Rebels Asending

Chapter 11

Marguerida said with a wan smile.

“I understand your reasons, even if I do not agree with them. Mik, if you have given your word, then I must make the best of it and stand by you. I do not think, however, that I will draw a single easy breath until that man is back on his own estates.”

Relief passed over Mikhail’s fair features. “It may all turn out for the best.

We have friends on the Council—your father and the Elhalyn-Hasturs, and others who seek a peaceful, united Darkover. We will have time to prepare.”

Mikhail took Marguerida’s gloved hand in his, and for an instant, the jewel of his ring glowed with the light of their joined powers.

Watching them together, Lew thought that as long as these two people were together, nothing could dim their happiness. But if anything should happen to Mikhail, if Marguerida’s premonition turned out to be right, what then?

What then?

I hat night, after the formal dinner following Javanne’s funeral, Domenic went to Alanna’s room. He was more than a little drunk, so he had an excuse to disregard his conscience and all his mother’s rules of propriety.

The day had been the longest, most emotionally exhausting he could remember. The funeral cortege had departed early, in a drizzle of half-frozen rain, traveling the Old North Road from Thendara to Hali.

Cisco Ridenow, as Captain of the City Guards, had taken charge of security arrangements with ruthless efficiency. Even so, memories of the ambush three years ago lingered in everyone’s memory.

The younger Gabriel Lanart-Alton, as the deceased woman’s eldest son, led the procession. His name, like his father’s, had originally been Lanart-Hastur, but when he assumed control of the Alton Domain, he had taken that name as well. Mikhail and Marguerida followed him, along with Grandfather Lew, then Domenic himself and Rory, who had been released from his duties in the Guards to attend. Ylanna rode in a carriage further back, along with her aunt Ariel and Ariel’s husband Piedro Alar. Miralys Elhalyn rode beside her husband, Dani Hastur, and his namesake, Danilo Syrtis-Ardais. Kennard-Dyan Ardais had not

returned to Thendara for the funeral, nor had Mikhail’s sister, the leronis Liriel. It was not as grand or large a party as the one that had accompanied the body of Regis Hastur, but it did honor to the woman who had been his sister.

They arrived at the field along the shores of Lake Hali. Pale green dusted the mounded earth. The drizzle cleared and clouds parted, revealing the swollen red sun. As Domenic took his appointed place, something roused his unusual laran. A silent keening rose and fell, reverberating through his skull.

Perhaps it was a residue from the eerie cloud-lake of Hali, said to be the result of an ancient cataclysm, or perhaps it was only the accumulation of centuries of grief.

Domenic tried to shut out the waves of fear and suspicion that emanated from the assembly, masquerading as grief. Whatever the cause, his grandmother had been an ambitious, unpleasant old woman. At one time, she had formed an alliance with Francisco Ridenow to replace Mikhail as Regent and Head of the Hastur Domain. Half the mourners here had been forced to take sides. Perhaps, with Javanne’s passing, the old quarrel might at last be laid to rest.

Family and friends had gathered in a circle as Javanne’s casket was lowered into an unmarked grave.

One by one, each person had shared a private remembrance of the departed. The two sons of the dead woman who had been able to attend came forward first. Following Gabriel, Mikhail spoke briefly of the mother who had nurtured him, with no mention of her later animosity. He concluded with the traditional formula, “Let that memory lighten grief.”

When Domenic’s turn came to speak, his throat had closed up. He wished there were some way to give voice to the sadness welling up from the layered mounds, from the ancient earth.

“The most important thing I know about my grandmother,” he finally forced out the words, “is that she was loved.”

He offered the words as a gift to her spirit. Let her be remembered for this, and nothing less.

Then he added, “Let that memory lighten grief,” and in that moment, it did.

Emotionally drained, Domenic had returned with the others for the funeral dinner, laid out in the Grand Hall of the Castle, a vast echoing space better suited to a Midwinter Ball than to such a sad occasion.

Rosettes and streamers of blue and silver, edged with black, intensified the gloom. It seemed half the Council attended the meal, all of them looking at him as if he were a high-bred horse they wished to purchase. Alanna had not been present, nor Yllana. Rory said he had City Guards duty that night, but Domenic suspected that his brother intended to spend the night drinking with his closest friend.

To make matters worse, Domenic could not shake the sensation of that mournful wail, like the cry of a banshee, now rippling through the stone foundations of the Castle. He had learned from experience that he could suppress the most unpleasant manifestations of his Gift with wine. At the time, getting drunk seemed the best way to deal with the social situation, as well.

The meal seemed to go on forever, through meat and fowl and cheese courses, sweet wine and pastries, and, when he feared he could hold no more, shallan and Thetan tea from his mother’s dwindling private stores. The coffee she loved so much had been used up last Midwinter Festival. Only the prospect of seeing Alanna again sustained Domenic through the interminable hours.

Now back at the Alton quarters, Domenic paused outside her door, drew himself up to an approximation of steadiness, and raised one fist to knock.

From inside came the muffled sound of weeping.

‘Alanna?” He tapped gently and, when there was no response or pause in the sobs, lifted the latch and went in.

Shadows lay thickly across the room, the same one Alanna had used since she first came here as a child.

A small fire flickered in the hearth, casting an uncertain light. The oval rug in front of the fireplace, normally a cheerful pattern of pink and red rosalys, looked as if it were covered with dark, irregular stains.

Alanna lay curled on her bed, facing the wall, fully dressed, clutching her favorite childhood toy, a stuffed rabbit-horn. Although he could not see her clearly, he felt her trembling.

“Alanna?”

“Domenic?” She sat up in a rustling of cloth and ran to him, tender and warm and exhilarating in his arms.

When she pressed her cheek against his, he felt the wetness of her tears.

He brushed them away with his fingertips.

” Breda, don’t cry. What has happened?”

“Oh, Domenic, it’s so awful here without you! No one cares anything about me! They all want me out of the way, or dead!”

Domenic put his arm around Alanna and led her back to the bed. He sat beside her and took her hands in his. “That cannot be true. It only appears that way because you’re upset. I love you, and so does my mother and Aunt Liriel, and my father loves you, too. Remember how, when we were little, he used to say how bright you were, like his own little star come down to earth?”

Alanna gave a little hiccough, somehow endearing. “You—you love me?”

“Yes, of course…” Domenic’s voice trailed off. His head was spinning again, only this time not from too much wine, but from Alanna’s closeness.

She lifted her face to his. He felt the warmth of her breath on his cheeks, saw the tiny droplets on her lashes. Her eyes were pools of green-tinted shadow, deep and mysterious. Her lips parted, and he wondered what they would feel like against his, how she would taste, the smell of her neck if he buried his face in the graceful curves, the feel of her skin.

Just as he leaned toward her, Alanna shifted, wrapping her arms around his waist. Her face fit into the hollow of his shoulder. She sighed, and another thrill, part exhilaration, part rapture, rose up in him. An image sprang to his mind of them together and naked, how her body would look, what it would be like to run his hands over her breasts and thighs and the mysterious places between them—

Oh, gods …

A sensation like fire kindled in his groin and surged