“Yes. His bargain with me is separate from your bargain.”
“Let him go.”
“I can’t. Anything but that.”
“Why?” I snarled.
Nuan Cee spread his paws. “There have been forty-two Turan Adins since the war on Nexus began. Some lasted mere days. He’s been on Nexus for a cycle and a half. You don’t even know how special that is. He’s too good. He lasted longer than even the original one. I was terrified because he refused to sign another contract. He said he would walk as soon as we found a replacement. But now he will stay. All will be well.”
“All won’t be well. Nexus is killing him.”
“It will eventually. But until then, he will lead our defenses.”
“Release him. This is what I want.”
“No. Ask anything else.”
“Damn it, don’t you have a crumb of conscience? Is there any drop of kindness in your soul, or is it all just cold dark greed?”
Nuan Cee bared his teeth. “There are three thousand of our people on Nexus. There are families and children. He is keeping them alive.”
“What the hell were you thinking, putting children on Nexus in the first place? Move them out.”
“Don’t you think I would if I could? They have no place to go. They are not welcome anywhere.”
The realization hit me. The Kuan lees, the cast-outs. He had staffed Nexus colony with the exiles.
Nuan Cee turned away and waved at the screen, his paw limp. “Archive number ten twenty-four.”
A long procession of foxes appeared on the screen, moving one by one into a shrine, carrying little lanterns.
“In our society, family is everything. Clan is everything. When I look back, I should see the line of my ancestors stretching through time, long and unbroken. It is they who give us strength and wisdom. Our clan. Our pack. Our past and the wealth of our clan’s deeds. When one of us commits a crime, when he or she is found weak or unworthy, they are cast out. Such is the way of the forest. Only the strong and the useful survive. The cast-outs are cut off from their clan. They have no shrines. They can’t pray to their ancestors. They can’t ask for solace or guidance. Their children grow up adrift, not knowing where they come from, branches severed from the tree of their clan and family forever. Some don’t even know their fathers. They have no home. They’re not welcome anywhere. My father was a Kuan. He was a criminal and the son of a criminal.”
Grandmother stepped out of the shadows and came to sit on the couch, quiet as a ghost.
“And when my mother fell in love with him and her clan paid a fortune, the worth of a small planet, to include him into our clan, he had a choice. He could go with my mother and cut off all ties with his clan or he could stay an outcast. My father’s mother told him to walk away from her and his sisters and to never look back. His own mother. She gave up her child so he could have a better life.” Nuan Cee’s voice shook. “I don’t know my other grandmother. She is gone now. Her soul is floating out there, lost and gone, crying out for the light, and I can’t even light a candle in a shrine to help her find her way. I am a cripple. I have not been able to bring myself to sire children, for they will be crippled like me. They will not know half their family.”
He swiped the tears from his eyes. “It took me decades to wrestle away the rights to Nexus. It is rich. I had offered a third of the profits we’ll reap to the Clans Assembly. A royal sum. In return, they let me settle the exiled ones on Nexus. They let me forge them into their own clan. They will receive dispensation to raise their shrines.”
His eyes shone. “Their children won’t have to wonder if they are just specks of dust in the nothingness. They will be connected. They will light their candles and speak to those who passed on. That’s why the exiled ones volunteered to come to Nexus, knowing they could never leave and that for the rest of the galaxy, where time moves slower, they will be dead long before anyone else they know. They left what little they had behind and trusted me to bring them there. They cannot leave now, because they have no place to go.”
He had brought thousands of his people to Nexus and now they were stranded, trapped between the grinders of two armies.
“I must have peace to turn a profit. And now the peace treaty is dead, and the least I can do is keep them safe for as long as I can. You cannot have Sean. Ask me anything but that. If he leaves, my people will die.”
He would never let Sean go. Sean would return to Nexus and die there. I had to save him. I had to do something. Anything.
“What if there is peace?”
“There won’t be. The otrokars are ready to leave, and the Anocracy is torn by their feud.”
My mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips. “Here is my bargain: you owe me. If I get the peace treaty signed, you will let Sean go.”
Nuan Cee shook his head.
“You’re wrong,” Grandmother said, her voice quiet.
I nearly jumped, I’d never heard her say a word and had almost forgotten she was there. Nuan Cee turned, startled.
“We have caused her an injury,” Grandmother said. “We owe her a great debt. We owe her parents a debt after everything they have done for us.”
Nuan Cee bowed his head. “As you wish. If the peace treaty is signed and upheld, I will release Sean Evans from my service. That will wipe the slate clean between us. You have my promise. I swear on the honor of my ancestors.”
That was the best I could get. I had to find a way to bring them together and convince them to end this insane war. Desperation wrapped around me like a noose. How in the world would I do that? I didn’t even know where to start. I was numb and terrified at the same time. I had to move, go, do something, but all I could do was sit. Everything else seemed too hard.
We sat in the quiet gloom, watching the procession of foxes at the shrine.
“There is only one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you take the emerald?”
Nuan Cee sighed again. “Because I was young once and foolish, my father did something to me to save me from myself. It is a thing within the clans that adults know and children learn when they become adults. The young are so rash, so desperate to make their own money and leave their mark on the galaxy. Couki is very bright, and that keen intelligence will get him into trouble. He will inherit a sum of money when he comes of age. He will use it, hoping to prove he has what it takes to be a Merchant. The bazaars of the universe are full of greedy sharks and he is smart, but too inexperienced to swim with the worst of them. The brighter they are, the faster they lose the money. Left on his own, he will become bankrupt within months. It will take him another five cycles or so after he reaches the age of maturity to pay back the emerald and the interest. Time enough for him to learn and mature and for the clan to absorb his small mistakes and keep him from making big ones.”
“Nuan Cee was a very bright child,” Grandmother said with a smile. “He almost bankrupted the entire clan twice before his twentieth birthday.”
They trapped their young adults, forcing them to remain with the family. “Do you do this to every smart child?” I asked.
“Yes,” Nuan Cee said.
I rose. I had a couple of things I needed to verify.
Chapter Fifteen
The full enormity of my task mugged me right outside the Merchants’ door. I made it midway down the curving staircase and sat down on the stone steps. How the hell was I going to fix this?
I wished desperately, with all the intensity of a terrified five-year-old in trouble, that my parents were here. I wanted advice. I needed reassurance. What do I do, Mom? Dad? How do I handle this? They all want peace but can’t bring themselves to actually agree to it, and now Sean will die on some hellish planet fighting a war he never wanted to win. He’d signed his life away to save me. Looking into his eyes was like watching ashes rise from a funeral pyre. The vampires hid in their rooms, the otrokars were getting ready to leave, and the Merchants had tried to poison me.