by Viehl, S. L.
“If their planet still remains free of the black crystal, we must find the reason for it.” A sojourn to the Saraced system might also keep the mercenaries hunting us from invading Joren, and give Reever time to discover who was offering the bounty for us and why. “We should go to oKia and survey it, even if we must do so from orbit.”
“The oKiaf will have something to say about that, I think,” Xonal said. “As will Xonea.”
My ClanBrother’s desire to keep me on Joren was going to be a problem. “We can’t fly a scout to the opposite side of the galaxy. We will need a vessel capable of interstellar flight.” I regarded the ClanLeader. “Perhaps you could persuade Captain Torin to permit us to use the Sunlace as transport for the expedition.”
“I believe that can be easily arranged.” He smiled, made an affectionate gesture and left us.
Darea gave me a shrewd look. “I think you are not so interested in traveling to oKia as you are in leaving Joren.”
“I do wish to know if the oKiaf have something that has prevented the black crystal from infecting their world,” I said. “Whatever has spared them could prove invaluable to removing the crystal from other worlds it has already infected.”
“But after all that Xonea has done to spy on you and Reever, why would you wish him to transport the expedition?” Darea asked, perplexed.
“My ClanBrother has done all these things so that he can keep me here on Joren,” I said. “What better justice is there than choosing him to be the one who must transport me off the planet?”
After our experience with Alek Davidov forcing us to crash-land on Trellus, and now this new bounty being offered for our capture, I knew we would once more have to leave our daughter behind on Joren. The League still did not know of her existence, and for her sake, we intended to keep it that way. Yet the thought of being separated from Marel again, so soon after our reunion, made slow, sharp daggers of guilt stab into me.
“A proper mother does not abandon her child,” I muttered as Reever and I cleared the servers from our evening meal interval. I glanced over at the cleansing unit, where our daughter was merrily playing in her bath. “Especially a girl child she barely knows. Yet no matter how I try, this is all I seem to do to the girl.”
“Would you rather stay behind with her?” my husband asked as he rinsed the plates. “I can sojourn to oKia alone.”
“The last time we were separated, I died, and you nearly cracked up,” I reminded him. “I think you and I had better stick to one another . . . like . . .” I stopped as I realized what I had been saying. “Glue.”
“Jarn?”
I grabbed a handful of his tunic and twisted my hand in it as I fought back the anger and fear. “What is that word?” I said through clenched teeth. “What is glue?”
“An adhesive form of plas, used to hold separate things together, or repair them when they split or break apart.” He covered the fist I had wound in his tunic with a gentle hand. “Think, Wife. You must have had something like glue on Akkabarr.”
I backed away from him and went to the cleanser, breathing in deeply. As I picked up a server, I scrabbled through the words whirling in my head.
He came up behind me. “Jarn, you need not—”
“Yes,” I said, almost shouting. Quickly, I lowered my voice. “Yes, we did have something. Joining paste. Boil ptar claws for three days and let the liquid cool. We use it to fix our sleds. We did.”
“It’s growing worse, isn’t it?” he asked quietly.
“No. I am well.” The server in my hand cracked, and the sonic jet turned pink. “Ignore that.”
Reever took hold of my wrist and turned it to see the gash across my palm. The bleeding stopped a moment later and the wound seemed to shrivel in on itself.
His eyes gazed into mine. “You are healing much faster than Cherijo could.”
“Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker,” I muttered under my breath. I watched the stream from the cleansing unit turn clear again. “I don’t know what those words mean, either, Duncan.”
“It is only a joke I told once,” he assured me.
“You lie.” I knew his memories, and those words were not his. “You never tell jokes.”
The words—the joke—had come from Cherijo. I knew it as well as he did. But she had never spoken them to him. These were words they had never once shared.
Reever’s hands cradled mine. “We will go and see Squilyp in the morning.”
“No. He will say the same thing as before. Amnesia victims routinely have anxiety attacks. I must have absorbed the words from another source of which I was not aware, or that I no longer recall.” I curled my fingers over the laceration that was no longer there. I wanted to weep. I wanted to strike the man I loved in the face.
“Mama?” Marel called from the tub cleanser. “Why did you shout at Daddy?”
“I am telling him a joke.” I carefully picked up the pieces of the broken server and put them into the disposal unit. Without looking at Reever, I went over to help our daughter out of the tub. “Duncan, how quickly can you teach me StanTerran?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The Terran you speak is very old and corrupted by Toskald. A purer form may confuse you. Jarn, what happened just now—”
I rubbed a drying linen over Marel’s damp curls. “It was nothing,” I lied. “As Squilyp says, a momentary thought disorder. But I would know the meaning of all the words that come out of my mouth.”
“I can teach you Terran, Mama,” my daughter said as she pulled on her night garments. “I have all the language files on my datapad. We can read together every night and in the mornings before I go to school.”
“It will have to wait for now.”This was the perfect time to tell her about the expedition, but instead I crouched down and took her into my arms. “Daddy must tell us a sleeping-time story.”
We did not hurry through our evening rituals, and by the time Reever finished telling a strange but stirring tale about a young shepherd who had used his wits to slay an armored giant, Marel had fallen asleep in my arms. I breathed in the soft, sweet scent of her as I covered her with her bed linens. I wanted to lie on the floor and sleep beside her, but I made myself turn down the emitters before I walked out of her room.
Long fingers laced through mine, tugging me back against my husband’s chest. Candy is a sweet-tasting treat favored by Terran children. There is no word in Iisleg for it because your people do not have the means to make treats or sugars. Liquor is a liquid once made of fermented botanicals. The alcohol produced by the fermentation made it an effective intoxicant. It is synthesized now. I did spend four years in a boarding school on Terra. I must have heard the words during that time.
My shoulders stiffened. Your lies are not going to make this any better. They were her words, not yours, and I remembered them.
Very well. We will talk about something else. Or do something else. He kissed the tip of my nose. “Do you have any suggestions?”
I could not dismiss it so easily; I felt as if I couldn’t breathe.
“I need air,” I told him, pulling away and crossing the room to the courtyard access panel. “I’m going for a walk.” When he began to follow me, I turned and held up one hand. “By myself. Please.”
He studied my face. “As you like.”
The nights on Joren were cool and dry, causing the indigenous flora to close their blossoms during the darkness. That cleared some of their perfume from the air and made it seem less alien to my nose. As I walked the pathways through the courtyard, I still felt trapped.
I did not belong here, on this world, in this pavilion, inside this body. She had been born to do all of these things, not me. Xonea was right in that sense. I had not meant to, but I had stolen everything from Cherijo: my body, my husband, my child, my life. None of them belonged to me.
Was Cherijo still somewhere inside my mind? Had her personality somehow survived the crash and the brain damage? Was she returning to this body, to take back what w
as hers?
I walked blindly for a time, until I found myself standing in a field of waist-high, silvery yiborra grass. Above my head the stars glittered, a hundred thousand tiny, hostile eyes.
I did not mind being alone. I had spent years in silent solitude on Akkabarr, living in my head as I came to know who and what I was. My sister skelas’ superstitions made them believe my survival meant I was touched by the goddess, and so they had cared for me while I ignored them. They had loved me in their way, but I had never truly cared for them. I remembered the time when I had considered walking out on the ice in the night, when it was too dangerous and cold to cross, simply so I could escape their noise, their smell, and the shadows in their eyes.
Among the ensleg, I had done little better. Reever loved me, but who was I for him to love? Who was I to be a mother to the child Cherijo had made with him? A presence, a thing that had filled a void.
I could not even be properly called a person. I had not been born. I had no parents, no family, no one to call my true kin. If I had not awoken in Cherijo’s body, no one would have cared what happened to me. If not for the work she had begun, and that I was obliged to carry on, I would be useless, pointless.
Wasted.
“When Kao Torin died, a part of Cherijo died with him,” Reever said as he came to stand beside me. “That did not happen to me when she died.”
I glanced back at the pavilion. We were too far from the child out here. “Marel is alone. We should go back.”
“Fasala was happy to come and stay with our daughter for a few hours.” He put his arm around me. “You dislike it when I speak of Cherijo’s first love.”
No, I didn’t. Sometimes hearing his name made my chest hurt. “He is dead. We do not speak of the dead on Akkabarr.”
“Indulge me this once.” His hand stroked the crown of my head. “Do you know why Cherijo’s death did not affect me as Kao’s passing did her?”
“You didn’t learn of it until several years after it happened.” I shifted my shoulders. “When you did, you had me to take her place immediately.”
“Is that what you think?” Reever turned me to face him. “I became Cherijo’s lover, and eventually her husband, so that I might take Kao’s place in her heart, as I had promised him that I would. But I could not.”
“She was an idiot to refuse your love,” I assured him.
“It had nothing to do with her. I have told you that I loved her, but the truth is that I did not. I could not.” He reached out and caressed the tips of the yiborra with his palm. “When Cherijo and I became lovers, I still had no human emotions. I did not know what it was to love.”
“Now you will tell me that you know how I feel and that this is why we love and are meant to be together,” I predicted, scowling up at the stars. “You don’t have to say it, Duncan. You’re wrong. You do have emotions. I have felt them. I know you love me.”
“I did not have these emotions for her,” he said slowly, as if speaking the words were painful. “I knew I had to be with her—I sensed that she might in some fashion be the most important person that I would ever meet—but she was not my first love here.” He tapped his chest. “You are.”
“What did you feel for her, if not love?” I demanded, unwilling to believe him.
The corner of his mouth curled. “Curiosity. Desire, certainly. All I wanted was her, but I didn’t understand why. I used my promise to Kao Torin as an excuse to keep her with me so I could fathom it. Near the end, I thought it was to prepare me to be a father to Marel. That I was never meant to love Cherijo, but simply learn from her how to be a parent to our daughter. I was wrong about that, as well.”
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “Do you know now?” He nodded. “Then why? Why stay with her if you knew you didn’t love her? Why did you spend all that time searching for her?”
“Jarn.” He put his hand to my cheek. “It was you. All this time with her, I was waiting for you.”
I saw the truth in his eyes, and relief and shame took turns choking me until I began to weep. I buried my face against his tunic, but the garment didn’t muffle the sound of my sobs very well. Reever put his arms around me as my knees buckled, and knelt with me in the soft, cool grass.
For me, the safest place in the universe was in my husband’s arms, and this night I reveled in it. I flung away my fear and held on to what was mine. My husband, my beloved. He belonged to me and only me now.
Flickers of light danced against my closed eyes, and I looked through the blur of my tears to see long ribbons of luminous color weaving all around us.
“Wind dancers,” Duncan murmured against my hair. “They’re attracted to our body heat.”
I lifted my hand, and a length of iridescent blue landed on my palm, curling around it briefly before its glow intensified and it fluttered away, leaving a cool sensation on my skin. Nothing on my homeworld compared to it, but something as delicate and beautiful as this would have been ripped to pieces by Akkabarr’s lethal winds. “It steals warmth from other creatures.”
“Only a little.” His hands brushed the hair back from my face, and his mouth touched the curve of my cheek. “Are you cold?”
That startled a laugh out of me. I had survived for years on a world that never knew a single moment as warm as this night. “I think not.” I put my mouth to his, tasting him slowly before I pulled him down into the grass.
A rainbow of light settled around us, reflecting off the shining blades of the yiborra as we tugged off the garments separating our skins. I had never coupled with Duncan in such an open place, and feeling the air and the cool flutter of the dancers touching my body aroused me almost as much as his hands.
It was my habit to let Duncan do as he pleased with my body, as everything he did gave me great pleasure. Tonight I felt something shift deep inside me, something that wanted to be more than a woman of the Iisleg.
I pushed my husband onto his back and straddled him, pressing his shoulders into the grass as I bent and used my mouth on his neck, shoulders, and chest. When I seized a handful of his hair and brought his face to mine, he lifted my hips and guided me over him. I sank down, taking him as he had so often taken me, with all the passion I felt. I could not feel empty or alone, not with our bodies like this. Not in this.
Wind dancers twined their sinuous bodies in my hair as I moved, caressing the thickness of him with my softness. He pushed deeper, groaning as he filled me, and I clamped down on him, squeezing him in a tight, ceaseless rhythm.
“I love this,” I whispered, pressing my fingers to his lips when he would have spoken. “No. Only feel it, Duncan. Feel what we are together.”
I kept him a prisoner of my body, and rode him that way until his fingers dug into my hips and his eyes became as intent and blue as a jlorra’s.
“Jarn.” His muscles shook, so eager to spill himself inside me, yet somehow he held back. “I will not go over. Not without you.”
The thing inside me shattered as I rolled, and the single thrust of his body into mine brought us both to the very brink. Duncan kept his eyes open as he lowered his mouth to mine in a kiss so soft and tender that I lost myself to it. Then the pleasure brought me back, into his heat and his eyes and the blessed release we found together.
We lay in the grass as the wind cooled our skins and the glowing dancers rose all around us and drifted away. I listened to the frantic pounding of Duncan’s heart gradually slow to a smooth, comforting pulse against my cheek.
“Do you think she would hate us?” I heard myself ask. “For what we have together?”
The hand stroking my back paused, then resumed its soothing motion. “Cherijo hated many things. Ignorance, incompetence. Bigotry, slavery, and war. She hated them with all of her heart.” He pulled me closer. “But not love. Never love.”
Four
We went back to our quarters and I slept in Duncan’s arms, better than I had in weeks.The next morning I sent my husband off to take Marel to school, and went t
o meet Squilyp at his private lab. We’d arranged it the day before, officially to discuss the results of the tests he had performed on Reever’s most recent tissue and blood samples.
Unofficially, we needed to talk about a lot of things.
“Wait, there is something on you.” Squilyp stopped me just outside the lab and used a gildrell to pluck something from my hair. He showed me a fragment of yiborra grass. “Have you been rolling in the grass, Doctor?”
“Only once or twice. Reever and I were too busy doing other things.” I took the bit of grass and tucked it into my tunic pocket. “Speaking of mates, have you signaled Garphawayn lately?”
“I signal my mate each night, thank you. If I did not, she promised to separate my head from my shoulders when she and our sons return to Joren.” He keyed in the access code to the lab, which he had built and designed for his personal use, and led me inside.
“They’re coming back from Omorr to visit you?” This was news to me.
“They will come back to live here with me. I have been offered a position as Chief Medical Adviser to the Ruling Council, and I intend to accept.” Squilyp went to his central control panel and turned on several emitters, illuminating the interior. “We have already been granted permanent residential status. All my mate needs to do is decide among which HouseClan she wishes to live. It would be more convenient to reside with the Adan, but she has become very attached to the Torin.”
I had been planning to ask Squilyp to join the expedition to oKia, but now I hesitated. As much as I wanted the Omorr in Medical, this position sounded far more important. Squilyp also had a rather demanding wife, to whom he was utterly devoted, as well as two young sons he adored. It would be selfish to expect him to drop everything to jaunt to oKia with us.
“What about your families on the homeworld?” I knew the Omorr lived almost as closely as the Jorenians did. “Do they approve?”
“My family acknowledges the honor of the position. Her family”—he rolled his dark eyes—“is displeased by our decision to raise the twins away from Omorr, but I think they will come to accept it. Thus far they have made only the token arguments.”