by Sharon Shinn
“Well, it’s excellent news, Gaaron,” she said. “I hope this gives you some reprieve from your worries.”
Now he was the one to come a few steps closer. “Yes, but—you do not look like you have had any reprieve from worries,” he said unexpectedly. “You look worn and tired.”
She smiled a little. “I am tired,” she said. “For no reason, really. I do not have the cares weighing on me that weigh on you.”
“It is not that you look tired, exactly,” he said. “You look more as if you have been crying.”
Even more unexpected. “Oh—I was feeling a little sad tonight,” she said, trying to make her response airy and careless, but sensing that her voice sounded dull and heavy. “Sometimes moods catch up with me. It doesn’t mean anything.”
He came closer still. “It means something to me,” he said quietly. “What has made you sad? I know you are worried about your Edori friends.”
“Yes—but there are so many people to worry about, throughout Samaria—it is not only my people who are not safe.”
“And it is not just the Edori who are your people now,” he said. “You will be the angelica for all the races.”
“Yes—very soon now—” she said somewhat at random, for she was not sure how to answer that. The angelica for all races, indeed. What was that supposed to mean? She didn’t even have a single friend, and now she was supposed to be a figure of hope and comfort to every malcontent in the three provinces? That hardly seemed fair.
“Is that what troubles you?” he persisted, peering down through the dark as if trying to read the secrets on her face. “Your responsibilities when you become angelica?”
“No—Gaaron—nothing troubles me. I am just—tired and sad and lonely. It does not matter, it—”
“Lonely?” he interrupted. “There is an entire hold full of people here, all of whom admire you greatly. There is Keren, and Chloe and the girls, and Nicholas and Ahio are your friends, too—you have a connection with all of them—”
“Gaaron, you do not know what true connection is if you think that!” she exclaimed, suddenly able to hold back her emotion no longer. “I am used to sleeping five or ten in a tent that is maybe twice the size of this bed—I am used to mornings where five people kiss me before I’ve even had breakfast. If I was sad, I could sit beside any of twenty people and have them put their arms around me and comfort me with the feel of their pulses matched to mine. Now I—I am so isolated. No one touches me. Miriam is gone, Kaski is gone, Keren has gone to Nicholas’ bed, and I cannot sleep at night for the loneliness and the dreams. There is—every night—I wake up with dreams in the middle of the night, but there is no one to wake up beside me and tell me I am safe. I cannot make you understand me. I am not a bad angelica by daylight, but at night I am a frightened Edori woman who has no one to hold on to.”
He stepped even closer. “Susannah—”
But she had turned away. She was shaking uncontrollably now, and the tears had started again, hot enough to melt the rime of frost on her cheeks. She wanted to tell him to go away, to not worry, to leave her until this mood passed, if it ever did, but she could not force any words past her closed throat. She put her hand over her eyes and felt the sobs increase in force.
“Susannah,” he said again, and put his arms around her, and wrapped his wings around them both.
She had been cold; now she was enveloped in warmth. The heat of his body was so great it was as if she had stepped inside a gentle fire burning at a pitch just high enough to raise her temperature by a degree. The feathers of his wings lay against her flesh like bolts of the finest satin, layer after layer unrolled from the merchant’s hand. She stirred a little, just to feel the delicious sweep of texture against her skin, and found herself turning in his arms, laying her cheek against his chest, letting her arms go around his back. He was so warm; he was a steady generator of heat and power and security. She pressed herself closer against him to absorb even more of his heat, and found herself inhaling his complex, musky odor. He smelled like sweat and far distances, high-altitude night skies, leather, winter, and skin. She took a deep breath, and then another.
She had stopped trembling. She felt as she always had, first thing in the morning, lying warm and cozy in the center of a Lohora tent, surrounded by love.
“I will sleep beside you tonight, if you like,” Gaaron murmured into her hair. “It has not seemed to me—clearly I have been wrong—it has not seemed to me you had much need of me beside you, since you had so many who shared your time. But I would not want you lying here lonely when I can lie beside you.”
She stirred a little, enough to lift her head but not enough to pull away from his delicious warmth. “Gaaron—I do not want to be one of your many burdens,” she said.
“You are not a burden,” he said. “You are a thing I care about.”
“You care about all your burdens,” she retorted.
She could hear the smile in his voice. “Not Zack so much,” he said. “Not Esther.”
She giggled. “I’m afraid I made Esther mad tonight.”
“You can apologize in the morning.”
“Gaaron, I—”
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Don’t talk about it. Don’t worry about it. Just relax and go to sleep.”
“I’m so tired,” she admitted.
“I know,” he said. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
It was not as smooth as that, of course. They both had to make quick trips to the water room, and then there was the strange business of climbing into the big bed next to someone who had never lain in that bed before. Some of Susannah’s nervousness had returned by the time she settled herself next to Gaaron, her face scrubbed and her hair combed and her thoughts in turmoil. But he merely moved to one side, making a space for her, and she snuggled against him, fitting the curve of her body to the curve of his. He had pushed the blankets to the foot of the bed, and it was clear she would not need them since the heat of his body instantly made her warm.
He shifted, and the darkness in the room was momentarily swept with eerie light as one of his white wings unfolded and drifted down to cover her. Again, that sensation of serrated satin against her skin. She shivered a little at the sheer sensuousness of the contact.
“Are you cold?” he asked instantly.
“No—no—” she said, a little breathless. “I’m—thank you—you’re so warm. This feels so nice—”
“Very nice,” he said, a smile sounding in his voice. “It will be something pleasant to get used to.”
She lay tentatively against him, knowing that much more could happen between them than this simple sharing of body heat, unsure if she should make the first overture, unsure of what he wanted, too happy with this much to risk it all by asking for more. She was still tired, but she was not at all sleepy. She could turn to him now, and press a kiss against his full mouth, show him what she knew and explain to him what she wanted.
The thought made her giddy and, for a moment, weak. It had been so long since she had loved a man, and she had never felt for Dathan what she felt for Gaaron. She had loved Dathan—she had thought she had loved Dathan—but that emotion had been girlish and shallow compared to what she felt for Gaaron. Dathan had energized her and frustrated her and delighted her and disappointed her; half of the time she had wanted to fold herself into him, and half the time she had wanted to change him. But Gaaron put her in awe. She would follow him barefoot from Luminaux to Mount Galo, dumbly doing any task he requested, because she believed in him so passionately, because he was so brave and so good, because she simply wanted to be with him. Because she loved him so much. He had come to occupy her thoughts so often that it was like she shared the space of her mind with another person; there were two people inside her skin. She did not know how to separate herself from him. She did not want to.
But she did not know how to present herself to him so that he would feel the same way about her. He cared for her—that she could not question. He had state
d it as plainly as a man with few eloquent phrases could state it. But did he love her? At least as she wanted him to love her? How could she discover that—and if he did not, how could she bring such a thing about? Cautiously, she thought, for Gaaron was not a man who was adept at romance. Unlike Dathan, he did not look for lures and signals; he did not expect to be loved.
She could change all that. But slowly. Not tonight.
She settled against him a little more closely. His arm came up and rested on her waist. Susannah smiled but said nothing. She closed her eyes and allowed happiness to waft her into dreaming.
The first thing she noticed when she woke in the morning was that she was shivering. There was no other thought in her head except I’m cold, and she felt for the cast-off covers before even opening her eyes.
It was while her hands were groping for the blankets that she remembered why these blankets had not been spread over her to begin with, and she opened her eyes to see why Gaaron was not still lying beside her.
He had not left the room. He had not been that thoughtless, to spend the night beside her and leave without warning. But he was standing apart from her, staring out the window, and his face looked as remote as the mountain reaches of the Caitanas.
“Gaaron,” Susannah said, sitting up and pulling the covers around her shoulders. He turned at the sound of her voice, and she could see that the window was open before him. No wonder she was freezing.
“I’m sorry—are you cold?” he asked courteously, shutting the glass. “I should have covered you up.”
“What’s wrong? What woke you?” she asked directly. “Is there bad news?”
His face looked pinched and wintry. If she had not known better, she would have said that he, too, was cold. “No—no news. I merely woke and—I got up.”
She felt a frown flicker across her face. This distant and dispassionate person was not the kind man who had shown such concern for her last night. “Was it me?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “Keren and Kaski often told me I woke them with my dreams.”
Now his face grew even more masklike. “Yes, I assume you were dreaming,” he said.
“What did I say?” she wanted to know. She had not, last night, had that frequent vision of the white-and-chrome room; there had been no sonorous voice calling out her name. She tried to remember what she had dreamed about. Happy things, she thought. Edori dreams. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“I was sorry not to be the one you dreamed about,” he said stiffly.
“What?” Pulling the blanket more securely about her shoulders, Susannah got out of bed and crossed the room to his side. Dearest Jovah, but the stone floor was icy against her bare feet. “Gaaron, I don’t even remember who or what I dreamed about. What did I say?”
“You called out names,” he said, as if reluctant to speak at all.
“I did? Whose?”
He looked down at her, and she was shocked at the hurt expression on his face. She had seen Gaaron angry, she had seen him worried, she had seen him baffled, but she had never seen him devastated. He did not answer, but he did not have to.
“Dathan,” she guessed. “You heard me say his name.”
He nodded wearily and turned away. “I have to leave as soon as I can for Windy Point,” he said. “You know the news I must share with Adriel. After that, I will probably go to Monteverde. I may not be back for three or four days.”
“Gaaron.” She put her hand on his arm to stop him; he was already stepping toward the door. He turned back to her, but his face was guarded, as if he did not want to hear what she had to say. “Gaaron, I don’t even remember seeing his face in my dreams. It has been months since I have wanted to see his face in the flesh. You are the one I wanted to be with last night—and for all the nights to come. Please don’t be angry because of a name I might have spoken when I was sleeping.”
“I am not good with women,” he told her. “Mahalah and Adriel have said that to my face, and I have always known it—and it must be obvious to you. I do not know how to flatter and say pretty things. I do not know how to express what I want. I have tried to think how to say those things to you, when the time was right—and I have thought the time would be right when you were happy here, when you no longer missed your Edori friends and your—your Edori lover. But I see I was wrong. You will never forget those friends and lovers, you will never be at ease here. I have expected too much to expect you to change that far. You have been gracious in consenting to live here, and you came at the god’s behest, but you will not become one of us. You will not become mine. I will release you from the burden of my hoping for such a thing.”
“Gaaron!” she exclaimed, and she shook the arm that she still had hold of. “Gaaron, do not say such things! I am here of my own free will, I have committed myself to you. I will—”
He pulled back a pace and released himself from her hand. “I know. You will do as the god directs, and so will I. But I will not expect more from you than that.”
“But Gaaron, I will give you more! I will ask for more! If I had had to settle for a loveless marriage with an indifferent man, I would have accepted it, if it was the god’s will. But we can create something better than that, you and I—we can love each other, we can believe in each other. We—”
“I am not good at love, and you clearly love elsewhere,” he interrupted. “That’s as close to heartbreak as either of us needs to come. I must go. I am out of words for the moment.”
And he swept away from her, his spread wings seeming to brush across every surface of the room as he stalked to the door and stepped through it. Susannah stared after him, feeling shocked and rebuffed and confused.
But not entirely hopeless. Only a man with his heart engaged would have any fear of harming it. Perhaps she had been wrong about Gaaron, last night; perhaps, after all, he already loved her.
She would have to wait four or more days to find out.
C hapter T wenty-six
Miriam sat with Jossis in the mud and played with dolls.
It was a fine winter morning, brilliant, cold, and beautiful, and they had crept away from the camp before all the work was done merely to enjoy the sunshine. Tirza had seen them go, however, and had done nothing to stop them, so Miriam didn’t feel too bad about it. They had wandered along the northern edge of the mountain, clambering over rocks and skidding from time to time into shadowed banks of gray snow, and they had laughed and pointed things out to each other and generally had a grand time.
When they had come to a sun-warmed little alcove punched into the rock, they had instantly settled into it, safe from the inquisitive breeze and almost comfortable with the built-up heat stored in the stone. Miriam pulled out a packet of dried food while Jossis melted snow in a bowl, and they ate a companionable lunch under the noon sun. From time to time, Jossis would point at something he had not seen before—though there was little, here on the upper reaches of the Galo range, that he had not come across by now—and ask the inevitable “Ska?” When she knew, Miriam told him. When she did not, she spread her hands and laughed.
Today she had decided to work on counting, so once the meal was done, she gathered a handful of twigs and rocks, then settled back down on their spread blanket. Jossis crouched beside her, instantly on the alert; there was nothing he loved so much as a new lesson. Miriam held up a single twig.
“One,” she said.
He nodded, still waiting, not sure if that was the name of the object or some other piece of knowledge that he would only comprehend as the lesson unfolded. She picked up a second twig and held it with the first. “Two.”
She went all the way to ten before repeating the exercise with the rocks, which was when she could tell Jossis began to catch on. Excited, he jumped to his feet and returned with a handful of empty seed pods, all more or less alike.
“Wuh,” he said, separating a single pod from the pile. “Tooooo. Theee.”
“Yes, yes! That’s it!” Miriam said, clapping her hands with excitem
ent. She extended her index finger. “One.”
He held up both of his own index fingers, side by side. “Toooo.”
He got stuck after three, so she had to repeat the whole sequence for him several times. She made him match the word to the actual amount the first few times—one finger, two rocks, three twigs, four seed pods—so that the sound and concept became synonymous. But after that she just allowed him to recite the series of syllables over and over so that he would memorize the phonetics.
“Very good,” she approved when she was sure he had it. Once he learned something, he never forgot it. He would integrate the most unexpected words into his limited conversations.
“More?” he suggested.
She laughed. “Well, you already know your colors and every object we own in the camp, and now you can count. I wish you could tell me more about you, that’s what I really want to know.”
“More?” he repeated.
She frowned at him a moment, thinking. What else could she teach him, how could she get him to teach her? She gathered up the twigs again and signaled for a new game.
“Miriam,” she said, holding up one of the twigs. “Tirza. Eleazar. Bartholomew.” She said a name for everyone in the camp, and Jossis nodded. “The Lohoras.”
“Lo-ho-rah,” he said obediently.
She planted the collection of twigs in the hard mud, then made a little mound of snow and dirt and rocks and pointed at the peak of Mount Galo. “Here,” she said, for that was a concept he had mastered a few days ago. “Lohoras here.”
He nodded again, though whether or not he truly understood was anybody’s guess. Now she picked up a stick and moved to a flat wash of mud that had settled beside a boulder, and she began drawing a map. “Mountain here,” she said as she sketched in Galo. “River here. Lohoras here.” She stuck a small rock at the base of her pointed mountain. “And here’s the rest of Samaria.” She added the outline of the coasts, a long squiggle for the Galilee River, and more triangular shapes to represent the Caitanas and the Velo range. “Samaria,” she said, then tapped her chest. “My world.”