Renegade Read online

  “But he believes in them.” Brander’s expression shifted. “At least, he once did.”

  “We are not the Coalition,” Drake said. “We will not compel him. We offer him healing because he is . . . less cruel and brutal than his replacement would likely be. And with that offer comes the necessity of some subterfuge. He will understand that, I think.”

  Brander looked at Drake. “You have a plan?”

  “I’m hoping that curiosity of his will go along,” Drake said. He glanced at Iolana. “But that will also mean you must be absolutely certain this place is completely masked from him. He must have no hint where we really are.”

  Iolana nodded. “Here, with the help of the stone, I can make it look however you wish to him.”

  “Ought to make it look like his office, then,” Brander said with a grin. “That should befuddle him a bit. Especially with you there. He’ll think that portrait has come to life.”

  Drake’s brows rose, then he smiled. “Indeed.”

  Iolana studiously avoided their gazes, for her feelings about that were something she did not wish to share.

  Then Drake spoke briskly, decision clearly made. “Brander, check his comm link. Do what you can mask its location when it is turned back on.”

  His second nodded, and he and his mate left. Drake stepped back inside as Iolana went to check on the motionless figure under the blanket. Drake glanced at Grim. “Can you give my mother and me a moment, my friend?”

  Iolana knew it was a testament to the position her son had gained in Grim’s eyes that he did not look at her for permission before leaving. She braced herself for what she knew was coming.

  She decided to save him from having to bring it up by saying briskly, “I will need a decision soon after he wakes, or I will not be able to heal his injury.”

  He studied her for a long moment. “If it were solely up to you?”

  “I would heal him,” she answered without hesitation.

  “But not simply because it is in your nature to heal, just as it is in Eirlys’s.”

  “No,” she admitted. “Also because there is . . . something.”

  “A vision?”

  “No. Nothing so defined as that. Just a feeling that keeping him alive is, or will be, important somehow.”

  Her son let out a long breath. “All right.”

  And so, Iolana thought. Paledan would live. For now.

  She hoped she did not live to regret it.

  Chapter 15

  PALEDAN OPENED his eyes to two impossibilities.

  One was that he lay in his own office, on some sort of cot that had not been there before.

  The second, greater impossibility was the woman sitting beside him. The woman he’d seen in what he’d believed to be his final moments. The woman whose vivid image was merely feet away, behind a single door in that office. The woman he knew to have sprung from his mind, not reality. The woman who had fascinated him beyond sanity.

  Beyond sanity because he knew she was dead.

  He had so committed that portrait to memory that he could bring it to mind even now, with such clarity that he could compare the features exquis­itely rendered by the artist to this, his mind’s hallucination. Which he sup­posed would explain why it was so accurate; his mind had conjured it. Therefore it would, of course, be exactly the image he would expect.

  “Welcome back, Major.”

  Her voice. There had been no recordings of her in the records, only her firebrand mate, so how could he have imagined it so accurately? Or was his brain—or whatever was producing this—simply providing a voice that he’d also imagined, and therefore in his mind, of course fit? Low, soft, but with a resonance that demanded attention for all its quietness.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to wade through the muddle. But almost instantly regretted it, for he feared when he opened them again she would be gone.

  He nearly laughed at himself. Gone from where? His office? If that wasn’t proof enough this was all illusion, what was? There was no reason he could fathom why the Raider would have him brought here. If by some freak of chance he truly was still alive, he would be on that misty hillside where he had fallen, his spine finally victim to the injury that had in fact slain him long ago. It was only that his body had delayed the inevitable until now. It was a shadow he had lived with for a very long time now, and it was no surprise that it had finally fallen.

  What was a surprise was . . . this, whatever it was. He had studied beliefs across many worlds, knew that some primitive places believed in a sort of afterlife. He did not, perhaps because he had seen so much of the finality of death. But he could accept that he did not know everything about the process of dying. No one did. The Coalition dealt in death, but it did not study it except in examining how much torture someone could endure before that moment was reached when the body gave up fighting to stay alive.

  Perhaps this was no more than a dying brain’s way of easing the path, perhaps the perception of time shifted when those last moments were dwindling, perhaps that same brain hung onto those last moments and spun them out so that they seemed much longer than they were. It was an intriguing idea, and one he almost wished he had time to explore. But how would one do such an exploration when the only ones who would know were dead?

  It was a puzzle, and—

  She would know.

  His eyes snapped open almost involuntarily.

  She was still there. Smiling at him. And he realized with a little jolt that this was not the woman of the portrait, with her haunted eyes. And yet that woman was there, beneath what he now saw.

  It was as if she had been softened somehow, yet the power, the fire remained. Or as if she had been cured of some dread ailment, and the joy of it had overwhelmed the loss that had put that wildness in her vivid eyes.

  “So,” he said, the differences from her portrait for a moment overtaking his logic, “you found peace, in the end.”

  She looked startled, then thoughtful, and finally a different kind of smile curved her mouth. “I did. And much more,” that perfect voice said. “I found happiness.”

  He frowned. Happiness was hardly a worthy goal, unless it came from advancing the Coalition. And even then it was more satisfaction than the ebullience most described as happiness. He himself would not know; it was not something he experienced.

  Her smile widened, as if she’d heard his thought and found it amusing. At the same time it was a softer kind of smile that did odd things to his pulse.

  Pulse.

  His heart still beat.

  How was that possible? Or was this, too, a manufacture of his dying brain, which seemed to be taking a damned long time with the process?

  “You are not hallucinating nor dreaming, Major,” she said. And then that smile turned somehow impish as she added, “Nor are you dead.”

  He stared at her. His logical mind was trying to register its opinion on the absurdity of this, but his gut was screaming at him to believe. It was rare the two were in conflict, and he did not know what to make of it.

  “That is not to say,” she went on, her expression serious now, “that you are not hovering very near that death you’ve been expecting for so long. That is why I immobilized you, so no more damage could be done even acci­dentally.”

  He tried to move, to test what she’d said, and could not. He could do no more than turn his head. She merely smiled as if she’d expected him to do exactly that. He was seized with the desire to see that smile every day, an even further sign that this was all some figment concocted by an oxygen-starved brain.

  “You see? And it is best for now, I assure you. You must rest, conserve your strength for what is to come.”

  He wondered why she would think he would believe her when she swore to good intentions. But realized it was irrational to dwell
on the details of a discussion with a figment of his dying mind. “To come? What, hades? Damnation? What final stop on this journey of death do you envision for me?”

  “I see you are not convinced,” she said. “Very well.”

  She reached toward him. His reflexes overtook all, and he tried to pull away—the last he’d known he’d been in enemy hands, after all—but as she’d said, he could not move. At the same time, an odd sensation welled up in him, a desire to accept her touch, even welcome it. Perhaps it was as he’d heard, that in the end death was welcomed, not dreaded. Yet somehow this seemed more. Because it was her his mind had contrived to present, no doubt because she had absorbed so much of that mind for far too long.

  Her fingers touched his arm. Barely, just a brush. An odd yet somehow familiar sensation shot up his arm. The arm he still could not move. So how could he feel anything in it? And then he felt something else, something deep, a faint echo of the pain that had engulfed him in the moment of his collapse. Distant, as if far removed, yet definite and recognizable. As if every nerve in his body was screaming with outrage.

  His gaze shot back to her face. That familiar, much-studied face. She looked much the same, albeit a bit older.

  But how could she have aged if she was dead?

  The absurdity of that question struck him. Because she was dead.

  And yet she was here. In some form.

  “Did I guess correctly?” she asked. “Is that what it takes for you to believe you are alive, the knowledge of pain?”

  He frowned. “It should . . . hurt more.”

  “I have muffled it, for I could not imagine even you wishing to feel its full impact again.”

  “Again?”

  “I saw you go down, Major.”

  If he had not already been frozen that would have done it. For it made this all sound real, too real, and he was not ready to accept that it was, even if it meant he was not dying. “You were . . . there?”

  She nodded. “And even from where I stood in the trees, I could feel the fierceness of it.”

  The thought that she somehow could sense—and control—how much pain he felt was too much, and too illogical, to deal with at the moment. So his brain seized on the other words she’d said.

  “Even me?”

  “You are a strong man. I can only imagine how much pain there would have to be for you to even acknowledge it. And you have been living with it for some time now, have you not?”

  He was carrying on a conversation with this apparition as if she were real. And in the moment he realized this, she smiled again.

  “Tell me, Major, if you are truly dead, then what do you have to lose by talking to me? A vision, a phantom, a . . . spirit?”

  “So you can also read minds?” he asked dryly.

  She laughed, and it was a marvelous sound that somehow eased his mind. “Not usually, unless I am in physical contact with someone.”

  He shoved aside the images that had shot through his mind when she’d used the words “physical contact.” He was far beyond ever worrying about slaking those needs again. He wasn’t certain he hadn’t been beyond those needs even before the injury that could now mean losing his life for a moment of physical pleasure.

  But she had a point; if he was dead or dying, and she was merely a vision conjured up by his brain, then what did he have to lose?

  “I would prefer to die sane,” he muttered, as much to himself as to her.

  “Your trouble is not sanity. You have a firm grip on it. Your trouble is something you never had.”

  “Now come the riddles.”

  “No riddles, Major. Now, shall I mute that pain for you again?”

  “Just that easily?”

  She touched his arm again, again only the merest of brushings. But this time a memory shot through his mind, of the woman on the bridge, who had touched him in the same way. But she had caused feeling. Not pain, but that strange sort of tingling.

  But now, with this woman and this touch, the echo of the pain he’d felt receded.

  He stared at her. “How?”

  “That is a long story, and likely involves too many of those riddles you do not wish.”

  “Then here’s a riddle for you. If what you say is true, that I am indeed alive, why?”

  “That,” she said as she rose to her feet in a graceful motion, “you will have to take up with my son.”

  It all tumbled in on him then. He’d been so enraptured with this image from the portrait he knew so well come to life, that he’d forgotten exactly who she in fact was, that woman.

  Iolana Davorin.

  Wife of the firebrand who had first inspired the rebellion.

  And mother of the Raider.

  Chapter 16

  SHE REALIZED SHE did not want to send for Drake. She wished more time alone with this man, to perhaps explore the things that made him so different from other Coalition officers. More time to discover what had made him this cool, compartmentalized thinker who brooked—or had—no emotion.

  But they were rapidly nearing the moment when his check-in must be made. And Drake would need time to persuade him, if it could be done. This might be her only chance. She wanted to know, down deep, why he’d kept her portrait all this time.

  “If you can control pain, what else can you do?” he asked.

  “Were you Ziem, you would not have to ask the Spirit about her powers.”

  “The—” His brows lowered. His eyes, she thought, truly were the vivid green of the new growth on the mistbreaker trees. In this world of varying shades of blue, they were beyond striking. “The Spirit is a local myth,” he said.

  “Is she?”

  He stared at her for a moment. And she realized, with a little shock of surprise, that holding his gaze was an effort. She had thought that holding her composure at her children’s cold regard had been hard, but this was a very different kind of difficult. But she did not answer, for the answer was not something he was ready to hear. If ever he would be.

  “Where are we, really?” His question was harsh, almost angry. And she could tell by the tension in the tendons of his neck that he was still trying to move, fighting what his body—and she—told him with every bit of strength he could muster.

  She made her voice even more relaxed. “It does not look familiar?”

  True, it had been a while since she’d been in an office in the council building, and never in his, but Drake had, and had provided a detailed description. Which, she thought with an inward wince, the twins had happily confirmed. The thought of those two brought on a whole new rush of emotions as she remembered that this man could have killed or had them killed many times over. They’d given him many chances, yet he had not done it.

  “Very. It is also impossible.” He said it flatly, in the tone of one certain of his conclusion.

  “Why?”

  “For so many reasons.”

  She merely lifted a brow at him. For a moment she thought he would not speak, but she could almost see the moment when curiosity—that unusual curiosity—won out.

  “I was dead upon that hillside. I felt it. Even if I were not, moving me here would have completed the job. And why would the Raider do so in the first place? I am the ranking Coalition officer on Ziem. His enemy. And there’s the little matter of getting past the guards.”

  “You do not think your men would allow safe passage in return for your life?”

  “It is against Coalition regulations.”

  “An answer that is not an answer.” She saw a spark of . . . something in his eyes.

  “And I still have no answer to where we really are. Or how you have manufactured this illusion.”

  “Illusions are something I have experience with,” she said. “And if I wish it, you will never know.”

&nb
sp; But he reacted so strongly that she knew something had registered. She did not think she had given anything away but—

  “It was you,” he breathed. “On the mountain, with the cannon. It was you the troopers saw, who froze them in place, made them believe the mountain held them motionless.”

  Iolana could not help herself; she laughed in delight. Oh, he was quick! Even when the answers warred with his highly logical mind, he was able to make such a jump.

  He was staring at her now, something new in those green depths, something she’d never seen before. She did not know what to make of it. And giving into a sudden urge, she went straight to the heart of what she wanted to know.

  “Why have you kept my portrait?”

  His mouth tightened slightly. “I see the Raider has an efficient informa­tion network.”

  “He does. And it grows with every atrocity the Coalition commits. But yet again you do not answer the question.”

  He looked at her steadily for a moment. And she was again surprised by how relatively calm he seemed. But perhaps he was marshalling his strength for a greater effort later. But she would have thought he would try now, if he was going to, since only she was here.

  “And what would you say if I told you I kept the portrait as a means of studying the enemy?”

  “I would say answering a question with a question is still not an answer.”

  “Then . . . perhaps we can negotiate, an answer for an answer,” he said rather slowly. “Your son keeps his word. Do you?”

  “No.”

  He blinked. His brows lowered. He could, she thought, look quite fierce. Never less than striking, a fine-looking man, but fierce.

  “Explain.”

  It had the ring of an order, but she could sense that curiosity behind it, and so answered anyway. “I promised to look after my children by the simple act of bringing them into the world. I did not keep that promise.”

  “Why?” Something in his expression had shifted.

  “Is this the question you wished answered?”

  “Yes.”

  That made no sense, for why would he care? She wasn’t even certain why she answered, but she did. “I thought I could not face life without the man I loved beyond all measure.” She smiled, sadly. “I was young.”