Restoree (16 page)

“Get her
in
here,” I hissed at Sinnall.

Poor Fara had no opportunity to run as I was sure she wanted to. Maxil had her by one arm and Sinnall by the other. I motioned to Sinnall to close the doors to the inner hall so that just the five of us were in the main room.

“Maxil, father will be furious if he knows I’m here,” she wept and then she gulped back her sobs as she came face to face with me.

Her emotions were painfully obvious. She had heard all the gossip and had been hurt by it. She had been betrayed in her love and denied sight of him by her father whose political common sense dominated his personal preferences. She did look like me, even with her eyes red with her tears and with her hair disheveled. A younger, prettier, gentler, totally different girl.

What impressed me more than her delicate loveliness was Maxil’s tenderness toward her. He drew her against him, one hand holding one of hers to his lips, the other arm drawing her possessively to him. There was no hint of the gawky adolescent who had clumsily tried to embrace me the previous night as we deceived the waiter. He was Romeo to his Juliet, strong and loving, tender and sure.

“Fara, I’m so glad to see you. What do you mean, your father will be furious with you? I’ve asked for no one else but you,” Maxil was saying.

“But . . . but . . . we were sent from the palace and no one would let us come back and Father wouldn’t let me come to the Starhall last night and then . . .” and she glared at me. She drew herself up to her full height, suddenly regal for all her youth.

“You heard those
rumors
about Lady Sara,” I finished for her.

She swallowed hard, too proud or too hurt to answer.

“Well, Lady Fara, they are only rumors,” I said. “Lord Harlan has claimed me as his lady.”

Her eyes widened and she gasped, looking trustingly to Maxil for confirmation. I don’t know how, but Maxil kept from blushing as he nodded solemnly to Fara.

“Now, will you stop glaring at me and sit down while we tell you the whole thing?” I suggested. “I think I can see why your father was not anxious for you and Maxil to meet right away,” I added as her emotions of uncertainty, curiosity and distrust crossed her transparent little face.

By the time she left in Cire’s company to dash back to her suite, we had the whole thing pretty well thrashed out. She didn’t much like it, but she understood. Maxil was so relieved I thought he’d explode.

“She’ll accept my claim. She’ll accept,” he cried, sliding down into his chair with delight. Stretched out full length, his long legs stuck out at angles, he sighed deeply and closed his eyes. Then, slamming both hands down on the chair arms, he propelled himself up with astonishing force, careening around the room. It was obvious from Sinnall’s expression he did not consider this proper behavior for a Warlord-elect.

“Leave him alone,” I laughed at Sinnall. “You’re only this young and in love once and I’ve presented a terrible complication. You must admit that.”

Sinnall shook his head. “What if they give themselves away?”

“They only have to play along for a few days.”

Sinnall still wasn’t convinced, but at that point Linnana and Ittlo suggested it was time we dressed for dinner.

CHAPTER TEN

F
ORMAL DINNER MEANT JUST THAT,
but it was a formality that very few of the main participants enjoyed. Harlan and Stannall, alone, at the head table, behaved as if they were enjoying themselves.

A portion of the Starhall had become a dining room, with a head table on the raised circular section between two of the five archways, while four long tables splayed out from it on the level below.

I don’t know who was more nervous, Maxil or me. His behavior vacillated between an almost unbearable imperiousness when addressing his younger brother and sisters to adolescent sullenness when he gazed at the table where Fara sat with adult members of Council. Stannall, of course, was at the head table between Maxil’s sisters. I was seated at Maxil’s left, and Lesatin, the curious councilman, sat on my left. Harlan sat at the end, too far away from me for the conversation I wanted to have with him.

It was not a cheerful meal although the food was excellent. Kalina and Cherez, Maxil’s two sisters, were dressed as befitted their age and station, their pretty faces much sweeter devoid of last night’s excessive makeup. But they were sullen. Maxil told me that Kalina had been told she was to deny the claim of the man Gorlot had mated to her. Fernan, completely cowed by Stannall’s presence and under Harlan’s scrutiny, ate the sparse meal set before him. His glowering fat face with its pasty pimpled complexion was not a pleasant sight at dinner. I avoided his direction as much to keep from seeing him as to keep myself from Stannall’s notice.

I must correct myself. Lesatin thoroughly enjoyed himself. He made conversation for us to agree with, commented on one course after the other. I felt terribly conspicuous and surreptitiously waited until I saw what Harlan used as silverware. Perhaps I felt a constraint because in Harlan’s presence I was so conscious of inadvertently tripping over my own ignorance. With Maxil or Sinnall I could laugh off a slip or divert attention. But Harlan was so preternaturally concerned with concealing my origin, I was unnerved. The menace of Stannall and Monsorlit completed the top-heavy pyramid of my anxiety.

By the time the entertainers whirled out into the center of the huge hall, I was weary. My back ached, my stomach felt overfull and churned with odd tastes and textures. My neck felt stiff with tension and I wondered if I could ever relax again.

When we finally filed out of the great hall, I tried to stay by Harlan. He gave me a warning look as he handed me over to Maxil. I was furious and frustrated. I desperately needed a few private words with Harlan on what to do tomorrow if the Council should actually call me. I was forced to go to bed without that reassurance and I was filled with worry, worry, worry.

In the alarm-clock way I had acquired since coming to Lothar, I awoke suddenly and completely. My head still ached, the room was unreal in its luxurious appointments and my body felt logy and disjointed. Linnana was evidently a skilled keyhole listener because I no sooner stretched than she appeared to announce my bath was ready.

I chose the simplest of the rich gowns and a single strand of contrasting beads as much to forget the extravagance of last night as to present Council with the “simple country girl” I had styled myself in jest.

The breakfast table held a surprise for me. Jessl was at it, chatting companionably to Sinnall, Cire and Maxil. The boy had recovered his equilibrium this morning it seemed, for he rose with a spring as I entered. Jessl seated me with a flourish and a flirt. Linnana and Ittlo bustled about with dishes.

The mood in which I awakened could not linger with such gay breakfast talk. Jessl insisted on a ribald recounting of town gossip about Maxil and me and he was so deft with his recital I couldn’t be offended. Even Maxil, now that he had set himself straight with Fara, laughed. The morning beverage stimulated me and unbound the knots of tension at the back of my neck.

“Sara, Harlan said not to worry about Council calling you. Today at least. We can all watch in the board room,” Jessl indicated the chamber devoted to communication panels. “It’s a closed circuit into this room from the Chamber. It will be a real pleasure to follow Gorlot’s downfall.”

“You’re sure of it?” I queried hopefully.

Jessl scoffed at my unspoken doubts and leaned forward across the table in a mock conspiratorial fashion.

“The things we’ve uncovered about that man would make your skin curl off. Remarkable, isn’t it, how the slightest breath of scandal on any public figure brings forth previously forgotten slights and errors.”

“But will these things discredit him as a candidate for Regent?” I wanted to know.

“Sure, surely,” Jessl agreed expansively. I wondered then if Jessl had been purposefully sent to allay Maxil’s doubts or whether Jessl was an incurable optimist.

“What’s the gossip about Harlan’s return from insanity?”

Here Jessl did hedge. “There’s a great deal of controversy about that. I only wish we had some conclusive proof that he never had been insane.”

“But he never was,” I insisted forcefully. “He was drugged. Gorlot and Gleto drugged him.” Why I inserted Gleto’s name instead of Monsorlit’s, I don’t know. “I heard that from Gleto’s lips myself.”

“Does Harlan know that?” asked Maxil anxiously.

“Of course he does,” I assured him.

“Then why doesn’t he have you appear before Council today?” the young Warlord fretted.

“Perhaps you are the main issue today, not Harlan’s sanity,” I suggested.

Jessl shook his head.

“No, Maxil’s as good as confirmed right now. Stannall had an inspiration and had the physicians check Fernan over, too. The kid’s heart has suffered from his overeating and he could never stand even normal acceleration. Maxil’s therefore practically the only choice. But it’s the Regency that’s to be the heavy contest. Don’t worry, lad. I mean, my lord,” Jessl said with sincerity. “Harlan and Stannall know what they’re doing.”

I fell to mulling over exactly what I had told Harlan concerning himself in the asylum. I had mentioned Gleto and his being drugged but not Monsorlit’s visit, nor one other, possibly very important fact. Yesterday I had told Ferrill that there were others held under drugs at the sanitarium, if those men all recovered as Harlan had, and told their stories, it would be definite proof, by association, that Harlan never had been insane. I tugged Jessl’s arm.

“Has anyone checked into the medical histories of Gleto’s other recent patients? I mean, say other squadron commanders or men of position who have also suddenly and unexpectedly gone mad.”

Jessl swiveled around to look at me with dawning comprehension.

“Trenor had nine other patients at that asylum,” I continued. “At least that’s what Gleto said. If they could be restored to sanity the way Harlan was, wouldn’t that prove that Harlan, too, had been drugged, had never been insane? And I
know
those men were drugged.”

Jessl was at the communicator panel before I finished my hypothesis. The screen lit to show Stannall’s crowded living room. Jessl asked Stannall to close his circuit. The background of the room blurred and only the first Councilman’s face was distinct. Jessl repeated what I had told him. Stannall’s face quickened with obvious interest.

“How long does it take to recover from the effects of the drug?” he asked, excited.

“About five days abstention from the drugged food,” I reluctantly advised him, knowing how important the time factor was. “But maybe there’s an antidote or a stimulant.”

“We can try. It would be very interesting to check this. It would implicate Trenor still further. Can you identify the patients concerned?”

I couldn’t. Stannall pursed his lips over this disappointment. Then he thanked me with absentminded courtesy and the screen dimmed. Jessl came thoughtfully back to the table.

“Sinnall,” he asked, “do you recall anyone going off his orbit recently?”

Maxil came up immediately with one name, a communications man at the spaceport who had run berserk all over the flying strip. Then there had been the case of a police official in the city. Jessl himself thought of two group leaders. Sinnall suggested a veteran trader on the Tane routes who had come home babbling some strange tale before he had been drugged quiet by physicians.

“What kind of a tale?” Jessl asked.

Sinnall frowned. “Oh, he made a rhyme of it, the way I heard the story.” Sinnall shuddered at the memory. “Went like this:

For a change the Mil can eat

The gentle, juicy Tane meat.

Of course, there hasn’t been a Mil raid for the last two Eclipses. And only a few Perimeter skirmishes reported.”

A few skirmishes in two Eclipses: that would mean more than a year. Was I in one of those ships? Could I have been on Lothar that long? But Harlan had only been in the sanitarium ten months. And the Tane war started a week afterward. When had I been taken? Before or after? And how? Harlan could only guess that I must have been transported from Earth to Lothar in a Mil ship. How then did I get off the ship; where did I go from there for Monsorlit to change my skin and my nose? I was certain now that Monsorlit had been responsible. How did I get into the sanitarium where I should have been a patient, not an attendant?

“Sara’s thinking. Maybe she knows another official for our missing four men,” Jessl jibed, startling me out of my frightening contemplations.

“Me? No, I haven’t followed that sort of thing. I was too busy with Harlan.”

“Which reminds me to ask you,” Jessl began forcefully, “where did you meet up with our Regent? Jokan doesn’t remember ever meeting you, but he’s been on and off Ertoi gazing into crystals. I’ve been underfoot and I don’t remember meeting you in our closed circle,” he ended with a complimentary leer.

“Which should prove to you that Harlan is pretty good at minding his own business all by himself,” I hedged archly.

This would not put Jessl off. “Where do you come from, lady of mystery? Your accent is slightly southern, if anything, but your appearance is northern.”

“A girl can’t keep anything secret around here,” I laughed.

“The lady minds her business pretty well, too,” laughed Jessl in good part. “I’ll bet I’ll figure you out yet. That’s my specialty.”

Sinnall and Maxil laughed with him. But I could see he was a little piqued at my continued evasion. I hoped he wouldn’t pursue the subject before I had the chance to talk with Harlan. Clan, cave and mining engineering notwithstanding, I had very little knowledge to fortify me against the determined curiosity of a friend. Or had he felt that his own would not question the girl who had restored him from the living dead?

“If you guess correctly, I’ll tell you true,” I promised easily.

Jessl merely smiled at me queerly and I noticed he was looking at my hands. It was all I could do to keep from jerking them into my lap. Harlan had been singularly interested in my wrists, too. Examine them as I might, I could find nothing to warrant such scrutiny.

The guard entered to say that Council was assembling.

Maxil rose with an excess of nervous energy, while Jessl, putting a reassuring hand on the boy’s arm, got more casually to his feet. He guided Maxil to the door and watched him down the Hall, Sinnall and Cire flanking him.

In his unguarded face as he returned to the table, I saw the weight of Jessl’s own doubts. He had been careful to hide them before the boy. The dread that had bothered me on waking returned in double measure.

Jessl and I went silently into the board room. I signaled Linnana to bring more to drink as Jessl flipped on the screen to the seething Council Hall. He yelled at Ittlo to leave off clearing the breakfast table. Then he settled himself beside me on the couch, to stare moodily at the screen.