“What brings a fair Monrali to our glacial winter?” he asked in a tone meant not to carry past her ears. His low voice rumbled comfort, and his eyes glinted with friendliness.
She stared at him. His intentions seemed opaque even to her sensitivity, which was troubling, but honesty was the only sensible response to an apothecary. “I came to see the Jorann.”
“Indeed?” He lifted his eyebrows. “When does she see you?”
Sharana shook her head.
His eyes narrowed. “You do not wish to tell me? Or you do not have an arrangement to see her?”
She controlled a startle. This apothecary was far too perceptive, though she could see no sign that he was a sensitive. Shaking her head again, she remained silent.
“Help me to understand how a visiting scholar, even one from an enemy province, came to be ejected from the Hall of Scholars without so much as a winter robe.”
Several camouflaged presences approached, from several directions. Guards. Two moved to flank her, their intent protective. She relaxed. “You are from the stronghold.”
“What could drive the beloved of Monralar to an enemy province in winter?”
“I must see the Jorann.”
“You risked our Sural’s honor to come here in
this
manner, Scholar Sharana.”
“Even so, apothecary.” She picked up her mug and took a sip from it. “How did you know who I am?”
“Your Monral alerted the ruling caste that you were missing.”
The mug slipped from her fingers and landed on the table with a clatter, spilling its contents everywhere. She jumped up, brushing the hot liquid from her robe, and the guards dropped their camouflage, the needles on their fingertips ready. All sound in the tea shop ceased as every patron’s eyes fixed upon her.
Captured
. The guards’ quick action clarified the apothecary’s real intent, even if she still could not read him. She dropped to her knees with arms opened wide, her vision blurring with tears. The Monral had betrayed her, but she would never dishonor her province. She closed her eyes and began the descent. A peace she had not known in far too long filled her.
“Stop!” the apothecary exclaimed, his voice fading into distance. He cursed.
Sensation dulled. Light dimmed. Sound muffled.
Time stopped.
* * *
Midway through the journey home to Tolar, Bertie performed a ritual he called
raiding the kitchen
. Containers of various substances littered the small counter in the forward stateroom of the
Star of Britannia
, and the human hummed as he investigated the contents of the cabinets. Farric stood out of the way.
“Honey!” Bertie exclaimed after rummaging through another cupboard. He came away with a broad grin and a transparent jar full of a thick golden substance. “I knew I’d put it on the requisition list. Prepare yourself for the sweetest experience of your life. I’m going to make baklava.”
“Does this
honey
require the death of any creatures?” Farric asked.
Bertie laughed. “No, no. We coddle our bees. We feed them sugar water—sugar comes from a plant—and they turn it into this golden nectar. Fortunately for us, they make more than they need, so we steal the excess.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t know how I’ll get along on an entire rotting planet of vegans.”
“Tolari.”
He laughed again. “Same thing, apparently.”
A shock rippled through the guards. Leaving Bertie to his preoccupation with food in general and sweet food in particular, Farric hurried into the central living area of the suite, where the guards gathered round the monitor of a comms unit they had modified to link with the communications plexus in Monralar’s stronghold on Tolar.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Your father’s bond-partner fled to Suralia,” Caradyn said. “Then he collapsed.”
* * *
Sharana screamed. Every nerve burned. She convulsed, sending fresh pain slamming through her body.
“Sharana.” A low voice serrated her eardrums. A warm hand touched her forehead, the contact a searing fire on her empathic nerves. “Breathe.”
She gasped, reaching on reflex through her pair-bond for the Monral’s strength. Something distant stirred, but died away. Agony ripped another scream from her throat.
A heavy hand scorched one shoulder. Strength poured from it. She whimpered and took it in the way dry sand drank water.
“Good,” another voice murmured.
The smell of astringents and tryllen stung her nose. Every muscle trembled. Sharana cracked opened streaming eyes on a dark ceiling, and a huge blue blur moved from her shoulder to her waist. She blinked, and needles of pain as eyelid met eyelid stabbed a cry out of her. It cleared her vision enough for the blue blur to resolve into a man in an embroidered, pale blue robe.
“High one,” she whispered.
The Sural bent to meet her gaze. “You are not captured,” he said in a soft voice. “You are free, and under my protection. Do you understand? You are free.”
She sucked in a ragged breath. “Free,” she repeated.
The apothecary from the teahouse appeared on her other side. He ran a hand under her head, his fingers like hot coals sliding through her hair, and lifted, bringing a small cup to her lips.
“Drink,” he said.
The potion numbed her mouth. She swallowed, and coughed, and the cough wrung another sobbing cry from her. More strength flowed from the Sural’s hand on her shoulder. The apothecary tipped the last drops of the potion onto her lips and lowered her head, removing his hand and its torturing fingers from her hair.
“Sleep now, scholar,” the Sural murmured. “We will speak when you awaken.”
* * *
Farric, surrounded by five guards, two servants, and one human, phased into the Monralar stronghold’s lowest level. The guards camouflaged and moved away the moment the transfer from the Kekrax ship was complete, dripping with eagerness to exercise the skills they had avoided using during their trip off-world.
“I say,” Bertie blurted, staring at the space they had occupied.
Farric spared him half a grin before he started to bark orders and demand information. “Go with the servants,” he told Bertie, when the seneschal appeared with another servant. “They will take you to guest quarters and show you how to use the bathing area and the necessary. I must see to my father.”
Bertie lifted a finger to his forehead, a gesture he used as a sort of salute. Farric camouflaged and ran, drawing another startled exclamation from his friend.
When Farric skidded into the small room in the apothecaries’ quarters, dropping his camouflage, the Monral stirred and groaned, then slipped back into unconsciousness.
“Father,” he said in a hoarse whisper, clasping a hand with both of his own.
The Monral’s apothecary, standing at the console at the head of the bed, nodded an acknowledgment.
“Has Sharana gone into the dark?” Farric asked.
“I cannot say,” the healer replied, shaking his head. “I thought at first she had, but now?” He lifted a shoulder.
“Explain.”
“He screamed and collapsed during a meeting, as if experiencing the shock of bond rupture. But when I examined him—high one, I probed deeply. He is bond-shocked and his heart is wounded, but his pair-bond is intact. He will recover.”
Farric let out a breath. “My gratitude, apothecary.”
“I did nothing, high one.”
“Even so.”
The apothecary bowed. When he straightened, he glanced over Farric with a clinical eye. “I can remove the treatment which filters your sense of smell, if you wish. Your father will sleep for quite some time yet.”
Farric looked down and lowered the Monral’s hand to his side. He nodded. “Do it.”
* * *
Sharana opened her eyes to pale winter sunlight streaming through a window covered in ice. She lay on her side, the pain a memory, if a vivid one.
She had walked into the dark. How did she live?
“Ah, you are awake,” said a familiar voice.
She started up onto her elbow, looking around for the source of the voice. She had sensed no one, but a mere stride away, in a chair between the window and the bed, sat her childhood tutor, Storaas.
“I am told you are quite fortunate and will recover the full measure of your sensitivity,” he added. “But for now, you are nearly sense-blind.”
She expelled a loud breath and allowed herself to sink back onto the bed. Of course. Rumor had long suggested that Suralia could bring a person back from the dark. “You should have left me there.”
He lifted one corner of his mouth. “That we could not do. The Sural’s honor was at stake.”
“To the Smoke with the Sural’s honor.”
That earned her a dry chuckle.
“I came without sanction, as a mere scholar.”
“The beloved of a provincial ruler can never again be a mere anything.”
She scowled and rolled onto her back. “I came to see the Jorann, as is my right. Your Hall of Scholars refused to assist me.”
A shadow flitted across his face. “The Sural will grant you safe passage to the Jorann the moment you feel equal to the walk. He apologizes for the inhospitable welcome and offers assurances that the matter has been addressed.”
“If the ruling caste did not play its great game, I would not have received such a cold welcome.”
“I do not dispute that.”
She lifted her head to squint at him. Then bitter laughter bubbled from some perverse corner of her heart, and she let her head drop back. “You have not changed.”
“I regret to say that you have.”
“I am yoked to violence.”
Storaas raised his eyebrows. “A harsh description.”
“A true one.”
“Sharana, why did you truly come to Suralia?”
She snorted. “I gave you my reason.”
“And I heard truth, but I sense conflict.”
Sharana fell silent, studying the Suralian who had journeyed to Monralar when she was a child and sacrificed years of his life teaching her to control her sensitivity. His youthful appearance gladdened her—he had clearly found someone, after all these years.
“Who is she?” she asked.
Approval lurked in his gaze. “An apothecary. I gave her an heir and she captured my heart.”
“My heart sings for you, old friend. You were alone too long.”
Storaas moved his chair closer and laid a hand over hers. A faint sense of him, and of his happiness, tickled her senses. “Allow me to help you, child.”
If only he could. She pulled her hand away.
“The Sural approaches,” he said with a sigh, quitting the chair. “If you wish to speak with me, tell the aides. I will come.”
The man who had humiliated Monralar five years ago appeared in the doorway. Her jaw clamped shut. “Scholars,” he said in a pleasant baritone. Storaas bowed, and the Sural moved aside to allow him to leave, then walked around the bed to take a seat in the chair.
She forced her jaw to relax and sat up, drawing her knees up in front of her. “High one.”
His mouth tilted. “You should have notified my stronghold of your visit.”
“You should have left me in the dark.”
“When your Monral believed you to be under my protection? No.”
“I—what did you say?”
The Sural laced his fingers together over his chest and stretched his long legs before him. “You speak truth when you say you came here without sanction, and yet your Monral notified the ruling caste you were at large—and sent
me
a message demanding your return, worded as if he thought you protected by Suralia. Why, Sharana?”
She let out a shaky breath. “I came to see the Jorann.”
“Indeed, and you placed my honor in jeopardy when you failed to follow the usual forms required of a bond-partner of the ruling caste. Why did Monralar believe the Sural knew you were coming?”
Her eyes filled. She should have known.
He thought I came here to betray him.
She sniffed.
“I came here,” she offered, her voice hitching, “to ask the Jorann to remove our pair-bond.”
His face and voice softened. “Is it so terrible to be bonded to one of us?”
She buried her face in her knees and nodded. A sob wrenched itself free. She gave herself up to it, weeping for the man who had captured her heart, for the things he had done, for the way those acts had destroyed the affection between them. The Sural laid a face cloth beside her, but otherwise made no attempt to give comfort—which she would not have accepted from him in any case. She picked up the cloth and wiped her eyes.
He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. “But that is not everything you hide.”
“Do not ask me to betray him.”
“I must.”
“I cannot.”
The Sural’s cora-colored eyes bored into her. “It falls to me to maintain peace in the ruling caste. Can you tell me his schemes do not impact that?”
“You know, as your entire caste knows, that he plots to unseat you. If he succeeds, there will be turmoil, yes.” She looked away.
“You evade my question.”
“He does not tell anyone all his plans, and of late he has told me less than that.”
“I know he was responsible for the heir to Parania’s death.”
She froze, her stomach sinking, and cursed herself. He would sense her reaction. He could have,
must
have his senses wrapped around her like he would a child, knowing she could not feel it though the sense-blindness.
“I cannot prove it,” he continued. “Yet. When I do, the caste will demand he walk into the dark, and you are too sensitive not to die from the rupture.” He leaned back again. “Unless you convince the Jorann to remove your bond before then.”
This time she could not stop herself from meeting his gaze with wide eyes, even knowing the simple reaction confirmed his suspicions. Her chest heaved. “You think I seek to escape the consequences of his alleged guilt?”
“Considering what happened at the teahouse, I think you a loyal daughter of Monralar.” He leaned forward. “Whatever my feelings for your Monral, I have no desire to see his province follow Detralar into the dark.”
Her voice trembled. “Is there a way to save Monralar?”
“Perhaps.”
* * *
Sharana paced down the tunnel alone, furling and unfurling her bruised senses, feeling the minute creatures searching out nutrients in cracks in the stone walls. Sensitivity had returned, but control had not. She exercised her senses at every opportunity, seeking to regain it.