Tiamat's Kittens: Benefactors Unknown

[aithne]

5/4/978

Sondirra:

Someone was poking me in the back. "Sondirra. Wake up."

"Wha? Huh?" I muttered.

"Sondira! We've got messages incoming. Get your butt out of the bedroll, sunshine, and put your brain in working order." Oh. It was Palil. It must be morning. Crap. Didn't sleep enough. I struggled out of the bedroll, stumbled to scrub my face with some snow, ran my hand through my hair, and then realized I ought to have put my boots on before doing this. "Good thing I have a couple of dry pairs of socks," I muttered.

"And you haven't washed any of them in days," Palil said tartly.

I grumbled but dug out dry socks. "Tell 'em to patch through, I'll listen in."

It was Jordan, and despite my general dissatisfaction with the fact that it was morning, hearing his voice made me smile. "We dropped off that potion with Bill's dad, he didn't really believe us but said he'd look into it. We're down looking at the fleet. They were heading pretty easterly, but have just now turned south-southeast."

Map? Palil said to me.

Working on it, sweetness. I dug out the map we use, battered thing that it is, and my compass. South-southeast puts them on a direct course for the Virgo home island.

It worked! Palil's silent voice was pleased, but none of that came through in her words to Jordan. "Good work. Head up to Soshi, check in when you have something to report."

"Will do, Major. Jordan out."

The next messenger spell waiting was from Hypatia. "Majors, seems that ghost ship isn't so ghostly after all. It's just floating out here, uncrewed. It honestly looks like it was pulled from the bottom of the lake, but it's still whole. We haven't boarded, we're very suspicious of it."

I could feel Palil thinking. "Use your best judgment, but I would suggest using a water breathing potion to see where it came from, if you can find it. Let us know if anything happens. Anything else?"

"No, Major. Hypatia out."

Next was Blaise, her voice breathless. "Something's weird here, Majors. I'm about halfway into the temple, I finished disarming one trap and went to the next. It was already disarmed. There's a long, clear corridor all the way into the center of the temple. Someone has been working their way out."

They're alone down there. Tarrant's not bad in battle, but the two of them could be in a lot of damn trouble, I said to Palil. Get at least some of the rest of her team down there?

Will, Palil replied. "Back off, Lieutenant," she said. "Watch the doorway. Let us know if anyone comes out, and try not to let yourself be seen. We'll get backup down there for you."

She then messaged Hypatia and explained the situation, and had her send some of her folks down. Paloma messaged in but didn't have much to report, and we spent a few minutes getting our stuff together. We thought we'd go see if we could talk to those white dragons before we left.

Then we got a message from Coulter that changed the plan.

"Majors Palil and Sondirra, Admiral Coulter here. Some interesting information for you. Reuben's bondmate Jezik is dead. He died of a wasting illness that looked a lot like the one that afflicted Tertia about six months ago. About the same time as Jezik became ill, Reuben's back was broken in a battle, supposedly with one of Yafa's MI teams. At least, he thinks it was one of ours. We're not missing anyone."

"That's why he's striking now," Palil said.

"Revenge for a dead bondmate and his own injury. Yes. Now. Where is Tertia at the moment?"

Palil raised her head. "Meeting with Andromeda. Who belongs to Reuben. And if Andromeda kills Tertia, Yafa will pull all of her forces off the border with Isla and throw them at the pirates."

"Leaving us with an invasion from the west, civil war, and a leader who we expect to go temporarily insane with grief. The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow. Are you going to take this? I have to assign someone to it."

Palil pause a moment, thinking. "We'll take it. We'll take Gannon and Jordan's squad with us. This might get rough."

"Got it. Good luck. Coulter out."

Palil bowed her head, pulling her wings in to her body. Then she straightened and took another message potion. "Captains Gannon and Jordan, this is Major Palil. An emergency has come up. Meet us at the docks in Khatanga as soon as you can."

"We'll be there. Gannon out."

"Let's go," Palil said, and I hurried to help her with the harness. "We don't have any time to waste."

On the way, Palil was muttering to herself. What? I asked.

Something's bothering me about that illness Jezik died from. Tertia was sick because the frost giants were splitting her soul from her body. She would have died briefly, but then she would have suddenly gotten better as a frost giant took her body.

I was following her logic, and frowned. Jezik died.

A copycat killing. Someone deciding to use Tertia's illness as a cover for Jezik's murder. And I bet I know who, she said.

Penn, I said flatly. Probably deflecting Reuben's attention from Isla's territory.

That and something else, she said. I don't know what, but Penn never has only one reason for doing anything.

Another explanation, I said. Reuben's kids probably know that dear old dad's dying. Since they're all exactly like him, maybe they decided to hasten his exit from the world.

Palil considered this. He has too many heirs. Once he dies, they'll tear his territory apart, unless he has something in place to counter that. But what might that be?

We talked it over all the way to Khatanga, but didn't come up with anything solid.


Palil:

Khatanga was scorching after the pleasant cold of the north. We found a quiet spot, and I explained what was going on. "We've asked Coulter to send a message through the usual channels to Tertia, to be on her guard because we believe she may be attacked."

"The plan?" Jordan asked.

"Impossible to say until we get down there. I think your team may be best stashed just outside of town for a bit. We'll do reconnaissance and see what we can see. First objective is to keep Tertia alive. Second objective is to maybe kill Andromeda, if we see a way to do so. And, of course, we need to try to keep Tertia from knowing that we're MI."

Jordan chuckled. "Just the usual, then. I'd like Elfrida and Lida to go with you, if you'll take them. Lida's more useful with you, and that way we'll be four and four pairs, not three and five. It's a bit less obvious."

I agreed, told everyone that this was going to be a mission that required polymorph spells, and we split and headed down to Omsk. Galen did some scrying on Cynara, one of Andromeda's guards, figuring that nobody would have bothered to put non-detects on them. He was rewarded by a good view of Cynara leading Andromeda and Rohana, Andromeda's lead mage, down some rough stone corridors. Winthrop, her other bodyguard, was nowhere to be seen. The place was damp, it looked like, but as the tunnel widened out and the stone started looking more finished, it got drier.

Finally, the corridor ended in a large room, perhaps twenty-five by fifty feet, with a big table in the middle, tile on the floors, and arched beams holding up the ceiling. I turned to Bambi, but she was already gone, slipping into the harbor to look for entrances. The corridors had been so wet that the obvious place for an entrance was the harbor.

She found three entrances to the same place. One was large enough to fit Andromeda in full form through it. The two flanking it were more humanoid-sized. Bambi changed and slipped into one, and came up against a locked gate. Beamer went down and helped her with that, and they went into the tunnels. They found two sleepy guards and overheard what sounded like completely normal conversation about the meeting tomorrow, then slipped out once more.

We had a location. Now we just needed to figure out what they were doing.


Sondirra:

We split up--Lida with me, Beamer with Galen, Elfrida with Palil, and Bambi and Tchar together. Lida had taken the form of an overly buxom blonde human, and I was about six inches shorter than usual, human, and not particularly pretty or ugly, a face designed to blend into a crowd. Lida and I first went to see if we could find Tertia, and found that she'd more or less taken over the nicest hotel in town. There were five military pairs out front, and at least as many on the roof.

"Think we found her," I said as we walked by. One of the guys out front whistled at Lida, and was swiftly elbowed by the one standing next to him.

She smiled, a bit self-consciously. "Good guess. Are those guys--"

"Staring at your ass, yep. Let's go see if we can find one big bad Aries dragon."

"Will you know who he is?"

I chuckled. "I was the one who fetched him when we were doing the trade. Like this, he won't recognize me--" I was wearing a human face, the face of some half-remembered woman from Lensk, as a matter of fact-- "but I will surely recognize him. I had to get pretty close to him to get him down. His pride's still smarting, I bet."

"How close?" she asked, curiosity in her eyes.

"Close enough." I shrugged. "Didn't have to get naked. Come on, I know the kinds of places he likes."

As much as we searched, though, Winthrop was nowhere to be found.

Then, a message from Jordan. "Majors, we have--a problem."

I frowned. "What kind of problem?"

"We were attacked by two Capricorn and two Aries dragons. We killed one and captured three. One of them says his name is Winthrop."

"Gorld's balls."

"Yeah, well." I could almost see him shrugging awkwardly. "Not much I could do."

"Be there shortly. Sondirra out." Palil, come on, bring Elfrida with you.

I'll relay to the rest.

We convened out at the campsite that Gannon's group had been using. Away from the prisoners, I ran my hand through my hair and said, "What the hell happened?"

Jordan spread his hands. "Haven went into a herbalist at the edge of town to get some supplies. When he came back, we got jumped out of nowhere by these guys. We figured they had to have followed him back, though we can't figure out how."

Palil eyed him. "I don't suppose he was wearing his own face when he went in."

"Well, yes. We figured that it was right on the edge of town, no one was going to see him."

Palil narrowed her eyes. She said nothing. She didn't have to.

"Interrogate the dead one," I said. "Come on, guys, time's short."

From a Speak with Dead spell, we learned that the pirates had followed Haven because he had Lida's scent on her. I hissed in a breath and glanced at Palil. Sleeping with her, you think?

Probably, Palil said. She seemed to file away the speculation. "What were you intending to do when you eliminated this group?"

"We were going to kill and replace five people in Tertia's group."

The last five loyal people to Tertia in that group, Palil commented. She does the meeting, hands over the gold, and then her own escort kills her on the way back. Neat. "And what were the names of those you would replace?"

"Filomena. Cyania. Dunham. Maddox. Oran."

Five loyalists out of twenty or more who had been either replaced or turned. Palil and I spent a couple of minutes in silent conversation, then we broke--the humanoids went to talk to Winthrop, the dragons stayed out of earshot.

Haven put up a Zone of Truth spell, with the usual warning that whatever we said while in the spell would also be forced to be true. "We have a couple of questions for you," I said, my arms folded.

He looked up at me. He didn't recognize me. "And I have one for you. Is there any chance you'll let us go?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Depends on what you tell us."

"Then hell if I'm going to talk. You probably ought to kill me right now."

I eyed him. "What do you want?"

"Give us three of those invisibility tablets and let us go, and we'll disappear. We'll get out of Andromeda's reach. Get us that, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

I considered, silently consulting with Palil. After a moment, I nodded. "All right. I agree."

We looked at each other. Finally, Winthrop said, "So what do you want to know?"

"Everything. Assume I don't know anything and start from there."

The plan was simple. The meeting would go without a hitch. Tertia would give Andromeda the gold, then leave, confident that her two hundred cargo holds of food were on their way. On the way north back to Petrozav, they will pass over a Capricorn ship holding two hundred dragons in the waters between Khatanga and the first island in this chain. The now completely compromised escort would attack Tertia, and the Capricorns would back her up. "Get rid of the bodies, and all Yafa knows is that someone killed her bondmate, and the pirates aren't implicated. She'll look for the nearest person to hit. That would be Isla. And Andromeda doesn't have to give up that food."

I nodded and stepped back. Can we get Tertia out here to talk to this guy?

Already thought of and vetoed, she said. We'd be compromising ourselves to do so. Same with taking him in to her, with the added liveliness that her escort would attack as soon as they knew.

The plan?

Come by, we're talking about it now. Palil paused. Bring Jordan.

I grinned, and grabbed Jordan and went to join the dragons. We went back and forth on it for a little while, everyone--including Jordan--putting forth plans, theories, wild-ass guesses.

The plan, as it finally settled out, was that we were going to let the meeting go on as planned, somehow get rid of the Capricorn ship, replace them with people friendly to us. The escort would attack when they saw the ship in the right place with the right flags, the friendlies would fly up to support Tertia rather than attack her, and Tertia would be safe and our names would be kept mostly out of it.

"Nice," I said. "How to kill the Capricorns, though?

"Chaim?" Palil suggested.

I shook my head. "Too risky. Kristof and Psyche. The friendlies--I wonder if Muisadora's nearby."

"I'll find out," Palil said.

Haven came up to us. "Done with Winthrop?" he asked.

I nodded. "For the moment. Keep the spell up, we might need it." Haven nodded, glancing over his shoulder at Winthrop. I almost thanked him for the headache remedy he'd made for me, and then checked myself--as far as Haven knew, Jordan was the one with headaches. Ah, I hate the secrets sometimes, I growled to myself.

Palil came back with, "Muisadora agrees and says she's nearby, but we're on our own with the Capricorns."

I took a breath. "All right. Want to message Kristof?"

"If we must. Palil was pacing a bit, nervous. "I don't like him," she blurted out. "But you're right. Chaim alone, too much risk he'd get hurt."

"It is." I slung an arm around her shoulders for a moment. "Come on, let's get this over with. You or me?"

"Me." She took a breath, swallowed a message potion, and said, "Kristof and Psyche, this is Palil. We have something we need help with, something that will piss off Reuben to no end. Somewhere between Khatanga and that first island off of it is a Capricorn ship holding about two hundred Capricorns. They're part of a plan to destabilize Yafa's territory. We need them eliminated, so that this plan of Reuben's doesn't go off--"

Kristof appeared in front of us. We both jumped. "I will. A moment." His image faded out. About half a minute passed, and then he reappeared. "Done."

He was gone again before we could respond.

"Hope we can trust him," Palil muttered.

I sighed. "Well, we'll find out, won't we?"

Now, all we needed to do was wait.


Palil:

Surprisingly enough, everything went as planned. Beamer snuck in and listened in to the meeting. Both sides were cordial, and the deal was struck with a minimum of conversation, though Tertia did negotiate for the same amount of food to be delivered every month for the next year. She gave Andromeda a large amount of gold, and Andromeda agreed to send the cargo fleet to Yaroslav, where the food riots are happening.

The next day, the 6th, she and her entourage flew out. We were hanging out on the Sagittarius ship, changed to look like Sagittarius dragons. They were flying Capricorn flags, of course. We saw her fly overhead, saw the escort attack, saw the dragons from the ship fly up to help.

She was enormous. Larger than Chaim by maybe twenty or thirty feet in length, her mottled sides streaked with black scar. She showed no sign that age was slowing her down, though, as she realized what was going on and began attacking the traitors.

It was over in less time than it takes to tell it, bodies floating in the water. Tertia flew down and landed on the ship, the five remaining members of her escort in tow. Her small form was of a drow, her hair cut to her shoulders, lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, the little signs of drow aging. We'd seen her once before in her small form, but she'd been very ill at the time. Well, she was...well, not beautiful, but striking.

She and Muisadora spoke, Tertia wanting to know what the Sagittarius ship was doing here and why they'd helped. Muisadora said that she had been contacted by a member of Yafa's MI, and they'd asked for her help.

"Did they pay you?" Tertia asked.

Muisadora shrugged. "They said help was needed, so we came."

Tertia gave the Sagittarius captain a searching look. Then she offered alliance between Yafa's government and the Sagittarius dragons. I'd hoped Tertia would do something of the kind, and smiled to myself.

Tertia left, and once she was gone we harvested heads from the traitors and sank the bodies to the depths. From the leader, we got a list of names of those known to be compromised in the military, as well as the information that Commanders Blessing and Osmar had recruited many of the traitors.

We packed up several of the heads, said our goodbyes and heartfelt thanks, and were gone.

A few Divination spells satisfied our curiosity about Kristof. It turned out that Gada, a few years back, had called down Bahumet's avatar himself to speak to. When he left, he left his stuff behind...and Kristof and Psyche had gotten it.

So much for "If you could understand what I do, you'd be like me already". Bahumet must approve of Kristof, to have let his things fall into Kristof's hands. So we assumed, at least.

We thought we were clear, congratulating ourselves on a job well done. Unfortunately, we were wrong. Gannon's team had left for Soshi (after a brief but heartfelt goodbye between my bond and Jordan, conducted out of sight of the rest), and about midnight we had flown into the mountains to the portal by Chaim's place, preparing to transit to Tura as a shortcut to Petrozav.

The pressure of a message spell demanded answer. It was Jordan. "Majors, we are coming in hot. Transiting to the portal we left from."

"What happened?" I demanded.

"Andromeda and two others teleported in on top of us. They hit Lida first, she was the one they followed. Meet us at the gate, coming through now--"

Elfrida and Lida shot through first, both of them looking much the worse for wear. Sondirra pointed at Beamer and Bambi, and they took those two in hand, conveniently placing them at the back of the fight that was about to happen. Neda and Haven came through, then Xora and Addison, then Sterne and Klara.

Then an Aires dragon, and a Capricorn. Cynara and Rohana.

Where is Gannon? Jordan? Andromeda? I asked.

Stayed behind, I bet. Slowed down Andromeda. Let us take care of these two--

She'll kill them!

I felt her shake her head. I wouldn't be so sure. Gannon's in more danger than Jordan from her.

That fails to make me feel better, I snarled. We go.

We go!

We dove for the portal, over the head of Rohana, who was wheeling smoothly around. I strafed her with my breath weapon as we blew past, Sondirra shouting, "Bambi, you have command here!"

Rohana screamed. Opened her mouth. And let the shards of her breath weapon fly.

Some flew past me, impacting the portal--

It flickered out of existence.

Pull up!

I slammed my wings downward, dropping my hindquarters, using my tail to counterbalance, and missed the entrance to the portal chamber by a hair.

The nearest portal was a few minutes away, it was the one we had moved. I screamed and dove for Rohana, who didn't show any signs of wanting to let me leave.

A few minutes later, the battle was over, and we'd pretty decisively won. I dropped down and let Haven take care of the worst of my hurts. Rohana had not been gentle, and I feared we still had Andromeda to face. Bambi and Beamer landed next to us. "Gannon says we should come meet him at that portal we moved. Seems he was prepared when he went through and she wasn't. She's now in the valley below the mountain, staring up at him. He says she's pissed, but take our time, she's not going anywhere."

I flexed my wings, looking at the place under them that there had been a great rent in the hide a minute before. "Good work, Haven," I said. "Thank you." To Beamer, I said, "Well, air potions all around, and let's go see what can be seen."

It was indeed a quite forsaken piece of rock, scrubbed bare by the relentless wind, the portal at the edge of the sheer drop. Gannon was peering over the edge as we landed. I walked carefully to the edge. Andromeda was crouched at the bottom, her tail lashing, her wings spread. "Hm," I said.

"We tried to get through the portal, and our end said yours was destroyed, and we knew this one was nearby," Jordan said. "We came through with an air potion ready to go, and she was right on our tail." He looked down at the Capricorn dragon, trapped by the thin air below us. "She's probably kind of cold, too."

"We have a problem, though," Gannon pointed out. "She's got her breath weapon primed and ready to go. Whoever's down there first is going to take the brunt of it." I raised my head and looked around at the rest, calculating. Gannon added, "I will, if you want."

I looked at him, then shook my head. "We need you whole. You and Jordan are one of the best fighting teams we have. But we do need to send down someone who can take what she can give out, for a minute or so at least." Sondirra had dismounted and was in a tactics huddle with some of the others, and I glanced at her. "Me alone. Sondirra stays. She can't take the punishment I can."

"She can ride pillion on me," Gannon offered. I thought about it briefly, then nodded.

From behind me, I heard Jordan ask, "So, how crazy do you feel, Beamer?"

Gannon hnfed. "Actually, it'll just be Sondirra on me. Beamer's going to d-door Jordan down onto Andromeda's back."

"He's insane!"

The red looked over at his bond. "Reckless. Not insane."

"And you're going to let him?"

"It's better to let him go when he gets into these moods. It even works, a lot of the time." Gannon twitched the end of his tail.

I gave Gannon a look, muttered, "There is something going on here that nobody is telling me about," and then straightened. "Are we ready to go, people?"

Assent, and a general scramble of humanoids for dragons.

"Then may the gods go with us!" I saw Sondirra mount Gannon, swinging easily into place, and suffered an instant of heart-twist before I flung myself off the edge, diving downwards. Andromeda, below me, roared and leaped into the air. As I approached the outer edge of her breath weapon's range, she opened her jaws and let loose with a blast.

I braced myself, ready for this to hurt, and then--

A shimmering door opened between me and her, and her breath weapon passed through. It then snapped shut an instant after it arrived.

Dumb with astonishment, it took me a moment to realize what had happened, and adjust to take advantage. I caught her in my own breath weapon, then Jordan dropped out of a portal and on to her back. Andromeda was rising, rising, Bambi appearing below her, several others dropping down towards us.

The wind was full of the sound of wings, and I closed with Andromeda, in that moment utterly unafraid.


Sondirra:

Andromeda was outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and frankly outmatched. She did some damage to Palil before my bondmate decided she'd had enough of the battle for the moment, and Gannon and I closed with her, him with breath weapon and claws and teeth and I with my wicked guisarme.

It was weird to be riding Gannon instead of Palil. He was a smidge bigger than she was, and the muscles of his back rippled differently as he attacked. But he showed as much care for me as he would have for Jordan, even though he didn't have my presence in his mind to remind him I was there in the middle of battle rage.

Finally, Jordan slid his sword between two of her vertebrae, and Gannon caught him as Andromeda went limp and fell from the sky.

It was over.

We landed by the body and took her head; Coulter would definitely want to see this one. Haven saw to our hurts, made sure none of us were going to bleed to death. Jordan was talking to Lida, concern written on his face. She was sitting, her arms wrapped around herself, a look of terrible pain on her face.

Elfrida finally came and took charge of her, copper scales shining in the magelights Tchar and Klara had put up. We picked up and left, using the portal to transit to somewhere warmer to spend the rest of the night. Once we'd all gotten down and unharnessed, most of the rest set up a sketchy camp. I motioned Jordan over. "What's Lida's issue, Jordan?" I asked him in a low voice.

Jordan sighed heavily. "She's been living in terror of Andromeda ever since she was captured. Andromeda showing up pretty much on top of her--well, she froze. She's not much good on the battlefield anyway, bards generally aren't--no offense to Beamer."

"It's all right," I said. "He and Bambi go in the back for a reason. She'll be okay."

"I don't know," he said. "I hope so."

"I'd talk to her, but I'm one of the Majors. I don't think she'd open up to either me or Palil. Beamer, though, maybe. I'll ask if he's willing just to listen to her."

Jordan was looking at me askance. "You do know--"

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I do. It'll be his choice. But she needs someone to talk to. Maybe Haven can."

"I'll ask him," Jordan said. I took his elbow and began steering him away from the rest. "What?" he asked.

"Is Lida sleeping with Haven?"

We'd stepped away from the campsite, and through a line of trees into an open meadow. The moon was rising, silvering us with its light. In that light, I saw Jordan blink. "No, not that I know of. Why would you think that?"

I shrugged. "That would have been an excellent reason for him to smell enough like her that he would have been picked up by Winthrop. It's probably not that, though, likely just accidental contact or healing her or whatever. Not that it would have been any trouble, just something to keep an eye on."

Jordan shook his head. "It's probably healing, and rehab for her drugs. Near as I know, he has been with Paloma for three years now, and still is."

Paloma and Haven? "Not that she told any of us that. I can see why she wouldn't have, but sheesh." The rivalries had been intense, and the repercussions would have been bad on both sides.

"They wouldn't." He chuckled. "I only found out by walking in on them in our rooms at #2."

"They've been very good about keeping it a secret. Suppose they'll keep it that way until they get out of the military."

"I would think so. He knows I know, so I look the other way when he is gone from his quarters at night and Paloma is in town."

I shook my head. "It's not like there's anything wrong with it. It's not even officially against the rules, and you get a lot more latitude with fraternizing in MI. They'd prefer us to have relationships with other MI members, if we're going to have them, honestly."

"Yep, that's why Addison and Blaise have been together for about a year now. A few others, too."

I grabbed his hand, pulling him towards the far side of the meadow. "I've missed all of this. I have got to start paying more attention. My own group's pretty boring, when it comes to that. I can't ever tell if Beamer's actually interested in Lida or not, and Tchar and Galen are off in their own worlds."

Jordan laughed. "Galen and Tchar actually know that girls exist?"

Ruefully, I said, "Not so much, really. Tchar's stepped out with a couple of people for work, but that's different. And I'm not sure if Bambi's the relationship type."

"Certainly not with humanoids. Cute black dragon is another story, probably."

I shrugged. "Maybe. Black dragons don't tend to stay with one person for too long, though."

"So probably not. Bambi also doesn't seem to have much interest yet. Blacks develop slower, so I have been told. Gannon should be the slowest of all, but even he has been feeling the pull."

I remembered what Eldil had told me. Sometimes, bonds speed things along. "We've all been under a lot of stress lately, I think it brings that sort of thing out. Maybe he takes over his many-greats grandmother in more ways than one. We'll see, I guess."

"His grandmother?" Jordan asked.

I smiled. "Eldil's daughter, Danae. I was talking to the sword, and she mentioned that her daughter married a white dragon. Danae sounds like she was a lot like Gannon--very reserved."

"Never knew that." Jordan's voice was speculative. "Might be why Gannon likes Palil so much."

"Part of it, maybe. I honestly don't know if he'll ever get anywhere with her, though. She's focusing on work a lot, at the moment. Maybe afterwards, if we all survive."

"Maybe." He paused, his voice dropping low. "Did I scare you, earlier?"

"Briefly. Eldil told me a bunch of other stuff, though, and I was pretty sure you'd make it through. Didn't quite stop my heart from being in my throat, though," I confessed.

He reached out and pulled me close in a one-armed hug. "Sorry, I needed to get Andromeda off Haven's butt, so we rammed her to get her attention."

"I figured you were staying behind to keep her distracted. We would have been coming through the portal to help, but Rohana destroyed it just before we went through. Palil was really worried."

His eyebrows went up. "Palil, seriously?"

"Yeah, she was. More about Gannon than about you, but that's to be expected."

"I figured as much." He winced. "He and I both have new scars after that one. Damn crystal breath weapons."

"Yeah, Palil and I are going to both have nice patterns from Rohana. Though I have to remember to thank whoever thought about using a d-door to keep Andromeda's breath weapon from hitting Palil. She was totally expecting to just take that."

Jordan nodded. "We saw that one. It was Tchar that did that. I went through one of Beamers."

"I was paying more attention to watching Palil than keeping track of who was casting spells. I'll buy Tchar a drink next time we're somewhere with a good bar."

"Prostitute might be a better idea."

I started laughing, considering the thought. "Granted!"

Jordan tightened his arm around me, then used his free hand to tip my chin up, kissing me. "Do you have time to see my new scars?" His hand dropped down to cup my behind, caressing.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours..." I purred. We ended up laying our coats down at the edge of the meadow, naked under the moon. I tasted the heavy iron tang of dragon blood on his lips, smelled the salty musk of the sweat of battle on both of us. We were wordless, the leftover adrenalin of the day driving us.

Need and release drove us, leaving us both gasping. Afterwards, I realized that I'd been wound tightly around myself, tense with the effort of command. I had needed this, as much as Jordan apparently had. Afterwards, I held Jordan and thought that this was the most relaxed I'd felt him since we'd started sleeping together.

For him, battle is freedom, Eldil's remembered voice whispered in my mind.

When we pulled our clothes on and straggled back to the camp, holding hands, there was a warm glow under my breastbone and a smile on my face. Ah, I wish I could keep you with me always...some day. With any luck. Some day.

All I had to do was survive.




Quotes:

"They can't say we don't earn our pay."
"Thirty gold a month for a Captain and thirty-five for a Major. Doesn't seem like that much."
"No wonder everyone goes over to Reuben, sheesh!"
--Kris, Storm, Derek

"I'm done with Andromeda. For now."
--Storm