The Fall (41 page)

“Oh!” She freed herself and grabbed a hand to tow him along toward the keep. “But why did you come to tell me yourself? You could have sent a servant.”

“And lose the opportunity to watch your face when you see it?”

“Where is it?”

“The family library.”

She changed course, angling toward the door to the family wing. A shiver vibrated though the Paran’s arm. “You could have sent a servant and then stood beside it waiting,” she said. “I know you have a lot of work now that spring is here.”

“I am not so busy that I cannot share my beloved’s delight.”

“Is it that beautiful?” She pulled him through a door situated along the family wing.

He chuffed in the keep’s warmth, rubbing his upper arms.

“You are such a baby about a little cold air,” she told him.

He broke into an eye-crinkling grin.

She stopped and peered at him. “Have I said that before?”

“Something very like it, yes. The topic of the moment was cold water.”

“Then I was right about that, too.” She tugged on his arm and headed for the library, skipping ahead as he followed, chuckling. The door opened as they reached it.

Laura gasped as she caught sight of the work, set up on her easel near the windows: Tolar from orbit, perhaps a meter wide and a meter high, framed in a black wood the same shade as the starry background. With no obvious seam anywhere, the wood grain followed the lines around the outside of the canvas, its inner edge feathered into the painting itself with such skill she almost couldn’t tell where the framer’s work stopped and hers started.

She found herself staring, breathless, one hand on her chest.

“I believe your caste leader will approve,” the Paran said, draping an arm around her shoulder.

She nodded. “I should take it to him tomorrow.”

“He is here now, in the guest wing common room.”

“Oh!”

Laura whirled to run out of the library and down the curving hall, stopping just short of the common room doors to smooth her robe. The Paran caught up with her while she fussed.

“How do I look?” she asked, raking her fingers through her hair.

“Beautiful.” He extended a forearm.

“You would say that if I stood here covered in stains and splatters,” she said, but she took the proffered arm.

A flick of his hand, and the door opened to reveal a veritable gallery of her works. Charcoal drawings she had done
before
, of flowers and trees, of the Paran, of a woman with her child, of an old man, hung on easels among the newer hot resin paintings of planets and stars. A short, graying man in artisan purple, with embroidery of the same color ornamenting the collar and cuffs of his robe, stood examining a charcoal of the Paran. He turned and bent in a deep bow as they approached.

The Paran nodded acknowledgment. “Be welcome, artisan.”

“You honor me, high one,” the man said. He gave Laura a respectful bow. “Artist.”

She didn’t hesitate to return the bow, and offered a welcoming smile. “Artisan.”

He indicated the charcoal he had been examining. “We met on the day you drew this. Do you remember?”

“I regret. I remember little before my injury.”

“How unfortunate. I am Rathyn, leader of Parania’s artisan caste. It does please me to see your talent remained unaffected by your mishap. I understand you have a masterwork to offer the art center in the city?”

Two servants entered the room, one carrying an easel, the other carrying the painting in a protective case. Laura waited for them to set the case on the easel in the middle of the room before taking up a position beside it.

“My most recent finished work,” she said, and opened the case.

Rathyn went still, his eyes moving over the depiction of Tolar from orbit with a critical gleam. He moved closer and bent to examine it for long moments, his nose almost touching it, then stepped back and straightened to view it from a few steps away.

“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “You show a fine understanding of our encaustic technique. This will add grace to our exhibits.”

“Does it earn her a master’s rank, then, artisan?” the Paran asked.

Rathyn’s eyebrows went up. He glanced around at the charcoals and paintings. “I had thought you already a master of your craft.”

“I have no rank at all,” Laura said.

The eyebrows climbed higher. “An oversight, surely. I shall have a word with the stronghold’s artists before I leave. Consider the rank given.”

The Paran laid a hand on Laura’s shoulder. She could sense
his
heart swelling at her… colleague’s… reaction to her art.
Colleague
. The word sank in and lit a warm glow.

I have a place here
. She tucked herself under the Paran’s arm.

“Forever,” he murmured.

* * *

Farryn ghosted through the restricted corridors at Tau Ceti Station, camouflaged, working his way toward the heavily-guarded residence taking up a substantial section of the inner ring. He had spent days of careful surveillance timing the comings and goings of the human guards in this part of the station, and it seemed he made his move with little time to spare.
Word on the street
, as the humans put it, said the Chairman lay dying. He had checked his own sources on the matter, and the reports appeared to be true. The news came as a relief to the majority of humans he heard whispering about it.

Not so to Farryn. He still had business to conduct with the
odalli
ruler.

He ducked into a doorway, waited for the pair of armed guards to pass, and slipped out when the hall was clear. He had almost reached the back entrance of the Chairman’s section. If the humans followed their routine—
stupid
odalli
!
—several of the staff would leave their work for the day mere moments after he reached the back passageway. He squeezed into the corner next to the door and searched with his senses.

Yes, a group of humans on the other side of the door moved this way. He waited. Once he made it into the Chairman’s residence, then, his contact with the Triads said, then
the fun would start
.

The door whooshed open, carrying the scent of plant life in the escaping air. He timed his movements and slipped through the doorway as the group of staff members exited, one by one. The air smelled richer inside, and he could sense the plants directly now. More guards moved along paths through them.

He squatted near the wall—the bulkhead, the humans called it—and cast his senses out as far as he could. He had not found any information on guard movements within the Chairman’s section of the station. Not that he had expected to. The
odalli
could be stupid, but not
that
stupid. Still, the low number of guards in here surprised him. Perhaps the four-legged animals walking with them—

One of the creatures made a loud noise, straining at its tether, its nose pointed toward Farryn.

“What is it, boy?” the guard said. “Do ya see somethin’?”

The animal whined, then burst into a flurry of cries. Farryn snared its senses and delivered a brutal empathic blow. The thing collapsed into a seizure.

“
Pilot!
” the human exclaimed.

“Hey Danny,” another voice called. A presence veered toward the nearby guard and his stricken creature. “What’s the matter?”

Perfect.
With the
odalli
guards distracted, he jogged along the path to the back door of the building in the middle of the huge space. Now he would see if the false skin for which he had paid so much money was worth it. He dropped his camouflage, gripped the door’s smart handle, and waited.

A heartbeat later, the door recognized the genetic code of the false skin on his hand and clicked open. He re-camouflaged, pushing the door open just enough to slip through.

The house stank of age and death. He closed the door behind him. Even here, in what appeared to be the kitchen, the odor of decay lingered in the air. Wrinkling his nose, he padded through the room, past a dark corner from which emanated unmistakable sounds of human passion, and into a carpeted hall, casting his senses ahead of him.

Few of the house’s inhabitants moved. He slipped past a room full of guards playing a card game. From the sound of it, it was the same game Bertie had taught the Monral his son. He shook his head and peered through the camouflage gloom. The door to the Chairman’s bedroom stood unguarded. No one expected an intruder to get past the roomful of card-playing guards, it seemed, or perhaps the guards who should be here had abandoned their posts for the game. Standing at the door, he reached into the room. The Chairman slumbered. Another presence in the room with him also slept, leaving the man who ruled thirty billion humans essentially unguarded.

This was too easy.

He dropped his camouflage again and gripped the door handle. It gave a soft click. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

An ancient, dying human—the Chairman—lay in a life support bed, his papery skin a sickly yellow, his eyes sunken in their sockets. A nurse in loose blue clothing sat asleep in her chair at a desk covered with medical monitors. He disabled the panic button near the Chairman’s hand and crept up behind her. Young. Attractive. A pity. He slammed his barriers as tightly shut as he could and delivered a fast and far more merciful death than the Chairman would have ordered for her.

He gripped the back of her chair while the death shock passed, then turned to face the bed to find the Chairman’s eyes glittering at him.

“Thank you for saving me the trouble,” he said, his voice thin and quavery, barely above a whisper. “Though it’s too bad. She was one of the prettier ones. I assume my call button won’t work?”

Farryn inclined his head. A few strands of hair fell into his face. It had grown out enough to tie back, but not long enough to knot. He pushed the hair back behind his ear. What knot could he put in it now? He was outcaste.

“Who are you, anyway? You don’t look like Triads. And how did you get in here?”

“You do not recognize me?” Farryn camouflaged, then dropped it a moment later. He took a step closer to the bed. “I think I should be insulted.”

The Chairman’s rheumy eyes went wide. “You’re Tolari.”

“At your service.” And since he wore black clothing, that was particularly apt.

“What do you want?”

“Ah, but I would ask the same question of you. What do you want?”

The ancient human sighed. “They say it’s useless to try to lie to a Tolari. Very well then. What do I want? I want to live. I think you Tolari have the means to help me do that.”

“Do we now?”

“Don’t play with me.”

Farryn chuckled. “No, I do not intend to play with you. In fact, I am here to give you what you want.” He took another step closer to the bed, pulling a small crystal box from a pocket.

The Chairman’s eyes glued to the box. “Is that what your Sural gave Marianne Woolsey?”

His lip curled into a sneer of its own volition. “He is not
my
Sural. But yes. It is.”

“It took ten years off her apparent age. I need a hell of a lot more than that.”

“As old as you are, it will take a few days, but you will be young again.”

The Chairman expelled a long breath, his hand scrabbling at the edge of the bed toward Farryn. “Give it to me.”

“I suggest you summon witnesses before your appearance changes overmuch.”

“Just give it to me!”

“Have patience.” He pried the lid off the crystal box and tipped its contents into his palm. “This will give you three hundred standard years.”

“Three hundred!”

“Be calm. As I understand it, too much excitement is bad for you.” He moved the rest of the way to the bed and stood near the Chairman’s head. “You will fall unconscious. Were you younger, you would remain unconscious for perhaps half a day. As you are, I cannot say how long.”

“Understood. Give it to me!”

“You are quite certain you want this?”

“
Give it to me!
” the old man hissed.

“Remember to summon witnesses when you awaken.” He dropped the tiny cube into the gaping, toothless mouth, and the Chairman fell unconscious. Farryn probed him. He was no apothecary, but he
thought
the man would survive—and live to make the Sural’s task that much more difficult, if becoming an empath without knowing it did not first drive the human mad.

Tolar cast him out for one crime after all the good he had done. Tolar would regret it.

End of Book Three

Other Titles by Christie Meierz

The Marann (Tales of Tolari Space ~ Book 1)

Winner of the 2013 PRISM Award for Futuristic Romance.

The Marann
recounts one woman’s journey through loneliness, shattering revelations, and attempted assassination on a world where everyone can read her emotions.

Marianne Woolsey is a high school Spanish teacher in rural Iowa, when Earth Central Command decides her linguistic talents would be better exercised if she spent 26 years teaching the daughter and heir of an alien ruler on a planet 24 light years from Earth. Now she’s alone on a planet of aliens so humanlike that she has to keep telling herself her student’s noble father is just her boss.

Handsome—and deadly—the Sural has ruled his province and led his planet far longer than he can admit to his daughter’s human tutor. He hides much more from the space-faring races of the Trade Alliance than he is willing to reveal. What he doesn’t want Central Command to know, he has to conceal from Marianne, but Marianne is concealing her own secrets from him—and as an empath, he knows it.

This first novel in the Tales of Tolari Space series explores what could happen when you put an unsuspecting human on a planet full of empaths.

Into Tolari Space ~ The First Contact Stories

First Contact

Earth’s Ambassador to Tolar, Smithton Adler Russell, gets a call in the middle of the night.

Field Work

The ruler of Monralar is ambitious, ruthless, and out to unseat the Sural. Can one laborer put a stop to the Monral’s scheme before Tolar’s advanced technology is exposed to the Trade Alliance?