Roca watched as they all left the house. Brad raised his hand to her, then closed the door.
She turned to Shannon. “I’m sorry. About the guards.”
“They never intrude.” His voice chimed softly.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. Fine.” He rubbed one hand over his cheek in a gesture he had used all his life, since he was a little boy in his crib. It made her ache to see him do it now, for it had always meant he felt scared.
Shannon, talk to me.
He gave no indication he heard her thought, though she directed it with enough strength and clarity to reach him. He had barriered his mind to her, probably to all of them. It broke her heart to see both Eldrinson and Shannon withdraw this way, shutting out the people who loved them.
“Would you like to sit down?” she asked.
“All right.” He settled into his armchair and she sat across the table from him in Brad’s chair.
Shannon moved his green chessmen to their squares along his side of the board. “Would you like to try a game?”
Roca touched one of the gold pawns on her side. “Aren’t you and Brad playing?”
He shrugged. “I was about to checkmate him.”
She wondered if she knew this son of hers at all. “I hadn’t realized you could play chess.”
He continued to set up his pieces. “When I worked at the port last year, Brad and I used to play after my shift.”
Roca had encouraged her children to try part-time jobs here, when Brad allowed. He put them to work maintaining the flyer or monitoring the consoles. It was a good experience beyond their farming chores. They learned what it meant to earn credits they could use to purchase Skolian goods or services. Althor and Soz had spent many hours here. Shannon had been less interested, but he had tried it. Perhaps he had really come to play chess. It hadn’t occurred to her to suggest the Earth game to him, but now that she thought about it, she could see its appeal. Although he had trained as a warrior, like her other sons, he had always seemed more interested in strategy than the actual fighting. Chess would intrigue him in the same way.
She set up the gold pieces on her side of the board. If Shannon could beat Brad, he would trounce her; she knew little about chess beyond how to move the pieces, and she wasn’t even sure about that with a few of them.
“Gold goes first,” Shannon said.
Roca slid one of her pawns forward. “Is ISC treating you well?”
“Yes.” He picked up one of his pawns. “Fine.”
Roca looked up at him. “Shannon, you have to stop blaming yourself for what happened to your father.”
He jerked and dropped the pawn. It hit another chessman and the two statuettes spun off the table. A flush touched his cheeks.
Ai! Roca wanted to kick herself. She leaned down and gathered the fallen pieces. When she straightened up, Shannon was still sitting, staring at the board. His face had gone pale. Roca started to speak, but then stopped, afraid she would only make things worse. She wished she knew how to talk to this son of hers, half man, half boy, half Archer, half Rillian. She felt his mood, strained and uneasy, but it didn’t do much beyond letting her know she had to tread with care. Sometimes being an empath made it harder; she could feel when her children hurt, but that didn’t tell her how to help.
She put the two chess pieces back on the board. Shannon looked at them for a moment, then set down his pawn in another square. Roca had no idea what strategy to use. She liked the castles in the corners, but her pawns were in the way, a whole row of the little foot soldiers. She moved another one forward.
Within a few moves Shannon was taking her pieces right and left. Another few moves and he had won, neatly trapping her king in one corner.
Roca smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid I’m not much challenge for you at this game.”
He continued to stare at the board. “I used to play with Father.”
Roca chose her words with care, taking it obliquely this time, as he had done. “The day I met your father, he had come here with his cousin Garlin to play chess with Brad.”
Shannon looked at her. “Garlin plays better than either Brad or Father.”
Roca smiled. “So Brad tells me.” Garlin, Eldri’s former regent, lived on a farm some kilometers distant, but he still often visited.
“I can beat Father sometimes. But never Garlin.”
“I hadn’t realized you enjoyed the game so much.”
He shrugged. “I don’t play much now. I did more when I worked here.”
She wondered if he felt a loss at that. “You could challenge your brothers or sisters.”
“Soz is the only one who really knows the game.” He looked rather alarmed. “She plays like she’s in a war. Even Garlin can’t beat her. She doesn’t win, she obliterates.”
Roca couldn’t help but laugh. “I can imagine.”
Shannon smirked. “I think Lord Rillia escaped a grim fate.”
“Shannon.”
“It’s true. Besides, Aniece wants him. And she will like being the queen of Rillia.”
“What?” That caught Roca off guard. “Aniece is too young to have such thoughts.”
“She doesn’t know that. She wants to marry him.”
In truth, Roca agreed that when Aniece grew up she would make a far better match for Lord Rillia than Soz. For all that the marriages of the Ruby Dynasty and other Skolian nobles were often arranged for political reasons, Roca had never been able to make herself insist when her children balked at the plans their elders hatched for their marital state.
She regarded Shannon curiously. “How about you?”
He stiffened. “What about me?”
“I just wondered if you had anyone.”
His face turned red. He mumbled, “No,” but his thought was so strong, it came to her despite his barriers, the image of a lovely young Archer, a woman with a superb bow made from glowing red glasswood and nocked with a gold arrow.
Roca held back her smile. She doubted Shannon would feel gratified to know his love interest charmed his mother. “Well,” she said, setting up her chess pieces for another game. “I’m sure you will meet someone someday.”
He made a noncommittal sound and put his own pieces in place. “You can go first,” he offered.
Their second game lasted a few moves longer than the first. Roca even figured out what to do with the pieces that resembled warriors on lyrine, what Shannon called “nights” in English, though she wasn’t certain why. The game had no “days.” In the end he captured her queen, which looked like an ancient Ruby Pharaoh and had a similar level of power in the game. Then he checkmated the Pharaoh’s consort, or king.
“Well, that was fast,” Roca said.
He grinned at her. “Father used to say that, too.”
“Perhaps you could play him when he’s feeling better.” She spoke with care. “It will give him something to do.”
Shannon’s smile vanished. He moved his pieces back to their original positions, then stood up and walked over to the glasswood bar against the wall.
Roca wished she had some magic spell that would tell her what to say. When he had been younger, he had often wanted to talk, but rarely volunteered. If she came asking, though, he spoke with enthusiasm about his thoughts, his dreams, his frustrations, and his joys. Now she had no idea what approach to take. He might open up to her, but if she pushed too hard, she could put him off, too, even antagonize him.
Shannon rummaged under the bar and came up with a pitcher and a large tumbler, neither of which could have originated in Dalvador given the relatively primitive glass crafts here. Many homes had glassware and windows now, though, introduced over the years by Roca’s people. Shannon filled his tumbler with blue water from the pitcher, focusing as if it took all his concentration to transfer liquid from one container to the other.
Roca tried to think of something to say. Then she changed her mind and just sat, letting him decide.
After a moment, Shannon
said, “He can’t.”
“He?”
“Father.” He stopped pouring. “He can’t play chess anymore.”
She gentled her voice. “His mind is fine.”
Shannon looked up at her. “He can’t see the pieces.”
“Maybe not. But he could identify them by touch.” She wanted him to know his father’s life wouldn’t end if he didn’t recover his sight or ability to walk. “You can carve the board so he recognizes the squares.”
Shannon set down the pitcher. He picked up his glass and drank slowly, then put it down again. After another long moment he spoke in a low voice. “I should have gone to him sooner.”
Roca’s heart ached to see him so troubled. “You didn’t know.”
“I should have known.” His hand shook and sloshed the water in his glass. “I felt what happened to him.”
“If you should have known, so should I have.” She struggled with that guilt. As an empath, she had been certain Eldri was in trouble, but what good did that realization do when it told her no more? She didn’t know what was wrong or how to help him, only that he suffered. She had raged at her helplessness when they couldn’t find him and now guilt ate away at her.
“Somehow we have to make peace with ourselves,” she said. “We can say, ‘If only’ so many ways, but no one can foresee the future.”
“I can’t find that peace.” His voice sounded hollow.
She spoke softly. “It could have been far worse. Vitarex could have succeeded in what he came to do.”
“Colonel Majda is furious with me.”
“Furious?” Roca had never seen Corey angry about anything.
“She hides it. But I know. They wanted to question Vitarex. If I hadn’t killed him, they would have him now.”
Roca wanted Vitarex alive, too. Ah yes, she had wanted him to live. But her motives were far less pure. She wanted him to suffer as Eldri suffered, in agony, a horror as drawn out and as brutal as what he had inflicted on her husband. It wasn’t a noble sentiment, but it burned within her.
None of that mattered, though, when she thought of her fourteen-year-old son setting himself against a warlord who could have crushed him as if he were nothing. She wanted to rage at Shannon, make him promise never to risk his life that way again.
“It took great courage for you to face Vitarex,” Roca said. She wondered if he knew the depth of that understatement.
Shannon shook his head, his eyes downcast. Watching him, Roca knew that the greatest toll exacted in a war had nothing to do with exploded machines or who had better weapons. It was the devastated lives that nothing could repair, not even victory. Her children might recover from the demons that haunted them, but the scars would remain. It made no difference who won; everyone suffered the emotional shrapnel.
Roca sat with Brad and Corey in the control room located in a short tower just off the landing field. They pulled their chairs inside the curving Luminex console and studied the holo displays. Brad indicated a three-dimensional graph in the air. A series of glowing lines in different colors curved within its cubical area, showing the fluxes and flows of power through various systems at the port.
“There,” he said. “Another one.”
Roca peered at the graph. The blue curve came to a point, like a thorn. “What is it?”
“A surge in the energy grid,” he said. “The one that supplies power to this building and my house.”
Roca vaguely remembered him mentioning something like this before. “Is it a problem?”
“We checked it out with our equipment on the Ascendant,” Corey said. “It’s within normal range.”
Roca could tell there was more. “But?”
Brad splayed his hands on the console. “It isn’t anything as far as we can tell. But if we’re going to find out how Vitarex got in here, we have to look at everything.” He indicated the thorn on the curve. “This spike is just a bit larger than usual.”
Majda moved her hand through another graph floating above the console, the red, blue, and green lines rippling in streaks of color over her skin. “We’ve found a few more of these spikes in records for the past year. They don’t appear to correlate to anything other than normal power variations.”
It didn’t sound like a promising lead to Roca. “Why did you notice them, then?”
“They’re at the edges of the bell curve for fluctuations,” Brad said. “About one standard deviation out from the center.”
“Oh.” It had been decades since Roca had studied error analysis and the subject had never particularly interested her, but she remembered enough to realize he meant the fluctuations were on the outermost edge of what they considered normal. “What will you do?”
“Keep an eye on it,” Majda said. “See if we find anything similar anywhere else.”
Brad leaned back in his chair. “I’ll keep trying to isolate the cause of the spikes.”
Keep trying. It seemed to be her internal mantra lately. Roca rubbed her eyes. It felt like ages since she had slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she thought of Eldri lying crippled and blind, alone at Windward; or of Shannon, trapped in a prison of his own making, built from his remorse.
Brad was watching her. “I can fly you back to Windward.”
“Thank you. Yes.” She glanced at Corey. “And Shannon?”
The colonel spoke carefully. “I’ve sent a report to HQ, including Shannon’s confession and my recommendation that they release him on the basis that he was defending your family and the people here against an ESComm attack.”
It was true, Roca supposed. But they all knew that Shannon had acted for one reason only. Vengeance. Although she doubted any court would support criminal charges against him, they had to do everything by the book. A Highton lord had died here and the Trader emperor demanded an investigation. Given that Vitarex had no cause or clearance to be on Lyshriol, the demands rang hollow, but ISC still had to observe the interstellar treaties.
No treaty, however, could heal the wounds of Vitarex’s trespass here.
The doctors operated on Eldrinson in the earliest hours of morning, long before the suns offered their light to the sky. Roca sat in the dining room of Castle Windward, unable to sleep, waiting to hear.
For hours.
The sky lightened and the suns rose, both darkened with spots, each slightly elongated toward the other. Roca thought of those suns slowly perturbing Lyshriol out of its orbit, tugging at the world as they executed their never-ending dance around each other. Humans had moved this planet here, but nature would destroy its orbit. Nothing remained stable no matter how hard they struggled to give their universe order.
Dawn usually lifted her spirits, but not today. For twenty-four years she and Eldri had lived together, loved together, and raised their children. Always the threat of the Traders shadowed their lives, but now it had violated their innermost sanctum.
Nothing could undo the events of two nights ago. Shannon had killed Vitarex. No matter how much anyone wished otherwise, nothing would change that truth. ISC would never learn from Vitarex how he had infiltrated Lyshriol. Unless they discovered other clues, they would never know—and so they could never be certain they were guarding against another invasion.
Fourteen hours later, the suns sank behind the horizon. In the dark hours of night, long after most everyone in the castle had gone to bed, Jase Heathland finally came down to the hall. And he told Roca: it is done. They had repaired Eldri’s legs and eyes to the best of their ability.
Only time would reveal if it had been enough.
22
Commencement
In the year 325 ASC on the Imperial calendar of the Skolian Imperialate, the year 2228 A.D. on Earth, the Dieshan Military Academy graduated its three hundred fifteenth class. The graduates included a tall, gold man—Althor Izam-Na Valdoria kya Skolia, Im’Rhon to the Rhon of the Skolias.
The graduation took place on a windy day in the quadrangle before the arches and columns of the academy. Stu
dents sat in chairs set up on the plaza, an area paved with glittering white flagstones and a tiled image of the J-Forces insignia two meters in diameter, a soaring Jag in white, silver, and black. The sun beat down on the assembled crowd, and chimes hanging in the eaves of the academy building clattered in the breezes.
Families and friends watched from risers bordering the plaza. Soz sat with her mother, her brother Eldrin, and his son Taquinil. Eldrin seemed unusually serene today, probably because he was with his son. His peace of mind calmed Soz and shielded Taquinil. Her brother Denric, her sister Aniece, and her youngest brother Kelric sat on the riser below them, restless with excitement on this world they had never before visited. Del-Kurj and Chaniece had stayed on Lyshriol to look after Dalvador, and Vyrl and Lily hadn’t been able to come either, with the demands of their farm and children, and Vyrl preparing for his university exams. But the family members on Lyshriol could experience the graduation in a virtual reality broadcast, using mesh links Brad had set up for them in the castle.
For the graduation, DMA had erected a stage at the front of the plaza facing the cadets. Kurj sat in a high-backed academy chair, as did Secondary Tapperhaven, Lieutenant Colonel Stone, and Secondary Foxer. Commandant Blackmoor was at the dichromesh glass podium, speaking to the graduates. The officers made a tableau of strong figures in the sunlight, their uniforms crisp, gold on black, their faces just distant enough that Soz couldn’t read their expressions. Were they proud of the graduates? Certainly. But she sensed regret as well. They were taking the pride of Skolia, the smartest and the fastest, the greatest empaths, and sending them to battle, perhaps to die.
Soz’s aunt, the Ruby Pharaoh, sat in an academy chair next to Kurj. She wore her hair swept onto her head in an elegant roll. Her black jumpsuit had no adornment except the silver insignia of the Imperialate on her chest. The edges of her body rippled, the only indication from this distance that she was a holo, a creation of light sent through Kyle space and projected here by hidden screens. Rumors of hostilities from the Traders became more widespread each day. The Skolian Assembly didn’t want to risk having both members of the Dyad in the same place at the same time, not even on the same planet if possible. So Dehya attended as a virtual simulacrum while she remained on the Orbiter, the governmental center that orbited throughout the Imperialate.