“Let her go, dear,” Caldenia called out. “You will crush her.”
Orro released me, and I sucked in a hoarse breath. Quillonian hugs weren’t for people with weak bones.
“Wonderful to see you moving around,” Caldenia said.
Orro retreated to the chair and turned away, suddenly embarrassed.
“Did you save the kettle?” I asked.
Her Grace raised her eyebrows. “Do you take me for an amateur?”
She stepped to the island, where a cake stand waited covered by a metal hood, and lifted the cover. The kettle, still filled with ruby tea, waited on the stand.
“Sadly, we are still unable to identify the poison,” Caldenia said. “Orro offered to taste the tea, but of course the Arbitrator refused to allow him to put himself in danger. But the Khanum provided us with another pot and I can tell you that there are definite chemical differences between the two liquids.”
“So the entire kettle was poisoned?” Just as I thought.
“It appears to be so. This was either very calculated or extremely sloppy.”
Or due to inexperience or desperation. “Thank you.”
“Whatever I can do to help, dear.”
I went to George’s quarters and knocked on the door. He opened it. Behind him Sophie sat on the couch next to Gaston. Jack leaned against the wall in his favorite pose, one foot propping him up.
“I know,” I told George.
An understanding showed in his eyes. “It is the only way,” he told me.
“You are despicable.”
“I will have to live with that,” he said.
“Yes, you will. We’ll revisit this later. I need to know when the Merchants were notified that the peace summit would be held here, in Gertrude Hunt.”
“On 2032, Standard,” he said.
The Standard galactic year had five hundred “days” of twenty-five “hours” each. The days were divided into four “seasons,” each a hundred and twenty-five days long. The first of the four digits identified the season, the next three identified the day. Today was 2049 Standard. “You didn’t give them much warning.”
“No,” George said.
“Good. I will be back in a couple of hours. Keep the peace while I am gone.”
“Where are you going?” Gaston called out.
“To see the weapon merchant,” I told him and shut the door.
Wilmos’s shop was an island of calm in the chaos of Baha-char. As I stepped into its cool depth, the soft, lilting melody of a now-dead planet wound about me like fragrant smoke from an incense burner. Gorvar, Wilmos’s huge lupine monster, lay on the floor, sprawled on a pelt of long golden fur that no doubt once belonged to some ferocious creature. Gorvar glanced at me with his orange eyes but decided moving wasn’t worth the trouble. I didn’t present enough of a threat.
Wilmos emerged from the back room, wiping his hands with a rag.
“You sent him to Nexus.”
“I’ve been expecting this conversation.” Wilmos pointed at a horseshoe-shaped couch. “Let’s sit.”
I sat. “You said he was your life’s work. Then you sent him to Nexus to die.”
Wilmos growled under his breath. Yellow light rolled over his irises. “I didn’t send him. I tried to talk him out of it.”
“Not hard enough.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the impossible job. The one that killed every creature that took it. He had to have it.”
“Why?”
Wilmos sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
The old warrior leaned forward, his eyes dark. “Soldiers aren’t born. They are made. Under the right conditions, most people can be forged into soldiers. They follow orders, they respect the chain of command, and when occasion calls for it, they will perform heroic deeds for the good of the many. But at heart those soldiers hope there is no war. Given a chance, they prefer to avoid combat and, if forced to go into battle, they fight so they can eventually go home. Sean isn’t just a soldier. He is a warrior. War is a thing he does as naturally as you breathe. It draws him like flame pulls the night insects to itself.”
And then they die, burned by the flame. “But why this war? Why not any other war, the kind with an expiration date?”
“Because he wanted the roughest job I had, and when I offered it to him, it had an expiration date. A six-month tour. He was supposed to come home ages ago.”
Wilmos dragged his hand across his face. “As to why he did it, there are many factors. His parents are one. He wanted to know that he could stand shoulder to shoulder with the two people who sacrificed so much to bring him into this world. In some way, if he proved to himself and to them that he could cut it in the roughest war, it would mean that everything they went through to give him life was worthwhile. He wanted to make them proud. His own sense of self-worth was a factor. He wanted to be able to look his reflection in the eye and prove that all his skills and power meant something. You want to be the best innkeeper you can be. He wants to be the best soldier he can be.”
Wilmos shrugged his massive shoulders. “I was a contributing factor to this. I told him to his face that he was the pinnacle of my work. That’s a hell of a lot of expectation to put on someone, and if I wasn’t old and stupid, I would’ve recognized this. He wanted to show me what he was capable of. Sean hates to disappoint. You were a factor.”
“Me?”
“I asked him if he was leaving anyone behind. He said he’d met a girl with stardust on her robe, and when he looked into her eyes, he saw the universe looking back.”
“He said that?”
“He did. The blood of Auul flows through him. We were warriors and poets, often both. I asked him if he thought this girl would wait for him, and he said he wasn’t sure.”
Wilmos sighed. “How do you think he felt when he met you? If I give you an obscure sentient species, I bet you can tell me their favorite color. You walk the streets of Baha-char and bargain with Merchants, you open doors to planets thousands of light-years away, and you use complicated technology like you grew up with it, because you did. He knew nothing except what he’d learned on Earth. You weren’t equals.”
“But I never wanted him to…”
“I know. He knows too. He wanted to learn everything in a hurry. He learned, all right. If you ever have trouble with an armored rover or your particle cannon, he’ll fix it for you.”
“I don’t want him to fix my rover. I want him to come home.”
Wilmos dragged his hand across his face again, as if trying to wipe away the pressure. “He wants to come home too. But he was designed to withstand a siege and protect civilians, and everything he has known since he was born—his parents’ moral code, the military training, and his service—all of it reinforced that core programming. That idiot Nuan Cee loaded Nexus with exiles. There are whole families there, hiding out in the colony bunkers. Sean couldn’t walk away from them. Biological programming isn’t everything, but you can’t discount it either. In this case, his programming aligns with his ethics. That’s a powerful urge.”
“Sean Evans won’t walk away from someone who needs his protection.” I had learned that when our neighbors were attacked.
“Yes,” Wilmos said. “It’s about doing what he believes is right. Beings depend on him for their very survival. He already proved whatever he set out to prove. He is the best there is. He lasted a year and a half on a planet where seasoned mercenaries died in days. He doesn’t have the manpower to win, but he sure as hell isn’t backing down. He is what we envisioned when we created his parents.”
I exhaled. “He traded a lifetime contract to save me from dying when I was poisoned.”
Wilmos grimaced. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
“It surprised the hell out of me. Wilmos, we spent a week together. One week. We flirted. We kissed once. Where is this… devotion coming from?”
The veteran werewolf studied me for a long moment.