Lee, Sharon - Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

There was a pause, and a whisper of velvet along silk. He glanced away from Aelliana's face, just as orange-and-white Relchin settled himself at her opposite side, chicken fashion, his eyes slitted in approval.

Distantly, Daav felt relief. Relchin had an . . . affinity for the Rainbow. That he appeared to oversee Aelliana's inaugural journey could only be a good omen.

“Now,” Aelliana whispered.

“Good,” he answered, drawn back into his role as her guide.

Color by color, he took her through the Rainbow, watching her relax more deeply at every level.

Once, at yellow, and again at purple, he reminded her that she might exit the exercise simply by opening her eyes, which was the protocol. She chose to continue, which everyone did.

In the choreography of the Scout's Rainbow, the ultimate safe place lay beyond violet. Each person who traversed the colors found a different door at the end of the Rainbow, uniquely theirs, the room behind it always a refuge.

At the far side of violet, with Aelliana breathing as sweetly as a child asleep, he asked the question, softly as her own thought: “What do you see?”

“Hatch,” she murmured. “Ride the Luck's hatch.”

Oh, indeed? And what shape had her safety taken before she acquired her ship, he wondered, and shuddered to think that there might have been none.

“Will you enter?” he suggested.

She did so, and he guided her into a deeper trance—not as rich as the Healers might provide, but restorative beyond mere sleep.

Copilot's duty done, he stood, ordered himself, and took stock. Reviewing the Rainbow had lent him an extra level of lucidity beyond even what the grandmother's art had given him. Which was well. For now, he must take up lifemate's duty, which was stern. Stern, indeed.

He dropped to one knee and gathered her into his arms, his lifemate, his love. Rising, he turned toward the path, and the house, Relchin his high-tailed escort.

One-handed, he flicked the blue coverlet back, and laid her gently down among the pillows. Relchin leapt up to the bed and was already curled next to her head by the time Daav had dealt with her boots and straightened again.

He drew the cover over her, smoothed his hand along her hair, lying in a tangled fan across the pillow—and dropped to his knees, his face buried in the cover by her side.

His lifemate, for whom he had ached, whom he had waited for, and despaired ever of finding. Against all odds, she was discovered, willing—no, eager!—to stand with him—

And he was a deadly danger to her.

That Aelliana could sense his emotions—that was abundantly plain. As plain as the fact that his will had overruled hers and influenced her to knowledge and actions beyond her—and perhaps repellent. Daav shuddered, and pushed his face deeper into the coverlet.

Despite the gift that Aelliana had received of the Healers' meddling, he knew no more of her now than a Scout with a high empathy rating had ever known. And how they two might remain together, when he could overpower her with a thought—

That was not a lifemating. Lifemates stood equal upon all things. This . . . aberration that the Healers had wrought—

“It will not do,” he said, raising his head, and looking down at her sleeping face. So precious—and his, to treasure as she deserved, and to protect from any who might do her harm.

Even from himself.

“We are a broken set, van'chela,” he told her, tranced though she was. “And I could wish your brother not already dead so that I might thank him fitly for his care of you.”

Which was perhaps, he thought, something that he might not wish Aelliana to feel from him.

He stood, staggered and caught himself with a hand against the wall. Looking down, he saw her face through a fog of tears, and shook his head.

“Good night, beloved. Sleep deeply. Dream well.”

He bent, and kissed her, chastely, on the cheek. On the neighboring pillow, Relchin yawned.

“Mock me, do. It's no more than I've earned.” He extended a hand and rubbed the cat's broad head. “Guard her well,” he murmured.

At the door, he paused to turn on the night dims, so that she should not be frightened to find herself in a strange room, should she, after all, wake.

Then he went away, eventually to his own apartment, stopping first at the central control board, where he removed himself from the list of those whom the house would admit to her rooms.

Back | Next

Contents

Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon

Chapter Eleven

A scholar is illuminated by the brilliance of her students.

—Liaden proverb

Aelliana stirred toward wakefulness, not knowing what roused her, nor with any memory of having gone to sleep. They had returned late to The Luck, tipsy with wine and drunk on the good wishes of their comrades. She had gone up the ramp, Daav a warm shadow at her back, opened the hatch, and stepped within. They had talked; though she failed of recalling their topic. The sound of his voice—that she recalled, serious and comforting; his arms when he embraced her warm and certain.

Someone tickled bristles across her nose. Aelliana sneezed, and opened her eyes.

A large orange cat looked curiously into her face from its nest on the pillow beside her. Its whiskers had precipitated the sneeze and, very likely had been what had set her on the path to wakefulness.

“What have you done with Daav?” she demanded, and pointed an accusing finger at its nose. “I know you—you were prowling in the garden last night!”

Which meant, she thought with a start, that she wasn't on The Luck, after all.

The cat bumped a damp nose companionably against her finger and purred gently. She rubbed its ears absently while she looked about her at the sun-filled room, the blue coverlet, the wooden wardrobe with its fanciful carvings of winged lizards lounging among fruit-heavy vines.

“This,” she told herself, or perhaps the cat, “is the apartment Daav has given me in Jelaza Kazone.”

The cat pushed his head into her fingers, demanding more robust attention.

“Brute,” she said, which was how one addressed Patch, the resident cat and co-owner of Binjali Repair Shop, when he made demands upon one's affections.

To judge from the increased level of purrs, the orange cat likewise found this to be an acceptable mode.

She had been so certain that she—that they—had come home to The Luck! Aelliana sighed.

“All very well for the Healers to give one the capacity for amusing dreams,” she told the cat, “but I believe I would prefer the reality.”

And that quickly, memory arose, as if all she needed to do was wish for it.

The tangled skeins of desire and need, the heat in her blood, Daav's flesh under her hands . . .

Aelliana gasped and sat up, clutching the coverlet to her, abandoning the cat utterly.

“I—repelled him,” she whispered, shivering with the memory of cold horror. “How—it was everything he desired; I—I felt it . . . ”

The cat yawned, stomped across her thighs and jumped to the floor.

Aelliana swallowed.

The Healers' gift was plainly a double-edged blade, new to her hand and risky to wield. That she had in some way misused it—and Daav! Would he even see her, after he had thrust her from him so coldly?

She closed her eyes, visualizing a gradation of color, and felt the panic growing in her stomach subside. Daav had done copilot's duty; he had succored her when she had asked for his aid. Someone must have brought her—and the cat!—here to her rooms, and she thought it had not been Mr. pel'Kana.

“I must speak with him,” she said firmly, as she would to a row of attentive students. “Surely, we can sort this out.”