One
• • • • •
Red-haired Miri Robertson sat in the middle of the so-called “reading rug” in the ruckus room, watching her daughter stalk her lifemate.
Lizzie wasn’t doing too bad, she thought, given that she’d only gotten the hang of standing relatively recently, and remained deeply suspicious of two-legged locomotion. On all fours, though, she was nothing more nor less’n greased lightning. Not that speed was the name of this game.
Val Con, Lizzie’s stalking horse, was keeping the action on her level, crawling with a certain amount of low cunning, until taking up a hiding place behind a large red-and-blue-striped ball. He was currently on his belly behind this object, which meant only the top of his head, one shoulder, and the entire length of one arm was in plain sight.
He could, as Miri knew from experience, have completely vanished behind that ball and possibly behind the stuffed monkey to the right of it, had this been the sort of game he was most accustomed to playing, which was—thank the gods—above Lizzie’s pay grade.
For a couple more years, anyhow.
Lizzie’d been pointed the wrong way when Val Con took cover, and now she was methodically moving back-and-forth, advancing on the position of the ball, the monkey, and her father, a little closer with every turn.
She made one more turn—and Miri saw her focus on the ball. Deliberately, she straightened to her knees, the new height giving her the perspective she needed.
With a squeal, she threw herself into a fast crawl, hurtling past the ball and onto Val Con, who rolled under the assault.
“Indeed, you did find me—and speedily, too!” he said, pulling her onto his chest. Lizzie shouted with laughter.
Miri shook her head.
Of all the things she’d never figured to have to care for in her life was a lifemate and a baby, never mind the whole rest of a small, but trouble-prone Liaden clan, which had been Val Con’s marriage portion. Her own portion…well, she’d never had anything precious, really, though she had been a master sergeant of mercenary soldiers, so she did have some experience in taking care of her people.
And, given the particular sort of trouble the clan, the husband, and—depend on it, any day now—the daughter were prone to, her skills in that area were kept fresh.
Across the room, father and daughter were laughing uproariously as he rolled them across the floor, toward the reading rug. She grinned, despite her throat tightening—which happened whenever she thought about losing one of them, a thought that had paradoxically been occurring more frequently, now that they were peacefully settled.
’Course, when Val Con and her’d been returning live fire, running for their lives, and covering each other’s backs, there hadn’t been time to worry was she going to lose him. Now, there was time for all kinds of thoughts to move through a person’s head, and not all of them welcome.
Plus, she thought, watching Val Con’s rolling progress and hearing their daughter’s laughter, there was the fact that they weren’t, exactly, peacefully settled. They were still hunted by a dedicated and well-equipped enemy who knew exactly where they were, and who could, in theory, pick them off whenever they felt like it.
Well, that was a theory. Clan Korval wasn’t without resources, or allies. Their enemy had taken losses.
And so had Clan Korval.
Val Con reached the edge of the rug, kicked and rolled—once, twice, thrice—coming to rest against her knees, right-side up and smiling into her face.
“Cha’trez,” he murmured under Lizzie’s shouting.
“Couple of howling monkeys,” she said. “Thought you was going to teach her how to be upright and polite.”
“It is important to build from a position of strength,” he told her solemnly.
Lizzie added to this, unintelligibly for the most part, though a couple bits of babble sounded Liaden-like, and a few more had a definite Terran flavor.
“What concerns you, Miri?” Val Con asked her, and she looked down at him with a sigh.
He’d know she was having a case of what on Surebleak was called the “chills.” No big deal, really, everybody chilled now and then.
Except, looking at him just now, their daughter cradled in his arms, the lean, strong body, green eyes, and the brown hair that tumbled over his forehead nearly into those bright eyes—and that Lizzie was beginning to reach toward—
Miri leaned forward and caught the questing hand. “That’s a foul.”
Lizzie frowned, every bit as willful as her father. Not the only thing she’d caught from her father either—the green eyes were particularly nice with the burnished copper hair, as bright as Miri’s own.
Their child.
Miri felt her throat tighten again, which was just—
“Jeeves,” Val Con said. “Please ask Mrs. pel’Esla to come and take Talizea to the nursery.”
“Yes, Master Val Con,” said a mellifluous male voice from the ceiling. A moment later, it spoke again.
“Mrs. pel’Esla is on her way. She should arrive at the door to the rumpus room in a few minutes.”
“Thank you, Jeeves,” Val Con said, and looked to her.
“Talizea, bid your mother a proper and decorous good-night, please.”
He opened his arms, and Miri leaned forward to lift the compact body into her lap.
“Good-night, Lizzie,” she said, brushing the hair from her daughter’s damp forehead. “Don’t let the snowflakes bite.”
It didn’t make much sense, that good-night, but it had been what her mother had said to her when she’d been a kid here on Surebleak. Couldn’t hurt, she guessed, to go with tradition.
Miri kissed Lizzie’s cheek as Val Con rolled to his feet.
He bent down as the door chime sounded, and took the child from her arms.
“Chiat’a bei kruzon, Talizea,” he said, settling her on his hip and kissing her forehead. “Here is your nurse now, come to take you to your bed.”
He crossed the room, the door opened, there was a brief murmur from Mrs. pel’Esla, and the door closed again.
Miri looked up as he returned and dropped to the rug, stretching out to put his head on her lap.
“Comfortable?” she asked him.
“Extremely,” he replied cordially. “Miri. What troubles you?”
“Well, I just watched my baby daughter set up a search grid to find a runaway. I’m thinking that should worry me.”
“Should it? It was the most basic pattern, after all. I might be inclined to worry if she had quartered the room and called in allies.”
She puffed a laugh.
“I didn’t realize the bar was so high—no worries there, then.”
“And yet,” he said, “you are worried. May I know why?”
She sighed and brushed his hair off his forehead.
“It’s been something of a while,” she said slowly. “We haven’t heard anything from Rys, or any of his team members. So…how will we know that they’ve done the job?”
“Possibly, when the Department of the Interior surrenders to the Scouts,” Val Con murmured. “Possibly, when an army of Old Tech is found dismantling what remains of a planet, or a moon…”
He paused, and reached up to touch her cheek.
“There is else?”
“Else…” she rubbed her cheek against his fingertips. “Are we ever going to hear from them again?”
He sighed. “It seems unlikely.”
Six agents had been recruited by Clan Korval to subvert, if not outright destroy, the Department of the Interior, Korval’s great enemy. Each of the six was a former DOI agent, ranging from technician-grade, to the deadliest of all—Agent of Change. Four of the six had been reclaimed, and immediately dedicated themselves to the destruction of the DOI. Two had rebuilt their lives…somewhat before the call to service came to them.
One of those two was Rys Lin pen’Chala, who had found a place as a son of the Bedel, a wandering group living more or less hidden under the old warehouses in Surebleak City. Rys had become a trusted person in that community that trusted few outsiders, an acknowledged grandson of the group’s wise woman; he had a lover, and a child on the way.
The second of the two was—
“Miri?”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
He lowered his hand, capturing hers, bringing it to his chest and pressing her palm over his heart.
“I am the decoy—the one who stands in the enemy’s sight.”
“Ain’t likely to let that just go by, are they?” she said. “When do you expect they’ll bring out the live weapons?”
“Ah. Well. One might argue that they have already engaged. After all, the four were captured attempting to do Korval real and lasting harm. Now that they have been removed from the board, the Department will become more bold. They must become more bold; they are at the end of their resources. If its last purpose is, as it seems to be, to destroy Korval entire, then it must strike—now—heavy and true. Everything they have left will be in that blow. There can be no more feints.
“My part is to oblige them with a visible target and take most of their attention to myself. Korval has set down new roots, accepted new obligations. We cannot simply flee before them.”
No, Miri admitted to herself; they couldn’t just run away. On the other hand, the DOI might be single-minded to the point of insanity, but that didn’t stop them from being competent as mischief-makers and murderers.
Val Con had been an Agent of Change, trained by the DOI to be one of its elite and most deadly operatives. He had already beaten the odds—breaking training, and staying alive this long. Which was to say that he had a better chance than most of surviving a DOI attempt on his life.
Which didn’t mean his odds were good.
“Cha’trez…they will not stop. They must be stopped.”
“Right.”
They’d talked about this, put plans in place, as much planning as could be done and put into place. Nothing was guaranteed in this life, safety least of all. She knew that as well as anybody—better’n most maybe, having lived to grow up on Surebleak.
“The longer I have you,” she said now, looking down into Val Con’s eyes, “the longer I want to have you.”
He pressed her hand where he held it over his heart.
“I understand,” he said. “To think that I might lose you…frightens me.”
She took a hard breath against the tightness in her chest and managed to produce a smile.
“Guess I wish it would get done,” she said. “Nerve-wracking, being the ones who have to wait.”
“I agree.”
He rolled up to sit beside her.
“How many are we for Prime?” he asked.
“Just you and me,” she said. “Everybody else has meetings.”
“Then I suggest we celebrate both our good fortune and each other, with a meal and wine, in our rooms.”
“I like it.”
“Good.”
He came to his feet and bent down to offer her his hands.
She took them and let him help her to her feet, as if she wasn’t just as light on her feet as he was, then slipped her arm around his waist, leaning into him as they walked slowly toward the door.