Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (25 page)

So I did. I set the boundaries at the wall and the house,
including the entire garden. A couple of the boys ran off to get Rel to join in
the game. Soon the boys were whooping and hollering and running about—except
when hiding. I kept a weather-eye out for Rel, making sure I was always on the
opposite side of the garden from him. And I yelled and ran and whooped and
never took the slightest peek in the direction of the wall, noooo, not me!

After a time a couple of the girls emerged, one small one
watching a round, then insisting on joining in. Before any of the boys could tell
her she was too little, I yelled, “Come on! The more the merrier!”

Then it was Rel’s turn to hide his eyes and count.

I buzzed straight for the wall—put my hands on it, ready to
leap up—and there was Rel, cruising around the side of the garden, having made
the wall his first searching sweep, the rotter. And he strolled along, peering
between the trees and the grass along the entire length of the wall.

I thought, it’s never going to get any easier—and I measured
the distance from the road to the river, and from the house to the wall.

Rel started in my direction, first a saunter, but slowly
speeding up.

I turned away with a groan, and bucketed back into the
garden to the game. It was my turn to count and find next, and to my utter
disgust I located every one of ’em except Rel. Not that I wanted to find the
slob—except, of course, to gloat at the rottenness of his hiding place.

We played a couple more rounds as the shadows slanted more
and more. Then the guests were rounded up by servants or tutors, and carried
off, chattering, some waving farewell to one another or to Pralineh at the
gate, smiling as she saw them all off.

I was still out in the garden, hoping in the noise of
departure I might get my chance, when Rel appeared unexpectedly. I jumped, then
scowled at my own reaction—I wasn’t even doing anything wrong!

He addressed me for the first time. “Raneseh wants to talk
to you.”

“Goody for him,” I snapped. “Let him talk.”

Rel hooked a thumb sideways, toward the house. He didn’t
move, just stood there, but his very size made me feel loomed at.

I knew a contest would end up with my losing, and so I
jerked round, sniffing in disgust, and stalked inside.

Back to Raneseh’s room, where he looked at me in a sort of
helpless exasperation. “A
prisoner
? Why did you tell them that?”

“Because I am one,” I retorted, crossing my arms with a
thump against my middle.

Raneseh looked skyward. “I regard your being here as a guardianship—and
I took the charge to
prevent
your becoming a prisoner. I was
specifically told by ... my contact that you would have been much worse off had
I not accepted. Possibly even dead,” he added reluctantly.

I jumped up. “You can threaten me all you want, but I have
to get home. You and I both know I’m a prisoner.”

“But I don’t want to lock you up,” Raneseh said, thoroughly
disgruntled. “I really believed that my daughter’s influence would show you the
rewards of good behavior.”

I gritted my teeth, struggling valiantly against airing my
opinion about girls whose only goal was marriage and housekeeping. I’d already
fought that battle once, and it had been Seshe who’d pointed out that a whole
lot of people in the world liked that life—and there wasn’t anything wrong with
choosing it. It wasn’t the
life
I ought to be deriding, or I’d be just
as bad as those grownups when I was a little kid on Earth ranting on about how
our only choices for our futures were “women’s work”—which was otherwise
defined as being a household servant. It was the
lack of choice
that we
kids resisted. It was obvious Raneseh would have let Pralineh do pretty much
anything she wanted. What she wanted was what I saw her doing every day.

So I wouldn’t say anything against Pralineh. But as for
Raneseh, and his contacts and his ‘Wise One,’ I was about to let him have it
when he said, “If you give me your word you will cease trying to run off, you
will have as much freedom as you like.”

“I can’t,” I snapped. “And I don’t know why you keep seeing
that as me being a brat.”

Raneseh said unexpectedly, “No, I quite see that you have
courage. And at a sense of honor, or you would have accepted, then paid no heed
to your word. Perhaps there are aspects to the troubles in your homeland that
are not as easily explained as they were first presented. I do want to look
into this matter. But you are
safe
here. Does that not mean anything?”

“Not while my friends are unsafe,” I shot back. “Not to
mention the homeland you just mentioned—” I scowled, realizing I’d gotten
tangled up somehow in all those ‘mentions.’ “Anyway. I can’t be the only one
stuck like this.”

Raneseh sighed. “Perhaps there can be a meeting arranged, in
a safe place, with trusted counselors present, between you and the Wise One who
claims to be your guardian. In the meantime—” He paused, then indicated the
silent Rel. “Pralineh is going to a friend’s for a visit tomorrow, and I have a
long-standing appointment in town. Rel said he’s going to visit the wilderness.
You may accompany him if you like.”

I would not ‘like’ to spend five seconds with Rel, but this
was a chance for escape. “Okay.”

One thing was certain. I had to get away before this
impossible, well-meaning man brought Kwenz back, and he learned the hard way
there was no ‘reasonable’ talk with the Chwahir rulers.

Pralineh assured me that I would have a wonderful time out
in the open as I liked it so much. She added that her friend Selah had extended
an invitation to me to accompany Pralineh on her visit, but I begged off
hastily. I remembered Selah and her drawly voice, and suspected she didn’t care
if I came, she just wanted to be blabbing afterward that she had invited a
princess. As for me, I had no intention of letting myself in for a boring
afternoon of being grilled about ‘how things were done in the colony’—to
Mearsies Heili’s detriment.

No, what I had to plan now was my escape.

So I’d be under the eye of Rel, but what did that mean? So
far, he seemed like ye typical clod teen-age boy: in my opinion, except for one
or two exceptions (Puddlenose being one, and Id another) boys were all size, no
brains.

Let’s see, I thought as I wandered back to my room, and
stared out into the night garden. He dresses like a slob—which is good, at
least in anyone but an enemy. Enemies are disgusting and annoying whatever they
do, or they wouldn’t be enemies, right?

That aside, what did I know? He was Raneseh’s ward. That
means like an adopted son. He was called ‘the shepherd’s son’ by the other
boys—which might have something to do with his dressing like a slob, but that
wasn’t the same as dressing like a servant. Raneseh’s and Pralineh’s servants
all dressed neatly in the pale green outfits, that much I’d seen.

He hadn’t attended the party until he joined the hide and
seek game—but Raneseh had not attended at all. The boys had said Rel usually
won all the games, which meant he must have attended parties in the past.

Last: he had good taste in songs, if Pralineh was right
about his favorite, and why would she make that up?

So far, he seemed to think it a game to foil my escape
attempts. Or maybe it was a challenge.
Then let’s hope he gets so bored with
me he pays no attention
, I thought as I crawled into bed.

o0o

Next morning I was up before dawn.

Of course Pralineh wasn’t up yet. I was going to make my way
to the kitchens, but caught sight of Rel through the window as he came from the
other side of the house.

“You’re up early,” he said when we met.

I shrugged. “Nothing else to do.”

He hefted a satchel, which was slung over his shoulder. “Just
left the kitchen. Do you want breakfast first, or shall we go?”

“Go,” I said, not wanting to eat with him sitting there
looming
at me.

And so we went. For the first time I got past the wall. The
road wound away uphill, and I could see the entire estate. The house was built
on the gentle slope of a hill tucked into the slow bend of a river. On the
other side of the hill from the house, out of view, was an extensive vegetable
and cooking-herb garden. The people who tended it did not dress in the light
green livery, but in ordinary clothes, a lot more like what Rel wore, making me
wonder again about his status. He dressed like the outdoor servants—but
Pralineh had mentioned dining ‘in the family’ once, and I had since seen the
dining room, which was in the group of three rooms opposite mine. Maybe Rel and
Raneseh ate there since Pralineh continued to have meals with me.

Oh, who cares, I thought, shoving away the question, and
walking a little bit faster so that Rel wasn’t in my view.

Behind the estate, running along the river, farmland
stretched away in patch-work quilt squares as far as I could see.

The road turned, blocking Raneseh’s Holding from view as we
rounded the hill. Then the road branched, the main part going over a bridge
across the river, and a smaller road angling off round another hill that lay
behind the estate’s hill.

Rel now began to walk fast. I skipped once in a while in
order to keep up, but keep up I did. I was used to moving fast—and wanted to
get wherever we were going as quickly as possible.

My reward was to crest a last hill overlooking a pocket
valley below, filled with tall green grass and wildflowers in every color of
the rainbow. I drew in a happy breath, and bounced on my tiptoes. A quick,
uncertain scowl Rel’s way. He flicked a hand out and I needed no further
encouragement but took off, running as hard and fast as I could.

So hard and so fast I got tired long before I’d reached the
middle, so I slowed down, surrounded by waist-high, sweet-smelling grasses,
flowers, wild herbs, with lazy bees bumbling from one to another, and the
bright, furtive flit of a butterfly here and there.

I sauntered alongside a bubbling stream, and splashed across
as I looked northward. Farmland rose gradually until it got gobbled up in the
dark green line of a woodland. Beyond that mountains jutted, hazy and purple.
The sight of them smacked me with longing, as if home called from beyond:
Come
back, come back. We need you
.

“Hungry?”

I jumped.

Rel had caught up a lot faster than I’d thought he would.

“No,” I said, though I was. It was the idea of his company
that soured my mood. How to get rid of him?

He said unexpectedly as he unslung the satchel, “This is the
same food Raneseh and his daughter eat.”

“What?” Then I realized his meaning and gasped. “I am not a
snob! I just wish you’d get lost.” I snorted. “I’d wish you lost even if you
were king of the universe.”

Rel studied me, his expression impossible to interpret. I
hated that.

“I can’t tell the difference,” he said, “between a snob and
an uncivilized brat. Is there one?”

He didn’t sound angry, he sounded calm, which made the
insult far worse.

“I am not
either
of those things,” I began, then
gritted my teeth, trying to get a rein on my temper. “No one believes me when I
say that Kwenz is evil, and I can’t bear thinking about my home in danger.”

“So you say.” He sat down on the grass, and began unwrapping
a sandwich. “Assuming any of that is true. What use could you possibly be to
anyone? You don’t seem to have any more skills than you do manners.”

I clamped my teeth closed. I was within a heartbeat of
letting fly with the longest pocalube of my life. Yet there was just a tiny,
teensy doubt—not about my own importance to those at home, but about how
everything must look.

So I tried to be reasonable. “I do have some. Skills, I
mean. My main one is magic. Not that I’m as good as Clair. But someone warded
my magic, so I can’t use it.”

I paused, readying an insult for the inevitable scoff.

But he didn’t scoff. Just ate the sandwich as he eyed me.
When I didn’t speak, he waved the sandwich. “Go on.”

“Well, I’m not about to brag on myself—then I
will
sound like a snob. But I’ve gotten into some messes. Like with the Chwahir.
When they try nasty things against us. And gotten out of ’em.”

Rel considered. “Chwahir?”

“Kwenz is brother to Shnit of the Chwahir! The rotten,
horrible king of the enemy!” I exclaimed.

“And you say you’ve met this king?”

“Worse than that,” I snarled. “I wish it was just met—though
that would be bad enough. You don’t just ‘meet’ Shnit, you are his target. If
you’re a Mearsiean.” I glared at Rel, who continued to eat his sandwich as if
I’d been nattering about the weather. “Blargh! It just snackles my chitlins
that Raneseh thinks Kwenz is some kind of good guy. I mean, a Chwahir! They
always attack first and ask questions later!”

“You keep coming back to that. From what I heard, there
wasn’t any mention of Chwahir,” Rel said. “Much less your being on
name-without-title basis with any of their kings.” He considered. “But then if
you really are a princess, that puts a different light on things.”

I gasped. “If Kwenz said he’s one of
us
, well, he
lied!”

Rel shrugged a little. “Raneseh seemed to think he sounded
convincing. And his contact was specific about keeping you safe, from what I
understand.”

“Who is this mysterious ‘contact’?”

“I don’t know. Raneseh has contacts all over. Some family
connections, like with his wife’s relations, and others are trade. He has one
from whom he orders his books. A few are people he met when young. He told me
this particular contact asked Raneseh specifically to take you in because
Raneseh lives quietly, and has a daughter who would be a good influence for
someone who’s had a bad upbringing. All that sounds benevolent.”