The newcomer smiled. She blinked. He was almost beaming with affability, and she could swear he was enjoying himself. The Monral sputtered, then seemed to catch himself and stood to bow – low. Adeline got to her feet, her heart still pounding, and helped Smitty up as the Monral spoke again, mentioning their names.
The impossible man favored them with a slight bow and said something that sounded like a greeting. When Smitty turned to the Monral and asked a question, a malicious smile curved the Monral’s lips. He looked as if he was about to say something, but then the giant silenced him with a sharp gesture. She narrowed her eyes. The Monral was the subordinate of the two. Now that was interesting. Very interesting.
Smitty glanced from one to the other of the two Tolari with a look of comprehension spreading across his blunt features. He said something and bowed.
“Watch your thoughts around him,” the Monral muttered in English.
What did that mean?
The tall man pierced the Monral with a dangerous look, all affability gone. The Monral was supposed to be silent, Adeline thought. While his superior takes charge?
Smitty filled the awkward pause with something conciliatory, in a tone of voice she recognized as the one he employed when he was trying to smooth over hostilities. The tall Tolari made a mollified comment.
“He is cold as the glaciers of his province,” the Monral said, using English again, as if he were daring the other man to deal with him.
The newcomer seemed to have had enough. He snapped a gesture and shot off a rapid-fire burst of words. Dripping with hatred, the Monral nodded, bowed, and stalked out of the room. His advisors followed him, each of them bowing as they passed the blue-robed giant.
Who outranked the Monral. That much was obvious.
She watched them leave with a sigh of relief and turned back to study the newcomer. His face had relaxed, and he was regarding them with genuine friendliness in his dark eyes. She suppressed a shiver. Those eyes. Molten pools of mahogany. And those long fingers... She pulled her mind out of distraction and got back to business, joining Smitty and tucking a hand under his arm.
“The Monral hates him,” she murmured.
The tall Tolari said something to Smitty. She sighed to herself and studied his body language until Smitty gave the little tug that meant it was time for her to drape herself on his arm and leave. She followed his lead and bowed before they headed out of the room.
The Monral was in the corridor, simmering and pacing. She could almost see anger dripping from his pores. Smitty stopped and bowed to him, but he waved them away. To one side, Farric beckoned.
“Come on, Addie,” Smitty said in a low voice. “He’s escorting us back to the shuttle.”
* * *
The Monral bottled his fury and paced. How did the Sural find out? He was caught, humiliated, at the Sural’s mercy. He had no doubt what would happen now. Word of what he’d attempted would leak, bit by bit, first to the Sural’s allies, then to his enemies. The ruling caste would never again consider him a serious candidate to lead them. Even more humiliating, the Sural was here, in his stronghold, giving orders to the servants, showing no concern for the guards. He ground his teeth, admitting the truth to himself. The Sural had no need to fear his guards. They couldn’t touch him if they tried, even in numbers. The only way to kill the Sural was to use a distance weapon.
The Monral shuddered. There was dishonor even in the thought of such a thing. Only hand-to-hand combat preserved honor, since the attacker’s life was at risk as much as the defender’s. Distance weapons were despised and forbidden, and the sight of the weapons the human guards carried had made his stomach heave. He shuddered again. To kill by piercing or damaging the body with projectiles or implements was an appalling concept.
He froze. Piercing. Projectiles. His nostrils flared. Proficiency with the bow was a harmless diversion practiced by most rulers, but an arrow could be used as a projectile weapon if aimed at a living being. His body tried to shudder again in reaction. He suppressed it and resumed his pacing, allowing himself to entertain the shocking thought.
The Sural was unkillable in honorable combat. But what about dishonorable? The bow could be a weapon. Perhaps the idea could be planted in one of the less intelligent members of the ruling caste. That might prove fruitful, if it could be done in a way that didn’t lead back to him.
The Sural appeared in the doorway of the audience room. The Monral glared at him, and the Sural’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t probing, the Monral thought. He wouldn’t dare.
Not that there was anything he could do about it. He would challenge any other ruler who tried to probe him, but challenging the Sural would mean his death, and he wasn’t ready to walk into the dark. Not yet, even with all his ambitions shattered. No, not quite all of them. He would live to see the Sural die. He vowed it to himself as he locked eyes with the man, willing him to drop dead.
“Show me how you concealed your activity from the rest of the ruling caste,” the Sural ordered.
The Monral ground his teeth again. A direct command. He had to use the familiar honorific. It burned on his tongue.
“Yes, dear one,” he hissed, and turned to lead the way to his engineers.
###
Field Work
Late spring in the province of Monralar was hot, even at dawn.
The rising sun hovered over the horizon, its normal orange hue distorted to blood red. A tall man in a dark green robe paced the road south from the city, ankle-length black hair swaying with each step, dark eyes set on the hard-packed road. Sweat poured from him as the deep color of his garment absorbed the morning heat. He was accustomed to a far cooler climate than equatorial Monralar offered.
A small woman, her hair gathered in the simple knots of a farmer, squatted on the left side of the road, examining young grain plants with a scanner in one hand and a tablet in the other. As he drew near, she turned her head and glanced at him, idle curiosity sparking through her. She nodded and stood, pocketing her scanner and tablet. She brushed soil from her hands.
“Greetings, stranger.” Her tone was amiable. “What brings you to the back end of nowhere?”
“I seek work,” he answered. He bowed. “My name is Kazryn. Are you Jeryth?”
She gave him a polite nod, then eyed him with a more appraising glance. “You sound like a Suralian.”
“I am.”
“What brings you to Monralar? You cannot get any farther from Suralia than this.”
“I go where the work takes me.” He shrugged. “I heard in the city you might need laborers.”
“Well, you heard right, if you have the skills. If you can tell me what afflicts this field, you have yourself some work for the next five days or so, till the harvest in the southern fields is in.”
“Of course,” he said, and turned to scan the field with his senses. After a moment, he headed for the southeast corner, allowing himself a small smile as her surprise washed over him. Then he tightened up his emotional barriers as much as he dared. If she was surprised, it might mean he had come across as inexperienced. That would never do.
He stooped down to examine the seedlings, then dug his fingers into the soil and brushed it away to inspect the little plant’s tiny roots. Ah, there it was. Whitish nodules on the roots. He didn’t allow himself to feel relief the little plant was suffering from a malady he recognized.
“Spring blight,” he announced, gently patting the soil back around the seedling. He stood and rubbed the dirt off his hands. “Early enough to be cured by cora seed oil.”
She smiled. “Aye, right enough. Welcome to my farm.”
“Accept my obedience,” he said, with a bow.
She gave him another appraising glance. “You look strong. You can work the sprayer.”
“Yes, Jeryth.”
“Everyone calls me Jer.”
“Yes, Jer.”
“Come along, farmhand.”
* * *
It was a long day of spraying cor
a seed oil on the north fields, broken by a simple meal at midday. At dusk, Jeryth showed Kazryn to a sleeping room he could make his own. Her dwelling was a house large enough to accommodate fifteen or twenty laborers. That must be what she needed it to do, during the summer harvests. For now, it housed only Jeryth, her young daughter, and the house servant, an older woman named Marzaina.
“Have you no belongings at all?” Jeryth asked.
He shook his head with a slight smile.
“Aye, I always get a few like you, what like to travel barehanded. Get yourself a clean robe and pants from the laundry before you wash up. There will be that which fits you, even tall as you are.”
“You honor me with your generosity, Jer.”
“Not many as would let a man go hungry or dirty in these parts,” she said. “Not in Monralar, not no matter whence he came.”
He nodded. The Monrali had that reputation. “A warm and generous people.”
“Aye, that we are. Best get washed up. You can help me with the evening meal.”
“Yes, Jer.”
Kazryn didn’t waste any time scrubbing the cora seed oil from his skin and hair – the sticky stuff got everywhere – and rejoined Jeryth in the kitchen. The day’s exertions had brought a pleasant fatigue, but he was refreshed from bathing. “You said you require help?” he asked.
She looked up from the vegetables she was scrubbing. “Aye,” she replied. “Finish cleaning and chopping these and get them boiling in that pot. I have dough to make into rolls.” She gave him another look. “Best scrub extra for yourself. You look to have a big appetite.”
He laughed. “Even so,” he said, as he set to work on the vegetables.
A small voice with the lisp of early childhood came from below him. “Are you a ruler?”
He looked down. A tiny child was staring up at him with big eyes. She could only be Jeryth’s daughter.
“And what is your name, little one?” he asked, with a friendly smile.
“Jeryneth,” she replied. “Are you a ruler? You feel like a ruler.”
“I do?” He looked at his robe, then back at the little girl. “What makes you say that?”
“You feel like the ruler who comes to my school sometimes.”
“Well,” he said, “if I were a ruler, would I spend the whole day spraying cora seed oil on a field of grain, do you think?”
“No.”
“There, you see? It would give your mother a very big surprise if I were really a ruler, would it not?”
She nodded. “What province do you rule?”
“Jery, stop bothering Kazryn with silly questions,” Jeryth chided. “Can you not see he wears a laborer’s dark green? Come help me with the dough.”
“Yes, Fafea.”
“Forgive my daughter. She has only ten seasons.” She shook her head and gave Jeryneth a small clump of dough to knead. “She gets some strange ideas.”
He chuckled. “She is delightful, Jer. My compliments.”
“You honor me,” she murmured as she worked the last of the dough into rolls. She put the rolls in the oven as Kazryn dropped the last of the vegetables into boiling water. “So tell me about yourself. Where did you learn the trade?”
“My grandmother had tea plantations in the Kentar Valley,” he said, taking a seat at the table. “When I was old enough, I administered them.”
“Can the tea flowers get the blight then?”
“They can, and we grew cora trees for their seed, to press our own oil.”
“Cold enough up there, aye,” she said, nodding. “Must have a plenty of flutters, too.”
“Many, yes. It was necessary to net the trees if we wanted to save the seeds from them.”
“Think after all these hundreds of years, scientists would find a way to eliminate the blight.”
He nodded. “And yet it persists.”
“So where were you last, before here?”
“Parania.”
“Explains the stains on your hands if you worked the fruit harvest.”
He glanced at his hands. He’d spent a day picking fruit for the sole purpose of acquiring those stains. “Even so.”
“You surely have a strange manner of speaking.”
He shrugged. “I am what I am. Does my speech offend you?”
She scoffed. “I would be a sorry sop if it did. I depend on traveling laborers to work my fields. You come from farthest yet, I do say. First to come to my farm from Suralia.”
He laughed. “Surely I cannot be the only laborer from Suralia in the whole of Monralar?”
“Nay, that you are not. We get a few here and there, so I hear. They usually work the farms closer to the city, or the other side of the province. None as get this far, till you. Stronghold scares them off, so I say, seeing as our Monral has such a dislike for your Sural.”
“He does,” he said in a grim voice. “The Sural advises his people not to come here, for that reason. Should I be afraid?”
She made a rude noise. “Not hardly, so I say,” she answered. “The Monral has better to do than harass traveling laborers what help his own Monrali. Does your Sural hate us, then?”
“Not at all. I cannot see him harming innocent travelers.”
“There you are then. The Monral will feel the same. What, look now, time to mince the vegetables.”
He held the steaming pot of vegetables while she scooped them out and minced them into a thick soup. Then she gave him a long paddle and ordered him to stir while she added handfuls of fresh herbs and pinches of seasonings. When she nodded her approval, he poured it all into a tureen and took it to the table in the dining area. She took the rolls out of the oven.
“Here we are now,” she said, setting the rolls on a trencher and taking it to the table. She looked around. “Jery!” she called. “Now where did that child go off to?”
He chuckled and set into the food with a will.
* * *
Kazryn slipped under his blanket, grateful for the quiet dark of his sleeping room. While Jeryth’s cheerful chatter distracted him, he needed to think. He yearned with everything he was to return to his own province of Suralia, but he could not leave Monralar before he accomplished what he came to do. He had to stop the Monral from succeeding in his current plans. Fortunately for Suralia, Monralar’s neighbor, Parania, was a closer ally than anyone knew.
He sighed and let his gaze meander out the window, west toward Parania. He had long let the ruling caste believe there was bad blood between himself and Parania’s ruler. Nothing could be further from the truth: she had pledged allegiance to him the day his father died. She was secretly a proponent of the rule of the Jorann’s grandchildren, and she hadn’t liked what her observers reported about the Monral. She informed him of the suspicious activities in Monralar.
It seemed the Monral was indulging his thirst for power and attempting to undermine the Sural’s authority as planetary ruler of Tolar by negotiating with one or more of the star-faring races of the Interstellar Trade Alliance. Worse, such activity threatened to reveal more about the Tolari than Kazryn was prepared to have revealed.
He could defend his world from any race in the Trade Alliance, but it was simpler – much simpler – if they had no interest in what they believed to be a sparsely populated planet of farmers and scholars. Outsiders with no emotional control were difficult for a race of empaths to tolerate. It was why his people had lost interest in the stars and turned inward, advancing their own arts, literature, and science without leaving home.
Their empathy was both blessing and curse: a blessing, because there was almost no crime; and a curse, because it turned the entire race reclusive. Or nearly the entire race. There was the occasional ambitious exception, such as the current Monral.
Kazryn rolled away from the window, stretching and yawning. He had informed the Jorann of the Monral’s suspected activities. She could have put a stop to them with a word, but she had seemed almost ... amused ... by the situation. Instead of summoning the Monr
al, she suggested the Sural intervene. Then she stripped him of his title, gave him a name, and sent him to Monralar as a farm laborer with nothing but a dark green robe and a compressed package containing his pale blue, heavily embroidered one. The one he no longer had the rank to wear.
If he failed, he reflected as he drifted into sleep, his life was going to become very complicated.
* * *
At midmorning, the late spring sun was hotter than high summer in Suralia. Kazryn headed north along the road with Jeryneth grasping his long fingers. The child was quieter and much more sensitive than her mother – he would have to be careful. She had already sensed he was a bonded ruler, as was the Monral, who had obviously visited her school. He was known to be fond of children. You feel like a ruler, she had announced. He glanced down at her, but she was absorbed in her own little thoughts. Good, he thought, tightening his barriers.
There was no help for it. He couldn’t leave Jeryth’s service without a good reason. He could only hope Jeryneth wouldn’t mention to her tutors her mother had engaged a provincial ruler as a farm laborer. He suppressed a grin. Any adult would laugh, but it still might implant an idea. He couldn’t risk raising the suspicion the Sural might be sneaking around in Monralar. He walked a thin line: only because the Jorann had made him into a farm laborer and ordered him to Monralar could he escape an accusation of espionage. Normally, one provincial ruler didn’t wander about another ruler’s province.
Normally, a bonded ruler never left his own province at all.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t just a bonded provincial ruler. He was the leader of the ruling caste and the guardian of the Jorann. That gave him power and authority over his fellow rulers.
Not anymore.
He took a fork in the road, away from the city and toward the massive stone fortress that was the Monral’s stronghold. Jeryneth’s school was in the shadow of the stronghold itself. While he walked her there, her mother was in the city, engaging more laborers. It was perfect. He would have both time and opportunity to investigate whether the Monral had somehow allowed beings from the Trade Alliance to land in his province without alerting the rest of the planet.
Into Tolari Space (Tales of Tolari Space) Page 3
