Patternmaster

Teray ignored him, and looked around the room to see whether Amber was still there. She had gone. Good. “Joachim, do you know a woman named Amber?”

“Teray, listen! You wouldn’t be giving up as much as I did when I submitted. He’s made me a kind of political puppet. But when he’s Patternmaster he won’t have to do such things with you. You’ll be almost independent. And you’ll be alive.”

Teray shook his head slowly, eyes closed for a moment. “I can’t do it, Joachim. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. A long leash is still a leash. And Coransee will still be at the other end of it, holding on. Now, do you know Amber?”

“All right, change the subject. Kill yourself. Yes, I know Amber. What do you want to know about her?”

Teray frowned. “Anything you know about her that isn’t personal. She says she’s an independent.”

“She is. Strange woman. She’s only four or five years out of school, but she managed to kill a man, a Housemaster, before she even made her transition. You ought to ask her about it. Interesting.”

“No doubt,” muttered Teray. “But look, how likely is she to go running to Coransee with anything unusual she hears?”

Joachim shook his head slowly. “Not likely at all. She likes Coransee, but she doesn’t make any special effort to impress him. She does her healing and otherwise keeps out of House business.”

Silently, Teray hoped he was right. It would be too easy for the woman to pick up something. No matter what happened, he was going to have to leave soon.

He found himself wishing he could speak privately to Michael, but he knew it would do no good. Even if the journeyman sympathized with him, the law really was on Coransee’s side. Michael could not change that.

* * *

Journeyman Michael stayed two days more, then headed farther north on more of Rayal’s business. North. Forsyth was 480 kilometers south. Teray could not even hope to catch up with Michael and try to attach himself to the journeyman’s party. That might not have been a good idea anyway, though, since it would have meant asking Michael to risk his own life by defying Coransee. After all, if things went as Coransee expected, Michael would soon be under Coransee’s direct control.

Teray would have to go alone. He realized that he was putting off leaving for just that reason—because the journey looked more and more like suicide to him. And what should he do about Iray?

That was something he did not want to think about. He was afraid to talk to Iray—afraid she might not want to leave Coransee, afraid her apparent interest in Coransee might be real. But even if it was not—she had kept her word, after all, she had not changed her name—how could he ask her to risk herself with him again? How could he take her out and perhaps get her killed? Then, strangely, it was Amber who gave him hope.

She was waiting for him in his room the night after Michael left. He walked in and found her staring out his window.

“Good,” she said as she turned and saw him. “I’ve got to talk to you.”

“You came all the way up here to talk to me?”

“Necessary. I have a message for you from Michael.” And suddenly he was listening.

“Why would Michael give you a message for me?”

“Because I offered to carry it. He and I are old friends, so he trusted me. He couldn’t very well give it to you directly.”

“Why not?”

“God, you must really be preoccupied with something. Don’t you have any idea how closely Coransee has watched you and Michael for the past two days?”

Teray went to his bed, sat down, and took off his shoes. “I didn’t notice. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t.”

“Michael didn’t think you would have lived long if he had shown any particular interest in you. There would be some kind of accident. You know.”

Teray shuddered. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t even thought about such a possibility. It was true enough, though, that personal attention from Michael could lead to personal attention from Rayal. And surely Coransee would not want Rayal to have the chance to pay attention to another potentially powerful son.

“What’s the message?” he asked Amber.

“That there’s sanctuary for you at Forsyth if you can get there on your own.”

In the moment of utter surprise that followed her words, he did the thing he had feared he might do: He betrayed himself to her. His screen slipped—not far, and only for an instant.

Coransee would have been hard put to read anything in so short a time. But Amber, it seemed, knew how to use her closeness to him. She read everything.

“Well,” she smiled at him, “it looks like I’ve brought you better news than I thought I had. Just the news you need, in fact.”

Teray dropped all pretense. Now, either she would report him or she would not. And Michael had seen fit to trust her. “What I really need,” he said, “is a few good fighters to go along with me. I counted twelve women and outsiders traveling with Michael.”

“Fifteen,” she corrected. “Are you taking Iray?”

“I don’t know yet. It seems to me—” He broke off and looked at Amber. She was still barely an acquaintance. Someone to sleep with, perhaps, but not someone to talk over his personal problems with. But on the other hand, why not? It was so easy. And who else was there? “It seems to me that I’ve done enough to Iray.”

“I don’t think you’ve done anything to her. Joachim has, and certainly Coransee has. But you’re only about to.”

“By leaving her—or by taking her?”

“By deciding for her.”

“I don’t want to get her killed.”

Amber shrugged. “If it were me, I’d want to make up my own mind.”

“I told her once that I wouldn’t leave her here.”

“Well, it’s between you and her.”

“Just out of curiosity, what are you trying to build between you and me?”

She smiled a little. “Something good, I hope.” “What about Coransee?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Point to you,” she said.

“What?”

“You remember telling me you hoped you’d be around the day I tried to leave Coransee?”

“You tried?”

“No. But I should have—some time ago. Now I’ve become a kind of challenge to him. Now I’m going to settle here as one of his wives whether I like it or not. He says. Which shows that he hasn’t gotten to know me very well in two years.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The same thing you’re going to do. We’ll live longer if we do it together.”

He took several seconds to digest this. His main emotion was relief. “Two, or perhaps three, traveling together. That’s better than one—though not much better.”

“You’re going to ask Iray, then?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll need her.”

“ ‘We.’ ” Teray smiled. “I wish you were just a little harder to accept.”

“I’ll wish that myself when the time comes for me to leave you. But I don’t wish it now.”

“You’re staying the night.”

“What about Suliana?”

“I just reached her. She’s going to sleep in her old room—or wherever else she wants to.”

“I’m staying, then.”

She was a lighter golden color beneath her clothing. Honey-colored. The cap of black hair was softer than it looked and the woman was harder than she felt. He would have to keep that last in mind, if he could.

Chapter 5

Early the next morning, Teray left Amber asleep in his bed and went down to the dining room, where he had sensed Iray. He would assume that Iray had not changed. He would know nothing that she did not tell him. He would not prejudge her. She was eating with another woman and a man at the end of one of the long tables in the nearly empty room. Most of the House was not awake yet.