Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  She cast through every nuance of that memory, trying to be as accurate as possible.

  "There was terrible loss. Personal loss, even worse than yours for your men, Jasak. Like when a family member dies. It felt … as if you'd lost a father?" she finished uncertainly, reopening her eyes to meet Gadrial's.

  "Yes." Gadrial's breath caught on a ragged half-sob. "That's exactly what it feels like. Halathyn was a father to me."

  "I'm sorry he was killed," Shaylar said softly. "I touched him that first day." She had to blink to clear her eyes. "I trusted him instantly. He was very gentle inside. It felt like he loved everything."

  "Yes." Gadrial wiped away tears. "He did. I still can't believe he's gone. That he died so horribly … so stupidly."

  "They all died horribly," Shaylar said, her voice suddenly harsh. "They all died stupidly. There was no need for any of it! I bleed for you and Halathyn, Gadrial?but who bleeds for us? Who bleeds for Ghartoun, who stood up to talk to you with empty hands? For poor, maddening Braiheri, who studied plants and animals? For Barris Kasell, who kept me sane when Falsan died in my arms? Who died trying to keep me alive? We had boys with us, too. Young men, barely out of school, who took care of our pack animals, the supplies. Boys with dreams and their whole lives to live. And they all died horribly. Stupidly. For nothing."

  Gadrial bit her lip, and Shaylar looked directly into Jasak Olderhan's eyes.

  "That first day, that horrible first day …" She didn't even try to fight the tears. "You can't ever know how terrified I was. How deep the shock was, even before you cremated the dead. I was badly injured?your own Healers have confirmed that. My husband's life hung by a thread, with burns so terrible I couldn't even bear to look at them. And then you burned the dead."

  She shuddered. Her mind wanted desperately to shy away from that particular memory, but there was a point she needed to make, and she couldn't do that without facing the memory herself.

  "When you burned them, I started to fall. You caught me?just like you did on the gangway. Do you remember that, Jasak?"

  He nodded slowly.

  "When you touched me?" She paused, swallowed sharply, wrapped both arms around herself. "My Talent was badly damaged because of my injury, but I could still feel your regret. Your horror. It shocked me. I didn't expect it, and I was too dizzy, too sick, to understand fully. But I felt more than enough to realize you'd actually intended to honor my dead."

  His own memories of that dreadful day floated like ghosts in his eyes as she stared into them.

  "And under the regret there was a sense of desperate sorrow?one I finally understood when Gadrial told me today, in this cabin, that you'd ordered your man not to shoot Ghartoun. I didn't want to believe it when she did, but a Voice has perfect recall, Jasak. I can shut my eyes anytime I want and hear you shouting not to shoot. And when I learned that, it hurt me, terribly, to finally know for certain that my friends had died for absolutely no reason except one scared man's stupid mistake. But it also confirmed what I'd felt inside you that day."

  He looked down at her, his eyes still hooded, still suspicious, and her temper snapped.

  "Gods' mercy, Jasak! Why else do you think I was able to trust you that day? To let you touch me? To not jerk back in horror every time you even looked at me? You've talked about how frightening our weapons were to you?what about your weapons to us? You'd just butchered my dearest friends?burned them alive, curse you! My gods, I'd never seen anything so barbaric in my life! You claim to be civilized people, but you build weapons designed to roast an enemy alive!

  "You can't possibly know what you did to me that day! What you're still doing to me, every single day I spend trapped in a room with guards staring at me if I even try to look out a window. I can't go for walks in the moonlight anymore. I can't go for walks anywhere! I can't even take a bath by myself, without having to ask Gadrial to order some musclebound guard not to shoot before I step outside that cabin door without permission!"

  She stood glaring at him, bosom heaving with emotion she could barely contain. She wanted to scream, wanted to hit him with her fists to make him see what he'd done to them, what he was still doing to them. And buried in her anger, making it burn even fiercer, was the knowledge that he did know. That he understood, and deeply regretted it. That he would have done anything to undo it … and that he was still unflinchingly determined to do whatever his "duty" required of him. That unless she could convince him their Talents did not present some deadly danger to his nation and the men in his army, he would take whatever steps seemed necessary to eliminate that danger.

  "It was my Talent?the Talent you're so worried about right now?that let me understand what you were feeling. I wanted to hate you. Gods, I wanted to kill you! I was in deep shock, and the shocks just kept coming and coming, and it was all your fault. I didn't want you to touch me, not then, not ever, but you did.

  "And because you did, and because I'm Talented, I knew you hadn't wanted it to happen. I knew how terribly you regretted it, and how determined you were to protect me from still more harm. And when that happened, I couldn't keep hating you. I couldn't. I'm a Voice?I was born to understand people. I can't help understanding people. Even," she sobbed in rage, "when I don't want to!

  "I wanted to hate you, and my Talent wouldn't let me. I'm not a weapon?I'm a Voice. A bridge between people. A living tool to help people communicate and understand one another. It's in my blood, my bones, my very skin. It you would just stop holding onto your suspicion with both fists and all your teeth, you'd see the truth, Jasak Olderhan."

  She drew a deep breath, scrubbed the angry tears from her face, then shook her head.

  "I can't prove to you that my Talent is no danger to you," she said quietly, almost softly. "But if it were, don't you think I'd already be using it? All I've done is use it to learn your language. If there were something I could do to strike back at you after all of the agony, fear, humiliation, and helplessness your people have inflicted on us, you can be certain that I would." She met his eyes levelly, challengingly. "You'd deserve that, and I'm sure you'd expect it. But there isn't, and I can't, and you're not a Voice, don't have a scrap of telepathy. So words are all I have to convince you I'm telling you the truth."

  He continued to gaze down at her, then turned to look at Jathmar again, and she wanted?more than she'd ever wanted anything in her life before?to touch him. To see what emotions were streaming through him behind that expressionless mask of a face. But that was the last thing she could do, and so she simply stood, waiting.

  Jasak looked at the tiny woman standing in front of him. Looked at the face of that woman's husband and read Jathmar's desperate fear for Shaylar, and the horrible, debilitating knowledge that there was no way he could protect her from whatever Jasak decided to do.

  And that was the crux of the problem, wasn't it? Jasak had to decide what to do, and Shaylar was right. He had no 'Talent" of the mind, no yardstick to measure the truth of what she'd said, or to sense what her true emotions might be. He had to choose whether or not to take her unsupported word for it.

  Despite all she'd just said, it was entirely possible that she could be?and had been?subtly influencing his judgments, his decisions, his very thoughts. The very passion with which she'd presented her argument had only driven home the fact that he had no way of knowing what other hidden abilities lurked within her. Not only had she admitted that she could sense the emotions of others, but the way she'd described herself?as a 'Voice'?had told him exactly how they'd gotten a message back to their own side. And she'd forgotten to try to disguise her fluency in Andaran. Jathmar's progress in learning Jasak's language had been phenomenal enough, but the command of it which Shaylar had just demonstrated was little short of terrifying.

  Yet that was the entire point, wasn't it? Should it be terrifying, or did it simply feel that way because he didn't understand? Because it was a simple, everyday ability of her people which simply lay so far outside his own experience that he couldn't recogni
ze it as such?

  "Sit down, Shaylar. Please," he said finally.

  She stared at him for a few more seconds, then stepped back behind Jathmar and settled gingerly on the foot of Gadrial's bed. Jasak waited until she'd seated herself, then pulled the straight-back chair back away from the small desk in the cabin's corner and placed it for Gadrial. He waited until the magister was seated, as well, then drew a deep breath.

  "First," he said quietly, "I acknowledge that I was in command of the troops who killed your companions and wounded the two of you. That's a significant point, which I'll return to in a moment."

  Jathmar was watching his face even more intently than Shaylar. Now he reached out and took his wife's hand once more, and Jasak realized he was also clinging to that 'marriage bond' Shaylar had mentioned. That he was using it to help himself follow what Jasak was saying with his own, more limited Andaran.

  "Second," he continued, "whatever concerns I might have over the threat your 'Talents' might or might not pose to the other people on this ship, or to the Union of Arcana as a whole, I wouldn't blame you for using them any way you could. Indeed, I'd expect no less out of you, just as I would expect no less out of Gadrial and her Gift under similar circumstances.

  "And, third, I believe you." He saw both of his prisoners' taut spines relax ever so slightly, and shook his head. "I believe what you've told me is the truth. That doesn't mean I believe you've told me the entire truth."

  They stiffened again, but he continued calmly.

  "In your places, I certainly wouldn't tell my captors anything which would help them against my people unless I absolutely had to. I've seen enough of both of you by now to realize you won't, either. But you're also both highly intelligent. That means you know that sooner or later you're going to be very thoroughly questioned. Questioned by professional interrogators who know how to put bits and pieces together and learn things you never even realized you were telling them. For the moment, however, and speaking for myself, I'm going to operate on two assumptions. First, that what you've told me up to this point is true. Secondly, that I have your parole."

  Not even Shaylar recognized the last word, and he smiled crookedly.

  "Your 'parole' is your word?your promise?that you won't attempt to escape, that you won't hurt anyone else except in direct self-defense, and that you will refrain from hostile actions so long as you're treated humanely and with respect. And?" he continued, looking directly into Jathmar's eyes as the Sharonian stiffened with an expression of borning outrage "?I believe that if you're honest with yourselves, you have no choice but to acknowledge that you have been treated both humanely?and with respect?by both Gadrial and myself. I can't undo what happened that day in the forest, but I've done the very best I could to see to it that you were treated well afterward."

  Jathmar inhaled, but before he could speak, Shaylar squeezed his hand hard. He turned and looked into her eyes for several heartbeats, then turned back to Jasak.

  "You want us to promise to be … obedient prisoners," he said in his slower, more halting Andaran. "What about our duty to escape?"

  "Escape to where, Jathmar?" Gadrial put in gently from her chair. He looked at her, and she smiled sadly. "Even if you could escape custody, where could you go? How could you ever possibly hope to get home on your own?"

  "Gadrial is right," Jasak said as Jathmar looked at her mulishly. "Trust me, however much any of us may regret it, you aren't going to be able to escape, no matter what you do. Unless, of course," his smile turned even more crooked, "your 'Talents' are quite a bit more … useful than I've just agreed to assume they are."

  "If escape is so impossible, why should we promise not to?" Jathmar challenged.

  "Because it will affect the precautions I have to take as the officer responsible for you," Jasak replied unflinchingly.

  "But how much longer will you be the officer 'responsible' for us?" Shaylar asked. "I said I trust you, Jasak, and I do. As much as I'll ever be able to trust any Arcanan, at least. But what about that other man?that Hundred Thalmayr? What about all of the other soldiers and officers I've seen glaring at us? Sooner or later, someone senior to you is going to be the one 'responsible' for us. How do we trust him? And why should any promise we make to you affect how he treats us?"

  "Because of that point I told you I'd come back to," Jasak said. "Because I was in command when your people were killed. That makes me responsible for what happened to them, and for everything that's happened to you since."

  "But I know you ordered that other officer not to shoot!" Shaylar protested.

  "Yes, I did. And I doubt very much that even with your Talent you can understand how much it means to me that you realize that. But the officer who opened fire was one of my subordinates. I ought to have ignored the letter of the regulations and relieved him before we ever caught up with your people. I didn't, and after he was killed, after the shooting had become general and I had men down all over that clearing?wounded, dying, dead?I assumed tactical command of the battle. I fought that battle, not Shevan Garlath. And I'd do it again, exactly the way I did it then, under the same circumstances and given what I knew at the time."

  He met the Sharonians' eyes levelly.

  "I had no choice at that point, but that doesn't change the fact that it was my command which attacked you, or that you were civilians who were simply defending yourselves. My men destroyed your lives as surely as they killed your companions, and that leaves me with an honor obligation towards you."

  "Honor obligation?" Jathmar repeated carefully, and Jasak nodded.

  "Among my people?Andarans, not Arcanans as a whole?there's something called shardon. It's the term we use to describe the act of taking someone under your own and your family's shield. You and Shaylar are my shardonai. As the commander of the troops who wronged you and yours, I'm obligated to protect you as I would a member of my own family. In fact, under Andaran law and custom, a shardon is legally a member of the family of his baranal."

  "Which means what?" Jathmar asked.

  "Which means I'm honorbound to refuse to surrender you into any other officer's custody, regardless of our relative ranks. It means my family and I are obligated to see to it that you're treated well, that no one abuses you, and that you're assured of all the personal safeguards any other member of our family would receive. It means that even though you and Shaylar are Sharonian, not Arcanan, any children born to you on Arcanan soil will be Arcanan citizens and entitled to all of the rights and protections of citizenship. No one can take them from you, no one can use them against you, and no one can violate their civil rights. The sole difference between you, as my shardonai, and my sisters or my parents is that the protections which we can extend to you continue to apply only so long as you voluntarily remain under my protection."

  "In your custody, you mean." Jathmar's tone was more cutting than it had been as he made the correction, and Jasak nodded.

  "For all practical purposes, yes," he said unwaveringly. "I'm sorry, but no one can change that. Not now."

  "And how long is your government going to be willing to leave us in your custody?" Shaylar asked tautly.

  "For as long as I, any member of my family, or either one of you is alive," Jasak said flatly.

  The two Sharonians looked at him in obvious disbelief. Then Gadrial cleared her throat.

  "I've lived among Andarans for years," she told them. "There are a lot of things about them and about their honor code that I still don't pretend to understand, but I do know this much. If Jasak tells you his family will protect you, they will protect you."

  "From the entire army? Your entire government?" Jathmar couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voice … assuming that he'd tried to.

  "I think you may not fully realize just who Jasak's family is," Gadrial said with a slightly crooked smile. They looked at her, and she shrugged. "Jasak is Sir Jasak Olderhan. His father is Thankhar Olderhan, who happens, among other things, to be the Duke of Garth Showma … and the planeta
ry governor of New Arcana. There may be one other Andaran nobleman with as much personal political and military power as His Grace. There couldn't possibly be two of them, though. And under the Andaran honor code, the entire Olderhan family and every one of its dependents and liegemen will die before they allow anyone to harm an Olderhan shardon."

  "And the rest of your government, of your politicians, would allow them to do that?" Shaylar demanded as she and Jathmar looked at Jasak with completely new expressions.

  "Some of them won't like it," Jasak admitted. "Some of them will try to get around it, probably especially among the Mythalans. And there may well be some?especially among the Mythalans?who attempt to step outside the law and justify it on the basis of 'national security.' But," he added in that same flat, inflexible, rock-ribbed voice, "they won't succeed."

  Shaylar and Jathmar looked at one another, then back at him, and as he looked into their eyes, he realized that at last they believed him.

  "All right," Jathmar said finally.

  He tried to keep his voice level, his tone normal, but it was hard. Partly, that was because of the enormous relief flowing through him. He'd had no idea Jasak might come from such a prominent, powerful family, nor had it even crossed his mind that the protection of that family might be extended to him and Shaylar. But relieved as he was, grateful as he might be, he couldn't forget that the price tag of that protection amounted to a lifetime as prisoners. He told himself that they'd have been prisoners under any circumstances, that this shardon relationship offered them the chance to live as human beings, anyway. He even knew it was true. But that didn't change the fact that its protection had been extended to them by the very man who acknowledged he was responsible for the massacre of their friends and their own capture in the first place.

  He could feel Shaylar's reaction through the marriage bond, and knew her emotions were far less … conflicted than his own. But Shaylar was Shurkhali. She'd been brought up in that culture, that society, and its acceptance of an honor code which had obvious resonances with the one Jasak and Gadrial were describing. Jasak had finally found something Shaylar understood. A rock she could grasp, use as an anchor, and Jathmar was grateful for that, as well. Yet he couldn't quite suppress his resentment of that, either. Of the fact that it was Jasak, her captor?and not her husband?who had provided her with that almost painful sense of an understood security at last.