KINSMAN’S OATH By Susan Krinard

Only his instinct for survival and Sihvaaro’s training got him back to his cabin undetected. Sight and sound ran together in a nauseating miasma. His brain was a heavy, useless organ, incapable of the least or simplest exercise. He fell to his knees and reached the cabin’s facilities in time to empty his stomach.

Failure.

Not strong enough. All the training, all the preparation was insufficient to make up for his weakness. But the greatest shame lay not in his lack of skill, but in his hesitation.

The very moment he could have succeeded, he had thought of Cynara. And Kord, and Lizbet, and all the others he must betray. He had remembered, too well, that he was born human.

If they came for him now, he would be glad.

He crept to the foot of his bunk and lay on the cold deck as once he had lain on pebbles as a child, learning to bear discomfort and sleep under any conditions. But he did not sleep. A warm, fur-covered body grazed his cheek, and he remembered Li Hanno’s gentleness when she had cleaned and bound his wounds.

Archie settled at the hollow of Ronan’s neck, feet neatly tucked under his body, and purred consolation. Ronan permitted himself to remember a time when he had dreamed of such unconditional acceptance.

“And what do you see, Ronan, when you look in the mirror? A man who can never be one of the beings who despised and abused you all your life ? ”

Ronan rolled to face the bulkhead and drew his knees up to his chest. Dreamless sleep came at last. He woke again long enough to climb onto the bunk and pull Archie into the crook of his arm. He was functional again when Kord tapped on the door and let himself in.

“You’re awake,” Kord observed. “The last time I came, you slept like the serpents of Iskar.”

Ronan sat up against the bulkhead and ran his hand through his hair. Kord’s surface thoughts were empty of suspicion or memory of disturbance other than the shaauri attack, but he was puzzled and concerned. The cabin stank of sickness.

Ronan set Archie aside and stretched his muscles one by one. He had no valid reason for asking about Cynara. “Is all well with the ship? There was no damage from the shaauri?”

“None of importance. It was simple misfortune that we encountered the patrol.” He cocked his head. “You were ill.”

“It was nothing. I must have eaten incompatible food.”

Kord was unsatisfied, but he let it pass. “We’re only sixteen hours from the last wormhole to Persephone Station. The captain intends to take you down as soon as we make orbit.” He wrinkled his nose. “You’d better change your clothes. Even a fool of a Dharman burgher could smell you ten kilometers away.”

“I will not disappoint those to whom I owe so much.”

Kord sat on his heels. “If I spoke too harshly before—”

“That would not be possible.” Ronan got up and unsealed the neck of his shipsuit. “I will be ready to meet the captain’s allies.”

“Be wary of them, Ronan. Their world is named for a woman, but its ways are not those of the Mother.”

“I will remember.” He tossed his soiled shipsuit into the laundry chute and stepped into the shower. When he emerged, Kord was gone.

Ronan cleaned the cabin, dressed in a fresh shipsuit, and fed Archie his evening meal. He dropped Charis’s passcard in the disposal, where it would instantly be reduced to its component atoms. Then he sat cross-legged on his bunk and waited for any indication that his activities had been discovered.

No one came for him. No alarm was raised. He had ruined his greatest opportunity to acquire the drive’s schematics, but his mind was calm. He understood the nature of his defeat. Cynara and the crew of the Pegasus had become important to him. They were not kin, nor even of his kind, yet he perceived his debt to them as if they were born of his House and Line.

But Persephone meant nothing. It was undisputed enemy. Somewhere on the Concordat’s central world, among the powerful rulers Cynara claimed to know, he would find what he had failed to obtain on the Pegasus.