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.”
She pushed the cover back and followed the cat's example. Once on the floor, however, she hesitated, looking down at herself. The olive trousers were rumpled and grass-stained, the black sweater flecked with stems and small bits of fluff.
“First a shower,” she told her invisible class. “This is not something to be discussed in less than a clean face.”
The cat was sitting in the window, gazing down into the garden, the tip of his striped tail flicking—one . . . two-three!—when Aelliana came into the parlor, her hair damp and loose along her shoulders.
In the shower, she had decided that the best course would be to send him a note through the house base, asking when they might speak together. She would be careful not to touch him, or in any other way offend him. In the time between, she would study the problem as she knew it to exist. She would, she vowed, do better for Daav than she had for Clonak.
She loved him, she thought, coming 'round the desk. Ought she to tell him so? She glanced at the computer; the message light was glowing a steady blue. Slipping into the chair, she touched the proper key.
Words bloomed on the screen; his name was the first she saw.
Good morning, Aelliana. I trust and hope that you slept well in our house. Korval's business rules me today, and so I am early away. That being so, I have asked my sister Anne to come to you and take you to the city to acquire clothing and whatever else you may need or desire. Please do me the honor of placing yourself entirely in Anne's care, and be guided in all things by her judgment.
Daav
She blinked and slumped back in her chair. Shopping? But—she needed nothing! Moreover—shopping with a strange lady—a Terran lady, whose book she still had not read? Was he mad?
“No,” she said, leaning forward abruptly. This was, after all, Daav, who did nothing for one reason if it could be done for six.
So, then, reason number one: Perhaps a wardrobe consisting entirely of two pairs of trousers, a sweater, a shirt, and a pilot's jacket was, just a bit, thin.
Reason number two: She had wanted to practice her Terran against a native speaker.
Reason number three: The lady was lifemated to Daav's sunny-haired brother, and counted the bonding as the greatest joy of her life.