The Fall Read online

  She had never been so wanton in all her life.

  Later, when the effects of the leaf wore off, the Paran burrowed into the blankets, mumbling, more asleep than awake. He had somehow managed to remain civilized. Perhaps experience had accustomed him to the fast and business-like nature of leaf-inspired tumbles. If that was how it would be with him and... a woman seeking an heir from him... she might almost be able to tolerate the idea.

  Almost.

  Sleep caught her unawares while thinking that over, and when she woke, Tolar’s orange sun hung halfway up the morning sky. She sprawled alone across his sleeping mat, on top of the blankets, with a small sheet of creamy paper near her face, folded once. It opened to disclose a brief invitation to walk in the city outskirts with the Paran, written in neat and precise English lettering.

  The city. She winced. She’d survived a journey through the heart of a dozen cities across half the planet. Surely she could manage a walk through the periphery of one.

  A loud grumble from her midsection broke into her reverie. Snorting a little, she hauled herself into the bathing area to get clean and start her day. The refectory would be mostly deserted by now, and deserted meant peaceful.

  Servants moved about the refectory, cleaning, when she walked in. A figure in an indigo robe—her language tutor, Kellandin—sat staring at something in his hands, at a table near the kitchens, where trays of food still sat out. She grabbed one and headed to his table. He sipped at his tea and nodded.

  Tea. With Tolari, it was always tea. She’d kill for a cup of coffee, with milk and just a touch of that wonderful boosted cardamom from New China World—

  “I greet you,” Kellandin said, in Paranian. His brown eyes glinted with the mischief suddenly coloring his presence. Like the Paran, he had a face more interesting than handsome and a cheerful expression. He differed, however, in his deep-set eyes, straight brows and nose, and lips a little on the thin side.

  “Good morning,” she replied, in English.

  He laughed, a rich rumble, and switched languages. “If you want to improve, you must practice.”

  “I’ve tried, but then I spent weeks in Suralia. Most of what I managed to learn is fuzzy now. I don’t have the talent for it, Kellandin. I wish you and the Paran would realize that and just give me a language implant. I’m tired of working so hard for so little, only to lose it the moment I stop paying attention.”

  His brows knitted. “We will have to determine how much you have lost in so short a time.”

  Her gust of a sigh blew stray hairs off her face. “If you like.”

  “Try a little longer, artist,” he said, in a softer voice. “The more you can learn, the more quickly an implant will integrate.”

  “There’s not much else I can do but try.” She pulled one corner of her mouth sideways. “The Paran said he’d take me for a walk in the city later. I’ll do my best to pay attention and practice.”

  * * *

  Five camouflaged guards fanned out ahead of them. Five more trailed behind. The Paran appeared unconcerned, but then, under attack he was far more dangerous than any of his guards. He’d been trained to kill with his bare hands. They hadn’t.

  Laura could detect a sort of collective good will, as she and the Paran strolled up from a transport tunnel in the outer edge of the city, but nothing else. The fierce glow around her made it difficult to separate out individuals, but no lurking intruders with nefarious intent tickled her senses—not that she expected any.

  A cool breeze blew in off the ocean, carrying a different tang than the seas of Earth. Buildings of pale stone, roofed with something resembling slate, lined the avenue they walked. Most looked like artisan shops and trade-houses. Farther down, a musician sat in a doorway, playing a spritely tune on a small dulcimer-like instrument. The area might serve as a cultural district on any human world, except it seemed deserted.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  “Taking a midday rest.”

  “Oh! A siesta? People do that in some places on Earth.”

  He squeezed her hand. “I hoped the timing would make the experience easier for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Ahead of them, small round tables littered the area before a shop. She peered into it. More such tables occupied the interior.

  “Is this a café?” she asked.

  “It is a teahouse.” He pulled out a chair for her at one of the tables in the avenue. “Are you thirsty?”

  “A little.”

  A small woman in black, her eyes gleaming, bustled over as the Paran took a seat. She bowed low. The Paran began to speak with her in Paranian.

  Despite Laura’s best effort to hold it in, a small sigh escaped her. She could understand a word. Or two. Oh, and there, a third. They discussed… tea, not surprisingly. Her eyes wandered to a nearby shop with small sculptures on display in the windows.

  “My love?”

  Her attention snapped back to the Paran. A young man, all elbows and adolescent gawkiness, who from the resemblance had to be the woman’s son, placed a steaming mug before first the Paran and then her. She murmured her gratitude in Paranian, hoping she hadn’t mangled the phrase or garbled it with an impenetrable accent, and picked up the mug to take a sip. A floral aroma rose with the steam.

  The tea mugged her tastebuds with a flavor as strong and flowery as its scent. Sweet. A little cloying. Not to her taste, but she smiled and nodded anyway.

  “It is a local tea,” the Paran said, when the woman and her son retreated into the café, leaving them in peace. “If you like it, I can have it added to the stronghold’s menu.”

  She shook her head. “It’s nice for a change, but I wouldn’t want a steady diet of it. It’s too sweet.”

  He laughed, relaxing into his chair.

  “We should do this more often,” she added.

  “Indeed, this… how did you call it in English?”

  “Café.”

  “This café offers a large number of different teas. Perhaps another time we will find one you prefer.” He straightened and leaned his elbows on the table, his mug cupped in his long hands. “Did you see a sculpture you like?” His mouth twitched into a crooked smile.

  “You noticed me admiring those?” She waved a hand in the direction of the shop with the sculptures.

  “Of course.” He took several long pulls on his tea and leaned back again, his head tilted to one side. “Kellandin spoke to me of your frustration with learning our language. Why did you not tell me?”

  She shifted in her chair and set aside the tea with a shrug. “I don’t learn very fast, but I did learn not to admit it to the powers that be. If I weren’t still recovering from the trip, I wouldn’t have said anything to Kellandin, either.”

  “You think yourself unintelligent.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I was tested, over and o—”

  “You,” he interrupted, “have few equals, and I cherish you.”

  A lump formed in her throat.

  He drained the last of his tea. “Come.” He stood and offered his arm. “Let us examine these sculptures you so admire.”

  The lump dissipated, and she grinned like a schoolgirl as she took his arm. “Can we?”

  A few camouflaged guards stayed at the door to the shop, watching the avenue. Two stationed themselves at another entrance she hadn’t noticed, another few preceded them inside, and the rest shadowed the Paran as he and Laura wandered through the door. Laura tried to memorize the position of each as they registered on her senses; before they left the stronghold, the Paran had suggested she get used to watching the guards, as well as the exits.

  A man in artisan’s purple, white-haired and bent, started to rise from a cushioned chair just inside. The Paran motioned him to remain seated. He slumped back with a sigh and a grateful smile.

  “He’s older than Storaas was,” Laura whispered, as they moved away from the door and in amongst the displays of… statuettes, she wanted to call some of them. Mo
st depicted figures of people—robed Tolari, in pairs or alone, solemn or cheerful, walking, running, dancing, standing still, sitting. Some sculptures portrayed animals, insects, or flowers. One reproduced in fantastic detail a pine-like tree she had seen in Brialar.

  The Paran picked up a small figure of a woman with a young child, made of a cream-colored stone, and examined it. “He has few seasons remaining to him,” he murmured, setting it back in its place with care. “Why do you whisper?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The ancient artisan stirred a little, and the Paran said something in Paranian, freeing him to speak. His voice quavered across the room, gentle and soothing. She blinked, longing to understand him.

  “He says he is past the ability to work stone, and these are all crafted by his son and his granddaughter and her daughter,” the Paran translated. “All but one.”

  The old man spoke again. The Paran’s eyebrows lifted. “He thinks his last work will call to you. If it does, it is yours.”

  “M-mine?” she stammered. She stared at the old man, slouched in his well-worn wooden chair, his rheumy old eyes bright. “But… me? When the ruler of his province is here?”

  The Paran chuckled. “Your heart is beautiful, my love, and he is quite taken with you. Honor the old one and accept his gift.”

  Social habits kicked in. She gave the old artisan a deep bow, and he rewarded her with a contented sigh. Straightening, she glanced around the room. How she would tell if anything called to her, she couldn’t imagine. She tried adjusting the threads she’d pulled from the hevalra’s net, moving them one by one around her, until the empathic glare faded almost to nothing while her sense of the Paran and the old man remained clear.

  Slowly, carefully, she extended her senses into the room, and found them heightened. Each piece of artwork held on to something of its maker, like a vibration of sorts. The sculptures echoed three different emotional signatures, except for one, hidden in a corner. With a gasp, her eyes came open and landed on an exquisite sculpture of three Tolari whales—the largest a female about the length of the Paran’s hand, the next a male three-quarters that size, and the last their young, half the male’s length. The natural shading of the gray stone mimicked the coloration of the individual animals she had seen in Suralia, darker on top, lighter on the bottom, from each figure’s body to its six flippers and long tail. They seemed to float above a base of jet black wood.

  She stroked the smallest whale with a fingertip. Something of the old man resonated through it, and something of a hevalrin resonated through the old man. “Is he sure he wants me to have it?”

  The ancient said something.

  “He asks you to bring it to him,” the Paran translated.

  She lifted it by the base, hugging the sculpture to her breast like an infant, and picked her way through the room. The old one watched her approach and sighed as she placed it in his lap. She knelt on the floor beside his knees, while he ran trembling fingers over each whale in turn, a fond smile wrinkling his face. Then he fixed his gaze on Laura and patted her cheek with one gnarled, papery hand, while the other cradled the sculpture.

  After a moment, he picked it off his lap and offered it to her, his heart glowing with happiness.

  “Receive it with both hands,” the Paran murmured.

  She swallowed another lump in her throat and held out her hands.

  Chapter Six

  The Paran stood staring out the windows of his open study, hands clasped behind his back, suppressing irritation. On his most recent visit, the Monral’s brilliant young son and heir, Farric, had made compelling arguments for opening interstellar trade relations, and campaigned tirelessly for his father’s vision of a Tolar once more under conventional rule. He had half-convinced most of the Paran’s own advisors—except Vondra.

  “You cannot deny that commerce with the Trade Alliance would benefit all of Tolar,” Kellandin said. He sat, fingertips pressed together under his chin, in a chair opposite the Paran’s desk, his deep blue robe blending into its fabric.

  The Paran half-turned to eye the family tutor and political advisor. “It will begin in a mere eight years, when the Sural’s heir comes of age.”

  “Indeed, and waiting for her to mature seems a short time to us. For humans, it will be seventeen of their years, which seems a long time to a short-lived people. Should we not treat with them now, while their interest is keen?”

  “With Monralar leading the way, and benefiting most?”

  “Ah.” Kellandin cocked his head. “An excellent point. But have you forgotten the Monral’s… guarantees of favor toward those who make his plan succeed? Parania would still prosper.”

  The Paran shook his head. “Assuming Monralar’s supporters do not all wake to the scent of Suralian tea flowers in their nostrils, if they wake at all. Have you forgotten how dangerous is the Sural?”

  Kellandin’s mouth flattened, but he did not answer.

  The Paran moved away from the window and leaned back against the desk. He himself found the prospect of interstellar trade appealing, but he led the largest political bloc on Tolar, a legacy of his grandfather’s time as leader of the ruling caste, and it was aligned with Suralia. His mother had worked hard to achieve unanimity within the coalition, and he saw little reason to disturb it by rushing toward an inevitable membership in the Trade Alliance, as Monralar was wont to do.

  Even if the Monral gained the majority he sought, the Sural needed only repeat the exploit that had gained him the Jorann’s favor to remind the caste why he led them. The Monral’s father had been among those who had known the Sural was coming but nevertheless awoke to a tea flower beside his head. Though the Paran had not yet been born at the time, his mother had once spoken of the feat with awe.

  “The young Sural,” she had said, “not even of age, spent days traveling to the strongholds of those who doubted his ability to rule, carrying nothing with him but a basket of Suralian tea flowers. He left a single large blossom on each ruler’s mat as they slept. I, too, received one, but on mine he had written the words, ‘My heart grieves for your pain,’ across several petals.”

  The act astounded the rulers of the time, and those who received a flower learned a potent lesson: he could as easily have sent them into the dark. His mother had preserved the token the Sural had left her; encased in a stasis field, it still occupied a corner on the desk in what had once been her private study.

  Yet it was true the Sural’s leadership might be coming into question. After a hundred years of peace among the ruling caste, local conflicts had begun to break out, and so far the Sural had done nothing. Instead, he waited for his heir to come of age, that following Tolari custom she might serve as his ambassador to the alien races who now roamed the stars.

  “No, Scholar,” he said, “I will stand with my coalition on the matter.”

  Giggles echoed in from the audience room, distracting Kellandin from his reply. Moments later, a camouflaged Veryth ran into the room and impacted the desk with a thud and a squawk.

  The scholar flinched. The Paran dropped to his knees next to the now-visible child, who lay on his back, mouth gaping and eyes squeezed shut. The desk’s edge had imprinted a thick line across the middle of Veryth’s forehead, the area where his empathic nerves clustered most densely. As he scooped his grandson off the matted floor, sharp pain lanced through the physical contact.

  “Nuu,” he murmured, getting to his peds with the boy cradled in both arms, his little body stiff and trembling and breathing in tiny gasps. “Notify my grandson’s apothecary,” he said to the guard at the door, and strode into the audience room.

  Kellandin followed more slowly, keeping his distance.

  A few paces later, Veryth gulped as much air as his tiny lungs could hold and arched his back, uttering a shriek that left the Paran’s ears ringing. A guard flickered, startled, and Vondra, who would have known the instant her son injured himself, rushed through the doorway from the main hall, arms outstretched. With
relief, he surrendered the child, who clung to his mother’s neck like a young scurrybrush, sobbing hysterically.

  “He ran into my desk,” he said, “very like the way you did at the same age. I notified the apothecaries.”

  Vondra nodded, face pinched. “My gratitude, Father.” She spun and hurried off.

  A sympathetic chuckle came to his lips and died away. Until the apothecaries soothed the boy’s considerable distress, his grandson would broadcast it to everyone around him. He expelled a breath. In proximity to small children learning what they could and could not do while camouflaged, the ruling bond tended to hinder more than help.

  “We will continue this discussion another time,” he said to Kellandin, and headed for the nearest door to the gardens.

  Outside, autumn had moderated the early afternoon heat to a pleasant temperature. He chose a path to the far wall of the stronghold grounds, letting the sun’s warmth ease away the tension in his neck and shoulders, and shrank his empathic awareness into himself, to minimize the needle-stab of Veryth’s discomfort, magnified as it was through every pledged adult in contact with him, not least Vondra.

  Vondra. His daughter had proved herself an extraordinary asset as his ambassador. If Monralar’s heir ever convinced her to advocate for interstellar trade in the near term, rather than to wait on the Sural’s plan, the years until the Sural’s heir Kyza came of age would become an exercise in patience.

  Senses thus pulled in, he strolled into the outer garden and did not notice his Laura before his eyes fell on her. Her dark purple robe blended into the deep shade under a corner of the keep and a tree, as she sat huddled over a sketchbook in creative ecstasy.

  He hunched down and looked over her shoulder. The scene coming to life under her hand existed nowhere on Tolar: a house, a very large house, of a style he had seen in archives obtained from human sources—rectangular, made of a vast number of tiny bricks, with a sloping roof. Columns at the entry arch spanned the first two floors. A floor above that, with many windows, reached from a wing on the left to a wing on the right, the whole surrounded by plants sculpted into tall cones and spirals.