CHAPTER TWENTY
Someone was holding Sebastian’s hand.
“Ren?”
He wasn’t sure if the word made it past his lips as more than an exhalation. But even as it did he realized that the hand in his was small and slender, with work-roughened calluses. Sebastian opened his eyes — it seemed like they were stuck shut — and saw Simi sitting next to the bed he was in. Her eyes widened, and he tried to say something, ask a question, but she was already turning away.
“He’s awake!” Her voice was loud enough to rattle in the inside of Sebastian’s skull. “Go get—”
Then there were several strangers poking at him and waving various beeping devices around until finally Lydia came in and shooed them all out of the small, dull-walled room.
“Everyone seems surprised I woke up. Was that… not expected to happen?” he managed to ask when the room was quiet again.
Much of his body from the chest down was cocooned in opaque coverings with tubes of various fluids going in and out. Sebastian thought he should be alarmed by all of that, but his sense of his body, along with his sense of alarm, felt hazily distant.
“No,” Lydia said firmly, but then grimaced. “Well, at least not since we got you back here. But you have been in an induced coma for the last thirty-six hours.”
“That explains why I feel so well-rested,” Sebastian said, though his eyelids were already drooping. He tried to focus. “What happened?”
“Don’t worry about that now, Sebastian. All you need to know is that everyone’s fine. The crew’s been taking shifts sitting with you. I’m going to go now and give them an update, so just sleep and focus on regrowing that liver and spleen.”
“Wait — what?”
She tapped something on the bed’s controls, and it became impossible to keep his eyes open.
“Where’s Ren?” he managed to mumble before sleep took him completely.
It wasn’t a touch or noise that woke him the next time, but a smell. Something delicious and savory was close by, and it was enough to get Sebastian’s mouth watering.
“Can I get some of that?”
Jaime, who was sitting near the bed and holding some kind of triangular-shaped pastry, looked up and brightened. “Sebastian! Lydia said you’d wake up again soon. How are you feeling?”
“Hungry.”
“Oh, yeah. Lydia also said you couldn’t have solid food yet. Sorry.”
“So you brought that in here just to torture me?”
“Pretty much,” Bo said cheerfully from a chair on the other side of the bed. He took a bite of his own delicious-looking meat pie thing. “It gets boring watching you sleep. Food’s good at least.”
The door to the room opened, and Mags and Rylan came in. Sebastian could also see, standing just outside the door, one of the palace guards, armed with a large rifle.
Mags saw his look and firmly shut the door behind her.
“We under arrest again?” Sebastian asked.
“No.” But there were glances being exchanged around the room by the four of them.
“What is it?”
“The guards are a precaution. It’s Ebba,” Mags said. “She escaped.”
“Oh, fuck me.”
“We can’t even blame Nisha this time,” Jaime said glumly. “She was being transferred to a medical facility outside the palace — there’s too much unsecured tech here — and took control of the shuttle. It’s pretty impressive considering she had a concussion.”
Mags perched on the edge of the bed, avoiding all of the tubes and wires that were still attached to Sebastian’s torso. “We’ve been helping the Arcadians track her, but it looks like she was able to meet up with a ship in orbit.”
“It was pirates,” Rylan said through a mouthful of food. There was a plate of the flaky little pies on a table in the corner, and Rylan had stuffed an entire one in his mouth. “The Arcadians don’t have the firepower to deal with ’em, so it’s a good thing the pirates took off pretty fast. But don’t worry, Captain, I’ve already contacted my brother. Jonathan will find her.”
“I don’t know,” Jaime said, “Ebba’s kind of next-level devious. Commonwealth agents might not be able to handle her.” He hesitated. “I’m just saying, we do know a bounty hunter.”
“That guy?” Rylan all but growled. “Seriously?”
“Xin’s whole job is finding criminals,” Jaime protested. “And, well, he has experience dealing with people like Ebba.”
“Experience? You mean because he slept with you?” Rylan folded his arms.
“It was the one time,” Jaime protested. “I was using him to escape.”
“I need more painkillers.” Sebastian sighed, turning away. He kept looking to the door, hoping maybe that Ren would come through it.
“He’s been in here,” Mags said, her blue eyes knowing. “For hours and hours while you’ve been asleep. He keeps getting called away. It seems he and Jaime broke that magic necklace and now the palace is in an uproar.”
“Hey,” Jaime said. He’d gotten up from his chair to lean against Rylan, their argument clearly over. “It’s not broken, the AI is just mostly shut down. By its own choice. And, yeah, I guess that means the planet does have to rethink its entire system of government.”
Sebastian felt exhausted again. “How long was I out?”
“Not as long as you’d think,” Bo said. “It’s been busy.”
“How about someone finds me something liquid I can pretend is food and then you fill me in?”
He managed to keep his eyes open for longer than he expected, even though the logic of Ren talking to his dead ancestor got incredibly confusing when another round of painkillers was pumped into his system. At some point, when the others were discussing the motivations of Ren’s grandfather — who had turned out to have been the inside man who’d set up the initial jewel heist — he drifted off.
The room he opened his eyes to was quiet and dim. His hand was being held again, and he smiled to feel a familiar weight, twining his fingers more tightly to join with that other hand.
At the movement, Ren lifted his head from the bed near Sebastian’s shoulder, blinking sleepily.
“There you are,” Sebastian said softly.
Ren’s mouth opened, but he didn’t speak. He reached with his other hand to touch Sebastian’s cheek and stroke his beard. Ren looked so tired that Sebastian wished he had let him sleep — his eyes were puffy and skin dull. But when he smiled it was like a sun breaking through the clouds, and he pressed Sebastian’s hand to his lips, tears slipping from his eyes.
“Shh,” Sebastian said, though Ren had still not spoken. He pulled Ren’s head down to his shoulder, shifting as much as he could so that they could both be comfortable. “It’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”