When the vapor dissipated, Mirta held Sintas’s hand while Beluine slapped a monitor on her arm. Sintas was thrashing about, trying to sit up, and staring totally unco-ordinated, eyes rolling. She pulled her arm away from Beluine, grabbing blindly for anything. Mirta caught her arm.
“You’re among friends, “she said quietly. “Easy. Udesii. Just relax and let the doctor take a look at you.”
Sintas looked right through Fett, her face all white terror made more stark by the ink-black Kiffar tattoos, the qukuuf. She was blind. He was ready for that, but he wasn’t ready to look into her eyes again, dark blue, at once both everything he thought he’d ever wanted and the deserved judgment on what he hadn’t given her. The last fifty years collapsed in on themselves leaving Fett nineteen again; be-sotted for a brief while, and then an older, numbed man wondering why the only thing he could manage was to walk away to leave her in some filthy alley, knowing he was abandoning his daughter again, too.
I didn’t even ask about Ailyn. I just gave Sintas the hologram and told her not to lose it again.
“Well, she can move, “Beluine said. “No paralysis. Excellent.”
“Shab, he’s a sharp one, “Medrit muttered. “I’d never have diagnosed that in a million years.”
Mirta and Beviin lifted Sintas and laid her on a repulsor trolley, wrapping her in blankets. She was calming down now, or at least exhausting herself into a quieter state. Fett dared to step closer. Beviin put a discreet hand on his back to steady him.
“Madam, “Beluine said. “Can you hear me?” He checked the device on her arm. “Can you tell me your name?”
She jerked her head in the direction of the doctor’s voice. “I… heard…”
“That’s good. Let’s try again. Can you tell me your name?”
Sintas seemed totally distracted by the question. She settled on her back, eyes open and apparently staring at the workshop ceiling.
“I… I don’t know. Don’t know…. who are you? Where’s… oh stang I don’t know who…”
Sintas had been frozen in her midthirties. She was a shuddering wreck coming out of the agony of carbonite suspension, but she was still a beautiful woman.
I owe her. She’s not my wife now, but I owe her something for all those years I was never a husband or a father.
Fett had no way of articulating that aloud, because he’d never learned to go beyond that single, all-defining father-son relationship, but he wouldn’t abandon her this time. At least he had some breathing space now to work out how to fill in her missing history.
If she’d been in her fifties, sixties, seventies, he’d have done things differently, he swore it. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t even old enough to be Mirta’s mother. Mirta looked stricken but her eyes were dry. She was a Fett, all right.
“Let’s get her to her room, “Fett said. “Dr. Beluine needs to carry out his examination.”
“Amnesia’s really common in carbonite cases, “Beviin said kindly, following the repulsor into the main body of the house. “But how much of the past would you want her to forget for good?”
“It’s not her who needs to forget, “Fett said. “It’s me.”
Chapter 4
Sweetheart, are you okay? Don’t take any stupid risks. You’re not responsible for saving the Galactic Alliance singlehanded.
-Shula Shevu, newly married, in an encrypted message to her husband
BASTION, IMPERIAL REMNANT: MOFF ASSEMBLY HALL AT RAVELIN
It was always sobering to be a spectator at your own funeral.
Pellaeon stood at the window overlooking the parade ground and watched the ornate cannon carriage that would carry his remains. Like him, it was a survivor from a different age, archaic in design but still able to fulfill its function in war. The paired bloodfins drawing it came to a halt at precisely the center of the paved expanse, remained motionless for a count of ten, and then wheeled right to follow a perfectly straight line through the archway and out into the streets of the capital, the brilliant scarlet crests that earned them the name bobbing like flames in the morning sunlight. Pellaeon was sure they were a subspecies of ghannoidal certecyes, but they had that striking red crest like the marine predator, and bloodfin was much easier to pronounce. A token platoon of Imperial Guards marched behind in their everyday number five uniforms, not parade best.
However many times Pellaeon saw the rehearsal, it was impressive. Bloodfins were notoriously hard to train in the art of dressage or precise cavalry displays. He made a mental note to congratulate the ceremonial staff; the carnivorous quadrupeds were formidable mounts, quite capable of fighting on their own even when their rider was dead, and they were not known for their obedience off the battlefield.