Double solitaire

Chapter Twenty

“How the hell does a sixteen-year-old kid become a king in six weeks? A month? Whatever it’s been in Takisian time?” Jay blurted.

“I was hoping you would enlighten me,” Taj said.

“What does it matter?” Tis said bitterly. “Now it will require a war to dislodge him. I’ll have to use Zabb, I can’t trust him, and he may kill both Blaise and my body.”

“Hey, man, like don’t forget about us,” Mark said with a significant lift of the eyebrows, and an obvious head jerk to Jay.

Sadness washed across the old man’s face. “Over the weeks I’ve watched the well-bred of House Vayawand kill each other like maddened sinde. It culminated with L’gura’s suicide. Ancestors know I hated that bloodless bastard, but he deserved to be ruined by a gentleman, preferably me.” Taj smiled, but the momentary flash of humor died fast. “Not manipulated by a piece of unplanned afterbirth.” Taj sighed. “Well, his death shall be avenged. Now that I know this is a mentatic phenomenon, it can be countered.”

“With difficulty,” Mark warned.

In painfully slow, excruciatingly bad English, Taj said, “Adversity is a state I understand. Achieving the impossible commonplace. What is merely difficult should be easily achieved.”

There was a soft chime, and Tis keyed the desk. A holo of the door guard sprang to life on the desk. The man’s face registered shock, and he couldn’t seem to say a word.

“Yes? What is it?” Tis asked. Nothing. Irritated, Tis pushed. “You interrupt me, it must be something.”

Taj stepped to her, laid a hand on her shoulder. “They don’t know you, and he’s never seen a woman in that chair.”

Relieved at seeing Taj, the man reported that Zabb was requesting an audience.

Taj glanced at Tis. She nodded wearily. “Let him in.

Zabb entered in his usual sweeping style. “We’ve got trouble. Remember that claimant Baz mentioned? Well, they’re attempting to ram through an elevation before any of us can react. I think we had best react.”

“Curse that motherless Egyon,” Taj said. “I wonder what spooked him.”

“Probably me wandering about the halls,” Zabb said. “And you know a palace, rumors pump like bile through the halls. The word must be out that Tisianne has returned. Either one of us has a superior claim to the Kou’nar line.”

Taj summoned the guard, who wrapped themselves like a protective cloak about the Takisians and the humans and hustled them through the corridors of the sprawling House.

While they walked, Tisianne explained how her entire plan rested on her ability to command the troops of the House Ilkazam. “If I lose the Raiyis’tet, it’s a sure bet that the new Raiyis won’t help me recover my lost body. If he does, he costs himself the throne.”

They kept nodding sagely, but Tis wondered how much they had really grasped. Ideal! She wondered how much she had grasped. It was all happening too quickly. There was no time for her to ease back into the life of a world she had left half a lifetime before.

She didn’t know how to conspire anymore, she didn’t want to. Resentment and weariness chewed at her. She wanted to react to the familiar faces she saw throughout the ranked bodies of her armed guards. She wanted to savor childhood memories brought back with painful vividness by the scent of baking pastries, or a particular tapestry. She didn’t want to be thrust willy-nilly into the battle. She wanted someone to bring her her stolen body and put her back where she belonged. She wanted to be at peace for the first time in forty-four years.

Illyana sent a wave of warmth and love from the womb to her mother’s mind. Tisianne’s breath caught at the overwhelming sweetness of it. At three months the baby had been little more than a sensory sponge. Now at seven and a half months she was becoming an individual. And the problem, you little demon, Tis sent to her daughter, though she knew the ideas were too complex for the baby’s developing mind to comprehend.

I love you and I want you, but I don’t want to birth you. I’m frightened – of the pain, of the entire experience… Ancestors! I don’t have time for these thoughts, I have to preserve my House, my station. I have to be warrior, not woman. No, that’s not right. Cody would be quick to jump down my throat. Women can be fighters. Mother then, my mind more on life than death… Hush, Illyana, sleep, baby, don’t distract me now.

Through the doors, and into an elaborate audience chamber. Tis remembered it being much larger. Had it shrunk or had she somehow grown? A knot of people were gathered about the platform holding the chair of the Raiyis of Ilkazam. It seemed to have been carved from a piece of glacial ice, filigreed with snowflakes. It was in truth constructed of an almost obscene number of diamonds supported on a platinum frame. Such conspicuous consumption on a planet so mineral poor. We’re psi lords, mentats, Most Bred, the Zal’hma at’ Irg, Tis reminded herself. It didn’t do much to assuage the guilt. Too long on Earth, she thought.

The pretender could be recognized by his sulky, disappointed expression. He had been rushed into his festival finery, for the cloak was caught up in the waistband of his ballooning trousers. Tis noted in shock that the boy still wore a mother badge twined about his left wrist. Not yet twenty – a baby! – and someone had made him a target.

Tis raked the rest of the assembly, searching for the Svengali. Egyon, Taj had said. Yes, that would fit. Zabb’s thought concurred with her conclusion. Tis also had to admire Taj’s intelligence sources. The personal guard of the Sennari line well outnumbered the more ceremonial escort protecting the Kou’nar conspirators.

Tis ignored the boy with his spun caramel hair dressed to form two horns rising from above each ear. Instead she addressed his trainer.

“Not yet, I think, vindi. There are still three lives between you and your ambition.”

Egyon pivoted elegantly to face her. He was dressed in fencing leathers dyed in multicolored squares, and his pale brown hair was clasped with a knife-and-sheath barrette. Obviously he had been caught unawares, but Tisianne had to grudgingly admire the speed of his response.

“Three, Tisianne brant Ts’ara sek Halima sek Ragnar? Are you counting that unplanned abortion you’re carrying?” Egyon asked sweetly.

The need to do murder flickered once like a whipping snake’s tail. Tis buried the urge. “Your powers must be failing, Egyon. This is a girlchild. And you forget my father, who is not dead yet.”

“As good as!” flared the pouting child.

“Quiet!” Egyon ordered.

“Yes, quiet, little one,” Tisianne agreed. “I’m trying to save your life.” The boy’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes, consider that. Do you really feel you have the experience to lead this House?”

There was an instant of silence, then Zabb showed his teeth and said softly, “No, that’s not a good idea.”

Her cousin had read the boy’s mind. Tisianne his body language, but she understood nonetheless.

“Zabb’s my heir,” Tis said. “You could put him in command of your troops, but will he fight the Vayawand or usurp you?” She shrugged eloquently.

“We have no proof this is Tisianne,” Egyon said. “Just the unsupported word of the regent. You’re all Sennari seed. You’d do anything to keep the Raiyis’tet from falling to the Kou’nar.”

“Test her,” said Zabb, and Tis took a quick, sidling step away from her cousin. He reached out and caught her above the elbow, held her still. “But not you, Egyon. This poor little human mind can’t protect itself well enough, and I’m not going to have my cousin conveniently die from a brain aneurysm.”

Relief suddenly removed the clog from her throat, and Tis quickly followed Zabb’s lead. “I’ll submit to an examination by the full Ajayiz. That should establish to anyone’s satisfaction that I am Tisianne.”

Zabb threw back his head and shouted, “And you can’t tell me you old beldams aren’t monitoring this little drama. So get in here, and let us do it.”

“Zabb,” said Taj warningly.

“They’d rather be amused than defend the House. Better to sit in the ashes and stir them with the stumps of their arms than miss one moment of emotional turmoil from their descendants.” In a more moderate tone he said to Taj, “Sorry, vindi, but I’ve always thought they were manipulative old spiders.”

“There’s no need to convene the Ajayiz. It was already decided that Onyze should ascend -”

“The situation’s changed, Egyon, you’ll have to do better than that,” Tis said.

Suddenly the House rang with a tone so high that it pained the ears and vibrated in the bones. The exterior manifestation of that call was painful enough – for the telepaths it was almost unbearable. The Takisians staggered, and Taj, who was a powerful and subtle telepath, was driven almost to his knees. Tisianne held up better than any of them because of the feeble abilities of her borrowed human body. But she felt it, drawn like a knife across her nerve endings. Only the Tarhiji guards and the humans were unaffected.

Mark, kind to the last and always concerned, supported Taj, even checked the old man’s pulse. The final aching harmonics died away, and the Takisians recovered. Taj pulled abruptly away from Mark, leaving the ace blinking in hurt confusion. Taj noticed. Glancing back, he said gruffly, “Your kindness was appreciated if unnecessary.”

Mark brightened perceptibly, and Tis was reminded again how much he loved this fine old man. Taj truly was a grand seigneur.

“Is that the Takisian version of a dog whistle?” asked Jay.

Zabb gave a short bark of laughter. In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“It is the Council Call,” Taj said, irritated by their flippancy.

Zabb’s grin became even broader. “Little cousin, you are more troublesome and get a bigger reaction than a swarm of scissor wings. They’re actually coming down.”

Panic took a brief run around the pit of her stomach like a frightened rabbit seeking its burrow.

“You can take some credit for this,” Taj said gruffly. “Pulling in the Network on us -”

“Which makes him a renegade and a traitor,” Egyon said with that tight, prissy voice that lawyers use when addressing a jury. “A perfect candidate for the Raiyis’tet.”

“Zabb is not the issue here, I am,” flared Tis.

“You’re bickering like the blind,” Taj exploded. “We now all wait on the decision of the Ajayiz, which will be several hours in coming. I suggest we adjourn to wait in more comfortable surroundings.” He paused and eyed the two humans: Jay dressed in his brown slacks and sports jacket, Mark in jeans, tennis shoes, and a T-shirt. He shuddered slightly. “And get something decent for these stirpes to wear.”

“Go away, Egyon,” Tis said softly. “Taj is still regent of House Ilkazam… and despite his courtesy I don’t think that was a request.”

Out-and-out warfare is rare in a Takisian noble house. Murder, when it occurs, is accomplished in shadowed corners, cloaked in the trappings of an accident.

This was how Blaise did it, thought Tisianne. If I possessed the jump power, I could take Egyon, manipulate the puppet body to attack, and jump back as the guards killed him.

But Egyon obeyed, and she didn’t possess the jump power, so she regretfully watched as the Kou’nar filed obediently from the audience chamber. Well, since no new and arcane powers were available to her, she would have to rely upon those fundamental Takisian talents – conspiracy and treachery.

Mark’s touch on her shoulder pulled her out of her reverie. “You should rest,” he said.

“No.” She shook her head. “First I must find a toilet. Then I must see my father.” She forced a casualness into her voice which she didn’t feel.

Zabb and Taj both looked at her sharply, and Zabb took her by the elbow and walked her forward until they stood at the base of the dais looking up at the throne. He seemed uncomfortable, like a man who was picking up and inspecting words to find the ones with the least potential for pain. At last Zabb said, “You’ve been warned what you’ll find.”

“Yes.”

“You can do a scan?”

“With Taj’s help.”

“Then you know what to do.”

Zabb turned and walked away, and Tis watched him go with hatred growing in her heart.

When Zabb’s hand fell like a stroke of doom on his shoulder, Mark wanted to shrug it contemptuously away. He could tell by the Doc’s expression that her cousin had again delivered some emotional body blow, but rudeness didn’t come easily to the gawky ace, and he secretly feared that he couldn’t carry off the gesture with anything approaching aplomb. Mark had looked ridiculous too many times in his life for it to be an unfamiliar sensation, but close association with the emotion didn’t make it any more welcome.

It took a quarter second for all these random, regretful, and scattered thoughts to shoot through Mark’s head, and then Zabb was saying, “Come, I need you with me.”

“Me?”

A flicker of a smile briefly relieved the intensity of the Takisian’s expression. “As incredible as that might seem… yes. Your grasp of our language is better than the noisy man’s, and in your case I am acquainted with your powers.”

“My friends,” Mark corrected softly. “And don’t assume you’ve met them all.” It was a gently couched warning, and Zabb didn’t mistake it.

“You may believe me when I tell you that at this moment my cousin has nothing to fear from me,”

Zabb was walking toward the door, and Mark said to his back, “Because right now you need something from her.”

The alien looked back. “Quite astute of you, groundling.”

“Wait a minute.” Mark knelt, snapped open the case, and removed five of the vials. Slipping them into the leather pouch at his belt, he crossed to where Tis was expostulating with Jay Ackroyd.

“Hey, man, watch this for me. Okay?” He handed the case to Jay and hurried back to join Zabb.

On this walk, with only a pair of guards as escort, and without the accompaniment of a frenzied explanation from Tachyon – Tisianne – Mark had the leisure to inspect his surroundings. Judging from the striations in the stone walls of the audience chamber, it was located in the ancient section of the house which had been carved from the rock of the cliff. Now they had entered the newer sections of the sprawling villa. The range of decorations was bewildering to the eye, and jarring to the mind. In some areas paintings and tapestries adorned the walls; in others just the polished stone; in still others there were inlaid mosaics.

“I take it that Takisians don’t believe in a coherent decor.”

Zabb laughed. “To understand Takis, you must first understand how territorial we are.”

“Yeah, I know. All the different families and Houses…”

“Yes, but that extends in-House as well. Each breeding line stakes out a section of palace for their own, and that includes the corridors.”

“So they get to decorate it as they please.”

“And maintain it at their own expense. It’s a way for the Raiyis to cut costs.”

That raised a new thought for Mark. “Money. How do you get it?”

“Investments, taxes, theft.” The alien laughed at Mark’s expression. “No, nothing so romantic as you are thinking. When we battle, the winner doesn’t cart away the treasures of a House. Our theft is of the electronic variety.”

“But when you absorb a smaller House -”

“It happens very rarely. Nothing fights like a cornered Takisian, so out-and-out victories are costly. Also, if we reduced the number of Houses…” He paused, considered. “Well, it wouldn’t be as interesting or challenging.”

“Then you like to fight.” A wealth of flower-child disapproval was ladled onto the words.

Zabb’s quick pace slowed, and he cocked his head curiously at Mark. “Yes, we’re a warrior culture. There’s glory in warfare, very little in peace.”

“That’s a lot of crap. A sincere and dedicated pacifist is braver than any soldier. Look, I don’t particularly like the Network – too profit oriented, and money’s never meant much to me, but, like, they’ve got the right idea. You don’t squander your energy in war, you direct it out – for exploration, scientific research. You’ve had space flight for a hell of a long time, and you’ve got only a few colonies and no alien allies. I think that’s sad, and really wasteful.”

Zabb stopped before an elaborately carved door. He laid a hand on the cut-crystal knob and quirked a smile up at Mark. “One could argue we are even now forging a unique alliance with you humans.”

Mark stared seriously down at him. “No… you despise us.”

There was the briefest of pauses, then Zabb nodded abruptly. “Yes.”

As Mark watched the alien step through the door, he had to admit to a certain grudging admiration. A human would have expostulated, temporized, weaseled. Takisian honesty was as brutal as their politics.

Mark checked just on the threshold. “This is your room,” he said.

“Very perceptive.”

Mark surveyed the collection of weapons on the wall, the series of paintings featuring animals that resembled a cross between giraffes, horses, and impalas. A large stained-glass window depicted a hunt, but the riders were mounted on enormous flying creatures of a genus so alien that Mark couldn’t even think of an earthly comparison.

“Nobody touched it in five years?”

Again that flashing smile. “They knew better.”

“And the Doc’s? Is his… her room still intact?”

“No.” Zabb turned from where he was fiddling at the contents of an elaborate desk with etched crystal fronting each of the drawers. “I made sure it was assigned to others… oh, it must have been twenty or so years after my little cousin’s precipitous departure.”

Mark seated himself on the corner of a table and swung a leg. “Are you so shitty to the Doc because you’re trying to bury the fact you really do like her?”

The Takisian had a funny expression. “Very… very perceptive. Is that why you agreed to accompany me and leave my cousin with only a single protector?”

“Yeah. And she would have stopped me if she’d thought it was wrong.”

“Tis and I each have a mission to accomplish.”

“And you need me if you’re going to succeed.”

“I could probably achieve it alone, but remembering how difficult you… er, your friends can be, I thought your involvement might simplify matters.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Help me kill a man.”

Hands up, palms out as if the words alone had the power to damage him, Mark backed off. “No, oh no, no way.”

Zabb pressed in, driving Mark around the opulent room like a drover with a skittish horse. “Then she’s dead.”

“That can’t be true. She’s got guards, she’s got us. Besides, there’s no reason to kill this kid. The Doc is the Doc, and once her bona fides have been established, the kid will just get shunted aside.” Zabb didn’t answer. He just began filling a pipe from a twisted blown-glass humidor, never taking his sardonic, cold eyes off the sweating ace. “Killing that boy won’t accomplish anything,” Mark continued. “There’ll always be a replacement waiting to…” Marks voice trailed away.

The images parading past his mind’s eye were those from human mythology. Of dragons’ teeth being sown into the plowed earth, and soldiers springing up like foul weeds.

“Precisely, which is why I want to remove Onyze in a way that will implicate Egyon and sow the seeds of distrust among the remaining members of that line. It’s a very effective way to discourage pretension and treachery. And it will work. Oh, not for all time, but for a score of years, perhaps there will be peace.”

“The peace of fear,” Mark said defiantly.

“The best kind I know,” was the imperturbable reply.

“Then I’m sorry for you.” And he found that it was true.

Zabb hunched one shoulder. He picked up a lighter and drew on his pipe until he had it burning to his satisfaction. “Tisianne understands the harsh necessity that presently drives us. Even now she is taking an action that tears her soul. But she will act. Will you?”

“Not this way.”

Zabb tried another tack, still in that same sweetly sane tone. “Have you never in your life acted to defend the helpless?”

Indignation edged the words. Mark sounded as harsh as an old crow next to Zabb’s mellifluous arguments. “This is not a case of self-defense, and all the sophistry in the world isn’t going to make it self-defense!”

“Perhaps I failed to express myself clearly. It is not incumbent upon either you or your ‘friend’ to kill Onyze. I will handle that, but I need full intelligence to succeed. I need a – in your culture I believe it is called a ‘bug’ – planted.”

“It makes me an accessory to murder, and I won’t do it!”

“Does your friend also share in your charming if totally unrealistic belief?”

Suddenly wary, Trips asked, “Which friend?”

“That blue fellow who can walk through walls.” In a burst of regretful reminiscence he added, “By the Ideal, he nearly drove my poor Hellcat mad.”

“Traveler.” Mark turned away, wrapped his bony arms around himself as if the act could somehow comfort. The scent of the alien tobacco was sweet in his nostrils.

Zabb was continuing. His voice was low, calming, eminently reasonable. “You have chosen a philosophy for yourself. A foolish one by my lights, and one I cannot understand, but you are the one who must face the shame of your descendants, and the rage of your ancestors. But how can you make the decision for this other individual? He might be willing to help me. To help Tisianne.”

With a tongue suddenly too thick for his mouth, Trips managed to mutter, “I do care… and he won’t help. He’ll be too afraid.” He paused, considered. “Maybe he’ll even believe it’s wrong.”

“How nice for you if he does. How fatal for Tisianne.” Zabb dropped the pipe into an ashtray with a clatter. “And then there’s the infant…”

Trips found words beyond him. He let out a sound that was half curse, half sob, and pulled out the small vial of blue powder. Downed it. As the transformation began to take hold, he faintly heard Zabb saying, “Don’t take it so to heart. You can always ease the conscience with the comforting argument that it wasn’t you. You were right, sophistry is the other great Takisian art.”

“Made any more progress?” Tisianne asked, as she shut off the computer and turned to face Taj. They were in the medical labs of House Ilkazam.

Not by the flicker of an eyelash did the older Takisian indicate that he read the wealth of fury and sarcasm behind the four words. “A little. It hurt us when we lost our two best researchers.”

“Ansata’s death was his own choice. A simple surrender was all that was required.”

“Or you could have released his ship.”

Tis wasn’t going to buy one instant of guilt. She buried the brief flash that tried to surface. “That was never an option. I weighed fifteen lives against the thousands on Earth. Ansata lost. And as for my absence – I was unavoidably detained.”

Jay surprised Tisianne by speaking up. Obviously he understood Takisian better than he spoke it. “If your ship hadn’t been damaged, would you have stayed?”

Slowly she said, “Probably not. I was very young, and I was making a grand gesture in the best and grandest Takisian style. You were just faceless masses who were going to be so very, very grateful. Only later did I learn to love you.”

“You have reason to be grateful, groundling,” Taj said. “You obviously have received some great and potent power, or you would not be a companion to Tisianne.”

Jay didn’t have to climb down the alien’s throat, Tis did it for him. “Grateful! Grateful! The Ideal curse you and leave you childless. Is Jay’s power worth tens of thousands of lives? Is it worth the damage to his life, concerned as he must be over the fate of any children he may sire? Is it worth the loss of all that I am? What was conceived in this room I am now carrying to fruition.”

She spun away and tried to regain control of her ragged breaths. The fury, the anguish helped propel her to a cabinet. It kept her from thinking too much about the purpose of the drug she was loading into an epispray.

“I see you haven’t lost your flare for impassioned speeches. Do you still favor desperate causes?” Taj asked.

He was trying to fathom the mind of a person who would run off to save the inhabitants of an alien world. Trying to see if she regretted throwing away her birthright and her future. Tis thrust the epispray deep into her pocket and looked her uncle straight in the eye.

“I’d do it again… in a second…”

His expression softened. “That’s my Tisianne. Your father would be proud.”

“Did he ever forgive me?”

“No… but he missed you to the end.”

“It’s time I saw him.”

The infirmary was almost empty. There was one young man floating in a biogerm bubble. The bubbles hung from the ceiling by long filaments that monitored the injured body, but it did look as if the patient had been swallowed by a Portuguese man-of-war. Tis also thought of them as placenta pods. They served the same function as the womb, growing a healthy body, and the individual floating in their soothing soup often seemed to revert. Like the man before them, curled on his side, his thumb in his mouth, eyes squeezed shut, and nutrient feeds stabbing his body at a hundred different points.

“Gross,” Jay said, but Tis wasn’t certain whether he was reacting to the bubble or the horrendous wounds that raked the man’s flesh, laying bare the various levels and colors of a Takisian body.

At the far end of the ward lay a pair of heavy plasteel doors like the entrance into a security vault. And it was a safe of sorts; it was designed to protect the most precious and powerful of the House Ilkazam as they healed. The guards took up positions at the door to the infirmary, and about the vault doors. Taj stood before the access panel, an abstract piece of appliquй art with multicolored silicon crystals, each of them flashing with white lights. Taj sent the telepathic code, and order became chaos. Crystals flashed with clashing and discordant colors, and then the doors slid slowly open with a soft whine.

“Do you want me to wait outside with the hired help?” Jay asked.

Tis couldn’t force words past the lump in her throat. She shook her head and entered. Jay followed.

Shaklan was also floating in a biogerm bubble, also curled into a fetal position, but there was no sense of the healing infant. This was a breathing, excreting husk. Rollers had been placed in the palms of each clawlike hand to prevent them from closing into permanent fists. The hip bones thrust like knife blades against the gray skin of the pelvis, and the bones of the rib cage fell away to a shrunken belly. Long, long hair floated like seaweed about the shriveled body.

Tisianne evaluated the vital signs being constantly monitored from the control panel. The monitors certainly supported the general consensus that the mind and soul of Shaklan brant Fleva sek Agem had fled.

“You still want the scan?” Taj asked.

“Yes.”

She keyed the panel, and the nutrient bath began to drain away. An examination table rose out of the floor and gently received the desiccated body. Pulling aside the gelatinous bubble, Tis stared into the face of this half-dead thing and tried to reconcile it with the face of her father. It had the proper shape. That was all.

Taj gathered her hand in his, physical contact helping him to capture and augment her own feeble mental powers. They went searching and found nothing. The flesh breathed, the mind was gone.

She paced, felt as if something were battering at the top of her skull. Found her hand thrust deep into her pocket clenching the epispray. She marched all the arguments through her head. The conclusion was inescapable.

She forced herself back to her father’s side. Laid a hand against a hollow, stubbled cheek.

“Daddy…” She was a little embarrassed using the human word, but she had always liked it. It spoke of warmth and affection, and the Takisian High House equivalent didn’t suggest intimacy, much less love. “I’ve come home. I’m sorry for the things I said. I… love you…” sound died as if strangled, and she walked away.

Taj followed and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Do you want me to…?”

“No!”

Tis held out her hand, and Taj laid a pair of tiny golden scissors on the palm. The hair was lank and wet as she separated out a strand and snipped it off. Carefully she wrapped this token of her father around one wrist.

Shaklan’s lips held a hint of warmth, and it almost shattered her resolve. Then courage, pragmatism, love, and selfish need spurred her, and Tis pulled out the epispray. Laid it against her father’s arm.

Jay’s fingers closed on her wrist, and the pain forced her to drop the epispray.

“What are you doing?” The enunciation was ice careful.

Tisianne’s eyes fluttered up to meet his. What she read there made it impossible for her to speak.

“Freeing him,” Taj said softly as he gently freed Jay’s fingers from around Tis’s wrist. “From a death in life.”

“You’re going to put your own father to sleep?”

“I have to,” Tis said so quietly that she wasn’t even sure the words were audible. “He’s been kept alive as a pawn. Now his presence is no longer necessary. In fact it’s a hindrance.”

“That’s what Zabb was laying on you. Remove that last life standing between you and your goddamn throne. Jesus, I can’t believe you.”

His scorn hurt. It struck her skin like a lash, and she almost quailed. She went searching for anger and found a thimbleful. It would suffice in lieu of courage. “I expect neither your understanding nor your approval. I expect you to do the job I hired you for,” Tis spat out.

Jay’s face shut down like shutters slamming closed. Jammed his hands into his pockets and turned away. Tisianne sucked in a deep breath, held it, and depressed the key. Twenty seconds later Shaklan’s chest seemed to collapse with the exhalation of his final breath.

Sweeping up her hip-length hair, Tis flung it across the body to form a golden shroud. From deep within her a shriek formed, drove upward, punching through her throat like a geyser of acid. The sound that emerged was like nothing human or Takisian. It was the cry of a wounded and dying animal.

For Shaklan, Raiyis of the House Ilkazam, was dead.