Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear (55 page)

Cookie snorted and swiped at another tear.  “What the hell is that, the sound of one hand clapping? The arrow that never reaches its target?  For Gods’ sake, Emily, who put you in charge of my emotions?”

From up the trail, Rafael waived at them.  “Got to keep moving if we want to make it to the village by sunset!”

They rode in silence for another two hours and then reached Ouididi. Cookie eyed the high fence and the barbed wire at the top.  Once again the children ran out to meet them, including Rafael’s younger sister.

“You came back!” Nouar cried delightedly, throwing herself into Emily’s arms and hugging her.  Then she looked curiously at Cookie.

“This is my closest friend, Maria Sanchez.  We met at the same training camp where I met Rafael,” Emily explained. 

Cookie leaned over and shook Nouar’s hand.  “Everyone calls me Cookie.”

Nouar laughed.  “That’s a silly name!”

Cookie smiled.  “My mother tells me it’s because I looked so sweet when I was born.”

Looking at the tall, muscular woman with the weathered face, short hair and tattooed tears on her face, Nouar looked a little doubtful, but managed a polite smile nevertheless.

The mothers came next: the petite Leila, the plain, stout Aicha and the tall, shrewd Hakima.  They each greeted Emily warmly.  Leila, Rafael’s birth mother, looked searchingly at Emily, then Rafael, then back at Emily.  To her surprise and mortification, Emily blushed furiously.  Leila hugged her and whispered, “I’m glad you’ve come back to us, Emily.  I’m so very glad.”

Aicha hugged her briskly.  “You must be hungry,” she said, practical as always.  “Supper will be ready soon.  I’ll have the children take your bags upstairs.”

Hakima was a little shy at first, perhaps remembering how she had treated Emily when they first met.   “Well, I’m glad I didn’t drive you off,” she said. 

“So am I,” Emily said, smiling.  She turned to Cookie.  “These three wonderful women are Rafael’s mothers, though how they managed to fail so miserably with him I’ll never understand,” she teased.

“Ah, excuse me,” Rafael said indignantly,  “but I’m standing right here.”

The fathers were next: Amin the woodsman, Danny the former soldier, and Yael the scholar.  They murmured polite hellos and faded to the background, letting the older children carry the bags up to the guest rooms and allowing the wives to fuss about the guests.  But Emily saw Danny watching Cookie closely and saw he knew her for a kindred spirit: a fellow warrior, bruised and battered by war.

Supper was boisterous and loud, with teasing and laughter and shouts and everyone talking at once.  Cookie, Emily saw, was totally overwhelmed and finally Aicha leaned over and whispered something into her ear.  Cookie nodded and she and Aicha both stood.  “A long day for our guests,” Aicha said simply.  “I’ll show Cookie to her room while the kid-folk clean the table.”   Then she took Cookie by the arm and led her upstairs.

Nouar leaned over between Emily and Rafael, her brown eyes alight with curiosity and mischief.  “And you two, do you have separate rooms or are you sharing a bed?”

Emily blinked – she hadn’t thought about this.  Rafael groaned and rolled his eyes.  “I think I know a little sister who could use a spanking.”

Nouar’s lips thinned and she waived a fork menacingly.  “Just you try it, Rafael Eitan, and I’ll show you what Uncle Danny and Uncle Amin taught me about fighting.”

“We’ll have no fighting and certainly no stabbing,” Aicha said curtly as she came down the stairs.  “Nouar, I would prefer it if you would wash that fork rather than get your brother’s blood on it.”  Then she glared at Rafael.  “As for you, Rafael Eitan, until you are a parent in this household, it is not for you to decide who needs a spanking and who does not.  Am I clear?”

“Yes, Mother,” the captain of Refuge’s elite Special Reconnaissance Force said meekly.

“Good,” Aicha replied, then turned to Emily.  “Emily, may we talk to you for a minute?”  She led her into another room where the fathers and the other mothers waited.  Leila offered her a glass of wine and invited her to sit.  From the other room came the sounds of children laughing and bantering as they cleared the table and washed dishes.  Emily could hear Rafael’s voice among them and for some reason she couldn’t define, she felt a strong stab of emotion that threatened to bring her to tears. Everything here – the hugs, the dinner, the laughter and bantering, the noisy, loving supper, Rafael, his many mothers and his quiet fathers – it all seemed so solid and dependable and
almost
within her grasp.  And at the same time it seemed so fragile and ethereal, a will of the wisp that could turn to mist at a moment’s notice and slip away forever.

Leila touched her arm.  “Emily?  Your friend, Maria, she seems very troubled.”

Emily could only nod.  The parents exchanged somber glances and Emily sensed some current of insight and comprehension move among them, unspoken but perfectly understood.

Leila nodded patiently.  “Can you tell us?”

Emily told them the story of the Dominion warships chasing the Atlas space station across Victorian space, of Emily’s desperate attempt to save Atlas and the Queen by sending Cookie through the teleporter to the Duck battleship, of Cookie’s capture and horrendous abuse at the hands of the Dominions, and of her eventual rescue.  She paused for a long moment, considering how much more to say, then told them the rest of it – of Schroder and the chance meeting in the corridor.  Of Cookie and the knife.  The mock trial and the real execution of a man already dead.  Of Cookie’s depression.  And Hiram.

“Well, then,” Leila sighed heavily, shaking her head.  Aicha, the stoic, practical one, sat still, tears running down her face.  Hakima looked thoughtful.  Amin and Yael looked somber and exchanged a concerned look.   It dawned on Emily then that none of them were looking at her, but instead they were all looking at Danny, the former Marine.

Danny looked white as a ghost.

Leila turned to Emily once more, a questioning look on her face.  “Emily, I think I understand about your friend, but why have you brought her here?  None of us are psychiatrists or anything like that.”

“She hasn’t had much luck with psychiatrists,” Emily said ruefully.

Leila nodded slowly.  “Why have your brought her here, Emily?” she asked again.

Emily hadn’t tried to put it into words before, but now they came to her.  It was as complex as her life over the last years, as simple as the truth.

“I brought her here because she desperately needs help, even though she doesn’t really know it.”  She looked at them earnestly.  “I brought her here because I am responsible for her, because I sent her into harm’s way.”  She bit her lip.  “Because Cookie is my friend and I don’t have many friends.” 

But there was one thing more, the one thing that was so much more. Unspoken but crowding out all of her other thoughts. She wanted it so badly, but was afraid to give voice to it, lest it slip from her grasp.  Leila, Aicha and Hakima all looked at her, nodding, encouraging her.  Giving her permission.  Amin had put his hand on Danny’s shoulder and looked at her with shadowed, worried eyes.  Yael smiled at her, but glanced again at Danny.

Emily tried to say it.  “I…I brought her here because this is the only home I have now…and I don’t know where else to go.  Because if I can save Cookie, then I can save myself, too.”

Then a curious thing happened.  The three mothers stood together, but instead of going to Emily, they went to Danny, who kept saying in an anguished voice, “I’m okay.  I’m okay.”  And it was the fathers, Amin and Yael, who came to Emily and put their arms around her shoulders and Emily was crying and crying and could not understand why because it was Cookie who needed help, wasn’t it?

And then little Nouar was there as well, hugging Emily fiercely and even though she had
no
idea what was happening, she told Emily firmly, “Everything will be alright.  I promise.”

And with that, somehow, Emily knew it would be.

Chapter 52

At the Imperial Palace

Qom, Tilleke Space

A day later Prince RaShahid’s ships reached the Tilleke home planet of Qom.  He took a ferry to the Palace and walked to his father’s private chambers.  Two Savak guards stood on either side of him as the Emperor walked into the chamber and sat down.  The Prince fell to one knee, his eyes on the floor.  “My father, I have failed you,” he said.  He explained what happened.

To his astonishment, the Emperor laughed.

“I smell The Light in this,” Emperor Chalabi said ruefully.  “They are cunning and treacherous and must be treated with great care, my son. Watch them and learn, for they are masters of deceit and psychological warfare in all of its forms. 

“I have told you that the best way to defeat your enemy is to convince him you are not a threat, then to take him by surprise and annihilate him.  The second best way to defeat an enemy is to convince him not to fight in the first place.  The clever little monks of The Light are gifted at this.”

“I am Your Imperial Majesty’s dutiful servant and I beg your forgiveness for my blunder,” Prince RaShahid said earnestly.  He
was
earnest; his life hung by a thread.

Emperor Chalabi looked at his son with a mixture of fondness and irritation, knowing exactly what he was thinking.  Kill him or not?  Would his son learn from this? 
Could
he?  Then his thoughts drifted to The Light and his mood darkened.  He should have destroyed them years ago, but he hadn’t and now they were once again meddling in his affairs.  He wondered how Abbot Cornelia’s head would look lacquered and set upon a spike in his Meeting Chamber.  One day, he promised himself, he would find out.

              His eyes drifted back to his son, still kneeling on the floor, terrified to look up.  A threat, his son, but also a useful tool.  One does not discard a knife simply because it has a sharp blade.  No, that wasn’t the right analogy.  One does not discard a scorpion simply because it has a sharp stinger, not if one can put the scorpion in his enemy’s bed.

              “Rise, my son, but remember this lesson.  We will continue to build our forces, for perhaps the Victorians and Dominions will stand together against us.  But in a few months, a year at the outside, we will be ready.”  He smiled the smile that only a handful of people had seen and still lived.  “And when we are ready, we will strike.  Not the way they expect us to, but in a way they can’t even imagine.”

              Emperor Chalabi stepped forward and took his son’s arm.  “But now, come with me.  I want to show you a new weapon I am working on and the strategy we can use once it is ready.  I think you’ll like it.”

              Together, arm in arm, they walked from the room.  Father and son.  A family.

Each wondering when they would have to kill the other.

End of Book II