Coalition 02.5 - The Kingbird (5 page)

“Do you ever think about ... the predictions? That they are destined to be bonded mates?”
Rina
asked, staring at the pair. When silence met her, she shifted her gaze back to them. “I know, we’re not supposed to talk about it when they’re around, but they’re far enough away.”

“It would be a good match, I think,”
Dax
said.

“Just what I was thinking,”
Rina
agreed. “A perfect balance.
Shaina
, so brave and clever and reckless, and Lyon so brave and wise and thoughtful.”

“But we agreed we would have no one push them toward it. If it is to be, it will happen on its own,”
Califa
said.

“I do think about it,”
Shaylah
said, “but only in the sense that were it to happen, our families would be bound forever, and I like that.”

Califa
smiled. “As do I.”

“We are already bound forever,” Dare said. “You do not come so close to losing everything and everyone who matters and not bind them to you as closely as possible when you regain them.”

A moment of solemn silence reigned before
Dax
broke it. “And that wisdom is why you’re the king, and the rest of us merely your humble servants,” he said with a grin and a mock bow.

“Humble? You?” Dare laughed, a full, deep-throated laugh. “The man who practically set off
pyroflares
the one time you beat me”—he gestured at the rock the children were swimming back from now—”in that race when we were children?”

“One time? I beat you three times!”

“Your memory is as warped as your instinct for self-preservation.”

“If your
royalness
will recall, I only let you win that first time because it was your birthday.”

“And I you on yours, so those don’t count. And you only won that last trip because you ignored my father calling us back.”

Dax
looked vaguely uncomfortable at that. “He did say he wasn’t the king on that trip. But I would have won anyway.”

“Keep believing that if you must.”

“Truth,”
Dax
said. “I’ll prove it.”

Dare eyed his brother in all but blood warily. “Oh?”

Dax
leapt up, grinning. “Race you,” he said.

Dare was on his feet in an instant. He yanked his shirt over his head as
Dax
did the same. Not for the first time she thought of the difference between them, Dare’s scars, other than the ones at his wrists and ankles from long ago chains, were buried more deeply.
Dax’s
were visible; he had been wounded more than once in his career as the
skypirate
who had terrorized the Coalition, and the thin,
criss
-crossing lines on his back were mute testimony to what he’d gone through, what he’d risked.

She glanced at
Rina
, knowing the reminder those scars were. He had taken that flogging for her, putting himself, albeit in disguise, in enemy hands in an effort to find out what had happened to her mother. He had not only learned she had been murdered by the Coalition long ago, but had nearly ended up dead himself. All for a child he barely knew anything about, except that she was
Triotian
.

He would do the same for any of them
, she thought. As would Dare. And
Rina
,
Califa
, she herself.

She laughed as the two men, for this moment in time back to the children they had been, challenging each other constantly, raced into the water. Lyon and
Shaina
had reached the shore, and now stood there staring at their fathers, looking more than a little startled.

“It is worth more than any gold to see them like this,”
Califa
said.

Shaylah
looked at her old colleague, fellow officer. “Yes,” she agreed.

“Right now war and the Coalition are the last things on their minds,”
Rina
said. “And the children’s, too.”

“They do carry such weight,”
Shaylah
said, thinking of
Califa’s
words. “It cannot be easy, being the children of two such men, living legends as they say.”

“Not to mention their mothers,”
Rina
said pointedly.

Shaylah
laughed.

“It is good to see you laugh as well,”
Califa
said. “Being queen becomes you, but it is a heavy burden.”

“Today,”
Shaylah
said, “I am not a queen, nor Dare a king. It will all be there when we return, and we will begin again, but for today ... let’s just be this family.”

“Agreed,”
Califa
and
Rina
said simultaneously. They all three laughed.

The race was a tie.

* * *

“THEY NEVER RUN out of energy, do they?”
Dax’s
tone was dry as they scrambled up over a pile of rocks that was partially blocking the trail.
So much
, he thought,
for a restful afternoon
.

“Would that we could borrow some of it on occasion,” Dare agreed.

Shaina
and Lyon ran ahead, as usual. Warnings to stay within sight were
heeded
for a short while each time, but then something would catch their eager attention and they’d be off again, leaving their fathers to catch up.

“I think our mates were wise to stay behind,”
Dax
muttered as he spotted the two scamps up ahead.

“They deal with it enough at home. More than we do.”

“Yes.”
Dax
grinned. “For a fighter pilot and a tactical genius, they make very good mothers.”

They were long past the stage where references to their lives before were uncomfortable. Dare only smiled; that smile that always showed when he thought of his mate.

“Did you ever think we’d wind up like this, chasing two little rapscallions through the mountains?”
Dax
asked.

“I never dared hope,” Dare said quietly. “Especially after ... Brielle.”

Dax
looked at his king. He rarely spoke the name, except on her birthday, when tradition ordained a memorial tribute. They had only once spoken of it, when Dare had rather coldly told him what had happened.
Dax
knew him well enough to know the coldness was the only way he could get the words out.

“I loved her,
Dax
,” he said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said.

“I still think of her, though I do not speak of it.”

“As do I. She was my sister. She ever will be.”

“I know.”

Dax
studied Dare’s face for a moment. “I do not hold it to your account, Dare. You did what she wanted. What you had to do. She would have died anyway, and in a much more painful, ugly, horrible way, at the hands of masters of brutality.”

“Yes. But she was my bonded mate, to be the mother of my children. It pains me still.”

Dax
felt the old, familiar pang. He’d long ago stopped trying to quash it.
Rina
had taught him that.

“
Rina
told me once, when I found her weeping in her quarters, that the pain was the only thing that made her parents still seem real to her. Funny how children can teach us things.”

Dare went quiet as they caught up once more, only to have
Shaina
and Lyon spot something else and dash off to investigate.

“For a long time I had thought I would never be able to father a child,” he said after a moment.

Dax
stopped mid-stride. He turned and looked at his oldest and closest friend. “What?”

“The Coalition ... took steps. It would have been inconvenient for them if their slaves were capable of breeding.”

Dax’s
breath caught. “They ... did something to you? You never told me.”

“Not something I wished to trumpet. And as it turned out”—he glanced at the boy ahead of them, now carefully inspecting yet another rock fall—”my worry was needless.”

Dax
followed his glance. “Yes. It was. He’s an amazing boy, Dare.”

“Yes.”

“He will be an amazing leader, when the time comes.”

Dax
knew that Dare was ever conscious of the burden his son would one day bear and how determined he was that the boy would have the tools he needed. Yet at the same time he wished for him to have some bit of carefree childhood, as much as could be managed in a time of war and constant vigilance. It was a fine balance, but the proof of success was just ahead of them, in the boy who showed every evidence he would become as fine a king as his father now was. Already he had the clever mind and the ability and willingness to learn. Most of all he had his father’s strength of character; the strength that had enabled him to survive where most had not.

“Yes, he will be,” Dare said. Then with a wry expression, added, “But I hope to put that off for some time.”

Dax
laughed. “You’re good for another century or so. Longer, if your genes run true.”

“A much more pleasant prospect, now that we know our mates will be beside us,” Dare said.

“Bless
Larcos
for figuring that out. Until he found that link to the water, I thought it was just coincidence that
outworlders
live longer here.”

Dax
knew both of them had made peace with the fact that
Triotians
lived longer than
Arellians
. They’d had to. They’d lived with the certainty—they thought—that if they survived the constant battles with the Coalition, one day they would have to survive without the women who had made the fight worth it. But the few
outworlders
here showed no signs of aging at what would be their normal rate on their home worlds. Including
Shaylah
and
Califa
.

It had been a mystery until the former medical officer from
Dax’s
crew had linked the gifted longevity with the water supply—a secret no one other than
Larcos
and the four of them knew. There was, Dare had decreed almost immediately, no point in giving the Coalition yet another reason to come back to Trios in full force. Every
outworlder
was already getting the benefits anyway.

“Good,”
Dax
had said at the time. “Coalition thugs live too
bedamned
long already.”

“They’re only averaging about forty years these days,”
Califa
had said with some satisfaction.

“As I said,” he’d replied, making her smile.

He was proud of her. She fought more fiercely now for Trios than she ever had for the Coalition, despite being one of their most honored officers. As did
Shaylah
.

“For whatever it might be worth,”
Dax
said, “While I loved my sister, I cannot picture you with anyone other than
Shaylah
.”

This time it was Dare who stopped mid-stride. He turned to look at him. “It is worth,” he said, his voice low, “more than you can imagine, my brother.”