Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

of burned sulfur. From his link with the dhuryam through the slave seed in his chest, Jacen could faintly perceive his robeskin’s primitive delight at the blood’s unusual flavor.

As weeks passed, Jacen and the dhuryam had learned to communicate more precisely, through the medium of the slave seed. Perhaps it was because the dhuryam, like its cousin the yammosk, was innately telepathic to a limited degree even with humans; perhaps it was because Jacen had long, long experience with empathic and telepathic communication. Perhaps it was because the slave seed’s web of tendrils had become so intimately entwined with Jacen’s nervous system that it was practically a part of his brain. Jacen did not trouble himself with explanations.

Only results counted.

He could now exchange information with the dhuryam, in the form of emotions and images. By using these in combination, they had developed a wide-ranging mutual vocabulary, but their connection had gone beyond this. As his bond with the dhuryam had deepened, Jacen had found he could tap into the dhuryam’s own senses: with concentration, he could become as aware of the various life-forms within the Nursery as was the dhuryam itself.

To reach the dying Devaronian, he’d had to fight his way through the mob of shouting, weeping, struggling slaves. Hundreds of them had gathered near the hivelake, all hoping that Jacen might treat their wounds or illnesses. Many of the slaves had been driven here by other dhuryams, lashed by slave seed-web agony burning their nerves; though the other dhuryams had tried to develop medics of their own, they could neither find nor create other healers of Jacen’s skill. His empathic bond with the slave seed let him use the dhuryams’ own telepathic connections to feel the extent of wounds and diseases and internal injuries, and to treat them with an efficiency that would have astonished a trained meditech.

At first, his own dhuryam had tried to stop Jacen from treating slaves who belonged to its sibling-rivals; for nearly a day, Jacen and the dhuryam had gone back to their war of unendurable pain against unbreakable will. Through it all, Jacen had kept hearing Vergere’s voice echo inside his head.

Which are flowers? Which are weeds? she had said. The choice is yours.

He had chosen.

No agony at any dhuryam’s command could unmake his choice.

There are no weeds here.

Every slave was a flower. Every life was precious. He would spend the last erg of his strength to save every one of them.

There are no weeds here.

He had built an aid station near the bank of the lake that surrounded the dhuryam hive-island. Since the domains radiated from the lake like sections of longitude, here was the place where slaves from rival domains could reach him while passing through the least amount of enemy territory. His own dhuryam had cooperated to the point of giving Jacen the occasional help of a few members of his slave gang, to gather medicinal mosses and herbs, supplies of clip beetles, and young robeskins that could be used for bandages.

The Devaronian had been one of these temporary assistants. Jacen had sent him upland for a bundle of grain-bearing grasses that grew on a nearby hillock; when ground fine, these grains made an excellent coagulant, and were mildly antibiotic. The Devaronian had given a nod of his vestigial horns, offered a smile full of needle-sharp teeth, and set off willingly, without requiring any spurring from the dhuryam.

Before he could return, the crowd of wounded had grown to a mob. Shoving matches broke out as the competing dhuryams set their injured slaves against those of other sibling-rivals; some of these shoving matches had turned starkly violent before Jacen could intervene. The Devaronian had been caught at the edge of one, and all that his hissing and sharp-toothed threat displays had accomplished was to get himself shoved off around the fringes of the mob. He couldn’t fight back without dropping the bundle of grasses Jacen had sent him for, and the two stunted horns that curved from his forehead were far from intimidating. He had tried to skirt the mob by slipping around the hive-pond’s shore, since the ring of Yuuzhan Vong warriors around it prevented the mob from extending in that direction.

It was this that had killed him.

Jacen didn’t know if the Devaronian had stumbled, or slipped on the scummy reeds that lay flat at the bank of the pond, or if someone in the crowd had knocked into him or even purposefully shoved him. All he knew was that the Devaronian had gotten too close to the ring of warriors.

He’d heard the harsh bark of a warrior’s order at the edge of the pond, and he’d looked up in time to see a flicker of amphistaff blade conjure a jet of shimmering black blood. He had pushed and shoved and fought his way through the mob to find the Devaronian lying on his back in a scatter of the grasses he had carried, one hand clutching at the stump of his other arm.

Jacen had done everything he could, which wasn’t much. Before he could tie off the stump, the Devaronian was in deep shock; death had followed only a minute or two later.

Jacen had had time to study the Devaronian’s face: the bleakly pale hide, the spray of needle teeth behind thick leathern lips, the small forehead horns curving in growth rings that Jacen could count with his fingertips. He’d had time to gaze into the Devaronian’s vivid red eyes, to read there a puzzled sadness at the useless, empty, arbitrary death that now swallowed him.

That’s when Jacen thought, Okay, maybe I was wrong.

There were weeds here, after all.

He lifted his head, and met the eyes of a weed.

The warrior who had killed the Devaronian returned his gaze impassively, black-smeared amphistaff at the ready.

Which are flowers? Which are weeds? It is not only your right to choose flowers over weeds, it is your responsibility.

Vergere’s words rang true. But Jacen doubted the truth he’d found in them was the truth