“What is the purpose of your darkness?” he asks.

She eyes him. “It makes me pretty.”

“You are painted for beauty?”

Hit grins, flashing white teeth. “I like to think so.”

“Me, too,” Hon puts in.

Zeeka looks as though he cannot decide whether they’re telling him the truth. “The others are ugly?”

I suspect to Zeeka, much like Vel, we’re all ugly. Suppressing a grin, I wait to see how Hit will handle this question. Dina’s tapping a foot, one brow raised.

“Beauty comes in many shades,” Loras offers. “And it is made dearer by attachment between sentient beings.”

“Love makes the ugly beautiful?” Poor Zeeka is really confused now.

“It does,” Vel says. And he’s looking at me when he says it.

Maybe he’s thinking of Adele. I remember in the story he told me that day before we visited her, he mentioned that he didn’t find her attractive at first—that none of her features appealed to him. But he came to see past it in time because she had so many other lovely qualities. There’s such sweetness in that.

This is typical of how we spend an afternoon while Loras completes his treatments. He’s receiving a series of injections, one a day for seven days. This incremental approach permits his adaptive physiology to process the chemical neurological change at a safe rate. At the end of that time, he’ll either be cured, or insane with bloodlust. His people, before humanity rendered them docile, had more than their share of aggression. They were insanely fierce and completely xenophobic, so it’s not a stretch to imagine the manner in which this could turn bad. Since he told Carvati he’d rather die this way than in servitude, I figure it’s a good risk.

Still, I can’t help fear for my friend. I’ve only just got him back in my life. I’m not ready to lose him again so soon.

This is the seventh day, and we’re killing time before his last treatment. Vel reprogrammed the servo-bots at Mikhail’s to offer selections more savory for him and Zeeka. While we can eat some of the same things, our palates are a bit different.

“It’s time,” Hit says.

As one, we rise and head for the hover cab. I love flying in Gehenna because there’s relatively little traffic. It takes three tries to find a vehicle large enough for all of us, but we squeeze in, and the bot asks us our destination.

“Carvati’s clinic.”

“Thank you. Enjoy the ride.”

Shortly, the hover cab deposits us on the platform outside. Loras leads the way, coldly determined to find out whether he’ll die a monster or become a free man. The receptionist waves us back to Carvati’s private lab. As always, he evokes echoes of Doc, but I push down the sorrow. It’s not the time.

“Loras?” In that one word, Carvati asks if he’s ready to proceed.

He responds with a slow nod. The doctor turns to the rest of us. “If you could wait in the next room?”

This is standard. The lot of us exit into an open space that appears to be used for training. I can’t imagine what Carvati does in here, but it’s part of his lab complex. Maybe it’s to test certain cybernetic upgrades, as he does a wide range of procedures.

“Nervous?” I ask Hon. If this works, he’s losing his status as shinai.

“This is what he wants.” Deep down, he’s not as mean as his reputation suggests—and maybe that’s the secret. If gossip does most of the heavy lifting, he doesn’t actually have to rape and maim his way through the galaxy.

We wait an hour before Carvati and Loras join us. He doesn’t look any different, so that’s a good sign. If he’d been overwhelmed by bloodlust, he would be snarling and trying to kill us all. Instead, he looks much as he ever does, blue-eyed and fair-haired, with a beautiful face, faintly etched with lines earned by hard experience.

“I need a volunteer,” Carvati says.

“Hon.” Loras doesn’t wait to see who will speak.

The pirate steps forward. “Aye?”

Loras smiles. “Hit me.”

He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t hit him like a man, either. Instead, it’s an open-faced slap, which feels like an insult. Loras responds immediately, his grin widening; he unloads a flurry of punches on the bigger man’s upper body. Hon tries to block, and though he’s bigger, he’s nowhere near fast enough. Loras has been saving this rage for turns, and there’s no denying it. He kicks the living shit out of Hon before Carvati grabs him. The pirate staggers back, bracing on the wall, with genuine surprise. This is why we pacified the La’hengrin, but we didn’t have that right.

“How do you feel?” Carvati asks.

Loras bends over, breathing hard. “Free, like something unlocked in my head. Before, no matter how furious I was, I couldn’t do that. It felt like I had strings attached. But they’ve been cut, and I’m a puppet no longer.”

I cheer and give him a big hug. He shoves me back . . . mostly because he can, I suspect. “I didn’t say you could touch me.”

“Sorry.” But I’m smiling, and so is he. “So what do you think? Should we carry Carvati’s Cure to La’heng and free your people?”

Loras nods. “Absolutely. Today, this is my independence day. And I dream that eventually, all La’hengrin will know this joy. If you help me achieve this, you will be the best friend I’ve ever known.”

I feel like that’s expiation, and a goal worth striving for, because he doesn’t offer friendship lightly. I once left him to die, and if he can forgive me that, then maybe I’m not beyond all saving. Mary, please, let me succeed in this. I’m not selfless enough to want to do it for the sake of all the enslaved La’heng. I want to do this for Loras to prove I’m not a selfish ass. And there’s some self-serving agenda tangled up in it, but doesn’t it matter more what you do rather than why?

“I’ll go get the ship ready,” Dina says. “I guess we’ll be leaving soon.”

Hit nods in agreement. They take Argus and Zeeka when they go; both males are eager to get into grimspace, Argus because he’s a junkie, and Zeeka because he aspires to Argus’s status as a veteran jumper. I find it adorable the way Zeeka dogs Argus, trying to imitate him. Which leaves Hon regarding Loras with one hand pressed to his injured side. I’d bet he has broken ribs, based on his ginger movements.

“This is good-bye, I think. No hard feelin’s?”

“If I see you again,” Loras says, smiling, “I’ll probably kill you. You treated me like a pet, one you expected to forage for its own food.”

Hon shrugs. “It made you stronger, didn’t it?”

Loras doesn’t answer, letting the man go. His ship waits for him, along with the rest of his crew, at least the ones who survived Venice Minor. He’s still running under Armada colors, and he has a galaxy to patrol. To my vast amusement, they promoted him when March stepped down, and now he carries the title of commander, along with all the privileges of rank.

Vel, Loras, and I walk out of the training room together. Loras holds himself differently, his shoulders straighter. I see a glimmer of the fierce warriors that my people could not conquer, and so chose to defeat in a bloodless coup. The knowledge makes me sick. But I’m trying to right the wrong even if I had nothing to do with it personally. That’s kind of the point—to fix something I didn’t break. I don’t kid myself it will change any of the harm I’ve inflicted, but it will comfort the soul Adele taught me to believe in, the quiet, smoky thing that lives at the heart of me and occasionally whispers at me that I can do better.

Carvati catches my arm. “If you have a moment, Ms. Jax, I’d like to speak with you.”

I tell the other two, “Head back to Mikhail’s. I’ll catch up with you.”

Vel agrees with a nod, then departs with Loras. I follow Carvati back to his lab, wondering what he wants. Maybe more credits? Mary knows he’s earned them. I won’t argue if he asks for the project-completion bonus. Even though I’m running low on Ramona’s bequest from the wave of wrongful-death payments, I still have the promise of half the credits from Vel’s auction of the Maker artifacts. The bids are flying fast and furious; a real war’s broken out.

“From your records, I understand you have a great deal of experimental tech implanted. How long has it been since you’ve had a checkup?”

Five turns, at least. In this world, anyway. In the Maker’verse, it only felt like weeks. Maybe months. Hard to say how gate travel will affect my implants down the line. At this point, however, almost everything about my future remains unknown. I’m not human; I’m . . . other. For the first time, I get how Jael must have felt—and I can almost see how he ended up a merc, willing to do anything for a credit, because there was nobody else like him in the universe, no one who understood.

“Not since before Doc died.” The words hurt my throat.

“I’d like to run some tests before you leave Gehenna, if you don’t mind. I’m concerned about your well-being.”

“How long will it take?” I don’t figure he’ll have good news for me. Doctors never do. So I’m understandably reluctant.

“Half an hour.”

That’s not long enough for me to make the excuse of being pressed for time. I sigh and hop onto the table. “Go for it.”

He scans me, pokes me with needles, and examines his findings with a curious expression; I don’t know how to interpret it. Finally, I can’t stand the suspense.

“Well?”

Carvati glances up, as if surprised that I can talk. “Some very interesting results, here. Apparently, thanks to your nanites, you’re no longer aging as normal people do.”

Shit. I’m like Vel now, doomed to watch the people I love die. That hits me like a ton of bricks. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means this is proprietary, unknown technology, and with its creator dead, there is no telling what your life span may be. Regular aging will kick in if the nanites ever go inert, but they appear to be self-maintaining and show no signs of breakdown five turns after their implantation.”

This isn’t news I wanted. Maybe other people would be thrilled to learn this, but not me. I’m shaking my head. “Can you take them out? I know there was some way to turn them off.”

“I can only surmise there was a signal device, but it was doubtless destroyed on Venice Minor.”

“Is the rest of my tech playing nice?” I ask, quietly despondent.

“The nanites have repaired any deterioration, so yes. But I thought you would be happy to learn this . . . It’s better than Rejuvenex. In time, they may even repair the burn scars.”

Not my scars. Frag. I feel like punching something. I don’t want to be this less-than-human thing anymore. I miss the woman I was.

There’s no point in trying to articulate my point of view. “It’s complicated. Thanks for all your help, Dr. Carvati.”

“Feel free to look me up again if you ever have a lot of credits to spend and some impossible project to complete.”

At that, I smile ruefully. “Mary, but you remind me of Doc sometimes.”

He etches a salute. “I’ve started a foundation in his name, you know. Researching a cure for Jenner’s Retrovirus. If we ever beat it, I’m calling it Solaith’s Solution.”

Right now I want to hug him, as that was Doc’s favorite impossible disease; it’s so tough because it adapts to all treatments. It’s the smartest virus modern science has ever encountered. Mentally, I flash back to all the times I asked him to tackle some tough problem, and he would say with such asperity, Shall I cure Jenner’s Retrovirus while I’m at it, Jax?

What the hell. I do hug Carvati. “Thank you again. I’ll send a sizable donation if you give me the account particulars.”

In answer, he beams the details to my handheld, then I’m off.