"No father, I have not."
Okay, I'll admit it, I've choked on a lot of things. Brocholii when I was little, a TV dinner when I was ten, brocholii again when I was fifteen closely followed by roast beef a couple months later (a very bad choking year for me), and on the night I turned 21 I inhaled some vodka which limited my breathing
and hurt like Dante's inferno.
I have never, I repeat, never, choked on my own tongue. Hearing Debbie proclaim the obnoxious man in a hat her father made me inhale so fast that the sudden rush of air pulled my tongue along for the ride, effectively blocking my airway. I lay there a little bit and coughed really hard. The harsh movements sent new flows of hurt through me, which quickly vanished under the painkilling spell of the lightsabre. All of this before I very eloquently said, "You're his! So...the concubine in the palace is your mom. But...he's not that much older than me, and I'm thirty and you're thirty...so how?" I blathered on uncontrollably for a few moments.
Debbie sighed, "We're magic touched. Mages. It's what makes us not human enough to wield the Wildflower. And our lifespans and appearence of youth are enhanced according to our power. I'm actually closer to 70. Andre's almost 200."
I noticed that she tended to call him Andre instead of proclaiming him her sperm doner. Why had she bothered to tell me now?
The answer came simply, to prevent a repeat of the incident on the helicopter. Oops.
Andre was looking at her as if annoyed. It was odd. They acted more like partners in crime then father and daughter. Yet again he fiddled with his hat, "The Wildflower has power. It can take his pain away but it won't stop the poison."
Debbie glanced at me, then back at Andre, "So it was a wraith spider?" After Andre nodded she swore something in another language that I was certain one would not utter in a friendly setting. "He needs a healer."
"I know, Debyone. But in case you haven't noticed a stroll into the King's palace will be very, very short. For us. He gets to be the King's little lapdog. We get a vertical drop to the spiritual plain!"
Debbie looked away, then back at me. "Andre, if he dies there will be nothing to stop the Emperor. He's just going to continue to advance, and rape and pillage and control. Did you see those people in prison outpost? What the Imperial Guard
did to them? It's going to be like that until someone has the power to stand up to him." She motioned to me, "Unfortunately this weak willed, simple minded, pasty skinned jerk is probably the only one who has the power."
I wasn't even going to reward that with a response...mostly because most of it was true. I had not had a tan in a very long time and I was admittedly weak willed. And based off my actions in the helecopter I was a bit of a jerk. But I was most certainly not simple minded.
Andre leaned against the tree as he contemplated what Debbie had said. "Fine. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to take the simpleton to the King's palace. You're going to flee to Marshwood before we run into Reza again. I have a friend there who can take the shackle off. After that just lay low in some backwater world until the heats off. That way your little hero here survives and there's someone to go on if this all blows up in our faces, think you can handle that?"
He spoke of it so cavalierly. You'd think he was organizing a family camping trip rather than offering up his life. The true weight of what he said showed only in the way Debbie responded to it. Her face twisted into a shape somewhere between sadness, amazement and anguish. They stayed like that, staring at each other for a long time.
"Hey, don't I have a say in this?" I called up.
"No!" They both snapped, breaking their eye contact. When Debbie's face turned to me I saw fresh streaks of wet down to her jawline.
Damnit.
I always hated to see her cry.