***

Rosabella, the unflappable Ambassatrix Sodalitatis, paced in her opulent chambers.

She heard the patter of gunshots and the screams of Chimeras beyond the window. She had asked the guards through her door to tell her what was going on, but there had been no response.

The bedsheets were pristine; Rosabella had made them up properly after she arose this morning. Imprisonment was no justification for sloppiness. What man or woman would accept the assistance of an Ambassatrix who could not even keep her own chambers clean?

Not that any men had seen those chambers in an intimate fashion. Not since Dorsin a lifetime ago. Muoro was the closest Rosabella had had to that in many years, and he was no lover.

Muoro had left her here almost an hour before, and she hadn't seen him since. It wasn't like the Sodality to leave her without an escort.

Prisoners such as she did not receive the consideration of being left to their own devices. Yes; prisoners.

Rosabella was a prisoner among her own people.

"For the sake of the Maiden of the Most High," they had told her. "When she comes into her power, you may announce her to the world." But Rosabella had seen it, if not in the masked eyes, then in the stances of the High: they feared that word might spread regarding what they had done to Oralie.

And they were right to fear. Had Rosabella been a mighty woman, a Maga with true power, she might have tried to force her way back down to the pit where a human relic of the oldest days drooled the Symbiont into a glowing pool. But she was no hero. Rosabella was weak.

Twice now she had betrayed her beloved Oralie. The second time was no less the worse for the fact that she hadn't intended things to end up like this.

And the gunshots wouldn't stop! Rosabella stormed over to the balcony door, but of course she couldn't open it herself. The polite fiction that she was a guest ended at the boundaries of her room. The High wouldn't risk an escape attempt.

The door to her chambers was flung open. Rosabella spun on her heel toward the interloper. "Politeness demands that you knock--"

Muoro staggered into the room. He looked haggard, his dark skin pale and sweat-stained.

Prisoner or no, Rosabella couldn't stand the sight of a man in pain. She forgot her irritation and rushed to him, helping him to the chair at her vanity near the door. "Magus Muoro? What happened?"

"Princeps Nethress," Muoro whispered.

Rosabella's heart skipped several beats. Dorsin was here?

Fever-eyed Muoro must have seen the excitement in her eyes. He clasped her wrist so tightly that her skin went white. "We must run."

Had he been briefed on her history with Dorsin? It was certainly not well known, but Dorsin had shared it in confidence with the Sodality before selling her pedigree to them. Should she fight him? Though her SOPHIOS was almost feral, she could release a slick lubricant from her arm to help her slip from his grasp.

It would be the act of a coward, a woman who ran, but Rosabella had never envied men their virtues. Men died, noble sacrifices for the sakes of humanity's wombs, while women fled. It had always been so.

For a manic, girlish moment, she envisioned that all of the gunshots were Dorsin's doing, that he'd led an army here to take back the tower and free her. It was silly; the sustained exchanges, the Chimera screams, had to be a coincidence, and Dorsin was surely here for Oralie, not Rosabella. Yet Rosabella could not imagine a world where her love abandoned her to imprisonment.

Not when he had been the one to free her, body and soul, in the first place.

"He will come for me," Rosabella said, communing with her SOPHIOS.

"Nobody is coming for us," Muoro said.

Lubric--

Something slammed into the balcony door. Rosabella shrieked, her concentration vanishing. Muoro staggered to his feet as the door smashed inward. Ruby diamondglass shattered as the night breeze blew the stench of sulfur mixed with overpowering rot into the room.

Muoro released Rosabella, drew his sidearm, and loosed into the maw of the bat-bird-skunk Chimera that charged into the room. Blue ichor splashed as the monster dropped like a marionette with cut strings. Muoro pushed Rosabella behind him out the door. "Go, go!"

Rosabella ran into the hall. A screech came from her left. A mass of wings, legs, and claws crawled like a wave down the corridor.

Then she was wrenched right. Muoro had grabbed her to pull her in that direction. "The lifts are out," he gasped. "Stairs only."

Rosabella threw a terrified glance over her shoulder as they ran. The mass of monstrous flesh was outclawing them, gaining ground. "What is happening, Muoro?"

"Chimerical attack. Defenses down." He spun Rosabella about him and loosed at the Chimeras chasing them. Blood splashed. More came on. He rejoined her, heaving deep breaths. "Worst ever. Overwhelmed."

Icy terror seized Rosabella's heart. "Use your STIGMOS!"

Muoro grimaced as a screech echoed down the hallway. "Can't. Gone."

Gone? What did that mean?

They passed door after door, running for the stairwell. The claws got closer and closer, scraping against the wood, forgebone, and stone of the floors, the walls, the ceilings.

Lubricant!

Rosabella's Symbiont leapt with gibbering glee within her, releasing a spume that soaked the floor and the walls.

Muoro shoved open the stairwell door.

The monsters behind them slipped on the lubricant. No longer needed, the STIGMOS spun down, the organs vanishing. The Symbiont, its power released but not yet quiescent, struck as Rosabella passed into the stairwell.

Waves of nausea passed over her as the Symbiont attacked her body, seeking to change her from within. She grabbed for the railing of the stairs for support, frantically chasing down the changes and reverting them before they could become true alterations susceptible to the genophage.

When she recovered, she found herself staring down the stairwell at another mass of monstrosity climbing up.

She grabbed Muoro's arm, and together they climbed.

Muoro was gasping for breath by the fifth story. Whatever had happened to him, it had rendered him nigh-impotent. He was her jailer, but Rosabella's heart went out to him .

The scraping of claws echoed from above. A misshapen face like a gigantic plague-ridden cat's peered down over the railing three landings up.

They were trapped from both sides.

Muoro fumbled the next stairwell's heavy forgebone door open. Rosabella chased him in, then had her SOPHIOS glue the door into the frame with spiders' silk. It would hold for a little while.

Rosabella put her back to the door, rode out the Chimerization struggle, and then surveyed the room. It was a mostly wide-open chamber, though glass pillars with bundles of nerves and veins were set at even intervals to ensure that the technology inside the room would survive.

They were in the Synapsis chamber.

The doors to the closed and nonfunctional lift were half a building away across the massive room, barely visible from this angle, and a trio of doors to other stairwells were also set into the walls, but mostly the sides of the room were vine-screens, bioluminescent readouts, and consoles. Seats shaped like grotesquely overweight humans clustered in sixes at regular intervals through the middle of the room.

The chairs were shaped like obese people because they were people, auxiliary processing units connected to the primary Synapsis Tool, able to send and receive messages to and from the Sodality's chapterhouses. Apparently the Synapsis Tool hadn't been affected by whatever had brought down the lifts, because Rosabella counted five occupants spread across the dozens of chairs. Nerve bundles dug into the skulls of the Synapsis users and the flesh of the seats half-enveloped them; eyelids flickered as they sent and received messages.

Not knowing what else to do, Rosabella slid into one of the chairs.

A screech came from the other side of the door, followed by a scraping pounding, just as nerves slithered between the strands of Rosabella's hair and connected to her brain.

Acerbia Archon Tool. Dorsin's people would know what to do.

A luminous, pale blue light shone in a pool of darkness. Rosabella knew it instinctively. "Oralie!"

Rosabella...

A door groaned somewhere in the distance. Muoro shouted.

An indistinct image of the inside of a skywhale's cabin.

Dorsin... is coming...

Rosabella's eyes snapped open. Muoro had his back to the door. Sweating, straining, he pushed against it with all his might. The spider-webbing strands snapped by the hundreds as the mass of monsters on the other side pushed against the portal.

"Xercotli Chapterhouse reports mass Chimerical attack on city outskirts," one of the other users mumbled. "Gens Nxtlu deploying three legions and request assistance from Sodality Magi."

"Gambne Chapterhouse reports Chimerical incursion from sewers," muttered another. "Gens Utulo barricading and quarantining affected area."

This wasn't merely an attack on the Nameless City. It was happening everywhere.

Rosabella tore herself from the chair and joined Muoro at the door. She sprayed more spider's silk into the frame, fought off the Symbiont's attempt to wrest control of her body, tore a bony lever from one of the consoles and jammed it into the frame to hold the door, put her back against it and rooted herself into the ground...

The barrier held for long minutes, but the monstrous symphony coming from the other side couldn't drown out the door's creaking protests.

"Defenses," Muoro croaked. "Check the consoles."

Rosabella hated to leave him to hold the door himself, but if she could bring the defenses for the room on-nerve, perhaps they'd both survive this.

She went to one of the consoles. Her fingers flew over the pustules; she read the luminescent changes on the vine-screen above her.

Defenses? Anywhere? Surely a room this important had a defense system separate from the palace's Archon Tool--

The door screeched and bowed inward.

Muoro's eyes met Rosabella's for one agonizingly long moment. Then the door flew open, flinging Muoro to the ground.

He spun onto his back just in time to be dragged into the crush of Chimeras. His hands scraped on the floor and he screamed as he vanished into the midst of dozens of abominations.

Rosabella screamed, too.

Heads snapped her way, though the crunching of bones and slurping of marrow didn't stop. Aardvark heads, and bone-plated fish heads, and snarling cats' heads...

The Chimeras spread out into the room, chirping, chittering, and yowling, a nightmarish cacophony.

This was the end. Rosabella had expected to die at the hands of Nxtlu, perhaps, or of old age a few centuries from now.

She hadn't expected to be ravaged by Chimerical claws.

Rosabella wasn't utterly defenseless. As the Chimeras sprang for the nearest groups of Synapsis chairs, she breathed a mist to slick the floors.

The Chimeras staggered and slipped, raking with talons to keep from sliding. Could she slip past?

No. More entered the room every moment. Suckers gripped the floor. Brachiators sought out nerve-pillars to stabilize themselves.

The Chimeras recovered, and blood splashed as they tore into the screaming Synapsis-chairs, devouring the flesh of the auxiliary units.

And of the one man sitting in that first row.

Her slipperiness-STIGMOS still working in her body, Rosabella retreated behind the next row and poured out more of the misty fluid, coating everything.

The Chimeras came through that, too. Eating. Eating, devouring. Sliding on blood and viscera and Rosabella's excretion, catching themselves with talons plunged deep in bodies.

One screeched and lunged for Rosabella. She flung herself behind a chair, scrambling on hands and feet as blood splashed her.

Spines jabbed into her back. She gasped at the pain as her vision went wobbly.

Couldn't... stop. Had to... escape.

No escape. Claws caught her ankles.

No, no, no, no--

The Chimera spun her onto her back. She stared up up the stinking beak of a hundred-handed octopus as it crawled over her.

No!--

--A forgebone blade arced.

The octopus shuddered, blood splashed, and the top part of the monster fell away.

Stunned, wordless and terrified, Rosabella crawled out from under the monster as its half-sentient arms thrashed. She slipped back to the wall of the room, taking deep, juddering breaths, and tried to understand what had happened.

She was hallucinating.

This couldn't be.

Dorsin was here.

His skinsuit was torn to shreds, and his muscles pulsed and flexed beneath the blood that coated them as he slipped beneath a feline jaw, dodging its bite, and rammed his shortsword up through its neck and into its spine.

He whirled. His pistol barked, lancing a bullet straight into the eye of a massive snake's head.

He had come for her.

Flesheater bacteria rose from Dorsin in a wave, tearing through the Chimerical flesh. He charged and leapt into a bear-monstrosity's chest, plunging his shortsword in and riding the beast to the ground, then rolling off and slicing through eight spiderlike legs at the knees.

Dazed, still crouching, Rosabella reached for the wall and found a console.

Defenses. Muoro had said there were defenses.

She forced herself to stand, place her quivering hands on the console, and work the pustules. She could barely make out the responses from the screen through the tears and the blood--was it in her eyes, or on the screen?

Assuming it worked at all, would it accept her command to target the Chimeras and leave the people? Surely any defenses had to be able to discriminate; they wouldn't gas the chamber and kill their own Synapsis chairs.

Command accepted, the Tool glowed at her. Manual override engaging. Please take cover.

Turrets slid down from the ceiling, and forgebone bullets rapid-loosed, adding to the cacophony as they pinged around the room. Rosabella clapped her hands over her ears and slid toward the floor, shutting her eyes tightly.

The ringing in her ears was so intense that she was late in realizing the shots had stopped. Dorsin stood a few meters away, his back to Rosabella. He yanked his shortsword out of a misshapen skull. Then he turned and looked at her.

He stood in the midst of a pile of bodies. Bloody, beaten, black-eyed; torn, pierced, cut. His hair was a mess, plastered by sweat and more terrible fluids to his forehead.

He had never looked more beautiful. "Dorsin," Rosabella choked out, flinging herself at him.

And then she was in his arms. His strong arms; her own arms were crushed against her chest, but her scraping fingers could feel the muscles of his pectorals--

She gasped as his palms touched her back where the quills had struck her.

"Rosabella, you're hurt," he said.

She flattened her hand against a slice in his chest. "So are you."

"I'll be fine."

A wave of guilt washed over her. "Oralie?"

"In flight. The Chimeras left us alone as we departed. I think they want the tower." Dorsin stepped back, holstering his pistol, and Rosabella mourned the loss of his warmth.

But the way he held out a hand to her made that regret disappear. "We have to go."

Rosabella put her hand in his. "They've taken the tower."

Dorsin smiled. Oh, how glorious his smile was! "Then we will take the sky."

They left the room, and Rosabella tried not to look at the Chimera corpses, the mangled auxiliary units, or the people who'd been sitting in them.

Dorsin led Rosabella up the stairwell as the shrieks of rampaging monsters followed them up from below. There were Chimera bodies here, too. Rosabella squeezed her eyes shut, trusting in Dorsin to lead her.

Dorsin rammed through a door several stories higher, and they emerged onto an occupied sniper's roost. The Defender's gun cracked, and a dark shape fell from the night sky to the steaming jungle below; then he looked over his shoulder. "Find her, Princeps?"

Dorsin nodded.

"Your flight out's on its way," the man said jerking a thumb down toward the jungle, then to the shortsphere device in the balcony's wall. "Confirmed they'll let you on."

The last skywhale was rising from its landing pad. It was a massive one, too. Most likely a cruise-whale, able to fit a thousand families on holiday. For all their complaints about the wasteful self-importance of the Gentes, the burgeoning bourgeois class did like to entertain itself in the idlest manners. But as the cruise-whale rose toward them, Rosabella thanked the goddess for the middle class's affinity for vacations.

"Thank you for watching my back, Rayin."

They waited endless, terrible minutes as the cruise-whale ascended from the landing pad, another terrible minute as the vessel stretched out a thin insectile leg and rested it on the balcony.

Entering the ship would require a long, frightening walk through the sky.

The sniper gave him a quick salute, all the more genuine for the fact that he was in a battlefield position. "May your ascension be swift, Princeps."

"Come with us."

"Nah. This is my obligation, and this is my battlefield." Rayin turned back to his gun and took down another of the flyers. "Get moving, now. I'll keep them off you."

Dorsin nodded, swept Rosabella up into his arms, and stepped out onto the skywhale's limb.

Rosabella clung to him, pretending for a sweet brief moment that he was holding her not because his Symbiont and balance were stronger than hers, but rather because he loved her.

Wind whipped at them as they crossed along the narrow leg-ledge, but Dorsin's steps never faltered.

After a terrible eternity, they passed from humid nighttime into a noisy, well-lit foyer, and Dorsin let Rosabella to the floor.

Colored lumins in crystalline chandeliers made the bone ribs arcing up the sides of the room gleam like gold. The gathered crowd didn't seem to care. They weren't bourgeois families out on some week-long pleasure cruise around the perimeter of the continent; they were refugees, bloody, sweaty, frightened, and tired. Most were novices and acolytes without Symbionts of their own or else simple citizens. The Sodality Magi--those who had combat STIGMOS, anyway--were clearly staying behind to fight.

Dorsin pushed through them without a thought. "Take me to the bridge," he demanded of a young man in the swept-back cap and green-and-blue uniform of a cruise line employee.

Dorsin was so forceful that the sailor didn't even argue. In minutes, Dorsin and Rosabella were pushing through well-dressed people crowding around the map table.

"I can't take the cruise back to Monokyo," said the captain, a tired-looking woman in a crisp green and blue coat. The stress of the situation would surely do her already graying hair no favors. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "The last transmission said that the Chimeras were attacking there as well."

A woman with the almond-shaped eyes and dark hair of a Takahashi scion turned up her small nose. "All the more reason for us to return. With as many Magi as must be aboard the Dancing Star, we can assist them in fighting off the attackers."

A man next to her--her husband, surely--clasped her arm and whispered something in her ear.

Monokyo was within extended shortsphere range of the Nameless City, only fifty miles away. A Takahashi holding, it was certainly a reasonable destination for a captain who would be worried about overcrowding and supplies. It spoke well of her that she wasn't inclined to drop thousands of refugees into a war zone just to protect her bottom line.

The bourgeois of Takahashi extraction, on the other hand, clearly had either no understanding of their dire straits or no care for their hapless passengers.

"What's the trouble, captain?" Dorsin asked.

The beleaguered skipper turned surprised eyes toward Dorsin, taking in his bloodied skinsuit. "A dozen would-be navigators all fighting over the wheel, Magus. The attack wrought havoc on more than the city. Our itinerary is shot to hell, too."

To hell, she had said. "You're an Adonist."

The skipper's eyes flared, and she drew herself up straight. "Born and raised in the Free City of Morganstern, Magus." There was forgebone in her words.

Dorsin thought of Cornartis, who even now would be extracting his daughter from a Chimerical killing zone. "Good. I've known a few good Adonists in my time." The woman rolled her shoulders back in surprise. "A skywhale left not long before we did. My wife is aboard it, as are several combat Magi of my Gens. Please send a shortsphere message ahead and ask them to wait. Numbers will make our escape easier."

The captain snorted. "What's one more navigator in a packed bridge, anyway? Sorry, Magus, but that's not happening. Our receiver still works, but one of those beasts tore the transmitter nerves clear out of the ship. We're not sending any messages to anyone, even if I decide it would be the right call." She eyed Dorsin warily.

Rosabella put a hand on Dorsin's arm. She needn't have tried to soothe him; he was angry at the Chimeras, not these people. Still, her touch comforted him. "Very well. In that case, as a favor to you and your god, I'll take care of your navigational problems and make the decision for you. We're going to Acerbia."

The bridge erupted in argument.

Dorsin strengthened his vocal chords. "I am Magus Princeps Dorsin Generosus Ortus Nethress, and we are going to Acerbia!"

That shut them up.

All except the captain, who chuckled. "Well, Erus, you're accustomed to getting your way, aren't you? But you shut up this clutch of yowling cats, and that's good enough for me. Captain Gratha Sylvie, no-Ortus-necessary, at your service."

Dorsin nodded to her, then turned back to the rest. The crew was wide-eyed, although a short-haired blonde at the comms station recovered quickly enough to give him a venomous look. "Now clear out. Captain, have a cabin--pardon, cabins--with washbasins prepared for me and for Maga Ambassatrix Rosabella Sodalitatis. And give me that shortsphere receiver." He pointed to an excess device, small because it was a non-transmitting receiver, next to the blonde comms officer. "I must know what's happening in our vicinity."

Dorsin had expected the captain to object over the receiver. Information was power, and now of all times, with an overpacked ship and attacking Chimeras, she needed to keep her guests calm. But perhaps she was grateful for his ending the arguments, or perhaps she was merely intimidated; she acceded without a fight. The blonde officer hardly hid her disgust as she handed over the receiver, however.

The cabins were finer than the ones on Nethress's military skywhales. A forgotten sock in the small drawer of Dorsin's cabin attested to the fact that the skipper had displaced its previous inhabitants to make room for the Princeps.

Normally Dorsin wouldn't have noticed or cared, but tonight, as he sponged off his wounds, he was glad for a little finery. Reports came through the receiver from the Nameless City and Monokyo.

"...reporting several hundred dead, and fierce fighting in the Monokyo outskirts..."

"...beaten back past the Palace of Ascension into the gates of Vallus. However, the Palace's Archon Tool is still off-nerve, and many of the city's most potent defenses are currently nonfunctional..."

"...concerns that Wildland-adjacent farms and ranches may be struck and shipments of food and other necessities may be disrupted..."

"...of blame. Magus Princeps Tlalli Generosus Ortus Nxtlu has made the following announcement."

Dorsin's ears picked up.

The announcer's cadence changed; she was clearly reading from a prepared message. "My fellow men, loyal to Tellus, may the Smoking Mirror find you worthy."

Dorsin hissed, not merely because he was sponging a particularly deep cut in his bicep.

"Hear the words of Princeps Nxtlu. A great scourge has come upon our land. It has been with us for eons, but only now do we learn the depth of its viciousness."

How had Tlalli managed to distribute this so quickly? Synapsis was instantaneous, but still, speeches took time to write, and it had been hardly an hour since Dorsin pulled Oralie out of the pool.

"A three-headed hydra now strikes at our cities, our lives, our very beings. Though the beast has three heads, it has but one body, and we would do well to recognize that it is a single creature. One head: the Chimeras, which now ravage our cities."

That implied that Princeps Nxtlu had word from many cities. How, so quickly? It wasn't as though he spent his time sitting in a Synapsis chamber, listening for announcements.

Did he?

"One head: the genophage, which tore mankind almost to death once, and has now bared its teeth again."

A chill swallowed Dorsin's spine.

"One head: Gens Nethress, which has released the genophage and the Chimeras on an unsuspecting world."

"What?" Dorsin shouted.

"It grieves me to acknowledge this terrible reality. Though Gens Nethress and Gens Nxtlu have had our differences and even our wars, Gens Nethress has always seemed to be an honorable adversary. The facts, alas, belie the General Principles of that storied bloodline."

"Fact the first: Despite Nethress's attempts to convince us otherwise, all of the children of Gerart, erstwhile Princeps of Gens Nethress, are residing in Acerbia.

"Fact the second: Reports indicate that Magus Princeps Gerart Generosus Ortus Nethress died of a wasting disease that transformed him terribly, as did several of his children and many of his grandchildren. Indeed, the disease that struck him down seemed to spread up and down the Nethress family lines, just as the genophage, seeking common genes at which to strike, might.

"Fact the third: Word has come to Gens Nxtlu that within the Acerbian Libraratory discovered last year, there is a partial cure for the genophage. However, Gens Nethress had no access to this cure until they reconquered Acerbia from Gens Nxtlu.

"Fact the fourth: A database of critical genetic information about Gens Nethress's Comitatus is maintained in Acerbia."

Surely Tlalli knew that all of these claims pointed to Nethress's being the target of a bioweapon, not the originator of it.

"Fact the fifth: Magus Princeps Dorsin Generosus Nethress is not Ortus Nethress. He is an interloper, not born of their blood."

Dorsin sat down on the bed in shock, wounds forgotten.

"The evidence is clear. Gens Nethress, an honorable bloodline, has been subverted by an impure element. Then-Dux Dorsin, now Princeps, was more than willing to sacrifice his own family members in mad inquiry while attempting to perfect a new strain of genophage, a targeted weapon.

"And what has this new strain done? It has maddened the Chimeras of the world. If you seek the cause of our present chaos, seek no farther than Dorsin Generosus Nethress, Ortus Null.

"I am now distributing to our fellow Gentes all that Gens Nxtlu knows about the altered genophage and its relationship to the Chimeras. Analysis of Chimerical DNA from the creatures attacking our cities will reveal strains of the novel genophage.

"I invite all who can see this terrible development for what it is to join me in demanding recompense, not merely for Dorsin's as-yet-unsuccessful attempt to behead our societies, but also for his role in unleashing the Chimeras upon us. We sail to Acerbia to demand his family remove him from power and sign over their holdings to us.

"Join us. Let us show Dorsin that without justice, there can be no peace."

The transmission ended. Oh, the announcer nattered on, but Dorsin sat stunned, washcloth in his hands, unmoving.

Nobody would believe this. Could they?

And yet, the accusations were leavened with a bit of truth. Just enough to make them dangerous. Dorsin wasn't his father's son--that, alone, could be damning, even to those who rejected the rest of the accusations as mad. How had Tlalli known?

The only way would be if--

Somebody had told him. Somebody like Eztli, who had been there for Senrii's outburst.

Dorsin felt the rage rise up within him again.

A knock came on the door, snapping him from his reverie. Rosabella, clad in a simple woolen robe, waited in the hall. She put a hand to her breast at the sight of him. "Oh, Dorsin," she breathed. "What happened?"

She always could read him like a book, but she surely hadn't needed to call on that skill now. His face was an open page. He shook his head, trying to clear the shock, betrayal, and anger from it. "Nothing, Ambassatrix. How may I assist you?"

Rosabella cocked her head, turned sideways, and let the gown slip down past perfect shoulders, revealing angry blue wounds along her spine. Quills. Most of the injuries had been cleaned, but a few of the piercing spikes still remained. "There are some cuts a woman cannot reach to heal herself, my heart," Rosabella said quietly.

Dorsin let her in. Truth be told, he wouldn't mind asking for an equal exchange. He could have called on the Symbiont to lengthen his arms and grow new elbows to help with the hard-to-reach injuries, but that would be inelegant.

Yes. Inelegant.

She seemed to read his mind. "Come, my heart." Rosabella pushed him onto the bed, took the washcloth from him, and dipped it into the blue-tinged basin. "Yours are worse than mine. And as I work, tell me."

"Tell you what?"

She turned deep emerald eyes to him. "Everything."

So Dorsin did. As the washcloth cleansed the injuries of his body, he cleansed the injuries of his soul. He told her how he'd rescued Oralie. He told her of his fears for her. He told her that Eztli had betrayed him.

Her gentle ministration to a deep cut on his stomach paused for a moment at that.

"Gens Nxtlu has revealed the genophage to the world," he said. "They are blaming it on me. And... there is more."

Dorsin told Rosabella everything. Everything that they had announced. Including..."I am not my father's son."

Rosabella licked ruby lips anxiously and put the washcloth aside on the table.

"Finished?"

"We are not nearly finished, Princeps." She took Dorsin's chin in her hand. "You are not finished. You are your father's son."

That was very nearly what Oralie had said to him. But as he gazed into those glittering eyes, Dorsin's mouth went sour at the thought of his wife.

"And like him, you will prevail, my heart. We will prevail together."

We. Was Rosabella with them, then? Was she with Gens Nethress?

Or was she with Dorsin?

A farmer cannot tend two fields.

"The wounds," he said. "Are there any more to see to?"

Rosabella's hand rested softly on his shoulder. "None that my hands can reach, my heart."

Dorsin swapped places with Rosabella. He focused on the injuries on her back.

Not on her back itself.

Not on the plain woolen robe, which she had let slip down so that he could reach her lower injuries.

Not on what that robe's slippage had revealed on her front, which he might glimpse if he only tilted his head a little to the side to look around her--

A farmer cannot tend two fields!

How could Rosabella make a simple gray robe look like an Imperatrix's garment? How did she make Dorsin's heart go to gravy and his will retreat like a broken legion?

Her skin so smooth, the curve of her spine so sensuous, even sensual--

His fingertip lingered on one of her vertebrae.

She sighed softly, leaning in, her body drinking up even the slightest touch.

They both spoke at once, as one. "When I saw you--"

Even now, they were one.

No. Dorsin fell silent.

Rosabella filled the silence. "When I saw you, I saw the man who rescued me from that bloody bed. The man you have always been to me." She turned her head to look at him.

Her chest turned too. Ever so slightly. Enough for Dorsin to see more than he ought.

He couldn't look away.

"You have always been the man who saved me, Dorsin. Comes, Dux, Princeps, or nothing at all, you are everything to me."

Dorsin hung his head, forcing his eyes to focus on nothing at all, and let his hands drop. "When I saw you, my heart was made whole again. If anything had happened to you, Rosabella..."

Could a heart even be a heart if it was itself a Chimera, made from two different fleshes?

"Are there any more wounds to see to?" Rosabella murmured.

Dorsin's swallow caught in his throat. "None that my hands can reach, Ambassatrix."

Rosabella leaned against him, and to Dorsin's shame, he allowed her. The warmth of her back against his chest thrilled him; the heat of her breath on his face as she whispered was stress and relief rolled up together. "There is one injury your hands may yet reach and heal, Princeps."

Another knock came at the door. Almost Dorsin might have believed in the Adonist god for giving him an excuse for sliding from the bed, from Rosabella's warmth, from temptation.

He opened the door enough to poke his head out. He wasn't presentable. Rosabella, even less so. "Captain Sylvie. How can I help you?"

The captain's hands were on her hips, and she did not look happy. "You can help by explaining that Adon-damned Nxtlu transmission, Princeps."

Dorsin wasn't accustomed to taking orders from anybody, and especially not redbloods. But this was Sylvie's ship. "I had nothing to do with the genophage, captain. Indeed, I stopped Nxtlu from releasing it."

Sylvie raised an eyebrow.

"Or close to it," Dorsin admitted. "The database belonged to Nxtlu. So did the bioweapon."

"Hmm. And the Chimeras?"

"I do not know," Dorsin lied, thinking of how he'd plunged the Symbiont-killer into the Half-Father. "Captain, Nxtlu tried to murder my family. I am only trying to keep them together."

Sylvie grunted. "I always did find Gens Nxtlu slippery, myself, and Nethress ports have always been among the more welcoming...But then, maybe that doesn't matter to a man who isn't Nethress."

"I am as Nethress as my brothers and sisters," Dorsin said, a spark igniting in his heart. Indignation was a rod shoved into his spine. "Any man who says otherwise may say so to my face."

Sylvie nodded, looking thoughtful. "So he was telling the truth about your parentage. A little truth here, a little lie there... it's been going on long enough. We have a story, did you know that, Princeps? Back in old Amricia, back before the Exodus, there were imperial elections every four years. Nasty, nasty elections, so they say.

"One election, a newcomer to politics was a primary contender. Claudios Danald, his name was. His opponent was a long-time politician known for political ruthlessness, well-connected across all of Terra, and she was going to win at all costs. She took salacious rumors directly from Amricia's enemies, laundered them through her political machine, and then used those rumors to claim that Danald had been conspiring to win the election with the help of the very same enemies she got the rumors from."

"Trying to shift opinion by accusing him of getting help from the people who were actually helping her? Hmm. An odd story," Dorsin said.

"Point is, Princeps, in politics, there's always a scumbag somewhere willing to accuse the other side of exactly the crime that he's committing himself."

"What happened to Danald?"

"They stole the next election from him, then bribed his wife Agrippina to murder him in his sleep." Captain Sylvie shrugged. "I guess the other point is, no matter how obvious the con is, no matter how obvious the hypocrisy of the accusation, you can count on the fifty percent of people who hate you to fall for it just because they hate you, and the other fifty will use the accusation without believing it, because they also hate you.

"Anyway, I'll let you get back to it. But Princeps? I don't know how long I can keep the whole ship in the dark. Guarantee you, there are people on this liner who're in that fifty percent, who're only barely keeping it together with you aboard. True or false, when this news gets out..."

"We'd better get to Acerbia quickly, then," Dorsin said.

Sylvie looked unsatisfied, but she nodded and left. Dorsin closed the door, then leaned his head against it.

She was right. Gens Nethress was like any other Gens: allied with a few, friendly with half, hostile toward half, enemies with a few. The allies would see through the accusations. The friends might; the hostile probably wouldn't; and the enemies wouldn't care. They wanted him dead. Any excuse would do.

Nxtlu had made its play, trying to take Nethress off the board, and truth wouldn't matter at all. Water had fallen on the fallow seed; the sprout of chaos was going to bloom, one way or another.

Nethress wouldn't survive.

Warm hands touched Dorsin's back. Her touch--

Rosabella's touch--

It was a refuge. Could be a refuge, at least for a time.

Her arms encircled his chest from behind.

So warm. So gentle.

So soft, her cheek against his shoulder, her bare breasts against his back.

"Dorsin..."

Dorsin's heart pounded as hard as when he had first seen Rosabella, naked and frightened and bloodied and beautiful in the bed of his enemy, almost forty years ago; as hard as it had a month after that, when he had found her for the first time in his own bed and fallen in after her.

A farmer cannot tend two fields!

He wanted her.

No!

He needed her.

But Oralie--

Dorsin could no longer deny who he was. He turned and swept Rosabella into his arms, warm wet lips finding hers.

Her robe fell away as he carried her to the bed. She arched her neck and gasped at his kisses as he laid her down.

For one sweet night after a day of torments, Dorsin allowed himself to tend a foreign field.