Colonel Corozen Micah was paralyzed with shock, unable to believe the fight had gone so far afield so quickly. Then pandemonium broke out.

  Dewar was racing across the mat toward Tal, Vellmar fell back with a groan and curled into a protective ball, and Senshalon was shouting.

  “Shekking Mother, what did you do? I had her! It was over!”

  Vellmar didn’t respond, and Micah wondered if she could even hear him. Her ears were surely still ringing from the illegal move Tal had used on her.

  “You didn’t have her,” he said, eyeing the blood on Senshalon’s chin as he hurried toward them. “You’re lucky she didn’t break your nose as well.”

  Senshalon gingerly tested a tooth with his finger. “No, but she loosened two teeth.”

  Micah’s earcuff came to life with the last voice he wanted to hear.

  “What in Fahla’s name just happened? Where is Andira?” Salomen sounded panicked.

  “She’s here,” he said, crouching down for a better look at Vellmar. “Safe. The fight is over.”

  “And she . . . lost?”

  Micah wasn’t sure how to characterize the end of that fight. “Vellmar performed her task,” he said, more for Vellmar’s sake than Salomen’s. “Tal will be fine.”

  He felt secure in guaranteeing Tal’s physical recovery, if not the mental one. He had never seen her lose control like that. The sounds she had made . . . He shivered.

  “I just landed. I’m coming down there.”

  Spawn of a fantenshekken, she wasn’t even supposed to be here. Tal had said she was staying at Hol-Opah. “I would strongly recommend against that. Dewar is patching them up. I don’t think you want to see them until she’s done.” He paused. “Salomen?”

  She hadn’t bothered to close the call, and was no doubt running across the landing pad. He sighed, tapped his earcuff to clear the frequency, and rested a gentle hand on Vellmar’s shoulder. “Can you hear me?”

  Vellmar nodded once, her features twisted in pain.

  “Dewar is working on Tal. She’ll help you as soon as she can.”

  Another nod. Vellmar closed her eyes.

  “Stay by her,” he told Senshalon, and moved over to Dewar. “How is she?”

  “Beaten to a paste.” She had rolled Tal onto her side and was bandaging her nose in place. “Severely bruised abdominals, broken nose, bruised larynx, her jaw is already swelling, and she’s going to have a lump on the back of her head to match the one in front. Then there’s the concussion, but I can’t assess that until she regains consciousness.”

  “But nothing is serious?”

  “Besides what we all saw? That looked pretty serious to me.” She pressed down the last strip and shoved the wrapper in her pocket. Dabbing a sterile cloth against the blood still dripping from Tal’s nose, she added, “I need you to watch her. If she comes out of it, don’t let her roll onto her back. She should sit up and lean forward to drain this blood. Will you clean her up? And spread the salve?” Without waiting for an answer, she pressed two packets in his hand, then applied a skinspray to Tal’s wrist and moved away.

  Micah ripped open the first packet and began wiping off the blood. If Salomen saw this, she would hit the farthest moon.

  Dewar sprayed Vellmar’s wrist and urged her to uncurl, frowning at the silent refusal. “If you’re still hurting that much after the skinspray, then I think we’re too late to keep that broken rib from damaging your lung.” She loaded a different compound and thumbed the trigger.

  This time the reaction was visible as Vellmar sighed and relaxed.

  “Senshalon.” Dewar motioned him over. “Help her up.”

  It took a bit more urging to get Vellmar to move, but she eventually allowed herself to be pushed into a sitting position. Dewar put a sterile cloth in her hand and pressed it just below her nose. “Hold it there while I get your rib wrapped.”

  By the time she had secured a stabilizing bind around Vellmar’s chest, the cloth was already red. She briskly disposed of it and produced a fresh one. “The good news is that you’re so happy with all the drugs now, you won’t feel me set this,” she said, wiping Vellmar’s face.

  The door flew open and Salomen pounded down the stairs. Careless of her shoes, she ran across the mat and slid to her knees between Tal and Vellmar. “Great Mother of us all, what did you—” She stopped, staring open-mouthed at Vellmar. “You made yourself look like her? Why would you do that?”

  “Senshalon,” Vellmar mumbled. “The control.”

  “Hm? Oh! Yes, of course.” He pulled a small control from his trouser pocket and pressed it.

  With the deactivation of the colorizers, Vellmar’s hair returned to normal. She looked up at Salomen, revealing eyes that were blue once more, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Salomen gingerly rested a hand on Tal’s shoulder. “I should have been here. I don’t even know what you’re apologizing for. Surely not for winning the fight.”

  “Nobody won,” Micah said.

  “But Andira said—”

  “It was never about winning.” He was getting a bad feeling about Vellmar, who had closed her eyes again. She showed no reaction to Dewar’s ministrations, not even when her nose was set with an audible click.

  “That didn’t sound good,” Salomen said weakly. She took a deep breath and drew herself up. “Someone needs to explain to me what just happened, and why everyone in this room looks like their crop failed.”

  “That can wait for later,” Dewar said as she taped a bandage across Vellmar’s nose. “First we need to get them to the healing center. I know Lancer Tal hoped to keep it more private, but they did too much damage.” She dug into her pack and took out a tiny tube with a screen attached at one end. Gently, she inserted the other end in Vellmar’s ear and shook her head. A quick look in the opposite ear brought the same result. “Lead Guard Vellmar has two perforated eardrums, a displaced rib, and possibly a punctured lung, and Lancer Tal should be under observation until we’re sure her larynx won’t swell up. I want her there for the concussion, too. Not to mention that both of them need intervention for these noses if they don’t want to look like wallballs by midmeal.”

  Salomen appeared stunned at the list of injuries. “What didn’t they do to each other?”

  They were all startled when Tal gasped and began coughing. “Water,” she croaked, struggling to sit upright.

  Micah helped her up, and Dewar held out a flask. Tal accepted it with a nod of thanks and took several gulps.

  “Fahla, I hate swallowing that much blood,” she said in a rasping voice.

  “Are you all right?” Salomen reached for her face, then changed direction midway and settled for a touch on her leg.

  “As well as I can be.” Tal’s gaze went to Vellmar, who had neither moved nor opened her eyes. “Is she?”

  “As well as she can be,” Dewar answered. “You’re both going to the healing center.”

  Micah thought it was a sign of how shaken Tal must be when she agreed without argument.

  16

  Conspiracy of silence

  “What in the name of all that grows is going on?” Salomen demanded before the door had closed behind her.

  “Ouch,” Tal whispered. “Salomen, please. Not so loud.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have a headache? Is that from the concussion or the broken nose?” Salomen dragged the guest chair closer to Tal’s bed and sat down. “Or maybe it’s from the effort it must have taken for you to beat Fianna so badly that she’s temporarily deaf, with a lung they tell me missed perforation and collapse by the width of a hair.”

  Tal closed her eyes and wished Micah were here. He had shielded her from Salomen’s rapidly rising anger on the way to the healing center, and after that the healers had shut the door in everyone’s faces while they tended to her injuries. Now she was on her own, and Salomen had clearly decided she was well enough for interrogation. Tal did not share her opinion.

  Then the words registered, and her eyes snapped open. “She’s deaf?”

  “You ruptured both of her eardrums. Healer Wellernal said he was surprised the bones in her middle ear were still aligned. He plugged something called isolators into her ears to heal the tympanic membranes, and she can’t hear a thing until the procedure ends tomorrow. She had a fractured jaw and a whole lot of bruising around her torso, because you turned a cracked rib into a fully displaced one, and then you came this close to driving the sharp end into her lung.” Salomen held out her finger and thumb, a breath of air between them.

  “You told me this wouldn’t happen,” she said in a quieter voice. “You said you were taking every precaution. You assured me that Fianna was too good to let herself be badly hurt, and even if she wasn’t, Senshalon would stop you. You said I had to let you go, so I did. Then I find that Fianna wasn’t good enough, Senshalon wasn’t good enough, and everyone in that room has sudden amnesia. What happened?”

  Tal should have expected this. If there was one thing Salomen did not tolerate, it was being held outside. She had been horrified and guilty in the training room, but having all five of them refuse to answer her questions had sent her emotions in a different direction.

  The problem was that Tal still didn’t know how to answer.

  “It worked,” she said.

  Salomen shot her a disgusted look. “I know that. You think I didn’t feel it the moment you woke up?”

  “Can we not celebrate that, then? Salomen, we did it. It wasn’t clean and it wasn’t easy, but it worked. The monster is dead.” In truth, she had thought freedom would be more of a triumph. Perhaps the medications and discomfort were holding it back.

  Salomen picked up her hand and ran a gentle finger over the ravaged knuckles. “You nearly broke your hand on her face. How am I supposed to celebrate that? I’ve watched Fianna spar before. She never goes down for long. I keep seeing—” She looked up, the anger splintering into grief. “You really did try to kill her.”

  Tal’s nod was cut short by a spike of pain. “It wasn’t working. I wasn’t angry enough. Vellmar woke the monster.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not ready to talk about that.”

  Frustration prickled through their link, but Salomen’s touch was still tender. “She won’t speak to me. In the training room, she apologized. When I visited her just now, she did it again. That’s all she’ll say, that she’s sorry. I don’t know what she’s sorry for. No one will tell me, including you. She’s in worse shape than you are—which is damn well saying something—so why is she the one apologizing? Her knuckles don’t look like yours.”

  Because she used words as her weapons, Tal thought.

  “Did she try to kill you first?”

  “No,” she said automatically, but then remembered an arm across her throat as she choked on blood.

  Salomen raised an eyebrow. “That doesn’t feel like no.”

  Tal shook her head to rid herself of the memories and let out a pained groan when one spike turned into two. “Shek! Would you please call the healer? The paincounters have worn off.”

  “We’re not done with this conversation,” Salomen warned as she reached for the vidcom on the bedside table.

  “I know.” Tal hoped whatever paincounters they gave her would put her to sleep for the next two days. Perhaps by then Salomen would decide she didn’t want to know what had happened after all.

  And perhaps dokkers would suddenly learn to sing.

  17

  Sanctuary

  Despite the many duties and responsibilities weighing on her as Lead Templar, Lanaril Satran always found time for temple rounds. Running the largest temple complex on Alsea made for an unending list of distractions, but when she stepped into the temple itself, she was inevitably reminded of her true purpose.

  This glorious open space, with the ancient molwyn tree at its center basking in light from the domed glass roof, gave solace to those in need. Some required only the peace of the temple and an opportunity to commune with Fahla. Others needed more: the comfort of being surrounded by worshippers, the feel of molwyn bark beneath their hands, or perhaps the visual and emotional boost of lighting a row of ten oil bowls—or an entire rack of one hundred—and watching the flames burn.

  The needs of most worshippers were easily met by the temple itself, but there were always a few whose needs were greater. They were the ones templars were trained to find.

  Lanaril began her round by walking along the circular wall with its cushioned benches. This was where the elders usually gathered, seeking physical ease as they gazed into the interior of the temple. Some were regulars, coming at the same time each day, and she always enjoyed chatting with them. She couldn’t stay long if they didn’t need her, but in truth, she needed them. They brought a continuity to her days that gave her comfort, and that had its own value.

  With a smile at the last elderly man near the interior doors, Lanaril turned toward the molwyn tree and scanned the people standing amongst the oil racks scattered throughout the temple. Thirty of her templars were making their rounds, a sufficient number for the small crowd. This was a quiet time of day.

  Seeing that the nearest worshippers were either content or already being cared for, she moved inward. On her second sweep, she noticed a figure on one of the deck benches.

  To save the roots of the molwyn tree and keep soil from being tracked over the tiled floors, all larger temples had raised wooden decks built around their trees. Some worshippers preferred the benches edging the deck for their proximity to the sacred tree, while others avoided the greater visibility of sitting in the center of the temple. Lanaril could not have said what drew her gaze so unerringly to this one figure among dozens on those benches, but the moment she focused, she recognized her. It didn’t matter that Fianna Vellmar was out of uniform, or that her hair was loose and obscuring her face as she sat cross-legged with her head bowed. Lanaril would have known her from a much greater distance than this.

  Moving quietly, offering a smile here and a palm touch there, she made her way to the wooden steps and then onto the deck.

  Fianna did not look up when Lanaril sat next to her, a clear sign of distress though her front was perfect.

  “This is the first time I’ve seen you here,” Lanaril said. “Did you come to speak with Fahla or me?”

  “You. Lost my courage halfway through, so I thought I’d sit here and see if it came back.”

  “Why would you need courage to see me?”

  Slowly, Fianna lifted her head. Her hair fell back, revealing her face, and Lanaril could not stop the gasp.

  “What happened to you?”

  Fianna turned, showing the full extent of the damage. Though her nose was straight, the faded bruising around her eyes was evidence of a break. More bruises covered her jaw. But it was her expression that worried Lanaril the most.

  “It’s all about cost, isn’t it?” Fianna looked up at the thick, gnarled branches reaching over their heads. “Lancer Tal asked me for help, and I gave it, but it came at a price. If I ask you for help, what does it cost you to give it?”

  Lanaril did not know where to begin with the information packed into those short sentences.

  “Andira did that to you?”

  Fianna’s generous mouth tipped into a sad smile. “See? There’s the first cost. I don’t want this to affect your friendship with her. She told me what to expect.”

  “We’re not talking about this here,” Lanaril decided. “Come with me.”

  She led the way to the inner temple doors and through a maze of corridors most members of the public never saw, with Fianna following like a silent shadow. Another set of doors opened onto the interior courtyard, where they were abruptly plunged into brilliant sunshine.

  The dome of her temple soared overhead, dwarfing the rest of the complex. Surrounding them on the other three sides were living and working spaces for the many templars who spent their careers here, as well as the guests who used the retreat quarters. Lanaril loved this courtyard, with its elegant arches, ancient downspouts for rainwater management, and equally ancient landscaping. The molwyn tree at its center was planted one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three cycles ago, ten cycles after the one in the temple.

  She had little time to appreciate it now. With Fianna still following—always a step behind, never beside her—she crossed the courtyard and entered the back half of the complex. The sun-drenched hall was lined with floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and arched entries on the other, the nearest of which opened onto a long corridor. At its far end, she laid her palm on a biolock and stepped into the foyer of her personal quarters, where she quickly removed her shoes and nudged them beneath the shoe bench. Fianna did the same.

  Not until they were seated on the sofa overlooking the private, high-walled garden did Fianna finally speak, her gaze on the view.

  “I thought you’d take me to your study.”

  “You’re not my patient. You’re my lover.”

  “But I am a patient, aren’t I? If I come to you for help? You said you wouldn’t always have anything left to give me. I said I’d give you comfort.” Fianna faced her then, dropping her front and revealing the self-loathing Lanaril had feared. “Here we are, three moons later, and I’ve already come crawling to you twice. So much for your needs.”

  Lanaril inhaled slowly, tamping down her first response and only then letting her front fall. “Do you think comfort is only provided in response to distress? Every hantick that we spend together, when you let me be who I truly am—that is a comfort.” Her words hit a wall of disbelief, and she shook her head. “I thought I was being honest when we had that discussion. I wanted you to go into this relationship with a clear understanding, but it seems I dug you a hole instead. You’re devaluing your own offerings while overvaluing mine.”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “We’re lovers, Fianna. That means we can expect more from each other than we do from anyone else. It means I should be the first person you come to when you’re hurting. It doesn’t mean you should be keeping count and worrying that you’re going over some pre-defined limit.”