So saying, he scooped the cat to the floor and plucked the cloak up. In a moment, he had the ring out and stowed safely away. The cloak, he dropped once again across the chair.
“Your forbearance is noted,” he said, inclining his head. Relchin yawned again, and jumped up to the chair, where he began kneading, eyes slitted in pleasure.
Daav winced at the sound of claws piercing silk. “Perhaps the news has not yet reached you. The clan's fortunes are by no means assured. I may need to wear that cloak for some while.”
Relchin continued to knead.
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Liaden 11 - Mouse and Dragon
Chapter Two
IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The Learning Module utilizes intense, direct-brain stimulation to impart preprogrammed information. Direct-brain stimulation is painful, even dangerous, to some individuals. Always run a compatibility test before logging into a full Learning session.
In no case should a Learner undertake more than one six-hour session of moderate intensity within one twenty-eight-hour period. Cerebral vesication may result from overuse of a Learning Module.
—From the manual for Learning Module No. X5783
When Aelliana woke again, she was alone. Content within the comforting embrace of the blankets, she lay, considering the sense of absolute wellness that infused her. She could scarcely recall a time when she had not been frightened upon waking, heart pounding and mouth dry before ever she opened her eyes. When her grandmother was delm, perhaps then she had woken knowing herself well—but failing to understand what a gift that knowledge was.
She stretched, luxuriating in the sweet working of limb and muscle. Truly, she was well, strong, and whole. Now, it lay with her to remain so.
Another stretch, and a lazy smile. Surely, she had her whole life to plan, but first—she wanted a shower.
Tossing the blankets aside, she slipped out of bed, finding a rug, warm beneath bare feet. She never dared to sleep naked at home, not when Ran Eld might come into her room at any hour. Not quite incurious, she glanced down at herself. Her skin was smooth and golden, free, as the Healer had promised, of any bruise or contusion, but—she frowned slightly at prominent ribs and hip bones. Was she truly so thin? No wonder Scouts felt compelled to feed her!
She smiled at that, and glanced about her. The room was furnished in pinks, yellows, and blues. Light washed in through tall, open windows, which also admitted a small, sweet-smelling breeze. This, Aelliana thought, must be what it was like to stand inside a flower.
Her bed sat next to the wall, a low table at its foot. Thrown over the table, as if she had negligently dropped it there just before retiring, was a leaf-green robe. Aelliana stepped forward and picked it up, sighing in pleasure as it silked over her skin. She owned nothing so fine; surely it had been provided by the kindness of the Healers, and she was glad of it. Later, after her shower, she would try to find what had happened to her own clothes.
Her own clothes, what remained of them, lay next to a box atop the new-made bed when she emerged from the 'fresher. It was plain that the House had attempted to do its duty to the guest, and no blame to the Healers if her orange shirt—already frail—had come apart in the washer. Or, she thought, raising what was left of that venerable garment and frowning at the pattern of tears, perhaps it had not been the wash, but its treatment beforehand that had destroyed it. Her overlarge trousers were scarcely in better shape, stained and ragged as they were. Even her bold blue jacket showed the worse for its recent adventures, though she ought, Aelliana thought, to be able to wear it out into the street.
Her boots, sitting neatly on the floor next to the bed, gleamed, entirely without blemish.
Aelliana laughed. “Only see the pilot, clad in boots and jacket, desiring the House to call a cab!”
Abruptly, her laughter stopped, and she turned away from the bed, to the window. Below her stretched a pleasant prospect: rows of flowers tumbling in the breeze, birds darting among the shrubberies, and the play of a fountain, somewhere out of sight.
That cab . . .
“Where, precisely,” she asked herself, staring down into the gentle riot of color, “will you go?”
Certainly, not to Mizel's clanhouse. Her clan had failed to protect her for the last time. It was the pilot's duty to protect her ship—a duty she could not carry out if she were injured or captive.
So, then, she thought decisively, she would go to her ship, which would protect her as much as she protected it. As it was urgently necessary to put herself beyond the reach of her nadelm, and therefore, the clan, she would need to lift—
“Immediately,” she whispered, distress nibbling at her peace.
To leave Liad immediately—that had not been the plan. The plan had given her a full Standard Year to prepare. She was ignorant of Outworld customs, had scarcely begun her study of Terran. Despite her first class card, she had the most glancing acquaintance with the protocols of her own ship. Such deficiencies might easily kill her.
And, to leave immediately, with Daav in ignorance, and her comrades in danger of Ran Eld's despite—that she would not do.
She bit her lip.
Now that Ran Eld knew she owned a ship, he would not rest until he had wrested it from her. She had already refused once to sign it over to him, which had been the cause of their coming to blows.
“He will steal nothing else from me!” she told the garden fiercely—and gasped, raising her hands.
