Free Price of Ransom by Kate Elliott

her body aggravated by her new stance. “I might have done the same thing, for you.”
    Lia began to cry. Silent, and with dignity, but tears coursed down her face, slipping off her jaw to wet the collar of her tunic. Jenny’s lack of reaction was more distressing to Lily than her previous anger.
    “You’d better go,” Lily said to Aliasing. “Yehoshua will escort you. You can collect your belongings, and then he’ll take you to the shuttle.”
    Lia seemed not to have heard her. “Don’t hate me, Jenny,” she said, soft.
    Jenny turned her face away. “I don’t hate you, Lia,” she replied, softer.
    Without looking at anyone else, Lia walked out of the room. Gregori backed away from her. Lia’s shoulders shook, as if that tiny, final rejection had finally broken her composure.
    Yehoshua, face painfully blank, led her away. The veil of her black hair was the last sight Lily had of her.
    “Jenny.” She said the name tentatively.
    “Not now.” Jenny’s voice was drawn tight with anguish. She stood, not moving, not speaking, for a long space of time. The angle of her head highlighted a fresh cut, running from the corner of one eye to the cheek beneath, one more legacy of Vanov’s short stay. Finally she turned and without a word went out into the corridor, took Gregori’s hand, and walked away.
    Rainbow appeared in the doorway, hesitating. She held a pistol in one hand, by the barrel.
    Lily motioned her in. “What’s that? I thought Yehoshua collected all their guns.”
    “We found ya one, Captain,” Rainbow explained, holding the pistol out. “It were in the back corner by ya life support console. Some person flung it so hard it dented ya console. Can’t have come there any other way, we reckoned by seeing where it lay.” She shrugged. “I thought you might wish to see it.”
    “No.” Lily took a step back, realizing with sudden revulsion that this dull, inert thing must be Vanov’s pistol, flung so far and so hard away from her in that infinity of time given Kyosti inside the window. “No,” she echoed. “Take it away.”
    With a brisk nod, Rainbow retreated. The door sighed shut behind her, leaving Lily alone in the captain’s suite.
    The silence was for the moment too oppressive. She returned to the other room to check on Kyosti. He did not respond to her entrance. He lay still on the bed, eyes open and dilated. His breathing seemed regular, but it was shallow. Frightened, she tried to find his pulse, but it was faint and slow. His skin seemed uncomfortably cool to her touch.
    She jumped up and slapped the com. Within minutes Hawk’s assistant Flower arrived. Her look of concern, incongruous against the wild cheerfulness of the tattoos decorating her face and hands, deepened as she examined him. At last she looked up at Lily.
    “I think he be gone catatonic, min Ransome. There be nothing I can do, but watch him and keep him in fluids.”
    “What have I done?” whispered Lily.
    “B’ain’t nothing you done, Captain,” Flower answered, puzzled. “It be ya shock, likely. It be up to him to come out when his mind can face up to what he done, back there. You just mun be ya patient.”
    “My best virtue,” muttered Lily, but Flower did not get the joke. And the only thing that came to Lily’s mind, staring at Kyosti’s inert form, was an old chorale that Bach sang on occasion.
    Ich bin’s, ich sollte büssen,
    An Händen und an Füssen
    Gebunden in der Höll’!
    Die Geisseln und die Banden,
    Und was due ausgestanden,
    Das hat verdienet meine Seel’.
    “It is I. I should atone,
    My hands and feet
    bound, in hell.
    The scourges, and the fetters,
    and all that Thou didst endure,
    that has my soul earned.”

5 Belly Down Day
    Y EHOSHUA FELT SOME SYMPATHY for Aliasing. He had met Alexander Jehane about five years back, and he still remembered vividly the impact of that meeting. Its main result had been to send his cousin Alsayid into a frenzy of revolutionary fervor. Born two years