"I just wanted to say I was sorry." He stood well back from her, not crowding her. "I tried to make you uncomfortable and I tried embarrassing you and I shouldn't have done that."
"No." She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and studied him. His expression looked sincere enough. "You shouldn't have. But I said I was willing to consider the circumstances. And I don't hold grudges."
He nodded and waited, watching her intently.
She waited, too, not saying anything.
At last he sighed. "But you still don't want to be friends."
"I don't know you well enough to want to be your friend, and what I do know hasn't made me desperate to know more."
"I suppose I can understand that." He backed away to let her pass. "But I hope that I'll find a way to win your friendship. You're attractive, Kate, and attractive in more than your appearance. I believe you would be a good friend."
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. "That's kind of you. Thank you." Then, before he had a chance to say anything else, she brushed past him and went, not upstairs as she had intended, but through the dining room and into the kitchen. Behind her, she heard him let himself out the front door.
She hadn't meant to charge into the kitchen, but once she was in, she couldn't retreat. Tik was there, and he waved her over to his side. He sat with his back against one of the counters, his legs stuck out at forty-five-degree angles and his heavy forelimbs resting across his round belly. His kimono wore the battle scars of a war fought against ketchup, mustard, and relish. Fought and lost, Kate thought.
"A word with you, if I may," he said. His voice reminded her of water racing over boulders, a current pounding through dangerous rapids. When he spoke, she saw the clear green of summer river water tumbling over a falls, backlit by the setting sun, and the froth of brown-white foam that flecked the river edges and collected in thick spirals in the eddies. Minnows and crawfish. Bare feet dangling into the water, the mud oozing up between her toes feeling like cold silk. The scent of pine trees and freshly mown grass, picnic tables, and someone barbecuing hot dogs. The bow of an aluminum canoe slicing through the sun-flecked currents, the J-swept arc of a paddle, the flash and sparkle of droplets flung away as she lifted the paddle, swung it forward, dug into the river, and the muscles of her shoulders and back burned pleasurably…
Kate shook her head to chase away the startling flow of impressions and said, "Of course."
He smiled. The smile pulled back and curled up at the corners, an amiable smile. His brown eyes were as deep and soulful as a Springer Spaniel's, she thought, and he had the same busy eyebrows, sliding up and down his forehead independently of each other, constantly in motion. Red-brown eyebrows thick as caterpillars. Silly eyebrows for such serious eyes.
"I like you," he said. "You're brave and sensible and competent, and you don't scare easily."
"Thanks." She waited. The compliment was a warmup for what he really wanted to say; she could feel something big waiting behind the trivialities.
He chuffed and stared down at his thick-fingered hands with their dark, heavy claws. "As competent as you are, though, you need to promise me you'll be careful about…things. People. Don't take chances. Don't be too…trusting."
Kate crouched beside him. "What are you talking about, Tik?"
He ducked his head down further and chuffed again. Then he sighed and looked up at her from under the funny eyebrows.
"I'm not going to be angry with you," she said. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"Val has been my friend most of my life," Tik said. "A good friend, Kate. I would give my life for him…perhaps he would give his life for me, too, in spite of the differences in our station. I owe him many things."
"But…"
He nodded. "Quite right. But. But he has a flaw. He is charming and romantic, and women in droves have fallen for his charms. He's brave and intelligent and he tells good stories and better jokes." Tik looked down at his hands again, and rolled his shoulders forward in a bearish shrug. "But he is not an honorable man, Kate. He uses people when he finds it convenient to do so."
"You think he would find it convenient to use me?"
"I know he would," the dagreth said. "He comes to me for advice, though once he's heard me out, he rarely takes the advice I give. He asked me how I thought he could get you to do what he wanted. I suggested that he didn't need to manipulate you; that you had as much reason as we did to find the Traitor and help us get home."
"But he wasn't satisfied with that." Kate glanced over her shoulder to be sure that Val wasn't standing there, even though she knew Tik wouldn't have said what he was saying if there was a chance his friend could hear.
"No. I suspect him of dark motives. He's suffered at the hands of his father, and he has great ambitions that the elder Peloral, Lord Faldan, will squelch until he is too weak to do so. Val's father is a miserable power-mongering martinet, but Val errs by being too like him in some ways instead of too unlike him."
"What does he intend to do?"
"I don't know," Tik said. "I cannot imagine. But I know Val is hungry for the power his father has been waving in front of his face his entire life, and I think he sees you as the weak link in the chain leading to that power."
"According to the book, all five of us have to work together if we are to beat out Callion."
"I'm not saying you should refuse to work with him." Tik rested one enormous hand on her shoulder so lightly it could have been a butterfly settling there for a brief rest. "You must work with him…with all of us. You are the glue that will keep the rest of us together. Just…" He looked so sad, sitting there contemplating the failings of his friend. "Just don't trust him."
Kate nodded slowly. "Thank you. I know telling me this wasn't easy."
"No."
"But I needed to know."
She rose and smiled at him, and he returned a wan half-smile before he looked down at his hands again.
"You did what was best for all of us. For your world and mine." She wanted to make him feel better, but he wasn't going to. He'd been forced to say things about a lifelong friend that he obviously would rather have never said. All her reassurances and words of intended comfort weren't going to mean anything to him right then. So she patted him lightly on his shoulder and said, "I'll see you tomorrow, Tik. If you're going to be up, you can watch the television. Just don't let the sound get too loud."
"I'll see you tomorrow," he said.
He was still staring at his hands when she turned the corner to go up to bed.
Chapter Twelve
Rhiana dug her fingers tighter into the padded grip on her right side and closed her eyes so tightly they hurt.
Beside her, Kate said, "Relax. We aren't going fast."
"Yes we are." Rhiana had no confidence in the slender belt that clipped over her lap and across her shoulder. She had no confidence in Kate's insistence that the horseless carriage was safe. She had no confidence, in fact, in anything except her own senses, and her senses insisted she was mere instants away from sudden, total annihilation.
"I've never had an accident," Kate said. "I've never even had a ticket."
"Just get me out of this thing."
"We're almost there."
"Really?" Rhiana opened her eyes in time to see them racing headon toward a huge devouring metal monster, and she slapped her hands over her eyes and shrieked and drew herself into a compact ball on the seat. But the screams of tortured metal and the crash of shattering glass never came, nor did the flames and the pain that Rhiana expected. Instead, she felt the car slow down. Then she felt it stop.
She put her hands down and squinted through one eye. They weren't moving. Neither were most of the other metal monsters that covered the vast stone field.
"This is Wal-Mart," Kate said. "It's the only place in town where I'll be able to afford an entire wardrobe for you plus replacement clothes for me."
From the outside, the building looked comparable in size to Smeachwyk
ke Castle, though Smeachwykke was considerably taller. Inside, though, Rhiana had another shock. No walls divided the space into rooms. It was one great pillared hall, and what it lacked in grace or elegance or the delicacy of detail it made up for with brightness and color. Rhiana stopped inside the bank of glass doors and stared.
"Welcome to Wal-Mart," an old man said to her and offered her a four-wheeled push-wagon contraption. She looked at him, not certain what she was supposed to do with it, and Kate reached in front of her, took the wagon, and said, "Come on. We have a lot of shopping to do."
Rhiana followed Kate into a forest of clothing hung on racks. Displays stuck to boards and on life-sized dolls showed the clothing as it was supposed to look. Barbarous. Graceless. Blocky. The fabrics didn't drape, the colors clashed, the pieces weren't fitted. She turned one garment inside-out and studied the stitch-work. It was very regular, but coarse. She could see raw fabric edges instead of the neatly matched interfacings and contrast-colored silk linings she found inside her own garments.
Rhiana pointed out the flaws she'd found and said, "The seamstresses in your world do a dreadful job," she said.
Kate looked down at her, the expression on her face exasperated. "Look, Rhiana. In this world, hand-stitching belongs to couture fashion, and a single garment of that sort of quality would cost us as much money as I make in a month. This stuff is stitched by machine. For what it is, it isn't too bad."
Rhiana considered that for a moment. In Glenraven her clothing was expensive, too; it took her seamstresses enormous amounts of effort and time to create, and bore little resemblance to the clothes worn by commoners. Some Glenraveners would not make in a lifetime the amount of money that would it would cost them to have a gown or embroidered silk shirt like the many she owned.
She looked again at the clothing, realizing that it was the Machine World equivalent in affordability to the very cheapest clothing worn by the lower classes. Suddenly, seen in that light, she realized how extraordinary it was. The dyes were bright, the seams solid, the fabrics new instead of used; unpatched, unworn, the finely woven cloth had nothing in common with the coarse homespun materials in dreary browns and grays and dull blues that made up the Glenraven commoners' wardrobes.
She said, "How many outfits did you have…before we exploded them, of course?"
Kate looked surprised. She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. "I don't know."
"You had more than four, I know, because we exploded that many and you and I still had clothing to wear."
"God, Rhiana, I have dozens."
"Still?"
"Of course."
Rhiana nodded. "How many pairs of shoes do you have?"
Kate laughed. "Two pairs of work boots, a good pair of Western riding boots, a good pair of English riding boots, two pairs of cross-trainers—though I did have three until recently—two or three pairs of old running shoes, probably five pairs of high heels, a couple pairs of slip-ons, some sandals, a pair of brown penny loafers, four pairs of Keds in rainbow colors…"
"You aren't rich, are you?"
"I get by," Kate said, "and I'm doing better this year than I've ever done before, but I'm not rich."
"I had a single pair of riding boots," Rhiana said thoughtfully, "and three pairs of indoor shoes—a night pair, a day pair, and a dancing pair. The majority of people in my world have only one pair of shoes. Perhaps two sets of clothing, not including their celebration clothing, which they will wear when they marry, at each holy day and festival, and when they are buried." She stared down the aisles where women ambled, pushing their wagons ahead of them, dropping clothing into the baskets as if this were something they did every day.
"These other people here aren't rich, are they?"
"Probably not. This isn't the sort of place where rich people shop, at least not most of the time."
"Compared to the people in my world, they're rich."
Kate laughed. "You won't convince them of that. People in this part of the world have one of the highest standards of living anywhere. But most of them don't appreciate it because it's so common. People don't value the things that anyone can have, no matter how valuable those things truly are." She was quiet for a moment, and the look in her eyes darkened to somberness. "That's one of the terribly stupid things about humans, I suppose."
"You aren't talking about buying clothing now."
"No. I'm not. I'm talking about every good thing that I had in my life that I took for granted until it was gone."
"Then humans and Machnan are no different in that way. I, too, have failed to appreciate the good things in my life until I lost them. If I did not love my husband, still I cared very much for him. And my children…and my friends…and my city…and my world…" Rhiana sighed. "But life moves forward, and so must we."
Kate seemed to be far away, her eyes focused on something beyond the reach of the moment and all it held. But she turned to Rhiana and said, "Quite right. And to move forward, we must have clothes."
They shopped, and Rhiana tried on outfits and discovered the numbering system that indicated sizes in the machine-made clothes. They found shoes and pants and shirts and bizarre undergarments and all manner of personal hygiene products and did not stop until their wagon, which Kate told her was a shopping cart, was full.
"Now we have to go to my saddle shop," Kate said as they loaded the last bags into the back of Kate's carriage, which she called her "car."
"You are a merchant?"
"Sort of. I'm more of a craftsman, actually, though I sell my own goods." Kate walked to the side and unlocked and opened Rhiana's door for her.
Rhiana climbed into the car and strapped herself in, closed her eyes, and wished she were able to draw up magic from Kate's source on her own. She would have wrapped it around herself, or perhaps around the vehicle, and perhaps even the space around the vehicle, so that anything that came within range would explode.
It was, she decided, probably just as well that she couldn't use the magic of Kate's world without Kate.
"I'll show you what I make. Maybe when you go back to your world, you'd like to take one of my saddles with you. I'm sure we'll figure out some way of trading…"
Rhiana, with her eyes tightly shut and both hands gripping the armrest, said, "Fine."
Rhiana liked the shop, enjoyed her tour, and liked meeting both Lisa and Paul. She listened while Kate gave both of them instructions, touched the finished saddles, admired the silverwork and the lovely engraved leathers, and imagined herself owning a saddle and bridle like those she saw.
"So, what do you think?" Kate asked as they walked out the back door to the place where she'd left the car.
"They're lovely saddles. I've never seen leatherwork like that. Painted leather, and embroidered leather, yes, but never carved leather."
Kate opened the door on Rhiana's side and started to go around to her own. "Technically, it's embossed," she said and then a hard, hairy arm grabbed Rhiana and a man with something over his face grabbed Kate and a third man, who also had his face covered, said, "Throw them into the van and tie them up and let's get out of here."
Rhiana saw Kate go limp. She didn't scream, she didn't fight. She tossed her car keys down the alley, and seemed to give up. Then Rhiana realized Kate was drawing up magical energy. Lots of it. The shield billowed out blue-white and powerful, nearly blinding to Rhiana's second sight.
The man who'd grabbed Rhiana dragged her toward his big, boxy car, but Rhiana had her eyes closed, watching the movement of magic up from Kate's source in a river, a torrent, an uncontrollable tidal surge. Kate diverted the whole nightmarish river to her, and Rhiana tried to catch it.
This time the explosion vaporized not just their clothes but their attackers' clothing and the back portion of the men's cavernous vehicle, a deep circle of the alley road, and part of a huge wooden pole that began to topple forward, dragging wires with it. The roar of the blast and the blinding flash of light stunned everyone within Kate's circle for
the duration of a heartbeat and another; Rhiana found it hard to believe neither the light nor the sound carried beyond the magical wards. But no one stepped out into the alley to investigate the noise. No one threw open back doors to shops, or peeked around corners.
The men screamed and fled; Kate yelled, "Get in the car," and while she ran down the alley for her key ring, Rhiana climbed into the vehicle and watched broken wires snaking across the ground with light dancing from their ragged edges. Her second sight saw nothing when she studied those wires—they looked like something magical to her eyes, but they were not.
Kate jumped in the car and inserted the key in the lock. She unlocked the monster that made the machine run, and it growled to life. "Grab us some clothes out of the back—just shirts. I don't want to get stopped for indecent exposure, but I don't want those bastards to get away again, either."
"Those were the men who beat you?"
"Unless I'm more unpopular than I thought, those were the ones."
Rhiana handed her a shirt and pulled on one herself, and a pair of pants, and one pair of the soft, cloth-topped shoes. As soon as Kate pulled a shirt over her head, she backed the car and stared down the road in the direction their attackers had fled.
They couldn't follow. The hole in the road was too deep. It would have swallowed Kate's car.
"Shit. We'll have to go the other way." Kate backed again, turned, and sped out of the alley in the opposite direction. She tore around the block and Rhiana discovered that she hadn't been joking when she said before that they weren't going very fast. Now they were going very fast and Rhiana wanted to be anywhere else. Anywhere.
Except with the three men.
"What are you going to do when you catch them?" Rhiana asked. Anything to get her mind off of the fact that they were going to die any instant.
Kate and her car roared around a corner, barely missing a brick wall, and raced back into the alley from the other end. Rhiana could see no sign of the men.
"I'm going to make them wish they'd never met me."
Marion Zimmer Bradley & Holly Lisle - [Glenraven 02] Page 9