Schism: Part One of Triad (36 page)

“Your husband is primarily Rillian,” Jase said. “He also shows traits of the Blue Dale Archers, and the Memories, who may be even rarer than the Archers.”

Colonel Majda spoke quietly to Roca. “We’re learning to understand his medical condition even as the doctors treat him.”

“You’ve all been studying Eldri for years,” Roca said. Grousing about the ISC

doctors and their tests was one of his favorite pastimes.

‘This is true,” Jase said. “And we know a lot more than we did twenty years ago. But it takes more than two decades to understand even one new class of humans, let alone three.”

Roca tensed. “Are you saying you can’t treat my husband?”

Jase spoke with assurance. “We can treat him. But we must take extraordinary care. His brain has many differences. The situation is complicated because as a Rhon psion he also has more neural structures than other people. Add that to his epilepsy and the problems multiply. We don’t know how he will respond.”

At least Jase was honest with her. She had always appreciated that about him.

Roca turned a cool gaze on Majda. “And my son Shannon?”

The colonel had the decency to look uncomfortable. “My people must hold him at the port. But please be assured he has come to no harm.”

Roca wasn’t reassured. “When will you let him go?”

Majda met her gaze. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Councilor Skolia. But he murdered a powerful man, one highly placed among the Trader aristocracy. We can’t ignore that.”

Roc stared at her in disbelief. “You’ve seen what that ‘highly placed’ monster did to my husband.”

Majda only said, “I’m sorry.”

Roca knew, logically, that they had to hold him. But all she could see was Shannon kneeling in the tent where the Archers had brought Eldrinson, tears running down his face as he spoke in jagged, heartbroken bursts to his dying father. She wanted to rage against Majda, against Vitarex Raziquon, against all the Traders who thought they had a right to torture people and destroy lives for their own pleasure, against a universe that would allow such atrocities. None of that would help her husband or son, but it took a conscious effort on her part to hold back the words that wanted to explode out of her.

“When may I see my son?” she asked.

“Anytime you wish.” Majda seemed relieved to give a positive answer. “As long as Prince Shannon remains in custody.”

In custody. That meant the port. Roca’s shoulders sagged. She would go to him, but she couldn’t leave Windward until she knew—until she believed—her husband would live.

“Can I talk to Shannon through the web?” Roca asked. To reach the port from here required routing their communications through the ODS, which could be construed as using military systems for private use.

Mercifully, the colonel just said, “Of course.”

“Thank you.” It would mean a great deal to Shannon to hear about his father’s condition from her rather than strangers.

One of the officers, a woman in the gray-green uniform of a lieutenant in the Pharaoh’s Army, was studying a screen on her wrist gauntlet. She looked up at them. “Dr. Heathland, I’m getting a summons from King Eldrinson’s medical console.”

Jase tapped his own gauntlet. “Got it.”

“Is Eldri in trouble?’ Roca asked.

“It isn’t a warning alarm, ma’am.” The young woman spoke with reassurance.

“His Majesty just woke up.”

Jase rose to his feet. “I’ll go check.”

Roca stood up as well, followed by everyone else at the long table. She and Jase regarded each other across its width. They both knew Eldri had refused to see anyone but Jase.

“Walk with me to his suite,” Jase suggested. “We can take it from there.”

Roca nodded. “Thank you.”

They went to a stairway set against one wall. Four steps led up to a square landing; from there, the stairs turned at a right angle and ran up along the wall, bordered by a fine banister of carved emerald glasswood. Roca walked up them with Jase, remembering all the times she and Eldri had climbed these stairs, starting that first night they dined together in this hall, a meal of bubbles in more varieties than she could ever have imagined, from sweet to tangy to bitter. After rounds of wine, Eldri had taken her up here, to the landing at the top of the stairs. They had stood together gazing out at the hall where people mingled below, laughing beneath clusters of red and green bubbles that hung from glasswood rafters, the hall turned golden by hundreds of candles. That night, she had slept for the first time in Eldri’s arms. The memory made her ache. Would he never stand here with her again?

Roca paused on the landing. She could see her son Denric at the table below, talking with Colonel Majda. She had wondered, since the disaster of Vyrl’s betrothal to Devon Majda, if Corey would offer for Denric. The Assembly still wanted the Majda Matriarch to marry a Ruby prince, but they had mercifully backed off after the last fiasco, willing to let matters take a more natural course. Denric would be a good choice for Corey, but Roca hoped nothing came of it in die near future. She couldn’t bear to have another of her children leave now.

As Corey spoke into die comm on her gauntlet, Denric rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes. Roca knew she might soon do the same if her garnering tears began to fall. She didn’t want to cry, not witii all diese people here, but she didn’t know how much longer she could hold back.

Jase spoke quietly. “Councilor?”

Startled, Roca turned to him. “My apologies.”

Sympathy showed in his face. He opened the door for her, a purple glasswood portal that seemed to glow from witiiin. It didn’t surprise Roca that Eldri had retreated here. The beauty of Windward soothed. Lyshriol had no true wood, but its stained-glass trees were lovelier to her than all me conventional forests on other terraformed worlds. The trees here had probably been an experiment; the Raylican people of me ancient Ruby Empire hadn’t had much genetic material to work witfi in creating life for meir new worlds, only a few plants and animals from Earth, along with increasingly misty histories of meir ancestral home world.

They followed a corridor where glasswood mosaics graced the bluestone walls with scenes of the mountains. A few showed stylized birds in the sky—except Lyshriol had no birds. Roca suspected they depicted ships mat had brought die colonists here. Windward was old, immensely old. The original colonists had probably carved tiiis castle out of me mountains. The Lyshrioli people now had nodring resembling the technology they would need to achieve such a feat or build a casde to endure for mousands of years.

Roca paused at a wall niche wim the statue of a female Archer sculpted out of lavender stone. Dressed in a tunic that came to midthigh, she held a large bow in her four-fingered, hinged hand. Beautiful and leanly muscled, she epitomized the ideal of female power valued during jhe Ruby Empire, which had been a matriarchy.

Over the millennia, the culture here had shifted. The same genetic anomaly that produced the phenomenal Memories among Lyshrioh’ women had also included fatal recessives. Thousands of years ago, it had become more pronounced and decimated the female population, leaving women far outnumbered by men. The culture evolved patriarchal aspects then, including the idea that only men went to war. They couldn’t risk losing their few childbearing women in combat.

Eventually the population reestablished a balance among men and women. The fatal mutations associated with the Memory traits had disappeared, either because all the women who carried it died out or because the gene pool shifted. Few women carried the Memory genes now, but those who did no longer died.

Roca touched the statue of the Archer. Sauscony. They had named their second daughter for this Lyshrioli goddess of war. Had she known how prophetic that name would become, would she have chosen another? No. Nothing would change Soz’s nature, nor would she have wanted to see her wild, brilliant daughter constrained.

Jase spoke softly. “Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry. I must seem distracted today.” She went with him down the hall, to a stone archway framed with engravings of bubbles. A curtain hung in the entrance, sparkling strings of iridescent beads. Beyond it waited the suite she and Eldri shared here at Windward. Except they no longer shared it. Now she slept in another suite down the hall.

Jase pulled aside the beaded strings, making them clink and rattle together, inviting her to enter. She walked into the circular foyer with a cushioned bench running around its wall. Engraved stone moldings bordered the ceiling.

Across the foyer, next to a purple glasswood door, a man sat at a console that hadn’t been there before today. Neither she nor Eldri would have tolerated such obvious ISC tech at Windward. Now Roca was deeply grateful they could bring down what they needed to care for him here instead of taking him to the battle cruiser Ascendant, that gigantic military city orbiting Lyshriol. It would have destroyed his spirit.

The lieutenant at the console wore a jumpsuit similar to Jase’s uniform, with the same insignia on his chest, a green vine curling around a silver staff, all superimposed on a blue sun, the symbol medical practitioners used in all branches of ISC.

Jase went over to him. “How is he?”

The officer saluted him. “Quiet, sir. He dozes, I think.”

Jase glanced at Roca, hesitating. She knew why. Would Eldri know if she went inside his room? He had forbidden her, but he slept now.

“I don’t flunk a few moments will hurt,” Jase said.

“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she opened the door.

Eldrinson drifted in a sea of warmth, his mind like flotsam on his consciousness. He could almost ignore the pain that tugged at his legs. It had become distant, bearable, an irritant. He had slept today sometime after the doctors crowded around him in the Archer’s tent. He hoped no one else would talk with him now. He had nothing to say. They had taken away most of his pain. It was enough. He needed nothing else.

He became aware of breathing. His mind glided while he listened. Eventually he said, Who’s there?

No answer.

It took Eldrinson a while to realize he hadn’t spoken. He opened his mouth, closed it, then wet his lips. “Who is there?”

A voice came from nearby. “Dr. Heathland, Your Majesty.”

So he was Majesty today. When they referred to him as Roca’s consort, he was Highness. Perhaps someday they would make up their minds.

Heathland. The port doctor. He could live with that. He rather liked Jase, though he rarely admitted it. It would ruin his reputation as being impossible for Skolian doctors, which might encourage mem to spend more time poking and prodding him.

A fire crackled. The fragrance of burning glasswood scented in the air. The room felt warm, but not overly so. For the first time in days he didn’t shiver. That fire was to his left, which was where the hearth would be if he was lying in the bed of his suite at Windward. This mattress felt familiar, the way it sagged a bit. He recognized the fresh, clean smell of the quilt.

Relief spread through him, so intense his eyes felt hot. It hadn’t been a hallucination. He truly was at Windward.

“How do you feel?” a man asked. He was right next to the bed now.

“Heathland?” Eldrinson asked.

“Yes, it’s me.” He rested his palm on Eldrinson’s forehead. “Your fever has receded.”

“I had a fever?” Eldrinson had noticed little else but the pain.

“Very much so.” Jase’s voice soothed. But something bothered Eldrinson, interfering with the mindless oblivion he longed to reach. Someone was here.

Her presence hurt.

“Roca?” he asked. “Is that you?” He couldn’t bear for her to see him this way, a crippled shell of the man who had loved, protected, and raised a family with her.

Her words came from across the room. “It is me.”

“You must go. I will not see you.” It was true literally as well as figuratively.

“Eldri—”

“Go!” He pushed up on his elbow, his face turned in her direction. New pain sparked in his legs. “Leave me.” He heard the doctor breathing, but the man didn’t interfere.

Roca spoke quietiy. “Very well. I will be downstairs if you change your mind.”

The door opened, then closed.

Eldrinson almost cried out for her to return. He bit back the impulse and lay back down. Part of him wanted nothing more than for her to lie with him, to hold him in her arms, to give him her beloved comfort. But the thought of her touching his shattered limbs made him ill.

For a while he listened to the doctor breathe. In, out. In, out. Eventually he said, “How long will you stand there?”

“Not too long,” Heathland said. “I’m scanning your body.”

“I feel nothing.” Usually they laid one of those infernal tapes on his neck.

“I can take readings without touching you. They aren’t as detailed, though.”

“What do your readings tell you?”

Silence followed his question.

“Doctor Heathland?”

Jase spoke quietly. “The bones of your legs are pulverized. You also have a massive infection.”

“Oh.” He had already known he would lose the limbs. Still, it was harder to hear man he expected. “Will you amputate?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Essentially?”

“We can rebuild them, Your Majesty.” ” “Don’t call me that.” He felt about as majestic at a slig-slug worming its way through the bole of a glasswood tubule.

“What would you like me to call you?” Jase asked.

“Eldrinson.”

“All right.” His gentle voice never changed.

After a moment, Eldrinson said, “How can you rebuild my legs?”

“Do you know what biomech means?”

“No.” He had heard the word, though.

“It is a medical technology.” The doctor laid a smooth strip against his neck.

Eldrinson grimaced. Jase had decided to use the holotape after all. He resisted the urge to pull it away. “My son Althor uses that word. Biomech.”

“Jagernauts have it in their bodies.”

“I am no Jagernaut.”

“This is true. But we can give you biomech similar to meirs. It will control the structural components we use to rebuild your skeleton.”