by Sharon Green
"How good of you to greet me so warmly," I drawled, hanging my cape over my left arm with a friendly smile. Grigon was still using the Tildorani tongue, so I did the same. "Your graciousness will be a great comfort to me during my sojourn here."
"Your manner remains entirely unacceptable," he growled, a faint flush of anger tingeing his smooth-shaven cheeks. "It is neither the youthful imperiousness of the princess, nor the carefully respectful response of a peasant girl. Do you think yourself in the midst of a female group-sewing that you behave so? Do you seek to nullify our careful planning?"
"It is scarcely possible for me to nullify your superior planning from this room," I came back, finding it impossible to keep the dryness from my voice. "I would, however, appreciate being informed concerning the reason for your having twice referred to the possibility of my being presented as a peasant girl. I was given the impression in base that I was to be the Princess Bellna alone."
"Guard your unthinking tongue!" he snapped, the look in his dark eyes sharpening. "Though this lodge is secure, you are not again to refer to 'base'! Also, it is not for you to question what role you will play. Should we think it necessary that you be disguised as a peasant, you will obey our orders without question - if such a difficult undertaking is not beyond your abilities. You stand dressed in the clothing of a princess; remove it and show me the peasant girl I may require."
His voice had grown cold and haughty, a Tildorani male giving orders to a lowly female. My temper flared in response to his attitude, but my own reactions were sweet calm compared to the outrage coming from the Bellna personality. No one spoke to a princess like that, and she wasn't about to stand for it.
"How dare you!" I found myself hissing, fists clenched as I leaned forward toward the man not far from me. "Is it now that you will overstep yourself, peasantish servant? Am I now to be able to speak to my father, giving him proof of your lack of respect for me? Till now he has laughingly dismissed my protests; there will be little laughter caused by this! Show me to my rooms at once, and perhaps you will retain your head when your manhood has been taken!"
I looked coldly upon the wretch, seeing his frown and the first signs of apprehension. Surely did he know that my words had not been idle, yet rather than attempt apology he abruptly straightened from the stoop that had ever been a part of him, strode across the distance separating us, then grasped my arms. He shook me with strength, shocking me with such unbelievable behavior, and I didn't know what the hell was going on.
"Snap out of it!" Grigon ordered, clear worry in his eyes as he shook me again. "That's the second time you've done it, and this time I'm sure. Cut it out!"
"Cut what out?" I growled, raising both fists in front of me and then snapping them outward to break his hold. He had shifted to base language, and that seemed to be adding to my confusion. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about that speech you just gave me," he answered, his eyes narrowed as he looked at me. He seemed both larger and younger now that he'd dropped his role, not to mention a lot less belligerent. "Bellna has resented Grigon's influence over her father for a long time, and she and he have had more than one venomous exchange like that. That wasn't you pretending to be Bellna; that was Bellna herself."
"Don't be ridiculous," I scoffed, picking up my cape and then looking around for some place other than the floor to put it down. "Just because I don't have the hang of using her persona yet doesn't mean there's anything strange going on. Once I get a little practice in, her personality won't jump out every time she gets upset."
"You're missing the point," he said, his touch on my arm bringing my eyes back to his sober face. "I don't know where you got the idea that practice has anything to do with it, but her personality isn't supposed to jump out at all. It's an unliving, unaware reference file, not another person inside your head to be fought with. Does Dameron know about this?"
I stared at him for a minute without answering, feeling even more confused, then finally shook my head.
"How can Dameron know about it when I didn't know about it?" I asked, searching his face for signs that he was putting me on. "Are you trying to tell me that impression isn't supposed to work this way? That this sort of thing - whatever it is - has never happened to anyone else?"
"Not until now." He took a deep breath as he looked away from me, let it out slowly, then brought his gaze back. "It's a good thing I had a communicator installed here, just in case. I'd better call Dameron."
"And tell him what?" I demanded, stopping Grigon as he began to turn away from me. "That we scrap the whole project because of one minor, unexpected complication? A suggestion like that is guaranteed to make him love you forever."
"One minor complication?" he echoed, outrage thick in his tone. "You've got a living, thinking Bellna sharing your head and body, taking over whenever she pleases, and you call that minor? Has anyone ever told you that you have a gift for understatement?"
"She doesn't take over whenever she pleases," I denied sourly, deciding I might as well hang onto the damned cape for a while. "She's been able to take over to a small extent because I didn't know she wasn't supposed to be able to. From now on I'll make sure I stay permanently in the driver's seat."
"Oh, sure you will," he agreed with heavy sarcasm, turning all the way back to me and folding his arms. "You'll have no trouble at all in making a fifteen-year-old brat do things your way while Clero's men close in from all sides. They won't distract you from matching wills with her, and she won't distract you from keeping yourself unspitted. It's done all the time."
"If it isn't done all the time, how do you know how hard it will be?" I countered, getting more and more annoyed at his pessimism. "And I thought this project was a top-priority, die-before-failing necessity. Someone listening to you would think you were looking for a reason to call it off."
I was trying to put him on the defensive, trying to take his mind off the single track it had been clinging to, but the man was no child or beginner. Instead of getting insulted or trying to justify his position, he let his eyes grow cold.
"You're right about this being a top-priority project," he said, staring down at me. "The part you're wrong about is thinking we'd throw away the life of one of our own people just to see our purpose accomplished. I know Dameron picked you because he thought you had a much better than even chance of surviving this mess; I also know he'll want to hear my reasons for thinking you won't survive. Want to bet he will love me forever?"
Grigon stared at me for a minute after that, giving me a chance to make the sucker bet if I was foolish enough to do so, but I knew better than to waste the effort. The Absari base commander would side with him, not with me. After the minute he unfolded his arms and began to turn away again, but I couldn't let him go through with it.
"Grigon, don't call Dameron," I asked with a sigh, giving up my previous attempts to buffalo him. "You don't have to tell me he'll cancel the project. I know he will."
"Don't you think he should?" the man called Grigon asked, his tone more reasonable than argumentative. "I can't imagine what could have gone wrong with the impression, but it's bound to make your role five times more difficult, if not downright impossible. Your wanting to go with it tells me you're probably a suicide buff."
"Sorry, but suicide's not my thing," I denied, shifting that stupid cape to my other arm. "I'm on the inside with this problem, and I'm telling you that it honestly doesn't feel as terrible as you're describing it. I've never walked away from an assignment already committed to in my entire career, not unless there were reasons a lot more compelling than some stray thoughts in my head. Just how positive are you that your guess is better than mine?"
He hesitated visibly then, considering my question, but logic was on my side. No one can be an expert on something that's never happened before, and Grigon couldn't pretend that he was.
"I can't possibly be positive, and you know it," he said, ending the brief pause, annoyance back in his voice and ey
es. "What makes you so sure that you have the way of it? If you find out I'm right with your last living thought, do you intend sending your spirit back to let me say I told you so? I won't find it nearly as satisfying as you seem to think I will."
"Why do you insist on seeing me dead?" I demanded, trying to ignore the severe adult-to-child overtones that kept escaping his control. "You said yourself that Dameron would not have sent me if he didn't think I could handle it. I'd like to know what makes you believe I can't."
"Maybe it's the fact that I know this world and I don't know you," he said, rubbing his face with one hand, the vexation in his voice stronger. "We've got to settle this one way or the other tonight, before we commit to this project too far to back out if it becomes necessary. Come with me."
He turned and strode to the left-hand door, threw it open, then waited for me to follow as he'd ordered. When I got there and looked past him I saw a dim, narrow back hall with two more closed doors straight ahead and a heavy staircase to the left. I wondered why my guide had stopped at the threshold rather than leading the way through, but he didn't leave me wondering long.
"Take those stairs to the next floor and go to the last room along the hall," he said, gesturing briefly with one hand. "I'll be there as soon as I report your safe arrival, and then we can discuss the problem until we both know where we stand."
I hesitated very briefly, trying to think of a diplomatic way of offering to go with him while he reported my "arrival," but there didn't seem to be one. Anything I said would translate out as not trusting him, which was exactly the way I felt but was not an attitude calculated to make him think more kindly about my chances of continuing with the project. The only thing I could do was give him the chance to blow the whistle behind my back and hope I'd raised enough doubt in his mind to keep him from doing no more than thinking about it. I craned my neck around a little more, using sightseeing to account for my silence, then nodded as I glanced at him.
"Up to the second floor, then down to the end," I agreed, using my free hand to get a grip on the long skirt that would have tripped me on those stairs. "See you there."
I walked to the stairs and began climbing them without looking back, not even pausing when I heard the soft click of the door being closed. There was no guarantee Grigon was on the outside of the closed door, and I'd already cut him loose in my mind. Taking him out of the game entirely would have been the only way to stop him from reporting anything he pleased, and I wasn't willing to do that. The Lord of Luck had been good to me in my time, and the only way to repay him is to trust him completely when none of your own efforts will do the trick.
The door at the end of the hall was not door but doors. Two beautifully carved doors stood quietly in the half-lit shadow of a single wall candle, and opening one of them showed me a room that banished all thoughts of rustic. A fire danced and crackled in the large marble fireplace to the left of the doors, an occasional spark jumping out to the wide stone apron in front of it. Beyond the apron was a single well-padded chair standing on the beginnings of a room-wide, deep-napped carpet in what seemed to be wine-red.
All the wall space in the room was covered with heavy cloth hangings, and ahead and to the right was an enormous bed, canopied and curtained in the same dark red, with another, lighter color showing faintly inside the curtains. Gold thread picked out Prince Havro's emblem on the front curtain, a large circle enclosing a snarling, clawing isphalgor standing on an intricately embroidered rendition of the three letters of Havro's family name.
I could feel Bellna's recognition of her father's insignia, but it came as something of a shock to realize that she couldn't read the letters. Women on Tildor were kept illiterate as a matter of course, and even Bellna's position as princess hadn't saved her from the darkness. The background information I'd been given let me read as well as any Tildorani male, but that was a point I'd have to keep firmly in mind. No matter who I was on that planet, if the character was female it would have to forget how to read.
I closed the door behind me and moved farther into the room, seeing a large, beautifully carved wardrobe and matching bench standing to the right of the bed. I finally got rid of the cape by dumping it on the bench, then walked over to the wide carved screen of wood that had been set up to the right of the wardrobe. There was faint candlelight trickling out around its edges that made me curious, but stepping behind it fed me a jolt of shock from the Bellna presence.
The area behind the screen was all mirrored, wall and screen alike, and thick, soft fur pelts covered the more sedate wine-red carpeting. The area was a slave nook, and if I'd bothered looking for them among the furs, I probably could have found the chains. Bellna was sputtering indignantly in my head, upset not so much by the discovery of her father's play nest as by having to look at something that free, high-born women were usually sheltered from. Everyone knew what men used female slaves for, but that didn't mean it was something a well-bred woman would want to look at!
Wondering in passing if Grigon had lit the candle, I turned my head to one of the mirrors and stared at the redheaded reflection there, consciously swallowing down the indignation and forcing it away from me. There was no expression on the beautiful face, but it took a minute or two for the tension to leave the well-rounded figure dressed all in dark blue. The effort necessary to push the Bellna presence to the back of my mind hadn't been excessive, but a faint doubt came to dance around lightly on my nerve ends.
Was I just being stubborn by insisting that I could handle the role? Was I endangering everyone involved - as well as the project itself - by not going straight back to base? Was Grigon right in thinking that I couldn't fight Bellna and Clero's men both at the same time? The hell of it was he could be right, but there was no way to tell for certain until the time came. Did I take the chance and go on with it, or did I opt for the cautious point of view and head on back?
A look of disgust formed on the face I stared at, but the Bellna presence had nothing to do with it. I was the one who felt the disgust, and entirely with myself. The thought of something having gone wrong with the impression didn't frighten me, not when I could regain control so easily. I'd been in a lot hotter water that time I'd been fed an illegal zombie drug, and hadn't been able to throw it off. The problem was that I still didn't really want to be here, and my devious mind was digging for a way out that would free me from my commitment to Dameron without my having to renege.
Which meant that there were certain questions I had to ask myself. Could Dameron find someone to replace me in time to keep the project going? No. Did I take on the job without coercion and promise to see it through? Yes. Then how about cutting out the emoting and breast-beating - and the needling of your co-workers - and getting serious about this?
I looked sternly at the mirror image that was me and held the stare for a minute, then let a faint grin come through. My sense of right hadn't allowed me to let Grigon send me back without an argument, but my escape reflex had almost had me ready to accept the easy out he wanted to hand me. I'd accept the challenge instead, and still make it home in time to vote.
"You look very much at home in there," a voice came, filled with faint amusement. "Except for the clothes, of course. You'll have to get rid of those."
"I wouldn't dream of usurping my host's right to initiate all actions," I countered with a laugh, turning to look at Grigon. "After you, my lord."
"You picked a hell of a time to be gracious," Grigon complained with a grin, stepping back from the end of the screen. "Come on out here and let's get acquainted."
I followed him back out to the middle of the room, then stood watching as he walked to the chair in front of the fire and lowered himself into it. Aside from the bench in front of the wardrobe and the bed, the chair was the only place to sit, but I wasn't given my choice of the two other locations. Grigon moved the chair so that he could see me more easily, then gestured me closer.
"I've been thinking about our problem and I believe I've come up with
a way to settle it," he said, making himself comfortable as he looked up at me. "It all depends on how determined you are that I'm wrong and you're right."
"I'm very determined," I said, folding my arms as I looked down at him. "Does your solution have anything to do with making me stand up until I fall over?"
"In a manner of speaking it does," he said, a flicker of annoyance showing in his eyes. "Since you seem to have slept through all the briefing sessions you were given, let me repeat the point I thought I'd made when you first got here: if you keep wise-cracking the way you've been doing, you'll either outline yourself as a complete stranger and foreigner, or end up tied to a whipping stand. You won't find either possibility enjoyable, and the rest of us are far from eager to join you. Do you think you can get it through your head that you're putting our necks on the block right along with yours?"
"I'm fully aware of the fact that flip doesn't go over well on this world," I said, feeling none of the guilt he was trying to feed me - and trying not to feel the annoyance. "If I'd known that wise-cracking in this lodge would put you and the others in jeopardy, I wouldn't have done it. Please accept my apology, and also my assurance that it won't happen again."
"You're still not funny," he growled, letting his eyes go cold as he looked at me. "The only way I can judge how you'll act out there is by seeing how you do in here - and so far you're not making it. It doesn't matter whether anyone else can hear you. I can hear you."
"I didn't know I was being tested." I shrugged, still not very impressed but finally seeing his point. "If you want to evaluate the role I'll be playing that's another story, but bear in mind that Bellna would not allow herself to be kept standing like this. Once I settle into her, you'll have to vacate that chair."
"Bellna might not be the only role you'll be playing," he said, comfortably crossing his legs as he ignored my last comment. "If you find yourself on your own you may have to switch to being the peasant girl we discussed earlier - with nothing of Bellna showing. Do you know how a peasant girl on this world acts?"