by David Weber
"No." Gadrial shook her head, eyes wide, and Jathmar and Shaylar exchanged startled glances.
"Nothing like it?" Jathmar's astonishment showed even through his slower, more labored Andaran.
"No."
The three of them stared at one another, thunderstruck for entirely different reasons.
"Well," Gadrial finally said, "it's clear we come from very different people. Very different."
"Yes," Shaylar gulped. "Even more different than we'd realized."
"Which brings up another question." Gadrial held Shaylar's gaze. "What are your . . . Talents?"
Shaylar had known it was coming. It was, after all, the next logical question. She just wished she'd thought to come up with an explanation for it before this. Lying, even by withholding information, did not come naturally to a Voice. For that matter, she wasn't certain exactly which lies she should tell! Should she understate what Talents could do in an effort to lull these people into a false sense of security? Hope they would take Sharona and the Talented too lightly? Or should she exaggerate the Talents? Hope she and Jathmar could make the Arcanans nervous enough that they'd move slowly, cautiously? Possibly create enough nervousness to buy time for their own people to mobilize in response to the threat?
"Jathmar is a Mapper," she said finally. "He . . . Sees the land around him. Not very far," she added. "For a few miles in any one direction, at most."
Gadrial's mouth had fallen open. She stared at Jathmar for a moment, then back and Shaylar.
"And you?"
"Oh, my Talent isn't very much," Shaylar prevaricated. "Mostly, I sense Jathmar through the marriage bond. It helps me know if he's in trouble, when he's out Mapping. And I help draw the charts, too."
"We didn't find any maps," Gadrial said, studying them with hooded, wary eyes. Shaylar met those eyes forthrightly and shook her head.
"No, of course you didn't. I burned them."
"You burned them?"
"What would you have done?" Shaylar challenged. "Would you have just handed them over? To people you didn't know? People who'd murdered one of your friends, who'd chased you down like animals, who were shooting and killing the rest of your friends all around you? Trying to kill you? Would you have let people like that get hold of maps that showed the way to your home?"
"No," Gadrial said softly, after a moment. "I don't suppose I would."
"Neither would I. Neither did I."
Gadrial nodded slowly, but another deep suspicion showed plainly in her expression. She started to ask a question, paused, then closed her lips. Shaylar waited, meeting her gaze levelly. It was one of the hardest things she'd ever done, but she held that gaze steadily, as though she had nothing further to hide.
"Shaylar," Gadrial said at last, sounding unhappy, "we think—Jasak thinks—your people got a message out. One that warned your people about what had happened. Did someone on your crew get a warning out? Using this Talent of the mind?"
Continuing to meet Gadrial's gaze was agony, but Shaylar did it anyway.
"I don't know, Gadrial."
"Don't know? Or won't tell me?"
"What do you want of me, Gadrial?" Shaylar's eyes filled. "We're your prisoners."
"Not my prisoners." Gadrial shook her head, biting her lip. "You're Sir Jasak Olderhan's prisoners."
"Don't you mean the army's?" Jathmar asked harshly in his accented Andaran.
"No, I don't. I don't understand all of it, because I'm not in the Army, either. And I'm not Andaran. The Andarans are a military society, and they have a lot of complicated rules I don't understand. But one of those rules is about prisoners, and about responsibilities toward them. You'll have to ask Jasak about it, if you want to know."
"I do want to know," Jathmar said in a voice full of iron. "And I think we have a right to know. Don't you?"
Gadrial bit her lip again, more gently this time, looking at him levelly. Then she drew a slightly unsteady breath.
"Yes, I do. If you'll wait here, I'll go find him and ask him to explain. Explain to all of us, actually. I'm caught in the middle of this thing, too, and I don't understand it as well as I should."
"Thank you," Shaylar said softly, and Gadrial nodded. Then she left the cabin, and Shaylar began to tremble.
"They're going to figure it out, Jathmar," she said, once again in Shurkhali.
"Eventually," he agreed heavily. "Probably sooner than we'd like. And it's my fault. I should have realized you weren't really in danger—not with Gadrial."
"Don't blame yourself." She laid a hand against his cheek, and his lips quirked.
"There's no one else to blame, sweetheart. It certainly isn't your fault." He captured her hand, kissed her fingers, and tucked them against his heart. "I know how hard that was, lying to Gadrial just now. I don't think I could have done half as well as you did. She's half convinced you don't know for sure if a message went out."
"Only half," Shaylar muttered, "and Jasak Olderhan won't be so easy to fool."
"No, he won't. Still, you're right. What else should they expect from us? If they were in our shoes, to you think they'd have volunteered that information about magic powering their whole civilization?"
"Probably not," Shaylar agreed dryly. "It would be interesting to know how much information our side's managed to gather from their prisoners." She shivered. "I'm not sure I want to know how we're treating their soldiers, though. We've been so fortunate . . . "
His arm tightened around her. He didn't need to speak; she could taste his fear for her, his fear about what lay ahead. When Jasak came into the room to explain, Shaylar would know he was telling the truth, if only she could arrange to touch him. But having said as much as she had already, he would undoubtedly be doubly suspicious if she tried anything so obvious. Up until now, their captors had viewed her penchant for touching people as a simple personal habit. She'd been careful to be just as "touchy-feely" with Jathmar as she was with them, but now—
She might never be given another opportunity to touch them again. She faced that probability squarely. And as she did, she also realized that lying to them now and being caught in that lie later would not do them a great deal of good down the road. It might well damage their circumstances, worsen their treatment, incur all sorts of unpleasantness.
The thoughts flowed through her, but before she could discuss them with Jathmar, it was too late. The door opened again, and Jasak Olderhan filled the frame, his eyes hooded as he stared down at them.
Chapter Thirty-Three
He knows, Shaylar realized with a jolt of pure terror. He already knows. . . .
The cold anger in Jasak's eyes was bad enough, but what lay under that anger had Jathmar moving abruptly, thrusting her behind him, facing Jasak with nothing in his hands but courage.
"If you hurt her," Jathmar said softly, each word enunciated precisely, carefully, "I will do my best to kill you."
Something lethal stirred in Jasak Olderhan's eyes. Then he drew a long, slow breath through his nostrils and let it out again, just as slowly. The glittering threat left his eyes. He was still angry—deeply angry, with a cold, controlled fury—but homicide no longer stared them in the face. Jathmar stayed where he was, anyway.
"Gadrial," Jasak said heavily, "please stay in the passage. I don't want you walking into this cabin."
Shaylar wanted to tell him Gadrial wasn't at risk, but what she felt from Jathmar held her silent. If anything threatened her, Jathmar would use whatever was at hand to keep Jasak away from her. Even Gadrial, the closest thing either of them had to a friend in this entire universe. Her breath sobbed in her throat. This was madness. . . .
Jasak stepped fully into the cabin and closed the door carefully behind him. He didn't lock it—not that there was much reason to on a ship in the middle of the ocean—but he stood with his back still against it, staring at them for several more seconds. Then he drew another deep breath.
"Gadrial tells me you want to know your status as my prisoners?"
"That's right."
"Well, I'd like to know how you sent a message to your soldiers."
Icy silence lay between them. It lingered, chilling despite the sunlight through the scuttle.
"Do you have any idea," Jasak asked softly, "what your people did to my men?"
"From what I've gathered, about the same thing they did to my crew," Jathmar said in a flat voice.
Jasak's eyes flashed. That murderous look glittered in them again for a moment, but then his nostrils flared.
"All right. I suppose there's a certain justice in that view." He very carefully unknotted his hands, then scrubbed his eyes in a gesture that combined weariness, frustration, and almost unbearable tension in one.
"Do you remember Hadrign Thalmayr?" he asked finally, abruptly.
"The man who replaced you? The one who hated Shaylar and me?"
"Yes." Jasak's voice was as dry as a Shurkhali summer wind. "He was a very . . ." He paused, clearly searching for words Jathmar's limited Andaran would allow him to understand. "He thought in narrow terms. I tried to convince him to pull out, to abandon that portal at least for a time. We'd already made one mistake, and I didn't want anyone making another one that led to more shooting. But he wouldn't listen. Neither would Five Hundred Klian at Fort Rycharn. They thought it was unlikely there was a body of your soldiers anywhere near our portal. And they thought it was unlikely you'd gotten a message out. But they were wrong on both counts, weren't they?"
"Where they?" Jathmar countered.
"You tell me," Jasak said softly. "And before you do, think about this. I've been adding things up. Puzzling things. We've been holding you for barely two weeks, yet you speak Andaran astonishingly well. How? Nobody learns languages that fast—not in Arcana.
"Then there's your wife's ability to know things about people. She's a very sensitive creature, your wife. Always touching someone. Always concerned. Always so understanding. She understands too much, Jathmar. It's almost like she knows what you're thinking."
He looked past Jathmar, staring directly into Shaylar's eyes, and her insides flinched. But she forced herself to meet his gaze, the way she'd met Gadrial's. It was harder—much, much harder—to simply meet Jasak Olderhan's gaze, let alone lie to those cold-steel eyes. When those eyes tracked back to Jathmar, she nearly sagged in relief. It felt as if someone had turned off the blowtorch they'd been holding on her.
"Then there's the dragon," Jasak added softly.
"The dragon?" Jathmar echoed, genuinely baffled this time.
"Oh, yes. The dragon. You were still unconscious, but Shaylar remembers. Don't you?" The glance he flicked into her eyes felt like a lance driven through her. Then he clicked that glance back onto Jathmar. "We had to airlift you out to save your life. When the transport dragon arrived, we loaded you on with no trouble. But when we tried to load Shaylar, the dragon went berserk. He hated her on sight, and I want to know why. What did the dragon sense about her that we couldn't?
"Stranger still, the dragon's rage seemed to hurt her. Not just terrify her; hurt her. She clutched at her head, and she screamed. Not just once, either. Not just the first time we tried to put her on the dragon's back. It happened again, right after we got airborne. The dragon actually tried to buck us off in midair, tried to reach her with his teeth. But your wife didn't even see that, because she was clutching her head again, screaming in pain. Gadrial had to put her to sleep, knock her unconscious with her healing Gift, just to stop the pain she was in. And to—how did Shaylar put it? To 'get the dragon out of her mind.'"
This time, Shaylar flinched. She couldn't help it. Her memory of that dreadful night was too chaotic, to confused, for detailed recollection, even for a Voice. But she remembered that moment. Remembered her desperate plea to Gadrial. Yet she'd never suspected Gadrial might actually have understood her. The deadly implications of that revelation stabbed through her and she felt the same awareness resonating through the marriage bond with Jathmar.
"Would you care to explain all of that, Jathmar?" Jasak said. "If I hadn't known such things were impossible, I'd have said she was doing something with her mind—something that enraged our dragon, and that the dragon's rage was somehow spilling over into her mind. But that was impossible. Absurd. Except that it isn't impossible, after all, is it? You people have these Talents." He spat the word out like poison. "You do things with your minds. Just what kind of game are the two of you playing with our minds?"
He's scared, Shaylar realized abruptly. He's scared to death of something he doesn't understand. She knew exactly what that felt like; she'd just gone through the same experience herself, with Gadrial's explanation. But his fright ran much deeper than hers had, much deeper than simple fear of something he didn't understand.
He's terrified that we'll put thoughts into their minds, control them somehow. What else could he think, if they don't have anything like telepathy? And he feels responsible. He's not just afraid for himself. It's not that simple for him. He's a military officer, responsible for others, for making certain we don't do something to them.
"It doesn't work that way, Jasak," she heard herself say.
"Shaylar!" Jathmar twisted around to stare at her, his eyes dark with protest, but she shook her head.
"No, Jathmar. I need to say this. Trust me, please." She'd deliberately spoken in Andaran, and her husband searched her eyes even as he searched her feelings through their bond. He bit his lower lip, taut with fear for her, and yet in the end he nodded and turned to Jasak once more.
"I'll say it again, Jasak Olderhan. Hurt her, and I will do my best to kill you."
Their gazes locked for a long, dangerous moment. Then Jasak let out an exasperated sigh.
"For people with 'Talents,' you can be amazingly unobservant, Jathmar! I don't kill women. Not if I know they're in the line of fire. And I don't hurt women, either. When I discovered Shaylar in those trees . . . "
The agony reflected beside the anger in his eyes was plainly visible, and not just to Shaylar, and she felt a little of the tension drain from her husband. Just a little, but it was enough to take them all one step back from the killing edge of danger. Jathmar still wouldn't let her move closer to Jasak, not even to stand at his own side, which was where she desperately wanted to be—held in his arms, not cowering behind his shoulder. But there was no point in making the tension worse.
She did reach forward, needing contact with him, even if that contact was as slight as interlacing her fingers through his, and he reached back to squeeze her hand.
"Please open the door, Jasak," she said then. "I know you're afraid. You're worried Jathmar might try to use Gadrial as a hostage, out of fear. But she needs to hear what I have to say."
Jasak stared into her eyes for long moments, trying to see past them into her mind. She could feel the attempt battering at her, and wondered abruptly if perhaps he did have at least a trace of Talent himself. But even if he did, he didn't have the slightest idea how to use it, and so he ended up with nothing but intense frustration and no real answers. In the end, he finally turned and opened the door.
Gadrial's eyes were wide and worried. She started to step forward, but Jasak lifted a hand.
"Don't come in," he cautioned. "Not yet. But Shaylar wants you to hear this, too. It ought to be . . . interesting."
He turned that cold-steel gaze back onto her and waited.
"I am Talented," Shaylar said, speaking very quietly, very steadily. "A Talent is a little bit like a Gift. You're born with it. But we don't use Talents to control some energy field outside ourselves. We use our minds to do different kinds of work. We call someone with my Talent a 'Voice." I can use my mind to talk directly to another Talented Voice. I can't do that with anyone else, not even Jathmar."
Jasak stood rigidly in the open doorway, clearly not believing it, but Shaylar kept going, because she didn't have any other choice. She released Jathmar's hand just long enough to reach up and brush fingertips across her husband's temple. Then she moved her hand f
rom his temple to her own.
"Jathmar and I share a special bond. When Talented people marry, there's such closeness, such sharing, that a deep and permanent bond forms. But it isn't the same as a full Voice. He can feel my emotions; I can feel his. And I can feel Jathmar's mind. Not hear it, exactly, but feel it—like I'm touching something solid. And he can feel mine, even across a distance of several miles. We can often guess what the other is thinking, because we know each other so well, but I can't read his mind.
"And I can't read yours or Gadrial's, either. I can't hear your thoughts. I can't put thoughts into your mind. You noticed how often I touch people." Her rueful smile startled him. "I knew one of you would, eventually, but I didn't know who would see it first. Gadrial spends more time with me, but you're more suspicious." She shrugged. "You're a soldier. It's your job."