It was just as well the door closed quickly—it would not have been the best of manners to laugh in its hearing.
Still chuckling, I threw a cushion at Morgan with a delightful mix of impatience and expectation. “When do we leave, oh mighty jungle guide?” How good it felt to be on the move again, to be shaking off the dust of this shabby city. I should have made this decision weeks ago. I’ll have to thank Barac, I thought to Morgan.
One blue eye opened. “We can go whenever you’re ready, chit. And our guest.”
Chit? If he meant to evoke memories of that simpler time, when I was Hindmost crew on the Silver Fox and technically deserved the nickname used for the youngest and least, it didn’t fool me for an instant. I grew still, alert to a return of that edge to his voice, to the feel of his mind, despite his casual tone. “You want Barac to come with us?” It was impossible to keep disappointment from my voice.
Morgan opened his other eye and raised his head onto his arms, the better to look at me. “I don’t like leaving him un-watched behind us.”
I walked over to a raised planter, staring down at the clustered flowers without seeing them. “What is it you sense that I do not?” I paused, feeling Morgan stand and come to my side. We looked out over the rooftops together for a moment; the distant mountain ranges were hidden in cloud. We’d had our share of rain, I thought, digging my fingers into the damp soil. It was loose and freshly turned. So Morgan had found time for his garden; the plants had that indefinable air of being loved again.
“I’m not sure what I sense,” he confessed quietly. “It would be easier if I were. But I’ve learned to trust my instincts—my Talent at tasting trouble,” he corrected. Morgan’s precognition had saved his life many times before I’d arrived to give him a name and source for it. It was a Talent I lacked.
I dusted my hands and looked up at him with a frown. “There is one way to test Barac,” I heard myself say, as if the calm voice came from someone else. “I could scan him.” The part of me that remembered when I was pure Clan cringed at the thought of breaking the law; the newer, less familiar part of me was distressed at the thought of my cousin’s probable reaction. I shoved both responses from my consciousness.
There was a grim set to Morgan’s mouth and a troubled look in his eyes as they studied me. “We already know the most likely reason he’s come. And you know my feelings about it.”
“To find the one responsible for Kurr’s murder,” I said in a low voice. Yes, I knew Morgan’s opinion. I caught at his hand, clenching it in my own. “Jason, swear to me. You won’t tell Barac. He can’t go against Jarad di Sarc.”
“He can’t go forever without knowing.” Morgan’s hand turned, his fingers lacing between mine. “When were you planning to tell him it was your father behind it all? Your father who arranged for Yihtor’s kingdom on Acranam. Your father, Sira, who sent both you and Kurr into Yihtor’s reach. Barac deserves the truth.”
“A dangerous truth.” I shook my head, feeling my hair rising in agitation. “If Barac is to live, he mustn’t know any of this. Jarad—his allies on the Council—they’d destroy him in an instant. Your knowledge is more than enough for me to worry about. Promise me, Jason.”
Morgan had a way of smiling strangely at times, a smile I couldn’t interpret despite my experience with his expressions. He did it now, the slightest upturn of his mouth coupled with a darkening of his blue eyes until I could have drowned in their depths. “My lady witch,” he said ever so softly. “You have my promise. Always.” His hand stole mine and brought it up to his lips.
A second hazardous moment in only one day, but at least this time I had full control of my emotions. I took back my hand, stepping away slowly, deliberately. “Barac’s search for his brother’s killer is not why you suddenly distrust his presence,” I said more breathlessly than I’d planned.
Morgan wisely allowed the change in subject, shrugging as he came back to his seat. “How can we be sure this visit is Barac’s own idea?”
“A scan would tell me.”
He looked uneasy. “If Barac has been somehow controlled by the Council, sent here to do some mischief, I imagine that control will be too subtle to be easily found. That subtlety might even be part of the trap, to draw you beyond the safety of your own defenses, to expose you to their attack or control.” And under the words, I felt Morgan’s determination to perform the task himself, if need be.
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 put 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.