She loved Ronan, and he loved her. This was his mother as no human had ever been.
"Hanno," he said, a world of affection in his voice, "ilku se Va Cynara D'Accorso."
The shaaurin turned immediately to Cynara. Her entire being smiled. She spoke softly and inclined her head, ears lowered.
"Hanno greets you," Ronan said. "She apologizes that she does not speak the human tongue and asks your forbearance. I have told her that you understand."
"Please convey all that is necessary," Cynara said, "and tell her how pleased I am to meet the one who cared for you as a child."
Ronan translated, and Hanno virtually beamed. She hurried back to the other shaauri, spoke to them in low tones, and vanished through a door at the rear of the room.
"Hanno brings tea and refreshments," Ronan said, smiling faintly. "She always feared that I did not get enough to eat."
Cynara felt a rush of gratitude. "She is quite… radiant. I can see that she would be very good with children, of any species."
"I am glad you think so." He took both her hands in his. "It is important to me that you understand."
That was why he had brought her here last of all, to prove that shaauri could love, that he had known true caring in his time among them.
The gap between species had never been narrower than it was here, in a nursery that might have been transplanted from any human world. She had begun to like Sihvaaro; she liked Hanno already, knowing that she had loved Ronan unconditionally when others had hurt and abused him.
Did two individuals atone for the sins of all the rest? And if they did… if she began to believe that the shaauri deserved equal consideration in the long war with humanity… how could she hope to persuade Ronan that only the human cause was just?
She dodged Ronan's gaze and watched the other li'laik'in, who was speaking in a soft voice to the children. "What is she saying?"
"She tells the story of the First Selection. Would you hear it?"
"Please."
"In ancient days," Ronan began in the measured tones of ritual, "when all shaauri lived upon Aur, there was no Selection. Though every other creature had learned its place and purpose, shaauri rebelled and refused to seek harmony with the land.
"In ancient days, before shaauri journeyed to the stars, Clans fought among one another in the manner of savages, without order or purpose.
"In ancient days, all fur was of a single pattern, so that one shaaurin might not be known from another.
"Because there was no Selection, a shaaurin might follow any Path regardless of need or ability, and there was much sorrow and unhappiness.
"Because there was no be'rokh-kaari'la, the young did not know when to become adults.
"Because there was no an'lai, the land was not cultivated, and Clan fought with Clan over hunting rights to feed the people.
"Because there was no li'lai, children were left orphaned with none to care for them.
"Because there was no ri'lai, shaauri lacked the beauty and the depth of spirit that raises us above the beasts.
"Because there was no ki'lai, reason was abandoned for unreason, and shaauri could not learn better ways.
"Because there was no ve'lai, all shaauri fought each other regardless of age or strength, and thousands died in the chaos of battle.
"Because there was no va'lai, all shaauri were ruled by their own wills and heeded no other, caring little for the harm they wrought in their selfishness.
"So it was the elders of those ancient days who saw that shaauri must change or die, and they gathered in council to call upon the First Ancestors. 'What must we do,' they asked, 'to bring peace to our people?'
"The First Ancestors took pity upon the ancient ones and said, 'You must send the young of each Clan into the wilderness and bid them find a new Path. This alone will bring peace to Aur.'
"So it was that the elders gathered the young as they were bid, but the ba'laik'i of those ancient days were stubborn and did not wish to follow the word of the First Ancestors. Then came upon them a great desire, sent by the First Ancestors, to leave their Clans and seek that which they did not know.
"Many seasons the elders waited. When the young returned, they had changed. Each bore the blessing of the First Ancestors in marks upon her fur. Each sought a new place in her Clan, according to her desires and talents: an'laik'i to work the fields and weave the cloth and build the houses;
li'laik'i to nurture the young; ri'laik'i to carve and paint and bestow the beauty of spirit; ki'laik'i to teach and discover new ways; ve'laik'i to fight in honorable battle so that others might not die; va'laik'i to lead.
"But there were those who returned with no Path and threatened the new way with their envy and discontent. All who looked upon these Pathless ones were troubled in spirit, and the Elders feared once more for shaauri-ja.
"Then the First Ancestors said to them: 'Let any who fails in Selection walk as a wraith, ne'lin, unseen and unheard.'
"So it was that the way of Paths became the way of the people of Aur. So it was that the First Selection brought order and peace to shaauri-ja. So it was, and so it will be."
Ronan let his voice die to a whisper. Cynara shivered. Let any who fails in Selection walk as a wraith, unseen and unheard.
Alien. Utterly, inexorably alien.
"I've seen enough," she said. "I'd like to go back to our quarters now."
"Hanno—"
"Please offer my apologies and regrets."
He searched her eyes. "You are not ill?"
"No."
His jaw tightened, and he strode across the room to the rear door. He returned with Hanno behind him, and the two spoke and embraced once more. He passed Cynara without a glance and left the building at a fast walk.
Ronan's anger was rare enough that Cynara was keenly aware of it with both body and mind. She couldn't explain her behavior until they were alone. But Ronan didn't take the path she had expected, back to the shaauri jail; he turned north and made for the perimeter of the settlement, where buildings thinned out and the first fields began. A small hut or cabin stood by a grove of conifers, and she knew this must be his home.
The door was unlocked, like all doors in the settlement. Ronan entered and opened the shutter of a small window. The light was just enough for Cynara to make out a single room, more austere than the brig on the Pegasus. A narrow cot, a plain wooden chair that he might have made himself, a table stacked with earthenware pots, shelves of folded cloth, and supplies in simple containers. The packed earth floor was bare, and so were the stone and plank walls.
Cynara looked for a source of heat and discovered a small hearth built into the corner, which Ronan brought to life with logs and kindling retrieved from a stack outside. Once the fire was burning, he left the hut with one of the pots and returned with water. He poured half of it into a pitcher, and suspended the pot from a bar running the width of the fireplace to heat the rest.
He worked with such efficiency that Cynara knew he had followed this same routine a thousand times, caring for himself with no expectation of assistance or company. Yet the surroundings suited him, quiet and spare as they were. He wanted no luxury. He was, in some strange way, happy here.
"I would not see Hanno hurt for any reason," he said, after the silence had stretched for many uncomfortable minutes. "She believes you disapprove of her."
"Poseidon, no. Nothing of the kind." Cynara sat on the lone chair and gathered her thoughts. "I liked her, very much."
He crouched on his heels before her. "Something is wrong between us," he said. "It is not about shaauri. If I have displeased you in some way—"
"Stop. It isn't what you've done, but what you still may do." She held his gaze. "I ask you again not to share any information you may have about the Pegasus, or human vulnerabilities, with the shaauri government. Especially not for my sake."
His brow creased in surprise. "Is this still your fear? Miklos would not have let me go if he thought I could harm the human cause."
His words made sense, and yet Cynara couldn't escape the conviction that going to the shaauri War-Leader was the worst possible action Ronan could take. She clenched her fists on her knees. "What will you say to them?"
He turned to stare into the fire. "I will tell you, Cynara, if you allow me to look deep into your mind."
"For what purpose?"
"To prove that you trust me." He tossed a twig into the fire. Sap popped and crackled. "That we trust each other."
Cynara's chest tightened. "Is this what it's come to, Ronan?"
His eyes held infinite sorrow, a hopelessness that sucked into its depths all the tender intimacy they had shared in the night. "Can you swear never to use what you have seen here against my people?"
"Your people are mine, Ronan. You are human."
"There is only one way to be certain. Let me in, Cynara."
* * *
Chapter 25
« ^ »
It was an ultimatum beyond all others they had faced. Either she trusted him, or she did not.
"Very well," she said, cold in the pit of her stomach. "Do what you must." She closed her eyes, unwilling to see his face. He was quiet for a time, and then she felt the first tentative probing of her surface thoughts. He slipped between them, seeking deeper levels.
His touch caused no discomfort. It was a beloved reunion, an embrace rather than an invasion. They had been too long apart, too little sharing this most profound of all bonds.
Ronan stroked her mind with sensual delicacy, driving her body to shivers nearly erotic in their intensity. She opened to him gladly. Deeper he plunged, and there came a moment when she saw into her own mind as a reflection in the shining brilliance of his.
Then she remembered. She understood fully what Ronan must have felt when he discovered his mind had been manipulated, memory overlain with memories false and true and somewhere in between.
Tyr was laughing.
In horror she cast Ronan out. He pulled away, rocking back on his heels. Cynara folded her arms around her stomach, sick in body and spirit.
So strange and bitter that Tyr filled her thoughts when so much more was at stake. She understood the reason they—VelShaan and Miklos—had planted the fraudulent intelligence in her mind. She not only had agreed to the ruse, but had suggested it. Ronan had taken the bait exactly as planned.
But VelShaan had taken additional action that Cynara had neither proposed nor expected. Since the time she had left Persephone, Cynara had lost all recollection of the turning point in her life: Tyr's death. The horror struck her anew as if it were happening all over again.
The horror, and the sure knowledge that she was no longer Cynara D'Accorso, but an unnatural synthesis of two souls, two beings contained in a single body.
For a handful of days she had actually believed she was whole and complete unto herself, bound and beholden to no one. She was free. But Tyr had never gone away.
She laughed, earning a bewildered glance from Ronan. She was hardly less bewildered. She'd hated the idea of deceiving Ronan, but she hadn't been afraid of what might lie ahead—capture and probing by Kinsmen, possible death at the hands of shaauri. No. She'd given herself up to VelShaan's expert ministrations terrified that the telepath's influence of her mind and memory would release Tyr from his prison. Cynara D'Accorso would finally lose herself.
The decision had been taken out of her hands. VelShaan had buried Tyr, but not deeply enough. Like a supernatural creature out of ancient myth, he rose again from the dead.
Poor Cynara. Tyr wouldn't pity himself the way she did. Her petty fears simply didn't matter anymore.
"Ronan," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
He blinked, his forehead creased in pain. "What?"
"You were right," she said. "My mind did hold information about the Pegasus. You were meant to find it… when we joined just before crossing the border."
Comprehension flooded his eyes. "Planted… for me."
"False information intended for the Kinsmen who used you." She leaned forward, trying to make him understand. "It was my doing, Ronan. Lord Miklos, Mes Carter VelShaan, and I discussed the idea just after I returned to Persephone and learned of the incident with the Archon. VelShaan removed from my mind any technical knowledge specifically related to the slingshot drive. It was done to make sure that the Kinsmen couldn't steal it if we fell into their hands. But she also erased my memory of the secondary plan—to provide any Kinsman interrogators with planted intelligence they'd have every reason to believe was genuine."
"As I must believe."
"The only way to make the plan work was if you were also convinced, and—"
"You anticipated that I would attempt to steal this information because of what I did on the Pegasus."
He turned his anger inward, and that hurt far worse than bearing it herself. "I know you didn't take anything then, or before when we were together on Dharma. But I had to make sure you did this time. Since telepathic bonds are most acute during sex—"
"You initiated mating so that I would penetrate your shields, discover this information, and accept it as truth."
"I didn't remember what I was supposed to do, any more than you remembered that you were supposed to assassinate the Archon. The difference is that I… truly wanted what we shared, Ronan."
He seemed not to hear. "Did you believe I would go to the Kinsmen?"
"We knew that you'd go directly to Aitu if given a choice, that your first loyalty was still to Kalevi. But we also assumed that once you'd entered shaauri territory, Kinsmen would eventually find a way to question you. If you reached your shaauri before them, you might find allies who would give you some protection and compel the Kinsmen to compromise." She almost smiled at the irony. "And I'd be with you."
"In the past, you did not accept that I had friends among Kalevii."
"But you always believed in them. I've finally begun to understand why. Sihvaaro won't give you up without a fight. If Constano and his crew behave as we predicted, they'll insist on questioning you but won't find it so easy to make you disappear."
"There is no predicting what Lenko will do."
"We couldn't know that your personal enemy would be running this place."
Ronan bent his head, deep in concentration. "You were not meant to remember this plan within a plan."
"I underestimated… the effect deep mental sharing between us would have on my memory."
"Yet you tried many times since our arrival to discourage me from giving information of humans to Lenko, even to preserve your life."
"When you mentioned going to the War-Leader with your suspicions about the Kinsmen, I was afraid. You didn't have real proof of their disloyalty, and I truly didn't believe you had anything else to offer." She wrung her hands in her lap, struggling to reach him. "We want the same thing, Ronan—to expose these Kinsmen if they're acting for themselves against shaauri interests."
"By making us both Concordat tools."
"It was the only way to get the assassination charges dropped and secure your release from Persephone. I didn't trust Damon. I knew you must despise what the Kinsmen had done to you. Lord Miklos wanted to let you go, but he needed a reason. And you needed the freedom to face your own demons without Challinor threats hanging over your head."
Ronan laughed softly. 'Then Lord Miklos's last words to me were untrue."
"Not completely. He's still unsure of you and the part you were intended to play. But he was willing to try this, for your sake and for the Concordat."
"And I would serve a real purpose against the Kinsmen, as I wish to do."
"You'd offer them a temptation they couldn't resist—the supposed location of the original alien excayation that gave us the slingshot drive. And if they failed to share this intelligence with the shaauri—if they acted alone in raiding the world in question—they'd fall right into the trap Lord Miklos has prepared for them and expose themselves as traitors."
Ronan finally met her gaze. "There
are many 'ifs' in this plan. What if I gave the information to Kalevi before the Kinsmen arrived, or if the Kinsmen proved to be loyal allies? It would be my people springing this trap."
"That was a possibility Lord Miklos was prepared to face. He still regards shaauri as the adversary. For him, the end result would be much the same."
"Destruction of the enemy."
"That's why I came with you. I didn't remember the plan, but I sensed that my presence would be important." She flushed and looked away. And what I said before, about love…
If Ronan heard the thought, he gave no sign. "By accompanying me to Aitu, you have given me the opportunity to discover the truth."
And thereby undermined the scheme completely. She tried to laugh. "It obviously wasn't a very good idea."
"Would you have urged me to cooperate with the Kinsmen?"
"I don't know. Until now, intuition was all I had to go on."
"You also proposed destinations other than Aitu when we approached the border. Did this intuition suggest that we should escape before your plan could be implemented?"
Escape. That was exactly what she'd wanted, knowing in her gut that the forgotten scheme might end in disaster.
"Lord Miklos never insisted that you return to Aitu," she said, "but we knew you wouldn't go anywhere else."
"In spite of your hope to divert me." He reached up to touch her knee, and the heat in his eyes flowed through skin and cloth, turning her spine to rubber. "Now that I know of the deception, it will not be so simple to deceive the Kinsmen."
"No. But I still have faith in you. I would never have done this if I didn't." She covered his hand with her own. "You'll have to keep bluffing Lenko."
He let his hand fall and got to his feet. "He expects to win honor for Kalevi, and himself, by sharing my knowledge with the A'Aho-Kei'hon-vekki. I cannot allow my House and Line to be shamed and made vulnerable by promising intelligence they cannot deliver."
Kinsman's Oath Page 33
