“You have helped Bean a great deal this day,” he said to the Falcorans. “For that, I thank you. She has a great well of untapped power within her, but fear has always kept her away from it. It’s important that she learn to use it, but trying to use too much, too quickly, is dangerous. She currently has a severe headache, which is a direct result of pushing herself too hard.”
“You have a headache?” Zach asked, studying her carefully. “You don’t appear to have a headache.”
Zander reached out with Water. The moment he touched her his eyes flared in surprise. “How can you stand there and look so calm with such pain?”
“It’s not that bad,” she said, looking down.
“It is that bad,” Zander argued. “I just felt it.”
“She has a great deal of practice hiding.”
“Iffon,” she warned.
“You asked them to help you, and they can’t do that unless they know the real version of you. Or would you prefer they know only the other version?”
“Right now I’d have them know the non-verbal pet canary version of you.”
Iffon leaned down and turned his head so that he could see her face. The crest of sulfur yellow feathers on his head rose stiffly. She stared back at him.
“I’m right, Bean, and you know it.”
Bean knelt down on the padded floor and picked up a couple of weights. “A few months ago I went into a store on Sheara 3 that sells pet supplies,” she said in a casual tone that almost hid her true ire. She stood up and carried the weights to their places along the wall and set them down. “They had these things called bird cages in all different colors and sizes. The one I liked best was pink.”
She returned to the mat and picked up more weights, not noticing that Zander and Zach were listening with barely restrained amusement.
“The bars were pink, and the top was pink, and it had these cute little tassels that hung down from the corners. Pink tassels. It even had the cutest little pink swing inside, and pink, heart shaped food and water dishes.” She set the weights where they belonged.
“Are you finished?”
“I don’t know,” she replied flatly. “Are you?”
Iffon studied her for a long moment. “I apologize,” he said only to her. “I should not have said that in front of them.”
“Thank you.”
Iffon leaned over to rub his head against her cheek. “You still need to be more careful, Bean. You know this.”
“Yes, I know Iffon,” she said out loud so the men could hear her. “I was just too excited to stop.”
“I understand.”
Bean turned around to see that the Falcorans had put away the rest of the weights for her. “Thanks, guys.”
“Iffon,” Zander said, “should we take her to the infirmary to get something for her headache, or can you help her with it?”
Bean’s eyes narrowed.
“I believe that was a mistake, Zander Falcoran,” Iffon said so that Bean couldn’t hear him.
Zander immediately looked from Iffon to Bean and nearly winced. “I apologize, Bean,” he said. “That came out wrong. What I meant to ask was if he could, or would, heal your headache. I was not asking him to determine what you should do.”
Bean sighed heavily. “I know that, Zander. It’s my turn to apologize. I’m feeling a bit testy right now and I’m not even sure why.”
“Is it the headache?” Zach asked.
“Maybe.”
“You should lie down and rest for a while, Bean,” Iffon said. “You just practiced for nearly two hours, while pushing hard the entire time.”
“I’d argue but the headache won’t let me.”
“Once you’re lying down I’ll meld and heal the headache. Then you can get some sleep.”
“At the risk of stepping out of line again, I agree with Iffon,” Zander said.
“Yeah, so do I,” she admitted. “Thanks for helping me. I appreciate it very much.”
“We’re glad to help, Lady BreeAnna,” Zach said. “Please don’t hesitate to ask if you need more help.”
Bean felt his sincerity. And Zander’s, too. It was nice, she decided. Nice to feel that they cared about her. But, as nice as it was, she also knew that it was only a tiny taste of what should be.
She buried her sadness as deeply as she could, knowing that if she could feel them, then they could feel her, too. It was only after she was in her room with the door locked behind her that she allowed herself to examine her emotions.
She kicked off her shoes and laid down on the bed. She liked Zander and Zach, she realized. She liked them a lot. More than she’d expected, in fact. But Zain was a different matter. She almost laughed at the irony. She hadn’t wanted Rami, but now that they were there, and now that she was getting to know them, her feelings had changed. But only for two of them.
She was just as much Clan Jasani as they were. Two weren’t going to do it. It had to be all three of them, or none of them, and if Zain had his way, it would be none. Since she couldn't exactly force him to want her, it was pretty clear that Zain was going to get his way.
Chapter 17
18 days to deadline…
Bean started the treadmill up and jogged through the warm-up portion of her program. Iffon stood on the shelf in front of the control panel and waited for the machine to pick up the pace a little.
“Tell me what’s troubling you, Bean.”
She looked at him and shrugged her shoulders lightly as she ran. “The telekinesis,” she said with a grimace.
“What about it?” he asked. “I thought it was going well.”
“Yes, but only to a point. I can throw a knife at the target hard enough for it to penetrate and I can guide it to the center, or close enough to it.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah, it’s fantastic as far as it goes. But when I get more than fifteen feet away, it falls apart.”
“Falls apart?”
“I can’t throw hard enough for it to go beyond a certain distance. I can use telekinesis to push it a little further, but not with enough force to penetrate the target.”
“I see,” Iffon said. “The weights have been going well, though.”
“Yes, but again, only to a point. I can lift two hundred pounds a few inches off the floor and hold it for a few minutes. That’s it. I can’t raise them higher or move them in any other way, and I can’t lift more than that.”
“Two hundred pounds is a lot, Bean.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But so what? Do you think the big important task I’m supposed to perform is to lift the weight of one person a few inches off the ground, or throw something from fifteen feet away? Because I don’t, Iffon.”
“I honestly don’t know,” Iffon replied. “What about the marbles? You were working with them last night.”
“I was,” she agreed. “But I can’t do anything more with them now than before.”
“Good morning, Bean, Iffon.”
Bean looked up to see Debora entering the machine room in her workout clothes. “Good morning Debora,” she replied, doing her best to stretch her lips into her littlest smile. “I won’t be long.”
“No rush,” Debora said. She frowned as she approached. “What’s the matter, Bean? You look tired and unhappy.”
“I’m all right,” Bean said. “I haven’t been sleeping too well I guess.”
Debora leaned against the stair machine in front of the treadmill. “You worried about something? Or someone?”
“The first one,” Bean admitted. “Debora, you throw knives, right?”
“Yeah, I do. I’ve never actually thrown them at a person, but I’ve been throwing knives for about fifteen years now. I enjoy it.”
“How far can you throw them?”
“I can throw twenty feet and maintain my accuracy. Beyond that things start to get iffy. Why do you ask?”
“I can only throw about fifteen feet and remain accurate. I was hoping you could tell me how to inc
rease my distance.”
“A little strength training might help. And practice.”
“I’ll try that,” Bean said just as the treadmill finished the program. She grabbed the towel, waited for Iffon to move to her shoulder, and stepped off the machine. “Thanks, Debora. Have a good run.”
“I hope to,” Debora said, smiling. “See you two later.”
Bean nodded, grabbed a bottle of water and left the machine room. She returned to her room, took a shower, and got dressed.
“Hungry?” she asked Iffon when she came out of the bathroom with his clean food dishes in one hand. She set them on the table and went to the closet for a sweat jacket.
“Yes, I am. Are you going to start strength training?”
“No, it’s too late for that,” she said, putting the jacket on. “Debora has been throwing for fifteen years and can only throw twenty feet with accuracy. I don’t think lifting weights for a couple of weeks is going to do me much good.”
***
Just as she and Iffon were finished eating breakfast and were getting ready to leave, Zach, Zander, and Zain approached their table. She stood up, not liking the way she felt with all three of them hovering over her.
“Good morning,” she said politely while gathering Iffon’s dishes. She sensed Zach and Zander’s nervousness, and wondered at it.
She’d seen the Falcorans several times since they’d helped her in the training room, but only to exchange polite greetings with Zach or Zander if they passed each other. Occasionally one of them would stop by her table in the cafeteria to ask how she was or say good morning, but they didn’t invite her to eat with them, and she was glad of it.
Zain never greeted her, never waved at her, and never spoke to her. Her ability to sense and feel Zach and Zander had increased to a degree that actually made her very uncomfortable. In stark contrast, she never felt Zain at all. Not that she needed to feel him to recognize his steadily increasing hostility toward her. Enough that she’d become extremely wary of him.
“Good morning,” Zander said, interrupting her thoughts. “We were hoping you’d agree to join us in the conference room for a little while.”
“Is there a particular reason?” she asked carefully, not wanting to insult them, but not at all happy with the idea.
“We have something we’d like to speak with you about,” Zander replied. She wanted to refuse, but she couldn’t. The hope coming from Zander and Zach wouldn’t let her.
“All right,” she agreed. “Iffon?” A moment later he was on her shoulder and she walked beside Zander out of the cafeteria. She could feel Zach behind them on the right, but she felt nothing of Zain. Nothing except a cold chill that made her exceptionally uneasy about having her back to him.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said to Iffon.
“They do seem rather tense, don’t they?”
“Any ideas about what they want to discuss?”
“Not a one,” Iffon replied. “We’ll soon find out though.”
“Yeah, I guess we will,” she said without any enthusiasm at all.
Within just a few minutes they were seated in the seats they’d used whenever they met in the conference room. She waited quietly for one of them to start speaking, her hands gripping each other tightly under the table. When Zander abruptly began speaking, she was relieved.
“We’re aware that a round of salacious rumors ran through the Askara before we boarded and took command. We’d like to explain what is and isn’t true about those rumors.”
Bean’s breath seemed to freeze in her throat. “Why would they want to tell me this, Iffon?”
“I don’t know,” Iffon replied. “Do you want to hear this?”
“Not particularly, no,” she said. “But it would be more than a little rude to just get up and walk out.”
“I don’t care if it’s rude or not, Bean. I care only for what you want to do.”
“Thanks, Iffon, I appreciate that.” She bit her lip uncertainly, then sighed inwardly. “I’ll listen. For now.”
She realized that Zander was waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t know what. After a moment, she just nodded. That was, apparently, enough.
“I have to warn you that we’ll have to touch on some personal and private topics.”
“All right, I’m warned,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel.
“As you’re no doubt fully aware, male-sets mature at about eighty to ninety years of age. Before that time, they…we…are sexually active. After maturity is reached that stops until their berezi is found.”
“Yes, I know this.”
“That didn’t happen to us,” he said. Her eyes flared in surprise.
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I know, please bear with me.” He waited for her nod. “We continued to experience and engage in sexual activities far past the time that it should have become impossible. At first our parents thought we were just taking longer than usual to mature, and that’s what we assumed as well. After another couple of decades, we couldn’t help but wonder what was happening.
“We discussed the situation many times between us but, in the end, we always decided that it didn’t really matter that much. Having a sex drive didn’t seem like such a bad thing to us, so we just let it go.
“In time we became more focused on our career than sex. We still had the ability, but the interest had faded. Several years passed and it seemed that whatever was supposed to kick in decades earlier to prevent our ability to engage in sex had begun to function to a small extent. Our focus on our careers had done the rest.
“Our hard work paid off and we were given command of a jump point sentry station near Sheara 3. We had a celebration that got a little out of hand.
“A few weeks later the woman we’d had sex with that night, Cela, showed up on our doorstep. She insisted that she was pregnant, and that Zain was the father. When we told her that wasn’t possible, she appeared to accept it and left.”
Bean stood up abruptly and crossed the room to the chiller. She opened it, noting almost absently that her hands were trembling quite a bit. She reached in, grabbed four bottles of water, and closed the chiller before returning to the table. She set three bottles down in front of Zach without even thinking about it, then sat down in her own chair. It took several moments for her to get the lid off but she barely noticed.
She felt like she was standing in the middle of a road with a speeding vehicle coming straight at her. She knew damn well it was going to do a lot more than just hurt if she stayed there, but she couldn’t figure out how to get out of the way. Shaky hands and tight bottle caps were the least of her concerns at the moment.
“A few days later we were hit with criminal charges,” Zander continued once she had her cap off and had taken a drink. “Cela claimed that Zain raped her and we held her down. It was ludicrous, of course, but we weren’t on Jasan at the time. We were on Sheara 3, and the people who were listening to her story believed her because they knew next to nothing about us.
“We have all of the data concerning the entire event on a memory crystal that we generally have to share whenever we join a crew that doesn’t know us. If you want, we’ll give you a copy of it.” She couldn’t disguise her shudder at the thought, and didn’t try. “For now, I’ll say only that it was a nightmare for us. Since she was using Zain as the main object of her delusions, it was more difficult for him than Zach and I.
“Eventually, it was discovered that the woman had a long history of mental instability, and we weren’t her first victims. The evidence proving her deceit and illness was sufficient to clear our names, and get another man released from prison.
“Instead of allowing that information to be released to the public, we opted to have it sealed on the condition that she be ensconced in a mental health treatment facility. We believed she needed help more than she needed punishment. The authorities agreed and signed an order that would keep her there indefinitely, but for no
less than ten years.
“We returned to Jasan and went straight to Doc, something we should have done decades sooner. He discovered that we had what is, essentially, a birth defect. I won’t go into details since we barely understand it ourselves. He mixed up a medication for us that took about a year to get right with constant tests and adjustments. We didn’t understand how anything could really help since medications don’t work on us. Doc explained that this was a supplement rather than a drug. We didn’t argue with him. The man knows his stuff, and we had next to no real understanding of the problem anyway. Eventually the right formula was found and we’ve been taking it ever since. That was a little more than fifteen years ago.”
Bean had a lot of questions, none of which she was prepared to voice. Instead she asked the most innocuous question she could think of. “The woman is free now?”
“No, she’s not,” Zach said. “She was there for two years before she claimed to have been raped again. She wasn’t believed and ended up killing her doctor and one orderly. She’ll never be free again.”
Bean nodded, then looked down at her water bottle. “Do you think it would be rude for me to leave now?” she asked Iffon. “I really need to get out of here.”
“No, not in the least.”
She nodded, a thought coming to her. She really didn’t want to say anything, but she had to. “Just a second, I have one thing to say.”
“I’m in no rush,” he said, spreading his wings a little before resettling them.
Bean took a deep breath before looking up to meet first Zander’s eyes, then Zach’s. “Thank you for telling me this. I’m sure it’s a painful and difficult subject for all of you. I’m sorry you had to relive it shortly after taking Command of the Askara.”
“Then you already knew all about this,” Zain accused.
“No, I didn’t,” she said, not taking her eyes from Zander’s. “I just saw that people seemed angry with you, and then suddenly they weren’t. I didn’t know why and I didn’t ask.
“I don’t know why you decided to tell me this story. I have the distinct feeling that you have a reason, and if that’s the case, I’d like to know what it is.”
Bean's Heart (Hearts of ICARUS Book 7) Page 26