The Quantum Rose

IV. Stained Glass Moons. Eigenstate Interactions

A crash woke Kamoj. She sat bolt upright, trying to fathom her surroundings. As she came more fully awake, she remembered. She was at the Quartz Palace.

Groggy from sleep, she got up, went to the window, and pushed open the stained glass panes, hoping the night air would clear her head. Outside, the East Sky Mountains slumbered under their carpet of trees.

Three of Balumil’s six moons were visible. The Elder Brother shone high in the sky, almost full, casting blue light over the world. The Wild Stag made a ragged green shape just above the trees, lagging behind his brother. For every four times the Elder Brother crossed the heavens, the Wild Stag only managed three. The Brother always presented a serene face to Balumil, passing with regular precision through his phases. The Wild Stag knew no such civilized behavior. Chaotic and unpredictable, he changed both shape and size as he tumbled through the heavens, varying from an uneven disk to a squashed sausage.

The auroras were quiescent, making it one of the rare times Balumil’s faint ring showed in the sky. Kamoj could just make out the gold thread curving up from the horizon in the southeast and back down in the southwest. The gibbous disk of the Shepherd Moon glistened pink above the ring. From the positions of the moons, she guessed she had slept seven hours. Dawn was still a long time away: in mid-autumn the days split evenly, thirty hours of darkness and thirty of light. During this season, she usually slept twice at night, once during the hours after sunset and then again in the hours before dawn.

A puffbug flew against the shimmer curtain in the window and stuck. With a frenzied beating of its scaled wings, it freed itself and trilled off into the night, its golden puff vibrating as it sang. Curious, Kamoj pushed her hand through the shimmer. The curtain stretched along her arm like a film. When she pulled her arm back inside, the shimmer clung to her skin, returning to its original shape.

Kamoj closed the window. So odd. For all the beauty Vyrl had restored to her ancestral home, he also brought these strange changes.

Where was Vyrl? The fountain still gurgled in the bathroom. What if he had passed out and fallen in the water? Azander already suspected her of foul play against her husband, and many people knew she had dreaded this merger. If something happened to Vyrl, she was the obvious suspect.

Kamoj limped into the main bedroom and went to the bathing room. The door stood ajar, but no one answered her knock. She nudged it all the way open, revealing a chamber larger than hers, though still smaller than the main bedroom. A pool filled most of it, tiled in pale blue squares enameled with roses. In its center, the sculpture of a rose opened to the ceiling. She remembered crawling into that bowl as a child and playing with dried leaf-scales that had drifted into it. Now water surged out of the fountain and cascaded down its sides.

A larger-than-human statue stood at the corner of the pool, the figure of a quetzal, that bird named for a mythical creature on a mythical world no one had ever seen. This statue was actually a great stone chair, its scaled head raised high, its back designed from its feathered wings, its upper legs as armrests, its middle legs encircling the seat, and its lower legs as the base of the statue, along with its glorious feathered tail.

Sprawled in the chair, a naked Vyrl was sound asleep.

Kamoj blushed. She didn’t know whether to stay or leave. She saw what had caused the crash that woke her. Blueglass shards from a shattered bottle lay scattered around the base of the quetzal. The bottle must have slid out of Vyrl’s hand, probably resting on an edge of the statue, gradually slipping, until it fell. His legs were braced against a ridge in its base, his muscles tense even in sleep. It was apparently all that kept him from sliding into the pool.

Picking her way through the glass, Kamoj went to Vyrl. She couldn’t stop staring at him, at his broad shoulders and chest, his narrow hips, his long legs, all well-muscled, his skin flushed with health, his magnificent hair tousled around his handsome face. The lamp light made his metal lashes glitter. For all her attempts to imagine his appearance, it had never occurred to her that he might be beautiful.

But did he always drink this way? She thought of Korl Plowsbane in the village, old before his time, wandering with his bottle. Kamoj balked at believing the same of Vyrl. Even if he was like Korl, he couldn’t have been drinking that heavily for long. He seemed too healthy. Perhaps he had simply been edgy today over the impending merger.

Still, what she had so far seen didn’t look auspicious. She inhaled, letting her nostrils widen so their membranes captured every stray scent under the odor of rum. She caught traces of trees and ferns, a hint of sun on scale-leather, even a lingering trace of Vyrl’s disk mail. It all mixed with a strong soap smell and another scent harder to define, a masculine smell she liked. Drawn by Vyrl’s scent, she stopped closer and rubbed her fingers along the knuckles of his hand where it lay on his thigh.

“Higher,” he said drowsily.

Kamoj snatched back her hand. He was smiling at her, his eyes half open.

She flushed. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He sat up straighter, rubbing his eyes. “How long have I been in here?”

“A few hours.”

“Ah.” His gaze wandered over her body. Mortified, Kamoj realized she was wearing nothing but stockings and a translucent underdress. Then again, given his “clothes,” she was overdressed.

Vyrl grinned. “You look beautiful.” He slid out of his chair, and she jumped back, losing her balance as she put her weight on her injured foot. Teetering on the edge of the pool, she flailed her arms.

With unexpected grace, Vyrl slid out of the chair and caught her around the waist. Holding her bent over his arm, he leaned down to kiss her. Startled, Kamoj just stared up at him.

He stopped, then straightened up, bringing her with him. “Don’t you ever smile?”

“Well—yes. Of course.”

Vyrl stepped away from the pool. “Maybe we should—ah!” He lifted his foot and pulled a shard of glass out of his heel. Blood welled up from the cut. With a grimace, he stuck his foot in the water and swirled it around until the blood washed away. His graceful way of moving made her think of a greenglass stag.

He smiled. “Either that’s a compliment to me or an insult to the greenglass, I’m not sure which.”

“How do you do that?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Know my thoughts.”

“I don’t.” He took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere with less glass.”

They picked their way through the shards and went into the main bedroom. Although he walked reasonably well, several times he put one foot down on the other and stumbled. When they reached the dais with his bed, he stopped, said, “We should do this right,” and hefted her up into his arms.

Hai! The last thing Kamoj wanted was a half-drunk man carrying her up stairs. “It’s all right,” she said. “I can walk.”

He started up the dais. “You hardly weigh anything.”

They made it to the top with no mishaps, but then he tripped. He took a huge step forward, lunging for the bed, and tossed her across it as he lost his balance. She hit the mattress with a thud, pillows tumbling around her head, and Vyrl landed on top her. Her breath wumped out with a muffled “oomph.”

“Ai,” Vyrl muttered, rolling off her. “My sorry, Chamois.”

This time she was too flustered even to think of correcting the name. When he pulled her into his arms, she stuttered, “Maybe you should, uh, call a healer.” She knew she was talking too fast, but she couldn’t stop. “For your—for your, you know. Your foot.”

“My foot?” He smiled at her. “Why?”

“It’s just, mine swelled—Vyrl! What are you doing?”

“Looking at my beautiful wife.” As his hands moved, he slid lower along her body. Then he closed his mouth around her breast and suckled her through the glimsilk of her underdress.

Kamoj flushed, blinked, said, “Oh, my,” cleared her throat, and coughed. Then she sighed and put her hands in his hair, tangling her fingers in his curls.

Some time later she murmured, “You’re different than I expected.”

He came back up, cradling her in his arms. “How is that?”

Too late, she realized how her answer would sound: I thought you would be cruel. She tried to hide the thought, imagining a blanket to cover it. “You’re younger.”

Vyrl grinned. “Such sweet words.” He fingered the garter that held up her stocking. Then he sat up and tugged the lacy ring off her leg. Setting it on his palm, he squinted at it as if it were another life form. “It’s pretty,” he said. “But who’d ever think to make such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Kamoj admitted. Lyode had given it to her.

Vyrl set the garter on the bed. Then he touched her thigh where the garter had held up her stocking. “So soft…” Taking her stocking by the toe, he pulled it off through the gold circlet around her ankle. “And soft here—saints almighty, what is that?”

She wished he would go back to showing her what was soft. “What?”

Vyrl peered at the sole of her foot. “This is serious.” He lay on his back and stretched out next to her, reaching his arm out to a tanglebirch stand by the bed. He so distracted Kamoj, she barely noticed him press a panel on the nightstand.

A drowsy voice came out of the air. “Colonel Pacal here.”

“Hai!” Kamoj sat bolt upright and clamped her arms over her breasts, looking around for the owner of the voice.

“I need you up here,” Vyrl said to the air.

The woman suddenly sounded awake. “On my way.”

“For flaming sakes,” Vyrl said. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?” the woman asked.

“Like ‘What has he done to that poor girl?’”

“Is she all right?”

“Her foot is hurt.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“All right. Out.” Vyrl pushed the panel again.

After the room remained silent for several moments, Kamoj’s pulse calmed. “Who was that?” she asked.

“Dazza.” Vyrl drew her back down next to him. “My doctor.”

“What is a doctor?”

He tugged apart her arms and pulled them around his waist so she was hugging him. “Healer.”

“But where is she? We’re the only ones here.”

Kissing her, he murmured, “She’s coming.”

After several moments of discovering that she liked kissing Vyrl far more than she had ever liked kissing Jax, Kamoj moved her lips to his ear and spoke shyly. “If someone is coming up here, shouldn’t we get dressed?”

“Ai…” He sighed. “I guess so.”

While Kamoj sat up, pulling her dress into place, Vyrl went to the wardrobe across the room and took out a blue glimsilk robe with iridescent green and gold highlights. As he was putting it on, a knock came from the entrance foyer. Tying his sash, he crossed the room and opened the door.

Dazza stood outside in rumpled trousers and a shirt, her hair tousled as if she had just pulled herself out of bed. She had something in her hand, Kamoj wasn’t sure what. A large black book? As the doctor entered the suite, she glanced at Kamoj, at the stocking on the bed, and at Vyrl. Then she reddened. It didn’t surprise Kamoj that the colonel looked like she wished she were someplace else.

“It’s her left foot,” Vyrl said.

While Vyrl leaned against the bedpost with his arms crossed, Dazza sat on the bed and lifted Kamoj’s foot. Her awkwardness vanished as she focused on the problem. “Did you treat this cut?” she asked Kamoj.

“I soaked it in water,” Kamoj said.

Dazza looked up at her. “Right away?” When Kamoj shook her head, the doctor said, “If you ever get a cut like this again, clean it as soon as you can.” She set down Kamoj’s foot and opened her “book.” Its top lifted like a box, revealing tubes and squares. When Dazza touched a small square, ghost pictures appeared above the box, rotating in the air, each with a different view of a woman’s body. Red and blue lines veined one, another showed a skeleton, and a third internal organs. Kamoj had heard tales of how the ancients made ghosts dance this way, but until now she had never believed them.

Dazza studied symbols flickering on the rectangles on her box. “You’re a healthy young woman.” She snapped a featherless black quill off her book and bent over Kamoj’s heel as if she were going to write on it.

Kamoj jerked away her foot. “What are you doing?”

“Numbing the area.” With a gentle touch, Dazza tugged back her foot. “So it won’t hurt when I drain the wound.”

Although Kamoj found that hard to believe, the pain did indeed recede after Dazza wrote on her heel with her quill. The doctor kept working, though Kamoj couldn’t see what she was doing.

“Gods,” Vyrl said. “That’s a bad one.”

Intent on her work, Dazza said, “If we hadn’t caught it in time, she could have lost the foot.”

Kamoj blanched. No wonder it had hurt so much when Jax jabbed it.

“Kimono?” Vyrl said. “Are you all right?”

Dazza made an exasperated noise. “Saints above, Vyrl. Her name is Kamoj.”

He reddened. “My sorry, Kamoj.”

Smiling, she said, “It’s all right.”

Dazza withdrew her quill, catching drops of blood from its tip with her finger. She cleaned Kamoj’s heel with a white mesh and then removed a new quill from the box. When she pressed a knob on it, a spray came out of its tip and coated Kamoj’s sole.

“The nanomeds will aid the healing,” Dazza said. “Then they’ll dissolve in your bloodstream.”

“Non-muds?” Kamoj asked. That made no sense.

“Nanomeds,” Dazza said. “Each has an active moiety linked to a picochip—” She stopped, watching Kamoj’s face. Then she said, “They’re like machines, but so small you can’t see them.”

“Nanobots?” Kamoj asked.

“Say again?” Dazza asked. “I have trouble with your accent.”

“She said nanobots,” Vyrl said. “She’s speaking Iotic.”

Kamoj stared at him. He understood Iotaca? Then again, he had read the contract scroll at their wedding, which was written in pure Iotaca. Maybe he could clear up the mystery of what the blasted thing said.

Dazza, however, also looked puzzled. “Why do you say it that way, as if she used a different language for ‘nanobot’? Everything we’ve said is in Iotic.”

Vyrl shook his head. “You and I may be speaking Iotic, but the people here don’t. Or not pure Iotic. Their ‘Bridge’ language is a dialect.”

It would never have occurred to Kamoj to describe Bridge as a dialect of Iotaca. The differences seemed too extreme to call them two forms of the same language. But then, to the people of the Northern Lands any change was extreme.

“Nanobot is a word from the temple language,” Kamoj said.

“I haven’t heard enough of your temple language to be sure,” Vyrl said, “but I think it’s what we call classical Iotic. That contract I read at the ceremony was written in it. What Dazza and I are speaking now is modern Iotic.”

Dazza regarded him with curiosity. “You speak the classics?”

“I learned them when I was a boy,” he said.

The doctor looked impressed. “You must have had a good education.”

He shrugged. “There were no schools where we lived, so my parents brought in tutors from offworld.”

Kamoj wondered what he meant by offworld. Whatever it was, she too found the result impressive. “I can pronounce words and phrases in Iotaca,” she said, “but I don’t understand it all. Like nanobot. I know the word but not the meaning.”

“Do you know what ‘molecule’ means?” Dazza asked. When Kamoj shook her head, Dazza said, “It’s like a tiny machine. A nanobot is designed for a specific duty. Different types have different duties. The ones we carry in our bodies, that help make us healthy, we call nanomeds. Each one has a picochip attached to it, a quantum computer.” She paused. “Think of it as a brain. The picochip tells the nanobot what to do and how to make more of itself. If you put a lot of them together, their chips combine into a what we call a picoweb. A bigger brain.”

Kamoj blinked. “You put all that in my foot?”

A smile gentled Dazza’s face. “I did indeed. Three types of nanomed, in fact. Two help ferry nutrients and structural materials to the wound and maintain your physiological balance while you heal. The third catalyzes molecular repair processes.”

“Catalyze?” Kamoj asked.

“Helps them go faster.”

“Is she going to be all right?” Vyrl asked.

“She’ll be fine by tomorrow.” Dazza snapped her quill into her box. Concentrating on her displays, the doctor said, “She should stay off that foot for the rest of the night, however.”

Vyrl started to speak, then just smiled. Kamoj flushed. Walking clearly wasn’t what he had in mind for the rest of the night.

Dazza closed the lid of her book-box and looked up at Vyrl. “Did you talk to Azander after you arrived?”

“Not really,” Vyrl answered. “Why?”

“He said you were followed by Ironbridge stagmen.”

“Ironbridge? Why?”

“Azander seemed to think you would know.”

“I’ve no idea,” Vyrl said.

His response disquieted Kamoj. Ironbridge was nothing to ignore. What was Jax up to?

Watching her, Vyrl sat on the bed. “What is it, water sprite? What troubles you about Ironbridge?”

Dazza drew in a sharp breath. Startled, Kamoj glanced at her. The colonel had the look of a healer whose patient had just showed signs of a recovery the healer had feared would never happen. It made no sense to Kamoj. Vyrl wasn’t sick, at least that she could see. Except for the rum. But he wasn’t drunk now, and all he had done was ask her about Ironbridge.

He hadn’t noticed Dazza’s reaction. Intent on Kamoj, he said, “Talk to me.”

“It is forbidden,” Kamoj answered.

“To talk to me?”

“For me to talk of Ironbridge.”

“Why?”

“Because you and I have a dowered merger.”

“Why does that make a difference?”

She wasn’t actually sure why tradition forbade discussing other bid candidates with the winner of a hostile merger. Rules changed in situations like this, when the balance of power tipped so far in favor of one party. “Hostile” was probably the operative word; if she spoke about Ironbridge she could aggravate Vyrl and so bring harm to herself, Argali, and Ironbridge.

“It is forbidden,” she repeated.

Vyrl glanced at Dazza with an expression that clearly said: Can you do something with this?

Dazza considered her. “If Prince Havyrl gives you permission to speak about Ironbridge, can you do it?”

Vyrl made an exasperated noise. “She doesn’t need my permission to talk.”

Kamoj looked from Vyrl to Dazza, at a loss to understand the strange hierarchy of authority here.

Dazza tried again. “Can you talk to me about it?”

“No,” Kamoj said.

“Who can we ask?”

Who indeed? Maxard, perhaps. He hadn’t married Vyrl. He was less likely to incur Lionstar wrath by talking about Kamoj’s relationship with another man.

“My uncle,” Kamoj said.

“We can send someone to Argali tomorrow.” Vyrl grimaced. “Which’ll be forever with how long the nights here last.”

Kamoj wondered what he meant. Nights weren’t long in autumn, not compared to winter, when snow covered the world and blizzards roared down from the North Sky Islands.

Dazza was watching her. “This is about your customs, isn’t it? All of you here, you’re afraid of showing disrespect. That’s important. Respect. To custom, to authority, and to the land.”

Relief settled over Kamoj. Dazza understood. “Yes.”

Vyrl blinked at the doctor. “Where did you get all that?”

With a scowl, Dazza said, “From talking to your ever-so-patient butler the last time you went riding during one of your binges. I wanted to know why no one stopped you.”

“Don’t start with me, Dazza.”

“Why? Because you happen to be more sober now than you’ve been in weeks? You’re going to kill yourself.”

Vyrl ignored the comment. “What did my butler tell you?”

Dazza tilted her head at Kamoj. “They all feel that way. I think they’re genetically engineered to obey authority. I’ve never known such a docile, cooperative people.”

“They have armies.” Vyrl paused. “If you can call thirty farmers who practice ritualized swordplay every now and then an army.”

Kamoj wondered why he found that strange. An incorporated man’s stagmen rode in his honor guard when needed and otherwise worked to support their families. Ironbridge had the only army that trained all year round. Only Jax could afford to pay a good wage in every season.

Given what she had seen in the past two days, though, it wouldn’t surprise her if Vyrl had his men training all year too, while he supported them at a rate ten times greater than anyone else without even realizing it. Most of his staff and stagmen obviously came from Argali. She and Maxard employed the best in the village, so Vyrl must be drawing from the outlying hamlets, which were even more impoverished. By hiring locals instead of his own people, he had been supporting her province even prior to their merger.

“Their ‘wars’ are more like arguments,” Dazza was saying. “In the rare instances when they do fight, it’s a ritualistic ceremony. Ironbridge is the only province with real calvary or troops, and they’re more of a police force. I doubt you could convince these people to defy authority even if you paid them to do it.”

Kamoj blinked. What an odd notion. Why would anyone pay them to be defiant?

Vyrl smiled at her. “They wouldn’t. It was just a manner of speech.” He didn’t see Dazza’s startled look; by the time he turned back to the colonel, her face had resumed its normal mien.

“I’ll send someone down tomorrow morning to talk to Maxard Argali,” he told her. “See if we can untangle all this.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Dazza packed up her book. She smiled at Kamoj, gratitude on her face. Why? Kamoj saw nothing she had done to make the doctor grateful.

After Dazza left, Vyrl lay back down on the bed. The bags under his eyes had darkened again.

“You look tired,” Kamoj said.

“Just a headache. I should have asked Dazza for something.” His scowl came back. “But then I would have to listen to her harp on ‘my drinking.’ Tell me she can ‘treat’ that too. As if I have a problem. It’s ridiculous. I have a few drinks, I go to sleep, I’m fine.”

Kamoj knew he wasn’t fine. But she had no idea what to say. All she could think of was, “I can rub your head.”

“That would be nice, Kamoj.” He paused. “Is that right? Kamoj?”

“Yes.” She drew his head into her lap. As she massaged him, he sighed and closed his eyes.

After a while he said, “What you said before, about us having a ‘dowered merger’—what does that mean exactly?”

“Merger is perhaps not the best word.” It implied a more balanced partnership. “Your corporation absorbed Argali.”

He opened his eyes. “My what?”

“Your corporation. It was far too big for us to best.”

He sat up, facing her. “I don’t understand. It was a dowry. I know that’s the word. Our anthropologists double-checked. The dowry is the property a man brings to his wife at marriage, right? Drake told me that in your culture, inheritance goes through the female line, and that the women court the men. To get a highborn wife, you need a good dowry. So I, uh, got one.”

Dryly she said, “The man is usually more subtle in making his interest known.”

He squinted at her. “I don’t actually remember what I did. I think I told my stagmen to clear out a storeroom and send the contents to Argali House. I almost fell over when they said you had accepted it.”

She stared at him, unsure which stunned her more, his manner of instigating the take-over, or the extent of his corporation. “That was only one stockroom’s worth of your dowry?”

“Well, yes, I guess you could put it that way.” He studied her face. “I don’t understand how the idea of a corporation got mixed up here with a dowry. You make it sound like I bought you.”

That was, in fact, how it felt. Kamoj doubted he would appreciate her saying it, though, so she hid the thought by imagining a blanket over it. “It seems normal to me.” She tugged on his arm. “Come lie down again.”

His face gentled. “I won’t argue with that.” He lay down, putting his head in her lap, and closed his eyes. As she rubbed his head, she thought what an irony it was that a merger certain to become a legend may have been a whim born of a drinking binge. Would he regret it tomorrow? What if he changed his mind? She had no wish to return to Jax. He might not want her anymore. If Ironbridge spurned her, Argali would starve, and even if Jax wanted her back she would still be humiliated by the Lionstar rejection.

Vyrl spoke quietly. “My father told me something when I was young: If you plant in the wrong place, you still have to tend the crops.”

“Was he a farmer?”

“Yes.”

“Am I the wrong place?”

“Gods, no.” He opened his eyes. “You’re like sunlight. I was lucky. What if the beautiful nymph I saw rising out of the river turned out to have a personality like shattered glass? But regardless, it’s my responsibility to see this through now. I would never humiliate you.”

Relief trickled over her. She also rather liked being compared to sunlight.

His grin flashed. “I’m glad you like it.”

Blushing, she said, “How do you know everything in my mind?”

“I don’t.” When she raised her eyebrows, he added, “Usually I just pick up emotions. My ability to do even that falls off with distance, roughly as the Coulomb force.”

Coulomb force? “I don’t understand.”

“It’s complicated.”

Her voice cooled. “And I am too slow to understand?”

“Kamoj, no. I didn’t mean that. I just don’t know how to explain it, except as I learned it.”

“Then explain it that way.”

He hesitated, as if unsure how to proceed. “I’ve an organ in my brain called the Kyle Afferent Body. The KAB. It’s too small to see without magnification. Certain molecules in it, that is, certain bits of my KAB, undergo quantum transitions according to how they interact with the fields produced by the brains of other people. That means—well, I guess you could say my KAB varies its behavior according to what it detects. Those variations determine what neural pulses it transmits to certain neural structures in my cerebrum, which interpret the pulses as thought.” He stopped, watching her face. “I’m not doing this very well, am I?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t understand some of your words.”

He tried again. “My brain can pick up signals from yours and interpret them. The process isn’t all that accurate, so it’s easier to get emotions than thoughts. It only works close up because the signals aren’t that strong.”

Although the words made more sense this time, it sounded as strange as before. “You do that with me?”

His voice gentled. “For some reason you’re more open to me than most people. I felt it that first time I saw you, when you were swimming. You were so beautiful. So alive. So happy.”

She smiled. “So naked.”

Vyrl laughed. “That too.”

She went back to massaging his head. After a while his lashes drooped and his breathing deepened. Then he jerked, and opened his eyes. When they closed again, he forced them open. Watching him struggle, Kamoj wondered why it was so important to stay awake.

The third time he started to fall asleep, he rolled on his side and pressed his lips against her leg. Distracted, she stopped rubbing his head. He was peeling off her other stocking, kissing her thigh as the silk slid away. After he had pulled it all the way off, he slid his hand back up her leg. “Your skin is even softer than glimsilk.”

Kamoj reddened, flustered again. “Ah. Uh. Oh.”

For some reason her idiotic response made the corners of his mouth quirk up. He sat up and pulled her into his lap. “I always thought I liked this room austere. I never realized before how cold it is.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “It would look softer in moonlight.”

“Morlin,” he said, “turn off the lights.”

“Their web contacts aren’t complete,” a man said.

“Hai!” Kamoj sat up with a jerk and yanked her dress down over her thighs.

Vyrl stroked his hand down her back. “It’s all right. He won’t bother us.”

“He is here? Watching?”

“‘He’ is just a computer web. I call him Morlin.” Vyrl hesitated. “The name was supposed to be after an ancient Earth wizard, but I think I got it wrong.”

“I’m having trouble completing the contacts,” Morlin said. “The molecular engines that repair the fiberoptic cables in this wing stopped replicating centuries ago.”

Kamoj pressed her fist against her mouth. Morlin didn’t exist, yet he was here.

“I suggest you reconsider trying to use the original web in the palace,” the voice continued. “These problems continue to—”

“Morlin,” Vyrl said. Watching Kamoj, he added, “We’ll deal with it later.”

It was quiet after that. Whatever Morlin was, apparently he answered to Vyrl. Gradually, as Vyrl explored her body, Kamoj relaxed against him. She breathed in his scent, spice-soap mixed with his own natural smell.

“Connection established,” Morlin suddenly said. The lights went out.

“Hai!” In reflex, Kamoj jerked up her hands to ward off a blow.

“It’s nothing,” Vyrl murmured, stroking her hair. In a louder voice, he said, “Morlin, shut up.”

Kamoj made herself lower her hands. “Does he obey you?”

“Well, yes, you could say that.” Vyrl gave her a curious look. “It’s just your computer. We’re using the old web in this building. Parts of it, anyway. Some of the components are too decayed. Their repair bots failed a long time ago.”

Kamoj wasn’t sure what he meant, but she knew the palace had been in abominable shape when he rented it. That Vyrl repaired her ancestral home meant more than she knew how to say. She had always longed to do it, but she could hardly have used precious resources to fix a building when babies in Argali needed cereal.

“Look,” she said, gazing over his shoulder.

Vyrl turned to look. A ghostly image of the stained glass window in her chamber stretched across the floor out here in the main bedroom, laid there by moonlight slanting through her room. Sparkles glistened in the image, from where the light hit the bead curtain.

“It’s beautiful,” he said.

She slid off the bed and held out her hand to him. He took it, his face gentling. Together they crossed the room, their fingers intertwined. When they entered her chamber, strings of beads trailed along their arms. The window glowed with light from the Sister Moon.

As Vyrl laid her on her bed, moonlight cast shadows on his robe, making him look as if he were cut from onyx. His callouses felt nubbly on her skin when he peeled off her underdress. Then he paused, kneeling between her legs. Too self-conscious to meet his gaze, she sat up and took off his robe, shy and unsure, trying to act self-assured. She didn’t succeed, but he seemed to like how she touched him anyway. She couldn’t look at his face because—she wasn’t sure why. If she looked, he would somehow acknowledge her touch, making her too embarrassed to continue.

Kamoj tried to relax. Most women her age were already married, even mothers. Lying down, she reached her arms out to Vyrl. When he stretched out on top of her, he supported his weight on his hands so he didn’t crush her under his body.

He took their lovemaking slow and gentle, giving her as long as she needed to relax. Even so, when the time came, she tensed up. It was tearing—she wanted him to stop—

He went still on top of her. “Kamoj—?”

Hai, she thought, mortified. If she kept this up she would still be a virgin after her wedding night. “It’s all right.”

Vyrl handled her even more gently after that. The moons shifted in the sky, their light casting a stained glass rose on the floor. He murmured against her ear, saying her name over and over, and right this time. His intensity increased, until finally he drew in a breath and blew it out, the stream of air wafting tendrils of her hair around her cheeks. Then he relaxed on top of her, still murmuring, his voice a soft current of sound against her ear.

After a while his murmurs trickled into silence and he lay still, one hand curled around her breast. He breathing deepened, until eventually it came with a faint snore at the end of each breath.

Kamoj blinked. Apparently they were done. Although the experience had been pleasant, after the initial pain, it seemed incomplete. Was this why Lyode extolled marriage? Certainly it was nice, but Kamoj didn’t see why it made her usually no-nonsense bodyguard smile like a besotted fruitwing. Kamoj wondered if in her shyness, she had somehow overlooked or missed the important part.

Vyrl felt heavier now that he wasn’t supporting his weight. She nudged him until he rolled off her and stretched out along her side. Then she turned onto her side, her body spooned into his, her back against his chest. He slid his arm around her waist without a break in the rumble of his sleep.

Kamoj drifted in a doze, like the fever-sleep of a delirium, her body so sensitized that she felt air currents whisper across it. She felt restless. Incomplete. Sometimes she awoke to find herself rubbing her own body.

When Vyrl’s arm shifted, at first she thought he was restive in his sleep. Then he slid his hand down over hers. As she moved against his hand, he kissed her neck, his teeth playing with her necklace. Whatever he was doing, he knew how to do it well. She felt as if she were trying to climb a peak she couldn’t reach. Then the release came, like a crest with many bumps. It spread to the rest of her body, until she lost control and cried out.

When she calmed, Vyrl murmured, “Sweet water sprite.”

Kamoj wanted to say soft words too, call her husband beloved and other endearments. Yet she didn’t feel she knew him well enough. So strange, to be so intimate, yet so unfamiliar at the same time.

Languor settled over her like a downy quilt…

Kamoj wasn’t sure what woke her. The moonlight had dimmed, both the Sister and the Far Moon having finished their voyages across the sky. The sense of drowsy satisfaction had also left the room.

She rolled over. Vyrl was lying on his back, staring at the canopy above them, a fixed stare that saw nothing. The tendons in his neck had pulled taut, and his jaw had clenched so hard the bones stood out against his skin.

“Vyrl?” She pushed up on her elbow. “What’s wrong?”

He jerked his head. Then he sat up, his face contorting.

And he screamed.

It shattered the silence. He sat with his fists clenched on his thighs, his face twisted until she hardly recognized him.

Boots pounded in the main bedroom. “Prince Havyrl!” a man called. The bead curtain rattled as Azander and the other bodyguard swept it aside and strode into the chamber. Scrambling to her knees, Kamoj yanked on Vyrl’s robe, covering herself.

Vyrl showed no hint he saw any of them. Staring straight ahead, he worked his mouth like a man in a nightmare trying, with horrific futility, to scream again.

Azander knelt by the bed and shook Vyrl’s shoulders. “Prince Havyrl, wake up! You’re all right. It only be the nightmares. Wake up!”

Vyrl swung his fist so fast, Azander had no time to duck. Vyrl hit him in the chin, and the bodyguard flew over backward, hitting the floor with a thud.

“Get out!” Vyrl said. “Now.”

Azander stared at him, holding his chin. Then he jumped to his feet and the two bodyguards left fast as they had come.

Kamoj slid back, away from Vyrl, until the wall stopped her retreat. Had she been mistaken about her new husband? But no. This was different from rage. Something was wrong, very wrong. He leaned forward, his arms wrapped around his stomach, as if he hurt somehow, not a physical hurt, but something else.

She didn’t know how long they sat that way. Finally she moved closer to him. Then she waited. When he neither objected nor showed anger, she came the rest of the way to his side. He turned to her, moisture gleaming under his eyes.

She touched his wet cheek. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He took a breath. “Go back to sleep.”

Nothing? He had just split open the night with his scream. She wanted to offer comfort, but she feared it would anger him instead, a risk she couldn’t take, not when the well-being of Argali depended on his good will. So she did as he asked, lying down with her eyes closed. She heard him put on his robe, then heard the bed creak and felt the mattress shift.

Kamoj opened her eyes. She was alone. She put on her underdress and got out of bed. Her footsteps made no sound as she crossed to the curtain and peered through the beaded strings into the main bedroom.

Vyrl had opened the window above his desk and was sitting in his chair, staring at the night, his body silhouetted against the sky. He raised a bottle to his lips, and the cloying smell of rum drifted in the air.

Watching him, Kamoj knew that whatever troubled Vyrl, it went far deeper than the rum could reach. What had happened to give a man of such power the terrors that haunted his dreams?