She smiled. “Pack as if you were spending the moon at Hol-Opah.”
36
Salomen’s surprise
Nikolay and Elanor were delighted to be taken on a new adventure the next morning. Salomen and Andira found them waiting at the transport with Ekatya and Lhyn, their bags already loaded.
It required only a little maneuvering to make certain that the four Gaians sat on the right side of the transport, while Salomen and Andira took seats on the left. Andira had already instructed the pilot, who flew east for twenty ticks and passed over Blacksun Base before beginning a long, curving sweep north.
Ekatya noticed immediately. “You’re laying a false trail, aren’t you?”
“We couldn’t make it too easy.” Andira crossed her hands behind her head and stretched out her legs, the picture of relaxation. “I’d advise you to emulate me. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”
“You don’t know Katya if you expect that,” Nikolay said. “She’s not capable of sitting back.”
“If you wanted that, you should have blindfolded her,” Elanor added.
Salomen pinched Andira’s leg. “Stop,” she whispered. “You can think about that later. Not now!”
Andira lifted her shoulders in an innocent gesture that did not fool her one bit.
“Wait a tick,” Ekatya said. “Now we’re flying parallel to the Snowmounts. We doubled back! Come on, tell me where we’re going.”
“And ruin Salomen’s surprise? I think not.”
The next thirty ticks saw her grow ever more suspicious. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re going to Hol-Opah.”
“Or we could be crossing the mountains to go to the west coast,” Salomen pointed out.
“Or we could turn north again and fly to Koneza,” Andira added. “It’s lovely this time of year. Toasty warm days and crisp nights.”
“Now you’re throwing out decoys. Obnoxious Alseans.”
“You know, some of us are enjoying the surprise,” Lhyn said. “We trust our hosts.”
Ekatya scowled. “That was low. I trust them, I just want to know.”
“Katya. Settle down and wait.”
To Salomen’s amusement, Ekatya responded to her grandfather’s order as if he were the captain and she an ensign. She said nothing more until their transport crossed the Silverrun River and began to descend.
“Ha! We are going to Hol-Opah, I knew it!”
“Close, but not quite,” Salomen said.
“We’re descending too soon,” Lhyn observed. “We’re not going to the house. The waterfall?”
“Even closer.”
“Not the waterfall?” Ekatya’s nose was pressed against the glass. “There’s nothing else here. Unless you’re planning a touch-and-go and this is just another decoy.”
“I should have thought of that,” Andira joked.
“Stay with me and I shall teach you my devious ways.” Ekatya grinned at her, bright with humor and open love, and Salomen wondered how her grandparents could fail to see it.
She stood up as soon as the transport landed. “Leave your bags. The Guards will bring them later.”
“Ooo, mysterious,” Lhyn said. “They’d only need to bring our bags if we were sleeping here. Did you set up a tent? I hope it’s pavilion-sized.”
“Do you really think she’ll answer that?” Andira asked.
“No, but I can’t not guess.”
“It would be like the Silverrun not flowing. An aberration of nature.” Salomen waited for Lead Guard Ronlin to precede her, then led the others down the ramp. “We have a short walk, but there’s shannel at the end of it.”
“Shannel! I’m sold,” Ekatya announced. She stepped onto the bricks and looked around. “You built a landing pad. And a trail?”
“Among other things.” Salomen traded a conspiratorial smile with Andira as they set off down the gravel path.
It was wide enough to accommodate a crateskate, a requirement given the many loads of building materials that had traveled along this path from the landing pad. Three could walk comfortably abreast, and additional space on either side had been prepared for ornamental plantings. There hadn’t been time, but she was looking forward to getting her hands in the soil this moon.
The path was straight as a sword from the landing pad to the edge of the forest, then wound between thick trunks of ancient trees on its way toward the Silverrun. As they passed beneath the first arching branches, Salomen identified the species to her guests and explained the law requiring producers to leave a natural buffer between the river’s edge and their field borders.
“We cannot remove endemic species from the buffer. Not that we would wish to; most producers take pride in the age and health of their buffer lands. Many of these trees are over a thousand cycles old.”
“Magnificent,” Elanor breathed, gazing upward. “If I were a few cycles younger, I’d want to climb one. Is that allowed?”
“If it weren’t, I’d have been in a great deal of trouble as a child.”
Chuckling, Nikolay brushed his hand against a sapling beside the path. “How did you put the trail through here if you can’t take out trees?”
“Exceptions are allowed up to a specific trunk diameter for each species. And only with permits from the caste house, which won’t be approved without a good reason.”
“What was your reason?” Ekatya asked innocently.
Salomen glanced over her shoulder. “Did you think that would work?”
“It was worth a try.”
“Nikolay, Elanor, how terrible was she about birth anniversary gifts?”
They groaned in unison.
“A demon child,” Elanor said.
“Impossible,” Nikolay agreed. “We ran out of hiding spots by the time she was ten. After that, we took her gifts to work and kept them in our offices.”
“But we had to bring them home eventually.” Elanor took up the tale. “I resorted to locks. She learned to pick them.”
“You picked locks?” Andira turned around and walked backward, grinning at an embarrassed Ekatya. “I’m impressed.”
“Yes, but then Gramps ruined it. He told me it made Grams sad when I found my gifts before she had the chance to give them to me. And if Grams was sad, he was sad. I would have taken corporal punishment over knowing I made them sad.”
Salomen laughed. “He knew your heart.”
“And manipulated it. I was twelve!”
“I did only what any good parent should. You can’t tell me you didn’t use the same technique with your officers.”
“Twelve, Gramps.”
“A good age to learn self-restraint,” Elanor said. “We got to you in time. Imagine if you had hit puberty any earlier!” She shuddered. “A demon child was bad enough. A demon adolescent? I’d have died young from sheer exasperation.”
Salomen lost track of the conversation when she glimpsed her surprise through the trees. She kept moving, waiting for the others to notice, and smiled when the first blast of shock hit her senses.
“My stars and asteroids!” Lhyn burst out. “Salomen! You built a house?”
The second blast came from Ekatya half a piptick later. “When in all the purple planets did you do that? How did you do it? You can’t build here.”
The forest thinned out, rich soil giving way to barren rock dotted by shrubs and smaller trees. Ahead, perched on the edge of the canyon wall and overlooking the Silverrun River, was a two-story round house built on the traditional rural plan.
Salomen stopped their little group and pointed toward the rock beneath her feet. “This makes it an exemption zone. There’s almost no soil needing to be held in place by the buffer species. We’re well above the high water line. And there aren’t many trees over the maximum diameter. You can see the ones we had to avoid—there, there, and those three over there. Otherwise, we were free to take out what we needed. But I hate taking down trees, so we only did what we absolutely had to.” She turned and shaded her eyes. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”<
br />
“It’s stunning,” Lhyn enthused. “What a perfect location. I can hear the waterfall. Is it right over the fall?”
“That was my original plan, but Prime Builder Eroles advised me to reconsider. The mist would be an issue during high flows.”
“Both for weathering and lowering the temperature,” Andira said. “We’d freeze in the winter. And have no privacy during the summer swim season.”
Salomen resumed walking. “We’re upstream. Close enough to hear it and be within easy walking distance, far enough to avoid the downsides.”
Ekatya jogged up next to Andira. “This must be paradise for your runs. Do you head toward the main house or follow the river up the eastern boundary?”
“I haven’t stayed here yet.”
“Why not?” Lhyn was right behind them. “I know you were running around like a yardbird with twenty chicks after the battle, but—wait. When was this finished?”
“Last nineday,” Salomen said. “My goal was to get it done before you came back, so we could spend our first night here together. I’m happy to include you in that,” she told Nikolay and Elanor. “It’s traditional for a new house to be blessed with the love and laughter of family on its first night. My father and brothers will be here for evenmeal as well.”
“I’d have invited Micah and Alejandra, but they’re a bit busy,” Andira added.
Ekatya’s forehead was creased. “You haven’t even spent a night here? And you’re housing all of us for a moon?”
Andira exchanged a glance with Salomen. “It’s not that we’re housing you,” she began.
“We’re bringing you home,” Salomen said.
Lhyn and Ekatya stopped walking in a cloud of surprise. One step back, Nikolay and Elanor looked on in confusion.
“Home?” Lhyn said in a small voice.
Salomen ached at the longing she was trying so hard to hide. “I did tell you we weren’t going to Hol-Opah. This is Hol-Tyree.”
Ekatya stared up at the house. “Lhyn,” she said urgently. “There’s a seventh star over the front door.”
Salomen would have worked twice as hard and for twice as long to live this moment again. The comprehension sweeping over both women, the submersion of Lhyn’s longing and doubt beneath a wave of joyous belief, Ekatya’s sudden and almost painful sense of belonging—even her happiest imaginings hadn’t matched the reality.
“It was a gift from Ravenel,” she said. “I tried to hire her, but she said the day she charged me for a sculpture was the day Rahel decided to be a merchant.”
Lhyn laughed, then covered her mouth as the emotional overload began to leak out of her eyes. “But this is your family’s land. How did—?” She waved her hand ineffectually.
“We had a family meeting and redrew our boundaries.” Salomen pointed west and began a slow pivot. “This parcel starts at the head of the canyon, follows the river to just east of the plunge pool, and goes straight back to the field boundary. The landing pad marks the northern border. None of it can be planted, so it doesn’t affect the holding.”
“Your family gave it to you?” Nikolay asked.
“No, but they gave us a fair price. Andira helped me buy out my brothers’ interests. Although . . .” She paused, still affected by the unexpected gesture. “Herot refused payment. He said he owed it to us.”
“We don’t agree,” Andira said. “But he closed the door on the worst of his shame by giving a gift that was in his power. It would not have been a kindness to refuse.”
Ekatya was shaking her head. “How are we supposed to accept this?”
“You accept because you’re family,” Salomen said.
It hung there, a statement of fact that stopped Ekatya and left her grandparents baffled. As the silence grew, Lhyn looked back and forth between them and finally blew out a determined breath.
“Right. We are. And I can’t wait to get a look inside. But first . . .” She caught Salomen’s hand and lifted it to her lips. “Thank you, heart of mine.”
Salomen didn’t quite know how it happened, but somehow she was in Lhyn’s arms, receiving a loving kiss that started on her mouth and moved to her ear.
“That should blow things up nicely,” Lhyn whispered.
She could not hold back the laugh. “I was leaving it up to Ekatya, you little dokker.”
“Sometimes she needs someone else to take the lead. It’s exhausting always being the captain.” Lhyn let her go and turned to Andira. “Thank you. I love our State House suite, but it’s never been mine.”
“I know.” Andira pulled her into a warmron. “You stayed because I didn’t want you to leave. Now you have another option.”
“Katya.” Nikolay’s voice cracked with uncertainty. “Is this another cultural difference?”
Trapped, Ekatya opened her mouth, closed it again, and straightened her spine with visible resolve. “So different that you probably won’t believe it. But it’s time. Salomen, you mentioned shannel?”
37
Culture shock
In retrospect, Salomen thought, she should have been forewarned by Ekatya’s reluctance.
With the exception of Herot, her own family had received the news with little surprise. Herot hadn’t known Lhyn long enough to have seen the progression of their relationship. “But if anyone is going to form a tyree bond with an alien, it’s my sister,” he said wryly, before touching their foreheads together in a wordless blessing. “I don’t have to understand it to know it makes you happy.”
“It does.”
“Then that’s what matters.”
Jaros had been overjoyed; he loved Lhyn and thought Ekatya was his ticket into shining space adventures. Nikin said he was only sorry he couldn’t give the protective elder sibling speech, because “Lhyn can’t hurt a fairy fly and there’s little point in giving that speech to the Savior.”
Shikal had held her hands and looked into her eyes. “You’ve learned to accept love,” he said. “I should have known you’d take it as a challenge.”
It was unusual, they all agreed, but Fahla never gave the gift without reason. In this instance, the reason was abundantly clear to all.
She had long looked forward to her first meal in the new house with all of her family. But in her imaginings, she had never considered that Nikolay and Elanor would not believe them.
“Surely you understand our concern,” Nikolay said. They were seated around the dining table, where Salomen had sadly watched her canyon view go unremarked while Ekatya told her tale.
“I was afraid of it,” Ekatya said carefully.
It was neither an agreement nor a refutation, but Nikolay didn’t seem to notice. “You want us to accept that a goddess neither you nor we believe in has given her blessing for you to take a second partner. Yet you can’t give us details on why you’re so convinced or why we should be glad that you’re breaking your marriage oath.”
“She’s not breaking her oath.” Of the four Gaians, Lhyn was the only one who had retained her calm. “We held an Alsean bonding ceremony. We didn’t sign a Gaian or Allendohan marriage contract. The wording and the cultural expectations are different. Ekatya hasn’t betrayed me.”
“Did you betray her?” he demanded. “Are you the one who started this?”
Andira laid a hand over Salomen’s and gave a slight shake of her head.
She swallowed the angry retort that had been on the tip of her tongue. No, it was not yet their fight, but if Nikolay accused Lhyn again—
“No one betrayed anyone,” Ekatya said sharply. “I can’t believe you’d think that of me. Do you know how hard Andira and I fought against this? And for how long? Lhyn and Salomen practically had to lock us in a room together.”
“Lhyn and Salomen,” he repeated. “So it was—”
“Gramps!”
“Katya, you’re asking us to take this on faith! You have incontrovertible proof but you can’t tell us because it’s classified? What in the name of flight could be classified about this?” Hi
s emotional signature hardened with suspicion. “Unless there really is something dubious about that change in your brain.”
Now it was Salomen stopping Andira, whose protective instinct came roaring to the surface at Ekatya’s palpable hurt.
“I spent a year and a half being tried and punished for this change in my brain,” Ekatya said, using the Common words for time. “I never thought you’d pile on.”
Suspicion collapsed into dismay. “I’m not. Katya, no, this isn’t about your duty or loyalty. It’s about you. We’re worried about you.”
She crossed her arms and said nothing.
“Katya, dear heart, you have to admit this is startling news.” Elanor was obviously the peacemaker in the family.
“I don’t see why it should be so shocking,” Lhyn said. “The Protectorate doesn’t limit legal recognition to any one type of bond. That’s why we have marriage contracts.”
“Yes, but the norm for us is one partner,” Elanor said.
“Not on Allendohan.”
“You told us in no uncertain terms how you felt about polygamy on Allendohan.”
“No, I told you how I felt about women being seen as little more than breeding stock to increase the population. Polygamy is not polyamory.”
“Is this polyamory? Do you love Salomen as much as you do Ekatya?”
“I followed Salomen into death,” Lhyn declared. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more about it, but can you imagine me doing that for someone I didn’t love? Yes, I love them both, equally and in different ways, and in some of the same ways, too.” She rested her fingertips on Elanor’s arm, looking at her with the earnest gaze Salomen had never been able to resist. “I’d be the first person to try to break this down to its constituent parts and classify each one, but it can’t be done. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. You can either accept it or not, but you won’t change it.”
“What will change is Ekatya’s happiness if you choose not to accept it.” Andira had run out of patience. “She has answered every question with honesty and respect. There is little left for her to say, and she cannot alter her heart. You must decide whether this alters yours.”
Alsea Rising: The Seventh Star (Chronicles of Alsea Book 10) Page 29
