Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
Oimit shook her head, but it wasn't a refusal to answer. Poss a'ltic felt her
allowing possibilities to filter through her mind. Reason enough in the form of her
mind, she thought. And something quite different added very recently. Wild? She
talked of Cassa with a familiar tone as though she had known the woman
personally. Did she feel a personal threat that her own reason might be
compromised?
Poss a'ltic signed A'in to let her go, but his lack of a refusal took as slow a turn
as Oimit's did. “Now,” she said, looking to Cayse. He put a hand on his brother's
arm until he stepped back. The exchange wasn't lost on Oimit - had that been
A'in's intention? He didn't show any reluctance, or concern, as he walked with
Cayse to the flitter. At a signal, Raswini joined them. Fisaldin, Tu'pin's tass'altin
backed away.
Oimit was watching the others talk, but still without an answer of her own. “Do
you really need to think it over?” Poss a'ltic asked while listening to the
conversation from her Net link.
The Zimmer shook her head. “Empress, do you remember Ri-altar?”
“Yes.”
“In the summer? Hot at any rate.”
Tu'pin stirred behind the woman and Poss a'ltic felt Zimmer-pattern growing in
him. “Oimit, don’t...”
Oimit ignored him or didn't hear, the woman blazed with the intensity of her
simple questions. Her thoughts had filtered through, leaving something quite
clear. “Late summer?” she added.
“Yes.” Ri-altar was around them. Late summer and it was very hot. A dry heat
and even with the air motionless, the clean fragrance filled her mouth. There
were the three of them there only, and she felt Kascin, not A'in, try to reach her,
sounding like one of the flies that swarmed around her face. Part of her knew he
was screaming her name over and over.
Tu'pin had bent his head and turned it, then looked up again as fast with a
shuttering gasp. His crest flared red down as far down his back as she could see
and red dripped from his braid ends. Zimmer-light or blood... Poss a'ltic thought
one might spark as bright as the other. A different scent came from him now, and
his eyes were red in the black lines in the blue. Then as quickly, simply dark blue
again. He was pulled in as far as he could go, an instinctive move well past his
level of training.
But Oimit just looked around, she looked at Tu'pin as calmly as she did the
granite ledge or the green sky or Palace barely visible through the haze. “Can you
hear Ri-song?” she asked.
She could. And Simic. “Should I?”
“Three people went through a portal, a bird in silver thread on Simic green
back. From Palace to somewhere else in Palace.”
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca