iilex – Thanks so much! Those little touches are so much fun to throw in. Nice to hear you're enjoying them!
-o-
She entered Command in a curiously light mood, having solved none of her troubles. "What news?" she inquired loudly. "Has the universe finally reversed its expansion and begun contracting upon itself? Flying Spaghetti Monster returned to lay its noodly appendages upon us? Drago-Kazov passed a surprise referendum to rename their homeworld Fuzzy Daisy Hug-Share Place?"
Harper laughed from where he was working under a console and bumped his head violently. Tyr smiled too, though at which one of them, she could not say. Fertrun was there too, looking just as stony as when she and Tyr had passed him earlier. Well, 'Fuzzy Daisy Hug-Share Place' might have evoked an amused twitch of his lips, but it could just as easily have been a tic of murderous anger.
"If you can believe it," Tyr responded, "the wedding's been called off."
For the second time that day, Beka was speechless. Then a wide smile spread across her face, and she had to forcibly restrain herself from jumping with delight. She coughed and cleared her throat, but the smile would not go away. "The wedding? Social event of the season? Just as well. It seems our invitation was lost in the mail."
Fertrun grunted. Beka wondered how the man could remain unaware of Tyr's narrow-eyed gaze burrowing into the back of his head. A big, smoking hole should have showed from his mess of iron gray hair.
"The Arch Duke had the strangest notion that his bride to be was planning a most unpleasant after-dinner performance. Upon ransacking the Sabra Ministerial Palace, he discovered a few interesting toys in his lady's most secret of chambers, including a pocket nuclear device."
Beka had to bite her lips to keep from exclaiming aloud. She had been right, after all? Well, on the right track. A pocket nuke would not render a star system uninhabitable, but it would wreak hell on Charlemagne's landscaped gardens.
"You'll hardly be surprised to hear," Tyr continued, "that Charlemagne has ordered Elsbett Mossadim's immediate capture and attached a significant reward to her return. The fleets are already clashing in three systems."
"Amazing how that worked out. Just when we were due for another assassination attempt, Charlemagne is unavoidably detained by a war which will doubtless hold his attention for the next few years."
She hoped Fertrun and any other mutinous crewmates of hers were paying attention. Tyr spared a moment to give her a slow smile that warmed her even more than his news had. One of the major threats to her life was tied up for at least a couple of years, possibly a decade or more, but she was decidedly infatuated with Tyr Anasazi. Crap.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other, the old saying went. Her crew knew she had been instrumental in manipulating events surrounding Charlemagne's aborted wedding, even if she had never divulged precisely how that had that had come about. The subterranean rumbles she had been hearing ceased as the Sabra and Jaguar prides withdrew into their conflict, ignoring their ambitions – especially as the Jaguar were concerned – about encroaching on Darjella's territory and paying little attention to minor incursions Beka made into their spheres of influence. The last thing either of them needed right now was an enemy at another front.
But now that she had admitted her deepest fears to Trance, Beka could not shove them into the back of her mind anymore and hope they would stay put. No, she had acknowledged them now, and there was no taking it back. Tyr had must have noticed when she became tense around him and did not confide as forthrightly as she once had, but he said nothing. It was hard, suspecting him constantly when she would have liked nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his broad chest and forget about everything outside her quarters, just for a little bit.
If only Tyr was as easy to predict as her more openly mutinous bodyguards like Fertrun. All she had to do was convince them that they were positioned to benefit more from her leadership that without it, and radically shifting the short-term political structure of the Known Worlds sufficed to show them the error of making her an enemy. But she and Tyr had been a team for as long as they had known one another, a team to the exclusion of just about everyone else. He knew things about her no one else did, and she thought she might know a secret or two of his. He knew just how much she depended on him; the real problem was that she didn't think he was nearly so dependent on her.
A few days after Darjella sent a cryptic message congratulating her on her success – the little birds were singing beautifully, she said – a private message arrived for Beka from a courier service renowned for their persistence and discretion. She routed it to her quarters, activated privacy mode, and stared in disbelief when a hologram of Charlemagne Bolivar appeared, lounging on a little fainting couch.
"Captain Valentine," he said in a disturbingly friendly tone, "please allow me to prostrate myself at your feet. Figuratively speaking, of course." He plucked a grape from a bowl and popped it into his mouth. "My physicians warn me that prostration is bad for the spine. Apparently, Sabra First Daughters can be quite dangerous to one's health as well, as you've certainly heard by now.
"Surely you understand how interested I am in tracing the source of the information which led my intelligence network to discover the Sabra plot. I am deeply indebted to whoever that should be and very interested in pursuing a further relationship, nothing but amiable and mutually beneficial, of course. So far, the winding paths of inquiry have led me to your illustrious employer but no further, and I have a hard time believing that the information dropped directly from the starry heavens into her delicate ear.
"I'm convinced that you could be of use to me in this matter, and please believe that I am willing to compensate you generously for your time. In the meantime, consider all mentions of any enmity between Pride Jaguar and your syndicate permanently sealed and off record. I would be happy to offer you a more durable sign of friendship, but I completely understand reluctance on your part to commit to either half of this little snit."
Beka emerged from her en suite bathroom – it seemed strange to call such a luxurious place, with porcelain and silver fixtures and multiple showerheads 'the head' – wrapped in a huge, fluffy towel, to find Tyr in silky pajama pants watching Charlemagne's message. He snorted in amusement and turned to Beka when it ended. "We have better things to do with our evening," he rumbled, "so allow me to distill this discussion to the essential points. You don't really wish to speak with the Arch Duke, but you're determined to hear what he has to say. For my part, I simply don't wish you to speak with the Arch Duke. But as I said, you're determined, and as you are not employed as your bodyguard, I understand that this meeting may be an appropriate action for you."
She blinked. "Right. Glad we got that figured out. So… I'm going, but neither of us likes it. Does this mean you aren't going to try to talk me out of it?" It would be the perfect time for him to take over the ship, a niggling little voice whispered.
"Well…" he said slowly, "I don't think I can promise that you will not hear a single derogatory word concerning the Arch Duke slip from my tongue."
Beka smiled. "Hell, I couldn't make that promise." She walked toward her dresser and began fishing pajamas from a drawer: shorts and a tank top, nothing fancy. "So," she began as she pulled on her night clothes, "what do you think he wants?" It was easier to undress around him if she were talking about something and looking in a different direction – and easier to ignore the figure he cut in that clinging fabric.
"It's hard to say. If he were anyone else, I would suggest that he was plotting one of two things, an assassination for meddling in his affairs and making him a laughingstock, or a plea upon bended knee that you never turn your formidable talents against him."
That was enough time for Beka to dress, and she was so accustomed to him that it hardly crossed her mind that her lack of underwear under her tank top was obvious. She had forced herself not to think about it when it became clear that he wasn't. "But he's not anyone else." She ran a comb through her damp hair and patted it dry with the towel flung on the dresser. "It's something more complicated, I know it."
"For all I know, he might ask you to take Elsbett's place," Tyr said with a shrug. "He must have spent months planning the ceremony."
Beka laughed. "He already rented the place, hired the DJ… might as well have a party, huh?"
She slid into the wide bed and watched as Tyr disappeared into the head. They had been sleeping together for months now, chaste every single night. It was necessary for their charade, of course, but she wished she could have thought of another sleeping arrangement. If he noticed that she had begun taking cold showers in the morning, he had not mentioned it.
It was quite a spacious bed, so at least she was rarely tormented with actual physical contact. But just breathing the air around him amounted to agony, sometimes – musk, a hint of clean perspiration, his expensive amber soap… it mingled together in a tantalizing bouquet seemingly unaffected by the Path's ventilation system. Her only consolation was that while Tyr possessed a strength of self-control she could barely imagine, he also possessed senses much more keener than hers. She liked to think that she tortured him as much as he tortured her.
"And then what?" she continued when he returned. "I can't imagine you and Charlemagne getting along, so you're out of a job, but the Path is yours. Win-win."
Tyr joined her bed, regarding her gravely. "I can see how I benefit from such an arrangement, as well as Bolivar, but I fear you would stand to lose. You would be a freak, a curiosity, a whim of the Arch Duke's to be pitied when he lost interest."
"I can always count on you to find the silver lining, can't I? Well, you're right. There's no guarantee he wouldn't forget one day about not wanting to assassinate me."
They stayed up for awhile reading, for all the world like an old married couple, except for the excess distance between them. Or maybe that was characteristic of old married couples as well. As usual, Beka tried to sneak a peek at Tyr's book, and as usual, she could not read the language. The book itself was an anachronism; she was sure the language was just as dead. Sometimes she pestered him to translate a bit of it aloud for her but decided to forego that tonight.
As Beka felt her eyelids beginning to grow heavy, Tyr set his book aside and turned to look at her with that solemn expression. "Rebecca…" he said slowly, and Beka knew she was in for something serious. He only called her by her first name when he had something difficult to say, she had noticed. She wondered if he had noticed.
"We both know that I have certain far-reaching plans, and I have no doubt that it has occurred to you that this ship could advance my agenda. In fact," he continued with a wry half-smile, "I've noticed it occurring to you recently."
Beka felt the blood rising to her face and refused to feel silly for what were obviously very reasonable suspicions on her part. No, it wasn't that she felt silly. She just didn't want to talk about it, and the current setting made it even more awkward. What kind of people discussed mutiny and betrayal – of one another, especially – in bed?
"It's hardly paranoid of you to worry, but…" For once, Beka thought Tyr was at a genuine loss for words. If only there was some way to record this moment for posterity, she thought dryly. "Either I will betray you, or I will not. Until I do, I have sworn to protect you to the best of my ability."
It was sweet, in a way. Beka sighed and dropped her gaze for a moment to rest on the flexi sitting ignored on her lap. Something rustled, and when she glanced to one side, she saw Tyr's hand outstretched toward her. Tentatively, she took it, looking up as she did and trying to read the expression on his face. The muscles lay smooth, but his eyes were intent on her. Dammit, he should not be doing this to her. Mixed signals bombarded her from all sides.
When he continued in a velvet-soft whisper, Beka shivered. She could almost feel the brush of his voice across her bare skin. "If I should betray you, remember this." He slid closer to her, investing his usual feline grace into the movement, and raised her hand to rest on his chest, just over his heart. It thudded slowly, regularly.
"It is a baseless human fallacy," he murmured, more to himself than to her, "but I believe the metaphor is fitting." He returned his attention to her and tightened his grip. "Rebecca, from that day, I will bear a scar that neither time nor distance shall soothe. But I have a greater duty to my people, which I hope to elucidate for you one day."
Once again, she found herself faced with two possible emotional responses to the situation. She could melt like she wanted, drown in his deep dark eyes and hope that day never came. Or she could show him her thorns. She could get angry and throw up a wall, so that if that day came, it might sting a little less. When she thought about it, it wasn't much of a choice.
She narrowed her eyes and tried to pull her hand away, but he held her firmly. "Right, you'll be just devastated when you order me off the ship immediately or else. That'll be a great comfort when I'm the laughingstock of everyone who's ever heard my name, unemployed and forevermore running from anyone with a grudge against Darjella." As she finished her rant, she jerked her hand, but still he held it fast.
To her surprise and growing irritation, he smiled at this display of temper. "My dear lady, I don't expect you to make it easy for me. If I should die in the attempt, I would consider it a magnificent way to leave this existence. Do you think you would mean so much to me if I could reduce you to tears with a few pretty words?"
But she was in no mood to be cajoled. She rejected the idea of struggling any further; the last thing she needed right now was to embarrass both of them by demonstrating just how much stronger he was. "Do I mean so much that you would delay these plans of yours by a single second? Look, I'm not trying to difficult," Okay, that might not be entirely true, "I just…"
Some of the anger drained out of her voice, leaving her tired. She slumped against the headboard, close enough to him to feel the heat he radiated. "I just don't understand why you're telling me this."
With his free hand, Tyr gently tilted her chin up until she met his eyes. "On very rare occasion, our unidentified alien medic utters something of interest. She has led me to contemplate futures wherein I've not told you this, and I find the possibility… disturbing. In the greater scheme of things, it matters so little, and if anyone deserves such reassurances, useless as they are, you do."
The head tilt combined with that soulful gaze should have been registered as a lethal weapon. She relented. "Fine. I mean… thank you. But, just so we're clear, you wouldn't hesitate?"
He gave her a long, considering look, and in the end, he did not answer. It was not the affirmation she had expected, and that bewildered her more than anything he had said. Instead, he kissed her, softly but quite soundly, for what felt like an eternity of thundering heartbeats.
When she finally pulled away with a deep, shuddering inhalation of breath, he murmured into her damp hair something that sounded like a quotation. "Never have mortals set mortal eyes upon these stygian flames resplendent, aureate damnation."