her instruments 03 - laisrathera (38 page)

“This sounds a little bit ominous,” Reese admitted. “Am I in trouble?”

“No. The opposite, in fact. My superiors have made it known to me that you earned the Copper Sickle not long ago.”

Fleet’s sole civilian citation had been awarded to her in a situation so harrowing and bizarre that Reese often couldn’t quite believe it had happened. But she had received a medal, not long after also hearing that she wasn’t going to be extradited for accidentally killing off several boxes full of a previously unknown alien species. That might have been part of what made the whole experience feel surreal. “Ah… yeah.”

“And we’ve done the base minimum to show our appreciation by waiving the mooring fees you’d ordinarily be paying at a starbase for the
Earthrise
,” Soly continued. “But I’ve also been authorized to fulfill any reasonable request from you.”

“You’ve been what?” Reese asked, astonished.

“As someone not only decorated by Fleet but also now the confidant of an allied sovereign of state, we are very interested in making an ally out of you.” Soly paused, then said. “No, I’ll be honest. An ongoing resource. Queen Liolesa has made noises about allowing us to put a permanent base in this system, which would dovetail nicely with our needs now that the Colony Bureau is planning to push out here, far, far away from the Chatcaava. Having a presence in what’s currently the furthest corner of the Alliance would be awfully good for us. And we figure if we make you happy, we’ll make her happy.”

“Okay, I see that,” Reese said, feeling her way into a chair. “Though I’ll be honest, I don’t know how much influence I have with her.”

Soly snorted. “You’re marrying her cousin, aren’t you?”

“How…. “ She stopped and folded her arms. “Does everyone know about this but me? I haven’t even asked him yet!”

The Seersa grinned. “You know how scuttlebutt is. Everyone loves gossip, especially if it’s about something happy. But to turn the topic back to how this can be of help to you, Captain Eddings—”

“—you might as well call me ‘Reese’ if we’re going to be talking gifts.”

“Reese, then. I’ve got a battlecruiser’s power-plant, genies, and storerooms here. We’re not talking unlimited potential, but we can set you up with a lot of very nice things before the replacement crew arrives to drive this thing out of orbit.”

“That’s… quite an offer,” Reese said. “But blood in the soil, I’ll take you up on it. We can start with a few spare Pads if you have them and as much gem grid flooring as you’ve got, and I’ll get you a bigger list once I’ve had a chance to go downstairs and have a better look at what I’m renovating.”

“Good enough,” Soly said, standing. She held out her hand, palm up. “Chances are if we do get basing rights, me and my hold will end up stationed here for a while. It’s looking like pirates are going to find this corner of the universe very tempting.”

Reese stood, covered the Seersa’s palm with her own. “And we’d be glad to have you keeping an eye out for them, definitely.”

Soly nodded and let herself out, leaving Reese standing in the middle of the room. So much to do, so much she didn’t know. How much capital did she have in addition to her own? Would Liolesa give her some? Would Liolesa care how many Pelted she imported to work on Rose Point? How many of them could she give land grants to, to convince them to stay?

The Pads she had to have, at bare minimum, because she foresaw a lot of meetings at Ontine, figuring all this out. Maybe she should have asked for a few space heaters too. With a rueful smile, Reese returned to her notes.

“So this is home,” Kis’eh’t said, for once taken aback.

“It will be, once we make it comfortable,” Reese replied.

Bryer was already moving past them toward the profusion of roses, his wings flaring a watery gold beneath the pale winter sunlight. She remembered, sudden as a blow, the wish he’d divulged when they’d been trapped by slavers in the Earthrise’s closet:
a garden
.

“That’s one happy Phoenix,” Irine said. “And I never thought I’d say that about any Phoenix.”

Reese smiled and started walking toward the keep. “All right. We have a job to do… in this case, going through this place and making lists of things we need to make it habitable.”

“Technically it looks like some of it is already habitable.” Kis’eh’t squinted at the stones as they passed beneath them. “This structure is sound, isn’t it?”

“It is, but it’s cold enough to crack your pawpads,” Irine said. “Habitable isn’t necessarily comfortable…!”

“All right. A list of things we need to make it comfortable,” Reese said. She stopped just inside the great hall, letting Kis’eh’t look around. “Soly’s offered to give us some things from the battlecruiser’s stores, so we should take her up on that before the ship leaves for the front.”

“Right,” Kis’eh’t said. She drew in a long breath and said, “Oh, it smells like flowers. Inside. Even in winter! It seems… well, a little magical.”

“To me, too,” Reese said with a smile, and started to speak when the sound of footfalls in one of the nearby corridors feeding into the hall froze them all in place.

“Did you leave someone here we didn’t know about?” Irine whispered.

“No?” Reese said, tense. “Maybe we should—”

“Sssh,” Kis’eh’t said. “They’re coming.”

…and from that hall stepped an Eldritch woman wearing a sheepish expression. Felith stopped at the arch and rested her hand on it, head lowered. “Ah… I hope you are not too wroth, Lady Theresa… but I came with the fugitives fleeing Ontine in Lady Fassiana’s entourage, and when they all began to return I thought perhaps I might stay and begin cleaning the castle in preparation for your arrival.” The woman blushed. “It did not occur to me until just this moment that this was presumption. I swear it you, I did not intend it thus—”

Reese interrupted her by crossing the distance and hugging her, Eldritch or not. Felith squeaked, and then hesitantly rested an arm across her back.

“I didn’t realize… I didn’t even think where you might have gone,” Reese said, stunned. “Not since they told me that Surela wouldn’t touch the servants. And all this time….”

“I hope you did not think I was lost!”

“No. I mean… I don’t know what I thought.” Reese flushed and rubbed her cheek, wondering if she could polish the blush off. “That you’d run off, or escaped, or….”

“Gotten eaten by bears,” Kis’eh’t offered.

“Basilisks,” Irine corrected.

The Glaseah eyed her, curious. “Literal ones?”

“Apparently.”

Felith covered her mouth to hide the twitching smile, then said, “I admit, when the betrayal occurred and the chaos erupted, I ran for the safest place I could find and hid there… behind Lady Fassiana’s skirts. I should have been braver.”

“You should have nothing!” Reese exclaimed. “You did exactly what you had to do. Blood, you did what I wish I could have done…!”

Felith shook her head. “You acted just as I thought you would, Lady. As a proper liegewoman to the Queen. Which… brings me to another question, as I believe you do not understand the implications of my decision to be here.”

“She wants to work for you,” Kis’eh’t said.

“Okay? Really?” Reese turned from the Glaseah and said, “Sure. Absolutely.”

Wide-eyed, Felith said, “That is all? Just so? ‘Yes, be one of Laisrathera’s’?”

“Is there a reason it shouldn’t be that easy?” Reese asked. “I mean, I assume there’s going to be some tiresome divisions between staff and labor and commoners and nobles and families and who knows what other Eldritch things, but I’m not Eldritch, Felith. I’m human. If you want to work for me, if you want to help me make Laisrathera a going concern… then absolutely. I could use all the help I can get. And Eldritch help? Someone who can walk me through all the traditions I’m going to accidentally trample? Yes, please!”

Felith was trying not to giggle, but she managed a sober expression. “You must not trample all our traditions, Lady.”

“Only the stupid ones,” Irine said, indulgent.

“Which is probably most of them,” Kis’eh’t muttered.

“Hush, you two.” To Felith, she said, “So it’s my turn to ask. Knowing that this is going to be an upside-down house… do you want to work here?”

“Oh!” Felith smiled to dimpling. “Yes. Absolutely. I think I could grow to like a… more unconventional lifestyle.”

“Ha!” Kis’eh’t shook her head. “Unconventional! Goddess save the poor creatures here. ‘Unconventional,’ my—”

Reese cleared her throat.

“—Tail.” The Glaseah fluffed hers. “Speaking of which, we have a castle to inventory and map, don’t we?”

“So we do,” Reese said, grinning. “Let’s go to work.”

It felt good to be wandering through the castle with a checklist, with no agenda other than to consider how she planned to furnish the place, or whether she wanted to partition off the rooms to make them easier to heat and cool, or how she could integrate modern technology without losing the architectural feel. Here and there she saw signs of the refugees’ passage, in a few blankets folded in a corner, or a floor that had been swept clean of dust… but other than that, the castle remained vacant, waiting for its own renewal. What would the gardens be like in spring, she wondered? Maybe she should plan the wedding for then. Come to think of it, if she wanted any of her crew’s family or friends to have the chance to get here from off-world, she’d have to put it off at least a month or two… and that was without the threat of the pirates maybe or maybe not returning.

Reese sat abruptly on one of the benches scattered on what was left of the wall walk, on the battlement still intact enough to support them. So much to do. So much to fear, still. It was funny: she’d thought that not letting herself care about things would make the fear manageable, maybe even go away. But the fear never went away, whether she was enjoying her life or not. Closing her heart only meant she had no reward for living with it.

With a sigh, Reese rose and looked over the wall into the courtyard. She could just see the glint of Bryer’s feathers amid the roses. How far back would he prune them, she wondered, and smiled. He could keep the whole garden if he wanted: an Eye-trained killer, now a noble groundskeeper. Would he bring a mate here from Phoenix-Nest and hatch a nest full of proper, tiny children? She imagined Irine’s kits pulling their tail-feathers and running away giggling and smiled.

This was what she’d worked toward; to think she’d almost lost it because she’d been too afraid to admit to wanting it….

“Hey, Reese!”

She looked up, found Irine jogging toward her with Allacazam in her arms.

“Here,” Irine said, handing the Flitzbe over. “One of the Swords on the ship brought him over. Said that he—that’s he the Sword, not he Allacazam—had a message, that she said, ‘yes’, and that you’d understand?”

“Yeah,” Reese said, petting Allacazam’s fur. She sent a wordless query and received back a satisfied sound, like the hum of an
a cappella
quartet warming up. “I do. Thanks, Irine.”

The tigraine eyed her. “Should I ask?”

Reese grinned and put an arm around the other woman’s waist. “Let’s just say that after years of other people gambling on me, I’ve decided it’s time for me to start gambling on other people.”

Irine rolled her eyes. “This is about Surela, isn’t it.”

“And if it is?”

The other woman shook her head. “You’re the boss.”

Reese snorted. “Right. So that’s why whenever I told you people to do something you didn’t want to do, you found a way to talk me out of it, right?”

“Well….”

“Or gave me ideas that you made me think were mine but were actually yours, and then let me go on believing they were mine?”

Irine looked up at the sky. “Well….”

“Or outright badgered me when I was doing something stupid until I stopped doing it?”

“It was for your own good,” Irine said, sagely.

Reese started to retort and then paused. Chuckled and said, “You know, you’re right.” And grinned at the tigraine’s gape. “Come on. Let’s go talk about a wedding.”

Finding her voice, Irine said, “So there’s going to be a wedding?”

“I hope so.”

“Have you proposed yet?”

“We’ve been a little busy,” Reese said dryly.

“Mmm. Might want to get around to that before you start sending invitations….”

Reese sighed and smiled. “I’m in trouble when the Harat-Shar start making sense.”

“We always make sense, by our standards. But yes, absolutely, let’s go talk weddings!”

“Before we do, though….” Reese stopped, frowned. “Is the Sword still here?”

“I don’t know,” Irine answered, one ear propped, the other sagging. “Probably? Why?”

Reese pulled the dagger out of her boot and turned it in her hands. This one was plainer than the blade Hirianthial had given her in Ontine, but felt older than the one from the Alliance she’d lost on Kerayle: someone had used this one, and taken care of it. She traced the white leather girdling the hilt with a fingertip and nodded. A woman alone in a new world should have a weapon. Hirianthial would understand.

She gave the dagger to Irine. “Give this to the Sword and tell him to bring it to Surela Laisrathera. A liege-gift, from her new lady.”

“You’re going to lose another dagger?” Irine said, rueful, but she took it.

“Not losing this time,” Reese said. “Giving.” She grinned a lopsided grin. “It’s not like I have any luck keeping them anyway, right?”

Irine sighed and hugged her, but Reese could tell she was smiling.

CHAPTER 27

Liolesa hosted the fealty sessions in the mud of Jisiensire’s ashen fields, so lately turned for the graves. Beneath the pewter-gray sky with its oppressive clouds, she sat enthroned on a small bench padded with a blue velvet cushion, with her hands folded on her lap and her skirts arrayed around her; the grime streaked up their hems looked like a brackish embroidery, and made her seem as if her purity was rising out of the muck. The display grated on the raw nerves of the men who came to kneel before her, already abraded nearly past bearing by the hours of digging holes and setting not only bodies, but parts of bodies into them. Hirianthial had required them to try to match the pieces when they could. They often couldn’t, and would break into frustrated tears at their failures.