Double Solitaire

  "I'm her mother and also her great-grandfather... which makes my head hurt to contemplate it. How much worse for the child? And how do I explain it once she's reached a reasonable age?" Tis shook her head. "Will she hate us all, or turn that hate into self-loathing?"

  She bent once more to her work, and Mark, with that sensitivity that was his hallmark, left her alone with her thoughts.

  The sentry stepped through the door and bowed. "The Raiyis."

  Zabb entered with his usual quick, nervous stride, but it seemed forced, and his uniform was filthy, heavily charred across one shoulder. The left sleeve had been ripped open, its blood-encrusted edges flapping like the wings of a dying bird. A field bandage was wrapped about his forearm.

  Tis rose and threw aside the gown.

  "Like, how did it go, man?"

  "I'm tired," Zabb said, dropping into a chair. "I don't want a lot of questions right now."

  Mark shuffled in confusion. "Sorry."

  "Will you leave my cousin and me alone, please?" Zabb asked, but it was really an order. Mark withdrew from the room.

  Tisianne moved to Zabb's side. She said softly, "That was certainly churlish." Then glancing to the arm asked, "How bad is it?"

  "Not very. It could benefit from sealing."

  "I'll do it."

  "I hoped you might."

  Tis unwrapped the bandage. As he said, the wound was not dangerous, but it was very ugly, with the lips of skin drying and curling away from the edges of the long cut.

  "What did this? Or is that also an unacceptable question?"

  Zabb glanced up at her from beneath his lashes. "A piece of Vayawand Ship Home. Lucky it didn't take the whole arm. I haven't time to regrow it right now."

  Zabb hissed slightly as she sprayed the wound with disinfectant. "So the mission was a success?"

  "Yes." He paused for a long moment, staring off into space. "You were right, Tis, it was hard, cruel hard. I've never felt so many of them die before."

  "And what was the cost for us?"

  "Ah, much better," Zabb sighed as she numbed the arm. "High. We lost fifteen ships, and a couple of hundred. Too many of them family. I'll be glad when we can start fielding some of these Tarhiji troops you've been drafting."

  "We have to train them first. They're too valuable to waste. There's not an inexhaustible supply." Tis carefully carved away the dried skin, then pulled the lips of the wound closed and applied the sealer.

  "What very steady hands you have."

  Tis glanced up at him startled. His skin was warm against her palm as she supported his arm -- a touch she was all too aware of. With heightened sensitivity she drank in the smell of sweat, cordite, smoke, and antiseptic.

  There is a look men assume when they suddenly "see" a woman in a sexual connotation. Tisianne had been a master of the look. Now on the receiving end, she realized it made them look stupid -- yearning cow eyes. And she had just lost her humanity, become a collection of breasts, hips, cunt. She tried to summon anger, found only confusion.

  To cover her discomfort, she said with studied casualness, "A great many years of practice. It's nice to be able to do it again. When I lost my hand, I found myself reduced to very much an administrator's role. Not one I enjoy."

  "When you were working on the Enhancer project, you resented the time you had to spend doctoring. You lived for research."

  "I've spent half my life treating the misery caused by that research. It's made me rethink my priorities." She began repacking her case. "When I do recover my body, I'm going to have that hand regrown --"

  "Tis." He had her by the shoulders. "I wouldn't count on that happening."

  She jerked free. "Because you won't try!"

  "No --"

  She rode over him. "I'm no threat to you, Zabb, male or female. I don't want the family. I want myself. I want my child."

  "I can't give it to you. It's not that I won't... I just can't!" His face was ravaged. "There has never been a coalition of such magnitude gathered against us. I don't think I can stop them." He snatched a sidearm from its holster and thrust the pistol at her. His hands were trembling. "I'd be prepared to use this. I wouldn't depend on me to protect you."

  It had been Tisianne's besetting sin that she could always place herself in the other person's situation. Shaklan had thought his only son possessed a rudimentary empathy -- a rare and not well-understood mentatic power. And certainly not a very welcome one in the totally self-absorbed world of a Takisian noble House. Even a body switch hadn't damped it. It was still her curse. How much the admission had cost Zabb she would never fully understand, but she did understand his agony, and more important, his fear. Zabb had agitated, plotted, and killed in his single-minded drive to rule the House. Now he had it, and the full weight of the responsibility was crushing him.

  Tis took him in her arms, one hand stroking the sweat-matted blond hair. Zabb's tears were warm against her neck. She couldn't find words. Maybe there were no words to ease his torment. She just held him and rocked him until the worst had passed.

  He straightened, held her out at arm's length, stared intently into her face. The pressure of his fingers was becoming painful. Tis let out a faint, inarticulate little sound as Zabb drew her close. The entire moment had a trancelike quality. Time had distorted. It was coming. Ideal knew she'd done it often enough to a faceless host of women. The pit of her stomach seemed to have gone warm and liquid. Zabb bent, his mouth searching for hers...

  And Tisianne jerked away. Blaise and Zabb, rape and murder, shame and fear. Too many terrors had come screaming up from her subconscious to allow her to accept this embrace.

  "I'm a man," she whispered as she huddled in on her self.

  "The body says otherwise," Zabb countered.

  She flung back her hair and stared at him desperately. "I can't trust you."

  "What by the Ideal does that mean?"

  "I can't explain. I haven't the words..."

  For an instant Zabb hesitated, wanting to say something, then flung himself out of the room. Mark stuck his head back around the door. Cautiously asked, "Is everything cool?"

  "No. Mark, hold me."

  Several of the Vayawand nobles were weeping. Despite his lack of telepathy, Durg could understand their distress. The scene at Vayawand Ship Home was shocking. The platform itself had been heavily damaged by the Ilkazam attack, and dead ships littered space around them. The worst were the still living, but mindless, ships. They flew aimlessly, unable to communicate or eat. Their deaths were coming, but far more slowly than their more fortunate fellows.

  Blaise's ship had offered a view of the devastation, but it was obviously costing the creature. Periodically long shudders swept the deck beneath their feet. Blaise himself was standing before a screen, hands clasped behind his back, his face inscrutable. Durg crossed to him.

  "My lord, a census of field commanders reveals a total of ninety war craft at our disposal. Rather more troop transport.

  "I can't take Ilkazam without ships," Blaise said. "And I've got to take Ilkazam because I'VE GOT TO GET HIM!"

  Spittle struck Durg's cheek. He prudently didn't wipe it away. There was also nothing to say to this outburst. The Morakh tried a change of subject. "Tandeh and Ss'ang wish to open negotiations --"

  "No. Smash them."

  "Why, my lord? They were not responsible for this debacle. And willing allies are far more useful than defeated enemies."

  Blaise pivoted slowly and stared unblinking down at Durg. "They have ships."

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Enough to conquer Ilkazam?"

  "Probably not."

  Blaise turned back to a contemplation of hell. "I've got to have a navy. Find me one."

  Durg bowed and withdrew.

  Illyana's howls had dropped to desperate and hoarse whimpers. During the long day Jay and Hastet's companions had slowly fallen away as they sought and obtained refuge with the various farm families along the road. It was an option that Jay and Hastet's pa
ranoia made impossible to consider. So when night drew in, they selected an abandoned barn and settled for the night.

  There were the remains of several summers' hay in the loft beneath the steeply peaked roof, and some of the rustlings Jay attributed not to their movements, but to the activities of the prior tenants. He just hoped they were the Takisian equivalents of mice. Not rats or spiders or something creepy.

  Illyana had thrust a pudgy fist against her mouth and was sucking hopelessly. Hastet looked down at her. "Tomorrow we've got to get help. She's got to eat."

  "Wouldn't do us any harm either," Jay said.

  She pleated the folds of her heavy skirt for several moments, then looked up at him. Her gaze was intense. "I want to discuss something."

  "Okay," Jay said cautiously.

  "This morning... back on the road. I realized I reacted with greater emotion to the loss of Haupi than I did to those poor people. I don't know why. And I don't want you to hate me for it."

  "Oh, sweety you don't have to worry about that. You were in shock, and, though it may sound callous, you didn't know those people from the pope, and Haupi was your pet, your friend, and a link to everything you've given up since you've had the bad luck to get involved with me."

  "Oh, Jay," she said, beginning to cry again. "She'll never survive out on her own."

  "Hey, hey." Jay folded her in his arms and rocked her gently. Her tears wet his shirt.

  "I'm tired, Jay, and I'm hungry... and I'm scared."

  "Me too."

  They sat in silence for several more minutes. Through the high loft window, Jay could see the double moons of Takis rising over the hills. So alien... and yet, as he held this woman in his arms, Jay realized he wasn't homesick or lonely anymore. And he realized he couldn't endanger her anymore. He lifted her chin with a finger, forced her to face him. "Hasti, baby, I'm going to send you and Illyana back to Ilkazam."

  She shook her head violently, escaped strands of hair from her braid whipping across her face. "No, Raiyis Zabb will kill her."

  "Okay, I'll send you back, and keep the kid with me."

  She lifted her hand, half dropped it back into her lap. Lifted it again and explored his lips with trembling fingertips. "No... I won't leave you."

  He tasted the salt of her tears on her lips. Hastet cupped his face in her hands and slowly sank back onto the hay. As her clothes fell away, Jay finally understood the words of the old wedding ceremony: And with my body I thee worship.

  Everything up till now had just been fucking.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  "Dry at least, brothers," called a clear tenor voice. Jay jerked awake and placed a hand across Hastet's mouth. "Beyond that I cannot speak for the accommodations."

  Hastet woke and nodded to indicate that she understood the danger in which they stood. Illyana had begun to wiggle, tiny arms and legs thrashing in the dry hay. Hastet gathered her up and placed her finger in the baby's mouth, hoping the sucking reflex would sublimate the yelling reflex.

  It was all wasted effort. The tenor voice sent his men fanning out through the barn. The first head popped over the edge of the loft, and Jay prepared to pop in return, but held off when he spotted the uniform -- tan and green - Jeban, not Vayawand.

  "A family of refugees, my lord," the Tarhiji soldier called down.

  "Let's have a look at them," the voice came floating up.

  Jay and Hastet exchanged glances, shrugged, and moved to obey. The soldier, spotting the infant, went all Takisian gushy and quickly offered to help. Hastet let him. It was no easy matter to climb down a ladder encumbered with both skirt and a baby.

  Once down, Jay found himself on the receiving end of an amused but wary scrutiny. "No proper courtesy to your lord and master?" the psi lord asked.

  Like most Takisians he was a shrimp, with hair the color of amber and bright green eyes. He had a narrow, but very long, goatee, and that combined with his knowing smile made Jay think he needed only a pair of horns to play the perfect little devil.

  "Sorry, we're out-of-towners," Jay answered, slapping hay from the seat of his trousers.

  The noble was sucking on a raw egg, and even so unappetizing a reminder of food set Jay's stomach to rumbling.

  "You picked a poor time to come visiting," said the psi lord.

  "Yeah, tell us about it."

  Hastet was staring at the egg with the same famished longing that Jay sensed was in his own eyes. The Jeban nobleman pulled another from his pocket, bowed, and offered it to Hastet.

  "Madam."

  "Thank you." She shifted Illyana onto her hip and, cracking the egg with her thumbnail, began to suck. Jay noticed the Jeban noble frowning at Illyana's hair color. With his brown hair and Hastet's brown hair, it was evident even to a pea brain they weren't the kid's parents. It was also evident the kid wasn't Tarhiji. Luckily the guy didn't ask them about Illyana. Instead he asked, "Where are you out of?"

  "Ilkazam," Jay answered.

  "You have a strange accent even for Ilkazam."

  "It's the result of a severe speech impediment," Jay replied.

  The psi lord threw himself down on a pile of hay. "Well, consider yourself under the protection of what remains of House Jeban. For all I know, I might be Raiyis."

  "Congrats. Kind of a drastic way to get promoted, isn't it?"

  "Actually this whole war may be my fault."

  "Surely you wrong yourself, my lord," Hastet said.

  "No, no." Nimble hands fluttered urgently in the air before his face. "I was in Rodaleh negotiating a marriage when Blaise invaded. Lost that bride, so next I tried Alaa. Meanwhile Blaise was asking his advisers, 'Where is that piece of afterbirth Govan brant Shen sek Sova?' Alaa, you say? Invade Alaa! So I come home. Maybe I'll just marry in House. Damned if he doesn't do it again." There was laughter from Govan's men, and he smiled in answer, but there was an air of forced gaiety.

  Still, Jay had to admire them. There wasn't much he admired about Takisians, but they did have an insouciance, an ability to laugh even in the face of disaster, that was rather appealing.

  "I think, my lord, you might consider celibacy," Hastet said. There was more laughter.

  "So what do you do now?" Jay asked.

  "Hide, hope, regroup, and wait."

  "Any advice on --"

  Jay broke off as Govan jerked up a hand in warning. Jay experienced a sensation as if someone had spread cold jelly across the surface of his brain, and he realized Govan had shielded them against a mentatic probe.

  "Did that do it?" the detective whispered.

  "I don't think so," Govan replied. And with hand signals he issued quick orders. His men quickly assumed defensive positions. Hastet, Jay, Illyana, and Govan took cover behind the sagging wood of a stall. They heard a ship landing.

  Govan chewed nervously on his lower lip. Shook his head. "No good, too many to fight." He stood. "Let us see if they will be content with my surrender."

  Jay grabbed the nobleman's wrist. "I don't get it. You're surrendering to save a bunch of Tarhiji?"

  Govan looked down his nose. "They are my men. Selected by me. Trained by me. They have fought with me."

  He walked through the wide front doors. Jay heard furtive movement behind him. The Vayawand troops were wisely encircling the building. They heard Govan's voice raised in greeting. Another few murmured words of conversation. The sharp report of a laser rifle being fired, and Govan's body was knocked back through the door.

  There was a moment of shocked silence from the Jeban soldiers. Then a man a few feet to Jay's left spun and fired through the wall. There was a scream from outside, and then a barrage of laser and projectile fire ripped through the barn. Jeban soldiers twitched like men with Saint Vitus' dance, and Jay threw himself across Hastet and Illyana, trying to push them beneath the level of the dirt floor.

  Five Vayawand soldiers came hurtling through the door. Two of them went down to weapons fire from the defenders. Jay popped the other three. Then ten or twelve ran in, and it
got very confused. It was tough to get a clear shot so Jay was just popping Jeban and Vayawand randomly. A Jeban soldier collapsed nearby, his face a charred mess. With only the stretch of a hand Jay could seize his rifle. With it set for automatic fire, he could do more damage a lot faster than his finger.

  Stubbornly he shook his head and looked away from that evil seduction. Seven, eight more soldiers vanished. The gunfire was becoming sporadic as the sheer weight of numbers bore down the Jeban defenders. Jay lined up on another soldier -- and then froze as the cold weight of a gun muzzle caressed the nape of his neck.

  Rolling over on his back, Jay put his hands over his head.

  "We're going to throw a party?" Disbelief drove Tisianne's voice into a squeak.

  A trifle defensively Zabb said, "We have won a victory." He spun around in front of her and continued to skate backward, hands clasped lightly behind him. "It is traditional to celebrate."

  "I don't know if I'd categorize a raid against ship homes when Blaise and his armies were occupied elsewhere a victory."

  "You always have been hard to impress. It kept Blaise off our necks for another few weeks, my dear, maybe a few months. In our current precarious position I call that a victory."

  The Tarhiji orchestra was tootling energetically from the glass bandstand. It was a celebration day, and all nonpregnant women had been released from Rarrana. Fathers, mothers, children, and lovers dived and swooped about the ice like gaudily plumed birds. Personal sleighs crisscrossed the ice like gliding flowers, each propelled by an attentive gentleman. A light snow was falling, which occasionally obscured the whirling figures, adding to the dreamlike quality of the scene.

  Tis had lost her taste for the sport, and she skated off the ice to where Mark, aided (or hindered) by a giggling clot of children, was building a snowman. Reaching the bank, she spun, sat down in the snow, and started pulling off her skates. Her ever-watchful maid, Gena, came running with her furlined boots.

  Mark abandoned the children and joined her and Zabb at the ice's edge. "What's up, Doc?" he asked.

  Tis winced. Fortunately no Takisian was struck by the absurdity. "My cousin has a mind to celebrate. There's to be a ball, dancing and music, food and fripperies --"