by Sharon Lee
“Trader, I guarantee that no harm will come to you while you are under the protection of Civilization.”
“Which,” said Tekelia, sotto voce, “has just lost its Oracle.”
Padi drew in an unsteady breath. Bentamin looked black.
At that precise moment, she felt a hand slide into hers, warm and big and reassuring, and felt a slight, hard pressure against the side of her palm, like the band of a ring.
“I am going with Tekelia,” she said again, tightening her grip around those sudden, surprising—and invisible—fingers.
She looked to the left, meeting Tekelia’s interested gaze.
“I am going with you,” she said firmly. “To Ribbon Dance Hill.”
“As you wish,” Tekelia said, extending a hand.
Padi bestowed her unoccupied hand, felt strong fingers close around hers. There was a moment of scintillant delight before the reception room was gone, lost in a swirl of darkness and light.
Tarona Rusk
Her Proper Business
* * *
She had fulfilled her last promise.
She had dismissed her pilot.
It was now time to complete her last piece of business.
She had found a place to be alone, where her actions would harm none but the intended target.
It was time.
Closing her eyes, she began to gather herself to herself.
Immolation was no more than she deserved.
Ribbon Dance Hill
* * *
Padi felt solid ground beneath her feet, and her hands held firmly in two very different grips. The air displayed a slight, glittering turbulence, as if they had emerged into a flurry of ice crystals.
The crystals continued to swirl, obscuring their surroundings, even as they slowly faded. When they were gone, Padi looked up into a vaulting dark-blue sky, and down on distant trees, and what was perhaps the shine of a stream between the flutter of leaves. The air was cool despite the sun, which, to be fair, was not high in the sky, and the invigorating atmosphere pinged audibly against Padi’s shields.
Father’s grip slackened, and his hand slipped away from hers. Padi knew a moment of panic, that she might lose him, which was only foolishness. Priscilla would be here at twilight, at the behest of her Goddess, and Father would surely be here to meet her.
“Ribbon Dance Hill,” Tekelia said from her side, fingers still entwined with hers. “The ambient is concentrated here. You might open your shields, if you wish to. Even the Civilized are welcome here.”
Padi turned to look into mismatched purple and brown eyes.
“Am I Civilized?” she asked.
There was a moment of silence.
“I hesitate to classify you, Padi yos’Galan. You are near enough to the Haosa that we were able to meet inside the ambient, despite the distance between us. Yet your presence failed to distress any of the Council, who are the most Civilized on all Colemeno. Furthermore—”
Tekelia raised their linked hands.
“This . . . this cannot happen to me, lest we court grievous harm to you. And yet, here we stand, neither of us flung into the ether by the force of our connection.”
Tekelia’s fingers tightened, and for a moment, it seemed to Padi that both eyes were the same dark shade of brown.
Then came a grin, eyes mismatched and merry. “In fact, you are a puzzle.”
Padi sighed.
“That would seem to be my role.”
“And who can say but that you’re fit for it?” Tekelia looked again at their linked hands, gently raised them and kissed Padi’s knuckles. “Thank you.”
Padi drew in a hard breath, unsure of what answer she might make as her hand was released, and Tekelia made a show of looking ’round the sunny hilltop, paused, and spoke.
“If you please, sir, I must know if you are a Reaver.”
There was a pause, then Father’s voice, speaking out of thin air, “Naturally, my first impulse is to say certainly not! But perhaps I will have more credibility if you tell me what a Reaver is.”
There was a sudden impression of fog clearing, and Father was standing only a few steps away, his hair mildly disheveled, and the red counter moving across the back of his hand.
“We called them Reavers, having no better name,” Tekelia said. “They were talents, enslaved, come here at the will of their master to steal any of us that they could.”
Father tipped his head, white brows drawing together.
“Something about this rings strangely familiar. To your point, however—no, I am not a Reaver.”
Tekelia took a deep breath, and met Father’s gaze squarely.
“Then I fear I must ask worse—are you the puppetmaster?”
Both brows shot up.
“You have a reason for asking worse, I assume? May I know what it is?”
“The Reavers each bore this as part of their signature.”
Fog boiled briefly, and there it hung in the crystal air between them, a sleek, dark thing at once repellent and attractive; twisted, like a tesseract.
“My reason is that I see this, in you,” Tekelia finished.
“What?” Padi cried, and Tekelia glanced at her.
“Open your Eyes and Look. I would be pleased to be mistaken.”
“You are not mistaken,” Father said, even as Padi threw her shields down, opened her Eyes and Looked.
For a moment, the intricacies of Sight threatened to overwhelm her. She—blinked—and stared and there—there was the wholeness of Father, very much more complex than Vanz, wider, deeper—older; informed by a life lived on so many levels—
Jewels glittered among the weaving; some threads brilliant, others dull—
But none so determinedly, willfully black as the two threads woven deep into the core of him.
“Who?” she wondered and did not realize she had spoken aloud until she heard Father’s voice in answer.
“Tarona Rusk, the dramliza broken and subverted by the Department, who in turn broke and subverted others.”
He paused, then added quietly, “I saved her life, and she saved mine, which is why there are two threads. For there was never a Healing made that did not bind both Healer and Healed.”
Padi closed her Eyes, and turned to Tekelia.
“What happened,” she demanded, “to these—Reavers?”
“They died.”
“What killed them?”
“An interesting question,” Tekelia said, turning to face her. “We believe that they had been bound so tightly, that when they were cut free—the links that tied them to their master broken all at once—the shock of liberation stunned them. The links sustained, as well as imprisoned—and they died before they could surmount the shock and repair themselves.”
Tekelia looked aside.
“Your pardon, sir?”
“How many?” Father said, his voice harsh. “How many died?”
“Dozens—all that were sent to us.”
Father took a hard breath, another—and closed his eyes, but not before Padi saw the tears.
“That, I do own,” he said, scarcely a whisper now. “I was the knife that cut their links. I knew that some would not be strong enough—but—gods! All died?”
“All that we knew of, here,” Tekelia said softly. “If there were others . . . ”
“There were others!” Padi snapped. “Dyoli and Mar Tyn survived. Surely—”
“Mar Tyn is a Luck,” Father interrupted, “and Dyoli is an enormously determined person.” His face was wet; his breath unsteady. “I knew that some would not survive, but—she was bound to hundreds—”
He stopped and visibly composed himself.
“Your pardons,” he said, and stepped—aside—remaining quite visible to the outer eyes, and more completely absent for all of that.
“Where has he gone?” Tekelia asked sharply.
“Healspace,” Padi said, never doubting it. “Will he—can he—call her to him there?”
“H
ealspace is what you were looking for when you came to me for tea?”
“Yes.”
“Then I would say—yes, he can call anyone he shares a link with to him—there.”
Tekelia’s face was somber.
“Should we,” Padi asked, “support him?”
“No,” Tekelia said slowly. “I think that we would only—be in the way. However . . . ”
A pause, as Tekelia turned ’round there atop the hill, the thick air following in streamers of translucent color.
Ribbon Dance Hill, Padi recalled, and glanced up to the cerulean sky.
“How long,” she asked, “until twilight?”
“Not very long, though the light lingers longer here on the hill.”
Padi brought her gaze down from the sky. Tekelia was standing, hands on hips, scowling. Father remained as he had been, loose limbed and absent.
“How long do you think this meeting will take?” Tekelia asked.
Padi moved her shoulders.
“I—one minute past an hour was too long for him to be absent in a Healing, is what he said to Trader Denobli, when we undertook to rescue Vanz in that place.”
“So we have both a time frame and a warning. Can you follow him there, if necessary?”
Padi bit her lip.
“I—” she began, meaning to deny it—and stopped, seeing the silver thread that bound her to Father, shimmering like a guide line in the busy air.
“Yes,” she said to Tekelia’s interested eyes. “I can.”
“If it does become necessary, that will be your task. In the meanwhile, I ask your indulgence while I call the Haosa together. We must, after all, give the Great One her crowd.”
Healspace
* * *
“Tarona Rusk.”
Shan heard his own voice boom and roll away into the mists like thunder, accompanied by sharp flares of lightning. There was a sense of pointed activity in this iteration of Healspace; the fog roiling so energetically that he had, for a heart-stopping instant, thought he had come to some other place entirely.
But, no—it was Healspace. He felt it welcome him as an old and valued friend; the fog that immediately supported him obligingly shading to pink.
Apparently the invigorating atmosphere—what Tekelia-dramliza styled the ambient—was acting upon Healspace, too.
There was, Shan thought, a certain amount of sense to that. It was taught that Healspace existed in a dimension accessible to those who were talented, and that each Healer and dramliza was their own doorway into that shared dimension. Merely, he had utilized the doorway of himself, and entered a Healspace informed by Ribbon Dance Hill and the ambient enclosing Colemeno.
It came to him, as if a gift from the energetic fogs, that Wu and Fabricant’s “invigorating atmosphere” was precisely why Priscilla’s Goddess had chosen to come here to die.
Which brought to mind, too vividly, that there were other deaths in the Balance.
“Tarona Rusk,” he said again, his voice rolling away into the fogs.
For a moment, he knew despair; she would not answer. Why should she answer? Even as he asked the question, he felt a—tug at the core of him, a stab of pain in his heart.
Before him, the fogs darkened, as if they were become thunderclouds indeed. A wind whipped the leading edge into a froth—bleak, dire, and toothy. The link that bound him to Tarona Rusk was burning, burning cold, singeing the stalwart pink fog that supported him.
At the heart of the storm, a darker shadow moved, and a voice rode the cold froth to him.
“Are you with me, Little Healer?”
“I am,” he returned.
“Now, I wonder why?”
The dark clouds blew, and she was there, straight and edgy, and lethal as any dagger. The links that bound them all but froze his breath in his lungs.
“How many of yours did I murder?” he asked her and, impossibly, he heard her laugh.
“More than a dozen and less than twelve hundred,” she said, darkly flippant. “The brights and the small talents—the innocent, you might say—they were lost to a soul. The stronger talents—Healers, nearly all, from the middle range to master class—were able to preserve themselves, and in some cases to assist their juniors.”
“Did you send recruitment teams to Colemeno, on the edge of the Dust?”
“I did—and they died, but those were at risk in any wise, Little Healer. Lavish no guilt upon them.”
“I cut the ties.”
“You did. And Colemeno is too strange to survive. We had to try, but we never thought we would succeed.”
Shan took a breath—Tarona Rusk held up a hand.
“You will perhaps wish a report, having released me as your agent into the heart of the Department. Those who survived their liberation have arranged a defeat from within. The Commander has been vanquished, and Headquarters is even now being turned over to the Scouts, working through a transition team.
“Your revenge is complete; the Dragon has prevailed. Are you not pleased?”
“Relieved, let us say. You have done exemplary work.”
“I have done nothing, save exact my own revenges and lend my support to those who had shaped and seized the plan for the Department’s defeat. Now, I am needed no longer, my purposes are fulfilled, and there remains one more task before me.”
The storm clouds billowed. He heard her resolve, tasted her intention, and shouted, with all the power available to him.
“NO!”
The murmuring paused, bleakness tempered somewhat by . . . chagrin.
“Now what it is?”
“Tell me what benefit accrues from self-murder,” Shan snapped.
“Aside from ridding the universe of the cancer that is myself?”
“Far better to Balance the ill you have done in the past, with good in the future. You have the capacity. You have the means.”
There was a pause, as if his words had struck her heart, prompting her to reconsider.
“I agree,” she said then, and it was humor he caught from her, and a certain grim eagerness. “I have the means to do some small good. I merely need to divest myself of that which is no longer required.
“Little Healer, I make you a gift.”
There was a distant sense of forces gathering.
And of forces being released.
He Saw it, a wave of dark, brilliant energy, boiling through Healspace, a tsunami of power.
He spared no thought for his shields; rather, he grasped the links that bound them. He felt her surprise, stilled her instinctive withdrawal even as he formed that which he would give her—a gift for a bold and damaged soul; a payment to the future in Balance for the past.
The fogs of Healspace were gentle no more; they boiled, merciless. He might deflect them, but what harm would he cause?
With a breath he opened himself utterly, accepting the download of power.
And in the last moment before he was engulfed, he pressed upon those links that bound them, and instilled them with his gift.
The Healer’s penultimate mercy: forgetfulness.
The wave struck, bearing him up into a boiling sea of energy, smashing him out of Healspace, and down onto his knees, in the center of a circle of staring faces.
“Father!”
Padi lunged forward—and stopped, staring at the taut figure stitched in black flames, his outline fluid, melting. She felt a flicker from the base of her spine—the seat of her power, so Lina had always insisted—as if she, whom her elders had found so bright and unwieldy, was being drawn into this greater conflagration.
From those in the circle—the Haosa, summoned by Tekelia—there came a shout, half in wonder, so Padi thought, and felt one foot slide toward Father, who was burning—burning—into ash.
She took a breath, opened her shields, and extended her hand, sliding another step forward . . .
“What will you do?” Tekelia asked beside her.
“My intent is to siphon off—enough . . . ”
She did, feeling their fingers interweave. Then she took a deep breath—and reached out.
It was instinct, to try to filter the power, to clean it, absorb it. He might, Shan thought painfully, actually survive the process, but if he did, would he any longer be himself? So much power, so much potential for good or for evil; so many things that he might simply solve with a thought . . .
“Father?”
Padi. Gods, no . . . Powerful as she was, still he would draw her like a moth—and immolate her.
“Stand back!”
“Father—do you want all of that?”
Shan shuddered.
“No! But I daren’t release it. There are—” Belatedly, he saw them, a dozen signatures and more. He was surrounded by talent, not to mention—ambient conditions . . .
“Take my hand,” Padi said, horrifyingly, and before he could snatch himself away, her fingers were around his, her grip firm and sure. The power howled, and flowed—he cried out once and saw it flowing—flowing away, through their linked hands, through the links they shared, father and daughter, master and ’prentice; links of affection, links of—
He saw her take fire.
Padi felt the power fill her—hot and cold, joyous and despairing. It swirled, and passed on, past her open shields, into her self—and onward yet, across that other bridge of two hands tightly held, and Tekelia was living flame, free hand flung toward the glittering sky—
It began to snow, upward, black flakes dancing in the glittering air, fading as they danced, until they were gone, indistinguishable from the ambient. Overhead, brilliant against the twilit sky, ribbons of light flamed brightly—red, yellow, blue—and went out.
“Ribbon Dance Hill,” Padi murmured, and beside her Tekelia said, “Yes.”
Padi felt a tug on her hand, and turned to meet Father’s dazed silver eyes. Dropping Tekelia’s hand, she stepped forward to help him rise. He was as disheveled as she had ever seen him, rumpled and exuberant.
“All’s well?” she asked him, low-voiced.
“All is, I believe, very well,” he answered, and drew her into a hug. “And well done. Though I have a question for Tekelia-dramliza.”
