Vyrl had opened the window above his desk and was sitting in his chair, staring at the night, his body silhouetted against the sky. He raised a bottle to his lips, and the cloying smell of rum drifted in the air.
Watching him, Kamoj knew that whatever troubled Vyrl, it went far deeper than the rum could reach. What had happened to give a man of such power the terrors that haunted his dreams?
V. Binge. Higher Level Eigenstates
Early morning light filled Kamoj’s room. Jul had yet to rise above the forest, so no rays slanted in the window, which someone had opened while she slept. She lay alone staring at a tapestry on the wall across from the bed. The hanging depicted two fierce women in warrior garb engaged in a duel over a youth. They were facing off in a forest clearing, one with a bowball cupped in her palm, her arm raised to throw it. Their young man stood leaning against a tree with his muscular arms crossed, looking appropriately dashing. He also looked rather disconcerted, which Kamoj suspected was closer to the truth of whatever legend had inspired the tapestry.
She felt lethargic, unable to face the day. She had watched Vyrl for more than an hour last night, afraid to intrude on his solitude. Exhaustion finally forced her to choose between sleeping on the floor or returning to bed.
Still, lying in bed solved nothing. She got up and went into the main bedroom. It was empty of Vyrl, but two trunks stood against the foot of his bed. Her trunks.
Her mood lightening, she went over to the trunks. The first held her clothes and the second had personal items, including the dolls from her childhood collection. She picked up her favorite rag doll, enjoying the familiar feel of its yarn hair against her cheek.
“Governor Argali?”
Startled, Kamoj looked up. A housemaid stood in the doorway of the entrance foyer. She must have been on the landing outside, waiting for Kamoj to wake up. “I heard you opening the trunks,” the woman said. “Would you like help dressing?”
Kamoj reddened, embarrassed to be caught holding a doll. Lowering it, she said, “Not today. But thank you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The woman bowed and withdrew.
Putting away her things took several hours. Then Kamoj went to the bathing room. Someone had swept up the glass and opened the window, letting sunshine in and the rum smell out. Bracing herself for icy mountain water, she slid into the pool. What she felt was even more of a shock: warm water. How? She saw no steaming stones or other heat sources.
Then she remembered her heel. Holding onto a claw of the quetzal statue, she pulled her foot out of the water. All she saw was healthy pink skin with a slight bruising. That rapid healing impressed her as much as all the other marvels she had seen here.
After her bath, she ran naked back to her chamber, racing across the main bedroom. She wasn’t sure why she ran. Vyrl had seen her without her clothes, and besides he wasn’t here. But she ran anyway. For all she knew, Morlin watched everything.
In her room, she started to take out a tunic. Then she changed her mind and put on a rose-cotton farm dress instead. It gave her pleasure to think Vyrl might enjoy how she looked. None of her dresses fit anymore, though. Her breasts plumped out the neckline, the waist was too tight, and the skirt barely reached her knees. She pulled up lacy ruffles from her underdress to cover her breasts and tugged her underskirts down until their ruffles swirled around her knees. Then she pulled on grey leggings made from Argali wool, followed by her suede farm boots.
Kamoj left the suite and paused on the landing at the top of the stairs. She was hungry, but she wasn’t sure where to find the kitchen. She also had to find Vyrl, to discuss Argali. Theirs was a tricky situation, one with no precedent that she knew. The union of provinces through a dowered merger of two governors was almost unheard of. She and Jax had agreed to split their time between Argali and Ironbridge. With Vyrl she had no idea. He could demand control of Argali or leave it to her, tax her province to death, shower it with riches, ruin it, or ignore it.
She descended the stairs, listening to the forest, the wind in the trees and the blue-tailed quetzals calling, even the trill of a gold-tail. Flaring the membranes in her nostrils, she inhaled the scents of the forest and its scale dust. It wasn’t until she reached the bottom that she heard the voices. As she walked down the Long Hall, they resolved into an argument between Vyrl and Dazza.
“I can’t,” Dazza was saying. “I haven’t the equipment.”
“Don’t treat me like a stupid farm boy,” Vyrl said. “The Ascendant has more than enough facilities. It’s a flaming city.”
The voices came from the entrance foyer. Kamoj hesitated in the Long Hall, near the entrance to the chandeliered ballroom, unsure whether to stay or leave.
“These aren’t simple alterations,” Dazza told him. “I would have to change your lungs and hemoglobin, redesign the way your body absorbs oxygen and carbon dioxide, and add filters for impurities. Who knows what side-effects it would cause? I couldn’t even begin until I made a thorough study. Surely you realize the magnitude of what you’re asking.”
“Contact the Ascendant,” Vyrl said. “Tell them to send down what you need.”
“The web systems in this building aren’t sophisticated enough to run the equipment,” she said. “If you want me to work on you, we have to do it on the ship.”
“No!”
Dazza spoke in a placating voice. “Vyrl, listen. Why change your body? Doesn’t the respirator let you breathe in comfort?”
“I don’t want a metal face.”
“You asked for metal. It doesn’t have to be that way. If it bothers you, we’ll redesign the mask.”
He made a frustrated noise. “The people here don’t need respirators. If I’m going to live on this planet, I want to go out without anything.”
“Why? Is this temporary exile worth such drastic changes to your body?”
Kamoj tensed. Temporary exile? Vyrl was going to leave Argali? What did that mean for her people? For herself?
She walked through the ballroom and stopped in the doorway to the Entrance Hall. Vyrl and Dazza were at the other end of the hall, in front of the entrance foyer. Azander and two other stagmen were standing back from them, trying to accomplish the impossible by being simultaneously attentive to their liege and oblivious to his argument.
“I told you what I wanted,” Vyrl told Dazza. “Do it. I’m going riding.”
“You’re in no condition to ride—”
“Contact the Ascendant, damn it.”
Dazza crossed her arms. “And if I refuse?”
“Don’t push me, Colonel.”
She exhaled. “Vyrl, stay here. Let me give you something to deal with the alcohol. Or let it work out of your system. When you’re sober, we’ll talk modifications.”
“You’re not putting more of your bugs in my blood.” He grimaced. “Those bloody things never die.”
“Nanomeds aren’t bugs. And meds designed to flush out alcohol do ‘die.’ They dissolve after a few—”
“No,” he said.
She scowled at him. “If I alter your body so you can live on this planet unaided, you’ll need even more self-replicating meds than the ones you carry now for health maintenance.”
“Fine.” With no warning, he spun around and strode up the hall, straight toward Kamoj. His sudden attention caught her off guard. She hadn’t even realized he knew she was there.
A farmhand must have given him the clothes he was wearing, an old white shirt, soft and worn with washings, and rough pants tucked into scuffed boots. Although Maxard wore old clothes when he worked the farm, it was still the garb of a highborn man. It startled her to see the wealthiest man in the Northern Lands, possibly on all Balumil, dressed like the poorest farmer.