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“Fashionably late.” Sebastian shrugged a shoulder and then wrapped Colin in a hug that was made awkward by Tesh’s size. The insinuation that he was never around for the real work of the Resistance would have rankled coming from anyone else, but he knew Colin didn’t mean it.
Colin stepped back. “Looking for Maxwell?”
“Yes. Please tell me I’m close. I don’t feel like wandering around as a klah’eel among a bunch of men who have just been killing klah’eel for any longer than I have to.”
Colin nodded sympathetically. “If it helps, we didn’t have to kill that many.”
“It doesn’t.” Sebastian put his hand on his hip and sighed. “That just means there are a few men who want their turn at it.”
“Dramatic.” Colin rolled his eyes. “Maxwell’s just at the end of this hall.”
“Thank god.”
“Drinks later?”
“Many of them.” Sebastian nodded heavily and then dragged himself down the hall. He really did wish he could have many drinks later. A long night of cold drinks and loud, rowdy crowds and regaling Colin with the stories of his adventure.
But he’d seen what was on that data stick Oliver Turner had hidden in his ridiculous pendant. He didn’t think rest was in his cards any time soon.
Sebastian got to the large room at the end of the hall and peered in. What appeared to have once been a very large lecture hall or auditorium had been converted into a makeshift medical wing. Tables, stretchers, some gurneys, and any other available flat, man-sized surfaces had been lined up in an orderly way throughout the room. To the right was a wall of hanging fabric to make private compartments.
Most of the beds were occupied by sleeping men and women bandaged or splinted, and one man with his foot suspended in a sling from a cumbersome lamp post scrolled through his data tablet. Overall, a full-to-bursting clinic, but still a reasonable amount of carnage for having taken Ralscoln’s seat of government.
“Maxwell?” Sebastian rapped his knuckles on the doorframe.
“Just a moment!” A sweet tenor voice with the soft drawl of a rural Tava accent came from one of the compartments at the end of the room. After a few beats, a short, slight, human man with rectangular glasses and blood splashed all over his front appeared from behind some old curtains. His face lit up. “Sebastian!”
“Maxwell.” Sebastian smiled and something loosened in his chest. He strode quickly toward him. “Got a body for me? A human one?”
“I’ve got better than a body.” Maxwell turned and waved over his shoulder. “Follow me.”
He opened a discreet door Sebastian had noticed but not paid any attention to, and they left the auditorium for a cluster of smaller rooms that must have been used for speaker preparation. Sebastian sighed and leaned back against the door as soon as it closed.
It felt overwhelmingly good to be alone with a friend.
Maxwell looked at him with a sad little smile. “Tough job?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Probably easier than what everyone had to do here.”
“Who could say.” Maxwell’s mouth twisted. “I am sorry. I—”
“Stop.” Sebastian cut him off as he did every time. “You’re needed in this role, not mine.”
Maxwell’s mouth twisted again as he obviously wrestled with his guilt, but this time, at least, he didn’t make them re-hash their usual exchange. Maxwell, like Sebastian, was a torvar. But he, like every other torvar Sebastian had ever met, kept it a secret. He stayed in the body he had lived in his whole life. He was, for all intents and purposes, the human doctor Maxwell Terry, the sweetest man anyone had ever met in their life.
And Sebastian was a body-hopping parasitic worm.
But a damn useful one.
Maxwell sighed. “Well, let’s at least get you into something more comfortable.”
“Oh, Maxwell!” Sebastian flattened a hand against his chest. “I didn’t know you were interested in me like that.”
Maxwell huffed a laugh and rolled his eyes, and Sebastian smirked and straightened up from the door and followed him. Maxwell led him to another room where a man was lying on a table with a respirator strapped around his head and an IV dripping into his arm. Sebastian stopped at the sight of the familiar, long, lean limbs and the striking dark hair against pale skin.
“That’s mine.”
“It is.” Maxwell looked very pleased with his little surprise. “Hess ordered it taken with us. He said you’d need it when you met us here.”
