I know, I know. This time my excuse is three nights a week of evening classes, which used to be my prime creative time. The late classes are ending next week, and I've resolved to write every day during Lent, so hopefully I'll get back on track.

Ilexx: There's more of him coming, and more of another blond we all know and love.

B.L.A the Mouse: Hee, I'm glad you enjoyed that! The interrogation was a lot of fun to write (I think of her as the ultimate nightmare mother in law), and of the course that ending had been waiting for SO LONG to be written.

OMG I totally had this written a week ago, and I could have sworn I published it. But I guess the site ate it! Oh well, this way you get two chapters at once!

Chapter 23

Every morning when Beka awoke, she was struck by how much her life had changed in such a short time. Even when she was in her own quarters, a simple glance in her mirror showed her flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips which recalled Charlemagne's usual affectionate good-morning greeting. Later, as she made her way through the Shining Path's corridors, the Nietzschean crewmembers regarded her with a new measure of respect and something that was almost kinship. They asked her opinion of the meteoric rise of Tyr Anasazi and his son, the rumored Nietzschean messiah, on the stage of the Known World. They congratulated her on arranging the marriage of their Arch Duke with a distant relation of Anasazi, as if she had planned it that way.

One morning, Charlemagne strode into his quarters where she was still waking up – he usually rose an hour or two earlier than she did – to announce that the Volsung Matriarch had made contact with Tyr. They were set to rendez-vous at a secret location in two weeks, and Dominique had suggested that the wedding occur before then in order to secure a possible connection between Tyr and the Jaguar Pride, who would be by far his most powerful ally if things went smoothly. Beka snorted at the idea that anything between Tyr and Charlemagne would ever go smoothly, but she saw the sense in it. What was more, Beka's sister had suggested that Beka speak with the Jaguar Matriarch about this potential alliance.

Charlemagne sat down beside her on the settee where she liked to drink a cup of coffee and come awake slowly. "She did apologize," he finished with a wry twist of his lips.

Beka narrowed her eyes but found that she could not really be angry. Annoyed, yes, but then, she was strangely touched that even Dominique knew her well enough to anticipate her irritation. "Let me get this straight," she groused, with a touch of warmth in her voice,

"You get to consummate your marriage with a gorgeous brunette in the next several days, and I get to appear before the Jaguar Matriarch to discuss an old flame."

He slung an arm around her shoulder and chuckled. "If you were of... a more Nietzschean mindset, I would remind you that you are thus securing your reputation as one of the most powerful humans among my people." She snorted. "You, however, remain unimpressed, so I shall be forced to remain in suspense for the revenge I am sure you are already plotting." His flashing blue eyes and the satiny undertone in his voice made the words sound like a filthy proposition.

She scoffed but somehow found herself inching closer to him. Slender though he was, she had discovered that he was very comfortable to lounge against. Maybe it was all those silky shirts he wore. "So, two weeks. You people don't go for long engagements, do you? Is that normal?"

Beside her, she felt him become tense, though he sounded nonchalant as ever when he replied. "As a rule, Nietzscheans do not bother with ceremony at all, but for political alliances such as this, it seems appropriate to give the people something more official than mussed bedsheets and a pair of double helixes in the morning."

Beka failed to completely suppress a laugh. "Political alliances?" She adopted a mock-innocent tone and looked at him with wide eyes. "But I thought all Nietzschean marriages were political alliances."

He erupted into laughter. She could feel his chest shaking as he laughed, and she felt her lips tug into a genuine smile. Had she ever made Tyr laugh like that? And wasn't that a strange thought to have right now?

"Clever girl," he chuckled. "Some Nietzschean philosophers argue that every interaction is political, but then the word loses some of its meaning, don't you think? In any case, you seem to think that marrying Dominique will improve my moral character. How strange – I could have sworn I was a lost cause."

"You'd better not be," she said as she shook a finger at him. "I get the feeling that if you turn out to be a lost cause, that terrifying Volsung woman is going to come after me with a very pointy stick." She shuddered. "Please tell me that you people don't have family reunions. Better yet, tell me that I will never again have any reason to be within fifty yards of her. I'm pretty sure she can disembowel me with her eyes at forty-nine."

"We-e-e-ell..."

She sat up and jabbed him hard in the chest. "Well, what? Don't tell me, weekly Sunday dinner at the Matriarch's?"

"The very horror of such an idea would drive Nietzschean males across the Known Worlds to suicide. No, nothing like that, but you will see her at the ceremony. In fact..." he paused again, and she poked him. Harder. "For an alliance such as this, there are certain formalities we like to follow. This is not just an agreement between Dominique and myself; it also involves our Prides and... you."

She stared. "Me? From the sidelines, you mean. Cheering you on. Silently. Divine save me, Charlemagne, I am not a flower girl."

He tilted his head to peer at her. "Flower girl?"

"In a human wedding. A girl, she carries flowers down the aisle ahead of the bride? She, um, scatters petals, I think. It's supposed to be pretty." At his perplexed look, she sighed. "It's a human thing. Flowers. Never mind."

When he shook his head, she recognized that exceedingly familiar expression of Nietzschean bewilderment with human quirks. During her long acquaintance with the race, she was beginning to suspect that much of Nietzschean contempt for their under-modified cousins was really a cover for their endless confusion at the inexplicable behavior of those people from whom they sprang. And perhaps jealousy at their comparatively tiny history. Nietzscheans didn't like anything they did – or had – to be smaller than anything human.

"I will make a note to Dominique, no flowers," he said dryly. "You'll be happy to know that the ceremony is quite brief and that your involvement is minimal. You will stand beside me as the Matriarchs... wax poetic about the future of our union," he waved his hand in a grand gesture, "and then they formally agree to our marriage, and Dominique and I will declare ourselves to one another." He grinned. "Do you know, she insisted on treating you with the full formality of a First Wife? You should be honored."

"Full formality?" She made a face. "Do I have to say anything?"

"We do not have vows, but the usual mode is to declare her part of your family, and she will say something similar."

She gaped at him, speechless for a moment. "I... have to ad-lib this? You people ad-lib your weddings? And you call yourselves civilized."

He tilted his head to peer at her. "For one of the most personal, most... emotional ceremonies of your life, your people prefer to spew rote formulas." After gazing at her for a moment, he leaned just enough to drop a light kiss on her hair. A faint chuckle rumbled in his chest.

All at once, Beka felt warm and safe and loved. Sitting on Charlemagne's slightly too-soft settee, leaning against his warm, muscled chest, she felt something deep inside her finally relax. It had been there so long that she could not remember a time when that knot was not suspended somewhere near her heart, but now it eased, just a bit. Why now, when she was discussing the event that would take Charlemagne from her side, at least from time to time?

"Two weeks." Beka shook her head slowly. "What exactly are you planning to pull together in two weeks?"

"A decent part but nothing extravagant. The last time I tried to have an extravagant wedding, my bride-to-be smuggled in a nuclear weapon amidst the lace." He snorted. "Besides, I fear the Volsung would see excessive expenditure as... mockery, of a sort."

"Charlemagne, you're always mocking people. It's one of the five things you do best."

"One of the five?"He sat up and waggled his eyebrows. "Tell me, are you free to practice number two for an hour or so?"

"That was number two."

"Precisely! That Volsung Matriarch, quite the harridan, wouldn't you say?"

She giggled. "She's terrifying. You know, I trust Dominique not to blow up, but her Matriarchy might try to kill you just to make sure you're worthy. Who's doing security for this shindig?"

He raised an eyebrow at the word, but she knew he secretly loved those very silly words that no Nietzschean would utter under torture. "Trusted Jaguars, one of them a distant cousin I believe. You sound as though you have a suggestion."

Charlemagne's mention of his prior, abortive stab at matrimony had brought to Beka's mind that scrawny little mudfoot who had worked aboard the Path when she had first planted the rumor of Elsbett's treachery. That kid could manipulate computers the way Charlemagne manipulated fleets.

"I do, actually. I'm not sure you had a chance to meet him, but when you and yours showed up here – for which I am eternally grateful – I had this hyperactive Earther running the Path's computer systems. I think he had a rash. Harper was his name. Seamus Harper and his purple friend Trance were a little wary of sticking around with all your people aboard, but they knew their stuff." She smiled to herself, remembering. "And they'll work for cheap."

A thoughtful look crossed Charlemagne's face. "Seamus Harper, I remember. And Trance... Gemini? Very strange girl. What species did you say she was?"

She shrugged. "Um, purple? I get the feeling that no one's managed to figure that out."

"I trust your judgment regarding his skills, but I am more concerned with his loyalties. If he left because he refused to work with my people, what would induce him to return now? Frankly, why should I trust him to do his best work for a Nietzschean wedding?"

She could almost see Harper asking her that exact same question, from his perspective. Why would he want to work for a bunch of Ubers? "He didn't want to serve on a ship where he'd be the butt of cracks about his inferior genes, but the kid grew up on Earth. I think he can take a couple weeks of snide comments in return for a decent salary. And hey, even if he doesn't care about any of the rest of you, I'm pretty sure he's not going to let anybody blow me outta the sky." It was a little conceited but true, she hoped.

A little smile danced around Charlemagne's lips. "A real Earther? That's amazing. Do you know the percentage of Earthers who manage to escape that gutter? I'm sorry I did not have more time to become acquainted with him. Beka, how do you meet these people?"

A primitive remnant of loyalty to Earth made her prickle when Charlemagne called Earth a gutter, though she knew that she had said worse. Well, it was all right for humans to abuse it, but there was a whiff of something else when a Nietzschean did so, even in the strangely complimentary way Charlemagne had said it. Something that hearkened back to jackboots and slavery, things she generally tried to avoid thinking about.

"The universe just throws 'em at me, I guess."

He must have sensed the change in her mood because he tightened his arm around her for a moment. "I understand." She could hear the two meanings in his voice. "Very well, I will give my family a grave insult and hire this human of yours to head security. Won't that be a charming picture? I shall have the most talked-about wedding in half a century, and you know how I love gossip."

**

Memory washed over her when she exited the Maru and stepped into the hangar of Miqo Drift. The bittersweet nostalgia for the old days hit her so hard that she swayed dizzily and had to steady herself on the Maru's hull. She glanced up at her ship; despite its numerous upgrades and repairs, it still fit better in the hangar of this mangy drift than it ever had in the Path. It was all boxy lines and hastily soldered hull plates to the sleek curves of the old Commonwealth ships.

Here, only the cons looked at her twice, the same way they looked at everyone, especially newcomers, twice. She had become so used to circles where she was instantly recognized or tended that it was both perplexing and liberating to walk around in total anonymity. She wandered around the drift, struck by emotions she could not name when she turned a corner to find a Flash head twitching quietly to himself or a small time gangster strutting with his meaty guards, until she came upon the drift's machine shop. It was nothing to the Path's, of course, but the signature presence of patched wires, sooty parts littered on the deck, and empty bottles of Sparky cola confirmed that Seamus Harper was indeed employed here.

A familiar whistling in the back, behind a curtain of steam, told Beka that she had finally found him. "Harper!" she shouted.

A muffled crash and a few muttered curses later, a filthy mudfoot emerged from the shadows. He squinted at her and ran his hands through hair that cried out for shampoo. "Boss? I mean, Beka? Hey, what are you doing here?" He looked at his hands and winced. "Uh, sorry about all this. The mess. We're renovating... well, actually I'm renovating and no one's stopping me. Can I... nope, nowhere to sit. Hold on just one second."

He disappeared for a couple of minutes without giving her a chance to say a word and then popped out again, looking as if he had run a moderately dirty towel over himself and perhaps washed his hands. She tried not to laugh. "So what's up?"

"I want to hire you, just two weeks of security, and then you're back here, or wherever you want to go. Is Trance still with you?"

He smiled. "Yeah, she spends most of her time in the greenhouse. They didn't even have a greenhouse until we got here, but she worked her pixie magic, and boom! They actually have an export now, some rare plant. The oil is worth a fortune."

Beka proposed that they go somewhere where they could talk for a bit, and as he led the way to a cafe, he told her the thrilling tale of how he and Trance had ended up at Miqo. At his first offer after the Path had fallen through, they had bounced around and ran lower and lower on cash until they had landed at Miqo without enough money to spend the night. Desperate, he had asked the drift administration for a job, any job, and when he had single-handedly fixed the persistent bug in the gravity generator, they had hired him on the spot as Chief Engineer. He was more like the only engineer, and as he rambled about his work, Beka realized that he was happy. He was needed here, which she suspected he had stopped feeling aboard the Path when the Nietzscheans encamped.

It was not until Beka had her coffee and Harper his milkshake that they started talking business. "I guess that's all there is to say about me and Trance. What kinda security gig do you have in mind?"

She took a gulp of coffee and steeled herself for the incredulity she was sure would come. "It's Charlemagne Bolivar. He's getting married again, and seeing as how I actually want him to survive this time, I figured I needed the best tech help I could get." She paused. "But it turns out he's on vacation right now, so I'm asking you instead."

He made a face. "Oh ha ha. I know he saved your life – saved all our lives, probably – but why do you care about his wedding? Big important guy like that, he can get all the badass Uber security he could possibly need."

"He had all that last time, and without a little intel, they wouldn't have saved him or his planet."

Harper looked at her as he slurped his milkshake. "But boss, you made that up."

"Well... okay, yeah. But it just goes to show, a story I pulled out of my ass was more useful to him than all his fancy Nietzschean protocols. Come on, Harper, you're the best man for the job. I know it."

He swirled his straw in the half-empty glass, staring into the melting goo. "You still haven't told me why you're doing this for him." His head shot up, his blue eyes wide with horror. "Oh no. Oh no no no no no."

She blinked. "No what?"

"Beka, don't tell me you're marrying that guy. Come on, that's insane!"

"Me?? Oh no, that's not how I'm... involved in all this. He's marrying a Volsung woman, her name is Dominique Mayae."

He set down his straw for a moment and slumped into his seat. "Phew. I was about to have a heart attack there, boss. Can you imagine, you chained to a Nietzschean? I'm pretty sure that's one of the circles of hell or something."

Her laugh in response was a bit forced. "Yeah, weird. Um... but there is something you should know before we talk any more. Um, a couple somethings, really. Um... I'm not the one getting married, but... I will be there, at the ceremony."

"What, are you the flower girl?"

She snorted, strangely delighted that Harper had made the same joke she had. "I told him, no flowers. I... this is really awkward. Dammit. Charlemagne and I... we're a, a thing."

He stared. "A thing? A thing like you and Tyr? That kind of thing? With the, uh, all the," he gestured, "the hugging?"

"Tyr wasn't..." She paused. "I mean, yeah, I guess."

"Wow." He tilted back his head and drained the fluted glass, then exhaled loudly. "Wow, boss. Wait, so why are you in the wedding? Wouldn't the... whatever her name is... wouldn't she feel a little weird having Bolivar's ex-girlfriend there?"

She laughed a bit weakly. "You'd think so. No, um, actually, I think she really likes me. I... did this thing for her people, just a little investigating. Anyway, it's like... I'm going to part of this weird family. And I guess I like that. I don't want anything to happen to them."

A silence fell over their little table. Harper was fiddling with the short stem of his glass, spinning it back and forth between his fingers. "Family? You're joining this Uber's family, Beka? That's... I dunno. I dunno if I can deal with that." He paused. "You said there were a couple of things. What's the other?"

If Beka's prayers had been answered right then, the deck would have swallowed her right then and there. The void of space would be friendlier than that confused, oddly hurt look in Harper's blue eyes. "His fiancee, Charlemagne's. She's a Volsung, which means that... Have you heard what Tyr's been up to lately?"

He shook his head briefly, still staring down at his empty glass.

"So he hooked up with this Pride, I forgot their name. He's, um... he's claiming that their kid is the Nietzschean messiah."

That lifted him out of his stupor. "The what? Tyr, as in... big looming guy who used to work for you? The Nietzschean messiah? Come on, you're pulling my leg."

"I kinda wish I was. Um, so, Dominique's people, they're related to Tyr, sort of. Distantly. I don't really know how it works. That's why Dominique's in such a hurry, she wants to cement this alliance before her people make contact with Tyr, which they're doing in two weeks. A little less than two weeks, now."

"He's not going to be there, is he? If he's there, Beka, there's no way in hell I can do this for you. I don't know if I can do it anyway, but not if he's there. No way."

What a mental image that was, all four of them gathered together, smiling for the holovid. "I doubt he and Charlemagne have any desire to be in the same room again," she replied dryly. "For all I know, I'll never see him again, which is fine by me." She sighed. "Harper, I know it's weird. And I can't promise that everyone will be nice, but you are the best man for the job. I know it."

He fished a credit chip out of his pocket and lay it on the table. "Don't worry about paying," he said, "I'm on the house. I dunno, boss, you gotta let me think it over. All those Nietzscheans... it brings back memories, you know? And you there in the middle of 'em. I'll talk to Trance, and I'll let you know by the end of the day. Did you get here on the Maru?"

She nodded.

"All right, well, I'll find you, okay?" They stood up, and after a bit of awkward shuffling, hugged each other tightly but briefly. "I'll see you around, boss." He turned and left the cafe, headed back in the direction of the machine shop. She had not realized until talking with him again how much she hoped he would accept. It was true that he was the best man for the job, she had not lied about that, but she could never really relax around Nietzscheans, except Charlemagne. It would be nice to have somebody she could relax around again.