Dream Called Time by S. L. Viehl Read Free Book Online Page B

girl had worn to make herself smell nice.
    Had she done it for Reever? What else had she done for him? Was that how she had stolen him from me? With some weird alien sex?
    A complicated, strapped contraption fell to the floor, and I picked it up. It didn’t belong to me. “What’s this?”
    “It was left folded atop your undergarments,” the nurse said. “I assumed it belonged to you.”
    “Why would I need all these straps?” It must have been Jarn’s, but what kind of woman-hating culture had she come from, to have to bind herself up in something like this?
    At second glance it didn’t appear to be a body rig; it was more like a harness to be strapped across the shoulders and chest. Odd pockets and flaps had been sewn in the straps, and when I opened one, I discovered it was a sheath for a small, smooth-hilted blade.
    I took out the dagger and examined it. “This looks like a weapon.” I checked the other pockets, which held a variety of other knives—twenty in all. “Jesus Christ. What is this thing?”
    The nurse smiled uneasily. “I would say it is a blade harness, Healer.”
    “I’m a physician,” I pointed out. “We don’t use weapons. We clean up the mess they make.”
    “The harness belonged to Jarn,” Reever said as he came into the room. He turned to the nurse. “Would you excuse us, please?”
    “As you wish, Linguist. Healer.” The nurse practically ran out of the room.
    “Hello, Duncan.” I took out one of the slave girl’s longer daggers and held it up to the light. “Omorrforged, perfectly balanced.” I didn’t have to test the edge, which bore marks indicating it had been honed down to a lethal sharpness that would cut like a lascalpel. “This looks like one of yours.”
    “I gave it to Jarn when peace was declared.” He seemed more interested in me now than he had in the environome. “She attended the injured and dying on battlefields. She was trained to carry weapons to defend herself.”
    “Considering what a lethal threat injured, dying rebels can be, that’s completely understandable.” I sheathed the dagger and dropped the contraption like the trash it was. “What do you want? Your knives back?” I kicked the harness across the deck to him. “There you go.”
    He bent over to retrieve the harness and slung it over his shoulder. “I did not come here to provoke you.”
    “Too late.” I showed him some teeth. “And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Jarn’s still dead, and I’m not.” I turned my back on him. “You know your way out.”
    He didn’t go. “We should talk.”
    “Oh, now we should talk,” I said to the berth. “ Not when I woke up out of a five-year walking coma. Not when I found out how long I’d been gone. Not when I went looking for my husband and he treated me like a Tingalean leper in active contagion- molt. Certainly not at any time over the past thirty-six hours that I spent alone in my new quarters waiting for him to drop by and reassure me that despite his behavior he was happy I’d come back. I can see how those would have been totally inappropriate moments to have a conversation.”
    “I needed time to accept Jarn’s loss.” He moved a little closer. “But now I see that it was wrong of me to make you wait and suffer in solitude as I have. I apologize for my actions.”
    Jarn’s loss. Not mine. Had he ever grieved like that for me? Why did he care now if I suffered or not?
    Silently I counted to ten, thinking the entire time that it was a damn good thing he was holding that knife harness and not me.
    “I am glad you have returned,” he continued. “I regret that we were not able to effect the reinstatement of your personality sooner than this. You must have a great many questions about the gaps in your memory.”
    “Not really. While you were busy sobbing into your pillow and sulking, I broke into Xonea’s secured files and read up on everything that’s happened since we parted ways at Oenrall. Well, almost