“He'll come out in a while—whenever it suits him. He'd been living wild in the business district, and not doing a very good job of it. One of the desk workers found him fainting and desperate and brought him to us. He hasn't been here long, and isn't very trusting of people yet.” She took a step toward Aelliana, her presence somehow heating the air between them. “My name is Jen ana'Tilesty, Pilot.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Healer,” Aelliana said, breathing deeply against the sudden warming of her blood. “Thank you for bringing the—for bringing Mouse. I had scarcely expected him so soon.”
“The way the house works is that whoever is at liberty takes up the next task in queue. Mouse was at liberty and I was, so here we both are. Master Kestra said you wished companionship.”
Companionship. And Master Kestra made sure to send a woman, Aelliana thought, so that the heir's parentage was not for a heartbeat in contention.
“It may be,” she said slowly, “that I, in my ignorance, gave Master Kestra faulty information. Certainly, she had offered companionship, and I had said, yes, meaning that I wished for a cat. She may have heard differently, with Healer's ears.”
“That's likely,” Jen ana'Tilesty said seriously. “Even I can see—well. I'll never be a Master Healer, no matter how much you polish me.”
“But you are,” Aelliana said, “a Healer.”
“I'm a Healer. I teach Empathic Sensuality, and tutor those whose clans don't want them going ignorant to their contract beds.”
She had never considered . . . certainly she had gone ignorant—desperately so—to her contract bed. Such a tutor might have shielded her from the worst of the damage inflicted by her husband. So much time wasted, thinking that what was happening to her was what everyone endured . . .
“I've stirred up something bad,” the other woman said. “Forgive me, Pilot.”
“There is nothing to forgive. I was merely remarking to myself that I wished I had known that such persons as you had existed . . . many years ago, now.”
“We all learn what we're meant to learn, when the time is ripe for learning,” Jen ana'Tilesty said. “You know I exist now, and I'm pleased to offer whatever will ease you.”
Aelliana considered her, glanced beyond her to where the cat named Mouse was only a pair of glowing green eyes, underneath the chaise.
“I wonder,” she said, looking back to Jen ana'Tilesty's wide-cheeked face, “if you would like a toasted cheese sandwich.”
The sandwiches had turned out moderately well. She was, Aelliana thought, gaining some skill on that front. Jen had proved a convivial companion, knowledgeable on subjects which Aelliana scarcely knew existed. After the meal was eaten, they cleaned up the kitchen, saw to the needs of the as-yet-invisible Mouse, and played several rounds of Modes, Aelliana having declined to play cards against a novice.
Just after midnight, they parted amicably on a three-and-three split, with promises on both sides for a rematch. Aelliana had then sought the bed behind the painted screen.
It was a very wide bed; the sheets were chilly; the pillows by turn too soft and too hard. She lay on her back and deliberately closed her eyes, but she was anything but restful. Now that it was quiet, thoughts crowded upon her. The tree—how could it have circumvented her protection! Worse, could a child born from such unguessable tampering be—well? Or ought it be aborted in favor of a more-regularly-got child?
Alas, her expert on Korval's tree was beyond her for these next few days—surely no more than a few days!— and that was an unhappy thought, indeed, for it brought to mind precisely the very many ways in which she missed him, and how much she wanted him with her this moment, in this terrible, strange bed, placing his hands thus and his lips so, and doing that particular—
Aelliana snapped up, forcefully pounding the too-hard pillow before curling onto her side. Her blood was hot, now, and she missed him even more for knowing that he would not tonight at least be slipping into bed behind her, curling his long body around hers; his skin so warm, soft over hard, wiry muscle, and his hands so knowing . . .
She fell at last into an uneasy doze in which it was not Daav but Jen ana'Tilesty who had curled 'round her, and teased her onto her back, offering a round breast to suckle while she guided Aelliana's hands, teaching her—
Unfairly, she woke again, hot and disordered, before the lesson was well completed, and retreated from the bed. Belting her robe around her, she went past the screen and into the common room.
Mouse's eyes still glowed from beneath the chaise.
Aelliana sighed and sat down on the floor, her shoulder against the chaise and her legs curled under her.
“I had used to be a mouse, you know,” she murmured. 'Utterly craven. I hid from my own reflection and would scarcely have spoken at all, saving that I had students and one must, after all, teach. I thought that my cowardice would save me; but in the long term, it did not answer. Those whom my existence threatened demanded ever more mouselike behavior. Willingly, I gave my strength away, but I was never safe, and I was always—always afraid.
'My fear almost killed me, though by then I had been growing bolder. But I had given so much of my strength away . . . it was a near thing, and I take no credit for my own survival. What I have learned is—mark me now!—life is not safe. Random action threatens us all. The choices we have are between fear and boldness, between joy and terror.
“If at all possible, I believe it is necessary to choose joy. One may survive no longer, nor ever be safe, but one's life will be worth living.”
She sighed, and rested her head against the side of the chaise.
“I don't presume to make your choices for you,” she told the cat, her eyelids drooping. “I merely offer the fruit of my own experience.”
She allowed her eyes to drift shut. It was very quiet in the little house. On The Luck, such silence would be horrifying, signaling the loss or malfunction of vital systems. Here . . . she was very tired, and the silence allowed her to hear quite small sounds, such as the beginning purr of a cat.
