A Way of Honor (Champions of the Crystal Book 2)

Chapter 10.1

In the next moment, Sabrina became aware of someone shaking her shoulders, hard, and calling her name in a voice of panic. She held her breath for a moment, trying to stop the sobbing that made her ribs ache, and realized it was Mara.

"Where has he gone? Sabrina, where is he?" Mara cried, her violet eyes painfully wide, her hair moving restlessly in an unseen wind.

"Khediva," Sabrina managed to reply, gulping. Looking beyond Mara, she saw Scotty and Selémahs, alarmed; then suddenly she was on Khediva's control deck, looking at Tirqwin and Malvarak. The two Wayfarers' expressions quickly went from surprise to anger, and Sabrina, in her emotionally bruised state, was glad to remain behind Mara as she faced them.

"How dare you!" Mara and Tirqwin said to each other in perfect unison. Mara added, "Stop!" as Tirqwin's hand, poised over the control panel, moved toward it.

"Release me and leave," Tirqwin ground out.

"Not until you do me the courtesy you owe me," Mara replied, angry but calm, "not as Queen of Praxatillus, or as the Guardian, but as someone who loves you."

The fury died out of Tirqwin's face. "I hoped to spare you a painful good-bye," he said.

"I don't wish to be spared it," Mara said. "I have little enough to remember you by. Give me this. Come back, just for a little while—until sunset—and let us talk. Or not talk. Just give me a little while longer with you. My life will be long; I shall have centuries in which to miss you. Give me these few hours I ask for."

"Mara—" Tirqwin groaned.

"I will not argue with you," Mara promised. "At sunset, I will let you go without argument or complaint. But give me until then."

"Elusha," Malvarak said quietly. "If you go back, you may never have the courage to leave again."

"I will leave again," Tirqwin said, "because I have to. Because Homeworld has been generous in not sending another Wayfarer pair to force me, allowing me instead to return of my own will. Because I will not cause a war. However painful leaving may be, it will not be as painful as that." He turned to Mara. "One condition."

"What is it?"

"I do not wish to see anyone else while I am on Praxatillus. I have already said two painful good-byes today; if I must add more to the one I am forced to say to you, it will be too much."

"You need say good-bye to no one but myself," Mara said. She glanced over her shoulder at Sabrina, who was dry-eyed but not yet composed, and added, "I doubt Sabrina could endure another of your good-byes, Tirqwin. I must have a chaperone, unfortunately; I think for both our sakes it must be Sabrina, but on the explicit understanding that you will not say good-bye to her again."

Tirqwin and Sabrina looked at each other wryly, and Tirqwin said, "All right." He turned back to Malvarak. "I will return at sunset."

Khediva said, "I should like to be alone, to prepare for the severance."

Malvarak nodded. "Then I will go down to Praxatillus and wait, if Sabrina doesn't mind my using her rooms."

"Of course not," Sabrina said.

Malvarak vanished, and a moment later the rest of them were standing in Mara's sitting room. It was a cozy little corner room filled with the afternoon sunlight, done in subdued, warm colors. Sabrina found a chair in the corner near the windows, facing outward, and picked up a book on the table nearby; it was a classic Praxatillian novel she had started to read once aboard Khediva and had given up because the story didn't seem worth wading through the long Miahn names and elaborate protocol. Well, she thought, as a distraction it ought to do.