In Dreaming Bound

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  With a mental prompt from Mikael, she located one of the upholstered chairs by touch and sank down into it. She’d sat in this same chair a month before when Colonel Cerradine brought her here to determine whether she and Mikael could work together. She had delved into Mikael’s mind for the first time that day. Or rather, it was the first time she’d done so knowingly.

  He’d shown her the memory of a different dream, but that memory had been worn and faded, unlike the dream of his father’s death last night. His father’s death had been preserved in minute detail instead, a significant difference.

  “Shironne, do you realize how annoyed the elders are with you?”

  She drew her attention back to the present. That was Dahar’s snapping voice. “Why? I quieted him, didn’t I?”

  You entered a black’s quarters, Mikael thought, just before Dahar said the same words.

  “Dahar,” Deborah inserted, “she didn’t think it through.”

  “Obviously,” he said.

  This is about my punishment, not about what I learned. “How much trouble am I in?” Shironne asked. “I mean, um, what will they do to me? Is Mikael in trouble?”

  “I will talk to the others,” Deborah said firmly. “These are special circumstances.”

  Mikael’s relief warmed Shironne. He still hadn’t said anything aloud.

  “Given that it did ease the situation,” Deborah continued, “and that none of the sentries even attempted to stop a brown wandering the hallways in her pajamas, of all things . . .”

  “That’s something Seth will have to explain,” Dahar inserted under his breath.

  “One did,” Shironne said. “And I had my uniform jacket on, too.”

  Deborah ignored both of them. “I don’t think the elders will see a need for any sort of punishment, so long as there isn’t a repeat of this in the future.”

  Shironne could still feel Dahar’s irritation floating around him. It sharpened her tone when she spoke. “You want me to do nothing when he dreams?”

  “No, dear,” Deborah answered. “Generally, when Mikael dreams, he has some warning. I think on those occasions, we can hold him in the infirmary, where I can keep an eye on you both.”

  Mikael flared annoyance—not with Deborah, Shironne knew, but with the implied confinement. The last time they’d tried that, they’d all gone out to a tavern in the city—the black something—but the infirmary would surely be easier.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” Shironne said. “I think I would recognize his reaction earlier next time.”

  Traitor, Mikael thought at her.

  Shironne smiled. He wasn’t truly angry with her. He just hated being fussed over.

  “So . . . Mikael tells me he thinks this was the dream about his father again,” Dahar began.

  Mikael itched to ask her questions. He wanted her to tell him everything she’d seen. He’d never had any proof, she realized then, that this dream told about his father, and she had those answers.

  She turned her head toward where Mikael sat. “The man who died, his name was Valerion,” she said aloud, interrupting Dahar in the middle of a sentence. “He was Anvarrid. He had blue eyes and freckles and a birthmark on his lip.”

  Mikael spun out a flood of emotions, relief and grief and anger. He quickly packed it away, not wanting to overwhelm her, but she gathered all of it in. This is what I can do for him. How I can help him.

  “Was there someone with him?” Mikael asked quickly, ignoring Dahar’s ire at being interrupted.

  In his dreams, Mikael became so tied into the victim’s emotions that he woke with only vague memories, hence his need for her to look into his dreams. She probably shouldn’t say aloud what had actually transpired in that room, though. In their fervor to protect a child from inappropriate exposure, the elders would never let her near Mikael again. “Yes. A woman was with him, they were . . . sleeping.”

  Mikael knew she’d just lied, though. She could tell from his reaction.

  “Did you. . . ?” He didn’t finish the question, unsure how to ask.

  “She was Family. Her name was Lydia.” His mother. That was his mother’s name.

  “What happened?” His voice sounded hoarse. He wasn’t certain he wanted to hear it said aloud.

  Shironne rushed to reassure him. “The door opened, and someone shot Valerion in the back. A man, but I couldn’t see him. I only heard his voice.”

  A sudden relief flared through Mikael. Shironne felt certain then—he’d always feared his mother had killed his father. “She didn’t kill him, Mikael. It was a man.”

  “What happened to her, then?” Dahar snapped.

  Shironne tried to think through the woman’s movements in the dream. “Um . . . she shoved Valerion onto his back—he’d fallen on top of her—and then she went after the man who shot him.”

  “Of course,” Mikael whispered. “She would have done that. She was his guard. Was that all?”

  She could feel questions straining at the edges of his control, some not yet formed into words, and others fairly screaming to be heard. Details. “It was summer. It was early morning, and already warm. They talked to each other. He said something about being glad she’d come after him. The man who shot him recognized her, said her name, so he had to know them or at least her.”

  He wanted to know if his father had died painfully, if it had been fast, or slow, if his father had called his name, or said . . . anything. So many questions roiled through his mind and poured over into hers that Shironne put her hands over her ears in a futile attempt to shut them out. “I couldn’t tell what he was saying.”

  “Stop it, Mikael,” Dahar said.

  At the sound of his voice, Mikael’s assault faded from her mind, controlled again.

  “I realize it’s important to you, Mikael.” Dahar spoke in a calm tone, so unlike him that Shironne wondered if he’d been practicing. “Will this dream reoccur soon?” he asked.

  Distracted now, Mikael’s mind calculated. “It usually comes twice a year or so.”

  “And Sera’s tweaking you about your father probably set it off,” Dahar said, irritation flaring again. “So, in six months or so, you’ll have another chance.”

  Shironne folded her hands in her lap, holding in her frustration. It wasn’t like clockwork, the timing of the dreams, she’d stolen that from Mikael’s mind, too. And Dahar had skipped over the important point. “Sir?”

  “What we need to do . . .” Dahar added.

  “Sir, can I say something?” Shironne interrupted.

  Dahar schooled himself to patience, a great effort from him. “Is it important?”

  “It’s the most important part, sir.”

  “Then say it,” he said.

  Shironne turned her face back to where Mikael sat. “It was intentional, your father reaching out to you. He was trying to tell you something, but he just couldn’t reach you.”

  Mikael’s mind whirled.

  “Are you saying that Valerion intentionally bound Mikael into the dream?” Deborah asked gently. “He used some binding to do it?”

  Shironne let out a slow breath, trying to put together all the right words. “What I was seeing was only Mikael’s memory, the things about this dream that Mikael has stored away in his mind. He remembers the place and all the details of a room he could never have seen. Those details came from his father’s head, not his own. In the dream, Mikael remembers his father trying to speak at the end. He remembers feeling his father hanging on to him, that he was desperate to tell Mikael something.”

  “To tell me who killed him?” Mikael asked.

  Shironne shook her head. “No, I think it was something else, but whatever it was, Valerion never managed to tell Mikael.”

  “Why do you say that?” Dahar interrupted.

  “Because it’s not in Mikael’s head. I would know. It’s like there’s a box in Mikael’s head, and when he dreams, I can look inside and see there’s nothing in it. You’re still holding onto that box, b
ecause you know there’s supposed to be something important inside,” she told Mikael. “It’s not there, Mikael. I’m sorry. Your father’s secret died with him.”

  * * *

  As soon as Deborah closed the door behind her and Shironne, Mikael slumped down in the upholstered chair opposite the one Shironne had sat in.

  She had to be wrong. He’d always felt that somehow his father had left some message for him. But if Shironne said there was nothing there in his mind, he must be the one who was wrong. I was so sure.

  “Why didn’t you have any warning this time?” Dahar asked.

  Mikael made himself focus on Dahar’s face. “Sometimes I don’t, sir, particularly with old dreams—the ones that repeat. I had a headache last night, but I didn’t make the connection.”

  “Dreams don’t come with bells on their wrists?” Dahar frowned. “Seth’s bound to be upset.”

  Mikael remembered Seth—the Family’s Battlemaster—barging into the office once, demanding his head on a plate. Seth considered Mikael one of the greatest threats to the security of the Fortress because his quarterguards, guards, and sentries were often made useless by the fear in Mikael’s dreams. Now that Kai was his apprentice, Mikael could only expect worse.

  “Well, I don’t have time to listen to Seth’s complaints.” Dahar glanced around, evidently hunting his jacket. One of the guards indicated the jacket where it lay, slumped over Kai’s old desk. Dahar put it on, carefully wrapped his sash about his waist so that the jacket lay smoothly under it, and said, “Come up with a list of questions for Shironne. What you want to know from the dream. Perhaps with her help you can find out what happened.” The guard held out his overcoat and Dahar slung it over his arm. “And tell Sera whether or not she’s angry with me, I still expect her to arrive on time.”

  Mikael returned to his desk after Dahar and his guards left, relishing the peace and quiet of having no Valarens in the office. A list of questions? He didn’t have to write them down, he just had to think of them and Shironne would know. But she couldn’t answer him that way, not like she would be able to if she was properly bound to him. He would have to go through Deborah instead.

  So he cleared his mind, took out a piece of paper, and began to write. Usually his dreams gave him information that helped him find the killer. Perhaps that was why he’d hung onto this dream for so long. He still needed to find the man who’d killed his father.

  He began with descriptions, the room, the angle of the light, the things his father might have said. His mother? What had happened to her? Somewhere in that tangled dream there must be some clue that made the recurrence of the dream worthwhile. Or at least he hoped so, given the number of times he’d woken feeling like he’d been shot through the lung.

  Kai showed up, though, ending Mikael’s writing.

  “Master Seth is upset,” Kai began without preamble.

  “I expected so,” Mikael said, resigned to the lecture that would follow.

  Kai tapped one impatient finger on his old desk, then glared back at the office door. “I’ve told him to consider you a force of nature,” he said almost absently, “rather like a flood. There’s no preparing for it, and nothing to do about it.”

  Mikael had expected Kai to take Seth’s side. “Thank you, I think.”

  Kai shrugged, turning his full attention back to Mikael. “I want to apologize.”

  Mikael wondered if the entire world had turned upside down in one day. “For what?”

  Kai went still, likely analyzing the question. “For assuming weakness in the matter of your dreams,” he finally answered. “I’ve been unfair to you.”

  They had worked together for four years, and Mikael didn’t think Kai had ever apologized for anything. “Thank you,” he said after a second’s surprise passed.

  “I struggle to deal with Dahar,” Kai said, “and not due to issues about my paternity. I often just don’t like him. It is much easier for him to get along with you.”

  That speech had begun to sound practiced. “He can be difficult,” Mikael agreed.

  “I wasn’t aware how much so until I began working with Seth. Dahar is . . . emotionally unstable.”

  Mikael didn’t intend to repeat that to Dahar. “Compared to you, Kai, of course he is.”

  Kai appeared to realize then how critical that sounded. “Please don’t tell him I said that, Mikael. I meant that his . . .” His brow furrowed. “His temperament is very different from mine.”

  Mikael wondered where this string of confidences was going. “I would have to agree.”

  Kai sighed and leaned back against his old desk, a rare moment of relaxation. “I sent for Sera, and he’s not happy with me. They don’t get along. But the king needs her here. He needs it to appear as if someone is preparing to take my place as his heir.”

  Ah. That explained Sera’s unexpected return. “An appearance of continuity. That’s what you mean.”

  The corners of Kai’s mouth turned down. He didn’t usually show his emotions on his face, so that hinted to the depths of his feeling about this topic. “I left my uncle in a difficult situation. And Father, so . . .”

  And Kai needed to fix that.

  The door opened and Sera herself walked in, wearing yet another embroidered burgundy jacket. Eli followed a step behind her, his face stiff. Mikael recognized the set of his jaw as annoyance, even if he couldn’t sense anything from the younger man. “I asked this runner what happened last night and he won’t tell me,” Sera began, sweeping one hand toward Eli’s brown-clad form. “Is he not expected to obey orders? Do they not discipline children in this place?”

  Mikael sighed gustily. Evidently Sera had gotten over her brief spot of low spirits and was back to her normal difficult self. “Sera, your father expected you here this morning, on time.”

  “I had nightmares last night. I didn’t sleep well.” She glared at Mikael now, apparently identifying him as the source of last night’s disturbance despite her claim that she didn’t know.

  “Neither did I,” he said. “As to the runners, their job is not to gossip with the household.”

  “I was not gossiping,” she snapped, irritation flaring about her. “I asked for information, and he just ignored me. He should be reprimanded.”

  “It is not his place to disseminate information.” Mikael glanced at Eli, who stared at a nonexistent point several feet in front of him. “Runners are instructed not to talk to adults unless absolutely needed.” Of course, calling Sera the adult in this situation was as ludicrous as considering Eli a child in need of the elders’ protection.

  “Sera, stop being childish,” Kai said in a cool tone. “You asked a runner to do something he should not do, and he didn’t. There is no reason to punish him for doing his job properly. In the same vein, Father may be soft on disciplining you for not doing your job properly, but I have no problem doing so. I left you my position here, and you belittle my years of hard work by making a game of it. I expect better of you.”

  Sera’s chin went up, her nostrils flaring and her eyes wide. “I do not make a game of your . . . my work.”

  “I was on time every day for over five years, whether I slept or not. It is near ten, now.”

  Mikael kept his mouth closed. That wasn’t exactly true. There had been times that Kai had simply refused to come in on schedule, but that hadn’t been tardiness. That had been him avoiding Dahar and the possible truth about his parentage, a different matter. But Sera didn’t need to know that.

  Sera’s jaw clenched, her color high.

  “You should go back to your post,” Kai told Eli.

  “Yes, Master Kai.” Eli made a half-bow and left without a glance in Sera’s direction.

  “Remember that the sentries and runners all answer to Master Seth—through me, Sera. Don’t attempt to trifle with my people.” Kai favored her with one more stern look and then turned his attention back to Mikael. “I have to return to work with Master Seth, but I’ll be back to deal with my sister aft
er luncheon.”

  Kai followed in Eli’s wake, leaving Mikael alone with Sera.

  Sera sat down at her desk and burst into noisy tears.

  So much for escaping the Valaren melodrama.

  Chapter 23

  * * *

  SHIRONNE SPENT the remainder of the morning in the infirmary, listening to Jakob’s lecture about bones—an interesting change from pregnant women. She would likely never set a bone alone, but now that he knew she could assist as she had the day before, Jakob wanted her to learn everything possible before the occasion rose again. Deborah returned from the elders’ meeting after noon and rescued her, but spent the next hour quizzing her on Mikael’s dream in detail.

  Most of the questions were less about the death and more about how she felt the dream itself worked. Deborah had theories about Mikael’s dreams, and hoped to get Shironne to prove them out. “For Valerion to reach Mikael in his sleep,” Deborah said, “indicates that there must have been a strong tie between them. I wonder if there might have been an aspect of binding involved, similar to what exists between you and Mikael.”

  That was why she’d used that word, bound, earlier that morning. “I thought binding was just between . . . well, a man and a woman.”

  Deborah sighed softly. “If a broadcaster can somehow trigger a binding,” she said, “as Mikael did with you, why would it only work between a male and a female? Why only once? Why can the broadcaster not bind four or five people? Or perhaps a strong bond with one person and a weaker bond with another? Or does a broadcaster form bonds with everyone in their life, bonds of varying strengths? As we don’t have any way to research that properly—or at least, not ethically—I can only guess at the answers. However, I had found at least one historical example where three people thought they were bound together. Three, so there is some precedent for my question.”