Exile

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  He didn’t blame her for keeping to herself. He could scarcely imagine what it was like being among people who did not want you there, who despised you at a glance simply because your appearance was everything they considered to be “enemy” and “other.” He did not think his people were being rude to her, and for that he was grateful and proud. But they did not bother hiding their distrust of her and her kind, either.

  He had the sense that keeping to herself had been Shannen’s default solution to things for a very long time, since far before she’d come to live among the Maarlai.

  He took the stairs to the second floor, where their suite was located, then walked down the stone corridor. Flames from the torches mounted along the corridor cast flickering shadows on the walls, and his boots thumped loudly on the stone floor. When he reached the door to their suite, he took a breath, then turned the knob and let himself in.

  As always, she sat at the small area she seemed to have claimed for herself almost immediately: a small desk and chair beneath a window near the fireplace. The desktop was piled high with books from the library, and Shannen sat hunched over one of them, carefully writing on a piece of parchment as she looked at the book.

  She was so engrossed in her work, she hadn’t seemed to have heard him enter. True, he moved more quietly than expected for someone of his size, and it had become a habit to move in that way. Even so, she was clearly focused on what she was doing, and he found himself smiling to himself, just a little. Her head was bent over the books, and he took a moment to admire the graceful curve of her back and neck, the way ringlets of her dark hair had escaped the intricate way she’d twisted it at the nape of her neck. She had stopped wearing her veil and scarf in their private quarters, and he was glad. He told himself that it was good, that it would help him get accustomed to seeing her, someone so alien and different from his own people.

  But he knew better. He knew he was fascinated by the warm tone of her flesh, the slope of her shoulders, the way the light caught her hair…

  …and, he was being a fool again. How did she do that to him, exactly? he wondered.

  “Good afternoon, Shannen,” he said in a low voice, trying not to startle her. It didn’t work; she jumped anyway. She seemed to startle easily, but he supposed that was because when she was doing something, she was fully engrossed, fully attentive to it in a way he’d rarely seen. He did wonder, lying next to her at night, what it would be like to have that intensive focus on him, rather than her books.

  Foolish.

  After the initial jumpiness, a small smile crossed Shannen’s lips. “Good afternoon, Daarik. Meetings are over, finally?”

  “Finally,” he said emphatically, and was rewarded with a small laugh. “How was your visit with your uncle?”

  A look crossed her face, gone as quickly as it had come. “Fine. I am surprised he bothered coming at all, really. He visited with me for all of five minutes or so, and then he and Harledon were gone.”

  “Checking up to make sure we’re not mistreating you, most likely,” Daarik said.

  “Not out of any sense of worry over my well-being. He probably just wanted to make sure you were holding to your end of the bargain. It is how he thinks.”

  Daarik shook his head. He was utterly tired of politics and those who practiced it.”What are you working on?” he asked, walking toward her.

  “Still trying to learn the language,” she said, gesturing toward the books and papers. “I am able to recognize quite a few of the letters now, I think, and simple words are becoming easier for me. Progress, but it is slow going.”

  A stab of guilt hit him. He should have found her a teacher, if she was this determined to learn. He would remedy that. “I can find someone to tutor you,” he said. “If you like.”

  She shook her head. “That is not necessary. Thank you. I cannot imagine that many of your people would enjoy sitting with me while I stumble over two and three letter words,” she added with a wry smile.

  “I could find someone, and strongly suggest that they be patient and kind while they taught you,” he insisted.

  She shook her head again. “I would rather teach myself, at my own pace. And, perhaps, ask you for help when I am having trouble?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’d be happy to help you.” He paused. “Reading the language is one thing, but I assume you also want to learn how to understand it in spoken form, and maybe even speak it yourself, eventually.”

  “Eventually,” she agreed. “I think that will be quite a bit trickier even than learning to read it seems to be.” She picked up the piece of paper she’d been writing on and took it to the settee across from their bed. The settee was in the style of the furniture his people had once had on their home planet, with plush, dark brown fabric and arms that flared and curved out at the sides. He followed Shannen over to it and sat beside her.

  “I was trying to translate from this book,” she said, holding out a child’s story book with some embarrassment. “Janara lent them to me,” she said, and he detected, maybe, a bit of surprise in her voice. He nodded. “Can you check it to see if it is right? I think I managed, for the most part.”

  He took the parchment from her hand, as well as the thin volume with its simple drawings, the type of story a child would proudly read aloud from when first learning to read. He read the first page, which depicted a boy and girl and a tree. He checked Shannen’s translation against the simple sentence, and nodded.

  “Perfect,” he said. He went through four more pages, and only found one mistake, which was confusion between the words “make” and “made.”

  “The letters K and D are pretty similar, as you undoubtedly noticed, in our alphabet,” he said, and Shannen nodded. “You did very well.”

  “For a small child, sure,” Shannen said with a laugh, and he patted her hand.

  “Here, I’ll write a few, and see if you can read them,” he said. She handed him her ink pen, and he started writing, then passed the parchment to Shannen when he was finished.

  “The dog eats bread,” she said, reading the words slowly.

  “Excellent. Try this one.” He took the parchment again, and wrote another sentence.

  “The wolf is big,” she read, and he nodded, then wrote another.

  “The sun is hot.”

  “Good.” He smiled to himself, then wrote another sentence, then another, then another after that. He passed the parchment to Shannen.

  “These are much longer,” she said, looking them over. “This will take longer.”

  “Take your time,” he said. He glanced toward the windows, where the light was beginning to fade. “Are you ready for dinner?”

  “You will be joining me this evening?” she asked him, rising and picking her veil and scarf up from the dressing table.

  “I will. And I apologize for not being there before.”

  She shrugged. “You were busy. I hardly expect you to sit around and teach me to read and keep me company while I eat. You have other things to do.”

  “But I enjoy practicing your reading, and I like watching you try not to look disgusted by some of our foods,” he said, and he was rewarded with a gentle shove as she walked past.

  “Say what you want, but even you have to admit that that shellfish we ate the other night was awful. It tasted the way a chamber pot smells.”

  He laughed. “I’m telling the cook you said that.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said. Her veil and scarf covered her again, but her eyes twinkled and he was learning her voice well enough to know that she was smiling.

  “Oh, I think I should, really. We can’t have my bride wasting away because she hates the food,” he teased.

  “I’m hardly wasting away,” she said, rolling her eyes as she gestured down at herself, at sinuous curves, full flesh that had him reconsidering how hungry he was for food.

  “No, you’re not. And I intend to keep it that way.”

  “Oh? My uncle and aunt always hoped I would sli
m down, but I never seemed to.” She was watching him closely. He had behaved himself. He hadn’t so much as brushed past her body since she’d told him to keep his distance. He was trying to be respectful, no matter how insane it drove him when he was near her.

  “Only a fool would wish for less of you,” he said, and her eyes widened. To her credit, she didn’t look away, but kept her eyes trained on his face. He felt a smile spread across his face as he said a few words to her in the guttural language of his people. When he’d finished, she was looking at him curiously, head tilted to the side.

  “What did you just say?”

  He shrugged.

  “Daarik,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “What did you say?”

  “You’ll figure it out as you learn more of our language. As you hear it more. You should start practicing.”

  “You are being an ass,” she said, though her eyes sparkled above the scarf she wore over her face. He leaned in toward her.

  “Consider it motivation to learn to speak Maarlai sooner. Who knows what wicked, improperthings I’m saying to you when we’re alone together.”

  Mother of Light, the smell of her skin, a scent that he’d found repulsive when they’d first met, was enough to have him hard in an instant. He shifted a bit, then drew back from her and walked to the door. He pulled it open and turned back to Shannen, who stood still, as she had been watching him with a slightly wide-eyed look. He smiled. “Are you ready for dinner, wife?” he asked.

  “Evil. You are pure evil,” she murmured as she walked past him, carrying that delectable scent with her.

  “Princess, you have no idea,” he said in a low voice, and she only paused for a heartbeat before continuing down the corridor.

  Chapter Seven

  Shannen entered the dining hall beside Daarik, and she stayed at his side as he was stopped every few steps to speak with someone or other. She had to respect how well he took it all: the constant interruptions, the never-ending demands for his time and attention. Her uncle had barred anyone from speaking with him unless he was officially holding court. People had ended up in the dungeons for the crime of speaking when he wasn’t ready to be spoken to. She was often surprised that she had never ended up there herself.

  When they finally made it to the table at the front of the room where Daarik’s family and their advisors sat, Daarik pulled her chair out for her. She thanked him quietly and settled herself beside his grandmother as Daarik sat on her other side.

  “Good day, Shannen,” Daarik’s grandmother, Faerlah, said to her. The elder Maarlai had been nothing but pleasant and warm toward her, and Shannen genuinely liked her. Most mornings, she ran into the older female on her way to the library or the kitchen, and they would stop and chat in the corridor. Faerlah seemed intent upon making sure that Shannen was comfortable, and had even been responsible for getting a supply of yarn and fabric for her when she’d mentioned how she missed knitting.

  “Hello, Faerlah,” Shannen answered.

  “How is the reading coming?”

  Shannen shrugged. “I mostly recognize the letters of the alphabet now,” she said. “I have a long way to go.” Daarik finally settled himself in the seat next to hers, and he pressed his knee to the side of her leg beneath the table.

  I should shift over a bit toward Faerlah, she thought to herself. Stupidly, she stayed where she was, her leg pressed to his beneath the table, as if they were two children trying to hide a first crush. She continued speaking with Faerlah, answering questions about how she was getting along and about some of the plants she had grown in her small garden back at the palace.

  “It sounds like you were quite the herbalist,” Faerlah said before taking a sip of bloodwine. Shannen pulled her veil aside so she could drink and eat as well.

  “My favorite moments were spent working in my garden,” Shannen said wistfully. “The scent of the earth, the way the plants would release their fragrance when I brushed past them. Even weeding wasn’t too much of a chore.”

  Faerlah smiled. “I understand the feeling. I’m not much of a gardener myself, by my mother and grandmother were. This was back in our home world, of course,” she added, and Shannen nodded. Very little was known to the humans about the Maarlai and the world they’d come from, but Shannen had learned quite a lot in her time in Darathar. The art history books Janara had shared with her had shown artists’ depictions of their world, and it had been fascinating to see that alien world through the eyes of those who had actually known what it was like. She realized, with the eventual passing of his grandmother and his father, Daarik’s family would lose anyone who had experienced what life had been like before they’d been forced to seek refuge on Earth.

  “Totally different plants, I suppose,” Shannen said, and Faerlah nodded.

  “It took us quite a long time and more than a bit of pain and illness to figure out what was edible here,” the elder Maarlai remembered. “We used to try to spy on the humans in the nearby villages to see what they were eating. We were lucky. This world was bountiful, almost as much so as our home world.” She paused. “At least, it was for a while.”

  Shannen nodded. The humans and Maarlai shared what was left of a dying planet, and there was no question that humanity was at fault. The religious zealots among her people preached that humanity had made the gods angry, and that they were punishing everyone by letting the world die. A history book would have dispelled every one of their arguments, Shannen had often thought. It is all too easy to blame a distant god or gods for the greed and evil among men.

  She continued talking to Faerlah during the meal, and after a while, Daarik bumped his leg against hers. And then he did it again, making it clear it was not an accident. Shannen turned to look at him.

  “Hello,” he said in a low voice.

  “Hello.”

  “I was wondering if you forgot I was here,” he said.

  “Your grandmother is a lovely lady,” she said, and he smiled.

  “It’s nice to hear that, but your poor husband sits here, lonesome, practically dying for just a scrap of attention from his wife.” He had a teasing glint in his eyes, and Shannen found herself smiling.

  “You poor, abandoned thing,” she said, and he sighed dramatically.

  “I know. Just a crumb, wife of mine. A word or two, maybe.”

  She laughed then, and he joined her. “You are incorrigible,” she said, and he bumped her leg with his again.

  He met her eyes, and said a few quiet words in his language. She obviously couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the tone, the timbre of his voice, the deep rumble of sound he made had her blushing, a pleasant tingle working its way up her spine.

  “What are you saying?” she asked. He picked up a bit of meat from his plate after noting that she hadn’t eaten any from her own plate. He held it to her lips, and she opened her mouth, her eyes locked with his, and accepted what he gave her. He watched her intently as she closed her mouth and chewed. The meat was flavorful, a bit on the spicy side, with an underlying note of smokiness.

  “That is actually quite good,” she said, and he lifted another bite to her lips. She was aware, somewhat, of the other Maarlai watching this display, but at the moment, she just couldn’t seem to care. Daarik, his eyes, his leg pressed to hers… that was all she could seem to focus on at the moment. She accepted another bit of meat, looking down, unable to take the intensity in his gaze for another moment.

  “You should try new things more often, Shannen,” Daarik said in a low voice. “You may be surprised by what you end up developing a taste for.”

  She knew she must be a deep scarlet now, blushing as she was. How did he do that? How did a word make her entire body sing, her stomach flip-flop in such a pleasant and exhilarating way?

  “Or I could end up sick and insist on never trying anything new again,” she said, lifting her glass of bloodwine to her lips.

  “I would never offer you anything that would harm you,” Daarik said. He w
as about to say something else, and then he seemed to think better of it and turned away.

  She watched him. The tension in his shoulders, the stiff way he held himself. He was clearly distressed about something, and Shannen hadn’t even realized it in her stupid, confused lust.

  “Is something wrong, Daarik?” she asked quietly, leaning toward him.

  He met her eyes. “Why?”

  “You seem tense. On edge. Is there anything I can do?”

  He let out a low laugh and shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  “I…” And then she realized what the problem was. His flirtations with her, the way he kept finding ways to touch her. The hungry way he looked at her. “Oh,” she said softly.

  “Oh,” he echoed, picking up a piece of meat and feeding it gently to her before taking a bite for himself.

  They ate in silence for a while. She put her hand on his thigh, and he jumped a little at the contact. She started to draw back, and he put his large hand over hers, keeping her as she was, her hand resting on his muscled leg.

  She was caught between being irritated and thrilled at touching him. She’d thought far too much about this, and his demeanor toward her when they did finally get a moment together was enough to drive her mad. He was at turns quiet and gregarious, serious and teasing. But always, always with an undercurrent of something she couldn’t let herself think about.

  “Let’s practice your Maarlai,” he said, and she nodded. He kept her hand in his, resting on his thigh. He gestured to the bowl of tart apples on the table and gave them a one-syllable sound. She’d read the word for apples, so it was interesting to hear how the sounds related to the letters. She tried to repeat it after him, and then again. Her lips and throat didn’t seem to work the way they needed to for pronouncing the alien words, but Daarik was patient. They went through the words for apple, bread, wine, plate, table, and candle. It should have felt like nothing. There was certainly nothing in the words he taught her that should have had her blushing, but the way he watched her mouth as she tried to form the words had her flustered, heated, and irritated.