There All Along

  He was wrong about that, but there was no use arguing with him. “There is always need for a light in the dark,” Teila said.

  The man studied her. He wore a scar over his eye like a badge, and in a way she supposed that was exactly what it was. His dark gray hair had been cropped short to his head, not because of his rank or service in the Sheirran Defense Forces, but because, she suspected, he liked the way it made him look. The Rav Aluf was the highest-ranking commander in the SDF. He was also her father-in-law.

  “Bring him,” he said over his shoulder to the two soldiers manipulating the gurney on which a covered figure rested. “Take him inside. There’s a room at the top, put him in there.”

  “I think I should decide where to put him,” Teila said mildly. “Seeing as how he’s going to be my charge.”

  The Rav Aluf raised a hand, effectively stopping the soldiers halfway down the ramp. He twitched back the magblanket covering the man beneath to show his ravaged face. Starburns feathered over his forehead and cheeks. His mouth and eyes were swollen and the blisters scabbed over.

  Teila drew in a breath, though she’d seen soldiers in far worse condition come to her. She looked at the Rav Aluf. He jerked the blanket with its healing magnetic properties back over the man’s face.

  “Put him in the top room,” Teila told the attendants. “Make him as comfortable as possible.”

  2

  Darkness.

  It was better than the light had been, the unending, burning glare he’d thought would be the last he’d ever see. There’d been a period of time when he’d wished for it, the end of everything. Now, with the pain in his face and limbs eased by time and whatever the medibots had done to him, he lay in the dark and wished for something to ease the monotony.

  How long had he been here? Not a clue. He remembered the battle in which he’d fallen, his ship attacked by a swarm of the small, stinging ships they called hornets. The advanced fleet for the much larger ships of the Wirthera. Hornets normally would’ve been no match for a full-sized Sheirran battlecruiser, except for the damage they’d taken on in the solar storm just hours earlier. The ship’s hull had been breached by the myriad of hornet lasers and their scuttling robotic destroyers that ripped and tore at metal like it was made of paper.

  He remembered all of that. The smells of fire and screams of dying men. The whine of the ship’s engines as they struggled to provide enough power to keep it running when the repair systems kicked in. He remembered the agony of the shields going down, letting in the flares of starfire that burned on contact. And he remembered the metal pincers and claws all over him, the slice of his skin, the burn of the injections. He remembered so much pain.

  But he couldn’t remember his name.

  3

  Teila had never trained as a medicus. She’d learned how to stitch wounds and mix herbs as remedies in the lighthouse because here in Apheera, the furthest outpost on the edge of the Sea of Sand, there was no city. Not even a town. The closest medica was a half-day’s journey away across the sea on one of the islands, where they’d built waystations for the whalers and tradeships. She could soothe a fever and bandage a wound, but the greater injuries done to most of the men and women who’d found their way here to her care were not of the flesh but the mind, and for those, she was still learning.

  The man in the top room, the one closest to the glass dome containing the solar-powered lamp, had been sleeping for days. That was from the drugs they’d pumped through his veins on the medicruiser, and also the nanobots still working to repair all the internal damage. When they’d finished their duties, they’d flush out from his system in his waste, but until then they’d work at keeping him mostly unconscious. She’d made sure the room was kept dark for him, the temperature comfortable, that his bandages were clean. Beyond that, all she could do was wait for him to wake up.

  “You understand,” the Rav Aluf had said, “how important it is that his mind be taken care of. The traumas he suffered, the damage done to those neural pathways that hold his memories, his personality, all of that was done by nanotriggers implanted in him by the Wirthera. You know what will happen to him if they’re triggered.”

  All Sheirran schoolchildren had heard the horror stories. “He will become part of their hive.”

  “He will be lost to us.” The Rav Aluf had shaken his head sharply before straightening his shoulders. “He will become the enemy. He will have to be put down, but before he can he might do a lot of damage.”

  As a top-ranking soldier in the SDF, the man in the top room had been fitted with internal and external enhancements that made him a better warrior. Injuries incurred during battle would’ve resulted in additional enhancements, not all of which she’d ever discover even with full access to his medical records—which she didn’t have. If he went rogue, if he were triggered to join the Wirtheran hive, the enhancements that made him such a good soldier also meant that he could easily become a machine, destroying everything in its path in order to create the chaos the Wirthera promoted as part of their plan to take over Sheira and all the other worlds they’d yet to conquer.

  “I understand,” Tiela had said.

  The Rav Aluf had leaned closer. “Do you? Do you understand how important it is that he return to himself without prompting?”

  “Yes,” she’d said, irritated by the man’s condescension. It wasn’t new, so she ought to be used to it. But it still stung.

  “And that he may never?”

  This had been harder to answer, but she’d managed. “Yes, Rav Aluf. I understand. You’ve brought me a man I’m supposed to heal but I’m not allowed to help.”

  A smile had twitched his lips, and she’d seen a shadow of the man he must’ve been when much, much younger. “You were ever so much smarter than I could give you credit for.”

  With that, he’d turned on the heel of his polished boots that had always thudded too loudly on her tiled floors. He’d left her there with this man who could be so dangerous if she wasn’t careful. And why? Because, she thought as she moved around the darkened room, straightening and tidying, listening to the sound of his uneven breathing, the Rav Aluf trusted her.

  His name was not Jodah, but that was what the Rav Aluf had told her to call him. It was the most common birthname on Sheira, though not many kept it beyond their adolescence when the adulthood rituals allowed children to choose what they wanted to be called for the rest of their lives. It suited him, she thought as she dipped a cloth in cool water and dabbed at the crust surrounding the edges of one of the bandages on his forehead.

  When his hand came up and grabbed her wrist hard enough to grind the bones, Teila bit back the cry that would’ve had Vikus or Billis running to help her. They wouldn’t take kindly to seeing her charge handling her so roughly—but Teila hadn’t grown up surrounded by her father’s less-than-savory friends for nothing.

  Calmly, though his grasp hurt, she put her hand over his. “You’re awake.”

  “Where am I?” He didn’t let go. In fact, he yanked her closer, hard enough to make her stumble on the hem of her robe. He sat up, legs swinging over the edge of the bed, and caught her before she could fall.

  Reflexes, not consideration. She reminded herself of that, even as the harsh grip on her wrist loosened and his other hand went automatically to her hip to steady her. It had been many circuits of the suns since a man had held her this close.

  He smelled good. Yes, there was the odor of blood and stale sweat, scents she’d sadly grown accustomed to since the Rav Aluf had started bringing her patients. But below that was a spicy, rich scent. Not of dust and heat but of green and growing things. Of black earth, not scorched sand. Of . . . water. Oh, how he smelled of fresh, clean water, of the air after a rare storm.

  “Where am I?” he demanded, his fingers gripping and bunching her robe. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Teila. I’m a lighthouse
keeper, though in recent years I’ve been put into practice as something a little more.” She paused, considering how to answer him. “You’re in the lighthouse at Apheera, on the edge of the Sea of Sand.”

  “Which one?”

  She laughed, because although there were indeed a multitude of sand seas on Sheira, along with only two saltwater seas, both so small as to be barely significant, there was only one Sea of Sand. The others had different names and were broken by islands and inlets and peninsulas and civilization. The great body of evershifting sands outside her windows was vast and mostly uninterrupted, the only body of sand large enough to provide haven to the whales.

  “The big one,” she told him.

  He peered at her through heavy lidded eyes. The starfire that had burned his skin and caused internal radiation damage hadn’t ruined his eyes. She knew they were a pure and vivid gray—or would be so in the light and once the swelling and redness had gone down. Now she could only glimpse a hint of the color. She put a hand on his shoulder, her fingertips brushing the skin of his neck.

  “Are you thirsty? Hungry? We have fresh milka. I could bring you some water or juice. It would be best if you didn’t overindulge yourself too much at once.”

  The hand on her hip gripped yet harder, shifting her closer so that she stood between his legs. Seated, he had to look up at her, but not by much. Jodah was as tall as the Rav Aluf, if not a few inches taller. His mouth parted and his tongue swiped along his lips.

  “Hungry,” he said.

  “I’ll bring you something.” Teila didn’t move. This close to him she could see the pattern of crimson veins and arteries raised against the lighter brown flesh of his forehead. Starfire burned from the inside out. She traced the map of his injuries with a fingertip, not trying to cause him pain.

  He winced anyway. She leaned a little closer, unable to stop herself from looking him over as best she could in the dim light. Her eyes had adjusted, but there were still details she couldn’t make out.

  She drew in a breath when he pulled her still closer, bending her at the waist to get his mouth and nose close to her neck, exposed by the way she’d arranged her hair. At the touch of his lips there, she shivered. At the brief tickle of his tongue against her skin, she shuddered. And when he breathed her in, giving a low moan of need, she let him pull her onto his lap.

  The man called Jodah mouthed her throat while his other hand slipped under the hem of her robe, finding her bare skin above the thigh-high leggings. His fingertips traced her heat there. Then higher.

  “Who are you?” he breathed, his fingers painting pleasure on her skin.

  She whispered, “My name is Teila. I’m the lighthouse keeper. And I’m going to take care of you.”

  His hardness pressed against her. Everything about him was hard—legs, arms, the chest against which she was so firmly nestled. Teila was used to the bodies of soldiers, but Jodah was more than a mere soldier. He wore this skin like a shield, his bones beneath replaced or covered by metal. She could guess that his lungs and kidneys had been replaced by artificial components too.

  “My heart,” he muttered, pressing her hand to it. “It’s beating so fast.”

  His heart was still real.

  She couldn’t keep herself from kissing him, then. She cupped his face and opened his mouth with hers. Their tongues met, stroking. It had been so long. So achingly long.

  He growled when she moved against him, the sound low and chilling. His eyelids fluttered, and for a terrifying moment she thought she’d somehow set off the Wirtheran nanotriggers roaming the channels of his brain. But no, arousal moved him. Not pain.

  He ground her rear onto his cock, his hips pushing upward while the hand between her legs found her clit as easily as if she’d directed his touch. She wore nothing under the robe but the thin slipcloth undergown and her leggings, and at the press of bare flesh on hers, Teila cried out. When he slid one thick finger into her, she had no voice and could only shake.

  A life without pleasure is no life at all. That old Sheirran saying had been one of her father’s favorites and one Teila had taken as her own. But her life had been without pleasure, at least of this sort, since before the birth of her son. Her own hands had never been an adequate substitute for a man’s rough caress, and though she’d had many offers over the years, she’d declined them all.

  Waiting.

  “I want to taste you.” He moved so fast, so smooth, and he’d pushed her onto the bed before she could blink. Then he was between her legs, pushing her robe up, his mouth following the path his fingers had made.

  He kissed between her thighs gently, the heat of his breath like fire. His tongue found the tight knot of her clitoris and stroked along it, then lower to dip inside her labia. Teila’s back arched when he moaned against her. At the press of his tongue inside her, she had to stifle her own cry by biting her fist.

  It felt so good, so good, and her hips lifted, pressing herself to the delights of his lips and tongue. Bright threads of pleasure wove themselves into a tapestry of ecstasy as he licked and sucked at her clit. When he pinched it gently between two fingers, jerking it slowly while he flickered his tongue over it, Teila lost her mind. Her orgasm rose inside her like the surge of sand on the wind, rolling and shifting, and all she could do was ride it.

  There was no biting back her cry this time, not shattering with climax as she was. The pleasure tore through her and left her spent and gasping, shuddering with the aftershocks as Jodah continued to lap at her clit and fuck deep inside her with his fingers. It was no substitute for his cock, but when he curled his fingers just so against the hidden spot inside her, Teila shuddered again with a second climax that came hard on the edge of the first.

  “So sweet,” Jodah said when she’d finally quieted. He pressed a gentle kiss to her cunt and withdrew just long enough to shuck out of his trousers. Again moving so fast and seamlessly she didn’t have time to react, he moved forward and slid inside her, so deep that at first the press of him inside her passage, so long without such attentions, made her squirm.

  But only for a moment, because when he began to move, her body surged along with his. She raked her fingernails down his bare back, not wanting to hurt him but helpless to keep herself from the reaction. Jodah muttered in wordless pleasure, fucking into her harder. He supported himself with one hand while the other moved beneath her knee to lift it, opening her to him further. Deeper. She moved with him, this dance a familiar one and never out of fashion, no matter how long it had been since she’d last made the steps.

  He bit down on the softness between her neck and shoulder when he climaxed, and Teila relished that pain. When he collapsed on top of her, she ran her fingers over and over through his hair, down his back and finally cupped the back of his neck when he went still. She listened to the sound of his slow breathing, felt the weight of him grow heavier as his body went slack in sleep. Then, she carefully pushed him off her, and he rolled onto his side, curling against himself and going quiet.

  She lay beside him only a moment longer after that. She had no time to spend in this bed, even if her legs felt boneless and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to walk. She listened to the rattling in-out of his breathing, reassured that it was harsh but not labored. She touched his hair gently; he didn’t stir.

  In the hallway outside, she quickly arranged her robes and smoothed her hair. There was nothing to be done for the marks he’d left on her skin, but she answered to nobody even if any of them should ask. In the lamp room she made sure all the switches were on, the solar cells charged. The light was built to last a millennium without burning out and would come on automatically, but she still checked and would check again as the suns dipped below the horizon and darkness fell. She’d check in the middle of the night, too, because while only once had the light ever gone out, it had left behind the wreckage of three whalers. That had been the night her father died.
br />   One of the mechbots whirred and chirped at her as Teila checked the switches once more, and she paused to touch it lightly on its “head.” It let out a series of low hoots that made her smile. It was programmed to react to petting, though of course it had only the lowest level of intelligence and had no emotions whatsoever. Its reactions had been built to make people think of it as a pet, not a robot, and therefore be more likely to treat it nicely if and when it malfunctioned. Vikus kept all the ’bots in the lighthouse working, but it did require constant tinkering, especially now that the parts for repairs were so hard to come by. Someday and maybe soon, ’bots would be made illegal and she’d have to decide how on earth she’d manage the lighthouse without them. Though for now the subject was cause for debate and controversy each election, but it had not yet been changed.

  Downstairs, she checked with the kitchen to be sure the meals had been prepared. The other residents, each with their own room in the lower parts of the lighthouse, would serve themselves as they were hungry, but Teila had implemented a communal dining time for the evening meal. It was good for the residents, many struggling with socialization or other mental issues related to their traumas, to have the company of others even if the rest of the time many of them preferred solitude. With that task taken care of, she climbed again to the top level and her own quarters, down the hall from the room the Rav Aluf had insisted on giving Jodah.

  Stephin was still too young to stay awake for the night meal. He’d been given his dinner by his amira, who’d been Teila’s amira and also her father’s before that. Amira Densi would probably be the amira to Stephin’s children, too. Curled in his small bed, one fist tucked beneath his cheek, her son slept without stirring even when she stroked his hair. But when she made to leave, his wide gray eyes opened.

  “Mao?”

  “Yes, love.”

  But he only smiled and sank back to sleep. She sat with him for a while, her hand on his back, testing the rise and fall of his breath. This boy was her life. He was all she’d had of his father since many months before his birth, and all she’d come to believe she would ever have again. Until now, she thought with a prayer of gratitude sent up to the triple Mothers who’d seen fit to return Teila’s husband, though his own father, the Rav Aluf, had told her he’d been lost in battle.