“Not really.” Salomen looked past Ekatya. “Here comes a whole herd of warriors. I guess they got over their awe. Ekatya, will you walk with me?”
“What? You’re leaving me alone with them?”
“I doubt I’m the one they want to speak with. Don’t worry, I won’t go far.” Salomen stopped Andira’s protest with a kiss, then led Ekatya away from the approaching group. True to her word, she turned at the nearest tree, keeping her bondmate in her line of sight. Ekatya smiled to herself; she recognized this kind of protectiveness.
“I never had a chance to speak with you last night,” Salomen said. “At least, not without several sets of ears listening. I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For the gift you gave Andira. You saw through her front. It had been a very long time since anyone besides Corozen treated her like a person, and not a rank or title.”
Ekatya nodded. “At a certain level, we start to forget how to separate ourselves from the rank. It’s what we need our friends and family for.”
“Were you forgetting yours?”
Looking at her, Ekatya had the feeling that Salomen understood everything, despite not being there or really knowing her. No wonder this woman had captured Andira’s heart.
“I was,” she said. “Worse, I was forgetting why I joined Fleet in the first place and what I wanted my life to stand for. That was the gift Andira gave me. Well, one of them. You owe me no thanks, Bondlancer. I think I’m still in debt.”
“Salomen, please. I’m still not ready for the walls that title is going to raise.”
“Just making sure I didn’t start a diplomatic incident. Speaking of which, did Andira ever tell you the story of when our friendship really began?”
“She told me that she liked you from the start, but no, she hasn’t mentioned any specific moment.” Salomen looked intrigued. “It involved a diplomatic incident?”
“A fistfight, actually…”
The feast was sumptuous, offering specialty dishes and drinks from all over Alsea, and the entire Whitemoon Symphony played at the far edge of the grounds, its music drifting over the revelers as they gradually loosened up.
Vellmar needed a full glass of spirits before the chills stopped, and a second before she could begin to relax. After that, she happily stuffed herself with some of the best food she’d ever tasted while wandering about the grounds and chatting with the guests. Every conversation naturally started with the same topic, but after a hantick, even that had been sufficiently reviewed and people reverted to their normal gossip, debates, and discussions.
But when she came around a curve in the garden path and found herself facing her oath holders, she was too awed to speak normally.
“Lancer Tal, Bondlancer Opah. Congratulations on a, ah, memorable ceremony.”
“Thank you.” Lancer Tal indicated the glass in her hand. “Nice to know you can drink all you want and not have to run with me tomorrow, isn’t it?”
Vellmar’s hand twitched, almost spilling her drink. “No! I mean, ah, yes? The feast is fantastic, I’ve never even had Valkinon before, but I’d run with you if you wanted…” She trailed off, her face heating as they smiled at her.
“Don’t tell me that after all these ninedays the Fahla’s Chosen thing finally got to you, too?”
“Well, no…but…” She gestured toward the temple. “I might be a few cycles behind in my offerings to Fahla.”
“And you’re telling me this why? I’m not a templar.”
“You made a molwyn tree glow,” Vellmar said bluntly. “That’s a miracle.”
“A little credit here, please,” the Bondlancer said. “She didn’t do it by herself.”
Vellmar looked from one to the other, not knowing what to say without digging herself in deeper.
Lancer Tal leaned closer. “Don’t let it get to you. It shocked the shek out of us, too.”
Vellmar’s eyes widened at the casual profanity. They were on temple grounds, on the night of a miracle, and Lancer Tal was just…
…acting like normal. Or at least normal when they were alone, training or exercising.
The laugh bubbled up out of nowhere. “It shocked two sheks out of me. I was remembering all the times I’ve hit you in our sparring sessions and wondering when the temple floor was going to crack open and swallow me.”
“Don’t even think about going easy on her after this,” Opah said. “I know what those sessions do for her. She’ll never get that kind of relaxation if she’s not battling for it.”
“Salomen is a fast learner.” Lancer Tal winked at her.
“Hard not to be, when I’m feeling what you feel.”
“What did Colonel Micah think about it?” Vellmar asked curiously.
“He asked if we could for once make his life easier instead of harder.”
She nodded, understanding exactly how he felt. “Well, I suppose it was going to come out sooner or later. And Ronlin is prepared for it.” Besides her professional interactions with Salomen’s Lead Guard, she saw him quite a bit on their off duty time since their quarters were adjoining in both the State House and the base. They had struck up a friendship, and she respected Ronlin as a highly—but appropriately—paranoid man.
“I’m beginning to wonder if Ronlin isn’t gifted with the forward sight,” Opah said. “He told me he was preparing for imminent exposure because all the world would be watching today. I thought he was just being…” She gestured at them.
“A warrior?” Lancer Tal asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes. And can we talk about something else besides security? There are other topics of interest, you know.”
“Such as?”
The Bondlancer pointed up. “That.”
Micah was done with crowds. He had mingled and conversed and enjoyed it, but after two hanticks, he needed some time alone.
He found the stone steps in the northeast corner of the temple grounds. A moon ago, climbing them would have required effort and his walking stick, but tonight he walked up easily. As he stood atop the park wall, looking out over the city and the vast bay beyond, he sent a thought of gratitude to the Redmoon healers who had done such excellent work on him.
It wasn’t often that a man owed his life to so many. When he had first seen the schedule for his Sharings, with nearly every time slot filled in for eight days and nights, he had broken down and wept. Then he determined that he would thank every one of those people for what they had done.
Even Aldirk.
It took nearly two moons, because one did not start such a conversation out of nothing. But he had just one left, and he could finish on the bonding break.
A soft breeze brushed his face, bringing with it the scent of the sea, and he lifted his eyes to the moons. He had been watching them all evening. Sonalia was the first to rise, full and brilliant, her light enhancing the natural glow of the temple dome. The largest and most distant of their moons, she moved with the stately grace befitting the eldest. Eusaltin was the impatient younger sister, rising later but catching up quickly as she dashed across the sky.
And now she was there, riding the trailing edge of her sister’s larger disc. Behind him, Micah heard the symphony play a fanfare as most of the feast lights went out. The hum of conversation and laughter ceased, and the temple grounds fell silent as every head turned skyward.
He settled himself on the wall, his legs dangling over the edge while he watched the moons begin their slide into the shadow of Alsea. Slowly, their brilliance was quenched. The stars blazed in the now-dark sky, and behind him, the glow of the temple dome seemed twice as bright.
The dark moons glided onward, almost invisible, until first Sonalia and then Eusaltin began to return to life—but not with their former silver light. This was an otherworldly red
glow, as they reflected the light from Alsea’s atmosphere rather than the sun. Eusaltin began her passage across Sonalia, and gradually, the two moons merged into one.
“There,” he whispered, entranced. For the next half hantick, Alsea would have one moon only—a red moon. It happened only once or twice each cycle, and since the earliest days of Alsean history, it had been associated with the unfathomable power of Fahla. Later scientific explanations did not lessen the instinctive awe the spectacle induced, and it seemed to him that a red moon shining on Andira and Salomen’s bonding feast was the perfect counterpoint to the flame of the molwyn tree. In every possible way, this bonding was blessed.
And so was he. He had carried his secret for so long that when he finally released it, he hardly knew what to feel. For Andira to know and accept it so easily…at times, it seemed like a miracle. Other times he was ashamed for ever thinking she would react otherwise. After all, she had been raised by Realta and Andorin—and himself.
Love feeds love, Realta had often told him. It was why she had no trouble finding room in her heart for both him and Andorin. He had never understood that until Fahla gave him the vision in Redmoon. Now he had a family of his own, and his heart seemed made of elastic for the ease with which it expanded to include its new members. Best of all, he had the freedom to speak of his great love as well as his great friend. He had always been afraid to bring up Realta too often, for fear of raising suspicion. In a way, telling his secret had brought her back to him.
“You would be so proud of her,” he murmured to the sky. “I think not even your dreams encompassed what she’s become.” Smiling broadly, he added, “But mine did.”
GLOSSARY
UNITS OF TIME
piptick: one 100th of a tick (about half a second).
tick: about a minute (50 seconds).
tentick: ten ticks.
hantick: 10 tenticks, just shy of 1.5 hours (83.33 minutes). One Alsean day is 20 hanticks (27.7 hours) or 1.15 days.
moon: a basic unit of Alsean time, similar to our month but 36 days long. Each moon is divided into four parts called ninedays. One Alsean moon equals 41.55 stellar (Earth) days.
cycle: the length of time it takes the Alsean planet to revolve around their sun (13 moons or approximately 17 stellar months).
Alsean days are divided into quarters, each five hanticks long, which reset at the end of the eve quarter. The quarters are: night, morn, mid, and eve. A specific hantick can be expressed in one of two ways: its place in the quarter or its exact number. Thus morn-three would be three hanticks into the morning quarter, which can also be expressed as hantick eight (the five hanticks of the night quarter plus three of the morning). In the summer, the long days result in sunrise around morn-one (hantick six), lunch or midmeal at mid-one (hantick eleven), dinner or evenmeal at eve-one (hantick sixteen), and sunset around eve-five (hantick twenty).
UNITS OF MEASUREMENT
pace: half a stride.
stride: the distance of a normal adult’s stride at a fast walk (about a meter).
length: a standard of distance equalling one thousand strides (about a kilometer).
GENERAL TERMS
ADF: Alsean Defense Force.
AIF: Alsean Investigative Force.
artisan: honorific for a crafter.
ba: short name for bondparent (either bondmother or bondfather).
bai: short name for birthparent (either birthmother or birthfather).
bondmate: a life partner.
boren: deer-like grazing animals.
cintek: the Alsean monetary unit.
deme: honorific for a secular scholar.
dokker: a farm animal similar to a cow. Slow moving and rather stupid, but with a hell of a kick when it’s angry or frightened.
dokshin: vulgar term for dokker feces.
Eusaltin: the smaller and nearer moon of Alsea.
evenmeal: dinner.
Fahla: the goddess of the Alseans, also called Mother.
fanten: a farm animal similar to a pig, used for meat.
front: a mental protection that prevents one’s emotions from being sensed by another.
gender-locked: an Alsean who is unable to temporarily shift genders for the purposes of reproduction. Considered a grave handicap, denying the individual the full blessing of Fahla.
grainbird: a small black and red seed-eating bird common in agricultural fields. It is known for singing even at night, leading to an old perception of the birds as lacking in intelligence—hence “grainbird” is also a slang term for an idiot.
grainstem powder: powder derived from crushed stems of a particular grain, which yields a sweet taste. Commonly used in cooking; also used to sprinkle over fresh bread.
Great Belt: the equator.
holcat: a small domesticated feline.
horten: an Alsean delicacy, often used in soup. It comes from a plant that, once harvested, stays fresh for a very short time and must be processed immediately. Due to that short window of time, fresh horten is very expensive and usually served only in the nicer restaurants.
hornstalk: a very fast-growing weed.
hyacot: a tree whose twigs, when snapped, provide a pleasant and long-lasting scent. Used in fine restaurants and as a room freshener.
joining: sexual relations. Joining is considered less significant than Sharing between lovers. The two acts can take place simultaneously, though this would only occur in a serious relationship.
kiral: honorific for a warrior serving in neither the Guards nor the Mariners.
kyne: honorific for a builder.
magtran: a form of public transport consisting of a chain of cylindrical passenger carriers accelerated by magnetic fields through transparent tubes.
marmello: a sweet, orange fruit.
midmeal: lunch.
molwine: the curved apex of the pelvic ridges on both male and female Alseans. A very sensitive sexual organ.
molwyn: Fahla’s sacred tree. It has a black trunk and leaves with silver undersides. A molwyn grows at the center of every temple of decent size.
mornmeal: breakfast.
mountzar: a carnivorous animal that lives at high elevations and hibernates during the winter.
panfruit: a common breakfast or dessert fruit.
probe: to push beyond the front and read emotions that are not available for a surface skim. Probing without permission is a violation of Alsean law.
raiz: honorific for a producer.
reese: honorific for a merchant.
Return: the passage after death, in which an Alsean returns to Fahla and embarks on the next plane of existence.
Rite of Ascension: the formal ceremony in which a child becomes a legal and social adult. The Rite takes place at twenty cycles, after which one’s choice of caste cannot be changed.
shannel: a traditional hot drink, used for energy and freshening one’s breath. Made from the dried leaves (and sometimes flowers) of the shannel plant.
skim: to sense any emotions that an Alsean is not specifically holding behind her or his front.
Sharing: the act of physically connecting the emotional centers between two or more Alseans, resulting in unshielded emotions that can be fully accessed by anyone in the Sharing link. It is most frequently done between lovers or bondmates but is also part of a bonding ceremony (in which all guests take part in a one-time Sharing with the two new bondmates). It can also be done between friends, family, or for medical purposes.
shek: vulgar slang for penetrative sex. Usually used as a profanity.
Sonalia: the larger and more distant moon of Alsea.
sonsales: one who is empathically blind.
thantane: a potent pain reliever, on a level with morphine.
tyree
s: Alseans whose empathic centers share a rare compatibility, which has physiological consequences. Tyrees can sense each other’s emotions at greater distances than normal, have difficulty being physically apart, and are ferociously protective of each other. Tyrees are always bonded, usually for life.
warmron: an embrace. Warmrons are shared only between lovers, or parents and children—and only until the child reaches the Rite of Ascension. A warmron is too close to a Sharing for it to be used at any other time.
weeper: a soap opera.
winden: a large six-toed mammal, adapted to an alpine environment. It is wary, able to climb nearly sheer walls, and the fastest animal on Alsea. Winden travel in herds and are rarely seen.
wristcom: wrist-mounted communication device, often used in conjunction with an earcuff.
zalren: a venomous snake.
THE STORY DOESN’T HAVE TO END ON THE LAST PAGE
Take it with you—on a shirt, a phone case, a mug and so much more. Choose your caste, or give a caste gift to a friend. That way, Alsea will always be there.
http://www.cafepress.com/chroniclesofalsea
ABOUT FLETCHER DELANCEY
Fletcher DeLancey spent her early career as a science educator, which was the perfect combination of her two great loves: language and science. These days she combines them while writing science fiction.
She is an Oregon expatriate who left her beloved state when she met a Portuguese woman and had to choose between home and heart. She chose heart. Now she lives with her wife and son in the beautiful sunny Algarve, where she writes full-time, teaches Pilates, tries to learn the local birds and plants, and samples every regional Portuguese dish she can get her hands on. (There are many. It’s going to take a while.)
She is best known for her geeky romance Mac vs. PC and her science fiction series, Chronicles of Alsea. Currently, she is working on the next books in the Chronicles of Alsea and as an editor for Ylva Publishing.
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