Renegade Page 20

  “I thank you . . . mother.” Her throat tightened in response. “But I am still afraid changing a lifetime’s indoctrination and cruelty will take longer than we have.”

  “I do not think it is a process that will end when—if—he leaves here. As long as Ziem and her people exist, as long as we continue to fight, and suc­ceed so far beyond the scope of Coalition predictions, he will question, search, and—”

  “May well get those orders to destroy,” Drake ended it sourly.

  “Then the real question is,” she said, “what will he do then?”

  And that she had no answer for.

  Chapter 31

  “IT IS,” PALEDAN said through clenched teeth as he struggled to walk an embarrassingly short distance across . . . whatever this room was, “as if my muscles have completely forgotten their jobs.”

  “And you have no patience with anyone or anything that has the temerity to do so,” the woman at his side said cheerfully.

  He glanced at her, and that simple action threw off his precarious balance and he staggered. She caught him, steadied him, and held his arm for a moment until he’d recovered his balance.

  “I do not need your—” He stopped himself in the middle of the denial, for in fact he did need everything he was denying he did.

  “It is very difficult,” she said, in that same cheerful tone that had prodded him into that ill-advised move, “for a person of such strong will to accept that they in fact do need help.”

  “Was it for you?” He wasn’t sure why he’d asked that.

  “Me? Oh, no. But I am not as strong of will as you are.”

  This time he moved much more carefully as he turned his head to look at her. “That,” he said flatly, “is the first time I believe you’ve lied to me.”

  She looked surprised, and for some reason he did not understand, that pleased him. He was not pleased by the quickly growing pile of things he didn’t understand, mostly his own reactions since the healing.

  He refocused on her and not the bewildering changes. “You did what they said impossible and removed that shard. I am alive and upright, in direct contradiction of the prognoses of the best Coalition physicians. That was not done without a powerful will.”

  “Perhaps they underestimated you.”

  For a long moment he just looked at her. “I promise you, Lana,” he said slowly, “I will never again underestimate you.”

  She held his gaze. “And I have not underestimated you since that moment on the bridge.”

  . . . what was that moment on the bridge focused on?

  The measure of a man.

  For the first time he wondered just how deeply she had probed. He could no longer deny that she had this gift, for he had seen too much of it. It had no place in his—and the Coalition’s—logical, ordered universe, but neither had much he had seen since he’d come to this misty place.

  Just as he had the thought he could not stay on his feet another moment, she turned. “You must not push too hard too soon. Sit.”

  He would have shot her another glance, half certain she was reading his mind, but he caught himself this time. For he was also half certain he would go down this time, from the sudden weakness that had flooded him. And so he let her guide him to sit on the edge of the cot. But he refused to lie down, not yet. He needed too many answers.

  “Ah. You have more questions.”

  “Do you read my mind?” he asked bluntly.

  “No,” she said, “although I’m interested that you even consider the possibility. But in truth, after a healing I have a connection to the one healed, until it is no longer necessary.”

  “A . . . connection?” He was not at all certain what he thought of this.

  “I can sense changes connected to the healing. Such as when you had reached the limit of your strength just now. Which, I might add, is impressive. I did not expect you to improve so quickly.”

  “It does not feel impressive.”

  “Compared to what you were before the injury, I’m certain it does not. Compared to the moment you went down on that hillside, unable to move at all, it is remarkable.”

  It occurred to him how his words could have been taken. “I did not mean that as insult.”

  “I did not think you did, Caze.” And every newly reawakened nerve in his body seemed to respond to the sound of his name on her lips. Was this part of it as well? Did that connection she spoke of somehow go both ways? “You are hardly fool enough to insult the one who holds your life in their hands. Unless, of course, you wanted them to end it.” He did not reply to this, but it seemed she needed no reply. “I understand,” she said.

  “Do you?”

  Her voice was suddenly that soft, soothing thing again. “Oh, yes, Caze, I do.” Why in hades had he ever given her leave to use his name? She went on. “You know my story. You know that I know what it is like to look at the life left to you and deem it not worth living.”

  “That is . . . different.”

  “Is it? I suppose you must think so, given what the Coalition has done to you, what they have taken from you.”

  “The Coalition gives all.”

  Those Ziem-blue eyes rolled. “Spare me the Coalition mantras, please. They take and destroy more than they could ever give back.” It was heresy, worth a death sentence. And yet she said it fearlessly. “They take even the most basic and important of human capacities. To love, fully and completely. You cannot even comprehend that losing the person that made you whole, half of your soul, would be as bad or in some ways worse than losing the function of your body.”

  He stared at her. The echo of a long-ago agony tinged her voice, and he could not deny it was real. And he felt an odd, unaccustomed hollowness inside him, something that might even be called pain were it not impossible. He struggled to make sense of her words, although the concept may as well have been uttered in Zenoxian for all that he understood it.

  “What I cannot comprehend,” he said slowly, “is allowing another, single individual to wield so much power over you.”

  “It is not a matter of allowing,” she said. “It is a matter of freely, happily giving. And the treasure of being given the same in return.”

  He felt exhaustion starting to creep over his brain. How was he supposed to deal with this, these ideas that were not only incomprehensible but antithetical to everything he’d been trained to believe?

  “You should rest now,” she said. “You’ve been given a great deal to process in a short time.”

  “Stop it,” he snapped.

  “That,” she retorted calmly, “was nothing to do with mind reading or the connection between us. That was simply logic applied to your situation.”

  That, at least, he could understand. But the reference to the connection between them was still unsettling. “Tell me,” he said, “who decides when this connection is no longer necessary?”

  She looked thoughtful. “I do not think it is a decision. The connection simply fades away. It is not a conscious thing, on my part.”

  “Then you could not break it before it fades?”

  “I do not know. I have, of course, never tried, for it only dissolves when the patient is safe. Before that, there is still the chance more intervention could be needed.”

  He drew in a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a moment. It was a mistake, for he could feel the wave of exhaustion beginning to take over.

  “I understand,” he heard her say, again in that soft voice. “You are not a man who would welcome another having that kind of deep, personal control over you. Yet you allow it to the Coalition.”

  “The Coalition—”

  “Gives all. Yes. I know. But while you rest, perhaps you might ask yourself if it is worth the price they demand.”

  Chapter 32

  “WHAT
IS YOUR best estimate?”

  Iolana looked at Drake. “Much sooner than I had expected.” Her mouth quirked. “Which tells me I should stop expecting the expected with him.”

  Drake lifted a brow at her. “Should I be concerned that this makes sense to me?”

  Iolana smiled, widely. But before she could respond, she heard the now-familiar footsteps as the twins raced into Drake’s quarters, forgoing knocking. They skidded to a halt just inside. Iolana hoped it was not because of her presence, and was relieved when Lux began it, rather apologetically, glancing back at the door they’d thrown open heedlessly.

  “We are not—”

  “On alert again—”

  “Are we?”

  “Not yet,” Drake said easily. She gathered that when the Sentinels were on alert, knocking was required even of these two. And wondered when they would be back on alert, how long Drake could stand the quiet. “I thought you were pestering Brander.”

  “We were but—”

  “Eirlys came and—”

  “They started—”

  “Kissing and—”

  “We know—”

  “What that means.”

  It was all Iolana could do not to laugh, so pleased was she. “So what mischief are you up to instead?” she asked. They glanced at her, but only a glance before turning their attention back to their brother.

  “Can we—”

  “See the major—”

  “Again? We have—”

  “Something for him.”

  “And what might that be?” Drake asked.

  Nyx held out his hand. Drake looked at the small, green, round thing the boy held, then shifted his gaze to her.

  “What do you think?”

  Iolana considered. “I think it will interest him.”

  For a moment the twins were silent, looking at her, but then Lux began with, “Are you—”

  “The one who—”

  “Decides now?”

  She could not read whether there was objection in their words; her skills often failed with these two.

  “Only whether he is well enough to see what you bring. Whether he should see whatever you have in mind is up to your brother.”

  They shifted their gaze back to Drake. “I can’t see any harm in it,” he said. “But not alone.”

  “Will you—”

  “Go with us?”

  “I cannot.” He did not sound in the least regretful. “I have a promise to keep.”

  Something in the way he said it made Iolana think that his plans were much like Brander’s; Kye had arrived back from a security flight within the last hour. She smiled inwardly.

  She almost offered to accompany the twins herself, but decided to wait and see if they would ask her. It would tell her if they were feeling any more warmly—or at least more comfortable—toward her, and also just how much they wanted to see Caze.

  And she was still a bit uneasy herself, mostly about how she reacted when using his name, even merely in her thoughts. She was feeling as she some­times did after a vivid vision; unsettled, off balance, and disturbed to the point of a physical reaction.

  Silence spun out between them, but before it became uncomfortably blatant, they broke.

  “Will you—”

  “Go with us?”

  “I will.” She kept her delight masked; it would not do to give these two imps any more leverage than they already had. “You should get something to put it in, after you show him what it is and what it does. I will meet you in the cavern in a moment.”

  The two dashed out without a word, no doubt headed to beg a plate or cup from Mahko.

  “Congratulations,” Drake said. “You have made progress.”

  “And I will gladly take their willingness to ask me as a sign of that.”

  “Be cautious.”

  “He would not intentionally hurt the twins.”

  “Agreed, yet he is still Coalition.” Drake studied her for a moment. “And there is still what you are not telling me.”

  “Because it is his to know first.”

  “Must I remind you who we are speaking of? The commander of our conquerors?”

  “Firstly, we are not conquered, and secondly, who was it who said that if we discard our first tenets—such as individual sovereignty—what are we fighting for?”

  Drake sighed. “I believe that was me.”

  “I believe it was.”

  “As you see fit, then,” he said.

  “And you have . . . an appointment, do you not?”

  The rakish grin that curved his mouth then gladdened her heart. “That I do. Keep those two occupied, will you?”

  “For as long as I can,” she promised.

  She went out into the cavern and found the twins waiting, as patiently as was possible for them, near the entrance. On the way to her home she watched as they ran ahead of her, but then got distracted by something of interest along the way, giving her time to catch up without altering her stride.

  When they arrived, she halted them before they ran inside. “If he is asleep, I must ask you to wait quietly until I check on him. If he is, you may have to wait until he wakes.”

  They considered this.

  “He was—”

  “Hurt very—”

  “Badly—”

  “Wasn’t he?”

  “Yes,” she said. And he lived with the knowledge this could happen for a very long time.

  “We are—”

  “Glad he—”

  “Did not—”

  “Die,” they finished together.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Are you?” Lux asked.

  That surprised her, both the question and that the child had asked at all.

  “Right now, I am. I hope I do not come to regret the decision to save him.”

  “You mean if—”

  “He turns—”

  “Coalition.”

  That gave her pause. “Is he not Coalition now?”

  “He wears—”

  “The suit but—”

  “His mind—”

  “Does not.”

  She stared at these two marvels she had produced. “A more concise summation I have never heard,” she murmured. Then, in normal tones, she added, “Your father would be very impressed with you both.”

  They looked very pleased at that, and she smiled inwardly. And realized she had smiled more with these two in the last ten minutes than she had since she had come back.

  “Let us go in then, and introduce the major to one of the small wonders of Ziem,” she said.

  Chapter 33

  “IT IS—”

  “A special plant—”

  “Only of Ziem.”

  Paledan stared down at the small, green ball the boy held out. He could see that it was indeed plant matter, but what was special about it escaped him. Was it edible? Did it have some medicinal value?

  Maybe poisonous . . .

  Even as he thought it he didn’t believe it. These two would not do that. He was not sure of why he knew this, only that he did. But as with anything that presented itself to his mind as a given when he did not have evidence to substantiate the conclusion, or when he could not trace each step of the thought process that brought him to it, he was mistrustful. Hence the thought occurring in the first place, he assumed.

  “You must—”

  “Hold it.”

  “She said—” The boy’s eyes flicked to his mother.

  “You could now,” the girl finished.

  He shifted his own gaze to the woman who sat on the chair opposite the cot he sat on the edge of. He had tried to keep his focus on the duo that so i
ntrigued him, since he had learned it was best to keep up with them. But this woman was ever unsettling to him, his every sense working at a tangible hum any time she was in this room with him. And she made him work at something that should have come easily, the simple process of logic.

  But surely she would not go through what she had in order to heal him, and then simply allow these two to undo it all with some strange, deadly plant of this world. He felt a sense of satisfaction as soon as the thought occurred; this must be what his mind had processed on a subconscious level. He hadn’t made some unfounded leap, he had merely realized this before he actually put it into words in his mind.

  He turned back to the twins. “And what else must I do?”

  “Just hold it—”

  “Warm it—”

  “With your hand and—”

  “It will—”

  “Do the rest.”

  Nyx extended his hand. Paledan did the same, flicking another glance at Iolana as he was able to do so with relative steadiness. The boy dropped the small green thing, which closer up looked like a handful of leaves tightly compressed, into his palm.

  “Now close—”

  “Your fingers—”

  “Around it.”

  He did so. Without hesitation. And yet it was not long ago it had taken him great concentration to get his fingers to properly respond. But he did not look at Iolana this time; he was certain she would note the improvement. She missed little, if anything.

  For a long moment nothing happened. “How will I know when what is supposed to happen happens?” he asked the twins.

  “You will—”

  “Know,” Lux finished, with a smile that inexplicably made him feel an odd, inward tug.

  “Is it—”

  He stopped as he felt a slight but undeniable movement in his hand, the slightest of tickles against his skin. The twins grinned.

  “Hold it—”

  “Just a little—”

  “Longer.”

  He did. And with each passing second the movement grew stronger, a brushing, expanding sort of sensation that felt as if the tiny ball were unfurling.

  “Now!” they chorused.

  He opened his fingers.