Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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"It's been twenty-eight fikken days, Whitlock," the icy urbane voice said, that night. "You said you'd do
it. Gave your word, renounced your hesitations. It's not a matter of my tried patience, Whitlock, not
anymore, though it's been tried to the bones. Any longer and it gets academic whether Shefen-kas dies,
as you and I both know. And I'll snuff your boy, though it makes no difference, just for failing me."
"I'll snuff your boy ifhe isn't dead or well on the way in another four days, and that'sit , final. You've
known damn well how long you could play games with me; and you must know now that the time for
games is over, Arko has nothing to lose, and Ihave to play my last card, though it be my last. No, don't
answer. I know you've heard me. Just getthe fik out of here anddo it, if you're any kind of mother."
I must do this, so she will not have died in vain.
The glow of manrauq was small, hardly more than a bright yellowish-green aureole around each claw, so
that she could see in the dimness of the tent.Careful . Megan touched the tiny brush to the tips of the
claws of her left hand.Dangerous . She hadn't done this for years, too much a risk that she might scratch
herself or someone she loved, but she'd brought it, just in case. A slow blood-poison, colorless,
untraceable, that killed in three days, acting like flux. The sort of thing her aunt would have enjoyed.No. I
am not Marie .
I must do this, so my akribhan will not have died in vain.
She took her unbound hair back out of her face, used to being careful with her hands. Outside
cook-fires were being doused and consolidated into night-fires. With unhurried, controlled motions she
screwed on the cap of the tiny jar. It looked like an ordinary bottle of nail-paint, but she always hid it in
the secret pocket in her leather case.
She'd tell him she wanted him, she wanted his help. In the bushes. "Like sleeping with a rabid
wolverine!" Shkai'ra's words, when they'd awakened, loud and vivid in her ear as yesterday—grief
stabbed without warning, like an assassin's knife, gushed suddenly like blood.No . She pushed it away
into a corner of her mind, before tears could come.Not yet . Ten bleeding pits in Shkai'ra's
muscle-smooth back… In a twitch of passion or fear, she would scratch him. Slightly. Men had used her;
she would use a man, to get back her son. In three days, four if he were strong…Lixand-mi .
I must do this so she will not have died in vain. She stood, pulled the mass of her hair to the nape of
her neck, and let it fall over her shoulder, as night fell.
Calm. He's better than good at reading people. As she searched from fire to fire, she forced it, blank,
wide, dulling like snow-blindness.
At the second A-niah fire, three men and a woman danced to the music of a bamboo flute, a Hyerne
dance linking arms across her shoulders. Brown limbs swung, black hair bounced slick. Flash of white,
on a gesturing hand: the signet. Those dark shining eyes, spark of gold between grinning lips. Here.
They shuffled a place for her, waves and smiles even from familiar hands and faces seeming distant as
trees across a bay. Five people away from him. She accepted the wine-flask as it came her way, took
one draught.
Take up the death of your enemies.
She caught his eye, and raised an eyebrow at him. He raised both his back at her, smiling, making the