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Who had lied, after all, and stolen her son; who came to bed with endearments in his mouth even as he planned to wed someone other—

"Anne!" His grip tightened; worried violet eyes looked up at her out of a face that showed clear consternation.

She made a supreme, racking effort. Fatal to antagonize Er Thom. Fatal to assume, to assume—

"You're hurting me." Her voice sounded flat, cold as iron. Cold iron, to bane an elf-prince . . . 

His fingers eased, but he did not let her go. Face turned to hers, concern showing plain as if it were real, he bespoke her in the Low Tongue.

"What has happened, beloved? You tremble . . . "

"I've just come from your mother—" She blurted the truth in Terran before she considered what lie would best cover her agitation.

But it seemed the truth served her purpose very well. Anger darkened Er Thom's eyes, his mouth tightened ominously.

"I see. We must speak." He glanced around the hallway. "Here." He tugged on her hands. "Please, Anne. Come and sit with me."

She let him lead her down the unfamiliar hall, into a room shrouded in covers, illuminated by the dusty light from a center-hung chandelier.

Her mind was working now, smoothly and with preternatural efficiency, laying out plans in some place that was beyond pain and bewilderment, that was concerned only with necessity.

"Here," Er Thom said again, his Terran somewhat blurred—a certain sign of his own agitation. He left her to swirl a dust-sheet from the sofa before the dead hearth, rolled the cloth into a hasty bundle and cast it aside.

"Please, Anne. Sit."

She did, curling into the high-swept corner. Er Thom sat next to her, turned sideways, one knee crooked on the faded brocade seat, one elbow propped along the back cushion. He looked elegant, all grace and beauty in his wide-sleeved shirt and soft-napped trousers. Anne looked away.

"My mother has distressed you," Er Thom said gently. "I regret that. Will you tell me what she has said?"

She considered that, deliberately cold. First and foremost, she must have verification of her worst suspicions. Yet she must gain such verification without alerting Er Thom to her plan.

"Your mother—confused me—on a couple things. I thought I understood—" She hesitated, then forced herself to meet his eyes.

"Shan is accepted of Clan Korval, isn't he?"

Something flickered in Er Thom's eyes, gone too quickly for her to read.

"Yes, certainly."

"But your mother said that he wasn't—wasn't good enough to be your heir," Anne pursued, watching him closely.

Anger showed again, though she sensed it was for his mother and not for herself. He extended a slim, ringless hand. "Anne—"

"It's just—" She glanced at the dead hearth, feeling how rapidly her heart beat.
Gods, gods, I'm no good at this . . . 

"It's that—" she told the cold bricks, "if Shannie's going to be a burden on your clan, maybe it would be best if I just took him back to University—"

"Ah." His hand gripped her knee very briefly; her flesh tingled through the cloth of her trousers. "Of course Shan shall not be a burden upon the clan. The clan welcomes children—and doubly welcomes such a child as our son! To snatch him away from kin and homeplace, when the clan has just now embraced him as its own . . . " He smiled at her, tentatively.

"Try to understand, denubia. My mother is—old world. She has held always by the Book of Clans, by the Code—by Liad. To change now, when she is ill and has lost so much in service of the clan—" He moved his shoulders. "I do not think that she can. Nor, in respect, must we who hold her closest demand such change of her." He seemed for an instant to hesitate. One hand rose toward her cheek—and fell again to his knee.

"I regret—very much—that she found it necessary to speak to you in such terms of our son. If you will accept it, I ask that you take my apology as hers."

A rock seemed lodged in her throat, blocking words, nearly blocking breath. That he could plead so sweetly for a parent who showed him not an ounce of affection, who ordered him to her side as if he were her slave rather than her son . . .  Anne managed at last to get a breath past the blockage in her throat.

Verification,
announced the strange new part of her mind that was busily molding its plans.
We proceed.

"I—of course I forgive her," she told the hearth-stones. "Change is difficult, even for those of us who aren't—old—and—and ill . . . " She cleared her throat sharply and closed her eyes, hearing her heartbeat pounding, crazy, in her ears.

"I find I'm to wish you happy," she whispered, and there was no iron in her voice now at all. "Your mother tells me you're going to be married—"

"No."

His hands were on her shoulders, his breath shivering the tiny hairs at her temple. Anne shrank back into the corner of the sofa, a sob catching her throat.

"Anne—no, denubia, hear me . . . " His hands left her shoulders and tenderly cupped her face, turning her, gently, inexorably, toward him. "Please, Anne, you must trust me."

Trust
him? When he had just confessed to lying, to kidnapping, to using the trust she had borne him to—no.

On Liad, you won. Or you lost.

It was absolutely imperative that she win.

She allowed him to turn her face. She opened her eyes, looked into his and saw, incredibly, tenderness and care and longing in the purple depths.

Er Thom smiled, very gently, ran his thumbs in double caress along her cheekbones before taking his hands away.

"I love you, Anne. Never forget."

"I love you, too," she heard herself say, and it was true,
true
, gods pity her, and the man had stolen her son.

Never mind,
the cold planner in the back of her mind told her.
Disarm him with the truth, so much the better. Put any suspicions he may have fast asleep. Then the plan will work.

He sat back, reluctantly, to her eye, and folded his hands carefully on his knee. The face he showed her was earnest, the eyes tender and anxious.

"This marriage which my mother desires," he said softly. "It is old world, and as a dutiful son I should accept the match and give the clan my heir, which is duty long past fruition." He tipped his head, anxiety overriding tenderness for the moment. "You understand, this is the—manner in which things are done—and no slight to you is intended."

"I understand," she said, hearing the iron back in her voice.

Er Thom inclined his head. "So. But it happens that there is you and there is our son and we two—love. There is that bond between us which—after even such a time—remains unabated. Unfilled. That is true, Anne, is it not?"

"True."
True . . . 

"I had thought so," he said, very softly, and she saw the shine of tears in his eyes.

"Since we wish not to part—since we wish, indeed, to become lifemates—this marriage that my mother hopes for is—a nothing. I have taken counsel on the matter. A lifemating between us shall be allowed, does the delm hear from your lips that it is your desire as well as my own. Alas, that my mother has sought to—to force the play—striving to divide us and burst asunder the bond we share." He reached out and took her hand; her traitor fingers curled tight around his.

"If we stand together, if we hold now as the lifemates we shall soon become, she cannot win," Er Thom said earnestly. "It will be difficult, perhaps, but we shall carry the day. We need only give her what she desires—in certain measure. She desires to have the lady here to meet me. So we acquiesce, you see? The lady is a child. She does not want me. She wants the consequence of bedding an a'thodelm, of having borne a child to Korval.

"The—infelicity—of the proposed match can easily be shown her, gently and with all respect, in the course of such an affair as my mother plans." His fingers gripped hers painfully, though Anne made no demur.

"We need only stand together," he repeated earnestly. "You must not allow yourself to be frightened into leaving our house. To do so ensures my mother's victory. You must only attend the gather and show a calm face. Why should you not? When the gather is done, we shall go hand-in-hand before the delm and ask that he acknowledge what already in fact exists."

Lifemates? For a moment it seemed she spun, alone in void, the familiar markers of her life wiped clean away. For a moment, it seemed that here was a better plan, that kept her son at her side, and her lover, too, with no duplicity, no lies, no anguish. For a moment, she hovered on the edge of flinging herself into his arms and sobbing out the whole of her pain and confusion, to put everything into his hands for solving—

The moment passed. Cold reason returned. Er Thom had lied. From the very beginning, he had intended to steal Shan from her, though he swore he would do no such thing. There was no reason to believe this plea for lifemates was any truer than his other lies.

"Anne?"

She stared down at her lap, at her fingers, twisted like snakes each about the other, white-knuckled and cold.

"Your mother," she said, and barely recognized her own voice, "will be just as well served if I shame you."

"It is not possible," Er Thom said quietly, "that you will shame me, Anne."

She had thought herself beyond any greater agony, foolish gel. She stared fixedly down at her hands, jaw clenched until she heard bone crack.

"We may go tomorrow into Solcintra," Er Thom continued after a moment, "and arrange for proper dress."

"I—"
What?
she asked herself wildly.
What will you say to the man, Annie Davis?

But she had no more to say, after all, than that bare syllable. Er Thom touched her knee lightly.

"Lifemates may offer such things," he murmured, "without insult. Without debt."

Oh, gods . . . 
From somewhere, she gleaned the courage to raise her head and meet his eyes levelly.

"Thank you, Er Thom. I—expect I will need a dress for—for the gather."

Joy lit his face, and pride. He smiled, widely, lovingly. "We play on," he said, and laughed lightly. His fingers grazed her cheek. "Courageous Anne."

She swallowed and tried for a smile. It was apparently not an entirely successful effort, for Er Thom rose and offered his arm, all solicitude.

"You are exhausted. Come, let me walk you to your rooms."

In the moment of rising, she froze and stared up into his eyes.

"Anne, what is wrong?"

"I—" Gods, she could
not
sleep with him. She wouldn't last through one kiss, much less through a night—she would tell him everything, lose everything . . . 

"I was thinking," she heard her voice say, "that maybe we should—sleep apart—until the gather is over. Your mother—"

"Ah." He inclined his head gravely. "I understand. My mother shall see that all goes her way, eh? That the guest has heeded her word and behaves with honor regarding the House's wayward child." He smiled and it was all she could do not to cry aloud.

Instead, she rose and took his arm and allowed him to guide her through unfamiliar hallways to the door of her room.

Once there, she hesitated, and some demon prompted her to ask one last question.

"Your mother had said that the clan would be—grateful—for Shan's adoption. I didn't quite—"

"That would be the proposal of alliance," Er Thom said gently, "as well as other considerations. Daav and I had drafted the papers yesterday, and a trust fund has been created in your name." He smiled up at her, sweetly. "But these matters are moot, when we are lifemates."

Speechless, she stared down at him, wondering what—
considerations
—what possible sum of money—Clan Korval had thought sufficient to buy a child.

"You are tired," Er Thom murmured. "I say good-night. Sleep well, beloved." He raised one of her hands, kissed the palm lightly and released her.

Tear-blinded, Anne spun and fumbled her hand against the lock-plate, escaping at last into grief-shot solitude.

"WHY NOW?" DAAV demanded.

Petrella regarded him calmly from the comm screen. "Why not now? He has been coddled long enough. Nexon calls Korval's melant'i into question. What better way to give such question rest than by proceeding as planned?"

"As
you
planned!" Daav snapped and sighed, reaching up to finger his earring.

"Aunt Petrella, be gracious. The guest will still be with you two nights hence. She holds Er Thom precious, whether you will see it or no. What can possibly be gained by wounding her in this manner? Such action does more harm to Korval's melant'i than all Nexon's petulance can accomplish!"

Petrella raised her hand. "I hope we are not rag-mannered, nor behind in our duty to the guest," she said austerely. "Certainly, there was instruction given. The guest cannot hope to know our custom. A word in her ear was sufficient, as it happens. I find Scholar Davis a very sensible woman."

"Oh, do you?" Daav closed his eyes briefly, running a Scout's calming exercise, trying not to think of Er Thom's desperate gamble and what must be made of his wooing now.

"Indeed I do," Petrella replied. "Shall I have the honor of seeing you at the gather, my Delm?"

"Why certainly," he said, hearing the snap in his voice despite the exercise. "I can always be depended upon to dance for you, Aunt Petrella. Good-night." He swept the board clear with a violent palm and surged to his feet as if he would run immediately out into the night.

Instead, he walked very slowly over to the windowsill and reached down to stroke the leaves and white flowers of the plant Olwen had left with him. Nubiath'a.

"Ah, gods, brother," he whispered to the little plant, "what a coil we have knotted between us . . . "

 
Accepted of Clan Korval: Identical twins, daughters of Kin Dal yos'Phelium and Larin yos'Galan.

Accepted of Line yos'Galan: Petrella, daughter of Larin.

Accepted of Line yos'Phelium: Chi, daughter of Kin Dal.

—From The Gazette for Banim Fourthday
in the Third Relumma of the Year Named Yergin