Baccat sniffed. My new personal armor is amazing, but it is not readily perceptible to dull senses—cannot be seen or smelled well.
Lori grinned. That is a GOOD thing.
Yes. Baccat sat up. My personal armor lasted another three septhours, for a total of four septhours. Good for a FamCat, or perhaps smaller Fams, but I believe limiting for a human, who has more mass.
Sighing, Lori said aloud, “For now.”
For now.
She sensed the stridebeasts and the horses in the stables stirring, looked over the frost-white trees fading to brown, sent love-warmth to them, began speaking with Baccat telepathically again. I am tired of the cold snaps this spring! I want to get going. Though a little voice in her head stated that she also wanted to get to know Draeg Hedgenettle better. In fact, when she thought of him, a warmth emanated from between her legs and spread throughout her body.
Yes, he could be a major distraction, and her plans to leave were so far along that she shouldn’t hesitate once the night temperature rose above freezing. Maybe my personal armor spell doesn’t last long now, but if I practice, it could get better. She set her chin.
After a deep breath, she continued mentally, Though I probably wouldn’t be able to give all my animals personal armor on the trip, I might be able to give them weathershields some nights. It would be draining, but I would not have any household responsibilities. Her mouth tightened. Better if we could find out how long the weather will hold, how warm it will be during the days when we travel, how cold at night. The grass that my beasts could eat on the trip is slow in growing this year.
I do not know any Weather Mages, Baccat replied. But I may be able to ask my contacts to discover a person who is good at forecasting weather patterns. Weather here in Druida and along our path to the Valerian estate in the south. His whiskers flicked and he looked slyly at her. Or We could visit the starship Nuada’s Sword and ask it.
Lori shook her head. I don’t want to attract attention before we leave by going to places we might be seen and commented upon, so no Nuada’s Sword. As for the weather forecasting mages—or spells—I doubt we could afford that. She had very limited personal funds and needed to hoard what she had for the trip.
I know the Sallows, and the Sallows’ stables, Baccat rumbled. I could, perhaps, speak to one of the ferals who live there to extrapolate about a three-week trip for horses and stridebeasts, beginning, say, next week?
Her gaze focused on her cat once more. Yes, perhaps the end of next week. Again she glanced at the stables. Draeg Hedgenettle might know better than we of horses’ stamina and needs, but I hesitate to ask.
Baccat sat up straight. You have Me to find out information for you.
“Yes.” She bit her lip, murmured, “It would be so much better if I had gilt, or if I could move about the city as myself, ask questions as myself instead of some shabby shadow.” Then she tossed her head. “It doesn’t matter. I will make my own life, and in under a decade my stridebeasts and my breeding program will be well known.” Yet a decade seemed like forever to her. She set her jaw. She’d worked on the breeding program, beginning with two stridebeasts, since she’d been ten, but she was allowed to keep only six animals. That would change.
Baccat coughed, and the unusual sound had her stilling. “What?“
It is GOOD that you are not known as D’Yew outside this estate.
“Really? Why?” She’d thought a FirstFamily GrandLady in charge of her household, which she’d never been, would have been able easily to find out what she wanted, would have people happy to help her for her gilt or favors or influence. At least, when the twins came back from their outings, they always looked smug as if their egos had been stroked.
The Yews are not universally liked.
She snorted and went back to mind-speaking with her Fam. They wouldn’t be if they treat everyone like they do me.
They DO treat everyone like they do US. Your MotherSire was NOT a good man.
So my father said in his record spheres.
Your MotherSire bought a young bride, just as your mother bought your father.
Knees weak, Lori stumbled to the nearby pitted stone bench and plopped down. “He never said that,” she protested aloud. “Not in his record spheres. And in the memory spheres that he made and I experienced, he didn’t feel bought . . . or unhappy.”
It was a very good marriage for a SecondSon of an old GrandLord Family. He got gilt of his own, a couple of minor estates of his own from both the Valerians and the Yews, and a relatively independent lifestyle. Your mother was not . . . demanding of him.
Lori steadied her nerves. “If you mean that she used herbs and Healers to get pregnant fast, I know. I saw the accounting for such in the ledgers.”
She did not deserve You, for You are a wonderful person.
“Thank you.” She stood. “I must get inside. The sooner I finish my work with the Family and the Residence, the sooner I can go to the stables and learn to ride my horses.” And see Draeg Hedgenettle. She didn’t want to think of her father or her birth now. All that was past and she had her eyes on the future.
One more thing, Baccat said.
“Yes?”
Neither your cuzes nor the maître de maison, nor your housekeeper, spend much time in the city.
“I don’t care.”
The other FirstFamilies are curious people and no Yews have been in their society for a long, long time. They do not know what is happening on this estate.
“I don’t care about that, either. I am nothing to them, to any outsider except that shabby shadow, and no outsider is anything to me.” Except, perhaps, Draeg Hedgenettle.
Baccat stood and his back rippled in a catlike shrug. I am done with breakfast, and it is fun in the city. I will go speak with Fams of the Sallows or the ferals who frequent their stable complex. Perhaps I will renew My acquaintance with the PublicLibrary Fams. Though they are not interesting, they can sometimes be persuaded to ask the librarians questions.
“All right.” Lori suppressed a sigh. Baccat’s morning sounded a great deal better than her own of taking inventory of all the food and items in the no-times on the estate and ensuring they were properly stocked.
I will see you tonight, Baccat grinned.
“Yes!” And the slight smudge of downheartedness vanished under fizzing anticipation. Exploring the city again, and Baccat would show her a Fam tradition! “Now we must play.” She took a string from her pocket, slithered it along the ground. “So that I can hide my anticipation and excitement at leaving this place from the Residence.”
The cloth mouse at the end of the string bumped and hopped with her gestures and the tiniest of Flair.
Eyes gleaming wild, Baccat leapt, caught the cloth on his claws. With a tiny rip, Lori whisked the fake prey away, turned, and trotted around pathways at the edge of the garden until Baccat rushed from under a bare bush, pouncing and yanking the cloth from the string.
He looked up at her holding the mouse in his mouth, showing his fangs in a smile that also reflected in his eyes.
I got it! I am the triumphant CAT king of D’YEW Residence.
She didn’t know why he’d fashioned the title for himself, but it became all too obvious that status mattered to her Fam. She should probably count it as a blessing that he’d agreed to come with her to a small, unimportant estate.
“Hooray,” she shouted.
“Are you finished amusing the animal?” asked Folia, the housekeeper. A tall, curvaceous blond woman no more than fifteen years older than Lori, Folia wore a coat that appeared new and of a different fashion than Lori’s.
With a flatulent pop, Baccat teleported from the garden. Folia’s mouth turned down. “Disgusting animal.”
“He’s my Fam.”
“Cuspid requested that I speak with you about some document.” Folia shrugged. “I have it in the small dining room for you to peruse during breakfast.” She turned and led the way back to the Residence, expecting Lori to follow, wh
ich she did.
Nine
If Lori was eating in the small dining room, that meant no one else would be at the table with her, and loneliness warred with relief that she’d be solitary. Pitiful that she could be lonely while surrounded by Family.
She followed Folia to the back door set in the stone as gray as the sky. Perhaps that was why she’d had a brief wish that her Family were . . . different. Different like Draeg’s must be, since he treasured his.
When they entered the room, Lori saw a long papyrus titled Allocation of Funds to Allies. She picked it up and handed it to Folia with a smile. “No business during meals.” Lori repeated one of the rules she lived by; occasionally she could make them work for her instead of against her.
Folia scowled.
“Bad for the digestion. Furthermore, Cuspid and I and the Residence worked on the accounts already this month. This will have to wait until next month. The Residence is not flexible in matters of gilt.” She pulled out a heavy wooden chair and sat. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Oatmeal with currants,” Folia nearly snarled.
Lori kept her smile. She loathed oatmeal, and no doubt if she’d studied the papyrus she’d have gotten eggs and porcine strips. There was always a cost for not going along with Folia, or Cuspid, or the twins, or the Residence.
“Good!” she said cheerfully, fully determined to pull a few spices from the pantry to make it taste better, maybe some dried porcine bits. Small rebellions the staff understood and would expect.
But as she ate her meal alone in a dim room with the windows closed on the grassyard sloping toward the river, she was glad she didn’t like her Family. So much easier to leave them, all of them.
* * *
Draeg had awakened hot and sweaty and trembling with the effort to restrain himself during dream loving, to be tender when he wanted to ravish. Scrubbing his hands over his face at the complete feeling of reality of the dream instead of a regular, simple sex-and-release experience, he shook his head. That kiss with D’Yew had even more impact than he’d thought.
He grumbled to himself through his waterfall and large but mostly tasteless breakfast, wondering how long he’d be able to keep his hands off the woman and how to explain to Tinne Holly that he intended to sleep with the man’s main suspect.
Time to head to work.
After tending to the animals’ morning needs, Draeg rolled his shoulders to stretch them, looked around and sent his senses out to check if he was being observed, found he wasn’t. Then he flowed into a fighting drill developed by Tinne Holly, one of the two people the Yews hated the most.
Though the more Draeg didn’t interact with the Yews, the more he believed they wouldn’t know a Holly fighting kata—any Holly pattern—if it came up and bit them on the ass. Draeg wasn’t the best household guard in the world, but if he’d been committing crimes and a new person showed up on his estate, he’d be down in person to check him or her out. Draeg had met only the dried-up stick of a maître de maison, Cuspid Yew; the housekeeper; and D’Yew herself.
If this had been his estate . . . the words, the feeling snagged in his brain. Sometimes the stables and the land around it felt like his own, since he worked by himself, had barely seen anyone since he’d arrived two eightdays ago.
Somehow this particular place felt . . . good, almost familiar, or as if he’d been waiting to find it, stupid as that sounded.
He let his workout carry him from the courtyard and behind the stables, facing the thick woodland that separated D’Yew’s land from lesser Nobles’ estates and, farther east, the more crowded middle class neighborhoods of Druida City. Tall evergreens as a backdrop for the reaching branches of bare-limbed trees and thick brush added a solid, living green to the gray day.
He finished the exercise and breathed deeply, letting the pleasing smells of Yew estate suck into his nostrils and lungs. Stables and stridebeasts and horses first, of course, then the scent of the land itself. Bushes and ancient trees and grasses, more tangled around the stables than the smooth yard surrounding the Residence. The fragrance of the sea.
Yew estate didn’t border the Great Platte Ocean like those across the avenue and to the west of it. Fine with Draeg; that huge body of water made him deeply uneasy. He’d never known how his mentor, Tab Holly, could have actually sailed on a ship on top of it.
So he started another long and traveling training pattern that would take him back to the corral and the horse pen, concentrating on the perfection of each move.
A bird cawed raucously overhead and Draeg glanced up to see it circling. You are too close to my horses, man, step away, came clear and astringent to Draeg’s mind. He followed through too hard on a foot sweep and was forced into fancy footwork to keep from falling on his butt.
Yes, his kata had taken him near the horses’ pen. He’d moved it close to the stridebeasts so the animals could get used to each other. The horses knew about stridebeasts—the Sallows had picked up three from the lost estate—but the Yew stridebeasts thought the horses were funny-looking creatures.
Quickly finishing his drill, Draeg withdrew a couple of paces but kept moving in the cool air. As a man of supposedly little Flair, he hesitated to pull a weathershield around himself.
The raven sounded a last caw and settled on Smyrna’s croup, glittering black eyes fixed on Draeg.
I have been with these horses many twinmoons. They are mine more than yours or the woman’s. His beak clicked as if in scorn.
Draeg bowed to the bird, though he kept his eyes on this new player in the intimate little game going on.
“May I ask your name, GentleSir Bird?”
Another beak clack. I am called Corax.
“Greetyou, Corax. I am Draeg Hedgenettle.”
You lie, the bird stated.
With a swift look around the area, Draeg muttered. “You may call me Draeg Hedgenettle. My birth name is Draeg Betony-Blackthorn.”
You have too many names, the bird grumbled. He strutted up Smyrna’s back and she blew out a breath. Though her muscles flexed, she made no move to rid herself of the bird, not even when he flew to the top of her head between her ears. Draeg got the impression that the horse had missed the raven. Ragan, whose neck had been stretched over the pen toward the stridebeasts, turned and trotted toward Smyrna and Corax, whickering in welcome.
Corax lifted and circled over both horses, then touched down on Ragan’s back. Smyrna slapped her tail against her butt in irritation, especially when Corax tilted his head and focused on Draeg again. I think I would like a FamMan who would provide regular and easy meals as you do for the horses. I have missed my suet and my oatmeal and apples and my raw clucker. I think you would do.
Draeg’s adoptive father and several of his siblings had Fams, but he’d never felt the need for one.
But now . . . he was alone on this quest, with only occasional contact with anyone outside the Yew estate. And his decisions as to how to handle this particular situation, how much and when to interact with the Yews, Family and estate, were his own. His great responsibility. He could use a friend inside the walls.
A friend. The sizzle of his blood when he thought of Loridana Itha D’Yew tempted him to take her as a lover . . . but whether she could be a friend as well, something rarer and more important to Draeg, still needed to be seen. The woman was so damn naive, innocent even.
The black raven studied him, appearing streetwise, and as dark as all Draeg’s cynical thoughts made solid. “Deal,” he said.
At the word, the bird—his FamBird—flew to his shoulder. Draeg tensed at having the sharp beak so close to his eyes.
Corax cackled. You trust me, FamMan, Draeg-of-the-many-names.
“Maybe.” Draeg spit the word through clenched teeth, but the raven lifted his wings and sidestepped back and forth on his shoulder with scratchy steps from twiglike feet.
This perch is broad enough. I like, Corax said. Coming even closer, he stopped near enough that Draeg could smell spring dirt dust on
his feathers, and those feathers actually brushed Draeg’s neck in a soft caress that prickled his skin. Slowly he lifted his hand and stroked the bird with the back of his hand.
Harsh, simple images of a bowl of mush with fresh fruit bits and a side of raw clucker flooded his mind.
I like that meal best.
“Uh-huh. I’ll see what I can do,” Draeg said, but a small warmth coated his insides and he couldn’t stop smiling. He had a Fam. Clearing his throat to loosen it, he said, “How many raven Fams are there?”
Corax lifted his wings slightly and Draeg felt disinterest from his new FamBird. Don’t know. There is a hawkcel flying around the city, but he thinks muchly muchly of himself, and does not speak or pay attention to me.
“So I may have one of two known FamBirds.” Yeah, his smile stretched wider into a grin. Wasn’t often in his life that he was unique. In fact, never. Well, never until he took this job as an undercover stableman; these particular circumstances were unique for sure. Before that he’d just been an angry young man, ex-merchant-guard, looking for trouble.
D’Yew’s Fam, Baccat, jumped onto one of the thin posts of the temporary pen, a pole too small for his fat rump, so he was forced to dance around the top as he strove for balance. The horses shied back and Corax took flight.
So there is a new Fam, a Feathered Fam; most interesting, the cat said, gaze following Corax as he circled, then returned to Draeg’s shoulder, cawing in irritation.
“Do you mind that I have a Fam, cat?” Draeg challenged.
Why should I mind? Baccat raised his nose.
“Another Fam in your territory?” Draeg said.
This time Baccat snorted before replying, I do not consider this My territory, or, rather, I only consider My particular herb garden My territory. He fixed big yellow cat eyes on the raven huffing in Draeg’s ear. THAT individual had better not leave droppings in MY garden, or look to eat MY furrabeast leavings.
Corax whistled. Furrabeast?
Draeg thought he heard the bird swallow. You had furrabeast this morning? I had desiccated mouse. Beak turning, he pulled at Draeg’s hair. I am hungry. I have had nothing I have not caught or found myself for many, many, many days.
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