“Either does not matter. Do not interfere, as any obstacles you put in his way will draw suspicion upon you.”
“But… if he does become a danger… well, he says you have taken his fiancée. I am certain he would agree to leave the rebels if you released her.”
A faint smile creased the man’s jaw. “He may, but the decision must be hers.”
“So… she doesn’t want to leave?”
“She only agreed to marry him because she thought she had no other choice.”
“Ah,” Tyen looked down. “Always two sides to a story.”
“Indeed.”
Vella’s cover was, as always, warm in his hand. He looked up again. “And your research…?”
The smile vanished. “I have encountered some difficulties and limitations I had not anticipated. It is likely we will have only one chance to restore her. She must be unmade to be remade. Unless I can find a way around this, I ought to test the process to ensure it works. I would not go to that extreme unless I have no other choice.”
Tyen nodded as the implications of that came to him. He doubted that the Raen owned other books created from a person, so the only way he could test the process was to make another. That was a prospect he didn’t want to contemplate.
“But you need to contemplate it,” the Raen said. “If that was the only way Vella could be made whole, would you agree to it?”
Tyen thought of what Tarren had asked: “… what are you prepared to do in order to fulfil your promise to her?”
“No…” he said slowly. “Doing to someone else what was done to her… that would defeat the purpose of restoring her.”
“Unless the person wanted it.”
Why would anybody want that? he thought. But then he looked at Reke. If they escaped an early death, or a damaged body, they might. If the person craved agelessness but was not powerful enough to achieve it.
Tarren might have been tempted.
He nodded. “They would have to be willing to take a great risk, but I suppose it would be better than the certainty of death or ongoing pain.”
The Raen nodded once. Then he looked towards the door. “You are about to have company.” And between one blink and the next, he was gone.
CHAPTER 15
Tyen quickly stuffed Vella into her pouch and slipped it under his shirt, but not before the healer tried the door and found it unmovable. Puzzled, as the doors here did not lock, she tried again and this time succeeded, staggering into the room when she encountered no resistance.
“Sorry,” Tyen said, taking a step back. “I was about to come out and find someone.”
She looked past him and saw Reke’s still and vacant gaze. Annoyance turned to understanding and she hurried over to inspect the dead woman. All signs pointed to a natural death.
“She woke up and was struggling to breathe,” he told her. “Then she just let out one long breath and…” He gestured helplessly.
The healer nodded. “Were you a friend?”
He shook his head. “Not a close friend. Not strangers, either. But I made a promise to bring her here.”
“Does she require rituals and preparation before you move her?”
“She didn’t say, so I guess not.”
“No family?”
“All dead.” Which was the reason she had joined the rebels, he knew.
She nodded. “If she had come here sooner we might have been able to help her. This will be more common, now that the law against travelling between worlds is in place again.”
“Will the hospital have to close?”
“No, we have always had plenty of patients. Either they have the Raen’s approval to travel here, or they are desperate enough to risk defying him.” She shrugged. “I’ve never heard of him punishing anyone, though.”
“Perhaps he is not as bad as some say.”
She looked at him guardedly. “He and his favourites can heal with magic. If this knowledge were available to us, we could cure everyone who came to us.”
Tyen’s heart sank a little, but then he thought of Vella. “Perhaps one day you will learn it from another source, or work it out for yourselves.”
She smiled. “Perhaps we will.”
He looked at Reke again. “What do you do with those who have no home to return to?”
After he had made arrangements and paid for the cremation and the healer’s services, he headed back to the room he shared with Volk. As he walked along the road to the dorms he turned the conversation with the Raen over in his mind. He considered the prospect of handing over rebel leadership to Baluka. “It is not preventing the Traveller from ousting you that is the challenge,” the Raen had said. “It is doing so while retaining a position of influence among the rebels.”