Chapter 26
DHOMHES
Roemary looked at Sereya throughout the hearing.
She had counsel on either side of her and a guard behind her chair. Her injured wrist was supported in a pale wrap. Someone had brought her better clothes.
Dhomhes sat beside Sereya while the examiner reviewed her account. The hearing was closed. Her protected history remained in a sealed record, with her advocate authorized to challenge any attempt to circulate it beyond those who needed it for the case.
It wasn't the same as never having been threatened. There was no arrangement he could make that would give her that.
But the account before them was hers. She had read it, corrected it, and signed it.
“Were you instructed to take Adryel to the loading bay?” the examiner asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you agree?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
Sereya described calling for help. The communicator. The attack on the guard. She paused once to drink water, then finished without looking at Dhomhes for permission to continue.
Roemary shifted in her chair.
“You always needed someone to tell you what happened,” she said.
Her counsel put a hand on her arm. Too late.
Sereya turned toward her.
“I remember what happened.”
“You remember what he wants you to—”
“You told me I could leave before they hurt Adryel.”
Roemary's mouth closed.
Sereya's voice remained steady.
“You thought that would make it easier for me to agree.”
The examiner called for order. Roemary leaned back between her advocates. Sereya faced the table again and answered the next question.
Dhomhes kept his hands in his lap. It was among the harder things he had done that week.
Afterward, in the corridor, Sereya took one of them.
“I thought I'd feel different.”
“How?”
“Braver. Triumphant. Something.” She looked down at their fingers. “I mostly want lunch.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth.
“An ambition I can support.”
Roemary's counsel won additional records and time to prepare, but not her release. Burk named the extraction crew and supplied a freight account that paid for the skiff. Dhomhes left any promise about sentencing to the tribunal.
Sret's murder remained under investigation.
Adryel's evidence and the moonstone went through the agreed channels, with a record of each transfer.
The first matched stabilizer payment now accompanied them.
Senator Vandrel continued to protest while investigators followed the transfers that paid his office's bills.
The explosives comparison had come back inconclusive. The surviving records could not establish a shared method. Roemary's choice of the word flushed remained in her account; it would not bear the weight of proving who had set the charges.
The family still had money and influence. The operatives who had taken Sereya were in custody, their contract route closed, and Roemary could no longer reach the volunteers.
For the first time since the platform, Dhomhes could arrange a meal without an evacuation plan being the first item on the table.
He began bringing flowers to it.
Sereya tolerated the orchids with considerable grace.
She admired the small white flowers from the refinery's growing bay and asked him to thank the worker who had cut them.
The armful of tall gold reeds finally made her laugh.
“You said decades. You've been at it three days and you've already gone industrial.”
“I have a network.”
“I can see that.”
She came around his desk and took the pad from his hands. He had been reading the same line for several minutes, aware of her standing in the doorway in his shirt.
She set it aside and sat in his lap.
“You promised to keep learning me,” she said. “The getting-to-know-you part.”
“That's the intention.”
“Then I have a question.”
“I had been warned.”
“What do you like?”
He looked at the shirt, at her bare legs beside his, at the smile she made no effort to contain.
“You.”
“Specifics, Gol-Vett. You require accuracy of everyone else.”
He took her hands from his shoulders and placed them at the base of his horns.
“This.”
She stroked upward slowly. His eyes closed before he could prevent it.
“Yes,” she murmured. “I remember that.”
She did it again, and his armor stirred beneath her forearms.
“What else?”
He drew her shirt over her head. His shirt. Hers now, he suspected, along with several other things he had once considered his alone.
He kissed the hollow of her throat and settled his hands at her hips.
“Your weight. On me. Like this.”
She rose onto her knees, holding his shoulders. He touched her between the thighs and felt her breath catch beneath his mouth.
“And knowing you want me,” he said.
“I would have thought that was becoming apparent.”
She reached between them, opened his trousers, and freed him. He was already hard in her hand. She stroked once, then positioned him and began to lower herself.
Slowly. Watching his face.
He held her hips without guiding her. She chose the pace, taking him deeper until she was fully seated and they both had to stop for breath.
“That,” he said, “is my favorite thing on any world.”
Her smile broke into a gasp when she moved.
There was no hurry this time. She rocked against him, finding the angle she wanted. He kissed her breasts when she leaned close and her throat when she arched back. Her hands returned to his horns, and he lost the thread of every clever thing he might have said.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
He looked up.
“What you're thinking. You keep stopping before you say it.”
He could feel her around him, warm and wanting, her body moving with his. Her eyes stayed on his face.
“I love you.”
She went still.
There. Said. No careful timing, no better circumstances waiting for him to arrange them.
“I love you, Sereya.”
She kissed him with both hands against his face.
Then she moved again, and whatever remained of his restraint went with the sound she made. He met her, lifting into her as she came down to him, and felt her tighten around him when pleasure took her.
He followed with his face against her shoulder. The knot formed and held them close. She clung to him through the last shudders, whispering his name until she could say the rest.
“I love you too.”
He lifted his head.
Her eyes were wet. She was smiling.
“For the record,” she added.
He laughed, and she caught his face and kissed him again before he could answer.
The reeds remained on his desk all afternoon.
On the morning of Tivek's rite, Dhomhes reached the asteroid station's assembly point early enough to be accused of checking the rock for unfair advantages. Beyond the gallery windows lay the bare claim, its citricite workings open to vacuum.
“I've trained for this,” Tivek told him.
“I'm aware. I was there for much of it.”
“Then stop looking at the descent equipment.”
Dhomhes made himself look at his brother instead.
Tivek wore the same pressure suit and issued harness as the others of his year. His hands were steady on the straps. Only the set of his mouth gave away how much it mattered that no one had pulled him out of line.
Sheira stood beside Ruthak near the rail in the pressurized gallery. Her fingers were tucked into the crook of her mate's arm. Sereya waited with them, carrying a small cloth bundle of food because she had been told waiting could take a while.
The examiner called Tivek's name.
No qualification. No extra attestation. His name, followed by the same instructions given to the others.
He looked back once.
Dhomhes nodded.
Then his brother sealed his helmet and went through the lock with the rest of his year to begin the descent.
The waiting took longer than Dhomhes liked. He ate what Sereya put in his hand without tasting it. Ruthak watched the access point with an expression so similar to his own that Sheira eventually looked from one to the other and sighed.
“He will come back filthy and hungry,” she said. “You may prepare for that.”
She was correct.
When Tivek returned through the inner lock, his helmet was under one arm and his hair was damp. His citricite remained inside the sealed sample container, now bearing the examiner's mark. He held it against his chest while the result was entered.
Then he looked at his family.
The grin arrived all at once.
Sheira reached him first. Ruthak put a hand on the back of his neck and drew him close. Tivek endured both attentions with the dignity of a male who had been an adult for several breaths and expected that to matter.
Dhomhes clasped his forearm.
“I'm proud of you.”
Tivek blinked.
“You sound surprised,” Dhomhes added.
“No. I just—” His brother swallowed, then lifted the container. “The obvious seam was poor. I had to go past it. Read the next face properly.”
“And you did.”
“I did.”
Dhomhes held his forearm a moment longer before releasing him.
Sereya offered the food bundle. Tivek took it with immediate enthusiasm.
“You remain my favorite.”
“Your brother brought it,” she said.
Tivek looked at Dhomhes.
“You may rise in the rankings.”
Khalzin came to see him two days later.
He closed the operations-room door himself and stood looking at the chair until Dhomhes pointed to it.
“Sit down before you make me nervous.”
Khalzin sat.
“Janae is pregnant.”
Dhomhes stared at him.
“Aukrae's scan. The genome he referred to in the chamber—he was speaking about the child she carries. We found it in the report after he told us to look more closely.”
The careful phrasing in the recording returned to Dhomhes. Aukrae had given Oleave exactly enough doctrine to loosen his grip without stopping to offer a lesson in reproduction.
“Does Janae want this shared?”
“With you. Yes.” Khalzin rubbed both palms over his knees. “The follow-up looks good. She is well.”
Dhomhes stood and pulled him out of the chair into an embrace.
For a moment his friend held himself stiffly. Then he gripped Dhomhes's back.
“Congratulations,” Dhomhes said.
Khalzin let out a breath that sounded almost painful.
“Everyone is going to talk about the program.”
“Eventually.”
“The proof. The future of the species.”
“Probably.”
“I keep thinking about whether she's eating enough.”
Dhomhes drew back.
“That sounds sensible.”