Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Taj watched Romjha gather his clothing and get dressed. The familiar sick feeling had returned to her belly. She tried to forget it was there, concentrated instead on the delicious twinges she still felt between her thighs.
Her gaze shifted to her altar, where the bowls of scented oil had long since cooled. She walked over and lit the candles under each, kneeling there because it brought her comfort, even now, on the day of Romjha's departure.
She heard him come up behind her. "Praying?" he asked.
A bad subject. She changed it. "Speaking of worship, you told the outsiders that women deserved to be treated along such lines. Well, you surely worship their bodies."
He gave a heavy-lidded half-smile and crouched next to her. His thick belt creaked with the movement, and she inhaled his scent, storing the memory of it to keep her warm during all the looming cold and lonely nights ahead. "I'm glad I could bring you pleasure, Taj," he said.
She gave a soft laugh. "A man of understatements he is," she remarked to the candles, which seemed to flicker with laughter. She gave Romjha a shyer, sideways glance. "I did always wonder about you."
He raised his brows. "I'm afraid to ask why."
"I never saw you with any of the women. I didn't know if you were, well, more or less . . . celibate?" she hedged hopefully.
He appeared taken aback. She was too mortified to wait for an answer. "But last night proved me wrong,
so ..." She shrugged.
He pulled her close and softly bit the side of her neck. She shivered. "How so, exactly?" he asked.
She tried to appear blase about the whole thing. "Your skill. It screamed practice. Lots of practice."
He laughed-actually laughed. She thought her heart would burst with joy at the beauty of the sound. "I've
had a lot of time to think, Taj.""Think? I have your imagination to thank for this?" She couldn't help but grin.His eyes sparkled with roguish amusement. "Did you expect to have to thank a woman?"She turned her embarrassed gaze back to her altar. "Or women."He sighed and answered enigmatically, "I have had my moments, more or less. Mostly less. Either way, it's been a long time."
He rose to his feet and pulled her with him, stroking his broad hands up and down her back. "It was difficult
to work up enthusiasm about anyone else when I wanted you, Taj. Only you. And for as long as I can remember, that's the way it's been." She let herself melt against him. She'd never melted against any man or known one who'd invited her to. It wasn't frightening at all. It felt. . . nice. Very nice, just to be held in his strong arms.
There came a soft but insistent knocking at the door. Taj exchanged a surprised glance with Romjha. He held up one finger, asking her to wait where she was, and went to the door. Through the open door, Taj saw shadows moving outside in the tunnel. Romjha's large frame prevented her from seeing more. She tipped her good ear toward the sounds of whispers, but could hear nothing. Then Romjha closed the door, his gaze focused somewhere else, not in the room. He simply stood there, grave and alone; silent, pondering thoughts only he could see.
"Who was at the door?" she asked.
"Two of Cheya and Jal's men. And Petro."
"And?" She gritted her teeth. "They must have wanted to find you badly to have come all the way to my
quarters, way back here. Nobody dares tread here, lest they be blown to bits by the hard-hearted
bombmaker," she joked.
He began walking toward her. With his hair already scraped back to its neat, soldier's style, restrained in a short clublike wrap at the base of his neck, he was the warrior once more, the raider commander, not the lover who had lowered his defenses and paid homage to her body all night long.
She held up her hands to discourage him from coming any closer. "Tell me what they said."
His throat moved as he swallowed. "They want me to prepare for an earlier-than-expected launch."
"How early?" she almost shouted.
He exhaled and replied, "They want me now."
Chapter Ten.
Taj turned her head. She appeared unable to look at him. Romjha couldn't blame her.
"Launch," she mimicked with bitter disdain. The word was alien to him, too, evoking a world of incredible tech extraneous to anything either of them had ever known. "You're a small-time rebel from a backwater planet, Romjha. You don't even know how to use a computer, let alone fly a starfighter. Why are Jal and Cheya so anxious to take you with them?"
"They need soldiers," he explained patiently.
"Rocket fodder."
"Experienced leaders."
"Oh, I bet they need leaders." She made a face. "The wannabe prince and his loyal dog. They'll need all the help they can get. But from recruits who think the monarchy should die? I don't think so. You made it clear last night what you believe. They won't forget it. They'll use you to fight, and then when they no longer need you, they'll get rid of you."
"I may be a small-time rebel, as you remind me, but I know the ways of war. Battlefields are battlefields. The only things that vary are the weapons in your hand or your motivations for using them. You need not worry about me."
"Worry? Pah! I've already prayed for your death to be painless and quick." Taj sauntered to her bed. Perched on the edge of the mattress, she threw her folded arms over her chest. It was the closest to petulance he'd ever seen her. "If it comes to pass, you can thank the Great Mother."
"And you, too. Thanks."
Her eyes were molten gold. Unrepentant. "How dare you make me pray for such a thing, Romjha B'kah! And for who else will I have to pray for a quick death? Who else heads off with you to war? Aleq? Petro?"
"Petro will take my place here."
"Oh, sure. Leave him to handle the consequences of what was done to the skyport."
"I wouldn't leave this place unprotected and vulnerable." Hell! Did she think he would? It was clear she had little idea how deep was his desire to protect her. "Cheya will bring forces to run patrol in this area while I'm gone. They'll keep Sienna safe."
She mumbled something that he couldn't make out, but he suspected it was negative.
He cast his attention around her bedroom, searching for inspiration to reassure her, to lay claim to her heart, to prove to her he'd return. He had to know she was here, waiting for him and no other, until he did. Otherwise this would all be for nothing. Couldn't she see he was doing this for her as well as everyone else?
He would return for her-not in the Ever After, but in this world, this life. She would be his reward, his future, his life-just as he'd always hoped.
His attention shifted to her altar. He'd glimpsed Taj's quarters from the tunnel passageway from time to time but had never set foot in it. Her private domain's decor was minimal, the room unadorned, forthright and beautiful, like her. Candles burned low here, smelling of the oils she'd burned for prayers to the Great Mother.
To grant him an easy death.
Romjha sat heavily on the bed next to Taj. The men were waiting, but he would not go with them until he made things right with Taj.
Her lips were fuller, rosy from their kissing. A small pink smudge indicated where his shaven beard had abraded her chin. Not a gentle embrace, that, he thought, his loins stirring.
"Are you so sure I will die?"
She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them. Her pupils blurred behind a film of tears. In the next instant the moisture was gone, blinked away. It hit him that he hadn't seen her cry since Joren's funeral. "I don't know," she said. She sounded depleted, physically, emotionally. He was nearly there himself. They'd barely slept in two days. They'd spent most of the night engaged in vigorous lovemaking. Now he had to leave her, his remaining relatives, and the only home he'd ever known.
"I'm coming back, Taj. I will return for you." He knew it with a certainty he felt in his soul. "And when I do, I'll at last be able to give you the life that I cannot now. The life you deserve. A life of peace. Peace, Taj. We'll have a family, you and I-"
She pressed her fingertips to his lips, her expression forlorn, as if she wanted so badly what he described that she couldn't bear to listen.
He took her hand and pressed it to his chest, to his heart. "Our offspring will have a chance to grow old. We'll live topside-in the high plains, perhaps, where it will be cool enough to sit outside in the evenings. We'll listen to our children laugh and play while we watch the suns set."
Her eyes shimmered in the dim light.
"I will win that life for us, Taj." He gripped her hand. "I swear it."
A strangled sob exploded from her, and she yanked away her hand. Outrage contorted her features so quickly that words eluded him.
"Martyrdom is the choice of fools and fanatics," she hissed.
"Not if an individual's sacrifice is made for the good of the many."
"Pah! Don't delude yourself with inspirational proverbs, Romjha. There's nothing inspirational about dying. Ask Pasha. Ask my father. Ask your dead wife!"
His stomach muscles tightened. "Inaction is cowardice. We've spoken about that before, you and I, many times. Evil triumphs only when good men do nothing."
"Proverbs," she spat.
"No. Your words inspired me. Long ago. Remember?"
She watched him with dawning horror.
" 'Destiny is not a matter of chance,' " he recited. " 'It's a matter of choice.' If not for your influence the night Pasha died, I might have squandered the chance I had to change our path. To change the future."
She turned her head. "Don't make it more than it was. I just didn't want any more accidents. Preventable accidents. That was all."
"You didn't like the way things were, so you sought to change them. Don't you see? You chose." He took her chin between his finger and thumb, forced her to look at him. "You used tragedy as a springboard for action. But what did I do after I lost Seri and the infant? Nothing, Taj. Nothing."
Those bleak days, months, years played out in his mind as if he'd experienced them yesterday. Nostrils flaring, he waited until the demons sank back into his psyche before he spoke again. "I let sorrow get the best of me. I allowed loss to hold me back. Never again, Taj. Never again."
He smoothed his hands over her hair as he searched her face. "You don't remember the poor excuse for a man I was back then." When he was seventeen, she was only eleven, protected by a doting father who did his best to shelter her-as much as a child of Sienna could be sheltered. "We're seven years apart-"
"Six," she corrected, seething.
"Six and a half. I was an apathetic cynic. I drank too much. I didn't care if I lived or died, and I was dangerous to everyone because of it."
"You still grieved for Seri."
"That's what everyone thought. But that grief had run its course. Rather, I used Seri's death as an excuse- an excuse for indifference. It allowed me to avoid dealing with my failures as a man, because to tell the truth, at that time I didn't feel much like one."
Taj glanced away, her throat moving. "I curse myself for the remark I made at dinner last night. It wasn't your fault, what happened to your wife. How could it have been? She was ill; we didn't have the ability to treat her. Or the baby. There was nothing you could have done."
"Perhaps. But whose fault is it for what I let myself become afterward?" he asked a little too harshly. "I accept full blame for those wasted years. I could have taken concrete steps to help improve our lives, to make it easier, healthier, safer."
He took a breath that he suspected broadcast the intensity of his pain, and jammed his fingers through his hair. "Then Pasha died and you came into the Big Room. ..." He broke off and watched as many unnamed emotions crossed Taj's face.
"You bid for the position of raider commander soon after that. We started working together," she said. Her voice softened a fraction. "I was able to achieve so much of what I'd wanted with your support. Your philosophy, your plans-they were aligned with my own," she murmured. Her expression darkened again. "But not anymore," she finished bitterly. "Stay low, stay safe-pah!"
She lurched off the bed. "They're waiting for you, aren't they?"
Something inside Romjha wrenched with the heavy-hearted sound of her voice.
He sighed and went after her. She whirled on him. "No! No more stories about words I said, my apparent inspiration. How I changed your path! I will not be your personal rallying call to war, Romjha B'kah. I will not be the justification for this madness."
"You are my reason for everything. Everything, Taj."
She froze.
He closed on her. "I wasn't much more than a boy when I married. Sixteen, going on seventeen."
Clearly knocked off balance, she glanced at him askance.
"I loved Seri, yes, but it was a different love from what I believe I'm capable of now." Patiently, and yet with his heart pumping, he watched Taj absorb the implications of his admission. "Yes, Inajh d'anah," he said quietly, reaching up to smooth his thumb over her soft, suddenly parted lips. "I love you. I love you as the man I am now."
She made a strangled noise. Her entire body trembled, and she squeezed her eyes shut. He wasn't quite sure what it meant, but it wasn't the reaction he'd hoped for.
A wave of insecurity settled over him, self-doubt. What if she doesn't want me? What if my feelings for her are forever one-sided?But he refused to listen to those doubts. He would win her over, no matter how long it took.
"No. Don't. You can't love." She sneered the word as if it were a curse. "There's no point. The probability of loss is too high."
"We're not mixing explosives, Taj. We're talking about our future."
"Exactly. You have to control your destiny, or it will control you. That's the way I want to live my life."