The Marann

by Sky Warrior Book Publishing

  “I’ve never been kissed,” she breathed. “I want to be kissed.”

  “I prefer your forehead.” His head lowered toward hers, his gaze fixed on her mouth. Their faces were nearly touching.

  Her heart tried to stop. In a moment, she would find out if his lips were as warm as—

  They both heard the sound—a sliding sort of click. The Sural’s face whipped toward it. Then he abruptly stood sideways between her and whatever had produced the soft noise. Startled, she swiveled her head in time to see an arrow, slick and wet, flying toward them. A split-second later, he stumbled against her as it hit him, penetrating his left side.

  He uttered only a grunt, but his pain ripped through her and tore a scream from her throat. She wrapped her arms around him, one hand encountering sticky warmth below the arrow. An eerie silence fell over the scene. The guards need to use their ears. She surprised herself with the dispassionate thought. The Sural released a loud breath and slipped to the floor. She slid down with him, cushioning his descent.

  “It was aimed at your heart,” he gasped. “But I am—much taller than you.”

  Kyza flew out of her room. “FATHER!” she cried, dropping to the floor next to him, clinging to his arm.

  “Kyza.” His voice was a rasp. “Leave. You are in danger here.”

  The girl set her jaw. “I will not leave you to die!”

  “It doesn’t look fatal,” Marianne whispered.

  Pain shuttered his face. “It is poisoned,” he replied in a grim voice.

  Marianne gasped in horror, unable to see through the sudden flood of tears. Her arms tightened around him, despite the pain lancing through her from the contact, and through the blur she saw red. His blood stained her hands, his robes, even Kyza’s sleeves where she clung to him. She fixated on the blood. She had not seen so much since... a horrible night more than twenty years earlier. On that night, the blood had been her own.

  The Sural looked up at her, as if he knew the old horrors had arisen from her memory. Sweat broke out on his face, and his breathing grew more ragged. “If I do not survive,” he said, “I want you to know—” He drew a gasping, painful breath and took her hand, pressing it to his heart.

  Love wrapped around her like a warm blanket. Passion erupted deep within her. Wonder and delight not her own washed through her.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, hardly able to breathe.

  “If you accept my heart,” he said, “call me beloved.” He took another painful breath. “I would come back from the dark to bond with you.”

  Apothecaries arrived and began to treat the Sural just as a scuffle broke out down the corridor. The sound of the struggle drew closer. Two blue-robed Suralian guards rounded the hallway’s curve, frog-marching a man in pale tan who struggled and cursed between them. Soft white embroidery covered the top half of his robe, and a long scratch marked one cheek.

  Kyza went still and deadly calm, her face devoid of emotion. She rose to place herself between the Detral and her father. “Why?” she demanded, using a superior’s tone to a subordinate.

  He spat in Marianne’s direction. “It is not possible for that to gain the Jorann’s favor. Your father dishonors himself by playing at something.” He fixed his eyes on Marianne as she sat on the floor, the stricken Sural lying across her. “Status higher than mine? Impossible! You will die, odalli. I will be vindicated, and then I will kill you.”

  Odalli, Marianne thought. Alien. He’d hung back during the celebration, she remembered, spending time with most of the guests—but not her.

  Kyza fixed the Detral with a frightening stare. She no longer seemed like a child. “You have condemned your people to death,” she said.

  “We will see.”

  “Yes, we will,” she replied. “But you will not. You are weak,” she hissed, full of a child’s contempt for an adult who had failed at what she herself could do. “Captured, drugged, dishonored.” She spat the words. She turned her attention to the guards. “Take him to the interrogators. Take his secrets.”

  They glanced at the Sural. He nodded, and then added in a strained voice, “Close our borders—search the stronghold and the surrounding area.” He took a breath, grimacing. “Find the Detral’s son and take him alive—he is too young to evade you long.” He stifled a cry, his face a mask of pain, as an apothecary pulled the arrow free and took tissue samples from the wound. An aide ran off with both arrow and samples.

  The Sural touched her cheek with his fingertips, and then went limp in her arms.

  “No!” she cried.

  “He lives, high one,” someone said. “He has lost consciousness, but he lives.”

  Two apothecaries maneuvered the Sural onto a litter and ordered their aides to carry him into his quarters. Kyza followed the guards dragging the Detral.

  Marianne, left alone in the emptying corridor, sat where she had cradled the Sural, trying to rub the blood from her hands, the ceremonial robes she wore ruined. She sensed the guards watching her with sympathy as they returned to their places. Leaning her head back against the doorpost, she closed her eyes and flogged herself for what had happened. If only I hadn’t been so scared, down in the tunnel, she thought. If only I’d been more willing. He would have been in my room, not in the corridor taking an arrow for me. She banged her head against the doorpost with enough force to hurt. He’s said so many times he’ll never hurt me. Why didn’t I listen? Why can’t I get over my fear?

  Rousing herself, she staggered to her feet and went into her quarters. Everything from her old quarters lay in the same position in the new. Even the cora twig lay where she had left it, on the blankets at the foot of the sleeping mat. She picked it up and caught a whiff of the Sural’s scent on it. The smell of him covered it. He must have spent time rubbing it with his fingers, and... across his face. She dropped onto the mat with the twig clutched to her breast, breathing in the scent covering the buds. Despite her distress, exhaustion and inebriation carried her into sleep.

  <<>>

  The Ambassador and the Admiral gazed out the viewport in the ready room, watching the planet revolve. While they had expected assassination attempts, neither Smithton nor the Admiral had expected one to come so soon, or from such an unforeseen quarter. An ally.

  The Admiral shook his head. “The news from Marianne is pretty grim,” he said. “The toxin was Tolari, tailored to kill a human but capable of killing one of their own, in sufficient quantity. They don’t have an antidote for it, and it’ll take time to come up with one. They may not have the time. The Sural survived the night, but he’s in a bad way.”

  Smithton swore. Then he muttered, “Almost would have been better if it had hit Marianne.”

  “She’d have been dead in seconds if it had,” John said. “That arrow was aimed for her heart.”

  He growled, as much to himself as for his friend’s benefit. “What else do we know?”

  “Not enough. Marianne doesn’t know much of what’s coming from the Detral’s interrogation, the Sural’s too sick to be communicating with her—if he’s even conscious enough to be overseeing it—and his daughter is too young, even by Tolari standards. Marianne thinks the stronghold guard must be conducting it. Her theory, based on what little she’s heard, is that the Detral was making a play for power, thinking if he could prove the Sural was dishonored, he could rule the planet himself. He didn’t bargain on getting caught, or on the Sural risking his own life to save Marianne’s.”

  Smithton started to pace in front of the Admiral’s desk, tapping his lips with a fingertip. “Why would the Sural, the most powerful leader on Tolar, throw himself in front of an arrow to save an alien?” he grumbled.

  “I’d do it to save Laura,” the Admiral shot back. He returned to his desk. “I think that your wife was right about the Sural.”

  Smithton stopped tapping. “More’s the pity,” he replied.

  John scoffed. “You don’t mean that. And you don’t want to impugn your wife’s keen powers of observation.”


  Smithton grunted. “Compared to the Tolari, my wife is blind.”

  “As are we all, my friend.” He leaned back in his desk chair and steepled his fingers in front of him. “You know, Smitty, it doesn’t add up.”

  “What doesn’t add up?” Smithton took a chair across the desk.

  “Marianne said the Sural seemed dead certain that their religious leader’s protection would keep her safe. Yet, within hours, his closest ally tries to assassinate her, claiming he doesn’t believe in it and that the Sural played some dishonorable game. Why kill Marianne? Why want her dead?”

  “Maybe the better question is, what would her death accomplish?” Smithton said.

  The Admiral pondered that. He lifted a finger. “One: if the Sural is in love with her, it would make him seriously angry. Two,” he lifted another finger, “if he’s anything like me, he would want to track down anyone who had anything to do with it. Think about it. The Detral had to have thought he could get away with it. He was so surprised to be caught that the Sural’s guards were able to drug him before he could commit suicide. Who stood to gain from it if the Detral had gotten away with it?”

  “We may never figure this out, John—there’s too much we don’t know. Maybe there’s history between the Detral and the Sural, bad blood we can’t know about.”

  “Marianne said the Detral was his strongest ally.”

  The Ambassador shrugged. “Those people are cold bastards—living, breathing icicles. They could be capable of being staunch allies to someone they hate and deadly opponents to someone they love. We just don’t know enough. We need Marianne to keep her ears open, get us more information.”

  The Admiral nodded. “I’ll talk to her.”

  <<>>

  Marianne found Kyza at a desk in the family wing library, absorbed in a thick tome of Tolari history. Even at a time like this, they continue their routines, she thought. She corrected herself. We continue our routines. Kyza looked up at her as she approached the desk.

  “How are you, dear one?” Marianne asked, pulling over a chair to sit.

  Kyza put down the book and sprang from her seat to throw her arms around Marianne’s neck, burying her face in a shoulder. “I am glad that you are no longer human,” she exclaimed, her voice muffled by Marianne’s robe. “We do not ever have to send you away no matter what happens.”

  Marianne wrapped her arms around Kyza, leaning her cheek against Kyza’s inky black hair. The girl needed comfort. She’s so little, but it’s easy to forget how young she is, she thought, especially when she holds herself together like she did last night. “I won’t leave,” she said, stroking Kyza’s hair. “Your father wasn’t ever going to send me away, whether I became Tolari or not.”

  A servant flickered into sight, bowing deference and apology. “Forgive this interruption, high ones,” he said. “The head apothecary requests the honor of the Marann’s presence in the Sural’s quarters.”

  The Marann? Marianne thought. Kyza lifted her face, wide-eyed.

  “Of course.”

  Kyza slipped down from her lap and went back to the book. Marianne rose and followed the servant to the ornately-carved—and well-guarded—door of the Sural’s private apartment. It opened for her.

  She caught her breath as she walked into the sitting room. The furniture lined the walls, creating an open space. The Sural, unconscious and almost grey under his coppery skin, lay on a raised bed in the center, clothed only in the loose trousers Tolari wore under their robes. To her surprise, despite the sophistication she’d seen of Tolari medical science, drains held the wound in his side open. Apothecaries moved round him. An aide stood near his head, using a pipette to drip slow drops of fluid into his mouth.

  Marianne’s stomach twisted. They told me he was in danger, she thought. They didn’t tell me it was this bad. The Sural’s head apothecary approached her, hands spread in respect. Marianne nodded, not taking her eyes off the Sural.

  “High one,” the apothecary acknowledged. “You honor me to come at my request.”

  “Is there anything I can do for the Sural?” she asked.

  “May I speak with you in another room?”

  “Of course.”

  The apothecary headed through the door to the Sural’s private study. Marianne followed, using a gesture she’d learned from the Sural to motion the guards from the room. One flickered in protest—she thought for a moment, and then nodded consent for the guards to stay. Their reluctance to leave her unguarded after the attempt on her life warmed her, and she reasoned that the Sural would have few secrets from his private guards.

  “What is this about?” Marianne asked.

  “May I speak frankly?”

  “Of course,” she answered, a nervous smile coming to her lips.

  “The Sural declared his heir. Do you know us well enough yet to realize what that means for him—personally?”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t. Will you explain?”

  “Before Kyza passed the great trial, he lived for the good of Suralia and of the entire planet. Once he declared Kyza his heir, our law permitted him to live for other things.”

  Marianne stared at her slippers, already regretting that she had allowed the guards to remain.

  “One of the things he chose to live for—is you.”

  Did everyone know how he felt except me? she thought. “But I—” She stopped herself.

  “I am his head apothecary, high one. It is necessary for me to know everything about him, including his emotional state. He tells me everything.”

  The blood ran from Marianne’s face. This woman must know… She quelled an urge to flee.

  “He knows that Suralia will go on and be led by his daughter should he fall,” the apothecary continued. “He needs something more than his duty to Suralia now. You can give him that.”

  She’s almost as bad as those scheming politicians up on the ship, she thought. Everyone is conspiring to throw me at him. She checked herself, remembering the moment in the hall when he opened his heart to her. But—

  “High one,” the healer said, “I implore you. If you want him to live—give him your heart. It is obvious his heart is already yours.”

  Before Marianne could protest, a commotion arose in the next room. Alarm spread in ripples. The apothecary ran out, Marianne close on her heels. The Sural had stopped breathing. One apothecary placed a mask over his face to breathe for him. Another positioned a device on his chest to stimulate his heart.

  This is it, Marianne thought, making her way to his side, trying to stay out of the way of the busy apothecaries. I’m losing him, before I ever even had him. She blinked away tears, trying to imagine what life in the stronghold would be like without his presence. A sense of loss pierced her. She didn’t want to lose him. Not now, not knowing how he felt about her. Impossible, she thought, almost by reflex. The sovereign ruler of a planet... and an Iowa farm girl. It was impossible. Wasn’t it?

  Whatever it takes. She reached out to take the Sural’s right hand in both of hers. The head apothecary noticed and gave her a grateful nod.

  “Don’t leave me,” she whispered to him in English. “I need you.” In Tolari, she added, “Beloved.”

  A long, frightening minute passed as the apothecaries continued to work on him.

  She felt the atmosphere in the room change.

  “He breathes,” said an apothecary across the bed, near his head.

  “He is stabilizing,” said a voice behind her, pregnant with relief.

  She slumped, letting out a breath she didn’t know she’d held. A chair touched the backs of her calves, and she dropped into it, grateful for the kindness. She brought the Sural’s hand to her face and pressed a cheek against it, shaking. A single day before, she’d believed he could never be more than a friend. It turned her world upside down to find him in love with her. Now, to save his life, she had made a commitment to what amounted to marriage, and she didn’t know if she could follow through with what that entailed.
She buried her face in the blankets and wept.

  “Bring the high one some tea,” the head apothecary ordered. “She will be here for some time.”

  <<>>

  Dark quiet filled the room when Marianne woke. A gentle finger traced the line of her jaw, and warmth and love wrapped her senses. Sighing, she opened her eyes to meet the Sural’s gaze in the gray light of evening.

  “Beloved.” His whisper was hoarse.

  Tears filled her eyes, and she buried her face in the blankets again, crying in relief. He rested a hand on her hair.

  “You heard me,” she whispered. She felt rather than saw him give an almost imperceptible nod. “You came back from the dark for me.”

  “Yes.” His voice was almost inaudible.

  “It’s all my fault!”

  A weak smile touched his lips as he shook his head. “When my strength returns, I shall show you how mistaken you are.”

  She almost laughed. Men, she thought, were all the same no matter where you went.

  “Marianne,” he whispered again. The use of her name caught her attention. “Tell me what happened to you. Tell me why you fear your own—” She placed a finger on his lips to stop him, glancing at the aide who monitored him from the other side of the room. Alarm pulsed through her, but the aide hadn’t seemed to have heard.

  “Shh,” she shushed him.

  He breathed a ragged sigh. “I should have told you sooner. It has stopped your panic to know of my feelings.”

  She shook her head and took one hand in both of hers. “No, it wasn’t that,” she said. “You were dying. Your apothecary—she told me the only way to save you was—to give you my heart. Did everyone in the stronghold know?”

  His face softened. “It was not difficult for them to see,” he rasped. “I could not maintain a proper distance from you.”

  “I must have been the one person in Suralia who didn’t figure it out,” she said, almost whispering. “I thought you couldn’t—it was unprofessional to let myself think—So I’d think about you, and then I’d have to think about what would happen if I ever let my feelings show. I thought you would pity or scorn me, and it scared me out of my mind.” Her voice hollowed as she continued, “And now I still don’t know if I can be more than just a friend to you, not even after—making such a huge commitment.”