Read Online With Stars Underfoot (Adventures in the Liaden Universe®) by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller - Free Book Online Page A

mess.
      Go to Solcintra Hall, take up his role as a Healer once more. Yes, certainly. Tereza, of all of them, should know that he had no intention of ever—he had told her, quite plainly—and his had never been a true Healing talent, in any case. It was a farce. A bitter joke made at his expense.
      He closed his eyes, deliberately initiating a basic relaxation exercise. Slowly, he brought his anger—his panic—under control. Slowly, cool sense returned.
      Tereza had been his friend. Caustic, she could certainly be, but to taunt a wounded man for his pain? No. That was not Tereza.
      The flimsy was a ruin of mangled fiber and smeared ink. No matter. He crossed the room and dropped it into the fire grate, and stood staring down into the cold ashes.
      Return to Solcintra? Not likely.
      He moved his shoulders, turned back to the window and picked up the lopsided cup; sipped tepid tea.
      He should answer his man of business. He should, for the friendship that had been between them, answer Tereza. He should.
      And he would—later. After he had finished his tea and sat for his dry, dutiful hours, trying to recapture that talent which had been his, and which seemed to have deserted him now. One of many desertions, and not the least hurtful.
    * * *
    SPRING CREPT ONWARD, kissing the flowers in the door garden into dewy wakefulness. Oppressed by cedar walls, Mil Ton escaped down the left-hand path, pacing restlessly past knolls and groves, until at last he came to a certain tree, and beneath the tree, a bench, where he sat down, and sighed, and raised his face to receive the benediction of the breeze.
      In the warm sunlight, eventually he dozed. Certainly, the day bid well for dozing, sweet dreams and all manner of pleasant things. That he dozed, that was pleasant. That he did not dream, that was well. That he was awakened by a voice murmuring his name, that was—unexpected.
      He straightened from his comfortable slouch against the tree, eyes snapping wide.
      Before him, settled casually cross-legged on the new grass, heedless of stains on his town-tailored clothes, was a man somewhat younger than himself, dark of hair, gray of eye. Mil Ton stared, voice gone to dust in his throat.
      "The house remembered me," the man in the grass said apologetically. "I hope you don't mind."
      Mil Ton turned his face away. "When did it matter, what I minded?"
      "Always," the other replied, softly. "Mil Ton. I told you how it was."
      He took a deep breath, imposing calm with an exercise he had learned in Healer Hall, and faced about.
      "Fen Ris," he said, low, but not soft. Then, "Yes. You told me how it was."
      The gray eyes shadowed. "And in telling you, killed you twice." He raised a ringless and elegant hand, palm turned up. "Would that it were otherwise." The hand reversed, palm toward the grass. "Would that it were not."
      Would that he had died of the pain of betrayal, Mil Ton thought, rather than live to endure this. He straightened further on the bench, frowning down at the other.
      "Why do you break my peace?"
      Fen Ris tipped his head slightly to one side in the old, familiar gesture. "Break?" he murmured, consideringly. "Yes, I suppose I deserve that. Indeed, I know that I deserve it. Did I not first appeal to Master Tereza and the Healers in the Hall at Solcintra, hoping that they might cure what our house Healer could not?" He paused, head bent, then looked up sharply, gray gaze like a blow.
      "Master Tereza said she had sent for you," he stated, absolutely neutral. "She said, you would not come."
      Mil Ton felt a chill, his fingers twitched, as if crumpling a flimsy into ruin.
      "She did not say it was you."
      "Ah. Would you have come, if she had said it was me?"
       Yes , Mil Ton thought,