Judgment at Proteus

TWENTY-THREE

The ten-day trip from Homshil to Sibbrava translated, in this case, to ten days of watchfulness, dit-recs and cards, meals and drinks, and, as it turned out, unnecessary anxiety.

Every time I left our compartment I expected Riijkhan or one of his friends to make some sort of trouble. But nothing of the sort ever happened. As far as I could tell, the whole Shonkla-raa community could have decided to give up and go away.

Which just meant that what they were really doing was gathering their strength for some seriously massive attack.

I could hardly wait.

We reached Sibbrava and the four of us transferred to another of the Spiders’ modified tenders. Three and a half hours later, we pulled into the unfinished station in the still unnamed Cimmal system where the Melding had set up their new home.

A long-range service vehicle, also modified for Human use, was waiting at the hatchway for us. With a service Spider at the controls, and a defender Spider standing beside him, we headed out into space.

With a near-Earth-type planet beckoning invitingly from the inner system, plus any number of moons and large asteroids available for warren habitats, my assumption had always been that the Melding’s leaders had moved inward from the Tube. It was something of a surprise, therefore, when our transport instead turned outward, toward the vast emptiness of the outer solar system.

In retrospect, though, it made sense. Quadrail Tubes typically touched their client systems far out in the local sun’s gravity well, putting ninety-nine-plus percent of the useful real estate on the inward side of the line. The handful of hardy knowledge-seekers who might go in the other direction would never even spot a lone, silent ship drifting through all that blackness.

Or in this case, six ships: six old survey/sampling vessels, Cimman design, probably leftovers from the system’s initial exploration sweep. The ships were linked together by wide transfer cylinders, with an industrial-sized fusion generator trailing along behind the whole thing like a pet dog on a leash.

Docked beside one of the ships in the cluster was a torchferry, presumably the vehicle the Melding used to get back and forth to the Tube when necessary. None of the other ships’ docking ports had the glowing red outlining that would indicate it was receiving guests, but our Spider seemed to know where he was going. He maneuvered us alongside the ship on the opposite side of the cluster from the torchferry, and I felt the slight tremor as the docking collars engaged. “Okay,” I said, as our engines went silent. “You all sit tight. I’ll go in and make sure everything’s okay.”

“No,” Morse said, his voice tight. “We go together.”

“Morse—”

“They want to see all of us,” he said. “Might as well go in together and get it over with.”

Back when Bayta and I first sneaked Rebekah off New Tigris and out of the Modhri’s hands she’d said there were about three hundred of these Melding people. From the size of the crowd gathered in the shuttle hangar bay as we walked inside, it looked like the whole crowd had come out to greet us.

And not all of them had friendly looks on their faces. Not even most of them.

I cleared my throat. “Hello,” I called, my voice echoing strongly in the hangar despite all the people gathered there. “I’m Frank Compton.”

“We know who you are,” a Jurian in the center of the front row said. “We know who all of you are.” His gaze swept over us, settled on Morse. “Why are you here?”

“We need your help,” I said. “The Shonkla-raa have revived—”

“Why are you here?” the Jurian repeated.

Only then did I realize he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to Morse. Or rather, to the Modhri inside Morse.

I shifted my attention to Morse. He gave a little nod, as if giving silent permission to an unspoken question.

And abruptly his face sagged subtly as the Modhri took over his body. “To see if I can be changed,” he said.

“And if you can?” the Jurian asked. “Will all of you—the entire Modhri—accept this change?”

“Why can’t they just make him?” Terese murmured from beside me, her usual shoulder-chip attitude momentarily eclipsed by the eerie gravity of the moment. “They’ve got to have hundreds-to-one odds on him.”

The Jurian had good ears. “We won’t impose our will on anyone,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly to Terese before returning to Morse. “Will all of you accept this change, Modhri?”

Morse braced himself. “I won’t hide from you that I fear this.” He looked at me, as if seeking reassurance. Or else reminding himself what was at stake. “But more frightening is the thought of being a slave to the Shonkla-raa,” he added. “Yes. All of me will accept the change.”

The Jurian nodded. “Then open yourself,” he said. “Do not resist. Open yourself to us, and allow us to bring forth the person that you can be. The person you were perhaps meant to be.”

I don’t know what I was expecting. Something dramatic, I suppose, something in line with life-changing events in the dit-rec dramas I’d watched over the years. But there was nothing of the sort. Morse’s head twitched back a bit, more like the precursor to a sneeze than anything else.

And then, he turned to me, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. “I’ll be damned,” he said, the same bewilderment in his voice.

“What?” I asked, reflexively shifting my feet into combat stance. “What happened.”

“This,” Morse said, waving a hand vaguely around him. “You ever wear glasses, Compton?”

I frowned. Did incorporating the Modhri with the Melding cause the former to go suddenly senile? “Sure, when I was a kid,” I said. “Most doctors won’t work on your eyes until you’ve stopped growing.”

“I remember the first day I got my glasses, when I was eight,” Morse said, his eyes sweeping the room but not really focusing on anything. “I hated the thought of wearing the things, so I’d been faking it for at least four years. You know what the first thing was I discovered?”

“That the things pinched your nose?”

“No.” He gestured. “That trees have leaves. All the way to the top. Individual leaves. And I could see them.”

He smiled. “I can see clearly now, Compton. Or rather, the Modhri can.”

“I’m happy for you both,” I said cautiously. It couldn’t be this easy. It couldn’t possibly be this easy.

Only, apparently, it was.

“We need to get you and your people to Yandro as quickly as possible,” Morse went on, the sense of awe in his voice giving way to brisk professionalism. “Compton, I saw five tenders at the station back there—are those for us to use? Four per tender would mean twenty of them could go now, plus as much coral as they can squeeze in—”

“Whoa, whoa,” I cut him off. “Let’s pause for a minute and think this through, shall we?”

“What’s to think through?” Morse countered. “You were right. It works. We need to get some of this coral to Yandro and start getting the segment-prime up to speed.”

“Don’t dampen his enthusiasm, Compton,” the Jurian said. I’d never heard a Jurian sound chiding, but this one managed it. “For the first time he sees what he’s been missing. He’s eager to share this discovery with the rest of himself.”

“Yes—the leaves on the trees, and all that,” I said, thinking fast. I’d expected the trip from the station to the Melding’s hideout to take considerably longer than the three and a half hours it actually had. If we started back now, my timing was going to be dangerously off the mark. “But that doesn’t mean charging blindly ahead,” I went on. “There are logistics to consider—how much coral, who goes, what happens to everyone who’s still here. Once we get to Yandro, what then? Does everyone head inward to the planet for direct contact with the Modhran coral, or does the segment-prime send some Eyes out to meet with the Melding?”

“Good questions, all,” Morse said, his forehead creasing. “And all of them except the ones about numbers and coral tonnage can be worked on en route.”

“And besides that, I’m tired and hungry,” I said.

“Two issues I believe we can solve,” the Jurian said gravely. There was movement at one side of the group.

And our old friend Rebekah Beach stepped out into view.

It had been less than six months since Bayta and I had said our final good-byes to her back at the unfinished Quadrail station. But even in that brief a time, the girl had undergone a dramatic change. She was noticeably taller, as generally happened with ten-year-olds. She’d also cut her hair into a shorter style, one that suited her face better than the old one had.

But more impressive than her physical changes was the new air of calmness and maturity that hovered around her. Back when we’d been running from the Modhri, Rebekah had tried very hard to be all grown up, to face the danger and uncertainties as best she could. But those efforts had been only partially successful, like a set of ill-fitting clothes she’d hastily thrown on.

Now, after only a few months, I could see her wearing those adult attitudes and responsibilities like a tailored suit.

Back then, I’d wondered whether the Melding colony within her had cheated her out of her childhood. Apparently, whatever forces were at work in her were well on their way to depriving her of her teen years, as well.

Which, as I remembered back to that period in my own life, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But despite all that maturity wrapped around her, I could see a hint of the excited child shining in her eyes as she saw Bayta and me.

Not that that kind of excitement was solely the province of ten-year-olds. I was still only halfway through my observation and analysis when Bayta broke from my side, hurried forward, and attacked the girl with a huge bear hug.

“Rebekah will take you to a room where you may rest,” the Jurian continued. “Meanwhile, we’ll prepare food for you.”

I inclined my head to him. “Thank you.”

“Any idea how long this nap of yours is going to take?” Morse asked.

“A few hours,” I said. “Maybe more. It’s been a long time since I felt genuinely safe, and I’ve got a lot of sleep to catch up on.” I turned back to Bayta and Rebekah, who had now disengaged from their hug and were talking softly together. “Whenever you’re ready, Rebekah,” I added.

The girl gestured to a line of unoccupied floor that had opened up through the crowd behind her. “This way,” she said. Her eyes shifted to Terese. “Would you like to come with us, too, Terese?”

“That’s okay,” Terese said. “I’m not very tired.”

“Could we talk, then?” Rebekah persisted.

The question seemed to take Terese by surprise. “About what?” she asked suspiciously.

“Nothing special,” Rebekah said, her air of calmness faltering a bit. “Just about … things.” She hunched her shoulders. “There isn’t anyone else aboard even close to my age. I just thought we could … just talk, that’s all. Or maybe listen to music. There isn’t much Human music here. Do you have anything modern with you?”

“Some,” Terese said. Her voice was still wary, but I could hear her warming to the idea of having some company that wasn’t Bayta, Morse, and me. Especially that wasn’t me. “You like Adam Pithcary?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him,” Rebekah said. “But I’d like to. Come on, we’ll show Mr. Compton to his room and then we can go to mine. Wait’ll you hear my player—it’s really good.”

She took Terese’s arm, and the two of them headed toward a door in the hangar’s rear. It looked a little odd, the little girl leading the teenager, but somehow seemed both right and proper given their different personalities. Bayta walked behind them, hanging back to give them some space, and I dropped into position a couple meters still farther to the rear.

We were walking down a beautifully decorated corridor when Morse caught my arm. “We need to talk,” he murmured.

I slowed down, letting Bayta and the two girls gain some distance on us. “What about?” I asked, turning to face him.

“About why you’re stalling,” he said, his eyes digging into my face like twin entrenching tools. “You just ate three hours ago, and you can sleep all you want on the way back to Yandro.”

“I already told you I don’t sleep well when I’m in danger,” I reminded him.

“That’s a bloody load,” he bit out. “And you know it.” He leaned in a few centimeters closer, getting right up into my face. “What are you up to, Compton?”

I considered introducing him to the deck, decided that a public scuffle wasn’t really what we needed right now. “I’m trying to win a war,” I said instead.

“Are you?” he countered. “You do realize, don’t you, that every hour you stall us out here gives the Shonkla-raa an extra hour to bring in more of their numbers.”

“It also gives them another hour to scatter frantically to the four winds looking for us,” I said. “Remember, they have no way of knowing how far we were going to go once we left Sibbrava.”

“You sure about that?” he asked darkly. “I understand Osantra Riijkhan offered you Earth’s safety in exchange for your help.”

In other words, had I betrayed him and the Modhri when they weren’t looking? “Yes, he offered,” I said. “I didn’t say yes.”

“You also didn’t say no.”

I sighed. How many times was I going to have to go through this? “Look, Morse. If you get taken by the Shonkla-raa, what’s the first question they’re going to ask you?”

“I thought you weren’t even sure that they could take control of Human Eyes.”

“Indulge me,” I said. “Assuming they can, what’s their first question going to be?”

“Where can I get one of those lovely English accents?” he suggested sarcastically.

“That’s question two,” I said. “Question one will be ‘What’s Compton’s plan?’ Am I wrong?”

His lip twitched. “No.”

“And since you would then have to tell him, it follows that it’s best if you don’t know my plan,” I said. “Is this starting to sink in?”

He glared at me another few seconds before pulling his face back to a civilized distance. “So I gather this delay is part and parcel of your plan?”

“This delay is because I’m tired and hungry,” I said, emphasizing each word.

“Sure.” He grimaced, the last remnants of his glare fading away into a sort of unhappy watchfulness. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I always know what I’m doing,” I told him.

“Are you always right?”

“Of course,” I said. “Aren’t you?”

He grimaced. “Fine. Go enjoy your rest. I’ll go see if I can help get the coral packed for transfer.”

He turned and headed back toward the hangar. Bayta and the girls had disappeared, but as I continued on down the corridor I spotted Bayta waiting for me outside one of the doors. “This our Fortress of Solitude?” I asked as I walked up to her.

“Our what? Oh—right.” She touched the control to open the door. “Yes, this is where Rebekah said we could rest. She and Terese are another three doors down, if you wanted to check on them first.”

“They’ll be fine,” I said, gesturing her into our room.

The room was bigger than I’d expected, with a single large bed, a washstand with running water, and a couple of comfortable-looking chairs. From the marks on the floor, I guessed it had been an analysis room, with most of the current empty space originally filled by lab tables and equipment racks. “There’s a food locker over there with ration bars, in case you wanted something to eat before they get a proper meal prepared,” Bayta said as the door closed behind us.

“No, thanks,” I said, crossing to the bed and lying down. “I mostly just wanted some breathing space.”

“And to give Rebekah time to talk to Terese?” Bayta asked.

I nodded. “Terese desperately needs someone new to talk to. I was hoping the two of them might click.”

“But that’s not the real reason for the delay, is it?” Bayta said, coming over and standing beside the bed.

I shook my head. “No.”

Morse had pressed me for more. But Bayta wasn’t Morse. “Okay,” she said. For another moment she stood looking at me. Then, to my mild surprise, she lay down on the other side of the bed.

And to my even greater surprise she proceeded to slide up beside me.

Close beside me. Way closer than she needed to.

“It’s not going to work, you know,” she said quietly. “The Melding may be able to adjust the Modhri within Agent Morse, but they can’t possibly have enough coral to do the same to the segment-prime.”

“I know,” I said. “Fortunately, we have another source of Melding coral.”

She lifted her head and frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

“At least, I’m pretty sure we do,” I said. Sliding over the last few centimeters that separated us, I slid my arm behind her raised head. “How much do you know about how the Melding came to be?”

She continued frowning at me, her head raised, and for a few awkward seconds I wondered if she was going to respond to my smooth move by simply not lying back down. But then her expression changed, and she lowered her head back to the pillow and across my arm.

And then, to my surprise, she rolled up onto her side toward me, resting her body right up against mine. “It still won’t work,” she murmured, her breath warm on my cheek.

My first flash reaction to this unexpected intimacy evaporated into the cold reality of her words. “Sure it will,” I said, crooking my arm at the elbow and bringing my hand up to rest on her shoulder. “We’re already well on our way.”

I felt her give a small shake of her head. “They won’t give you the coral,” she said. “Not without safeguards.”

I pursed my lips. So she did know that it was the Chahwyn who had bioengineered the Melding coral in the first place. Or if she hadn’t known she’d deduced it, just as I had. “They don’t have any choice,” I said firmly. “Not if they want the Modhri to be a reliable ally.”

“They won’t believe he can be that ally,” she said. “They’ll be afraid he’ll overwhelm the Melding, no matter how much coral they deliver. They’ll instead want to keep producing the coral until they’re sure they have enough to make it work. Only they never will.”

I grimaced. Unfortunately, she had a point. No matter how fast the Chahwyn created their Melding coral, the original Modhran coral would also be reproducing, sitting there in its cold-water habitat on Yandro. The Chahwyn would be racing a moving goal line, without ever knowing exactly where that goal line was. “The situation is different now,” I reminded her. “The Modhri is willing to change. In fact, if Morse is any indication, once he sees what the Melding offers, he’ll be downright eager to change.”

“They don’t trust him,” Bayta said. “They’ll never trust him. They’ll go with their alternate weapon.”

I felt my stomach tighten. “The defenders aren’t an alternate weapon,” I said. “They’re a self-springing trap.”

“I know,” Bayta said. “But they don’t understand that. And they won’t. Not until it’s too late.”

“Then we’ll have to find a way to explain it to them.”

She gave a wry little snort. “I don’t think your usual tools of persuasion will be of much use this time.”

“Don’t count me out yet,” I warned. “You’d be amazed how many of those tools I have up my sleeve.”

She shook her head again. “I know the Elders. Once they’ve made up their minds, they won’t change. They’re probably already working on creating new and better defenders to send against the Shonkla-raa.”

She breathed out a long, weary sigh. “And whoever wins that battle, freedom will disappear from the galaxy.”

“Well, at least the defenders aren’t lusting after power, the way the Shonkla-raa are,” I said, searching for something positive to say. “I suppose that’s something.”

“The Shonkla-raa want power,” she said. “The defenders will calmly and unemotionally take it whether they want it or not. I don’t see a lot of difference.”

I pursed my lips. “There is an alternative,” I reminded her. “The one you suggested aboard our first super-express. You told me we could destroy the Thread, disintegrate the Tube, and end the whole thing.”

“Yes, we could probably do that,” she said, a deep sadness in her voice. “Only it wouldn’t help. The Shonkla-raa, or the defenders, would still control the people they happened to be among when the Quadrail collapsed.”

Which was pretty much the same conclusion I’d come to the first time she’d offered this approach. “You’re right, that doesn’t really gain us anything,” I agreed. “In fact, it might make things worse. If someone ever figured out a way to beat back the Shonkla-raa, without the Thread and Quadrail there wouldn’t be any way for them to share that information with the rest of the galaxy.”

For a long minute we just lay quietly, our bodies still pressed close together. Gently, I stroked her shoulder; hesitantly, almost unwillingly, she lifted her arm and laid it across my chest. “Tell me something,” I said at last. “In any of your discussions with Terese, have you ever found out who exactly she is?”

Even without looking, I could sense Bayta’s frown. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for starters, she says her name’s Terese German, but we don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “More importantly, why did the Shonkla-raa pick her to be the host for their little Trojan Horse invader? The Modhri usually shoots for top political, industrial, and military targets. Is that the Shonkla-raa approach, too? If so, what exactly does Terese bring to that table?”

“I don’t know,” Bayta said, her voice thoughtful. “She’s never mentioned any family to me. Maybe it was just her genetics that made her a good host for their experiment.”

“Then why were there all those other women in Building Twelve?” I countered. “Did they all have Terese’s unique biochemistry? Besides, I can’t see the Shonkla-raa limiting themselves any more than they had to. No, there’s something about Terese we don’t know.”

“Do you want me to go ask her?”

“If she hasn’t volunteered the information by now, I doubt she will,” I said. “But she might tell Rebekah, especially if Rebekah asks her nicely. Tell me, are you on friendly speaking terms with the Melding these days?”

“Am I—?” She broke off, and I could feel her shoulder stiffen under my hand. There were at least two different levels of outrageousness in what I’d just suggested, and she was clearly trying to catch up. “I can’t communicate directly with them,” she said after a moment. “Even if I could, I’m not sure Rebekah would agree to do it.”

“I’m not asking her to betray her new friend,” I said. “What I want isn’t even secret. Terese’s data is on file somewhere on Earth—theoretically, we could go dig it out any time we wanted. But that would take time, and time is something we have limited quantities of.”

I could practically hear the question spinning around in her brain: if we were that critically short on time, why were she and I still lying here side by side instead of helping Morse and the others load coral aboard our transport? “I suppose,” she said instead. “I’ll go talk to one of the others.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “My idea—I’ll do it. If any heat comes from either Terese or the Melding over this, I should be the one on the receiving end.” I touched the arm lying across my chest. “I suppose you’ll have to take this back.”

“Okay,” Bayta said, making no attempt to move her arm. “You need to do this right now?”

The bed really was pretty comfortable. “A few more minutes shouldn’t hurt.”

I’d set up this needing-to-rest thing mostly as a pretext to stall our return to the Tube. But it was quickly clear that Bayta really was exhausted, more so than I’d realized. We hadn’t been lying there together more than three minutes when her breathing slowed into the rhythm of sleep.

Apparently, I wasn’t in much better shape. Within a very few minutes, I drifted off to join her.

* * *

I woke an hour later with that heavy, groggy feeling of having had a too-short nap on top of a still massive sleep deficit. Sometime in that hour Bayta had rolled over to face away from me, but her back was still snugged up against my side. I managed to extricate my arm from beneath her neck without waking her and slid out of my side of the bed. A minute later I was walking back down the corridor toward the hangar.

The earlier crowd had long since dissipated, but there was a lone Melding member—a Pirk male—waiting by the docking collar leading into our transport. I approached him warily, but like the other Melding Pirk Bayta and I had run into once before this one had none of the overwhelming odor that emanated from most members of his species.

“Compton,” he greeted me gravely. “You are rested?”

“Enough,” I said. “I need a favor. Two favors, actually.”

He inclined his head. “Speak.”

“I need to know who exactly Terese German is,” I said. “Not her name, but who she’s related to, or under the protection of, or whatever it is that drew the Shonkla-raa’s attention to her. I assume Rebekah’s still talking to her—maybe she can ask her.”

“This knowledge is necessary to your war effort?”

“Probably,” I said. “I’m not absolutely sure, but probably.”

The Pirk nodded. “Then Rebekah will ask her.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Subtly, of course, and without telling Terese that it was me asking.”

The Pirk smiled faintly. “Rebekah has heard all about Terese’s feelings toward you,” he said. “Rest assured, she will know how to ask the question.”

“Thanks,” I said again. “The other favor is that I’d like one of the people who are coming back to Yandro with us to ride on the regular Quadrail along with Bayta, Terese, Morse, and me.”

A flicker of surprise crossed the Pirk’s face. “I assumed you would be traveling on the Spider tenders along with us.”

“Unfortunately, there are a couple of other errands I need to deal with along the way that have to be done at the normal stations,” I told him. “Arriving there by tender would draw more attention than we can afford. Oh, and along with one of your members, we’ll also want to take some of the coral.”

For a few seconds he gazed at me, and I had the sense that the whole Melding was being brought in to consider this one. “What are you planning?” the Pirk asked at last.

My mind flicked back to Morse’s earlier questioning of my motives and loyalties. “The less you know, the better,” I said, trying the same argument I’d used on him.

The line hadn’t gone over very well with Morse. It didn’t do any better with the Melding. “Unacceptable,” the Pirk said flatly. “In our estimation, the risks of knowledge far outweigh the risks of ignorance.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. “But I’m the one in charge, and my decision stands.”

“The Modhri may have accepted your leadership,” the Pirk said. “But the Melding hasn’t yet done so. What if we withdraw from this action?”

“Then you’ll lose your only chance of bringing the Modhri back to the light,” I said. “Without me, I doubt the Modhri will be willing to join with you, and without that joining he’ll be left the way he is now. His mind will stay broken and limited, without the ability to interact with others in any civilized way.” I cocked an eyebrow. “Are you willing to have that on your collective conscience? That you could have redeemed him, but chose not to?”

“Your argument is flawed,” the Pirk said evenly. “The choice is not simply one of showing the Modhri the way, but also of risking our own survival.”

“Your survival is already forfeit,” I said bluntly. “Morse knows where you are. If the Shonkla-raa win, sooner or later they’ll drag that information out of the Modhri and come after you. The only way any of us will live through this is to join forces and take them down.”

“Under your leadership.”

“Yes.”

There was another moment of silent inter-Melding communication. “Very well,” the Pirk said. “Rebekah will travel with you.”

I felt a sudden tightening of my throat. “Rebekah?”

“Is that a problem?” the Pirk asked, eyeing me with an uncomfortable intensity. “Surely her participation in a few simple errands pose no threat to her.”

I grimaced as I realized how neatly I’d just been had. And by whom. “This is Morse’s idea, isn’t it? He told you that I might be willing to put some random Melding member at risk, but would never take a chance like that with Rebekah.”

The Pirk inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Agent Morse is far more versed in such things than we are,” he agreed. “That was indeed his reasoning.”

“Oh, you and the Modhri are going to make a great team, all right,” I said sourly. “Fine—Rebekah it is. How soon before the coral is loaded aboard the transport?”

“Another two hours,” he said. “I thought you also wanted to share a meal with us before you left.”

“I do,” I said. “I just wanted to get some idea about our timing. I’m going back now to get a little more sleep.”

I left the hangar and headed back toward our room, fuming the whole way. Morse had called it, all right, damn him. He was right about Rebekah being the one person aboard whom I would hesitate to put at risk.

Now, thanks to him, I was going to do exactly that.

And there was nothing I could do about it. Events were already in motion, events I could do nothing to stop or even slow down.

Bayta was still sleeping when I reached the room. For a moment I stood beside the bed, gazing down at her, a sense of guilt flowing over me. Here I was worrying about Rebekah when I should also be worrying about Bayta. After all, she would be in as much danger as any of the rest of them.

But then, Bayta was already squarely in the Shonkla-raa’s crosshairs. She would be in danger no matter where she was.

It was complete and utter rationalization, of course. But right now, rationalization was all I had.

Sighing, I lay back down beside her. This time, it took me considerably longer to fall asleep.