Broken Vision (23 page)

He sensed the change in her immediately, even though they weren't touching. She sat up
straight beside him. The face she turned to him was tightly drawn.

"There's something you need to know."

Beneath him, the ground stilled and the strokes against his body diminished. The whisper
and sigh of the forest became almost inaudible. The trill of unseen creatures faded. It was as if the
land waited with him for what she had to say. He reached for her hand, but she pulled away from
him.

"I remember. I remember everything." She frowned. "I think." She twisted her hands
together on her upraised knees and slid her gaze away from him.

"On the Taragon ship, there was a priest. A woman priest. Nargune."

Shock splintered through him. "Women priests are outlawed on Taragon. The elders
themselves purged the temples."

"That's what I heard too. They didn't do a very thorough job." She had turned her head and
he couldn't see her expression. Her voice wavered.

Alerik sat up. "It wasn't specifically a condition of the Treaty. It became a later addendum.
The elders apparently felt the women had accumulated too much power. They weren't confident
they could control the women priests, even by confining them to their temples."

Maegan hunched her shoulders. "In hindsight, I'm sure this one controlled the Taragon
vessel."

If Maegan was right, this information changed things drastically. The power structure on
Taragon was not what it seemed. The elders seconded to the Coalition Council were out of touch.
Morgon's covert operation had just quite possibly gained legitimacy.

He stood. It was imperative this stunning piece of information be shared with the Council.
"Are you absolutely sure?"

"Sure? What do you mean?"

"Sure of the priest's gender?"

His wife hunched in a ball at his feet. She hid her face in her knees. "Of course I'm sure.
She did things to me." Her voice was whisper-soft.

"What?" Cold unease slid down his spine. The Council and the galaxy would have to wait.
Slowly, he sat down beside her again. "What did she do?"

Maegan's fists clenched. Her body trembled, but she raised her head and looked him in the
face. A desperate sadness clouded her eyes and made his heart clench in his chest, but her face also
bore a look of fierce determination.

"She made me b-be intimate...she made me..." Her features twisted. She sucked in a noisy
gulp of air. "She made me have...have sex with her."

Whatever he had expected, it wasn't that. He tried to process the information and found
himself struggling to wrap his mind around it. "She hurt you?" There had been no physical trauma
to her body, no pain except for the headaches.

"No. I...she...I remember enjoying it. How could I?" The last was a wail of
desperation.

He caught her arms. "She had you under psych control, remember?"

"I know, I know. I can't get it out of my head. I feel...v-violated." She clutched back at
him. Her nails dug into his flesh through the sleeve of his tunic and pulled him back from the edge
of a vortex of gathering rage. "I can't make it go away."

"You were raped." He forced his voice to a soothing calm he didn't feel. "We'll get help,
love."

"Alerik, I..." She stopped and looked at him in desperation, her eyes large and moist with
emotion.

He tamped down the violent urge to destroy something, and gathered her face gently in his
hands. "This has nothing to do with us, with you and me," he said. "It changes nothing about our
relationship. Understand?"

"But it does," she objected. "How could it not?"

"No. It doesn't. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

She shook her head and tried to pull away. "I can't--"

"Don't, Maegan." He had to make her understand. "You and I have something
extraordinary. You may have resisted it at the beginning, but after the last few days, can you really
deny it? Nothing will take that away from us. Nothing. We'll get help for this."

She looked at him wide-eyed. Something shifted in her expression. The stiffness of her
body beneath his hands eased. She gave a tiny nod of her head. Shadows still lurked in her eyes but
she no longer looked like she was about to shatter.

"Let's spend a little time here, at least," he said quietly. "It's beautiful and peaceful. Let's
just enjoy it for what it is." His own urgency to return and report had faded. A few hanans would
make no difference.

It wasn't until much later, when they were back at the governor's habitat, that she asked the
question he had dreaded.

* * * *

The moons of Pallas Five were an odd bronze color tonight.

Maegan leaned her head against the high back of the bench in the courtyard to study the
streaked sky. A storm was on its way. The bellian winds were beginning to blow. Even protected as
she was by the walls of the courtyard, she felt her hair stir and the brush of a stronger gust across
her cheek. She would have to go in soon.

As soon as they had arrived back at the governor's habitat, Alerik had gone off to some
meeting. She was grateful for the time alone. He had reacted with remarkable calm to her
disclosure. An eerie calm.

She shuddered. Another gust of wind wrapped around her.

"Maegan, what are you doing out here?" Alerik strode down the path. "These winds are
about to explode. Come inside."

"Why did the Taragon priests let me go?"

"What?" He stopped in front of her, tall, solid. He held his hand out.

She ignored it and looked past him into a garden that was beginning to sway and bow to
the demands of the elements.

"What reason did they have for letting me go? You didn't give them the children."

"Let's go inside." He was impatient. "We can discuss it there." He reached for her
hand.

She pulled away. It was somehow imperative he not touch her at that moment. If he did,
she would give in to his demand, and she was afraid then she wouldn't be able to get to a dreadful
truth that seemed to hover just out of her grasp.

"Tell me!"

His face was shadowed in the rapidly dimming light. A blast of wind slammed into them.
He leaned over her and braced an arm against the back of the bench. He could have done it to
protect her from the worst of the wind, but it felt almost threatening.

"There was an exchange," he said. "But not the children."

"Who?"

"Maegan... Balls of Sortor!"

Another blast almost knocked him into her.

"I tell you and we go inside. Immediately. Understand?" He was nose to nose with her. His
eyes glittered. His voice was raised almost to a shout as the winds began their mournful howl.

She inclined her head in agreement. A terrible urgency clawed at her. Part of her shrieked
she didn't want to know. She wanted to stay safe and insulated by her ignorance.

The warrior she had trained to be so long ago stood resolute and braced for an answer.

He moved his hand from the bench to grip her shoulder. "Morgon."

Nothing had prepared her for that knowledge. Shock ripped through her and tore into her
heart. "Nooo!" she heard herself scream. The sound was taken by the wind and tossed to the
skies.

Alerik grabbed her, jerked her to her feet and tugged her down the path. She went without
resistance, her mind smothered in a curious, heavy blankness, beneath which the implications
writhed and struggled for life.

All around them, the wind tore at leaves, tossed branches and howled its fury. Loud pops
punctuated the howls. The sky was streaked with purple and crimson and an insidious, icy, yellow
mist had moved in and blew with the wind.

They reached the outer door. Alerik shoved it open and pushed her through. He turned to
secure it behind them. The abrupt cessation of noise left a hammering in her ears.

He swung around to face her. In the silence, his breaths sounded harsh and uneven. His
expression was tight, his eyes dark.

"Up," he said.

She went, unable to force a single thought to her mind. Her husband stalked her past the
empty rooms of the lower level of the habitat and stood behind her on the mobilstair, as if guarding
an escape route. Lumens brightened and dimmed again with their passage.

In the upper level hallway, she automatically turned toward the great room. Alerik's boots
thumped behind her on the metaplat skin of the floor.

The lumens bloomed to full intensity as she stood in the middle of the room and willed the
blankness in her mind away.

"It's my fault," she whispered. "It's my fault. It's my fault."

Hard hands caught her under her armpits as her knees gave way. Alerik pulled her back
against him. For once, the solid heat of his body didn't, couldn't soothe her.

"It was his choice," he said. "And it was the right solution. The priests agreed to release
you in exchange for hosting Morgon for a two-rotation. Everything possible is being done through
diplomatic channels to secure an earlier release."

"Then why the exchange?" She tried to move away from him, but his arms tightened
around her. "Why not use diplomatic channels to secure my release?" But she knew the answer. A
rush of hot anger caused her to drive her elbow into his side and slam her heel down on his foot. It
was enough to gain her freedom.

She whirled and thrust a finger in his face. "Don't you dare coddle me with platitudes," she
shouted. "It isn't working, is it? How could it? And you all knew it from the beginning. How can
you practice diplomacy with a sect that doesn't exist? How do you even find them? Even the
Taragon elders are clueless. They're gone from Pallas Four, aren't they? Did you put a tracker on
them?"

Alerik's eyes glittered as he absently rubbed his side. "It was a condition of your release
that we let them go. The tracker lost them early."

"Of course." In an instant, anger evaporated to be replaced by fear and grief. "They'll
destroy him," she whispered. "Two rotations is a long time and utterly meaningless. They won't
return him alive. They'll strip his memories and his knowledge. Why did he do it? Nargune knows.
She knows he's the mastermind behind the network that's been intercepting the children."

"Maegan--"

"No!" She moved back. She didn't want to be comforted. Couldn't bear the compassion she
saw in his eyes. "I did this. If I hadn't gone looking for him--"

"Quite possibly the result would have been the same. You were taken in the tunnel habitat.
The priests had somehow discovered it when all our technology couldn't. They might eventually
have found Morgon there, but they found you instead. They sought something or someone,
Maegan, and we're becoming more convinced that it wasn't the children. They didn't leave Pallas
Four after they took you. They only left after the exchange."

"When they had Morgon."

"Yes."

"We have to look for him."

"We let diplomacy do its work."

"They'll have taken him to The Divide." She didn't know how she knew that. She just did.
Pain laced through her palms. She realized her fists were clenched so tightly her nails had bruised
the tender skin.

Alerik shook his head. "Don't even think about it."

"I can find their base. Morgon described it to me once."

"Maegan!"

Alerik's tone would have made a subordinate shudder. It pierced her all-consuming
determination.

He stepped forward to within a hand's breadth of her. It was a deliberate attempt to
intimidate.

"You will do nothing," he said through gritted teeth. "The Council has been fully briefed.
The diplomats are working on it. You will do nothing."

"Then he'll die."

"He had choices. We had choices."

"He didn't know about Nargune."

"It wouldn't have changed his decision."

"You don't know that. You don't know him." Anger was beginning to burn inside her
again. She loathed this feeling of utter helplessness, hated the restrictions her husband placed on
her. She should have been plotting a course to The Divide and sending messages to the relay
network.

"I spent enough time with him to know that your safety would be worth any sacrifice he
had to make."

"If our positions were reversed, he'd be doing everything to find me and free me. He
wouldn't be leaving it to the slieking diplomats." Anger and grief raised her voice to a decibel level
that stunned her. Appalled, she took some deep gulps of air to calm herself.

Alerik's expression was as threatening as she'd ever seen it. His eyes and temple mark were
almost black, his nostrils flared, his lips narrowed and tight. He grabbed her wrist and dragged her
to him.

"We will find him," he bit out. His sapphire gaze drilled deep into her. His grip tightened
to the point of pain.

"Leave it alone, Maegan. Leave it alone. You don't want to test me on this."

Margaine Confluence:/Second Rising
Pallas Five

"How's the miniature Alerik project coming?"

It was late morning, and Sharm Foster strolled into the small workout chamber as if he
weren't hanans late for duty. Late for Sharm was unheard of. No doubt he had a mag-tight excuse,
except Alerik didn't give a sliek. Nor was he in the mood to tolerate Sharm's goading.

Sweat soaked his body from the talweights. His biceps and thighs were beginning to burn.
Time to stop. He had been at this too long and it hadn't helped. Nothing had helped. Worry for
Maegan hammered at him in arbitration, stole his concentration in council and dug claws into his
chest without warning. Neither arbitration nor council had gone well.

The workout chamber had been almost at capacity when he'd arrived. It had cleared out
quickly and now, with the exception of Sharm, he was alone.

He glowered at his second from the talweight bench. "Nice of you to show up. Anyone
brief you on your leisurely way in here?"

Sharm stopped before the refreshment dispenser. "Lagale," he ordered. It took only
nanonans for the goblet to fill, but Alerik caught himself grinding his teeth.