“The message for you is encrypted. No one else has heard it.” Aryl rose and put the image disk in Karina’s unresisting hand. “I trust Marcus to have made it possible for you to access it. I’ll be waiting, inside, when you’re done. Take your time.”
A hand, broken-nailed and callused, fastened on her wrist.
Worry/hope/grief.
Aryl strengthened her shields, unsurprised. “What is it?”
Karina stared at the disk. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because your father was my friend,” Aryl told her. “His loss was the hardest of them all.”
And then, as if a wind had blown through her mind and taken with it all the mist and confusion,
“I could never forget him.”
Interlude
ARYL FOUND ENRIS, sitting on the roof’s edge, dangling his bare feet over the air. “I thought you didn’t like it up here.” She used his shoulder to ease down beside him.
“I’m getting used to it.”
She leaned against his comforting bulk. I remember now. Not all of it. Not most. But Marcus. I remember Marcus.
And felt light inside, for the first time.
“I’ll want you to show me,” he said, putting his arm around her. “But first, I have something to tell you. I’ve thought of a name for our daughter.”
Aryl smiled to herself. “Not ‘Bundle’?”
“What do you think of Taisal? It’s your mother’s name.”
“I know.” They’d all looked at the parches, hunting connections to the past.
As Karina did now, Aryl realized, listening to her father’s voice.
Unlike Marcus, the name brought no resonance of meaning or emotion. Still . . . she hesitated.
Enris stopped smiling. “We don’t have to—”
Aryl put her fingers over his lips. Taisal she’ll be. Thank you.
Then, as if she’d been waiting, Taisal di Sarc chose that moment to announce she was ready to be born.
NOWNOWNOW!!
Epilogue
THE WATCHERS WERE A PALPABLE, disconcerting presence. Others, more tangible and equally impatient, at least waited outside the door. Mirim di Sarc pressed her sweat-soaked face into her pillow, wishing she could hide from both.
Not that they cared about her. They awaited the one she carried. Her grandmother Naryn hadn’t approved Council’s candidate for her Choice; was this why? Impossible to ask the dead. Impossible to defy the living. Mirim moved fretfully, glad of the unfashionable net that bound her hair, the one trace of before she could claim as her own. Before. Before. Before.
Her hands sought her swollen abdomen, felt the band of muscle grown tight and strong, the slight movement beneath. Peace, she sent, in no hurry to give her daughter to them.
For Mirim could taste change. That was her Talent, her only strength of worth.
Change would begin with this birth, more profound and far-reaching than anything a M’hiray could imagine. I warned them.
The impatient fools told her they knew better. That what she sensed was Power. Power they’d control.
She knew better.
Sira di Sarc would change everything.
The M’hiray—Clan of the Trade Pact
FIRST HOUSES OF THE CLAN
Caraat
Friesen
Mendolar
Parth
S’udlaat
Sarc
Serona
Non-M’hiray of Note
Brocheuse (Dancer, Doc’s Dive, Human)
Cindy Bowman (Sister of Marcus, Human)
Gene Maynard (Norval Constabulary, Human)
Gurdo Wymratoo’kk (Bartender, Doc’s Dive, Carasian)
Howard Bowman (Brother of Karina, Human)
KaeCee Britain (Antiquities Dealer, Human)
Karina Bowman (Sister of Howard, Human)
Kelly Bowman (Mother of Karina and Howard, Human)
Lawren Louli (Owner, Doc’s Dive, Assembler)
Marcus Bowman (Triad First, Analyst, Father of Howard and Karina, Human)
Yirs (Server, Doc’s Dive, Undetermined)
Author’s Note
Rift in the Sky concludes the story of Aryl di Sarc and her Om’ray. It begins that of the M’hiray, the Clan, forced to live within the alien conglomeration known as the Trade Pact. The next installment of the Clan Chronicles concerns Aryl’s great granddaughter, Sira di Sarc. (The Trade Pact trilogy: A Thousand Words for Stranger, Ties of Power, and To Trade the Stars.)
But all good stories have an end. This one comes in the Reunification trilogy, where Sira and the M’hiray rediscover their past and claim a heritage no one could have foreseen.
Except me, of course. That’s my job and I love it.
I hope you enjoy the first six books of the Clan Chronicles. Once you have, I hope you paid attention and have questions.
Because I promise . . .You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Julie Czerneda
Rift in the Sky Page 40
