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  Too insistent. “So, something,” he said dryly.

  “We learned the governor is an even bigger blowpig than we thought,” Lux said.

  “And Jakel a rabid barkhound,” Nyx put in.

  Since he could disagree with neither assessment, Paledan said nothing. And while he doubted the governor had been truthful in saying he’d discussed nothing of import with the brutal enforcer, he had little choice but to take the man at his word. And let the results be on Sorkost’s head.

  He turned just enough to activate the comm system. His aide answered instantly. “Have a guard bring me the taproom keeper,” he ordered. “Tell him who we have here.”

  He sensed the twins going very still the moment he spoke.

  “Under arrest, sir?” Brakely asked.

  “Not yet,” he answered.

  He in fact had nothing to arrest Davorin for, at the moment, but he thought it might capture the attention of these two little demons if they thought their brother was in jeopardy. And it apparently had. They stayed quiet.

  “Nothing more to say?” he asked mildly.

  The boy grimaced. “Drake’ll say enough when he gets here.”

  And I will be very interested to hear it.

  DEAR EOS, WHAT had they done now?

  Drake didn’t try to hide the worry that had flooded him upon the arrival of the Coalition trooper with orders from Post Commander Paledan to present himself immediately in the matter of Nyx and Lux Davorin. He would be expected to worry, would he not?

  “What has happened?” he asked, more to give himself time to assess the possibilities than with any thought the man would actually tell him anything. He was proven correct in short order.

  “Just hasten. The commander is not one to keep waiting, if you know what is good for you. And them.”

  He had to work on the assumption that this was only about something the twins had done. And that the trooper’s implied threat meant that at least they were still alive. Given that, the best thing all around would be for the new commander to be presented with what he expected to see: the quiet, ineffectual taproom keeper. He stopped what he’d been about to do—pull off the stained apron he wore. Instead, he left it on and moved quickly from behind the bar, as if he were in a hurry to accede to the trooper’s demand. Satisfied, the man turned on his booted heel and no less than marched out the door, assured that the lowly tapper would of course follow on his heels.

  Which he did.

  He had never been inside the compound in daylight. He knew the ground it stood on well; it had once been the courtyard of the council building where his father’s office was, before the Coalition had arrived and thrown up this large complex practically overnight. They had used the building itself as one wall of the compound. Never let it be said they weren’t efficient.

  Drake looked around, wiping his hands on the apron as he did, as if he had a twitchy sort of feeling inside. Which he did, for several reasons. He let his gaze dart around as if he were nervous, but the trooper didn’t seem to be bothered; in fact, he barely glanced at him as they reached the headquarters building that had been the council building itself. Nor did he pay him much mind as they walked down the wide hallway, even when he glanced through the few open doorways they passed along the way.

  When they stepped into the office at the end of the hall, he looked around quickly. The walls were bare of ornament save for a crossed pair of traditional Ziem swords on one wall. The rest of the space was taken up by, surprisingly, old-style paper charts, maps, and a few books that he hadn’t seen the like of since his father’s collection of the old tomes had been confiscated and burned after his death. The requisite viewscreen, holographic station, and other gear was present, but to one side, as if there only under protest.

  And nowhere were the twins. Drake’s pulse kicked up at the thought that he’d been wrong, that they were already dead. He clamped down on the burgeoning apprehension and faced the man behind the desk that he guessed was large for use, not show.

  He didn’t know what the office of the prior commander, Frall, had looked like, but he somehow doubted it was as stark and severe as this.

  But then, Commander Frall had been nowhere near the man Paledan was, and Drake didn’t need the man’s history to know that. He needed only to look at him across the expanse of that desk, watch as he stood. The office needed no ornament, because the man who now owned it needed none. The aura of power and command was enough.

  He put on his best imitation of a man who had been through this many times before. Since it was nothing less than true, he hoped it would work to trivialize whatever they’d done.

  “What,” he said with an audible sigh, “have those two hedgebeasts been up to now?”

  “Spying,” Paledan said.

  Drake’s heart jammed in his throat. A sudden fear that he couldn’t get them out of this one shot through him.

  “At least,” Paledan continued, “according to Governor Sorkost.”

  Something in the way he said it, some faint undertone he couldn’t—or didn’t—quite mask, made Drake risk saying, “They are children. I’m afraid they don’t quite respect the governor’s office.”

  “Or the man in it?” Paledan suggested.

  “They are children,” he said again. Then, carefully, “I don’t believe they yet realize there can be a difference between respecting the office and the one who holds it.”

  Paledan walked slowly around the desk, leaned a hip on the edge of it, and crossed his arms over his chest. “You surprise me, tapper.”

  With a sinking feeling he’d gone too far, Drake masked his misgivings and said only, “I do?”

  “I was given to believe you barely above a muckrat in intelligence, and below a skalworm in courage.”

  “I lay no claim to great amounts of either. Sir.”

  “And yet you have raised two imps that have an overabundance of both.”

  “It is their nature,” he said. “They take after our parents, I’m afraid.”

  “Hmm.”

  Drake said nothing more as the man studied him for a long moment. He wasn’t sure what he would do—what he could do—if Paledan had indeed killed the twins, or had them killed.

  “You do not ask for details,” Paledan observed.

  Drake steadied himself inwardly. “I have learned it is wiser to wait to be told what the Coalition is willing to tell.”

  “And one should always follow the wiser course, is that not true?”

  “That,” Drake said, “I cannot argue with. Sir.”

  He could have sworn the man’s mouth quirked slightly, as if suppressing amusement. “Then allow me to point out that your wisest course now is to keep those two out of the way of the governor for the foreseeable future.”

  Drake sucked in a breath. “Then . . . they are alive?”

  Paledan frowned. “You thought otherwise?”

  “The governor is . . . of uncertain temper at times.”

  “Odd,” Paledan said, “I’ve found him of a steady and certain temper—bad—most times.”

  Drake didn’t dare let himself smile, but it was an effort.

  “I do not intentionally slaughter children, Davorin. Not even those with the name of an infamous rebel.”

  “I am . . . thankful for that, commander.”

  He used the title purposely, for the first time. He saw it register. After a moment, Paledan nodded. He leaned over and spoke into the communicator on the desk.

  “Bring them in.” Then he looked back at Drake. “I wish you luck with those two. I fear you will need it.”

  “I fear I’ve already run through my allotment with them,” Drake said.

  The man did smile then. And Drake had the oddest feeling it was with a sort of relief that the twins were not his to deal with.
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  A relief he could completely understand.

  Chapter 22

  SHE IS LONG DEAD, forgotten. . . . A suicide.

  Paledan looked again at the painting as he took another drink of his brew, Davorin’s calm, unemotional words echoing in his head. Only now they were followed by Ordam’s derisive rant about Davorin himself.

  “. . . just a mother’s pet. When she hurled herself from Halfhead to her death, she might as well have taken him with her.”

  Was it possible? Could that ethereal beauty in that painting truly be Iolana Davorin, widow of Torstan? The woman whose grief had driven her to throw herself off a cliff to her death? Mother of the man who stood just a few feet away, placidly wiping a spill off the bar?

  And if it was, how could her son speak of her so coolly, with such detachment, especially if her death had so beaten him down? How could he live with this portrait before him, day after day?

  Leaving four young children behind to fend for themselves.

  Or rather, leaving her oldest son the responsibility of the younger three. Including those two mischief makers he had already encountered. Perhaps that was the explanation for the detachment. Surely any boy of that young age would resent having that kind of responsibility thrust upon him.

  And yet it appeared he had lived up to it, to some extent anyway. His family ate, and had a solid roof. And he worked hard in this place to see to that. And was wise enough to see that a careful neutrality, if not outright servility, was the best way to assure keeping what he had.

  He took another sip of the brew that was surprisingly good for this remote place. He glanced again at the man behind the bar.

  It was a wise man who accepted facts and adjusted accordingly, as Davorin had. Far better than continuing to fight an impossible battle, and perhaps losing the very thing you were fighting to save in the process.

  He had come to know a lot of different sorts of people in the Coalition’s romp across the galaxy. And a lot about each sort. Those who resisted, those who did not. Those who resented, and those who welcomed. Those who openly fought, and those who gave in. Those who talked, and those who led.

  And a few who were combinations of two or more. Those were the ones that were the most dangerous, the ones that could lead to trouble larger than a few skirmishes here and there.

  And that thought led him back to the man who had greatly occupied his mind of late. This raider, known only by that name, spoken by people as if it were a royal title, was more than just a thorn—he was a genuine wound. One that might hemorrhage if they were not careful.

  There were different ways of dealing with such men. The success of any of those ways depending on knowing as much as possible about them. And Paledan had the feeling he still had much to learn about this one.

  And so I will.

  He drained the last of his brew, tossed a coin on the bar, and left without waiting for his change.

  “YOU LOVE HIM, don’t you?”

  Kye snapped out of her haze abruptly at the question. Ever since she and Eirlys had stopped here again at their favorite place beside the pond, her brain seemed to have slipped its tether and gone wandering.

  “What?” she asked, stalling.

  “The Raider. You love him.”

  Images of that useless discussion raced through her head. She quashed them, and gave the answer the Raider would have. “Don’t be foolish. There is no time or place for such in our world now.”

  Eirlys laughed, and that laugh sounded much older than her tender years. “As if even the Coalition could change the nature of humans. Have you not heard that war only intensifies such things?”

  “Your brother is right,” Kye said dryly. “You are too clever for your own good.”

  Eirlys looked away so quickly that Kye knew she was hiding something, something she feared would show in her eyes. No doubt the same as always; her disappointment in Drake. Or perhaps her distaste and disillusionment had descended into something worse, perhaps downright disgust. Kye would hate to think that was true, yet she would understand if it were. And for once, she couldn’t even bestir herself to try and defend the man she had loved so dearly.

  It was not that she did not see the immensity of the burden left him by his mother’s suicide, and the courage and determination with which he undertook to carry it. It was that she missed the other side of him—the dashing, courageous, utterly planium-nerved cool side of him. The man who had dared things no other did, who had rallied a devastated city, and then an entire planet to him.

  But that man was long gone, buried as surely as if he had died along with his parents. What remained only looked like Drake Davorin, and handsome as he was, she had no pleasure in looking at him any longer, not when all she could see was the servility, the bowing, the humiliation and mocking heaped on his head without rejoinder. And no matter how well she understood why he’d had to do it, how she lamented what it was costing him to do it, it still hurt. Especially when she disagreed that it would save them in the long run.

  “If there is anyone to blame for what my brother has had to become,” Eirlys said, “perhaps it is my mother.”

  Kye was so startled by what she’d said she barely noticed that the girl seemed to have followed along with her own thoughts with an eerie accuracy. “Your mother to blame?”

  No one ever spoke ill of Iolana Davorin. Only sadness and loss were acknowledged. She had been their visionary, and the widow of their greatest man, and all of Ziem understood how it could be that she could not go on after his loss.

  “It was she who abandoned us, was it not? She who left Drake to care for us? You said that yourself.”

  “I never said that,” Kye said, protesting automatically. This was near heresy in Zelos. “I said only that Drake was very young to have all that responsibility dropped upon him.”

  “But he had it dropped upon him because she could not carry it any longer. Or would not. She loved us, but not enough to stay.”

  “Eirlys—”

  “I know what you will say. She loved my father too much to go on without him.”

  “Yes.”

  “I,” Eirlys declared firmly, “do not ever want to love anyone like that.”

  And yet it is what I wish more than anything, but cannot have. “I see,” she said, her tone carefully neutral.

  “The price is too high. If you lose them, it is like the heart being ripped out of you.”

  Kye thought of a man in a carved-out quarters on the mountain, his ruined face something that made people look away, and helped strike fear into those he fought. Thought of feelings denied, longings buried deep.

  “You do love him, don’t you?” Eirlys repeated softly.

  “Many people love the Raider for what he’s doing.”

  “Yes. But that’s not what I mean and well you know it. You are in love with him. I can see it in your face.”

  Kye turned to look at her young friend. “And if I were? Would you tell me I was a fool? Ask who could love a man with such scars?”

  Eirlys drew herself up straight. “Never. For not only do I know you are not so small-brained as to let that matter, I know you are wise enough to see beyond that exterior damage to the man within. The man brave enough and steadfast enough to stand against the entire Coalition if need be. The man who would die for his people and his planet, if it is asked of him.”

  “But would be bedamned sure to take as many of the Coalition with him as he possibly could,” Kye added.

  Eirlys smiled, widely. “Yes. And that.”

  For a long moment, Kye just looked at the girl before her. She was, as her brother often said, frighteningly clever. And fierce, even as she dealt with her beloved creatures with the gentleness of a true healer. Kye knew Eirlys had come to look upon her as a sort of older sister, especially after the loss of her moth
er. She had had no other older female to turn to.

  And it was with that thought in mind that Kye answered her original question, as honestly and openly as she had ever answered it to anyone.

  “Yes. I love him. I think I was half in love with him before I ever met him. But that was the idea of him, I think, the idea of a man who stood, who fought, who refused to be cowed no matter the odds, no matter the likelihood that he would bring about his own death. I had made him, in my mind, into something beyond reality. I believed in the legend of the Raider, and had forgotten one essential thing.”

  “What?” Eirlys asked, looking at her raptly.

  “That he is, in the end, only human. A man with a life to lose, and who has come very close to doing so more than once. More than any of us.”

  When Eirlys smiled at her then, it was a different kind of smile, an oddly adult one. “I am glad that you see that. Many who think of him only as the legend do not.”

  “I know. And that makes me even more afraid for him, for I think some of them believe him immortal.”

  Eirlys frowned at that. “Meaning?”

  “They might not take the care they could or should, if they think he cannot die.”

  The girl went pale. “I had not thought of that.”

  I do. Every day.

  And it made her wonder if Eirlys was right. Perhaps the price was too high.

  Chapter 23

  CAZE PALEDAN looked once more over the report Brakely had compiled. It was accompanied by a few odd-shaped bits and pieces of paper that he had managed to acquire. One was a handwritten report of a raid conducted three years ago, and was the earliest mention his aide had been able to find of the rebel who would later become known simply as the Raider. The paper it was on was ripped raggedly at the top, but Brakely’s note indicated it had been fastened to a post in the town square, where it had been read by several people before being discovered and torn down by a trooper.

  Those several people had been enough to insure that by nightfall, all of Zelos had known of the exploit. And that was only the first.