“Water sprite, wake up.”
Kamoj moved, then groaned. It felt like pins and thornbats prickled her legs, where she had folded them under her body. She didn’t remember sliding out from under Vyrl, but she was sitting next to him now, her hands tucked between her knees. Moonlight poured over the bed.
Vyrl lay watching her. “I need you to do something for me.”
She smiled, imagining his hands on her body. “Anything.”
“In the second drawer of my desk. There’s a bottle I need.”
Her good mood vanished. “You don’t need that.”
“I can’t sleep.”
“Dazza could give you—”
“No!”
“But—”
“I don’t need Dazza’s damn sedatives.”
“I can’t get you the bottle.”
His voice hardened. “Why not? You have two legs. You can walk the ten steps it would take to reach the desk.”
“The rum hurts you.”
“After two days you claim to know me well enough to dictate what is and isn’t good for me?”
“Vyrl, no. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then get it for me.” His voice gentled. “Just for tonight. To help me sleep.”
“I can’t. I—I’m sorry.”
His gentleness disappeared. “Then get out of my bed.”
“But I—”
“Get out.”
Stunned, Kamoj slid off the bed and ran across the room, her bare feet slapping the stone. Inside her chamber, she dropped onto her own bed. Moonlight shone through the window, creating a swath of pale colors across the floor.
A grunt came from the master bedroom, followed by the rustle of blankets. Kamoj froze, listening.
A gasp, labored but brief.
Silence.
Was he having trouble breathing? It was hard to believe he had suffered a collapsed lung only this afternoon. She started to get up, then hesitated. Get out, he had said. If she walked in and he was fine, she would look like a fool.
The crash of shattering glass broke the silence. She jumped up and ran into his bedroom.
Vyrl was kneeling by his desk, wearing only his sleep pants, his chest bare, except for the bandages, his arms wrapped around his body. Shards of broken glass covered the floor, glinting in the moonlight. A pool of rum was spreading under the desk.
Kamoj went over and knelt in front of him. Up this close she saw tears on his cheeks, just as she had seen them last night after his nightmare. She wondered if his waking helped at all or if his night terrors recognized no boundaries between sleep and reality.
Stretching out his arm, he pulled a strand of her hair away from her lips. “Touch me, Kamoj. Let me feel you. See you. Smell you.”
She reached for him. “Always. Whenever you want.”
Instead of responding, he grabbed the desk and pulled himself to his feet. The window above the desk looked south, over the Lower Sky Hills that fell away to the plains. Staring out at the mountains, he spoke in a distant voice. “I’ve a younger brother. Kelric.”
She stood up, trying to understand his mood. “A little brother?”
“Little?” He gave a short laugh. “He’s huge. Joined ISC.”
“Is he here now?”
“No. The war took him away.”
Kamoj lifted her hand, meaning to touch him, to offer comfort. Then she hesitated, unsure what he needed or wanted. Uncertain, she dropped her hand again.
“I have a lot of brothers,” he continued. “Althor. I always admired him. Looked up to him. He joined ISC too. Jagernaut.”
“Jagernaut?”
“Cybernetically enhanced star fighter pilot. Like Kelric. Like those new bodyguards Colonel Pacal gave me.”
“Althor is a soldier too?”
“Was.” In a wooden voice, he said, “ISC gave him a beautiful funeral.”
“Hai, Vyrl. I’m sorry.”
He kept on, as if unable to stop. “There’s my sister. Soz. We were closest in age, out of ten children.” He finally turned to Kamoj. “You look a little like her.”
“She is also a soldier? Like Dazza?”
“Dazza served under her.”
“Where is she now?”
“Blown to dust.”
“Vyrl, I—I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” His words came like leaded rain. “My brother Eldrin is still alive. The Traders captured him. You know what they do when they catch one of us? No, never mind. You don’t want to know. My aunt and her son, they’re gone. Prisoners, maybe. Dead, probably. Then there is Kurj, my uncle. War leader before Soz. She took over after the Traders killed him.”
“I’m so sorry.” It sounded useless, saying that over and over. She had lost only her parents and that had torn apart her world. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose most of a large family.
He walked away, across the room. Bathed in pale light from the Far Moon and the aurora borealis, he climbed the dais. Then he turned to face her. “I’m a good farmer. You want crops with better yields? Bi-hoxen that can better survive your winters? I can work it out. That’s what I wrote my doctorate on, the application of genetic engineering to crop and livestock development. I’ve had Morlin running DNA simulations here.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” she said.
“Farming.” He stood in the moonlight like a statue, the planes of his chest stark in the colorless radiance that filled the room. “I’ve always loved it. You know where I got that? From my father. He loved the land. And he loved us. His children.” His voice broke. “At least I was there when he died.”
She went to him then, joining him on the dais. Gently she said, “How did it happen?”
He rubbed his palm over his cheek, seeming surprised to find tears there. “Old age. Old wounds.” Dropping his hand, he said, “My father spent his last days with his family, in our family house, on our home world. The Allied military let us have that much.”
“Allied?”
“The Allied Worlds of Earth.” Bitter now, he said, “They were ‘kind’ enough to let us live in our own homes. Of course, Earth now controls the entire planet where we live.”
“Earth? I don’t understand.”
“I told you this afternoon. Our ‘allies’ betrayed us. They won’t let my family go.” In a quieter voice he said, “They believe that without my family to power the Ruby machines, ISC won’t risk another war. Earth fears that otherwise my people and the Traders will destroy civilization, the way the Ruby Empire was destroyed, five thousand years ago.”
“But if you were their prisoner, how are you here now?”
“None of my family could get offworld.”
“But you’re here.”
He looked away from her, out the window across the room. “Do you know what my father’s dying wish was? His gruesome dying wish? That his coffin be launched into orbit around the planet.”
“Orbit?”
“Above the sky.”
“Like the moons?”
“Like the moons. He wanted to be a moon.”
“But why? If he valued the land—”
“He loved it. The land. The harvest. The seasons.” Vyrl turned back to her. “Going into orbit terrified him.”
“But you said he asked to go there.”
“That’s what he told our jailors.” A muscle in his cheek jerked. “We held his true funeral in secret, to do what he told my mother he really wanted. We cremated his body and spread the ashes over his land.” He swallowed. “Then my family took his coffin to the starport.”
“Why, if he wasn’t in it?”
“The Allieds didn’t know that. There was a body, one their sensors registered as his.”
She stiffened. “No.”
He went on, inexorable. “Our family physician on Lyshriol was an ISC agent. He installed an intravenous system inside the coffin to feed me. Made the coffin vacuum tight. So I could breathe. Put in a web system to deceive probes. I weigh more than my father, so he streamlined everything. Same for the web, not because of weight, but to minimize the risk of detection. It didn’t even have a voice mod for conversation. He didn’t want to use drugs in an unmonitored environment, but finally he agreed to sedate me, so I wouldn’t get claustrophobic.” His voice cracked. “It would only be for one day, after all.”
“They buried you alive?”
Flatly he said, “My mother made a heartbroken plea to our jailors. Said she couldn’t bear to think of her husband in that cold wasteland. In compassion for the beautiful bereaved widow, they agreed to let an ISC ship recover his casket from space. In honor of his wishes, it would spend one day in orbit, and then ISC would make the pickup.” He paused. “By the time I awoke from sedation, I would be safe on the Ascendant.”
Relief poured over Kamoj. “It was a trick! To get you away from your enemies. And it worked.”
“Yes. It worked.” His cheek twitched. “With just one little glitch.”
“Glitch?”
“An Allied bureaucrat stalled the pickup.” In a quiet voice, he added, “No one told my family. The Allieds didn’t want to upset them. But minutes after the launch, someone somewhere along the line changed his mind and said they wouldn’t give up the body.”
Kamoj felt as if her stomach dropped. “No.”
“Don’t look so grim.” He flexed his fist, jerkily opening and closing his hand. “Negotiations to recover the body began even before I woke up.”
“You woke up inside the coffin?”
“Yes.”
Kamoj tried to imagine it, buried alive, with only a box separating you from the sky and stars, knowing something had gone terribly wrong, that you were here when you should have been there, safe and free.
Vyrl swallowed. “Do you know what ‘sensory deprivation’ means? No sound. No sight. No taste. No smell. No weight. After a while I couldn’t even feel the inside of the coffin. And my mind—I couldn’t—as a telepath, I need to be close to people to pick up anything. My mind opened up, searching for anyone. Anything. Anything. I was wide open and there was nothing.”
“How long?” she whispered.
The brittle edge of his voice broke. “Thirty-one days. When the team on the Ascendant finally got me out, I was screaming, raving insane.”
Kamoj had no idea what to say. No words would take away this horror, no touch heal it.
“Don’t look so dismayed,” he said. “They took care of me. Treated me. Hell, it even helped. To a point.” His head jerked. “But the psiber centers in my brain went dead. ISC got their precious Ruby psion, but they broke him in the process. Turned me into a crippled telepath.” He swallowed. “Except when I sleep. Then my mind opens up like in the coffin. But this isn’t space. People are all around. So I go into telepathic overload. If they isolate me and I can’t pick up anything, I start to scream again.” Dully he added, “And every time Dazza sedates me, all I can think is that I’ll wake up in that coffin.”
“There must be some cure—something—”
“The rum deadens my brain. It lets me sleep.”
She took his hands. “Surely some other solution exists. Can’t Dazza and her people help you?”
“They can all go to hell.”
“But—”
His voice hardened. “Two people on the Ascendant knew my father’s body wasn’t in that coffin: the special operations officer assigned to the mission and General Ashman, the ship’s commander. They could have ended it any time by revealing that a living man was out there. ISC would have lost me back to the Allieds, but I would have been free from that nightmare.” His fists clenched. “They wanted me any way they could get me, and to the hell with my sanity.”
“Hai, Vyrl.” She thought she understood now, both his pain and the desperation that drove his military to such an extreme. Gently she said, “When did you start to feel thoughts again?”
“With you.” With an obvious effort, he relaxed his hands. “You’re wide open to me, water sprite. I felt it that day I saw you in the river.”
Kamoj remembered Dazza’s face when the doctor had realized Vyrl was picking up his bride’s thoughts. Joy. Hope. Elation. All signs of a healer whose patient had begun a recovery she feared would never happen.
Vyrl took her hand and climbed onto the bed, drawing her with him. As they lay down together, the quilts enveloped them in billowy cloth, soft from many washings and fragrant with the scent of spice-soap.
She touched his damp cheek. “We have a saying in Argali: ‘Tears wash clean the debris of the heart.’”
“I’m not crying.” Another tear slid down his cheek. “I never cry. Only children do that.”
Kamoj thought of all the tears she had held in over the years. “Maybe children know better than we.”
His voice caught. “Ai, water sprite. Something inside me is breaking. I don’t know what, only that it’s thawing.”
“Like ice on a lake in spring.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Be my spring, Kamoj.”
Night curled around them, quiet and foggy. As they made love, a low-lying cloud seeped in the window. Afterward they lay together, drowsing, their heads together, Vyrl’s lips touching her hair.
Some time later he said, “Look. The Lion came up.”
Kamoj opened her eyes. The fog in the room had reached as high as his desk, but their view of the window was clear. The Lion constellation was stalking across the sky, his head thrown back, his mane flowing in a wind of stars.
“See the star in his front paw?” Vyrl said.
“The yellow one?”
“Yes. That’s a sun of my home world. It’s why we made up the name Lionstar.”
“Lionstar isn’t your real name?”
He gave her a guilty look. “It isn’t even close.”
“What are you called?”
“A lot of nonsense.”
“Tell me.”
“You don’t really want to hear it.”
She smiled. “But I do. The whole thing.”
“All right. But I warned you.” With a grimace, he said, “Prince Havyrl Torcellei Valdor kya Skolia, Sixth Heir, once removed from the line of Pharaoh, born of the Rhon, Fourth Heir to the Web Key, Fifth Heir to the Assembly Key, and Fifth Heir to the Imperator.”
Kamoj blinked. “So many names.”
He touched her cheek. “And you?”
“Just Kamoj Quanta Argali.” It didn’t sound nearly so impressive as his.
“Quanta?” He laughed. “Ai, Kamoj, you’re a bound quantum resonance.”
It relieved her to see his spirits lighten, even if his words were odd. “You think my name means resonance too?”
“Argali refers to a Breit-Wigner scattering resonance. It comes from the Iotic word akil tz’i.” He paused. “Actually akil tz’i originally meant leash. It’s used now for resonance. Some people say it derives from a Mayan language, but no one really knows.”
Kamoj knew nothing about “Mayan,” but she had no doubts about her own language. “Argali means vine rose.”
“Not really. It just got mixed up with another Iotic word, akil tz’usub, which means vine runner.”
Just like that, he took away her entire name and gave her a new one, without even realizing it. “What does ‘Mayan’ mean?”
He pushed up on his elbow to look at her, as if her appearance could give him a clue to his own past. “My people have tried to determine our origins by comparing our languages to those on Earth. Some similarities exist between classical Iotic and Tzotzil Mayan. Other of our words suggest we came from the Mediterranean or Near East. But no matter how you look at it, none of it makes sense, unless my ancestors were shifted in time as well as space. Our history on Raylicon goes back six thousand years, and at that time no culture on Earth even vaguely resembled that of my ancestors.”
“Then how can you be sure about the language?” She shook her head. “Scattering resonance? It makes no sense.”
“It’s like when you roll bowballs on a table and they bounce off each other.” He lay on his side again. “Particles do that too.”
“Particles? You mean dust?”
“Smaller. Much smaller. And they can change state.”
“What is ‘change state’?”
“Deform, spin different ways, that sort of thing.”
“This is what ‘resonance’ means?”
“A resonance is when one ball captures another.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Vyrl, I have never heard of bowballs capturing each other.”
He laughed. “Just try to imagine it. The balls don’t bounce apart right away. They collide and stick together for a while. That’s the resonance.”
“Why would my name mean such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” he admitted. “What are some other common Argali names?”
She thought about it. “Sable for women. Maxard for men.”
“Maxard could refer to a maximum. What is your uncle’s full name?”
“Maxard Osil Argali.”
“Osil means life. Maximum resonance lifetime?”
Kamoj didn’t see what sense that made either. “What about Sable?”
“I don’t know about that one. It just means black.”
“It is a contraction of Metastable state.”
He stared at her. “That can’t be coincidence! Metastable state refers to a resonance.” He looked inordinately pleased with this strange statement. “You’re all named after scattering processes. Wait until I tell Drake.”
“Drake?”
“The anthropologist on the Ascendant. He’s been trying to make sense out of the name ‘Jax.’”
Kamoj stiffened. “What about Jax?”
“It’s actually an acronym. Jks.”
“Yes. I know. But Jax is easier to say.”
“Jks. They’re quantum numbers. For a free particle. J is angular momentum, k is energy, s is spin.” He snapped his fingers. “Jax Ironbridge is a free particle! Actually, he’s one term in the partial wave expansion for a free-particle plane wave.”
“Good for him,” Kamoj said dourly.
His smile faded. “My sorry. That was insensitive.”
Free particle indeed. All she knew about Jax was that she no longer needed to suffer a pendulum of emotions, swinging between fear of his temper and relief for his tenderness. Which was fine with her.
After that they lay in silence, side by side, their heads together. Kamoj was almost asleep when Vyrl made an odd choked sound.
She opened her eyes. “Are you all right?”
He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yes.”
“Shall I get Dazza?”
“No.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “I’ll be fine.”
“I can rub your head.”
He glanced at her. “Yes. Thank you.”
Kamoj sat up and took his head into her lap. As she massaged him, his eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. But after only a few moments he said, “Maybe you better not.”
“There must be something I can do.”
“Get me another bottle. From the kitchen. That one I broke is the last I had up here.”
“Please don’t—”
His face went stiff, like the precursor to an explosion.
“Wait,” Kamoj said. She couldn’t bear the thought of his rejecting her again, a second time in one night. But how could she do what he asked?
Then it occurred to her that if she went downstairs, she might find someone who could give her advice. “I’ll go to the kitchen.”
He relaxed. “Thank you, Kamoj.”
She put on her underdress and a robe, and left their bed. As she tied her sash, she crossed to the entrance of the suite, wondering what she would find on the landing outside. Vyrl’s new bodyguards, stagmen from the Ascendant.
She eased open the outer door, trying to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Moonlight filtered onto the landing from a window in the stairwell. The two men posted outside were huge, bigger even than Vyrl. They wore black, with no diskmail, only jackets, pants, and knee boots. Metal bands gleamed on their upper arms, and the leather guards on their wrists glinted with metallic ribbing. Each man also wore a black bulk on his hip, not a sword or dagger, but something else with a handle and snout.
Then Kamoj realized one of the stagmen was a stagwoman. Massive and muscled, she stood taller than most men of Balumil. How did Vyrl’s people grow so big?
Both guards were watching her. From their intrigued looks, one would have thought she was some rare, exotic flower instead of an ordinary farm girl.
The man spoke in accented Iotaca. “Can we help you, Governor Argali?”
“I need to go to the kitchen,” Kamoj said.
He smiled down at her. “Tell Morlin what you need. Then you won’t have to walk down there in this cold.”
“Isn’t Morlin gone?”
“Most of the system is down. But you can use the intercom to page someone in the kitchen.”
“I don’t wish to bother anyone. But thank you.” Self-conscious, Kamoj nodded to them as she would to her uncle’s stagmen. Then she started down the stairs. To her relief, neither of the giants tried to accompany her.
No lamps or candles lit the stairwell, but moonlight slanted in through the window slits-white light, which meant more than one moon was up, and probably the aurora as well. She reached the Long Hall on the first floor without seeing anyone. A few lamps burned on the walls, but the corridor was empty. Further down, light slanted out of rooms here and there, on either side.
The first of the lit rooms was empty. In the second, a housemaid was cleaning the floor. Kamoj found Dazza in the third. The colonel was sitting on a sofa, reading an odd book with glowing hieroglyphic symbols on its surface.
Dazza looked up as she entered. “Good evening.”
Kamoj hesitated just inside the doorway. “My greetings, Colonel Pacal.”
“Did you want to talk to me?” When Kamoj nodded, Dazza closed her book and motioned to a chair by the sofa. “Please. Be comfortable.”
Kamoj came in and sat on the edge of the chair.
The colonel smiled. “What is it, child?”
Child? Kamoj stiffened and said nothing.
After a moment Dazza asked, “Have I offended you?”
Kamoj made herself relax. She hadn’t come here to bristle at people. “I need your help, ma’am.”
“What can I do for you?”
“It’s about rum.”
Dazza pushed her hand through her hair, mussing the grey curls. “Is it rum? Or someone who drinks it?”
Kamoj twisted her hands in her lap. “He wants me to bring him more.”
“Don’t do it. Please.”
“He will send me away.”
“He won’t.”
“He says he will.”
“He doesn’t mean it.”
“How can you know?”
Dazza’s face gentled. “I do believe he’s already in love with you.”
“He can’t be,” Kamoj said matter-of-factly. “We don’t know each other.”
“Apparently it happens this way sometimes, with telepaths.”
“Happens?”
“Falling in love.”
“Everyone falls in love.”
“Not like Vyrl.”
“Why is he different?”
Dazza set her book on the couch. “Psions have more neural structures in their brain than other people. Vyrl, especially. He feels everything more. Add in that emotional artistic temperament of his and you get real fire.”
Her words surprised Kamoj. Vyrl didn’t strike her as emotional, but as capable of deep emotions, which she wouldn’t have called the same thing. She liked the way he expressed himself, open and warm, full of dash. She wondered, too, what Dazza meant by artistic temperament.
“Fire?” she asked.
The colonel smiled. “They used to call it ‘love at first sight.’ That turned out to be a misnomer, though. It’s more ‘at first thought.’”
Wryly Kamoj said, “We have such a saying. ‘Love under the Wild Moon.’ It is because this love makes your life chaos.”
Dazza gave a rueful laugh. “Yes, I can see that.”
“But why ‘at first thought?’”
“The fields produced by his brain couple to an unusually large degree with yours. His mind interprets that interaction in a pleasant way.” When Kamoj shook her head, Dazza tried again. “The process of thinking creates fields in your brain. You can’t see them, but they can affect what is nearby.”
“Like a magnet?”
Dazza gave her a surprised look. “Well, yes, actually, in a sense. The various fields your cerebrum produces are more complicated and less intense, but the basic idea is the same.”
“And Vyrl reacts to mine?”
The doctor nodded. “When people are near each another, the fields interact. Usually the effect is minor, even negligible. But every now and then two people hit a resonance. Combine that with a strong physical attraction and you can get intense emotion in a remarkably short time. Over the long term, it can create an exceptional bond.” Dryly she said, “Poets call it a love ‘deeper than the sea’ or ‘wider than the sky.’ ‘Quantum resonance’ may sound less romantic, but it’s more accurate.”
Kamoj blinked. It sounded like Dazza meant Vyrl’s actions were more than a drunken whim, that something special about she, Kamoj, had drawn him to her. It unsettled her to discover just how much she wanted that to be true.
Feeling awkward, she said, “He is also important to me. But each time it seems he will be all right, he wants to drink again. I had thought he would stop.”
Softly Dazza said, “I wish it worked that way.”
“Can you help?”
“I can treat his withdrawal symptoms. And his craving. But I can’t make him want to quit.” She spoke in a quiet voice. “I’m trying to reach him. But in the end it must be his choice.”
“Can’t you give him something to make him stop?”
Dazza shook her head. “I don’t think so. I could inject nanomeds that would interact with alcohol to make him sick every time he drinks. But if I force him to quit that way, it won’t stick. In the end all I would probably achieve is to earn more of his resentment.” She grimaced. “Besides which, if I did it without his consent, I would be breaking the law and endangering ISC relations with the Ruby Dynasty.”
Kamoj nodded. She and Maxard had often had to juggle politics with expediency for the sake of Argali. “Vyrl doesn’t seem like someone who would drink so much.”
“Apparently he never had much interest in it prior to—” The colonel stopped, then said, “to a sickness he suffered.”
“He told me about the coffin.”
Dazza stared at her. “He told you?” When Kamoj nodded, the doctor said, “He’s refused to speak of it with anyone else.”
“If he can talk to me, can’t he stop drinking too?”
“It’s not that easy. His body expects it now. Stopping will make him sick.”
“You can help him with that.”
She nodded. “Yes. But mentally he also depends on it. He thinks he can’t survive without it.”
“He can.”
“Vyrl doesn’t believe it.” Dazza exhaled. “I wish I could make him see. Few people could survive what happened as well as he has. It’s even more remarkable because his being a psion amplified the experience, gods only know how much. Something had to give. I hate what the alcohol is doing to him, but it could have been a lot worse. He hasn’t tried to commit suicide. And incredibly, despite everything, he came through it with his mind and personality intact.”
“He thinks the rum does that for him.”
“Please, Kamoj. Don’t give it to him.”
She twisted her hands together. “He gets so angry.”
“I know. But you must refuse.”
“This is easy for you to say. You don’t share his bed.”
The colonel blinked. “Well, no. I’ve my own husband.”
Kamoj doubted Dazza had ever suffered the humiliation of being banned from her bridal bed. “I am the one who must live with him.”
Dazza spoke carefully. “No one will force you to stay in this marriage if you desire otherwise.”
“Your ISC wishes Vyrl and I didn’t wed, don’t they?”
It was a moment before Dazza answered. “It is true that the marriage complicates an already complicated situation.”
“You will all leave here, yes?”
“Yes. Probably soon.”
“What happens to me then?”
“The choice to come or stay is yours.”
“Is it?” Kamoj made a conscious effort to keep her voice even. “Vyrl has set himself up as the authority in Argali. If he leaves, it will bring great shame to my province.” And to her. “Especially given the way he became governor.”
“Surely a way exists to let you save face.”
Kamoj made an incredulous noise. “More must be saved than ‘face.’ Argali is dying. Why do you think I was betrothed to Ironbridge? Lionstar humiliated Ironbridge, and if Vyrl leaves, he humiliates Argali as well. If I stay here alone, what happens to the merger? To my province? To my line? Unless I am pregnant when Vyrl leaves, I will have no heir. If I am pregnant, and alone, my uncle will feel honor-bound to stay as guardian to the child, as he did for me. If I leave with Vyrl, Maxard will stay to govern Argali. Either way, Maxard cannot marry his lady in the North Sky Islands. Both Argali and the Argali bloodline, one of the oldest in Balumil, will end.”
Dazza leaned forward. “Rest assured, Vyrl would never leave you without the full resources of his title and name. And he can return for visits.”
“You think politics will play attendance on visits?” Or loneliness? Bitterly Kamoj said, “Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If Vyrl goes, Jax Ironbridge will probably seek his place. Vyrl could return to find his wife taken, and his child too, if we have one.” She swallowed. “Given the circumstances, I suspect Ironbridge would eliminate the heir of a rival.”
The colonel stared at her. “Saints almighty, Kamoj, we would never let that happen. Don’t you understand your position? You are a Ruby consort. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“No.”
Dazza paused at the blunt response. In a gentler voice, she said, “Your marriage gives you the highest standing a person can have among my people. ISC would never strand you, your family, or your province.” She hesitated. “Assuming it is your wish to remain married to Vyrl rather than Ironbridge.”
A voice came from behind them. “Colonel Pacal?”
Dazza looked past Kamoj. “Yes?”
Turning, Kamoj saw the Ascendant stagwoman in the doorway. “Prince Havyrl wants to know what happened to his wife,” the guard said.
“Hai.” Kamoj stood up. “I will be right there.”
“Governor Argali,” Dazza said. When Kamoj turned, the doctor added, “One more moment, if you don’t mind.”
Kamoj sat down. “Yes, ma’am?”
In a soft voice Dazza said, “Gods know, I may be letting my hope run away from me. But I do believe Vyrl wants to quit.” She paused, watching Kamoj. “If he can just make it one day without the rum, it’s a start. Don’t bring it to him. Please.”
Kamoj swallowed. “I will do my best.”
Gently the doctor added, “And if he isn’t ready to stop, don’t blame yourself.”
Kamoj nodded. Then she stood and went to Vyrl’s bodyguard. The woman bowed, then accompanied Kamoj back to the tower.
Kamoj reentered the suite to find Vyrl sitting on the edge of the bed. He watched as she walked up the dais to him.
“Where is it?” he asked.
She stopped in front of him. “I didn’t get it.”
“Who were you talking to down there? Dazza?” When Kamoj flushed, his voice tightened. “Your laws say you’re supposed to do what I tell you, don’t they? So get it for me.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean.” He started to get off the bed. “I’ll go myself.”
“Vyrl, no.” Kamoj pushed him back. “You were almost killed today. You shouldn’t be up at all.” She took his hands. “Listen. I’ll rub your head. We can hold each other. Every time you want a drink, we’ll make love. So many better ways exist to sooth your demons than soaking them in rum.”
Despite himself, his mouth quirked in a smile. “I like your cures a lot better than the ones Dazza comes up with.” In a gentler voice he said, “But I don’t need this ‘cure,’ water sprite. It does more damage than what it is meant to fix. If Dazza told you otherwise, she’s wrong.”
Kamoj lifted his hand and bit at his knuckles in a gesture of affection common throughout the Northern Lands. “Please.”
Instead of answering her, he said, “Men do that where I come from.” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, pressing his teeth against them. “Like this.”
“Only women do it here.”
He pulled her to stand between his legs, his arms around her waist. “Women this, men that. All these ‘rules’ exist and they’re different everywhere. Do you know what I think? That under all those rules, people love the same. They find their way to each other no matter what.”
She put her arms around him. “I can’t bear to see you hurt yourself.”
“I just need a drink. It helps. Not hurts.”
“It’s drowning you.”
“That’s flaming nonsense, Kamoj. Did Dazza pressure you to do this?”
“No one pressured me. I know what I see.”
“Now you’re a medical expert?”
“I don’t need to be.”
He brushed her hair back from her face. “If you won’t get it for me, I’ll go myself.”
“Vyrl, please. It’s destroying you.”
“How the hell would you know?”
“Cursing at me won’t change the truth.”
“It’s your truth. Not mine.”
“You almost died today. Because of the rum.”
It was a moment before he spoke again. When he did, he surprised her. “I never used to drink. I don’t like the taste of it.”
“Not even now?”
“Not even now.”
“Then don’t drink it.”
His anger flared. “I can stop if I want.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I don’t want to.”
“So why do you care that you never used to drink?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Damn it, Kamoj, let it go.”
Her voice caught. “I wish I could make your night-demons go away. But I can’t. Neither can the rum.” A tear ran down her face. “I don’t want you to send me away. But I can’t do what you want.”
He watched her, his face unreadable. “Don’t sound like this.”
“Like this?”
“Like your heart is breaking.”
“Just one night. Stay away from it for one night.”
He didn’t answer, just pulled her closer until her head lay against his shoulder. She wasn’t sure if he offered affection or couldn’t bear to look at her. For a long time they held each other, he sitting, she standing. Gradually she began to hope it would happen, that tonight he would turn from his blue bottle.
He drew back to look at her. “Very well.”
Her hope surged. “Yes?”
“I’ll send one of my bodyguards for it.”
“No.”
“If you really wanted to be a good wife, you would help me.”
“I won’t help you kill yourself.” She squeezed his hands. “You’ve already made it more than halfway through the night. You only have a few more hours.”
His face was set. “If you won’t help, I don’t want you here.”
She felt as if he had slapped her. But she forced out the words. “All right.” She let go of him. “I will have my things sent back to Argali. I can leave in the morning.”
A muscle in his cheek twitched. Then he turned and stabbed his finger at a jade leaf on the nightstand. Defeat washed over Kamoj, made all the worse by the way her hope had built.
A voice came into the air. “Doctor Pacal here.”
Kamoj froze, watching Vyrl. He had an odd startled look, as if he had surprised himself.
After several moments Dazza said, “Vyrl? Is that you?”
“Yes. Never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Are you all right? Do you have any pain?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Vyrl—”
“I’m fine.”
“I can come up.”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes. Good-night.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
After a while Vyrl said, “Are you still there?”
“Yes,” Dazza said.
“I don’t… I mean, I’m fine. But I—” He fell silent. Kamoj wondered if Dazza was waiting with the same held breath as she, afraid to speak for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Finally he said, “You can treat withdrawal symptoms from alcohol, can’t you?”
Dazza spoke quietly. “Yes. I can help.”
“Can you come up here?”
In an infinitely gentle voice she said, “I’m on my way.”
Vyrl touched the leaf again. Then he sat staring at the wall. Finally he turned to Kamoj. “Just for the rest of tonight.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “Yes. Tonight.” In the morning they would deal with tomorrow, and when the time came, with the day after that, one day at a time.