His hand twitched. He shoved it behind his back.
“I will never betray you,” she said.
He peered at her, hunger lurking in his gaze. “No, you are a loyal daughter of Monralar,” he murmured. Then he said in a firm voice, “Go then. See what you can do to aid your friend.”
Sharana pushed herself off the rock and bowed. “My gratitude, high one.”
Ignoring his flinch, she hurried back to the keep, barriers as closed as she could make them and mind focused on the short trip to the city’s transport hub. The Monral, with his dulled senses, might not have detected her deception, but his guards had no such impairment.
Think about Laura
. She opened the wall to the transit room. The Paran’s bond-partner had experienced a severe head injury, and memory loss to some degree often accompanied such. She might need help relearning the empathic skills Sharana had taught her during the short visit she made to Monralar.
A few steps from a small pod, she faltered. The guards focused on her. She concentrated on her concern for Laura, built a plan in her mind of how to re-educate an injured, possibly amnesic sensitive. The guards relaxed. She touched the pod and stepped through the door it formed for her. Once settled in its cramped interior, she gave it an empathic caress, and it dropped into the transport tunnels.
Free!
A crash of nearby thunder startled Laura awake. Her gaze went to the beaded and streaked windows opposite her bed. Dark clouds made black by the night loomed beyond them. She pulled her legs up a little and tried to lift her head to look down at herself in the dim light, but managed barely a glimpse before her neck gave way like an overcooked noodle. She rolled her eyes.
“What did I do, break my neck?” she muttered.
“Yes,” said a woman’s voice. Syvra stood at the bedside table, mixing something in a shotglass-sized cup.
“Oh.”
The healer bent over Laura and slid a hand under her head. “Drink this,” she ordered, lifting Laura’s head and bringing the cup to her mouth.
She sipped at it, then spat out the vile-tasting mixture and coughed. “No,” she declared, glaring at the cup Syvra continued to hold at her lips. Laura knocked the thing away with all the strength she didn’t possess. It landed with a splat and a clatter next to the bed.
The healer lowered Laura’s head and straightened, crossing her arms. “You will slow your recovery with such behavior.”
“Then make your medicines taste better.”
A sigh gusted out of the yellow-robed woman. “Are you hungry?”
“Does your food taste better than your medicine?”
Syvra twitched a smile. “If you can eat a little, you will be stronger tomorrow.”
Laura glowered at her. She hadn’t answered the question, but the idea of food sounded worth a try, as long as it didn’t taste like floor polish. “All right.”
Syvra turned and left the room. Laura watched her back disappear out the door, feeling… surprisingly fit, she had to admit to herself, but her nerves sang with all the different emotions swirling around her. She wanted to leap, and dance, and cry, and beat her head against the wall, all at once. It was almost too much to bear.
She considered the possibilities. Hallucination? Probably not. Dream? Definitely not. Central Command, doing a loyalty check? The Fleet had put a stop to that against its own people decades ago. She had seen nothing to prove she was outside human space, and none of the non-human races looked anything like these
Tolari
.
But if she really could judge the feelings of others—and that was a big
if—
it certainly seemed that the young woman, Marianne, had told the truth so far. It also seemed clear she was withholding something, and showed signs of a patience that might give way to frustration. The servants, each one different to her perceptions, were patience themselves. But that man, the Paran…
As if on cue, Syvra stood beside her again. “Shall I send for the Paran?” she asked, derailing Laura’s train of thought.
“I—how late is it? Is he awake?”
“He left word he would come at any time you requested his presence.”
She looked away, her face warming. Syvra served as her doctor, as far as she could tell. She would know that the Paran had gotten her pregnant. If that were true, it meant Laura had… been with him. Her face grew hotter. She stopped and did the math in her head, carefully, counting the months of pregnancy. Even if the baby was
small
, which seemed to mean
early
, it wasn’t long enough. A widow having an affair less than six months after her husband died. Scandalous.
But he
was
magnetic. Tall and dark, with all that straight black hair, pulled back and knotted, falling to his ankles. She’d never seen such long hair, much less on a man. He looked like the Latin lover she’d always wanted, dark and passionate.
Was he passionate? That might explain her scandalous behavior. She’d once hoped Papa would arrange a marriage for her with one of the New Arabian princes. But then… but then… but then what? Something had stopped her from having one. She wracked her brain.
John
.
She could see his face. Unruly dark brown hair, alert gray eyes, the confident, arrogant attitude worn by the sons of Boston’s wealthiest families. A uniform. He was military—Earth Fleet. He cut a dashing figure. The year she turned nineteen, he came with his father to a dinner party at Papa’s summer house and left with her heart. Papa raged for weeks. He didn’t think even a prince would be good enough for his baby girl, much less a younger son, no matter how old and aristocratic his family, and even
much
less one who had joined Earth Fleet. She eloped with John, and Papa disinherited her, but before she died Mama prevailed on him to write the grandchildren into his will. The money didn’t matter. She had John, and
his
family loved her. She would never want for anything.
Except her father’s love.
But John was gone. Stabs of grief shot through her heart and resounded through her soul. Those eyes. She had liked those eyes. No, she had
loved
those eyes. Gazing at her with kindness, with love, with joy, through a long life together. Dust replaced the face, showering onto a chair and a desk. She gasped.
A hand touched her wrist.
“Beloved?”
She shattered back into the present. The Paran gazed down at her, swimming in her watery vision, something gray in his hands. Wracking sobs shook her.
He put the gray object aside and slid onto the bed beside her, pulling her into his arms, taking care to cradle her head against his shoulder. “Why do you weep?”
“I remembered John,” she whispered. “Dying.”
“My heart grieves for your pain.” He kissed her hair.
“He turned to dust. Right in front of me, he turned to dust. Marianne said he died in the line of duty, but I was
there
when it happened. How can that be?” She burrowed her face into his chest and sniffled. Hard muscle rippled beneath the embroidered robe, and he smelled… familiar.
She stiffened. What was she doing?
“What troubles you?” The Paran’s voice rumbled through his chest.
“I—this is not—I must not—”
“You are on my world, in my province, and by our customs, we belong together. No one here will mock you.”
She gave herself up to the grief, and somehow he rode the worst of it with her. When the tears had spent themselves, she rested against his shoulder and listened to the patter of the rain against the window. She risked a glance up at his face. He turned a gentle smile on her.
“Your apothecary wants you to eat,” he said, as a servant laid a tray on the bed beside her. “Will you try?”
A pile of food lay on the tray, none of it familiar other than the rolls, but enticing aromas rose from it. Her stomach yowled.
The Paran chuckled. “I will consider that assent.”
He broke the rolls into manageable chunks, held a soup bowl for her to sip, gave her pieces of strange fruit to nibble. When she had eaten the last scrap on the tray, he offered a steaming mug with a familiar smell.
“Oh,” she sighed, after taking a sip. “This tastes a lot like… like…” Her thoughts stuttered. She knew the flavor, smooth and smoky, but the words wouldn’t come.
He uttered something she didn’t understand. She closed her eyes and sipped a little more tea. Sounds of the sea shore filled her ears—crashing waves and unfamiliar bird cries. Images floated across her mind’s eye. The Paran, sitting across a small outdoor table, sipping tea. The Paran, laughing, as she fell into some kind of pool on a beach. The Paran, helping her to build… a sand castle? She found herself starting to smile.
“Another memory?” he asked.
“I remember you,” she whispered, “on a beach.”
He chuckled. “You taught me something new that day.” He leaned his cheek in her hair. “You are a gift, beloved. If I could have only the honor of your presence, it would be enough. You are my heart and my life.”
She swallowed around a lump in her throat. If he said things like that, no wonder she had gotten involved with him. She sighed and buried her face in his robe.
* * *
Farric leaned against the veranda railing, gripping it hard enough to render his knuckles pale, and looked out over a garden full of purple and green vegetation from the Den homeworld, dotted with red stone sculptures donated by the V’kri. Behind him, a presence approached from the sitting room—living room—of the diplomatic suite.
“Bad news from home?” Bertie’s voice rang with the casual sympathy he intended and undertones of anxiety he did not.
Farric looked over his shoulder. Bertie had bathed and changed from the clothes he wore for sparring to the everyday wear of a human aristocrat, and stood framed in the doorway, toweling his hair. “Plans run toward their conclusions,” Farric said, turning to lean against the railing and face Bertie. “The ruling caste prepares to meet. Father orders my return.”
The human uttered a colorful and anatomically unlikely vulgarity. Farric chuckled and brushed past him into the living room, pulling a small tablet from a pocket.
“What the hell is—”
Farric raised a hand to interrupt him as he set the tablet to scan the room. It detected two espionage devices and disabled them with faint popping sounds.
“Now we can talk for a time.” He dropped onto an overstuffed chair. “Until the servants replace the—how do you call the surveillance devices?”
“Fleas.” Bertie took a seat across from him and started pulling a brush through his hair, his eyes fixed on the tablet. “Please tell me that isn’t Tolari tech.”
“I regret to disappoint you, but this came from my planet, yes. We borrowed the notion of tablets from a race that disappeared long ago. You humans reinvented them, but your technology is—leaky. And often loud.”
“Bloody hell.” The human ran a hand through his hair. “Why are you telling me this?”
“You need to know what you truly face, if you are to represent Tolari interests to the Trade Alliance.”
Bertie opened his mouth, then closed it.
Farric grinned. “We are not primitives,” he added.
“And I wondered why our tech never seemed to surprise you. I chalked it up to superior deportment. Just how advanced is your technology?”
Farric lifted a shoulder. “More so than Earth’s.”
“You’re quite sure of that?”
“Yes.”
Bertie gathered his hair and tied it back with a black ribbon. “You do realize there will be an almighty explosion in the general direction of Central Command when this gets out?”
“That is why I would prefer it if you worked from Monralar. You will be safer there.”
He grunted and pulled on his boots. “Do you throw any parties in dad’s castle?”
“I regret to say, no. And our food is poisonous to humans, for the most part.”
“No meat, you said?”
“No meat.” Farric shuddered. “Will you come?”
Bertie grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Laura woke alone in dim gray daylight. She sighed. She’d fallen asleep in the Paran’s arms, and now… she wished she’d awakened in them, too.
Urgent needs assaulted her.
“Syvra?” she called, struggling to get her elbows beneath her. “Someone? I need the necessary. Badly!”
Two women in yellow robes hurried into the room. One helped her to her feet to use the necessary, while the other took the opportunity to change the bed clothes. They both assisted while she bathed, a real bath in a stone basin. Afterward, she fumbled trying to pull on a knee-length, dark purple bed-robe with matching loose trousers. Her right arm and leg were weak and her right hand strangely clumsy, and it took much longer than it should have to dress.
The aides explained that most of the damage had been to the left side of her head, damaging her speech centers but leaving the right side of her brain intact. That didn’t make sense, since her left hand worked fine. Good thing she was a lefty.
They also talked about some sort of speech implant she’d gotten here on Tolar that had helped, though they didn’t explain how. The question of how she had become planet-bound in the first place… she’d deal with that later. Something was
wrong
with her; the glow around the people in the room, and the terrible brightness beyond…
And it wasn’t just her, it was the people, these Tolari. All and sundry around this place, this stronghold, seemed to accept her relationship with the Paran, but as Mama would have said, that didn’t make it right. What kind of person had she been? A respectable woman, an Earth Fleet spouse, a widow, none of those would have carried on with a man at least twenty-five years her junior less than a year after her husband’s death. That didn’t seem like her at all.
The aides tucked her back into bed and left. With some thrashing, she managed to roll onto her side, facing the windows and a small bedside table. On the table sat the gray object the Paran had brought and set aside when she burst into tears—a sculpture of what she might call a family of three whale-like creatures, mama, papa, and baby, each with a long, bladed tail and six flippers instead of two. She touched it with a finger.