A NOTE TO THE READER: Thanks for opening up Chapter 1 of Synapsis! This is the second book of the Liber Telluris series. If you're new to the world of Tellus, please start with Genophage, which you'll find under my profile in Royal Road. If you're returning to Tellus, then spin up your STIGMOS, awaken your Symbiont, and be ready for anything...

SYNAPSIS, CHAPTER ONE: A FRAGILE PEACE

"Once, there was a world...

"That spun in space all alone.

"It spun in space for centuries.

"It spun in space until it met a voyager in the void.

"'Why do you spin? Aren't you dizzy?' asked the voyager.

"'If I didn't spin, I'd never see the sunrise,' replied the world."

--Excerpt from Terran Myths Reconstructed, by Daonial Ollstrent Pellnias

----

13 Tumbling Blooming, 1886

Airfield, Acerbia

The skywhale jolted as its insectoid legs clawed down for the landing platform. The floor and chair shook beneath Eztli, Maga born of the Nxtlu family, and she woke from her brooding.

She had never been so glad to be home. And it was strange even to think of Acerbia as home, demonstrating just how impossible her position was.

The pulsing rhythm of the biotechnological vehicle's heart slowed. The steady beat of the skywhale in flight had lulled Eztli into a state of dark cogitation more appropriate for a scion of Gens Nethress than of Gens Nxtlu. She rose from the richly appointed chair in the divinity's quarters.

Even having a room called the "divinity's quarters" was beginning to seem odd to her. Nethress vessels merely had a captain's or Generosus's quarters. Was her uncle, Magus Princeps Tlalli Generosus Ortus Nxtlu, correct when he warned Eztli against being corrupted by her close contact with Gens Nethress?

As the passenger door opened in the main cabin, the scent of evergreen carried on cool alpine wind wafted into the cabin. Blooddrinker Guards, naked to their waists and wearing the red and black masks of their station, snapped to attention as Eztli passed through the cabin.

Eztli outwardly ignored them, as befit one of her ilk, though inwardly she couldn't ignore the nagging sense that they were just as much people, just as human, as Eztli was.

The guards stayed behind as Eztli stepped out into the black beehive city of Acerbia: Chasm City, the Ebon Pine, the Big Break. She was, if not precisely welcomed, at least tolerated in the Nethressian duchy. Nxtlu soldiers and warriors were not. Not even as an honor guard for a goddess.

Barely a year past, Eztli's late brother Ilhicamina had unleashed a monstrosity, a variant of the ancient genophage tailor-targeted to kill all of Gens Nethress, into the world.

He'd secured the deaths of several Duxes and Comes of Gens Nethress -- and their families, as the gene-devouring xenovirus traveled up and down their family trees -- before securing his own death in the Nethress counterstrike that had conquered the city of Acerbia.

Good riddance. Eztli would not have minded if her madman brother had been sentenced to anaesthematization and excision from the gene pool, but it would have been impossible. In a manner befitting a living god, Ilhicamina had left innumerable bastards over his years of spoil-taking and "genetic taxation," as he called it. It would be impossible to track all of his issue down. And it would have required Eztli to publicly announce Ilhicamina's complicity in releasing the novel genophage, which she didn't dare do, not when the Princeps of Gens Nxtlu forbade it.

The walls of the skywhale's leg curved like a halfpipe, and the the leg's muscles rippled like a throat, pushing the fleshy bucket Eztli stood in down toward the ground. The damage that Nethress's strike caused to the city's primary airfield had been repaired some months previously. Eztli was thankful.

She did not relish the idea of using the Sodality's airfield instead. There were far too many painful associations.

A carriage waited for Eztli at the edge of the airfield. A biomobile would have been quicker, but appearances needed to be maintained. A Ductrix of Gens Nxtlu did not ride in a bourgeois vehicle, even if her Duchy was only one of the mind, of inquiry.

The filters in the interior of the carriage kept out the ripe scent of the jungle wolves straining at the yoke. Soft yellow light glowed from lumins set in every corner of the vehicle. At last Eztli could relax for a moment.

The carriage rumbled down the streets of Acerbia. Despite the damage from last year's bombardment, more pedestrians were out now than when Nxtlu had had control of the city. Once, Eztli would not have cared that the common folk hated her family. Once, she barely would have considered the citizenry human at all.

But a few months earlier, she had met a Chimera who had been human. If this was possible for a monster, was it not possible for a common citizen, as well?

Eztli removed a pair of iridescent feathers from an interior pouch of her feathered belt and meditated on them until the carriage stopped.

To the right, where the Archives of Acerbia had once stood, the massive form of the Thunderhammer cannon rose dozens of stories in the air. Ilhicamina had named this ancient Last Era weapon the Xipe Totec, after a strange pre-Exarchian god who (so fragmentary records claimed) had been worshiped by some of the people whose genes had seeded the line of Gens Nxtlu. Gens Nethress, naturally, had renamed the weapon according to their own idiom, after a skywhale which had been destroyed in the battle with Nxtlu. All souls had been lost, including two Nethress Duxes.

To Eztli's left, the enormous Welcome Frieze of the old Archives stood, though it had been transformed entirely into its true purpose as an elevator into the Libraratory deep within the Labyrinth of Acerbia. The mile-long crack that had opened over the Libraratory when the cannon had emerged from the ground was covered in a black honeycomb roof so that commoners couldn't simply look down into the ancient lab's depths.

The Frieze slid open, and a dark-skinned, bald-pated inquirer ran toward Eztli, his feathered headdress flapping in the chill breeze. The Nethress guardsmen and inquirers who passed him on their way into the elevator gave him nasty looks, but Txaxan paid them no heed.

Eztli had chosen Txaxan as her chief assistant precisely because of his imperviousness to social censure. In a city where she and her people were viewed with barely-concealed hostility, it would not do for her tiny team of inquirers to be put off by nasty looks.

"Ductrix," Txaxan said, taking a knee before the carriage. "Your august person arrives unexpectedly."

"My meeting with the Princeps was shorter than expected." Shorter? Worthless, even. Her uncle demanded data that Eztli wasn't free to give. She was here at Nethress's sufferance to study alongside them, not to spy on them. Worse, Eztli had had no success in gathering information about the archives of the old Milintica bloodline. After her Chimerized cousin Yaotl had briefly unlocked that data, it had been moved. Even Eztli wasn't cleared to know where it was being stored now.

Txaxan rose. "Princeps Nethress has called an inquiry roundtable. I was on my way to represent our interests."

Eztli felt her nostrils flare. "He called a roundtable without me?" How dare Dorsin attempt to exclude her from discussions about their Libraratory findings? They had an agreement.

Txaxan nodded. "One might assert that his purpose in calling it while you were gone was to exclude you." The man's dark eyes drifted toward the carriage.

Just another day in Acerbia. "Very well." Eztli turned on her heel and strode back toward the carriage. "To the Palace of Governance, then."

***

Palace of Governance, Acerbia

Dorsin had not expected to see Eztli at the meeting. Her thick soled boots clacked against the marble floor as she entered the room, and all conversation ceased. Duchess Lenaa narrowed her eyes at the Nxtlu Generosa as Txaxan pulled out Eztli's chair. Eztli slid into her seat, seemingly impervious to the stares of the Nethressians around her.

Eztli glanced around the table, her eyes roving over the Generosi. "You may begin," she said, waving a hand dismissively.

Dux Volund growled softly. "We already had." While Dorsin had been an enhanced infantryman in his youth, his adoptive brother had been a pilot long before Dorsin's birth, and even a century of politicking had not dulled his aggressive impulses.

Perhaps that was what made him such a skilled marshal for Nethress's air force.

"Surely not." Eztli drummed perfectly manicured fingernails on the table. "For we have an agreement, do we not? Nethress is too honorable to exclude my Gens from meetings, since our treaty obligates the sharing of information. No?"

Dorsin held up a hand to forestall the fight, though he didn't blame his brothers and sisters and cousins for their doubts. He himself could barely believe that Gens Nxtlu wasn't planning another act of treachery. "We had begun discussing the agenda for today's meeting. To answer your question, Ductrix, no; we would never think of betraying our agreements. That is how your family operates, not ours."

"Ah, Dorsin." Eztli smiled wanly. "As charming as ever."

"In addition to which consideration, not all of my own family have arrived for the meeting."

"Yes. I see that the Ductrix of this very city is absent."

"Senrii has been busy lately."

"Of course." Eztli raised an eyebrow. "My uncle told me as much. "

Dorsin had known that Eztli had left the city a few weeks ago, but he hadn't known to where; it wasn't his place to keep track of her comings and goings. Perhaps that needed to change. "Slippery as a Nxtlu snake," the saying went.

"He also told me," Eztli added, "that your daughter spent some time in Azcapotz two weeks ago."

Dorsin stiffened. Senrii's mission there was supposed to be secret. Just because Gens Nethress had a temporary truce with Eztli within the city of Acerbia, Dorsin wasn't obligated to ignore the rest of the world.

With most of his family reliant on exposure to the aerosolized genophage cure to prevent Chimerization, every mission had to be critical. The expense of shipments and the speed at which the cure denatured had convinced most of his family members to secretly remain in Acerbia and manage their fiefdoms remotely via Synapsis.

If only they could figure out how to fabricate the cure at will, or even better, develop a permanent vaccine! Unfortunately, while Erus Tvorh's mother Meghan, who was an auxiliary processing unit linked to the Libraratory Tool, could synthesize the cure, Nethress still hadn't figured out how to engineer the organs necessary for it. Until the right STIGMOS were isolated, Meghan would be their only source.

"I told Princeps Tlalli he must've been mistaken," Eztli continued, her voice studiedly nonchalant. "I informed him that Gens Nethress would never stoop so low as to dispatch the Ductrix of Acerbia to spy on Gens Nxtlu. Not when your Gens and mine have agreed that Acerbia is to play the role of neutral ground between our two families, and to provide the template for understanding and perhaps peace between your people and mine. "

"Yes, he must've been mistaken," Dorsin agreed. "Though I wonder why your Princeps believes Duchess Senrii to have been in your territory. Surely Gens Nxtlu has not been keeping a database of my family's genetic information."

Eztli gazed placidly at Dorsin. "I did not think to ask. I do not question my superiors any more than your family questions theirs." She glanced around the table.

Infuriating woman. "You know as well as I do, Ductrix, that your insane brother gathered that information for the purposes of poisoning my family with a targeted strain of the genophage."

"And you know as well as I do, Dux, that my brother's purpose is not my own. If a man used a tool for an improper purpose, it is not the tool that is tainted by this action." Eztli's fingernails clicked against the table. "You must understand how important it is to Gens Nxtlu that this peace be maintained."

"Indeed. No doubt you're still smarting from losing Acerbia. Tell me, Ductrix, how long does Nxtlu need to lick its wounds before it feels safe enough to try to murder my family again?"

"I am not my family, Princeps. I have not betrayed our agreement, nor will I. Did I not swear a blood oath with you?"

"Just words."

Eztli clucked her tongue. "An oath? Just words? Did my ears hear a Princeps of Gens Nethress claim that an oath is only words?"

"Your ears heard a Princeps of Gens Nethress observe that for Gens Nxtlu, honor has always bowed before expediency."

"Not expediency, Princeps. Growth. Evolution."

"With you at the apex, no doubt. And so long as we are on the topic of how well you have discharged your oath, I feel compelled to bring your attention to the sale of the graphene technology to private individuals within this duchy."

Eztli raised an eyebrow. "Gens Nethress has always considered uplifting the less gifted to be one of its duties, has it not?"

"Gens Nethress has, so long as the technologies are verified to be safe."

"If the graphene tech is unsafe, then why have you replaced every membrane screen in this palace with it? Princeps Dorsin, I cannot but believe that when you claim concerns of safety as your shield, what you truly mean is that you wish to keep the technology out of the hands of others lest its dispersion yield advantages to your adversaries."

Dorsin couldn't believe that Eztli would dare make such accusations. "Such as the Gens that without permission has sold--"

"Or even the common folk. Princeps, for the last time, I am not my family. I do not intend you harm. And imagine the good that this technology will do in the hands of others.

"Low-power displays of information, resilient and yet capable of being rolled up and carried easily. No more delicate membranes criss-crossed with veins. The Libraratory has already shown the incredible applications of graphene for the purpose of surveillance. This is not simply a matter of military equivalency of power, Princeps. Entertainment will benefit as well. The leap in vidality tech, for example, will be astronomical, much to the pleasure, I'm sure, of Tvorh's Sodality acolyte. So why not share it with others?"

"It was not your decision to make."

"By your agreement to Rosabella's plea, it was as much mine as it was yours, so had we disagreed from the outset, Princeps, who would have prevailed? Your decision against mine. Whose will would have been the stronger?"

Magi weren't supposed to get headaches. Dorsin rubbed his forehead. "You should have told me."

"I do not ask permission to act as I will from a member of any other Gens. Not even a Princeps. What is done is done. Accept it."

"You walk a dangerous path--"

The door to the chamber slid open, and Dorsin stood as his daughter entered the room. "Ductrix Senrii," he said, nodding.

"Hey, dad." Senrii shot a distasteful glance at Eztli. "Keeping odd company these days, huh?"

"If you were in Acerbia more often, Ductrix, you would've noticed," Eztli shot back.

"Enough." Dorsin held up a hand again. "Ductrix Eztli, perhaps we can continue this conversation in private."

"As you wish." Eztli leaned back in her chair. "I'm as interested as anyone else in hearing the reports of your inquirers."

The rest of the gathering trickled in slowly. Two of Ductrix Lenaa's Comes sat near her. There was Ranulf, a bespectacled and balding Tutela in his 40s, whom Dorsin had named head of inquiry in the Libraratory below. Senrii had smarted over that selection, but the girl was too young to be able to be trusted with such decisions, even if she was the Ductrix of Acerbia.

Ductrix Ramona, the youngest of Dorsin's siblings, only recently out of grieving for the husband she lost a year ago in their assault, entered. Dorsin was glad she hadn't been there for Eztli's arrival; brash young Ramona wouldn't have been able to contain herself during the exchange of barbs. As it was, if looks could poison, the harsh gaze that she sent Eztli's way would've been infected with the plague.

At last Dorsin's wife Oralie arrived. Though she'd been born to a family barely one step above the bourgeois, she had taken to her position as a Ductrix and then as the Uxor Principis as if nobility ran in her blood. She was the most recent recipient of the Symbiont out of anybody in the room, but she had accepted its responsibility with aplomb, and even now she acted as an unofficial intermediary, clerk, and administrator in her daughter's new duchy.

Oralie was Dorsin's vizier, and the sight of her gladdened his heart.

When everyone had come in and taken a seat, Dorsin nodded to Ranulf. The Head of Inquiry stood and drew out his papers. "Eri, Erae, fellow inquirers and seekers of knowledge, it is my honor to present to you today the most incredible findings that your humble servants have made in the vast Libraratory below, where our ancestors worked tirelessly for the betterment of their families and their posterity--"

"Some of us'll never have posterity if this meeting lasts forever," Senrii faux-whispered to Lenaa.

The girl had no sense of shame. "Senrii."

At the sound of her father's cold voice, Senrii pursed her lips and sat back in her chair. Dorsin nodded again to Ranulf.

"Yes," the Head of Inquiry said. "Eri, Erae, you all know of many of the discoveries that have already borne fruit for us. The personal burdenbirds. The screens of carbon layers, revolutionary for surveillance, which we are already making good use of throughout the palace." Dorsin ignored the growing smugness of Eztli's smile. "The drop pods, launched from the Thunderhammer cannon in the center of the city and propelled by great flames, capable of dropping a payload to any point on Tellus in a radius of hundreds of miles.

"Every day, our knowledge grows by leaps and bounds. The wonders of the last era are unveiled before us. But..." Ranulf scratched his head uncertainly, the sales pitch giving way to obvious agitation. "But there are still questions," he admitted.

"Care to tell us what they are, Ranulf?" Senrii asked. "Or are you going to keep talking around the problem?"

"Er. Yes. You see, we've uncovered a...communication. The new form of shortsphere, which, you'll recall, is hardly short--"

"Radio," Eztli injected. "Yes, we recall."

Ranulf took an object from the cart behind him and placed it on the table in the center of the room around which everyone was sitting. It was taller than it was wide, about half a foot in height, and waving cilia-like hair stretched up toward the ceiling from its top.

Dorsin recognized it as one of the strange new devices, like a shortsphere but more powerful. "That is a receiver."

Ranulf nodded. "However." He took another device from the cart, a circular nodule of flesh marked around the perimeter with the numbers zero through nine. He pressed the tumor against the flesh of the radio, and the two of them bonded. "This is a decryption mechanism. Some of the Last Era radios, we've discovered, scramble their signals through a conversion. By using some of the blueprints that we've found, we are able to translate those signals back into High Exarchian."

"Yeah, we know." Senrii shrugged.

"Senrii," Dorsin warned. She shot him a look of surprise at his chiding, but the girl needed to learn to hold her tongue.

Still, her impatience was understandable. In the past year, the Libraratory technologies had led to the discovery of six smaller nearby caches of last era provenance, and two of those discoveries had come from radio signals emanating from ancient antennas within the caches.

"Your pardon, Era." Ranulf bowed his head. "I mean to say that this is the first signal that we have discovered without an obvious key." He turned the radio on, and static filled the room.

Dorsin straightened up, closed his eyes, and listened to the waves of sound as they washed over him. It was true that there was no recognizable speech within the sound, but there was an obvious pattern to its movement. The ears could hear it, though it meant nothing to the mind.

"I bet Tvorh could tell us what it means," Senrii said. "I think he speaks bat."

"Senrii!" Dorsin barked. That was no way to speak of her fellow Generosus. Senrii gulped and paled visibly. Why couldn't the girl learn some decorum?

"So I come here to ask for your leave," Ranulf said quickly. "We've discovered a new form of technology that may allow us to analyze the strength of radio signals by placing several recipient antennas at some distance apart. By combining the positions of the antennas with the power of the signal received, we may be able to pinpoint its source. But this will require some movement on our part. Our inquirers will require defense as they transit the wildlands --"

To Dorsin's–and by the looks of it, to everyone else's--surprise, Eztli rose fluidly. "Perhaps that will not be necessary." She held out a hand. "The device, if you please."

Ranulf looked to Dorsin, and the Princeps nodded. He couldn't afford to tell Eztli no. Not and retain the shaky peace that he had with her family.

With the radio in her hand, Eztli poked at the numbers on the decryption device. Eight selections in all: 07041776. Then she pressed the center of the tumor, activating the decryption system.

The sounds of High Exarchian replaced the shifting static.

They had decrypted radio waves twice before, and Dorsin knew to expect numbers. As the radio announced the message, Oralie scribbled the coordinates that it relayed.

The message was only a few seconds long. Once it had concluded, there was silence for a few moments, and then it repeated.

"Well," Dorsin said, "it appears that our Nxtlu associate has many hidden skills." Eztli just smiled. "Get that coordinate mapped."

In a few moments, they were gazing at a display written in veins of every color shifting over the table top. "Only 30 miles away," Lenaa mused to herself.

Oralie glanced back and forth between the map of the wilderness and the map of Acerbia. "That's likely still connected to the Labyrinth."

"We can't know that," Senrii said.

"It makes sense," Dorsin agreed, "given what we know of how far those tunnels range. But you're right, Senrii. We would have a terrible time finding our way to those coordinates through the Labyrinth unless--"

"Unless we had somebody to map it for us."

This time Dorsin didn't chastise Senrii for speaking out of turn. "Ductrix, please fetch Magus Tvorh. We have need of his unique skills."

***

Palace of Governance, Acerbia

"...the fragments of which we continue to try to piece together in order to..." Old Haralt paused. "Magus?"

"I'm awake! I'm awake," Tvorh said.

Haralt frowned and glanced sideways at Hrega and Bilr. Tvorh's two sisters both sat upright on the bench on either side of him. If you judged only by their body postures, they were the images of attentiveness.

Based on the grins on their faces, though, they were laughing silently at him. Never mind the fact that he was brain-linked with Hrega and could feel her smile; Tvorh didn't even need to turn his head to hear them nudging each other.

Haralt turned back to the board. Chalk scratched as he wrote out a number of glyphs. "...in order to determine the meaning of what few records we do have of those times."

Tvorh's echolocation couldn't show him marks on the board. That was why he'd linked his nerves with his tiny sister; through her eyes he could see light and color.

He saw the green of the board and of the evergreen inlaid in the alternating marble and black honeycomb of the floor and walls; the white of the chalk, of Haralt's slicked-back hair and well-trimmed beard.

He saw his own face, so much darker than his sisters' skin, and heard Hrega smile.

And writing. Words on pages, words on chalkboards. When he'd been young, he'd taken for granted Acerbia's Archives and the thousands upon thousands of books he'd had access to every day. Now, too late, he was acutely aware of how precious the ability to read really was.

Almost as precious as his baby sisters. Are you laughing at me? Tvorh teased through the bond.

The SOPHIOS inside him sent the message along his nerves and into her mind, and he heard her gasp. She always did that when he spoke to her brain-to-brain. "It's like a slimy worm in my head," as she'd once put it in her seven-year-old way. Tvorh understood; there was something unsettling about the symbiotic organism infusing his flesh.

Little Reggy still let Tvorh bind with her, though, and now she let out a mental giggle. Nope! Nope, nope, nope. She shook her head, her pigtails slapping from side to side. "Nope."

"Children," Haralt said sternly, not turning from the board. "Pay attention."

Haralt didn't like the idea of Tvorh sharing mental space with his sisters. How had he put it? "I was your age once. There are things going on in your head that your little sister has no business knowing about." It had taken Senrii some work to convince the most skilled archaeoinquirer of Gens Nethress to mentor Tvorh and his sisters, and he'd agreed only after much grumbling.

Tvorh stuck his tongue out at Haralt's back, making Bilr on his other side giggle. Tvorh didn't really mean it, though. This one hour a day was as close as he got to books every day, not to mention his sisters.

If only he wasn't so exhausted.

Fathers, but Tvorh missed reading. He missed it a lot. Finally, after years of scrounging to survive, of hiding in the chasm and having to fight for his life every day, Tvorh was surrounded by books.

But he didn't even have functioning eyes. Those had been the cost of his entry into Gens Nethress. The irony was enough to make him want to scream.

Instead, he picked up his pen in his free hand and started taking notes in the notebook in front of him. Haralt might be irritated by Tvorh's distractibility, but he was only having such a hard time paying attention because he was trying too hard to pay attention.

There was too much to do and not enough time in which to do it. Tvorh had to prove his value to Gens Nethress. He didn't want to spend his life acting as a Key or relegated to his chambers, no matter how palatial they might be. He had to...

Prove himself...

Tvorh yawned, and a gasp squeaked out as he did so. The scratching of the chalk on the board stopped, and Haralt spun. "Erus Tvorh, shall we stop for the day?"

Tvorh was pretty certain that it wasn't a serious question, but even if it had been, he didn't want to stop. He just... Had a hard time staying awake. What with the fact that he'd been up until the early hours of the morning practicing at the shooting range.

What if Princeps Dorsin decided that adopting Tvorh had been the wrong decision? His sisters would end up on the streets again.

No, he had to prove himself.

"No, Erus Haralt," Tvorh said. "I don't want to stop."

Too much to learn. Not enough time in which to do it. Couldn't somebody invent new hours of the day for him? Or couldn't somebody create a STIGMOS that could speed up thought so that he could have more time?

Being a Generosus was hard work. And it was harder if you were afraid that the family that had adopted you might decide that they were better off without you.

"Erus Haralt," Bilr said, "those look like different letters." She pointed at the board.

Haralt nodded. "They are certainly from different pre-Exarchian languages," he said, pointing to the glyphs that he'd written on the left side of the board and then to the ones on the right. "We've discovered no fewer than a dozen different such alphabets and syllabets in fragmentary documents from the era of the Heavenfall, with another several that are clearly related to some of the others, using similar shapes with additional diacritical marks attached."

Haralt scratched out another series of glyphs on the bottom of the board. The first one was a single line, the second a vertical line followed by a V shape, and the third two lines crossed diagonally.

Haralt pointed to each in turn. "One, five, ten. These symbols are used in various arrangements in a number of what appear to be official documents, and we are certain of their numerical values. Some inquirers suspect that they derive from a yet older pre-Exarchian language. They're used very infrequently, however. Often we find them at the beginnings of documents.

"Clearly they are not the most common method of writing numerical values, which is no surprise, as they mark single values using multiple shapes and count additively rather than by using multiplicative bases. This makes both writing and arithmetic difficult."

Bilr leaned towards Tvorh. "I don't know what he just said."

Tvorh patted her on her head. "You will, Bilr. Just give it time." She was supposed to start mathematical instruction in the next couple of months. "For now, just write down the symbols that Erus Haralt is writing."

Despite his best efforts, Tvorh faded in and out as his tutor droned on. Finally his ears caught the faint birdlike call, sent through the Palace's chordal systems, that announced that the hour was over. As Haralt leaned back and sighed, Tvorh urged his sisters out of the room.

Reluctantly he released his bond with Hrega. Color and sight swirled away to oblivion, leaving Tvorh feeling empty inside.

The girls needed to get to their riding class, which was really recreation. And Tvorh needed to get to his swimming class. A Magus had to learn how to operate below the surface of the water as well as above it.

Oh, who was he kidding? What he actually needed was a nap.

Hrega and Bilr ran for the door, but Bilr stopped there. "Wait! Make me smell nice, Tvorh?"

Tvorh grinned and released a puff of a vanilla-scented ester from his palm. It settled on his little sister like a gentle perfume.

She giggled, limped up to hug him, and then ran off.

"Going somewhere, Tvorh?" Aoife asked as he stepped into the open air marble hallway.

Tvorh stumbled, and Aoife caught his arm, spinning him about slightly. "Aoife? What are you doing here?"

"Reminding you that you missed our date last night," Aoife said, weaving her arm through his.

"Date?" Tvorh didn't remember agreeing to go on a date with Aoife. Not because he wouldn't consider it, but just because, well, he hadn't.

He felt Aoife's posture change in annoyance as they walked past the marble pillars to their left. Morning sunlight poured between the pillars and warmed his skin.

What did sunlight look like, again?

"We were going to go to the market, remember? A convoy of merchants from the Free City of Hallard...?"

"That was last night?" Tvorh scratched his head.

"Obviously not."

"I'm sorry, Aoife. I completely lost track of time. I'm –"

"I know, I know. Busier than an underfed bear in the Withering months. You've told me. A lot."

"I have to do this, Aoife. I have to learn how to be... How to be better for Gens Nethress."

She stopped and turned about, her hair dancing a symphony to his ears. "Tvorh, they're not going to throw you back into the Chasm. You're too valuable." She squeezed his biceps. It felt...nice. "You can take a break now and then."

Tvorh wasn't certain that he could, but with Aoife standing there squeezing his arms, he couldn't find the words to use to argue against her, either.

"So!" Aoife laced her arm through his again as they started to walk again. "What did you drive yourself to exhaustion doing last night? What was so interesting that it could take your attention away from me, of all people?" His unnaturally sensitive ears heard her bat her eyes at him. It sounded ridiculous, and Tvorh liked it a lot.

"Shooting range."

"Well, I can't blame you for that." Aoife sighed. "Though you know that you could've invited me. I'd have taught you better than any of these green-blooded blue-bloods." Aoife smiled innocently as old Comes Laboran passed them by, appearing untroubled by the scowl he gave her.

Tvorh just wanted to curl up and hide. You didn't call blue-bloods blue-bloods, not in their hearing. "I'm a blue-blood myself, you know."

"I know," Aoife said cheerily.

"And what was that about green-bloods? I haven't heard that one before."

"Oh, just a term we use on the frontier. It means somebody who hasn't really spent time out in the wilderness yet. Toughening up." She winked. "Learning to use guns. You know, all of the things that a well-trained, well-rounded person should learn how to do."

"Better not cut my skin, then. My blood's just as green as theirs is."

"Oh, Tvorh." Aoife shook her arm within the loop of his own. "You might not have spent time out in the wildlands, but you lived in a wilderness of your own. Anyway, I came down to see if you wanted to catch a vidality. The Beast of Elster Woods is playing, and some of the acolytes are going out to see it." Aoife was terribly proud of having risen from Sodality novice to acolyte a month before.

"Now?"

"Well, it starts in 20 minutes –"

"Can't. I've got swimming lessons."

Aoife stopped again and stepped in front of him. "Tvorh, can't you relax for just an hour? You stood me up yesterday. And yet here I am, offering you forgiveness and another chance to spend time in my glorious luminosity."

"I know, Aoife. Thank you, and I'm sorry. I just... I can't."

Aoife stared after Tvorh as he continued on without her. "You know, for someone who's afraid of being kicked out of the clan and driven away by the people he cares about, you sure don't spend a lot of time with the people who care about you."

Tvorh stopped.

Aoife's slippers pattered on the marble floor. "I'm sorry, Tvorh. But honestly, somebody needed to say it to you. I mean –"

"You care about me?" Tvorh asked.

Aoife drew up short. "I thought that was obvious," she said. "Look, Tvorh. I'm not trying to guilt you into spending time with me. It's just... you know..."

"Hey, kid." If Aoife's voice was the wind, Senrii's was a gust that broke straight through it. "Oh, Aoife. Sorry, didn't see you there."

Aoife stepped back from Tvorh, heat radiating from her face. Why was she embarrassed? "It's all right, Era."

"Oh, please. You know you're supposed to call me Senrii. Kid. With me."

Senrii looked really good to his echolocation. Really, really good. The skinsuit clinging to her long, slender, yet muscular legs; the hair brushing her shoulders...

He couldn't blame himself for the crush he'd had on her when he'd first met her.

"Kid. Now." She strode off down the hall she'd come from.

Tvorh hurried to catch up. "Wait, Senrii. What's up?"

"Heading down to the Labyrinth. We need you to screech for us a time or two, bat boy."

Tvorh looked back over his shoulder at Aoife and shrugged helplessly. He could feel her eye roll in the vibrations of the air, could hear her sigh, but then she strode after them. "I'm coming, too. Only way I'm going to get a few minutes with Gens Nethress's latest star," she grumbled.

Why did that make Senrii grin?