by Jane Routley
“So who is your master? I thought it was Great Uncle Igniate. And he’s only interested in cooks. Which I’m not. A cook, I mean.”
“I’ve other connect... Holy Mother, what’s that?” breathed Hagen.
I swung round and saw it—the huge shining white Mooncat from the night before, standing on the other side of the stream. He was looking away from us down the stream, probably unable to hear us over the sound of the water.
He lowered his face to the stream and began to lap it delicately. The beauty of him—his shining fur, his huge velvet paws, the soft pink tongue lapping so neatly at the water—made me tingle all over.
Then his head jerked up. He looked straight into my eyes, and at the same moment a clap of thunder sounded in my ear.
I slammed my hands over my ears and whirled around. Hagen was standing up behind me pointing a smoking metal tube towards the Mooncat. Even over the sound of the stream, I could hear the creature crashing away through the undergrowth.
“What in hell’s name are you doing?”
“What do you mean? It could have killed us.”
“It was the other side of the stream.”
“It was huge.”
“The forest creatures never cross that stream.”
“It was a rogue, you stupid thing.”
I saw red, then; no one likes being called stupid. He yelped as I grabbed that silly little firework out of his hand and I yelped in my turn as it burnt me. I dropped it.
“You idiot. Don’t do that.” He pushed me away so I pushed him back.
“You almost deafened me with it,” I shouted. “You stupid man. It didn’t see us. We could have watched it.”
“It was dangerous, you fool. A damned shape shifter. Not some little pussy cat.”
Derision came off him like a bad smell.
Sometimes my temper...
Ignoring its heat, I scooped up his stupid metal tube, threw it into the stream and stalked away.
As I reached the house, Katti came loping through the trees toward me, all concern over the loud noise. Hilly and Tane were peering out of the back door, but no one else in the house seemed to have heard the explosion.
“Don’t worry. It was just some idiot with a firework,” I told them.
Upstairs, everyone went on laughing and dancing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GREY DAWN LIGHT. I was awake. Someone was in the room, and it wasn’t Katti.
I sat bolt upright.
“Oh, sweetie,” said a man’s voice. “I woke you. So sorry.”
“Scintillant? What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to watch you sleep. You looked so pretty.”
“Really? Since when did you care about watching people sleep? You haven’t got a sentimental bone in your body.”
He laughed his warm sexy laugh and the bed shifted as he sat down beside me.
“You have such a cynical view of me, sweetie, and really I’m a terrible softheart.” His hand cupped my face and as always I felt beautiful and my heart turned to syrup. He kissed my cheek lingeringly. I felt myself start to open to him and let him push me down. Magic glowed dimly and his boots thudded to the floor. He stretched out beside me, slid his arm round my waist and nuzzled his head into my neck.
He smelled of sweat and salt and someone else’s scented oil. The smell brought me back to myself.
“Scintillant, may I remind you that I didn’t invite you in?”
“Oooh, getting all haughty, are you? I know it was naughty of me. I’m not taking you for granted. I was passing by your window on the way to my room and had an overwhelming urge to see you. Such a lovely pale little thing, shining in the darkness.” He nuzzled my cheek. “I’m sorry I woke you. It wasn’t my intention. I was going to do a quick in-and-out.”
I couldn’t help laughing at the double entendre.
“That did sound bad, didn’t it?” He laughed. “As if anyone would want to love you like that.” His hand slid over my breast, the thumb grazing the nipple. He kissed my neck in the perfect spot and my lips once and again—a deeper kiss, this time. Somehow his hand had got in under the quilt and begun stroking my belly. The feeling was delicious.
I slid my hand onto his prick. Nothing.
“Sorry, sweetie,” he said quite easily. “Old fellow’s a bit tired.”
“No doubt,” I said.
“Don’t be disappointed. Why don’t you let me tickle you sweet instead? I do love watching a woman enjoy herself.”
I wasn’t going to accept the offer of a tickle no matter how much he insisted he liked it. I get self-conscious when I’m enjoying myself and my partner isn’t.
“It’s nice like this,” I said. Lying in bed with a man you’ve already made love to has a certain relaxing innocence.
“It is, isn’t it?” he said, nuzzling me. “Just holding you. Those maids... they only want my seed. It’s nice to be with someone who likes me for myself.”
I should have been meltingly happy to hear this, but I felt uneasy.
All this soft cuddliness. That wasn’t Scintillant. I pushed away my doubts and relaxed into his arms as he kissed my hair.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to a thump against the door and remembered. It was Blessing time and I had duties!
“Ladybless, what time is it?”
“I think I heard the maid putting the hot water outside your door,” said Scintillant. He was standing over by the window opening the curtains. Bright light flooded into the room.
I jumped out of bed and rushed to the door. I’d have been astonished if there’d been a can of hot water there; the maids were too busy waiting on the lords and ladies. Katti had made the noise, thumping against the door. Scintillant must have closed the window. She stalked into the room, tail lashing, clearly annoyed at being locked out, and crouched and hissed at Scintillant.
What is this tom cat doing here?
“Oooh dear. Your pussy cat doesn’t seem to like me.” Scintillant smirked, stretched out on the bed again and put his hands behind his head.
“She doesn’t care much for mages. I’d better get a wriggle on, Scintillant. I want to go out for the ceremony today.”
“You didn’t go out yesterday, did you?”
“Too much to do looking after you lot.” I’d worked out my lies the day before. I hadn’t expected to be testing them on Scintillant.
“You weren’t secretly visiting Bright in the forest, were you? I thought he might still be out in one of the huts.”
“No, he’s long gone,” I said firmly. I started collecting my clothes into a basket so that I could go down to the bath house.
“I wasn’t going to tell on him, sweetie. I know you love him like a brother. Just curious. When I heard about his escaping with a woman, I hoped he’d found his way back to the right path. If he has—the family would be sure to have him back. I could shoot out there and tell him, if you like.”
“Nowhere to shoot to,” I said. “Bright’s gone, honestly.”
“So who was the woman?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe someone from his regiment?”
He paused and said, “This old place. I love it here. So quaint. All dark passages and mysterious rooms and... Hey, didn’t old Uncle Batty build a hidey hole here somewhere? For when the bats got too bad?”
My neck tingled with fright. Fortunately I wasn’t looking at Scintillant.
“Do you know where it is?” asked Scintillant. He leapt out of the bed and started tapping the walls.
“Don’t do that!” I cried.
“Why not? Come on. It must be here somewhere. Ah-ha, Got it.” He said, hearing a hollow sound. “So, how do you get it open? Come on, sweetie, show me.”
He pulled me to the wall and I touched the panel without thinking. Once it opened and the ghost wasn’t there huddled in the wall, I realised why I’d been anxious about it and relaxed.
“Marvellous!” cried Scintillant. “A secret little hidey hole. I love
this old place.” He climbed into the gap.
“We’ve got a lover’s cupboard, too,” I said helpfully.
“Oh, but everyone’s got—what’s this?” He picked up something from under his feet. “What a strange colour!”
A small bright orange square dangled from his fingers. The moment I saw it, I knew it was the ghost’s. My mind went blank with panic.
“What odd fabric. Like satin, only hard. And something sewn inside it. How do you get it out, I wonder?” He pulled the square of metal dangling at one end, but it didn’t open. “What is it?”
The orange square was the same sort of material as the little blue backpack the ghost carried everywhere with him. I could feel some sort of padding inside it. I almost pulled the dangly square sideways the way the ghost did to open his pack, but stopped myself in time.
“I’ve never seen it before,” I said quite truthfully. “I guess... It could belong to one of Auntie Eff’s visitors,” I added quickly. “Some of them have been in here. I wonder how long it’s been there.”
“Auntie Eff’s visitors? Lady of light, does she have a string of radicals through here?”
“Not a string. But I know she does sometimes show her guests this little hole. In case the Imperial police raid the place. As if! Please, Scintillant, you won’t go telling Im... Lord Impavidus will you?”
Scintillant laughed. “Oh, sweetie, I never tell him anything. That’s why, if Bright were hanging around, you’d be safe to confide in me.”
“Well, he’s not,” I said firmly. His endless questioning, his interest in Bright, was so unlike him. He was up to something, possibly to Bright’s disadvantage. I’d actually thought for a moment that he’d come into the room for me. I was annoyed at myself—and at him because I was disappointed.
“And I don’t know why you’re so interested. I’d better take this and give it to Eff.” I put it in the basket with my clothes.
“You leaving me?” cried Scintillant
“I’d really like a bath before today’s ceremony,” I said.
“Wouldn’t you rather make love to me?”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Are you a machine, Scintillant? I thought you didn’t have any left.”
He waved a little folded paper at me. “I’ve got Rampant.” He jumped out of the wall, put his arm round my waist and nuzzled my neck. “Take a moment or two.”
Rampant! He’d have an erection, but he probably wouldn’t climax. It didn’t appeal.
“Why don’t you rest?” I said, wriggling out of his arms.
He looked shocked.
“You’re knocking me back?” he cried.
“I must to go to the ceremony,” I said, blowing him a kiss and running out the door. Anxiety fluttered in my stomach as I ran away. When I analysed it later, as I took my bath, I realised I was scared. What if he did care about me and I had put him off? No! There was no way. He was just using me to get at Bright, for some reason. How easily I could come to believe in his care! And what a trap it would be—I knew it couldn’t be the case.
Almost certainly not the case.
I WAS VERY glad to be able to attend the Blessing Ceremony that morning. After my conversation with Glisten last night, I really needed to feel that sense of connectedness and celebration, and to repeat the beautiful traditional prayers lead by the Matriarch. I’d sought out Eff at breakfast to find out what had happened between her and Glisten. She was deep in an argument with Cousin Two and Auntie Four about the morality of strike action by the stone masons working on the Elayison Sunspire. All she did was pat my cheek and tell me not to worry. Her vague smile left me no way to commiserate over the awful thing Lady Glisten had said to her, and I felt like a weed.
To top it all off, Old Man Jenkal, one of the peasant elders, took me aside as our procession started and told me that one of Lord Impavidus’ servants had been round asking him about the newly drained fields. Curse Impi; why did he have to be so efficient? I’d been hoping to make a little money for me and Eff out of growing vegetables on those fields. I figured I was entitled to something for draining the fields in the first place. I’d even helped dig the ditches myself. Curse it. All the other estate managers in the neighbourhood diddled their employers out of huge sums of money, yet I couldn’t even get away with a tiny skim like this. No wonder Impi has accused Eff of skimming yesterday.
“What did you tell him?”
“I said as I dun’t know nothin’ about no drained fields,” said old Man Jenkal, putting on the dumb hayseed face and accent that was the peasant’s main defence against questioning superiors.
I thanked him warmly and shook his calloused old hand, but I had a sinking feeling there were going to be some ugly questions when Impi and I had our business meeting on the final Blessing day.
A SLIGHT MIST rose from the ploughed fields in the golden morning sun and dew sparkled on the grass. Beautiful sunny mornings like this were one small consolation for being stuck in the country.
Once again Auntie Splendance floated before us in a shining light with her pink robes flowing out behind her, Impi at her side and the female mages of the family clustered around her. Was it my imagination or did Blazeann seem to be leaning very close? The peasants followed behind in their long robes, singing Blessing hymns with only slightly less vigour than they had the day before. Priest Zostre kept time for them.
As Lucient and I followed the other worshippers from field to field, he told me all about his struggles with Chatoyant, which made it hard to feel any sense of holiness. Twice she had drugged him with Rampant and, using a man’s inability to control his own prick, had mounted him and later claimed on the strength of these two successful couplings that he adored her. Blazeann had laughed when Lucient told her he’d been forced, and Impi had told him to show some backbone.
“She blindfolded me, stuffed a scarf in my mouth and treated me as if I was just a prick,” he whispered. “She feels like rubber to touch.”
He seemed obsessed with the idea that Blazeann would force him to become Chatoyant’s consort. I told him that I couldn’t see why Chatoyant would want that.
When Lucient became Blazeann’s Avunculus, as seemed inevitable as the only male mage Splendance had birthed, he was likely to obey Blazeann without question and without needing a second woman to manage him. As for Chatoyant having only managed to get one child so far, and that a mere boy—while pair bonding with a cousin might give her a better chance of birthing a mage, it wouldn’t improve her fertility any.
“She’s a big bully. You need to stand up to her,” I said, knowing full well as I said it that Lucient would never be able to. The horribleness of his story gave me a dull ache in the gut. As a mage he wasn’t protected by Shola’s pact, and as a mere man he could not hope to overpower and drive away a woman mage. Toy would always be the stronger in terms of sheer brute magic.
“She’ll be after me tonight, you wait and see,” he whispered, voice trembling. “Promise you’ll stay in my room tonight.”
“Of course I will,” I said, squeezing his hand. I was protected by Shola’s pact, and it was bad manners and bad luck to disrupt a Blessing affair. Manners are an oddly powerful shield in our civilised world.
“Look how put out Blazeann looks at how well our Matriarch is doing,” I said, to distract him.
“She does, doesn’t she? And I’ve already seen Glisten saying something nasty to Toy about spreading baseless gossip,” he said in a more cheerful voice.
He didn’t know the combination to Toy’s treasure box, or anyone who might know, so I concentrated on wheedling some information about Klea out of him. He and Klea were only a year apart and had been close as children. I’d hoped he could give me some hint about what Klea’s letter related to, but he didn’t know anything about her life in Crystalline. They’d hardly communicated at all since she’d left home. He missed her.
“But she would go,” he said sadly. “Terrified that Auntie Flara would regain control of the family and that Radiant
would come back. They treated her dreadfully.”
“How?” I prompted when he stopped talking.
“Flara’s way. Toy’s way, too. Always forcing people to do things they don’t want. Best not to talk about it. Wish Klea would come back. She’d fix Toy.”
And he went back to dwelling on his own situation. I was hard pressed to cheer him up again.
Lady Splendance was in excellent form the whole day, blessing the farm animals and the village babies with great spirituality and focus. At the end of the day, we finished our tour of the estate in one of the more distant villages—not the one where the inn had been burned down, I noticed. We watched children wreathed in garlands made from last year’s grain harvest dancing their funny little jumping dance to make the crops grow. Lady Splendance cooed loudly over their sweetness. Then it was into the carriages and back to the house to change into our best robes for the great Blessing Feast.
THE BOTTOM OF the Eyrie had been cleared and tables set out for everyone, villagers included. Blessing night was the night when mages and mundanes mingled most freely. Many mages felt that breeding with the mundanes refreshed the bloodlines of the great families. Smug mages would accept as many flowers as they could from enthusiastic mundanes, who were always eager to impress with their love skills in the hope of being whisked away to service in the city, or to achieve the blessing of a child. A child who turned out to be a mage would become the Ward of the Empress, to be taken into paid Imperial service when they came of age. A mage could win all kinds of further patronage by sitting in the Great Council that approved the Empress’s policies—or becoming the consort of a great lady, as Impi had. Even a mage from a very humble lineage would be able to keep her mother and family in comfort for the rest of their days.
A fire had been built on the lawn in front of the Eyrie, and a bullock and a pig were being spit-roasted under the anxious supervision of Tane. Later the fire would be built up into a huge blaze. Everyone would dance round it to celebrate the renewal of Shola’s Pact. The villagers would blow grain alcohol from their mouths into the fire, creating huge plumes of flame; this was actually an offering to Grain Boy from the old peasant religion, but the nobles always pretended not to know.