Three nights afterward, Admiral Syranax lay dying. Had he not fallen sick, Delp would now be a mutilated slave, but in this renewed tension and uncertainty, so controversial a sentence was naturally stayed.
Once T’heonax had the Admiralty, thought Rodonis in a cold corner of her brain, there would be no more delay. Unless -
“Will my lady come this way?”
They were obsequious, the officers who guided her across the deck and into the great gloomy pile of logs. Household servants, pattering up and down window-less corridors by lamplight, stared at her in a kind of terror. Somehow, the most secret things were always known to the forecastle, immediately, as if smelled.
It was dark in here, stuffy, and silent. So silent. The sea is never still. Only now did Rodonis realize that she had not before, in all her life, been shut away from the sound of waves and timber, and cordage. Her wings tensed, she wanted to fly up with a scream.
She walked.
They opened a door for her; she went through, and it closed behind her with sound-deadening massiveness. She saw a small, richly furred and carpeted room, where many lamps burned. The air was so thick it made her dizzy. T’heonax lay on a couch watching her, playing with one of the Eart’ho knives. There was no one else.
“Sit down,” he said.
She squatted on her tail, eyes smoldering into his as if they were equals.
“What did you wish to say?” he asked tonelessly.
“The admiral your father lives?” she countered.
“Not for long, I fear,” he said. “Aeak’ha will eat him before noon.” His eyes went toward the arras, haunted. “How long the night is!”
Rodonis waited.
“Well?” he said. His head swung back, snakishly. There was a rawness in his tone. “You mentioned something about… another mutiny?”
Rodonis sat straight up on her haunches. Her crest grew stiff. “Yes,” she replied in a winter voice. “My husband’s crew have not forgotten him.”
“Perhaps not,” snapped T’heonax. “But they’ve had sufficient loyalty to the Admiralty drubbed into them by now.”
“Loyalty to Admiral Syranax, yes,” she told him. “But that was never lacking. You know as well as I, what happened was no mutiny… only a riot, by males who were against you. Syranax they have always admired, if not loved.
“The real mutiny will be against his murderer.”
T’heonax leaped.
“What do you mean?” he shouted. “Who’s a murderer?”
“You are.” Rodonis pushed it out between her teeth. “You have poisoned your father.”
She waited then, through a time which stretched close to breaking. She could not tell if the notoriously violent male she faced would kill her for uttering those words.
Almost, he did. He drew back from her when his knife touched her throat. His jaws clashed shut again, he leaped onto his couch and stood there on all fours with back arched, tail rigid and wings rising.
“Go on,” he hissed. “Say your lies. I know well enough how you hate my whole family, because of that worthless husband of yours. All the Fleet knows. Do you expect them to believe your naked word?”
“I never hated your father,” said Rodonis, not quite steadily; death had brushed very close. “He condemned Delp, yes. I thought he did wrongly, but he did it for the Fleet, and I… I am of officer kindred myself. You recall, on the day after the raid I asked him to dine with me, as a token to all that the Drak’honai must close ranks.”
“So you did,” sneered T’heonax. “A pretty gesture. I remember how hotly spiced all the guests said the food was. And the little keepsake you gave him, that shining disk from the Eart’ho possessions. Touching! As if it were yours to give. Everything of theirs belongs to the Admiralty.”
“Well, the fat Eart’ho had given it to me himself,” said Rodonis. She was deliberately leading the conversation into irrelevant channels, seeking to calm them both. “He had recovered it from his baggage, he said. He called it a coin… an article of trade among his people… thought I might like it to remember him by. That was just after the… the riot… and just before he and his companions were removed from the Gerunis to that other raft.”
“It was a miser’s gift,” said T’heonax. “The disk was quite worn out of shape — Bah!” His muscles bunched again. “Come. Accuse me further, if you dare.”
“I have not been altogether a fool,” said Rodonis. “I have left letters, to be opened by certain friends if I do not return. But consider the facts, T’heonax. You are an ambitious male, and one of whom most persons are willing to think the worst. Your father’s death will make you Admiral, the virtual owner of the Fleet — how long you must have chafed, waiting for this! Your father is dying, stricken by a malady unlike any known to our chirurgeons: not even like any known poison, so wildly does it destroy him. Now it is known to many that the raiders did not manage to carry off every bit of the Eart’ho food: three small packets were left behind. The Eart’honai frequently and publicly warned us against eating any of their rations. And you have had charge of all the Eart’ho things!”
T’heonax gasped.
“It’s a lie!” he chattered. “I don’t know… I haven’t… I never — Will anyone believe I, anyone, could do such a thing… poison… to his own father?”
“Of you they will believe it,” said Rodonis.
“I swear by the Lodestar — !”
“The Lodestar will not give luck to a Fleet commanded by a parricide. There will be mutiny on that account alone, T’heonax.”
He glared at her, wild and panting. “What do you want?” he croaked.
Rodonis looked at him with the coldest gaze he had ever met. “I will burn those letters,” she said, “and will keep silence forever. I will even join my denials to yours, should the same thoughts occur to someone else. But Delp must have immediate, total amnesty.”
T’heonax bristled and snarled at her.
“I could fight you,” he growled. “I could have you arrested for treasonable talk, and kill anyone who dared—”
“Perhaps,” said Rodonis. “But is it worth it? You might split the Fleet open and leave us all a prey to the Lannach’honai. All I ask is my husband back.”
“For that you would threaten to ruin the Fleet?”
“Yes,” she said.
And after a moment: “You do not understand. You males make the nations and wars and songs and science, all the little things. You imagine you are the strong, practical sex. But a female goes again and yet again under death’s shadow, to bring forth another life. We are the hard ones. We have to be.”
T’heonax huddled back, shivering.
“Yes,” he whispered at last, “yes, curse you, shrivel you, yes, you can have him. I’ll give you an order now, this instant. Get his rotten feet off my raft before dawn, d’you hear? But I did not poison my father.” His wings beat thunderous, until he lifted up under the ceiling and threshed there, trapped and screaming. “I didn’t!”
Rodonis waited.
Presently she took the written order, and left him, and went to the brig, where they cut the ropes that bound Delp hyr Orikan. He lay in her arms and sobbed. “I will keep my wings, I will keep my wings—”
Rodonis sa Axollon stroked his crest, murmured to him, crooned to him, told him all would be well now, they were going home again, and wept a little because she loved him.