“You’ll still have nothing to give them.” Her anger beat against him like the heat of a midsummer bonfire. “I can take you… anywhere, Ronan. Anywhere other than the Shaauriat.”
“To Dharma, where they already believe you to be a traitor? The Challinors would learn of it, no matter where you left me. I will not permit you to betray your loyalties for my sake.”
“And what if your shaauri brothers cast you out, Ronan? What then?”
It was a possibility he had considered, more terrifying than any other. To become ne’lin in truth, a ghost, unseen, unable to win his way from the twilight of a half-life…
“It will not matter, as long as I know you are well.”
‘That isn’t good enough.” Abruptly her mood shifted, and she compelled him to meet her gaze. “When you were in the cell on Persephone, Brit Carter VelShaan saw images in your mind—images of the Kinsmen who trained you. She also said that shaauri would not have sent you to kill the Archon.”
“They do not hire assassins. It would be dishonor and cowardice.”
“And they wouldn’t think that killing a single human leader would paralyze the Concordat, no matter how important the Archon is. But humans—your Kinsmen—might have other, more subtle reasons for wanting the Archon dead. That’s why I believe these Kinsmen are as much your enemies, the shaauri’s, as they are humanity’s. It was Kinsmen who programmed you to assassinate the Archon. They’re operating clandestinely for their own purposes.”
“Programmed.” It seemed a most appropriate definition. “I have reached the same conclusion,” Ronan said.
“We know you weren’t aware of everything the shaauri Kinsmen intended for you. They corrupted your memory, even your emotions. That was one reason Miklos let you go.” She paused, becoming suddenly fascinated by the pattern of the carpet. “When did you begin to remember, Ronan?”
He could not misunderstand her. “On Bifrost, when you forced me to remain alive. Our sharing… released my memory.”
“That was also when you began to regain your supposedly lost telepathic abilities.”
“They were lost to me, for a time. I was meant to employ them, but not until it was absolutely required.”
“The Kinsmen didn’t expect you to recover your memory so soon.”
“I am sure they did not, but they did not anticipate your… interference in their work. After Bifrost, I remembered only that I was to gather information about the new technology that permitted human ships—the Pegasus—to pass through shaauri-ja unscathed.”
“That wasn’t your ultimate goal.”
“It was a secondary objective, in the event that I failed in my first.”
“To assassinate the Archon.”
“I believe that I would have been driven to use any means necessary to reach Persephone.”
“And I took you there.” She looked away. “You did an excellent job of deceiving me. I didn’t become wary until that night at Uncle Jesper’s…” Her words slowed and stopped.
He wanted very badly to touch her, hold her, but he dared not. “I intended to retrieve the intelligence just as I was instructed, but it brought me no pleasure to deceive you.”
“I’ve wondered how many of the things you said were genuine.”
“Not all was deception.”
“But your first loyalty is to the shaauri.”
“I knew much less of humanity than I do now. I believed what I did would protect shaauri-ja from Concordat invasion. Matters are not so clear as they once were.”
“That is a vast understatement.” She looked as though she wished to attack the bulkhead with her fists and teeth. Gradually her anger gave way to poorly feigned indifference.
“We’ll reach the wormhole any minute,” she said. “I’ll need to take the yacht through manually. Stay webbed in.”
She disappeared into the cockpit. It was only then that Ronan considered the one question Cynara had failed to ask: why he had not taken the Pegasus intelligence directly from her mind when they had joined on Dharma.
He would have found it very difficult to answer.
Ronan lay back until the alarm sounded and he felt the ship enter the wormhole. After a moment of disorientation, he knew the yacht had reached the other side.
‘Two more legs,” Cynara said at the door, “and we’ll reach the border. You have six hours to make up your mind, Ronan.”