Rebels Asending

Chapter 9

slipped into it.

She wore the same gown as before, but her hair had been tidied, plaited flame against the cream of her skin. Domenic noticed that she offered no excuse for her lateness. Instead, she kept her eyes on her plate.

“Alanna dear, will you not welcome Domenic back among us?”

Marguerida said.

“She has already done so,” Domenic said, accepting the bowl of amber-nuts Rory passed to him. “We ran into each other when I first came in.”

Alanna’s smile flashed like the sun after a storm. The air in the room brightened.

“Now we are all here together as a family,” Mikhail said, “even if it is for a sorrowful occasion. Domenic, you did well in your kindness to my mother during her last days and in bringing her body back for burial.

For all the unhappiness in her life, she was Comynara.”

Domenic heard the heavy resonance in his father’s voice, like the distant throbbing of a knell.

How would I feel if it were my mother lying in that casket, waiting to be laid in an unmarked grave? Domenic shuddered, unable to imagine a world without Marguerida.

“—do you?” Mikhail was asking.

Domenic had missed a beat of the conversation. He covered it quickly, excusing the lapse as fatigue from the journey.

“Of course,” Marguerida said, giving him a tender smile.

The conversation shifted to Javanne’s funeral. The ceremony itself required Lite preparation, for the ancient tradition was simple, but arrangements must be made for those relatives and dignitaries who were able to make the journey to Thendara at this season and on short notice. Lew Alton, Marguerida’s father, had sent word that he would arrive from Armida, where he had retired at the invitation of the younger Gabriel, who would attend as well. The Elhalyn estates were close enough so that Dani Hastur, the son of Regis, and his wife and family could also be present.

“I wish some of the Aldaran folk could be here,” Marguerida said.

Katherine, the wife of Hermes Aldaran, was one of her closest women friends.

“Not even a weather worker could make the roads through the Hellers passable at this season,” Rory commented.

“You’re not afraid of a little snowstorm?” Yllana’s eyes glinted with affectionate teasing.

Rory shrugged, refusing to be drawn in. “With a decent horse and proper gear, of course not. A caravan of wagons and pack animals is another matter.”

“Our friends will be here soon enough,” Mikhail said, “and then we will finish our discussion about Yllana returning with them to be fostered at Castle Aldaran.”

“Would you like that, little sister?” Domenic asked. This was the first he had heard of the Aldarans fostering Yllana.

The girl lifted her chin,looking very much like her mother in a resolute mood. “I may have some of the Aldaran laran, and Mother says it would be better to learn how to use it from those who know it well.”

Domenic nodded. In his grandfathers’ time, Aldaran was still estranged from the other Domains. In isolation, they had learned new techniques to develop their distinctive psychic talents. A few of them now worked in Towers, but the rest of the Domains knew little of the Aldaran disciplines.

“It isn’t fair!” Alanna’s expression darkened. A frown twisted her beautiful mouth. “You made me go to Arilinn!”

“Child, that was for your own safety,” Marguerida said. “We would never have sent you away if there were any other choice.”

“But Yllana gets to live with Domna Katherine—”

“Yllana does not have your abilities as a telekinetic and a fire-starter, a dangerous combination,” Mikhail said gently. He had always loved Alanna, even when she was at her most tempestuous.

“I hate Yllana!” Alanna shrieked. “I hate you all!”

Yllana flinched under Alanna’s psychic blast. She clenched her dinner knife so hard, her knuckles went white. She looked as if she wanted to throw it at Alanna, but common sense and a naturally steady temperament restrained her.

“Alanna, you know you do not mean that.” Marguerida struggled visibly to keep her own composure.

“You are foster sisters, after all, and should not speak so to one another.

We want what is best for each of you.”

“It was not so bad at Arilinn, was it, little lady?” Mikhail asked. “Did they not teach you well?”

Alanna drew in her breath, clearly ready with a caustic retort. Suddenly, she grew very still. The hectic color drained from her cheeks. Her breathing slowed, and the fire in her green eyes dimmed.

“As you wished,” she said in a flat, emotionless tone, “they taught me to control my laran. I do not light fires or hurl objects with my mind any longer.”

“Now it is Yllana’s turn to go away,” Marguerida said, gently redirecting the conversation, “and we will miss her as much as we did you, Alanna.”

“It is not my fault that life in a Tower did not agree with you.” Yllana continued to regard Alanna with a mixture of caution and firmness. “I wish it had been otherwise, that you might have been happy there.

Can you not wish me well?”

Alanna looked confused. “Of course, foster sister,” she murmured in a subdued voice. “Why would I want anything else?”

The servants came in to clear away the remains of the meal. Rory excused himself to return to the Guards barracks and a previous engagement with one of his comrades. Yllana pleaded a headache, clearly to avoid becoming the target for anyfurther outbursts.

Alanna rose also, but Marguerida gestured for her to stay.

“My dear, I will need your help with arranging a small dinner gathering tomorrow. Come to my office after breakfast and I’ll give you a list of things to be done.”

“As you wish, Auntie.” Alanna dropped a curtsy before departing.

Domenic reflected that whatever his mother’s intentions, there was no such thing as a small gathering.

She knew too many people, and both she and Mikhail were outgoing, sociable personalities. Domenic suspected that in this aspect, he resembled his Great-Uncle Regis more than either of his parents. He, like Regis, was an essentially private person thrust into a public role. How had Regis done it?

He could not remember Regis without Danilo Syrtis, his sworn brother and paxman, at his side, or Lady Linnea, lending him her gracious strength.

Glancing at his parents, Domenic saw how they, too, formed a seamless whole. They were the right hand and the left, the darkness and the dawn. In that moment, he knew he could not face the future they had planned for him if he were alone. But he did not know where to find the other half of his soul.

Lewis-Kennard Alton stood at the window of the main hall in the Alton suite in Comyn Castle. Bitter storms had lashed the ancient stone walls for the past tenday, and the courtyard garden glistened. Even so, the worst of the winter had passed, Snow no longer lay thick on the ground, and buds swelled on the bare branches.

This room was one of the oldest in the Castle, the walls set with luminous stones from deep caves that charged with light all day and radiated a soft glow at night. Since Lew had last seen the place, someone, probably Marguerida, had covered the old stone seats with needle-pointed cushions in sea-wave patterns of blue and green.

Lew sighed. In his late sixties, one-handed, his face etched with scars, he felt as weary in spirit as the wet, gray world outside. He would just as soon have remained at Armida, the family estate, where he had useful work to do, advising the younger Gabriel, gentling young horses, riding the pasture boundaries, savoring the peace and nostalgia of his childhood home.

Marguerida had specifically asked him to attend the funeral for Javanne Lanart-Hastur. He could not have stayed away.

This place is too full of ghosts.

Memory stirred, unbidden. Many years ago, Lew had ridden with Regis Hastur on the road to Thendara to attend Comyn Council. Regis had been only fifteen then, slender and earnest. His grandfather, Dan-van Hastur, had been grooming him to take his place as Regent of the Comyn. Lew remembered the hunger in the younger man’s eyes as he watched the Terran Federation ships roaring into the sky.

That