The Marann (10 page)

He made a slight bow and left, taking
Kyza with him.

In truth, his duties were light at
this time of year. His people became sluggish, distracted, and
sleepy during deep winter, when the days were short and the cold
deadly, and they accomplished little anywhere in the province. He
himself needed no stimulants to remain alert, but most of his
advisors did. He had little use for them in their winter lethargy,
so he had drawn up plans for the spring during the previous autumn.
Since the winter had set in, he had little to do beyond overseeing
the stronghold’s day-to-day operations. Those few of his aides who
remained alert kept an eye on activities in the southern hemisphere
and sent him reports if alliances shifted. It was always a restful
season, in which he could study or indulge in pastimes.

He handed his daughter to a nurse and
camouflaged, returning to the refectory to watch Marianne finish
her meal. She drained her mug and asked a servant to show her to
the library, as he had suggested. When she disappeared around the
passageway’s curve, he dropped his camouflage and went to his study
to read the small number of reports waiting for him.

<<>>

When the short day dawned, the Sural
strolled into the library to see how Marianne fared. She hunched
over a book, so absorbed she failed to notice him enter the room.
He sent a delicate probe into her surface emotions and found she
used the book to soothe herself. He scuffed a ped against the
matting.

She looked up at the sound and turned,
a wan smile coming to her lips when she saw him. He took a seat
across the table and glanced at the book she held.

“Vetralen is a modern poet,” he said.
“He still lives. Very good.”

“Have you read his work?” she
asked.

He ignored the question. “What
happened in the night?” he asked instead.

She paled. “You know about
that?”

“You woke most of the
stronghold.”

She winced, and he sensed disbelief
mixing into chagrin, embarrassment, and… fear. “Forgive me, high
one.”

“What was it?” he
persisted.

“A—” She stopped, lips parted, then
clamped her jaw shut and frowned. “Nightmare,” she said in English.
“Bad dream,” she continued in Tolari. “Very bad dream.”

He let his expression soften. “Tell
me,” he said.

“I was—” He sensed her consider trust,
but a surge of anxiety wiped it away. “Forgive me, high one,” she
continued. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

His heart contracting, he suppressed
the heavy sigh her distrust inspired and tried a different tactic.
“A strange word,
nightmare
,” he said.

She nodded, relief shuddering through
her at the change of subject. “It comes from
mara
, a
Scandinavian word for a spirit sent to suffocate people in their
sleep. But many English speakers imagine the nightmare of myth and
legend as a dark horse with glowing eyes and flaming hooves,
bearing evil dreams.”

“You have many animals on
Earth.”

“Yes, millions of species. The largest
live in the oceans.”

“And your people sometimes bring
animals into their homes,” he said. “I find this difficult to
imagine.”

She grinned. “Dogs or cats, often
both. Birds are common, so are fish, sometimes rodents, even
reptiles, insects, arachnids.” She laughed a little. “I guess it
must seem pretty strange to you.”

He nodded. “We have no land animals
larger than a flutter,” he said. “However, we do have immense
creatures in our oceans.”

Her face grew wistful as she seemed to
sink into memory. “I had a dog when I was a girl. A
pug.”

He raised an inquiring eyebrow at the
unfamiliar English word.

“A breed of dog,” she explained. She
sighed. “My little Gretchen. I loved that dog.”

“Gretchen?”

“My dog. That was her
name.”

“You gave it a name?” Both his
eyebrows tried to reach his hairline, and his eyes went
wide.

She laughed. “Of course.”

“I am perplexed.”

Amusement displaced some of her weary
sadness. “Sometimes I forget you’re an alien,” she said. Then she
remembered where she was. “To me. You look so human.” The
atmosphere grew awkward.

He lifted a shoulder. “You look
Tolari,” he countered, his face unreadable.

Marianne swallowed. “So, high one,”
she said, trying to get past the awkwardness, “do you still want
your daughter tutored by a woman who would sleep with a
dog?”

He smiled. “Yes, proctor, but why
would you want to sleep with an animal?” It surprised her to see
him shudder a little.

“I don’t know.” She tilted her head to
one side. “We just—I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the comfort of
touching another warm, living being. Touch is important for us, and
it’s vital when we’re children. Our babies can die if they aren’t
held enough.”

“And your adults?”

“Adults can live without
it.”

“But not well.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said.
“I do just fine.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“I do!” she protested.

He inclined his head. “As you say,” he
yielded.

She grumbled, shifting in her chair
and twitching her shoulders, then sighed.

“Read to me,” he said.

He inflected it as a request, not a
command, but she was happy to carry it out. Reading to him reminded
her of poetry exchanges in the Babel cloud. “Of course, high
one.”

Grateful that Vetralen composed
nothing but delicate word pictures of nature scenes, she chose a
poem describing the High Fralentolar Mountains. The Sural leaned
back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his long legs.

He must be bored senseless
, she
thought as she read, some of the tension draining from the muscles
in her neck and shoulders. She took a deep breath, grateful for the
relief. Perhaps that was why he’d asked her to read to him: it
relaxed her.

Something flickered at the corner of
her eye. “What was that?” she said, putting down the
book.

“A guard.” The Sural’s eyes opened and
fixed on her.

She swiveled in her chair, searching
the room, but saw nothing. “There are guards in here?”

His face became bland. “Yes, two in
this room. They are camouflaged.”

“Where else do you have guards?” Her
hands started to shake.

The Sural gave her a sharp glance, his
eyes darkening with concern. “There is nowhere in the stronghold
out of range of a guard. The safety of the Sural and his
daughter—and his guest, the human tutor—all demand it.”

“They’re everywhere? In
every
room?”

“Yes, every room.”

Her heart seemed to stop. “You
mean—you mean there are guards in my
sleeping
room?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And—and they’ve watched me dress, and
bathe, and—and—” Her throat closed.

“Proctor.” His voice was low and
soothing. “For us this is a comfort, not a source of
distress.”

Her stomach clenched. “We’ll just have
to agree to disagree about that.” She grated the words
out.

“Why does this anger you?” He rubbed
his eyebrows.

“I’ve been exposing myself to them
every time I change my clothes or bathe!” she exclaimed. “And—and
how many of them are
men
?” She jammed her hands into her
armpits to stop their shaking.

“Proctor,” he said, his voice still
gentle, “your government informed me before you arrived that some
humans have modesty inhibitions and that you may be one of them.
The guards in your quarters are women.”

Marianne took a deep breath and
expelled it, letting her hands fall into her lap. She slumped back
in her chair, feeling foolish. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Thank you, high
one.”

“My honor,” he murmured.

She looked up at him and said in
English, “I’m sorry.” She looked away, stifling the grumble that
tried to escape.

He smiled and gestured toward the
door. “The guard was reminding me it is time for the midday meal.
Would you accompany me?”

“Yes, high one,” she said, getting to
her feet.

His enigmatic smile appeared. It was
maddening.

Chapter Six

The arctic cold of Suralia’s deep winter gave way
to the beginning of spring and its more survivable temperatures.
The flutters emerged from the hollow interior of the cora trees,
waking from their winter hibernation, and new growth began to poke
through the snow. Marianne stood at her sitting room window,
watching Kyza show her father a mittened hand full of snow. On this
morning, the Sural had taken his daughter outside to frolic in the
garden before the morning meal. Kyza was a few months short of two
standard years now, and she’d become inquisitive, fearless, and
most of all, verbal. While Marianne couldn’t hear what the Sural
and his daughter said to each other, Kyza’s lips moved without a
pause.

Grinning, Marianne turned away from
the window and activated the comms unit. It was time to contact the
Alexander
.

Adeline seemed in a mood to tease.
After the preliminaries of confirming the Ambassador had received
Marianne’s written report, she didn’t waste any time getting down
to it.

“The Sural spent an awful lot of time
with you when the stronghold was socked in with ice and snow,” she
said.

“He doesn’t have much work during the
winter,” Marianne replied. “They let up on their plotting and
scheming when the weather closes in—it’s not honorable to take
advantage of a sluggish and sleepy enemy. No sport in it. All he
has to do is run the stronghold and read a few reports. Talking to
me was probably more interesting than watching the frost creep up
the walls.”

Adeline laughed. “I just bet it was,”
she replied. “Especially to a man.”

“Addie! He’s an alien!”

“He’s a pretty handsome alien, if you
ask me. Like classic Greek god handsome. Don’t tell me you never
noticed?”

Marianne pressed her lips together and
grumbled. “It’s unprofessional.”

“You know, being gods didn’t stop them
from dallying with beautiful human women—and you’re pretty enough
to qualify. Maybe the Greek gods were the Tolari gone space-faring,
and the Sural is just biding time before he becomes a dark Adonis
and sweeps you off your feet. Or actually, he’s their ruler—maybe
he’s Zeus.”

“Nonsense!” Marianne’s face heated.
“He treats me as if he were a monk. He might be one, for all I
know—I never see his wife, or concubine, or whoever Kyza’s mother
is. He never so much as lays a finger on me. He’s very
careful.”

Adeline’s lips formed an O. “Ooh,
careful.
That sounds promising.” She winked.

“Addie! It’s not appropriate! He’s my
employer, and anyway, I’m just a schoolteacher descended from
generations of dirt farmers.”

“Suit yourself,” Adeline said with a
shrug. “But if it were me—I’d get a little closer and see what
happened.”

“You’re a minx, Addie,” Marianne
scolded.

Adeline sighed and struck a pose with
the back of one hand on her forehead. “My secret is out!” she
exclaimed in dramatic tones. Then she leaned toward the monitor and
said in a low voice, “It’s a good thing Smitty can keep up with me,
or I might just come down there and try to take that Sural of yours
away from you.”

More blood rushed to Marianne’s face,
and Adeline’s laugh turned gleeful.

“Oh Marianne, you’re so much fun to
tease. You and Laura. You both blush so predictably.”

Marianne forced herself to laugh and
turned her head toward the door to the hall as if someone stood
there. “I have to go now, Addie. Say hi to Laura for me, will you?
Tell her I’d like to talk to her tomorrow.”

“I’ll do that.”

<<>>

A few days after the spring festival,
the Sural announced he would accompany a group of laborers back to
a tea flower plantation not far from the city. Since he intended to
take Kyza with him, he asked Marianne to come along.

Marianne packed a bag and hurried into
the corridor. The Sural stood near the great doors, opened to the
morning sunlight, with Kyza slung across his back and drumming on
his head. Two nurses and several servants gathered just outside,
all carrying packs or shoulder bags.

The Sural set a pace the rest of the
party could match and still maintain a quiet conversation. The trek
down the cliffs Marianne knew well, but rather than continue south
into the city, they joined up with one of the farmers and a party
of wandering agricultural laborers, all in dark green robes, and
turned west onto a packed dirt road. The vegetation changed,
becoming scrubby as they left the city environs and headed into the
hills of Suralia.

Small creatures lurked in the bushes.
She caught occasional glimpses of them breaking from cover when one
of the party wandered too near a hiding place. Most were furry
animals resembling six-legged squirrels. Some bounded away like
tiny kangaroos. A few turned out to be ground-nesting flutters.
Kyza squealed at each one.