Kylla had banished him again. As a punishment, Mattan supposed, but he found house duties less demanding than her constant disappointment. She longed for things he couldn't give; other arvir lusted for things he could provide. The more menial daytime tasks only engaged his body, not his imagination. The orders given by the t'arvir managers and supervisors were clear and uncharged with emotional traps and barbs. It was simple to please them. They only wanted results not fulfillment.

    Today, the sun shining on his covered back, he fitted stones to form a wall along a flowerbed. Marran often projected her window's view of a garden. Perhaps she lived just above this one.

    Mattan sent to Marran. She didn't welcome him as she usually did, but didn't push him away. Marran projected her engrossment in her present circumstance. Unable to hear the conversation, he followed by her thoughts about the encounter. Mattan didn't recognize the arvir she projected. T'arvir, she corrected.

    T'arvir?

    Biralt heard the door open, the bright sunlight momentarily obscuring the flat screen.

    '?' He heard.

    "Don't send to me. Go practice your dance." The t'arvir had heard the unmistakable tempo earlier.

    "I know it."

    "Then practice another."

    The door opened and closed. And, a while later, again.

    "What?" he asked. Dothan's accounts had been ignored too long.

    "Tea?" Marran offered.

    Biralt huffed, sipped the tea, and withdrew back into the numbers.

    '?'

    "Don't send me, virar. You're not supposed to be in here."

    "But not forbidden."

    "A legalistic distinction, one which won't placate Dothan," he warned.

    "What are you doing?" she asked. She sent a comical image of a mumbling hunched form, face lit eerily by the scrolling numbers, hands waving over the screen like an wizard casting an enchantment.

    He resisted the urge to laugh, and shrugged her hands from his shoulders. The unnatural warmth of the virar's skin repulsed him.

    "Dothan's business, not yours. Now go," Biralt insisted.

    Marran leaned over his shoulder, and her sleek hair brushed his cheek, her scent reached his nostrils. She tapped the screen. "What are these drawings?"

    "If I tell you, you'll go?" Biralt asked. Marran had never bothered him at his work before. T'arvir avoided viraran, the dubious privilege of venom addiction reserved for arvir.

    She shrugged.

    "Numbers, a tally of goods and debts." His breath came easier as Marran withdrew toward the door. Her hand paused on the latch plate.

    "Biralt? One more question? Why do you sometimes think one - number," her tongue savored the new word. "Then draw another?"

    The cool hand of unpleasant surprise squeezed his lungs and mind.

    "If this is Dothan's business, would creativity with numbers be of interest to him?"

    He whirled toward her, and though she averted her face in the viraran manner he detected a certain smugness in the curve of her lips.

    "You don't…" He meant to denounce her accusation, but the lie died before he could speak it. Marran looked at him full, maintaining eye contact longer than he thought possible. No projections, no subliminal caresses, simply a measuring look.

    "You win - this time. What do you want?"

    "I feel…?" she said aloud.

    Biralt's mind filled with an image of her dancing, repeating the lesson perfectly time and time again, but with growing frustration.

    "You're bored," he offered, and projected a vision of the music disc being flung from the window, refracting the sunlight as it fell away.

    She answered showing the fragile cube striking the garden wall and shattering, the myriad pieces scintillating as they skittered in their random paths.

    Biralt had never heard a virar laugh. The weird rise and fall of the amused tones struck him in its sound. His repugnance ended her laughter, cut off as abruptly as if she were a music cube silenced at a word.

    Marran averted her eyes, reminded of her station. She reached for the door release and ran her hand along it. "Perhaps Dothan needs to know none of this?"

    Biralt caught an image of his creative numbering, and sighed. "A bargain, I suppose. I allow you to stay and you remain quiet about the other?" he proposed.

    Her eyes gleamed, and her secretive smile returned. "If he doesn't ask, I won't offer."

    Even a t'arvir knew viraran couldn't lie. "It'll have to do. But if you stay - be quiet. I have work to finish."

    Biralt talked while he worked, aware of the virar creeping closer to watch. "I tally Dothan's accounts. What he spends…" Biralt changed the color of debts to orange. "A fortune, against what he earns and owns through the house. Also - a fortune." He pointed to a symbol. "This is what he pays to keep you. More than he gives me, by the way."

    Watching the scrolling numbers, she said, "I am not given anything." Her fingers covered her lips remembering his admonishment to remain quiet.

    How to explain the economics of a Great house? "You belong the House of Peidra. Dothan pays for the privilege to keep you for himself."

    "I see this drawing most often." She pointed to a number.

    "Twelve - as many fingers as we have - or, rather, as I have. You have ten. This is the symbol for ten."

    Marran examined her hands, and then traced in the air a symbol roughly resembling the one on the screen. "That means ten fingers?"

    He sniggered. "No, ten of anything."

    Her eyebrows drew even closer together. Radiating confusion.

    "Wait, here. These are numbers. Symbols to indicate how many." He tapped the other side of the field. "These are words, symbols to indicate the type items counted."

    Marran noticed the symbol he had shown her previously. "That means Marran?" she asked.

    "Yes. Well, no. It means virar. I need more symbols to spell your name." He tapped in the symbols of her name. "This is your name."

    As she stared at the symbols, Biralt saw an excitement, an understanding come into her expression. Suddenly he realized what he had done, and erased the word hastily. Having her in the room had been no crime, but teaching a virar to read definitely would be one.

    "Forget this," he warned, sending his sense of urgency.

    She nodded.

    "It will do you no good, Marran."

    She nodded.

    "Now go. Before I show you something else you are forbidden." He turned back to his figures and resolutely ignored her. Without the distraction he finished quickly, and closed the screen. Wincing at the necessity, he set the locking code. No telling where this mistake may lead, but he would prevent what he could.

    Opening the door, blinking in the brightness, Biralt nearly tripped over her. Sitting cross-legged in a patch of sunlight, she had waited outside for him.

    "Why?" she asked.

    "Why what?" he asked, while setting the door's lock code as well.

    "Why is it forbidden?"

    The answer sprang to his mind, but he couldn't tell her. "I don't know. Ask Dothan." He escaped the apartment wondering how a few simple words had led him so deeply into dangerous waters.

    Marran felt his fear clearly. Tvaren had spoken the truth. The tiny drop of her saliva in Biralt's tea had relaxed his unwary mind, opening it for her to read. Ignoring his spoken answer, she considered the flash sent before his reticence reclaimed him. She liked the feel of the words, and the thoughts they engendered within her.

    "Knowledge gains power," she said aloud.