“Yes,” Eli answered for both himself and Tabita. “And you as well.”
Shironne nodded. Am I supposed to sit down now? Or do we all remain standing?
“Why don’t the two of you sit over there,” Dahar said in a testy voice.
Footsteps sounded around the room, muffled by the thick rugs. Shironne took that as permission to sit as well. Tabita and Eli ended up on an upholstered seating surface to her right, which left Shironne in the center, between them and their elders. She didn’t have any idea how this transfer of responsibility was to be handled, primarily because Mikael had no familiarity with it. She couldn’t skim knowledge he didn’t have from his mind. What do I do?
“Shironne is my sister’s daughter,” Dahar began, “and thus part of the House of Valaren. Her mother will continue to live here in the royal household, so Elder Deborah will act as Shironne’s sponsor within the Family. Queries go to her first.”
Shironne hadn’t known the doctor would be her sponsor. The woman was Mikael’s sponsor also, and Elisabet’s, two people within the Family she already knew. A bit of tightness that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying eased out of her shoulders.
“She’s a touch-sensitive,” Dahar went on. “No one in Lucas has dealt with that condition in decades. There will be some concessions needed, and at this point, we can’t be sure what they all are. Tabita, her supplies will need to come from the quartermaster new, nothing used. If that goes outside her budget, the Valaren will pick up the expense.”
Shironne felt herself blinking stupidly, a reflex, as if clearing her nonfunctioning eyes could clear her mind. I have a budget?
Dahar went on to lay out more conditions, mostly addressing Tabita as he did so, matters of sleeping arrangements—she had to be in the group quarters, which would be an adventure in itself—and other daily functions. He finished his lecture with an admonition not to let the other girls haze her.
Haze? That hadn’t even crossed Shironne’s mind before. She kept her mouth shut because it should have.
“What about duties, sir?” Eli asked in his flat voice.
“She’ll be serving in the infirmary,” Dahar said, “and for the engineers as well, whenever they request her.”
That announcement surprised Eli, but he quickly tucked his response away. “Yes, sir.”
“And, as a favor to the army,” Dahar added, “she may still be asked to visit their headquarters at times. She’s worked with them before. That will be handled through the infirmary, who will inform you of any changes in her schedule.”
Shironne felt Eli’s exasperation swell around him.
From Mikael, Shironne knew schedules were the framework of Family life. Eli and Tabita, as her First and Second, were expected to know where she was at all times, so her schedule had to be posted somewhere. Mikael wasn’t sure where, as every yeargroup had its own way of doing things. She would have to figure that out on her own.
“What about her studies?” Tabita asked.
That question stymied Dahar. “I will discuss that with Elder Deborah,” Dahar said after a moment, his irritation rising. “I suspect she’d prefer to evaluate Shironne’s prior knowledge before deciding.”
Shironne shifted her hands in her lap, tired of being talked about. “I’m good with basic mathematics, biology, and chemistry,” she said, “but my studies in literature and history have fallen off since I can’t read any longer.”
That provoked a quick flare of disdain from Eli, and an equal touch of remorse from her mother.
Dahar considered her pronouncement peculiar, suggesting that he hadn’t given her education—or lack of it—any consideration before. “Since you’ll be working under Deborah, she’ll decide what you need to study. I’ll leave it to her.”
There were a few more instructions, but then Eli asked, “Is that all, sir?”
“Yes. Shironne, you’ll need to go with them now.”
That’s it? She’d been handed off to the long-term custody of two sixteen-year-olds with no more fanfare than leaving one of her younger sisters with the governess? Shironne swallowed her consternation and rose. “Um . . . I’ll need some guidance.”
Again she felt a stab of annoyance from Eli.
“I can help you,” Tabita said. Shironne heard muffled footsteps approaching, and then the other girl took her gloved hand in her own. “Do I hold your hand?”
Even through the cotton of her glove, Shironne could feel Tabita’s careful curiosity. “I . . . um . . . I usually put my hand on someone’s arm.”
Tabita moved her arm, and Shironne set her gloved fingers on the girl’s sleeve. They were close to the same height, so that would make this easier.
Can she sense what I’m thinking? Tabita wondered, her thoughts seeping through the contact. What is she thinking? Is she afraid?
“Yes, I’m afraid,” Shironne admitted, keeping her voice soft enough that she thought only Tabita would hear it.
Tabita almost jerked her arm away, disconcerted. Her surprise spread about her like petticoats flaring out, then quickly pulling back in around her legs.
I shouldn’t have said that.
It was awkward enough to be going into this new situation. She didn’t want to frighten her potential allies. She needed Tabita on her side. “I’m sorry,” Shironne said. “But you should know now, not later.”
The others in the room seemed curious about their whispered conversation but didn’t interfere. Tabita took a careful breath. “Yes, I agree. We’ll discuss this at greater length when we get down to our barracks.”
Barracks. That sounded very impersonal.
“Go ahead,” Dahar said to some signal that Shironne didn’t sense.
Silent communication. The Family were known for their silence. Shironne held in her sigh.
She nodded once in her mother’s direction and let Tabita lead her from the hall. Once out in the hallway, Tabita paused. “You should go ahead, Eli,” she said. “We’ll take longer. Don’t worry, I’ll get her settled.”
Eli’s thoughts reflected relief. “I’ll get back to work, then.”
Shironne heard his feet carry him away, muffled on the hallway’s runners.
“You’ll answer more to me anyway,” Tabita said. “If there’s a problem, you bring it to me first, then Eli, then a sponsor. Unless that problem is with me or Eli, in which case you’ll take it to your own sponsor, Elder Deborah.”
Tabita had begun walking again, slower than Shironne needed. Then again, she didn’t know this part of the palace and might fall down an unexpected stairwell or trip over the edge of a runner and land flat on her face.
“How much do you get of what I’m thinking?” Tabita asked.
“If I’m touching you, I will pick up most clear thoughts. Solid thoughts, I mean. Ones where you’re actually using words in your mind. A lot of thoughts are just . . . mush.”
Tabita calculated, her mind turning quickly like a machine’s gears. “Even through the gloves? And my clothes?”
Shironne shook her head. “The fabric only mutes it.”
“It would be best not to tell the others that. We’re coming up on a stairwell. What do I do?”
Shironne took mental stock of where she was. They were on the third floor of the palace, which meant going down two levels, then to the grand stair that lead below ground to the Fortress, and however many levels down they needed to go after that. She tried to mentally map that out. “If you’d put my hand on the stairwell wall, I can get down the steps myself.”
“Very well.” Tabita lifted Shironne’s hand from her arm and carefully laid it against the stone wall, but not before her relief seeped into Shironne’s consciousness.
Shironne felt the stairwell wall and slipped out one foot to feel for the first step, grabbing with her other hand to lift her petticoats before she recalled she didn’t have any. It was going to take some time to become accustomed to that. She sighed inwardly as she started downward.
“I don’t know h
ow much you know about the Family,” Tabita said. “Should I assume it’s nothing?”
Shironne paused. She’d just lost count of the steps. So much for that. “Um, no.”
“Where do I start?” Tabita asked from the step above Shironne.
How do I answer that? Anything that was in Mikael’s head, she could know. In theory, that meant she could figure out anything about the Family she needed to know. Or the Fortress, for that matter. She even knew about Deep Below, which very few members of the Family had ever seen. Mikael had. As had Tabita, because Mikael had gone down into Deep Below to locate the girl while he was in the Jannsen Fortress. But as Shironne was forbidden to talk about her ability to reach into his mind because Mikael was an adult, that made everything more difficult than it truly had to be.
“Irritated?” Tabita asked.
The other girl must have picked up on her annoyance. “You understand about secrets, Tabita. You know things you’re not supposed to know. So do I. And neither of us can talk about them.”
“You have secrets?” Tabita asked, caution underlying those words.
There in the stairwell, no one would be able to overhear them. That’s why people whisper secrets in the wells. That’s why if two sentries wanted to steal a kiss, they would cross paths there. Those things were in Mikael’s mind, and Shironne didn’t want to chase that knowledge further. “I have secrets,” she told the other girl. “I know you’re a Jannsen, for example, not a Lucas.”
Mild surprise floated around Tabita for a moment, quickly negated. “That’s not a secret.”
“But I shouldn’t know that, should I?”
“You got that from touching me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Tabita’s aspect was cool now, her earlier disquiet returning. “Anyone can look at me and tell.”
Shironne felt her brow rumpling. “How?”
“When the Lucases call you a termite,” Tabita answered briskly, “you know you’re pale.”
Shironne pressed her lips together. There was a faint edge of hurt under Tabita’s words, indistinct enough that most sensitives might miss it.
When they’d first come to Larossa two centuries past, the Anvarrid had called the Family termites, a fitting name since the Six Families were pale and lived underground. It was meant as an insult, though. The term was rarely heard any longer, just as Anvarrid were not often called warbirds either. Time had worn the edges off of those prejudices, or Shironne had believed so. Perhaps she was wrong. “I’ve only ever seen the Lucases before I went blind,” she admitted, “so I had no idea that there was any difference between different Families.”
“Hmmm,” Tabita said. “That’s like saying all Larossans are the same shade of brown.”
There wasn’t an intention to offend behind those words; Tabita was making a valid comparison. “I suppose it is,” Shironne said. “My apologies.”
Tabita didn’t speak, but Shironne felt a hint of impatience from the other girl, so she started down the steps again, fingers trailing along the wall. “Will you warn me when I hit the landing?”
“Yes. Two to go,” Tabita said, her worry dissipating. “After the landing, you turn about and go down again.”
She knew that much, at least, having traversed one of these stairwells before. “I am sorry that you’re being burdened with me.”
Tabita laughed. “Given what I’ve heard, you’ll be pulling more than your own weight. And I promise, I intend to find some way to use you to my yeargroup’s advantage.”
That was probably why Tabita was a leader in the first place.
Chapter 9
* * *
WHEN MIKAEL ARRIVED at the offices of the Daujom on the first floor of the palace, he found Ensign Pamini waiting for him on a hall bench under the eyes of a watchful sentry. The young woman wore an impressively clean tunic and black trousers underneath them—the guise of a servant again, although surely not for the Anjir family any longer. “New position?”
The young woman smiled slyly. “It’s so sad. With all the trouble at the Anjir household, I lost my position there. Fortunately, my sweetheart has a friend in the police commissioner’s stables, and I’m going to go apply there this afternoon.”
The sweetheart in question was one of the housemaids from the Anjir house, one whom they’d known for some time was carrying reports on the family back to the police commissioner. Pamini—who frequently passed herself off as a pretty boy—had convinced the maid in question that he’d gone sweet on her. Mikael didn’t know whether the maid in question knew Pamini wasn’t male. Or if she cared. It wasn’t his business, so he wouldn’t ask. Pamini was good at her job, and that was what mattered to him.
“Good luck, then,” Mikael said as he unlocked the office door, “although I’m not sure that working for Faralis will be a state of joy.”
Pamini rose, laughing shortly. “Not from what I’ve heard, sir. They say he’s a jackass from behind and a goat up front.”
A what? Puzzling over that Larossan saying, Mikael went into the office, then closed the door behind Pamini. “So what brings you here?”
“Colonel asked that I come out and let you know what we’ve found so far.”
“Would you rather wait for Dahar?” He was only Dahar’s aide. Most of his time in the office was spent shuffling papers that other workers for the Daujom had forwarded to him and deciding which deserved Dahar’s attention.
Pamini perched atop Kai’s old desk. The surface was completely clear now that Kai no longer worked for this office. “Colonel says Dahar’s training you to take his place, so just treat you like you’re in charge.”
Mikael stifled his surprise. Dahar certainly hadn’t said as much to him, but it would be like Dahar to make a decision about the rest of Mikael’s life without discussing it with him. He’d long considered Mikael betrothed to his daughter Amserian without ever having Mikael sign a contract or, in truth, discussing it with him. Fortunately, Dahar understood now that, given Mikael’s link to Shironne, marriage between him and Amserian was no longer possible. Mikael had been vastly relieved when he’d been able to send a letter to Dahar’s daughter informing her of that decision. “What do you have then?”
Pamini ruffled a hand through her short dark hair. “Messine and I followed up on the two men who fled the house on foot. One of them, name of Karemen, was found the next morning, only four houses away. He stumbled into their garden and died under a hedge. Bled out from a cut artery. Messine said the middle girl did that.”
Mikael didn’t look forward to Perrin Anjir finding out she’d truly killed the man. The girl was still distraught, clouding much of the third floor with her cloying guilt. “And the other?”
“Karemen ran with a man named Aman Jusid.” Pamini reached into a pocket on the front of her tunic and held up a slip of paper between two fingers. “I’ve got an address in the low town, near the river. Want to come with me to see if he’s home?”
Mikael considered the papers accumulated on his desk and decided they could wait a bit longer. “Give me a couple of minutes to get my arms.”
* * *
Shironne felt the change underfoot on the grand stair, where the marble steps that connected the palace to the Fortress changed over to the strange surface that made up the Fortress itself. She’d felt that surface the last time she’d been here. Not stone, her senses told her, but almost like woven strands of charcoal . . . with air and water flowing through them.
“We stop here,” Tabita said.
“And touch the stone,” Shironne responded. “To warn the Fortress we’re coming.”
Fortunately, it was a wide landing, she recalled, so she didn’t have to worry about tumbling down the next set of steps. She knelt carefully, took off her right glove, and brushed the tips of her fingers against the false stone. Then she raised her fingers to her lips.
No one thought about how many booted feet traversed these steps daily, carrying in dust and hay and animal dung and all manner of disgu
sting things. Shironne did her best to ignore the myriad sensations that flooded through her fingers and her even more sensitive lips. She shuddered anyway.
“Does it always bother you that much?” Tabita asked, curious now.
“Always.” Shironne shook her head to clear it. “The ground is never clean.”
Tabita took her arm, grabbing her sleeve rather than her hand. She guided Shironne back to the wall. “I don’t think the Fortress will mind if you touch up here, instead. The Lucases touch the ground to show their humility, but in Jannsen we just touch the wall.”
Her voice was expressionless, but a flare of exasperation accompanied that last sentence. It was a feeling Shironne had sensed from Mikael before regarding how serious the Lucases were about . . . well, everything. Another reminder that the Six Families weren’t all the same, no matter what she’d believed as a child.
“More steps,” Tabita said, moving downward again. Shironne followed slowly. The steps now were harder but more uniform, making it easier for her to predict them. She let her elbow drag the wall since her hand was still bare. She would have to touch an archway as well, not far past the last set of sentries at the bottom of the stair, so there was no point in pulling on her glove yet. Since Tabita had gone ahead, she counted the steps from that landing down to the bottom—seventeen. Good to know.
She could almost feel the eyes of the sentries at the bottom of the grand stair on her. She and Tabita had already passed several on the way down. They directed mildly inquisitive thoughts at the dark girl and quickly turned away. Family minds were trained to calmness. They kept their emotions under control, especially underground.
“This is the primary sentry post for people going into the Fortress,” Tabita told Shironne as she came down the last step.
As opposed to the one for people going out of the Fortress, she decided. “Do I sign in?”
“No,” Tabita said. “You live here now. Only visitors sign in.”
In Dreaming Bound Page 7
