—From the manual for Learning Module No. X5783
When Aelliana woke again, she was alone. Content within the comforting embrace of the blankets, she lay, considering the sense of absolute wellness that infused her. She could scarcely recall a time when she had not been frightened upon waking, heart pounding and mouth dry before ever she opened her eyes. When her grandmother was delm, perhaps then she had woken knowing herself well—but failing to understand what a gift that knowledge was.
She stretched, luxuriating in the sweet working of limb and muscle. Truly, she was well, strong, and whole. Now, it lay with her to remain so.
Another stretch, and a lazy smile. Surely, she had her whole life to plan, but first—she wanted a shower.
Tossing the blankets aside, she slipped out of bed, finding a rug, warm beneath bare feet. She never dared to sleep naked at home, not when Ran Eld might come into her room at any hour. Not quite incurious, she glanced down at herself. Her skin was smooth and golden, free, as the Healer had promised, of any bruise or contusion, but—she frowned slightly at prominent ribs and hip bones. Was she truly so thin? No wonder Scouts felt compelled to feed her!
She smiled at that, and glanced about her. The room was furnished in pinks, yellows, and blues. Light washed in through tall, open windows, which also admitted a small, sweet-smelling breeze. This, Aelliana thought, must be what it was like to stand inside a flower.
Her bed sat next to the wall, a low table at its foot. Thrown over the table, as if she had negligently dropped it there just before retiring, was a leaf-green robe. Aelliana stepped forward and picked it up, sighing in pleasure as it silked over her skin. She owned nothing so fine; surely it had been provided by the kindness of the Healers, and she was glad of it. Later, after her shower, she would try to find what had happened to her own clothes.
Her own clothes, what remained of them, lay next to a box atop the new-made bed when she emerged from the 'fresher. It was plain that the House had attempted to do its duty to the guest, and no blame to the Healers if her orange shirt—already frail—had come apart in the washer. Or, she thought, raising what was left of that venerable garment and frowning at the pattern of tears, perhaps it had not been the wash, but its treatment beforehand that had destroyed it. Her overlarge trousers were scarcely in better shape, stained and ragged as they were. Even her bold blue jacket showed the worse for its recent adventures, though she ought, Aelliana thought, to be able to wear it out into the street.
Her boots, sitting neatly on the floor next to the bed, gleamed, entirely without blemish.
Aelliana laughed. “Only see the pilot, clad in boots and jacket, desiring the House to call a cab!”
Abruptly, her laughter stopped, and she turned away from the bed, to the window. Below her stretched a pleasant prospect: rows of flowers tumbling in the breeze, birds darting among the shrubberies, and the play of a fountain, somewhere out of sight.
That cab . . .
“Where, precisely,” she asked herself, staring down into the gentle riot of color, “will you go?”
Certainly, not to Mizel's clanhouse. Her clan had failed to protect her for the last time. It was the pilot's duty to protect her ship—a duty she could not carry out if she were injured or captive.
So, then, she thought decisively, she would go to her ship, which would protect her as much as she protected it. As it was urgently necessary to put herself beyond the reach of her nadelm, and therefore, the clan, she would need to lift—
“Immediately,” she whispered, distress nibbling at her peace.
To leave Liad immediately—that had not been the plan. The plan had given her a full Standard Year to prepare. She was ignorant of Outworld customs, had scarcely begun her study of Terran. Despite her first class card, she had the most glancing acquaintance with the protocols of her own ship. Such deficiencies might easily kill her.
And, to leave immediately, with Daav in ignorance, and her comrades in danger of Ran Eld's despite—that she would not do.
She bit her lip.
Now that Ran Eld knew she owned a ship, he would not rest until he had wrested it from her. She had already refused once to sign it over to him, which had been the cause of their coming to blows.
“He will steal nothing else from me!” she told the garden fiercely—and gasped, raising her hands.
The antique silver puzzle ring that was her death-gift from her grandmother was still on her finger. But the other—her gift from Jon dea'Cort, the Jump pilot's ring that had for generations been in the care of a binjali pilot—
Aelliana spun back to the bed. She shook her tattered clothing; turning out every pocket. She found a cantra piece in an outside jacket pocket, and the precious piloting license tucked into an inner. But of the ring, there was no sign. Snatching the lid off the box—she froze, assaulted by the scent of leather, and stared down at the jacket folded neatly within.
A Jump pilot's jacket, its supple black finish as yet unmarred by such small adventures as might befall a pilot on a strange port.
It looked as if it might fit her.
Hands shaking, she set it aside, for there were other things in the box: a plain white shirt; a high-necked black sweater; a pair of tough trousers in dark blue, and another, in dusky green; underthings—everything, to look at it, near or at her size. She put it all aside, lifted the pretty paper lining the bottom of the box—but Jon's ring was not there.
Ran Eld! she thought. It had caught his eye, and easy enough to have it off her hand, once she was unconscious.
“He will not have it!” she snapped, and turned back to the window.
Overlooking the flowers, she tried to make a plan.
It seemed she would be returning to Mizel's clanhouse again, after all.
* * *
The doorkeeper showed him to a private parlor, served him wine and left him alone, murmuring that the Master would be with him soon.
The wine was sweet and sat ill on a stomach roiled with fear. He put it aside after a single sip and paced the length of the room, unable to sit decently and await his host.
Behind him, the door opened, and he spun, too quickly. Master Healer Kestra paused on the threshold and showed her hands, palms up and empty, eyebrows lifted ironically.
Ignoring irony, Daav bowed greeting, counting time as he had not done since he was a halfling, throttling pilot speed down to normality, though his nerves screamed for haste.
The Healer returned his bow with an inclination of her head and walked over to the clustered chairs. She arranged herself comfortably in one and looked up at him, face neutral.
“Well, Korval.”
He drifted a few paces forward. “Truly, Master Kestra?”
She waved impatiently at the chair opposite her. “I will not be stalked, sir! Sit, sit! And be still, for love of the gods! You're loud enough to give an old woman a headache—and to no purpose. She's fine.”
His knees gave way and, perforce, he sat. “Fine.”
“Oh, a little burn—nothing worrisome, I assure you! For the most part, the Learner never touched her. She knew her danger quickly and crafted her protection well. She created herself an obsession: an entire star system, which required her constant and total concentration—I should say, calculation!—to remain viable.”
She smiled, fondly, so it seemed to Daav. “Brilliant! The Learning Module will not disturb rational cognition.”
She moved her shoulders. “Tom Sen and I removed the obsession, and placed the sleep upon her. We did not consider, under the circumstances, that it was wise to entirely erase painful memory, though we did put—say, we caused those memories to feel distant to her. Thus she remains wary, yet unimpeded by immediate fear.” Another ripple of her shoulders. “For the rest, she passed a few moments in the 'doc for the cuts and bruises. I spoke with her not an hour ago and I am well satisfied with our work.”