Patternmaster

“That there’s sanctuary for you at Forsyth if you can get there on your own.”

In the moment of utter surprise that followed her words, he did the thing he had feared he might do: He betrayed himself to her. His screen slipped—not far, and only for an instant.

Coransee would have been hard put to read anything in so short a time. But Amber, it seemed, knew how to use her closeness to him. She read everything.

“Well,” she smiled at him, “it looks like I’ve brought you better news than I thought I had. Just the news you need, in fact.”

Teray dropped all pretense. Now, either she would report him or she would not. And Michael had seen fit to trust her. “What I really need,” he said, “is a few good fighters to go along with me. I counted twelve women and outsiders traveling with Michael.”

“Fifteen,” she corrected. “Are you taking Iray?”

“I don’t know yet. It seems to me—” He broke off and looked at Amber. She was still barely an acquaintance. Someone to sleep with, perhaps, but not someone to talk over his personal problems with. But on the other hand, why not? It was so easy. And who else was there? “It seems to me that I’ve done enough to Iray.”

“I don’t think you’ve done anything to her. Joachim has, and certainly Coransee has. But you’re only about to.”

“By leaving her—or by taking her?”

“By deciding for her.”

“I don’t want to get her killed.”

Amber shrugged. “If it were me, I’d want to make up my own mind.”

“I told her once that I wouldn’t leave her here.”

“Well, it’s between you and her.”

“Just out of curiosity, what are you trying to

build between you and me?”

She smiled a little. “Something good, I hope.” “What about Coransee?”

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Point to you,”

she said.

“What?”

“You remember telling me you hoped you’d be

around the day I tried to leave Coransee?”

“You tried?”

“No. But I should have—some time ago. Now I’ve become a kind of challenge to him. Now I’m going to settle here as one of his wives whether I like it or not. He says. Which shows that he hasn’t gotten to know me very well in two years.”

“What are you going to do?”

“The same thing you’re going to do. We’ll live longer if we do it together.”

He took several seconds to digest this. His main emotion was relief. “Two, or perhaps three, traveling together. That’s better than one—though

not much better.”

“You’re going to ask Iray, then?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We’ll need her.”

“ ‘We.’ ” Teray smiled. “I wish you were just a little harder to accept.”

“I’ll wish that myself when the time comes for me to leave you. But I don’t wish it now.”

“You’re staying the night.”

“What about Suliana?”

“I just reached her. She’s going to sleep in her old room—or wherever else she wants to.”

“I’m staying, then.”

She was a lighter golden color beneath her clothing. Honey-colored. The cap of black hair was softer than it looked and the woman was harder than she felt. He would have to keep that last in mind, if he could.

Chapter 5

Early the next morning, Teray left Amber asleep in his bed and went down to the dining room, where he had sensed Iray. He would assume that Iray had not changed. He would know nothing that she did not tell him. He would not prejudge her. She was eating with another woman and a man at the end of one of the long tables in the nearly empty room. Most of the House was not awake yet.

“I have to talk to you,” he told her.

She glanced at him hesitantly, almost reluctantly. Then she took a last bite of pancake, swallowed some orange juice, and excused herself

to her friends. She followed him out to the privacy of the completely empty courtyard where they had last talked. Since then, they had looked at each other, and they had refused to look at each other, but they had hardly spoken at all.

They sat down on one of the benches and Iray stared at her clenched hands.

“I’m sorry,” began Teray, “but I have to ask you … .Is there any way … through you, that Coransee will hear what I say?”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m linked with him, but only so he can be sure that you and I… that we don’t make love.”

“The link is just an alarm, then?”

She nodded. “And I won’t tell him anything you don’t want him to know.”

She was offering him the same loyalty that she had always offered, but somehow, something was wrong. Was it only her link with Coransee that had started her twisting her hands, that made her willing to look at him only in quick glances?

“Will you open to me?” he asked.

“You don’t trust me,” she said. There was neither surprise nor anger in her voice.

“I trust you … trust who you were. I want to trust you now.”

“You can. I won’t open to you, but I won’t betray you either.”

“Has he hurt you? Has he done something you don’t want me to … ?”

“No, Teray. Why should he hurt me?”

“Then what’s happened?”

“I took your advice.”

There it was. All his fears wrapped in four words. He could not pretend to misunderstand her any longer.

“I started out playing a role,” she said. “A hard role. Then …” She faced him, finally, wearily. “Then it got easier. Now it’s not a role anymore.”