The Marann (11 page)

“Fafee!” she cried, pointing and
bouncing in the sling. “What that? What that?”

The Sural named the creature for her,
and she went back to making a mess of his hair. Marianne made a
mental note of the names for future reference. The family library
might have a book on local fauna.

The party reached the banks of a river
at late morning. It coursed through a valley filled with orderly
rows of bushy, waist-high plants, punctuated by groups of cora
trees.

“Tea flower,” the Sural said. “And the
cora trees will be familiar to you. We will stay on this plantation
until the trees are netted.”

“Why net the trees?” she
asked.

“To save the fruit from the
flutters.”

The road crossed the river at a
graceful stone bridge, passed through the tea flower plants—which
didn’t possess anything Marianne could identify as flowers or
flower buds among their spiky foliage—and turned north to run along
the steep hills on the other side. A few stone buildings with tile
roofs dotted the lowest of the hills.

The farmers served a midday meal when
the group arrived. The servants who’d come with the Sural unpacked
their shoulder bags and packs, revealing cloth-wrapped packages of
medicines and seeds, which were carefully laid away in the nearby
dwellings. Meanwhile, the oldest of the stronghold servants set
about cleaning and reknotting the Sural’s hair, which Kyza had
smeared with her midmorning snack as well as pulled in all
directions. Two of the farmers living on the plantation had small
children, who discovered Kyza with noise and enthusiasm. The three
crowded together to eat under the tables, monitored by the
nurses.

After the meal, the work
began.

The laborers carried large woven nets
from low storage buildings beyond the hilltop and laid them in
piles near the clusters of trees. Then came the really interesting
part, to Marianne’s mind—the children ran around a tree, shrieking
and flapping and scaring off the flutters, at which point the
laborers used long wooden poles to fling the nets over the tree.
They repeated the process until all but one tree in the cluster lay
covered—for the flutters’ sake, the Sural explained.

When the children began to grow tired,
the servants took their place, using tubes of a strange, flexible
wood to beat the trees and frighten the bird-like creatures into
the air. Marianne joined in, wielding one of the light-weight tubes
like a sword and provoking smiles and laughs from the
Suralians.

By the end of the afternoon, they had
netted three clusters of trees. After the evening meal, everyone
hiked to the next hill. It boasted a crown of stone seats around a
bare circle of dirt, in which the servants built a fire.

When darkness fell, the singing
began.

<<>>

The Sural stood in the darkness,
camouflaged and barriers shut. His daughter lay abed, walking the
far shores of sleep in a pile with the other two children. Everyone
else—save one servant watching the children—sat around the fire
singing. He lingered in the shadows to observe.

Two farmers, a man and a woman, traded
turns singing the verses. He positioned himself where he could make
out Marianne’s voice among the others as the entire group sang the
refrain—with her eidetic memory for language, she had learned the
refrain on its first occurrence and joined in on the second. She
smiled, sang, and laughed, her eyes flashing. He had never seen her
so relaxed, and when the laborer sitting at her right hand rose and
left the circle during a lull in the singing, the Sural wasted no
time taking the man’s place.

“Where have you been?” she asked, her
voice resonant with high humor.

He smiled—she was very relaxed,
indeed. “Watching.”

She snorted.

“Do you enjoy yourself?” he
asked.

“Very much. Netting the trees looked
like a lot of work, though. Is the fruit that
important?”

He shook his head. “Not the fruit—the
seed within. Its oil cures a plant disease that can destroy several
important crops.”

“Oh I see. So you do this every
year?”

“Not I. My father brought me here as a
boy, but I have not returned since I took power. The Suralia my
grandmother preferred to visit the plantations farther north and
west toward Detralar, in the Kentar Valley.”

He stared into the fire and leaned
forward, elbows on his knees, fingers laced.

“High one?”

He swiveled his head toward her, and
his heart gave a hard thud. Marianne’s eyes reflected the
firelight, and her hair, loose around her face, glowed. His mouth
went dry.

“I just realized—you didn’t bring any
guards,” she said. “Aren’t you in danger?”

He gathered his scattered thoughts.
“No,” he replied. “Not at present.”

She sighed. “I will never understand
Tolari politics.”

“Perhaps you will, in
time.”

Across the fire, someone began to
sing.

<<>>

When early summer arrived, Kyza
stopped climbing on the refectory tables and found a new
game.

“Fafee!” she cried one morning,
standing on a chair to lean against the table toward her
father.

“Yes, Kyza?” He looked up from his
meal.

Kyza took a deep breath—and
disappeared.

The Sural lit up. “Kyza!” he exclaimed
with a huge, delighted smile, pride written all over his face. Kyza
popped back into view, giggling and laughing so hard she nearly
fell off her chair. He stood and swept her into his arms, taking
her out of the refectory with a swoop and a spin.

Marianne watched them go, eyes wide,
jaw slack. Kyza’s giggles retreated down the corridor.

That was... normal,
she
thought
.

<<>>

The Sural could not contain his grin.
Kyza was young to have discovered how to camouflage. He had hurried
to her nursery and played camouflage games, pretending to be unable
to sense her when she flickered out of sight and exclaiming in
surprise when she reappeared, until she exhausted herself and fell
into a doze on his shoulder.

Such a precious gift, he thought, as
he laid her in her cot. He did wish Marianne had not been present.
She had radiated surprise, even shock, at his display, and it had
certainly hastened the day when she would realize he was not what
he seemed. Still, to have shared an honest moment with her was
itself something to cherish. He could not regret it.

Kyza sighed and rolled over in her
sleep. Smiling, he smoothed her blankets. He
could not
have
failed to respond to her accomplishment. It was a significant one,
and she had needed his approval more than he needed to hide Tolari
emotion from Marianne. A thrill ran through him. Kyza would be a
challenge, learning to camouflage so young—a mere five seasons!—but
he could be nothing less than proud.

It was time to begin her training.
Leaving his daughter asleep under the watchful eyes of her nurses,
he set off to inform the family tutor, Proctor Storaas.

<<>>

The oldest Tolari Marianne had ever
seen joined her in the library the next day. White-haired, upright,
and dignified, he greeted her with a smile full of wrinkles and a
precision to his movements that reminded her of her grandfather.
Unlike Gramps, he carried his thin frame with an air of gentle
sadness. Kyza ran to tug on his dark indigo robe.

“’
Raas!” she squealed.
“’Raas! ’Raas!”

He picked her up and gave her a warm
hug, then set her back down and turned to Marianne.

“I am Storaas,” he said.

He took a wooden box from a shoulder
bag he’d brought with him. Kyza’s attention riveted on the box as
he set it on a table, and she climbed onto a chair to see what it
contained. He opened it to reveal stacks of square, wooden tiles
the size of Kyza’s palms and as thick as one of her fingers. Each
tile had a symbol from the Tolari syllabary burned into
it.

“You have an unusual name,” Marianne
said.

“Indeed.” He smiled and stacked a few
tiles in front of Kyza, naming them as he did. “It comes from
another time and another place.”

“You’re not Suralian?”

The question brought a chuckle from
him. He stacked a few more tiles for Kyza, naming them as well.
Some had tooth marks. “Yes, I am Suralian. I have taught several
generations of Suralia’s rulers.”

Kyza giggled and scattered the tiles
across the table.

“My activities with Kyza will resemble
play,” he continued. “I will also teach her games of
camouflage.”

Marianne frowned. “From what I’ve
seen, camouflage exhausts her.”

“Yes, of course. She is hardly more
than an infant.”

“But if she—”

“Have no concern, proctor,” he
interrupted. “Continue with your teaching. For now, I will occupy
her when she grows restive or bored.”

“I see.” She leaned against the table
and helped Kyza gather up the tiles she’d scattered, glancing at
the old man. If he’d taught Suralia’s rulers for generations, he
must have taught the Sural. She tried to imagine the Sural as a boy
or as a young man, happy and outgoing perhaps, before he became the
somber man she knew. The thought struck her that she preferred the
Sural distant and emotionless—as he hadn’t been the day before,
when Kyza had camouflaged for him. That said something about
herself she wasn’t sure she liked.

Storaas laid a gentle hand, gnarled
and papery, on her shoulder. Quiet reassurance spread through her.
She blinked and peered first at the hand, then at his
face.

He removed the hand from her shoulder
with an unreadable look. “Forgive me, proctor,” he said with an
apologetic bow. “I did not mean to intrude.”

<<>>

“Forgive me, high one,” Storaas told
the Sural. “She is bewitching. I forgot myself. An old man’s
mistake.”

The Sural sat at his desk in the open
study off the audience room. The old proctor had come to him of his
own accord and admitted he’d laid a hand on Marianne’s shoulder
against the Sural’s explicit orders that no one,
no one
,
touched the human proctor.

You need the Jorann’s blessing, old
friend,
the Sural thought
. You’re too old to grow
careless.

Aloud, he asked, “What did you sense
in her?”

“A deep pain, high one,” the old man
said. “She carries a profound wound. I have never seen the
like.”

The Sural tapped his fingertips
together in front of him. “Tell me more.”

“She does not fear me. I get a sense
that I remind her of someone who loved her, perhaps a father figure
of some kind, but I have not studied human family relationships
well enough to say.”

“Excellent,” he murmured. “Is that
all?”

“No, high one.”

“And?”

“And she fears you.”

The Sural shook his head and allowed
himself to look grieved.

In an amused tone, the old man
continued, “But she does find you—attractive.”

The Sural raised an eyebrow. He had
never sensed any indication Marianne felt attracted to anyone, much
less to himself, but Storaas was renowned for his unusual
sensitivity and ability to read others. If he sensed it, it was
there.

“She fears you because of it,” the old
man finished.

He sat back. He had sensed anxiety in
abundance, but never fear. Had a fear he did not sense been the
reason he had so far failed to gain her trust?

“That makes no sense,” he said. “Are
you certain?”

“Nothing is
certain
, high one.
Perhaps fear is too strong a word. Anxiety may be a better one. But
yes, I am confident of my abilities.”

“Astonishing.” He had sensed her
anxiety many times, always leading down into the deeper pain she
hid. “Did you sense what it is she hides?”

Storaas spread his hands. “I cannot
say more without further study. I am no apothecary, and ignorance
of human psychology limits what I can tell you with any certainty.
And I do not expect the humans to share their psychological
information with us soon.”

The Sural began tapping his fingertips
together again. He had no honorable method to gain access to the
humans’ data archives. Unless… in his role as leader of the ruling
caste, he had jurisdiction over Tolari space—and everything in it.
He sent a summons.

Storaas stirred.

“Speak,” said the Sural.

“Do not approach her, high one. Let
her come to you.”

“Explain.”

“I cannot explain,” he said, spreading
his hands again in apology. “I knew it as soon as I touched her.
You must let her come to you. If you pursue her, you will frighten
her more.”

The Sural pondered. He could do worse
than to trust the old man’s advice. “Very well,” he said. “I will
wait.”