Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

Without switching the view wall off, he cut her free from the tape. He summoned up the memory of his own breaking in. It lent him the sympathy he needed to extend his hands and help her to her feet. She accepted his support without protest, leaning heavily against him.

“Bed,” he said to her, as he opened the spare cabin. “Sleep. Some more food. You’ve beaten it, Aria. Planetside is going to be nothing next to that.”

She toppled onto the mattress and flung her arm over her eyes. Her wrist was a mass of welts from fighting against her bonds.

Something that wasn’t contempt, fear, or caution turned over inside him. Eric opened up the path to his power gift and stretched out his hand.

Her arm flinched when he touched her, but did not drag itself free. The reach of his gift found the damaged flesh in her and took hold of it gently. This was more complicated than breaking locks. Her body had already begun the healing, but he had to encompass that beginning in order to speed the process along. All of it. A missed step would bring infection, or worse. Eric’s vision blurred over and his heart began to pound in his chest.

And it was done. He released her.

Aria rubbed her smooth, clean wrist. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He gulped air like a drowning man. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone about that either. The Skymen have very strange notions about healers.”

“There will be no word from me.”

He smiled. “Sleep,” he ordered, and left the cabin.

When the door shut behind him, Eric collapsed onto the sofa. He was shaking, and it was not from the adrenaline shock that normally came after a healing.

What is the matter with me? Garismit’s Eyes, I don’t have time for this! He pounded his fist against his thigh. Get her away. Now. May the Powers bless Perivar for taking her. I’ve got to think. Figure out what to do next.

His mind was not ready to let go yet. Instead, it gathered up all the memories of Lady Fire it could find and handed them across to him. He saw the quiet beauty in her face the second she had opened the door to her house so he could enter and heal her husband’s fever. He felt the touch of her mouth, saw the light in her eyes.

He remembered the sweat and screams and blood that came with the birth of their baby. The baby that was dead and buried by his own power-gifted hands. Because that was the Law. That was what the Nameless demanded. Born of an adulterous union, its blood was untraceable. Such blood could be diverted by the Aunorante Sangh. It had to die and Eric had done as the Words instructed and Lady Fire had cursed him for it.

And now there was war. Maybe in the First City. Maybe not. War over the Skymen’s presence, and it was known that Lady Fire had consorted with him and that he had left with the Skymen and…

Maybe the war was for the best. Maybe the Heretics and the Skymen would weaken the Words, would destroy the hold they had on the Realm and on Lady Fire. Then he could go back, and he could…

Eric knew he was deceiving himself. Ten years and ten times as many light-years of travel hadn’t been enough to wipe the Words out of him. No matter how hard he’d tried. Part of him would never call anywhere but the Realm home, and it would not stop resenting the ones who drove him away from it. It would take the death of every Teacher in the Realm to silence the Words in the world.

Somehow, he doubted liberation of the People from their superstitions was what the Skymen were after.

I don’t care, I can’t care! Eric buried his face in his hands. It’s the Rhudolant Vitae I’ve got to worry about, not…not the Realm or their war. It’s their war, over their laws. Not mine. Not anymore. Not again.

He stayed like that for a long time. When he was finally able to raise his head again, he stared out at the void, hearing the screams of women in his mind.

Whatever else, I was honest. I held to the terms of my contract. Whatever judgment they make against me, it will not be for breaking my word.

The thought did nothing to warm Basq. In truth, the chill hadn’t left his blood since he’d reported the loss of the artifacts. He sat stiffly in the shuttle’s padded seat, hands spread on his knees. The robe that covered him was pure white, a color that allowed no status, no allegiance, and no work.

“You do not have to wear this,” said Caril, even though she got it out for him with her own hands instead of leaving it to the automatics.

“I do. Eric Born was my study. The security of him and the other artifacts was my responsibility.” Basq could still feel the rough edges of the shattered bolts under his fingertips.

“The Contractors will not say it was a breach. They will see there is no way you could have known. All the evidence indicated that he manipulated datastreams, not hardware.”

The memories of Caril’s reassurances didn’t offer Basq any more warmth than preening himself for his honorable behavior had. His study of Eric Born had contributed directly to the rediscovery of the Home Ground. The promotions that had followed had been exhilarating. He had been able to tell himself that memory of his past shame had been wiped away by this success.

Do I have the strength to defend myself again? Do I have the means?

Basq felt his whole body slump farther down in the seat. I don’t know.

The view wall in front of him showed the gleaming length of tether stretching out to its anchor on the encampment’s core. Outsiders compared Rhudolant Vitae encampments to spiderwebs or jewels on strings, depending on how they felt toward the Vitae at the moment. For this gathering, fifteen white and mirror-skinned ships had been moored to the elongated core. Each ship was tethered to its neighbors as well as to the core with bundles of polycarbon cable. When a current was applied, the strands maintained a crystal-fiber structure that allowed the tether to remain rigid. The core’s rotation kept the ships at an even distance from each other and kept all the tethers taut.

If the current was cut, the tethers could fray and tear, sending the ships careening out into space.

Basq realized, with a small jolt, why he was brooding on them. He felt as if his tethers had already been torn.

At this distance, Basq could see the curve of the core’s mottled side. As the shuttle slid forward along the tether, it looked to Basq as if the core expanded. The curved side became a gleaming wall that blocked out the vacuum and the starlight. Modules and antennae, some more than a kilometer across, rose from a surface of smooth ceramic, but most of the surface was covered with the hulks of tanks. Tanks for fuel and coolant and hydrogen and nitrogen and all the other essentials that needed to be carried with them between the worlds. Like the home ships, the core was fully mobile, if slow compared to the freighters and runners that clung to its sides between the tanks and the tethers.

Basq glanced toward the rear of the shuttle, in the direction of his ship, the Grand Errand. He did not move his hand to switch on the view wall that would let him see it.

They will not let me go home again.

Eric Born and the female were too important for any Contractor to let this matter go. The Home Ground was at stake. His failure might have delayed the Vitae’s chance to fully return.

The gravity and inertial regulators adjusted themselves so that Basq could feel the shuttle slowing. The view wall showed the docking corridor extending itself from the core to lock onto the shuttle’s hatch. Basq stood and smoothed the fabric of his white robe.