Forgotten Suns Read Online Free

but his
voice was soft and steady, and he spoke perfectly comprehensible PanTerran. “A
bath,” he said, “would be a welcome thing. And a razor, if you have one.”
    “Not if you’re going to slit your throat with it,” she said.
    It was next to impossible to tell, but maybe the corner of
his mouth curved upward. “I will not do that,” he said gravely.
    If she had been a suitably modest daughter of the family,
she would have called Vikram to do the honors. But she had not been either
modest or proper in a long time, and Vikram would add complications that she
was not, at the moment, in a mood to face. She ran the bath herself and found a
razor in one of the other cabinets, and a set of shears, too. While she was at it,
she raided the common storeroom for clothes that she hoped would fit, and a few
other useful things.
    He was still in Shenliu’s bed when she came back, and still
awake. The pure madness had retreated from his stare, but was still there
underneath.
    She knew that madness. She had a fair share of it herself.
She contemplated carrying him into the bath, but although he was weak, he could
walk. He was a little taller than she was: not a big man at all, but well-built
and compact, and surprisingly fit. When he was back to himself, he would be
quite strong.
    He had no modesty that she could detect, and nothing like
shame. He acted as if it was perfectly natural for a man to be bathed and
shaved and turned into a civilized being by a woman.
    He was much younger than she had thought. Under the thicket
of beard he had a young man’s face, though not exactly a pretty one.
Distinctive, that was the word. Whatever modifications had given him that skin
like black glass, she suspected the features were the ones he was born with.
    He had scars, which meant the modifications were years old.
Most were on his arms and chest; there was a deep one in his thigh. His right
hand was a fist; it would not open for any pressure she could put on it. His
fingers and palm must have fused together with some old injury.
    He would not let her cut his heavy curling mane, though it
hung clear to his waist. She combed it out as much as she could and twisted it
into a braid as thick as her arm. That contented him, and got it out of the
way.
    He was still feverish, and weaker than she liked to see. He
hardly argued when she helped him back to bed, though when she ordered him to
sleep, he said, “I’ve slept enough.”
    “You’re sick,” she said. “You need to rest.”
    “Not any more,” he said.
    She shook her head. If she had to sit on him to keep him
down, she would.
    She bullied water into him, and tipped a pana-tab in with
the last of it. He choked and tried to spit it up, but it had already
dissolved. “Stop glaring,” she said. “It will help with your fever.”
    “It will not.” He was breathing hard. Panic attack, she
thought. She knew about that, too. Oh, did she. The shakes, the sweats—all of
it.
    By the time she realized that he was not panicking, he was
actively sick, it was too late to head off the reaction. She cursed herself
ferociously. Any three-year-old knew not to give medication before asking if
the patient was allergic. Even a pana-tab. Especially a pana-tab, when the
patient had an unknown quantity and variety of modifications.
    “Never,” she said. “Never without a scan. Damn . If I’ve killed him, I’ll kill
myself.”
    With luck he would kill her first. The first assault of
fever laid him flat and kept him deathly quiet. She did what she could: ice
baths, cold cloths, prayer to a God she had stopped believing in when she was
Aisha’s age.
    Then came the delirium.
    It was daylight by then. She noticed it because the door was
open and the children were standing in it, all eyes and shock.
    She gave them something to do: mine the house computer and
the schoolbot and find something, anything, to counteract a severe allergic
reaction. Miraculously, they did as she told them. They were gone