The Fall Read online

  “I have,” the Paran said.

  Laura lifted her chin. “I’ll still do it.”

  “You cannot change your decision,” Storaas said, his dark eyes fixed on her. “As a legal matter, it cannot be reversed.”

  “He told me that, too. And that my son won’t consider me his mother after… after he bonds to the Paran. But Parania is my home now, and the Paran…” Her throat tightened. “He needs an heir now. Mine can wait.”

  Storaas gave a slow nod. “Very well. On the Sural’s behalf, I approve your petition.” He met the Paran’s eyes. “I authorize you to change your records. I will file a notification in the interprovincial archives.”

  The Paran expelled a deep breath and reached for Laura’s hand. “You have given me a great gift, beloved,” he said. “My gratitude.”

  * * *

  With the city awake and busy, the café was not empty. Laura looked through the door, her skin tingling, ready to bolt for the transit branch and cursing herself for talking so much about the teahouse that Storaas announced he wanted to see it.

  She glanced back at him. Storaas affected the air of a kindly old grandfather, despite his apparent youth, and touched her elbow. Soothing reassurance flowed through the contact.

  “This is not the crowd I was told you experienced at the sending,” he said. “Your barriers will hold.”

  She gazed over his shoulder. A sign marked the steps leading down to the transport tunnels, several buildings away. “I hope so.”

  “Come.” He led her into the café, to an empty table near an interior wall, the usual guard trailing behind them to take up a watchful stance beside one chair.

  She looked around at the half-full establishment, then seated herself and focused on Storaas. “How is Cena, really?” she asked.

  “She does quite well,” he replied. He signaled the shopkeeper with a gesture and spoke a few words in Paranian. “She is as stubborn as a hevalrin.” A fond smile played around his mouth.

  A little of Laura’s apprehension eased, and she laughed. “That’s your Cena.”

  “She has much to do despite her retirement, continuing her research into the characteristics of the Jorann’s grandchildren and teaching the Marann to care for a Tolari infant.”

  The shopkeeper’s son arrived with the tea of the day. An unmistakable aroma wafted up from the mug.

  “Black tea?” she blurted.

  Storaas cocked his head. “Artist?”

  She sipped a mouthful of the hot liquid. “This tastes and smells just like Lapsang souchong, the good stuff from the New China run. We used to have it all the time in the Fleet.”

  Storaas let his confusion show. Laura blinked. He was allowing it to show, in a deliberate, measured way.

  “How long did it take you to learn that kind of control?” she asked.

  His face betrayed none of the surprise that shot through him. “A very long time,” he said, tasting the tea. He eyed the steaming liquid. “Very good.”

  “Just how old are you?”

  He chuckled. “You retain your human curiosity.”

  “And Tolari don’t?”

  “About personal matters such as age, we tend to be very incurious.”

  She frowned. “The Paran wants to know everything to do with me.”

  “His heart is entangled with yours. Ask him about anyone else, and he will display little inquisitiveness.”

  “You might be right,” she said, after a moment. “At least about everyone else. Kellandin, for example—the Paran’s family tutor—he only congratulated me on my pregnancy after I mentioned it first.”

  Storaas nodded.

  Laura sighed. “Kellandin hasn’t had much more luck teaching me Paranian than you did with Suralian. Why didn’t anyone in Suralia talk about giving me an implant?”

  “You have no awareness of pitch. An implant would not have helped you with a tonal language such as Suralian. With Paranian, however, it will be quite useful.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good then. The Paran told me his apothecary will have my implant ready before long. Finally.” She took a sip of tea and savored it, her mind full of images of the conversations she’d have, once she could. Finally. She could hardly wait. “Why don’t you Tolari use your technology more? It’s like you have an aversion to it.”

  Storaas chuckled. “We are not entirely in agreement, as a people, as to the appropriate amount. Over the course of hundreds of years, we utilize more and less and then more again.”

  “But Marianne told me you haven’t gone starfaring for millennia.”

  “Some of the ruling caste wish to change that. Monralar has pressed for a return to interstellar trade for tens of years. He argues that we have grown stagnant.”

  “And the Sural disagrees.”

  “The Sural is cautious.”

  “What do you think?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “I think,” he said, and he lifted a hand to beckon to the teahouse proprietor, “that we should arrange to have a supply of this tea sent to the Paran’s stronghold for you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Monral paced through the garden as the sun beat down from overhead, hands clasped behind his back and chin buried in his chest, paying little attention to where his peds took him. The drying groundcover crunched beneath his slow tread, and a fresh breeze, light but sharp with autumn, blew in from the sea, ruffling his robes and hair. He came to a halt when the ground fell away before him, and he looked up to find himself standing beside the large, flat boulder behind the stronghold on which Sharana often sat to enjoy a view of the city.

  His beloved had ordered the seneschal to move her few possessions to the staff wing, upstairs and as far from the family wing as possible. He had not seen her in days.

  His eyes stung. She was weeping again.

  With a throb in his chest that might be hers, he laid a hand on the rock. She had spent so much time there that an echo of her presence resonated through it. It must have been that which had drawn him.

  “Sharana,” he whispered. Images of her flitted across his mind. The smile she gave only to him. The way she laughed. The glow of her, naked and in ecstasy. He could almost feel the touch of her hand—the touch she withheld by refusing to see him. He longed for her presence.

  Soon or late, she would move past this. She must, for her own sake as much as his. Already they both ached for contact. Sharana knew as well as anyone that a bonded pair could not remain long apart. This situation could not continue.

  He hitched one hip onto the rock, and his gaze fell west, toward Parania. Even now, the human Laura Howard increased with the Paran’s new heir. As for the grandson—that was an unfortunate tragedy, but the child’s walk into the dark had cleared the path for a Tolar free from the Sural’s tyranny. For that, the Monral would risk a great deal. Careful diplomacy would win enough of Parania’s allies to give Monralar’s opposition a numerical majority, and he could set in motion the rest of his plan against the Sural.

  Sharana’s distress increased. He winced. With an effort, he turned his thoughts away from his political plans and considered how he might entice his beloved from her apartments. His gaze fell on the graceful buildings at the center of his city. The tallest, the tower of the musicians, soared above the rest.

  His eyes widened as the answer struck him. Of course. Make the incentive to come out greater than her determination to avoid him. A concert, perhaps. Running the possibilities through his mind, he stroked the rock with his fingertips as if it were his beloved’s hand.

  A chime and an insistent buzzing broke through the net of his thoughts. He pulled his tablet from its pocket. The communications sigil shone with the transmission he had been expecting—marked voice only. He frowned. The humans had no reason to be so rude. With a tap, he turned off visual on the outgoing signal and opened the link.

  “Speak,” he said, in English. The only alternative tongue was Suralian, and that he would not use.

  “High one, you
honor me,” a female answered.

  His eyebrows rose, and a smile crept onto his lips. He recognized the woman’s voice.

  “You wanted my attention,” she continued. “You have it. How can I help you?”

  “We can help each other, Mrs. Russell.”

  Her breathing hitched loudly enough to be audible over the link. “You may address me as Major Russell,” she said in a flat voice. “And while this communication is secure at my end, I can’t vouch for yours, so let’s be brief. I trust the Sural isn’t aware that we’re talking.”

  His smile grew. It had taken two years of work to arrange this call, and he would lose no time.

  “My world is stagnating under his rule. We have strategic assets you want. You can help me achieve something I want. It would benefit us both to… cooperate.”

  “As I recall, your authority is limited.”

  “At the present time,” he said, letting his smile broaden more. “Need I tell you that the political situation on my planet is fluid? The Sural’s coalition does represent a numerical majority of the ruling caste for now, but I have set plans in motion to change that.”

  The woman had the effrontery to laugh. “As you did ten years ago?”

  He clamped his jaw. Forcing himself to relax it, he continued, “How if I tell you that you do not need Marianne Woolsey?”

  “Marianne is our key to controlling the Sural.”

  “No one can control the Sural. But I can give you something that you want, and which the Sural will never allow you—a base in the Drift. And furthermore, I can give it to you now.”

  Silence. The Monral waited.

  “I’m listening,” she said.

  “Allow me to send my ambassador to you. He can speak in my name and make suitable arrangements without the doubtful security of interstellar transmissions.”

  Doubt tinted her voice. “Without the involvement of the Sural.”

  “Yes.”

  Another long silence. “How do you propose to get your ambassador off-planet?”

  “I prefer to make my own arrangements. We will meet on neutral ground. I favor the Den station at the star you call Capella.”

  This time, the silence stretched.

  “Agreed,” she said, when she spoke again. “Notify me when your ambassador is on his way. Earth will be happy to escort him.”

  “And his guards.”

  “And… his guards.”

  * * *

  The language implant didn’t seem to be much trouble to… implant, or whatever it was they did, at least from Laura’s point of view. Meilyn asked her—through Kellandin, who had accompanied her for the purpose—to lie down on an examination bed in a small room in the apothecaries’ quarters. She blinked when he put something on her forehead, and then it was over.

  Except that now she lay in an alcove of the main room, the sun sat on the horizon when it should have been high in the sky, her stomach was grumbling, and the Paran stood over her beside the watchful and expectant apothecary.

  “Can you tell me your name?” Meilyn asked.

  She opened her mouth to reply, but no words came—only the image, in her mind, of the small blue flowers she had seen in Brialar. She frowned. My name is Laura, not flower. The word formed on her lips, almost the same. “Laora.” She let it shift and tried again. “Laura.”

  The apothecary’s face relaxed. “Excellent.”

  The Paran took one of her hands in both of his. “How do you feel?” he asked. It sounded funny.

  “Well. I feel well.” The words popped out—different. Paranian! She grinned. “We speak Paranian!” Then her thoughts crowded together. “You never… my name… flower…”

  “Slower, artist,” Meilyn said. “Finish your thought, then speak.”

  Laura took a deep breath and locked eyes with the Paran. “My name sounds like flower.” Each word, as it formed in her mind, carried an array of meanings, connotations, connections to other thoughts, some her own, and some that seemed unfamiliar and felt alien.

  “Have I not many times compared you to a garden?” he asked.

  “Poet. You are a player at words.” Her heart sang as her mind searched for the word to name her bond-partner.

  The Paran bent to kiss her forehead. “Yes, my beloved, but I am also a ruler. I must attend an important meeting.” His words sounded strange again. “I will return when I have finished the day’s tasks.”

  A moment later, she realized he’d spoken English. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

  The apothecary interrupted again. “Good,” he said. “High one, I want her to remain here, under close observation, until tomorrow.”

  “Is that necessary?” Laura asked, in English. She paused, and reached for words he could understand, repeating the question.

  “The change you are undergoing rendered the procedure delicate, and a small possibility remains that the final adjustment of your implant did not quite match your current physical state. I prefer you to remain here until we are certain.”

  “Oh. Very well.”

  “Beloved.” The Paran gave her hand a final squeeze and strode away.

  Meilyn left the alcove to busy himself at a large desk in the middle of the room. Laura grinned at the ceiling. More than a hundred languages were spoken on Tolar, but only Paranian was important to her, now. Even if her speech never smoothed out, she could understand. A world of cultural and social possibilities opened up before her mind’s eye, and a burst of happiness surged through her. An answering pulse came from the Paran. At the desk, the apothecary looked up to study her for a moment, then went back to whatever he was doing.

  A servant approached with a tray of food, none too soon for her rumbling midsection. She thanked him—in Paranian!—and tore into the meal with relish.

  The idea of spending the rest of her life on Tolar had just become much more congenial.

  * * *

  The next morning, Meilyn spent an extravagant amount of time passing a medical scanner over her head. Laura couldn’t actually be sure how long he spent at it—not only because she had no sense of time, but because he took so long that the instrument’s gentle hum lulled her to sleep. She woke to a light touch on her shoulder.

  “I can detect no disturbance of normal brain function,” he said. “You may resume your usual activities. You should understand nearly all of what others say, but you will require practice to speak smoothly. Speak Paranian as much as you can, and your speech will soon be fluent.”

  “My gratitude, Meilyn. Truly. This… it gives me the world.”

  He favored her with a tight smile. “Your bond-partner is in the refectory.”

  She slipped off the bed and bowed to the man, then ran for her quarters to freshen up. When she skidded through the refectory door, the Paran still occupied his heavy chair at the head of the high table, his attention fixed on a tablet before him. Azana sat… in Vondra’s chair… her hand dancing over the object’s surface. The Paran looked up, and his face lit.

  “Beloved,” he said, as she took her seat. “How do you feel? You still slept when I visited the apothecaries’ quarters earlier.”

  “I feel good.” Laura surveyed the Paranians ranged across the room, in twos and threes. “Happy. Now I can understand and… speak, and… life here will be more… more agreeable.”

  Azana’s presence took on a pleased glow. “Our world has much to offer.”

  “What…” Laura paused to raise a cup of water to her lips while she marshaled her thoughts. “What… you are doing?”

  “Your human physics and our Tolari version differ,” Azana replied. “I am engaged in a project to better understand and relate them.”

  “The Sural requested Parania’s cooperation,” the Paran added, “and I assigned several of my mathematicians to the task. Azana has spent her morning meal attempting to give me an outline of the progress so far.”

  “For one without the necessary background, your bond-partner understands more than I expected.”

&nb
sp; The Paran snorted. “Rulers are taught to focus on what they can comprehend—which is little enough, on this topic. Nevertheless, continue.”

  Laura grinned and busied herself with her stomach’s demands while Azana spoke of vectors—whatever those were—and particle perspective—whatever that was—and abstract concepts Laura couldn’t begin to identify. She stared out the refectory windows at the trees in the garden. The Paranian word for tree floated through her mind. But what kind? It couldn’t be cora—the Sural had once commented in her hearing that cora only grew in cool climates. She’d have to learn the old-fashioned way what kind of trees grew here.

  “Are you bored, beloved?” the Paran asked.

  She pulled her attention away from the window and glanced at the Paran. His lips tilted in a crooked grin. “Oh no,” she replied. “I am too busy… happy… that I can understand.”

  “Too busy being happy that you can understand?” Azana suggested.

  “Yes, exactly. This is wonderful, after the struggle to learn. But some things—” Laura pointed out the window “—I know that is a tree, but what kind?”

  The Paran patted her wrist. “Perhaps Azana will educate you. I must begin the day’s duties.” He stood.

  Laura shifted into English. “Another busy one?” She caught his hand, and he brushed his lips across her fingers.

  “Indeed.”

  “I’ll find things to do, then.”

  Azana pocketed the tablet they had been using. “If you wish, I will take you to a park in the city, and introduce you to trees common to this part of the world.”

  “An excellent idea,” the Paran said over his shoulder, as he headed toward the hall.

  Laura watched him disappear through the doorway and sighed.

  “Artist?” Azana prompted.

  “What?” Laura turned back to the table. “Oh yes, let’s.”

  * * *

  She returned from the city sometime after the midday meal, stuffed with new words and local food, to find the Paran outdoors, in a state of pleasant exuberance.

  “The city representatives canceled their meeting with me,” he said when she came upon him on the long, straight path that ran the length of the garden, nocking an arrow with green cloth fletching on a bow almost as long as he was tall.