Shadow of the Swan (Book Two of the Phoenix Legacy)

by Wren, M. K.

  “I didn’t expect to see you up so early,” she said. “Dr. Lile won’t be happy to find you gamboling in the pool when you should be in bed.”

  Alexand laughed, resting his folded arms on the rim of the pool.

  “Has he complained?”

  “He isn’t awake yet.”

  “Then we’ll worry about that later.” He pulled himself up into a sitting position on the rim. “There’s a towel on the table over there . . .”

  She went to the table and tossed the towel to him as she returned. He dried his face, then came to his feet. Her hand was ready when he swayed with the too-sudden movement. He laughed as he tied the towel around his waist.

  “I guess I’m not used to the gravity level yet.”

  One eyebrow came up. “Or maybe you shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”

  He paused, feeling already a bittersweet regret that wasn’t yet mordant because for the moment she was still here. He leaned down to kiss her, his eyes closing. When he drew away from her, he studied her a moment, then smiled.

  “I’ve gotten you all wet.”

  “I’ll dry under this ’bubble in a short time.” She sighed, touching the bandages on his wrists. “Alex, how are you feeling? Really?”

  He kissed her lightly to distract her from the bandages.

  “I took a reading with Dr. Perralt’s biomonitor, and all systems are functioning properly.”

  “Still, you should be resting.”

  “Adrien, in three days I’ll be on my own again. I won’t regain my strength lying in bed.”

  “No. I suppose not.” Her eyes were briefly downcast, then she looked up with a quick smile. “Get yourself dry and covered before you get a chill, and I’ll have Mariet bring some breakfast.”

  Adrien took out her pocketcom and spoke into it while he gave himself a cursory drying, then pulled on a robe, and sank into one of the lounge chairs, reveling in the warmth on his sun-starved skin.

  “I hope you slept again last night, Alex. I should feel guilty for keeping Dr. Lile’s patient awake so long.” She sat down on the lounge beside him, laughing softly. “But I don’t.”

  “It was I who kept us both awake. I slept again; very well, in fact. Did you?”

  “Not really. I couldn’t make my eyes stay closed. Haven’t you ever had a dream so lovely you didn’t want to wake up and find it gone? That’s what last night was like, except in reverse.”

  He felt his smile slip away. It would all be gone soon. That awareness stood like a shadow behind their every word.

  “Alexand . . .” Her fingers were light against his lips. “You’re thinking future tense. I can feel it.”

  “I can’t ignore the future.”

  “Neither can you do anything about it at the moment. Joy in the present tense, love. Remember? Three days. That’s a miracle.”

  He smiled at her, watching the sun-glints in her hair.

  “More than a miracle.”

  “A Rightness. That’s what Malaki would call it.” She took a deep breath, her eyes veiled with remembrance. “He told me about the Brother. And about Saint Richard the Lamb. The Bonds showed great perception in making Rich a saint. I haven’t talked to Malaki for some time; I must go see him when I get back to—” She stopped, and it was more than the awareness of their impending separation.

  The marriage. The Selasid marriage. She hadn’t once mentioned it, and it was more a shadow than the separation.

  “Adrien . . .”

  Her hand tightened on his and she smiled. “What a luxury to have hours and days when I never imagined having even minutes.”

  The subject of the marriage was closed for now. He nodded and pulled her into his arms.

  “A luxury, indeed.”

  She settled comfortably into his embrace, her head on his shoulder.

  “But, Alex, I won’t indulge myself to the point of depriving you of rest.” She frowned briefly, then, “Thank the God for Dr. Lile. I suppose I shouldn’t have brought him here, but you were so ill.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” He felt a little uneasy. Perralt’s double identity was one thing he’d withheld from her, but only because he wanted to talk to Perralt and Ben first. He intended to tell her; he would need a line of communication with her in the future.

  And there was something he intended to discuss with Erica. Why had his conditioning failed in so many areas with Adrien? They were general and nonspecific areas, to be sure, but he had been surprised at how much he could tell her before the conditioned restraints went into effect. Perhaps it was because in his mind she was so much a part of him, of his life and hopes, she was in a sense a part of the Phoenix. Rich, he knew, would have understood.

  Adrien was still frowning; she seemed distracted.

  “Dr. Lile would never betray you, Alex. You needn’t be concerned about that. Still, I wouldn’t have involved him if I hadn’t been so worried about you. I’m sorry I had to . . . burden him with it.”

  Alexand’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m afraid he’s ill. His heart, I think, but he won’t talk about it, especially now that he knows about—” She stopped. The marriage again.

  “I’m sorry if he is ill.” And he was wondering if Ben knew about it. Probably not.”

  She called up a smile. “Well, Dr. Lile is an excellent physician; he’ll take good care of himself. Perhaps you’d like to go up to the roof and see my view.”

  He didn’t comment on the change of subject. “Adrien, I’d like to do whatever you’d like, and it doesn’t really matter what it is.”

  She laughed, then looked toward the retreat. “Whatever we do, I’m going to see that you get some breakfast first. Here comes Mariet.”

  “It isn’t as elegant as your viewpoint pavilion in Concordia,” Adrien said as they stepped out of the lift.

  Your viewpoint pavilion. It seemed so alien, both the memory and the possessive pronoun. He walked with her across the roof, absorbing the sunlight as he did her presence. When she reached the bench against the railing, she rested one knee on it, looking eastward, a smile curving her lips.

  “I suppose you have to be born to views like this to love them.”

  Alexand looked out over the stark vista, senses straining with the equivocal readings of distance, the clarity of the atmosphere. the strong contrasts between light and shadow, the nearness of the horizon.

  It was a landscape divided. To the right, a desert whose glaring ochres were softened with a haze of green-tinged gray—the pygmy forests, also called the Marching Forests because they migrated constantly with the melting and freezing of the icecap, dependent on its precious moisture. None of the plants were more than a meter in height, many nearly microscopic. The dry gray-green faded toward the south, the yellow ground rolling toward the horizon and a range of naked hills whose origin in the upthrust of a fault block was clearly evident in this land where erosion was limited to the workings of wind and the slow grinding of extreme temperatures.

  The Barrens. This was the temperate zone of Castor. Girdling the equator was the real desert, the Midhar, where no form of life survived. The furious winds were all that moved there, and the sands driven by them. Alexand knew of the Midhar only vicariously, and it was enough to adjust his senses to the Barrens now. And the icecap.

  The left half of this view was a startling contrast to the right: an expanse of white vanishing over the close horizon, reflecting the sunlight in a brutal glare. Between the icecap and the Barrens was a pied joining, fingers of ice laced with patches of ochre and olive gray.

  This land offered no green welcome to human beings as Pollux did. Castor was one vast, indifferent wilderness that suffered a man to survive unprotected on its surface for a matter of minutes in its temperate zones, or seconds in its polar and equatorial z
ones.

  Yet there was beauty here. Perhaps it was because he was seeing it with Adrien. She respected this dry-hued land, and didn’t despise it because it didn’t welcome her.

  “Sometimes we have auroras,” she said, looking up at the star-dusted morning sky. “Even in the daytime you can see them, but at night they’re beyond description. In the winter I’m entirely surrounded by ice, and the reflections—it’s like being immersed in a sea of color.”

  He smiled, enjoying her rapt pleasure as much as the images she called up.

  “I’d like to see that. Perhaps one day I will.”

  She looked at him soberly. “I hope so. Alex, you look pale. Are you—”

  “I’m all right.” He sat down on the bench, turning to face her when she seated herself beside him. He was feeling the draining weariness peculiar to the aftermath of illness, and the lighter gravity level only accentuated it, giving him a disconcerting sensation of lightheadedness. “I’ll rest, Adrien, but allow me a little more time to enjoy the sun before I consign my body to that bed.”

  “I get the feeling you don’t like that bed.”

  “Oh, it’s beautifully comfortable. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m not used to such comfort.”

  “Alex, do you miss the old life?”

  He gave her a crooked smile. “You mean the comfortable beds?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  He tilted his head back to look up into the dark sky.

  “I don’t miss it, and I have no regrets, except for the pain I’ve caused others. I hope I can justify that.”

  “You will,” she said flatly. “Do you think you and your father will ever come to terms again?”

  He paused, then, “I don’t know. I hope so for many reasons, some of them entirely personal.”

  “They say he’s changed a great deal.”

  “Yes, he’s changed. I haven’t been out of touch with the old life, Adrien. Our intelligence system is excellent.” He studied the patterns in the mosaic pavement. “Do you know the Lady Olivet?”

  “Yes. Only on a social plane, really, although she and your father have both been very kind to me. I met your half sister last year. Alexandra.” Adrien smiled to herself. “She’s a pretty child; she laughs so much.”

  “And Justin?”

  “I haven’t been to Concordia since Justin came along. Alex, Olivet is a gracious and sensitive young woman. I think she’s made your father very happy.”

  He smiled at that assurance that went so directly to the real question behind his oblique inquiries.

  “I’m happy for his sake, then.”

  “And I’m happy for that.” Then she turned to gaze out over the arid landscape, a tension underlying her composure now. He waited silently, knowing what must come next.

  “Alexand, there’s one matter both of us would prefer to ignore, but it must be dealt with.” She paused, her eyes opaque. “The Selasid marriage.”

  There was no beauty in the landscape now, only a promise of death. He read contempt in her eyes, knowing it was for Karlis, read resignation, and behind it, dread. It was the dread that made his hand tighten on the railing.

  She looked around at him, her hand closing over his. “Alex, don’t blame yourself for this.”

  “I can’t ignore the fact that I made it possible.”

  “You did what you had to do—as I must. We’re both products of the same school, burdened from infancy with obligations and taught that failure to meet them is tantamount to treason. You found it necessary to turn to a kind of treason, just as Rich did, but still, you’re acting on the imperatives of duty, and so must I. You can’t betray the Phoenix, and I can’t betray my father or the House.”

  He wondered how she kept her voice so level, and wondered if he’d ever entirely understand the paradox she was. He turned his hand, enclosing hers in his.

  “I know that, Adrien, but the marriage isn’t a fact yet. There’s still time.”

  “Yes, and still hope. I assume the Phoenix has tried to stop it.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “But with no success, and that’s understandable. Alex, Father’s desperate; Selasis has him backed to the edge. Besides, it’s unlikely I’ll be offered another scion of a Directorate House. I think I’ve succeeded in alienating all the available scions.”

  “You had help with some of them.”

  Her brows came up. “The Phoenix? Well, that should teach me humility. I thought I’d managed it all on my own.”

  He smiled fleetingly. “You didn’t need much help.”

  She laughed, but it faded as she turned toward the serrated horizon.

  “Ironic, isn’t it? You and I are already husband and wife legally. The only problem is you’re also legally dead.”

  His mouth tightened. “Or legally a traitor.”

  She shrugged. “That detail will be taken care of when you’re resurrected, I’m sure, and when you are, the Woolf-Eliseer Contracts of Marriage should take legal precedence over . . . any subsequent contracts. Tell me, when the Phoenix was calculating means of dealing with this marriage, what did they think I’d do about it?”

  “We couldn’t calculate that, but no one expected you to betray your father by trying to escape the marriage.”

  “I’ve never even considered that. But you’ve forced me into a drastic change of course by being alive. I found myself in a very unique position, and I intended to take full advantage of it.”

  He felt a constriction in his throat, remembering that wry laughter from other years, knowing it always masked grave purpose. “How was your position unique?”

  “In two ways. First, I’d be the wife of Orin Selasis’s sole heir. Second, I didn’t care whether I lived or died. There’s freedom in that. No courage; it doesn’t take courage to risk something you don’t care about. But the result is much the same, and in a way I’m sorry to lose that freedom. It was in my power to bring the House of Selasis to an ignominious end, with all the sons-in-law clawing over the remains.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How did you plan to accomplish that?”

  “Very simply. I planned to kill Karlis.” She gave Alcxand an oblique smile. “But not all at once, and not in such a way that I could be held responsible for it. Orin wouldn’t limit his revenge to me. He’d make Father and the House suffer, too. That was the most difficult part. My first thought was simply to carry a gun—or perhaps a knife would be more fitting—and use it at the first opportunity, but I realized that for Father’s sake I’d have to be more subtle.” Her eyes were obdurate as stone, her smile chill as the dark sky. Alexand could only gaze at her helplessly, waiting for her to go on.

  “I did some research on poisons, and, oddly enough, the best possibility came—in all innocence, of course—from the gentle Malaki. He warned me of a Polluxian plant called ‘death hemus’ that mimics the true hemus. It’s a cumulative poison. The University memfiles tell me it’s also virtually undetectable, and the symptoms are so close to hypertensive stroke, it’s unlikely anyone would look for it. Of course, after Karlis’s demise Orin might still try to get an heir of me— he probably keeps a sperm reserve for Karlis, even if the Board of Succession frowns on it—but I was prepared to die before I bore any heir to Karlis, however conceived, and even if Orin made a prisoner of me, I’d still have one escape, the ultimate escape of death.”

  Alexand turned away. It was intolerable to hear her speak so casually of her death. But none of this was unexpected or surprising. Still, it was some time before he trusted his voice enough to speak.

  “This is why I had to come to you now. I knew you wouldn’t accept this marriage passively. I didn’t know exactly what you might do, but I knew you’d do something. And I didn’t know if it would make any difference to you that I was alive, or that there was a fain
t hope for my resurrection, but I had to tell you. You had to know.”

  She closed her eyes, but not before he saw the glint of tears held behind her lashes.

  “Oh, Alexand, did you really think it would make no difference? It changes everything. You’ve saved my life in a sense. I’ll not die willingly now, not for any reason.”

  I’ll not die willingly. He took little comfort in that qualification. He knew her and the Selasids too well.

  “Adrien, I can’t tolerate even the thought of the grief I made you suffer, and I don’t think I could survive what I inflicted on you.”

  A mute sadness was reflected in her eyes. “I know, and I don’t think I could survive it twice. And yet . . .” She took a deep breath before she went on. “Alex, I must ask a pledge of you.”

  He hesitated, then, “What pledge, Adrien?”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to sit like the fairy-tale princess in her tower, wringing her hands while you, or the Phoenix, fight the dragon. I won’t be relegated to that role. I’ll take part in the battles that will determine my fate—our fate—in any way I can. This is the pledge I ask of you, Alexand: trust me; give me the freedom to take any course, and any risks, I feel necessary. Don’t try to stop me or limit me out of fear for my life.”

  He couldn’t meet her eyes; he was numb and aching. The price of this pledge would be paid in fear. But there was no decision to be made. Adrien Eliseer wouldn’t be confined even if he asked it of her; the wind wouldn’t be caged.

  “Adrien,” he said softly, “let me think of you as a princess. Don’t deny me that. But I won’t relegate you to a safe tower, not even if it were in my power to do so.”

  She pressed his hand. “Thank you, love.”

  “For what? Recognizing a truth? Call it a pledge if you will, but, please, give me at least some hint of what you intend to do outside your tower.”

  “I intend to keep myself free, that’s all. Free to honor the Woolf-Eliseer contracts when you’re resurrected.”

  “But how, Adrien?”

  “I can’t answer that now, Alex. I have no idea what I’ll do—what I can do. The only honorable way out is the cloisters, really, but it’s too late for that. I may have to go through with the wedding; the ceremony. That’s for Father.”