by Weber, David
There’d been another sign of that family’s—or at least their baranal’s—sense of honor, too. Jasak had picked up a new dress uniform from the post store at Shaisal Air Base, just outside Chemparas, the largish city at the portal between Basilisk and Manticore. But the base didn’t have anything suitable for Jathmar and Shaylar or Gadrial. He’d apologized to them all for that, but it wasn’t until Forhaylin and his men turned up in New Ransar that she’d realized why apologizing was all he’d done. Once the security team was on-site with them, he’d taken all three of them on a shopping spree in Theskair…with a wary-eyed squad of the Garth Showma Guard prominently displayed everywhere they went.
The shopping trip had surprised them, since Shaylar and Jathmar had picked up practical Arcanan-style clothing along the way; but Jasak hadn’t wanted them to arrive in Portalis wearing workmen’s sturdy clothes. They might be prisoners, but they were political prisoners more than anything else, and their status was high enough to warrant the finest clothing available. Particularly since Arcana had done them sufficient injury to make any reparations he could offer them a high personal priority.
First impressions were also important, he’d explained with a very sober expression. His parents would do their best to see Jathmar and Shaylar as foreigners, not bound by the same social conventions as Arcanans—any Arcanans, let alone Andarans—but having them show up in the kind of clothing the family’s gardener wore would make it difficult for other people to treat them with respect.
Gadrial had been impressed that he’d recognized the problem, when he broached the subject with her earlier. And when he’d asked for her advice, she’d plunged into the spirit of things with childlike glee.
The results were well worth it. Shaylar had been transformed from a sturdy, tough-as-hickory pioneer into a stunningly graceful young woman. She wore the silks Gadrial had chosen like a queen, and the current Arcanan ladies’ fashions, with their nipped-in waists and clean, elegant lines suited her petite stature. She would’ve been swallowed whole by the ruffles and flutters that had been popular when Jasak had left New Arcana for the frontier, but now—! If she’d been single, instead of married, Jasak would’ve been hard-pressed to turn away smitten suitors, her status as political prisoner notwithstanding, Gadrial thought, watching Shaylar run her fingers down a long, silken sleeve with absent sensuality.
Not that Shaylar had been the only one to profit from the expedition.
Now Jasak had to swallow a laugh as he, too, watched from the corner of one eye as Shaylar stroked her shirtwaist’s sleeve and remembered the other side of the excursion…and his own reaction to it. Gadrial was close enough to Shaylar’s shape and size for the styles and silks to be stunning on her, as well, and he’d gotten his first taste of jealousy when they left the first boutique, with Gadrial and Shaylar each wearing one of the ensembles they’d just purchased. The long, appreciative male glances at Gadrial, in particular, had left Jasak with rising blood pressure and a need to stomp hard on an equal rise in irritability. He’d gotten used to being the only unattached male in Gadrial’s company.
He hadn’t liked the change.
The intoxicating scent she’d picked up hadn’t helped. The perfume was some earthy and exotic Ransaran concoction that punched him in the gut with the first whiff. Whatever it was, it smelled totally different on the two women despite the fact that he’d seen them both dabbing various pulse points from the same little bottle. On Shaylar, it was evocative of the wilderness and endless forests drenched with patches of sunlight and droplets of water from the last rain.
On Gadrial…
It should’ve been illegal on Gadrial.
To distract himself, he’d studied Jathmar critically, comparing him with the well-dressed men on the streets and in the lines at the slider station, and he’d come to the conclusion that Gadrial and the salesman had done equally well by Jathmar.
Jathmar was a rather nondescript fellow in a lot of ways, the kind of man most people wouldn’t glance at twice, neither handsome nor homely. But he was in very good physical condition, if not the hardened, top-notch condition of military veterans on active duty. He not only wore the current styles well and contrived to look surprisingly distinguished, he moved well in them, with the kind of catlike grace trained athletes possessed. Once the uneasiness at finding himself in unfamiliar, expensive clothes wore off, he’d been transformed from a man who faded into the background into one who commanded intent glances from unattached women. He would certainly pass muster with Jasak’s family and servants.
On the whole, the shopping trip had been well worth the time and money spent on it. As their slider whipped silently across the miles, following the shining dotted path of crystal control nodes, Jasak felt better about their reception in his parents’ household. As to their reception into Arcanan society… That, he knew, would depend largely on how the press chose to portray the events at the frontier, and that wasn’t looking good. By now, everyone knew the fighting had resumed, but still there was no official explanation of how and why, and in its absence, the rumors only grew more extreme every day.
Now, watching Jathmar and Shaylar, particularly the lovely woman his men had come so close to killing, Jasak felt an ominous foreboding about the future—his own and theirs and both of their people’s. Jasak’s culture and theirs should have been able to meet one another peacefully, for they shared enough common ground to form genuine friendships. Watching Shaylar and Gadrial together was proof of that. If only that incompetent bastard Garlath—
He cut short that thought. Yes, Garlath had effectively started the war, but Jasak had been Garlath’s commanding officer. The blame might be Garlath’s, but the responsibility had been his, and he fully expected a court-martial. But the question of how the Commandery’s officers would vote on that court was as up in the air as everything else, and until that court-martial was out of the way and resolved, one way or the other, he could make no plans for his own future.
His stomach seemed to congeal inside him as that familiar thought went thought him once more, and his glance lingered on Gadrial, who was busy poring over her PC, studying the Sharonian primer she and Shaylar had put together. She was now very nearly as proficient in their language as the Sharonians were in Andaran, and her expression was rapt with a scholar’s joy as she worked on becoming even more proficient. Jasak’s heart twisted as he watched that expression, watched the light play across Gadrial’s face while the slider whipped across the last hundred miles toward home.
He wanted Gadrial to share that home with him.
Desperately.
He hadn’t spoken to her about that. Not yet. And as the final miles flashed past, all the reasons he hadn’t—the reasons he couldn’t—crashed in upon him. It was like a vast weight, slamming down on him, blotting away the amusement he’d felt only a moment before. The moment was coming when he’d have to say something to her…one way or the other. And he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t.
He wasn’t free, couldn’t be free, to say a single thing to her about his hopes and dreams. He didn’t want to think about what it would mean to him, personally, if a court-martial found him guilty, and not because of whatever sentence it might hand down. A woman like Gadrial deserved the very best in life, not a future tied to a man drummed out of the military in disgrace. He wouldn’t—could never—even ask her to endure that.
Yet even if he was acquitted, would a Ransaran whose deeply held convictions about personal worth had been tested and turned to granite in the volcanic fires of Mythalan prejudice, even be willing to accept a proposal that would tie her to an Andaran officer and aristocrat? Submerge her in the suffocating web of obligations and honor-debts that comprised the only world Jasak truly understood? She’d had years of experience with Andaran customs during her time at the Garth Showma Institute, but that was a very different thing from joining that culture. She and Magister Halathyn had been enormously respected scholars and teachers, and that’s what she still was. In their ca
ses, Andaran custom had accommodated itself to them, not the other way around, and rightly so. But if he asked her to share his life, he wasn’t simply asking her to live in Garth Showma with him, or even to accept the outer forms of culture and custom. He was asking her to marry the heir to Garth Showma, to accept the knowledge that one day he would become duke…and she would become duchess. One of the things he’d learned about her—one of the things he most loved about her—was that she would never, ever shirk an obligation she’d assumed, and she wouldn’t shirk that one…if she accepted him.
He didn’t see how she could.
True, one day he would be Duke of Garth Showma, a man of immense political power and wealth, whatever happened to his military career. Assuming, of course, that none of the charges which might be levied against him carried the death sentence. But the mere inheritance of a title would carry less weight with Ransarans than with almost anyone else in the Union of Arcana. Many of them actively despised hereditary titles and the—in their opinion—unearned power that went with a mere accident of birth. Gadrial wasn’t one to be prejudiced against someone by the mere fact that he possessed a title, but she was no friend of aristocratic privilege, either. If she ever had been, her time in Mythal would undoubtedly have cured her of the infatuation!
Why should one of the most gifted theoretical magisters—Ransaran theoretical magisters—in the entire Union chain herself to a man who might soon find himself stripped of his commission and utterly disgraced? A lesser woman might accept him based on the Olderhan wealth and title, but no amount of money could make a man worthy of Gadrial Kelbryan. She was too exceptional, too accomplished, too brilliant in her own right—too strong—to ever live as a man’s shadow. She deserved everything. He could only complicate her life and add extra responsibilities to interfere with her passion for magical research.
And even if she might be willing to entertain the thought of accepting his proposal, what about her family? How did they feel about aristocrats? What if, unlike her, they did despise the very concept of aristocracy? And how would they feel about his dishonor if the court-martial did strip him of his rank and expel him from the military in disgrace? About the part he’d played, whatever a court decided, in launching the first inter-universal war in human history?
He was afraid to even suggest his parents travel to Ransar and speak with hers, for what could Sathmin Olderhan say in his defense? “He didn’t mean to” was such a paltry apology for the man who’d begun a war that had already claimed the life of Gadrial’s mentor. Not the kind of troth gift that convinced a family to permit an engagement. But the thought of her going out of his life—the thought of one of those men on the streets of New Ransar standing beside her, instead—left him feeling like the ashes of last week’s campfire: cold and gray and utterly desolate.
Perhaps it was the intensity of his inner turmoil or perhaps it was just the helpless stare that he couldn’t help, unable to pull his eyes away from her face, but she lifted her head, abandoning the display on her personal crystal to meet his eyes. The instant their gazes touched, a jolt like lightning blasted through him. Blessed Torkash, how he wanted this woman to stay in his life!
Gadrial, too, jolted when their gazes met and she saw the look—the longing, the hunger…and the fear—in his eyes. She knew in that moment, as clearly as if she’d had Shaylar’s Talent as a Voice—exactly what he was thinking, exactly what he feared…and why. She knew it, yet for a long, wrenching moment, she didn’t know what to do about it. Anything she said or did—or didn’t say or do—was likely to push him in a direction she didn’t want him to go. Then she thought about what a future without Jasak Olderhan in it would do to her.
She put away her personal crystal with brusque movements, quite suddenly angry clear through. Angry over the massive injustice of the whole situation, angry that he would back away without ever giving her the chance to say yes or no to whatever it was he wanted to say or ask her. So she stuffed her PC into its carrying case, jerked to her feet, and strode over to his seat. She felt Shaylar’s startled gaze follow her, with Jathmar’s joining it an instant later.
“Jasak,” she said in a low voice, “would you walk with me for a moment?”
Surprise flared in his eyes and a frown of uncertainty drove between his brows, but he stood up without a word. Once she was sure he’d follow, Gadrial turned and marched toward the door that led into the enclosed space between their private car and the one behind it. The instant Jasak had joined her there, closing the door behind him, she turned to glare up at him.
“Gadrial?” he asked warily, reacting to the anger surging through her.
Anger at the enormous, insufferable, idiotic weight of Andaran pride and Andaran stupidity stacked against her, against Jasak. Against them.
“You look like a man about to make a decision, Jasak Olderhan,” she said in a low, hard voice. “An irrevocable decision.”
His eyes widened. She read alarm and the beginning of genuine panic in his expression. She didn’t give those reactions time to solidify.
“I just want to make one thing perfectly clear, before you start making decisions your insufferable pride won’t let you back away from or reconsider.”
She grabbed his uniform lapels and jerked hard. He might be well over a foot taller than she was, but Gadrial was in superb physical condition and he wasn’t expecting her to jerk him forward, off balance. The instant his head was in range, she let go of his uniform, plunged her fingers through his hair, and kissed him with every ounce of creativity and passion she could summon from her admittedly limited repertoire.
Apparently his repertoire was even more limited than hers, because he simply stood there in utter shock for long seconds while she did everything she could think of, short of ripping his clothes off and seducing him right where he stood. She did things with her lips and tongue she hadn’t realized the human mouth was physically capable of doing.
A long, deep shudder ran through his whole body…
Then a groan tore loose, like a tree in the dead of winter, splitting down the center with a thunderous snap. Quite suddenly her feet were no longer touching the floor and Gadrial discovered that his repertoire was considerably more inventive than hers, after all. Her senses swam as he crushed her close, nearly breaking bones as he pulled her against a chest that was hard as granite.
She didn’t care.
Every inventive touch of his lips, his tongue, and his hands on her body wreathed Gadrial in wildfire and smoke. When they finally came up for air, she was shaking violently. And so, she realized with a sense of marvelous satisfaction, was he. They stared into one another’s eyes. His were wide and shocked.
“Does that clarify things a little, Jas Olderhan?” Her voice was soft and husky, and he swallowed once. Then—
“Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I do believe that does, Magister Gadrial.”
“Good. Now if you’d be so kind as to put me down, we can both get on with what we were doing when you started to make a decision without all the facts.”
“What?” He blinked, then realized he still held her nestled tight against him with both feet off the floor. A sheepish look stole across his face. “Ah…” Then he muttered, “Oh, what the hell…”
By the time he broke the second devastating kiss, Gadrial’s knees were such jelly that if he had put her down, she would very probably have collapsed. One corner of his mouth crooked into a satisfied little smile as he set her down at last. To her amazement, she didn’t collapse…probably because he still had one arm firm around her.
“Does that clarify things a little more?” he asked, and brushed one fingertip across her cheek as the sense of his words finally sank in. Her breath stuttered under that exquisitely gentle touch. Then she breathed out.
“Oh, yes…that clarifies things very nicely,” she allowed.
“Good.”
He held her a long, long moment longer, then took his arm back with manifest reluctance, led her back into their slider
car, and guided her back to her seat. She couldn’t have made it there unaided. And when he settled her solicitously into her seat and handed her the carrying case with her PC, she simply held it in limp hands, still reeling from the aftershock of that second fusion of lips and thundering heartbeats.
Jasak opened the case for her and put her PC back into her hands, then resumed his own seat.
Jathmar was staring in bafflement, but when Shaylar caught Gadrial’s stunned gaze, she grinned and winked. Gadrial found herself answering that grin with a sheepish smile.
She also spent the next quarter of an hour staring at the same line of Ternathian script, without once taking in the shape of the letters, let alone what the words meant.
She was too busy being deliriously delighted with the outcome of that little experiment in cross-cultural communications. Whatever happened when they reached Portalis and Garth Showma, Gadrial had made sure Sir Jasak Olderhan understood exactly how she felt. She wasn’t going to let anybody—neither the Commandery of Arcana nor Jasak Olderhan, himself—wreck what they could build, together.
