by David Weber
"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 from 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."
He glowered at her, but then, to her vast relief, he seemed to unbend the tiniest bit.
"Yes. It is my job," he said gruffly, then drew another deep breath and forced the steel burr out of his voice.
"All right. I'll try to listen with a little less suspicion. I need to understand this, for a lot of important reasons. And while I'm listening," he met her gaze, "I'll remind myself that despite what your soldiers did to my men, despite the threat to my people they represent, neither you nor Jathmar tried to kill my men until we fired on you."
"No," Jathmar said stiffly. "We didn't. We weren't stupid. We were good enough woodsmen to notice panicked wildlife rushing ahead of a wide line of men driving through a forest to surround us. We guessed right then that we were outnumbered. That's why we found a hiding place. And when we finally saw your people, it was obvious we faced soldiers. Less than twenty civilians against enough men to cut off our escape from every direction? We'd have been crazy to shoot first! But that didn't help us in the end, did it?because you had to come in shooting anyway! Maybe Gadrial is right and you didn't order your people to shoot, but you were in command. You were the one who pushed it?chased us?until it was inevitable!"
His accent was more pronounced even than usual, and he had to pause several times to find the words he wanted. But his anger came through with perfect clarity, and Jasak studied him for long silent moments.
"Let me tell you what I see about that day," he said finally. "You had personal weapons more terrifying than anything we'd ever seen?certainly more terrifying than anything we 'soldiers' had. Something that killed with horrifying violence, something we couldn't even identify. And when we tracked the man who'd killed one of my men to your camp, we discovered that you hadn't made the sort of open encampment we 'soldiers' made when we bivouacked. Oh, no, you'd built a palisade, well placed on commanding ground, with good fields of fire. An obviously military palisade. One of my men was already dead, I had no idea who you were, where you'd come from, who'd shot first, what other weapons you might have, how close other military forces might have been, what your intentions were, what sort of people you were. And when we finally did catch up with you, you were holed up in the best military position we'd seen anywhere on that side of our portal! Yes, you turned out to be civilians, but how was I supposed to know that then? I knew nothing about you?except that you'd already killed one of my people?and every member of the Arcanan military forces has standing orders where contact with another human civilization is concerned. We're to make it a peaceful contact if we possibly can. But, if there's already been blood shed, especially by what appears to be an organized military force, then those same standing orders required me to control the contact. Given all of that, Jathmar, how would you have reacted differently up until the instant fire was opened?"
It was his turn to hold Jathmar's gaze challengingly, and he did. Yet even Jathmar could see it was a challenge, not simple anger, and he felt his own anger waver.
He didn't want to feel that. The sudden realization that he wanted?needed?to cling to his anger shook him badly, but it was true. He didn't want to take a single step toward understanding what Jasak had known, what Jasak's options had been, because understanding might undermine his hatred.
Yet he couldn't afford to clutch that hatred to him, either. And so, finally, he shrugged.
"I don't know," he said shortly. "I'm not a soldier. I'd like to think I wouldn't have run down a civilian survey crew, but if I'd thought they were soldiers?" He shrugged again. "I don't know."
"I appreciate your honesty in coming that far," Jasak said. "But there was another side to it, as well. Something I'd already recognized even before the shooting started. You were trying to keep the situation under control, too. You didn't want a bloodbath any more than I did, and I knew it."
"How?" Shaylar asked, totally astonished.
"You could have opened fire without warning. I was sure you'd gone into those fallen timbers. If you'd wanted a fight, you could have dug in in your palisade, tried to set up an ambush when we followed your man back to your camp. You hadn't done that; you'd run for your portal, instead, tried to break contact. There could have been a lot of reasons?military reasons?for that, but you didn't open fire when we started closing in on your position out in those fallen trees, either. You had concealment and cover?you could have killed a lot of my men before we even knew where to shoot back?and you didn't. Not until someone on our side killed someone else on your side who was trying to talk, not shoot."
He shook his head again, slowly, heavily.
"I'm not prepared to second-guess all my decisions that day, and we'll never know what happened when your man?Falsan?met Osmuna. But the bottom line is that my people shot first, whether I wanted them to or not, in the second encounter with you. However it happened, that was the outcome. And that means you deserve for me to at least listen with as open a mind as I possibly can."
Shaylar started to speak, but he raised one hand. The gesture stopped her, and he smiled without any humor at all.
"Don't misunderstand me. I'm still a soldier, and my duty is still to protect my people. After what happened at our portal?after what your soldiers did to us, when they came looking for you?I'm very much afraid that an ugly, brutal war is waiting for all of us." He spoke with dark and bitter honesty. "Even if we, the four of us, could figure out a way to stop it, it may be too late already. Military people on both sides are obviously already beginning to react to what's happened as the reports go up the chain of command, and the gods only know where that's likely to go. And once the politicians get their hooks into this, it may be impossible to stop.
"All we can do is this; try to convince me, Shaylar. Convince me your mental Talents aren't super weapons. That you can't use your minds to destroy Arcana at any time you choose. Whether you believe it or not at this moment, I am absolutely the closest thing to a friendly judge you're going to find. If you can't convince me, you'll never convince the An
daran High Commandery, let alone the politicians who govern the Union of Arcana."
"I know that," she whispered. "And that terrifies me."
"It should."
The dark thing riding his shoulders left Shaylar trembling. She was more than afraid for herself; she was afraid for Sharona. For every Talent alive. But then Jasak went on.
"Whatever else you say or don't say, before I come to a final decision about whether or not I believe what you're telling me, answer me this. Why do you touch people, if it isn't to read minds?"
He still sounded suspicious, although less unbelieving, and she met his gaze unflinchingly.
"Most people, even those without Talents, can tell a great deal about a person's emotions. When you look at a person, Jasak, you can see emotion in him, can't you? In his expression, his eyes, the way he stands or walks. You learn a great deal about a person that way, don't you?"
He nodded, clearly unsure where she was going.
"Well, I can see all that, too, visually. But when I touch a person, I can sense their emotions directly. Not their thoughts, just their feelings. If they're terrified, I feel waves of terror, as though I'm terrified of something, too. If they're angry, it's like being hit with a fist. If they're grieving, it's like drowning in the need to weep."
She turned to look at Gadrial, who still stood in the passage beyond Jasak.
"The day we came onto the ship, Jathmar and I knew something terrible had happened. That was obvious, because Gadrial had been crying. Her deep emotional shock showed in her eyes, in her face, in her posture?anyone could see that. But," her gaze moved back to Jathmar's face, "when you took my hand to help steady me on the gangway … "
Shaylar shut her eyes, shivering involuntarily.
"I almost fell down, your grief was so terrible. I know now it was for what had happened to your men, but I didn't know that then. And I didn't even have time to block it out. It just smashed into me like a club. It literally knocked me off my feet. I would have fallen, if you hadn't caught me, and then Gadrial took my hand, and that was almost worse. It felt?"