Peanut's eyes were shifting nervously. "I've said too much already. Eat, Doc, eat. And he'll help. He's helpin' all of us."
Tach squatted and stripped the meat from the chicken with graceful slender fingers. She ate in quick little gulps but was careful to rate her intake. Too much too fast would send the stomach into a spasm, and it would be criminal to vomit up this bounty. There was a tomato on the plate. She bit into it, the juice oozing over her chin. Replete for the first time in weeks, she sighed and rocked back on her heels.
She seemed relaxed. In reality, she was measuring the distance between Peanut and the door. Testing the strength of her muscles. Suddenly she sprang and darted for the exit. But the weeks of imprisonment had taken their toll. Clumsily she staggered forward on trembling legs. The horny surface of Peanut's arm connected painfully with her face, flinging her backward.
He was stuttering with shame. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Doc, but you made me. I gotta think of the others." Peanut swept up the tray and fled. The slamming of the door had a certain grim finality. Tachyon began to weep.
Wait, wait, my love.
It was telepathy, but telepathy like a half-seen shadow in the darkness, a firefly's path observed from the corner of an eye, the sigh of music blown on the wind. She reached for that elusive telepathic sense with both hands.
"Help me!" she screamed aloud. I will not fail you.
The contact was broken, but the sincerity of that promise warmed Tachyon with the comfort of an embrace. Someone cared.
With dawning wonder, she stroked the material of the blouse. Silk. To what care this mysterious benefactor had gone.
"Thank you. Thank you!" she whispered into the darkness.
His eyes turned down at the corners when he smiled. It gave him a crafty catlike look, and it always made Tisianne laugh when he saw it. When Shaklan got that look, it meant work would be put aside and some pleasurable outing was forthcoming.
"Papa, where are we going?"
"Ice-sailing."
"But it's past my bedtime, and I'm hungry… and cold."
"What you'll see is worth more than sleep."
His arms were clasped about his father's neck, and the fur and lace at the older man's throat tickled Tis's nose. He sneezed. The sound blended with the crack of boot heels on the marble floor.
The aurora borealis was dancing like a shaken curtain of jewels across the star-strewn blackness of the night sky. The cold was intense, and each breath hurt like a rake of claws across the lungs. The glacier that crowned the peak of Da'shalan was cracking and groaning. The crunch of snow beneath booted feet, an occasional muffled cough from the bodyguards. Tis kept his eyes closed, his face buried against his father's neck. Shaklan smelled of ambergis and musk and the sharp pungent scent of gunpowder.
Glittering like a mirror, the lake threw back the colors of the borealis. A ice-sailor skimmed across the surface of the frozen water. It was accompanied by a delicate ringing of bells. It heeled over and skidded to a stop with a hiss. Ice fragments stung Tis's face. He licked his lips and tasted the sharp taste of mountain water as the ice melted in the heat of his mouth.
They were aboard, and the wind was stinging his cheeks as the ice-sailor swept across the lake.
"Take the tiller, Tis."
"I can't, Papa. The wind… it's too cold."
A man stepped forward. The borealis formed a halo behind his dark head. A cloak of white and silver lay across his arm. The texture of the fur was so delicate, the tips sparkling in the starlight, that it seemed as if it had been formed of snow. He bowed.
"Ma'am." His tone was so reverential, deepened in the way a man had when he was indicating to a woman that he found her beautiful. Tachyon was disoriented. The little boy looked in confusion to his father.
Shaklan smiled, nodded. "The Outcast will care for you now"
Tachyon looked back to this stranger, and disorientation birthed a different and more familiar emotion for a Takisiansuspicion. The man's coloring was all wrong. Black hair? Tach had never seen the color except as a dyed affectation among the House Alaa until he/she had come to earth. And his clothes. Plain brown leather-no style at all. And the final proof that this interloper in her dream was no Takisian-the name. A Takisian of the psi-lord class wore his or her moniker with more than pride. It was a shout, a scream for attention. A thousand, five, ten thousand years of careful breeding was represented in a name. Can you match it? Can you equal this pedigree? Of course you can't. I'm matchless, peerless. I am Tisianne brant T'sara sek Halima-he could continue in this vein for nearly an hour. But she didn't have the time. Danger had entered his haven of sleep.
Tach backed up, until she was brought up short by his father's knees. "No, Papa, don't leave me." It was a frenzied whisper.
Shaklan chuckled, shook his head, then bent over Tachyon s hands. The strands of his golden hair caught the light and seemed to glitter like spun wire. Tach pressed her mouth against Shaklan's ear and continued to plead. But the words seemed to be reduced to mere puff's of air, and Shaklan's hair caught in the cracks of Tachyon's lips.
"You will be as safe in the Outcast's hands as you are in mine."
Shaklan placed a quick kiss in the palm of each hand, then folded Tach's hands together as if the child were holding and protecting the kisses. It was a beloved ritual, and Tach smiled mistily up at his father, the fear forgotten. Shaklan led Tachyon close to the Outcast.
The man placed the cloak gently about her shoulders. Somewhere in this confusing interchange Tach's sex had gotten very confused again. The long white-blond hair mingled with the fur. Tach frowned. Even her hair seemed to have developed tiny diamond lights. It reminded her of the illustrations in the more flamboyant, romantic Japanese comic books Blaise had been wont to leave strewn about the apartment.
"This is silly. Have my eyes been invaded by stars as well?"
The question seemed to rattle the Outcast. Fingertips lightly touched the brim of his black cloth hat, fluttered to the hilt of the rapier hung on the leather belt with the air of a man trying to reassure himself that he had not forgotten his trousers.
"Princess, I'm the whisper of a cloud, a voice on the wind."
"You!" Involuntarily, her hands closed on the soft leather of his jerkin. "Help me."
"Soon."
The Outcast leaned in, his lips just brushing the back of her hand when there came a raucous scream of laughter. They jerked apart, and Tach stared in confusion at a penguin with ironic human eyes wearing ice skates, gliding along with the skimmer.
The crash of the door being thrown back brought her awake. Blaise had returned. The glare of the flashlights left Tachyon blinking like a mole as the light pulled tears from her sensitive eyes.
"Grandfather. I should have come-" He broke off abruptly, a thunderous frown wrinkling his forehead. "Hey! Where did you get the fucking clothes?"
"I went to Saks for them. What do you think? They were shoved through the door along with my slops."
"I see I've been away too long. People are getting soft with you. But I'm back now, and you'll be pleased to hear I've wrecked the clinic. You're really disappointing a lot of people over in jokertown."
Each word seemed to strike like a splash of acid. Tach blinked frantically, trying to focus. Eventually she succeeded and flew at Blaise like a fighting cock. "You monster. You evil,. parentless bastard? What have you done to my people?"
Blaise knocked her down easily, then blew a kiss at Tachyon. "You're beautiful when you're angry."
The five youths accompanying Blaise laughed. They were all drunk, and they gusted whiskey-scented remarks (outstanding only in their crudity and banality) back and forth between them like men playing shuttlecock.
The rasp of the zipper on Blaise's slacks cut through the babble and banter. "Get him out of her clothes," said Blaise, hopelessly tangling his pronouns.