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“I cannot go back there as—”
“Enough, Serihk!” Lar’a and Mal’ik fell silent as Bryant’s voice snapped out from the bedroom. It was quickly followed by Bryant himself, who slammed open the door and then hobbled out on crutches, a huge cast encasing his left leg from ankle to hip.
He stopped when he saw Mal’ik and Lar’a, chest to chest in the foyer, then just hobbled over to the couch they’d abandoned. “Don’t stop on my account.”
“Bryant, you—” Serihk strode out of the bedroom, red and black and gray swirling across his cheeks, then stopped as well when he got to the foyer. He stood straighter, and some of the colors receded down his face and back down his neck. “Captain Mal’ik. Can we help you?”
“Sure, help him find some damn sense.” Lar’a waved a hand and went to lean against the arm of the couch near Bryant, crossing her arms over her chest.
Mal’ik scowled at her but didn’t deny it. Some sense was exactly what’d he come here for. Some sense of what to do, some direction from anyone.
“Well, you haven’t come to the right place,” Bryant groused from his spot on the couch, his cast-clad leg up on the coffee table. “Sense is in short supply around here.”
Both he and Serihk were pouring pungent frustration into the air, but it was tinged with longing and hurt and fear. Serihk closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose with his long fingers. Then he looked up at Mal’ik, and he looked like the confident and competent emissary Mal’ik was used to.
“What’s happened, Captain Mal’ik?”
“The Klah’Eel are going back to war with Southern Tava.” Once Mal’ik said the words out loud, something settled in his chest.
“You mean the Klah’Eel are putting down a terrorist group,” Lar’a said.
Serihk shot her a look. “It’s war by any other name.”
“It’s worse than a war,” Bryant said. “At least wars have rules.”
Mal’ik ignored them and kept speaking to Serihk. “I’m being put in charge of the ground force.”
“It makes sense.” Serihk nodded. “You have much experience with the region, saboteurs, city fighting, and leadership. You’re the obvious choice.”
Mal’ik dropped his gaze to the floor with a frown. “Yes.” He was the obvious choice, and what did that say about him? That he was the obvious choice when someone needed to raze a Southern Tava village. “I can’t do it.” That certainty that had started to settle settled deeper. “I can’t put the people through that.”
Lar’a scoffed from her position against the couch. “So you’d rather let them live under the constant shadow of the Resistance’s violence?”
“Are the people traitors and soldiers of the Resistance, or are they victims of the Resistance, Lar’a?” Bryant snapped. “You can’t have it both ways.”
Serihk shook his head and waved them at them to be quiet. “Regardless, a heavy-handed offensive by the Klah’Eel isn’t going to solve any of their problems. Violence will beget more violence. We need a peaceful, diplomatic solution to this problem.”
“Are you going to get us that?” Mal’ik asked.
Serihk made a pained face. “I can hardly do it myself. Klah’Eel officials are hawks even during peaceful times. It will take more than me to get them to hold off. I need to get back to the Qeshian senate, find some allies, pull together an interspecies comm—”
“And in the meantime, Mal’ik is ransacking villages and killing civilians.” Bryant leaned back and crossed his arms. Red started seething up Serihk’s neck, and Bryant held up a hand before he could say anything. “I’m not saying I don’t believe in your plan, Serihk. A diplomatic solution is exactly what we need in the long term. I’m just saying it doesn’t solve Mal’ik’s problem right now.”
Lar’a straightened suddenly. “You could be Bryant’s bodyguard. We haven’t hired anyone yet.”
“And after what just happened, no one could blame me for demanding the best.” Serihk nodded. “I could talk to some people, pull some strings. There’s bound to be pushback against me demanding the proposed head of ground forces for my personal security detail, but I could get it done.”
Bryant looked at Mal’ik. “I bet I’d be a way easier charge than Turner. And you’d only have to kill people that needed killing.”
The offer was tempting.
The thought of turning his back on his thorny problem and melting into the fold of Lar’a, Serihk, and Bryant made his limbs go loose with relief. He’d have a clear purpose and a meaningful one. Serihk and Bryant did good work; protecting them would be a noble cause.
Shaking his head slowly felt like jumping out of an air transport without checking if his parachute was working.
“I can’t do that either. I can’t hide away under your wing while this happens.” He shook his head more firmly and turned toward the door, catching a glimpse of Lar’a’s confused frown as he did so. “Try to stop it soon. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Captain Mal’ik, what—”
