Convergence (50 page)

"I'd be willing to bet every copper I possess on it," Jowi answered, her disturbed certainty adding even more weight to the contention. "He's determined to have Tamrissa no matter what he has to do to accomplish it."

"I'm goin' to talk to her," Valiant decided aloud, straightening a bit where he stood. "She won't want to hear anythin' at all from me let alone somethin' like that, but she has to know. I really do appreciate the help you gave her, and I'll . . . talk to you later."

"It was my pleasure," Jowi answered, now apparently amused about something. "She and I have become friends, so if either of you need me again, please don't hesitate to ask."

Valiant nodded his thanks for the offer,
then
headed directly for the library. If he hadn't been so distracted with worry about Tamrissa, he would have wondered about Jowi's amusement. As it was, he reached the library door, knocked once,
then
walked in without waiting for a response. Tamrissa was in a chair, her beautiful face looking drawn and pale, and Valiant gave her no chance to order him out.

"I know I'm intrudin', but don't let it disturb you," he said quickly, closing the door again behind him. "There's somethin' you need to know, and then I'll get out of your way again. But first I'd like to apologize for what I said. Somehow it came out soundin' as if I was callin' you helpless, but I really wasn't. It was the situation—"

"You came in here to apologize?" she interrupted, suddenly looking annoyed.
"For the second time, when I haven't done it even once?
You seem to make a habit of apologizing when you aren't guilty of anything, Dom Ro, but I suspect you don't do it for everyone. Those who aren't helpless undoubtedly have to manage without."

"I was tryin' to say that that was a misunderstandin'," Valiant replied, swallowing down a flash of his own annoyance as he moved a few steps closer to her chair. "That bunch thought they could
make
you helpless, but they were as wrong as it's possible to be. Even if Jowi and I hadn't come along to help, you still would have been able to handle them."

"Only I wasn't handling them, and we both know it," she
said,
the bitterness clear in her voice. "That means you're lying in an effort to make me feel better, which would be absurd if your reason wasn't so obvious. Helpless women need to have their fears soothed, and men who consider themselves gentlemen are honor bound to perform the task. But now that it's been seen to, Dom Ro, I'd like you to go away and leave me alone."

"I'm not in the habit of lyin'," Valiant said through his teeth, frustration adding itself to his increasing annoyance. "You're in a situation so bad I can't even imagine what it must feel like, to have your own parents care about nothin' but how they can use you. If it was me I probably
would
be helpless, but you're managin' just fine. Jowi thinks so too, so why don't you ask
her."

"Jowi's a friend, so what else would she say?" the beautiful female mule responded with a gesture of dismissal, a stubborn glint now in those incredible violet eyes. "And for someone who's not in the habit of lying, you seem to do well at it. Or was it my imagination that you said you'd asked me to marry you? No wonder you have trouble with women. Being a Knight in Shining Aspect will do it every time."

"That wasn't a lie, it was moral support," Valiant stated, now thoroughly annoyed. "You listen to me, little lady, and you listen
good
. I don't have trouble with 'women,' I have trouble with beautiful females who have too much spirit for their good and mine. You could have agreed to whatever your father said, which you would have if you really were helpless. Instead you stood there defyin' his right to use you like a worthless piece of trade goods, and that took more courage than most
men
have. It's easy to stand up for yourself when the person givin' you grief is a stranger, but it's damned hard when they're somebody who's supposed to love you. You are
not
helpless, and I don't ever want to hear you say you are again."

By that time she sat there blinking at him wide-eyed, obviously unsure of how to react or what to say. Men usually jumped to agree with him when he used that tone on them, men often twice the size of the slender female who sat looking up at him without a word of the agreement he'd demanded. Briefly, Valiant wished he himself were female, so he'd be free to scream in frustration the way
he
so wanted to do. How was he supposed to get through such thickheaded resistance?

"Now see what you made me do," he grumbled after a moment of useless searching for the right thing to say. "I came in to apologize, and ended up yellin' at you instead. Just for that I ought to punish you by takin' a kiss."

He expected to see her laugh or get angry at that, the usual reaction that could be expected from a woman. Instead she went pale again, so quickly and completely that Valiant was shocked. And she'd begun to tremble! What in the name of the Five was wrong?

"No, please, I was only jokin'," he said as fast as possible, immediately crouching and reaching up to touch her hand. It was ice cold, and that look in her eyes—! "I'm not goin' to hurt you, I'd never hurt you. Are you all right?"

It took a long moment before she nodded, but Valiant still made no effort to straighten. Looming over someone you'd just frightened wasn't the way to reassure them, and he also reluctantly stopped touching her hand. She hadn't pulled it away from him, but it certainly seemed that she wanted to. It had to be the worst possible time to ask questions, but he simply had to know.

"What was it that frightened you so badly?" he put as gently as he knew how, watching her face. "I see now that it was a rotten joke, but do you dislike me
that
much? If so, I'll certainly leave at once—"

"No," she interrupted, clearly trying to pull herself together. "It wasn't really you at all. I—had an unpleasant marriage, and the ghost of it keeps haunting me. I don't want you to think you were responsible, not when you were just trying to help me. That would be very unfair."

Unfair.
Valiant stared up at her without changing expression, but how he managed it he'd never know. If a thoughtless, offhand comment was able to terrorize her like that, it wasn't possible to really know what her marriage had been like. Unpleasant couldn't be anything like a proper description, but she'd pulled out of it just to reassure
him.
Valiant wished briefly but fervently that it was possible to get his hands on her former husband. If he had still been alive, he wouldn't have remained so for long.

"Tamrissa, I want you to hear me and believe what you hear," he said then, slowly but deliberately reaching for her hand and taking it gently between both of his. "There's nothin' in this world that will ever make me hurt you, and what's more I'll never let anybody else hurt you either. I mean to be there if your daddy comes back with that friend of his, and if I'm not you'd better make sure I'm called. Will you do that?"

"Certainly," she agreed after a short hesitation, her hand unmoving between his bigger ones, a spot of red on each of her fair cheeks. "If that's what you want, I'll be glad to see to it May I have my hand back now?"

Valiant would have been much happier if he could have ignored that request, but it wasn't really possible. With great reluctance he released her hand then straightened, wondering in passing why she now looked so reserved. Well, whatever the reason, at least she wasn't terrified any longer. And it would have been heartless to return her to the state by telling her what Jowi had said about Hallasser. That would have to wait for another time.

"Since it's nearly lunchtime, I think I'll go and freshen up," Valiant said when the silence grew too heavy. She sat staring down at her hands, obviously waiting for him to decide to leave. "I'll—see you in the dinin' room."

She nodded without looking up, so he had no choice but to leave the way he'd said he would. The hall was empty when he stepped back out into it and closed the door behind himself, so he crossed it to the stairs and went to his room.

There were any number of things disturbing Valiant's thoughts, but one of them kept returning while he washed his hands in the room's basin. She'd said she believed his determination to stand beside her, but something about the way she'd behaved led him to believe she hadn't been telling the truth. She
didn't
believe him, but why in the world would she doubt—

The answer came so suddenly that Valiant groaned, feeling like an idiot for not having seen it sooner. He'd told Tamrissa he would be there for her, but they'd already established that he would
not
be there, not at all. As far as she knew, he was determined to go home as soon as he could, so how could she expect him to be there for her? He'd let his emotions speak for him, making him both a fool and a liar.

But
had
he been lying? There was something about Tamrissa Domon that drew him more strongly than any other woman he had ever met, maybe even more strongly than the need to go home to the sea again. How he would get around his problem with closed-in spaces he had no idea, but suddenly he wanted to get around it. He
had
to stay to help her, but the matter still came down to whether his affliction would allow it. He'd given his solemn word, but would he be allowed to keep it?

Valiant took the hand towel and threw it as far as he could, then
had
to use the power to dry his hands. He seemed to have picked up the habit of acting thoughtlessly and then regretting it, but maybe things would change. Maybe some-how, in some way, he would find it possible not to be a liar after all. . . .

TWENTY-SEVEN

Lorand had come out to the gardens after breakfast, and even without bright sunshine he had enjoyed the serenity too much to go back inside. His mind kept replaying the events of last night, and he'd needed to be surrounded by vital living things in order to come to terms with what had happened. Everyone had been upset except for Clarion, who'd been too tipsy to think the thing through. And Drowd,
who'd
left the tavern—and them—at the first hint of trouble starting.

Which would have been considered nothing but prudence if Drowd had told them he was leaving rather than wordlessly sneaking away.
Lorand crouched beside a flower bed composed of jonquils and peonies, an odd combination that nevertheless attracted him. All of the flowers and bushes and mosses and grasses seemed to have perked up only recently, as though something in the soil—or the atmosphere—had recently changed. He'd Encouraged the entire area in general when he'd first come out, and now could simply enjoy being near their happy eagerness to grow.

But the pleasure of that wasn't up to taking away
all
the unpleasantness of breakfast. Pagin Holter had been at the table when Lorand first walked in, but the little man had been so deep in his thoughts that Lorand had decided against disturbing him. Holter had worn a look of grieving since they'd left the tavern, his mind mourning the loss of something he couldn't speak of. Lorand knew he'd realized he could never go back to the places where he'd felt so at home, and he sympathized more fully than Holter would ever know.

A small amount of sunshine blossomed as the clouds briefly parted, then it disappeared again even more quickly than it had appeared. It took the beauty of the riotous garden colors with it, just as last night had taken the joy from Holter. He'd
had
to offer his help, just as the rest of them had had to agree to do the same, and it wasn't fair, although that was hardly a comfort. Even Mardimil had been affected, since he'd done little more than greet Lorand warmly before sitting down with his meal and sinking into his thoughts.

"But at least it did us a favor where Drowd is concerned," Lorand muttered, reaching out to the softness of a nearby daffodil. Drowd had appeared after Mardimil, and his air of amused condescension had returned as though it had never been gone. He'd talked languidly about nothing as he filled his plate, but once he'd sat down he'd tried to go back to his old tricks again.

"How nice it is to see you returned to us, Mardimil," he'd drawled while pouring himself a cup of tea. "The way you behaved last night, I was certain you'd decided to stay . . . 'under the weather' permanently."

"How would you know, Drowd?" Mardimil had returned with the same sort of drawl, surprising Lorand. "You ran away so fast, it's a wonder you had time to notice anything at all. And then to try to strand us there
...
I knew you were a liar, Drowd, but I hadn't realized you were that colossally stupid. Did you really think we didn't know simply because no one contradicted you on the spot?"