Free Alarm of War, Book II: The Other Side of Fear by Kennedy Hudner Page A

seriously.  “She fought the Dominion after they invaded Victoria and made it possible for Queen Anne to safely reach Refuge.”
    Nouar looked at her with new interest, but before she could say anything further, Rafael brought his horse to a stop.  “We’re here,” he said.  “Let’s put the horses away and get something to drink.”
     
    Rafael’s six parents were mostly in their fifties, with the youngest, Hakima, in her mid-forties. His birth mother, Leila, was a petite, small-boned woman with a light complexion and tawny colored hair running to grey that fell past her shoulders.  She looked nothing like her tall, broad-shouldered, swarthy son and Emily amused herself for a few moments trying to guess which of the three men at the table was Rafael’s birth father, before conceding it could have been any of them.
    There were ten children at the house, the youngest being Nouar and the oldest Fatum, who was married and had two children of her own.  She was a year or so older than Rafael – and Emily, too, for that matter – and she studied Emily with frank curiosity, her eyes shifting from Emily to Rafael and back again.  Dinner was served at two long tables that stood in the center of a large dining room.  The tables were made from wide planks of the local wood; there were benches for the children and chairs for the adults.  There was hot food and tea, thick loaves of a dark bead that tasted of molasses and a dark red local wine that at first Emily found too bitter and sour, but by the end of the second glass thought wonderful.  And Gods help me if I have a third glass, she thought, I’ll just fall asleep here at the table.
    The three fathers – Amin, Danny and Yael – were mostly quiet, but the mothers fussed over Emily as if she were a long lost daughter.  At the other table, the younger children mostly talked among themselves, occasionally glancing at Rafael and laughing over something.  Conversation ranged from the early signs of winter, hunting, recent grogin sightings – a large pack was in the area and the villagers went beyond the electric fence only if armed – to the war with the Dominion.
    “What bothers me is the rumor you heard that the Tilleke were involved with the Dominion,” Yael told Emily, his spectacles flashing in the light.  “Bad enough to be caught unawares by the Dominion, but the Tilleke are truly a nasty lot, too clever by half and Emperor Chalabi has to be the most ruthless man in Human Space.”
    “And Godless,” murmured Leila and the others nodded in agreement.
    “How do you manage to stay so well informed here in Ouididi?” Emily asked with genuine curiosity. 
    “Oh, we have radio and television just like the cities,” Yael assured her.  “You couldn’t have seen it when you arrived, but we have a large antenna half a mile along the ridgeline, so we have good broadband reception and follow things pretty closely on the Nets.”
    “Khali Yael is being modest,” Rafael said, across the table from her.  “He spends six months of the year in Haifa; he’s a professor of political science at the University, so we are a better informed family than most in Ouididi.”
    One of the other fathers, Danny, chimed in.  “Yael is also our token liberal, though how we ever let a liberal into the family still escapes me.”
    “I thought it was my overwhelming sex appeal,” Yael deadpanned, and then tried to look hurt when all of the other adults hooted with laughter.  He glanced at Emily and winked.
    “We needed to balance off having a blood thirsty Fleet Marine and a backwoodsman in the house,” Hakima suggested dryly.
    Danny laughed.  “He does do that, he does.”  He turned to Emily.  “All honor to you for escaping the Dominion the way you did.  ‘Tis rare to escape a trap like that.”  He laughed and slapped the table.  “Oh, and I’d loved to have seen the looks on their faces when they realized you’d taken the space station Atlas with