B00CH3ARG0 EBOK Read Online Free Page A

then shook her head. “I’m a
linguist,” she said. “I don’t understand your science. But if you tell me my
baby is healthy, that’s all I really need to know.” She paused as anxiety
churned in the pit of her stomach. “She is healthy, isn’t she? She’ll be all
right?”
    The apothecary eyed Marianne as if calculating what she
could say. “I cannot know for certain. If you were fully Tolari, I could say
yes, but as you are not, I will tell you that you must be careful, and you must
remain calm. You must tell me immediately if you feel anything, anything ,
unusual. I would prefer it if you brought me news of a normal symptom fifty
times than if you should fail to inform me of a warning sign even once. Do you
understand? You will not, as you put it, ‘bother’ me.”
    Marianne nodded, a nervous smile forcing its way onto her
lips.
    “Good,” the other woman continued. “For the present, I
forbid you to go anywhere alone. It is too dangerous, should you experience
another episode like yesterday. Is that clear, high one?”
    That explained the aide in her quarters. She felt smothered
already. “Yes, apothecary.” Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I
don’t know how that happened. I don’t even remember all of what
happened.”
    “You seemed to have been in an altered state of
consciousness, reliving your attack and largely unaware of your actual
surroundings. It is perhaps less likely now that you will experience another
episode, but I consider it still possible. The Sural informed me your dreams
this past night were violent.”
    Marianne nodded and heaved a sigh. “I understand.”
    “Good. Do you have further questions?”
    “Just one. Do you have a name?”
    The apothecary laughed. “Yes, high one. My name is Cena. It
means ‘dreamer’ in the language of the ancients. My mother named me after her
mother.”
    “Really? I was named after my grandmother, too. My mother
and I loved her very much. She died when I was in,” she floundered for a word
for college in Tolari, “during the last years of my education. Is your
mother an apothecary as well?”
    Cena nodded. “She served as the Sural’s head apothecary for
a time, then left to provide care for the workers in the tea plantations of the
Kentar Valley.”
    “Didn’t you ever want to be anything else? I mean, I’m a
schoolteacher, but my mother was a nurse. Nana Marianne was a – there is no
Tolari word for it. A mother. Her work was to take care of her home and her
children.”
    The apothecary shook her head. “Such disparate choices can
happen here, but it is almost unknown. No one is ever compelled, but normally
an heir wants to follow in the parent’s profession. A second heir, on the rare occasions
when one is granted, does often choose different work to establish a new family
line.”
    “And you work for your father.”
    Cena cocked her head. “He is not my father, high one,” she
said. “He is the man who fathered me, although my position here proves there
are advantages to being fathered by the Sural.”
    “But don’t you love him just because he’s your— because he
fathered you?”
    Cena smiled. “Of course. He is kind and generous to those
who serve him, and I can take pride that I was fathered by such an honorable
man.” She picked up the device from Marianne’s belly. “You may dress now. I
will inform the Sural of all this. I cannot predict what the coming season will
bring. Your body is producing both Tolari and human hormones, and they are not,
as the humans say, ‘playing well together.’”
    Marianne quirked a grin. “Hormones. That explains a lot. Oh,
one more thing—”
    “Yes, high one?”
    “When you saw me in the corridor yesterday, how did you
know?”
    “I smelled the difference in your body chemistry.”
    Memory sparked. You even smell different , her
bond-partner had said. “The Sural said I smell different.”
    Cena nodded. “He would notice, but without training he