“I wanted breakfast in bed,” Aryl admitted ruefully.
That drew a chuckle. “That I can arrange without breaking the Agreement— granted I get home tonight. Which is where you belong, youngest.”
Then, as if Aryl was a baby, her mother kissed her on the forehead and pressed two fingers over the warm spot, sending her love.
Aryl was halfway across the bridge when she realized her mother’s sending had contained something else, something Taisal hadn’t intended her daughter to share.
Dread.
Interlude
THE OUD HAD LEFT THE TUANA village as they’d come, their vehicles etching a second set of lines through the dust. There’d been no more surprises.
One had been more than enough, Enris thought, kicking a tread mark.
“Hey!” Ral jumped sideways. “These are— were— clean boots, cousin.”
Enris gestured apology. “I’m in a foul mood,” he admitted. “You shouldn’t bother with me.”
Ral laughed and clapped the other on his shoulder. They’d had breakfast in the meeting hall, a usually lighthearted gathering to host those taking Passage. Tradition abounded during Visitation. “How can you be grumpy today?” he protested. He spun about, holding his hands from his sides to show off his new shirt. “Do I not look fabulous?”
Enris’ lips twitched involuntarily as he considered his cousin. It was, to be fair, a fine shirt and Ral looked ridiculously blissful in it. Still . . . “She hasn’t Chosen you yet,” he cautioned. Gelle Licor was one of Naryn’s ilk, in his opinion, full of her own Power and herself.
“A mere detail.” This with an airy wave. “She filled my cup twice!”
“Well. That says it all, doesn’t it.” Enris somehow managed a straight face. Besides, what did he know of Choice? No Chooser-to-Be had offered to fill his cup. “Congratulations.” And he meant it. Several couples had left the meeting hall last night with soft looks at one another. All during breakfast, Traud and Olalla had touched fingertips under the table when they thought no one could tell. Mind you, she’d hiccupped each and every time.
He should be grateful this morning had been calm and civil. There’d been a threat to the look and feel of Mauro Lorimar and his friends at the end of last night. They hadn’t taken Irm’s being picked for Passage well; they took Enris being “spared” as a personal insult. Only the watchful eye of the Speaker had kept them from saying what they felt.
Or worse.
“It’ll be my turn to congratulate you soon, Enris,” Ral said magnanimously. “That is, when you . . . when there’s more . . . next time . . . I mean—” He coughed at some dust and then laughed. “You know what I mean.”
“Not a clue,” Enris grinned. “But if it has anything to do with letting me get to back to work sometime today, I’m happy.”
The two stopped outside the shop. It was locked against the night; Jorg hadn’t arrived yet.
Enris wasn’t surprised. The Chosen weren’t expected to attend the breakfast and they’d stayed up late, he and his parents, trying to make sense of the Oud. Jorg wanted to go to Council even if it meant revealing they’d had commerce with the Oud earlier. Ridersel wanted the strange object away from her family and forgotten. Returned to the Oud. Tossed in a field, if need be.
He’d— Enris sighed. He’d wanted to keep it a while longer, to puzzle at it in secret. Maybe not the best or wisest course, but his mother had given him that too-keen look, the one she used to see right through him, and agreed.
“I’d help you fetch the leavings, Cousin, but . . .” Ral indicated his new shirt. “Gelle would never forgive me.”
Enris laughed and waved him on. “See you later.”
To save time, he didn’t bother unlocking the shop but went around to the side where he parked the cart each night. It was a long, thin alleyway, protected by the overhang from the potter next door. Enris was in its cool shadow before he noticed something wrong.
The cart had been turned upside down.
He ran the rest of the way, stopping with his hands on the wheels. They were priceless, virtually irreplaceable— and intact, he discovered after checking them carefully. He let out a sigh of relief. Whoever had done this hadn’t been thorough fools.
They’d been angry. At him.
He didn’t need to be an Adept to figure that out. Or to know who. There were footprints everywhere he looked, footprints made by fancy, hard-soled boots. Mauro Lorimar and his friends. He should have realized why they’d been all smiles at breakfast; it hadn’t only been the company of their Choosers-to-Be.
Enris shook his head. None of that mattered. The Oud who brought the new day’s leavings expected the previous ones to be gone. He was already running later than he liked— it would take most of the afternoon to empty the bins.
The cart was made of thick metal, built for heavy loads and rough terrain. On its big wheels, it could be moved with ease, even fully loaded. To flip it like this? He guessed there’d been five of them, maybe more.
Help would lead to questions. There were, Enris decided glumly, too many of those already.
He stood back, concentrated on the cart, and pushed. It was easier than shoving the bench. Once in the air, the cart moved without resistance. He turned it over and lowered it. Slowly. Slowly.
“Nice trick.”
The cart thudded to the ground. Enris groaned. Had he damaged the wheels? He plunged to his hands and knees to check, ignoring Naryn.
She came closer, kicking dust. “Did you hear me?”
He rocked back on his heels and gazed up at her. “The wheels are fine.” No thanks to you, he added to himself, keeping his shields tight.
“Wheels—? What do—” She seemed to collect herself. “So this is why you wouldn’t vouch for me. You wanted to show off yourself!”
Enris got to his feet, brushing dust from his pants. “I’m not the one who ran to Council and the Adepts,” he pointed out.
“I have every right to use my special Talent.”
“No,” he said calmly, “you don’t. Not if you make a display of it where the Oud could find out.” He wrapped his hands around the handles of the cart and heaved it into motion. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m late.” She didn’t move; and he was forced to stop. “Naryn—” with exasperation.
“You didn’t pick anyone last night. Why?”
Enris stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You aren’t—” this as though she’d made a startling discovery “— stupid.”
“Thank you. Now get out of my way.”
Naryn put her hands on the cart. “Not until I get an answer.”
“I could push you out of the way,” he suggested almost idly.
She arched a shapely brow. “You could try.”
For an instant, Enris ached to do just that, to pit his Power against hers, to make her stop behaving like the spoiled child she was. It was more than frustration, more than anger. Something deep inside, something he’d never felt before, wanted . . . was trying . . . trying to . . .
To answer . . .
“You!” he accused, dropping the handles and backing away. “What are you doing?”
Naryn tilted her head, as if she needed a different view of him. “How— interesting,” she said, running the tip of her tongue over her lower lip to taste the word. “I suspected. Oh, yes. There was always something about you, Enris Mendolar. Annoying. Addictive. They’re much the same, you know.” She eased out of the cart’s path, but only as far as the wall of the shop. She leaned back against the brick, stretching her slender right arm languidly over her head as if daring him to reach for it. “Go.”
Enris wrapped his big hands around the cart handles and left her there.
By the time he reached the Oud tunnel, he’d almost stopped wanting to go back.
Chapter 15
WITHIN THREE FISTS OF THE M’hir’s weakening, the afternoon rains returned with a vengeance, deafening and deadly.
They pounded walls of water between buildings, obscured bridges and ladders. It was impossible to find a grip to climb while they fell; they left every branch and stalk slick and treacherous, encouraged slimy growths that puffed a choking black dust if touched. The brief morning respite swirled with mists and swarms of returning biters. It was, in Aryl’s opinion, the worst season of all.
Council had ended the desperate hunt for dresel pods. There would be none left to find, none whole, that is. They’d done what they could; the precious extra stores were now hidden within the Cloisters. No Tikitik had ever set foot there, though if Yena fortunes held their course, they might.
Aryl made a wry face. Not something to say out loud, even if she dared admit having heard Council debate that very thing. It was too easy to be afraid of the future. She didn’t need to be told how important it was to keep trying. To keep working. If they were to survive as a Clan, it would be because no one gave up.
At least she need no longer worry about those on Passage from Yena. There were no more isolated glows of Om’ray life; all who’d survived had reached their destinations, their presence merged into the larger glow of their new clan. With an effort of will that surprised her by growing easier with time, Aryl resisted the temptation to reach for their identities. She now understood the reasons to be wary of new Talent. It was enough, she told herself, to know these Yena lived.
To know Bern lived.
She wished them joy.
Over the past fists Aryl had discovered, also to her surprise, a talent for coaxing along Costa’s greenery. There had been more sweetberries and, she thought proudly, a quite remarkable set of yellow-and-black gourds— type unknown— continued to ripen on the floor by one window panel. Maybe she’d paid more attention to his work than she realized.
“You’d probably grow without me,” she told the rustling leaves. Her main task was keeping each growth from overwhelming all the others— that, and providing rain water to those pots not under a leak. A drop landed on her head and Aryl glared upward, suspecting her brother had made strategic holes in the family roof.
Costa . . . falling . . . screaming . . .
Taisal told her the sharp bite of loss would fade, that she’d be surprised by its pain for M’hirs to come, but no longer overcome. She wasn’t there yet, Aryl thought helplessly, tears rolling down her cheeks. The world still stopped when she remembered he was gone. Each breath had to fight through her throat and . . .
“Aryl?” softly, from the doorway. “Are you all right?”
There were distinct disadvantages living with someone whose range of accepted Talents included an unsettling sensitivity to the emotions of others. Aryl rubbed her eyes and tried to keep irritation from her voice. “I’ll be fine, Myris.” She didn’t try to lie; if shields hadn’t protected her privacy, words couldn’t. “I was thinking about Costa.”
Myris took this as an invitation to enter, though she moved with caution. Her skin had produced a painful rash in response to one of Costa’s captives. Not knowing which, her only choice was to avoid them all. It wasn’t easy. The rains stimulated growth in the canopy— apparently even that indoors. An entire table had disappeared.
“Ael went for our supper,” Myris told her, tactfully concentrating on the gourds. She pointed at the nearest. “Has anyone decided if we can eat those?”
“First Scout Haxel saw climbers eating a broken one she thought looked the same. She—” Aryl coughed slightly. “Seru told me Haxel chased them off so she could try it herself. Said it wasn’t bad. The Adepts are watching her for signs of poison.”
“Haxel is—” Myris broke off, her face flushed. “There’s no respectful way to say this, Aryl. Anything she’d try, well, no one should. Trust me. No one. She has the sense of a flitter who’s hit a tree once too often.”
Aryl had to chew her lip to stop an equally disrespectful grin. Then, she stopped trying and chuckled with Myris. “How did you do that?” she spoke without thinking.
“Do what?”
Aryl took her turn pretending to study the gourds. They were as long as her arm and starting to thicken. If she squinted and imagined slices, maybe fried . . . they looked like food. Sort of.
“How did you change how I feel?” she asked finally, quietly. She glanced sidelong at Myris. “Through my shields.”
The other Om’ray half-smiled. “You’re too strong for me to influence, if that’s what you think. But you know I’d never do that, even if I could.”
“Then how?”
Myris reached out and gently tugged the lock of hair that always escaped Aryl’s binding. “You and Taisal. Always thinking about how to use your Power, your Talents. You want to change things. Do things. Me?” That mischievous look Aryl knew very well. “All I do is feel. Nothing more complicated. If there’s Power in that, I don’t know how to explain it. I feel what those around me feel. It took Ael a while to get used to it, believe me.” The mischief became something dreamier and distracted.
Sending to her Chosen, no doubt. “You do more than that,” Aryl insisted. “You changed how I felt, just now. You can’t deny it.”
“I didn’t intend to—” The other hesitated, then sighed. “It’s not something I control. But if I’m near someone in pain, sometimes I— sometimes I can ease it.”
She was seeing Myris, really seeing her, as she hadn’t before. This was why her aunt’s expressions were always changing. Some weren’t hers at all. There were those who could use their Power to accelerate a body’s healing, but this? “The Adepts must value your Talent—” Aryl stopped at the flash of misery she couldn’t help but sense. “I’m sorry,” she said, unsure what she’d said.
“It’s all right, Aryl,” Myris said sadly. “They do. But I’ve more limits than use. I can ease the discomfort of close family— I do little or nothing for anyone else. I’ve tried.” This last came out so utterly bleak, Aryl was afraid to ask.
“That’s why you and Ael came to live with me, isn’t it?” she guessed, shaking her head. “Here I thought I was taking you in.”
Myris had a smile that could outshine the glows. “And we’re grateful. Especially me.” She swept up her arms in a grand gesture that just missed the purple vine draped over the glowbead string. “It’s nice being home. This was my room, you know,” as she caught Aryl’s mystified expression. “I lived here until your mother Chose that handsome rascal Mele first and claimed the right . . .” her voice trailed away. “Aie. What am I saying? Poor Taisal.”
That grief belonged to them both. Hers had faded, Aryl realized with a faint guilt. Or maybe newer pain had more strength. “What’s past is past, Myris,” she offered clumsily. “I’m glad you’re here. So is Taisal.” Their eyes sought the doorway at the same time, then they looked at each other. “Ael’s back.” Aryl stated the obvious. “We should eat.” Her stomach gurgled agreement.
Myris laughed. “Glad someone has an appetite these days,” she said. “You’ll need a good breakfast before today’s climb.” Her hand reached out as if to touch Aryl’s arm, then sketched gratitude instead.
Aryl followed her aunt to the main hall, bemused to think she’d been the one to comfort anyone else.
* * *
Not my fault . . . not my FAULT!!! . . .
Aryl winced and tightened her shields, already sorry she’d agreed to take Seru’s youngest cousin with her this morning. Seru wasn’t feeling well— she rarely was, these days. Being a Chooser newly ready for Choice was difficult enough. Having no unChosen in reach? Until she settled, Seru was, to put it mildly, difficult company.
Besides, it had seemed a golden opportunity. Aryl’s bag was filled with her latest fiches, as she now thought of them. With the child along, she had a good reason to stay within the home grove instead of foraging during the rainless morning, and climb the sort of straight, open stalks she needed.
NOT MY FAULT!
Aryl winced again. “Will you hush?”
Joyn’s black hair stuck through the gauze of his hood i
n every direction, making him resemble a startled flitter. Now he gave her a puzzled look. “I didn’t say anything, Cousin Aryl.”
“You’re sending again,” she sighed. His maturing shields were at that awkward stage, new and tight enough to damp most emotions, so he could be allowed away from his parents, but not yet under his conscious control. They should have been barely permeable to mindspeech. Should have. There were a handful of truly gifted Yena children; none were remotely as precocious or strong as Joyn Uruus, barely past eight M’hirs and already giving adults— and her— a headache. No wonder his mother, Rimis, had been doubtful of Aryl taking him.
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