The Marann (24 page)

“I’ve never been kissed,” she
breathed. “I want to be kissed.”

“I prefer your forehead.” His head
lowered toward hers, his gaze fixed on her mouth. Their faces were
nearly touching.

Her heart tried to stop. In a moment,
she would find out if his lips were as warm as—

They both heard the sound—a sliding
sort of click. The Sural’s face whipped toward it. Then he abruptly
stood sideways between her and whatever had produced the soft
noise. Startled, she swiveled her head in time to see an arrow,
slick and wet, flying toward them. A split-second later, he
stumbled against her as it hit him, penetrating his left
side.

He uttered only a grunt, but his pain
ripped through her and tore a scream from her throat. She wrapped
her arms around him, one hand encountering sticky warmth below the
arrow. An eerie silence fell over the scene.
The guards need to
use their ears.
She surprised herself with the dispassionate
thought. The Sural released a loud breath and slipped to the floor.
She slid down with him, cushioning his descent.

“It was aimed at your heart,” he
gasped. “But I am—much taller than you.”

Kyza flew out of her room. “FATHER!”
she cried, dropping to the floor next to him, clinging to his
arm.

“Kyza.” His voice was a rasp. “Leave.
You are in danger here.”

The girl set her jaw. “I will not
leave you to die!”

“It doesn’t look fatal,” Marianne
whispered.

Pain shuttered his face. “It is
poisoned,” he replied in a grim voice.

Marianne gasped in horror, unable to
see through the sudden flood of tears. Her arms tightened around
him, despite the pain lancing through her from the contact, and
through the blur she saw red. His blood stained her hands, his
robes, even Kyza’s sleeves where she clung to him. She fixated on
the blood. She had not seen so much since... a horrible night more
than twenty years earlier. On that night, the blood had been her
own.

The Sural looked up at her, as if he
knew the old horrors had arisen from her memory. Sweat broke out on
his face, and his breathing grew more ragged. “If I do not
survive,” he said, “I want you to know—” He drew a gasping, painful
breath and took her hand, pressing it to his heart.

Love wrapped around her like a warm
blanket. Passion erupted deep within her. Wonder and delight not
her own washed through her.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, hardly
able to breathe.

“If you accept my heart,” he said,
“call me
beloved
.” He took another painful breath. “I would
come back from the dark to bond with you.”

Apothecaries arrived and began to
treat the Sural just as a scuffle broke out down the corridor. The
sound of the struggle drew closer. Two blue-robed Suralian guards
rounded the hallway’s curve, frog-marching a man in pale tan who
struggled and cursed between them. Soft white embroidery covered
the top half of his robe, and a long scratch marked one
cheek.

Kyza went still and deadly calm, her
face devoid of emotion. She rose to place herself between the
Detral and her father. “Why?” she demanded, using a superior’s tone
to a subordinate.

He spat in Marianne’s direction. “It
is not possible for
that
to gain the Jorann’s favor. Your
father dishonors himself by playing at something.” He fixed his
eyes on Marianne as she sat on the floor, the stricken Sural lying
across her. “Status higher than mine? Impossible! You will die,
odalli
. I will be vindicated, and then I will kill
you.”

Odalli
, Marianne thought.
Alien. He’d hung back during the celebration, she remembered,
spending time with most of the guests—but not her.

Kyza fixed the Detral with a
frightening stare. She no longer seemed like a child. “You have
condemned your people to death,” she said.

“We will see.”

“Yes, we will,” she replied. “But
you
will not. You are
weak
,” she hissed, full of a
child’s contempt for an adult who had failed at what she herself
could do. “Captured, drugged,
dishonored
.” She spat the
words. She turned her attention to the guards. “Take him to the
interrogators. Take his secrets.”

They glanced at the Sural. He nodded,
and then added in a strained voice, “Close our borders—search the
stronghold and the surrounding area.” He took a breath, grimacing.
“Find the Detral’s son and take him alive—he is too young to evade
you long.” He stifled a cry, his face a mask of pain, as an
apothecary pulled the arrow free and took tissue samples from the
wound. An aide ran off with both arrow and samples.

The Sural touched her cheek with his
fingertips, and then went limp in her arms.

“No!” she cried.

“He lives, high one,” someone said.
“He has lost consciousness, but he lives.”

Two apothecaries maneuvered the Sural
onto a litter and ordered their aides to carry him into his
quarters. Kyza followed the guards dragging the Detral.

Marianne, left alone in the emptying
corridor, sat where she had cradled the Sural, trying to rub the
blood from her hands, the ceremonial robes she wore ruined. She
sensed the guards watching her with sympathy as they returned to
their places. Leaning her head back against the doorpost, she
closed her eyes and flogged herself for what had happened.
If
only I hadn’t been so scared, down in the tunnel,
she thought.
If only I’d been more willing. He would have been in my room,
not in the corridor taking an arrow for me.
She banged her head
against the doorpost with enough force to hurt.
He’s said so
many times he’ll never hurt me. Why didn’t I listen? Why can’t I
get over my fear?

Rousing herself, she staggered to her
feet and went into her quarters. Everything from her old quarters
lay in the same position in the new. Even the cora twig lay where
she had left it, on the blankets at the foot of the sleeping mat.
She picked it up and caught a whiff of the Sural’s scent on it. The
smell of him covered it. He must have spent time rubbing it with
his fingers, and... across his face. She dropped onto the mat with
the twig clutched to her breast, breathing in the scent covering
the buds. Despite her distress, exhaustion and inebriation carried
her into sleep.

<<>>

The Ambassador and the Admiral gazed
out the viewport in the ready room, watching the planet revolve.
While they had expected assassination attempts, neither Smithton
nor the Admiral had expected one to come so soon, or from such an
unforeseen quarter. An ally.

The Admiral shook his head. “The news
from Marianne is pretty grim,” he said. “The toxin was Tolari,
tailored to kill a human but capable of killing one of their own,
in sufficient quantity. They don’t have an antidote for it, and
it’ll take time to come up with one. They may not have the time.
The Sural survived the night, but he’s in a bad way.”

Smithton swore. Then he muttered,
“Almost would have been better if it had hit Marianne.”

“She’d have been dead in seconds if it
had,” John said. “That arrow was aimed for her heart.”

He growled, as much to himself as for
his friend’s benefit. “What else do we know?”

“Not enough. Marianne doesn’t know
much of what’s coming from the Detral’s interrogation, the Sural’s
too sick to be communicating with her—if he’s even conscious enough
to be overseeing it—and his daughter is too young, even by Tolari
standards. Marianne thinks the stronghold guard must be conducting
it. Her theory, based on what little she’s heard, is that the
Detral was making a play for power, thinking if he could prove the
Sural was dishonored, he could rule the planet himself. He didn’t
bargain on getting caught, or on the Sural risking his own life to
save Marianne’s.”

Smithton started to pace in front of
the Admiral’s desk, tapping his lips with a fingertip. “Why would
the Sural, the most powerful leader on Tolar, throw himself in
front of an arrow to save an alien?” he grumbled.

“I’d do it to save Laura,” the Admiral
shot back. He returned to his desk. “I think that your wife was
right about the Sural.”

Smithton stopped tapping. “More’s the
pity,” he replied.

John scoffed. “You don’t mean that.
And you don’t want to impugn your wife’s keen powers of
observation.”

Smithton grunted. “Compared to the
Tolari, my wife is blind.”

“As are we all, my friend.” He leaned
back in his desk chair and steepled his fingers in front of him.
“You know, Smitty, it doesn’t add up.”

“What doesn’t add up?” Smithton took a
chair across the desk.

“Marianne said the Sural seemed dead
certain that their religious leader’s protection would keep her
safe. Yet, within hours, his closest ally tries to assassinate her,
claiming he doesn’t believe in it and that the Sural played some
dishonorable game. Why kill Marianne? Why want her
dead?”

“Maybe the better question is, what
would her death accomplish?” Smithton said.

The Admiral pondered that. He lifted a
finger. “One: if the Sural is in love with her, it would make him
seriously angry. Two,” he lifted another finger, “if he’s anything
like me, he would want to track down anyone who had anything to do
with it. Think about it. The Detral had to have thought he could
get away with it. He was so surprised to be caught that the Sural’s
guards were able to drug him before he could commit suicide. Who
stood to gain from it if the Detral had gotten away with
it?”

“We may never figure this out,
John—there’s too much we don’t know. Maybe there’s history between
the Detral and the Sural, bad blood we can’t know
about.”

“Marianne said the Detral was his
strongest ally.”

The Ambassador shrugged. “Those people
are cold bastards—living, breathing icicles. They could be capable
of being staunch allies to someone they hate and deadly opponents
to someone they love. We just don’t know enough. We need Marianne
to keep her ears open, get us more information.”

The Admiral nodded. “I’ll talk to
her.”

<<>>

Marianne found Kyza at a desk in the
family wing library, absorbed in a thick tome of Tolari history
.
Even at a time like this, they continue their routines,
she
thought. She corrected herself.
We
continue our
routines
.
Kyza looked up at her as she approached the
desk.

“How are you, dear one?” Marianne
asked, pulling over a chair to sit.

Kyza put down the book and sprang from
her seat to throw her arms around Marianne’s neck, burying her face
in a shoulder. “I am glad that you are no longer human,” she
exclaimed, her voice muffled by Marianne’s robe. “We do not ever
have to send you away no matter what happens.”

Marianne wrapped her arms around Kyza,
leaning her cheek against Kyza’s inky black hair. The girl needed
comfort.
She’s so little, but it’s easy to forget how young she
is,
she thought,
especially when she holds herself together
like she did last night.
“I won’t leave,” she said, stroking
Kyza’s hair. “Your father wasn’t ever going to send me away,
whether I became Tolari or not.”

A servant flickered into sight, bowing
deference and apology. “Forgive this interruption, high ones,” he
said. “The head apothecary requests the honor of the Marann’s
presence in the Sural’s quarters.”

The Marann?
Marianne thought.
Kyza lifted her face, wide-eyed.

“Of course.”

Kyza slipped down from her lap and
went back to the book. Marianne rose and followed the servant to
the ornately-carved—and well-guarded—door of the Sural’s private
apartment. It opened for her.

She caught her breath as she walked
into the sitting room. The furniture lined the walls, creating an
open space. The Sural, unconscious and almost grey under his
coppery skin, lay on a raised bed in the center, clothed only in
the loose trousers Tolari wore under their robes. To her surprise,
despite the sophistication she’d seen of Tolari medical science,
drains held the wound in his side open. Apothecaries moved round
him. An aide stood near his head, using a pipette to drip slow
drops of fluid into his mouth.

Marianne’s stomach twisted.
They
told me he was in danger,
she thought.
They didn’t tell me
it was this bad.
The Sural’s head apothecary approached her,
hands spread in respect. Marianne nodded, not taking her eyes off
the Sural.

“High one,” the apothecary
acknowledged. “You honor me to come at my request.”

“Is there anything I can do for the
Sural?” she asked.

“May I speak with you in another
room?”

“Of course.”

The apothecary headed through the door
to the Sural’s private study. Marianne followed, using a gesture
she’d learned from the Sural to motion the guards from the room.
One flickered in protest—she thought for a moment, and then nodded
consent for the guards to stay. Their reluctance to leave her
unguarded after the attempt on her life warmed her, and she
reasoned that the Sural would have few secrets from his private
guards.