“Grandfather, help me!” Tisianne could feel the fascinated and horrified gaze of the humans between his shoulder blades. To the Ly’bahr, Blaise screamed, “I’m not Zabb! I’m not. I jumped him. I stole his body. He’s dead. I’m Blaise! Tell them!” he shrieked hysterically at the ceiling. It was as if with Zabb’s stolen telepathy he could sense his grandfather watching.
“Jesus, he’ll jump!” Jay said suddenly.
“To an alien mind encased in a metal body? Impossible,” Tis said quietly. “And he has to see us to reach us.
A high-pitched whine filled the air. Blaise screamed, a sound so raw that it seemed impossible for a human throat to produce it. Mark let out a small cry like a frightened kitten, and Jay retched. Kelly’s arm slipped around Tis’s waist, but he read the exaltation in her mind.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Tis said as the top of Blaise’s stolen skull was carefully twisted off.
Bounty nodded and returned the strongbox. “Good doing business with you, Raiyis. And you’ll want this.” He handed over the contract signed by Blaise which had ceded Ilkazam to the Network.
Tisianne spun on his heel and led Jay, Mark, and Kelly back through the umbilical.
“Jesus Christ.” Jay gulped air. “Vengeance as an art form.”
“Your fee,” Tis said, and handed the detective the strongbox.
They were almost back to Takis before Mark spoke. “Today, for the first time in all the years I’ve known you, you really felt like a Takisian to me.”
“Don’t be an idiot! Set her aside? On what grounds?”
Taj clutched distractedly at his hair, raging across the room and back again. Tis stared at his image in the mirror and made a face at the abject terror of the tailor fitting the coat. The paunch Kelly had grown for him made him feel heavy and ungainly, and the need for a drink ached in every muscle and fiber.
“How about that I don’t love her, and she’s a conniving and dangerous bitch?”
“Recall that Vayawand has agreed to cadet status. Marriages are a good way to cement such conquests,” Taj countered.
Tis briefly closed his eyes. “Why do you always have to be right?”
“A virtue of old age.”
“There is another matter,” Tis said. “I made a bargain with Yimkin to send him a bride. I’ll abide by that promise, but this is the last time we do it. We’re not going to barter and sell our women like chattel any longer.”
“As my lord commands.”
“I understand that since the wounded soldiers have returned to their own Houses, there is a move to reestablish Rarrana.”
“Yes, of course.”
“No, I’m abolishing it. End of discussion.”
The old man moved to Tisianne and laid an arm across his shoulders. “Tis, this is your experience talking.”
“Absolutely.”
“Rarrana is one of our cherished -”
“It doesn’t make any damn sense. From age fourteen to forty our girls are free to join in the life of the House. Then at forty they are married, start producing babies, and lose their freedoms. Why are they more precious at forty than they were at twenty-three?”
“Because they’re pregnant.”
“It stays abolished.”
“You are condemning our women to death!”
“Who is going to kill them? We’ve got bigger problems then preying on one another. The cities of Alaak, Ban, and Lira were totally destroyed. There’s going to be hunger in the southern hemisphere after Blaise’s scorched-earth policies. The Most Bred of House Rodaleh and Jeban have almost all been killed.”
Tisianne’s voice was spiraling upward. Taj suddenly gave his nephew’s arm a shake. “Tis, take a woman. If not Mon’aella, someone. It will help you remember who and what you are.”
“That’s a person I don’t want to remember.” He smiled at the puzzled expression on his uncle’s face and gently laid a hand on Taj’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Uncle. I am only a little mad.”
Jay paused at the top of the biogerm bubble and looked down at Hastet. “Hey, when I get out of the pickling vat, we’ve got to talk.”
“About what, please?”
“Well… us.”
“What about us?”
Takisians were discreet, that much could he said for them. The doctors assigned to oversee Jay’s regrow moved politely away.
“You know.”
“I know nothing. If you want me, you are going to have to ask for me.” She whirled and was gone. Jay thought about running after, then decided he’d look stupid in his little breechclout and nose plugs.
Mark found Roxalana packing. She waved to her maids to continue and led him onto the glass porch off her suite. It was rich with the scent of flowers.
“Busy?”
“It’s a useful substitute for worry.”
“What have you to worry about?” Mark asked.
“There’s a wonderful sense of safety in tradition and custom. Tisianne dismantles Rarrana. I am moving in with my husband. The poor man is quite terrified. Frankly, so am I.
“After the initial fear wears off, you’ll like being free.”
“I enjoyed being safe.” She bowed her head, and Mark found himself on one knee by her chair, his arms around her.
“I’ll never forget what you did for me.”
She stroked his hair, smiled. “I’m afraid you aren’t handsome enough to carry off life as a toy or an ornament. You needed your voice.”
“I’ll never forget you,” Mark said, and his voice had a little squeak and quaver to it.
Roxalana leaned in and kissed him long and slow on the mouth.
The three humans had taken up residence together. One afternoon, as Jay was idly popping objects from one side of the room to the other – just to assure himself that the new fingers worked – Mark suddenly said, “We gotta get home. It’s, like, time, man.”
An expression of almost comical dismay crossed Ackroyd’s face. “What about your plumbing?” he asked quickly. “Don’t you have to get hooked up again?”
Kelly hid a smile. Mark smiled placidly at the detective. “I already did it, while you were doing your regrow.”
“Oh.”
“Going to have to make a decision, Jay,” Kelly said. “This is the big C – commitment.”
“And don’t forget the L word,” Mark said to Kelly. “Love. Not to be confused with another four-letter word beginning with L.”
“I hope you both bloat up and die from horrible diseases.”
“You’ve only got two choices, Jay. You go home with her. Or you go home without her,” Mark said.
Jay took a seat at a table near the door. That way if it went bad, he wouldn’t have far to get booted. It was very early, and he was the only customer in the restaurant. Hastet hurried out from the kitchen and checked as she saw him.
Jay looked up from the menu. “You don’t have any crow today, do you?”
“What’s crow?”
“It’s a dish you eat when you’ve been stupid.”
“You must be a connoisseur of it.”
“There, now you’ve done it again. I just don’t know how I can go back to Earth and never get another love pat from the rough side of your tongue.” She didn’t respond. Just folded her arms across her chest and waited. “Think you could stand to leave this paradise of a planet?”
“I can stand quite a lot.”
“How about me?”
“I could get used to that too.”
“Doctor?”
“Yes, Kelly love.”
Her gray eyes widened at the sight of the enameled and inlaid sleigh, the two fidgeting l’lails. “What are you doing?”
“Taking Illyana and myself out for a breath of air. The taste of politics is coating my tongue.”
“In a sleigh?” the girl breathed.
“It’s a logical way to cross snow, and far more pleasant than a snowmobile. Would you like to come?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
They settled into a nest of furs. Tis handed the baby back to Kelly. “Here, you may as well get in practice.” He hesitated, arranged the reins between his gloved fingers. “Unless you choose to terminate.”