Hell's Gate

Jathmar inhaled, but before he could speak, Shaylar squeezed his hand hard. He turned and looked into her eyes for several heartbeats, then turned back to Jasak.

"You want us to promise to be … obedient prisoners," he said in his slower, more halting Andaran. "What about our duty to escape?"

"Escape to where, Jathmar?" Gadrial put in gently from her chair. He looked at her, and she smiled sadly. "Even if you could escape custody, where could you go? How could you ever possibly hope to get home on your own?"

"Gadrial is right," Jasak said as Jathmar looked at her mulishly. "Trust me, however much any of us may regret it, you aren't going to be able to escape, no matter what you do. Unless, of course," his smile turned even more crooked, "your 'Talents' are quite a bit more … useful than I've just agreed to assume they are."

"If escape is so impossible, why should we promise not to?" Jathmar challenged.

"Because it will affect the precautions I have to take as the officer responsible for you," Jasak replied unflinchingly.

"But how much longer will you be the officer 'responsible' for us?" Shaylar asked. "I said I trust you, Jasak, and I do. As much as I'll ever be able to trust any Arcanan, at least. But what about that other man?that Hundred Thalmayr? What about all of the other soldiers and officers I've seen glaring at us? Sooner or later, someone senior to you is going to be the one 'responsible' for us. How do we trust him? And why should any promise we make to you affect how he treats us?"

"Because of that point I told you I'd come back to," Jasak said. "Because I was in command when your people were killed. That makes me responsible for what happened to them, and for everything that's happened to you since."

"But I know you ordered that other officer not to shoot!" Shaylar protested.

"Yes, I did. And I doubt very much that even with your Talent you can understand how much it means to me that you realize that. But the officer who opened fire was one of my subordinates. I ought to have ignored the letter of the regulations and relieved him before we ever caught up with your people. I didn't, and after he was killed, after the shooting had become general and I had men down all over that clearing?wounded, dying, dead?I assumed tactical command of the battle. I fought that battle, not Shevan Garlath. And I'd do it again, exactly the way I did it then, under the same circumstances and given what I knew at the time."

He met the Sharonians' eyes levelly.

"I had no choice at that point, but that doesn't change the fact that it was my command which attacked you, or that you were civilians who were simply defending yourselves. My men destroyed your lives as surely as they killed your companions, and that leaves me with an honor obligation towards you."

"Honor obligation?" Jathmar repeated carefully, and Jasak nodded.

"Among my people?Andarans, not Arcanans as a whole?there's something called shardon. It's the term we use to describe the act of taking someone under your own and your family's shield. You and Shaylar are my shardonai. As the commander of the troops who wronged you and yours, I'm obligated to protect you as I would a member of my own family. In fact, under Andaran law and custom, a shardon is legally a member of the family of his baranal."

"Which means what?" Jathmar asked.

"Which means I'm honorbound to refuse to surrender you into any other officer's custody, regardless of our relative ranks. It means my family and I are obligated to see to it that you're treated well, that no one abuses you, and that you're assured of all the personal safeguards any other member of our family would receive. It means that even though you and Shaylar are Sharonian, not Arcanan, any children born to you on Arcanan soil will be Arcanan citizens and entitled to all of the rights and protections of citizenship. No one can take them from you, no one can use them against you, and no one can violate their civil rights. The sole difference between you, as my shardonai, and my sisters or my parents is that the protections which we can extend to you continue to apply only so long as you voluntarily remain under my protection."

"In your custody, you mean." Jathmar's tone was more cutting than it had been as he made the correction, and Jasak nodded.

"For all practical purposes, yes," he said unwaveringly. "I'm sorry, but no one can change that. Not now."

"And how long is your government going to be willing to leave us in your custody?" Shaylar asked tautly.

"For as long as I, any member of my family, or either one of you is alive," Jasak said flatly.

The two Sharonians looked at him in obvious disbelief. Then Gadrial cleared her throat.

"I've lived among Andarans for years," she told them. "There are a lot of things about them and about their honor code that I still don't pretend to understand, but I do know this much. If Jasak tells you his family will protect you, they will protect you."

"From the entire army? Your entire government?" Jathmar couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice … assuming that he'd tried to.

"I think you may not fully realize just who Jasak's family is," Gadrial said with a slightly crooked smile. They looked at her, and she shrugged. "Jasak is Sir Jasak Olderhan. His father is Thankhar Olderhan, who happens, among other things, to be the Duke of Garth Showma … and the planetary governor of New Arcana. There may be one other Andaran nobleman with as much personal political and military power as His Grace. There couldn't possibly be two of them, though. And under the Andaran honor code, the entire Olderhan family and every one of its dependents and liegemen will die before they allow anyone to harm an Olderhan shardon."

"And the rest of your government, of your politicians, would allow them to do that?" Shaylar demanded as she and Jathmar looked at Jasak with completely new expressions.

"Some of them won't like it," Jasak admitted. "Some of them will try to get around it, probably especially among the Mythalans. And there may well be some?especially among the Mythalans?who attempt to step outside the law and justify it on the basis of 'national security.' But," he added in that same flat, inflexible, rock-ribbed voice, "they won't succeed."

Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, then back at him, and as he looked into their eyes, he realized that at last they believed him.

"All right," Jathmar said finally.

He tried to keep his voice level, his tone normal, but it was hard. Partly, that was because of the enormous relief flowing through him. He'd had no idea Jasak might come from such a prominent, powerful family, nor had it even crossed his mind that the protection of that family might be extended to him and Shaylar. But relieved as he was, grateful as he might be, he couldn't forget that the price tag of that protection amounted to a lifetime as prisoners. He told himself that they'd have been prisoners under any circumstances, that this shardon relationship offered them the chance to live as human beings, anyway. He even knew it was true. But that didn't change the fact that its protection had been extended to them by the very man who acknowledged he was responsible for the massacre of their friends and their own capture in the first place.

He could feel Shaylar's reaction through the marriage bond, and knew her emotions were far less … conflicted than his own. But Shaylar was Shurkhali. She'd been brought up in that culture, that society, and its acceptance of an honor code which had obvious resonances with the one Jasak and Gadrial were describing. Jasak had finally found something Shaylar understood. A rock she could grasp, use as an anchor, and Jathmar was grateful for that, as well. Yet he couldn't quite suppress his resentment of that, either. Of the fact that it was Jasak, her captor?and not her husband?who had provided her with that almost painful sense of an understood security at last.