Mouse and Dragon

by Sharon Lee

  Her failure gnawed at her, and yet she could think of nothing that she might have done—might now do—that would mend matters. She was at a loss even to know how to discover what trouble afflicted him.

  Finally, with the setting sun casting deep shadows in the corners of the garden, she put her work away and rose from behind the desk.

  She would, she thought, find Daav and put the question to him. He and Clonak had been friends for—since Scout Academy! Daav had been the captain of Clonak's team. Surely, he would know what was to be done to ease their comrade's dismay. Indeed, hadn't she seen that glance between Jon and Daav, when she had asked after Clonak's shift?

  Scouts, she reminded herself, opening the door and stepping out into the hallway; one must always take care to ask the right question of Scouts . . .

  She went down the stairs and paused, suddenly aware of her folly. Where in this enormous house could she hope to find Daav? She ought to have called him, or—

  To her left, a door closed. She turned her head and here came Mr. pel'Kana, followed by a very upright man in sober business dress, with brown hair going grey, and a case tucked under one arm. Upon seeing her, he checked, murmured a word to the butler and stepped forward.

  "Do I have the honor of addressing Aelliana Caylon?" He spoke in the mode of servant-to-lord, which was surely an error; his voice was precise and pleasant.

  "I am Aelliana Caylon," she said, offering adult-to-adult as a more realistic approximation of their relative melant'i. "You have the advantage of me, sir."

  "I am dea'Gauss," he said, and bowed profoundly. "Your servant, ma'am."

  "I—That is very kind of you, Mr. dea'Gauss. However, you mustn't let me delay you, sir! I am only looking for Daav . . ."

  "Certainly," he said promptly. "Allow me."

  With that he slipped his arm through hers and guided her down the hall to the second door. He knocked, one sharp rap of knuckles against wood, and paused, head tipped.

  "Come!" Daav called from within.

  Mr. dea'Gauss turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  * * *

  The door closed behind Mr. dea'Gauss. Daav did not so much rise as spring to his feet, spinning toward the window as if the view of the inner garden would answer his need for action. He felt every nerve a-quiver—some part of which might, after all, be attributed to relief. While he had never truly supposed that he had been the agent of the clan's ruin, he had considered it possible that his misstep had cast Korval into stern economy. Which might well have been the case, had Korval employed a qe'andra any less able than the very able dea'Gauss.

  For the rest—

  A knock at the door shattered his thought. Doubtless, Mr. pel'Kana come to inquire about his preference for Prime.

  "Come!"

  The door opened.

  "My thanks," Aelliana said.

  Mr. dea'Gauss answered with a grave, "My pleasure."

  Daav turned in time to see the accountant's shadow fade away from the door, as Aelliana stepped within.

  His heart rose to see her, walking assured and firm—sharp and telling contrast to the tentative, near-invisible woman who had slunk into Binjali's so short a time ago, and whispered the name of her ship.

  "Aelliana," he said, smiling. "Bored to distraction already?"

  "Indeed, no," she said, pausing at the far side of the desk. "Only bedeviled by my own stupidity and wondering if I might ask you, yet again, to help me!"

  "Of course I will help in any way I can. What has happened?"

  She hesitated, and it seemed to him that the glance she leveled at him was more sightful than previously, as if she saw past face and eyes and someway into his heart.

  "Perhaps I should not plague you, just now," she said slowly, and stepped 'round the desk, her hand darting out to grasp his.

  He stiffened, then relaxed as cool fingers wove between his.

  "Aelliana," he said softly, "what do you see?"

  "See? Nothing save a weary face and some sadness about your eyes," she answered, her own face troubled. "However, I feel—Van'chela, what a stew!"

  "Your pardon," he said, stiffly. "I fear I'm all at dozens and daggers." He slipped his hand away from hers and tucked it into his pocket.

  "Daav—tell me true. Is your clan in peril?"

  "It is not."

  She tipped her head, as if she considered whether that bald statement might yet harbor some ambiguity.

  "Your sister—"

  "My sister," he interrupted, his voice sharper than he had intended, "sees a hundred-year scandal—"

  Aelliana's eyes widened, and he made haste to finish.

  ". . . in a teacup misaligned within a formal setting. You must not, as much as she does herself, take Kareen too seriously, Aelliana. In this instance, you may discount her fears entirely, as Mr. dea'Gauss has just shown me the outcome of today's negotiations." He produced a smile for her earnestness and had the satisfaction of seeing her face lose some of its tension.

  "Now," he said, "you are troubled. What may I do to assist you?"

  She sighed and walked to the open window, leaning one hand against the frame as she looked out into the early evening.

  "I—as you know, I spoke with Clonak—it was the strangest thing, Daav, but I feel . . . I feel that assuring him of my safety failed to ease him, and that I left him more distraught than I had found him. He was . . . very subdued—not at all in his usual mode, and—the entire purpose of speaking with him was to give him heart's ease . . ."

  "Ah." He stepped up to the window, too, and looked out over the riot of gladoli blooms. That Clonak's case was bad—he feared it. He had known that his friend had formed an attachment to Aelliana, as had all of the crew at Binjali's. If his heart was truly engaged—and it seemed now that it must be . . .

  He took a breath. "Perhaps Clonak still needs some time," he said carefully. "We were all of us—anxious for you, and recall it has only been a day since it seemed likely that you were . . ." he paused, wondering if he should bring such things to a mind newly Healed.

  "Brain-burned and unlikely to recover," Aelliana said crisply, which seemed to answer that question.

  "That—yes. Sometimes, it is relief which plunges us into terror, once we are certain that danger is beyond us. Certainly, Clonak has been of that persuasion. Scouts are taught to act first and panic later, when one is safe from the worst effects of stupidity."

  "I . . . see." She was silent for a long time, her attention seemingly on the darkling garden.

  He took a deep breath of flower-scented air, and sighed. She was right, he thought; he was weary, and trained as a Scout as much or more as Clonak had been.

  "Daav?" she asked softly.

  "Aelliana?"

  "Do you know—what it was that the Healers did to me?"

  Now, there was a question he had hoped not to hear for some days. And yet, she had asked it, and it was his to tell her.

  "I know . . . what Master Kestra told me," he admitted. "Which I will tell you, if you like, but I wonder, Aelliana . . ."

  She turned to look at him.

  "Yes?"

  "Would you care to go for a walk in the garden? It's far too fine an evening to languish indoors."

  Chapter Ten

  The Guild Halls of so-called "Healers"—interactive empaths—can be found in every Liaden city.

  Healers are charged with tending ills such as depression, addiction and other psychological difficulties and they are undoubtedly skilled therapists, with a high rate of success to their credit.

  Healers are credited with the ability to wipe a memory from all layers of a client's consciousness. They are said to be able to directly—utilizing psychic ability—influence another's behavior; however, this activity is specifically banned by Guild regulations.

  —

  From "The Case Against Telepathy"

  The garden smelled of greenleaf, damp soil, and a hundred other subtle perfumes. Walking beside Daav along the overgrown path, Aellia
na's hand brushed against a tall lavender spike, releasing a burst of mint scent.

  "To address what the Healers have . . . done to you, Aelliana, we must first allow you to know the state in which you were received into the Hall. The report I had from the pilots at Chonselta Hall was that you were raving, clearly assigning meaning to words which were . . . inappropriate to the case . . ."

  The taxi driver, and her own voice, quavering in and out of audibility, the words tumbling in a meaningless chatter of sound. "I remember," she said, and that was true, though the memory was distant and without emotional charge, as if it had all happened a very long time ago.

  "Ah. Then you will not find it surprising that two Master Healers were immediately called to your side—Kestra and Tom Sen. It was Master Kestra I spoke with today when I arrived at the Hall.

  "Of the most recent trauma, you have been healed. There was, so Master Kestra tells me, some small bit of burn, which she pronounces insignificant. She is, by the way, all admiration for you and the solution you employed to preserve yourself."

  "Solution?" Aelliana frowned, trying to recapture that memory, but it eluded her, lost inside a sound like shouting and the image of a solar system entirely unknown to her.

  "You had created yourself a piloting problem," Daav said softly. "A model star system, the balancing of which kept your mind focused and the . . . more inimical effects of the Learning Module at bay."

  "Oh, but that's standard protocol," she said. "The Learner will not disturb a brain at work."

  "Thus did you save yourself, when those of us who would have, could not." There was something in that which reminded her too nearly of Clonak, but when she turned to look into his face, all she saw was weariness.

  "The Healer who was with me when I woke, the first time today," she said, the memory suddenly upon her. "I had asked her if I were brain-burned. She said she was trying to determine just that, and then—I fell asleep. How odd, that I hadn't recalled that until just now! When I woke again, I had no question but that I was perfectly well."

  "Healers are bright, and terrible, and wise," Daav murmured, with the air of one quoting . . . poetry, perhaps.

  "I've had so little experience of Healers—none, in fact." She bit her lip and glanced at the side of his face, waiting for him to continue, but he merely strolled on, a man communing with his garden. The impulse to touch him was very strong. She curled her hands into fists, counted to twelve, and then asked another question.

  "They—the Healers did something else, didn't they, Daav?"

  "The gloan-roses are doing well, don't you think?" he said, pausing to call her attention to a mound of glossy green leaves and flowers the color of heart's blood.

  "They're very pretty," she said, but he was gone, angling across the short plush grass, to a wooden bench set within the embrace of the rosebushes.

  Daav sat, one knee folded on the seat, his arm on the back of the bench, chin on his arm as he regarded the roses. The perfect study, Aelliana thought, of a man who very much did not want to answer the question that had just been put to him.

  A step out from the bench, she paused, and asked herself, very earnestly, if she truly wished to know what the Healers had wrought. If it were enough to give Daav pause, perhaps she did not. And yet—

  "I scarcely know myself." The words rose to her lips unbidden, a whisper no louder than the soft brush of the breeze over rose petals.

  "Daav." She sat on the bench, folding her hands tightly onto her lap. "What else have the Healers done?"

  He closed his eyes. "Aelliana, have mercy."

  Mercy? Her stomach knotted painfully, familiarly.

  "Have I escaped brain-burn only so the Healers might discover a greater flaw?" And yet, what? What might be so terrible that he wished to hide it from her, when copilot's care—

  And if the copilot's best care of his pilot was to conceal an unpleasant truth?

  "I am an oaf." His voice was cold.

  He straightened and turned 'round on the bench, his feet flat on the ground. Leaning forward, he put his hand over hers where it was fisted on her knee.

  "Aelliana, it is nothing dire—I had only wished you to have some days to become accustomed, and to know yourself again before hearing the rest of what confronts you."

  Anguish swept through her, and self-loathing, tenderness, avarice, and pain.

  "I think," she said unsteadily, "you had better tell me."

  "Yes, I suppose I had better." He sighed, and took his hand away, settling back into the corner of the bench. It took a ridiculous amount of willpower, not to snatch his hand back to her, but she managed to sit seemly, fingers folded tightly together.

  "The other thing that the Healers did is that they pruned away, as Master Kestra styles it, a layer of scar tissue—again, an approximation—from the old trauma. She felt that you might be . . . 'easier,' van'chela, though there was no healing it entirely."

  "It had happened too long ago," Aelliana said.

  "And compensations had been built. Yes, exactly so." He took a breath, and exhaled, carefully, she thought.

  "What they found, when the thing had been done, was—a hint, Aelliana—that you and I are the two halves of a natural lifemating." He raised his hand, as if to forestall the question she could not think to ask.

  "Master Kestra warned me, most plainly, that the seed which ought to have blossomed into a full joining, had been . . . stunted; oppressed by the scarring. She did not—she would not—say that we should ever become what we were intended to be."

  Ran Eld, Aelliana thought bitterly, had been a genius, indeed. Always, it had been given him, to know precisely how best to harm her. Yet, she had loved Daav, now that she was not too craven to call it by its proper name—had loved him perhaps from the first . . .

  "You understand that my brother whom you met, is linked to his lady, heart and mind. He—they—speak of their bonding as . . . the greatest joy of their lives." Daav cleared his throat. "In our circumstance, with the link stunted, or dead—"

  "It may not have had room to grow, but it is not dead!" she cried, and stood up, one knee braced on the bench as she put her hands on his shoulders.

  "Can you not feel it?" she demanded.

  Silence was her answer; or perhaps the shiver of wonder, leavened with fear, was her answer.

  She looked down into his face, angular and beloved, his lips just parted, black eyes watching her with such care. Her blood heated, and a longing so fierce that her eyes teared tore at her, even as she bent and put her lips against his.

  Deeply, she kissed him, feeling his answer in every cell of her body.

  * * *

  Her mouth was sweet, and unexpectedly cunning. Desire stiffened him all in an instant, and he ran his hands into her hair, sweeping it free of the silver ring, returning her kiss wholly, as her fingers stroked deliciously down his throat. With him wedged into the corner of the bench, it was she who had the upper hand, and it seemed she wished to exploit her advantage, as she explored him, each touch an agony of pleasure, as if her desires and his were one. Never had a lover known him so well; nor played him with such surety. He was molten, all but beyond thought.

  But not quite.

  "Aelliana—" Her name was scarcely more than a moan; the question: "How do you know these things?" incinerated as her mouth found him.

  Too fast, too fast. A laborious thought, but thought nonetheless. He reached for her, but she eluded his hands, focused entirely upon his pleasure, and in such manner . . . Aelliana did not know these things.

  He moved, not in passion now, but in horror, his blood going from molten to ice. Loud as he was, he had overtaken her, who could access his inmost feelings through a touch! She started back with a strangled cry, lost her balance, and crumpled to the grass.

  "Aelliana!" He threw himself after her—and froze as her hands came up, warding him, green eyes dazzled, panting with mingled horror and lust.

  "Help me," she gasped, and closed her eyes.

&n
bsp; Help her, when her danger was all from him? And, yet, who better then her copilot—her lifemate?

  He took a deep breath, reached through the turmoil of emotion and spun himself into a circle of quiet peacefulness. For the space of three heartbeats, he only breathed, letting calmness inform his mind. When he was certain of his control, he opened his eyes, and settled himself comfortably on the grass beside her.

  She was panting yet, and shivering where she lay, her hands fisted at her side, muscles hard with anguish.

  "Aelliana," he said, softly. "Look at me."

  She whimpered, her brows drawing together, but she did not open her eyes.

  "Look at me!" The command mode, flicked with precision against abused nerves.

  Her eyes snapped wide, and met his.

  "Copilot's duty, Aelliana," he murmured, willing the sense of his words to reach beyond her disorientation and fear. "I will help you. Can you trust me so much? And do exactly as I say?"

  "Ye-e-s . . ."

  "Good. I am going to teach you the Scout's Rainbow. You saw it, this morning, and thought it useful, eh? And so it is, useful. It is the first tool we learn, and the one we reach for most often. There is nothing to fear in the Rainbow. However, if at any step you should begin to feel anxious or afraid, only open your eyes. Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Good. Close your eyes, now, and visualize the color red. Let it fill your head to the exclusion of all else. Tell me, when you have it firm."

  Three heartbeats, no more, which was better than most hopeful Scoutlings achieved.

  "Now," she whispered.

  "Good. Allow your thoughts to flutter away, unconsidered. Focus on the color red, warm, comforting red. Let it flow through your body, beginning at the top of your head, warm and relaxing—down your face, your throat, your shoulders . . ." His voice was soft, softer, the rhythm of the words timed precisely to aid the student in achieving trance.

  Watching, he saw her muscles lose some tension and felt a flutter of relief.

  "Visualize the color orange. Let it fill your head, to the exclusion of all else. Tell me, when you have it firm."