The Seekers of Fire (25 page)

Linden

Night 78 and Morning 79 of the Fourth Quarter, Year of the Master 705

Outside it was raining again, heavy drops of water drumming on the windows of Rianor's personal living room.

"You are fortunate to not need stitches," Nan muttered over Rianor's hand. "Dare I ask how you got this?
After
you arrived home?"

Linden watched him wince, as Nan dabbed his palm with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

"I cannot know what you dare or dare not do, Nan."

Nan used the index finger of her less busy hand to jab him in the chest.

"You don't be cheeky with me, my boy. If you think you're past the age for slapping, think again."

The look he cast his frowning old nurse was so incredulous that for a moment Linden forgot how she felt and let out a small laugh. Nan waved the gauze in her direction. It flapped.

"Think you are immune from my slaps, my lady?" Her fingers snapped the gauze with almost inhuman speed around Rianor's palm and wrist, tying a perfect knot. "Think you?" She massaged Rianor's elbow, still glaring at Linden. "Perhaps
you
will tell me what you two have been doing this time? You are a woman. You should have a bit more sense than our lord here ..." She raised Rianor's arm, her fingers working on his biceps and shoulder. "There, all patched up. Again—Girl, what on Mierenthia have you done to
your
hand?"

Linden was startled at that, both her hands twitching in her lap. Then, for the first time since she had tried to bandage Rianor herself, she consciously looked at them. Her left wrist wore a wristwatch—three delicate, interweaved hoops of white metal, exquisitely joined together by a small dial on one side. It would have looked beautiful on her—were it not currently cutting into flesh that was red-blue and very, very swollen.

"I—" She closed her eyes, suddenly at a loss for words.

"She did nothing. I did it to her."

Rianor's voice came from a closer distance than it had a moment ago, and she opened her eyes to find the reclining chair where he had been sitting empty. He now stood beside the sofa where she herself was seated, his face even paler than before, his bandaged hand hanging awkwardly beside him. He was watching her.

"You were hiding this hand under the pillow, weren't you. While Nan was bandaging mine."

She met his eyes while Nan sat beside her and took her hand in hers, the wristwatch fading away before it could touch Nan's skin. Linden bit her lip so that she would not scream.

"What if I did? Nan was worried enough as it were."

Silently, jerkily, Nan washed Linden's wrist, then bandaged it with vinegar and something that smelled equally foul.

"So I was worried enough?" She had started massaging Linden's elbow as she had Rianor's before. "And you are qualified to make a healer's choices for her how?" The shoulder's massage somehow made the wrist pain lessen. "A healer with two wounded patients needs to see all damage and prioritize treatment based on that. What did you think, silly girl? That you were helping me? By not letting me decide who needed to be treated first, and thus graciously ensuring that I got a decent amount of sleepless nights and heartache when your hand finally festered and I had to cut it? ... Oh, don't cry darling, it is not truly that bad! What, in the name of the Master, am I saying? Come here now, don't cry ..."

"I am so sorry ..." Linden gratefully sank her face onto Nan's ample bosom, while the healer's plump arms encircled her shoulders. She was not really crying, was she?

"Rianor's cut was worse, darling, I would have treated him first, anyway. You'll both be fine, don't you worry." She stroked her hair. "You're such a sweet girl."

I am not. A part of me wanted to kill your boy tonight. I don't even know if I wanted you to help him first because I wanted to, or because I felt guilty. And it was a stupid thing to do. I would have given you sleepless nights if my wound were worse. I did not think. I did not think of you. I only thought of me.

Nan smelled of medicine and healer's alcohol right now. She smelled like Dad—and Linden had not thought of him either, for hours. Where were he and Mom? Were they still at home, or had they had to run? The Mentors had done nothing, Nan had said, but that did not mean that they would do nothing.

There would be a new Mentor, and the very first event he or she would preside upon would be the taking of old Maxim's body to the temple to be given to fire and Maxim's quintessence released to the Master and the Eternal Place. Everyone would attend. What if the new Mentor was the young Mentor from that night? What if he remembered Linden's face and saw how much Linden and Kelley looked alike?

Linden raised her head from Nan's embrace, her face tearless. Somehow the tangle of sadness, guilt, anger, confusion, emptiness, and shear exhaustion was not to be appeased by an old woman's caress, or by crying.

Rianor was still watching her; he seemed to read something on her face. He put his good hand on Nan's shoulder, gently.

"Nan, if you are done with Linde, I would like to talk to her alone." Nan hesitated, and he lowered his gaze to the ground. "Please?"

Nan shook her head. "Rianor, my boy, how could you do this to her? Why didn't you do it the way it should be done? You should have done it in front of everyone, so it could be properly sealed. You should have said the words. Did you say the words? No? I thought so."

"Nan. Words are not that important. We'll talk later, at Council. I am sorry for disturbing you twice tonight. Please, keep Blake with you, too." His tone was final, but Nan paid no heed.

"Are words not important? Silly boy, what is there to the world but words? "
High Lord,
" "
lady.
" These things are words, and they do matter. But what is done is done now." She slowly raised her body from the sofa, leaving a warm concave on the pillow beside Linden. Linden watched he pillow expand slowly, regaining its shape. Its colors were a soothing combination of black and green.

Only, she did not feel soothed.

"I'll come to see both your hands in the morning, after I have checked on Desmond. He's worse than you both because his wound was not clean. But he'll walk again." Nan squeezed Rianor's hand, then removed it from her shoulder and turned to Linden. "Smell or no smell, don't remove the vinegar, dear, don't sleep on your hand, and don't let him sleep on his."

Linden continued watching the pillow after the door closed behind Nan, and she started only a little when the lock clicked. The predominating color of the pillow was light green, interspersed with knitted black spirals, from which embroidered leaves of darker green grew. The leaves had silver edges. The light green fabric felt soft to her fingers; the black and the silver-edged dark green were more defined and rugged. Linden lifted the pillow and pressed it to her cheek. It smelled strange, like ... like a tree. And it felt like a forest, soft green in the background where faraway trees intermingled, with dark trunks and defined leaves for the trees that were close.

Linden had seen real forests. She had gotten very close to a forest, once. It was so long ago that Eileen had not even been born. She had climbed the Forbidden Hill by Kladenets Village in Balkaene Province with Grandmother Dragana. They had climbed so high that they had almost reached the Boundary before the first wild trees. Linden had reveled in the dark, forbidding, breathtaking beauty of large oaks that had been there for so long that even Grandmother did not remember the land without them.

However, Grandmother did not remember the land without the Boundary and the Ber Station on the top of the hill, either.

When they had gone back to Grandmother's cottage, Mom had yelled and cried and said that Grandmother might be a daft old hag who could go anywhere, to the Lost Ones if she wished, but she was never again to risk the life of her daughter. Grandmother said nothing, but when Mom yelled again, Grandmother said that only a stupid woman would imprison her own child, and slapped her, and Mom slapped her back. Then, for the first time ever, Linden heard Dad yell, then they went home to Mierber and never, ever saw Dragana or Kladenets Village again.

Linden pulled the pillow closer. It smelled of Dragana, that was how it smelled, of some herb, some furniture perfume, something ... Something so distinct that it had brought the memory of Dad's infamous mother now of all times.

Linden had missed her and cried for her. But never before Mom. She wanted to cry for her again, now. Did she even live, after so many years? She had a lady granddaughter now, would she be proud? A granddaughter who chased her own forbidden hills.

She almost jumped when she felt Rianor's fingers in her hair, the other pillows shifting beside her as he sat. His touch was so different from Nan's. Linden forced herself to tear her eyes from the pillow and look at his face.

"Linde, I apologize for what I did to you with the wristwatch. I did not think it would hurt, but that does not excuse my action."

She started crying, even though she had told herself she would not. "What exactly did you apologize for just now?"

He seemed taken aback. "What exactly are you asking? I apologized for causing you pain."

She avoided his eyes, looking at the pillow again. "You do not understand, do you?"

He tried to pull the pillow from her hands, making her look at him again. "Care to make me understand, my lady?"

She tried to blink the tears away. How could he not understand? "This wristwatch faded into my body," she said carefully, fighting a great desire to look away from his eyes. His face was so close to hers. "You put something into my body without asking. Without warning. You hurt me. You violated me. How is that different from a rape?"

"Oh, Linde." He removed his hand from her hair, and for the first time since she had known him, he seemed at a loss. "I would have never looked at it like this."

Well, now he would.

He closed his eyes and ran his good hand along his forehead. He looked so much more ... vulnerable without his steely gaze.

"I ... the idea to rape you did cross my mind at certain times tonight. But I would never do this to you."

She swallowed. "Have you ... have you done it to anyone else?"

"That clarifying question is proof that I have found an apprentice with a true Scientific mind." He gave her a small smile. "No. I have not. Don't worry."

She tried to smile back, but could not. "I wanted to do bad things to you, too. Even kill you."

"You did not do bad things to me. Or kill me."

"I am sorry about your hand. Nan said to not sleep on it." He looked at her again, and she suddenly felt reckless. "She seemed to think I would sleep with you."

"Is that so? What
you
seem to think interests me more."

He leaned towards her, both the lantern on the wall and the smaller candle by the table casting light and shadows on his face. The effect was that his features looked sharper. The clean-cut outline of his cheeks and jaw was sharper, and so were the thin line of a whip cut, the fine nose, and the narrowed eyes that momentarily reminded her of a predator's.

She shivered and saw that he noticed. Suddenly torn between running to him and running away, she extended her good hand and lightly caressed his shoulder. His muscles tensed.

"Linde." Very carefully, as if it cost him great effort, he took her hand in his and moved it away. "Perhaps it is best to once and for all clarify some things between us." He stared at the candle, and if looks could hurt, by now it would have been an abused candle. "Linde, as a Scientist and your master, I respect and admire your mind and ideas. As a person, I like your flair, independence, and your choices." He gripped the edge of the pillow that she had released before touching his shoulder. "As a Scientist and as a person, I think that we can do many things together, things that matter. And then, as a man—" She winced as the pillow shot towards the table, clashing with the bottle of vinegar. "As a man, I want you sexually. Very much. And this is
not
good. I have one of the smartest people I have ever met here with me, after a day full of way too many events of great importance, and all I think of right now is how your lips and skin will taste while I am pulling this dress off of you."

She imagined him doing it—with details; then pressed her thighs together to control the tingling inside her body. She was not entirely sure how she wanted to—or should—react to all this. If she should react at all.

Again, he noticed, then purposely shifted his eyes away from her and stared at the candle again. The air smelled of vinegar.

"There are societal guidelines discouraging sexual relations between members of the same House. Of course, I do not give a damn about what society thinks. But since I consider myself relatively smarter than a brainless oaf, I do give a damn about wasting the potential of our partnership to basic instincts. I will not try to take from you what I can take from any random wench, is what I am trying to say. I want your mind."

"I rather value it, you know. I would keep it for myself."

He laughed. "See? This is what I mean."

How about what I mean, you egocentric, tactless ... How about how I feel?
His High Lordliness had not even asked what she thought of the whole issue—what she wanted from
him.
And he just had to include random wenches in the conversation. She stared at the pillow, which was currently lying askew on the floor at the other side of the table. Why did he throw it like this? So careless.

Well, what
did
she want from him? He was still watching the candle, the light reflecting in his unreadable eyes.

Oh, but she could read him. The realization surprised her. His face was hard and, as usual, she could not touch his mind with hers, but through the part in her that thought with crystal clarity—or through some other, womanly, part—there were things she just knew.

She could go to him now. She could break all his barriers with just a touch or a kiss. He could not withstand her. But the price would be that, with all his barriers broken, she would not be able to withstand him. In a way, it was exhilarating. She had the power to control him—at the moment. Raw power that she felt rather than knew how to use. If she used it, however, she would be at his mercy. He could rape her, or do anything else that right now his barriers were telling him to not do.