The Marann (5 page)

“You may stay,” he said.

A huge wave of relief crashed through
her, and she almost kissed the baby. She stopped herself, not sure
if it was appropriate. “You honor me, high one,” she said. She
beamed a smile at Kyza. The infant still stared at her with dark,
slanted—

She gasped and jerked her head up to
meet the Sural’s eyes. “The shuttle pilot?”

“He has been informed that he may
leave.”

She heaved a sigh and nodded, smiling,
then turned her attention back to the warm little bundle in her
arms. Kyza made an unhappy noise and began to stir.

“She is hungry.” The Sural made a
gesture, and a yellow-robed woman appeared, holding out her arms to
Marianne. Marianne placed the baby in the woman’s arms and turned
back to the Sural as the woman left the room. His eyes were fixed
on her, face impassive and unreadable. Another gesture, and a
black-robed woman appeared.

“Show the new tutor to her quarters,”
he ordered. “See to her comfort, and show her how to use the
controls in the—” Marianne didn’t understand the word.

“Yes, high one,” the woman said with a
deep bow.

He turned back to Marianne. “Those in
black robes are servants,” he told her. “You may ask them for any
assistance you need. Call out and one will come.”

Then he disappeared into thin air.
Again, Marianne stared at the space where he’d been. He’d
disappeared without a trace—no ripple in the air, nothing. The
black-robed woman beckoned to her. She stood to follow and slipped
her feet back into her shoes.

Her quarters lay in the stronghold’s
guest wing, a short walk down the curved corridor. It resembled a
suite in an expensive hotel. The door from the hall opened into a
spacious sitting room, where the servants had already placed her
bags. Bookshelves and artwork lined the walls. One corner held a
desk positioned to look out the windows onto unfamiliar trees and
flowers. On the desk sat a small, exquisite crystal sculpture of
what resembled a bird with four feet rather than two. Ahead of her,
the sitting room led onto a covered veranda overlooking a garden or
park of some kind.

To the left was the door to the
bedroom.
Sleeping room,
she corrected herself in Tolari, as
she glanced at the bed-sized mat in the center of the rectangular
space. In one corner lay the area for which she hadn’t understood
the Tolari word—a bathing area. The servant led her into it. Walls
of the same dark gray stone as the rest of the stronghold, polished
to a high gloss, gleamed on all four sides, but the floor looked
pebbly and seemed to grip the soles of her shoes. Carved steps led
down into a bath large enough to hold two people. Levers and spouts
protruded from one end. Once Marianne knew how to use the simple
but elegant mechanisms to control the water flow and temperature,
the servant left her in peace.

Heated water! Marianne shook her head
in wonder. Central Command had told her the Tolari didn’t have
running water or plumbing. This was both, and it wasn’t crude by
any definition—low tech, perhaps, but not the simple basins and
water pitchers the briefings had led her to expect.

She gazed around her. A door at one
end of the sleeping room opened onto the veranda, where it had an
exit into the gardens. She wanted to explore—it looked beautiful
out there—but she wasn’t sure yet just how much freedom she had, or
if it was even safe. Rather than indulge her curiosity, she set
about putting her clothes away in the drawers and closets the
servant had shown her in the sleeping room. Then, feeling a little
whiffy from her exercise on the cliff, she decided to give the
bathing area a try.

She played with the levers until the
water warmed as much as it would, which wasn’t as warm as she would
have liked, but it didn’t give her a chill. The quick rinse washed
away some of her fatigue along with the sweat. She donned fresh
clothes and contemplated the stale clothing she had just removed.
Central Command had given her no information on how the Tolari did
their laundry, and she had no idea what to do with it. As she
pondered, the black-robed woman appeared in front her again. She
started.

It might be harder to get used to this
camouflage thing than she thought.

“Forgive me,” the woman said with an
apologetic bow. She waited for Marianne to catch her breath. “I
will take your robes for cleaning.”

Marianne nodded, feeling a little
foolish. “My gratitude,” she said.

“It is my honor,” the woman said,
leaving the room in a more conventional manner.

<<>>

Smithton poured himself a whiskey.
He’d just received word the shuttle had lifted—and left Marianne
Woolsey behind.

“We did it!” his wife exclaimed, face
glowing. “We got someone in there.”

He grunted and sipped the drink. “How
useful she’ll be is another question.”

“Oh Smitty.” Adeline pursed her lips.
“Don’t be such a stick. She’ll do fine.”

The door chime sounded. Adeline swayed
off to see who it was.

“Come in,” he barked, before she could
get halfway there. The ship’s AI opened the door on John and Laura
Howard—as he expected. He caught John’s eye and raised the glass.
“Drink?”

“I’m on duty,” John replied. “Early
for that, isn’t it?”

Smithton took a sip.

“I’ll make coffee,” Adeline said in a
bright voice.

The Admiral lifted a hand. “The ship’s
processors—”

“—
make wonderful tea and
ghastly coffee,” finished Laura. “I don’t know how you drink it.”
She shot Adeline a smile. “I’ll help.”

The women disappeared into the suite’s
small kitchen with a swish of their long dresses.

“Well?” Smithton asked, sinking into
one of Adeline’s well-padded sofas.

John took a seat in the one chair
which wasn’t overstuffed and examined the fingernails of one hand.
“Well what?”

“You owe me a week’s pay.”

His friend’s expression turned sour.
“Who’d have thought Central Command would keep their mitts off the
girl?”

“Anyone who could put two and two
together. Come on, pay up. You bet the Sural would reject Miss
Woolsey just as he did the other two candidates. You lost.” John
pulled a card from an inside pocket of his uniform jacket, flipping
it across the coffee table. Smithton caught it and swiped the back
with a finger. He grinned. “You got a raise. I’m going to buy Addie
something shiny with this.”

John laughed. “You do
that.”

“Do what?” Adeline came through the
door from the kitchen carrying a porcelain coffee service on a gold
tray. Laura followed with a small silver plate piled with
cookies.

Smithton let his grin broaden. “Buy
you a nice bauble with a week’s worth of John’s pay.”

“What did you two argue over this
time?” Laura asked. She put the plate on the coffee table and sat
on the arm of John’s chair.

John snaked an arm around his wife and
leaned forward to grab a cookie. “I was sure I’d be shipping Miss
Woolsey back to Tau Ceti by now.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Adeline
scoffed, as she set the gold tray beside the silver plate and
started serving coffee.

John mumbled around a cookie. “What
made you so sure this one would pass the Sural’s muster?” Adeline
handed him, then Laura, steaming cups.

“She’s really just a teacher from a
tiny high school somewhere in Iowa,” Smithton said. “Speaks an
ungodly number of languages and practiced them in the Babel cloud
where someone noticed. She’s only twenty-seven. No secrets and
clean as a babe in arms.”

“Hah! You had inside
information!”

He sipped his whiskey, unperturbed.
“You had access to it if you’d bothered. Besides—you don’t need
your Earth Fleet salary any more than I do, though I do like to
decorate my wife with it when you lose.”

John snorted and stuffed another
cookie in his mouth. Laura poured milk from a creamer into their
coffees.

“She seemed like a nice young woman.”
Laura slid a cookie from the silver plate and nibbled at it. “I’m
glad the Sural didn’t send her away.”

“We all are,” John said. “But now the
real work begins.”

Chapter Three

The Sural remained camouflaged in the audience
room, observing the human woman as she left for her quarters with a
servant. Some disinformation had provoked her reaction when she
forgot herself and spoke English—she had expected a summary
dismissal for a child’s mistake. She
was
little more than a
child, at least in his people’s terms, and it seemed she required
some re-education.

He wanted to uncover her secret, but
he suspected that would take time—seasons, perhaps years. What she
hid lay so deep it had to be personal, and he would have to win her
trust to uncover it. From what he could sense, that would be no
easy task. Still, the humans had chosen better than they knew. This
Marianne Woolsey possessed a natural reserve and an appealing
clarity of spirit. His daughter would do well with such a
companion.

He dropped his camouflage and made his
way to the open study off the audience room to read reports until
the new tutor finished settling into her quarters. The stronghold
seneschal rose from a chair near the desk as he entered the
room.

“This candidate is satisfactory,” the
Sural said.

The man bowed. “Yes, high
one.”

When the seneschal did not move to
leave, he asked, “You have more to say?”

“Is the human permitted to leave the
plateau?”

“I do not hold her
captive.”

“If she should wander into the
city—”

“She will see what I wish her to see.”
He flicked a dismissal with one hand and turned his attention to a
report while the man bowed and left. When a servant came to inform
him that his new guest appeared to want to explore the gardens, he
went out to intercept her.

She stood on her veranda, gazing out
into the gardens, when he walked out from behind a tree and into
her line of sight. Hands clasped behind his back, he relaxed and
dropped his air of authority, becoming more like the man who’d
carried her bags up the cliff and little like the imposing ruler he
affected in the audience room. He offered a friendly smile. Her
answering smile became uncertain as he neared.

“Would you care to see my gardens?” he
asked, schooling his face back into impassivity.

“Yes, many!” She stopped. She had used
the wrong intonation and seemed to realize it. She tried again.
“Yes, very much.”

“Your language ability is impressive.”
He led her out amid the flowers. The late afternoon sun hid behind
the clouds, but the long summer would come soon. The cora trees had
long since come into full leaf, and small pale blooms sprouted from
the ground cover. He looked down at the flowers and took a deep
breath. Their delicate fragrance filled the garden.

“The groundcover requires a cold
winter to bloom,” he said. “Can you smell it?”

The young woman sniffed the air, and
her face fell. She shook her head. “No, high one. The information
Central Command gave me indicates your sense of smell is much more
sensitive than ours.”

“So it seems.” Comparing their sensory
abilities was, perhaps, not the best topic to pursue. He veered
away from it. “When did you begin to learn my language?”

“Three—” She fell silent, struggling
to find a word “Perhaps twenty or twenty-one days,” she finished.
“We would call that three
weeks
.” On the last word, she
dropped into English, and he sensed her anxiety spike.

“So little time.” He offered a
reassuring smile, but rather than quell the anxiety, he seemed to
prolong it. He smoothed his face, and her tension eased. The woman
was a puzzle.

“There wasn’t enough time to give me a
full vocabulary implant, but I have the essentials, and I have a—”
she stopped, squeezing her eyes shut as she sought the proper word
and intonation. “I remember everything I hear,” she
finished.

“A useful ability for one who
specializes in language,” he said, sensing enjoyment begin to color
her presence. She took a deep breath, tension dissolving from her
as she exhaled. “You are free to wander the gardens whenever your
duties permit,” he added. “It is quite safe.”

She looked around her and sighed, her
shoulders loosening and back straightening as she relaxed.
Concentrating on exercising her language skill seemed to be enough
to take her mind off the identity of her conversation partner,
despite her obvious travel fatigue.

They neared a small cora tree in full
bloom, its leafy branches covered with small white flowers. A
gathering of flutters burst into the air, a riot of color swirling
away, alarmed by the approach of a stranger. She stood still and,
much to his surprise, faded from his senses a little, in an
apparent attempt to lure the flutters back. He had not imagined a
sense-blind human could possess such an ability.

A few of the creatures returned,
hopping about in the tree’s upper branches, agitated and
scolding.