He swiped the tears from his eyes. “It took me decades to wrestle away the rights to Nexus. It is rich. I had offered a third of the profits we’ll reap to the Clans Assembly. A royal sum. In return, they let me settle the exiled ones on Nexus. They let me forge them into their own clan. They will receive dispensation to raise their shrines.”

His eyes shone. “Their children won’t have to wonder if they are just specks of dust in the nothingness. They will be connected. They will light their candles and speak to those who passed on. That’s why the exiled ones volunteered to come to Nexus, knowing they could never leave and that for the rest of the Galaxy, where time moves slower, they will be dead long before anyone else they know. They left what little they had behind and trusted me to bring them there. They cannot leave now, because they have no place to go.”

He had brought thousands of his people to Nexus and now they were stranded.

“I must have peace to turn a profit. And now the peace treaty is dead and the least I can do is keep them safe for as long as I can. You cannot have Sean. Ask me anything but that.”

He would never let Sean go. Sean would return to Nexus and die there. I had to save him. I had to do something. Anything.

“What if there is peace?”

“There won’t be. The otrokari are ready to leave and the Anocracy is torn by their feud.”

My mouth had gone dry. I licked my lips. “Here is my bargain: you owe me. If I get the peace treaty signed, you will let Sean go.”

Nuan Cee shook his head.

“You’re wrong,” Grandmother said, her voice quiet.

I nearly jumped, I’d never heard her say a word and almost forgot she was there. Nuan Cee turned, startled.

“We have caused her an injury,” Grandmother said. “We owe her a debt. We owe her parents a debt after everything they have done for us.”

Nuan Cee bowed his head. “As you wish. If the peace treaty is signed and upheld, I will release Sean Evans from my service. That will wipe the slate clean between us. You have my promise.”

That was the best I could get. I had to find a way to bring them together and convince them to end this insane war. Desperation wrapped around me like a noose. How in the world would I do that? I didn’t even know where to start. I was numb and terrified at the same time. I had to move, go, do something, but all I could do was sit. Everything else seemed too hard.

We sat in the quiet gloom watching the procession of foxes at the shrine.

“There is only one thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did you take the emerald?”

Nuan Cee sighed again. “Because I was young once and foolish, so I did what my father had done to me to save me from myself. It is a thing within the clans that adults know and children learn when they become adults. The young are so rash, so desperate to make their own money and leave their mark on the Galaxy. Couki is very bright and that keen intelligence will get him into trouble. He will inherit a sum of money when he comes of age. He will use it hoping to prove that he has what it takes to be a Merchant. The bazaars of the Universe are full of greedy sharks and he is smart, but too inexperienced to swim with the worst of them. The brighter they are, the faster they lose the money. Left on his own, he will become bankrupt within months. It will take him another five cycles or so after he reaches the age of maturity to pay back the emerald and the interest. Time enough for him to learn and mature and for the clan to absorb his small mistakes and keep him from making big ones.”

“Nuan Cee was a very bright child,” Grandmother said with a smile. “He almost bankrupted the entire clan twice before his twentieth birthday.”

They trapped their young adults, forcing them to remain with the family. “Do you do this to every smart child?” I asked.

“Yes,” Nuan Cee said.

I rose. I had a couple of things I needed to verify.

Chapter 15

The full enormity of my task mugged me right outside the Merchants door. I made it midway down the curving staircase and sat down right there on the stone steps. How the hell was I going to fix this?

I wished desperately that my parents were here with all of the intensity of a terrified five year old in trouble. I wanted advice. I needed reassurance. What do I do, Mom? Dad? How do I handle this? They all want peace but can’t bring themselves to actually agree to it, and now Sean would die on some hellish planet fighting a war he never wanted to win. He’d signed his life away to save me. Looking into his eyes was like watching ashes rise from a funeral pyre. The vampires hid in their rooms, the otrokari were getting ready to leave, and the Merchants tried to poison me.

How do I fix this mess…

A pressure built in my chest, a dense insistent ache. A tear wet my cheek, made of distilled stress. I fought it back, but the pressure ground on me from the inside. I was ready to burst. Either I cried now or I forced it down, which meant I would have to cry later, probably at exactly the wrong moment.

I was alone. Nobody would hear.

I took a deep shuddering breath and let it go. The damn inside me broke. All of my stress and pain came out with the flood of tears. I cried and cried. I cried because I didn’t know what to do, because I almost died, because Sean sacrificed himself for me, and because I wanted my parents to hug me.

Gradually my sobs began to die down. I felt tired, but light. My head was clear.

A thin tendril slid out of the wall and brushed my cheek. I looked at it. A tiny white bud formed on the tip of the thin branch and opened into a little star of a flower with tiny turquoise stamens in the middle. A faint honey-sweet aroma drifted up.