at the front of the restaurant, tethered to the horse rail with chains looped over their heads.  Pale, hairless, dried like leathery jerky, the undead stared at us with mad glowing eyes.  Death had robbed them of their cognizance and will, leaving behind mindless body shells driven only by bloodlust.  On their own, the bloodsuckers would slaughter anything alive and keep killing until nothing breathing remained.  Their empty minds made a perfect vehicle for necromancers, who telepathically navigated them like remote controlled cars.

Curran glared at the vampires through the windshield.  Ninety percent of the vampires belonged to the People, a weird hybrid of a corporation and a research institute.  We both despised the People and everything they stood for.

I couldn’t resist.  “I thought you said this was a nice place.”

He leaned back, gripped the steering wheel and let out a long growling, “Argh.”

I chuckled.

“Who the hell stops at a restaurant while navigating?”

I shrugged.  “Maybe they were hungry.”

He gave me an odd look. “This far away from the Casino means they’re out on patrol.  What, did they suddenly get the munchies?”

“Curran, ignore the damn bloodsuckers.  Let’s go and have a date anyway.”

He looked like he wanted to kill somebody.

The world blinked.  Magic flooded us like an invisible tsunami.  The neon sign above the restaurant withered and a larger brilliant blue sign ignited above it, made from hand-blown glass and filled with charged air.

I reached over and squeezed Curran’s hand.  “Come on, you, me, a platter of barely seared meat, it will be great.  If we see the navigators, we can make fun of the way they hold their forks.”

We got out of the car and headed inside.  The bloodsuckers glanced at us in unison, their eyes like two smoldering coals buried beneath the ash of a dying fire.  I felt their minds, twin hot pinpoints of pain, clenched securely by the navigators’ wills.  One slip up  and those coals would ignite into an all consuming flame.  Vampires never knew satiation.  They never got full, they never stopped killing, and if let loose, they would drown the world in blood and die of starvation when there was nothing left to kill.

The chains wouldn’t hold them -  the links were an eighth of an inch thick at best.  A chain like that would restrain a large dog.  A vamp would snap it and not even notice, but the general public felt better if the bloodsuckers were chained, and so the navigators obliged.

We passed the vampires and entered the restaurant.

The inside of Arirang was dim.  Feylanterns glowed with soft light on the walls, as the charged air inside their colored glass tubes reacted with magic. Each feylantern had been hand-blown into a beautiful shape: a bright blue dragon, an emerald tortoise, a purple fish, a turquoise stocky dog with a unicorn horn…  Booths lined the walls, their tables plain rectangles of wood.  In the center of the floor four larger round tables sported built-in charcoal grills under metal hoods.

The restaurant was about half full.  There were two couples in booths on the right: the first was occupied by two middle aged men and the second was a dark-haired man and a blond woman in their twenties.  The younger couple chatted quietly.  Good clothes, relaxed, casual, well groomed.   Ten to one these were the navigators who had parked the bloodsuckers out front.  The Casino had seven Masters of the Dead and I knew them by sight.  I didn’t recognize either the man or the woman.  Either visiting or upper level journeymen.

Both of the older guys in the next booth were armed.  The closer one carried a short sword, which he put on the seat next to him.  As his friend reached for the salt shaker, his sweatshirt hugged a gun in the side holster.

Past them in the far right corner, four women in their thirties laughed too loud – probably tipsy.  On the other side a family with two teenage daughters cooked their food on the grill.  The older girl looked a bit like Julie.  Two business women, another family with a toddler, and an older couple rounded off the patrons.  No threats.

The air swirled with delicious aroma of meat cooked over open fire, sautéed garlic, sweet spice.  My mouth watered.  I hadn’t eaten since grabbing some bread this morning from a street vendor.  My stomach actually hurt.

A waiter in a plain black pants and a black T-shirt led us to a table in the middle of the floor.  Curran and I took  chairs opposite one another- I could see the back door and he had a nice view of the front entrance.  We ordered hot tea.  Thirty seconds later it arrived with a plate of pot stickers.

“Hungry?” Curran asked.

“Starving.”

“Combination platter for four,” Curran ordered.

His hungry and my hungry were two different things.

The waiter departed. Curran smiled.  It was a happy genuine smile and it catapulted him from attractive into irresistible territory.  He didn’t smile very often in public.  That intimate smile was usually reserved for private moments when we were alone.

I reached over, pulled the band off my braid, and slid my fingers through it, unraveling the hair.  Curran’s gaze snagged on my hands.  He focused on my fingers like a cat on a piece of foil pulled by a string.  I shook my head and my hair fell over my shoulders in a long dark wave.  There we go.  Now we were both private in public.

Tiny gold sparks danced in Curran’s grey irises.  He was thinking dirty thoughts and the wicked edge in his smile made me want to slide next to him and touch him.

We had to wait.  I was pretty sure that having hot sex on the floor of Arirang would get us banned for life.  Then again, it might be worth it..

I raised my tea in a salute.  “To our date.”

He raised his cup and we clinked them gently against each other.

“So how was your day?” he asked.

“First, I chased a giant jellyfish around through some suburbs.  Then I argued with Biohazard about coming and picking it up, because they claimed it was a Fish and Game issue.  Then I called Fish and Game and conferenced them into the Biohazard, and then I got to listen to the two of them argue and call each other names.  They got really creative. Also the Mercenary Guild is having some sort of arbitration to decide who’s in charge and apparently I’m supposed to break that tie. Because I am a veteran and the Consort, and the Pack apparently owns some percentage of the Mercenary Guild.”

“Not looking forward to it?”

“I’d rather eat dirt.  It’s between Mark and the Four Horsemen and they despise each other.  They aren’t interested in reaching a consensus.  They just want to throw mud at each other over a conference table.”

An evil light sparked in his eyes.  “You could always go for Plan B.”

“Pound everyone to a bloody pulp until they shut up and cooperate?”

“Exactly.”

It would make me feel better.  “I could always do it your way instead.”

Curran raised his blond eyebrows.

“Roar until everyone pees themselves.”

A shadow of self-satisfaction flickered on his face and vanished, replaced by innocence. “That’s bullshit.  I’m perfectly reasonable and I almost never roar.  I don’t even remember what it feels like to knock some heads together.”

The Beast Lord of Atlanta, a gentle and enlightened monarch.  “How progressive of you, Your Majesty.”

He cracked another grin.

The male necromancer in the booth next to us reached under the table and produced a rectangular rosewood box.  Ten to one, there was some sort of jewelry inside.

“Your turn.  How did your day go?”

“It was busy and full of stupid shit I didn’t want to deal with.” Curran drank his tea.

The blond woman opened the box.  Her eyes lit up.

“The rats are having some sort of internal dispute over some apartments they bought.  Took all day to untangle it. ”

The woman plucked a golden necklace from the box.  Shaped  like an inch and a half segmented collar of gold, it gleamed in the feylanthern light.

I poured us more tea.  “But you prevailed.”

“Of course.”  He drank his tea.  “You know, we could stay over in the city tonight.”

“Why?”

“Because that way we wouldn’t have to drive for an hour back to the Keep before we could fool around.”

Heh.

A scream jerked me off my feet. In the booth, the blond necromancer clawed at the necklace, gasping for breath.  The man stared at her, his face a terrified mask. The woman raked her neck, gouging flesh.  With a dried pop, her neck snapped, and she crashed to the floor.  The man dove down, pulling at the necklace.  “Amanda! Oh my god!”

Past him two pairs of red vampire eyes stared at us through the window.

Oh crap.  I pulled Slayer from the sheath on my back.  Sensing undead, the pale blade of the enchanted saber perspired, sending wisps of white vapor into the air.

The dull carmine glow of vampire irises flared into vivid scarlet.   Shit.  The restaurant just updated its menu with fresh human.

Flesh boiled on Curran’s arms.  Bone grew, muscle twisted like slick ropes, skin clenched the new flesh and sprouted fur, and enormous claws slid from Curran’s newly thickened fingers.        The vampires rose off their haunches.

Curran stood next to me.  “I’ll take the right.”

“I’ll take the left then.”

I gripped the hilt, feeling the familiar comforting texture.  Bloodsuckers reacted to sudden movement, bright lights, loud noises, anything that telegraphed prey.  Whatever I did had to be fast and flashy.  The blood alone wouldn’t do it, not when every table was filled with raw meat.

The window exploded in a cascade of gleaming shards.  The vampires sailed through, like they had wings.  The left bloodsucker landed on the table, the remnant of the chain hanging from its neck. The right skidded on the slick parquet floor and bumped into another table, scattering the chairs.

I dashed to the left, pulling Slayer as I sprinted. Curran snarled and leaped, covering half the distance to the right bloodsucker in a single powerful jump.

The vamp glared at me.  I looked into its eyes.

Hunger.

Like staring into an ancient abyss.  Behind the eyes, its mind burned, free of the chain.  I wanted to reach out and crush it, like a bug between my fingernails.  But doing that would give me away.  I might as well give the People a sample of my blood with a pretty bow on it.

I flicked my wrist, making the reflection of feylanterns dance along Slayer’s surface.  Look.  Shiny.

The bloodsucker’s gaze locked on the blade.  The vamp ducked down, like a dog before the strike, front limbs wide, yellow claws digging into the table.  The wood groaned.  The chain slipped along the table’s edge, clinking.

No way for a neck cut.  The chain loop would block the blade.

A high pitched, female scream slashed my eardrums.  The vamp hissed, jerking in the direction of the sound.

I jumped on the chair next to the table and thrust sideways and up.  Slayer’s blade slid between the vamp ribs.  The tip met a tight resistance and sliced through it.  Hit the heart.  Banzai.

The bloodsucker screeched.  I let go of the saber.  The vamp reared, the Slayer up to the hilt in its rib cage. The undead staggered, pitched over, and crashed to the floor, flopping like a fish on dry land.

To the left, Curran thrust his claws through the flesh under his vamp’s chin.  The bloody tips of the claws emerged from the back of the bloodsucker’s neck.  The vamp clawed at him.  Curran thrust his monstrous hand deeper, clenched the vamp’s neck and tore its head off the body.

Showoff.

He tossed the head aside and glanced at me, checking.  The whole thing took about five seconds.  Felt like an eternity.  We were both in one piece.  I exhaled.

The restaurant fell silent, except for the hoarse hissing from the convulsing vampire as my saber liquefied its innards, absorbing the nutrients into the blade and the male necromancer sobbing on the floor.

In the far corner a man swiped his toddler from his high chair, grabbed his wife’s hand, and ran out.  As one the patrons jumped.  Chairs fell, feet pounded, someone gasped.  They rushed out of both doors.  In a blink the place was empty, save for us and the two necromancers.

I gripped Slayer and pulled.  It slid from the body with ease.  The edges of the wound sagged and dark brown blood spilled from the cut.  I swung and beheaded the vamp with a single sharp stroke.

Curran’s arms shrank, streamlining, grey fur melting into his skin.  He walked over to the male necromancer, pulled him upright, and shook him once, an expression of deep contempt on his face.  I could almost hear the guy’s teeth rattle in his skull.

“Look at me.  Look at me.”

The necromancer stared at him, shocked eyes wide, his mouth slack.

I knelt by the female navigator and touched her neck.  No pulse.  The necklace clamped her neck like a golden noose.  The skin around it was bright red and quickly turning purple.

I picked up her purse, pulled out a wallet and snapped it open.  People ID.  Amanda Sunny, journeyman, Second Tier. Twenty years old and now dead.

Curran peered into the journeyman’s face. “What happened?  What did you do?”

The man sucked in a deep breath and dissolved into tears.

Curran dropped him in disgust. His eyes were pure gold.  He was pissed off out of his mind.

I went to the hostess desk and found the phone.  Please work… Dial tone. Yes!

I punched in the office number.  Chances were, [toggle_content title="spoiler"]Andrea’s[/toggle_content] was still there.

“Cutting Edge,”[toggle_content title="spoiler"]Andrea’s[/toggle_content] voice said.

“I’m in Arirang.  Two navigators were having dinner.  The man gave them woman an gold necklace and it strangled her to death.  I have two dead vampires and one human corpse.”

“Sit tight.  I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

I hung up and dialed the Casino.

“Kate Daniels, for Ghastek. Urgent.”

“Please wait,” female voice said.  The phone clicked and went silent.  I hummed to myself and looked at the ID.  I didn’t know which of the Masters of the Dead Amanda answered to, but I knew Ghastek was the best of the seven.  He was also power-hungry and he was making his bid for taking over Atlanta’s office of the People.  He was very much in the limelight at the moment and I could count on a rapid response.

A moment passed.  Another.

“What is it, Kate?” Ghastek’s voice said into the phone.  He must’ve been doing something, because he failed to keep exasperation from his voice.  “Please keep this quick, I’m in the middle of something.”

“I have one dead journeywoman, one hysterical journeyman, two dead vampires, one pissed off Beast Lord with bloody hands, and a half a dozen terrified restaurant staff.”  Quick enough for you?

Ghastek’s voice snapped into brisk tone.  “Where are you?”

“Arirang on Greenpine.  Bring a decontamination unit and body bags.”

I hung up. Our waiter edged out of the doors and approached our table, looking green.  The rest of the staff were probably huddled together in the back room, terrified, not knowing if it was over.

“Is it over?”

Curran turned to him.  “Yes, it’s over.  The People are on their way to clean up the mess.  You can bring your people out, if it will make them feel better. We guarantee your safety.”

The waiter took off.  Someone shouted.  A moment later the doors opened and people ran out: an older Korean man, the older woman who had greeted us, a woman who looked like she could be their daughter and several men and women in waiter garb.  The younger woman carried a boy.  He couldn’t be more than five.

The owners piled up into the booths around us.  The boy stared at the two vampires with dark eyes, big like two cherries.

I dropped into the chair next to Curran.  He reached over and pulled me close.  “I’m sorry about the dinner.”

“That’s okay.”  I stared at the dead woman.  Twenty years old.  She barely had a chance to live.  I’d seen a lot of death, but for some reason the site of Amanda laying there on the floor, her boyfriend weeping uncontrollably by her body, chilled me to the bone.  I leaned against Curran, feeling the heat of his body seep through my T-shirt.  I was so cold and I really needed his warmth.

GRACE OF SMALL MAGICS

Dedicated to Beatrix Kaser

“Never look them in the eye.”  Uncle Gerald murmured.

Grace nodded.  He’d calmed down some when they had boarded the plane, enough to offer her a reassuring smile, but now as they landed, he turned pale.  Sweat gathered at his hairline.  Gripping his cane, he scanned the human currents of the airport as they entered the terminal building.  His fingers shook on the pewter wolf’s head handle.  She’d seen him take out a couple of men half his age with that cane, but she doubted it would do them any good now.

He cleared his throat, licking his dry lips.  “Never contradict.  Never ask questions.  Don’t speak until you’re spoken to and then say as little as you can.  If you’re in trouble, bow.  They consider it below them to strike a bowing servant.”

Grace nodded again.  This was the sixth time he recited the instructions to her.  She realized it calmed him down, like a prayer, but his trembling voice ratcheted her own anxiety until it threatened to burst into an overwhelming panic.   The airport, the booming announcements spilling from the speaker, the crush of the crowd, all of it blended into a smudged mess of colors and noises.   Her mouth tasted bitter.  Deep inside her a small voice protested, “This is just crazy.  This can’t be real.”

“It will be fine,” Gerald muttered hoarsely.  “It will be fine.”

They passed the gates into a long hallway.  The bag slipped off her shoulder, and Grace pulled it back on.  The simple action crested her panic.  She stopped.  Her heart hammered, a steady heavy pressure pushing on her chest from inside out. A soft dullness clogged her ears.  She heard herself breathing.

Twelve hours ago she woke up four states away, ate her usual breakfast of an egg and a toasted English muffin, and got ready to go to work, just like she had done every day.  Then the doorbell rang and Uncle Gerald was on her doorstep with a wild story.

Grace always knew her family was special.  They had power.  Small magic – insignificant even – but it was more than ordinary people had, and Grace had realized early on she had to hide it.  She knew there were other magic users in the world, because her mother had told her so, but she had never met any of them.  She’d thought they were like her, armed with minor powers and rare.

According to Gerald, she was wrong. There were many other magic users in the world.  Families, whole clans of them.  They were dangerous, deadly, and capable of terrible things.  And one of these clans had their family in bonded service.   They could call upon them at any time, and they had done so for years, demanding her mother’s assistance whenever they needed it.  Three days ago they requested Grace.  Her mother had told her nothing; she simply went in her place.  But Clan Dreoch called Gerald.  They wanted Grace and only Grace.  And so she flew to Midwest, still dizzy from having her world turned upside down and listening to Gerald’s shaky voice as he told stories of terrible magic.

Her instincts screamed to run away, back into the airport filled with people who had no concept of magic.  It was just an animal reaction, Grace told herself.  The Dreochs had her mother and if she did run, her mother would have to take her place.  Grace was twenty six years old.  She knew her responsibilities.  She had no doubt her mother wouldn’t survive whatever they demanded, otherwise they wouldn’t have required her presence.  Grace knew what she had to do, but her nerves had been rubbed raw, and she simply stood, unable to move, her muscles locked into a rigid knot.  She willed her body to obey, but it refused.

The crowd of people parted.  A man stood at the end of the hallway.  He seemed too large somehow, too tall, too broad, and emanating power.  He loomed, a spot of otherworldly magic among people who stubbornly ignored his existence.  She saw him with preternatural clarity, from ash blond hair falling to his shoulders to the pale green eyes, brimming with mournful melancholy like the eyes of a Russian icon.  His was the face of a brute: powerful, stubborn, aggressive, almost savage in its severity.

He looked straight at her and in the depths of those green irises she saw an unspoken confirmation: he knew.  He knew who she was, why she was here, and more, if she were to turn around and dash away, he wouldn’t chase her.  The choice was hers and he was content to let her decide.

The flow of people blocked him and she reeled, released from the spell of his eyes.

Uncle Gerald thrust into her view.  “What is it?  You have to come now, we can’t keep them waiting, we—”

She looked at him, suddenly calm.  Whatever would be would be.  Her family owed a debt.  Her mother had been paying it for years, carrying the burden alone.  It was her turn.  “Uncle,” she said, holding on to her new-found peace.

“Yes?”

“You have to be quiet now.  They’re here.”

He stared at her, stunned.  Grace shouldered her bag and walked on.

They reached the end of the hallway.  The man was gone, but Grace didn’t worry about it.  She headed to the twin slope of escalators.  Behind her Gerald mumbled something to himself.  They took the escalator down to the baggage claim.

“Grace!”  The shot laced her ears.  She wheeled about and saw her mother on the escalator rising in the opposite direction.  Her mother stared at her, a horrified expression stamped on her face.

“Mom!”

“Grace!  What are you doing here?”

Mother turned around and clutched the escalator handrail, trying to head down, but two people in grey blocked her.  She pushed against them.  “Let me through!  Gerald, you old fool, what have you done?  I’ve lived my life, she hasn’t!  She can’t do this.  Damn it, let me through!”

The escalators dragged them in opposite directions.  Grace spun around to run up the moving steps and saw the man with green eyes blocking her way.  He towered behind her uncle, immovable like a mountain.  Green eyes greeted her again.  Power coursed through them and vanished, a sword shown and thrust back into its scabbard.  Uncle Gerald turned, saw him, and went white as a sheet.

They reached the bottom.  Three people in grey waited for them, one woman and two men.  Grace stepped onto the floor, lightheaded as if in a dream.

“I’ve done…  I’ve done the best I could…” Gerald muttered.  “The best.  I—”

“You’ve done wonderfully,” the woman said.  “Nikita will escort you back to your plane.”

One of the men stepped up and held out his hand, indicating the escalator heading up.  “Please.”

The green-eyed man stepped past them.  His gaze paused on her face.  An unspoken command to follow.  Grace clenched her teeth.  They both knew she would obey, and they both realized she hated it.

He strode unhurriedly toward the glass doors.  Grace matched her stride to his.  She supposed she should have bowed and kept her mouth shut until she was spoken to, but she felt too hollow to care.  “You robbed me of what might be my last moment with my mother,” Grace said softly.

“It couldn’t be helped,” he answered, his voice quiet and deep.

They stepped into sunshine in unison.  A black vehicle waited for them, sleek and stylish.  The trunk clicked open.  Grace deposited her backpack into it.  The man held the rear door open for her.  Grace took her seat on the leather.

The man slid next to her, filling the vehicle with his presence.  She felt the warmth of his body and the almost imperceptible brush of his magic.  That light touch betrayed him.  She glimpsed power slumbering inside him, like an enormous bear ready to be roused and enraged in an instant.  It sent shivers down her back, and it took all of her will to not wrench the car door open and run for her life.   “You’re him.”

He inclined his head.  “Yes.”

The car pulled away from the curb, carrying them off.  Grace looked out of the window.  She had made her choice.  She was a servant of Clan Dreoch and there was no turning back.

#

The scenery rolled by, scrawny shrubs and flat land, its sparseness mirroring her bleak mood.  Grace closed her eyes.  A whisper of magic tugged on her.  It was polite touch, an equivalent to a bow.  She glanced at him.   Careful green eyes studied her.  “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Grace.”

“It’s a lovely name.  You may call me Nassar.”

Or Master, she thought and bit the words before they had a chance to escape.

“How much do you know?” he asked.

“I know that my family owes your family a debt.  One of you can call on one of us at any time and we must obey.  If we break our oath, you’ll murder all of us.”  She wished she had been told about it sooner, not that it would make any difference at the end.

His magic brushed her again and she edged away from it.

“What else?” Nassar asked.

Say as little as possible. “I know what you are.”

“What am I?”

“A revenant.”

“And what would that be?”

She looked him in the eye.  “A man who died and robbed another of his body so he can continue to live.”  The cursed revenant, Gerald had called him.  A body snatcher.  An abomination.   Monstrously powerful, clouded in vile magic, a beast more than a man.

Nassar showed no reaction, but a small ripple in his magic sent her further away from him.  She bumped into the door.

“Any further and you’ll fall out of the car,” he said.

“Your magic…  It’s touching me.”

“If all goes as planned, you and I will have to spend the next few days in close proximity.  I need you to become accustomed to my power.  Our survival will depend on it”

She sensed his magic halt a few inches from her, waiting tentatively.   She was a servant; he could force her.  At least he permitted her an illusion of free will.  Grace swallowed and moved within its reach.  His magic brushed her.  She winced, expecting his power to mug her, but it simply touched her gently, as if her magic and his held hands.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I know how people in your family see me.  Body thief, aberration, murderer.  The Cursed One.  What I’m called doesn’t concern me.  Neither I nor my family will torture, rape, or degrade you in any way.  I simply have a specific task I need completed.  I need you to want to succeed with me.  What would make you want to help me?”

“Freedom,” she said.  “Let my family go, and I’ll do whatever you ask.”

He shook his head.  “I can’t give you permanent freedom.  We need your services too much. But I can offer you a temporary reprieve.   If you and I succeed, you can go home and I promise not to call on you and yours for six months.”

“Ten years.”

“A year.”

“Eight.”

“Five.”  The resolute tone of his voice told her it was his last offer.

“Deal,” she said softly.  “What happens if I fail?”

“We’ll both die.  But, our chances of success will be much better if you stop fearing me.”

That was certainly true.  “I’m not scared of you.”

His lips curved slightly.  “You’re terrified.”

She raised her chin.  “The sooner we get done, the faster I can go home.  What do you need me to do?”

Nassar reached into his jacket and took out a rolled up piece of paper.  “In our world disputes between the clans are resolved through war or by arbitration.”

Grace arched her eyebrow.  “How many clans are there?”

“Twelve.  We’re now in dispute with Clan Roar.  War is bloody, costly and painful for everyone involved and neither of the families can afford it now.   We’ve chosen arbitration.  The issue is pressing and the dispute will be decided through a game.”

He unrolled the picture and held it.  She would have to move closer to him to see it.  Grace sighed and moved another three inches to the right.  Their thighs almost touched.

Nassar showed her the paper.  It was an aerial photograph of a city.

“Milligan City,” Nassar said.  “Squarely in the middle of the rust belt.   A couple of decades ago it was a busy town, a blue-collar haven.  Good life, family values.”

“Defined future,” she said.

He nodded.  “Yes.  Then the conglomerates shifted their operations overseas.   The jobs dried up, the real estate values plummeted, and the residents fled.  Now Milligan’s population is down forty two percent.  It’s a ghost city, with all the requisite ghost city problems: abandoned houses, squatters, fires and so on.”  He tapped the paper.  “This particular neighborhood is completely deserted.  The city council’s getting desperate. They’ve relocated the last of the stragglers to the center of the city and condemned this neighborhood.  In nine days it will be bulldozed down to make way for a park.  The arbitration will take place here.”

“When I think of arbitration, I think of lawyers,” Grace said.  “Both sides present their case and argue to a third party.”

“Unfortunately this case isn’t something that can be settled through litigation,” Nassar answered.  “Think of it in this way: instead of having a large war, we decided to have a very small one.   The rules are simple.  This area of the city was warded off from the rest, hidden in the cocoon of magic and altered.  It’s been officially condemned, so no others are allowed near it.  Those who try are firmly discouraged, but if someone does make it through, to their eyes the area will appear as it always was.”

She chewed on that others.  Normal, non-magical people.  He said it in the way one might refer to foreigners.

“Arbitration by game is a big event.  By last count, representatives of ten clans have shown up for the fun.  Two weeks were allowed to each clan who so wished to dump whatever hazards they could manage into this space.  It’s full of things that go bump in the night.”

“The other clans don’t like you,” she said.

“None of the clans like each other.  We compete for territory and business.  We have wars and bloody battles.  And it will be up to you and me to help us avoid such a war this time.”  He touched the photograph.  “Somewhere in the zone the arbitraries hid a small flag.  Two teams will enter the game zone to retrieve the flag, while the rest of the clansmen will bet on the outcome and enjoy their popcorn.  Whoever touches the flag first will win and be ported out of the zone.  Whether the flag is retrieved or not, in three days’ time the wards will constrict, sweeping anything magic from the area into its center.  The pyromancers will destroy it in a preternaturally hot bonfire, while the locals blissfully sleep.”

“Are we one of the teams?”

“Yes.”

Now she understood.  Mother was almost fifty and overweight.  She wouldn’t be able to move fast enough. They needed someone younger and she fit the bill.  “Will the rival team try to kill us?”

Another light smile touched his lips.  “Most definitely.”

“I don’t have any offensive magic.”

“I’m sure,” he said.  “You’re entirely too polite for that.”

It took her a moment to catch the pun.  “I’m a dud.  I sense magic and I can do small insignificant things, but I can’t foretell the future like my mother and I haven’t been trained as a fighter, like Gerald.  For all practical purposes, I’m the other, a completely ordinary person.  I’ve never fired a gun, I’m not exceptionally athletic, and my strength and reflexes are average.”

“I understand.”

“Then why do you need—”

Magic stabbed her, cold and sharp, wrenching a startled gasp from her.  Her eyes watered from pain.

“Lilian!” Nassar barked.

“Go!” The chauffer mashed a square button on her dashboard.

The roof of the vehicle slid aside.  A dark sheath coated Nassar.

The pain pierced Grace’s ribs, slicing its way inside.

Nassar jerked her to him.  She collided with the hard wall of his chest, unable to breathe.

The dark sheath flared from him, filling the vehicle in long protrusions, shaping into a multitude of pale feathers.

“Hold on!” Nassar snarled.  Grace threw her arms around his neck and they shot straight up, into the sky.  Wind rushed at her.  The pain vanished.  She looked down and almost screamed – the car was far below.

“Don’t panic.”

The flesh of Nassar’s neck crawled under her fingers, growing thicker.   She turned to him and saw a sea of feathers and high above huge raptor jaws armed with crocodile teeth.   Her arms shook with the strain of her dead weight.

“It’s okay,” the monster reassured her in Nassar’s voice.

Her hold gave.  For a precious second, Grace clung to the feathers, but her fingers slipped.  She dropped like a stone.  Her throat constricted.  She cried out and choked as a huge claw snapped closed about her stomach.

“Grace?”  The feathered monster bent his neck.  A round green eye glared at her.

She sucked the air into her lungs and finally breathed.  “Your definition of okay has problems.”

The wind muffled her voice.

“What?” he bellowed.

“I said, your definition of okay has problems!”

The ground rolled past them, impossibly far.  She clenched her hands on the enormous scaly talons gripping her.  “Is there any chance that this could be a dream?!”

“I’m afraid not!”

Her heart hammered so hard, she was worried it would jump out of her chest. “What was it?”

“Clan Roar – our opponents in the game.  Or one of their agents, to be exact.  They’re not dumb enough to attack you directly.  Once the game is scheduled, all hostilities between the participants must cease.  Interference of this sort is forbidden.”

“What about Lilian?”

“She can take care of herself.”

Grace shivered.  “Why would they be attacking me in the first place?”

“You’re my defense.  If they kill you, I’ll have to withdraw from the game.”

“That sounds ridiculous!  You’re the revenant and I can’t even defend myself.”

“I’ll explain everything later.  We’re beyond their range now and we’ll arrive soon.  Try to relax!”

She was clutched in the talons of a monstrous creature, who was really a man trying to rescue her from a magical attack by flying hundred of feet above solid ground.  Relax. Right.  “I serve a madman,” she muttered.

Far beyond the fields, an empty piece of the horizon shimmered and drained down, revealing a dark spire.  Tower Dreoch, Uncle Gerald had called it.  He’d said the Dreochs lived in a castle.  She thought he’d exaggerated.

Nassar careened, turning, and headed to the tower.

#

They circled the tower once, before Nassar dived to a balcony and dropped her into a waiting group of people below.  Hands caught her and she was gently lowered to the ground.

In the overcast sky, Nassar swung upward and swooped down.  The group parted.  A dark-skinned woman grasped Grace by her waist and pulled her aside with the ease one picked up a child.

Nassar dove down.  His huge talons skidded on the balcony and he tumbled into the room beyond.  Feathers swirled.  He staggered up.  “Leave us.”

People fled past her.  In a moment the room was empty.

Grace hugged herself.  Up there, in the evening sky, the cold air had chilled her so thoroughly, even her bones felt iced over.  Her teeth still chattered.  She stepped to the double doors and shut them, blocking off the balcony and the draft with it.

The large rectangular room was simply but elegantly furnished: a table with some chairs, a wide bed with a gauzy blue canopy, a bookcase, some old, solidly built chairs before the fireplace.  A couple of electric table lamps radiated soft yellow light.  An oriental silk rug covered the floor.

Nassar slumped in front of the fireplace.  Bright orange flames threw highlights on his feathers, making them almost golden in the front.  His feathers seemed shorter.  His jaws no longer protruded quite as much.

Grace crossed the carpet and stood before the fire, soaking in the warmth.  It all seemed so dream-like.  Unreal.

“This will be your room for the next couple of days,” he said.

“You have no idea how strange this is to me,” she murmured.

His smart eyes studied her.  “Tell me about it?”

“In my world people don’t turn into…  into this.”  She indicated him with her hand.  His feathers definitely were shorter now.  He’d shrunk a little.  ”People don’t fly unless they have a glider or some sort of metal contraption with an engine designed to help them.  Nobody tries to murder someone through magic.  Nobody has mysterious castles masquerading as empty fields.”

A careful knock interrupted her.

“It’s your room,” Nassar murmured.

“Come in,” she called.

A man entered, pushing a small trolley with a teakettle, two cups, a dish of sugar, a ewer of cream, and a platter with assorted cookies.  As he passed her, she saw a short sword in a sheath at his waist.  “Your sister suggested tea, sir.”

“Very thoughtful of her.”

The man left the trolley, smiled at her, and departed.

Grace poured two cups of tea.

“I suppose in your world people don’t drink tea either?” he asked.

“We drink tea,” she said with a sigh.  “We just don’t always have servants armed with swords to bring it.  Cream?”

“Sugar and lemon, please.”  Nassar had returned to his normal size.  The feathers were mere fur now, and his face was bare and completely human.

“What’s happening with your feathers?”

“I’m consuming them to replenish some of my energy.  Transformations such as this are difficult even for me.”  He sank into a chair, took a cup from her with furry fingers, and sipped from it.  “Perfect.  Thank you.”

“I live to serve.”

His lips curved into a familiar half-smile.  “Somehow I deeply doubt it.”

Grace sat into the other chair and sipped shockingly hot tea, liberally whitened by cream.  Liquid heat flowed through her.  His magic brushed her again, but she had flown over miles bathed in it and she accepted his touch without protest.  She was so very tired.  “This is a dream.  I’ll wake up, and all of this will be gone.  And I’ll go back to my quiet little job.”

“What is it you do?”

Grace shrugged.  He knew, of course.  His clan had been keeping tabs on their family for years.  When you own something, you want to pay attention to its maintenance.  He probably knew what size underwear she wore and how she preferred her steak.   ”Why don’t you tell me?”

“You’re a headhunter.  You find jobs for others.  Do you like it?”

“Yes.  It’s boring at times and stressful, but I get to help people.”

“You didn’t know about your family’s debt, did you?” he asked.

“No.”  She refilled her cup.

“When did you find out?”

“Three days ago.”

“Was it sudden?”

“Yes,” she admitted.  “I always knew about magic.  I was born able to feel it.  At first I was told I was a very sensitive child, and then, once I was old enough to realize I needed to keep it to myself, more complicated explanations followed.  I live in a world of very small magics.  I can sense if I’ll miss the bus.  In school, I could usually foretell my grade on tests, but I could never predict anything else accurately.   If I concentrate very hard, I can scare animals.  A dog once tried to chase me, and I was frightened and sent it running.”

She drank again.  “Small things, mostly useless.  I thought that all magic users were like me.  Working their little powers in secret.  I never imagined people could fly in the open.  Or walk through crowded airports without being seen.  My mother is a fabric buyer.  My uncle’s a mechanic who really likes weapons.  My dad’s normal in every way.  My mother and he divorced when I was eighteen.  He runs a shift at a tire repair plant.”

Grace drank more tea.  Her head was fuzzy.  She was so comfortable and warm in the soft chair.   “When Uncle Gerald told me this half-baked story about blood debt, I didn’t believe him at first.”

“What convinced you?”

“He was terrified.  Uncle Gerald is like a rock in the storm: always cool under pressure.  I’ve never seen him so off-balance.”  She yawned.  She was so drowsy.   ”I think my mother hoped I would never have to do this.”

“I can see why,” Nassar said softly.  “We live in constant danger.  I would think any mother would want to shield her child from us.”

“I would.”  Drowsiness overtook her.  Grace set the cup down and curled into a ball in the chair.  “Even though your world is so…”

She vaguely saw him rise from his chair.  He picked her up, his magic cloaking about her.   She should have been alarmed, but she had no resolve left.

“So?”

“So magical.”

He drew the canopy aside and lowered her onto the bed.  Her head touched the pillow and reality faded.

#

Nassar stepped out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.  Alasdair waited in the hallway, a lean sharp shadow, with a robe draped over his arm.  Nassar took it from him and shrugged it on, absorbing the last of his feathers.   His whole body hurt from too much magic expended too quickly.  Walking was like stepping on crushed glass.

“Is she asleep?” Alasdair asked.

Nassar nodded.  They walked down the hall together.

“She’s pretty.  Chestnut hair and chocolate eyes – a nice combination.”

She was also calm under pressure, smart, and willful.  When she looked at him with those dark eyes, Nassar felt the urge to say something intelligent and deeply impressive.  Unfortunately, nothing of the kind came to mind.  It seemed her eyes also had a way of muddling his thoughts.  The last time he felt that dumb was about fourteen years ago.  He’d been eighteen at the time.

“You like the girl,” Alasdair offered.

Nassar leveled a heavy gaze at him.

“Lilian said you tried to be funny in the car.  I told her it couldn’t possibly be true.  The moment you try to make a joke, the sky shall split and the Four Horsemen will ride out, heralding Apocalypse.”

“How droll.  Did you double the patrols?”

Alasdair nodded his dark head and stopped by the ladder.  Nassar walked past him, heading to his rooms.

“Did you?” Alasdair called.

“Did I what?”

“Did you joke with the girl?”

Nassar kept walking.

“Did she laugh?” Alasdair called.

“No.”

Nassar entered his room.  He hadn’t expected her to laugh.  He was grateful she didn’t collapse in a hysterical heap.  Her uncle had been scared to within an inch of his life – fear had rolled off of him in waves.  In Gerald’s life of some fifty odd years his services had been requested only twice, but the second time had scarred him for life.  In the zone he would be useless.

Grace’s mother, Janet, was always meticulous and formal.  She took no initiative.  Working with her was like being in a presence of an automaton who obeyed his every order while being grimly determined to dislike it.  Taking her into the zone, even if he could compensate for her age and health, would be suicide.

He was never comfortable with any of them.  He was never comfortable with the whole idea of the bonded servant and took pains to avoid requesting their presence.  But this time he had no choice.

Working with Grace presented its own set of difficulties.  He could still remember her scent: the light clean fragrance of soap mixing with the faint rosemary from her dark hair.  His memory conjured the feel of her body pressed against his and when he’d picked her up to place her on the bed, he hadn’t wanted to let go.   He wasn’t an idiot.  There was an attraction there, and he would have to manage it very carefully.  The imbalance of power between the two of them was too pronounced: he was the master and she was the servant.  Don’t think about her, he told himself.  Don’t imagine what it would be like.  Nothing can happen.  Nothing is going to happen.  She’s off-limits.

#

Grace followed the servant into a spacious atrium.  Morning sun shone through the glass panels in the ceiling.  The stone path wound between lush greenery, parallel to a stream lined with smooth river pebbles.  Spires of bamboo rose next to fichus and ferns.  Delicate orchids in a half a dozen shades dotted the moss-covered ground.  Red kafir lilies bloomed along the stream’s banks, echoed by paler blossoms of camellia bushes.  The air smelled sweet.

The path turned, parting, and Grace saw the origin of the stream: a ten foot waterfall at the far wall.  The water cascaded over huge grey boulders into a tiny lake.  Near the shore stood a low coffee table surrounded by benches.  A dark-haired man lounged on the bench to the left, sipping tea from a large cup.

Nassar stood next to him, talking softly.  He wore blue sweatpants and light-grey t-shirt.   A towel hung over his shoulder and his pale hair was wet and brushed back from his face.  Poised like this, he appeared massive.  Muscles bulged on his chest when he moved his arm to underscore a point.  His biceps stretched the sleeves of his shirt.  His legs were long.  Everything about him, from the breadth of his shoulders to the way he carried himself —controlled and aware of his size —communicated raw physical power.  His wasn’t the static bulk of a power weightlifter, but rather the dangerous, honed build of a man who required muscle to survive.  If a genius sculptor were to carve a statue and name it Strength, Nassar would’ve made a perfect model.

He glanced at her.  His green eyes arrested her and Grace halted, suddenly realizing she wanted to know what he would look like naked.

The thought shocked her.

Something in her face must’ve equally shocked him, because he fell silent.

A torturous second passed.

She forced herself to move.  Nassar looked away, resuming his conversation.

I can’t be attracted to him.  He forced me to come here and risk my life and I don’t even know why.  I know nothing about him.  He’s a monster. That last thought sobered her up.  She approached the benches.

“Grace,” Nassar said.  His magic brushed her.  “This is Alasdair, my cousin.”

Alasdair unfolded himself from the bench.  “Charmed.”

“Hello.” Grace nodded at Alasdair, then turned to Nassar.  “You drugged my drink.”

“Actually I drugged the cream,” he said, “and technically it was my sister who did it.”

“Why?”

“You were in shock.  I wanted to spare you the break down and anxiety when you came out of it.”

Grace held herself straight.  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t do it again.  We have a deal.  I’ll keep my part, but I can’t do it if I have to watch what I eat and drink.”

Nassar considered it for a long moment.  “Agreed.”

“A deal?” Alasdair’s eyebrows crept up.  His was lean and sharp, his movements quick.  His stare had an edge.  If Nassar was a sword, Alasdair was a dagger.

“I’ve agreed to do my best to help you, and in return, you’ll leave my family alone for five years,” Grace said.

Alasdair grimaced at Nassar.  “That’s incredibly generous, considering what they’ve done.  We owe them nothing.”

Nassar shrugged his massive shoulders.  “It’s worth the reward to have her full cooperation.”

Grace took a seat on the bench.  “What did we do exactly?”

“You don’t know?”  Alasdair passed her a plate of scones.

“No.”

The dark-haired man glanced at Nassar, who shrugged.  “You tell it.”

“At the end of the nineteenth century your family and our clan were in dispute,” Alasdair said.

Grace was learning to decipher their code.  “In other words, we were murdering each other.”

“Precisely.  The dispute grew out of control and so our families agreed to end it.  The peace was to be sealed through a wedding.  Jonathan Mailliard of your family was to marry Thea Dreoch.”

“He was your great grandfather’s brother,” Nassar supplied.

“The wedding went well,” Alasdair continued.  “There was a very nice reception in one of Mailliard gathering halls, a beautiful old hotel.  Everyone ate, drank, and was merry.  The couple went upstairs, to their rooms, where Jonathan pulled out a knife and slit Thea’s throat.”

Grace froze with a scone halfway to her mouth.  She had expected something of this sort.  To force her family into indefinite servitude, the crime had to be horrible.  But it still shocked her.

“He waited for almost two hours by her cooling corpse,” Alasdair continued.   ”Until the party died down.   Then he and several Mailliard men and women went through the hotel door to door.  They murdered Thea’s sister, her husband, and their twin daughters who were flower girls at the wedding.  They killed Thea’s parents and her two brothers, both minors, and would’ve slaughtered the entire party, but they were seen by a Dreoch retainer, who started screaming.  Our offensive magic was always stronger and we were inside your family’s defenses.  There was a bloodbath.  Every member of the Mailliard family was killed, except Thomas Mailliard, who was fourteen at the time.  He hid in a closet and wasn’t discovered until later in the day, when the butchery had stopped.  Because Thomas was a child and hadn’t participated in the slaughter, he was given a choice: death or servitude for all of his descendants.  And that’s why you now serve us.”

Grace sat in a sickened silence.

“Anything to say?” Alasdair asked.

“That’s very horrible,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“However, I never knew Jonathan Mailliard.  I didn’t even know his name.  I feel awful about the murder and I understand that my family bears responsibility, but I never killed anyone.  I’ve never hurt you and neither has my mother, my uncle or my great grandfather, who hid in the closet.”  She tried to make her voice sound calm and reasonable.  “I’ve done you no harm, yet you limit my freedom and force me to risk my life because of a crime perpetrated a century ago by someone I’ve never met.  Our family has served yours for over a hundred years.  At some point this debt will have been repaid.  When do you think will that be?”

“Never,” Alasdair said.

It felt like a slap.  She looked to Nassar.  “So this is how you do things?  You dumped all of the blame for a bloody feud onto a fourteen year old child who hid in a closet, and because he’s failed to stop grown men from killing, you keep his descendants in perpetual servitude?”

“Hardly perpetual,” Nassar corrected.  “Since I assumed the responsibility for the clan fifteen years ago, I’ve called on your family only four times.”

“But we know we can be called at any point.  We have to live with the knowledge that on a moment’s notice we might be required to risk our life for a complete stranger for no reason and we might never see our loved ones again.  We can’t refuse.  The terms are obedience or death.  Would you want to live like this?”

“No,” Nassar admitted.

“Can you tell me when the debt will be paid?” she asked.

“This arrangement is to our advantage,” Nassar said.  “It makes no sense for us to release you.”

“I see.  I’ll have to release us then.”

“Really?” Alasdair gave a short barking laugh.  “How exactly are you planning on doing that?”

“My uncle has no offspring and I’m my mother’s only child.  To my knowledge, I’m the last of Mailliards.  I’ll have to make sure that I don’t continue the line.”  She rose.  “I think I’ve seen the washroom on the way here.  I really need to splash some water on my face.”

“Second door on the right,” Nassar told her.

“Excuse me.”

Grace walked away.  Her knees shook a little in her jeans.  Her face burned.

#

Nassar watched Grace’s figure retreat down the winding path.

“Wow,” Alasdair offered.

“Yes.”

“Think she’ll do it?”

“She’s a Mailliard.”

He’d seen the same steely resolve in her mother’s eyes, Nassar reflected.  He suspected it was the same will that drove the wedding night atrocities a century ago.  It enabled her mother, Janet, to grimly bear her service, and fueled Grace’s fight against it.   He doubted she would ever go into outright rebellion, not while her mother and Gerald were alive, but he could tell by the way she held herself, by her face and her eyes and her voice, that she would rather give up her future children than bring them into Dreoch’s “service.”

“You like her,” Alasdair said.

“What of it?”

“Why don’t you tell her?”

The imbalance of power between them was too great and her antipathy and contempt for Dreoch was painfully obvious.  Nassar took the towel off his shoulder and sat on the bench.  “Because she can’t say no.”

#

When Grace returned, Alasdair was gone.  Nassar sat alone.  It was easier if she simply admitted it, Grace decided.  Sometimes you see another person in passing, your eyes meet, and you know by some instinct that there is something there.  She felt that something for Nassar.

He managed himself very well: he was powerful and probably enormously strong, but he radiated a calm courtesy.  It was deeply reassuring on an instinctual level, and while her mind reminded her that she should be afraid, her intuition told her Nassar wouldn’t hurt her.  NOt deliberately.  She’d watched his face while Alasdair told the story of their families.  Nassar had looked uncomfortable.  And his eyes, when he forgot to guard, betrayed a deep inner sadness.  Looking at him for too long made her want to reach out and touch him, to soothe him somehow.

It was wrong on so many levels, her head reeled from simply contemplating it.  He was a revenant, a creature more than a man.  Her great grandfather’s brother slaughtered his relatives.  His family held hers in bondage.  Maybe it was some sort of twisted version of Stockholm syndrome.  Whatever it was, she would have to be very careful to keep her distance.

“You still haven’t told me what you need me to do,” she said.

Nassar rose.  “Walk with me, please.”

Grace followed him down the path deeper into the atrium.  Nassar led her out through an arched door and into a large round chamber.  Bare, it was lit by sunlight spilling through a skylight very high above.  A thick metal grate guarded the skylight.  Plain concrete made up the floor, showing a complicated geometric pattern with a circle etched into its center.  Nassar stood on its edge.

“When a revenant takes a new body, he gains great power but he also inherits the weaknesses of that body.  The body I took was cursed.  After I transferred into it, I was able to heal the damage and break the curse.  But all of my invulnerability to the curse is gone.  I’ve used it all up.”

“And the man who was born in this body?  What happened to him when you took it?”

“He died,” Nassar said.

She’d hoped he wouldn’t say that.

A woman entered the chamber through the door in the opposite wall.  A pale blond like Nassar.   She smiled at them.  Nassar didn’t quite smile back, but the melancholy of his face eased slightly.

“This is Elizavetta.  My sister.”

“Call me Liza,” she said.  “Everyone does”

“Grace,” Grace said simply.  “You’re the one who drugged the cream.”

Liza nodded.  “Yes.  Alasdair warned me I may have earned your undying hate for it.  I sincerely hope we can put it past us.  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings in any way.”

“Given that I’m a servant, my feelings are hardly relevant, but I appreciate it,” Grace said.

Liza blinked.  An uncomfortable silence ensued.  Nassar cleared his throat.  “Liz?”

“Yes, right.”  Liza stepped inside the design.

“Every revenant has a fatal weakness,” Nassar said, his gaze fixed on his sister.  “This is mine.”

Liza arched her back, spreading her arms.  Her hands clawed the air.  She spun in a place, twisting. Magic pulsed from her and filled the lines etched on the floor with pale yellow light.  Liza brought her hands together, cried out, and forced them apart with a pained grimace.  A clump of mottled darkness appeared between her fingers.  She stepped back.

The clump spun, growing, and ruptured, vomiting a creature into the circle.  The beast was three feet long and slender, shaped like a slug or a leech except for the fringe of carmine feathery hairs along its sides.  A patina of grey and sickly yellow swirled over its dark hide, like an oil rainbow on the surface of a dark puddle.

The creature shivered.   The red fringe trembled and it took to the air, sliding soundlessly a foot off the ground.  A cold foul magic emanated from it.  It touched Grace.  She jerked back and bumped into Nassar.

“What is that?”

He put his hand on her shoulder, steadying her.  “A marrow worm.  They live in dark places, where there is stagnant water and decay.  They feed on small animals, fish, and old magic.”

The worm hovered behind the glowing outline of the circle.  Its head was blunt and as it rose up, testing the boundaries of its invisible cage, Grace saw a slit of a mouth lined with sharp serrated teeth on its underside.

Liza approached the worm.  The creature shied away, sliding as close to the glowing lines as it could.

“Think of them as germs.  Most people have a natural resistance to them, an immunity.  I don’t.  To me, they’re fatal.  We did our best to keep this fact to ourselves, but I have no doubt Roars know it.  They would be fools not to.  Unfortunately, marrow worms are easy to summon.”

He’d stepped behind her and she was painfully sensitive to the presence of his large body only an inch from her back.  His magic touched her.  Her every nerve shivered, hyper-aware of his movements.  She sensed him lean to her and almost jumped when his quiet voice spoke into her ear.  “Do you remember when you sent that dog running?  I want you to do that again.”

Grace swallowed.  “I don’t remember what I did.  It just happened.”

His big hand pushed against her back gently, making her take a step toward the circle.  “Try.”

Grace took a deep breath and stepped over the glowing lines inside the circle.  The worm jerked away from her like a wet ribbon.  Grace glanced at Nassar.

“That’s just normal resistance to humans.  Keep trying.”

Grace stared at the worm twisting.  Go away, she thought.  Gone.  I want you gone.

The worm remained where it was.

Grace glanced at Liza.  “Any idea what I’m supposed to be doing?”

Nassar’s sister shook her blonde head.  “None.  Dreochs are aggressors. We have few defensive abilities and they’re radically different from yours.  Mostly our defenses consist of Nassar hacking at things with something large and sharp.”

“The magic you’re trying to do is called the Barrier,” Nassar said.  “It’s one of the natural Mailliard’s magics.  Very talented members of your family used it both as defense and as a weapon.  Your mother stated that it can’t be taught.  You simply do it or you don’t.”

Grace focused on the worm and tried to pretend it was a large, mean-looking German shepherd.

An hour later she sat exhausted on the floor.   The worm floated at the edge of the design.

“It’s useless.”  Liza unscrewed a cap from a fresh bottle of water.  She had gotten a cooler with drinks, migrated to the wall, and now sat on the floor.  “Why Janet didn’t practice with Grace is beyond me, but she didn’t.  We’ll have to change the plan.  Instead of you and Grace, I’ll go with Alasdair.”

“No.”  Steel laced Nassar’s voice. He leaned against the wall.

“You’re being unreasonable.”

Nassar’s face was dark like a storm.  “Both of you will die.  I have resistances and power to counter Roar’s attacks.  You don’t.”

“You can’t counter this one.”

He didn’t answer.

“Why don’t you just turn into a bird and fly through the zone?” Grace asked.

“Flight is forbidden in the game,” Nassar answered.

Liza sighed.  “Grace, would you like some water?”

“Yes.”

Liza tossed her a new bottle.

“Thank you.”  Grace caught it.  “Why are you fighting Roars anyway?  What’s this dispute about?”

“It’s about children,” Nassar said.  “And killing me.”

“Our aunt married a member of clan Roar,” Liza said.  “Arthur Roar.  He turned out to be a wart on the ass of the human kind.  Abusive, violent, cruel.  She left after eight years and took their three kids with her.”

“Should’ve left sooner,” Nassar said.  His green eyes promised violence, the light irises so cold that Grace took a small step back.

“She had her reasons for staying,” Liza said.  “There was a large dowry involved and she didn’t want us to have to pay restitution and interest.  But in the end it was just too much.  After Arthur broke his son’s legs, she grabbed the kids and came home.  Now, nine years later, Arthur suddenly wants his children back.”

Liza took a drink from her bottle.  “He’s never shown any interest in them.  No calls, no letters, not even a card.  He’s done nothing to support them.  But Aunt Bella signed the wedding agreement that specified equal amount of time with the children for each parent in the event of separation.  Arthur claims that since the kids were with her exclusively for nine years, now he has exclusive rights to them.”

“He doesn’t give a damn about the kids.  It’s an excuse for the Roars to test the waters,” Nassar said.  “They have a couple of strong people and they’re thinking of moving in on our interests.  Before they do it, they want to weaken us.  They knew that if they challenged the clan, I would enter the game, and they believe they have a reasonable chance of killing me.  They’ll knock out Dreoch’s biggest power user and earn respect from other clans for killing a revenant and they will do it all before the war ever starts.”

He pushed from the wall.  “It’s almost time for lunch.  Let’s take a break.”

#

The lunch was laid out on a long table in a vast dining hall.  Nassar held out a chair for Grace and she sat down.  He took a place to her right, while Liza sat down at her left, next to Alasdair.  Other people came into the room – two men and three women.  They took their seats, nodded and smiled, started conversations in calm voices.  Alastair said something and a woman laughed.  They were so at ease and the warmth of their interaction began to thaw Grace’s resolve.

The four chairs directly opposite her remained empty.  She wondered who would sit there and a couple of minutes later she had her answer.  Three children entered the room, followed by a pale woman.  Of course.  Nassar arranged it so she would spend the meal looking at the faces of the children whose fate would be decided in the game.

They took the seats: the woman with careworn eyes, a young boy with wild mass of dark hair, and two girls, one slender and blonde and the other only about ten or so, a kid with short dark hair and big blue eyes.  The youngest girl saw Nassar and came grinning around the table.  “Hug?” she asked him seriously.

“Hug,” he agreed and put his massive arms around her.

“And no dying,” she reminded him.

He let go and nodded.

The girl noticed her.  “Hi.  I’m Polina.”

It was impossible not to smile back.  “Hi.  I’m Grace.”

“You’re supposed to protect Nassar,” Polina said.

“That’s what he tells me.”

The child looked at her with her blue eyes.  “Please don’t let him die,” she said softly.  “I like him a lot.”

“I’ll try my best.”

Polina went around the table to her seat.  Grace leaned to Nassar and whispered, “Laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t put her up to it,” he told her.  She glanced into his green eyes and believed him.

The lunch went on.  Dishes were brought and passed around the table: roast beef and mashed potatoes, green beans, corn, iced tea and lemonade.  The food was delicious, but Grace ate little.  Mostly she watched the children.  The boy leaned to his mother, making sure her cup was filled.  The older girl seemed on the verge of tears.  She became more and more agitated, until finally, just as peach cobbler made its way past Grace, the girl dropped her fork.  Her voice rang out.  “What if they win?”

The table fell quiet.

“They won’t,” Nassar said calmly.

“If Arthur touches us, I’ll kill him.”  Steel vibrated in the boy’s voice.

Their mother leaned her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her hands.  “No.  You’re not strong enough,” she told him in a dull voice.  ”Not yet.  You must do whatever it takes to survive.”

“That’s enough.”  Nassar’s magic surged out, spreading behind him like invisible wings.  It brushed against Grace.  Breath caught in her throat.   So much power…

Nassar fixed the children with his stare.  “You’re our kin.  You belong to Clan Dreoch.   Nobody will take you from us.  Anyone who tries will have to go through me.”

With his power rising above the table, the prospect of going through him seemed impossible.  His magic was staggering.  It would take an army.

The anxiety slowly melted from the children’s faces.

#

“Let’s try again,” Nassar said, as the two of them strode back into the room.

The worm still floated in the circle.  Grace stepped inside.  It shied from her.

“Why did you tell the children about the curse?”

“I won’t lie to them.  The possibility of defeat exists and they have to be prepared.”

That defeat seemed very likely at the moment.

“But I will fight to the death to keep them safe.  And even if I lose, the clan won’t surrender them.  We will go to war.  We won’t turn over children to a man who will break their bones.”

Neither would she.  It didn’t matter who they were.  A child was a child.  She couldn’t let them suffer, not after watching them near panic with fear of having to leave their mother.  Their family and their home, all would be ripped away if Nassar and she lost.

“Now do you understand why I fight?” he asked her softly.

She nodded.

“I need your help desperately.  Please help me, Grace.”

“I wish I could,” she said, her voice filled with regret.

Nassar watched her for a long moment.  “What do you remember about your encounter with the dog?  What did you feel?”

Grace frowned.  “It was twelve years ago.  I remember being scared for myself.  And for the dog.  He was my friend’s dog.  I knew that if he bit me, he would be put down.”

Nassar strode to her, a determined look on his face.

“What are you doing?”

Nassar kept coming.  She realized he was going to cross the line.

“Liza isn’t here to save you!”

“No.”  He gave her the familiar half smile.  “Only you can save me now.”

Nassar stepped over the line.  The worm streaked to him.  It skimmed the surface of his magic and clamped onto his shoulder.  Nassar’s magic shrunk.  He staggered and ripped the worm off.  Grace cried out.

The worm flipped in the air and slid over him.  Nassar tried to knock it off, but it slipped past his hands and leeched onto his side.  Nassar gasped.  His face went bloodlessly white.  He spun, tripping over his feet, pulling at the writhing body, and stumbled to her.  The worm slithered from his fingers and swooped down on him.  Nassar fell.

Grace lunged forward.  She meant to thrust herself in front of it, but instead magic pulsed from her in a controlled, short burst.  The worm hurtled back, swept aside.

She pushed harder and the worm convulsed, squeezed between the press of her power and the glowing lines.  “Nassar?”  She knelt by him.  “Nassar, are you okay?”

Nassar’s green eyes looked at her.  His nose bled.  He wiped away his blood with the back of his hand.  “Protective instinct,” he said.  “You’ve done it.”

It felt so right.  As if the pressure straining at her from the inside suddenly found an outlet.  So that’s what she’s been missing.  All these years, she had suspected there was something more to the magic coursing through her and now she finally found it.

“I guess I did,” she murmured.

“Were you scared for me?”

“Yes.  How could you have done that?  That was so reckless.  What if I couldn’t save you?”

“I hoped you could,” he said.

The way he looked at her made her want to kiss him.

“Your family is free,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve let Clan Mailliard go,” he said.  “I’ve signed the order before lunch.”

She sank to the floor.  “Why?”

He sat up.  “Because I decided that’s not what I do.  I don’t force people to fight our battles.  I don’t want to be the man who blames children for their parents’ mistakes.  And I don’t want you to be the last of the Mailliards.  Whether you have children should be your choice alone.  I don’t want to take it away from you.”

It slowly dawned on her.  “So I’m free?”

“Yes.”

She stared at him.  “You don’t even know me.  I could just take off right now and leave you here to deal with the game on your own.  Do you have any idea how scared I am?  I don’t want to die.”

“Neither do I.”  He gave her another sad smile.

She hung her head, torn.  She was deeply, deeply afraid.  But walking away from the children wasn’t in her.  She wouldn’t be able to look herself in the eye.  It was as if they stood in the road with a semi hurtling at them at full speed.  What kind of person wouldn’t push them out of the harm’s way?

“I should practice more,” she said.

“We’re going to need another worm then,” Nassar said.

She glanced at the beast.  It lay dead, sliced in a half.

“You killed it,” he told her.  “Sometimes the Barrier magic can also become a blade.”

“But I don’t even know how I’ve done it.”

“We don’t need to worry about that now,” he said.  “As long as you can defend me, we should be fine.”

#

Three days later Grace stood in the middle of the street in Millighan City, hugging herself as the sun set slowly.  Nassar loomed next to her.  Behind them unfamiliar people moved, their magic shifting with them, their clothes color-coded by their clan: grey and black for Dreoch, green for Roar, red for Madrid.  Nassar explained the rest of the colors, but she couldn’t recall any of it.  The anxiety pulsated through her with every heart beat.

Ahead a seemingly empty stretch of a suburban street rolled into the sunset.  The round, red sun hung low above the horizon, a glowing brand upon the clouds.

Familiar magic brushed her and a heavy hand touched her shoulder gently.  Nassar.  He wore grey pants tucked into military boots.  A long-sleeved shirt hugged his arms and over it he wore a leather vest that wanted very much to be called armor.  She wore the same outfit.  The leather fitted her loosely enough not to be constricting, but tight enough not to get in the way.

“Don’t worry,” Nassar said.

Her gaze slid to the large axe strapped to his waist.  She touched her own blade, a long narrow combat knife.  Gerald had taught her the basics of knife-fighting a long time ago but she’d never been in a real fight.

A male voice rose to the side.  “Can he bring a servant into the game?”

It took a moment to sink in.  Of course, her status would be public knowledge among them, but it still cut her like a knife.  She turned.  A group of people stood on the side.  Five of them wore dark blue robes.  The arbitrators, she remembered from Nassar’s explanations.  An older female in the arbitrator robe regarded her with serious grey eyes.

“If you want to withdraw, you may do so now,” the woman said.

She could withdraw.  She could simply refuse to go in.  If she did, Nassar would be doomed.  He had already committed to the game and she knew he couldn’t simply substitute someone else in his place.  He wouldn’t.

Overnight, her fears had grown into near panic.  Now she could walk away from them.

Grace looked at the gathering of the clansmen.  Her family used to be a clan.  Her people should have stood right here.  Instead the clansmen viewed her as a servant.  Pride spiked in her.  She had as much right to be here as anybody else.  The vague feeling of unease that had eaten at her ever since Nassar had transformed into a bird crystallized and she finally understood it: it was envy.  Envy of the magic used freely.  Envy of knowledge. Circumstances had jettisoned her out of this world, but she refused to stay locked out.

Grace drew herself to her full height.  “Why in the world would I want to withdraw?”

A red-haired man in Roar’s green shook his head.  “She can’t refuse.  She isn’t even properly trained.  She’s a servant.”

“Not anymore,” Nassar said softly behind her.

The gathering suddenly grew quiet.

The arbitrator surveyed them for a long moment.  “Nassar, am I to understand that you’ve released Clan Mailliard from their service?”

“Yes,” he answered.

The arbitrator looked at her.  “You’re here of your own free will?”

“Yes,” Grace said.

The arbitrator glanced at Roar clansman.  “There is your answer.  Let the record reflect that Clan Mailliard chose to assist Clan Dreoch.  You have our leave to proceed.”

They passed her.  Grace let out her breath.

“Thank you,” Nassar murmured.

“You’re welcome.”

Two young men in Roar’s green came to stand at the other end of the street.  Both were lean, strong, hard, as if twisted from leather and twine.  Both had long hair bound into horse tails: one red, one black.

Nassar leaned to her.  “Conn and Sylvester Roar.  Powerful, but they lack experience.”

The arbitrators passed between them, blocking her vision.  As the blue robes fluttered by, Grace saw Conn Roar turn to her.  He grinned, his eyes alight with feral fire, and snapped his teeth.

Alarm dashed down her spine in a rush of cold.  She raised her eyebrows.  “Someone forgot his muzzle.”

“See the pendant around Conn’s neck?”

Grace glanced at a small black stone hanging on a long chain.

“That’s a summoning stone.  They’ll use its power to manifest creatures.”

Marrow worms.  They’d use it to summon the marrow worms.  Nassar had warned her that the Roars would try to kill them.  Him, specifically.  The game as only the opening salvo to the hostilities between the two clans, and Roars wanted to land the first blow by taking out Dreoch’s best magic user.

The arbitrators raised their hands.  A controlled surge of magic washed over the street.  The reality drained down, as if it were a reflection in a melting mirror.  A new street opened before them.  Green and red lianas hung from the dark, sinister houses.  Kudzu vines climbed in and out of windows.  To the left a huge clump of yellow foam dripped rancid red juice onto the street.  A puddle of brown slime slivered across the asphalt like an amoeba and slipped into the storm drain under the light of street lamps.  Ahead something furry dashed across the intersection: a long, shaggy body with too many legs.

Somewhere in that zone a flag waited.  Whoever touched the flag would be instantly transported out.  They just had to survive long enough to reach it.

The woman arbitrator raised her hand, fist closed.  Next to Grace, Nassar tensed.

“Let the game begin!”   A white light pulsed from the arbitrator’s fingers.  The crowd erupted in a ragged cheer.

The two Roar clansmen screamed in unison.  Flesh bulged under their skin.  Their bodies contorted, their limbs thickened.  Black fur sheathed their skin.  Horns burst through their manes.  Their eyes drowned in golden glow and an extra pair opened beside the first set.  As one they raised monstrous faces up, the sharp fangs in their jaws silhouetted against the red sky.  Eerie howls tore free from their throats, blending into a haunting song of hunt and murder.

The Roars dashed into the zone on all fours.  Nassar watched them go, his face calm.  Leaping and growling, they turned the corner and vanished behind the abandoned houses.  The echoes of their snarls died.   Nassar took his axe from its sheath, rested it on his shoulder, and strode into the zone, unhurried.  Grace swallowed and followed in his footsteps.

The street lay quiet.  They would be watched by magical means while in the zone, but for now the press of many stares bore directly into her back.   Her nerves knotted into a clump.

They’ve reached the intersection.

A hint of movement on the roof of a two-storey house made her turn.  Grace frowned.

A flat, wide shape leaped off the roof, aiming at her.  She caught a glimpse of a fang-studded mouth among bulging veins.  Too stunned to move, she simply stared.

Nassar’s huge back blocked the mouth.  A hot whip of magic sprung from his hand, cleaving the creature in two.   Twin halves of the beast fell to the ground, spilling steaming guts onto the asphalt.

“You’re allowed to dodge,” Nassar said.

#

The enormous blue beast bore on them.  Grace watched it come.  It thundered down the street, its six stumpy legs mashing pot holes in the crumbling pavement.

In the past seven hours, she’d used her magic for defense countless times.  Blood splattered her face, some dried to flecks, some still wet.  Her side burned where a red furry serpent had bit her before Nassar chopped off both of its heads.  A long rip split her left pant leg, exposing puckered flesh of the calf where a liana stung her with its suckers.  It never ended.  There was always a new horror waiting to pounce on them from some dark crevice.  Grace clenched her teeth and watched the beast charge.

It brushed against a house, sending a shower of broken boards in the air, and kept coming, cavernous mouth gaping wide, the sound of its stomping like a canon blast salute at a funeral.  Boom-boom-boom.

Keep it together.  Keep it steady.

Boom-boom-boom.

The beast was almost on her.  Two bloodshot eyes glared.  The black mouth opened, ready to devour her.

“Now!” Nassar barked.

She slammed her magic into it.

With a surprised roar, the beast rammed the invisible barrier.  Her feet slid back from the pressure.  The beast’s momentum pitched it to the side.  The mammoth body fell, paws in the air.  Nassar leaped over it, a feral shadow caught in the moonlight.  White light sliced like a huge blade from his hand and Nassar landed by her.  Filthy and bloody, he looked demonic.

Behind him the beast lay split open, like a chicken with a cleaved breastbone.  Soft, beach-ball-sized sack of its heart palpitated once, twice, and stopped,

Grace stared mutely at the carcass.  She had never imagined the night could hide things like it, terrible, awful things.  She felt like she had aged a lifetime.

A soft humming filled her skull.  She shook her head.

“What is it?” Nassar grasped her face and turned it to him.

“Buzzing.”

He raised his head, listened, and grabbed her hand.  “Run!”

She’d learned not to ask why.  They sprinted, zigzagging through the labyrinthine streets, past overgrown lawns, past an abandoned playground, where small things with round red eyes clutched at the jungle gym with sharp claws, past office buildings, and burst into a park. In the middle of the park lay a pond, bordered by a row of street lamps spilling orange light.  The moon slid from the clouds, illuminating the water’s surface and the raised concrete basin of a dried fountain in the center.

Nassar pulled her into the water and pointed to the fountain.  ”Go!”

She swam through the murky water without thinking.  Something soft brushed her legs.  She shied and squeezed a frantic burst of speed from her exhausted body.  Dizziness came and then her hand hit the concrete base.  She pulled herself up.  Nassar climbed up next to her, grabbed her by her waist and hoisted her up into the seven foot wide basin.  She fell on dried leaves and dirt.

The buzzing grew louder, steady and ominous like the hum of a giant engine.

An invisible whirlpool of magic built around Nassar.  He stood cocooned in its fury, his axe held high.  His body trembled under the pressure.  The cuts and gashes on his arms reopened and bled.

The buzzing swelled like a tidal wave.

She saw the axe fall in an arch, its tip prickling the pond.  The magic sucked itself into the axe handle and burst through its blade into the water.  The pond became preternaturally calm, its surface smooth like glass.  The buzzing vanished.

Nassar swayed.  Grace grabbed his shoulders and pulled him against the lip of the basin, steadying him.  His hand squeezed hers.  He turned carefully, leaped up, and pulled himself into the basin next to her.

A swarm of insects spilled from the street.  Green and segmented, like grasshoppers armed with enormous teeth, they were the size of a large cat.  They streamed around the water in a mottled mass, bodies upon bodies, packed but none touching the pond.

“What are they?” Grace whispered hoarsely.

“Akora.  The spell keeps them out of the water.  As long as nothing disturbs the surface, they can’t see or hear us. Don’t worry.  They can’t survive the sun.  They’ll stay here entranced by the spell until morning.”  He lay on his back and closed his eyes.

Across the water the green insects crawled over the stone benches, perched on lamp posts, and combed the weeds of the once perfectly cut lawn.  They had surrounded the pond.  Everywhere Grace looked, long segmented legs rubbed, sharp mandibles gnawed on random refuse, and backs split to flutter pale wings.

There were too many of them.

She felt so hollow.  The seven hours she had spent in this place had consumed her: there was nothing left inside her.  “We’ll die here,” Grace whispered.

“No.”

“They’ll eat us, and I’ll never see my mother again.”  What was the point of going on?  They’d never make it out.  She no longer cared if they would.

A warm hand grasped her and pulled her with irresistible strength snug against Nassar’s chest.  His arms closed about her, shielding her, shocking her cold body with their heat.  His cheek rested against her hair.  “I won’t let you die, Grace,” he whispered.  “I promise I won’t let you die.”

She lay rigid against his chest, her face in his neck, listening to his strong, even heartbeat.  His lips grazed her cheek.  “I must be out of my mind,” he whispered and his mouth closed on hers.

He kissed her, at first gently, then harder, as if he tried to breathe his life into her.  She felt numb, but he persisted, his kiss passionate and searing.  His arms caged her.  His large hard body cradled hers, keeping her from slipping off into the empty deadness.  His magic wrapped them both.  He kissed her again and again, anchoring her, refusing to let her go.  Caught on the threshold between complete numbness and painful awareness, Grace teetered, unsure.  He pulled her back to life, back to the desperate reality.  She didn’t want to face it.

A shudder ran through her.  She closed her eyes and let him part her lips with his tongue.  He drank her in and finally she thawed.  She wanted to live, to survive so she could feel this again.  She wanted Nassar.

Tears wet her cheeks.

Nassar released her mouth and crushed her to him.

“I want you so much,” he whispered, his green eyes looking into the distance.  “And I can’t have you.  I really must be cursed.”

She lay in his arms for a long time.

The coal darkness of the sky faded to pale grey of pre-dawn.  Grace stirred.  “Why did you do it?” she asked softly.  “Why did you become a revenant?”

“I was dying,” he answered, his voice hoarse.  “We had a feud with the Garveys.  They cornered my brother, John, and I went to get him.  John didn’t want to be taken alive.  He didn’t think help was coming, and he cursed himself and all those around him with a plague of marrow worms.  A suicide curse is very potent.  I brought him out of the trap, but the curse had caught me.  We were both dying and the family could do nothing to keep us alive.  I’d lost consciousness.  John knew that if I took his body, I’d gain a temporary boost of power to break the curse.  He made the family commence the ritual.”

“He sacrificed himself?” she whispered.

“Yes.  I remember there was a rush of red, like I was swimming through a sea of blood and drowning, and then I saw this shape floating in the depths.  I thought it was my body and I knew if I wanted to survive, I had to get to it.  I grabbed it, saw it was John…  The pull to live was too strong.  I awoke in my brother’s body.”

She put her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

“I killed my brother so I can live,” he said.  “It doesn’t get any worse than that.”

She simply held him.

A low growl froze both of them.  Grace flipped onto her stomach and glanced over the lip of the basin.  In the night, the insects had stopped moving.  They lay still now, entranced by the spell, their chitin mirroring the grass and weeds around them so closely that if she didn’t know they were there, she would’ve mistook them for heaps of vegetation.

A lean muscled creature trotted along the edge of the pond.  It gripped the ground with four oversized paws armed with sickle claws.  Its serpentine tail lashed its dark pelt spotted with flecks of red and yellow.  The beast padded down the shore, dragon-like jaws hanging open showing off fangs the size of her fingers.  Foamy spit leaked from between its teeth, staining the long tuft of red and yellow fur hanging from its chin.  It halted, sniffed the air, and turned to the basin.  Four glowing amber eyes glared at her.

“Sylvester Roar,” Nassar murmured.

Sylvester sniffed the water.  His narrow muzzle wrinkled.  He looked like he was grinning at them with his monstrous mouth.

Nassar growled.  “No, you young idiot!  Can’t you see the spell on the water?”

Sylvester snapped his teeth and snarled in a feral glee.  An eerie raspy growl came from between his teeth.  “I see you, Nassar.  You can’t hide from me.”

“Inexperienced fool.”  Nassar reached for his axe.

“I’m coming, Nassar.  I’m coming for you.” Sylvester gave a short ragged howl and splashed into the water.  Little waves ran over the surface of the pond.  Behind Sylvester the akora swarm swelled.  Buzzing filled the air.  Sylvester turned—

Nassar grabbed her and forced her to the floor of the basin, next to him.

A hoarse scream sliced through the morning, a terrible howl of a creature in impossible agony being torn to pieces.  Grace squeezed her eyes shut.  Sylvester screamed and screamed, the buzzing of the akora a morbid choir to his shrieks, until finally he fell silent.

Grace lay still, afraid to breathe.  Slowly she opened her eyes.

An akora perched on the lip of the basin.  It sighted her with dead black eyes.  Its back split, releasing a pale gauze of wings.

Sun broke above horizon.  Its rays struck the insect.  Tiny cracks split its shiny thorax.  The insect shrieked and fled, breaking apart over the water of the pond.   Grace rose.  All around the pond the insect horde fractured and crumbled under the rays of the sun.  The air smelled faintly of smoke.  She looked beyond the heaps of melting insects and drew a sharp breath.  Past the park, to the right, rose a tall heap of rubble that had been a multi-storied building in its former life.  Atop the rubble a small white flag fluttered in the wind.

“The flag!’

Nassar had already seen it and jumped into the water.  Together they swam across the pond.  As she waded onto the solid ground, Grace passed a human skeleton, stripped bare of all flesh – all that remained of Sylvester.

Nassar moved cautiously along the sidewalk, jogging lightly on his feet, axe at the ready.  She followed him, gripping her knife.

He wanted her and she wanted him.  He’d forged a connection between them she couldn’t ignore.  The way he had held her, the way he’d touched her made her want to hold on to him.  She had no idea what would come of their connection, but her instinct warned her she wouldn’t get an opportunity to find out.   Thinking of losing him now, before she had a chance to sort it out, terrified her.

They reached the rock pile.  Nassar paused, measuring the height of the rubble with his gaze.  It was almost three floors tall.  He glanced at her.  She saw the confirmation in his green eyes: it was too easy.  He expected a trap.

“We go slowly,” he said.  “We must touch it together.”

She nodded.

They climbed the pile of debris, making their way higher and higher.  Soon they were level with the first floor of the neighboring buildings, then the second.  The flag was so close now, she could see the thread weave of its fabric.

The cold magic slammed her.  Grace screamed.  A lean shape burst over the top of the pile – a half-man, half-demon, surrounded by marrow worms, the summoning stone on his chest glowing with white. The beast hit Nassar in the chest.  Nassar reeled, the refuse slipped under him, and he plunged down, rolling as he fell, the dark worms swirling over him.

Grace ran after them.  Below, the beast that was Conn Roar tore at Nassar, all but buried under the black ribbons of worm bodies.

She wouldn’t get to him in time.  Grace jumped.

For a moment she was airborne and falling and then her feet hit hard concrete midway down the slope.  It gave under the impact, pitching her forward.  She fell and rolled down, trying to shield her head with her arms, banging against chunks of stone and wood.  Pain kicked her stomach: she’d smashed into a section of a wall.  Her head swam.  Her eyes watered.  Grace gasped and jerked upright.

Ten feet away the marrow worms choked Nassar.

Magic surged from her in a sharp wave.  The blast ripped the worms clear.  They fled.

Nassar lay on his back, his eyes staring unseeing into the sky.  Oh no.

She killed the panicked urge to run to him, crouched, and picked up his axe from where it had fallen.  Her own knife was gone in her fall.

A dark shape launched itself at her from the pile.  She whipped about, reacting on instinct.  Nightmarish jaws snapped, her power pulsed, and Conn Roar bounced from the shield of her magic, knocked back.  His paws barely touched the rubble before he sprung back.  This time she was ready and knocked him down again, deliberately.

Conn snarled.

She backed away toward Nassar’s body.

“He killed my brother,” the demonic beast said.  His voice raised the small hairs on her neck.  “Let me have Nassar and I’ll let you live.”

“No.”

“You can’t kill me.” Conn circled her.  He limped, favoring his left front paw, and a long gash split his side, bleeding.  Nassar had got a piece of him before he went down.

“Of course, I can kill you,” she told him, building up her magic.  “I’m a Mailliard.”

She only had one shot at this.  If she failed, he’d rip her to pieces.

Conn tensed.  The muscles in his powerful legs contracted.  He leaped at her.  She watched his furry body sail through the air, watched his jaws gape in joy when he realized her Barrier wasn’t there, and then she sank everything she had into a single devastating pulse.  Instead of a wide shield, she squeezed all her power into a narrow blade.

It sliced him in two.  His body fell, spraying blood.  His head flew by her, its four eyes dimming as it spun.

She didn’t give it a second glance.

“Nassar?”

She dropped the axe and pulled him up by his giant shoulders, sheltering a weak flutter of magic emanating from him with her own power.  He was covered in blood.  Her chest hurt as if she’d been stabbed.

“Come back to me!”

He didn’t answer.

No! Grace dropped and put her ear to his chest.  A heartbeat.  Very weak, faltering, but a heartbeat.

She wiped a streak of blood from her eyes with her grimy hand so she could see.  She couldn’t help him.  She didn’t know how.   But his family would.

Grace looked at the pile of concrete and rubble, to the very top, where a white flag flailed in the breeze.

#

Nassar leaned against a tree across the street from a brick office building.  Grace was inside.  He couldn’t sense her, not yet, but he knew she was inside.

He vividly remembered waking up to the familiar vaulted ceiling.  He’d whispered her name and Liza’s voice answered, “She’s alive.  She dragged you out, and I released her and her family, like you wanted.”

He didn’t believe her at first.  He knew how much he weighed.  No woman could have dragged his dead weight up that heap, but somehow Grace had done it.

She left no note.  No letter, no message, nothing to indicate that she didn’t hate him for dragging her into the horror of the game.  He thought of her every day while he lay in his bed waiting for his body to heal.

It took a month for him to recover.  Three days ago he was finally able to walk.  Yesterday he was able to make it down the stairs unassisted.  Now, as he leaned against an old oak for support, his left arm still in a sling, he wondered what he would say when he saw her.  He’d read thousands of books, but somehow he couldn’t find any words.

He would say nothing, Nassar decided.  Id she told him to leave, he would turn around and go back to the airport and fly back to his life as the cursed revenant of Dreoch Tower.  Nobody would ever know what it would cost him.

He wanted to hold her, to take her back with him.  To have her in his bed, to taste her lips again, and to see a smile hidden in her eyes for him alone.

He was projecting.  Of course, he was projecting.  He barely knew her.  He didn’t even believe in love at first sight.  The fact that the memory of the first time he saw her, walking through the airport, was etched in his brain proved absolutely nothing.  The fact that she dragged him up the heap of broken concrete proved nothing.  She probably hated him.  He should leave.  Nassar sighed.  His feet remained rooted to the ground. If she hated him, he had to know.

The door opened.  Three women stepped out, but he saw only one.

Grace halted.  Nassar held his breath.

She took a small step toward him, and then another, and another, and then she was crossing the street, and coming near.  He saw nothing except her face.

Her magic brushed him.  She dropped her bag.  Her hands went up to his shoulders.  Her brown eyes smiled at him.

Nassar stood very still, fighting against the urge to grab her and crush her to him, afraid he would break her.

“You look well,” she told him.

“Come with me,” he said.  Damn it, he was mangling it.  “Or let me come here.  So I could see you.  I need to see you.  I…”  It was all over.  He’d screwed it up.

“I’m cooking a pot roast,” she said.  It’s nothing special, but it’s been in slow cooker since this morning, so it should be right about done by now.  Would you like to have dinner with me?  At my place?”

The words penetrated slowly.  Dinner.  “Yes.”

She exhaled.  “I was worried you would say no.”

He held out his hand and she put her hand into his.  Together they walked down the street.  A curious feeling filled Nassar, a kind of wild elation.  He felt light, as if the weight that rode on his shoulders for the last sixteen years fell apart and crumbled into nothing.  He puzzled over it, stroking Grace’s hand gently with his fingers, and realized that for the first time in his adult life he felt hope for true happiness.

END

I had never before questioned Jim’s loyalty; he was Alpha of Clan Cat and for all intents and purposes my Second.  Doolittle despised pack politics and had saved my life more often than I liked to think about.  Derek had become a member of the Pack after his father had gone Loup and slaughtered his mother and sisters.  When this happens, and it happens more often than humans think, SOP is to kill male survivors, especially adolescents as they were believed to have a genetic predisposition to going Loup.  Jim had been in favor of putting Derek down.  I had overruled him, which I rarely do.  The kid had been through a lot and I decided he deserved a chance.  Had I made a mistake?  That Raphael was involved in this surprised me not at all.  If Bea’s little peacock thought I wouldn’t mess up his pretty face he was as dumb as those girls who followed him around like dogs in heat.

What could possibly cause a cat, a wolf, a hyena, and a middle-aged medmage honey badger to risk my wrath?  I couldn’t figure out the what or the why, but I had a damn good idea of the who.  Kate Daniels, professional fuck-up.  Kate worked for the Order, humans who despised my kind.  Yeah, she was employed by the Order and did jobs for the Guild, but I swear her mission in life was to make mine miserable.  She defied me publicly, challenged me privately, and God help me, she bounced around inside my head like a bull in a china shop.

As soon as I had gotten wind that something was amiss, I had called her.  In her usual charming and diplomatic way she had both denied any and all knowledge as well as politely declining to assist me in any way.   Of course she was in this up to that nice ass of hers.  Later as I started to put the pieces together, she had called to tell me that she and Jim were running off together and even offered me an erotic dinner if I could find them in three days.  Kate short-circuits my brain.  In my head we always have these clear coherent exchanges, but once we meet, what comes out it is, “Kate, do what I say or I’ll kill you.” Her default reply is, “Fuck you!” and we go downhill from there.

Once I shook the idea of naked Kate out of my head, the big picture made no sense.  Jim and Kate had worked together on odd jobs for the Guild but there had never been a hint of anything more than a friendship built on mutual respect. I knew for a fact that Jim liked that half-blind vegetarian tiger.  Who the hell ever heard of such a thing?  She gave the big cats a bad name and she kept trying to kill herself by driving too fast.

Jim had a high opinion of Kate’s abilities, which was a rare thing.  Kate was skilled with that sword of hers, almost as good as she thought she was.  I kept trying to puzzle it out: even if they had decided to run away together, how did the Games figure into it?  I knew Kate would fight for the fun of it, or the money.  Did they need the money for their new life together?  How had they gotten the others involved?  Derek worked for Jim, almost worshiped Kate.  If they had used him…. That I could not forgive.

I also knew that Raphael’s mate was Kate’s best friend.  He would do anything for her or just to piss me off.  Perhaps he thought his Mommy could intervene on his behalf if he got caught.  I had almost hoped B did interfere and got tangled up in it.   After all she has been a thorn in my paw as long as I can remember.  It would feel good to remove it.  Since Mahon was not mixed up in this nonsense, I could give him that honor.  I know he would enjoy it and faithfulness should not go unrewarded.  None of this of course explained Doolittle’s involvement.  Had they forced him to help?  Possibly, but he is a tough old bastard and you don’t cross a badger without a good reason.

I had to know, and so I tracked Kate to one of Jim’s safe houses.  She was alone but I could smell the others, they had been there recently.  Derek was hurt, I could sense it.  That had driven me over the edge and I had leaped at her without looking.  Right into a Loup cage.

When I had stopped roaring, Kate explained it all.  I now knew about the Wolf Diamond and the Rakshasas.  I understood why Kate felt compelled to do these things.  It made sense; she was trying to help her friends and the Pack.  What I could not condone or comprehend was how she did these things.  Some people go about things in a roundabout way.  Kate blows things up and then tries to glue the pieces together with spit.  If she had only come to me in the beginning, but now it might be too late.

As I sat at the bottom of the Loupe cage, waiting for the skin on my palms to heal enough to try the silver bars again, I slowed my breathing and went over my options.  None were great.  I could wait for them to let me out of this cage or for someone else to find me.  No, that was unacceptable.  I am the Beastlord, I will not be crated and let out like a puppy.  I could break out of this, but it would hurt, a lot, and in that rage I would slaughter not only Kate and cohorts but anyone who tried to stop me.  As angry as I was, I had to admit I did not want to do that either.

By now they would already be in the Arena.  Short of slaughtering the entire Red Guard, I could not get in there to stop them before the entire audience of sick fucks saw members of the Pack take part in the Games.  After that too many people would know and I could not let that pass.  If they survived I would have to kill them.  By myself in front of the rest of the Pack.

Kate had finished her spiel and left.  I forced myself to relax and try to find a way out of this mess.  I assumed I was alone with my thoughts when I heard something move down the hallway.  The smell was familiar but I could not place it, definitely not Kate but…

Julie.  Her kitten.  All I had to do was to convince her to let me out.

I closed my eyes and listened to her sneaking through the house.  Close by, almost close enough.  Here, kitty kitty.

The alarm chimed, sending tiny shivers through Deirdre’s fingers, coated in liquid interface. Five minutes to the opening speech. “All right, all right.” She shrugged the lead-grey metal off her hand and caught her reflection in the mirror. The hair. She had forgotten about her hair.

Her gown looked fantastic. She loved this dress; the cut and color suited her: a shimmering grey-black that caught her breasts, wound about her waist and fell down in clean lines to brush the floor. Unfortunately, the gown alone wouldn’t do it. Her hair set atop her head in an ugly pile, and it was too late to do anything about it. It’s your fault, Robert, she thought, pulling out the pins one by one. She dragged the brush through her hair and inspected the result.

Hideous.

That’s fine, she decided. Nobody can be expected to be ran ragged for nine straight hours and then attend a banquet looking perfect.

A knock jarred her from her thoughts. “Open!”

The door slid open, revealing Fatima Lee in her navy blue power-dress. Robert’s aide-de-camp looked perfect, her hair a glossy black wave, her face fresh as if she had taken a long refreshing nap instead of the grueling administrative marathon.

“Three minutes to opening speech. If we’re late, Robert will suffer a deep space fit.”

They headed out the door and down the winding hallway at the speed of a brisk march. Unbound by gravity, the makers of the Orbital Embassy had constructed an impossibly tall banquet hall, and the hallway circling it matched it in height. Today the huge walls and ceiling lost in darkness brought a sense of foreboding. Like going through some ancient Temple to be sacrificed.

Fatima’s communicator buzzed with voice of Michel Rashvili. “Where are you? Robert’s losing it.”

“We’ll be there in thirty seconds, tell his Excellency to keep his panties on.” Fatima snorted. “I don’t get it. The man can negotiate with terrorists with a needle rifle pressed to his temple, but banquets drive him up the wall.”

“That’s because he can’t control a banquet,” Deirdre murmured. “And the stakes are high.” 30 million lives hanging in the balance would give anyone a pause.

They rounded the curve. The huge doors of the banquet chamber waited wide open just ahead, under the banner depicting the Duke of Rodkill, Robert’s mentor and veritable legend in the annals of the Diplomatic Corps. Fatima zeroed in on the doors.

Several men dressed in black entered the hallway from a side passage, also aiming for the door. Deirdre caught Fatima’s arm. “The Reigh.”

The aide-de-camp halted. The Reigh moved in silence, like black ghosts, each carrying a vered, a short ceremonial branch, in left hand signifying their peaceful intentions. Tradition dictated they stayed silent when in sight of the enemy until given permission to speak by the Lord. For them, everyone is an enemy, Deirdre thought.

They had to be desperate for the money to even enter the Orbital. Unfortunately, taking money for their military services was the very thing that the Reigh doctrine categorically forbade.

A tousled man shot out of the doors at a near run � Michel Rashvili mumbling into his communicator. As if in slow motion Deirdre saw him crash into the nearest Reigh. The black-gloved hand let go and the sign of peace clattered to the floor. Oh great Lao Tzu.

Michel stumbled, caught himself. His face went slack with shock. A short-range plasma firearm leaped into Fatima’s hand almost on its own.

“Michel, kneel!” Deirdre approached and dropped to her knees.

Michel hit the floor next to her. Wide-eyed, he looked at the veled. “I’m so sorry. Should I?” His voice shook.

“No. Keep your head down, don’t look them in the eye.” Very slowly Deirdre reached and picked up the branch off the floor. Holding it on her open palms, she raised it above her head, like an offering. Their eyes fixed on the floor, they waited. Moments dripped by, long and viscous. Finally the Reigh closest to her stepped forward. Leather brushed her palm, and the Reigh moved on, still silent, into the banquet hall. Deirdre remembered to breathe.

“Sweet Jesus.” Michel straightened. “I can’t believe I knocked that out of his hand.”

“You didn’t.” Fatima’s firearm had vanished. There was no way it could be hidden in that tiny dress. “He dropped it.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“He dropped it,” Deirdre confirmed, looking after the Reigh making their way through the banquet hall. “When was the last time you fought in hand to hand combat, Michel?”

The adjutant ran a shaking hand through his hair. “I don’t remember.”

“They do it every day. Trust me, if that man didn’t want to run into you, you wouldn’t have touched him in a million years. Go hide somewhere.”

“What?”

“Go hide, dimwit.” Fatima snorted. “When Robert finds out, he’ll blow his core. You want to give him a few hours to cool off.”

The words finally made an impact and the adjutant took off down the hallway.

Deirdre frowned. “We have been tested, and I’m not sure we’ve passed. Why do I have a feeling this isn’t going to end well?”

“Because it won’t.” Fatima’s face was grim. “Let’s go.”

For better or worse they entered the banquet hall.

#

The red-furred Vunta officer at Deirdre’s left smiled at her, exposing fifty two sharp teeth, arranged in twin rows in his cavernous mouth. The effect was enough to give a hardened Navy veteran a lifetime of nightmares.

“You wook wowery,” he offered, sounding very much like a Terran Scottsman with a mouthful of tissue stuffed into his cheeks. He hit her with a direct, unblinking stare.

Trying to dominate. He should know better. “Thank you.” She showed him her teeth and glared back.

For a moment they stared eye-to-eye, neither willing to back down. Deirdre ground her teeth. The sound died in the hum of the banquet hall but not before the Vunta heard it. A noise reserved for the alpha of the Vunta society, the grinding had the same effect on the Vunta as the scarping of the nails on a glass had on human ear. The officer wrinkled his muzzle and looked away.

Deirdre glanced across the hall at the Vunta, seated here and there at the tables. Too many flickering ears, too many flashes of teeth, too much animation in the gestures of furry paw-hands. Like sharks smelling blood in the water. What is going on? What do they know that we don’t?

She looked to Robert, seated at the head table between the Vunta Ambassador and the elderly lemon-skinned Monrovian with mournful iconic eyes. Sir Robert Sergei Sarvini, Ambassador of the Second Intergalactic Empire to the Branches of Reigh, looked perfect: hair slicked back into a horse tail, handsome face shaven, trim figure sharp in Diplomatic Corps formal midnight blue. Urbane, debonair, eloquent, every inch worthy of the long list of titles attached to his name.

Robert’s food lay untouched on his plate. Officially the banquet was thrown in honor of the successful treaty negotiations between the Monrovians and the Vunta Caliphate, for which the Empire, in the form of Robert, had provided a neutral meeting ground. Unofficially, Robert wanted to woo the Reigh. Unfortunately, he was stuck at the head table, sandwiched between the two treaty partners.

Their stares connected and in his eyes she read a confirmation. Yes, something’s up. No, we don’t know what. We can do nothing about it. Just sit tight and wait.

Deirdre sighed. There were four parties to this dance: the Vunta Caliphate, the Monrovian Republic, the Empire, and the Reigh. Each wanted something and would claw all others bloody to get it. All she wanted to do was to prevent a massacare.

She looked to the guest of honor table where the Lord Nagrad of the Reigh sat with Nina on one side and a white-furred Vunta dignitary on the other. The rest of the Reigh formed a line behind the table. None but the Lord had chosen to sit down. None ate or drank. A line from the Reigh Codex popped into her head: I will consume no food in the house of my enemy�

Nagrad’s scarred face was grim. Had he been from an inner Imperial world, she would’ve guessed him at eighty or ninety. Her painstaking research put him at closer to sixty. The only Reigh lord in the history of his people to entertain the idea of cooperation. His wife was dead. His entire family consisted of his son. And the Vunta Raiders were very afraid of him.

The Vunta dignitary shot Nagrad a toothy smile and said something. Nina cut in, smooth, breathtaking like a golden angel against the backdrop of black. Deirdre felt a stab of jealousy right in the stomach. Nina’s perfect six foot and one inch tall figure was wrapped in a strapless gown of champagne-colored lace, accented with complex swirls of golden thread. The dress hugged her like a glove. The color perfectly complemented her light blonde hair and light bronze complexion.

“Why couldn’t we have her job?” Fatima murmured at her right.

“Because we don’t score 8:13 on the proportion scale,” Deirdre said. “And because we haven’t been trained as escorts and we don’t have a perfect recall.”

“Bullshit,” Fatima said. “You know you could do what she does with your eyes closed. You’re a freaking cultural attache. You know more about Reigh than all of us combined. You should be picking the Reigh Lord’s brains, not she.”

“She knows what she’s doing. My job is to compile and analyze the information. Her job is to keep the object of her attention enraptured.” And it would be an incredibly difficult task, considering the strictness of the Reigh rules of conduct. Nothing off-color. Not a hint, not a joke, not even an idea of impropriety. No reference to sex, religion, or politics. Deirdre smiled. “I’m perfectly happy to advise her from the sidelines.”

Fatima sneered. “You have no ambition. In the next life, you’ll be reborn as a tea kettle.”

Nina reached for a small appetizer and artfully offered it to the Reigh Lord. He accepted the tiny twisted dough puff and bit into it. Nina continued talking. She had a way to totally engage a person in conversation, until speaking to her appeared to be a reward in itself.

The Reigh Lord finished the puff. A nervous tick jerked his face once, twice. A grimaced twisted his features, baring his teeth. He arched his back, biting at the empty air. His hands flailed, knocking over the goblets and plates. A spasm gripped his body. He shuddered, froze, and fell back against his seat, foam sliding from his lips down his chin.

For a moment absolute silence claimed the hall. And then chaos broke.

#

The situation made absolutely no sense.

Deirdre dipped her fingers into the interface. The liquid metal coated her hand, climbing from her fingertips all the way to her wrist. It slid between her fingers, slightly cold, dry but slippery with silky smoothness, the way very fine sand might feel if individual sand granules were perfectly round. As the synaptic implants under her skin made connections with free floating nanoclusters, she felt her hand–skin, muscle, ligament, and bone–stretch impossibly far. She thought of the archive. The four petals of the unit ignited with pale green, and the huge collection of files, the sum total of her research and archival documents, flared into existence, projected into space above the petals

Ten feet away Robert slumped in the chair. In the corner Nina rubbed her face with her hands. The room was dim, the huge communication screens on the wall silent and dark, all except the one on the right side, showing the map of the sector. In the center of the map hung the Colchida Cluster, three stars, eleven habitable worlds total, four warp points, thirty million colonists. It used to belong to the Monrovian Republic. Situated too far from Monrovian industrial centers, it was all but worthless to the Republic. But to the Empire, the Cluster was a diamond in rough. Had the Empire been given a chance to develop the Cluster, it would’ve become the biggest industrial and commercial base of the sector.

Unfortunately the Vunta Caliphate very much enjoyed raiding the Cluster while it was in the Monrovian possession. The numerous stars of the Caliphate, tinted with pale blue to show the territory boundaries, hung in the corner of the map like a storm cloud. It would take the Empire at least two decades to build up the defenses of the Cluster to a survivable level. Until then, the only guard against the Vunta were the Reigh, a thin ribbon of worlds tinted with green.

The Vunta wanted to make the last run at the Cluster, stripping it of all valuables. Hundreds of lives would be lost. The Empire would threaten war and the Caliphate would back off with apologies, but the budding economy of the Cluster would be wrecked. It would take decades and billions to recover.

The Empire needed to protect the Cluster. The Reigh needed the money. But the Reigh doctrine forbade trading payment for military service. And so the staff of the Embassy had to figure out how to skirt the Reigh doctrine. To find an underhanded way to exchange money for protection with the people, who were forbidden to become mercenaries. Now it would never happen.

They were responsible for the safety of 30 million colonists and they blew it. The thought made her stomach lurch.

Deirdre sank deeper into the interface, both arms up to the elbow, speed-reading through the flurry of documents and her notes. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was sure if she just figured out what it was her subconscious was trying to tell her, the situation would become logical.

Fatima moved on quiet feet to stand at Robert’s side. “Would you like some tea?”

“What I would like is to travel back in time twenty four hours and strangle the sushi chef. How could we not know Nagrad was allergic to redfish caviar?”

Deirdre heard the question. It sank in slowly, fighting its way through her focus.

“Numerous reasons,” she said, still reading. “Nagrad could have not known he was allergic. He could have deliberately hidden the allergy so it wouldn’t be used against him. He could’ve been distracted by Nina and not realized what he was eating. The Vunta could’ve poisoned him. Your theory is as good as mine–all of them are total rubbish. “

Robert startled. “Why?”

The tone of her voice snapped her out of her search. “Because the Reigh are suspicious paranoiacs, who also happen to be very poor actors.”

She tossed the recording of the banquet to one of the side screens, fast-forwarding to the right frame. “Look at him. Yes, he’s taking pains to listen to Nina, but he’s hardly absorbed. He can’t even pretend to be interested enough to fool a casual observer. He’s definitely not distracted enough to ignore poisonous food. Look at the line of faces behind him. They are about as relaxed as stone idols on New Barbar and they are watching him so hard, they don’t even blink. Do you really think they would let him put something bad in his mouth? Not really. Nor would they let the Vunta mysteriously sprinkle something on his food. This whole thing makes no sense at all.”

The main screen ignited and the face of Timur Gonzales came into the view. The Chief of Security looked slightly baffled, hooded dark eyes melancholy, long phlegmatic face relaxed, as if he just woke up from a long nap in sunshine. It made total sense that the Reigh would demand communication through him�the Branch Nagrad and the Empire were now technically in the state of war. Unfortunately he had about as much diplomatic ability as Deirdre herself.

Timur dragged his fingers across his chin, stroking an imaginary beard. “We have contact.”

Robert looked up. “Patch them through.”

“They won’t talk to you,” Deirdre said, almost at the same time as Timur. “Why not?”

“Because you’re technically responsible for Nagrad’s death. They would be honor-bound to kill you on sight,” Deirdre said.

“What she said,” Timur added.

Robert growled. “Fine, patch them through on the side screen as a closed feed.”

“They’ve already delivered the terms.”

The veins in Robert’s temples bulged. “For Zeus’s sake, would you stop wasting my time then and give me the bloody recording?”

A harsh-faced Reigh filled the screen. “You’ve robbed our Branch of a great man. You must atone. The bloodtree must be replenished. You will provide a woman for Lord Nagrad so an heir can be born. And you will pay a dowry. A very large dowry for the insult was grave. Thirty billion units.”

Deirdre blinked. Brilliant. Lao Tzu, that was simply brilliant.

Robert exhaled. “Out of the question! The entire Reigh Branch can survive for a decade on that money. Tell him�”

Deirdre cut in. “Robert, a marriage would make you related. He would be honor-bound to protect your possessions.”

She watched the thought sink in. Robert’s face took on an intense look of a hound closing in for a kill. “Ask him if the marriage would mean Branch Nagrad would protect the Cluster in the event of a raid or invasion.”

Timur intoned the words. Deirdre tuned him out, going back to her notes. She already knew the answer.

“Yes,” Timur relayed.

Robert leaned back. “So here it is. Nagrad Junior doesn’t waste time, does he? Thirty billion is a bit steep, but it’s doable.”

“I’ll do it. It’s my responsibility.” Nina rose with dignity, her voice hoarse. “You may tell Lord Nagrad that I accept his proposal.”

“He doesn’t want you,” Timur said.

“Well, who does he want?” Robert asked.

Deirdre finally hit on the correct recording, thirty-two years ago, one of the first contact missions to the Reigh. The ceremonial trading of the swords, and sharing of the food. She zoomed the picture, focusing on the platter before the Survey Captain and a young-looking Reigh warrior�

Robert’s face penetrated the projection. She looked up at him.

“Deirdre,” he said, his voice quiet and earnest. “Do you remember your oath to the Diplomatic Corps? The part where you promised to dedicate your body and mind�”

“To serve to the most of my ability and to sacrifice my life should my duty demand it. Of course I remember.”

Robert tried to pick up her hands but they were covered in the liquid interface. He settled on holding her shoulders instead. “How do you feel about sacrifice in a form of a marriage?”

“Lord Nagrad desires a meeting with his bride,” the Reigh said. “He wants to determine that she is of sound body and free of mental retardation. She must be ready in one hour.”

Robert wheeled about. “Our shuttle. Tell him our people are coming with her and we want her safely delivered back or the deal is off.”

After a momentary pause, the Reigh inclined his dark head. “Agreed.”

#

The hallways of the Nagrad Keep looked unlike anything Deirdre had imagined. She had pictured bleak dark walls; instead she found wall-long windows and a palette ranging from rust to fresh mint green. As she walked down the corridor between Timur and Johanna Bray, the red rays of the rising sun danced on the wall and slid on her gray dress, adding color to the fabric.

It didn’t make her feel any better.

She recalled Robert’s briefing: You’re going there to haggle. Get him down to twenty billion. Take the initiative and don’t let him control the conversation. I’m sorry I can’t be there with you, but I promise you, I won’t send you to him without backup again. This is just the first step, Deirdre. We have a long way to go before we’ll agree on the amount.

The fact that she was being appraised like a cow at market apparently didn’t bother him at all.

Their escort, a Reigh woman in black leather, led them to a wooden door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.

“Why me?” Deirdre murmured.

“Because you’re hot,” Timur said. “Because he hates blondes. Because a bug bit him this morning when he got out of bed.”

“He had it on the first one,” Johanna said. “You’re pretty hot. Don’t worry, we’ll get you back up to the Orbital in one piece.”

The door opened and their escort invited them into the room with a sweep of her hand.

Deirdre stepped through. Despite the large window, gloom pooled in the corners and snuck across soft rug. A single table stood in the middle of the room, lit by soft yellow light of a cluster lamp. Two chairs flanked the table. In a far chair sat a Reigh. Lean. Dressed in black like all of them. Black hair, cut short. He sat just outside the circle of light, and shadows masked his face. What a cheap trick.

The escort moved forward, silent like a shadow, and held the second chair out for her. Here we go. Her knees trembled. This is so stupid. Why am I scared?

She forced herself to walk across the carpet. Timur followed. The Reigh gave him a flat stare and the chief of security halted a few feet away. Deirdre sat.

“Lord Nagrad, I presume.” Her voice sounded almost normal.

The Reigh inclined his head. She could see him now. He had a hard face, not handsome but not unpleasant. Square jaw, strong nose. The same sharp intelligence she saw in his father’s eyes showed full force in his. How old is he? Thirty?

“I am�”

“Deirdre Lebed. I know.”

The sound of his voice almost made her jump. She looked past him, trying to collect herself, and saw four shadows in the depth of the room. Bodyguards.

Take away the initiative. Right. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?”

“Please, feel free.”

“Why choose a foreign wife? One who is unfamiliar with the traditions and culture? Why not just take the monetary restitution?”

He braided the fingers of his hands into a single fist. “To accept a bribe for the loss of life is forbidden by the doctrine. Besides, a woman from outside the Reigh has several advantages. The man is the trunk of a family, but the woman is its root. In our society, men own the children and the means of war. Everything else is owned by the woman. And too often a woman’s first loyalty is to her mother instead of her husband. It tends to make matters� complicated. A woman of the foreign blood has no one to turn to. She would exist solely at the mercy of her husband.”

Fantastic. This conversation was going a long way to allay her concerns about becoming a bride.

“And,” the Reigh Lord permitted himself a small smile. “Our traditions are rather binding. There are certain things a man could ask of foreign woman that would be considered unclean by the women of the Reigh.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things of sexual nature. Do you consider yourself open-minded in those matters, Lady Deirdre? Would you do all those things at my request?”

If he was willing to walk down the road, it was perfectly fine with her. With Reigh being as rigid as they were, it was likely he’d bail first. Deirdre arched her eyebrows. “Very few women within the Empire do all things, Lord Nagrad. I cannot confirm what I may or may not do without knowing what you have in mind. Would you be more specific?”

She smiled and waited for him to back off.

“Would you suck my cock?” he asked.

She stared at him for a long moment, trying to make sure she didn’t mishear. Behind her someone made a strangled noise.

The Reigh Lord waited for her answer. His face was perfectly solemn.

“Well.” She cleared her throat, desperately hoping she didn’t blush. “I suppose that could be� hrhm arranged under certain circumstances. Is there any� other requests you would like to make?”

He raised his hand. One of the shadows detached itself from the gloom and brought a platter with a thin pseudo-paper magazine. She hadn’t seen pseudo-paper since her days at Altair museums during her graduate on the Colonial Journalism.

Nagrad took the magazine off the platter and put it on the table. The digital photograph on the cover left no doubt as to what kind of a publication it was. He flipped the pages and pushed the magazine toward her. “Would you do this?”

“Yes.”

He flipped another page. “This one?”

“Possibly.”

“This one?”

She felt the blush creeping onto her cheeks. “Yes.”

“What about this one?”

She squinted, trying to make sense of the naked shapes. “Is that even possible? Wouldn’t you have to have low G for this?”

“Or a very strong woman.”

“I’m not sure I’m that strong.”

“I suppose we could arrange a shuttle trip than,” he offered.

“No, thank you. Thirty billion is an outrageously large sum.”

“You think so? Considering the scale of the injury, I believe it’s just right.” He flipped the page. “How about this one?”

#

Robert’s face was incredulous. “You didn’t drop him at all? Not even by half a bil? Oh Hermes, a child could’ve done better.”

Deirdre threw the recorder onto the table. Nagrad’s face, frozen on the screen, mocked her with grey eyes. “What do you want from me, Robert? Every time I tried to bring up the money, he would show me more porn. The man asked me if I would suck his cock! How do you counter that?”

A soft voice interrupted, “By saying, ‘That would depend on the size of your instrument, my lord. Would you care to take off your pants so I can determine if it would be a good fit?’”

Robert bent in a half, “My lord.”

She turned to see an older man in soft green tunic. He gave her a light smile, as if he was too polite to laugh at his own off-color joke.

“Holy crap, the Duke of Rodkil.” Fatima’s heels clicked together.

Deirdre bowed. The living legend placed his hand onto her shoulder. Imposing on the portraits, in person he appeared rather slight, short with narrow, bird-boned frame. “No need to bend your back, my dear. I understand Robert called me as soon as he knew, but despite all of our progress, there are times when the interstellar travel isn’t quite fast enough.” He nodded at Nagrad on the screen. “A very shrewd man. Let’s see if we can cut him down a bit, shall we? I’ll need all of the background you have.”

#

Deirdre shrugged the interface off her hands and leaned back against the seat. Her head throbbed. The ancient diplomat was still speed-reading, submerged in the interface up to his elbow.

“What’s the significance of kneeling? Submission?”

She rubbed her temples. “Not exactly, Your Grace.”

“Jason,” he corrected.

“Jason,” she repeated, trying to ignore the absurdity of referring to a recipient of the Diamond Sword by his first name. “The Reigh don’t submit. Not even in battle–when they surrender, they raise their hands to the sides, daring a thrust to the stomach. The kneeling� It’s more a gesture of ultimate respect. A Reigh kneels only before his Lord and only once, at the acceptance into service. A Reigh Lord kneels before no one.”

“A quaint culture. So many references to the vegetative symbolism.”

“Yes.”

The Duke� Jason glanced at her. “You should sleep, my dear. You look exhausted. He’s likely to call for another meeting tomorrow.”

She sighed. “Why? I couldn’t haggle him down. He’d be smart to avoid us so he can hold on to the original sum.”

“But he knows you don’t control the proverbial purse strings. He’s perfectly aware the real fight is ahead and he doesn’t want to give us enough time to regroup.”

She sighed. “He caught me off-guard. I expected coldness, some sort of brutal physical test, perhaps a ritual where I’d have to untangle tree branches without breaking the leaves or untie an impossible knot. I didn’t expect dirty pictures. It goes against everything I know about them. It makes me question my assumptions.”

Jason shook his head. “What I’ve seen so far is both thorough and well documented. Your conclusions are logical and, I wager, quite accurate. Robert is very lucky to have you, and he knows it, otherwise he wouldn’t have called me.” The Duke chuckled. “Quite a hit to his pride, to have to call your former mentor out of retirement. But back to the Reigh, don’t doubt the entire body of your research on the basis of Lord Nagrad. In diplomacy, like in great many other things, the rules of engagement survive only until one remarkable person decides to break them. It’s just our luck we stumbled across such a person.”

“That, and the fact that I’m a lousy diplomat.”

“To each his own. You’re an excellent analyst. Not everyone is born with the gift of snappy comeback. But you should rest. And don’t worry, we may yet get you out of this mess.”

#

This time the meeting fell onto afternoon, and the sunlight filled the room. Nagrad waited in precisely the same position Deirdre had seen him the first time.

“Greetings, Lady Deirdre. And Your Grace.”

Jason smiled. “I wasn’t aware I’m well know to the Reigh.”

“You are,” Nagrad assured him.

“Very well, Lord Nagrad.” Jason rubbed his hands together. “In that case shall we dispense with preliminary niceties? Let’s talk money.”

“Indeed.”

They launched into the foray like two warriors, amidst clashing blades and thudding shields. By the second hour Deirdre lost the thread of the argument. By the fourth she caught herself dousing off.

Nagrad’s voice snapped her from her reverie. “I do believe the lady is tired. Let us take a break.” He offered her his hand. “Would my lady care for some fresh air?”

To say no would’ve been an insult. She put her hand in his and let him lead her out to the balcony. Big enough for a decent size party, the semicircular balcony extended out good twenty five meters. Nagrad maneuvered all the way to its farthest point and stopped at an ornate amber and white rail. The keep protruded from the side of the mountain and as she looked down below to where the forest shimmered awash with green leaves, a curious feeling of peace filled Deirdre. Bright blue and red birds flittered from branch to branch. Somewhere a distant relative of the Vunta howled once. She inhaled the air. It tasted sweet.

“Beautiful,” she murmured. “I forgot how lovely the planetside can be.”

“It’s home,” he said simply, putting the world into a single word.

Deirdre leaned on the rail. “Why me?”

“Because you’re attractive,” he said. “And I greatly admire your body.”

She blushed.

“Of work,” he added and offered her his reader. A list of recent publications lit the screen. The top one�

“This hasn’t been publicized. It’s classified information.” She took the reader and tapped the top title with the stylus. Here it was, the entire contents of her Reigh research. “How did you get this?”

“It was brought to my attention by a party concerned that we may have a loose mouth in our midst.”

“You tapped the Embassy’s network.” She stared at him stunned. Lao-Tzu, what else he could have access to?

“It wasn’t that difficult actually.” He shrugged. “I can’t afford informants in my branch, no more than you can tolerate the blame for my father’s death.”

“I had no informants.” She handed the reader back to him.

“I realized that once I’ve read through your analysis. To have deduced that much from external indicators is remarkable.”

The extent of his arrogance was even more remarkable. Deirdre looked at him. “Then perhaps you would enjoy another deduction.” She slid the square of a reader card from her data bracelet and snapped it into the reader. The recording of a peace meeting from three decades ago filled the screen. “This is the Survey Captain Sean Kozlov. And this, I believe, is your father. They are performing a peace ritual–they have fished together and now they are sharing their catch.” She tapped the screen, forcing it to zoom. “They are eating redfish. And redfish caviar.”

Nagrad watched the screen. The impassive mask slipped and in his face she saw profound sadness.

“Your father wasn’t allergic to caviar,” she said.

“My father was born without immunity to black moss.” Nagrad kept his gaze on the reader. “A genetic failure, a mutation that for some reason wasn’t detected. He had survived for sixty four years without contracting the infection. We didn’t realize he was sick until he began coughing black dust. Very rare in these times, unfortunately, it still happens.”

The black moss was incurable. Two month incubation period and then a soft death, as the victim fell asleep to never awaken. Instead of passing on in his bed, the Reigh Lord died in agony amidst strangers. “He took his own life.”

Nagrad leaned back. “He felt his death must serve the Branch. The only difficulty lay in finding the poison that would imitate an allergic reaction to redfish. The death didn’t happen as quickly as we had hoped.”

The realization struck her. “You were there,” she said. “Were you the one who took the veled off my hand?”

He closed his eyes for a briefest of moments. “Yes.”

“You stood there and you watched your father die.”

“He was my Lord. I honored his wishes.”

“He died to give you an excuse to take a bribe from the Empire.”

Nagrad’s face gained a dangerous edge. “Yes. And the Branch desperately needs the money. And you may be assured, my Lady, that I will do everything in my power to squeeze every last unit I can from your realm. To do any less would be to dishonor his death.”

He took the card from the reader and offered it to her, but she closed his fist about it. “It belongs to you.”

Before he could say anything else, she shook her head. “I understand, Lord Nagrad. I truly do.”

“I suppose you despise me.”

“No. I admire you.” She walked away so he wouldn’t see her face.

#

The evening brought a cup of fragrant tea and a knock on Deirdre’s door. “Come in,” she yelled, wishing with all her being the visitor would go away. Nina Carrest entered the room. Dressed into a soft robe that looked like it had been slept in, her hair pulled back from her face in a hastily made pony tail, Nina looked radiantly beautiful.

It was simply not fair that a woman should do absolutely nothing and look this good.

“I’m not sure why I’m here.” Nina shifted uncomfortably.

“Please come in.”

They sat on the soft circular couch and drank tea together. “I feel responsible.” Nina rubbed her left temple. “I don’t want you to think that I came here because I feel guilty and I want you to tell me it will be fine and it’s not my fault. I just� it should’ve been me.”

“It would’ve been me anyway.” Deirdre sat her teacup back onto the table. “The Reigh had hacked the Orbital’s database. I’m apparently the only one who didn’t know this. Robert fed them my research on purpose. Lord Nagrad very much wanted to meet me. He would’ve found an occasion to do so, one way or the other.”

“Still, I fed his father that appetizer�”

Deirdre offered her a smile. “I wouldn’t worry about that. The old Lord Nagrad didn’t die from an allergic attack. He was terminally ill and had taken poison so his son would have pretext to ask the Empire for the monetary compensation. His son was right there among the guards. He watched him die.”

Nina paled. “That’s monstrously cold bloodied.”

Deirdre sighed. Some things were harder to explain than others. She pulled her portable to her. A small part of her rebelled against interfacing this late. She had wanted the evening to last, to drink her tea, and enjoy the few minutes of comfort, to work on herself by being still. But the need to explain nagged her into dipping her hand into the liquid metal. She watched it creep up to mid-palm�no need for more�and waited until the sensation of stretching subsided enough to speak.

“The first colonists to have settled on some of the Reigh worlds pre-Second Empire were the Sureks. The word ‘lahiko’, the Reigh’s substitution for “clan”, is thought to have been a corruption of Surek Luh-iko, meaning literally ‘branch.’ However, if you ask a Reigh to pronounce it, he will say, ‘Lehgio.’ An almost perfectly preserved, true Latin pronunciation of legion.”

Deirdre played with the interface and it projected a small map of the Reigh territory. “During the Melasyan conflict, a large part of Melasyus’s army broke off, upset by his failure to secure peace. At this point they had been unpaid for over five standard years. They hadn’t seen their families. Most of them didn’t have families since the Planars had wiped planet after planet with their toxins. They’d had enough and they took their ships and left. Seven legions.”

She highlighted the home worlds of the seven branches of the Reigh one by one. “They were hardened veterans, disciplined, supreme warriors, whom Melasyus strove to make into ‘New Romans’. All they wanted was peace.”

Nina’s gaze was fixed on the map. She refilled their cups without looking.

“They came here?”

“I think so. There are more factors in play here than just a single word. For example, these branches on Nagrad’s standard. If we take off the leaves”�she called up a standard and swiped the abundance of stylized leaves from the branches�” and we have the Roman numeral XXVI. The twenty-fourth legion. And so on. My theory is that the legionnaires put as much distance as they could between themselves and Melasyus’ ambitions and settled here, mixing with native Surek population. Thirty years ago they were found. Only eight generations since they had left. They are paranoid, extremely martially proficient, and ruled by a doctrine of personal discipline and distrust of outsiders.”

“I see.”

“The legionnaires had stripped several worlds before they perpetrated their escape. Their descendants stretched those supplies for a long time,” Deirdre continued. “But they lacked the expertise to really build an industrial base. I’ve pulled the logs of their known purchases and ran a projection analysis. They are adept at keeping the fleet and armaments going, but they are rapidly depleting their supplies. Chances are they don’t have access to tech developed in the last two hundred years. Also the fact that Lord Nagrad hadn’t undergone a genetic screening leads me to believe they’re running out of medical equipment. They need vaccines. They need production facilities. They need new tech, but they don’t have an overabundance of natural resources nor do they have access to some unique goods. They can’t make their money in trade. In fact, the only resource they can export is themselves �they are superior warriors. Unfortunately their doctrine forbids them to do exactly that. They must fight for a cause. If this continues…”

“They will be overrun by the Vunta,” Nina said.

Deirdre nodded and shrugged the interface from her hand. “They must find a way to obtain financial resources without breaking the foundation of their society. Or they must give up being who they are. Lord Nagrad came up with a short-term fix. I believe his solution cost his son a great deal of pain.”

Nina looked at her. “Tell me about him.”

Deirdre thought about it. “Very smart. He has very light eyes, grey with a little bit of green. He’s tall. He bends slightly toward you when he speaks. He has large hands and almost never gesticulates. When you speak to him, you get a sense that if he hates you, he’d kill you in a second, but if he likes you, he would do all he could to keep you from harm. It’s a curious feeling.”

Nina was smiling.

“Did I say something funny?”

“Not at all. Will you really marry him?”

That was a question she had successfully avoided asking herself for two days now. “I don’t see how I have any choice in the matter. If I didn’t have to marry him, I would’ve requested an extension anyway. The research material I had compiled here is my best work. I want to know more about them. Looks like I’ll get to, just not in a way I had planned.”

The comscreen behind her erupted in a series of beeps and almost immediately somebody hammered on her door. She ordered it open, and Robert burst into the room.

“Get dressed! The Vunta overbid us!’ “What?”

“The Vunta just offered Nagrad the thirty billion he wanted in a Brotherhood Pact. He gets exclusive rights to raiding on the fourth world of the Colchida Cluster. We must bid higher, but I have to get approval before I can commit. It will take the com launch at least twenty eight standard hours to reach us with the answer. We must stall until the Treasury approves the expense. We have eight hours until the sun rises to come up with a plan.”

Deirdre crossed her arms on her chest. “What do you mean stall?”

“He’ll want this matter concluded now, before the Vunta back off, but he can’t just back out of the marriage, so he’ll demand a higher amount and when we fail to deliver, he will claim to be gravely insulted.”

“She could pretend to be sick,” Nina said.

“No, then he’ll claim we’re insulting him by withholding her. It has to be something else, something he can’t weasel out of.”

An idea snapped together. So simple and so ironic. Deirdre smiled. “Robert?”

“What?”

“How much smut do we have in our databanks?”

#

“I feel dirty.” Fatima laid her head back. “I don’t think I can take anymore.”

“Found another one,” Michel Rashvili announced. “The man on the back, legs bent, the woman holds his hands on the sides and squats onto his…”

“The amazon,” Deirdre and Nina said at the same time.

“Did that one,” Robert said.

“I thought the amazon was the one in a chair.” Michel yawned.

“No, that’s side-saddle.” Nina yawned too.

“Has anyone actually done the amazon? I mean like in real life?” Michel wondered.

“I have.” Duke of Rodkil yawned. “It’s overrated.”

Deirdre blinked her eyes, trying to stay awake. Whatever embarrassment she had possessed had fled hours ago.

Robert surveyed the room strewn in pornography sheets and sex toys. “It looks like we had an orgy.” He stifled a yawn, gave up and yawned. “Now look what you’re started, Rashvili. Don’t you know yawning is contagious? We all need a nap.”

Nina put her head down and snored.

“Highly appropriate post-orgy, I would say,” His Grace murmured.

The comscreen flared and the face of the chief of security came into the view. Nina jerked awake.

“We have contact with the Reigh. They want the bride and they want her now.” Timur squinted. “What exactly have you all been doing?”

#

The booster shot coursed through Deirdre’s veins, spreading a slightly cool sensation all the way from her toes to her scalp. She felt light as a feather. Twelve hour from now she would pay the price by passing out, but for now she felt fantastic.

The elation evaporated when she entered the meeting room. The Reigh guard had been doubled. Nagrad’s face promised a storm.

“Are you prepared to accept my terms?”

The question wasn’t aimed at her, but the harsh tone lanced her anyway.

“Of course, Lord Nagrad,” Jason smoothly said.

“Thirty billion?” The disbelief was plain on Nagrad’s face.

“Indeed. However, before the moneys and the lady can exchange hands, there is a small matter that requires your attention. A mere formality.”

“What matter?”

The Duke smiled. “In accordance with the formal union contract, the bride requests a full accounting of her duties.”

“I’ve delivered the full accounting during our first meeting.”

Not even a single glance in her direction. I am just an animal to be sold and bought.

“Yes, but the accounting states, and I quote, ‘…and to not shun the husband’s request in the bedroom, lest she sabotage the begetting of an heir.’ This fails to specify the exact nature of your attentions.”

“This was also covered in our first meeting.”

“But my lord,” she said, keeping her voice as sweet as she could. “That was but a very small part. The subject must be explored fully before I commit to you. I have a right to know what is required of me.”

“We’ve taken the liberty of preparing a short list of all ‘duties’ known to the bride.” With elegance of a dancer, Jason slid the reader card onto the table. “All that remains is for us to examine each entry and to determine whether or not it will enter into accounting. Should you require anything beyond what is detailed here, we will do our best to incorporate it into our list.”

Nagrad slid the card into his reader. It took him a good minute to scroll to the end of the list. His eyes blazed. “How many entries are here?”

“Five hundred and forty five.” The Duke’s voice couldn’t have been sweeter.

“I request all of them,” Nagrad said.

“In accordance to entry two hundred and three, will you then submit to having a cast of your anal canal so the dildo employed to penetrate your anus can be made to perfect proportions?”

The Reigh bodyguards froze.

Nagrad read the entry. “I won’t be requesting that one.”

Deirdre leaned forward. “With all due respect, my lord, I insist you review each one to avoid such misunderstandings.”

He finally turned to her. “I refuse to submit to this idiocy. The list could take days to review.”

“It’s my right under the law. You must review the list with the witnesses present. You have made an offer of a formal commitment. It cannot be withdrawn lightly.”

She could almost hear him grinding his teeth. “You are not a Reigh. You have no rights.”

“Yes, I do. You gave them to me when you delivered the statement of full accounting of my duties and requested a dowry. You have followed the law up to this point as if I was a Reigh bride. Does the doctrine exist only until it suits you, my Lord?”

For a moment she thought he’d reach across the table and strangle her. Instead he sat back. His face relaxed�it must’ve taken a monumental effort of will on his part�and the Reigh lord picked up the reader. “Very well. The first section is titled ‘Terms and Devices’. I believe we can skip that one.”

“Would my lord care to define the term anal plug?” Deirdre asked. “How about the difference between the soft and a hard one?”

If his eyes could shoot lightning, she would’ve been fried on the spot.

“Very well then.” His Grace announced with a placating smile. “Term number one: penis. Also known as dick, cock, Johnson, lance, sword, thruster, little soldier�”

Deirdre leaned toward. “You may want to call for some refreshments, my lord. It will be a very long day.”

Four hours later Nagrad tossed his reader onto the table. “I need some fresh air.”

He strode onto the balcony. Deirdre rose, stretching, and went outside also.

The second she stepped out of the room, Nagrad took her by the elbow. “Come with me, my Lady.”

His touch on her arm was very light, yet she knew with absolute certainty she couldn’t get away. He led her to the farthest point of the balcony out of the ear shot of the bodyguards within the room. “It’s you,” he said. “I know it’s you. You came up with this farce.”

“What gives you that idea?”

“You were gloating in every second of it. Why are you doing this?”

“I simply want to know what’s required of me.”

He turned away from her, plainly trying to keep control of himself. “This matter could be settled later. It’s of no consequence.”

“It’s of a great consequence to me. You opened the door, all I had to do was walk through it.”

“I opened the door?” he snarled.

“Temper, temper, my Lord. I’m sure your guards would rush to my rescue if you were to choke me. Patience is a virtue.”

He stared at her. “God preserve the man who makes an enemy of you.” He turned on his heel and stalked off.

Deirdre sighed and went back to the room. As she slumped into her chair, His Grace leaned to her. “How did it go?”

“My future husband hates me with a passion of a thousand stars,” she said.

The Duke gently patted her hand. “We’ll get through this.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

#

“Entry number three hundred and twelve: Multiple partners.” The Duke droned on.

Deirdre put her head onto her hands. Post-booster cooldown required at least twelve hours of sleep. She barely got eight before the Reigh demanded her presence. Her head hurt. Her ears were filled with something soft and mushy. Across the table Nagrad looked exhausted. The two Reigh witnesses, picked by him from the bodyguard, didn’t look much better.

“Subsection A. Two male partners and one female partner.”

“Pass,” Nagrad called. There were deep bags under his eyes.

“Let it be known that Lord Nagrad abandons all claim to the act described in entry number three hundred and twelve, subsection A and all the subsequent positions described or listed under subsection A.”

“So noted,” the witnesses intoned.

Everyone made the appropriate notations in their copy of the list.

“Subsection B: Two female partners and one male partner.” The Duke waited for a moment, but Nagrad appeared absorbed in his reader.

“Position one: the male partner assumes horizontal position with his back to the surface. The first female partner kneels�”

Deirdre rolled her eyes. Just pass now, you know you can’t take it in front of the witnesses. Nagrad listened to the description with the look of somber concentration. “Pass,” he said finally.

“Let it be known that Lord Nagrad abandons all claim to the act described in entry number three hundred and twelve, subsection A, position one.”

Deirdre stuck her tongue out at him.

Nagrad mouthed, “After we’re married.”

“So noted,” the witnesses mumbled.

“Position number two: the first female partner clasps the male partner’s�”

The Duke’s comlink beeped. “Excuse me. It appears I have an urgent call.” He strode away onto the balcony.

Deirdre put her head onto the table with a soft bump. Marry me off, I don’t care. I just want some sleep.

She heard the Duke’s footsteps. They stopped next to her. “Thirty five billion,” he said softly.

She raised her head. Nagrad sat very still.

“That’s an extraordinary offer.” A slow kind smile softened the Duke’s face. “You won’t get a better one.”

“Done,” Nagrad breathed.

There. The odd look on his face, relief mixed with surprise, brought out her own smile. We did it, she thought. We saved the cluster and we saved you and your people. She watched the beginning of a smile curl his lips. In this moment of joy, he seemed almost vulnerable.

“Thirty six billion, if you abandon your claim to Deirdre,” the Duke said.

Cold washed over her. That’s it. It’s over. I will never see him again.

“No,” Nagrad said.

“We both know it was never about the girl. Let her go.”

Nagrad’s face snapped back into an impenetrable mask. “She stays or the deal is off.”

The Duke drew himself to his full height, suddenly regal and terrifying. “Ask yourself, would you truly force yourself on this woman?”

Nagrad looked at her. “Do you want out?”

“She has a brilliant career ahead of her,” the Duke said. “Don’t stand in her way.”

Nagrad took her hand and swept her off the chair. “A minute of your time, my Lady.” He pushed past the Duke and drew her outside.

I’m so sick of running onto this balcony, a thought flashed through her head.

Nagrad ran his hand through his hair. “I’m past my undergrowth years.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m not an adolescent anymore. What I mean to say is, women no longer unsettle me.” He held up his hands, seemingly lost or words. “This is harder than I thought.”

He looked so lost that she laughed softly. “Did I unsettle you?”

“Yes,” he said, relieved. “I… miss you when you’re away. I think of you. I don’t want you to leave.”

“You were ready to trade me in for the Vunta billions.”

“Yes,” he admitted. “I would’ve done whatever was best for the Branch. What would you have done in my place?”

Deirdre looked at the forest beyond the balcony. “In your place I would’ve auctioned myself off if I thought I’d get more than one bid.”

The Duke and the bodyguards were watching them.

“I wish I knew what to say,” Nagrad said. “But if you give me a chance, I think I would come to love you very much. Marry me and I promise you I’ll be as loyal to you as my father was to me. I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”

The way he looked at her made Deirdre’s heart flutter.

He took a deep breath and glanced at the audience waiting in the room. “They will only see it once.”

Slowly, deliberately he knelt before her. “Stay,” he said. “Please.”

“Well that won’t do,” she murmured. “The Reigh Lord doesn’t kneel before anyone.” She knelt next to him. “That’s better.”

“Is that a yes?”

She brushed his lips with hers and he kissed her, her mouth eager and warm. “It’s a yes,” she murmured when they came up for air. “On one condition. You have to tell me your name, because I am not moaning ‘lord Nagrad’ on our wedding night.”

END

A Mere Formality by Ilona Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

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In the green glow of Nemurian midnight, the food stain on the geosurvey graph blazed electric orange. Sean Kozlov dragged his hand across his face in a vain hope some of his fatigue would stick to it and groped the surface of the desk for a pen.

The pen felt moist and cold. Suspiciously like a nose.

He looked up just in time to avoid a long pink tongue aimed to lick him right between the eyes. The trogomet scooted onto the graph, sniffed the food stain, and flopped on top of it, a two-foot wide ball of rust fur, equipped with four hands-feet and a shrew muzzle studded with tiny black eyes.

Sean yawned. Gods, he was tired. He reached to scratch the furry trogomet stomach. Two surveys left. Half an hour of work, then he would enter the last of the data into Snow White, and then he would finally sleep.

His hand froze. He was petting a trogomet. Twenty meters from Snow White. Sweet Olympus.

How did it even get inside past shutters and double doors? Never mind that, how was he going to get it out?

The trogomet let out a disappointed “Mook!” It rocked upright and sat on its haunches, its forehands held limp on its chest.

Cookie. As long as it had a cookie, it might not venture down the hallway, break through the vault door, and devour the only computer on the entire planet. Sean rummaged through the pockets of his pants, coming up with a half-crumbled disk of oatmeal.

“Cookie!”

“Mook!”

Sean jerked the window shutter open and tossed the treat into the bluish grass outside. Fuzzy black lightning shot past him, snatching the cookie in mid-air. Sean slammed the plestiglass shutters closed, locked them, and sprinted down the hallway to check on Snow White.

A thick plastic door barred entrance to the vault. Grasping the lever, he jerked it to the side, and the door slid into the recess in the wall. The trogomets had gotten pretty good at opening the standard issue doors, but the heavy side-slider left them stumped. A cluster of phoros spheres spilled lemony light on the small space between two doors. Sean stepped through, slid the first door closed behind him, and scrutinized the tiny space.

Nothing. No two-foot tall fuzz balls hiding in the corners. No “mook!”

Reassured, he slid the second door open, jumped through, and slammed it back with muscle-tearing force just in case. A rectangular room lay before him, empty, save for the transparent cube of plestiglass. Six feet high and two inches thick, the cube enclosed Snow White, a Fourth Order Workstation, the totality of the expedition computer arsenal. If you didn’t count the Dwarf, a small remote unit, which was little more than a glorified backup drive.

Snow White’s terminal glowed weakly. The motion sensors stayed silent. The workstation and the FER, the Final Evaluation Report, within it remained safe. The two dozen scientists whose two-year efforts and careers rode on that report wouldn’t have to lynch him.

“Cookie?”

No answer. Just silence.

It finally sunk in. Relief flooded him and Sean sagged against the wall, resting his head against the plastic. Enough sensors to deter a gaggle of ninjas and here he was yelling “Cookie!” like an idiot. Great Zeus, he was paranoid. Not my fault, he assured himself. Nobody can blame me. Living on a planet where a pocket computer unit served as a tantalizing appetizer would drive anyone into paranoia. Before coming to Nemuria, all personnel had to be stripped of their augmentation and implants. They’d surrendered their direct uplinks, their personal computer units, even their watches. He would’ve given his right arm for a piece-of-shit uplink. Anything to keep from typing. And writing. Gods, what a tedious chore that was. Just the hand cramps alone…

He squinted at Snow White one more time, before closing his eyes. She was still in one piece.

It wasn’t like the trogomets could help it. They weren’t bad natured, really, and pretty bright for a non-sentient species. Unfortunately, to an organism whose primary stomach housed a distant cousin of Geobacter metallireducens, most metals looked pretty tasty. Particularly iron. Manganese. Gold. Platinum. The Geobacter metallidevastor microbe gained energy from the dissimilatory reduction of just about any metal, and thus to a fuzzy, the innards of any computer presented a heavenly smorgasbord. If it was metal, it was food. How the hell did something like that even evolve? Nemuria was rich in metal deposits, but not that rich. Luckily, trogomets’s secondary stomachs liked carbohydrates well enough, or the fuzz balls would’ve starved to death eons ago.

Sean yawned. When did he last sleep? Was it twenty hours ago? Thirty? Did it matter? Fatigue flooded him, anchoring him, and he wanted nothing more than to curl on the plastic floor and pass out in the blissful glow of the electric lamp.

“Sean?”

The human body is an amazing organism. It can go from dead tired to completely alert in a terrified blink.

The Chief of Security raised his dark eyebrows. “I didn’t know you could jump that high.”

Sean mumbled and gave Santos a bleary-eyed stare of doom. It bounced off Santos like a trogomet from plestiglass.

“Do you remember when I told you that we have to run every transmission past the Great Wall, because we live less than a solar hour away from the third largest producer of AI synths and because their hackers think it highly amusing to screw with us every chance they get?”

Sean nodded. “I do. Every transmission’s ran through Great Wall. It comes through scrubbed to the bone.”

Santos looked grim. That in itself meant nothing. Dark-haired, with eyes so dark, they looked almost black, the Security Chief usually alternated between grim, phlegmatic, and stoic expressions.

“You logged on last night. Around one. There was a transmission from the satellite.”

“Yes,” Sean said. “And I ran it through the Great Wall. Like I always do. Check the protocol, Santos.”

“We no longer have the protocol.”

Sean opened his mouth, but suddenly the words refused to come out.

“Take your time.”

“A centipede virus,” Sean managed finally.

“Worse. A millipede, complete with respawn and AI subsets. It rode in on that last transmission and lay dormant for a couple of hours. Long enough for you to log off.”

Oh, Gods. A millipede virus that broke into segments, which would hide in the system, disguising themselves, each spawning dozens of new tiny millipedes… “The FER?”

“Fried.”

Sean felt like screaming. The Joint Commission would be here in four days and he had no report to give them. Nothing but a four-foot stack of paper notes from the section chiefs. It had taken a month of intense, brain-numbing labor to integrate loose notes from people who’d never handled paper before into a comprehensive scientific document.

“What about the back-up?”

Santos sighed. “As I said, the millipede lay dormant…”

“And when Julia brought the Dwarf to back up the FER, the millipede transferred into it?”

Santos nodded.

“Both back-up drives?”

Santos nodded again.

“What about the back-up disks?”

Santos’ stoic face gained a troublesome hint of emotion. “I’m worried about you.”

That’s right, the fuzzies had stolen the hard disks two weeks ago. He hadn’t worried too much at the time. After all, they still had Snow White and the Dwarf.

“So we’re screwed.”

Santos nodded. “Indeed.”

It occurred to Sean that he was dead and that Santos, with his somber impenetrable face, was his Thanatos come to take him to Hades to be judged for his earthly transgressions. He rocked back. Perhaps he wasn’t dead. Perhaps he was merely sleeping. Soon he would wake up and everything would be fine.

“Sean?”

“I’m not dreaming?”

“No.”

There was no possible way to recreate the report in four days, not with the amount of research material he had. The two standard years worth of data accumulation, analysis, hard work, frayed nerves… The section chiefs still had their paper notes, but the totality of their labor amounted to nothing unless it was presented to the committee. It would have catastrophic consequences on their careers.

He could always take the easy way out of this situation. He could bash his head against the wall and save himself the pain. He could…

His brain clicked.

“Nannybot,” he said. “Nannybot is the tertiary back-up. We back up all files to it every other week. It would have everything before I plugged Timur’s geosurveys in. I can fix that in four days.”

Santos sighed. “That’s the bad news…”

#

Sean crossed his arms on his chest and watched as the bio-storage unit, otherwise known as Nannybot, tried to ride a dwarf cow. The dwarf cow resembled a miniature Terrestrial buffalo with orange fur. In its quadruped mode Nannybot resembled a large but slender canine with a smooth indigo skin and a single lens in the middle of a tubular head. In its bipedal mode, it resembled an alien from early Terrestrial UFO mythos.

Neither mode was suited to riding. Particularly to riding terrified dwarf-cows, while holding a broomstick in one appendage.

“Why the broomstick?” Sean asked.

“Verne isn’t sure,” Santos said.

The cow charged a small bench, where Emily, the oldest of the children, sat reading her book. For a terrified moment Sean was lost between being frozen in panic and springing to the rescue. The cow veered left, avoiding the bench by a hair. He exhaled. “Tell me how this happened again?”

“The best Verne can figure out is that the millipede’s protocol pegged Nannybot as an AI during the back-up and spawned. Only of course, Nannybot isn’t a regular AI, so instead of shutting down it made it do… Whatever it’s doing right now.”

“But there was no Nannybot back-up scheduled for last night.”

Santos coughed. “Julia thought you were taking the back-up protocol too lightly. She’s been backing up to the Nannybot every night for the last week.”

Sean looked past the school yard, past the spasmodically jerking blue monstrosity on the cow’s back, to where Ino forest reached toward the sky, its smooth silvery stems intertwining and braiding. Garlands of ino-ino fruits beckoned from the branches like enormous dandelions. The air smelled of red wine.

“Why me?” he wondered idly. He hadn’t even wanted Nannybot in the first place. Officially classified as Independent Biological Reasoning Unit, Nannybot was neither independent nor reasoning. An abacus was a better substitute for a computer than this genetically-engineered collection of muscle and ganglia. Designed as an alternative to regular data storage, Nannybot had an enormous capacity, but it took forever to transfer even a small data cluster from the Dwarf into it. He voted to have it deactivated, but the majority vote sent it to tutor the children instead. And now his entire future depended on Nannybot. The Universe was mocking him.

The dwarf cow buckled and kicked, catapulting Nannybot into air. The IBRU flew over the fence, cleared their heads, flipping in the air like a cat, and landed on all fours. Santos snapped into a shooter stance, pointing his zapper at Nannybot.

“If you shoot it, I’ll kill you,” Sean said evenly. “The report’s still in it.”

Nannybot rose slowly. Its limb still clutched the broomstick. The round lens of its ocular swiveled. The vocal slit opened and smooth baritone issued forth. “Knights full of thought and sleepy, tell me if thou sawest a strange beast pass this way?”

“Dear Gods,” Sean said.

“The Beast!” Nannybot proclaimed, swinging the broomstick in a dramatic fashion. “I have followed this quest this twelvemonth, and either I shall achieve him, or bleed of the best blood of my body.”

“What does it mean?” Santos asked.

“It means nothing. It’s gibberish.” Sean said.

“Mallory,” Emily said.

“What?”

Emily looked up from her book. “It’s not gibberish, it’s Mallory. Arthuriana. Nanny thinks he’s Sir Pellinore.”

“Emily, honey, what is it trying to do?” Sean asked.

Emily smiled. “He’s trying to hunt the Questing Beast, of course.”

A small light of hope flared in the deep black void filling Sean’s head. “Tell me more.”

#

“There are only two ways to break down a third-order AI like Nanny: a chaotic protocol or a goal-oriented protocol.” Sean strode to the Chief Programmer’s block, Santos in tow. “The chaotic protocol floods the AI with a random avalanche of tiny tasks, which throws the system out of whack and drives the AI insane. There is no cure for that one. The goal-oriented protocol locks the system into a loop with a definitive goal in mind. Achieve the goal and the virus purges itself. The first way is tedious and doesn’t require much imagination. The second takes far greater skill.”

He paused but Santos offered no comment.

“Arbian hackers take pride in their work. They love a challenge. They wouldn’t slap together a chaotic protocol for that millipede – any hacker can do that. They sent a goal-oriented virus, so they could watch us squirm trying to solve it.”

“You think Emily is right?” Santos said.

“Yes. And Nanny’s behavior is too logical to be a product of a chaotic protocol.”

“So not everything is lost?”

“If – if – we break the loop and if Verne can get the Workstation back up, it’s possible we can salvage the FER. We…Ummm.”

They turned around the corner and saw Verne. Ratibor Verne, the Chief Programmer and Protocol Guide wore a ceremonial plastic hauberk. He had brought a proper metal one from New Barbar, but trogomets had found it within the first week and promptly eaten it. Sean had managed to convince the orbital station’s automated synthesizer to produce a plastic substitute, but it looked a bit ridiculous on Verne’s hulking figure, partially because it was colored neon green.

Verne faced a rock, on which sat a small idol. Foot-long and carved from some dark wood with startling detail, the idol squatted, clutching an axe in one hand and a stack of wheat in the other.

A couple of curious trogomets sat next to Verne, pondering the idol. At the sound of Sean and Santos’s steps, they scuttled forward, like twin clumps of tumbleweed, and sat on their haunches, tiny hands-feet raised, waiting for a handout. Santos extracted a cookie from his pocket.

“Cookie.”

The trogomets mooked in unison.

Santos broke the cookie in a half and handed a piece to each fuzzy. The delicate hands snatched the cookie halves. Small shrew-noses poked out of the fur to sniff the treat. The cookie vanished into tiny mouths and the trogomets took off. No doubt, they would’ve preferred a piece of copper wire.

Verne picked up a stick, hefted it in his hand, and hit the idol. Thwack!

Sean stopped. “Verne?”

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

“He has been a bad god,” Verne said grimly. “He must be punished.”

Thwack! Thwack!

“Two years I spent here! Two! Years!”

Thwack!

“On a planet with no system. No uplink, no sensors.”

Thwack!

“Always paranoid that what little I had would get eaten. And now he robs me of all of it.” Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

The stick snapped in his hand. The idol seemed no worse for wear. Verne cast the broken stick on the ground and looked for another one.

“Emily thinks Nannybot is a character from a 14th century Terran myth,” Sean said.

“Yeah?” Thwack!

“A knight,” Sean said. “Who hunts a Questing Beast.”

“Stop trying, Sean. It’s a chaotic protocol. We’ve been buggered.”

“Suppose it was goal-oriented, just for the sake of argument. How would we solve it?”

“Give Nanny what it wants,” Verne said. “Give it the Asking Beast, let it hunt it, and catch it.”

“There is no other way?”

“No.”

Santos rubbed his chin. “Where would we get a Questing Beast?”

Verne stopped. “You’re serious about this.”

“Yes.”

He rested his stick on his shoulder and looked to the sky. “If you’re wrong, then I will hate you for the rest of my life for giving me hope and then bashing it to pieces.”

“Understood,” Sean said.

“Make one,” Verne said.

“Make one? How?”

“You have genetic blanks in storage in orbit. The Workstation is shot but it will still transmit code. Input the correct parameters and…”

“That’s highly illegal,” Sean said. “Not to mention it would leave us without any spare tissue for limb replacement in case of emergency.”

“We’ve been on this planet for two years,” Verne said. “We’ve had about two dozen bites, and three twisted ankles. Do you really think that in the next week someone will suddenly get his leg chewed off?”

“Verne, we can’t just make a creature! I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to live the rest of my life in a controlled facility.” Sean turned to Santos.

“It’s a good idea,” the Chief of Security said.

“I can’t believe you two.”

“It’s a good idea,” Santos repeated.

“It’s up to you,” Verne said. “You’re the one who didn’t run the transmission through the Great Wall. You’re the team leader.”

Shawn opened his mouth. On one side fifteen careers. On the other, his life thrown away if he were found out.

If.

“Alright, let’s say we do it,” he said hoarsely. “The only person who can code something like that into the genetic synthesizer would be…”

“Jennifer,” Verne finished grimly.

#

Jennifer crossed her arms on her chest. She was petite and ten pounds on the right side of plump, and Sean couldn’t help but note that the way her arms were crossed pushed her breasts up and out.

Sean took his eyes from her chest and stared at the ground. That had been a problem all along. He knew it. He wasn’t sure if she knew it, and it worried him to think that she might. It may have turned out fine, possibly they could’ve even become a couple, but after Ickman had left, Jennifer was named his Joint Team Leader, which meant that she was the only person he could argue with without fear of entering a leader-subordinate relationship. And they argued a lot.

Sean took a deep breath. “I apologize for what I said earlier. I do concede that not all supporters of Autonomous System Structure are naive, slack-jawed, starry-eyed rich kids, who seek to alleviate personal guilt caused by their life of privilege. I also would like to say that a strong centralized government does have its weak points. And that I take back anything bad I’ve said before that could possibly piss you off.”

Jennifer brushed back her brown hair. “What do you want?”

It took him ten minutes to get through the explanation.

“You’re insane,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“Jennifer…”

“There’s a reason why it’s illegal, Sean! You can’t introduce a man-made species into an ecosystem. It can wipe the whole biosphere out.”

“We only need one. You could make it sterile.”

“No.”

“Jennifer, I beg you…”

“Ha!”

He desperately raked his mind for a way to convince her and found none. “Look,” he said miserably. “There are fifteen people who gave two years of their lives to study and assess this planet. Their careers will be destroyed. It will reflect badly on both of us – in the entire history of Survey, there has never been an instance when a team hasn’t turned in a Final Evaluation Report. Except for Captain Chef, but that doesn’t count because he and his crew were eaten. But that’s not even the important part. The important part is that without the survey report we can show no basis to support preservation. They’ll chuck this planet for development. The trogomets, the tari trees, the dwarf cows, the ino, all of it will be gone.”

She was looking at him. He took her gently by the elbow and turned her around to the window.

Long-stemmed grasses shivered in the light breeze, dotted by pale red flowers with white stamens that sparkled in the sun. In the distance, in a soft patch of Maiden’s hair weeds, a herd of dwarf cows watched two small calves butt heads with mock ferocity. Beyond the field, the tari forest rose like a jagged mountain ridge, silver, tall, and majestic. Above it all long feather-brush strokes of clouds highlighted the crystalline depth of the emerald sky.

#

“Emily, I want you to understand what’s at stake here,” Jennifer said.

Sean remembered to unclench his fists. They sat in front of the Workstation, tapped into the mainframe of the unmanned orbital laboratory. The complex interface of the genetic synthesizer filled the screen. Verne hovered somewhere in the shadows behind them like some menacing guardian of the cybernetic treasure trove.

“You can never, ever, ever tell anyone about this,” Jennifer continued. “Otherwise all of us would lose our jobs and Sean, Santos, Verne, and I would go into a controlled habitat. I realize this is a lot of responsibility for a fourteen-year old. I’m sorry to have to ask this of you.”

“I understand,” Emily said. “I promise not to say anything. I give my word.”

Jennifer took a deep breath. “Very well then. Let’s begin. It’s a chimera, so give it to me piece by piece.”

“Head of a snake,” Emily said. “Body of leopard. Haunches of lion. Feet of a deer.”

“What are you selecting as the primer?” Sean asked.

“A Polberian running lizard,” Jennifer answered.

“It doesn’t sound like a lizard,” he said.

“Sean, shut up. Go on, Emily. What else do we know?”

“It was big. It made noise like forty baying hounds. It lived to be hunted and it was smart, because one time when Pellinore stopped hunting it, it came and found him.”

“We don’t want it too smart,” Sean said.

“I can’t guarantee the baying,” Jennifer said.

Sean thought of saying that he doubted she could guarantee anything. For all they knew the whole thing would come out as a puddle of goo, but under the present circumstances, he decided against voicing his opinion.

#

Sean stood in the field, knee-deep in grasses. Somewhere a taina bird sang a trilling song. They had yet to catch one.

The incubation of Questing Beast took two days. They had less than twenty four hours until the Committee’s arrival.

A falling star winked into being. It blazed across the sky like a glittering emerald and streaked toward him. The pod. Finally.

The star grew into a white ovoid. For a moment it looked like the pod would plunge into the ground, and then the guides kicked in pulses of intense white flame, righting the pod, slowing the fall, and gently bringing it down in the middle of the field.

A hairline crack split the pod’s surface. Sean stared at the developing door with a sick feeling. Behind him Jennifer made a small noise.

The door swung upward, revealing the dark interior. Something stirred within the gloom, something large and alive. A long head attached to a flexible neck appeared from the darkness, elegant, narrow, almost equine rather than reptilian in its lines. Big eyes with cobalt-colored irises regarded them. The Questing Beast blinked and stepped into the grass.

“Dear Gods,” Sean said.

Lean and graceful, it stood on four muscled legs, ending in wide hooves. Silver fur, dappled with a spray of pale green and carmine rosettes, sheathed its body. A long silky mane flared on its sinuous neck.

It didn’t look like a chimera. It looked like a cohesive being, like nothing he had ever seen before, and it was beautiful.

The Questing Beast opened its mouth and a clear voice issued forth. “Dear Gods.”

Sean’s heart jumped into his throat.

Behind him Verne exhaled. “Oh, shit!”

“Oh, shit,” the Questing Beast said.

“It’s a mimic.” Jennifer strode toward it. “I told you I couldn’t guarantee the baying.”

“Jennifer!” Sean barked sharply. “Don’t get close to that thing!”

“Oh, please.” She reached over and the head dove to her hand. “It’s an herbivore.” She rubbed Beast’s silvery nose and it licked her palm with a long pale tongue. An odd noise emanated from it, as if it had swallowed a beehive and now the infuriated bees fought to escape.

“See,” Jennifer said. “It’s purring.”

Sean remembered to breathe.

“Well?” Jennifer asked. “Where is Nanny?”

Sean turned and waved his arms at Emily standing by the corral. She vanished behind the feed block and reappeared a moment later, followed by the Nannybot astride a dwarf cow fitted with a bridle and reins. The cow seemed surrendered to her fate.

“Is that a net he’s carrying?” Sean wondered.

“Emily’s idea,” Jennifer said. “He has to catch the Beast.”

The bizarre group approached them. Sean stood aside. “Sir Pellinore! This is the Questing Beast. Beast – Sir Pellinore.”

Nanny’s ocular unit swiveled. The Questing Beast blinked.

Without a word, Nanny dug his limbs into the cow’s ribs. The startled bovine jerked forward, the Questing Beast moved in a silver shimmer, and just like that both were gone, galloping across the plain, the lean elegance of the Beast followed by the bouncing Nanny on top of the orange puff of fur.

In a couple of breaths they reached the forest and vanished from the view.

“Ummmm,” Sean said. “Did what I think happened just happen?”

Nobody answered.

“What now?” he demanded.

“Now we hope Nanny catches him in his net,” Emily said.

“Did you see how fast it was?” Verne scowled. “He’ll never catch that thing.”

Santos shook his head. Sean glanced at the forest. Verne was right. Nanny would never catch it…

“It was me,” Jennifer said.

He looked at her. She swallowed visibly.

“I initiated the transmission that the millipede rode. It was me. I logged on after Sean. So blame me.”

Verne turned on his heel and took off toward the forest, punctuating each step with grim determination.

“Where are you going?” Sean called out.

“I need a new stick,” the Chief Programmer answered.

#

The seven members of the Committee sat at the table like the keepers of keys to Hades, sitting in judgment of the sinners on the crossroads between Tartarus and Isles of the Blest. Sean didn’t even know their names, only the fields they represented. At least Jennifer sat next to him.

Somehow the fact that they would go to the Tartarus of Destroyed Careers together brought him no comfort.

The Education/Science Member regarded the stack of loose paper sheets in front of her. Some of the paper was frayed and dirty. A couple of pieces, probably from Val, had food stains on them. In his mind Sean saw himself shrinking until he disappeared into nothing with a faint pop.

“We have looked through the notes,” the Business/Industry Member said. “We found them unsatisfactory.”

Sean cringed.

“You are aware that in the history of the Survey no team has failed to turn in the Final Evaluation Report?” the Environmental/Health Member said.

“Except for Captain Chef,” Jennifer said. “Because he was eaten.”

“In our defense,” Sean said, “we would both prefer to have been eaten.”

The Education/Science Member gave him a stony stare.

“What I meant to say was, there are extenuating circumstances.”

“Indeed,” the Social/Cultural Member nodded. “However, they do not change the fact that we are here and the FER is not.”

Sean opened his mouth…

The door burst open and Santos dashed inside, flushed and winded, and for a moment Sean thought the stoic Chief of Security was having a heart attack.

“Nanny’s back,” Santos breathed.

In a blink Sean was off his seat and out the door. People crowded the small stretch of grass before the Block 7, and in the whirlwind of faces, he saw Nanny’s familiar gangly form. It was riding the Questing Beast.

“The Independent Biological Reasoning Unit is reporting operational status,” Verne said.

Sean spun about to see the Committee exiting the Block.

“Two hours!” he cried. “Give me two hours, and I’ll have the FER.”

The Education/Science Member was looking at the Beast.

“What is that?” she said softly.

“A recent find,” Jennifer improvised. “We call it the Questing Beast after Mallory’s Arthur myths. Would you like to pet it? It purrs.”

#

The Nemurian sunset was burning slowly. Against the deep emerald sky, the silvery ino trees seemed to glow.

Sean heard steps behind him, but the vista was too breathtaking and he was too tired, so he stayed where he was, leaning against a low fence. Someone took a spot next to him. He glanced over. Jennifer.

Two trogomets scuttled from the brush, jumping over each other.

“They recommended preservation,” she said.

He said nothing.

“I thought I’d be relieved,” she said. “I’m not. I’m still wound up so tight, it hurts.”

“Give it time to sink in,” he murmured. “Merlot.”

“What?”

“Merlot. It’s a varietal of Terrestrial wine grape. That’s what the air smells like.”

She closed her eyes. “I was trying to cross-reference the migration data with the warming patterns. Pen was asleep, and I thought I’d take a shortcut and just pull the data from the orbital myself. I logged on after you did and didn’t run it through the Great Wall. I’m sorry. I was so tired … and then when everything started breaking down, I just couldn’t…” She bit her lip. “I should’ve said something. I feel like scum.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You said something in the end. That’s all that matters.”

She glanced at him, brown eyes warm.

“Do you think we’ve done the right thing?” he wondered.

“Too late to worry about it now,” she said. “I requested the extended tour, so if any complications arise I’ll be here to handle it.”

“I signed up for the extended tour too,” he said.

“I know. I’d checked.” She touched his hands with cool fingers. He reached out and put his arm around her and felt her snuggle against him.

Together they watched as the thousands of tiny white fireflies spilled from the puffy dandelions of the ino-ino fruits and danced on the night breeze.

#

The Questing Beast sniffed at a spot beneath the knotted roots of a tari tree. Around it the forest shivered, full of sounds and life. The Questing Beast scratched the ground with its hoof, squatted, and laid an egg.