Vyrl took her hand and climbed onto the bed, drawing her with him. As they lay down together, the quilts enveloped them in billowy cloth, soft from many washings and fragrant with the scent of spice-soap.
She touched his damp cheek. “We have a saying in Argali: ‘Tears wash clean the debris of the heart.’”
“I’m not crying.” Another tear slid down his cheek. “I never cry. Only children do that.”
Kamoj thought of all the tears she had held in over the years. “Maybe children know better than we.”
His voice caught. “Ai, water sprite. Something inside me is breaking. I don’t know what, only that it’s thawing.”
“Like ice on a lake in spring.”
He pulled her into his arms. “Be my spring, Kamoj.”
Night curled around them, quiet and foggy. As they made love, a low-lying cloud seeped in the window. Afterward they lay together, drowsing, their heads together, Vyrl’s lips touching her hair.
Some time later he said, “Look. The Lion came up.”
Kamoj opened her eyes. The fog in the room had reached as high as his desk, but their view of the window was clear. The Lion constellation was stalking across the sky, his head thrown back, his mane flowing in a wind of stars.
“See the star in his front paw?” Vyrl said.
“The yellow one?”
“Yes. That’s a sun of my home world. It’s why we made up the name Lionstar.”
“Lionstar isn’t your real name?”
He gave her a guilty look. “It isn’t even close.”
“What are you called?”
“A lot of nonsense.”
“Tell me.”
“You don’t really want to hear it.”
She smiled. “But I do. The whole thing.”
“All right. But I warned you.” With a grimace, he said, “Prince Havyrl Torcellei Valdor kya Skolia, Sixth Heir, once removed from the line of Pharaoh, born of the Rhon, Fourth Heir to the Web Key, Fifth Heir to the Assembly Key, and Fifth Heir to the Imperator.”
Kamoj blinked. “So many names.”
He touched her cheek. “And you?”
“Just Kamoj Quanta Argali.” It didn’t sound nearly so impressive as his.
“Quanta?” He laughed. “Ai, Kamoj, you’re a bound quantum resonance.”
It relieved her to see his spirits lighten, even if his words were odd. “You think my name means resonance too?”
“Argali refers to a Breit-Wigner scattering resonance. It comes from the Iotic word akil tz’i.” He paused. “Actually akil tz’i originally meant leash. It’s used now for resonance. Some people say it derives from a Mayan language, but no one really knows.”
Kamoj knew nothing about “Mayan,” but she had no doubts about her own language. “Argali means vine rose.”
“Not really. It just got mixed up with another Iotic word, akil tz’usub, which means vine runner.”
Just like that, he took away her entire name and gave her a new one, without even realizing it. “What does ‘Mayan’ mean?”
He pushed up on his elbow to look at her, as if her appearance could give him a clue to his own past. “My people have tried to determine our origins by comparing our languages to those on Earth. Some similarities exist between classical Iotic and Tzotzil Mayan. Other of our words suggest we came from the Mediterranean or Near East. But no matter how you look at it, none of it makes sense, unless my ancestors were shifted in time as well as space. Our history on Raylicon goes back six thousand years, and at that time no culture on Earth even vaguely resembled that of my ancestors.”
“Then how can you be sure about the language?” She shook her head. “Scattering resonance? It makes no sense.”
“It’s like when you roll bowballs on a table and they bounce off each other.” He lay on his side again. “Particles do that too.”
“Particles? You mean dust?”
“Smaller. Much smaller. And they can change state.”
“What is ‘change state’?”
“Deform, spin different ways, that sort of thing.”
“This is what ‘resonance’ means?”
“A resonance is when one ball captures another.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Vyrl, I have never heard of bowballs capturing each other.”
He laughed. “Just try to imagine it. The balls don’t bounce apart right away. They collide and stick together for a while. That’s the resonance.”
“Why would my name mean such a thing?”
“I don’t know.” he admitted. “What are some other common Argali names?”
She thought about it. “Sable for women. Maxard for men.”
“Maxard could refer to a maximum. What is your uncle’s full name?”
“Maxard Osil Argali.”
“Osil means life. Maximum resonance lifetime?”
Kamoj didn’t see what sense that made either. “What about Sable?”
“I don’t know about that one. It just means black.”
“It is a contraction of Metastable state.”
He stared at her. “That can’t be coincidence! Metastable state refers to a resonance.” He looked inordinately pleased with this strange statement. “You’re all named after scattering processes. Wait until I tell Drake.”
“Drake?”
“The anthropologist on the Ascendant. He’s been trying to make sense out of the name ‘Jax.’”
Kamoj stiffened. “What about Jax?”
“It’s actually an acronym. Jks.”
“Yes. I know. But Jax is easier to say.”
“Jks. They’re quantum numbers. For a free particle. J is angular momentum, k is energy, s is spin.” He snapped his fingers. “Jax Ironbridge is a free particle! Actually, he’s one term in the partial wave expansion for a free-particle plane wave.”
“Good for him,” Kamoj said dourly.
His smile faded. “My sorry. That was insensitive.”
Free particle indeed. All she knew about Jax was that she no longer needed to suffer a pendulum of emotions, swinging between fear of his temper and relief for his tenderness. Which was fine with her.
After that they lay in silence, side by side, their heads together. Kamoj was almost asleep when Vyrl made an odd choked sound.
She opened her eyes. “Are you all right?”
He wiped sweat from his forehead. “Yes.”
“Shall I get Dazza?”
“No.” He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “I’ll be fine.”
“I can rub your head.”
He glanced at her. “Yes. Thank you.”
Kamoj sat up and took his head into her lap. As she massaged him, his eyes twitched beneath his closed lids. But after only a few moments he said, “Maybe you better not.”
“There must be something I can do.”
“Get me another bottle. From the kitchen. That one I broke is the last I had up here.”
“Please don’t—”
His face went stiff, like the precursor to an explosion.
“Wait,” Kamoj said. She couldn’t bear the thought of his rejecting her again, a second time in one night. But how could she do what he asked?
Then it occurred to her that if she went downstairs, she might find someone who could give her advice. “I’ll go to the kitchen.”
He relaxed. “Thank you, Kamoj.”
She put on her underdress and a robe, and left their bed. As she tied her sash, she crossed to the entrance of the suite, wondering what she would find on the landing outside. Vyrl’s new bodyguards, stagmen from the Ascendant.
She eased open the outer door, trying to project a confidence she didn’t feel. Moonlight filtered onto the landing from a window in the stairwell. The two men posted outside were huge, bigger even than Vyrl. They wore black, with no diskmail, only jackets, pants, and knee boots. Metal bands gleamed on their upper arms, and the leather guards on their wrists glinted with metallic ribbing. Each man also wore a black bulk on his hip, not a sword or dagger, but something else with a handle and snout.