“And then?” Farric asked, gently.
“I yelled for help, and one of them hit me in the solar plexus—that’s right here—” he pointed at a spot in his midsection “—to shut me up. Very effective, I must say. When I could catch my breath again, I looked up at Teylis, and he wasn’t struggling, just letting the thugs pin his arms behind his back, and he said, ‘I believe we have been captured.’ Then he closed his eyes and collapsed, like—like he was a puppet, and someone cut his strings. I thought he had passed out.
“They beat me after that, with sticks, until I lost consciousness.” He offered a sad smile through his tears. “I wish I could tell you more, but that is all I can remember. I woke up here, and they told me Teylis is dead. I am so very sorry.” Tears rolled down the sides of his head into his hair.
Farric leaned forward, elbows on his knees and fingers laced, and let the break in the conversation lengthen.
“I can tell you something else,” Darpan said, suddenly. “Those men—I am thinking the men who attacked us were not really Triads brothers.”
“The organized criminals?” Farric straightened. “On what do you base this thought?”
“Triads brothers are very good at what they do. Trust me, I have seen their handiwork in my emergency department many times. They know how to cause the most pain for the least damage, and they can make it last as long as they want. The men who beat me and killed Teylis, they tried to act like Triads, but they were sloppy.” He shrugged. “Maybe they sent inexperienced men after us, but I do not think so.”
* * *
Laura peered through the astronomical viewer—a telescope, to all intents and purposes, but a small one. It did little more than make Earth’s sun, an unremarkable point of light in Tolar’s night sky, a little bigger and a little brighter, but it was better than the naked eye. The Paran sat behind her, huddled on top of one blanket and under another. She grinned despite herself, but his mood was too grim tonight to poke fun at him.
She lifted her face from the eyepiece. “Is it really that bad?” she asked.
“Several more of my coalition have joined with Monralar,” he said. “He lacks three to achieve a majority.”
Laura winced. “He would have the Sural’s job if it weren’t for the Sural, wouldn’t he?”
“Very likely. Even the Sural admires Monralar’s cleverness.”
“I thought they hated each other.”
“They do.”
She eased her swelling body onto the blanket beside him. “At least Central Command hasn’t shown up demanding an explanation. Farric must be doing something right.”
“The heir to Monralar is formidable of himself—another reason their coalition grows.” He shook his head. “Monralar’s actions would likely win him the caste leadership in a time of conventional rule, but to challenge the Sural’s authority and grow the coalition opposed to him gains the Monral nothing now. Even should he gain the majority he seeks, the Jorann has never deposed one of her grandchildren.”
“Maybe he thinks there’s a first time for everything.”
The Paran lifted an eyebrow.
“I’ve seen any number of men like him, over the years. If he didn’t think he could change things, he wouldn’t be trying. He’d be causing other kinds of trouble instead. If I could meet him in person, run into him somewhere, I might be able to tell.”
“He is a bonded ruler with no reason to leave his province.”
Laura tapped her lips with an index finger. Bonded rulers. Why did he have to be a bonded ruler? Bonded—a
bonded
ruler. Her eyes widened. “He’s pair-bonded, isn’t he? And isn’t his bond-partner a sensitive? It would make sense for me to ask another sensitive for help with all this. It’s getting better, but it can still be overwhelming sometimes. Enough to be a good reason to go to Monralar to learn from his bond-partner—and incidentally to meet him, find out how far he can be trusted.”
A chill breeze picked up, and the Paran shivered. Laura snuggled closer, lending him some of her body heat.
“Monralar is an ally, and you would be safe visiting Sharana, but…” He grimaced.
“But?”
“Wandering laborers returning from Monralar report that Sharana no longer lives in his stronghold, but has moved into the city.”
“What?” Laura straightened. “How can that be? Marianne told me bonded couples can’t live apart.”
“Not easily, no, and they will not be able to stay apart more than a season, perhaps two. If the rumors are true, and she has fled his presence, he must win her back before her absence destabilizes him.”
“How awful for them.”
“Indeed. But we have still a ten of days before winter stops the great game for the year. Much can happen in that time.”
She snuggled back in. “So… I can go?”
“If you wish,” he sighed. “In truth, I have no right to constrain you.”
“But you don’t like the idea.”
“You are my bond-partner, and the child you carry is my heir—of course I do not like the idea. I do not wish to part from you, even for a short time.”
“Hm.” She grinned into his shoulder. “I won’t be gone long. And I’ll make it up to you when I return.”
A slow smile grew on his face. “Will you begin to
make it up to me
before you leave?”
“Ma-a-a-aybe.”
Sharana eyed the exotic
odalli
who stood in the doorway, with not one but two guards provided by Monralar behind her, though her state of increase rendered her safe from deliberate harm.
Under normal circumstances.
Sharana shoved that dark thought aside and extended her senses. She read… a confusion of disparate emotion, in which she could identify only curiosity and the exhilaration of one who enjoys travel, and contentment from the child within her. Then the woman’s focus shifted to the edges of Sharana’s empathic awareness. Interest perked.
“You are Sharana?” the woman asked in lightly-accented Paranian.
From long habit of courtesy, she replied in the same language. “Indeed, yes.” She gestured toward the circle of divans in the sitting room of her daughter’s home in the avenues of the scholars. “And you are Laura Howard. Come, sit. Our servant prepares tea. Will you share it with me?”
“I would enjoy that.” The beloved of Parania smiled, her presence aglow with genuine pleasure. “Call me Laura.” She crossed the room to the indicated divans but waited to take a seat until Sharana joined her—perhaps a human custom. The guards camouflaged and remained near the door, watchful but at ease. She suspected they preferred her presence to that of their Monral.
“The Paran’s messages said you need the assistance of a sensitive,” Sharana said. “How may I help?”
Laura relaxed a little, less adept—far less adept—at controlling the physical expression of her emotions than were the human diplomats Sharana had met, five years past. “The Jorann’s gift made me more sensitive to others’ feelings than I thought possible. I need more basic control, as much as you can teach me in… a hand of days? Storaas would have taught me during my visit to Suralia, but circumstances did not permit. We only had time for barriers, so he taught me that.”
“He taught you well.” She let the corners of her mouth twitch upward. “But why does your Paran’s tutor not teach you further?”
“He has no experience with sensitives.”
Sharana nodded. “I see. Will you allow me to probe you? It will help if I know—”
“No!” Laura exclaimed, bursting with alarm.
“Have no fear, I will probe but lightly.”
“Forgive me, but no. I cannot yet reliably control the reflex to push an intruder away, and where I am from, we are very private about our own thoughts and feelings. I am afraid I might hurt you, as I have done to others without meaning it.”
A servant entered the room, carrying a tray. The unmistakable aroma of Suralian tea flower wafted around them as he poured from a carafe into a pair of mugs. Laura’s mouth twitched, her alarm subsiding.
“If Monralar does not trade with Suralia, how did you come to acquire Suralian tea?” she asked.
“Perhaps you should not ask.” Sharana allowed herself a grin, then grew serious. “All sensitives react strongly to unwanted probing. I can help you with that, but you must do the exercises I give you every day without fail. Because you are already adult… it may require several seasons before you have full conscious control of the reflex. But while you are here we can also work on how to defend yourself against the unwanted feelings of others.”
“That would be wonderful!”
“Excellent. Stay then—you can learn what you need in three or four days. If you are not too fatigued, accompany me to a lesson with my student when we finish our tea. You may find it helpful to watch as she performs the exercises I will teach you.”
Laura considered. “I do not speak Monrali.”
“She speaks Paranian.”
The green-and-brown eyes glinted. “Then I would enjoy that very much.”
* * *
The student, it turned out, lived on a farm outside the city. Laura breathed in the earthy-but-different air as they hiked past stubbly, harvested fields. The two lavender-robed guards who’d met her at the city’s transport hub trailed behind them. The Monrali scholar ignored them entirely, as if their presence offended her.
Laura sighed her relief as the intense glow of the city fell beyond range.
“The city is bright,” Sharana said. “I must teach Jery away from it, or I cannot teach her at all. The child becomes overwhelmed.”
“I can understand why.” She heaved another sigh, and let go of the hevalra’s net, raising her natural barriers and extending her senses past her own skin.
She almost gasped. Something awful wracked Sharana.
Then she
did
draw a sharp breath and stumbled. Years of habit clicked into place, and she glared like a cat at the spot on the road where she’d tripped, rather than behind them where she wanted to look. Another guard followed them, camouflaged and barriers shut tight—one of the rare individuals who could make himself undetectable to other Tolari.
I will need to watch that one.
“We will not pass through the stronghold,” her companion said, chuckling.
Laura looked ahead. The corner of a massive building peeked around the curve of a hill, gleaming in the sunlight, built from rock perhaps a shade darker than the nearly white stone of the Parania stronghold. She forced a nervous laugh.
“I am a little afraid of your Monral.”
Sharana started. “Why?”
“I was here, in orbit, eleven… eleven human years ago. Five Tolari years? When Ambassador Russell came with his…” She searched for the word; none came. “Here you might call her his bond-partner, although we do not have bonding like you do. The leader of the human ship was my—” she swallowed “—bond-partner.”
“My heart grieves for your pain,” the other woman murmured.
“I saw your Monral then, when he communicated with my… with John. He seemed a difficult man to please.”
“A ruler must sometimes be hard for the good of his province. It sets the ruling caste apart from the rest of us.”
They walked on in silence. “How much farther to your student’s home?” Laura asked, looking ahead.
“Not far. Do you fatigue?”
“No, but my peds ache.” Actually, her
toes
ached—and itched—but Paranian didn’t have a word for human toes. “They are changing.”
Sharana slowed almost to a stop, glancing at the stronghold. “Do you require rest?”
Laura shook her head and slowed with her companion. Sharana didn’t show any of it on her face, but a hidden anger burned inside her, and she
clearly
didn’t want to be anywhere near the stronghold.
The camouflaged presence behind them veered toward the massive keep at a run.
“No,” Laura said, drawing in a deep breath through her nose and letting it out. “I am fine.”
Sharana smiled—and then froze. A different presence left the stronghold, heading their way, with five more fanning out around it. Laura whirled to face it. Him. A man in lavender walked in plain sight, the upper half of his robe covered with white embroidery, crossing the distance between them, eyes fixed on Sharana. The other five presences remained camouflaged. Guards.
The back of her neck prickling, Laura looked sidelong at the woman beside her. Sharana stood so still as the Monral approached that she might just have turned to stone. Then hunger erupted from both of them, Sharana more than the Monral. The Tolari woman went even more rigid, if that were possible, and a guard accompanying them moved forward to step in front of her. The Monral stopped short.
He tore his eyes away from his bond-partner and gave Laura a nod. “Artist,” he said in Paranian, his voice deep and smooth and far more pleasant than his blunt-featured, almost ugly face. “Be welcome in Monralar.”
Laura returned the nod with a deep bow. Bond-partner of a provincial ruler or not, she was still unsure of her rank and status in a society where manners counted.
“You honor me, high one,” she murmured as she straightened. “I am Laura Johnson Howard, beloved of Parania.”
“Indeed,” he said, with a broad smile. “Come, share tea with me and tell me how you find my province.”
“I—”
Sharana broke in, her voice brittle and icy. “She accompanies me to a lesson with my student, high one.”
High one?
Laura blinked at the formality in her voice, and the Monral’s internal flinch didn’t show. Other than the hunger that tinted his presence and nigh to consumed Sharana, he was impassive. And certainly more charming than she remembered from seeing him on the comms.
What had Sharana done?
“Come to the stronghold afterward,” he said to Laura.
She looked from one to the other. The Monral’s presence yearned toward Sharana, but the scholar looked ready to crawl out of her skin to get away from him.
Something is very wrong
. As much as she wanted Sharana’s help, however, this man was the reason she’d come to Monralar in the first place.
“You honor me,” she said. “I will come.”
The Monral peered at Sharana. “And you, beloved? Will you accompany her?”
Sharana’s breathing hitched. Without a word, she turned her back on him and continued on her way at a brisk walk.