“What about Blaise? He’s the result of an outcross with human blood, and look at his powers. We could get lucky.”

“Produce another Blaise, lovely thought.”

“There’s one thing in all of this you’ve never said,” Zabb said.

“What?” Tis demanded.

“You’ve never said no.”

“Everything I’ve said has been a no.”

“No, everything you’ve said has been good reason why I shouldn’t marry you. Well, I don’t give a damn about any of them.” He stood up abruptly, bumped his head on the top of the tent. Sat abruptly down again. “I love you.”

He thrust himself into her, emotions raw against her mind. It was all true. And it terrified her. She slammed up her shields. Tis remembered Blythe and thought of Cody. Felt herself whipsawed between a man’s mind and a woman’s body. Went down, sucked away in confusion, a maelstrom of conflicting drives and emotions.

He/she had loved. He/she had been loved. But not by a telepath. Not body to body and mind to mind. Their souls rubbed sandpaper raw against each other. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was a closeness no human or Tarhiji could ever experience.

She gave way to tears. “If you loved me,” she said, you would help me recover my body. You wouldn’t condemn me…” Her voice failed, strangled in throat.

“No, if you are restored, I lose everything.” She looked away. His need beat at her. Her confusion tore at her guts. She wavered. He read it. Gripped her shoulders, and moved in for the final blow. “Don’t you see, it’s right somehow. A string of seven girls. No son. No one expected it. I thought I was safe. Then you were born. As a child you charmed me, but your sex condemned you. Now you’re safe. I can have you. Care for you.”

“That’s not love, that’s possession.” She threw back her hair. “Do you know the best definition of love?” Softly she quoted, “It’s when that other person’s happiness is essential to your own. I can’t be happy with you, Zabb. Ultimately I don’t think you could be happy with me. We would both know it was a cheat.”

For a long moment he just looked at her, then he stood and pulled on his heavy parka. “For prudence’ sake I’m taking both l’lails. I’ll send an escort for you.” He touched the tent, and it peeled back. Snow and wind rushed in. “And I very much fear my guard of honor has become a guard in truth.”

Tis hung her head. “I won’t try to run again.”

“You said that before.” Zabb hesitated, then added, “This could have gone so… differently.”

He drowned her mind in sensation. Sweat-slick limbs twining around each other. The delicate dance of tongues. He fed back to her the orgasm he’d elicited only a few days before. Then he was gone, and Tis sat in the midst of melting snow and cried.

“Have I taught you nothing?” Blaise’s face had assumed that sulky boy expression that made Durg long to drive said face into the nearest wall. “Perhaps the whisperers are right. Perhaps you are mad.”

The two women cavorting in the gold-and-tiled tub had sunk to the level of their chins. One was the plump little Tarhiji beauty, the other a stately Most Bred beauty. They were both wives. Just another custom shattered by Blaise’s precipitous social engineering. Doomsayers in the House had predicted that this mongrelization of the Zal’hma at’ Irg presaged the end of history. It now seemed a small vagary when compared to this latest whim.

“Get out!” Blaise gritted.

The women fled, leaving wet footprints on the mosaic floor. Durg watched the dimpled, rounded butt of the Tarhiji female. To watch the psi lady could only earn him a strong, and probably physical, reprimand from that lady’s father, brothers, and uncles.

Blaise climbed out of the five-foot-long pool and flung his head, flipping water from his soaked hair across Durg’s uniform. He lifted his arms, and Durg wrapped him in a bath sheet. Blaise had reasserted control over his features, and his expression was now one of neutral interest. It gave Durg a bellyache – not precisely of fear, more of wary concern.

Still silent, the young man padded back into his bedroom. It cost him face and weakened his position, but eventually the silence drove Durg to speak.

“This has gone far beyond the little prince. Your personal vendetta against your grandfather was a pleasant enough diversion, and in its own way began this great process, but we have grown far beyond that narrow purpose. Only Ilkazam stands between us and planetary unification beneath the Vayawand colors.”

Blaise fiddled among the drawers of the bedside table. He located an Illusion and with a snap of the wrist brought it to smoldering life. He took a long drag of the drug, held it, exhaled.

“I told you to find me another navy. You haven’t done it.”

“Patience. So it takes another year to conquer Ilkazam.”

“No,” Blaise said harshly. “I want it now. And the Network’s going to give it to me. They’ll sell us ships, and the Kondikki to service them.”

“And what have you given them?” Durg asked.

“Ilkazam.”

“Which you don’t possess, and if you give it to the Network, you will never possess! Haven’t the contradictions inherent in this plan struck you?”

“I’m heir to Ilkazam, and the Network doesn’t give a shit about the validity of my claim, so I can give it away. The Network will try to take possession, and then Granddaddy will really have something to worry about. The Network and Ilkazam will fight, and then we’ll fight the winner.”

Durg felt as if the world were tipping. He groped to collect the shattered threads of his thoughts. “If you take this action, it will shatter the alliance. Where once there were allies, you will find only enemies.” The Morakh’s intensity was all the greater for his so-soft tone.

“Bat’tam started bleating about that when I married a Tarhiji. And right after that Zaghloul joined with us. Sekal said the alliance would collapse when I allowed Tarhiji to kill Most Bred. Didn’t happen. You all said we were fucked when I allowed the troops to hit civilian targets, and currently we control through conquest or treaty twenty-seven of the thirty-one Houses. I think you’re full of shit this time too.”

“The Network is different. They have been our mortal enemies for eight thousand years. It is why we developed our ships, built the stations, rejected large-scale colonizing – so we could guard ourselves against the Network. I will not allow you to do this.”

Blaise reached again into the drawer, and this time when his hand emerged he was holding the.44 Python he’d brought with him from Earth. It caught Durg flatfooted, still delivering his lecture. He gaped at the weapon, tried a dodge, and felt the bullet rip into his belly.

It would have knocked a normal Takisian to the floor. Durg swayed, grunted, and, cupping his hands over the wound, watched the blood flowing sluggishly from between his fingers.

“I don’t think you’ll die from it, and it certainly did shut you up, didn’t it?” Blaise smiled jauntily. “Now before you go and look for a doctor would you oblige me by obeying my commands?”

Durg made no effort to move carefully and ease the pain. It was no more than he deserved. He had betrayed his mistress and loosed a monster upon Takis. Now all that remained was to live… and die with the consequences.