Starfire Saga, page 29
“Not you three,” Mortel John said stolidly. “The Com has generals and strategists and tacticians aplenty. You are to help maintain the peace, not participate in the conduct of war.”
Coney seemed perfectly content with the reply, but Kray was even angrier. “All men know how to fight,” he said, “and you’re trying to keep Coney and me from that knowledge.”
He sounded terribly pompous, and I couldn’t resist laughing even though I tried to stifle it. He heard my sputter and threw me a nearly murderous look, which, unfortunately, made me sputter again.
“You have been taught eight separate methods of self-defense,” Mortel John said. “The Com wishes to withhold no knowledge from you which may be necessary. Military studies is not considered necessary, because you will never direct an army, and because it can only consume limited study time better devoted to other subjects.”
For the next six months Kray made our free time a hell, trying to convince us to study military tactics and history clandestinely with him. At first, united against the idea—Coney because it was a bad idea, and me because it was Kray’s idea—Coney and I were adamant in our refusal. I suggested that Kray pursue the study alone if it was so important to him.
But the three of us had been studying together all our lives, and Kray’s one effort to do it alone failed, so he returned to his campaign of nagging at us until, finally—for the sake of peace—we agreed to study with him.
It was a mistake, because Coney and I really had no interest in learning who had thought of taking the position on the hill first and why, or who first equated “the high ground” with “orbit,” or who said that the seeds of an enemy’s defeat lay in the enemy himself.
Once we had agreed to study with Kray, we did our best, but it was clear that we didn’t enjoy it. Finally, unwilling to admit that he really did not like our forbearance, Kray broke off the studies and blamed it on us.
Coney and I talked about it in private. “He just can’t admit he’s wrong,” I said, “and he just plain is.”
“Well,” Coney said, “let it go. He’ll never admit being wrong in front of you, and you know it.”
“I don’t understand what makes him so damned stubborn,” I said, and Coney grinned crookedly.
“Don’t you? Strange. You’re usually so perceptive.”
I bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” But even as I asked, I knew. I just refused to recognize it. Kray competed with me at every step, and he lost hard when he lost.
Coney just said mildly, and accurately, “You know.”
Coney always knew me better than Kray did, and I was always less threatened by Coney. It’s possible I cared more about him, or it’s possible I was less like him. But it’s also just possible that Coney simply accepted that he couldn’t compete with me.
When Jemeret taught me there was another way of relating to people, a way that did not involve competition, I realized that I had never perceived it, even with Coney. I hadn’t recognized that the game was any different—I just thought that Coney had refused to play.
At three places, as the track grew steeper, we crossed chasms on sturdy bridges that looked so solid I admired the workmanship. “In case of attack, we can take out one or all three bridges,” Gundever told me with pride. “We become impenetrable under those circumstances.”
“Have there been attacks?” I asked him. This seemed a better subject to discuss with him than with Variel.
“Not in my lifetime,” he replied, “but after the original breaking of the Samothen alliance, when the High Lady was gone, there were a number of battles, and the Ilto and the Vylk mounted an attack on Stronghome.”
“What happened?”
Gundever grinned. “They decided to go home while there were still enough of them to father the next generation. That’s why those tribes still exist. Hold on, this is a very sharp turn.”
It took two days to climb to the pass on the shoulder of Harrilith, and the tivongs had to sleep in the wagon harness because there was not any room to unhitch them. Sejineth fed them a concentrated grain mixture he’d brought along for just this purpose. The cold was severe here, but there still seemed no sign of the storms, for which I was grateful. A storm that caught us here on the narrow track would be devastating.
We all slept in our wagons, bundled against the cold, and Jemeret and I did not make love. Instead, we talked long into the night about nothing important, until, just before we finally fell asleep, Jemeret asked me, “What do you hope for?”
“I hope for a little quiet time,” I said softly. “I don’t think I’ve ever had quiet time.”
He smiled against my forehead. “Some of us never get very much,” he said, “but this winter, in this valley, we may be fortunate.”
“What do you hope for?” I asked him in return.
“You knew from the very first day,” he replied. “I want a child.”
“I’m not sure I can,” I said honestly.
He stroked my hair. “Give it time,” he said. “We have plenty of time. We get to Stronghome tomorrow afternoon.”
The valley in which Stronghome lay was immense, but it was dwarfed by the mountains that rose all around it. As we descended into the twilight, I could see a long, winding river that divided the valley nearly in half from north to south, its far side forest, cultivated fields, orchards, and pasturage. The near side was largely open fields, but to the west, nestled into a sheltered triangle made by Harrilith and Zuglith, was a village of many small buildings and a few larger ones. They were only pinpoints of light by the time we reached the valley floor.
Word of our arrival had naturally gone ahead, and many people lined the road with cheers and torches. Jemeret leaned from his tivong to touch hands as we passed.
We reached a fork in the road near the village, and Jemeret dismounted and gestured to me to join him. I swung off Rocky. Shenefta seemed to appear out of nowhere to take the reins of the two mounts. Jemeret took my arm, and we started to walk the remainder of the distance to the buildings in the torchlight. He was continually greeted by people who hadn’t seen him in a while, and he spoke easily with them. There was a great deal of curiosity about me, and I was shy before them all. Luckily, I did not have to speak, Tynnanna created something of a sensation, and because he stuck close to me, I got a wide berth.
It seemed a very long time before we reached a house at the mountain end of the village. Behind it was an expanse of field, and then the soaring heights of Harrilith. Somehow Numima had gotten there first, probably because she did not have to stop and talk with everyone she passed. The house, behind the porch posts, was brightly lighted.
“This is home,” Jemeret said quietly to me. “Get settled inside. I want to make certain everyone’s in safely, and then I’ll be back. If I’m very late, eat without me.”
“Come in out of the cold,” Numima called, and the klawit and I climbed the four steps to the porch and entered our new home.
It was definitely the house of a chief. The spacious front room ran the entire width of the house, divided roughly into a dining area on the left and a sitting area with two facing couches and a huge fireplace on the right. Numima took my cloak and disappeared into a doorway to the right of the fireplace. Tynnanna went directly to the stone-flagged hearth, turned around three times and lay down with a contented sigh.
I began to explore before Numima came back, finding a nice-sized kitchen behind the long dining table, and a small bedroom beyond that which I assumed to be Numima’s. Back in the sitting room, I opened a door to the left of the fireplace and found a small bathroom. Numima passed me on her way to the kitchen, and I went into the room she’d come out of. It was a spacious bedroom, with a dressing area and a small fireplace with two chairs in front of it. A bathroom opened off the room, and I glanced in, curious. It contained a deep tub, a sink, and a wooden-seated disposer, all fed by a system of pipes that vanished into the ceiling. I assumed there was a water tank in the attic. When I turned a stop-cock on the sink, the water came through warm. I smiled at it and went back into the bedroom. It was an altogether warm and cozy room, the wide bed piled high with pillows and coverlets, including a deep, fluffy one that was probably stuffed with feathers.
Once it started getting cold, talmas were inappropriate, and all the women had taken to wearing tunics and leggings. Now I saw a laba-fur-lined robe laid across a chest at the foot of the bed, so I changed into it. The room felt surprisingly comfortable and welcoming. It was, too, strangely luxurious, the dressing area lined with trunks and a large wardrobe. A mirror of polished metal, edged with filigree and probably of Genda manufacture, hung over one of the trunks. I studied my face in it for any signs of change and discovered that I looked older than I remembered. I attributed it—a little stupidly, but perhaps not without reason—to the maturity gained from weeks of the most intense lovemaking imaginable. Despite the slight reddish cast to the metal of the mirror, I saw an additional blush rise to my face when I thought about the things Jemeret did to me and the way those things made me feel.
Quickly stifling that, I turned away to investigate the view from the back window. It overlooked the sweep of meadow leading to the foothills of Harrilith.
Tynnanna lifted his head and looked at me as I came back out of the bedroom past him, but then he put his head back down and purred briefly before dropping off.
Numima was bustling around in the kitchen, and something smelled delightfully mouth-watering. I went to the kitchen door and watched her add a fingertipful of spices to the pot hanging from an iron hook on the kitchen hearth.
“Numima, are you related to Jemeret?”
She looked at me, startled. “Stars, my lady, all of the Boru are my lord’s family,” she said, “but no, I’ve just cared for him since he was a young man.”
“What about his parents?”
“His sire was gone before he was born,” she said, not interrupting her work for a moment, “and his mother went back to the house of women to have him.”
“So Jemeret was Lord of the Boru from birth,” I said.
Numima looked even more startled. “Where did you hear that?” she asked. “Sejineth’s sire, Brenadel, was the Lord Before, but my Lord Jemeret took the lordship from him when he came of age. It was after his many-year stay with the Genda. He challenged for the leadership and had to kill Brenadel.”
I felt very stupid not to have ever asked these questions before, for it explained Sejineth’s hostility. I was struck by a thought and pulled my robe closer in spite of the heat radiating from the kitchen. “Numima,” I said carefully, “do you think I’m terrible because I never asked you anything about yourself before?”
If my previous two questions had startled her, this one was flabbergasting. Her mouth dropped open and she dusted her hands quickly on her oversmock, came to me and took my hands in hers, earnestly looking up at my face. “Terrible, my lady? By the stars, you have been unhappy for a long time. Of course it is not terrible to think of yourself when you are in such a state! Now it pleases me to see you becoming happy.” She touched her forehead to the backs of my hands and bustled back to work, leaving me feeling very strange.
I turned to go see where my nomidar had ended up and found that Jemeret had come silently into the house and had obviously watched and heard what passed between Numima and me. The expression on his face was deeply thoughtful. Then he smiled and took off his cloak, scattering across the room a shower of melting snowflakes I hadn’t even known were falling.
That first night in our house—I had not begun to think of it as “home” yet; I was too unused to the idea of having a home—Jemeret changed the nature of our lovemaking. I wasn’t expecting it. I had grown accustomed to being entirely responsive, of allowing him complete access to my body and my mind and merely following his signals.
When we’d eaten and let the weariness of the journey sink in, I bid Numima good night and went into the bedroom, stripping out of my clothes in the chill of the room and slipping for the first time into Jemeret’s bed.
He came in soon after, smiling to see me there, and I sensed some new purpose about him. He stripped quickly and said, “Slide over.” As I did, he climbed into bed. It was the first time since Convalee that we had been naked together, as the trek had not allowed so much freedom. I wondered what he intended.
He lay back on the pillows, drawing me in against his side. “Tonight is up to you, Ronica. If you want me, I’m here.”
I was stunned. It had been so long since I had controlled anything, and he was asking me to control something I had never done well before he took over. I couldn’t move.
Jemeret’s breathing was slow, deep, and even, and I was completely aware of the pressure of his body against mine. I would have known what to do if I had still had the sting; I didn’t have the slightest notion of what to do without it. I couldn’t think of what to do with my hands. I knew he was watching me in the fading light of the banked fire, and still I couldn’t move. His steady gaze was disconcerting.
I swallowed to clear my throat and said in a whisper, “I don’t think I can.”
“Why not?” The deep voice was even, unchallenging.
“I can’t—control you when you have the sting, and I don’t.” I hadn’t known I was going to say it.
“Control me?” he repeated. “Is that what you think sex is about?”
“Isn’t it?” I didn’t voice the question as I asked it, but either he heard it anyway or read it on my lips.
He drew my head down onto the hard muscle of his shoulder. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “It’s a sharing.”
“You’ve been controlling me.” That time, I did voice it.
“I’ve been leading you,” he corrected. “It’s like any other form of training. I knew more of the pathways than you did. You have to begin to develop your own style at some point, and I think this is the appropriate point.”
I still couldn’t move. It was as if his words had created a situation in which I had no way of succeeding, no way of attaining the level of ecstasy for him that he could achieve for me. But he had not ordered me to try to satisfy him, nor had he asked me to. He was only telling me that it was time for me to accept some responsibility to reach out for him. “I don’t know how,” I said.
He laughed once. “Now that, I don’t believe. You’re a good student, and you’ve learned well. If you have doubts, they aren’t doubts relating to ‘how.’” We were both silent for a time, and then he asked softly, “Do they relate to ‘why’?”
I didn’t understand, and I said so.
“Do you see no reason why I should want you to take the initiative in this?” He sounded casual, and his muscles under and around me were still relaxed, but I sensed an underlying tension. This meant something to him, and while I didn’t know what, once again I did not want him to be disappointed.
I moved my hands down his sides. “I may not be very good at this.”
He smiled. “Just use your imagination,” he said. I did.
I awoke suddenly, looking around at the gray light filtering into the room, blinking to free my sight from a lingering veil of golden sparkles. It faded quickly. Either it was false dawn or it was snowing, for the sunlight was only a hint. Jemeret was already gone. I fished my laba-fur robe from under the clothes he’d abandoned the night before and slid it on, then opened the bedroom door.
“That gives me the right to ask,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “It used to be my place.”
Jemeret’s voice held a coolness I had never heard in it—not menacing, just detached. “There is a difference, Shantiah. She is my bracelet.”
The woman gave a minute hiss. “You braceleted her?”
“I just said so,” Jemeret said.
“I want to see her.”
Before Jemeret could reply, I stepped out into the sitting room, holding the robe closed at my throat. The woman confronting Jemeret was taller than I, with dark hair bound up under a fur hat and dark eyes that flashed to my movement. She was very well built, lean and strong, but when she turned from Jemeret to me, she was moving a little too nervously.
Her eyes widened when she studied my face. “You do look like the High Lady,” she said grudgingly. “I can see why he wanted you.”
She was beautiful, and I had learned from things Variel said about her power that she was a talented Class C, but I had never feared either category of person. I could only think that she had lost her chance with my Lord Jemeret, and I didn’t necessarily want to hurt her. I said, as kindly as I could, “No, I don’t think you can. I don’t think the things that draw people together or tear them apart are ordinarily visible.”
Jemeret laid a hand gently on my arm. “Ronica, this is Shantiah, once my claim. Shantiah, this is the Lady Ronica of the Boru, my bracelet and my love.” He chose the words deliberately. I could tell by the widening of Shantiah’s eyes that she didn’t doubt their sincerity.
She let her breath out in a powerful sigh. “I will see you again, lady,” she said. She threw one more glance at Jemeret, more resigned than angry or hurt, then spun on her heel and marched out. As she opened the door, Tynnanna appeared out of the swirling white beyond the porch and bounded past her into the house. Shantiah jerked back, startled, her hand on her dagger, but when she saw me stroke his damp head, she relaxed. “That, too,” she said, went out and slammed the door behind her. Through the porch windows I could see her pull her hood up over the fur hat and stalk away into the snow.
I realized that Jemeret was watching me, and I turned and went back into the unlit bedroom. I suspected that he would follow, and he did. He leaned against the door frame. I went into the dressing area, picked up my hairbrush, and concentrated on getting some of the tangles out of my hair. For a long time neither of us said anything. I worked all the tangles out, brushing my hair smooth, then stole a look at him.
His arms were casually crossed, and when he saw me glance at him, he said, “Go on, ask.”
