Page 52

A shadow filled the doorway behind them.

Kesta glanced over her shoulder and saw Dreven standing there with Keth just behind him. He had removed the loose shoulder plate he had worn earlier, though most of his armor remained in place. Dark grease streaked one forearm, and dust had settled into the grooves near the bases of his horns, making it obvious he had gone directly from the failing condenser to the infirmary.

His gaze moved first to Horan, then to Sera, the scanner and finally Kesta. Whatever he saw in her face made his own expression sharpen.

“What happened?”

Sera stepped aside so he could see the image more clearly. “Kesta recognizes what is inside him.”

Dreven moved closer. He stared at the silver lattice without speaking, and for several seconds Kesta could not tell whether he understood what he was looking at. Then one clawed hand curled slowly at his side.

“What did the empire put inside him?”

Kesta glanced toward Horan. Restraint scars ringed both wrists, old enough to have faded but too symmetrical to have come from anything accidental. The answer that rose in her throat felt brutally simple.

“A leash.”

Dreven went completely still.

His reaction was so immediate that Kesta looked at him rather than the screen. His jaw hardened, the muscles beneath the scales at his temples tightening as his tail lowered behind him and stopped moving altogether. The word had struck somewhere deeper than simple outrage.

Keth’s mechanical eye clicked softly as it focused on the scanner.

Dreven noticed the sound. “Copy the image.”

Tavi stepped in front of the console so quickly that his smaller body almost collided with Keth. All four of his hands spread protectively across the controls.

“After I remove the patient identifier.”

Dreven’s silver gaze settled on him.

Tavi swallowed. His shoulders drew back anyway.

For a moment the size difference between them was almost absurd. Dreven could have lifted him out of the way with one arm.

Instead he asked, “Why?”

“Horan never consented to having his medical information entered into a command archive.” Tavi’s voice had lost most of its usual humor, though his chin remained stubbornly lifted. “The image can be copied without attaching his identity to it.”

Dreven looked toward Horan, then at Kesta.

She said nothing.

There was nothing she needed to say.

When his attention returned to Tavi, the anger in his expression had altered into something more thoughtful. “Remove the identifier.”

Tavi relaxed visibly.

Keth tilted his head. “Without the name, the record may be less useful if we need to compare other implants.”

“The pattern is useful.” Dreven’s voice remained low. “His body does not become evidence we own simply because the empire treated it that way.”

Kesta felt something shift unexpectedly beneath her ribs.

That was not a lesson she had taught him.

She had known him for scarcely a day.