Shannon closed his eyes. He didn’t know why he stayed in Dalvador. No, he did know. It would sadden his parents if he left. The Valdoria children were dispersing like glitter on the wind. Eldrin, the firstborn, had gone offworld and married the Ruby Pharaoh. Althor had gone to DMA. Soz probably would, too. Vyrl had married and moved to a farm outside of Dalvador, but at least he stayed here. Denric would go offworld to the university. Aniece wanted to marry Lord Rillia and become an accountant by attending an offworld university as a virtual student, like Vyrl. Kelric already talked about seeing the stars. If Shannon left, too, what would that do to his parents? He couldn’t desert them.
But the loneliness would starve him.
Eldrinson sat in the alcove of the master suite on a cushioned bench. Windows reached from the bench to the ceiling. Outside, a golden day graced the plains, and Dalvador basked in the amber sunlight. He picked a melody out on his drummel, composing a song for a festival that had been held in Starlo Vale an octet of days ago:
The planters jumped high,
They jumped so high.
They sang their news,
Sang their news.
Sang their news.
Three times they told,
Three times they sang
Three times they sang
Their tales of plenty;
Their crops of twenty.
Twenty bushels, piper-reeds ripe and true;
Twelve only, bagger-bubbles so few.
Thirty-four sure, sweet-spheres, gold and blue.
Six octets total, bubble squash full and clean,
Every color, red, yellow, orange, blue, and green.
He stopped, frowning, unsure about the rhymes. Usually for a rhyme scheme, he kept the number of syllables equal in the rhyming lines, but that didn’t work here. Still, he liked the way the harvest tally fit the music. It worked.
A knock came at the door. He lifted his head. “Come.”
The door opened, revealing a familiar, beloved, exasperating sight, Soz in the blue leggings, gray tunic, and soft gray boots of an archer. Boy’s clothes. It wasn’t that they weren’t lovely on her. But they were for boys. Not girls.
Still, it gladdened him to see her. He beamed, pleased she had sought him out. They argued so much lately. He wished he could find a way to talk with her, to regain the easy warmth they had shared when she was young.
“My greetings, Soshoni,” he said.
She stood awkwardly in the doorway. “May I come in?”
“Of course.” He set the drummel on the bench next to him. “Come sit with me. Tell me why you look so pensive.”
She came to the alcove and sat on the cushioned bench near his drummel. “I wanted to talk to both you and Mother.”
Her strange mood unsettled him. These past few years as she had turned from a girl into a woman, she had become more distant, but he could usually judge whether she was happy, angry, sad, or full of energy. Right now, he couldn’t tell, and that made him uneasy. He didn’t intrude on her privacy as an empath; it would have been like entering her room without knocking.
“Would you like me to get her?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It’s best if I talk to you first.”
Eldrinson felt a chill. “What is wrong, Soshoni?”
“A few months ago, I took the preliminary exams for the Dieshan Military Academy.”
He froze. No. Not now. He needed more time. He spoke more stiffly than he intended. “You know how I feel about that.”
“Father, listen, please.” She watched him intently, her eyes so green, so unlike Lyshrioli eyes. “I passed the tests. I even did well. Really well.”
“Why do you waste your time with such things?” He didn’t want to hear. Couldn’t hear. “It serves no purpose. You cannot go to Diesha. I won’t sign the forms.”
She regarded him steadily, not angry, not growling, different today, composed in a way that frightened him. “If I stay here, my spirit will wither and die. Surely you see that. I have to go.” Her voice caught. “You have to let go.”
His thoughts whirled. “Why does it matter? It will be a year before you need to worry about it.”
“I’ve already been accepted.”
No. No. He had to barrier his mind from this news. But he couldn’t do it; he lived in the moment, unable to cut himself off from those he loved. He could only say, “That cannot be.”
“It is.”
“But you said you took only preliminary exams.”
She nodded in that quiet way she had today, so odd, so unlike her usual fire. “I did better than I expected. They want me to enroll now.”
“Now? NO!” He rose to his feet, filled with the fear of losing her, of her death, of the violence she could meet out there in a harsh universe beyond his ken. “I will not allow it! You cannot go.”
“You can’t stop me.” She stood up as well, defiant now. “They will accept me without parental consent.”
“What? No! They can’t do that.” Skolians claimed young people didn’t reach their majority until three octets plus one year of age. Eldrinson thought it absurd; in Dalvador and Rillia you became an adult at two octets. It didn’t matter. By their own definition, Soz was a child. His child. They couldn’t take her away from him. He wouldn’t allow it.
“I don’t want to go without your consent.” She was using her quiet voice again. “I would ask you please, Father, give me your blessing. Please understand.”
A terrible foreboding settled over him. “Who gave you permission to do this?”
“The DMA admissions office.”
“I see. And who let them do such a thing.”
Soz hesitated. “I don’t know.”
Eldrinson barely kept his anger in check. “Could it by any chance be your dear half brother, Kurj, the Imperator, who tried to shoot me dead the first time he met me? Who would see me in my grave rather than acknowledge I am his stepfather? Is that who gave you permission to defy his own laws and turn your back on your family?”
Soz drew in a deep breath. “Father, listen.”
“I have heard too much.”
“Kurj chose his heirs.”
“I don’t care what Kurj has done. You will not leave.”
“Listen to me!” Her eyes blazed. “Kurj designated Althor and me as the Imperial Heirs. Don’t you understand what that means? Someday one of us will be Imperator.”
Eldrinson was dying inside. He had spent years trying to make peace with his warlord stepson, to no avail. It was painful to live with Kurj’s scorn, his barely disguised contempt, even hatred, but he had never expected this, that Kurj would rip his children away. He could live with Kurj’s loathing because Kurj was in another place, distant, unable to affect his life. Now Skolia’s mighty Imperator reached out his long arm to take what Eldrinson valued above all else, even above his own life—his children.
“No.” He was whispering now. “You cannot do this.” It was a betrayal beyond his ability to comprehend.
“Ah, Father.” Soz’s anger vanished, replaced by a pain she didn’t hide. “It isn’t what you think. He has to choose heirs. The Assembly has insisted, regardless of his feelings about your marriage to Mother. He has all of Skolia to worry about, nine hundred settled worlds and habitats, hundreds of billions of people. He must train Rhon psions to assume his position.”
This couldn’t be true. Kurj couldn’t take his daughter and send her to die in war. Or worse. “You cannot go.” He would repeat those words a million times until she heard them.
“It’s the information networks that stretch across the stars.” She spoke as if urging him to see what she meant. “Only the Rhon can control them. Without them, interstellar civilization as we know it couldn’t exist.”
“It makes no sense.” Roca had told him this, that instantaneous interstellar communications were possible only through some universe outside spacetime, someplace where light speed had no physical meaning. It meant nothing to him. Light was light. It had no sp
eed. They expected him to believe this bizarre place existed that only people with Rhon minds could tolerate, a place that made speech among the stars possible? It was stories, fables. That Kurj would use this insanity to take his children—no, he couldn’t accept this betrayal.
He spoke slowly, measuring his words. “If you leave, you are no longer my daughter.”
“Father, don’t.” A tear ran down her face, so unusual for this daughter who hid her gentler side. “Don’t ask me to make that choice.”
Somehow he kept his voice steady, though surely it would break soon. “My daughter is a woman of Lyshriol.”
“But it is all right if your sons leave?” Bitterness edged her voice. “Althor is your glorious son, coming down in a pillar of flame, but I am betraying you?”
“Is it not bad enough that he leaves? Must you go, too?” He despised himself for his bewildered tone. “If you go now, Sauscony, do not come home again. You will have no place here.”
Another tear ran down her face. “Neither Althor nor I are what you think, Father. We may break your heart, but remember this—always, for both of us, we love you. You gave me a wonderful childhood, one full of love. You can disown me when I leave tonight on that ship, but I will always love you.”
With that, she turned and left the room. For a moment he simply stood, frozen. Then his shock cracked open like a dam breaking, water flooding, rushing, bursting through the cracks and past the jagged edges of his thoughts.
Eldrinson crossed the room in a few strides. He yanked open the door and strode out to the hall that stretched the length of the house. He was running by the time he reached the top of the main stairs. He pounded down them, coming around their curve—and collided with Roca.
“Eldri, what’s going on?” She caught her balance. “Soz told me you just disowned her. Then she went off. She won’t talk to me.”
“Your son never gives up, does he?” He couldn’t stay calm. “You stopped him from killing me. You stopped him from having me declared incompetent. You stopped him from having me caged in a lab while they studied my brain. Now he retaliates by taking my children.”
Roca stared at him. She didn’t try to deny his words; they both knew the extremes Kurj had taken in his attempts to end their marriage. “That was a long time ago. He’s changed.”
Eldrinson struggled to breathe. “Apparently not much.”
“Listen. Kurj had to choose his heirs. The Assembly voted on it. And his heirs have to be Rhon psions. I’m Deyha’s heir. Our children are the only real choice.”
Eldrinson stared at her. “You knew?” His world was breaking apart. He had nowhere to stand.
“I knew they had voted. I didn’t realize Kurj had done anything until now, when Althor told me.”
He gripped the banister. “Soz told me.”
Her forehead furrowed. “About Althor?”
“No! Herself. Kurj chose them both.”
“Gods above. That was what Althor meant.”
“Meant by what?”
She exhaled. “That it was Soz’s decision what to say.”
Eldrinson didn’t know where to put his dismay, his anger, all this pain. “Where is Althor?”
“Outside, in the courtyard—”
He pushed past her, taking the stairs two at a time.
“Eldri, wait!” Roca caught up with him. “You have to calm down. You’ll have a seizure.”
He kept going, unwilling to hear, unwilling to acknowledge that he owed his life to the doctors of her people, to hated technology he barely understood, to the Skolians who were stealing his children.
At the bottom of the stairs, he strode through the house until he reached the archway out to the courtyard with the potted plants. Shoving open the doors, he saw Althor talking to Del by the fountain. Arches of blue water spouted into the air and fell in sprays back into the round basin.
Eldrinson walked over to them. “Althor.”
His son turned. He started to smile, then stopped. Eldrinson didn’t know how his face looked, but given the way Althor stiffened, he doubted it was pleasant. He heard Roca nearby, but he kept his attention on his son. “Soz says she is leaving with you tonight.”
Althor let out a breath. “She talked to you, then.”
Eldrinson strove to keep from clenching his fists. He wouldn’t threaten his own son. “I have forbidden her to leave.”
“What did she say?”
“That she will go anyway.”
“Father, I’m sorry. But she has to make her own decision—”
“No!” Eldrinson was losing the battle to stay cool. “She is a child. She does not have to make her own decisions.”
Althor regarded him, his metallic eyes and face glinting in the sunlight, so much like his mother. Like Kurj. “She is seventeen. Twenty-one, in octal. Here that makes her an adult.” He spoke quietly. “If she is old enough to marry a man more than twice her age, she is old enough to decide her own future.”
“According to Skolian law, she is a child. They break their own laws to take my daughter?” He couldn’t believe Althor would do this. “If you take her against my wishes, you will violate the basis of every trust I have ever put in you.”
Althor spread his hands out from his body. “Father, she is a genius. A technological genius. A military genius. You can’t cage her spirit here. She would be miserable.”
“Miserable?” He gave Althor an incredulous look. “Miserable to have a happy life with a good, decent man? Instead I should send her to war, to gods only know what violence?” His voice was shaking. “What if she were taken prisoner by the Traders? Could you live with knowing you had made it possible for them to torture and enslave your sister? Are you out of your mind?”
“The choice isn’t ours to make,” Althor said. “It is hers.”
Eldrinson ground out his words. “If you take her on that ship tonight, you are no longer my son.”
Roca stepped forward. “Eldri, stop.”
Eldrinson swung around to her. “You would let this happen? You, my wife? Their mother.” His voice caught. “You put your loyalties with a man who once sought my death?”
A tear ran down her face. “It isn’t that way. We need time to talk. Soz will be in school for four years, perfectly safe. A lot can happen in that time.”
“That’s right.” He wanted to smash his fist into the wall. “Skolia could go to war against the Traders.” He swung around to Althor. “I mean it. If you take her, don’t ever come back here.”
A voice came from beyond the fountain. “Father, no!”
Startled, Eldrinson turned. Shannon stood in an archway of the courtyard with his hair disarrayed from running in the plains.
“Don’t send Althor away.” Shannon came across the courtyard, his dismayed gaze on his father.
Althor spoke quickly. “Shani, it’s all right.”
For a long moment Eldrinson looked from Althor to Shannon and back again. Then he said, “Shannon, go inside.”
“But, Father—”
“Now!” Eldrinson pointed at the house. “You will do as I say, young man.”
Shannon swallowed. He went on, past them, into the house.
Althor spoke in a low voice. “Father—”
“Enough!” Eldrinson clenched his fist. “You have my final word. You will leave your sister here and you will bring back a wife the next time you come home. Or don’t you ever come back again.”
Althor stared at him. “What?”
“You heard me.”
His son flushed. “What does a wife have to do with anything?”
Eldrinson knew he should stop, that he should go on doing what he had always done, letting himself believe what he wanted to believe about Althor, loving his son for the good in him, leaving unspoken what he didn’t understand. But he couldn’t do it any longer, not with so much betrayal. “You think I’m stupid? I’m an empath, damn it. You never look twice at those beautiful girls who vie for your attention. But you can’t keep your e
yes off your own brother.” His voice shook with anger. “Come home with a wife, Althor. Or don’t come home at all.”
With that, Eldrinson strode back into the house, leaving his sons and his wife in the courtyard.
5
A Harbor Lost
They gathered on the tarmac under a sunset that smoldered red and purple across the sky. Soz stood with Althor, and they hugged their family good-bye. Their mother had come, also Del and Chaniece, who had returned when she received news that Althor had come home. Chaniece resembled their mother most of the Valdoria daughters, though she had violet eyes and lavender-streaked yellow hair. It hurt Soz to see her older sister’s dismay now, knowing Chaniece had arrived just in time to tell them farewell, possibly forever.
Denric stood with Chaniece. He was a youth of Lyshriol rather than of Skolia, with his yellow curls, violet eyes, and slender build, so much like the people of Dalvador. None of the younger children had come; their father had forbidden it. Eldrinson also stayed away. Nor had Ari come, though Soz had looked for him in town and his home this afternoon and left messages. She knew the truth; her siblings and friends belonged here and she didn’t.
Tears ran down Roca’s gold cheeks. Soz’s own eyes filled with moisture. This had been so much worse than she expected. For all that she had known her father would be angry, she had never thought it would end this way. She couldn’t turn back. No matter how hard she tried, how much she wished otherwise, she couldn’t be what he wanted. She would have given almost anything to keep him from being hurt, but if she didn’t go now, she might never leave.
Colonel Tahota stayed back while they said their good-byes. Even through Soz’s mental barriers, she felt the colonel’s subdued mood. Tahota had the unenviable job of dealing with the aftermath of yet another attempt by the Assembly to control the Ruby Dynasty, in this case by forcing the matter of Kurj’s heirs. It didn’t help to know they were right.