The pain came while she was swimming back to the side; just under her ribs, then in her legs. She tried to ignore it, swimming on, gritting her teeth. She got to the pool-side, put her hands on the ridged tiles, tensing her arms. Not again. It couldn’t happen again.
The pain slammed into her ears like a pair of white-hot swords; she heard herself gasp. She tried to clutch at the pool-side as the next wave hit, searing her from shoulders to calves. She cried out, falling back in the water, coughing and choking as she tried to swim and to curl up at the same time. Not all of it again. What came next? What did she have to prepare for now? The pain ebbed; she grabbed at the pool-side again. She was suddenly weak, unable to pull herself out; she felt to one side with her foot, seeking the steps. Her right hand found a handle recessed in the tiles. She gripped it, knowing what would happen now; her body convulsed as the agony tore through her, as if her body was a socket and the pain some huge, obscene plug, transmitting a vast and terrible current of agony.
She doubled up in the water, concentrating on her grip on the tile handle, terrified of letting go. She felt her face go underwater, and tried to hold her breath while the pain went on and on and a low moan escaped her lips in a string of bubbles. She wanted to breathe but she couldn’t uncurl herself from the fetal position she’d assumed. A roaring noise grew in her ears.
Then the pain eased, evaporating.
Spluttering, coughing, spitting water, she pulled on the tile handle and felt her head bump into the pool-side. She surfaced, breathing at last, and put out her other hand, found the handle, found both handles. One foot slotted into an underwater step. She kept her eyes closed and dragged herself upwards with the dregs of her strength. She felt the edge of the pool against her belly, and collapsed onto the warm plastic tiles at the edge of the pool, her legs still floating in the water.
Then strong hands were pulling her, lifting her, holding her, arms enfolding her. She opened her eyes long enough to see the worried faces of Zefla and Miz, and started to say something to them, to tell them not to worry, then the great sword smashed into her backside, and she spasmed, collapsing; they held her again, taking her weight, and she felt herself lifted, one toe sliding over the tiles, and then she was laid down on something soft, and they held her, warm against her, whispering to her, and were still there when the last brief instant of agony burst again inside her head, ending everything.
She woke to the sound of bird-song. She was still lying by the pool-side, covered by towels. Zefla lay beside her, cradling her head, gently rocking her. A bird chirped and she looked round for it.
“Sharrow?” Zefla said quietly.
The bluebird sat on the wooden parapet of the pool terrace. Sharrow watched it watching her, then turned to Zefla. “Hello,” she said. Her voice sounded small.
“You okay?” Zefla asked.
The bluebird flew away. Miz appeared, dressed in trunks, squatting down. “Called the-” he started to say to Zefla, then saw Sharrow’s eyes were open. “Well, hi,” he said softly, putting one hand out to her face and touching her cheek. “Back with us again, are you?” he asked, smiling.
“I’m all right,” she said, rolling over and trying to sit up. Zefla put an arm to her back, helping her. She shivered and Miz wrapped a towel round her shoulders.
“All that wasn’t what you’d call natural, was it?” Zefla said.
She shook her head. “It was the same as the last time. In the tank. Exactly the same. A recording.” She tried to laugh. “They did say they’d be in touch.”
Miz looked over to the pool. “Could be a nerve-gun or something down there, in the valley; beaming straight up.”
“Or something in the house,” Zefla said, patting at Sharrow’s hair with a towel.
“Maybe,” Sharrow said. “Maybe.”
“If I ever get my hands on whoever’s doing this,” Miz said quietly. “I’m going to kill them, but I’m-”
Sharrow put her hand out, held Miz’s arm, squeezing it. “Ssh, ssh,” she whispered.
Miz sighed and stood. “Well I’m going to take a look round the house, starting with the next floor up; I’ll get Dlo or Cen to take a look down in the valley.” He reached down, put his hand on Sharrow’s head for a moment. “You going to be all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
“Good girl.” Miz walked quickly away.
“Girl,” Sharrow muttered, shaking her head.
“Let’s get you to bed, eh?” Zefla said.
Sharrow used Zefla’s shoulder to help her get up. Eventually she stood, supported by the other woman. “No; I was having a swim. It’s gone now; I feel fine.”
“You’re crazy,” Zefla said, but let Sharrow shrug off the towel she was holding round her shoulders, and walked with her to the side of the pool. Sharrow stood there for a moment, composing herself, drawing herself upright and flexing her shoulders. She dived into the water; it was a rather ragged dive, but then she surfaced and struck out strongly for the far side.
Zefla sat down on the side of the pool, her dark red-brown legs dangling in the water. She grinned at the pale, lithe figure forcing its way through the lime-glowing water to the far side, and shook her head.
“How’s our patient, Doctor Clave?” Bencil Dornay asked.
“Fit and healthy, it would seem,” the elderly clinician said, entering the lounge with Sharrow at his side.
Bencil Dornay was a compact, clipped man of late middle years with small green eyes set in a pale-olive face; he had a neatly trimmed beard and perfectly manicured hands. He dressed casually, almost carelessly, in clothes that were of the very best quality, if not the last word in fashion. His father had left the employ of Gorko, Sharrow’s grandfather, when the World Court had ordered the dissolution of the old man’s estate; Dornay senior had gone into business and been highly successful, and bought himself a shorter name. Bencil had been even more successful than his father, reducing his own names from three to two. He had no children but he had applied to the relevant authorities to be allowed to clone himself, and hoped the succeeding version of himself might be able to afford the next step, shedding one more name to instigate a minor noble house.
“Fit enough to dance, perhaps, Doctor Clave?” Dornay asked, eyes twinkling as he glanced at Sharrow, who smiled. “I was planning a small party in the lady’s honour tomorrow evening. This little dizzy spell won’t prevent her from dancing, will it?”
“Certainly not,” Doctor Clave said. He was rotund and heavily bearded and had an air of amiable distraction about him. He seemed so much like how Sharrow remembered doctors were supposed to be that she wondered just how much was an act. “Though I’d-” The doctor cleared his throat. “Advise having medical attention on hand at this party, naturally.”
Bencil Dornay smiled. “Why, Doctor, you didn’t imagine I would dare conduct a soiree without you in attendance, did you?”
“I should think not” The doctor looked at a small clipboard. “Well, I’d better see if those lazy techs have got all that stuff back in the plane…”
“Let me see you out,” Bencil Dornay offered. “Lady Sharrow,” he said. She nodded. He and the clinician walked to the elevator. She watched them go.
Sharrow could just remember Bencil Dornay’s father from a single one of those seasons when she had visited the great house of Tzant while the estate had still technically belonged to the Dascen family yet its administration-and fate-had been in the hands of the Court.
Dornay senior had left Gorko’s employ twenty years earlier, and had already become a rich trader; it had been his particular pleasure to revisit as an honoured guest the residence he had served in as house-secretary. He had been a stooped, kindly man Sharrow remembered as seeming very old (but then, she had been very young), with a perfect memory for every item in the vast, half-empty and mostly unused pile that had been house Tzant. She and the other children had played games with him, asking him what was in a particular drawer or cupboard in some long-neglected room of some distant wing, and found that he was almost invariably correct, down to the last spoon, the last button and toothpick.