Mouse and Dragon

by Sharon Lee

  "So I have also been taught," Anne agreed.

  "We should scarcely care to disoblige the Code, or the guest." He bowed, sweet as a flower dancing on its stem. "I will myself drive you to Jelaza Kazone. Do you leave immediately?"

  Relief washed through her so strongly that she feared her knees would fail.

  "Yes," she said, and cleared her throat. "Immediately."

  Er Thom yos'Galan paused as they came into the garage, his bright head cocked to one side.

  "This is the car that Daav put at your disposal?"

  Aelliana moved her shoulders, impatient to be away. "He had said the blue car, but, truly, sir, this is the first I have seen it." Her voice carried an edge unbecoming to a guest. She took a breath and inclined her head. "I hope that it is not improper," she added.

  He seemed to shake himself, and awarded her a grave smile. "Not in any way improper, Pilot; and it is, since you are too nice to ask, a very good car. It was our mother's. But, come! I see you are in haste to return to Daav.

  "Of course you understand that the duty of the delm is to care for and solve for those of the clan," he said some few minutes later, as they turned onto the valley road. "It is an uncomplicated melant'i, though stern, and with a tendency toward avarice. Therefore, it is the duty and privilege of we who respect the delm, but who hold Daav in our hearts, to be vigilant on his behalf, and ensure that Korval takes no more than the clan needs, and not so much that Daav withers and becomes nothing more than the demands of duty."

  Aelliana swallowed, staring at the Tree, the clouds of evening tangled in its tall branches. Her anger had not yet cooled—a novel sensation. And yet, she recalled suddenly, in the days before her marriage and the damage done, she had owned a temper, and had sometimes defied Ran Eld from what their mother had styled as wildness, and her grandmother as high spirits. Still, it would not do, if her first words to her erring copilot were hard. She ought at least to—

  "Wait," she said, turning to look at Daav's brother. "What if he will not see me?"

  "He'll see you," Er Thom said, as the car crested the hill, and began the race down toward Jelaza Kazone. "If you will allow me, Pilot—plain speaking may serve you very well here." He glanced over, bestowing another of his grave smiles upon her.

  "I fear the delm often measures Daav's portion with a heavy hand. Perhaps you may find a way to leaven that."

  Aelliana considered him closely, this man who shared his soul and counted it a gift, and who was held dear—very dear—by his brother.

  "Perhaps I may," she said.

  * * *

  There was no reason for him to be sitting in his office, with the lights dimmed and the screen dark. Such Korval business as demanded the delm's personal attention was retired, and he expected no outburst of emergency. Indeed, the emergencies of the last two days were enough to sustain him well into the next quarter.

  He should, he told himself, rise, rid himself of his business clothes and—do something. Work in the garden, perhaps; or there was that business of Kiladi's yet to be concluded. Or—he might call Clonak and propose a night on the port.

  Alas, that last was ill-thought, for it brought him 'round again to the sad certainty that Clonak, possessed of the most susceptible heart on the planet, had irrevocably given it to Aelliana.

  "That's two of us struck," he murmured, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. "And neither fit to comfort the other."

  He sighed, and opened his eyes.

  "Really, Daav—such melodrama. Stand up, do, and take a turn around the grounds."

  After a moment, he did rise, and was halfway to the door when it opened, quite suddenly, admitting a slice of brighter light from the hallway along with his brother, Aelliana herself at his shoulder.

  It was quite ridiculous, the way his heart stuttered, and his eyes filled. And it was everything he could do, not to step forward and sweep her into an embrace as she passed Er Thom, striding into the room as if she had every right to be there.

  Which, gods help him, she did.

  Three steps away, Aelliana paused, her face turned up to his, her hands tucked deep into the pockets of her jacket. Chest tight, eyes burning, Daav looked past her, to where Er Thom stood, relaxed but unsmiling, in the doorway.

  "Would you care to explain yourself?" he asked, his voice harsh in his own ears.

  Er Thom inclined his head. "Korval's guest asked to be brought to Jelaza Kazone, so that she might speak with Daav. As this request is in all ways reasonable, I am delighted to bring her to you."

  Delight—well, and so it could be. Er Thom had previously demonstrated a willingness to put aside his delm's word. Nor did either of them, both trained to hold Korval, in case one should fall—neither of them entertained an appropriate respect for the delm.

  "What he does not say," Aelliana said in her clear, fine voice, "is that I was quite rude. I don't know how I shall ever show Anne my face again. However, I am prepared to be rude again, for I will not leave here until you and I have spoken on my topic."

  That was plainly said, Daav allowed; and plainer still was the determination that informed her stance, her shoulders, and the angle of her chin.

  "There is no need to deplete your entire store of rudeness in one evening," he said, not quite as mildly as he had intended. He glanced to Er Thom. "Pray, await Pilot Caylon in the library."

  Er Thom bowed—honor-to-the-delm, damn him—and departed, closing the door quietly behind him.

  It was scarcely latched when she launched her first strike.

  "Why did you send me away?"

  He sighed, and flung out his hands, speaking the plain truth, as copilot and as lifemate.

  "Because it is dangerous for you to remain here. I cannot allow you to reside in peril."

  "So you sent me away without even discussing it? Have I no choice in how much peril I will accept?"

  "Aelliana, last night I overruled you—utterly. Surely you don't wish to wager your will."

  "It is my will and my wager," she snapped, stepping forward into the pool of light cast by the desk lamp. Her eyes were was green as glass, and as sharp. "What right have you to take them from me?"

  He raised his hands—and let them fall.

  "No right," he said quietly. "My reason is that I love you and—"

  "You do not love me!" she interrupted. "It is the woman I was two days gone that you love—craven, shaking, and in need of protection!"

  Shock chilled him, followed hard by anger.

  "I beg your pardon, but you will not tell me whom I love—or why!"

  Aelliana's eyes widened, but she did not step back—and that, he thought distantly, was well. It was ill-done to run from a Dragon.

  "You may not defame my lady, nor call her craven. Frightened she may have been, but craven she never was! She pressed on and did what was needful, with courage and generosity. Her care of her comrades, her joy in flight, her gallantry—how could I not love her? And if she was frail, she grew stronger with every new sun, and I never doubted it, that she would do what she had set herself—learn Terran, master her ship, and shake the dust of Liad from her wings!" He took a breath, deliberately cooling his anger.

  "I know my heart, Aelliana."

  "And now I know mine." She stepped forward, and extended a hand. "I loved you two days ago, if I dared not name it. I love you all the more now that I allow myself to know what it is that I feel. If we are, in fact, lifemates, then what is left us is to consider how best to run this board between us. Separating us solves nothing, and only wounds both."

  "Dare I risk my will overtaking yours, even once more?" He blinked the tears away. "Aelliana, the peril here is all yours!"

  "Then the choice to wager—how much and how far—is also mine."

  "No," he said, quietly. "It is mine. I hold the power."

  He took a breath. "It is plain that the link between us has been damaged. My brother describes a free flow of emotion and thought between his lady and himself. What we see between
us is that I—whom the Healers have already declared overloud—broadcast to you, wiping your signal out. I—" He paused, lifting a hand as the idea broke upon him.

  "Daav?"

  "How if I ask the Healers to block me? Then you would be in no danger."

  "But I would lose the joy of . . . hearing your signal," she said slowly. "And it is a joy, new as it is to me. I propose a method of slow study." She stepped forward, one hand reaching for his.

  He sidestepped, slipping away from her grasp like smoke.

  "Be wary! Here is good reason for fear."

  "I am not afraid of you!" she cried, her anger sparking truth from him, like flame from a firestone.

  "Aelliana, sometimes I am afraid of me!"

  She paused, and he thought that sense had at last won through. Then she shook her head, Terran-wise, and smiled.

  "That's as may be, van'chela. I beg, however, that you will do me the honor of allowing me to love you, fearsome as you are. Please, let us at least try my method. If you see that I am overruled and lost, then you must disengage, as you did last evening. I depend upon you for this, for you will be able to see when I cannot. Is that a bargain?"

  He licked his lips, scarcely able to look at her. His love, his lifemate. His pilot.

  "What do you propose?" he whispered.

  "Sit," she said, pointing to his reading chair, over near the window. "My neck is quite cricked from staring up at you."

  "Very well." He did as he was bid and looked up at her, with eyebrows raised.

  "Good," Aelliana said. "Now, what I propose is very simple. I will touch you, and take time to listen to your signal, so that I may learn to differentiate. Once I am able to know your signal as distinct from my own, then I believe the level of risk for both of us decreases by a factor of six."

  It was the sort of calculation that Aelliana might very well do, he thought. More than that, she might have a point. Certainly last evening they had taken no leisurely course to pleasure, but had tumbled helter-skelter into passion, each half-blinded with need. Well they might try this more modest approach, and he would do what he might to make the course less dangerous yet.

  He took a breath, preparatory to activating the Rainbow.

  "You will please not use any of the skills you have to calm or distance yourself from me," Aelliana said.

  He lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"

  "It will dull the signal," she said reasonably, and raised her hand.

  * * *

  Daav's cheek was soft beneath her fingers, the flutter of his pleasure as apparent to her as the scowl on his face. Aelliana paused, concentrating on these new perceptions the Healers had given her.

  Regarded in calmness, Daav's input was nothing at all like the emotions she felt for herself; she could differentiate quite easily. She ran her fingers lightly down the side of his face, across his lips, noting the growing warmth—his and hers, distinct. It was rather like simultaneously listening to chatter off the wideband and instructions from the Tower. At first, it seemed nothing other than a dreadful mixup of sound, but the ear very quickly learned to sort and make sense of each stream.

  "Aelliana . . ." His lips moved beneath her fingertips; she felt herself warm agreeably, even as she received a flutter of trepidation from him.

  "Hush," she murmured, and reached to stroke those strong eyebrows before placing both hands, gently, on his shoulders.

  He was in tumult now: fear, longing, and a tangled skein of emotion she was too inexperienced to name. What a complex creature he was! Complex and utterly fascinating. Her blood was beginning to heat, slow and inescapable, echoing Daav's longing, yet distinct and very different.

  It was therefore her own choice that she moved forward, put her knees on the chair at either side of him, and sat astride his lap.

  "Kiss me," she said, raising her face to his.

  "Aelliana, I don't—"

  She snatched his long tail of dark hair and pulled it, hard.

  "Kiss me!"

  He shivered and she felt his fear strongly, almost as if it were her own.

  Then she felt his resolve, his concurrence, his desire, and his lips, warm and knowing on hers.

  * * *

  She was pliant against him, her mouth not so cunning as yestereve, but taking her lessons to heart. Daav went carefully, fear at first mixing with desire, slowly dissolving into passion.

  Somewhere in the world beyond she and he, there was a sound.

  The door had opened.

  Daav lifted his head, felt Aelliana sigh and nestle her cheek against his chest.

  Er Thom lounged in the doorway, arms crossed, a book tucked under one elbow.

  "Pilots," he said neutrally, inclining his bright head. "I am going home, to my lady and to my dinner. Pray, do not disturb yourselves on my account! I'm certain that Mr. pel'Kana can find me a car." He straightened and lifted the book. "Brother, I will return tel'Jorinson's Treatise on Trade tomorrow. Pilot Caylon, I took the liberty of having your things brought down from Trealla Fantrol and reinstated in your quarters here. A fair evening to you both."

  And with that he was gone, the door shutting quietly behind him.

  "Is your brother . . . angry?" Aelliana murmured.

  "My brother," Daav told her, with a certain wry humor, "is enjoying himself far too much."

  "And you think that is both amusing and irritating."

  He laughed. "So I do. What else do I think?"

  He had meant it for a joke, but, Aelliana-like, she took it as it was asked. Or, perhaps her terrible new sense informed her.

  "It is not terrible at all," she said, snatching the thought wholesale out of his head. "Indeed, I quite like it, though I must say, van'chela, that you're not half complicated!"

  She sat up, displaying a complete disregard for the fact that her shirt was unsealed, and her hair tumbled every-which-way.

  "Shall I become more simple?" he asked.

  Aelliana smiled. "I would never ask it of you. As to what you think—I can't pretend to know, though I might guess. It seems that my guesses will gradually come closer to the mark, as I learn you better." She put her hand flat over his heart, her palm cool against his flesh.

  "I hereby scry," she announced, singsong and unserious, "you are regretful, you are happy, you are desirous, and you are . . ." She paused, brows pulling together into a sudden frown. "Daav, are you—ill?"

  Ill? He looked down into her face, seeing playfulness melting beneath concern.

  "Not that I am aware," he said. "I will own to being tired, now that the alarms of the last few days are behind us. Perhaps it is that which you scry?"

  She tipped her head, considering, and finally sighed, shaking her hair back.

  "It may be," she said eventually. "After all, this is new to me." She smiled and leaned toward him. "Perhaps I need more practice."

  He bent his head, not loath to assist in so worthy a goal.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Aelliana drooped against him, muttering.

  "It will be Mr. pel'Kana," Daav said, "wanting to know our wishes for Prime, or—" He glanced to the window, noting with surprise that twilight had faded into evening. "Or perhaps he wishes to tell us that a cold meal has been laid for us in the morning room. Either way, we should acknowledge him, and let him seek his bed."

  She sighed, but slid off his lap, and walked to the window, her back to the door, and her hands busy at the fastenings of her shirt. He rose and sealed his own shirt, scooped her jacket up and dropped it into the chair.

  The discreet knock was repeated.

  "Come," Daav called, walking forward to stand by the desk.

  Mr. pel'Kana came two scant steps into the room and bowed.

  "There is a cold meal laid in the morning room, your lordship," he murmured. "Do you or the pilot require anything else this evening?"

  "I believe that I do not," Daav said composedly. "Aelliana?"

  "Thank you, I am quite content," she said, her voice perhaps a
little unsteady.

  Daav inclined his head. "We will serve ourselves, Mr. pel'Kana. Please do not wait any longer on our account."

  "Thank you, sir. Pilot. Good evening to you both."

  "Good evening," Aelliana called. "Thank you."

  "You are quite welcome, Pilot," the old man said, and left them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He found it in a desert, so he told me—the only living thing in two days' walk. A skinny stick with a couple leaves near the top, that's all it was then.

  I don't remember the name of the world it came from. He might not have told me. Wherever it was, when his Troop finally picked him up, Jela wouldn't leave 'til he'd dug up that damned skinny stick of a tree and planted it real careful in an old ration tin. Carried it in his arms onto transport. And nobody dared to laugh.

  —

  Excerpted from

  Cantra yos'Phelium's Log Book

  This waking was both easier and more difficult. Easier because she had the memory of last evening's pleasures to treasure; more difficult because she knew before ever she opened her eyes that she was alone.

  After Mr. pel'Kana's interruption, she and Daav had taken a leisurely meal, sitting together on the window seat and overlooking the nighttime garden. They had not spoken very much—there seemed to be no need. When they were through, she had helped Daav clear what was left and carry it down the back hall to the kitchen, where he made quick work of stowing everything in its proper place.

  Arms around each other, they walked slowly up the stairs. She had opened her door, thrilled and a little frightened after all, stepped inside and turned to look at him.

  "Daav? Will you—come in?"

  "Not, I think, tonight," he said, with a smile so regretful tears rose to her eyes.

  "How if I overwhelm you, and both of us asleep?" he asked.

  "Van'chela, we have spoken of this. Surely this evening's pleasures have shown you that we are safe together? I know you now, and will not mistake you for myself!"

  "Even asleep?" he asked, and shook his head. "We cannot be certain. I suggest that we stay the course and keep to your plan of unhurried research." His smile this time was pure mischief. "And we have done prodigious amounts of research this evening, Aelliana."