In Dreaming Bound Read online

  “I know why you’re here,” Cerradine said, motioning for Mikael to take a seat as he closed the door. “I’ve turned that case back over to the police.”

  Mikael sat. “Why, sir? They attacked members of the Royal House.”

  Cerradine leaned against the wall, crossing one booted ankle over the other. “To start, if we investigated Karemen’s death, it would come out that he was killed by a member of the House of Valaren. Perrin Anjir is having a difficult enough time adjusting to the idea that she killed someone. If that became public, it would be devastating for her.”

  Mikael chewed his lower lip. He could sense the colonel’s desire to be trusted, but beyond that, he was unsure what the man was feeling. The colonel had always had excellent control of his emotions. “The Daujom would keep that information out of the papers.”

  “Do you want to risk someone letting it slip?”

  A good point. Mikael pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, we hand it over to the police and hope they don’t figure it out?”

  “Police Commissioner Faralis has strong incentive to cover this up,” Cerradine said. “The case will disappear into some file, and he’ll keep his mouth shut.”

  “And what of the other man? Jusid? What about whoever killed him?”

  The colonel’s jaw clenched. “That’s not your jurisdiction. Not mine, either.”

  Mikael wasn’t sure what emotion he was catching from Cerradine now. It was subtle, held close. “Finding out who killed him could help us find out who’s after Shironne.”

  “No,” the colonel said. “We’re working on that separately. Pamini’s installed in the police commissioner’s stables now, and she’ll work on coming up with the evidence we need to lay charges against Faralis.”

  A very vague plan. Mikael rubbed a couple of fingers across his forehead. Although Faralis deserved to be in prison, surely, Mikael was more concerned with who had wanted Shironne delivered to an asylum in the first place. Why wasn’t the colonel more worried about that? “So you want me to drop this.”

  “As a personal favor,” Cerradine affirmed.

  Mikael pursed his lips. “What should I tell Dahar?”

  “Have you discussed the body’s treatment with him?”

  He hadn’t had time to exchange more than two words with Dahar in the last few days. “No, we haven’t talked about it.”

  “I suggest you don’t mention it to him, then,” Cerradine said.

  The colonel wasn’t pleading. It wasn’t an order, either. “Is this about Lieutenant Messine?”

  The colonel’s head tilted, irritation now seeping out of him. “I’ve already questioned him. Messine let a piece of information slip to the wrong person,” the colonel said. “It wasn’t wise, but he didn’t have all the particulars. He will be more circumspect in the future.”

  To whom did he let that bit slip? Mikael was sure that if he asked, Cerradine wouldn’t answer.

  * * *

  Shironne had a map of the infirmary in her head now, although she wasn’t sure it would still be there tomorrow. Usually it took a few days to have every item’s location firm in her mind. Deborah had assured her that the infirmarians rarely moved things from their proper places unless they were in use, so she shouldn’t stumble over a bedpan left lying in the middle of the aisle.

  Gabriel showed up around lunchtime, bearing food for them all on a rolling tray that squeaked and rattled. Shironne suspected she would learn that sound well.

  She stayed out of his way while he distributed meals to various personnel—three infirmarians and two assistants, at the moment. Then he found her and directed her toward the counter along the back wall of the infirmary where they could eat. He brought her a stool to sit on but otherwise let her decide where to set it. She located her covered plate with one gloved hand as he watched, his mind clear of anything other than observation.

  She heard him sit a couple of feet away after she’d settled. “I heard my mother came in this morning,” he said. “Was she sick?”

  Shironne paused, plate cover suspended in one hand, then set it aside. So far today she’d worked with two other women, both farther along in their pregnancies, so it was very likely someone could guess what she was doing with Ruth. “I don’t think I’m supposed to discuss her with you,” she said anyway. “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I know she’s your mother, but I just . . . can’t. Not until I know I can.”

  He patted her sleeve with his large hand. “We don’t talk about the patients,” he said in an approving tone. “I’m just a runner, but I have to keep things confidential, too. So you’re right not to tell.”

  More secrets. Shironne held in her resignation.

  Gabriel sat companionably next to her at a counter along one wall of the infirmary, and they ate their lunch—a salad with fish. Shironne surprised herself; rather, the fish did. She sniffed it carefully first, and then touched a piece with a bared fingertip. It bore no taint from the river, and no sign of parasites. Usually she couldn’t stomach flesh of any kind, but this was . . . clean. When she explained that to a curious Gabriel, he found it fascinating. “It must be grown in a pond,” he suggested. “Instead of the river.”

  Shironne didn’t see any reason why people couldn’t raise fish in a pond. She’d simply never considered that before. They ate the rest of their lunch, chatting companionably, Gabriel catching her up on the activities of the rest of the yeargroup. He quizzed her over where to find things in the infirmary, and she remembered most of the answers.

  “Shironne?” Deborah called from the center of the infirmary. “Can you come over here?”

  Her voice didn’t seem anxious, and Shironne couldn’t sense anything other than a general tiredness in the doctor’s mind. After Gabriel promised to take care of her dishes, she climbed down off the stool and went to join Deborah. It was only when she came close enough that she realized Eli was there as well, his impatience tucked close about him. Is he always like that?

  Shironne tried to locate the doctor in her mind and turned to face her. “Ma’am, is there something I need to do?”

  “Your mother has asked if you might come upstairs. She hopes you might be able to help her with Perrin.”

  An unvoiced sigh went with that, Shironne decided. She’d barely given her sisters a thought yesterday. She’d been too overwhelmed by everything else. But how could she not have not thought of them? “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Eli will escort you up there,” Deborah said. “This will take precedence over your infirmary duties this afternoon.”

  Shironne made the long trek up the grand stair out of the Fortress in Eli’s company. His impatience bled through her hand into her senses, barely restrained, like he was holding back a flood with his bare hands. She was slow on the stairs—her legs ached fiercely after the number of stairs she’d gone up and down the day before—and she kept trying to lift her petticoats, a reflex motion since they weren’t there any longer. The first couple of times she did that, brief confusion filled him. Once he’d figured out what she was doing, though, his reaction quickly shifted from amusement to mild irritation.

  “I’m not accustomed to trousers,” she said, feeling defensive as they walked along the chilly first floor of the palace toward the stairwell that led up to the third. “Not without petticoats, I mean.”

  “I realize that,” Eli said in his deep voice. “I apologize if I seem impatient.”

  He probably didn’t look impatient. That was one of the things she knew about Eli. He kept his emotions off his face. He even did a good job controlling his emotions most of the time. He couldn’t fool her, though—or Tabita or Gabriel, for that matter. He had an angry streak in him, she suspected, one he suppressed through sheer will.

  “You don’t need to escort me,” she told him then. “I’m sure I can find my sister.”

  “And leave a member of the royal household walking around unguarded? I think not.”

  Ah, the royal household meant her mother . . . and Melanna and Perrin, too
. Shironne vividly recalled Perrin’s reaction on meeting Eli the last time they’d come to the palace. Does he have any idea that Perrin swoons when she sees him?

  Her feet reached the end of the thick runner, which told her she’d come to an intersection. The sounds changed as well, with echoes that spoke of a high ceiling. They must have reached that wide entry hallway where all the stairwells met; it was far colder in this space. She could walk around the edge of the room until she found the correct stairwell going up, but Eli walked away from her, his footsteps heading directly across the open hall. She followed the sound of his boots, hoping there wasn’t a low bench in her path. Or a fold in the carpet. Or . . . anything.

  She managed to keep her sigh internal. Mikael was much better at directing her. Since he’d had a blind friend growing up, he knew what to look out for. Eli had no grasp of what would cause her problems.

  Fortunately, Eli had stopped to wait for her at the base of the stairwell. “Stop. Over here,” he said, likely saving her from walking into a wall.

  She felt for the wall ahead with her hand, corrected in his direction, and followed him up toward the third floor—Three Up West, as the Family called it. He preceded her in silence, pausing at the landings to make sure she didn’t fall flat on her face and embarrass him. When they finally came out on the third floor, the private part of the palace that housed the king’s family, Eli addressed one of the guards. “She’s come to see her sister.”

  The quarterguard’s voice stayed level, but a hint of resignation tinged Shironne’s perception of the woman. All the quarterguards had to be sensitives, a requirement of the treaty. It gave them the ability to judge the intentions of anyone who approached the royal household.

  Shironne had sensed her sister halfway up the stairwell. Perrin was inflicting a miasma of guilt and fear and pain on the whole household, staining the ambient. “I hope I can help.”

  Eli took her gloved hand, set it on his arm again, and walked along a soft carpeted surface toward Shironne’s sense of Perrin’s anguish. “She’s annoying them,” he said softly. “It makes everyone snappish up here.”

  And therefore he was suffering. “I’ll try,” she promised.

  He stopped, dropped his arm, and opened a door. The pain in the ambient roiled out like river water, making Shironne step back. But he led her on, then, into a closed space where Perrin spun out her pain.

  Then came a squeal. “Shironne!”

  She’d been so fixated on Perrin’s emotions that she hadn’t realized Melanna was there. Her youngest sister threw her arms around Shironne’s waist, her heavily splinted arm hard. Melanna was tall for her age, promising to be even taller than their mother. She still wore the bracelet that let Shironne know where she was, although she’d moved it to the other wrist—the uninjured one. “Your hair looks better!”

  Shironne felt a flush on her cheeks. She wasn’t used to this short hair, brushing her cheeks and carrying dust and humidity and smells with it. She had never seen her face with hair like this, either, so she had no idea whether she looked unkempt all the time. “How are you?”

  Melanna let loose a dramatic sigh. “Bored. Perrin feels bad and everyone’s angry and I can’t do anything. Can I go stay with you?” she whispered loudly.

  Shironne felt her sister’s coarse hair under her gloved hand. “Maybe later.”

  Her mother came near them, her bracelet carrying bells of a different pitch. Her emotions were more controlled, hidden now under Perrin’s distress. She touched Shironne’s hair, sweeping a loose lock back behind one ear. “It does suit you, sweetheart,” she said softly. “How are you doing?”

  There was a great deal left unsaid in that question. Shironne clasped her mother’s hand. “I’m fine, Mama. It’s . . . different, but I’ll adjust.”

  Perrin sobbed noisily from the bed, and Shironne suspected it was honest distress, not just frustration at losing a portion of their mother’s attention. “What can I do?” she asked softly.

  “Perhaps you could sit with your sister,” her mother said. “I need to take Melanna down the hallway to see Amdirian for a moment,” she added, mentioning the king’s consort. “Could you stay with Perrin while I do that?”

  Her mother hadn’t had her walk all the way up here just to keep her sister company. She pressed one hand to Shironne’s cheek, wishing loudly that she could try to see what was clouding Perrin’s mind, what might make her stop this endless mental keening, what would make her better. Then her mother’s hand slipped away, the scent of vanilla and sandalwood going with it.

  “I’ll stay here, Mama,” Shironne promised.

  Her mother’s hand led her to a chair—a soft upholstered one—that must be next to Perrin’s bed, given the sounds of Perrin’s sobs. She heard her mother and Melanna move to the door, and then they were gone. Unsure what she should do, she reached out a hand and located Perrin’s arm. Perrin must be lying on her back, looking up or away. She couldn’t tell. “Perrin, why won’t you talk to anyone?”

  Perrin made a choking sound. “Just go away.”

  Shironne tried to pick up what was in Perrin’s mind through the touch of her hand on Perrin’s arm, but it was a cycle of despair and pain. There weren’t any words in the haze of her mind that would give shape to its cause. Not that Shironne didn’t know the cause, but the shapelessness of Perrin’s distress gave her no way to heal it, either. “Perrin, what can I do to help?”

  “Go away,” Perrin repeated, dully now.

  I’m not sure I’m the best person to deal with this. After all, the men had come to the house after her, not her sisters. If not for me, Perrin would never have been in that situation.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you were mad at me,” she admitted. She heard Perrin shift in the bed, and her arm slid back from Shironne’s fingertips. Turning away from her, Shironne decided. “I would feel better if you yelled at me, or something.”

  “I’m tired,” Perrin said, a little muffled now as if the coverlet covered her face. “Go away.”

  “I’m not going to leave you alone,” Shironne insisted, withdrawing her hand back to her lap. “I’m worried about you.”

  Perrin didn’t respond this time, although annoyance was slowly rising in her thoughts as well. She didn’t want to talk about this. Shironne waited instead, hoping the right thing to say would magically come into her head.

  “Have you ever killed anyone?” Perrin asked abruptly. “Have you?”

  Well, that confirmed Perrin knew the man she’d stabbed was dead.

  “Sort of,” Shironne said after she’d thought it through. “I mean, sometimes when I questioned people, they ended up going to the gallows. And Master Elisabet shot a man to get me away from him. And I watched a friend of mine die in a dream. Even though I couldn’t save him, I still felt like I should have, somehow. Should have saved him. But . . . none of that is the same thing, Perrin.”

  She heard movement in the bed. Perrin’s attention focused on her quizzically, as if she’d never considered that Shironne’s investigations for the army might have consequences.

  “Does the feeling ever go away?” Perrin asked softly.

  Shironne didn’t want to lie to Perrin about this, not when it mattered so much to her. “Most of the people I’ve investigated—the man who killed Captain Kassannan’s wife, the man who stabbed his brother, the woman who stabbed our maid’s lover—if I hadn’t done what I did, they would probably have hurt someone else.”

  “It’s not the same,” Perrin said.

  “I know.” Shironne tried to find her sister’s hand. “Just . . . you weren’t trying to do harm. You were trying to do the right thing. You were trying to help your sister. And that man? He probably hurt girls all the time.”

  Perrin stayed silent, her mind still whirling with pain. When Shironne’s mother came back a short while later, they hadn’t said any more. Shironne turned her head to where she heard her mother’s bracelet tinkling. “Mama, is she all right?”

&nbs
p; “Melanna?” her mother asked. When Shironne nodded, her mother came closer. “The doctor said she’s healing well. She’s just bored. She wants to go down to live in the Family, like you are.”

  Shironne pressed her lips together. Of course Melanna wants that. Her younger sister had always been curious about the Family living under the palace. “Would you let her?”

  She heard her mother sit nearby, incredible weariness spreading around her. Perrin wouldn’t sense that, at least. She was the only one of them who didn’t share the others’ emotions. “I don’t know,” her mother said softly. “This is too much right now. Thankfully, Amdirian is helping me, and Dahar is too.”

  Amdirian—or Lady Amdiria, since that suffix merely meant lady—would be the king’s consort who ran the royal household from her wheeled chair. Shironne had met her a few times now and found her very kind and grandmotherly.

  Her mother touched Shironne’s hand. “Would Melanna . . . do well?”

  Perrin was actually paying attention now, Shironne realized, her pain abating for the moment.

  “I know she would be busy, Mama,” Shironne said. While it might be exhausting for her, she and Melanna had very different personalities and powers. Melanna was only a regular sensitive, like Mama. “I think she would like being in a crowd of other children like that.”

  Her mother mulled that over, her mind too twisted to make words at the moment. “It might be for the best.”

  * * *

  When he returned from army headquarters, Mikael sat in the office for a time, trying to figure out what had happened.

  Clearly, Cerradine had wanted Jusid’s murder left unsolved. It wasn’t just to spare Perrin Anjir the notoriety of having killed a man. Cerradine was protecting someone, most likely Filip Messine. But Cerradine had implied that the lieutenant merely told someone about young Melanna’s injuries, and that person had acted. Mikael felt certain the colonel wouldn’t lie about something like that.