Exile's Return Read online

  “Not exactly uplifting and cheery for the patient,” Khar finished for her. “You know, she may want you to acknowledge her condition, admit it, so she can admit to it herself. Each time she has to cheer you up, pretend things are fine, she’s forced to carry not only her burden of pain but yours as well.”

  She wheeled on the ghatta, almost spooking her at the unexpected move. “Khar, she’s ... she’s not dying, is she? She is going to get better? I know she’s weak, there are so many things that could steal her from us, but we’re not letting that happen, are we? Not Mahafny and the other eumedicos, not any of us.”

  Khar stared at the path, head dipped, shoulders slanted and supplicating, at last raising her head, the white around her mouth and nose emphasizing the broad aspects of her expression. “Did you ever think perhaps she longs to go? Craves permission to leave this life but doesn’t dare while anyone needs her? Remove or share some of her burden and she could choose her time when she’s ready.”

  “But Koom! What about Koom?” she begged, grasping at straws. “Koom won’t let her leave, can’t let her go.” Koom had loved and lost a human Bondmate once already, many years ago, just when the Seeker General had lost A’rah. The two survivors had meshed without the formal Bonding, refusing to be disloyal to the memory of their previous mates, but creating a close, sharing relationship that still baffled some who’d believed such a thing impossible.

  “Koom will know when the time’s right. His burdens weary him as well.” Brushing against her pantalooned leg, Khar trotted for the door, Doyce following, mouth grim, brain working frantically.

  As protocol demanded, she rapped hard at the heavy oaken door, waited for it to swing open. A tall young woman, lanky and with wide shoulders highlighted by the green tabard edging that indicated she was a Novie, still in training for the Seekers Veritas, hauled open the door, leaning on her heels and swinging it with a balanced grace. An equally rangy but undersized ghatt with a wide cinnamon muzzle and nose peeked around the door, eyes wide, one paw swiping at its newly gained ear hoop and earring, still acutely aware of their presence. He bristled defensively as Khar marched inside, then thought better of it, taking his responsibilities too seriously.

  “Thank you, Cady. Thank you, F’een.” Doyce good-naturedly threw her own weight against the door to help close it, the younger woman’s strong muscles turning to water in Doyce’s presence. “Just as heavy as always. Still squeak and groan before a rain?” Just as it had when she’d first come to join the Seekers Veritas, just as it had when she’d first met Oriel and his Bondmate Saam.

  Shyly, the young woman bobbed her head. Propelled by a rising wave of hope and crashing fear, she stammered, “H ... how’d ... you know my name? I ... I ... haven’t done something ... have I?” The last words a wretched wail of insecurity. The ghatt, a tiger with almost diamond-shaped markings, as if he’d sheltered behind a lattice fence being painted, sprang into her arms and buried his head under her chin, glowering at the intruders who’d worried his beloved Bondmate.

  “Lady bless!” Doyce exclaimed, half-amused despite herself. “Mindwalk if ye will,” she directed at the defiant ghatt. As the permission, the invitation, sank in, he stared from Doyce to Khar, dumbfounded, grassy green eyes widening, mouth agape.

  “Isn’t it just wonderful to be teariess—or fearsome—heroines of song, story, and legend?” Khar smirked, sharing her thought on the strictly intimate mode. “So fulfilling, being larger-than-life role models for the young and credulous. And you,” she paused significantly, “certainly are larger-than-life these days.”

  Controlling an overwhelming urge to smack the side of her boot against Khar’s satiny backside, Doyce tried to retrieve the situation. “Cady Brandt, Seeker-in-Training, stop fishing for compliments. All Seekers are aware of the new trainees and generally have some idea how they’re progressing.” She tapped her foot, letting the tapping continue, just a touch ominously, while she paused. “And you and F’een are doing very nicely, although you both need considerably more self-confidence. Remember, you’re as good as anyone here, or will be, soon enough.”

  A deep flush further darkened Cady’s olive skin as she set F’een on his feet, and tossed off a crisp if belated salute. “Thank you, Seeker Marbon, and welcome. May we assist you with anything?”

  “No, I’m just going to stop in and see the Seeker General if she’s awake and receiving visitors.” And with a casual wave of her hand she and Khar started off down the white and black squared marble hall. “Remember, self-confidence !” she threw over her shoulder. “Lady bless and keep us, ” she mindspoke Khar, “is that what we’re sending out into the world, wet-behind-the-ears, unable to control herself, let alone a crowd? How can they ride circuit, give the populace the confidence they need?” she continued, close to fuming out loud. “I swear, Khar, they’re getting younger every day!”

  “Well, you may not have been that young,” Khar shot back, “but you certainly weren’t any more self-confident.”

  “And you were, I suppose?”

  “No,” the ghatta stopped dead in front of her, amber eyes reminiscent. “But I believed in my love for you, even when you didn’t believe. And we’ve muddled through so far, haven’t we?”

  Kneeling, she cupped the ghatta’s head, let her thumbs trace the stripes radiating out from her eyes. “Yes, love, yes, we have.” Nothing to do but grin. “But does it, ever get to be less of a muddle?”

  “No. You humans make life more messy and tangled than a ghatten with a ball of yarn. Do you know how tiresome it is straightening it out and rewinding it? But do you ever learn? No.” And for that the ghatta gave genuine thanks. To always be loved and needed was a wondrous thing, and she needed Doyce as much as Doyce needed her.

  Pushing off the floor with her knuckles, Doyce tugged her tabard sash into place, although in her condition she didn’t know whether to wear it high or low, and belatedly realized they’d reached the Seeker General’s door. Giving a little snort to bolster her courage, Doyce knocked, heard a childish treble shrilly overriding a weak command to enter. “Who’s there? What do you want?” the childish voice demanded, mouth pressed to the crack by the door. “The Seeker General is resting now. Run along!”

  “It’s Doyce Marbon and Khar. We just wanted to say hello, but we can come back tomorrow if the Seeker General’s too tired.” The small “dragon” so zealously guarding the door was Davvy McNaught, a twelve-year-old Resonant raised in the cloistered security of the Research Hospice in the north. And the reason he’d assumed the role of watchdog stemmed from his guilt over Swan being wounded riding in search of him when—overcome with battle fever, war cries resounding in his ears—he’d fled from behind the safe lines into the thick of battle. The banners, the swirling horses, the badly outnumbered Marchmontian royalists luring their brethren into the arms of the waiting Canderisian forces had filled Davvy with a glorious awe—but he hadn’t intended for Swan to ride after him to save him. Admittedly she liked the boy, full of all the quirks and foibles and flaws of a child desperately stretching toward manhood, but it struck her that Davvy had become entirely too officious toward her since she’d left Swan’s bedside for the library.

  “He thinks you’ve deserted him as well as Swan, and he’s decided he’s totally responsible for her. And you’re just a little bit jealous of that.”

  “Wonderful. That explains his dragonish tendencies, not to mention my reaction. Sometimes I wish you weren’t quite so all-knowing—and so willing to share it. ”

  “Oh, it’s you.” A round face with heavy brown bangs to eyebrow level peeped around the door, now open a crack. “S’pose it’s all right if you come in for a bit. But don’t tire her or rile her up.” The last at a whisper, a stage whisper that carried all too well.

  “I’m not deaf, Davvy. Let them in or I’ll tan your hide.”

  He waved them in while shouting back, “I’d like to see you try!” The battle of wits and wills, albeit a good-natured one, had obviously been
in full swing for some time. The thought of Davvy as a “nursemaid” was a bit hard to accept, but they seemed to suit each other just fine.

  Koom, blocky and ruddy-furred, arched into a stretch at the foot of the bed, nose crinkling. A little dance in place revealed his delight at the visitors, and Khar jumped up beside him, companionable, rubbing his flank before moving pillow-ward to greet the Seeker General. A thin hand stroked her, and Khar paraded beneath it until the Seeker General captured her tail and shook it. “Mindwalk if ye will,” she pronounced the formal greeting, only to be overcome by a wheezing cough.

  But Davvy materialized with a cup of water, easing her into a sitting position, piling pillows behind her. Feeling ineffectual, Davvy’s quick ministrations showing up her own slowness, Doyce sat beside the bed, waiting for Swan to recover. At last the Seeker General spoke. “Cha, Davvy, if you would. The warmth helps.” The lad darted off, obedient, but with a rolling eye to indicate he wasn’t fooled, that he knew he was being politely shooed out of the room.

  “More omnipresent than dust mites, and Mahafny swears they’re everywhere in numbers we can’t comprehend,” Swan noted as she fingered the satin blanket edge, “but I confess I enjoy having him around. Most of the time.” Her twiglike hand clasped Doyce’s, and she wanted to throw her arms around the Seeker General, but one didn’t embrace one’s superior, nor did a eumedico embrace her patient. Foolish—if that were called for to effect a cure. Reining in her emotions, she chafed the cold hand between her own before freeing it.

  “Nothing can be caged forever, not even for its own good,” Khar murmured.

  “Koom, how’s she faring?” Doyce appealed, ashamed to ask Koom such a personal question in Swan’s presence.

  “Not much better. But thankfully, not much worse.” The ghatt circled once and resettled at the foot of the bed, placid half-lidded eyes staring into the distance, camouflaging their private mindspeech. “Just when I think she’s a little better, she slides downhill again. And just when I believe she’ll continue sliding, she crawls toward the peak again. Except she’ll never gain the pinnacle. I know that,” he paused, “and she knows that as well. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “As is everything in life,” Khar soothed.

  And it was time, Doyce realized, to pay attention to Swan. Or make it patently clear she was the subject under discussion. “What’s the word from the Monitor these days?” Hardly an idle question, indeed, she’d been so immersed in her research that she couldn’t always keep abreast of Kyril van Beieven’s and the High Conciliators’ latest decisions. Some of it Jenret told her, but he’d been absent so much lately she’d heard only bits and pieces. Momentarily angered that something as unimportant as a Bicentennial History held sway over her, she cursed herself for the distraction. Truth be told, sometimes she simply didn’t want to know, as if not knowing meant nothing could or would change, the world couldn’t collapse at her feet. As far as she knew, the question of what to do about the Resonants in their midst still hadn’t been resolved. And the wary waiting, the nervous suppositions drove Canderis to look over its collective shoulder as if in mounting fear of the thumps and bumps and bogeymen who haunted the night.

  Swan rubbed parched lips. “Well, one faction is proposing amnesty. A reasonably nice thought, but what are Resonants guilty of that they require amnesty, I might ask? Their only fault is their ability to read minds, something they’re born with. Do you grant them amnesty and insist they cease doing it?” Doyce couldn’t help smiling at the absurdity.

  “Of course, a small but vociferous faction demands they be hunted down, rounded up, and deported to the Sunderlies. How they expect to capture them without a struggle, I don’t know. Volunteers aplenty until it’s time to form a posse comitatus, I suspect.”

  Doyce shifted, uncomfortable at Swan’s phlegmatic ability to tick off options. It wasn’t an abstraction, a textbook case. Any of these solutions would affect Jenret, little Davvy, very probably the child she carried, others as well, and when abstractions gained distinct, individual faces, it became all too complex and too intensely personal. Just like the faces blooming like fireworks in her mind after she’d conquered her stepson Vesey, with his twisted Resonant skills, and nearly forfeited her own sanity. But so few were like Vesey, or Marchmont’s Prince Maurice and Jules Jampolis, warping minds to gain a throne they didn’t deserve.

  Swan’s voice overrode the chilling memories. “A third group, supported by some High Conciliators, thinks Resonants should be allowed to remain in Canderis and take part in daily life, but they should be tattooed—some nice, clear marking on their foreheads—so no one can ever mistake them for nice, normal people. Nothing as mundane as a badge that might be removed. And if permanently marking them doesn’t make them second-class citizens, I don’t know what does. Any of these ideas appeal to you so far, Doyce?” A low, breathless wheezing told Doyce that she’d let Swan talk too much, had best shift some of the conversational burden.

  “And what we don’t know, we fear. We don’t even have an accurate assessment of their numbers, but I suspect we’re closing that gap. Some have voluntarily revealed themselves. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but I suspect every Seeker pair on circuit is alert for possible Resonants.” She paused, a sense of betrayal overwhelming her, shaming her. “And forcing the ghatti to do a general mindsweep in each village, reading human minds without permission to discover if anyone is a Resonant. Breaking our oaths.” A bitter thought, made more bitter by Khar’s defensive stiffening.

  “Are the other options more palatable?” Koom broke in wearily. “And there may be even worse alternatives.” He now straddled the Seeker General’s thin legs as if to protect her from Doyce’s outrage. Yet his yellow eyes radiated nothing but compassion toward her, as if she were too naive, too innocent, that issues of such magnitude could only be objectively contemplated by those already at the brink of the abyss. Well, she’d stood there as well—more than once.

  “And we simply can’t coexist?” Yes, she was naive. “If there were no reason for them to hide their talents, we’d know who was a Resonant and who wasn’t. It’s worked in Marchmont for more than two hundred years, why shouldn’t it work here? So they’re different, so what?” Almost sputtering now, angry at everything and everyone, even herself, for so often fearing, doubting. “We don’t discriminate against someone who’s left-handed, or who has one brown eye and one blue eye!”

  “And perhaps if the general populace discovers something good, something necessary about Resonants, they’ll be accepted. But it’s almost as if they must give the performance of their lives to prove it,” Swan interjected.

  “Performance of their lives, how apt!”

  The door opened and Davvy eased inside, cha tray balanced, face screwed with concentration as Doyce hurriedly cleared the small bedside table. Miracle of miracles, the tray wasn’t awash in cha. She did notice, though, that one of the buns on the plate boasted a crescent bite, the childish act of greed a relief after their discussion.

  Davvy fussed, handing things around, spooning honey into Swan’s cup. “Not so fast,” he admonished as the Seeker General tilted the cup to her lips. “It’s still too hot. Hurried fast as I could.” Satisfied that Swan obeyed, he turned to Doyce, fists clenched at his sides. “I’ll help, help any way I can! Show them that we’re normal, nice as anyone else.”

  “Eavesdropping again, Davvy?” Swan rubbed his back. Perching on the edge of the bed as if to separate Swan from Doyce, he shook his head. “Is it worse to eavesdrop or to listen with your mind? But I don’t have much choice, do I?” His mouth twisted in a silent cry. “I have to know what’s going on! I have to! It’s my life at stake! All I want is to be like everyone else! I can’t help the way I am, I can’t change it!”

  Swan wrapped her arm around his midriff, hugging him close against her wasted frame. “No, you can’t, Davvy. But we’re going to do everything in our power to make things right. And you can help too.”

  But how Davv
y could help, Doyce had no idea. And a part of her wished the boy back in the circumscribed safety of the Research Hospice in the north. Literally and figuratively out of sight, out of mind. The baby within her kicked once in emphatic agreement.

  Cha cups rattled against each other as Davvy piled the tray and he grabbed desperately, only to make them clink worse. “Oh, smerdle!” he hissed under his breath, sure that he’d awoken Swan. His brown-eyed gaze danced in her direction, skittered by to pretend he simply searched for other clutter to straighten, but it was all right, she’d fallen fast asleep after Doyce had left. Too much excitement, too much worry. The conversation had upset him as well, no two ways about it. Fish out of water here, the only Resonant in a building full of Seekers. No one to talk with in his mind, except when Jenret Wycherley came by, or Faertom or Darl Allgood, though he’d been specifically forbidden to contact Darl, told to pretend on pain of a paddling—or worse—that Darl was a Normal, not a Resonant. And he’d been warned to steer clear of any other random mindcalls he might hear in the city, to evoke the protective coloration of a normal boy, give no one reason to doubt him. At first it had been fun to pretend, but now it wasn’t. He was lonely—and scared. The unknown woman’s mindshriek of death a few octs past had chilled him to the marrow.

  “Smerdle.” He tried the word again, whispering it. Swan was dead-set against swearing, but had no objection to fashioning a personal vocabulary to fulfill the purpose. He began to grin, giggled, and pressed his arm over his mouth at the memory of the day Swan had reared back in bed and told the Monitor, “Kyril, you can go farfel in your queep if you think that plan will work!” Swan had told him later it meant absolutely nothing except what the listener brought to it, and from the look on the Monitor’s face the connotation had been less than pleasant. “Smerdle” was Davvy’s own first step toward creating words with hidden meanings to express his own frustrations. He tried it again, decided it served his purpose. Of course, a great deal depended on the emphasis, he decided and rolled the word over in his mouth.