The Fall (32 page)

“It seems a majority of the ruling caste has decided to expand Tolar’s trade with other worlds,” the Sural said. “We need someone with the capacity to generate wealth and who is relatively unimportant.”

Bertie’s voice went dry. “Well, I certainly qualify on both counts.”

“Can you conduct your work from Tolar?” Storaas asked. “Earth’s government is unlikely to respond well to your involvement in Tolari trade.”

“I brought him back with me for this precise reason,” Farric said. “Central Security monitored us closely, and Adeline Russell attempted to warn us away. Her weapon hand twitched when she looked at him.”

Bertie paled. “I hadn’t noticed. Good thing I took you up on your offer.” He cleared his throat. “Before we left Capella Free Station, I set up a privately-funded shell corporation with dummy subsidiaries all under my personal control. I’ll have no problem making whatever transactions I need to do no matter where I’m at, so long as I have good communications.”

“Excellent,” the Sural murmured. “Storaas, our analysis of provincial resources that can be considered for near-term trade—please review it with Lord Albert, and send me a summary of your conclusions when you are finished.” He fell silent while Storaas and Bertie left.

“Farric,” he continued when they had gone, “we must speak of your father.”

“He desires the return of his beloved.”

The Sural lifted an eyebrow. “Sharana is free to choose her path. I do not compel her to stay and I will not compel her to leave.”

“She must attend the Circle.”

“As must Monralar. Can he not collect her there?”

Farric studied his father’s enemy—to little effect. The Sural had closed his barriers enough to make his empathic presence undetectable. Tightening his own barriers, hoping his host would choose not to look past them, Farric took a slow breath. They could circle around each other with words. Or he could ask for the information he wanted.

“I think you know why Sharana wanted to see the Jorann.” Farric paused, then spread his hands. “Will you tell me?”

The Sural’s lips flattened into a grim line. He pressed his fingertips together before his chin. “A young member of the ruling caste might become entwined with a sensitive trained and engaged by his parent. Such a pair might decide to bond, against the advice of all. And such a one might have more ambition than is possible to pursue.”

A cold feeling gripped Farric’s stomach.

“He might start,” the Sural continued, “pace by pace, stride by stride, down a path toward actions which would have shocked him in the beginning of his rule. And his bond-partner might be driven away by the violence his heart pours into hers, to beg relief from the only one capable of giving it.”

Farric closed his eyes and expelled a breath. “Sharana seeks release from her pair-bond with my father.”

“I did not say that,” the Sural said when Farric met his gaze again. “I told you a story, one that has occurred a few times throughout history. What you learn from it is not the concern of your father’s enemy.”

“Yet travelers with a common goal might help one another to find a safe route across a glacier, where one alone might fall through unsupported snow into a crevasse.”

“Indeed. One might.” The Sural’s eyes glittered. “Tell me everything you did and said at the Trade Alliance station, and to what, exactly, you have committed our world.”

* * *

CCS-52-2303

Memorandum

FROM: Adeline Pearson Russell

SUBJECT: Tolar activity

After giving sufficient time for the Tolari ambassador to return to his homeworld, we made an attempt to communicate with the Sural, with no results. The minor functionary (probably guard caste) who spoke with us stated that the Sural is still planetary ruler (recording and transcript attached) and referred to Farric of Monralar as their ambassador to the Trade Alliance. The interdict against humans in the Beta Hydri system still stands.

(signed) Adeline Russell, Major, Central Security

Head of Field Operations, Inner Sector

* * *

The bitterness lodged in her heart could not entirely dull Laura’s enjoyment of the wonderful chill on the evening breeze. She leaned on the veranda rail and turned her face into it. Her senses sharpened.

Of all the new things she had awakened to discover, her delight in cold temperatures ranked among the strangest. Cold, cold, and more cold, she couldn’t get enough of it. The night chill here dropped near freezing, and she should fall sick from the amount of time she spent out here wearing nothing but a short bed-robe, or get hypertension, or hypochondria, or whatever they called it when your body temperature dropped too low. Instead, it gave her energy. Even her fingers and the tip of her nose stayed warm.

A presence in the apothecaries’ quarters made its way to the veranda door behind her—an aide who had, it turned out, seen but never spoken with Laura before the accident. That was good enough, as long as no one had any expectations of her, and it had given Meilyn, the apothecary in charge, time to engage aides who didn’t know her at all.

“Artist,” the aide said, “the kitchen has brought the evening meal.”

“My gratitude,” Laura murmured, turning toward the door and pushing her stiff right leg forward. She grimaced; she’d stood motionless at the rail too long.

The aide hurried to her side. “Lean on me,” she said, grabbing the belt—a heavy sash, really—about Laura’s waist.

Together they walked into the entrance room, where a table stood, laden with food. A green-robed guard sat at it, his right arm held against his body by yellow wrappings, sipping a bowl of soup. He nodded at her as the aide helped her ease into a chair, and then he turned back to the bowl in his left hand. He didn’t ignore her, but he didn’t speak, either. His heart sang.

Maybe he’s in love
.

The thought carried only bitterness. She applied herself to the food, quelling it. The Paran had seemed to love her. He’d been so caring, so kind, until he revealed his
true
thoughts. Now—she felt his heartbreak, from the other side of the stronghold.

Good
. She ripped a roll in half.
He didn’t really love
me
anyway
.

He stayed away as she’d asked, and so did Marianne, but since then, the memories had dried up. Maybe the company of people she’d known really did trigger them. She didn’t care. Living without her memories was easier than living with people who claimed to love her but really didn’t, and besides, she could occupy her time with art. The aides had delighted in bringing her whatever she requested in the way of media and supplies, and she’d begun making initial color studies of planets from orbit. Drawing in color had never much interested her before, so far as she could remember, but now it fascinated her.

She glanced at a landscape on the wall beside her. It looked like a hot wax painting. Her mind crowded with possibilities. Maybe someone would teach her the technique. It would work beautifully with the planets she’d been drawing.

At least she hadn’t forgotten art. Meilyn told her she’d remember even less if she hadn’t been early in the process of transforming from human to Tolari. Not much of what he said made sense, but he seemed to know what he was about.

She might keep him on. He didn’t say it—he didn’t have to—but he didn’t want her to change back to who she’d been, and she had more than a passing suspicion he hadn’t liked her before. Now, on the other hand, she seemed to amuse him, and they got on very well. It made for a refreshing change to talk to someone who appreciated her for herself.

Too bad she couldn’t look up more people who didn’t like her before.

Her hands and feet began to tingle, and the Paran’s emotional distress focused into a point. That happened, Meilyn had told her, when the Paran went down to a training facility under the stronghold. Sometimes Meilyn had to repair the Paran’s hands and feet afterwards.

The guard staggered to his feet, helped by an aide, and moved with a heavy limp toward one of the little patient rooms. The short bed-robe revealed more yellow wrappings on his right leg. He looked like he’d taken quite a tumble.

Just like her, maybe.

Meilyn walked in as she drained the last of a bowl of soup. Approval tinted his presence when he spotted her sitting at the table. It cemented a sudden decision on her part.

“I want you to be my apothecary,” she said.

He started. “Explain your reasoning.”

“You are the only one here who likes me the way I am.”

He dropped into the chair the guard had occupied. “Insufficient.”

“You are the best apothecary in Parania.”

“Better.” One corner of his mouth lifted.

“We get along.”

“Truth.” Meilyn lifted one straight black eyebrow. “I will consent, provided the Paran agrees to share my services.”

“Oh.” Laura slumped against the back of her chair.

“I think it likely he will, artist. He cares about you.”

“He cares about a woman I cannot ever be again.”

“You both need time to adjust, and this is not the way to achieve it. You are bonded. You
must
spend time together. If you continue to stay away from him, you will make the situation worse.”

“Then I make it worse.”

* * *

Farric’s tablet vibrated with an anonymous message that Sharana had gone to the guest wing common room. He shook his head, half a grin twitching itself onto his lips. The Sural seemed to make plans within plans. Leaving Bertie draped across a divan, succumbed to travel fatigue, he left their quarters and went to intercept her.

She stiffened as he entered the room, standing in the small library at one end, book in hand. With slow, deliberate movements, she returned the book to its place on the shelf and turned to face him.

He pulled her tablet from a pocket. “You left this in Monralar.”

She gave it a weary look.

“Sharana, I am not your enemy.”

“You are almost as much Monralar as your father,” she said, picking the tablet out of his hand.

“I am not my father.”

She shook her head, pocketed the tablet, and walked toward a chair in the middle of the room. “You will be.”

“I lack his degree of ambition,” he said, following her. “You know this.”

She slumped into the chair. He took one across from her.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

She looked up and through him. “I mistakenly thought myself captured and walked into the dark. The apothecaries here brought me back. They explained to me that it takes an adult longer to heal from this than it does a child. I have not yet fully recovered.”

“Father collapsed of bond shock.”

She sighed. “Of course. When did you return from the Trade Alliance?”

“Two days after his collapse.” He allowed himself a wicked grin. “I brought a human advisor back with me.”

Sharana snorted. “He will have loved that.”

“Oh, indeed, but the man is so highly intelligent and physically accomplished that even Father cannot object to him.”

“I would like to meet such an
odalli
.”

“He is here with me—asleep from travel fatigue at present.”

“Hah. Did the Monral send him with you?”

“He did, no doubt to keep him out of the way.” He sobered. “Sharana. Come back before you and Father both go mad.”

“The Jorann eased my bond-hunger. I assume it eased his as well. Or perhaps the drug he takes is sufficient. I do not know.”

“So you have been to see her?” He cocked his head.

Sharana stared at him. “You already knew that.”

“I knew it was your intention.”

“What else did the Sural tell you?”

“I am trying to save the province, Sharana, and I will take help where I find it. The Sural does not want another Detralar any more than you or I.”

She winced. Farric suppressed his own. Monralar lay on the other side of the planet from the doomed Detrali, but even the least sensitive of his people had sensed the mass death. The more sensitive had screamed. Sharana had collapsed.

He gave her time. She stared past him, her mouth a thin line, her emotions a jumble.

“I will not betray Monralar,” she whispered, lowering her eyes to gaze at her hands.

“Nor will I, and I do not ask it of you.”

“Have you not already betrayed him?” She lifted her eyes to his and didn’t—quite—probe.

“No. I have done as he instructed.”

“And more.”

“I am now the ambassador of Suralia, through an ancient and little-used law. If the heir is too young or not yet engendered, the leader of the ruling caste may appoint the heir of his most powerful enemy to represent his province—an arrangement intended to promote provincial alliances in times of conflict. As Father is arguably his most powerful opponent, the Sural chose me.”

She gasped. “Does Monralar know?”

“Not yet.”

“When he discovers it—”

“He and the rest of the ruling caste will learn everything at the coming Circle,” he said. “You
must
attend.”

“Yes, high one.”

His eyebrows flew up on their own. She had submitted too quickly. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Sharana, do you
know
anything that can be used to force Father to step away from the path he is setting us on? A path toward war?”

“He told me little, and nothing of detail. I have only… knowledge of circumstances that attended his schemes.”

Farric let out a slow breath. It might yet be enough. “So the mere accusation may suffice, when the time comes. He told me nothing, but he has always thought that because I lack his ambition, I also lack his cleverness.” The skin on the back of his neck began to prickle.

The Sural appeared in the doorway. “In that, he is mistaken,” he said. In Monrali.

Farric and Sharana both stood and bowed. “You honor us, dear one,” Farric said.

“Do you find the hospitality of my stronghold sufficient to your need?” he asked as he sprawled his long frame across a divan, his eyes on Sharana.

Sharana returned to her seat. “Yes, high one.”

Farric shot her a glance as he sat.

“A lapse of courtesy occurred in the Hall of Scholars when she arrived,” the Sural said. “It will never be repeated.”