Quantam Rose (8 page)

Vyrl ignored the comment. "What did my butler tell you?"

Dazza tilted her head at Kamoj. "They all feel that way. I think they're genetically engineered to obey authority. I've never known such a docile, cooperative people."

"They have armies." Vyrl paused. "If you can call thirty farmers who practice ritualized swordplay every now and then an army."

Kamoj wondered why he found that strange. An incorporated man's stagmen rode in his honor guard when needed and otherwise worked to support their families. Ironbridge had the only army that trained all year round. Only Jax could afford to pay a good wage in every season.

Given what she had seen in the past two days, though, it wouldn't surprise her if Vyrl had his men training all year too, while he supported them at a rate ten times greater than anyone else without even realizing it. Most of his staff and stagmen obviously came from Argali. She and Maxard employed the best in the village, so Vyrl must be drawing from the outlying hamlets, which were even more impoverished. By hiring locals instead of his own people, he had been supporting her province even prior to their merger.

"Their 'wars' are more like arguments," Dazza was saying. "In the rare instances when they do fight, it's a ritualistic ceremony. Ironbridge is the only province with real calvary or troops, and they're more of a police force. I doubt you could convince these people to defy authority even if you paid them to do it."

Kamoj blinked. What an odd notion. Why would anyone pay them to be defiant?

Vyrl smiled at her. "They wouldn't. It was just a manner of speech." He didn't see Dazza's startled look; by the time he turned back to the colonel, her face had resumed its normal mien.

"I'll send someone down tomorrow morning to talk to Maxard Argali," he told her. "See if we can untangle all this."

"I think that's a good idea." Dazza packed up her book. She smiled at Kamoj, gratitude on her face. Why? Kamoj saw nothing she had done to make the doctor grateful.

After Dazza left, Vyrl lay back down on the bed. The bags under his eyes had darkened again.

"You look tired," Kamoj said.

"Just a headache. I should have asked Dazza for something." His scowl came back. "But then I would have to listen to her harp on 'my drinking.' Tell me she can 'treat' that too. As if I have a problem. It's ridiculous. I have a few drinks, I go to sleep, I'm fine."

Kamoj knew he wasn't fine. But she had no idea what to say. All she could think of was, "I can rub your head."

"That would be nice, Kamoj." He paused. "Is that right? Kamoj?"

"Yes." She drew his head into her lap. As she massaged him, he sighed and closed his eyes.

After a while he said, "What you said before, about us having a 'dowered merger'-what does that mean exactly?"

"Merger is perhaps not the best word." It implied a more balanced partnership. "Your corporation absorbed Argali."

He opened his eyes. "My what?"

"Your corporation. It was far too big for us to best."

He sat up, facing her. "I don't understand. It was a dowry. I know that's the word. Our anthropologists double-checked. The dowry is the property a man brings to his wife at marriage, right? Drake told me that in your culture, inheritance goes through the female line, and that the women court the men. To get a highborn wife, you need a good dowry. So I, uh, got one."

Dryly she said, "The man is usually more subtle in making his interest known."

He squinted at her. "I don't actually remember what I did. I think I told my stagmen to clear out a storeroom and send the contents to Argali House. I almost fell over when they said you had accepted it."

She stared at him, unsure which stunned her more, his manner of instigating the take-over, or the extent of his corporation. "That was only one stockroom's worth of your dowry?"

"Well, yes, I guess you could put it that way." He studied her face. "I don't understand how the idea of a corporation got mixed up here with a dowry. You make it sound like I bought you."

That was, in fact, how it felt. Kamoj doubted he would appreciate her saying it, though, so she hid the thought by imagining a blanket over it. "It seems normal to me." She tugged on his arm.

"Come lie down again."

His face gentled. "I won't argue with that." He lay down, putting his head in her lap, and closed his eyes. As she rubbed his head, she thought what an irony it was that a merger certain to become a legend may have been a whim born of a drinking binge. Would he regret it tomorrow? What if he changed his mind? She had no wish to return to Jax. He might not want her anymore. If Ironbridge spurned her, Argali would starve, and even if Jax wanted her back she would still be humiliated by the Lionstar rejection.

Vyrl spoke quietly. "My father told me something when I was young: If you plant in the wrong place, you still have to tend the crops."

"Was he a farmer?"

"Yes."

"Am I the wrong place?"

"Gods, no." He opened his eyes. "You're like sunlight. I was lucky. What if the beautiful nymph I saw rising out of the river turned out to have a personality like shattered glass? But regardless, it's my responsibility to see this through now. I would never humiliate you."

Relief trickled over her. She also rather liked being compared to sunlight.

His grin flashed. "I'm glad you like it."

Blushing, she said, "How do you know everything in my mind?"

"I don't." When she raised her eyebrows, he added, "Usually I just pick up emotions. My ability to do even that falls off with distance, roughly as the Coulomb force."

Coulomb force? "I don't understand."

"It's complicated."

Her voice cooled. "And I am too slow to understand?"

"Kamoj, no. I didn't mean that. I just don't know how to explain it, except as I learned it."

"Then explain it that way."

He hesitated, as if unsure how to proceed. "I've an organ in my brain called the Kyle Afferent Body. The KAB. It's too small to see without magnification. Certain molecules in it, that is, certain bits of my KAB, undergo quantum transitions according to how they interact with the fields produced by the brains of other people. That means-well, I guess you could say my KAB varies its behavior according to what it detects. Those variations determine what neural pulses it transmits to certain neural structures in my cerebrum, which interpret the pulses as thought." He stopped, watching her face. "I'm not doing this very well, am I?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I don't understand some of your words."

He tried again. "My brain can pick up signals from yours and interpret them. The process isn't all that accurate, so it's easier to get emotions than thoughts. It only works close up because the signals aren't that strong."

Although the words made more sense this time, it sounded as strange as before. "You do that with me?"

His voice gentled. "For some reason you're more open to me than most people. I felt it that first time I saw you, when you were swimming. You were so beautiful. So alive. So happy."

She smiled. "So naked."

Vyrl laughed. "That too."

She went back to massaging his head. After a while his lashes drooped and his breathing deepened.

Then he jerked, and opened his eyes. When they closed again, he forced them open. Watching him struggle, Kamoj wondered why it was so important to stay awake.

The third time he started to fall asleep, he rolled on his side and pressed his lips against her leg. Distracted, she stopped rubbing his head. He was peeling off her other stocking, kissing her thigh as the silk slid away. After he had pulled it all the way off, he slid his hand back up her leg. "Your skin is even softer than glimsilk."

Kamoj reddened, flustered again. "Ah. Uh. Oh."

For some reason her idiotic response made the corners of his mouth quirk up. He sat up and pulled her into his lap. "I always thought I liked this room austere. I never realized before how cold it is."

She laid her head on his shoulder. "It would look softer in moonlight."

"Morlin," he said, "turn off the lights."

"Their web contacts aren't complete," a man said.

"Hai!" Kamoj sat up with a jerk and yanked her dress down over her thighs.

Vyrl stroked his hand down her back. "It's all right. He won't bother us."

"He is here? Watching?"

"'He' is just a computer web. I call him Morlin." Vyrl hesitated. "The name was supposed to be after an ancient Earth wizard, but I think I got it wrong."

"I'm having trouble completing the contacts," Morlin said. "The molecular engines that repair the fiberoptic cables in this wing stopped replicating centuries ago."

Kamoj pressed her fist against her mouth. Morlin didn't exist, yet he was here.

"I suggest you reconsider trying to use the original web in the palace," the voice continued.

"These problems continue to-"

"Morlin," Vyrl said. Watching Kamoj, he added, "We'll deal with it later."

It was quiet after that. Whatever Morlin was, apparently he answered to Vyrl. Gradually, as Vyrl explored her body, Kamoj relaxed against him. She breathed in his scent, spice-soap mixed with his own natural smell.

"Connection established," Morlin suddenly said. The lights went out.

"Hai!" In reflex, Kamoj jerked up her hands to ward off a blow.

"It's nothing," Vyrl murmured, stroking her hair. In a louder voice, he said, "Morlin, shut up."

Kamoj made herself lower her hands. "Does he obey you?"

"Well, yes, you could say that." Vyrl gave her a curious look. "It's just your computer. We're using the old web in this building. Parts of it, anyway. Some of the components are too decayed.

Their repair bots failed a long time ago."

Kamoj wasn't sure what he meant, but she knew the palace had been in abominable shape when he rented it. That Vyrl repaired her ancestral home meant more than she knew how to say. She had always longed to do it, but she could hardly have used precious resources to fix a building when babies in Argali needed cereal.

"Look," she said, gazing over his shoulder.

Vyrl turned to look. A ghostly image of the stained glass window in her chamber stretched across the floor out here in the main bedroom, laid there by moonlight slanting through her room.

Sparkles glistened in the image, from where the light hit the bead curtain.

"It's beautiful," he said.

She slid off the bed and held out her hand to him. He took it, his face gentling. Together they crossed the room, their fingers intertwined. When they entered her chamber, strings of beads trailed along their arms. The window glowed with light from the Sister Moon.

As Vyrl laid her on her bed, moonlight cast shadows on his robe, making him look as if he were cut from onyx. His callouses felt nubbly on her skin when he peeled off her underdress. Then he paused, kneeling between her legs. Too self-conscious to meet his gaze, she sat up and took off his robe, shy and unsure, trying to act self-assured. She didn't succeed, but he seemed to like how she touched him anyway. She couldn't look at his face because-she wasn't sure why. If she looked, he would somehow acknowledge her touch, making her too embarrassed to continue.

Kamoj tried to relax. Most women her age were already married, even mothers. Lying down, she reached her arms out to Vyrl. When he stretched out on top of her, he supported his weight on his hands so he didn't crush her under his body.

He took their lovemaking slow and gentle, giving her as long as she needed to relax. Even so, when the time came, she tensed up. It was tearing-she wanted him to stop-He went still on top of her. "Kamoj-?"

Hai, she thought, mortified. If she kept this up she would still be a virgin after her wedding night. "It's all right."

Vyrl handled her even more gently after that. The moons shifted in the sky, their light casting a stained glass rose on the floor. He murmured against her ear, saying her name over and over, and right this time. His intensity increased, until finally he drew in a breath and blew it out, the stream of air wafting tendrils of her hair around her cheeks. Then he relaxed on top of her, still murmuring, his voice a soft current of sound against her ear.

After a while his murmurs trickled into silence and he lay still, one hand curled around her breast. He breathing deepened, until eventually it came with a faint snore at the end of each breath.

Kamoj blinked. Apparently they were done. Although the experience had been pleasant, after the initial pain, it seemed incomplete. Was this why Lyode extolled marriage? Certainly it was nice, but Kamoj didn't see why it made her usually no-nonsense bodyguard smile like a besotted fruitwing. Kamoj wondered if in her shyness, she had somehow overlooked or missed the important part.

Vyrl felt heavier now that he wasn't supporting his weight. She nudged him until he rolled off her and stretched out along her side. Then she turned onto her side, her body spooned into his, her back against his chest. He slid his arm around her waist without a break in the rumble of his sleep.

Kamoj drifted in a doze, like the fever-sleep of a delirium, her body so sensitized that she felt air currents whisper across it. She felt restless. Incomplete. Sometimes she awoke to find herself rubbing her own body.

When Vyrl's arm shifted, at first she thought he was restive in his sleep. Then he slid his hand down over hers. As she moved against his hand, he kissed her neck, his teeth playing with her necklace. Whatever he was doing, he knew how to do it well. She felt as if she were trying to climb a peak she couldn't reach. Then the release came, like a crest with many bumps. It spread to the rest of her body, until she lost control and cried out.

When she calmed, Vyrl murmured, "Sweet water sprite."

Kamoj wanted to say soft words too, call her husband beloved and other endearments. Yet she didn't feel she knew him well enough. So strange, to be so intimate, yet so unfamiliar at the same time.

Languor settled over her like a downy quilt . . .

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