Exile's Return

by Gayle Greeno

  Amber eyes comically wide in appeal, Khar trotted after the cheese, determined to devour it before Koom followed through with his threat. Yes, good. She sniffed but caught no scent of nutter-butter, vague disappointment welling within her. Saam licked his chops, “Sorry. Wasn’t any. I checked.”

  “Well, what brings you to join us?” Foot tapping, Doyce waited while Khar tried to work the cheese from her teeth. Not that a full mouth would hinder mindspeech. “I wanted you here this evening for support, but no, you found something better to do, didn’t you?”

  Unfair! Totally unjust! If Doyce only knew what she’d attempted tonight, she’d have been petted and praised as the “most prescient, clever ghatta in the world.”

  “They don’t know about the Elders, and that’s the way of it. Nor do we want them to know,” Koom reminded her, “so stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I’m sorry, beloved,” she ringed Doyce’s legs, willing her to sit. “There were things tonight that needed doing. I had no choice.” Relenting, Doyce sat, and Khar ingratiated herself onto the little of Doyce’s lap that remained, shoving under her arm, peeping out in appeal.

  “Ghatta, my dear, you’re radiating guilt about something.” Her grudging laugh loosened after a moment. “You haven’t acted this way since ghattenhood. You dove off the wardrobe and went skidding across the table—knocked off my good mug, broke it into a million smithereens. I hope whatever you’ve done this time mends better than that.”

  “Leave the poor thing be, Doyce. Swan and I haven’t finished arguing with you yet. One thing at a time and don’t take out your aggravation on Khar.” Bless Mahafny for interrupting, but what had they been arguing about? No help from Koom or Saam. “In fact, let’s ask Khar, an impartial bystander uninvolved in our dispute until now.”

  “Khar, you be the judge,” Swan appealed, and Khar shifted beneath Doyce’s arm to read Koom’s face, chart which way the winds blew. His muzzle and mouth flexed, tightened to make the corners up-curving, reminiscent of a human smile. Doing it on purpose, was he? “Stormy.”

  “Khar, wouldn’t it do Doyce good to get away from the capital, leave Gaernett for a time? Things are entirely too tense here lately, whether she acknowledges it or not.” Swan shifted, coughed, sought a comfortable place against the pillows. So easy, too easy to forget the evidence before one’s eyes that Swan was a very sick woman, her voice, her manner always so commonsensical, unconcerned. “And I should note that firefighting this far along into one’s pregnancy is probably not a wise thing to do. Brave but not very wise.”

  Oh, carefully, carefully, she counseled herself. How to straddle both sides of the line? Yes, the Elder Mother had ’spoken Koom, and Koom had clearly primed Swan for this attack, preliminary feints begun long before her arrival. Any ambushes? How much to prevaricate, cloud the issue, make it appear it wasn’t her idea? How could she lie, speak untruth? “Leave Gaernett?” Surprise—never a bad opening gambit. “What about Doyce’s research? How can she finish her history if she leaves?” An approving stroke from Doyce. “Where would she go, where would we go?”

  “Oh, anywhere you choose,” the Seeker General waved an airy hand, as if the whole world eagerly awaited them. “As you can see, I’m answering your questions back to front, Khar.” Khar’s admiration grew at the artful conversation. “And I don’t see why she can’t bring her research materials along, write wherever she is. Parse can continue his research here, send along updates. Even visit to deliver new material. About time we got him on horseback.”

  “Depending on the state of his sensitive posterior,” Koom chimed in. Parse’s condition was something of a gentle joke amongst the ghatti, although any teasing raised Per’-la’s dander to dangerous levels, inflamed Parse’s allergies.

  “But I’m a Seeker, this is my home. I’m needed here.” Not defiance but grim resolution, and the unspoken “aren’t I?” rang all too clearly, a sharp chime of desperation. Doyce sounded as if she suspected she was being slowly outmaneuvered, pressing for reassurance.

  “Always,” Swan agreed. “But you know where you should go, who needs you more right now.”

  Mystified yet greatly daring, Khar suggested, “What about visiting your mother and sister?” That explained the tight knot clenched deep inside Doyce, closed from her sharing.

  And almost got dumped from Doyce’s lap for her pains. “She’s not that sick, she can’t be, not as sick as ...” and stopped, face flushing, pinned again by the treacherous acknowledgment, hemmed in by Swan’s and Mahafny’s noncommittal expressions. “That ... I couldn’t ... they don’t ... need me.” “Want me,” she’d almost said. Khar touched the old guilt from years ago, the guilt she’d never quite grappled with, when at sixteen Doyce had abandoned her mother and sister, gone off to train with the eumedicos. Doyce had believed they’d needed her then, unable to exist at more than subsistence levels without her there to partner in the weaving, her sister too crippled to be of much use. It hadn’t been true, but the old guilt was still useful for self-flagellation, and now a new guilt burned as well, raw with denial.

  “They need you, now most of all. And they’ve always wanted you,” Mahafny pressed home her point. “You don’t have to persist in suffering over an argument that faded too long ago to matter.”

  But Doyce had risen, tilting her hips forward, letting her figure speak in mute appeal. “Is it wise for me to travel this far into my pregnancy?” Surely this served as a valid petition, an excuse from her duties?

  “Don’t play it for more than it’s worth, Doyce,” Mahafny warned. “You’re healthy, and I’ll check you over thoroughly before you go. Coventry isn’t that far from here, although I want you to take it in easy stages, that much I’ll grant. There are eumedicos there as well, and I’m sure you’ll be back long before your due date. Another octant, isn’t it? After all,” and she tossed the phrase back with casual precision and more than fair mimicry, “pregnancy isn’t an illness, simply a natural occurrence.”

  Strange to admit, but she did want to go home, be part of a family again, renew her links with the past, her heritage, her future child’s grandmother. There might not be another chance, and the thought chilled her heart. Few active-duty Seekers had children; there were fewer women outside the Seekers she could comfortably talk with about pregnancy, childbearing. Claire had been one, but she’d missed the chance to ask so many questions, her mind still mired in the aftermath of the fire, including Maize’s near-escape that night.

  “Maybe ... it wouldn’t be ... so bad.” She tasted at acceptance, half-convincing herself. “But I can’t leave everyone here, leave the Seekers like this! How will Jenret know where to find me?”

  “I think that can be arranged,” offered Khar soothingly.

  “I want you to go as a favor to me, Doyce. Not just because I’d rather you were clear of Gaernett and its strife, but because I need your help. Please, take Davvy with you! He’s still too young, too much a Hospice-trained Resonant to realize the need for concealing his skills as well as he should. I could send him back with Mahafny, but I’d rather totally remove him, seclude him in the country. Would you, please?” Swan had half-risen, eyes narrowed with pain and fear. “I don’t want anything to happen to him. I don’t need that responsibility on my soul.”

  “Of course, Swan, of course she will,” and Mahafny was by Swan’s side, lowering her back onto the bed, turning her to diminish the pressure on a still-fragile lung.

  “By the Lady they esteem and by the Elder Mother that we hold precious, you may be taking a little haliday, Khar.” Koom would have sounded smug except for his melancholy eyes devouring his almost-Bond, his beloved second chance at companionship. “Lucky ghatta.”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it,” she countered, a deep and abiding relief washing over her. The first part of her task, completed through blessed intervention. But what to do about having Davvy along, she didn’t know.

  “I say we do it!” Eadwin shifted an elbow on the table, reach
ed to move his knight on the board. “Checkmate!” A minor distraction when playing chess with Arras Muscadeine never hurt—not if he’d ambitions to win. Hadn’t Arras taught him that? Arras lofted his king across the room and a “yip” exploded from under the table.

  “Sore loser!” goaded Marchmont’s newest king, “Hardly fair to kick Felix in retaliation.” A lanky black dog with extremely long legs, floppy ears, and a long, slim muzzle scrambled clear, sleepiness and reproach flooding his brown eyes. He ambled off to inspect what Hru’rul, the king’s Bondmate, had captured, nosing the discarded king piece until it skittered and rolled drunkenly across the floor.

  “What do you mean ‘poor Felix’? What about ’poor Muscadeine’ when you choose me as your Defense Lord and then disregard my advice? And make me sacrifice my king, an ill omen if ever there was one.” He shoved hands through his dark hair, brushed at his extravagant mustache, shaking his head regretfully as he studied his ruler.

  Eadwin was no youth, but a man of near thirty with clear blue eyes and a quirky grin, his brown hair and short beard already showing a white streak, the outward scar of his bleak incarceration in the arborfer observatory, forsaken by all except Hru’rul. Conspicuously lacking the easy grace of a ruler, someone bred to royalty and command, Eadwin’d had no hint he stood to inherit the throne, except in a distantly related way. He’d been deeply content as a forester, a graduate of the agricultural college, bent on revitalizing the dying arborfer, those strange coniferous trees with ironlike properties that were indigenous to Marchmont’s northern reaches.

  It took getting used to—a king who took his trees as seriously as he did his subjects. Arras reminded himself of that and more: Eadwin’s consternation at discovering he was the bastard offspring of Prince Maarten, the late Queen Wilhelmina’s younger brother, and bastard solely because Maarten had died before he could wed Eadwin’s mother. Fabienne, desperate, had married Maurice, late Lord of the Nord and Defense Lord, a man intent on claiming the throne as his own with his perverted Resonant powers. Arras walked slowly to where the giant ghatt Hru‘rul batted the king piece, daring Felix to snatch it. With his broad feet, luxuriant ruff, and tufted ears, Hru’rul was truly the epitome of the fabled larchcat of yore, a wildcat of a ghatt. Hands on hips, Arras bent one knee in mock supplication, finally meek, “Yield me my king?” he asked the ghatt, and Hru’rul lazily swiped at it, bouncing it off the polished leather boot.

  “I yield to my king,” he bowed in Eadwin’s direction. “It’s your decision, your right, my lord,” he swallowed hard, “and I deny that sometimes. If you deem it wise we go to Canderis as they’ve requested, we shall, but I’m not pleased with the idea.” At ease behind the chessboard, Eadwin was nothing but frank, open as always; what one read on his face was what Eadwin felt. Pray that the man would someday learn to better school his thoughts, even from someone as loyal as Muscadeine.

  Rearranging the pieces on the board, placing them in some complex, private pattern rather than setting up another game, Eadwin concentrated, shifted a white piece over one square, cocked his head to judge the effect. “You always offer wise advice, Arras.” He smiled again, that quirked smile so like his late father’s, and Arras cursed himself for having been so blind to the resemblance. Equally candid, guileless, viewing the world in microcosm instead of in macrocosm, just as Maarten had. “And I hope you note that most of the time, most,” he emphasized, “of the time I take it. I’d be a fool not to—I’m learning as I go along, and I’m the first to admit that.”

  Hru‘rul jumped on the board, indiscriminately knocking over pieces, flopping on his side and stretching out, sending more scattering. “Go to Canderis? Seeing Doyce and Khar? Seeing T’ss? Play? Ignore black Rawn.” Hru‘rul’s pronouncements tended toward the succinct from his delayed Bonding, but Eadwin understood; Hru’rul bore little fondness for Rawn, nor Rawn for Hru’rul after the frightened ghatt had escaped over Rawn, trouncing him into the dirt. “Learning more from Khar on Seeking?”

  A boot on the andiron, Arras stared into the fire, then turned back to his king. “You’re hardly a fool, Eadwin.” A smile of relief at the use of the king’s given name, the habit of so many years. It felt more natural to them both, but Arras continually reminded himself that the relationship had changed, the balance forever altered, something he must constantly recall with every breath. And he’d been responsible for that alteration by overthrowing Maurice. “It simply is not politically expedient to journey to Canderis. You’re still consolidating your power here, your citizens learning to trust and respect you both as man and king. I don’t think there’s any danger of an overthrow while you’re absent, but I do think it best you consider your own first, not Canderis.”

  The younger man came to his side, a perfectly nice, adequate man, totally average compared to Muscadeine’s physique, leadership qualities, and political acumen. “And there was no need for a Canderis, a Marchmont, until Venable Constant spirited our Resonant ancestors here for safekeeping.” A hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Arras, I owe Doyce and Khar, the Monitor, and all of Canderis a debt. Without them and without you, I’d never have escaped Maurice, attained the throne.” He added as an afterthought, “And for that you owe me—a perfectly good agricultural degree going to waste!”

  Muscadeine hadn’t given up, not yet. “Reports indicate a subtle slippage of control in Canderis. I’ve no way to guarantee your safety, even if I’m by your side every moment of the day and night. They don’t like us there!”

  And Eadwin understood some of that baseless dislike, for both he and Arras Muscadeine were Resonants, anathema to many Caderisians. “Some of them don’t, the rest of them don’t really know us, invent the worst. That’s precisely why we must go, show them that we live in agreement and accord, that we couldn’t envision our world without Resonants, or if we could, it wouldn’t be the richly varied world we have.”

  “And you think they want our world?” Bitterness tinged Arras’s voice. Without volition, Doyce Marbon’s face swam into Eadwin’s mind, the revulsion on her face when she’d discovered he was a Resonant, though one with blocked abilities, another of Maurice’s little jests at his expense. But she had overcome it. And Arras, he suspected, remembered Doyce as well, had been more than smitten by her, but was too honorable to come between her and Jenret Wycherley, despite the opportunities presented.

  “I doubt they’ll willingly embrace our world unless we can convince them it’s viable, that we enhance each other, Normal and Resonant alike, that we take no liberties with such special gifts. Our healing skills alone should make them welcome us.”

  “Think that last statement through, Eadwin,” Arras warned, just as he had so many times before, striving to make the younger man broaden his thinking, weigh the positive and negative, and never, ever assume.

  “Healing gifts, healing gifts ...?” the king rubbed a thumbnail over his lower lip, deep in thought. “That they don’t ... ? That we ... ?”

  “The position papers the Bannerjee twins prepared for you?” he prompted. Reinstated as Public Weal Lords, the Bannerjee twins, Dwyna and Wyn, had provided copious details on Marchmont eumedico training and abilities and their differences and similarities with Canderisian knowledge. A very large report.

  Eadwin groaned, eyes shut in concentration as if rereading each page in his mind. “Hru‘rul?” Since all ghatti could seek out the truth in a human’s mind, Hru’rul had proved an unexpected bonus for Eadwin, able to winkle the forgotten answer to the surface of his brain. “Differences between Canderisian and Marchmontian eumedicos, please?”

  “Pretend. Good eumedicos, but can’t see inside. Ours can.”

  He assimilated the prompt, remolded it to match Muscadeine’s question. “Then we would ... expose them, reveal their lies to the populace?” Arras’s nod showed him he was right, but he’d already bounded one step ahead, “But it’s something they could have if they allowed their Resonants to train as eumedicos! That’s a benefit!” He slowed, consideri
ng, “But anyone entrenched in the old ways may not always welcome new ones.

  “Merciful havens, Arras! How could I have forgotten? It’s Corneil Dalcroze and the Cinquantes all over again! Isn’t it an anniversary of sorts—fifty years ago? But this could be different: Corneil’s actions were totally unsanctioned, he was guilt-driven about our history, was right that the wild Resonant abilities had flowered and flourished in ways we didn’t know. But he tried to right wrongs by himself, atone for the past. What we have to do is win some of the eumedicos to our side! Mahafny Annendahl and some of the others, have them acknowledge not that their eumedico skills are based on years of lies, but to bruit it about that their mindtrance skills are fading, that they’ve requested our aid in regaining them! Makes our visit even more reasonable, don’t you think?”

  Yes, he was learning fast, discovering logical sequences, creating a plausible scenario, an outward justification to placate nervous Canderisians. Damn him for remembering Corneil to bolster his argument when that debacle should have pointed out the error of his plans. Well, one final piece to play, and he played it, prayed he hadn’t taught Eadwin too well, could still outflank him, his knight to Eadwin’s king this time. Let him counter this move if he were so skilled! “There’s one other thing, sire,” and hoped his mustache camouflaged the fleeting, gloating smile he couldn’t conquer. “You’ve no heir, sire. You haven’t yet married and fathered an heir, or fathered one without benefit of marriage, to my knowledge.” Eadwin’s ears crimsoned. “And you’ve named no interim heir. Something we must seriously consider, weigh potential candidates.”

  Eadwin’s face twitched, he began to laugh, harder and harder as if he couldn’t control it, didn’t want to control it. “Naming an heir is easier than you think. In fact, technically I don’t have to—there already is one.” He felt rich enjoyment at Muscadeine’s discomfiture and confusion, his brain scrabbling to decipher Eadwin’s meaning. He’d stumped him, he couldn’t believe it!