Price of Ransom by Kate Elliott Page B

Lily heard only the tone, not their words, because a sudden flood of memory, of the last moments before they had gone through the window, choked her. Vanov had killed her.
    Pinto stopped talking. They all stopped talking, seeing her face.
    Yehoshua stood up. “Do you need to sit down?”
    She let him guide her to the chair and sit her down. “He killed me,” she said, dazed by the discovery. “He fired the pistol. I should have been dead.”
    “Who killed you?” Pinto asked.
    “Vanov,” said Yehoshua slowly, trying himself to recall the sequence of events. “I knew he had the gun against your head.”
    “Ah.” The flow of the exclamation gave it a sagacious flavor. “You have overlooked the obvious conclusion,” the Mule continued, having gained their attention. “Hawk also thought you were dead. It would explain the—severity of his reaction. He is not particularly stable, and his attachment to you is deeper than most. And he is not in any case fully human.”
    Pinto just blinked, looking confused. Lily did not reply.
    “What do you mean?” Yehoshua demanded. “He’s not ‘fully human.’”
    The Mule smiled, a peculiarly out-of-place expression on his half-sta face. “Like recognizes like,” he replied. “I knew the moment I met Hawk that he is, as I am, a half-breed.” He turned his gaze from Yehoshua’s disbelieving face to Lily’s quiet one. “But to more than that, I cannot answer.”
    Lily sat, remembering the bridge of La Belle Dame’s Sans Merci , where the aliens—what had La Belle called them? Where the je’jiri had run their prey to ground.
    The other three waited. Eventually it became clear to her that they expected an explanation. And even, perhaps, in the face of the circumstances, that they deserved one.
    “I just found out myself,” she began softly. “After Blessings. His father is human. His mother is one of an alien species called je’jiri. They’re hunters. I saw them—” She halted, unwilling to share the memory of what had happened on La Belle’s bridge. “I saw them,” she repeated, ending the sentence there. “They’re not like us.”
    “Enough like us,” said Yehoshua, “that mating could produce a child.”
    “I don’t know how that works, or how usual it is in League space to find half-breeds. But not very usual, I don’t think. The je’jiri don’t approve of it.” The comment seemed even to her ears ridiculous, a gross understatement of the bloody aftermath of their hunt. The man who had been killed on the Sans Merci had not looked so different from Comrade Vanov and his compatriots.
    “Is that why Hawk is so unstable?” Yehoshua asked, continuing to press the issue.
    Lily looked directly at him. “Yes. That’s why. His—attachment to me isn’t”—she hesitated—“It isn’t a human attachment. That’s why I can’t abandon him.”
    “So you expect us to continue serving on this ship with him running loose?” Yehoshua’s voice was rough. “After what we’ve seen he can do?”
    “It’s true,” said Pinto, finding his voice. “I’m not sure he shouldn’t be locked up. It almost gives me sympathy for Finch.”
    The Mule hissed slightly, laughing.
    Lily stood up. “All right. I agree to keep him quarantined in my cabin until we get to League space, where I’ll hope we can find a doctor, someone who knows more about this than we do. The lock is manually coded to my imprint alone in any case. Whatever else he can do, I don’t think he can walk through walls.” She walked across the room to the door that led into the inner chamber.
    “You’re not going in there?” Yehoshua asked, amazed and horrified at once. “ Alone ?”
    “He won’t hurt me. It’s the one thing I am sure of.” She paused before touching the panel that would shunt the door aside. “Yehoshua. Escort Lia up here. I’m going to want to talk to her after I’ve checked on Hawk.”
    “Do you wish company?” the Mule asked unexpectedly.
    She considered