Judge (41 page)

Why did I carry on after she chose to die? Bezer'ej didn't need me, not with the garrison in place. I hung on because I didn't feel I'd tasted enough of life. I was greedy for existence, even one in exile.

If Shan felt the same way, how could Aras judge her after he'd burdened her with
c'naatat
in the first place? She never asked for it. He didn't even tell her he'd infected her. She found out the hard way, and she'd been distraught. She'd had a life of little else but duty too. Ade—Ade was just starting to live, it seemed. They had no debt to him or some wess'har principle.

Aras loved them both,
isan
and house-brother, and the pain of separation would be immense.

But Ade's always there for Shan. She adores him. And I must, absolutely
must,
live out the life I never had. I have to try, at least.

I must be a father.

“Eddie was wise enough to know when his life was lived, and that
c'naatat
wouldn't be a life for him at all,” Aras said at last. “His decision made me think harder.”

“Eddie didn't think about it. He just reacted right away and said no.”

“And Jon and Izzy? I've seen the regret in your face. You sometimes wish you'd done what I did for Shan—saving their lives with your blood, without their asking. But you didn't.”

“It was just that. A split second. Don't you think I hate myself for that? I didn't even think of infecting them until it was too late. But they could have had it removed later, and that was a choice we didn't have when you saved Shan. Maybe I got to Jon too late, but Izzy would have lived. I don't know what that makes me—a stupid bastard who didn't think fast enough, or a callous one who let his mates die on a point of principle.”

“Never callous, Ade. Never that. Don't think about it. You can't change the past.”

“It's hard not to.”

“Humans and wess'har have different views of
c'naatat.
That's the core of the problem. And I'm torn, because of my love on one hand, and my need for a child on the other, and I can no longer justify being
c'naatat.
”

I started all this strife and killing. I was the first source of infection; I passed it to Shan. I even caused Ade to infect Lindsay Neville, and so the bezeri too, and Esganikan. Shan never really succumbed to the temptation. If Eddie had said yes…no, I think she knew in her heart that he'd refuse.

“You don't have to decide now, if you don't want to,” said Ade. “The antidote thing will still be there.”

“If I avoid confronting the choice, I'll live in limbo.” Aras took Ade's arm. The contact didn't upset Ade now. There was a time when he would have reacted badly, the product of a childhood where any sudden touch was a violent one. “I have to do this.”

Ade went quiet and just watched the two children, swallowing so hard that Aras could see the little lump moving at the front of his neck.

“When are you going to tell Shan?” he asked.

Aras had tried to imagine how she would take it, an alien thought process for most wess'har, because blurting out your views and intentions was simply how they did things. Shan would be upset. She wouldn't know why she was upset, whether at the prospect of losing a lover or because she feared he was making a sacrificial act again, but she would not smile and bless him on his way. He knew that.

“Soon,” he said. “As soon as she returns.”

“Just be sure why you're doing it, mate,” Ade said quietly. “That's all.”

Aras was. For the first time in many years, he was clear that he was making a selfish decision. Self-regard had probably kept him a
c'naatat
for far longer than he needed to be one, because he was the last of his kind and had always had an exit if he'd had the courage to take it, but now he faced what a human might regard as shortcomings.

There was nothing wrong with being selfish. If you couldn't act to make yourself happier when it harmed nobody, then you were what Deborah called a
martyr,
except she regarded it as a fine thing. Humans seemed to value their own pointless suffering, part of their constant attempt to get their god's approval.

Motive didn't matter. That was the core of the wess'har worldview.

“I'm sure,” Aras said at last. “I'm wess'har.”

 

F'nar; the Exchange of Surplus Things.

 

Shan kept chipping away at the
C
in the stone, refining the name
BECKEN
and suddenly afraid to look away from it. Carving the stone had taken much longer than she expected. Now she was glad of the displacement activity.

The curve filled her field of vision. She wouldn't even let herself register the peripheral stuff of the stone ashlars and the crates around her. If she concentrated on that awkward curve, far beyond her carving skills, then her gut would steady, the hot pounding pulse in her throat would ebb, and the world would not fall apart. She was a child again, being reminded that she was of no consequence.

Aras waited in patient silence. He was calm, exuding a scent of male wess'har musk, a pleasant sandalwood aroma that always caught the back of her throat and made her feel good. It was one of the first things she'd noticed about him; he smelled wonderful, and he was a strikingly beautiful creature, so far outside her own human standards of aesthetics as to be meaningless, but beautiful nonetheless.

He's leaving me.

Shan fought to steady her voice. “So you're going.”

“Yes.”

“It's not because of Ade, is it? It's not because you feel left out?”

“No.” There was a rustle of fabric and rush of air as if he was going to put his hand on her arm, but she turned and took a step back. “I don't feel neglected. I never have. There was a time when I felt I made life difficult for Ade, because humans value monogamy, but I have never felt jealousy or pain. This isn't how wess'har think. You must know that by now.”

“Okay.”

“You're upset.”

Shan was damned if she'd cry in front of him. “Well, when your old man walks out on you, you tend to feel a bit pissed off. It's a monkey thing. It's okay. I always pack a spare.”

“Shan, please don't do this.”

“What, end on a sour note?”

“Put on this act.”

“I think,” she said, in a moment of agonizing clarity, “that you're far braver than I'll ever be because you can face yourself. Your
real
self. Me, I'm still avoiding everything that makes me
me.
And maybe that's why I clung to this fucking parasite after all, because it made me someone else.”

“No,” said Aras patiently. “I think you did what you always do. You were stuck with it, so you made the best of a bad job.”

“And now I don't have to. Rayat's right. I just won't deal with it.”

She thought she was doing pretty well, all things considered. She hadn't shouted at him, or accused him, or even started crying or pleading. She'd never plead, even though he was precious to her and might well heed the appeal. She wanted him to be
happy.
She'd put her own needs aside all her life out of duty, out of what she suspected was a perverted instinct to be declared a clever, brave girl, and thus worthy of her parents' attention, but this was the first time she'd done anything without factoring in her own sense of self-worth.

Aras deserved to be happy.

“I would like to do this alone,” Aras said. “This is hard for you and Ade. I know the process, and I'll go back to Baral.”

“You should have someone with you. I'll—”

“It's not like dying, Shan. I can still see you both whenever I want, even if I'm different then.”

But it
was
like dying. Once the parasite was neutralized, Aras was on borrowed time like every other wess'har—like every human.

“It might be frightening,” she said. “Let us go with you.”

“Lindsay could endure it, and I'm far more secure in my self than she ever was.”

“You'd rather be alone?”

“I think so.”

He was right. He wasn't playing games or being self-effacing because he was wess'har, however much human or isenj or whatever was in him. They didn't do that. But she still felt she was letting him give her an easy way out.

How can I forget him? He's in me. And he was the last thought I had when I was dying. That's where the truth is. That's when you know what your soul is made of, if any of us have one.

“Okay. Okay, we've made up our minds.” She couldn't see well enough to carry on with the careful chipping away of stone to make Becken and Qureshi immortal in a more ecologically acceptable, less ethically fraught way. “Funny. We think we're bonded for eternity, and then we can walk away from each other in a matter of minutes.”

“I haven't shocked you,” Aras said quietly. “You could see this was coming.”

“Yes.” Could she blame him? If she'd been a less troubled soul and removing
c'naatat
could have given her a second chance of younger adulthood, she might not have been as torn as she was. Like she told Lindsay, this was that rarest of things, a second chance. All that removing
c'naatat
would do for her would be to restore her to a time when she'd made all her mistakes and lived with them grudgingly. “And I think you'll be a wonderful father. You
should
do it. I want you to do whatever makes you happy.”

Aras turned and took a few steps, but then spun around, caught her by her shoulders and gave her an ordinary human kiss that broke her heart.

She thought of all the people she'd put a poor second to some goal that was far less important than being a normal creature of your own species. She had no right to sentence Aras to live his life as a freak to satisfy her own needs.

He'd do whatever I told him to. Wouldn't he?

That was no way to live.

“If I avoid you for a while,” she said, “it'll be because I'm coming to terms with it. Be patient with me.”

“You always were a bad liar,
Shan Chail.
”

She was no longer
isan,
then. She turned back to the carving so she wouldn't have to watch him go, and worked on it even though she couldn't see the bloody shape any longer. Eventually she stopped rather than ruin the inscription, and thought that at least she wasn't so distraught that she couldn't think rationally. She never was. The lights in her hands rippled with shades of violet for a few seconds and then vanished again

“Sod it,” she said.

When she got home, Ade was waiting, expression like a kid awaiting a thrashing, and started making the universal remedy of tea in total silence.

“Do we want to discuss this?” she said, flopping down on the sofa she'd built herself. It was still rock-solid. “He's gone.”

Ade put her cup on the low table within reach and leaned over the back of the sofa to cup her face in his hands and look down at her.

“I bloody well love you, woman, and I always will,” he said quietly. “And we'll cope. Shit, we'll even be happy again. I promise you.”

That was Ade—dog-loyal, grateful for small kindnesses because he'd known so few, and able to snatch contentment and normality wherever he found it. He was totally admirable. He could also go after Kiir with a saber, intent on cutting him to ribbons.

“Ade, what happens to
us
if we revert back to normal?”

He pulled a face at her. It was hard to read expressions upside down. “I'd still want you, Boss. I fancied you something rotten when we were both ordinary, didn't I?”

“You did.” She took a shine to him from day one, too. He was a choice rather than an accident made happy, whatever she'd once told herself. “I feel wrong carrying on with this thing when there's no justifiable
need.
”

Ade walked around the sofa and sat down next to her. “
I
need us, though. Aras told me that doing a self-indulgent thing that wasn't harmful to anyone else was something everyone had to do. I've had a very short time of happiness in a life of shit. I want more. Is that good enough reason? I don't know. We could all have eaten a grenade and solved this once and for all, but none of us did.”

“You always get to the balls of the argument, sweetheart.” Shan ruffled his hair. Ade didn't make that contented
urrring
noise like a wess'har, but he lit up. “I'm going to do as my old man says for once.”

They acted happy and acted eating a normal dinner with just the two of them. It was strained, but they would come through it, as they always had so far. If they could act it long enough, it would become habit, and then reality.

Ade had taught her that much. There were times when he showed her how intelligent she was but how very little she knew. She'd give it a few days to settle in her head, then go and tell Giyadas they'd reached their decision.

It was the right thing, but her guts were screaming that it just wasn't fair, not after she and Ade had both been through so much.

For the first time in her life, she wanted someone else to make the decisions for her.

 

Baral, northern Wess'ej.

 

Shan had told Aras that he shouldn't do this alone, but he wasn't. He was among family, and when he got to know everyone better, then he'd also be among friends.

“Will you require help?” asked Jesenkis. This male was his kin, even more distant than Nevyan's uncle Sevaor, but definitely kin. When this parasite left Aras, he would value that. “Is it painful?”

“A fever,” said Aras. Please, just check on me and give me water for a few days. I would rather go through this alone.”