In the House of Five Dragons
23. Gambit
“The people love a hero. Be sure to give them one or else they will find their own.”
— King Carsus Tychon III, Carcaen monarch
Thainna woke early to visit the kitchen and found Arliss kneading a ball of dough on the sideboard. The fat cook nodded to Thainna and aimed a kick at a potboy’s backside.
“Go get some more wood for the stove,” she ordered. “Not the flinders in the back. The oak logs from the storehouse.”
The boy stuck out his tongue at Arliss, then yelped as she kicked him again. When he had scurried off, Thainna got down to business.
“I need to send some important news to the Crest,” she said.
“You need me to run a letter into the city?”
“I don’t write very well,” Thainna admitted. “And besides, I don’t think it’s something that should be written down. Can you just tell someone? I can’t go myself. I have to stay for Captain Mazrem’s visits.”
“It can get done, hae. What’s so important?” Arliss asked with a nervous frown. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No, I’m not in trouble,” Thainna said. “Well, maybe a little bit with Lady Mazrem when I yelled at that historian, Ferro. But she didn’t dismiss me or anything.”
Arliss clicked her tongue. “Don’t you go making an enemy of the lady.”
“I know that! I didn’t mean to and I won’t do it again. I can’t fail this job. No, I found out something about Captain Mazrem. He… he can hear what people are thinking.”
The cook whistled and leaned back against the sideboard. “I knew that he came back strange, but that’s a big bite to swallow. Are you sure?”
“Hae,” Thainna answered. It was a little hard to believe, but she knew it was true. “He can read out what’s in your mind and heart like it’s written in a book.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“I don’t think so. But it won’t stay a secret forever. Rikard doesn’t think about the things he says. It’ll slip out sooner or later, but I wanted the Crest to know first.”
Arliss cocked her head, listening attentively. “Anything else?”
“Hae, there’s more. Rikard said something else, about fighting in Alterra and using things like memories and feelings as weapons. Maybe we can use things like that to… to control him. When Rikard first started seeing into my mind, I was scared and that hurt him. He says that fear was one of the blades in Alterra, and it wounds him even now.”
Thainna felt guilty even thinking it. Rikard had seemed so… vulnerable in those moments, sharing his weaknesses with the girl pretending to be his nurse.
“What are you going to do now?” Arliss asked in a low voice. “If Captain Mazrem can hear your thoughts, how long until he discovers you?”
Thainna sighed. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. I can only guess what the Crest will do if I fail in this. What he’ll do to my brother. I just have to hide it all from Rikard. As long as I’m frightened of him, I can try to keep him out of my head.”
“You’re risking a lot,” Arliss said, but she shook her head. “I suppose you have to. I’ll go to talk to Narissa this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Arliss.”
“I’m doing my job. When Narissa or one of the other Eyes asks to see you, you can tell them so.”
“Hae,” Thainna agreed.
We’re all so eager to please the Crest, aren’t we?
Arliss gave Thainna some breakfast and then sent her on her way. The cook had plenty of work to do, which now included a journey out into Dormaen. Thainna took her handful of steaming rye cakes back to her room and wolfed them down, but the heavy meal didn’t sit easily in her stomach. How long would the Crest wait before he expected progress with Rikard? Days? Weeks?
Thainna still had no idea how to control Captain Mazrem. Bully him with her fear and anger? How long could that last? Rikard was strange and unpredictable. He could see into Thainna’s mind, too. It was probably best to keep away from Rikard Mazrem entirely, but Laurael’s orders made that impossible. Even if she could, distance would only make following the Crest’s orders equally impossible.
I can’t do this.
The thought was more than depressing; it was terrifying. There had to be a way, or Thain would suffer the consequences of her failure. Thainna pulled out the jars that Narissa had provided and laid out the drams along the edge of her bed. Rikard didn’t seem the type to be easily split on any of them. His interactions with Terra were difficult enough without adding ophellion into the mix.
Cardak, maybe? Thainna was pretty sure that cardak was some sort of narcotic, but Rikard wasn’t interested in anything like that.
Does Rikard know he’s mad?
There were more visitors in the days that followed. On the fifth day, Rikard didn’t know two of them: a Nianese man named Liam Io and another historian, Huron DuRainne. Laurael assured him that they were both prominent, important men, but Rikard had no more to say to them than he had to the Moon Court knight, Sir Gallard.
The day’s final visitor, though, was the one Rikard was at once anxious and eager to see. As the dinner hour approached, he found himself walking back and forth along a gallery of marble carvings. Laurael was off taking care of final preparations, but both Gaius and Thainna stood to either side of the door, watching Rikard pace. Even though supper was less than an hour off, Gaius snacked on a handful of sugared rose petals. Thainna watched but tried not to look like she was.
They smell like perfume. What do they taste like? Rikard heard her wonder.
“Why so nervous, Father?” Gaius asked. He wiped the white sugar from his lips with the back of his hand.
“I haven’t seen Saul in thirty years. I wonder about him. Did he marry?”
“A few years after the war. He has two daughters, as well. I’m engaged to the older one, Sierra,” Gaius said.
Laurael had told Rikard of his son’s engagement, but not that Gaius was promised to Saul’s daughter. Rikard sheared off from his pacing and bounded over to seize Gaius in a hug.
“What? Why have you thought nothing about it?”
“It’s not very important,” Gaius said, taken aback by Rikard’s sudden exuberance.
“Why haven’t you married her yet?”
“I’ve been busy, Father.”
Too busy to get married? Laura said the same thing, but it made no more sense now.
“With what?” Rikard asked. “Gaius, family is the most important thing in… in ever! They will love you and you will do anything for them!”
Nearby, the foster nodded to herself and Rikard felt her agree. But she saw him looking at her and quickly turned away. A red, raw blade of frightened distrust drove him out of her thoughts. Rikard touched his fingers to his temple. It stung, but not enough to quell his joy. Gaius was engaged to Saul’s daughter!
A servant in a smart black-trimmed tabba appeared at the door. “Lords Mazrem, General Darius has arrived. He’s waiting in the triclinium.”
Rikard shoved past and ran down the hall to the dining room. His boots clapped on the polished marble and slid as he came to a squeaking halt. Saul stood in the triclinium, handing Laurael a brightly striped amphora. He was older, much older than the young squire that rode beside Rikard into Fiore, but his face was still round and boyish.
“Saul!” Rikard shouted.
At the sound of his name, Saul Darius turned and grinned. The two men embraced tightly, laughing and thumping each other hard on the back until Thainna caught up and made a small, politely disapproving sound.
“Gods, Rik! It really is you,” Saul said happily. He gave his one-time master a final squeeze and then led him over to a trio of Carcaen women standing beside Laurael. “This is my wife, Althea, and our daughters, Sierra and Celeste.”
Celeste was the very image of her slender, long-boned mother, but Sierra looked much more like her father, rounder of face and wearing a perpetually broad, cheerful smile. All three women curtsied gracefully to Rikard. When Sierra rose, her eyes lingered on Gaius, but he avoided her gaze. Rikard took the girl’s hand and kissed it. Sierra blushed prettily and giggled.
“Gaius told me you’re going to be my daughter,” he told her. “You’re very lily-bee.”
“Pretty,” Thainna whispered from behind him, just loud enough for Rikard to hear.
“Very pretty,” he repeated.
Sierra’s blush deepened.
“She is, isn’t she?” Saul beamed at his daughter and winked at Rikard. “Maybe you can convince Gaius to take some time away from the archouse and actually marry my girl.”
“You know how young men can be,” interrupted Laurael before Rikard could answer. “So dedicated to their duty. You were just the same! You remember, Althea.”
Saul’s tall wife laughed and nodded. “Hae, I do. Nothing would keep you from marching into Fiore at Captain Mazrem’s side, Saul.”
“Ah, hae,” agreed her husband. “But I was young. And I came back to marry you, my dear.”
“It was difficult to leave,” said Rikard, nodding. “Gaius was only six slivers… months old when we received Tychon’s orders.”
The others must have felt his bitterness or heard it in his voice. No one answered, but the silence didn’t last long. Laurael invited everyone to lay themselves on the three long couches. After a moment of indecision, Sierra reclined beside Gaius. She lay further away from his son than Rikard would have liked, but maybe they didn’t know each other well yet. He and Laurael certainly had not when they were first married. Rikard looked over at his wife. He caught her eyes and smiled.
Thainna folded her pale legs under her and sat on a cushion on the floor beside Rikard. He touched her shoulder and the girl jumped as though he had burned her, but Thainna was simply surprised, not frightened.
“Thank you for the word. Pretty. I’ll remember it.”
“Hae, my lord,” Thainna replied quietly. “I’m happy to help.”
“You are?” Rikard asked in surprise.
The red-haired foster blinked up at him.
“What?” she asked.
A dozen men and women served food and drink, talking loudly and announcing what was on each plate, in each decanter. Glass clinked and copper rang. The triclinium was full of noise, so Rikard guessed that Thainna hadn’t heard him. Terran ears were so very… limited.
“You said that you’re happy to help, but you don’t feel happy.”
“Get out of my head!” Thainna snapped, then mastered herself and continued in a calmer voice. “I only meant that I’m glad to do my duty, Captain Mazrem.”
“Then why aren’t you happy?” Rikard asked her. He was even more confused. Despite her protestations of being happy and glad, Thainna only grew more upset with each word.
“Maybe I don’t want to be here… Maybe I want to go back to my own family!” she hissed under her breath. “Or maybe because you tried to strangle me when we met!”
Rikard hadn’t thought about their first encounter in days, but Thainna just forced herself to smile tightly as the cook presented a peacock painstakingly redressed in its own colorful plumage and stuffed with truffles.
“I’m sorry, my lord. There’s no reason for anger,” Thainna said politely. “Please, enjoy your supper.”
Her words had the slippery-cracked feel of lies, but the foster girl’s mind flitted from one feeling to the next so quickly that Rikard could barely follow.
“Uh… hae,” he stammered.
At least the food smelled delicious. Since Rikard’s return home, he had eaten better than ever before — even better than his wedding day — but this feast surpassed it all. The peacock was only the first dish in a parade of exotic foods from every corner of the Carcaen Empire. Rikard felt his own not inconsiderable appetite whetted all the more by Thainna’s hunger.
“Everyone is talking about you, of course,” Saul said. He had to speak up to make himself heard over the clatter. “You’re the greatest hero in history, Rik. The Lyceum keeps talking about making you a god!”
“Me…?” Rikard asked. He didn’t like the idea. “No, men do not become gods!”
“Most men don’t disappear and take an entire army of Fiore barbarians with them!” Saul laughed. He glanced at Thainna and her distinctive fiery hair. “No offense to you, honey.”
“Hae, my lord,” she said politely.
“Tell me more about afterward, Saul,” Rikard said. So much still didn’t make sense. “In the vine-fall opens, I spoke to Alexander Ferro, but he asked for more answers than he gave. What happened after Njorn Pass?”
Saul cocked his head at Gaius. “You haven’t told your father about it?”
“The basics. Things have been busy. Besides, what could I tell him that anyone else in the world couldn’t?”
“We’ve discussed the political ramifications of his victory,” Laurael added. “However, as neither of us were actually present at Njorn Pass, we haven’t been able to share those particular details.”
“I want to know,” said Rikard.
“And you deserve to. Lucky for these gentle ladies, it’s a short and simple story.” Saul considered for a moment. “You know well how it began, Rik. The Fiori came on us in the night, in the middle of that storm, and one of the scouts came to our tent. You’d taken to sleeping in full armor and so you went straight away to the battle. I was on your heels, but the Fiori were everywhere and I lost you in the snow. I saw Nikas — Captain Hern — and stuck close. By the time I finally found you, Rik, you were up on that snowdrift and drawing a pact circle. No one could hear what you were saying through the storm and the battle.”
“Hae, I remember,” Rikard said.
He did. So much snow and so much blood… He glanced down at Thainna, the girl who — as she just reminded Rikard — he had tried to kill. After thirty years of constant war, it was a difficult instinct to overcome, and the girl was Fiori. Still, that did not mean he was forgiven.
“There was a great, bright red light. I thought you’d called down a great fire or somesuch,” Saul went on. “It filled the Njorn Pass. When it was gone, so were you and all of the Fiori. There were just footprints and blood and spears sticking out of the snow. And your sword, of course. Do you know what happened to all of those Fiori, Rik?”
“Stumble tried to explain once, but I couldn’t hold it steady,” said Rikard. He looked down at Thainna, but her green eyes were turned away. “Flickerdim and the others pulled them toward Alterra, but not through. I think the Fiori broke against the veil.”
Saul’s brows shot up and his wife blanched.
“At any rate, they were gone,” he said quickly. “It took us some time to understand what had happened. When we finally did, when the scouts came back and reported that we were alone in the pass, Nikas took command. We still had the blizzard to contend with, so he had us collect those wounded who could still walk and we marched out of the pass.”
“How many survived?”
“A little more than five hundred knights and maybe seven thousand soldiers and support made it out of Njorn Pass. Less by the time we returned to Carce.”
“So few?” Rikard breathed. “We entered Njorn Pass with seventeen thousand men. Thirty thousand marched from Carce when the campaign began!”
“It was a terrible blow to Carce and to the Verita et Illumina Lansinos,” Saul agreed with a nod. “The survivors were divided up among the courts and we started rebuilding our numbers. Emperor Tychon put Nikas in charge of the Moon Court and then Castor inherited the Sun Court a few years after that. I was knighted when we returned, and then the emperor gave me charge of the whole bloody Star Court.”
Rikard was happy for his friend’s fortune, though he wasn’t sure what he thought of the emperor’s decision. Saul was a good man, but not a clever or strong-willed one. Not one Rikard would ever have placed in command. Gaius felt much the same, he sensed.
Saul looked between the Mazrem men and gave Rikard a wide, lopsided smile.
“I know what you’re thinking, Rik,” he said.
“You do?” Rikard asked, surprised. “Can you reach me?”
“Eh? Don’t think so, but I’m a career soldier, Rik. I was never on the command road,” he said, shaking his head. Althea stroked the back of her husband’s hand comfortingly. “It’s all fine, my love. I know my own faults. I’m not a quick man.”
“But you still took the promotion,” Gaius said. His voice had a sharp, bitter edge.
Saul blinked. He laughed again, but now it sounded nervous and uncomfortable. “Why didn’t you take it, Gaius? You and the emperor are close. I’d be happy enough to give up command. Truth be, it’s a good thing we’re at peace. I can schedule guard rotations for the emperor, but not much more.”
“For the emperor?” Rikard asked curiously.
“The Star Court provides the knights for Emperor Tychon’s guard these days. Castor’s never been happy about the arrangement, but there’s not much he can do about it. It’s not my doing.” Saul paused to pour thick strawberry sauce over a slice of duck meat and take a few bites. “This is delicious, Lady Mazrem. You always set the most lavish table.”
“Thank you, Saul.”
“Well at any rate, the decision wasn’t mine or even Emperor Tychon’s. The Lyceum called a vote early on after they were first convened. Most of the surviving Sun Court was men who had remained behind during the war in Fiore. A consul on the Lyceum, Nieve Centra, argued that the Star Court better knew battle and sacrifice than the Suns. I never agreed with Centra. Neither did Castor — it was just about the only time we’ve ever sided together — but we were outvoted by the rest of the Lyceum.”
Rikard drank from a bowl as he thought. The soup was rich and salty, with chunks of melting cheese floating in it. It was almost too much to take in. When did VEIL get involved in politics?
“Speaking back to promotions, they’re saying that Emperor Tychon is going to make you legens,” Saul said. “Is it true?”
“Hae, it is,” answered Gaius.
“Are you going to accept it, Rik?”
“I don’t know,” Rikard admitted. “I don’t want to accept anything from that man.”
“My lord, please,” said Laurael. She spoke softly into his ear. “Emperor Tychon has been generous to everyone at this table.”
Rikard fell grudgingly silent on the matter. He did not like Castum Tychon, but he liked upsetting Laurael even less. For all of his other faults, Saul was sensitive to the moods of those around him and moved the conversation along to something else.
“Enough about things here, Rik!” he said. “Gaius told the entire Lyceum about some kind of civil war in Alterra. That’s why they took you? To win their war? What do Alterrans have to fight about? That entire world of theirs is made out of dreams and thoughts. They should have anything at all that they want. Quite literally, hae?”
“It’s not… No, it’s not like that. Alterrans don’t think the way Terrans do. They can’t change their thoughts as easily as we can,” Rikard told his guests. They listened attentively — even Thainna. “All new things in Alterra, all new dreams and memories, come first from Terrans.”
Saul was still curious. “What about this war? It’s about us, I’ve heard. What does that mean?”
“It’s… it’s hard to explain. Everything goes two ways. Our worlds are twins. The Alterra are strong in our world. They can do things we can’t.”
“Hae,” Saul said with a nod.
“The same is true in reverse. Terrans can do things there that the Alterrans can’t do themselves. Change ideas, have new dreams,” Rikard explained with some difficulty. Remembering the details was like trying to catch fireflies with a spoon. “Because of us, Alterra is a changing place. Every song, every day, that whole world changes.”
“So you say. I follow, but I still don’t understand how that led to a war,” Saul said.
“There are Alterrans who don’t want their world to be so… influenced. The Shatter. They want things to be… to be…” Rikard tried to find the right words.
It was painstaking work. What seemed so obvious and clear in Alterra was hard to put into speech. He smiled mockingly at himself.
Was this what it was like teaching me in those first days, Stumble?
“The Shatter don’t want us to shape Alterra anymore. Long, long ago, when there were few Terrans, Alterra was without form. A starless sky. The Alterra lived without body or… or mind. Just… existed as blank as paper. The Shatter want that back… The still silence. Perfection, as they think of it.”
No one ate. Every eye in the triclinium, even those of the stilled servants, was on Rikard. He felt their shock like splashes of cold water. They knew nothing about the war that raged in Alterra. Why? How was that possible? The questions pulled the frayed parts of his memory, tugging on a thread that seemed important, but that might unravel everything if pulled too hard.
“They are fighting over us, what to do with us,” Rikard said. “The Shatter want the worlds separated. Without us, all Alterra will return to the primordial emptiness. No pacts, no prayers. They want to sever all bonds.”
“You fought for the other side?” Saul asked.
“I do. I fight with the rages and curiosities, singes and dires. I fought for Uprising, the Alterra of the tree-tower. The ones who hear our pacts and honor our sacrifices to them. But there were oceans of bitter tears and we were losing.”
Saul sat up, eyes wide, and whistled. “Bloody hell, Rik. Bloody hell. I’m happier than words can ever say that you’re back from all that. May the Alterra fight their own damned wars until the stars burn out.”
The triclinium was quiet for a moment. The servants resumed their work, removing empty dishes and replacing them with full ones. Slowly, Rikard and his guests continued eating. Another cook came in to show off a huge cake decorated with sugared violets and roses, all glittering as though rimed with frost. Laurael nodded her approval and struck up conversation with Althea and her daughters, suggesting that a more extravagant version of the cake might be suitable for Gaius and Sierra’s wedding. Saul sidled down his couch, closer to Rikard.
“Rik?”
“Hae, Saul? Gods, it’s good to see you again.”
“This war… if these Shatter win — and it certainly sounds like they are winning. Maybe that’s for the best, hae? Who wants to make pacts with the Alterra anymore? No one wants to be pulled away for thirty or sixty years to fight in some mad, unending war,” Saul said slowly. He gestured to his wife and daughters. “You missed so much. Maybe it’s for the best if those Uprising Alterra… lose. Maybe our worlds should just go their separate ways.”
Rikard stared. He could not believe what he was hearing. You want this? The Shattered path…? The broken road?
“Rik? Hae, Rik? What’s wrong?”
Saul shook him and Rikard started, bristling with fury. Lost, all would be lost…!
As the molten rage coursed through him, Rikard tried to bridle it like a wild horse. Saul was his oldest friend. But the need to fight the Shatter on all and any field ran deep and hard as bedrock. The rage lanced out, razor-sharp, and arrowed out invisibly at Saul. His friend’s body went slack and he grunted in pain. Rikard’s stomach turned into a knot of ice and he yanked his anger back, but Saul shook his head, eyes glazed.
“What was that? Sorry, Rik, I lost track of things for a moment there,” Saul slurred.
He rubbed his face hard enough to redden the skin. Rikard knew the feeling, the pain — the attack — from experience. A sharp, burning needle buried somewhere impossible to reach. It would fade, but not for hours. Rikard dropped his gaze, ashamed of what he had done.
From her seat at the foot of the couch, Thainna looked up at Rikard quizzically. After a moment’s confused contemplation, she stood and snapped her fingers to get everyone’s attention.
The foster bowed and addressed Lady Mazrem. “I’m sorry, my lady, but I’m afraid I must call an early end to the night. Captain Mazrem needs to rest.”
“I think I might have had a little too much wine, myself.” Saul chuckled. He stood unsteadily and embraced Rikard, wincing as he did. “Take the legens position, my friend. VEIL needs you.”
Rikard made quiet, mumbled farewells to Saul’s family. Laurael touched his arm.
“My lord, Gaius and I will see our guests to the gate,” she said. “I will find you in our bed soon.”
“Hae, Laura.”
Rikard kissed Laurael and let her go. Together, his family and friends exited the triclinium. Thainna appeared at Rikard’s side.
“Let me check you over and then to bed,” she said.
The foster gestured for Rikard to come with her. He wanted to fight, to tell Thainna that he didn’t need to be put to bed like an unruly boy, but he just couldn’t summon the will to argue.
Rikard followed the slender, pale Fiori girl through the halls of his unfamiliar house. She opened the door to the bedroom and waved Rikard inside. He dropped onto the edge of the monolithic bed. Thainna fumbled an emberbox from the nearby table to light a few lamps, then slipped it into her tabba. She sat on the edge of the dais.
“What happened?” she asked. “I saw that look on your face tonight.”
“I don’t know.” Rikard crossed his arms over his stomach. The sick knot of pain in his gut felt too big, too confusing and complicated. He wished he could just cut it out.
“What’s wrong?”
“Too many things. I don’t have enough words for all of them,” Rikard said. But Thainna was a foster. Maybe she could help with the pain.
“Is it the things I said to you before? About…” Thainna whirled her finger around her ear. Rikard wasn’t sure what she meant and reached for the rest, the words that went unsaid. About you being in my head. I hate it. I can’t let you. What if you see?
Rikard frowned. “You don’t like it when I listen to the things you think.”
“I like it fine when you listen to me talk, just not in my head,” Thainna said, then raised her red eyebrows. “Did you pull that out of my mind again?”
“Hae,” he confirmed.
“You don’t really understand the irony there.”
“No.”
Rikard looked down at his hands. The little crescent cuts in his palms — the marks of his furious tantrum against Emperor Tychon out in the jasmine garden — were fading, but he could still see them. His knuckles were bruised from fighting with Nikas and then again with the Lyncean guard, Karl. Rikard shifted his gaze to Thainna’s hands, resting on her knees. They were small and Fiori white, with rough nails and cracked cuticles. But there was no mark of violence on them.
“You have ordinary hands,” said Rikard.
“Hae, I guess so.”
Thainna put her hands in her lap and examined them. Rikard returned to staring at his own.
“Thainna, why do you make my visits short? I want to see more. More people, more of Carce. I died. I’ve been gone so long. I fought. Bled. Lost in high winds. There are things I don’t… I can’t…” Rikard tugged at his hair as though if he could just pull hard enough, he could wrench the thoughts beneath free for Thainna’s inspection. “I want to see… more. Why won’t you let me?”
But the foster was obviously having trouble following Rikard’s conversation. Her face scrunched up like a piece of paper about to be thrown away.
“I don’t know if that’s a very good idea,” she said. “You’re not… healthy. I don’t think it would be good for you, Captain Mazrem.”
Rikard stood up and ripped open the front of his saela with a sharp jerk, snapping free the knotted cord buttons and sending them flying across the room. He tore off the bandages beneath and then pointed angrily to the stitched spear wound in his side.
“It does not bleed anymore, Thainna!” he said. “I will not die that easily. I’m a soldier of Carce, a VEIL knight! I’m not so fragile that I cannot talk.”
Thainna leapt back, terror naked on her thin face. When Rikard remained still at the bedside, she calmed — much to his relief. The girl was as prickly as a porcupine.
“Look, it’s not my choice to make, Rikard,” she told him after a moment.
“But you’re my foster!”
“It wasn’t my decision to keep you out away from the public. It was your wife, Lady Mazrem. I can’t go against her wishes.”
“I… what?” Rikard could not believe Thainna. Despite his prior resolve, he reached out, but found honesty in Thainna’s thoughts. “Why would she do that?”
“I’m sure she’s just being protective.”
“Hae…”
They sat there in silence for a moment until Thainna sighed and picked up Rikard’s discarded saela and dressings.
“This was really unnecessary,” she said with a long sigh, then smiled at him. “You sure like making a point.”
Even though he wasn’t reaching for her thoughts, Rikard plainly felt the wobbly, shaky nervousness that clung to the foster like a sticky film.
“There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?” he asked softly.
Thainna rolled up the torn cloth and wrapped her arms around the bundle. “Hae, there is.”
Rikard sat once more and held out his hands. “I don’t know how to say things. I don’t know how to…”
He curled his fingers into hooked claws and pulled them in close to his chest.
“It’s a lot more than that,” Thainna said under her breath.
“What?”
Thainna frowned at Rikard. Her words weren’t meant for him, he guessed.
“You’ve been gone from Terra for a long time,” she said. “You’re completely inhuman.”
Rikard narrowed his eyes at her. “I thought you wanted to help, foster.”
“I do! Don’t rush in!” Thainna snapped. “Believe me, I do want to help. But the problem isn’t your physical health. It’s probably why Lady Mazrem wants to keep you in, too. There’s something wrong in here.”
Thainna approached the bed and very gently touched her warm fingertips to his temple. The feel of her made Rikard feel oddly light and feverish.
“It’s your mind that needs healing, not your body. I don’t think you’re really mad, exactly, though I’d bet laurels that I’m one of precious few around here. You answer everything with anger and violence, Rikard. It’s scary, even when you don’t actually hit people.”
Rikard slumped. Though he had not struck Saul with his fists — not as he had Karl — Rikard had hurt his friend. It was only a reflex, but a dangerous one. As a younger VEIL knight, how many times had he pitted wills against men just like that, criminals who fought and killed simply because they knew nothing else?
“You’re right,” Rikard said. His throat was so tight that his voice cracked. “I did… I hurt Saul tonight. It was…”
Rikard made a shoving motion, shook his head and tried again. He pushed all his fingers together into a point. Thainna chewed her lip again.
“I don’t understand,” she told him. “You never touched General Darius, did you?”
“No, not with my hands. Do you remember when I first saw you, when I grabbed you?”
“Hae, how could I forget?” she asked dryly. “It was one of the more memorable nights of my life.”
“I hurt you.”
“You were strangling me, Captain Mazrem.”
“No, here,” he said, touching Thainna between the eyes. She flinched, but she remembered the encounter quite loudly. “I sent my anger on you, honed and sharpened. I did it to Saul and I did it to you. I was surprised and I lashed out. I… I am sorry, Thainna. I’m sorry I hurt you.”
“It’s alright, Rikard,” Thainna answered. “You thought I was your enemy.”
“Saul isn’t my enemy. Neither is Nikas.”
“Neither was Karl, but you still attacked him.” Thainna held up her hands when Rikard tried to respond. “No, wait. I think I understand. Really, I do. You spent thirty years in a war, in another world. It’s hard to come back to something else. It would be like… like living your whole life in the Rows and then suddenly being asked to work in the imperial palace. Everything is so different.”
“I suppose so.” Rikard wasn’t quite sure, but Thainna’s idea had the thick weight of truth.
“You just need to learn to be Terran again,” Thainna said with a shrug. She burst into laughter. “Listen to me! I’m advising Rikard Mazrem on how to be human!”
He had no idea why that was funny, but her giggles were contagious. Rikard found himself smiling and then laughing, too. When he finally stopped and wiped the tears from his eyes, Laurael stood in the door with her perfectly plucked eyebrows drawn up into high, surprised bows. With some effort, Thainna stopped laughing and stood.
“Lady Mazrem, your husband is well,” she said. “I believe that the wounds should breathe at night, so I’m leaving them uncovered. Please, be gentle with him.”
“Hae, foster. I am always very careful,” said Laurael.
Thainna bowed and left the bedroom.
