The Fall Read online

* * *

  The Paran had required the transit room to send its feed to his tablet, which allowed him to follow Laura’s progress across the planet. He had monitored it through the day with an impatience surprising even to himself, checking it at every free moment, watching the display update her position with grinding slowness. Now that the transport pod carrying her neared the stronghold, he nearly danced on his heels. The child at his side, heir to his lead mathematician and awake well past the time she should have walked the far shores of sleep, did dance on her heels, fidgeting in the dim light, eyes fixed on the opening in the center of the transit room. He too found himself unable to tear his gaze from that dark oval in the floor, unwilling to blink lest he miss the moment the pod arrived.

  Laura is a sensitive. The revelation had stunned him. She said nothing during their daily communications by tablet, doubtless warned by the Sural not to reveal anything she did not want a random listener to know. The Sural had then sent him a shrouded message after she left, describing in detail his observations of her empathic potential, that she had been tutored by the hevalra—the hevalra!—and would require more food and lower temperatures.

  According to the Sural, the possibility existed she would become as powerful as the Jorann, as her transformation progressed.

  Mother of all. If word of her potential reached the ruling caste, he lacked the resources to protect her from the ambitious rulers who would try to capture her—which might include his own neighbor, Monralar. The man wanted to lead the caste, and with it the planet. He would use any tool that came to his hand to accomplish that goal, even if it meant taking it from an ally.

  His senses tingled, and the child squealed. She clapped her hands together and bounced as displaced air rushed into the room, blowing their hair and robes, and the pod appeared in the opening, humming its satisfaction. Three women occupied it, sagging and rumpled—the English-speaking servant who had accompanied Laura to Suralia, the mathematician he had sent with a private message for the Sural and a letter for Laura, and Laura, his Laura, whose eyes locked on his.

  Did he not know her presence, he might not recognize her, with her fair skin now smooth and youthful, and her hair no longer gray but a rich reddish-brown. The eyes remained the same, however, never leaving his as Azana, his foremost mathematician, exited the pod ahead of her. Somehow, a huge smile had taken over his expression. He smoothed his face and tore his attention away from Laura to focus on Azana.

  The child threw herself into her mother’s arms, bubbling with happiness. Azana bowed, daughter and all.

  “My gratitude to you, mathematician,” he said. “We will speak tomorrow.”

  She nodded. “High one.”

  The servant slipped past, bowing, to leave with Azana. The Paran opened his arms and stretched out his senses toward Laura, the smile back in place and matched by hers. As he folded arms and senses around her, holding her tight, her barriers somehow closed around him. For a moment, the world disappeared into the soft curves molding against him and the sweet smell of her hair.

  “My love,” he whispered. “My heart rejoices at your return.”

  His robe muffled her reply. “I missed you so much.” Tilting her face up, she offered a rueful grin. “I know I must look like a mess.”

  “You are beautiful,” he murmured, and lowered his head to catch her mouth.

  She gasped against his lips, and wonder filled her presence.

  He lifted his face enough to stare into her eyes. “I can hide little from you now.”

  “My word.” Her voice barely broke a whisper. “I had no idea how much you love me.”

  He let his smile tilt. “No idea?”

  Her face flushed. “Well…” A long groan issued from her midsection, and she sputtered an embarrassed laugh. “Maybe I should eat,” she said. “The servant didn’t take my appetite into account when she packed food for the trip.”

  He straightened and smiled into her eyes. “Of course.”

  * * *

  As she feasted on night-time fare in the stronghold’s refectory, Laura was in heaven.

  To her right, the Paran sat at the head of the high table, in the elaborately-carved, throne-like chair Tolari rulers seemed to favor, sipping tea and watching her eat like a crazed hippopotamus, his eyes crinkled with amusement. He wasn’t what she would call handsome, but he had a pleasant enough face, with winged brows, eyes so dark a brown they were almost black, and a masculine, sensual mouth that tended to a slight upturn at the corners from much smiling. Glossy black hair, twisted and knotted and braided in a complex pattern, cascaded into a pile at the foot of his chair. It reached his ankles when he stood, despite his height, which was not much shy of two meters. His pale green robe sported white embroidery from collar to waist and set off his coppery brown skin tone. She liked looking at him.

  At the moment, he sparkled with pleasure looking at her, too.

  She spared a glance around the empty refectory. Only a few guards occupied the room with them, using the Tolari ability they called camouflage to disappear from view, but visible to her by their empathic glow. She picked up the last piece of fruit before her, a small yellow-orange ball with thin, wrinkly skin, and contemplated it. “I’m so glad to be home,” she said, and took an experimental nibble.

  A pulse of surprise drew her attention back to the Paran. He sat motionless, eyebrows raised.

  She lowered the fruit. “What?” she asked.

  He put aside his tea and placed his elbows on the table, eyes intent on her face. “You have never before referred to my stronghold as home.”

  “Oh.” Heat rose in her face.

  He touched a cheek with his fingertips. They trailed down and across her chin, his delight a shower of incandescent sparkles, before he let his hand fall to her wrist. His thumb described circles on the back of her hand. “Have you begun to accept your exile from human space?”

  A nervous laugh bubbled out. “I guess I must have,” she said. “I spent a lot of time in Suralia wishing I was here.”

  “You seemed happy there at first.” He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Well, yes. Marianne had her baby, and—” She pulled her wrist out from under his hand and laced her fingers through his. “From across the stronghold, I felt Rose being born. Like… a star emerging from another star. I felt everything.” A smile blossomed and grew.

  “And in taking the blessing, you became a sensitive. I had not expected it.”

  She quirked the smile sideways. “There are drawbacks. Big ones. Cities are hard to tolerate. And I injured another sensitive without meaning to, the Sural’s advisor Storaas, when he tried to probe me. The apothecaries said I don’t know my own strength. The whales—the hevalra—they taught me what they could before they left, so I’m not as big a danger to everyone around me.”

  The Paran scanned the room with his eyes. “We should not speak of this here,” he said, quitting his seat without letting go of her hand.

  “All right.” She got to her feet and let him lead her out of the refectory. In the cool of the stronghold’s main corridor, he slipped an arm about her waist to pull her close. Laura remained quiet, content to soak in the feel of him while they walked through the family wing and turned into his warm, dimly-lit quarters.

  She fished a coldpack from a pocket, pinched it, and pressed it against her forehead.

  The Paran took a seat on a divan facing the darkened garden windows and made room for her. She looked down at him for a long moment. His eyes gleamed, warm with affection. Heart swelling, she slid onto the divan and curled against him, head on his shoulder, one hand holding the coldpack, the other resting on his chest.

  “The Sural informed me of your need for cold.”

  She nodded. “If I get too warm, I faint. The Sural’s apothecary thinks the Jorann is the same way, that she lives in that ice cave because she needs to.”

  “And yet you returned.”

  Laura shifted her head so she could search his face. Parania lay near the eq
uator. It never froze, even in deep winter—or so she’d been told—and the sweltering summer had been her first experience of the province. “Yes.”

  His arms tightened around her. “Did anyone in Suralia discuss with you the change in your legal status?”

  “N-no,” she said. “Storaas’ disappearance brought everything to a halt, and then I spent most of my time on the beach talking to the whales. What about my legal status?”

  “You are Tolari now. Taking the blessing not only began a genetic change to make you one of us, it gave you a place in our society. As a member of the artisan caste, the demands it places on you change little, but…” He hesitated. “You share your blanket with me, and I am of the ruling caste. You need to know that certain decisions we make together could result in you becoming a legal target for assassination.”

  She started upright and pivoted to stare into his face. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

  “Because I failed to realize until you left for Suralia that I wanted more with you than you had the capacity to give as a human.”

  Her heart tried to stop.

  “If we carry on as we did before,” he continued, while she held her breath, “you are in no danger. Lovers—love-partners—of members of the ruling caste are safe from the Game. Bond-partners… are not. And…”

  He stared out the darkened windows of his sitting room, brows pinched, silent for so long that Laura began to see spots. Breathe, Laura. She sucked in a breath. He still loved her. She could see it in the way his presence glowed and yearned toward hers. So what troubled him?

  “And?” she whispered.

  “History and tradition teach that members of the ruling caste should avoid becoming entwined with a sensitive at all.”

  The air rushed from her lungs. “What? Why?” Her words ended on an almost airless squeak.

  “We are violent.” He met her eyes. “Few sensitives can tolerate it.”

  She stopped breathing again. Then she emitted a snort that would have horrified her childhood deportment tutor. “Violent?” She convulsed into helpless laughter. “You think—” she gasped “—you’re violent? Compared to humans?” She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his chest. “Oh my love,” she said, still laughing. “Don’t ever change.”

  He cradled her while she laughed. “And yet there is a danger,” he said, after a time.

  The words sobered her. She wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes. “How much of a danger is it?”

  “I have few real enemies. Stay close to Parania and conceal the extent of your sensitivity, and I will have little trouble protecting you.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.” She traced the curvilinear embroidery on his robe with a finger. “So tell me the difference between lovers and bond-partners.”

  * * *

  The difference, as she had suspected, was more than a matter of degree. Lovers paired for a time, a season or a few years or even a lifetime; decades might elapse between one lover and the next. Ritual and custom governed the exchange of goods, keeping all in balance. Bond-partnership more closely resembled human marriage—but bond-partners shared their hearts and souls as well. Her time spent living with the Sural and Marianne had shown her some of it, and she had seen it clearly with her new empathic abilities during her recent visit. Those two felt each other’s feelings, from the inside, in a different and more intimate way than normal Tolari empathy.

  But. No one had mentioned bonding’s drawbacks to Laura. When the Paran told her, she got up from the divan to stare into the gray gloom of the garden. The full moon hung low in the sky; they had talked most of the night.

  “They die together?” she asked.

  “Very often,” he replied. He joined her at the window, snaking his hands around her waist to pull her back against him. She fit perfectly under his chin. “The shock of the bond rupture itself can kill a sensitive.”

  “No wonder some of you prefer not to bond.” She covered his hands with her own. “So, I wouldn’t survive losing you, but you might survive losing me.”

  “Not happily, but yes, I might.”

  An image flitted across her mind of John turning to dust before her eyes. “Not an experience I would wish on anyone,” she murmured.

  “We might live to become ancients and walk into the dark together in each other’s arms. Would you prevent such a joy by avoiding all risk?”

  She sucked her lower lip between her teeth. “Would you?” she asked out the side of her mouth.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s a fair answer.”

  He chuckled and kissed her hair.

  “And to think I used to believe all you Tolari were cold and emotionless.”

  “You cannot ever have thought that of me.”

  “Oh no, I knew better by the time I met you.” She pivoted in his arms to face him. “But we all thought it, up on the Alexander. Tolari don’t have feelings, not like humans do. I still believed it when I landed.”

  The Paran snorted.

  “I’ve seen enough human feelings for one lifetime. When Marianne took me in—when the Sural rescued me from that horrible man—” She shuddered at the memory of the cold-eyed Central Command operative who would have murdered her and abducted Marianne, if the Sural, ruthless savage that he was, hadn’t killed the man first. With his bare hands. She shuddered again and buried her face in the Paran’s robe. Maybe Tolari rulers were more violent than she wanted to believe.

  The Paran rested his chin in her hair, heart open, and his love settled around her, warm and comforting. She stood on the threshold of a commitment the likes of which she’d never imagined. At that thought, her heart leapt into her throat. Seize the day, her late husband would have said, though he would have said it with Latin words she could never remember. Carp… Carpie… something. She took the Paran’s face in her hands and searched his deep, dark eyes. His lips curved upward. He curled long fingers around her hands, placing a gentle kiss in each palm before pulling them away from his face to fold them over his heart.

  “Laura Johnson Howard,” he said. “Will you bond with me?”

  Chapter Four

  CCS-51-1227

  Get a secure commlink to our officer on the Kekrax station at Gliese 877 ASAP. His unsecured communications are oblique to the point of incomprehensibility.

  (signed) Adeline Pearson Russell, Office of Field Operations, Central Security Headquarters, Tau Ceti Station

  * * *

  The beloved of Monralar leaned against the railing of her sitting room veranda, enjoying dawn’s play of color across the eastern sky. She looked forward to a demanding day, training a young sensitive and teaching her to hone her abilities. Herself a noted sensitive, research scholar, and political advisor to the Monral of Monralar—her bond-partner—Sharana sipped at her first tea of the morning, Suralian tea flower, sighing as the exquisite flavor of the drink spread over her tongue.

  She felt her beloved approach. He had left her blanket at first light to begin his own even more demanding day, and returned now to escort her to the morning meal. Hastily, she set down the tea and tossed a cloth over it. A few heartbeats later, the door to the corridor opened to admit her Monral, a powerfully-built man neither tall nor short, resplendent in Monralar’s pale lavender.

  No one could call him a handsome man. When his blunt-featured face darkened with anger, it could frighten the bravest of Monrali. But when he looked at her, his face softened to reveal the heart within the stern and uncompromising ruler, and she could forget how much he had changed in recent years, since humiliation at the Sural’s hands had rendered him bitter.

  The Monral joined her on the veranda, draping an arm across her shoulder and smiling down at her. He bubbled with glee, mixed with the irritation he displayed when—

  “You have found a way to strike at the Sural,” she said.

  His smile broadened, though he said nothing in response.

  “Beloved,” she said, careful to moderate her wor
ds and her tone of voice, “can you not bring your heart back to Monralar and focus on the good of your people, rather than a futile scheme to restore conventional rule?”

  The smile disappeared, and his face stiffened. “The restoration of conventional rule is for the good of my people.”

  She leaned into him and laced her fingers through the hand at her shoulder. “You have governed Monralar for fifty-five years. Release the province to your son. Come away with me. We will find a quiet place to live out the remainder of our lives together. It will give you peace.”

  “Farric lacks the required years to rule.”

  “He is of age. He can administer in your name.”

  Pale brown eyes narrowed. “Why do you think I cannot prevail against the Sural?”

  “No one has ever unseated a grandchild of the Jorann.”

  “They did not have the help of interstellar allies. The Sural has something the humans want back, and the Trade Alliance is in some doubt of their authority to intervene. I can turn that confusion to our advantage.”

  “The Sural’s coalition still holds a numerical majority.”

  His smile returned. “Not if I weaken Parania enough to scatter the Paran’s followers.”

  “Is that what you plan? To assassinate your ally?”

  “The Paran? He must live.”

  The air went out of her in a rush. “His lover...”

  “She returned from Suralia yesterday, in late evening,” he said, his voice light. “It seems she took the blessing while there and came away a sensitive.”

  * * *

  Talking until dawn had been glorious, and Laura didn’t mean to fall asleep in her sitting room after breakfast. Before the Paran left to start his day, he had explained that the bonding process itself normally lasted three or four days, and that while a couple might wait a few seasons—or even longer!—to bond, he hoped she would not be so traditional. She had laughed, and he promised to turn over a week’s administrative work to his daughter as soon as possible. Then he had gone off to a meeting, looking a little ragged.