Over the millennia, the culture here had shifted. The same genetic anomaly that produced the phenomenal Memories among Lyshrioli women had also included fatal recessives. Thousands of years ago, it had become more pronounced and decimated the female population, leaving women far outnumbered by men. The culture evolved patriarchal aspects then, including the idea that only men went to war. They couldn’t risk losing their few childbearing women in combat. Eventually the population reestablished a balance among men and women. The fatal mutations associated with the Memory traits had disappeared, either because all the women who carried it died out or because the gene pool shifted. Few women carried the Memory genes now, but those who did no longer died.
Roca touched the statue of the Archer. Sauscony. They had named their second daughter for this Lyshrioli goddess of war. Had she known how prophetic that name would become, would she have chosen another? No. Nothing would change her daughter’s nature, nor would she have wanted to see her wild, brilliant daughter constrained.
Jase spoke softly. “Ma’am?”
“I’m sorry. I must seem distracted today.” She went with him down the hall, to a stone archway framed with engravings of bubbles. A curtain hung in the entrance, sparkling strings of iridescent beads. Beyond it waited the suite she and Eldrinson shared here at Windward. Except they no longer shared it. Now she slept in another suite down the hall.
Jase pulled aside the beaded strings, making them clink and rattle together, inviting her to enter. She walked into the circular foyer with a cushioned bench running around its wall. Engraved stone moldings bordered the ceiling. Across the foyer, next to a purple glasswood door, a man sat at a console that hadn’t been there before today. Neither she nor Eldri would have tolerated such obvious ISC tech at Windward. Now Roca was deeply grateful they could bring down what they needed to care for him here instead of taking him to the battle cruiser Ascendant, that gigantic military city orbiting Lyshriol. It would have destroyed his spirit.
The lieutenant at the console wore a jumpsuit similar to Jase’s uniform, with the same insignia on his chest, a green vine curling around a silver staff, all superimposed on a blue sun, the symbol medical practitioners used in all branches of ISC.
Jase went over to him. “How is he?”
The officer saluted him. “Quiet, sir. He dozes, I think.”
Jase glanced at Roca, hesitating. She knew why. Would Eldri know if she went inside his room? He had forbidden her, but he slept now.
“I don’t think a few moments will hurt,” Jase said.
“Thank you,” she said softly. Then she opened the door.
Eldrinson drifted in a sea of warmth, his mind like flotsam on his consciousness. He could almost ignore the pain that tugged at his legs. It had become distant, bearable, an irritant. He had slept today sometime after the doctors crowded around him in the Archer’s tent. He hoped no one else would talk with him now. He had nothing to say. They had taken away most of his pain. It was enough. He needed nothing else.
He became aware of breathing. His mind glided while he listened. Eventually he said, Who’s there?
No answer.
It took Eldrinson a while to realize he hadn’t spoken. He opened his mouth, closed it, then wet his lips. “Who is there?”
A voice came from nearby. “Dr. Heathland, Your Majesty.”
So he was Majesty today. When they referred to him as Roca’s consort, he was Highness. Perhaps someday they would make up their minds.
Heathland. The port doctor. He could live with that. He rather liked Jase, though he rarely admitted it. It would ruin his reputation as being impossible for Skolian doctors, which might encourage them to spend more time poking and prodding him.
A fire crackled. The fragrance of burning glasswood scented in the air. The room felt warm, but not overly so. For the first time in days he didn’t shiver. That fire was to his left, which was where the hearth would be if he was lying in the bed of his suite at Windward. This mattress felt familiar, the way it sagged a bit. He recognized the fresh, clean smell of the quilt. Relief spread through him, so intense his eyes felt hot. It hadn’t been a hallucination. He truly was at Windward.
“How do you feel?” a man asked. He was right next to the bed now.
“Heathland?” Eldrinson asked.
“Yes, it’s me.” He rested his palm on Eldrinson’s forehead. “Your fever has receded.”
“I had a fever?” Eldrinson had noticed little else but the pain.
“Very much so.” Jase’s voice soothed. But something bothered Eldrinson, interfering with the mindless oblivion he longed to reach. Someone was here. Her presence hurt.
“Roca?” he asked. “Is that you?” He couldn’t bear for her to see him this way, a crippled shell of the man who had loved, protected, and raised a family with her.
Her words came from across the room. “It is me.”
“You must go. I will not see you.” It was true literally as well as figuratively.
“Eldri—”
“Go!” He pushed up on his elbow, his face turned in her direction. New pain sparked in his legs. “Leave me.” He heard the doctor breathing, but the man didn’t interfere.
Roca spoke quietly. “Very well. I will be downstairs if you change your mind.”
The door opened, then closed.
Eldrinson almost cried out for her to return. He bit back the impulse and lay back down. Part of him wanted nothing more than for her to lie with him, to hold him in her arms, to give him her beloved comfort. But the thought of her touching his shattered limbs made him ill.
For a while he listened to the doctor breathe. In, out. In, out. Eventually he said, “How long will you stand there?”
“Not too long,” Heathland said. “I’m scanning your body.”
“I feel nothing.” Usually they laid one of those infernal tapes on his neck.
“I can take readings without touching you. They aren’t as detailed, though.”
“What do your readings tell you?”
Silence followed his question.
“Doctor Heathland?”
Jase spoke quietly. “The bones of your legs are pulverized. You also have a massive infection.”
“Oh.” Eldrinson had already known he lost the limbs. Still, it was harder to hear than he expected. “Will you amputate?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Essentially?”
“We can rebuild them, Your Majesty.”
“Don’t call me that.” He felt about as majestic at a slig-slug worming its way through the bole of a glasswood tubule.
“What would you like me to call you?” Jase asked.
“Eldrinson.”
“All right.” His gentle voice never changed.
After a moment, Eldrinson said, “How can you rebuild my legs?”
“Do you know what biomech means?”
“No.” He had heard the word, though.
“It is a medical technology.” The doctor laid a smooth strip against his neck.
Eldrinson grimaced. Jase had decided to use the holotape after all. He resisted the urge to pull it away. “My son Althor uses that word. Biomech.”
“Jagernauts have it in their bodies.”
“I am no Jagernaut.”
“This is true. But we can give you biomech similar to theirs. It will control the structural components we use to rebuild your skeleton.”
Eldrinson tried to get his mind around the words. They wanted to give him mechbot legs, like the small creatures that cleaned his house when he wasn’t looking. “That is revolting.”
Another silence. Emotions leaked past Jase’s mental barriers. Eldrinson’s response had startled him.
“Why is it revolting?” Jase asked.
“I am not a machine.”
“Your new legs would look no different than the old.”
Eldrinson didn’t believe him. “Would I walk like before?”
“I don’t know.”
That gave him pa
use. He had expected reassurances. Healers were notorious for telling you less than you wanted to know, and with more sugar than the news warranted. He wished they would realize how aggravating it was for them hold back the truth when an empath could tell they were pretending. He should have remembered Jase had never been that type. It was another reason Eldrinson liked him.
“Why don’t you know?” Eldrinson asked.
“We aren’t sure if your body will accept the changes.”
“Oh.” He wanted to ask more, but fatigue weighed on him. The pain in his legs was increasing and he had exhausted himself, though he had done little more than lie in bed.
“Are you thirsty?” Jase asked.
Thirsty? Actually, very much so, now that he thought of it.
“Yes,” he said.
A clink came from the nightstand. Then Jase set a glasswood tumbler into his hand. Lifting his head, Eldrinson drank the water with relief. When he finished, he let his head fall back on the pillows. Jase took the glass from his hand.
The pain in his legs was growing. Softly he said, “I hurt.”
“I can increase your medication.”
“Medication?” Eldrinson heard the strain in his voice.
“We injected you with a nanomed species that dispenses a painkiller into your body. Each med carries a picochip. Via a remote, we can tell those chips to increase the dosage they release.”
Eldrinson wondered if the words made sense. Twenty years ago it would have sounded like gibberish, and right now it wasn’t much better. It was hard to think when he hurt so much. “Can you make the pain go away?”
“I think so.”
“Do that. Please.”
“All right.” Tapping noises came from the nightstand. “You should notice a change soon.”
“Good.” Eldrinson whispered the word.
Then he lay there, enduring it. He didn’t notice a change. The agony went on and on.
Gradually, though, he began to feel detached from the pain. After a while it hardly bothered him at all.
“Eldrinson?” Jase asked. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” He felt sleepy. “Can’t see you, though.”
“We can help that, too.”
His mind began to drift. “Robot eyes? Click, click, Eldri, you’re blinking.”
“Eldri?” Now Jase sounded confused.
“Yes?” Eldrinson asked.
“Oh. I see. It is your nickname.”
“Only Roca may use it.” Eldrinson yawned. “And Garlin.”
“Garlin?”
“My cousin. He has a farm outside Rishollina now. You would have called him my regent, when I was young.” His eyes closed, though it made no difference to what he saw. Or didn’t see. “He raised me.”
“Ah,” Jase said.
Eldrinson slipped into the welcome oblivion of sleep, where he wouldn’t face the horror of what they wanted to do to his legs and eyes.
20
Vibarr
Soz walked down the corridor after class deep in thought, pondering multilayered Hilbert spaces, including those that created the Kyle universe.
“Cadet Valdoria?” a voice said.
Startled, she glanced up. A novice from her own class was walking next to her, a girl with brown hair and a round face. She saluted as if Soz were an upperclass cadet.
“You don’t have to salute me,” Soz said.
“Foxer says you’re third-year status now.”
Interesting. It was true she did have the augmentation that most cadets received in their junior year. And she had tested out of her first- and second-year classes, ending up in third-year or senior courses. But she still roomed with the novices and thought of herself as a first-year student. If Secondary Foxer said otherwise, though, who was she to argue?
Soz grinned at her. “At ease.”
The other girl relaxed. “I have a message for you, from Foxer. You’ve a visitor this evening, during your free hour.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Then remembering herself, Soz added, “Thank you, Cadet. Dismissed.”
The novice saluted and took off, obviously relieved. Soz wondered if she felt awkward, having to treat a former classmate like an officer. Then she wondered who was coming to visit. She wished it could be her mother, with news of her father. Soz wanted to see him so much. He had almost died. It helped a little to know it wasn’t only her he had refused to see, but she longed to go home, to end her exile and be with her family. They needed one another now.
Even if her father would have let her come home, though, Kurj probably wouldn’t let her go. Allowing an extended absence for travel to another world in the middle of the term would be granting her an exception over other cadets, which he wasn’t likely to do.
Lost in her brooding, she ran into a barrier. Soz blinked and looked up. Her roommate Grell was standing there with her arms crossed.
Soz’s face heated. “Sorry.”
“Heya.” Grell lowered her arms. “You going to run me over?”
“I wouldn’t dare.” Soz smiled. “You might organize Jazar and Obsidian into a commando team and attack me with pillows.”
Her roommate’s grin flashed. “Good idea.”
Grell fell in beside her and they walked together down the marble hall bordered by columns. Other cadets passed them by, talking with each other or lost in thought.
“So how does it feel to be wired up?” Grell asked.
Soz thought of her biomech enhancements. “Fast.”
“Rajindia still following you around?”
“No, thank goodness.” The biomech adept had grilled her for days after the trouble with the node. Soz had fully intended to take care with the accelerated mode, but Rajindia and Kurj decided on drastic steps anyway. “They took out the extra memory in my node.”
“Will you get it back?”
“I think, if Rajindia ever decides I’m no longer at risk of brain damage.”
Grell smirked. “What, you mean it didn’t already happen?”
“Hey!” Soz swung her flat-pack and Grell ducked, laughing. Several cadets glanced their way. Thinking of her never-ending supply of demerits, Soz resisted the temptation to keep roughhousing. Instead she smiled angelically at a senior cadet who was frowning at her. She didn’t know his name, but she had noticed him around. He was tall and well muscled, with a patrician nose and the dark coloring of the nobility.
Grell stopped at Soz’s side. “Sir!” She saluted the cadet.
Belatedly, Soz started to salute. Then she remembered the novice who had saluted her. Foxer said Soz was a junior now. According to the convoluted academy rules, that meant she didn’t have to salute other upperclass cadets. Or was it only juniors? She squinted at the senior, her flat-pack dangling. Yes, she remembered, she was supposed to salute seniors.
“Sir!” Soz dropped her flat-pack and raised her arms, fists clenched, wrists crossed.
He looked bored. “At ease.”
Soz lowered her arms. For good measure, she added, “Yes, sir.”
“You realize,” he said, “that was worth two demerits.”
Ah, hell. Resigned, Soz said, “Yes, sir.”
He motioned to Grell. “You may go, Novice.”
Grell looked from Soz to the senior. But she couldn’t refuse. “Yes, sir.” Then she went on her way, with a backward glance at them.
Soz considered him. He had to be a psion, given that he was a cadet here, but she picked up nothing from his guarded mind. She waited, unsure what he wanted.
He indicated a side hall. “Novice.”
Soz thought of telling him she was an upperclass cadet now, but decided against it. He still outranked her, besides which, with her questionable tact, it might come out badly. She went down the hall, aware of him behind her.
“In there,” he said. “On the right.”
Soz turned into a secluded alcove that slanted off from the wall. It had probably once been part of a larger room that had been divided. Now a few crates filled it, sta
cked against one wall. The way it angled back from the hall made it impossible for anyone to see into the alcove unless they came down the side corridor and stopped to look in here.
Soz didn’t like it. She paused next to a pile of boxes and regarded the senior. “Sir?”
He leaned against the wall so that he blocked even the restricted view from the hallway outside. Not that anyone was likely to come this way. “I hear you’ve got nothing but demerits, Cadet Valdoria.”
So he knew her name. Soz scrutinized his uniform, but she couldn’t read the tag from where she stood and she had no intention of going closer to him. “No, sir.”
His voice turned cold. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, sir. You said you had heard I had nothing but demerits. I’ve also many other things.” Then she added, “Sir.”
He stepped toward her, his face flushing. “Don’t goad me, smart-mouth. You just got yourself two more.” He stopped in front of her and braced his palm against the crates behind her back, cornering her in the alcove.
Node, she thought. How many regulations is this asshole breaking?
None, it answered. An instructor would probably give him one or more demerits for his behavior, but technically, he hasn’t violated any procedures.
“So what do you say, Valdoria?” he asked in a low voice, his body a handspan away from hers. “You going to be on droid duty for the rest of your life?”
“I hope not.” To her node, she thought, It must be against regulations for him to get this close to me.
In spirit, yes. By the book, no. He hasn’t touched you.
If he does touch me, is there any device in this alcove that can record it?
Nothing.
Well, hell. That was convenient for him. Then again, if she couldn’t prove his inappropriate behavior, neither could he prove disrespect on her part.
However, her node added, both you and Cadet Vibarr have biomech webs and nodes. Anything you do will be recorded on his node, and vice versa.
So his name was Vibarr. That meant he came from a powerful noble House.