Exile

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  “None of it is done for you,” Janara seethed. “It was done only because Daarik asked it of me.”

  That instant, it was clear that this was not just a servant helping her ruler. Janara had feelings for Daarik; Shannen would bet a bottle of good southern ale on it.

  “Well. My husband is gracious, as are you,” Shannen said, and noted with some amusement that the other women clenched her mouth shut as if not trusting herself to speak. She turned abruptly and started walking down a corridor to their left. That had been petty, Shannen told herself. Bitchy, even, and just like someone in her family, first having the urge to put others in their place, to lay claim to what they saw as theirs, whether they actually wanted it or not.

  She’d never claimed to be a nice person.

  She followed Janara silently through the corridors until they came to a set of heavy double wooden doors. Janara pushed them open, and Shannen sighed in pleasure at the sight of rows upon rows, shelves upon shelves of books and scrolls, all meticulously organized. Tall, arched stained-glass windows rose at one end of the enormous room, and when she breathed in, the scent of old paper and leather was enough to make Shannen’s heart skip a beat. This library was obviously kept by someone who cared deeply for the knowledge contained on the shelves. Not a speck of dust or a book spine out of place. Shannen tried, and failed, to hide a smile as she looked around.

  “Is it organized alphabetically?” she asked, her churlishness forgotten at the beautiful sight of so many leather and cloth-bound tomes.

  “Humans are so archaic,” Janara said, her lips twisted in disdain. “Honestly, do you people even have libraries?”

  “Not for a very long time,” Shannen murmured as she walked along a shelf, eyeing the spines of the large books there. “Even before the war, the religious zealotry that plagued humanity began its destruction of any works they deemed questionable. Mine was the last land to have a library, and that was, unfortunately, destroyed in the war against your people.”

  Janara was silent, and Shannen cut a glance her way. “We saved as much as we could, both from our lands and from others. It was done secretly, by those who treasured the knowledge we knew would otherwise be lost. They wait, in storage, for the day when my people believe it will be safe to allow knowledge of them again.”

  “Yet you just told someone you consider an enemy,” Janara said, shelving a book someone had left on a table.

  “You are the librarian here, are you not?” Shannen asked, walking down another row.

  “I am.”

  “Then you understand better than anyone what these musty, dusty old books mean.”

  Janara was silent for several long moments. “They are organized by language, and then by region, and then, alphabetically within each topic. Books in Common are on that half of the room,” she said, gesturing toward the north side of the library. “Those on this side are Maarlai, and those in the alcove are the odd tidbits we’ve found of the distant past. They are supposed to be nonfiction, but I do not entirely believe that.”

  Shannen nodded. “I have read some of those. I agree. It all seems too fantastical to be real. Yet you can also see how, if true, it was so easy for humanity to destroy everything so quickly.”

  Janara crooked her brow at Shannen. “It is odd to hear one of your kind actually admit that humanity destroyed this world.”

  “Well, I am not a very good human. Ask anybody,” Shannen said, strolling down another row. “Do you have any primers on learning the Maarlai language?”

  “Why would we need such a thing?”

  Shannen glanced toward her. “I intend to at least try to learn the language so people don’t have to translate for me all the time.”

  “We have nothing like that. It was part of what helped us defeat your people. None of you understood what our captains were saying to their soldiers. We, however, took advantage of all of those language primers your people created.”

  “Well. Humans didn’t have one unified language up until a century ago,” Shannen said. “Not everyone, especially those further from the city centers, knew Common at first.” She’d wandered to the Common section. It was very well organized, and she was able to find the art history section easily.

  “Oh, you have an impressive collection,” she swooned. She pulled out a large book on the Renaissance, a period that, to her, seemed as fictional as anything else.

  “Of all the periods to choose, you choose that one,” Janara said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Which do you prefer?”

  “I think the Post-Impressionists were the most interesting.”

  “Those are nice, too,” Shannen admitted, and Janara shook her head.

  “Nice. But nothing compared to the art my people have produced. Come on. I will show you art that will make that look like the scribblings of a child.” Shannen clutched the large book to her chest, but followed Janara nonetheless, watching as the tall, powerful Maarlai woman pulled a small stack of books off of one of the shelves in the Maarlai part of the library.

  “Sit,” Janara commanded, and Shannen sat with a smirk.

  “Your people aren’t ones for niceties, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one would ever dare to speak to someone married to one of the human royals the way you speak to me.”

  “Well, I don’t like you,” Janara said, and Shannen laughed.

  “Likewise.”

  “But I did promise Daarik that I would help you. Educating you in the fact that my culture is vastly superior to yours will only improve your outlook.”

  Shannen shook her head and started leafing through the large red book Janara slid over to her. After a moment, Janara pulled the book away, and Shannen looked up in surprise.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I want your attention for a moment,” Janara said.

  “Well, you have it. Unfortunately.”

  Janara’s gaze was intense. “Good. Because I am only going to say this once. If you cause him any pain. If you make him even more miserable than he has to be, stuck as he is married to something like you, then I swear it on everything I hold dear that I will make you feel pain the likes of which you cannot even imagine. You will beg for mercy, and you most certainly will not get any from me. Do we understand one another?”

  “We do. As long as you understand that he is most certainly mine, and any ideas you have about what may have been between you are finished. So. Do we understand one another?” she asked, turning Janara’s words on her.

  Janara laughed, shaking her head. “Humans are so simplistic. Get over yourself, princess. Daarik is my cousin and my best friend. He is more of a brother than my own seem to be at times. I would destroy anyone who harmed my family, and it includes him.”

  Shannen nodded. Familial affection and loyalty were things she definitely did not have any experience with.

  “All the same, what happens between me and Daarik is our own business, not yours. Understand?”

  “Oh, we understand one another just fine, wife of Daarik.”

  “You can just call me Shannen.”

  “Why, though, when ‘wife of Daarik’ seems to annoy you so much?” Janara asked. The women sat together, Janara occasionally pointing out a favorite work of hers from the large book of Maarlai art, and Shannen taking in her explanations. By the time her stomach forced her to go search out something to eat, she was as enthralled with the small taste of Maarlai art as she was with that of her own people. She signed out both art history books in a large ledger Janara kept.

  “A fortnight, wife of Daarik. No longer,” Janara said sternly. “And I will look into ways to teach you Maarlai. It may be easiest to start with some of the children’s picture books we keep on hand.”

  “Thank you.”

  Janara didn’t answer, just waved her away, and Shannen held her books to her chest, taking the path she and Janara had taken back to her suite. She dropped the books off, then asked for directions to the kitchen.
This was not a palace like those she’d known. No one was waiting on her. If she wanted to eat, she was expected to take care of herself.

  No one was hovering over her. It was strange, yet wondrous.

  She found her way to the kitchen easily enough, and the only one there was the cook, along with a younger female Maarlai, who looked enough like the cook that she may have been her daughter. The cook was a tall, solidly built Maarlai, with biceps that put the arms of many human strongmen to shame. Her flesh was a greenish-brown, which, from Shannen’s short time among the Maarlai, seemed to be fairly common. She wore her long gray hair in a braid looped around the crown of her head, and, like many Maarlai women, she was dressed in a linen tunic and brown leather pants, though a dark apron covered her clothing. She glanced up when Shannen entered, and the girl stared, openmouthed.

  “Can I help you, erm… miss?” she asked, as if she was trying to find a way to address her that would work.

  “I didn’t know if there was a scheduled mealtime…” Shannen began, and the cook shook her head.

  “No, we’re very casual around here. There are smoked meats and cheeses in there, bread in that cupboard. Wine and ale are over there. Help yourself.”

  “Thank you,” Shannen said, picking up a plate. She sliced some cheese onto it, as well as a couple of slices of bread. There were ripe plums as well and she grabbed one of those. She poured boiling water into a cup, and, after the girl showed her where the tea was, she steeped a fragrant herbal tea.

  She settled herself at a small table out of the way.

  “Dinner is usually at half past seven. It’s the only meal we take in any organized fashion,” the cook told Shannen. “Your husband should have told you this.”

  “I have not seen him yet today.”

  “Yes. He’s been in council with his father,” the cook said, nodding. “You be good to him, understand?” she said sternly, wagging a large wooden spoon at Shannen. Shannen merely nodded in response and gulped down the rest of her bread and cheese. In all honesty, she was in a hurry to get back to her room, and the books she’d borrowed from Janara.

  After eating and cleaning up after herself, Shannen wandered through the corridors, paying attention to the large tapestries, the wrought-metal sconces and chandeliers. The stone floors were so smooth she wondered how they’d managed it. It gleamed. Of course, she’d seen photographs of stone that gleamed that way, in old books of the architecture of her people, but any floors that may have once had a luster like that had long since been destroyed or lost their shine, lacking anyone who knew or cared how to revive their former glory.

  She’d expected everything to be so different. While the small huts, like those she’d spent her first day and night in, fit, maybe, what her people thought of the Maarlai, this palace, the libraries, certainly did not. While the people were every bit as fierce and frightening as she’d ever believed, she’d been raised, every single human had been raised, to think of them as barbaric monsters, more animal than anything else.

  Her mind wandered as she walked, and she finally made her way back to the suite she shared with Daarik. She unlocked the heavy door with a key he’d left for her, and, upon entering, she could pick up his scent immediately. Something curled, hot and deep inside her, the scent of him bringing to mind the way it had felt the night before, trapped beneath his huge, strong body, bound to him, his hot breath on the side of her neck, his scent, that clean, musky, completely male scent that was his surrounding her. The way he’d groaned when he’d entered her, the small, almost helpless moan when she’d wrapped her legs around him.

  Shannen put her hands to her face, which burned beneath her veil. She could still feel him. It had been maddening, trying to sleep beside him. His scent was already etched into her memory the same way the sandy, hot, sulfurous scent of her homeland was, or the scent of the rare and exceeding valuable white roses that grew in the palace greenhouse of her childhood home. It clung to her the way the scent of herbs did after she worked with them, as much a part of her as the very clothing she wore.

  She shook her head and cursed in a low voice at herself. She was dead, if she did not get her head straight about the male she’d married. She could not afford to be distracted. Could not afford to trust.

  She knew there were things she needed to do. The first would be finding any possible escape routes should the day come when her death could be used to make her people comply. She would not be a weapon, or a tool. She would not run unless she had to. She had every intention of honoring her vows, until the threat of death made it otherwise.

  Still, a smart woman was always prepared, she remembered her mother saying in her low, rich voice. A smart woman never waits, or hopes, that life will be kind to her, because life in and of itself is a game, and one every single being eventually loses. It’s just a matter of how long, and how well, one can stay in the game.

  The first key to surviving would be learning at least some of the language. Being able to understand what they were saying, would be important. They were not exactly careful about speaking around her, and she knew that would likely continue, because she was so ignorant of them and their ways, just as all humans were. Despite Janara’s words to the contrary, Shannen figured it would be better to err on the side of caution — she’d help herself first, and then be pleasantly surprised if the Maarlai librarian actually kept her word. She wouldn’t hold her breath, though.

  She settled herself at the rectangular table near the large fireplace in the suite she shared with Daarik, and focused on the books she’d borrowed from the library. She spent some time going through her book of Renaissance art. How pristine, how vivid life must have been, once upon a time. The rich colors in the paintings, the healthy roundness of the people they depicted, landscapes so lush and full of life that they seemed to be the stuff of dreams. Even the deepest existing forest, such as where the Maarlai village was located, had not even a fraction of the vitality depicted in most of the artwork. It was like living in an anemic, secondhand copy of a world that had once been so much more.

  It made her long for something she’d never known, never had, and could never have. Which was utter nonsense, she chided herself as she gently closed the book and placed it aside. She brought the work of Maarlai art out, and opened it to the first page. Titles, she figured, should be easy enough to figure out.

  Shannen glanced at the letters. They were of a more angular, sharp shape than the letters she knew, the letters of the human Common language. Janara had said this particular book was called Maarlai Art: Society and the Unseen, and that it was one of the many, many books the Maarlai had brought from their home world when they’d been forced to flee it. She gently ran her fingers over the letters. This first word, she guessed, had to be Maarlai. Unless their letters went from right to left, as she’d heard some languages once had? Shannen bit her lip, then glanced at the final word in the title. Six letters, when Maarlai, at least the way her people spelled it, had seven, as did the first word on that particular page.

  She furrowed her brow in concentration, then got up and headed to the bedroom nook. The bed was still rumpled from the way they’d left it, and Daarik’s scent was strong there, making her stomach flutter.

  She tried to ignore it. Instead, she picked up the piece of thin parchment her emissary had left on the bedside table, the one both she and Daarik had signed upon marriage, and their witnesses had signed after the consummation had been completed. There, in his signature, was the “aa” that would be the same as in “Maarlai.” She brought the document back to the table, and matched it up with the first word. The symbol was in both words, which told her that the first word must have been Maarlai.

  Gods below, this was going to be slow going, she thought to herself. She studied the document. Okay, there was what would be the letter “i” in Daarik’s name, and she was able to match it up with the final letter in what she was assuming was “Maarlai” in the art book.

  Great. She’d confirmed two letters.


  She continued, matching up those letters could from the marriage document, then making what she knew were fairly clueless guesses, based on the assumption that Maarlai language worked similarly to her own, about what the other letters in the book title were.

  She was so engrossed in her work that when she heard a deep voice say “what are you doing?” she jumped and let out a squeak. Her knee bumped the leg of the table, and she winced. She glared up at Daarik, who was standing at the other end of the table, watching her with an unreadable look on his face.

  “Reading,” she told him, closing the book while she tried to stop her heart from pounding, first in surprise, and then at the sight of her husband, dressed in that black leather armor she’d first seen him in. Two short days ago, the sight of the armor had made her think of war, horror. Now, not so much. Damn the male.

  “Reading. Janara said you’d stopped by the library,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard all about it,” she said under her breath as she stacked the books neatly, placing the marriage document on the top of the stack.

  He ignored her tone. “Trying to find a way to get out of our marriage?” he asked. Her gaze shot up to his.

  “What?”

  “You were studying the contract as well as the books. Trying to find… what is it your people call it? A loophole?” His gaze was like stone, his body tense despite the appearance of being at peace.

  “No,” she said, keeping her eyes on his. “I was not looking for a loophole.”

  “Good. Because there isn’t one.”

  “I know.” She stood up, still watching him. “I was not looking for one,” she reiterated quietly, wondering why it even mattered to her that he knew it was the truth.

  “All right,” he said, and his voice was gentler, though he did not seem any less tense. “Have you eaten?”

  “I had something to eat in the kitchens a while ago,” she said.

  “I apologize. I should have showed you there, and told you they were at your disposal. The cook had more than a few words for me on that count,” he said dryly.