Endgame by Ann Aguirre Read Free Book Online Page B

we have any chance of pulling this off?” I ask softly.
    He thinks for a few moments. “With any other team, I’d say no. But I know what you and Vel can accomplish together. So…maybe?”
    “I’d prefer more confidence.” I poke him. “It’s not just us, you know. Loras has quietly been building underground resistance. There are more supporters of an independent La’heng. They’re just not under this roof.”
    “You need a face for your rebellion,” he says, pensive.
    “We have one,” I say at once. “Loras. He was the first to receive the cure. He’s free of the
shinai
-bond, the first La’hengrin to have free will in so many turns. His people will think he’s a hero even before the fighting begins.”
    March nods. “Perception is everything.”
    “Not everything. But it matters a great deal.”
    “He’ll work,” he says. “He has charisma and resolve.”
    “Did I share the most interesting thing?” I project a gossipy tone, prompting a quirk of amusement from March.
    “No. Do tell.”
    “The former chancellor, Tarn, is on world.”
    He arches a brow. “Really? Why?”
    “I’ve no idea, but he’s been helping with the petitions and appeals. I was surprised as hell to see him.”
    “That’s…interesting. Does he have another job here as well?”
    I shake my head. “That’s why it’s so odd. But without him, we wouldn’t have gotten the motion as far as we did.”
    “Only to be blocked in the High Court,” March mutters. “Imperial bastards.”
    His bitterness is a tangible force between us, like a serrated blade. I remember the story he told me about losing so many men on Nicu Tertius, the pain of the endless war and betrayal. When March worked as a merc for these Imperial bastards, it meant a fat paycheck waited at the end of each contract, but at such cost. And irony is, those turns cost him his sister, who tired of waiting for him to save enough credits to buy a ship and save her, a sin for which March will spend the rest of his life trying to atone.
    But I’ve got my ghosts, too. Doc haunts me still. He comes to me in the night, gone but not gone, so long as his memory lingers in the neurons and electrons that comprise my brain. You’d think the dreams would be nightmares, but he only talks to me in the way he used to—with dry humor and quiet wisdom.
    Then I imagine living on Venice Minor, where he died, and I have to ask, “How do you stand living on Nicuan?”
    I’d think the memories of failing Svetlana would be even stronger there, as that’s where March was when she died.
    “It’s best for Sasha,” he replies simply.
    That makes sense. He can expiate that grief by doing better for her son. With effort, I tamp down my emotional turmoil and go on with the conversation. “But I
did
think it odd that Tarn is here. I wondered if he intends to make up for the fact that Conglomerate tried to hang me out to dry.”
    “I’m sure he feels a little guilty over that,” March admits. “Mary knows I do. But then I remind myself they were your choices. If you’d gone about it a different way, I could’ve shielded you.” There’s tension in his tone, even after all this time.
    “Hey,” I say, sitting up. “I am
never
going to ask you to give an order that could result in my death. You couldn’t live with it.”
    He’s been inside my head so many times that I know exactly where his stress fractures lie. And failing to protect those he loves—starting with his sister, Svetlana? That’s a wound he wouldn’t recover from. Yes, he might be strong enough to send me to die, but then,
he
would, too. And I’ll never let that happen.
    “You know me too well,” he says softly.
    “Not as well as I used to. Fatherhood has changed you.”
    “For the better?”
    I consider this. “You’re calmer. Less hard-edged. So, yes, I think so. When you’re inside me”—I touch the side of my skull—“I see that he’s finished the healing I started on Ithiss-Tor. Those dark,