Matriarch Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ade—well, Ade had seen terrible things in combat and coped with it, but his violent father had left him struggling when it came to hurting women. Lindsay had been his commanding officer. It must have been hard to watch the bezeri take her, even if she’d helped Rayat detonate the bombs.
    Shan took the container out of Aras’s hand and tipped the seeds into her palm.
    â€œOkay,” she said, patience expired. “What the fuck really happened?”
    Aras and Ade both flinched at the same time.
    â€œWe delivered them—” said Ade.
    Aras interrupted. “This is my responsibility, not Ade’s. The bezeri were always my responsibility.”
    It was another of his wess’har non sequiturs. They had their own logic, switching topics instantly. Shan wondered if he was establishing a pecking order as senior male in the household and putting Ade in his place.
    â€œLook, I’m sorry if it was traumatic. I just want to know so that I’m not treading on eggs the whole time.” She patted his arm and felt him lock his muscles in that alarm reflex. “I’ll find out anyway, won’t I? All your other bad memories surface in me sooner or later.” She glanced at Ade. “And so will yours.”
    Sooner or later. Yeah, I have to do something about that. Ade’s your old man too, remember that.
    She could lean on Ade, she knew it. She could scratch away at his guilt about shooting her, about abandoning his mother, about the bezeri, about his dead comrades, about always feeling that he let people down; but she was determined not to fall prey to expedience, because none of it was true. She couldn’t do it to him.
    â€œThey’re not dead,” he said suddenly.
    Oh God. A switch threw somewhere and she defaulted to Superintendent Frankland, the unshockable copper, the persona that could cope with this. “But you handed them over. Didn’t you?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, between the anti-human pathogen that’s been spread around Bezer’ej, and the bloody ocean, I’m having trouble with the not dead bit.”
    Oh God. Tell me you didn’t chicken out.
    Ade held up a warning finger as Aras opened his mouth to interrupt. “The bezeri wanted someone to help them rebuild so we—I gave them Neville and Rayat.”
    â€œI’m missing something here.” No, you’re not. You just don’t want to think that they did something so bloody stupid. “How?”
    â€œIt was my idea,” said Ade.
    You might be wrong. Calm down. “What was?”
    â€œInfecting them with c’naatat. ”
    Shan was inured to shock after a lifetime in the police force, but disappointment in the few people she trusted still had the power to make her stomach churn. Her skin felt as if it was tightening and freezing across her body from her scalp to her hands.
    Oh shit. No, no, no.
    Ade was silent, eyes wide, teetering on that edge of admission that she’d seen far too often in interrogations.
    â€œYou deliberately gave them a dose?”
    â€œYes. I did.”
    â€œYou gave Rayat the fucking thing?”
    She tried to take it in. She’d sacrificed everything to keep it away from the likes of that bastard. She’d committed suicide—or she’d stepped out the airlock, anyway. C’naatat had had other ideas. That should have given Ade a clue about how she’d react if they just handed the frigging thing over—
    â€œYes,” said Ade. “Both of them, Boss. I’m sorry.”
    â€œ Sorry? I fucking spaced myself rather let Rayat get a chunk of me. He’s a spook, for Chrissakes. Have you any idea what a bastard like that can do with this stuff?”
    â€œBoss, I—”
    Her pulse pounded in her ears. “ Have you?”
    â€œThe bezeri wanted someone down there with them. He isn’t going anywhere. Neither is she.”
    Steady. Think, think, think. “Who else knows