It took a few seconds to sink in. She slumped against her pillow.
“You know where Wilmos is,” she finally said. “What’s there to talk about?”
“Why they took him? Is he alive? What do they want?”
She looked at the ceiling. I could see it in her face: she realized that she screwed up. It wasn’t the first time, and I could tell it was getting old for her.
“Have you ever seen Sean fight?” I asked her.
“Fight? No. I barely got to talk to him. The first time, he threw me out of your inn. The second time he came out to get the guy with weird teeth and told me to stay out of his way.”
I flicked my fingers. A screen appeared on the wall. On it, a battle raged across the barren hellish landscape. Armies clashed, vampires in black syn-armor, otrokars in battle suits, and the Merchant mercenaries in tactical gray.
“Nexus,” I told her.
A clump of fighters burst on the right and a single figure tore out into the open. He was seven feet tall and clad in obsidian black. The armor coated him like a second skin, flowing over his muscular body, completely seamless. It turned into clawed gauntlets on his oversized hands, into boots on his feet, and into a hood on his head. Inside the hood was darkness. Ink-black darkness that looked back at you.
The fighter ripped into the soldiers, moving with insane speed. The two green-edged blades in his hands sliced, stabbed, and cut with relentless, controlled fury.
The werewolf woman stared, open-mouthed.
“Nexus killed all of Sean’s predecessors. Every Turan Adin before him died,” I said.
Nuan Cee had given me this recording after the Peace Summit. I never knew why. It just arrived one day to the Baha-char door, a small datacube inside a little box with Clan Nuan seal on it. I had watched it twice so far, and I’d cried every time. A familiar heat warmed the back of my eyes. I had to hold it back until I got my point across.
“Consider the kind of willpower required to wake up every morning and fight through hell, then heal your wounds, and do it again. And again. And again.”
The vampire and otrokar warriors moved as one, their blades slicing, creating a deadly whirlwind with Sean at its center, their own fighting forgotten. Blades flashed, and then the ring of weapons and fighters broke, and he was through, splattered with blood. He didn’t feel like Sean. He felt like a force, as if the rage and the bloodlust that emanated from the fighters had coalesced into a humanoid form and tore through the battlefield.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks.
“Why are you crying?” she asked me, her voice quiet.
“Because he is inside that.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He was protecting the Merchant fort. He didn’t fully understand what was required of him until he arrived there. He found refugees, families, children, the elderly. Creatures who had no place to go. Their lives depended on him. He couldn’t leave. There was no escape, so he killed a part of himself, the one that was kind and funny and was bothered by hurting others, and became that. I cry because I know what it cost him.”
She looked back at the slaughter.
“It took him a long time to come back,” I told her. “Do you understand now? I haven’t trapped him here. I’m not guilt-tripping him into staying or keeping him from being the best werewolf he can be. No force in this galaxy could make Sean do something against his will. I knew him before he was Turan Adin, I saw him with the armor on, and I was there when he took it off. He stays here because he loves me, and I love him.”
She looked at the battle. “Please turn it off.”
I dismissed the screen. We sat in silence for a few moments.
“Your wounds should heal in another couple of days. Do you have a place to go? Where is home?”
She gave a short, bitter laugh. “A small room a block away from Wilmos’ shop. I’ve been living there for the last six months. When he didn’t have werewolf guests, I went to hang out at his shop and listen to his war stories. Hanging on to scraps of other people’s glory because I don’t have any of my own.”
Sean had viewed the recording of our fight with the corrupted ad-hal, and according to him, she was well trained and knew what she was doing in a fight. Despite her activation issues, she was faster and stronger than an average human. A lot of security forces would be happy to have her. Failing that, she could make a good living as a mercenary.
None of that mattered. Her self-esteem was nonexistent. She seemed to tackle every problem head-on, without strategy or planning, trying to power through it on sheer will and physical persistence. It must have worked for her in childhood. She probably learned that even if her ossai misfired, if she just ran fast enough, hit hard enough, and didn’t quit, she could hold her own. But the older she grew, the wider the gap between her and other werewolves became. She was likely almost as good as everyone in early childhood, but by mid-teens she would’ve started to lag behind, and by the time she became an adult, she probably realized that no matter how hard she tried, she could never keep up.
If she continued on the same path she was on now, she would die fighting. Heroically, but probably needlessly. She needed to feel competent, to be in a place where her skills were valued, so she could stop seeing herself as a failed werewolf. I needed to talk to her more, but it was almost 10 pm, and I had somewhere else to be.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Derryl of Is.”
I waved my arm. The wall in front of us opened into a new room with a floor-to-ceiling window that offered a soothing view of our pond. I slid the medward bed into it, lightened the walls to a comfortable, soothing blue-gray, and added a screen, some furniture, and a plush rug.
“Things are not as bleak as they look, Derryl,” I told her. “You still have a couple of days to recuperate. Rest. We’ll talk again.”
I knocked on the door of the Gaheas’ quarters. The door opened slightly, giving me a narrow view of a female Gaheas. Like most of her people, she was tall and willowy, with amber skin and long, dark hair put away into an elaborate arrangement on top of her head. When Gaheas felt at ease, they let their hair down, literally. With the exception of their candidate, not a single one of them let themselves have a L’Oreal moment after that first opening ceremony. They considered themselves to be in enemy territory.
“A calm night to you, innkeeper,” the Gaheas said. “How can I be of service?”
“A calm night to you as well. I have a small gift for Nycati.”
“Now isn’t a good time,” the guard said.
“On the contrary, now is the perfect time. It is the end of the 4th Phase, and if we wait another half an hour, it will be too late.”
I raised my hand and made a small gesture, gently forcing the door to open a bit wider. Behind me Gaston carried a large trunk. I lifted the lid so she could see the shimmering fabric inside.
The woman’s eyes widened. She stepped aside, inviting me to enter with a sweep of her hand. I walked in, with Gaston right behind me.
The interior of the Gaheas’ common room was perfectly round. While they recognized the need for straight lines in technology, when it came to their living arrangements, they considered corners inauspicious. The floor was smooth and gray, like soapstone. The walls were slightly curved, forming a gentle dome overhead, and made of burled wood and smoky resin. On their native planet, the resin would be polished quartz, seamlessly fitted to the wood swirls, but we had to make the quarters in a hurry, and the tinted resin was a quick and easy substitute.
The entire delegation had gathered in the center of the room, clustered around Nycati. They turned as one at my approach, their stares hostile. Hands went to weapons, which in their case meant they simultaneously touched the ornate tiaras and diadems on their heads. Duke Naeoma Thaste, the official head of the delegation, stepped forward, body-blocking Nycati from my view.