Salomen nodded. “I’ve only known him for a moon, but that’s long enough to see what kind of a man he is, and how special you are to him. I would be honored if he accepted me. And I’d have no difficulty in petitioning him, because I’ve seen for myself that he’s family to you. There’s no rule that says the family connection must be by blood.”
“No, there isn’t.” Tal was thinking furiously. Would Micah accept it? Or would he see it as a well-meaning ploy? “We cannot petition him now,” she decided. “He’ll know why we’re doing it. We need to wait a few ninedays. And it’s to our benefit that he’ll be working directly with you; that will help him build his own relationship with you and—”
“Stop that. Listen to me very carefully.”
“I’m listening.” Tal stifled a smile at her fierce expression.
“Family is sacred. It is the thread that holds our entire world together. I would never use it as part of a strategy, so get that out of your head. Yes, it might help Colonel Micah, and I hope it will, but even if it were the only thing between him and an early Return, I would not petition him if I did not believe he’s your family. This is a real proposal, not a trick.”
Ashamed, Tal said, “I didn’t mean to imply that it was. I was just—”
“Working out a strategy,” Salomen finished. “Don’t. I know that’s part of your nature, but you cannot kneel before Colonel Micah with that on your mind. It must come from your heart, or it won’t work.”
Tal shifted her gaze to the windows. “He mentioned you when he was trying to convince me that I didn’t need him anymore. He said you had already filled the hole he might leave by retiring. I couldn’t believe how much that hurt—the idea of him stepping aside because I have you.” A warm hand enclosed hers, and she looked into Salomen’s eyes. “He is my family. He has been for as long as I can remember. We just don’t talk about it. I’ve been so happy these last few ninedays, but not because I have you instead of Micah. It’s because I have you in addition to him—and the rest of your family, too.”
“Most of it, at least.”
Tal squeezed her hand; there was little she could say to that. “I can petition Micah with a clear heart. And I’m grateful that you can as well. It’s a wonderful idea, tyrina.”
“It will be my pleasure, believe me.” Salomen slipped an arm around her waist.
“When would you like to petition him?”
“I think we should wait a few ninedays. Otherwise he might think he knows why we’re doing it.”
Tal laughed. “Excellent advice.”
They sipped their shannel and watched the rain stream down the glass.
“I love that sight,” Salomen said quietly.
“Do you? I only love it when I know I don’t have to go out in it.”
“I love it because it means I’m free for a whole moon. It means harvest is over and I can focus on other things. And it means the autumn feast.”
Tal had nearly forgotten about that. “Have you set a date?” She hoped she would be able to schedule it in.
“Don’t worry, I already spoke with Aldirk. He found a free afternoon.”
“You scheduled your feast around my obligations?”
“Yes, I did. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Ah…” Tal hesitated as Salomen loosened her arm and looked at her. “No, of course not. I’ll be delighted to attend, and I’ll try to forget that a feast honoring your field workers has been planned around my calendar.”
“You were a field worker too,” Salomen said. “And you’re my bondmate. But you’re not quite used to thinking of yourself as part of Hol-Opah, I see.”
“Not yet,” Tal admitted.
“Then we’re even. I’m not quite used to thinking of myself as Bondlancer, either.”
There was another long pause as they watched the rain.
“I really do like the sound of that,” Tal said.
“The rain?”
“No. Bondlancer. It’s a lovely word, don’t you think?”
“I’ll let you know in two moons.”
CHAPTER 20:
True terror
Lanaril often used the act of pouring shannel as a means of concealing her facial expression or giving herself time to think. It was not effective when neither she nor her guest had their fronts up.
“What?” Andira demanded. “Why are you so surprised?”
Lanaril handed her a cup and sat down with her own, looking out her study window for a moment as she took her first sip.
“Because it took you nine moons to tell me anything about your experience in the Battle of Alsea,” she said. “Yet here you are, talking about something even more personal just a few days after the fact. It’s a good kind of surprise. I’m honored that you feel you can speak with me about this.”
“Hm.” Andira wasn’t convinced. “Are you sure it’s not surprise that the leader of the warrior caste had a shekking flashback?”
“Being the caste leader doesn’t preclude being Alsean,” Lanaril said gently. “You’re less than one nineday from a significant trauma. It takes time to move past that.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. What trauma? I’ve been hurt before. Pain doesn’t frighten me. It doesn’t make sense, and I need it to make sense so I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
She couldn’t help her smile.
“Lanaril, I swear, if you don’t—”
“I’m smiling because I’ve just realized that you could never be in any other caste. You’re doing battle with it, aren’t you? Most people would put off dealing with this for as long as they could, or just hope it never happened again. You want to find it and tear it apart.”
“Of course I do. For Fahla’s sake, we’re afraid to use the traditional joined Sharing position with me on top. I don’t want to be that restricted, and I especially don’t want Salomen to be worrying.”
“All right.” Lanaril set her shannel on the small table beside her chair and leaned forward. “Let’s do battle with it. I need you to tell me every detail, no matter how small. What you felt, what you thought, what you saw and smelled—”
“How did you know that?” Andira shook her head. “Never mind. That’s why I came to you. I hate to think how many times you’ve done this with veterans.”
“Too many. But this is different. You’re my friend, and we will fight this together.”
Andira’s defensive prickliness softened. “Thank you. I cannot imagine talking about this with anyone else.” She sat straight in the chair, her posture perfect, and began speaking in a clinical tone about love interrupted by abject fear.
But her attempt at detachment didn’t last, and Lanaril could certainly see why she wouldn’t share this story with anyone else. This was Andira at her most vulnerable, and she felt humbled by such a display of trust.
“Remarkable,” she said when the story ended. “You pulled yourself out of it. Most people need training to do that.”
“It wasn’t really me. It was knowing that Salomen was afraid. I just responded to that.”
“It’s a powerful motivator, isn’t it? Wanting to protect her?”
“I don’t think there’s anything more powerful.”
Lanaril nodded. “Well, here’s the good news. I’m fairly certain the position was not the trigger. At least not by itself. You were experiencing a great deal of kinesthetic sensation at that point, none of which was remotely similar to the sensations of being burned. The position itself and the visual stimulus of looking down at Salomen—those were necessary ingredients, but they wouldn’t have been enough. It was the muscle twinge in your back that combined the ingredients and set off the reaction.”
“I wondered about that.”
“Which you might have avoided had you not joined
mere hanticks after being released from five days of immobility.” She didn’t try to hide this smile.
“Ha. We did well to wait that long.” Andira’s answering smile reflected her loss of tension; just addressing this was improving her mood. “Salomen thinks it was about the burns. She tried to rub my back to comfort me, but when I went stiff as a staff, she realized what was happening.”
“For Salomen, it probably would be about the burns. She doesn’t have your regrettable history with injuries, nor your training for compartmentalizing pain. And she Shared your pain when it happened. But as you said, pain doesn’t frighten you.”
“Then what did?” Andira asked impatiently.
“Tell me again, what brought you out of it?”
“Worrying about Salomen.”
“What is your most powerful motivator?”
“Protecting Salomen. What does this—?”
“What is your greatest fear, Andira? What terrifies you more than anything else?”
Andira stared at her, the understanding blossoming in her emotions. “Losing her. Oh, Fahla, of course. That makes so much more sense.” She sat back in the chair, her wrists dangling limply over the armrests. “I almost lost her that night. When I woke up in the healing center, Micah and I were talking about what happened after I passed out, and I said it couldn’t have been much worse. He said yes, it could. And when he said that, I had a vivid vision—” She cleared her throat. “I could actually hear it, Lanaril. What I would have sounded like if I hadn’t pulled her out of that window seat. All I could think of then was seeing for myself that she was all right.”
“And when you did save her, you had almost no time to process that fact before passing out. Nor did you take much time to consider it in the healing center, did you?”
“After that vision, I didn’t want to think about it again.”
“But it’s still inside your mind. Were you afraid when it happened?”
“I didn’t have time. I just reacted, and then I burned, and that took up all of my attention. Well, along with finding that fantenshekken and realizing that Salomen was sacrificing herself for me.”
Thankfully, Lanaril had enough experience with this to hear what Andira was not saying. “You reacted. To what?” She saw Andira’s brow furrow, felt the too-quick answer coming, and held up a hand. “I know, you reacted to a threat. But what did you feel when you recognized that threat?”
Andira’s gaze grew distant. “I felt…a sense of putting a puzzle together. I’d been trying to determine who that emotional presence was, and then it all came together and I was…” Her eyes focused. “Shekking terrified,” she whispered. “She was going to die because of me. Because she was sitting in my seat.”
Lanaril let her sit with that for a moment.
“That’s the fear in my flashback. Goddess above.” Andira picked up her shannel, a slight clink of the cup against the saucer betraying her unsteady hands. “How do I fight that? It’s not as if I can tell myself I was wrong to be afraid. I was right.”
As she drank, her gaze went to the window, where the top of the State House rose over the trees.
“Salomen was afraid of the wrong thing,” she said, replacing the cup in its saucer. “The day I came to you to ask about our empathic flashes—that was the day she told me she was afraid. Of my Guards and what they represent. She was afraid of me being killed.”
Her head turned, and Lanaril was held by the intensity of her light blue eyes.
“You told me she would be a proxy assassination target. You understood the true risk. So did I, so did Micah…but Salomen didn’t. She was focused on the risk I live with, and her loss of privacy, and all of the expectations that come with being Bondlancer. But loving me almost killed her before we even bonded.”
Lanaril shook her head. “I think we need to separate that. Loving you did not almost kill her. If anyone else had been sitting in that seat, they would have been the target. If Herot Opah had been there, he would have been the target, and I’m reasonably certain he’s not very fond of you.”
“Herot would never have been in that seat.”
“If he had, would you have been able to save him?”
That brought her up short. “I…don’t know. I don’t know if I would have been fast enough if it were anyone but Salomen.”
Ah. Here it was. “What made you so fast? When you told me about it in the healing center, I really couldn’t picture it. You were sitting in a chair, and then you leaped halfway across the room? How did you do that without a running start? Or at least a standing one.”
Andira’s confusion was a gray fog in her emotions, covering the landscape and blocking her understanding. “It wasn’t halfway across the room; I was closer than that. But…I didn’t think about it. I just did it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. What are you asking? You want something.” Irritation thickened the fog.
“I want you to put yourself back in that chair and tell me how you got from there to the window seat, and pulled Salomen out of it, in what sounds to me like a physically impossible feat. What fueled that?”
Andira watched her with narrowed eyes, and the fog grew thicker still. They were going in the wrong direction.
“I know this is difficult,” Lanaril said. “And I’m sorry to be asking all of these questions about a time you don’t want to remember. But I wasn’t there; you were. You’re the only one who can solve this. Let me ask you a different way. What were you feeling when you made that leap? Determination? Anger?”
“Utter terror,” Andira said without hesitation. She stopped then, as if she had just heard herself, and the fog lifted.
“Loving you did not almost kill her.” Lanaril repeated her earlier words and watched them take root this time. “It saved her. You would not have been that terrified for anyone else. You did the impossible for her.”
Andira’s eyes were wide. “Fear is a weapon,” she said. “Practically the first lesson we learn.”
“And you used it.”
“I did.” Her features relaxed. “So that’s what I need to remember if I have another flashback.”
“That’s how you fight it,” Lanaril agreed. “If it ever happens again, and I don’t think that’s very likely, because the set of circumstances that led up to it were very specific. But don’t shy away from remembering what happened that night. That kind of fear, the kind that comes out in flashbacks—it lives in shadows. In the unexamined parts of your memory. It maintains its strength only as long as it can slink along unnoticed, with no light shining on it. But you can think about that night without flinching. You know that fear saved Salomen. You used it. It’s not your enemy. It’s your weapon.”
Andira dropped her head, then looked up with a smile of relief that transformed her face. “Lanaril…thank you. I don’t know what to say. You are—”
She stopped, gave one quick nod, and then did something Lanaril had never expected: she held up both palms.
“You are a treasured friend,” she said simply.
The gesture meant so much more than that, as did the solid warmth of her affection, and Lanaril blinked back tears as she raised her own hands. “As you are mine. Fahla blessed me the day you overrode my quiet time and walked into this study.”
They wove their fingers together and stayed that way for some time, smiling at each other. At last Andira released their hands and reached for her cup. “But you have got to get a better shannel dispenser.”
Lanaril laughed. “Any time the Lancer wishes to put that in the temple budget, she should feel free to do so.”
CHAPTER 21:
Skimming Ehron
It was two days before Tal and Salomen could meet with Councilor Ehron. In the meantime, they met with Councilors from four other castes to throw off suspicion. Tal
had thoroughly enjoyed watching Salomen put them at ease, asking questions about their work in the State House and listening with an air of active interest that invariably resulted in a final invitation for her to please call them if she wished to know anything else.
“I must congratulate Micah on his instruction,” Tal said when Councilor Treslen from the builder caste had shut the door behind him. “You already know how to play the role of Bondlancer. They’re eating out of your hand.”
“They’re meeting me with you sitting beside me,” Salomen pointed out. “It would hardly be to their benefit to treat me rudely.”
“Believe me, if they wanted to be rude, my presence wouldn’t stop them. There are ways to do it while appearing polite and respectful.”
“And you think that’s a skill limited to Councilors? Come to a producer caste house meeting in Granelle some time. No one can throw a polite insult like a small-town producer. Especially when we all know each other’s business.”
“Or not-so-polite insults, in the case of Gordense Bilsner.”
“He doesn’t know how to be polite. He thinks it’s beneath him.”
“Actually, I was thinking of you telling him that the only reason your name was still good was because you’d turned down his bond offer. I still wish I’d been there to see that.”
Salomen chuckled. “Compared to what I wanted to say to him, that was polite.”
An approaching presence alerted them to their next appointment, and soon Tal was introducing Councilor Ehron and Salomen to each other. He was an average man in both height and appearance, and unable to completely front his nervousness at being asked to a private audience with the Lancer. Sitting straight-backed in his chair, he touched Salomen’s palm and said, “I’m honored to meet the producer who had the horns to challenge our Lancer.”
“And look where it got me,” Salomen said. “An entire moon of meetings. So much for the glamour of rank.”
Without a Front: The Warrior's Challenge (Chronicles of Alsea Book 3) Page 17
