Seen (Heartstone Book 2)

by Frances Pauli

  “Let’s dump him out the airlock,” Mof suggested.

  “Tout wouldn’t appreciate that.” Haftan chuckled, the first mirth he’d shown in weeks. “Though I would enjoy it almost as much as you would. The man hasn’t done anything illegal…yet. He could simply be hoping negotiations go poorly. We can hardly kill him for that.”

  Mof’s grunt suggested otherwise.

  “We can’t,” Haftan asserted. “If we ever hope to win membership in the Summit.”

  “Screw the Summit.” Mofitan’s ire melted, despite his words. He’d concede, but his opinion on Galactic membership was clear. Haftan, on the other hand, had a lot riding on the negotiations going smoothly. Shayd could see that clearly enough. Haftan was built for this sort of thing. It suited him to the core.

  “How much longer?” Shayd’s voice sounded weak to his own ears. He tried to hide the anticipation, the soft thread of excitement.

  “I should go monitor their progress.” Mof pushed away from the table. “You’re welcome to come forward. Not much room in there, but it’s boring the shit out of me alone. Don’t know how Dolfan could stand it. All that time on the moon.”

  “I’ll come.” Shayd stood up. He’d make a poor replacement for Dolfan, and he knew it, but he couldn’t resist the invitation either.

  “Haftan.” Mofitan reached the door and turned back. “See if you can’t woo your way into that trader’s graces. I’d like to search the bastard’s luggage, but I doubt that would get us any closer to Summit membership either.”

  “Agreed.” Haftan chuckled again. “He’s probably stuffed his bags with trade goods, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good.”

  Shayd followed Mofitan from the room. He hung back long enough to share a parting glance with Haftan, to gather his own thoughts before heading for the forward cabin. It would be hard enough to wait there, hard enough to keep his composure when he knew who was on the shuttle. Peace or violence, the Shevran said. They’d have to prepare for either.

  No matter which occurred, however, the Shrouded Seer had his eye on the next few moments. His attention was focused on his own future, on the woman now leaving the Choma surface, and on the soft singing of the Heart that only they could hear.

  Chapter Twelve

  The shuttle rocked and wobbled more than she’d experienced in the vision. Possibly it would settle once they reached their final orbit, but at the moment it was making Rowri’s stomach dance. Her cat whimpered its displeasure, and Omira fared no better. The Senior’s usual serenity cracked under the foreign experience. Her hands folded and unfolded, and every time the vehicle tilted her lips twitched sharply to the opposite direction.

  Watching her drove Rowri’s hands into motion as well. She folded them together, closed her eyes, and chimed in her thoughts for patience.

  They sat behind the cockpit, on the very same opposing couches from her vision. The pilot’s voice filtered back through the gap, announcing their approach and relaying messages to the port. The shuttles were old. Very few Choma-uraru were skilled enough to manufacture new ones. They had enough trouble enticing the young to study sufficient science and mechanics to keep the fleet they had in repair. These banks of controls had probably come from Tolfarian plans, built by Uraru techs years before Rowri had been born.

  Eventually, their technology would decay beyond their capability to replenish it. The bio-net had already failed, and no one on Choma understood that system well enough to handle such an unforeseen disaster. They would be helpless to repair it without outside help, and yet that help didn’t necessarily need to come from Tolfarian hands.

  Still, as much as the two races had parted ways, they still shared kinship. To the Uraru, an enemy that shared Choma blood ranked considerably higher than a complete outsider. It was as it should be. Her seeing only confirmed it.

  Rowri opened her eyes. Rivets. The hatch was lined with them, a stipple of glossy dots ready to re-enact her dreams. The port had been tense. Citizens, ordinary Chomans with lives that didn’t revolve around seeing, didn’t understand the choice they’d made. They couldn’t. They’d assembled in protest to greet her shuttle. The silent disapproval had bid her farewell, and it still echoed in her memory—a sea of faces, an angry and confused people reeling from the loss of their bio-net, the loss of so many lives.

  The hatch would open and the rivets would glint in the light from his ship.

  “It’s going to be fine.” Omira’s voice rang hollowly inside the compartment. It sounded false and out of place. Then again, she might have been reassuring herself. She would have to return eventually. The Senior would have to face her people whereas Rowri only had to face away from them.

  What could she say to comfort the woman? She believed this was the right path, but only for herself. Her seeing hadn’t shown Choma’s future at all. What had Omira seen? “The Tolfarians will help you repair the net, Senior?”

  “Yes.”

  No elaboration, nothing but a single word of affirmation. Now her curiosity woke her Uraru. The cat tensed, and the priestess inhaled to quiet it. She couldn’t ask directly, but there had to be a way to get Omira to elaborate.

  “I’m sure the people will agree with the decision then.”

  “Perhaps.” Not a confirmation. It was a guess, and one that Rowri felt like a weight.

  She had agreed to leave her people behind believing it would secure their future. The dream of her future Tolfarian husband had only made her more willing. If she left and her arrangement did not solve the Chomans situation, that cast her into an entirely different light as well.

  It made her cat bristle further, and when the ship rocked to one side the beast in her mind growled outright. They stopped talking then, both doing their work invisibly. Rowri breathed and focused, imagined a chime for peace and success. She didn’t hum, didn’t want to disturb the mood in the shuttle any further. Two cats locked inside a metal box. Two women, locked inside their minds, working their way nearer to destiny with each inhale.

  The pilot’s voice blared soon enough. “We’ll be docking soon,” he announced. “Final orbit reached, contact established.”

  Contact established. Somewhere out there, he was very close. Rowri stilled and listened, as if she could hear him through the silence, across the ribbon of space that separated their vessels. The cabin shook and trembled. She grabbed the edge of the couch with both hands and closed her eyes, chanted the meditation for serenity over and over. Metal clattered and electronics whined. A control in the cockpit blinked so brightly it turned the entire shuttle interior into a flickering wash of red and white.

  They leveled out, tilted, leveled again, and slowed until the engines became nothing but a soft vibration against the backs of her calves.

  “It always sounds like that. This is all normal.” Omira parroted the vision, spoke the words that meant their docking was nearly complete.

  Rowri’s gaze flew to the hatch then. She eyed the rivets while her cat rumbled suspicion at them. Any minute now. The sounds started, different this time, not as loud but more immediate. Metal hit the outside wall, and the cabin echoed with the twang. She heard smaller engines, the humming of many electrical systems working at different tasks. The constant hiss meant they’d docked together, that the compartment stretching between their vehicles had begun to stabilize.

  She’d read all about it in the library. A few Chomans ventured off world still. They hadn’t completely abandoned the rest of the galaxy, but those adventurous traders or diplomats were uncommon and usually left with a singular purpose and a rapid return date.

  Rowri was never meant to come back. She thought about that now, and it seemed unnecessarily final. The Tolfarians had wanted her to understand the possibility, of course, but if they truly sought reconciliation, then the odds of a return visit would seem likely. At the very least, not impossible. But Omira had been quick to stress the permanence of her sacrifice, had spent a long hour repeating the nature of this undertaking.
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  Had she been trying to scare her? To warn her for some reason? Again, she wondered what it was that the Senior had seen and how sharply it diverged from Rowri’s own dream. The door groaned and cracked. Light sliced in and lit the rivets along one side of the frame. Their copilot slipped through the narrow space between the cabin and the cockpit to check on his passengers.

  He averted his gaze when Rowri attempted eye contact. She hadn’t seen that. That might have affected her decision, might have sent her along the wrong path. It persisted, however, despite the lack of precognitive evidence. The men delivering her to her future detested everything she was about to do. The copilot spoke to Omira directly, but even to her, to the Senior who so deserved his loyal obedience, he sounded clipped. The words chilled upon leaving his tongue.

  “They have confirmed,” he said. “And are ready to receive you…both.”

  “Thank you,” Omira sniffed, touching her nose softly and then straightening to a more formal posture. She stared the man dead in the eye and eventually, he slouched a little. His cat ceded to her authority and the slight was reprimanded without words. “You have done your task efficiently. See well.”

  “See well, Senior.” His bow had more sincerity then. The blessing served to remind him that it was Omira’s seeing that trumped all others on Choma, that his secular vision had little import and his opinions even less. He returned to the cockpit a much humbler man.

  Rowri watched the rivets then, watched her seeing unfold as the hatch dropped. It was always a little different, actually being there. The lighting was sharper, more solid. The sounds had no dream to muffle them, and the bits where the seeing sped up or slowed down all flowed at a normal speed, mundane by comparison and yet she knew otherwise. This moment meant everything.

  She wished it felt as extraordinary as it had in the seeing. She wished the rest of the room trembled and blurred at the edges, if only to match the feeling under her skin.

  If only she could slow it down.

  The crack widened. Light streamed in and the flashing stopped. Omira unfastened her harness, while Rowri’s fingers fumbled at hers blindly. Her eyes remained on the door. On the briefest glimpse of black fabric that had just rippled past the opening. Lilac skin and black robes, eyes like eternity.

  There was more than one of them on the other side. She hadn’t seen that either, but now bodies jostled beyond the gap and the black robes were lost in a pattern of legs and flexible tubing being connected and disconnected outside the hatch. She might have seen long black hair as well, might have caught a piece of him here or an angle of him there.

  Then the door was down, their exit was revealed, and the seeing became life. The lilac man stood in the threshold, came first up the ramp and ducked under the overhang, dipped to face them. His eyes lighted for a moment on Omira and then turned and fixed on Rowri. They stretched and deepened. His jaw tightened. In life, Rowri’s heart raced. In her mind, she heard an ancient song of bonding. A chime rang that was totally new to her and completely familiar. This one, it whispered. This one.

  Her future stared at her. He held his breath as much as she did. Could he hear the song as well? His eyes said yes. They said, yes, and, forever.

  “Greetings.” Omira had stood. Now she reached one arm out, extended a palm to the lilac man, and he flinched as if she’d shouted.

  “Pardon.” His voice had smoke in it, like the scent that entered the cabin with him. It had magic and darkness, and the sound set her cat to purring. Except his eyes left her, of course, and she felt their absence. He turned to face the Senior and dipped his head politely. “Welcome. I am Shayd, Seer of Shroud and emissary sent by the Galactic Summit to escort you on your journey.”

  Shroud? The purring stilled. A cold crouch replaced it. A waiting that tasted like death. What was Shroud and why would he introduce himself as an emissary?

  “No pardon necessary.” Omira smiled, but her eyes touched Rowri’s and she read something of the panic inside there. They widened before turning back to the lilac man. Her tone had shifted when she spoke again, had sprouted caution. “I am Omira, Senior Priestess to all of Choma and first representative of the Choma-uraru. My companion is our priestess, Rowri.”

  “Priestess.” His eyes came back to Rowri. They stayed there, held fast and tight by the song that still chimed between them. Now, however, his forehead creased. A line formed between his eyebrows and the tightness of his jaw shifted from one side to the other and back. “You are not the Senior Priestess?”

  “Rowri is our candidate for the Tolfarians’ bargain.” Omira said it, let the words loose in the cabin and a foul air came with them. The lilac man, Shayd, Seer of Shroud, tensed from his crown of black hair to the hem of his silken robes. He understood the rest, knew what the bargain meant, but he also heard the song. Rowri knew it as surely as she knew anything.

  As surely as she knew, now, that he was not a Tolfarian. The man she’d traded her whole world for was not the man she would have. This man, the one who heard the same chimes she did, was bait. Her seeing had dangled him before her only to lure her toward a future she might have rejected otherwise. Now, it would tear him away again. It would hand her to a stranger, an enemy, and whatever horrors lay in store as his wife.

  Wife. Her legs shook. Mirau had been right. Rowri had made a terrible mistake. They all had. Yet here was Omira, smiling, taking Rowri’s hand and helping her stand. The Senior led her in the Seer of Shroud’s wake, down the ramp and across the corridor between ships. The Senior introduced them to the other men, the Shrouded, who were so like him and yet not at all the same.

  The Senior led her to her doom with a gentle hand against her elbow and a tight crinkle at her eyes’ corners. Had she seen this? Had Omira known?

  Rowri could only guess and stumble after them with her eyes down and her cat howling in her mind.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She was not the Senior Priestess of the Choma-uraru. She was his Heart and, though he’d never been more certain of anything, everything about it was wrong. Shayd stalked in front of them, less than arm’s reach from her, and tried his best to see the hallway. Haftan spoke, thank the Shroud. His own voice had left him at the news.

  She belonged to the Tolfarians.

  “We’ve had to refit one of the candidate cabins, I’m afraid.” Haftan wooed Omira with a charming look. “But we’ve done our best to make it comfortable, and it should only be a short trip.”

  A short trip to death. A few days in a tiny ship and then he’d be expected to hand her off, to give her freely to another man, to negotiate the transaction. His left arm shot to the wall, steadied his legs while he got his feet back under control. The ship hadn’t tilted; he had. Now he pushed against the corridor and kept walking as if he hadn’t nearly passed out.

  The Heart had, indeed, sent him away. It would make him pay for his predecessor’s evil, but like this? This fate could not be deserved. He most certainly hadn’t earned it. No matter. A Seer had defiled the Heart, and the Heart would take a Seer down for it.

  “I’m sure it will suit us.” The Senior, Omira, responded to Haftan with a slight echo of disapproval in her voice. She would not go easy on the Tolfarians. This one knew her own power and meant to do right for her people. Shayd sensed it, her authority, almost as palpably as he’d sensed his Heart beating in the woman she meant to sacrifice for her duty.

  Rowri. The priestess, Rowri, dark and silvery and bearing the exact face he’d seen in his smoke. Skin like charcoal and eyes…the eyes like gemstones. He wouldn’t give her away, couldn’t. The Galactic Summit be damned, the negotiations could go to hell, the Shrouded…Shroud. He hit the wall the second time with his shoulder.

  “Shayd?” Haftan spoke with more humor than the universe should ever hold again. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine!” He caught the snarl and amended it. “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “Just a few more down.” Haftan addressed the women, but he favored Shayd with a look that had
more questions in it. “Almost there.”

  How could he betray his people, his planet? Would they ask him to if they knew? The Heart was always right. Always.

  His eyes cleared. The hallway came into focus and his legs steadied. They would support him, of course. The heartbond was more important than Summit membership. Half of them didn’t even want to join. Shroud would be behind him, then. There was no reason to doubt it. He inhaled slowly and watched Haftan’s hair swing in an arc as he stopped. They all stopped, and the girl who occupied his thoughts stood directly behind him.

  Real. Present. He couldn’t believe the Heart would allow them to part now.

  They had a little time, a short journey before they’d face the Summit and the Tolfarian representatives. The Heart would work it out. Haftan held the door open. He stared at Shayd and the skin on his forehead turned into a washboard of concern. The women waited for him to move aside—they all waited for him.

  He forced his feet to move, drifted to Haftan’s side and turned to look her in the face again. She watched him. She knew. Her eyes glimmered with it and her mouth had drawn into a thoughtful knot. Shayd concentrated on breathing, on not rushing forward and sweeping her into his arms.

  “We’ll leave you to get settled.” Haftan dipped politely and cooed. “Someone will alert you at meal times.”

  “Of course.” Omira sniffed and stepped back against the wall. She swept an arm out and urged her charge to enter first. Either she suspected something, felt something, or he misread the dagger in the glance she saved for him. Did she know his thoughts as well? “Thank you for your willingness to offer this service. Our people will be grateful for your assistance.”

  “It is our pleasure,” Haftan answered her, but her gaze stayed on Shayd until Rowri had obeyed, until the priestess drifted into their quarters and was out of his reach. Then Omira moved into the doorway, blocking his view of Rowri completely. The Senior Priestess spared them a curt nod and slid the door closed.