Revolution's Shore by Kate Elliott Read Free Book Online

can’t even pay you, Jenny.”
    â€œBut I trust you. I’m not working in big organizations anymore, not after—my previous experience. Bureaucracy loses you, and you lose yourself. I’m hiring on with you .”
    Lily sighed, looking up at the short cap of tight curls that crowned Jenny’s head, at the handsome face, creased both by equanimity and by hard times, at the breadth of her shoulders and the muscled length of her arms. “Well, I’m not going to let you go as easily as Bolyai did. You’re too much of an asset.”
    Jenny grinned and offered her a mock salute.
    Lily sighed again, exasperated. “And I haven’t even told you what the job it. And it is dangerous.”
    Jenny shrugged, almost insouciant. “ Ensha-lat , as we used to say on Unity. ‘As it is willed.’ You can’t fight what is fated.”
    For a moment Lily regarded her, not quite affronted—disbelieving, perhaps. “ I can,” she said decisively.
    Jenny grinned again. “That’s what I like about you, Lily-hae.”
    â€œGo on.” Lily slapped her on the shoulder. “The one named Yehoshua will return your weapons to you, and you’ll have a few minutes at the shuttle to talk to Lia and Gregori. And bring Bach back with you. Now I need to see Hawk.” Behind, the door to the corridor whisked open as if at Lily’s command.
    Jenny saluted, not mocking now, as she left the cell. “Luck to you,” she said, and was gone.
    Lily frowned, tapped in a sequence on the keypad beside the window, and braced herself to step into the next room.
    She stopped on the smooth-surfaced floor and the door sighed shut behind her. There was a moment’s dead silence. Kyosti did not move, did not even seem to register her presence in the room. His eyes remained shut.
    â€œHello, Lily,” he said.
    She almost jumped, the comment came so quietly and suddenly out of the silence, without even a movement from him to presage it. She glanced around at the featureless, grey interior. “I was told this cell is sound and sight proof.”
    Now he opened his eyes, to reveal their piercing blue, tempered with a hint of green in the depths; like spring foliage seen reflected in water. “It is.” He sat up, a lithe, relaxed movement, and lowered his hands to pat the bench beside him invitingly.
    Lily did not move. “Then how did you know it was me who came in? You weren’t looking. I never took my eyes off you. And I didn’t say anything.”
    For a long moment he did not reply, but she felt that he was measuring some aspect of her, closely, carefully, and with the greatest concentration, and that whatever conclusion he reached based on that measurement would determine the entire course of his behavior. For an instant she felt he trembled on the edge of his control, and then abruptly he relaxed, visibly—when she had not even known he was tense—and he leaned back against the wall and smiled, lazy and sensual.
    â€œCome sit down beside me,” he said, inviting.
    That she was tempted to go and take what he was offering her—even at a time like this—irritated her. “Kyosti, stop it.”
    He sat watching her expectantly, as if she were the one who had to explain. He seemed utterly calm and reasonable, so she allowed herself to lean back against the wall, hands loose at her side, and just looked at him: the exotic handsomeness that had first attracted her to him was not, perhaps, so much the component parts of simple physical beauty but rather a combination of unusual yet graceful features underlaid with a blend of mystery and, she reflected with bitter irony now, danger.
    â€œEven if he is dead,” said Kyosti suddenly, “what possible reason could he have had to be executed as Pero?”
    The vision of Finch choking under Kyosti’s pale hands stood in Lily’s mind so strongly as Kyosti spoke that she could