Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
“I don't know.” From stroking the cat, her hand moved to his arm. He flinched
and she drew back. “I'm sorry,” he said and with an effort, touched her hand with
his. “Disorientated about describes me. How's your eye?”
She shrugged. “Are you going to try to get up?” He nodded and she moved to
let him swing his legs out, then handed him his bathrobe. Tika went back to sleep
in the warm hollow his body left in the mattress. Sand on his pillow? He felt his
braid and found more sand in the twists of hair. The broken bead? In the pocket
of the bathrobe.
Alicia waited at the door, watching him. He let her open it and go through first.
Eunni was at the table by the window overlooking the common, one of the kittens
in her lap. She was feeding him bits of scrambled egg.
A covered bowl of tea rested in the ashes of the brazier beside the table. Eunni
blew the ash from the bottom of the bowl and held it out until he took it, then
pushed a plate of toast his way. “Breakfast, if you're interested. I've ordered
fresh tea.”
He knelt in front of the toast, across from her. “Thanks, this is fine.” The tea
was bitter and he put it down, barely touched. “I thought you were busy talking.”
Still stroking the kitten, she looked up and smiled. “You're my next project.
I've been successful at keeping cooks and gardeners from disappearing - how
could I fail with you.”
“I feel like I didn't so much disappear as fell off a cliff. Or was pushed.” He
toyed with a slice of cold toast just to be seen doing something. “Was it an
attack?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Alicia said. She hadn't joined them at the
table, but was standing by the tall brazier by the window. Made of dark shell - the
spiral ribs carved in the ti'Linn Temple design of crosses - the brazier was to her
waist. One finger traced the rim, but her eyes didn't leave him. She was staring
at him as though he had three heads.
Beside the brazier was the wooden tea chest from Bolda, the rug from Garm's
Suite in Palace. The Clan knife from Gennady, she wore always and kept it under
her pillow when they slept, but the Spann tops were in the tea chest along with a
very few other things carefully wrapped in silk. The boxed strand of pearls he had
given her. The stuffed bear that had belonged to her youngest cousin.
Rit hadn't noticed exactly when it was that the ti'Linn brazier had become an
altar, or when Alicia had begun to keep a box of joss sticks on top of the tea
chest.
“I don't know how much I can tell you that you wouldn't already know,” he
said. “First the attack on the Zimmer. Then our ti'Linn moving in. Then the ti'Linn
response to what they saw as the Empress's involvement. And then Ulanda
dropping into...” And himself following. Or had he? At a touch, the Net restraints
crumbled. The toast was a mound of crumbs before he finished reviewing Bolda’s
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca