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Healer Hall
Surebleak City


“Lady, there’s one waiting for you in the visitor’s parlor.”

Anthora looked up from her screen and met the ’prentice Healer’s eyes.

“One?” she repeated.

The boy—Skoly—was Surebleakean; a Liaden would have bowed to cover his consternation. This lad only stared, mouth tight.

“I only mean to ask,” Anthora clarified gently, “if this person gave you a name or any other identifying information?”

Relief eased the unhappy mouth.

“Oh! He said the delm sent him with a message, and he has to deliver it in person.”

And that, she thought, marking her place and closing the book, resolved the matter neatly.

She stood.

“I will be pleased to end one’s waiting,” she said.


The Surebleak City Healer Hall was housed in a former hotel. Renovations were ongoing, and the function of rooms reassigned as necessary to accommodate the work.

This week, the visitor’s parlor was on the mezzanine level, in what had perhaps once been an intimate meeting room. Some attempt had been made to create a comfortable waiting area—two soft chairs, an occasional table, and a bureau supporting a kettle, cubes of pressed tea, packets of coffeetoot, and sealed bottles of water.

The one who awaited her, however, was not seated, refreshment in hand, but standing at the window, looking out over the snowy street.

She closed the door; her brother Val Con turned. He was dressed Surebleak-style—sweater, work pants, boots. Snow melt glittered in his dark hair like crystal beads. His face was…careful, and his emotions also. She felt tenderness brush over her, tasted the sharp tang of his worry. There was more, but she did not immediately try to See it. Her brother’s arms were open to her. She walked into his embrace, put her arms around his waist, and her face against his shoulder.

“Sister,” he murmured. His arms were a comfort; the sweater warm under her cheek. It smelled like cedar and lavender, which meant it had come from House stores. The very scent evoked home and safety.

“Brother.”

She took a deep breath, squeezed him and stepped back, Inner Eyes open now.

“Well,” she murmured, “what is this, Brother? Have you been wounded?”

He tipped his head.

“Miri was wounded, as you know. I assume that you are seeing my clumsy attempt to hold her to life—”

“By feeding her yours.” Anthora gently traced the scarred edge of his pattern.

Val Con raised an eyebrow.

“Am I in need, Healer?”

She moved a hand, dismissing irony. “Surely, a sister may show some concern, when her brother arrives after too long a separation, bearing new scars.”

She Looked more deeply, finding the lifemate link at the core of him, blazing even brighter than previously with the energy of two lives interleaved and supporting both.

It was a thing of very great beauty, that link, and Anthora sighed in relief, to find it burning so brightly. She began to withdraw—and paused, spying something else new in the tapestry of his life.

It was a small thing—not an entire weaving, nor yet merely a thread. When she brought her attention upon it more nearly, she could hear—a song.

“Emissary Twelve demonstrated a less-ruinous path before I was entirely committed,” Val Con murmured. “I apprehend that she also performed a repair.”

“Quite an elegant repair,” Anthora agreed. “I would welcome an opportunity to speak with her about her methods.”

“That may not be possible. She only plans to be here, herself, for the next one hundred forty-four local years.”

“Ah. I will make it an object to free an afternoon in my schedule before her departure,” Anthora said solemnly. “But none of this is why you came.”

“No.”

He reached out and took her hands in his, and studied her, green eyes sharp and face serious.

“I came to ask a question,” he said.

Anthora inclined her head.

“Ask, then.”

“Very well. Tell me truly: Are you well?”

“What do the Healers tell you?”

Val Con sighed.

“The Healers would have me know that you are diminished; that there is a lack of habitual levity; a worrisome quietness of energy. They skirt such definitives as well and not-well.” He let go of her right hand, and cupped her cheek, looking hard into her eyes.

“I can see for myself that you are—changed,” he murmured.

Anthora smiled.

“Of course you can. And you would think, would you not, Brother, that Healers, who deal with so much of it, would know the word changed?”

“Perhaps they did not wish to cause alarm.”

“And see how well they accomplished their goal,” she said sharply.

“Arguably changed is a different quality than either well or not-well,” Val Con remarked.

It was Anthora who sighed this time, and stepped back, freeing herself from his touch.

“You told ’prentice Skoly that you bore a message from the delm,” she said.

“In fact, I bear two messages from the delm. Which one I deliver depends upon the answer to a question. Are you well?”

She wrinkled her nose at him.

“Well enough, though as we agree—changed. I am learning my new parameters—necessary work which may—and must—be undertaken wherever I find myself.”

“Hah. And your lifemate, my brother Ren Zel?”

She hesitated.

“Also changed,” she said slowly, careful to be precise, “and learning new limits. He remains under treatment because the Healers wish to assure themselves that the…addiction will not return.”

“Will it?”

“In my opinion, it will not. He no longer sees the golden lines, and his memory of them is very dim, as is the memory of his victory.”

She raised a hand.

“There is also for both of us the question of…classification. You will understand that this concerns the Guild more nearly than our colleagues. It would seem that I—am a Healer. What else I might be cannot be known until this quietness of energy with which the Hall Master saw fit to task you has arisen into the frenetic state that had been more usual with me.”

“Will that occur?” he asked.

She moved her shoulders.

“Who can say? Though I confess to you, Brother, it is…something of a relief, to not stand always in the eye of the storm, and to have the luxury of calm reflection. I suppose I will accommodate myself, if the storm finds me again, but at the moment, I am content with quiet energy.” She reached out to touch his cheek again, a fleeting brush of fingertips against smooth skin.

“And you know, I am a very good Healer.”

“Yes,” he said solemnly, “I do know that. Do you think that I might dare ask to see Ren Zel?”

“I don’t know why you need to ask,” she said. “I will take you to him, myself.”

This new iteration of his woolly-headed sister would, Val Con thought, take some getting used to. Still, he was of better heart now than he had been after his conversation with the Hall Master, who would have had him believe Anthora dull, even broken. To find that she was neither, merely altered by what she and her lifemate had done in the service of preserving the universe as they knew it—well, who would not be changed by such an event?

He went beside her down quiet hallways, and then far noisier, as she walked them through a construction zone, and into a narrow back hall, where he dropped behind her so as not to rub his shoulder against the wall.

She seemed older, he thought, which was no ill thing, as she had always seemed much younger than her years, the effect of the frenetic energies the Healers now missed in her. He chided himself, a little, that he had not known that the buffeting of her own powers had distressed her.

“How should you have known?” Anthora asked very much in her old style of snatching the thought out of one’s head. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “I did not know it myself. It was what was. It is only now that I have achieved a state where comparison is possible, and find I have a preference.”

She moved a hand to the right as they came to a cross corridor.

“Down here; they have him overlooking the garden.”

“Garden?” he asked, recalling the blowing snow outside.

“They’ve done well with materials in hand,” Anthora told him, with a touch of her old earnestness. “It’s not the garden at Solcintra Hall, of course, but it is—fitting. Ren Zel quite likes it.”

“And you?”

“Say that it’s grown on me.”

She stopped and placed her hand against the door.

“Beloved,” she said, far too softly to be heard on the other side. “May I come in? I have Val Con.”

The door whisked open, and there was Ren Zel, smiling, reaching to catch their hands and pull them inside.

With the door closed, Ren Zel released Anthora to grip Val Con’s forearms—kin-touch, if not so gentle as a hug, and Val Con felt another knot of worry that had been lodged in his chest loosen.

“Brother!” Ren Zel said gladly. “It is good to see you.”

“And to see you,” Val Con assured him, taking a moment to consider the man before him. Unlike his volatile lifemate, Ren Zel was quiet; serious and gentle. A less likely savior of the universe could hardly have been found.

Only Ren Zel had a gift—a dramliz gift, though not one, thank the gods, that often manifested. He could—he had been able to—see the golden threads, as he described them, that held everything together.

Even more horrifying, he had been able to manipulate them, and had used his power boldly and to the point, sealing the rift in the fabric of space that had allowed Tinsori Light free passage between universes.

It had been too heavy a burden for a mortal man, and Ren Zel had become addicted to his own gift. The gift that he no longer held, according to his lifemate.

A brother could only be glad for that.

“Why are you here?” Ren Zel asked, and there was a certain gleam in his pretty brown eyes. “Have you something for us?”

There was an eagerness there, and Val Con sighed.

“I am here on behalf of the delm,” he said quietly, and saw some of the eagerness fade, replaced by a reasonable wariness. One did not, after all, wish to hear overmuch from the delm.

Ren Zel pressed his arms once more, and released him, waving them further into the room. “Come, sit by the window. There’s a pleasant view, believe it or don’t.”


The view was pleasant, overlooking a pocket garden of shrubberies and artfully placed blocks and boulders of what was very probably scavenged ’crete, softened and made winsome by the snow. In the center of the space was a simple fountain, kept liquid by small heat lamps set into the bottom of the pool, their light transforming the modest spray of water into silver, blue, and amber.

“Shall I ring the kitchen for tea?” Ren Zel asked, after seeing them seated.

“Perhaps not,” Anthora said. “Val Con is afraid of being found out, you know. He had only told poor Skoly that he wanted me.”

“I was gentle,” Val Con protested.

“Skoly is easily overset,” Ren Zel murmured, “and too afraid of giving offense.”

“Perhaps he will learn better,” Val Con said. “There’s no need to rouse the kitchen on my account.”

Ren Zel crossed his arms on the back of Anthora’s chair and leaned on them.

“So,” he said, “a message from the delm.”

“First a question,” Val Con said, studying him. Ren Zel seemed not as much changed as Anthora, which was perhaps accounted for by his fading memories. Indeed, he seemed very much less worn than he had been previous to his engagement to save the universe.

Still, the question had to be asked—and answered.

“Are you well?”

Ren Zel tipped his head, giving the query due consideration, and met his eyes.

“Well enough to sit First at Jump, to attend a climate board meeting as the clan’s representative, or any like task. The interrogation of prisoners, or the manipulation of…time and space—those are beyond me, and, if I am frank, Brother, it is my ardent wish that they remain so for the rest of my life.”

Val Con inclined his head.

“I had understood that you have forgotten much of what your gift was like,” Val Con murmured.

“I recall, as through a cloud, and from a distance of years,” Ren Zel said. “The Healers offered to either sharpen my recall or erase the memories entire. I am content to allow them to fade at their own rate.”

He straightened out of his lean suddenly and looked aside, through the window to the snowy garden below.

“If the delm requires me to use that gift—but, there; I cannot. In starkest truth, it is no longer mine to wield.”

“The delm requires nothing so terrible,” Val Con said gently. “The task in the delm’s eye lies adjacent to your last battle, and it would, I think, be a good thing if you recalled, even in abstract, what you had done.”

Ren Zel looked back to him, half-smiling.

“Of a certainty, I cast the last remnant of the Old Universe back, and sealed the door through which it had crept.”

“That will do as a tale. In reality, it would appear that you reset—or even recreated—a portion of space.”

Ren Zel blinked.

“Yes, I know; it’s outrageous. Every sensibility must rebel. However, there is supporting data from several impeccable sources, if you allow the Uncle’s data gathering to be so characterized.”

“I would see that data,” Ren Zel said.

Anthora added quietly, “And I.”

“In good time. For the moment, allow me to move closer to the delm’s message. I should tell you that there was an artifact—a space station of the Old Universe—that was caught between. It was forced fully into our universe as a result of your actions. The core intelligence is, we are told, deceased, and the station has fallen into Korval’s care.”

“How did that come about?” Anthora asked, broadly skeptical. “Had we an administrator in place?”

Val Con smiled at her. “In fact, we did. Jen Sin yos’Phelium has been a light keeper on that station for two hundred Standards. And here we come to your part in all of this.”

He paused and glanced out at the little fountain in its snowy garden.

“Jen Sin’s duty has been long, and—difficult. His last correspondence touched upon how difficult, this by way of informing his delm that he is…fatally compromised.”

“The delm would send him kin,” Anthora said. “A Healer, and one who is able to administer the station, should Jen Sin falter under the weight of his pain.”

“That closely mirrors the delm’s reasoning, as I understand it,” Val Con said. “Though you should know that more kin is en route, so that he will not be wholly alone very much longer.”

Anthora frowned. “Who?” she murmured, and that quickly her frown became a look of nearly comic horror. “Theo. You sent him Theo?”

Val Con raised his hands. “Acquit me. Shan sent him Theo.”

“Of course he did.”

“I think Theo and her crew will be very helpful,” Ren Zel said. “Especially if there is work to do with station systems.”

“In fact.” Val Con gave him a nod. “We now arrive at Korval’s message: Anthora yos’Galan and Ren Zel dea’Judan will be dispatched to Tinsori Light to provide what aid is needed. The clan of course will shelter and provide for Shindi and Mik.”

Ren Zel shifted. Val Con raised an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“Anthora carries our child,” he said.

“And will carry her for some time yet, no matter where I am,” Anthora said tartly. She looked at Val Con.

“Of course I will go. Ren Zel?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Though I wonder how quickly we may start. If Jen Sin’s danger is acute—”

“There,” Val Con said, “I think we may depend upon Theo.”

Anthora laughed. “To provide distraction, you mean? Yes, that might do. But we ought to go quickly, nevertheless. The Healers must be persuaded to release us at once.”

Val Con stood. “That, I will undertake.” He paused, looking down at his sister. She lifted her brows.

“Another question?”

“I only wonder how is your piloting, Sister.”

“That was always a question, was it not? I did earn my license, Brother.”

“Yes,” he murmured, and bowed contrition. “A momentary lapse. Forgive it.”

“Bah,” she said, and rose. “Go away and quell the Healers. We will be ready in half an hour.”

He turned toward the door, and turned back when she said sharply, “Val Con!”

“Sister?”

“Are any of Jen Sin’s things in House stores? We should take to him—anything from home, really, but something of his own would be best.”

“Ah.” He bowed gently. “I will see what may be found. Else?”

“I think not. Go, I beg you, and liberate us.”

“You may depend upon me,” he promised her, and was gone.


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