Ties of Power (Trade Pact Universe) Page 5

  I shook my head violently. “No,” I responded to the unspoken. “You overestimate yourself. It will be your downfall yet, Jason.”

  “I don’t overestimate my ability to sense trouble coming,” Morgan insisted quietly, eyes narrowing. “Things are not as they seem.”

  A new voice. “They rarely are.” It was a sign of the intensity of our conversation that Barac had been able to materialize behind us unnoticed. I thought, too late, it would have been a fine idea to add some internal protections to the Haven. But I hadn’t planned on Clan guests.

  My current one stood as though ready for a battle, arms loose, legs slightly bent. His face was white, except for angry red flashes over each high cheekbone. Morgan matched the Clansman’s posture in an instant, sliding to his feet with a deadly grace I knew Barac would remember.

  I gestured appeasement, soothing the emanations of my own power touching the M’hir between us, feeling Morgan withdraw into his customary cool detachment—invisible to all but mere sight. “You carry with you echoes of the past, Cousin,” I told him bluntly. “Your simply standing here is like a hull breach alarm light-years from the nearest port. Why shouldn’t we be concerned?” I paused for emphasis. “How can you know your desire to find me was entirely yours?”

  Barac’s eyes flickered to Morgan’s unreadable face, then back to mine as if he were unsure which of us needed to be convinced. “Why should the Council go to such lengths to send me into exile when they could find you directly? My power is no threat to either of you. And this place is a fortress. Between your wards and Morgan’s traps, you could withstand a siege in here.”

  “And you could be their gate, Barac,” I reminded him. “You know that.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Is it?” Morgan asked, his voice definitely knife-edged now. Almost automatically, he stepped closer to me.

  Barac threw up his hands. “Why don’t you scan me, then, Sira?” he said furiously. “That’s what this is leading up to, isn’t it? Or aren’t you capable of taking that last step away from your own kind—of breaking the one law you’ve left intact? Well?”

  Words would not solve this, I knew with a sudden sense of calamity. I summoned my will, brutally suppressing both my compassion and my anger. What remained was the icy, sharp logic of my upbringing and a dark determination which was far newer. Raising my eyes to meet Barac’s immediately frightened ones, I entered his mind with all the speed and force I possessed—choosing the approach of an attack rather than the delicacy which should have been my preference as heart-kin—ripping past his shields as though they were cloth. Whether this would save me from any traps I didn’t know.

  As if carried along by a wind, I felt Morgan’s mind following mine; its powerful force remaining checked, quiescent, on guard.

  Mercifully, my cousin fainted. Morgan, sensing the moment, was ready to ease Barac’s limp form down gently. I remained rigid, blind, my mind racing along forbidden corridors, exposing connections, motivations, ignoring all decency in this rapelike exploration.

  And all for nothing.

  There was no touch that did not belong, no feel of anything remotely foreign to Barac’s own ordered and intricate thought patterns. I’d trampled through his innocence and his hope for better, exposed the haunted depths of his unChosen emptiness and his grief, leaving violation and pain behind me.

  I withdrew, swallowing bile, shivering not with cold, but with the aftermath of my own self-disgust. What had I become, that I could do the unspeakable without hesitation? How deeply had I been maimed by hate that I would attack my own kin on a suspicion?

  Arms around me—a fiercely tight hold that spoke of trust, of faith, of things I doubted I deserved any longer. I opened my eyes, blinking tears away, and stared up at Morgan with my own barriers in shreds. “What have I done?” A whisper in a voice gone strange to my own ears.

  Morgan’s face bore a new, unfamiliar expression, one I recognized with an inward shock as pity. “What was necessary, for all of us,” his tone remained level and soft. “You couldn’t leave Barac wondering if he was being used by them—for all his bluster, you know he feared it was true as much as we did. And I wouldn’t want to face him without knowing who was looking back at me through his eyes.” I didn’t need to touch Morgan’s thoughts to share his memory of Gistries, the woman he’d killed at her own request to release her from the mental bondage imposed by Yihtor.

  I pulled away, going to my knees beside Barac, sending now-gentle tendrils of thought seeking through his unconscious mind. “I—Barac is damaged,” I said at last, my voice closer to normal. I looked up at Morgan. “I wasn’t careful. He will be in pain when he awakes.”

  Morgan nodded in understanding, mimicking my position on the other side of Barac’s still form. “Show me,” he ordered.

  Despite the circumstances, I felt the anticipation that always accompanied a chance to witness this difference between our powers. Among the many things we had discovered during the past year was that Morgan’s mental strength was linked to an empathic sensitivity that made him a potentially gifted healer-of-minds. It was a rare Talent even among the Clan. In another universe, perhaps the Clan would have accepted his ability and trained him to its peak. As it was, Morgan relied on his instincts and what little I knew.

  I felt his hands lightly upon my own as I once more sought Barac’s unconscious mind. As I came to areas of pain, I entered them, absorbing the discomfort almost gratefully. Morgan’s power slid around mine, soothing, sealing, restoring Barac’s disordered thoughts.

  When it was done, I could sense Barac’s return to consciousness and withdrew rapidly. Before I had to face his condemnation, look into his reproachful eyes, I pushed and . . . . . . threw myself down on the pile of fragrant branches, willing away emotion and regret until at last I could do so no longer. Then, I wept for what I had done.

  Perhaps even more, I wept for what I had become.

  INTERLUDE

  “How do you feel?”

  Barac rubbed one hand wearily over his eyes. “Better than I should,” he confessed slowly. “Which of you—?”

  “We are partners, Sira and I,” Morgan reminded the Clansman.

  “A Human concept,” Barac noted with a scowl. “But it was Sira alone who scanned my mind. Sira—who now cares nothing for law, or kin.”

  “You offered.” Mildly.

  “Only as an act of faith!” Barac said bitterly. “Faith that was broken.” He rose unsteadily, staggering once but ignoring Morgan’s proffered hand, and looked around the rooftop garden. “Where is she?”

  Morgan paused, looking inward through the golden haze that marked his own interface with the M’hir. There. “She’s gone where she could avoid your judgment, if not her own.” He felt a momentary unease at her leaving the defenses of the Haven; a concern made easier knowing she’d left Barac to him.

  “Her own.” Barac shuddered. “Ossirus. Let’s hope such power answers to any judgment.” There was something fractured in his eyes. Morgan saw it, but, unlike Sira, felt no impulse of remorse. As a Clan Scout, permitted by Council to interact with Humans and other species, Barac and others of his kind had routinely done worse to those others who suspected Clan abilities in the M’hir—or even its existence. To Morgan’s way of thinking, there was a certain amount of justice served by Sira’s actions and Barac’s resulting headache. He only regretted the cost to her.

  So Morgan tilted his head and regarded the ashen-faced Clansman with a small, grim smile. “So it was unpleasant. Be grateful she didn’t find you under Council control.” He left the obvious unspoken.

  Barac seemed not to have heard, sunk in his own thoughts. He spoke slowly, as if to himself. “If Sira could do this to me, perhaps she would have been a fit mate for Yihtor the Renegade after all. And who could have saved us from the two of them?”

  Morgan’s light but swift openhanded blow caught Barac completely by surprise, shocking alertness back into dull eyes. The slender Clansman p
ut one hand to his mouth, wiping blood from his split lip with a trembling finger. “Good,” Morgan said, his mental barriers tightening as he felt Barac instinctively strengthening his own defenses. “You know me well enough, Barac sud Sarc,” he went on, thinking back over the years when Barac and his brother Kurr had been frequent passengers on the Fox, years when Morgan had found information about the Clan a profitable item to trade, a seemingly ancient past before Sira gave him a new loyalty. “You know I’m not restricted to your methods—or by your laws. You’d be wise to remember that.”

  “I know you defend her,” Barac said after a long pause during which he searched Morgan’s implacable face. He made the gesture of appeasement, seeming soothed by the ritual whether or not he expected Morgan to appreciate its meaning. “I respect your rights as her Chosen,” he added slowly, sitting down on a nearby bench. “Perhaps I should respect your judgment also. My own is not operating too well at the moment.”

  Something dark eased out of Morgan’s face. “I still sense trouble coming.”

  Barac’s eyes lost focus briefly. He winced then said ruefully. “I’m tasting nothing beyond this ache in my head.”

  Morgan considered the Clansman for a moment. “It was my suspicion Sira tested, not her own, Barac. If the trouble I sense isn’t you, I’ll apologize. If.”

  Barac shrugged gracefully, though his eyes were smoldering. “Be sure I shall be there for it when you’re ready, Morgan,” he promised tautly.

  Chapter 5

  “PUT it inside the door this time, please,” I said wearily, poking my head around the woven grass inner wall of the hut. The Poculan who’d been about to put the village’s latest offering of food safely distant—and thus out in the rain—started so violently that he almost dropped the basket and gourd.

  “Yes, Lady Witch,” he said courteously enough, considering the dilation of his pupils. The provisions were rapidly pushed into the entrance hall, their bearer obviously torn between a desire to escape my notice and a fear of offending. Irritated, I waved him to freedom, less than pleased to be beginning my adventure by accepting the homage—and unpleasant reputation—accorded to real Ram’ad Witches.

  Still, the quarters were comfortable and I was given all the privacy I could desire. Morgan’s memory of the place had promised at least that. I sat cross-legged on a thick, rust-red mat to examine the contents of the basket, careful to taste only those fruits I knew from the city markets.

  It should have been good to be alone, to have time to think. I scowled at the fruit I was disassembling with unnecessary force. Think? I had too many thoughts rattling around in my mind already, the focus of most persistently straying from the steady purpose I had held foremost for so long. I blamed the quiet, the peaceful sleepiness of this remote forest village.

  Then I shook my head, knowing better. This was Morgan’s hut, his things. I had fallen asleep where he had slept for so many weeks, my cheek on a pillow his had warmed. I’d been so careful to avoid any physical association with the Human—to keep an insulating distance.

  Coming here was a mistake.

  I was so tired of battling myself. Such conflict was unproductive and damaging; better to make the best of my time in this new environment, learning from it, gaining every scrap of information I could—as I had in the Haven. As I had from Barac’s mind, I recalled with a shudder.

  “Lady Witch.” I looked up in surprise at that soft summons from the door. An older hunter/warrior stood there, head respectfully bent. No fear here, I noted with relief. No fear, but I detected a strong sense of purpose.

  At my “Yes?” the hunter stepped boldly into the hut, pulling the door cloth closed behind him. Unlike the race who preferred the city, familiar to me as patrons and staff of the Haven, this Poculan was tall and lean, his color closer to cream than the more vivid yellow-brown I’d seen previously. The pattern of soft, fleshy knobs covering each of his joints differed as well, although I couldn’t quite name why I thought so. I did know better than to ask.

  Intrigued, I motioned him to join me on the mat. “You are the Lady Sira,” the hunter announced in quite reasonable Comspeak, dropping into a practiced crouch, second knees level with his head. Well enough. My own grasp of the local dialect owed a bit too much to the Haven’s clientele to be reliable or always polite.

  “Names have power, Hunter,” I replied, warned to caution by the gleam in his eye.

  A slow blink. “I am Premick, Lady Witch,” the hunter said with a quicker courtesy. First naming was an important moment among these widely-scattered people. I’d been right not to ignore his slight insolence. “These past two seasons I have been a furseeker.”

  So. “You’ve been guiding Captain Morgan.” I examined this Premick with increased interest.

  “We have been brothers in the hunt,” Premick corrected. “And thus I have in truth been your faithful gatherer as well.” This last came out a shade too quickly, as if to forestall any denial.

  I restrained a smile, aware now of what this enterprising hunter was after. By the standards of his culture, Premick was well within his rights to assume that my appearance without Morgan meant that the Human’s place in my household was now available. There was valuable status to be claimed by one chosen to serve a Ram’ad Witch. I arched one brow before pointing out: “You are already burdened with three sisters, Hunter Premick.”

  Premick removed a leather pouch from his belt with one thin-fingered hand. He spilled its contents nonchalantly on the mat between us. I picked up one of a dozen large, green-streaked teeth. “Most impressive,” I said honestly, quite willing to believe that considerable effort and skill had been required to remove the objects from their original owners.

  Encouraged by this admiration, Premick drew his knife and held the carved handle out to me. “I can provide for you, Lady Witch,” he said earnestly.

  “And for your own flesh as well?” the question from the doorway was sharp, and in almost accent-free Comspeak. I kept my face smiling, although there was an unusually strong feeling of menace about the two figures shadowing the net of the door cloth.

  “Enter if you have business with me, lurkers at doors,” I suggested coolly. Premick had stood, knife still drawn. I wasn’t sure if it was for my defense or his own.

  The two hesitated only briefly before pushing through the door cloth to stand just inside its shelter. One was Withren, the village’s headwoman, her collection of memory bones making a heavy, tinkling rattle as they swung around her legs. I dismissed her immediately as the source of the menace I felt—her concern was more for my reaction to being disturbed.

  No, it was the other one. The rudimentary mental abilities I sensed in Premick and others of his kind were keener, more controlled in this old male, though scarcely a match for a child of the Clan. The sense of menace was his, based in a considerable anger directed solely at Premick.

  “I am within custom, Laem’sha,” that worthy was now protesting, looking very distraught as he felt the other’s fury.

  Laem’sha. I nodded respectfully, having heard of the village wise man from Morgan. “Welcome under my roof,” I said politely, but firmly. “What is your business with me, Laem’sha, Withren?”

  With that naming of names, the wise man seemed to recollect himself, damping the emanations of his own emotions with acceptable skill. “Greetings, Lady Witch,” he said smoothly. “Forgive our intrusion, but we need to speak to this hunter—”

  “Before I can accept him as my provider?” I finished for Laem’sha when he paused. “That seems more my affair than yours.” It could be an error on my part to give in too easily; theirs was a society painfully conscious of status. On the other hand, I had no wish to become embroiled in local politics. I frowned slightly. “What is your concern here?”

  Surprisingly, it was Withren who answered, her voice calm and placating, her Comspeak heavily accented but, again, better than my smattering of Poculan. “Our village has given four hunters to the service of your sisterhood, good
Lady. It is a high ambition, and one which brings honor to us all.” A delicate pause. “We wish only to remind Premick of his—obligations—elsewhere.” The scowl on Laem’sha’s face indicated he would have stated the village’s preference in more forceful terms.

  I could hardly fail to understand their predicament. Poor, sister-ridden Premick (who now sat looking quite deflated and stripped of his bravado) was in truth a dreamer to think the village would allow him to traipse off in my wake. And, although custom was on their side, who were the Ram’ad Witches to take the cream of the hunters from their families, leaving the burden of support on those less able? I was no such parasite, even though I posed as one.

  I thought furiously for a moment, then reached out to touch the hilt of Premick’s knife with my right hand—touched, but didn’t take the blade to hold in completion of the ritual I’d seen through Morgan’s eyes. “I am honored by your offer, noble Premick,” I said solemnly. “But I am not free to accept your service.”

  The elders were obviously pleased, though they carefully avoided expressing that emotion in front of Premick. It was likely Premick wouldn’t have noticed. His pupils dilated in shock. I sighed. “Jason Morgan stands at my door, Hunter Premick, even when I send him from me in the hunt,” I searched for words to save his pride and to keep their support. “I am sworn to him as much as he is sworn to my service. It will always be so,” I added very quietly, knowing it was true.

  “Morgan is worthy,” Premick said with commendable dignity. “I shall remain at your service, Lady Witch. And at my village’s.” This with a sideways glance at the two village leaders. I was amused to feel Laem’sha send a flow of comfort to soothe Premick’s troubled thoughts.