Kamoj blinked. "So many names."
He touched her cheek. "And you?"
"Just Kamoj Quanta Argali." It didn’t sound nearly so impressive as his.
"Quanta?" He laughed. "Ai, Kamoj, you’re a bound quantum resonance."
It relieved her to see his spirits lighten, even if his words were odd. "You think my name means resonance too?"
"Argali refers to a Breit-Wigner scattering resonance. It comes from the Iotic word akil tz’i." He paused. "Actually akil tz’i originally meant leash. It’s used now for resonance. Some people say it derives from a Mayan language, but no one really knows."
Kamoj knew nothing about "Mayan," but she had no doubts about her own language. "Argali means vine rose."
"Not really. It just got mixed up with another Iotic word, akil tz’usub, which means vine runner."
Just like that, he took away her entire name and gave her a new one, without even realizing it. "What does ‘Mayan’ mean?"
He pushed up on his elbow to look at her, as if her appearance could give him a clue to his own past. "My people have tried to determine our origins by comparing our languages to those on Earth. Some similarities exist between classical Iotic and Tzotzil Mayan. Other of our words suggest we came from the Mediterranean or Near East. But no matter how you look at it, none of it makes sense, unless my ancestors were shifted in time as well as space. Our history on Raylicon goes back six thousand years, and at that time no culture on Earth even vaguely resembled that of my ancestors."
"Then how can you be sure about the language?" She shook her head. "Scattering resonance? It makes no sense."
"It’s like when you roll bowballs on a table and they bounce off each other." He lay on his side again. "Particles do that too."
"Particles? You mean dust?"
"Smaller. Much smaller. And they can change state."
"What is ‘change state’?"
"Deform, spin different ways, that sort of thing."
"This is what ‘resonance’ means?"
"A resonance is when one ball captures another."
She gave him a skeptical look. "Vyrl, I have never heard of bowballs capturing each other."
He laughed. "Just try to imagine it. The balls don’t bounce apart right away. They collide and stick together for a while. That’s the resonance."
"Why would my name mean such a thing?"
"I don’t know." he admitted. "What are some other common Argali names?"
She thought about it. "Sable for women. Maxard for men."
"Maxard could refer to a maximum. What is your uncle’s full name?"
"Maxard Osil Argali."
"Osil means life. Maximum resonance lifetime?"
Kamoj didn’t see what sense that made either. "What about Sable?"
"I don’t know about that one. It just means black."
"It is a contraction of Metastable state."
He stared at her. "That can’t be coincidence! Metastable state refers to a resonance." He looked inordinately pleased with this strange statement. "You’re all named after scattering processes. Wait until I tell Drake."
"Drake?"
"The anthropologist on the Ascendant. He’s been trying to make sense out of the name ‘Jax.’"
Kamoj stiffened. "What about Jax?"
"It’s actually an acronym. Jks."
"Yes. I know. But Jax is easier to say."
"Jks. They’re quantum numbers. For a free particle. J is angular momentum, k is energy, s is spin." He snapped his fingers. "Jax Ironbridge is a free particle! Actually, he’s one term in the partial wave expansion for a free-particle plane wave."
"Good for him," Kamoj said dourly.
His smile faded. "My sorry. That was insensitive."
Free particle indeed. All she knew about Jax was that she no longer needed to suffer a pendulum of emotions, swinging between fear of his temper and relief for his tenderness. Which was fine with her.
After that they lay in silence, side by side, their heads together. Kamoj was almost asleep when Vyrl made an odd choked sound.
She opened her eyes. "Are you all right?"
He wiped sweat from his forehead. "Yes."
"Shall I get Dazza?"
"No." He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. "I’ll be fine."
"I can rub your head."
He glanced at her. "Yes. Thank you."
Kamoj sat up and took his head into her lap. As she massaged him, his eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. But after only a few moments he said, "Maybe you better not."
"There must be something I can do."
"Get me another bottle. From the kitchen. That one I broke is the last I had up here."
"Please don’t–"
His face went stiff, like the precursor to an explosion.
"Wait," Kamoj said. She couldn’t bear the thought of his rejecting her again, a second time in one night. But how could she do what he asked?
Then it occurred to her that if she went downstairs, she might find someone who could give her advice. "I’ll go to the kitchen."
He relaxed. "Thank you, Kamoj."
She put on her underdress and a robe, and left their bed. As she tied her sash, she crossed to the entrance of the suite, wondering what she would find on the landing outside. Vyrl’s new bodyguards, stagmen from the Ascendant.
She eased open the outer door, trying to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Moonlight filtered onto the landing from a window in the stairwell. The two men posted outside were huge, bigger even than Vyrl. They wore black, with no diskmail, only jackets, pants, and knee boots. Metal bands gleamed on their upper arms, and the leather guards on their wrists glinted with metallic ribbing. Each man also wore a black bulk on his hip, not a sword or dagger, but something else with a handle and snout.
Then Kamoj realized one of the stagmen was a stagwoman. Massive and muscled, she stood taller than most men of Balumil. How did Vyrl’s people grow so big?
Both guards were watching her. From their intrigued looks, one would have thought she was some rare, exotic flower instead of an ordinary farm girl.
The man spoke in accented Iotaca. "Can we help you, Governor Argali?"
"I need to go to the kitchen," Kamoj said.
He smiled down at her. "Tell Morlin what you need. Then you won’t have to walk down there in this cold."
"Isn’t Morlin gone?"
"Most of the system is down. But you can use the intercom to page someone in the kitchen."
"I don’t wish to bother anyone. But thank you." Self-conscious, Kamoj nodded to them as she would to her uncle’s stagmen. Then she started down the stairs. To her relief, neither of the giants tried to accompany her.
No lamps or candles lit the stairwell, but moonlight slanted in through the window slits–white light, which meant more than one moon was up, and probably the aurora as well. She reached the Long Hall on the first floor without seeing anyone. A few lamps burned on the walls, but the corridor was empty. Further down, light slanted out of rooms here and there, on either side.
The first of the lit rooms was empty. In the second, a housemaid was cleaning the floor. Kamoj found Dazza in the third. The colonel was sitting on a sofa, reading an odd book with glowing hieroglyphic symbols on its surface.
Dazza looked up as she entered. "Good evening."
Kamoj hesitated just inside the doorway. "My greetings, Colonel Pacal."
"Did you want to talk to me?" When Kamoj nodded, Dazza closed her book and motioned to a chair by the sofa. "Please. Be comfortable."
Kamoj came in and sat on the edge of the chair.
The colonel smiled. "What is it, child?"
Child? Kamoj stiffened and said nothing.
After a moment Dazza asked, "Have I offended you?"
Kamoj made herself relax. She hadn’t come here to bristle at people. "I need your help, ma’am."
"What can I do for you?"
"It’s about rum."
Dazza pushed her h
and through her hair, mussing the grey curls. "Is it rum? Or someone who drinks it?"
Kamoj twisted her hands in her lap. "He wants me to bring him more."
"Don’t do it. Please."
"He will send me away."
"He won’t."
"He says he will."
"He doesn’t mean it."
"How can you know?"
Dazza’s face gentled. "I do believe he’s already in love with you."
"He can’t be," Kamoj said matter-of-factly. "We don’t know each other."
"Apparently it happens this way sometimes, with telepaths."
"Happens?"
"Falling in love."
"Everyone falls in love."
"Not like Vyrl."
"Why is he different?"
Dazza set her book on the couch. "Psions have more neural structures in their brain than other people. Vyrl, especially. He feels everything more. Add in that emotional artistic temperament of his and you get real fire."
Her words surprised Kamoj. Vyrl didn’t strike her as emotional, but as capable of deep emotions, which she wouldn’t have called the same thing. She liked the way he expressed himself, open and warm, full of dash. She wondered, too, what Dazza meant by artistic temperament.
"Fire?" she asked.
The colonel smiled. "They used to call it ‘love at first sight.’ That turned out to be a misnomer, though. It’s more ‘at first thought.’"
Wryly Kamoj said, "We have such a saying. ‘Love under the Wild Moon.’ It is because this love makes your life chaos."
Dazza gave a rueful laugh. "Yes, I can see that."
"But why ‘at first thought?’"
"The fields produced by his brain couple to an unusually large degree with yours. His mind interprets that interaction in a pleasant way." When Kamoj shook her head, Dazza tried again. "The process of thinking creates fields in your brain. You can’t see them, but they can affect what is nearby."
"Like a magnet?"
Dazza gave her a surprised look. "Well, yes, actually, in a sense. The various fields your cerebrum produces are more complicated and less intense, but the basic idea is the same."
"And Vyrl reacts to mine?"
The doctor nodded. "When people are near each another, the fields interact. Usually the effect is minor, even negligible. But every now and then two people hit a resonance. Combine that with a strong physical attraction and you can get intense emotion in a remarkably short time. Over the long term, it can create an exceptional bond." Dryly she said, "Poets call it a love ‘deeper than the sea’ or ‘wider than the sky.’ ‘Quantum resonance’ may sound less romantic, but it’s more accurate."
Kamoj blinked. It sounded like Dazza meant Vyrl’s actions were more than a drunken whim, that something special about she, Kamoj, had drawn him to her. It unsettled her to discover just how much she wanted that to be true.
Feeling awkward, she said, "He is also important to me. But each time it seems he will be all right, he wants to drink again. I had thought he would stop."
Softly Dazza said, "I wish it worked that way."
"Can you help?"
"I can treat his withdrawal symptoms. And his craving. But I can’t make him want to quit." She spoke in a quiet voice. "I’m trying to reach him. But in the end it must be his choice."
"Can’t you give him something to make him stop?"
Dazza shook her head. "I don’t think so. I could inject nanomeds that would interact with alcohol to make him sick every time he drinks. But if I force him to quit that way, it won’t stick. In the end all I would probably achieve is to earn more of his resentment." She grimaced. "Besides which, if I did it without his consent, I would be breaking the law and endangering ISC relations with the Ruby Dynasty."
Kamoj nodded. She and Maxard had often had to juggle politics with expediency for the sake of Argali. "Vyrl doesn’t seem like someone who would drink so much."
"Apparently he never had much interest in it prior to–" The colonel stopped, then said, "to a sickness he suffered."
"He told me about the coffin."
Dazza stared at her. "He told you?" When Kamoj nodded, the doctor said, "He’s refused to speak of it with anyone else."
"If he can talk to me, can’t he stop drinking too?"
"It’s not that easy. His body expects it now. Stopping will make him sick."
"You can help him with that."
She nodded. "Yes. But mentally he also depends on it. He thinks he can’t survive without it."
"He can."
"Vyrl doesn’t believe it." Dazza exhaled. "I wish I could make him see. Few people could survive what happened as well as he has. It’s even more remarkable because his being a psion amplified the experience, gods only know how much. Something had to give. I hate what the alcohol is doing to him, but it could have been a lot worse. He hasn’t tried to commit suicide. And incredibly, despite everything, he came through it with his mind and personality intact."
"He thinks the rum does that for him."
"Please, Kamoj. Don’t give it to him."
She twisted her hands together. "He gets so angry."
"I know. But you must refuse."
"This is easy for you to say. You don’t share his bed."
The colonel blinked. "Well, no. I’ve my own husband."
Kamoj doubted Dazza had ever suffered the humiliation of being banned from her bridal bed. "I am the one who must live with him."
Dazza spoke carefully. "No one will force you to stay in this marriage if you desire otherwise."
"Your ISC wishes Vyrl and I didn’t wed, don’t they?"
It was a moment before Dazza answered. "It is true that the marriage complicates an already complicated situation."
"You will all leave here, yes?"
"Yes. Probably soon."
"What happens to me then?"
"The choice to come or stay is yours."
"Is it?" Kamoj made a conscious effort to keep her voice even. "Vyrl has set himself up as the authority in Argali. If he leaves, it will bring great shame to my province." And to her. "Especially given the way he became governor."
"Surely a way exists to let you save face."
Kamoj made an incredulous noise. "More must be saved than ‘face.’ Argali is dying. Why do you think I was betrothed to Ironbridge? Lionstar humiliated Ironbridge, and if Vyrl leaves, he humiliates Argali as well. If I stay here alone, what happens to the merger? To my province? To my line? Unless I am pregnant when Vyrl leaves, I will have no heir. If I am pregnant, and alone, my uncle will feel honor-bound to stay as guardian to the child, as he did for me. If I leave with Vyrl, Maxard will stay to govern Argali. Either way, Maxard cannot marry his lady in the North Sky Islands. Both Argali and the Argali bloodline, one of the oldest in Balumil, will end."
Dazza leaned forward. "Rest assured, Vyrl would never leave you without the full resources of his title and name. And he can return for visits."
"You think politics will play attendance on visits?" Or loneliness? Bitterly Kamoj said, "Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If Vyrl goes, Jax Ironbridge will probably seek his place. Vyrl could return to find his wife taken, and his child too, if we have one." She swallowed. "Given the circumstances, I suspect Ironbridge would eliminate the heir of a rival."
The colonel stared at her. "Saints almighty, Kamoj, we would never let that happen. Don’t you understand your position? You are a Ruby consort. Do you have any idea what that means?"
"No."
Dazza paused at the blunt response. In a gentler voice, she said, "Your marriage gives you the highest standing a person can have among my people. ISC would never strand you, your family, or your province." She hesitated. "Assuming it is your wish to remain married to Vyrl rather than Ironbridge."
A voice came from behind them. "Colonel Pacal?"
Dazza looked past Kamoj. "Yes?"
Turning, Kamoj saw the Ascendant stagwoman in the doorway. "Prince Havyrl wants to know what happened to his wife," the g
uard said.
"Hai." Kamoj stood up. "I will be right there."
"Governor Argali," Dazza said. When Kamoj turned, the doctor added, "One more moment, if you don’t mind."
Kamoj sat down. "Yes, ma’am?"
In a soft voice Dazza said, "Gods know, I may be letting my hope run away from me. But I do believe Vyrl wants to quit." She paused, watching Kamoj. "If he can just make it one day without the rum, it’s a start. Don’t bring it to him. Please."
Kamoj swallowed. "I will do my best."
Gently the doctor added, "And if he isn’t ready to stop, don’t blame yourself."
Kamoj nodded. Then she stood and went to Vyrl’s bodyguard. The woman bowed, then accompanied Kamoj back to the tower.
Kamoj reentered the suite to find Vyrl sitting on the edge of the bed. He watched as she walked up the dais to him.
"Where is it?" he asked.
She stopped in front of him. "I didn’t get it."
"Who were you talking to down there? Dazza?" When Kamoj flushed, his voice tightened. "Your laws say you’re supposed to do what I tell you, don’t they? So get it for me."
"You don’t mean that."
"Don’t tell me what I mean." He started to get off the bed. "I’ll go myself."
"Vyrl, no." Kamoj pushed him back. "You were almost killed today. You shouldn’t be up at all." She took his hands. "Listen. I’ll rub your head. We can hold each other. Every time you want a drink, we’ll make love. So many better ways exist to sooth your demons than soaking them in rum."
Despite himself, his mouth quirked in a smile. "I like your cures a lot better than the ones Dazza comes up with." In a gentler voice he said, "But I don’t need this ‘cure,’ water sprite. It does more damage than what it is meant to fix. If Dazza told you otherwise, she’s wrong."
Kamoj lifted his hand and bit at his knuckles in a gesture of affection common throughout the Northern Lands. "Please."
Instead of answering her, he said, "Men do that where I come from." He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles, pressing his teeth against them. "Like this."
"Only women do it here."
He pulled her to stand between his legs, his arms around her waist. "Women this, men that. All these ‘rules’ exist and they’re different everywhere. Do you know what I think? That under all those rules, people love the same. They find their way to each other no matter what."