What to say. I’d been trained as a diplomat, but this wasn’t exactly the negotiation table, and I felt I shouldn’t dissemble to the Ai-Naidari emperor. Actually, I got the feeling it wouldn’t matter because he’d know I was hiding something. And you know? I was damned tired of hiding things.

So I opted for candor. “I’m kneeling because Jaran is, Emperor.”

I saw Jaran’s shoulders twitch and wanted badly to know if I had upset him, or if he was too wounded from the journey and this was just one more damn thing that hurt because it showed us that we couldn’t live without one another.

The emperor seemed satisfied with that and returned to Jaran. “ij Qenain.”

“Master,” Jaran whispered.

“Sit up, my servant.”

Jaran sat up then, folding his hands on his lap. It gave me a good view of his profile, and my whole body tensed. I wanted to be next to him, protesting that what he’d done wasn’t a crime that warranted punishment… but somehow it was, to them. And I knew there was nothing I could do.

“You are still my servant?” Thirukedi asked him.

“Oh, master,” Jaran said, voice choked. “Yes. Always.”

“I have a duty for you,” the emperor said. “If you remain willing to serve.”

“Anything,” Jaran said, and the depth of his willingness to just… throw himself on someone else’s mercy made my blood cold. How could anyone promise anything to someone who was there to punish them?

Then again, what the hell was I doing here? The same thing. Throwing myself into the void, trusting that I’d sprout wings before I hit ground.

“There is a world that could use a new presence,” the emperor said. “It is to this world I would send you, if you are willing.”

“Of course,” Jaran said. “Say the word and I shall go.”

“What?” I said, before I even realized I was talking. “Wait, what world? Alone? Are you sending anyone with him?”

Jaran managed to glance at me, horrified, and it was to him I said, “That sounds like exile to me, damn it!”

“It is an exile, Administrator Clarke,” the emperor said, grave.

“Not if you send him alone, it isn’t,” I said. “It’s a death sentence! Forgive me, Emperor, but you people… you’re not exactly rugged explorers. You put one Ai-Naidari in a wilderness and the first wild animal or big storm will kill him.”

The emperor was studying me now with what I swore was a pensive look. “And what would you propose, Administrator Clarke?”

“Let us go with him,” I said, without thinking. Lenore drew in a sharp breath, but I kept on. “We’ll bring some people. Supplies. Enough to live longer than a few days…!”

“You would do this?” the emperor said. “Go with him into exile?”

I looked at Lenore then. “Ah…”

“There are some people who’re ready for it,” she said, God bless her. She’s been my right hand for so long I wouldn’t know what to do without her. “They’d jump at the chance to build something new, something really new, not just set up prefab buildings on a world that’s already got people on it. It’s what they signed up for, not to play at an alien United Nations.”

Jaran interrupted. “You… you would do that for me? Leave your own people?”

“Hell yes!” I said.

“We’d do anything for you,” Lenore said softly.

“We’d even enjoy it,” I said, trying to cheer him up a little, and it made him smile. “Bet you would too, a little. An adventure, right?”

“ Yes,” he said. And breathed in, and I saw the fire in his eyes that I’d found so impossible to resist. “Yes.”

“I too will send supplies,” the emperor said, after a pause long enough that I realized he wasn’t just tolerating our interruption of his audience, he was listening carefully to what we were saying. And giving us the space to talk. He was… well, nothing like any ruler I’d ever met, not at all full of his own importance. Maybe it was because he wasn’t the one investing the importance in himself, it was the people around him. That would be typical for Ai-Naidar. God, they bend your brain.

And I couldn’t get by without one in my life.

“When you will it, master,” Jaran said. “We will go.”

“Soon,” the emperor said. “You will be my guests until then.”

I thought that pretty kind of him, calling us his guests. Until I saw the look on Jaran’s face. Of course. If you belong, you’re not a guest of your own civilization. And Jaran would never belong again. Not really.

We’d done that to him. God help us.

That night, we held him, and he thanked us over and over for coming with him, and we told him over and over we wouldn’t abandon him, we never would.

We didn’t. But that’s another story.

  "Three Suitcases"

“You’re what?” Ruben asked, staring at him.

“Leaving,” Andrew replied, opening the drawers and starting to stack his shirts on the bed. “For good. With Lenore and Jaran.”

“With the alien?”

“With the alien.” How had he fit all his life in a suitcase the first time? Technically the second, he supposed, if he counted divorcing his wife, and he should. It felt like another lifetime ago, though. “The Ai-Naidari Emperor exiled him, and Lenore and I are going with him, because otherwise whatever world he ends up on is going to kill him. Ai-Naidar don’t do well alone.”

Ruben moved between him and the dresser. “Start from the beginning. And this time don’t leave anything out.”

“I didn’t leave anything out the first time.” He met the man’s eyes, a man who’d become a trusted subordinate… that he’d had to learn to trust in that role, the way the Ai-Naidar didn’t. They just took it for granted, that you would have good people beneath you, and above you, too. That you could start working from a position of strength, with the assumption that everyone around you was going to support you. What would it be like, to build a human society with assumptions like that? Was it even possible?

He was going to find out.

“Sit,” he said, pointing at the chair in the corner of the room. Once the other man had done so, he said, “You know I’m in love with him.”

“No,” Ruben said. “I don’t. I know you’ve been seeing him with Lenore. I know you like him. But that doesn’t mean anything.”