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  “I don’t understand you,” she repeated, her voice constrained now as if with weariness, but she turned and led them to the elevators and up to the shuttle where the others were waiting for them.

  8 Audience

  “I SAID NO STRAYS,” said Lily, looking first at Jenny and then at Rainbow, who had strapped herself in beside Paisley, evidently finding refuge in the fellow Ridani.

  Jenny shrugged, punctuating the gesture with an ostentatious sigh, but did not answer.

  “I reckoned my chances, all sides of ya pattern,” said Rainbow in a soft voice, not pleading, “and I reckoned I be best off with you, min Heredes, being if you’ll have me.”

  “Hoy. All right. I’m too tired to fight this out. But you’re Jenny’s—min Seria’s charge. Understood?” A nod. “Jenny. She’s your responsibility then.” Jenny, too, nodded, but a tiny smile, only half-mocking, broke the surface of her lips. “Good. Now I’m going to take a nap until we dock at Hospital. Unless one of you has another surprise?”

  Given the tone of her voice, no one volunteered any.

  She slept until they were slung into the vast cargo hold of the merchantman renamed Hospital, stayed awake long enough to be assigned a four-bunk cabin with Jenny, Lia, Gregori, and Bach, and went back to sleep.

  If they passed through windows, she neither woke nor had strange enough dreams to account for it. When she did wake up, she found Kyosti asleep on the narrow bunk with her. Long intimacy had allowed him to find a way to fit in beside her without waking her, or even pushing her too close to the edge of the bunk. She shifted carefully, but he remained asleep. The cabin was empty, except for Bach. The robot floated unlit next to the ceiling. Lily lay quiet for a while on the thin foam pad and watched Hawk.

  His breathing had a slow, regular pulse that reminded her abruptly of a Bajii Ransome aunt’s astronomical studies: she was a crazy old woman, lodged in an orbiting science lab for so much of her life that visits to the closed vistas of Ransome House left her almost hysterical with claustrophobia, but she had once in her ramblings claimed to have discovered, or glimpsed for one all-too-brief hour, the pulse of the distant heart of the universe.

  Then Hawk smiled and opened his eyes, breaking the illusion.

  “You slept through two meals,” he said, “and unless you’re quick you’ll miss this one.”

  She sat up. “I’m starving. Where are we?”

  “Some godforsaken backwater with only a pygmie-manned Station orbiting a white dwarf.”

  “The rendezvous point,” she guessed, and stood up to smooth down her clothing so that it did not look quite so slept in.

  “Callioux left a message,” Kyosti went on, watching her slightest movement with unnerving thoroughness. “You’re to rendezvous with the Boukephalos at oh-eight-oh, fleet time.”

  “Boukephalos—that’s Jehane’s ship?”

  Kyosti chuckled. “I wonder what he’ll come up with next,” he murmured. “You’re to go alone.”

  “I expected that.” Lily considered Bach thoughtfully, whistled. You will remain here and let no one but our people enter this cabin. You can control the lock?

  Affirmative, patroness. I will voice code it to thy specifications.

  “Good. Be very cautious, Bach. You’re my—”

  “Ace?” suggested Kyosti.

  Bach responded with a rippling arpeggio.

  Lily merely rubbed her face with her palms. “Hoy. Where’s the washing cubicle?”

  “Down the hall.”

  She gave a last tug to her sleeves. “What time it is? And where’s the mess? And everyone else?”

  He swung off the low bunk and stood up, the light tips of his hair almost brushing the ceiling. “In the mess. I told them I’d get you there by oh-six-thirty.”

  She checked her wrist-com and grinned. “Bless the Void. I have time for a shower. Meet me there.”

  Jenny had assembled everyone at a long table in the far corner of the mess hall, isolated from the other diners by several empty tables. Lily had some trouble counting, however, as she came up to the table: it was almost full. Jenny sat with Gregori and Lia; on the other side of the table sat the brilliant Ridani contingent, Pinto, Paisley, and Rainbow, taking strength in numbers, with the Mule sitting stiffly beside Paisley. But there were two more—

  “Finch! What are you doing here?” With some surprise she greeted his sister, Swann. “I’m glad to see you got off okay. Your mother?”

  Finch, looking mutinous, did not reply immediately, but cast a pointed and hostile glance at the three Ridanis. “She said,” he nodded toward Jenny, “that they were meant to be here, but I can’t believe you’d have us sit down to table with tattoos.”

  “Finch,” whispered Swann, looking embarrassed.

  Paisley regarded Finch with interest, but Pinto and Rainbow had, as if allied, fixed stares of equal contempt on Finch’s angry face.

  “Hoy.” Rather than sitting down, Lily leaned her hands on the table and forced Finch to meet her gaze. “I never took you for a bigot, Finch. I thought you were above that.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with bigotry,” began Finch. “The fact is, it’s well known the kind of foul diseases—”

  Pinto started up out of his chair and grabbed across the table for Finch’s shirt.

  Finch jerked back, banging his chair on the chair behind him. “Is this another one of your lovers?” he asked sarcastically, out of range.

  “Pinto, sit down,” snapped Lily. “Finch, shut up. Hoy.” She regarded the two men with disgust, but after a few long moments during which the other diners in the cafeteria whispered and glanced around and subsided back to their meals, both men did as they were told.

  “Where’s Hawk?” asked Jenny in a low voice before an uncomfortable silence could grow.

  “He’s supposed to be here.” Lily glanced toward the door, then at Finch, who was too busy glaring at Pinto to be aware of this exchange. “Keep an eye out for me, Jenny.”

  Jenny nodded with quick understanding and shifted her chair just enough to give her a good view of the door.

  “I don’t have much time,” said Lily, “so I’m going to make this short.” She paused to survey the group, waiting until all of them watched her attentively, even Pinto, who nevertheless lapsed at frequent intervals with quick, bitter glances at Finch.

  Lily let her gaze settle first on Swann. “Your mother?” she repeated.

  “In Hospital,” Swann began.

  “We came with her,” interrupted Finch. “We can’t go back to Unruli. You know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” replied Lily. She sighed, thinking for a moment that the closed corridors of ships were not so different from the underground tunnels of Ransome House. “I don’t have much time,” she said again. “I think you all know that I’m going to meet with Jehane. To offer him my services—and the services of those of you who are willing to throw your lot in with mine.”

  The Mule hissed, a slight but penetrating sound. “And why should this Jehane, being so powerful, want your services as anything more than another soldier?”

  “I have several things he wants, and I mean to negotiate with those to get what I want.”

  “Which is?” asked Jenny.

  Lily grinned, a private understanding between her and the mercenary. “I’m not sure yet. But I want to keep this group together, all of you who want to stay with me. You don’t have any obligation to me. You can join Jehane’s forces in any capacity you wish, or not. But if you do stay with me, you have to accept that I will use whatever talents you have as part of my bargaining, and you have to accept whatever assignment I choose as best suited to my goal.”

  She waited, but no one spoke. Pinto stared down at the geometric patterns decorating his hands, and she guessed that he surely must be thinking of his father, of the way Senator Isaiah had utterly rejected his once-loved son for the sin of being half-Ridani. Pressing her lips together, she chose and cast off words in her thoughts, not wanting to say the wro
ng thing.

  “I’m not specifically a Jehanist,” Lily continued quietly, aware of Lia’s eyes going wide at the declaration. “I support his goals. I had the privilege of working with a man named Pero, on Arcadia, and I learned a great deal about selfless passion from him, and about our rights and duties as citizens of the Reft. He made me understand that we need reforms in the government of Reft space. I want to see Pero in a position to bring those reforms to the people, because I know he will. That’s one reason I’m joining Jehane now. Because Pero is a Jehanist, and speaks for Jehane and his goals.”

  She considered this a moment in silence. Paisley gazed at her with rapt attention.

  “But I’m really not a reformer either,” she went on. “Whatever my personal feelings about Jehane or Pero or anyone who does work for reform, I have to admire their zeal, but I can’t emulate it. So you must understand this: The main reason I am joining Jehane is to revenge myself on the people, the government, in Central, who killed my father.”

  “But Lily—” Finch began, while Swann, who also knew Sar Ransome, simply looked bewildered.

  “Sometimes other ties are as thick as blood,” said Lily softly, but with finality. Finch subsided. Swann still looked confused.

  “Sure,” said Paisley, enlightened. “Kinnas be ya bond as strong as ya family, if it be owed, like I owe to you. Ya man, he be ya one we meant to scam off ya spook ship, bain’t he, min Ransome?”

  “It’s Heredes now, Paisley. It wasn’t them. It was Central.” She had to stop, feeling a mask of stark anger and sorrow harden on her face.

  “Well, Lily-hae,” said Jenny cheerfully into the silence. “You know I’m with you.”

  “I am too,” said Aliasing, beside her, so faint a voice that it was almost lost in the harmonic buzz of the mess hall’s other conversations. Gregori was playing a mathematical game on the com-screen that Lily had prudently brought along for him, and had long since ceased paying attention to the adults’ discussion. Finch and Swann had their heads bent together in a whispered conversation, so Lily shifted her gaze back to the Mule, who hissed in the affirmative, casting an ironic gaze at Paisley’s determined face.

  “You know I be,” Paisley declared in a ringing voice, as if daring anyone else at the table to state their intentions with as much loyalty or boldness.

  Lily smiled at her, looked next at Rainbow, a little questioning.

  “I said before,” said the Ridani woman. “And be I meant it then, too.”

  “Pinto?” Lily asked, pausing at the frown on his face. For the first time she realized clearly that the inherent natural beauty of his face, and of Paisley’s as well, was cleverly and subtly enhanced by the patterns chosen for them at whatever early age such choices were made in the labyrinth of Ridani culture.

  “You know I’ve got no choice,” he muttered. “You possess my kinnas. What else am I supposed to do?”

  At the sound of his voice, Finch looked up, first at him, then at Lily. “Swann and I both agree,” he began slowly, “that we and Mom would be best off with you, Lily. We’d just get lost in Jehane’s forces, and probably separated as well. But you aren’t really going to mix—”

  “Don’t want to dirty your hands with us filthy tattoos, do you?” asked Pinto, with a sneer. “Well, maybe you never considered that we don’t like mixing with your kind any better—”

  “You can’t talk to me like—”

  “I can talk to you anyway I damn well please. You don’t deserve—”

  “Sit down!”

  Since both men were sitting, the words had the desired effect of startling them into a brief silence. Brief enough: “Now listen. Keep your prejudices to yourself. And that goes for both of you. And all of you.” Lily swept a quick glance around the table. “Unlike Jehane, I don’t have any resources backing me up except my people and Bach. So you will show politeness and respect for each other. Or I will ask you to leave. Is that understood?”

  “Min Heredes.” Unexpectedly, it was Rainbow who spoke, tentative but with growing firmness. “Be it you know about ya one, or be it you don’t.” She looked at the Mule. “We all knew, in ya thirties, ’bout what it be, and some had their say as it were ya perverted—” She paused, and by the set of her mouth Lily could tell that in her own way she was attempting to be compassionate. “—ya monster. Some said it be buying ya one Ridani girl’s favors for ya unnatural fashions.”

  The Mule began, with stately contempt, to rise. Paisley stared at Rainbow with astonished disgust.

  “No, no, min,” hastened Rainbow. “Be it you misunderstand me. If all know, then there’s none to whisper.”

  “I will thank you,” replied the Mule with fluid disdain, “to stay out of my affairs.”

  Lily saw Finch and Swann, and even Jenny and Pinto, staring at the Mule with dawning enlightenment, mingled with some revulsion and, in Lia’s case, pity.

  “Damn my eyes,” breathed Jenny. “I thought it was just one of those wild space tales, like the old ghost ship.”

  “And now everyone knows.” Lily tapped her hands impatiently on the table. “Which settles the question.”

  “Sure, and that be ya lowest run, sneaky way to tell folk—” began Paisley hotly, glaring at Rainbow.

  “Paisley.”

  Paisley frowned, looking mulish, and clenched her hands in her lap.

  “Any other surprises? Or confessions?” asked Lily sardonically. “Thank the Void. Now maybe I can eat before I go to meet Jehane.”

  “What about the crazy—” began Pinto with his usual caustic undertone. Responding instantly, Finch jumped to his feet with a gasp, just as Pinto said, “doctor,” in a surprised voice at the sight of Finch losing all his color as he stared at the mess door in terror.

  Lily whirled. Across twenty meters, she saw Kyosti halt in the door, his whole being fixing like a programmed seeker onto the paralyzed Finch. Some faint word escaped Finch’s lips. He was so mesmerized by the sight of Hawk that he could not even move to flee, or to beg for help.

  “Pinto, cover him,” snapped Lily, already moving. “Jenny, with me.”

  Finch flung aside chairs as he threw himself away toward the far wall, but to Lily, the sound of their clatter and fall faded into a dull counterpoint as her concentration narrowed onto her target. She knew, incontrovertibly, that Kyosti must not, could not, reach Finch, that whatever she had thought about Kyosti’s rash words about inevitability and killing, she had erred in believing them rash. She felt more than saw Jenny circle out to close in on his other side. Kyosti’s attention had riveted with such utter focus on Finch that he seemed oblivious to the two women converging on him.

  Jenny reached him first, and since they had all been forced to leave their hand-pack weapons on the shuttle—security reasons—she tackled him.

  Had she not had the most ruthless hand-to-hand combat training available in the Reft, he would have thrown her off. Damaging her did not seem in his purpose: he continued to stare at Finch, who had trapped himself in a corner and was frozen in terror even as his sister and the three Ridanis massed in front of him, trying to hide him from Hawk’s sight.

  Jenny tugged Hawk to his knees and was trying to force him down, but even so he struggled up with all her weight on him. Lily simply ran straight into him and wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard into her chest, as if suffocating him. He paused in his forward momentum, distracted by her presence.

  She looked back over her shoulder, gestured wildly with chin and eyes, and Pinto grabbed Finch by the arm and yanked him around the edge of the room and out the door. The others crowded along behind.

  Kyosti attempted to rise again, slowed, partly by his restraints and partly by some new information registering in his mind. He sank back onto his knees.

  There was a long pause, like a moment of opportunity lost, or of the kind of transfer of information that interrupts a computer’s flow.

  Everyone in the mess stared at them. The Mule, followed by Lia and Gregori, picked his w
ay past overturned chairs and came up to them just as Kyosti began to shake.

  It wasn’t even trembling, in fear or anger or relief at danger passed by. As Jenny had said, it was as if he was in the grip of a palsy so debilitating that it took both Lily and Jenny to support him. His face seemed shut down, emotionless, as if he was not there at all, though his eyes remained open. The tremors shook him for at least five minutes, while Lia and the Mule, prompted in her case by compassion and in his by some unknown emotion, attempted to shield the scene from the sight of onlookers. Gregori asked if he was sick, and an officer in Jehanish whites approached to offer to take him to one of the wards.

  Lily shook her head and waved him off. At last the tremors subsided, and Kyosti lay limp. He had fainted.

  “What time is it, Jenny? Hoy, I have to go. Have Pinto meet me at the shuttle. Tell Finch to lock himself in his room. No, in the room with Bach. And you’d better get Kyosti checked by a doctor.”

  “I don’t think he’ll like that,” said Jenny.

  “Damn what he likes,” said Lily fiercely. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. Is that what happened before?”

  “Yes, but the first time was worse.”

  “I’ll carry him,” said the Mule unexpectedly.

  “Thank you.” Lily studied the Mule with interest, and calculation, for a moment. “Can you stay by him?”

  The Mule nodded and reached to transfer with remarkable gentleness Kyosti’s unconscious figure from the grasp of the two women into its own. Like any sta, it was obviously stronger than a human.

  “Oh, hells,” muttered Lily, watching Kyosti’s limp form as the Mule carried him out. Simple jealousy did not seem to her an adequate explanation for what she had just seen. She straightened out her clothing, straightened herself. “Keep them in line, Jenny. Just for as long as I’m gone.”

  Jenny chuckled. “Look at it this way, Lily-hae. At least it’ll never be dull.”