“Water sprite, wake up.”

Kamoj moved, then groaned. It felt like pins and thornbats prickled her legs, where she had folded them under her body. She didn’t remember sliding out from under Vyrl, but she was sitting next to him now, her hands tucked between her knees. Moonlight poured over the bed.

Vyrl lay watching her. “I need you to do something for me.”

She smiled, imagining his hands on her body. “Anything.”

“In the second drawer of my desk. There’s a bottle I need.”

Her good mood vanished. “You don’t need that.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Dazza could give you—”

“No!”

“But—”

“I don’t need Dazza’s damn sedatives.”

“I can’t get you the bottle.”

His voice hardened. “Why not? You have two legs. You can walk the ten steps it would take to reach the desk.”

“The rum hurts you.”

“After two days you claim to know me well enough to dictate what is and isn’t good for me?”

“Vyrl, no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then get it for me.” His voice gentled. “Just for tonight. To help me sleep.”

“I can’t. I—I’m sorry.”

His gentleness disappeared. “Then get out of my bed.”

“But I—”

“Get out.”

Stunned, Kamoj slid off the bed and ran across the room, her bare feet slapping the stone. Inside her chamber, she dropped onto her own bed. Moonlight shone through the window, creating a swath of pale colors across the floor.

A grunt came from the master bedroom, followed by the rustle of blankets. Kamoj froze, listening.

A gasp, labored but brief.

Silence.

Was he having trouble breathing? It was hard to believe he had suffered a collapsed lung only this afternoon. She started to get up, then hesitated. Get out, he had said. If she walked in and he was fine, she would look like a fool.

The crash of shattering glass broke the silence. She jumped up and ran into his bedroom.

Vyrl was kneeling by his desk, wearing only his sleep pants, his chest bare, except for the bandages, his arms wrapped around his body. Shards of broken glass covered the floor, glinting in the moonlight. A pool of rum was spreading under the desk.

Kamoj went over and knelt in front of him. Up this close she saw tears on his cheeks, just as she had seen them last night after his nightmare. She wondered if his waking helped at all or if his night terrors recognized no boundaries between sleep and reality.

Stretching out his arm, he pulled a strand of her hair away from her lips. “Touch me, Kamoj. Let me feel you. See you. Smell you.”

She reached for him. “Always. Whenever you want.”

Instead of responding, he grabbed the desk and pulled himself to his feet. The window above the desk looked south, over the Lower Sky Hills that fell away to the plains. Staring out at the mountains, he spoke in a distant voice. “I’ve a younger brother. Kelric.”

She stood up, trying to understand his mood. “A little brother?”

“Little?” He gave a short laugh. “He’s huge. Joined ISC.”

“Is he here now?”

“No. The war took him away.”

Kamoj lifted her hand, meaning to touch him, to offer comfort. Then she hesitated, unsure what he needed or wanted. Uncertain, she dropped her hand again.

“I have a lot of brothers,” he continued. “Althor. I always admired him. Looked up to him. He joined ISC too. Jagernaut.”

“Jagernaut?”

“Cybernetically enhanced star fighter pilot. Like Kelric. Like those new bodyguards Colonel Pacal gave me.”

“Althor is a soldier too?”

“Was.” In a wooden voice, he said, “ISC gave him a beautiful funeral.”

“Hai, Vyrl. I’m sorry.”

He kept on, as if unable to stop. “There’s my sister. Soz. We were closest in age, out of ten children.” He finally turned to Kamoj. “You look a little like her.”

“She is also a soldier? Like Dazza?”

“Dazza served under her.”

“Where is she now?”

“Blown to dust.”

“Vyrl, I—I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” His words came like leaded rain. “My brother Eldrin is still alive. The Traders captured him. You know what they do when they catch one of us? No, never mind. You don’t want to know. My aunt and her son, they’re gone. Prisoners, maybe. Dead, probably. Then there is Kurj, my uncle. War leader before Soz. She took over after the Traders killed him.”

“I’m so sorry.” It sounded useless, saying that over and over. She had lost only her parents and that had torn apart her world. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose most of a large family.

He walked away, across the room. Bathed in pale light from the Far Moon and the aurora borealis, he climbed the dais. Then he turned to face her. “I’m a good farmer. You want crops with better yields? Bi-hoxen that can better survive your winters? I can work it out. That’s what I wrote my doctorate on, the application of genetic engineering to crop and livestock development. I’ve had Morlin running DNA simulations here.”

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” she said.

“Farming.” He stood in the moonlight like a statue, the planes of his chest stark in the colorless radiance that filled the room. “I’ve always loved it. You know where I got that? From my father. He loved the land. And he loved us. His children.” His voice broke. “At least I was there when he died.”

She went to him then, joining him on the dais. Gently she said, “How did it happen?”

He rubbed his palm over his cheek, seeming surprised to find tears there. “Old age. Old wounds.” Dropping his hand, he said, “My father spent his last days with his family, in our family house, on our home world. The Allied military let us have that much.”

“Allied?”

“The Allied Worlds of Earth.” Bitter now, he said, “They were ‘kind’ enough to let us live in our own homes. Of course, Earth now controls the entire planet where we live.”

“Earth? I don’t understand.”

“I told you this afternoon. Our ‘allies’ betrayed us. They won’t let my family go.” In a quieter voice he said, “They believe that without my family to power the Ruby machines, ISC won’t risk another war. Earth fears that otherwise my people and the Traders will destroy civilization, the way the Ruby Empire was destroyed, five thousand years ago.”

“But if you were their prisoner, how are you here now?”

“None of my family could get offworld.”

“But you’re here.”

He looked away from her, out the window across the room. “Do you know what my father’s dying wish was? His gruesome dying wish? That his coffin be launched into orbit around the planet.”

“Orbit?”

“Above the sky.”

“Like the moons?”

“Like the moons. He wanted to be a moon.”

“But why? If he valued the land—”

“He loved it. The land. The harvest. The seasons.” Vyrl turned back to her. “Going into orbit terrified him.”

“But you said he asked to go there.”

“That’s what he told our jailors.” A muscle in his cheek jerked. “We held his true funeral in secret, to do what he told my mother he really wanted. We cremated his body and spread the ashes over his land.” He swallowed. “Then my family took his coffin to the starport.”

“Why, if he wasn’t in it?”

“The Allieds didn’t know that. There was a body, one their sensors registered as his.”

She stiffened. “No.”

He went on, inexorable. “Our family physician on Lyshriol was an ISC agent. He installed an intravenous system inside the coffin to feed me. Made the coffin vacuum tight. So I could breathe. Put in a web system to deceive probes. I weigh more than my father, so he streamlined everything. Same for the web, not because of weight, but to minimize the risk of detection. It didn’t even have a voice mod for conversation. He didn’t want to use drugs in an unmonitored environment, but finally he agreed to sedate me, so I wouldn’t get claustrophobic.” His voice cracked. “It would only be for one day, after all.”