T’Ash’s collars are bespelled to return home. Sometimes they are bespelled to return the Fam home, if injured. Though Baccat stated the words evenly, the angle of his ears and the slight ruffle of his fur showed his offense that she didn’t immediately commit to purchasing the collar.
“Wonderful,” Lori breathed. “Ah, you do want to eat on the way to the trip, don’t you?” She inhaled a breath. “It is too expensive.”
Fifteen
Biting her lip, Lori said to Baccat, “I have only a couple of pieces of jewelry of my very own. A baby ring, and I was given a necklace for completing my First Passage by the Family.” She visualized it, sent the image to Baccat. The piece contained silver links, not gold, but included six small oval rubies and one ruby drop. “It is mine,” she said, and her emphasis echoed against the glass window, sounded down the now-empty street, so she switched to mind-speaking again. I can give it to you, if I wish, unlike any of the ancestral jewels. Which she’d seen at one time, a huge cabinet made especially to house them in the MasterSuite, though she hadn’t been permitted to touch them.
She didn’t want them anyway. Not one of the pieces—mostly rubies because of the redness of yew berries—looked as pretty as . . . that pair of copper marriage bands studded with sapphires and amethysts in a simple Celtic knot pattern sitting on a velvet stand before her. She shook her head at the uncurling desire for the beautiful objects. Marriage bands of all things. The last thing she wanted was marriage. The Family would have no hesitation arranging a husband and a marriage for her, one that would benefit them. They’d done it often enough through the past centuries.
My collar? prompted Baccat, purring. Yes, I would like that First Passage necklace. YOUR necklace for Me. He paused. The Family did not give you a Second Passage necklace last year upon your attainment of your majority?
“No,” she said shortly and aloud, jerking her stare from the marriage bands and turning away. Telepathically, she said, It’s late. Let’s walk to the area south of here that will be our route and check that street for a few blocks before we return home. She strode away and Baccat kept up with her, radiating satisfaction.
I get My collar!
Yes. A thought snagged her mind. Did your old scholar give you a collar?
Baccat gave a little hop, didn’t look at her but picked up his pace as if embarrassed, then answered, He did a braid spell on a string with some paper scraps of old notes when I pointed out I needed a collar. He laughed.
That man had hurt his Fam’s feelings. Even though she learned more every day about Fams—like this business with the collar that she didn’t know yesterday—she knew enough about animals, and about herself, to understand when feelings got bruised.
My First Passage ruby necklace is in the HouseHeart, she said. She kept it there with her other treasures—the few memory spheres and record spheres she’d discovered of her father’s—in a box no one else could open. Even Cuspid and Folia could only enter the HouseHeart three days a month at the most if she’d ordered so, and she had. The HouseHeart, who was not the same persona as the Residence, listened to her as long as she remained reasonable in her requests. I’ll get the necklace for you.
Baccat whirled and raced back to her and jumped for her shoulder. She hastily formed the invisible shelf support for him. When he landed, he leaned against her and purred loudly.
Though that comforted her, she realized her mind felt tired, her whole body did . . . and that she’d been using too much Flair what with the standard spells she did every day with the Residence, and working with the horses to get them ready for the trip, mixing herbs in the stillroom today, and these after-dark excursions.
She’d have to cut back on something—the Flair she used in these adventures. Not a pleasant thought. She found her jaw ached from gritted teeth.
LET’S CELEBRATE! Baccat’s shout filled her head and jolted her from her doldrums. She forced a smile. “What did you have in mind?”
He nuzzled her ear and tickled her with his fur, and she wished it weren’t her cat, but Draeg’s tongue. A little shiver went through her at the thought—and because the temperature had turned freezing.
Slyly, Baccat said, I went to the food carts earlier this evening and destroyed a humongous spider. The vendor lady expressed her gratitude with two tubes of an acceptable Pinot Noir and marinated clucker cubes. They are quite extraordinary clucker cubes. She felt the touch of her Fam’s rough tongue, but more in passing as he licked his paw and groomed his whiskers. I hid them in a cache; they are waiting for us.
“All right.”
After retrieving the very good clucker cubes and eating them by hand, Lori felt slightly more optimistic. The lights on the streets had dimmed and the fabulous star-studded Celtan sky sparkled like her renewed spirits. She’d always looked to the abundant stars in the night sky, accepted their shine in the darkness as inspiration. They’d be even more brilliant at her new home.
And some night, before she left, she’d ensure that she and Draeg made love with the stars sending light through a private pavilion’s windows. She hoped.
Yes, her Fam, the food, the stars helped. She burped discreetly and began walking along the start of the smallest of the three streets that led back into Noble Country.
A humming attracted her attention. She stared, mouth open, at the sleekly modern gliders zooming toward her on the narrow street. She hadn’t thought such vehicles could go that fast.
Side by side, they raced, like in a competition. She stared.
Look out! shrieked Baccat mentally. Then he hopped on her shoulder, bounded somewhere else. Jump up and back, to Me in this doorway!
Gasping, Lori did, and her fear triggered her Flair, she felt it pulse—but it didn’t encase her soon enough. The edge of the bumper struck her shin and she heard the break as well as felt it, hideous pain shocking through her, stopping her breath. Then her personal armor formed around her. She hit the wall, bounced away, back into the air behind the glider that had passed.
She panicked. Home! Not the Residence, but the estate. One bright thought sliding under the nauseating pain—where she’d told people she would be. Boathouse. One last clear idea. Path to river! That should cover her explorations. She teleported before she hit the ground . . . of the street. Instead she landed in the bushes close to the steps to the river. Steps that, if she’d fallen, could have broken her leg.
The bushes and her personal armor cushioned her and she had just enough strength to roll onto the steep stone staircase. She drained the Flair powering her armor to relieve the pain.
It didn’t do much. She’d never broken a bone, never been so physically injured. Tears running down her face, she called, for the first time in years, to her Family.
Cuspid! Folia! Not to the twins, never the twins, who would mock her. I have fallen.
Where? snapped both voices in unison.
She sent them an image, then as pain made sickness crawl up her throat, she turned her head, vomiting in the dirt, curving her fingers into claws to scratch soil and leaves over the regurgitated clucker cubes that she hadn’t eaten here.
Seconds seemed like minutes as the chill of the night mixed with the cold sweat coating her body, her face. Her mouth tasted nasty.
Baccat appeared and meowed plaintively, licked the side of her face where tears dribbled down, then walked to her uninjured side and began purring. She concentrated on the warm vibration against her body, steadying her breathing.
She heard Folia’s steps first, quick light footfalls descending the stairs. Then Lori looked up into the housekeeper’s beautiful face and knew she’d interrupted the woman, who must have been with a lover in her rooms. Folia’s silkeen gown scandalously clung to her elegant figure; her face had been enhanced for intimacy. Her red-slicked mouth pouted. “You stupid, clumsy girl.” Her voice almost lilted. She smiled, unpleasantly, grooving a couple of lines in her pale forehead, accented by the twinmoonslight.
Leaping to his paws, Baccat arched and hissed.
&
nbsp; “That filthy animal!”
“My. Fam,” Lori said weakly. Moving her arm to pat him sent crisp waves of pain radiating through her, and she had to focus to control her bladder from emptying. She had no Flair to protect her Fam. Had no Flair at all. Weak and vulnerable as she’d rarely been since her Second Passage. Her panting came rough to her ears.
“Hey!” Two voices shouted and loud thuds pounded toward her, slaps of hard and soft leather, she thought, but her mind had grown odd and fuzzy.
Cuspid showed up first, then, right behind him, Draeg Hedgenettle.
The sight of him turned on her sobs; she didn’t know why. Perhaps because it appeared like he cared she was hurt? Perhaps because he might not be a friend, but he didn’t seem as hostile as the others.
“Let’s see, let’s see.” Cuspid spoke more gently than she’d heard in years—at least to her. He used his tender voice with his children, the twins Vi and Zus. The maître de maison went around Folia, and Lori found herself lifted from the stairs, slid over on a gliding cushion of air to a grassy part of the incline a meter away. Everyone followed.
Baccat hissed again.
“Enough of that, cat,” Cuspid said. “Go to your garden shed, or I will ’port you to the dungeon again.”
She is MY FamWoman. I must protect her!
“She is a daughter of the house of Yew. We will care for her. Prepare her room,” he ordered Folia. “And any medical necessities.”
“She broke her leg,” Folia said.
“Obviously,” Cuspid said.
Draeg tramped around the steps, in the dirt runoff and up to her. “I c’n carry her,” he said.
The other two turned to him and as they did, he slouched round-shouldered, his posture matching his lower-class accent.
“Or ya got an anti-grav stretcher?”
“We can teleport to her bedroom,” Cuspid said with cold arrogance. That indicated to Lori that he continued to check on her rooms when she wasn’t there, since he knew the light well enough to ’port there.
Draeg stared at them, his eyes appearing dull. “Ain’t ya gonna take her to a Healin’Hall?”
“That is not necessary,” Cuspid said at the same time as Folia said, “No. It’s a simple break.”
“’Kay. Which one-a ya gonna hold her? Best if ya lie down beside her, I’m guessin’.” He scratched his head. “I don’ know everythin’ I should ’bout ’portin’.”
Not a lie, Lori figured, her thoughts distant. Who did know everything they should about teleporting?
Folia retreated up the stairs to the boathouse deck. “I’m teleporting to the stillroom for supplies.” Lori sensed her disappearing from the scene.
“Cat, you must move,” Cuspid demanded.
Snorting, Baccat sent mentally, You promise on your word of honor you will not hurt her more?
“Cave of the Dark Goddess,” Cuspid muttered. “Swearing on my word of honor not to hurt Loridana! Stup.”
Draeg squatted down beside her, took a softleaf from his trous pocket, and wiped her eyes and nose. It smelled of him, and that soothed, helped her steady her chest from heaving sobs. Then he pushed her hair away from her forehead. Clearing his throat, Draeg said, “I promise on my word of honor I will not harm Loridana Itha Valerian D’Yew.”
A bird cawed from a nearby tree branch. Corax, she supposed, though she didn’t really feel him and sure didn’t want to move her head to look for a black shadow against the night sky.
“Cave of the Dark Goddess,” Cuspid repeated. “All right. I swear on my word of honor I will not hurt Loridana Itha Yew any more than is medically necessary when treating her wound.”
Baccat growled, but lifted his head. I accept your word of honor, maître de maison. I will monitor My link with My FamWoman. He walked to her cheek and licked it again and she received a private message. The stableman will look after you. You are in good hands, there. Then, with a last brush of fur against her face, the cat winked out of sight but had started Lori thinking less about pain and more about Draeg’s hands and the future of those hands on her body. Not tomorrow—or later today, as she’d anticipated. But in the next several days, she hoped. She swallowed.
Draeg stroked her head again, dabbing up sweat, she thought.
“Since you ain’t takin’ her ta no Healin’ Hall, uh, do you all have a Healer on staff—”
“Not a full Healer,” Cuspid snapped. “I have enough standard Flair with a touch of Healing to handle this.”
“All righty,” Draeg said. “Though a real Healer in a Healin’Hall could fix this break tonight.” He coughed. “I got some experience, too. I c’n set that there bone right here, but it’s gonna hurt.”
Lori blocked a whimper from escaping, swallowed bile, and nodded, tensing.
“I can help, and place a Flaired splint on it,” Cuspid said.
“You got pain relief–type spells in your Flair?” Draeg asked.
“Of course.”
“Then I think ya should be doin’ that.” His voice sounded rough and his body moved with unusual jerkiness.
“I beg your pardon?” Cuspid huffed.
“Lady is in pain. You care about that?” Again Draeg shifted. “Temp’s movin’ ta freezin’ and she’s goin’ into shock. Let’s set this now, afore you have ta call fer a Healer ta help her out.”
“That won’t—”
“By the Lady and Lord!” Lori cried out. “I can—” She started to sit up and suddenly Cuspid held her shoulders and pressed her back down to the glacial cold and hard ground. The movement caused her stomach to lurch unpleasantly in her body and she subsided. Pain ebbed and flowed like waves. She thought she might even hear the ocean. Perhaps it was only air rushing in her ears. Or perhaps it was words her brain could no longer distinguish.
Then a last, wrenching, sickening yank of pain sucked her into the dark.
Sixteen
Draeg stared at a far too pale Loridana D’Yew, whose pearly skin in the moonlight showed other pearls—translucent ones of pain sweat.
He and the maître de maison, Cuspid Yew, had straightened the woman’s leg and she’d passed out. Then the guy had translocated splints and bandages. Draeg had lifted and held Loridana while the man had fussily sent the excess materials away, then turned back and efficiently splinted the leg.
Reluctance along with wariness had Draeg drawing Loridana close. Not at all the fuss that would have happened at his home if one of his sisters had broken a bone. No mistress of the house taking charge and giving orders, no gathering of siblings to help in any way they could. No calling of a FirstLevel Healer to their home—or taking their injured Family member to Primary HealingHall. Just one old and unsympathetic man working on an ill-lit slope with a grudgingly lit spellglobe. As a supposedly poorly Flaired person, Draeg didn’t want to chance providing light or anything else except main strength.
He wished he could see to her. He’d have had her to T’Blackthorn Residence in an instant.
He didn’t want to let her go. Not to the Residence, the little caring of this one man, the unknown others who populated the great house and hadn’t been bothered to help. Even whatever Draeg could manage in his apartments in the stables with medications and supplies for the animals felt like it would be better than her Family’s help in the intelligent Residence.
Yep. Wanted to keep her, take care of her himself. None of the Yews he’d seen had impressed him, and he didn’t trust them. He’d trust Loridana’s FamCat, but there were limits to what some Fams could do, and he didn’t know the power of Baccat’s Flair, whether the Fam could teleport Loridana as well as himself. And Baccat had been banished to his garden shed.
Cuspid Yew heaved a sigh and braced outthrust arms. “Give her to me and I’ll teleport with her to her bedsponge. I had hoped she’d outgrown her clumsiness.” He sniffed.
Draeg felt his jaw flexing. He’d only seen Loridana move with grace, especially when riding.
His own Fam cawed and sent a short burst of telepathy
to Draeg. I think I can sense woman of much Flair. I will fly past the windows to find her. Maybe there will be a ledge where I can perch and watch.
You didn’t see what happened to her? Draeg asked. He’d thought the bird was keeping an eye on her and the cat.
No.
We will talk later, Draeg sent to his Fam as he set Loridana as gently as possible into the thin arms of the maître de maison. Aloud, Draeg said, “You sure she’s gonna be all right?” He scrubbed a hand over beard bristles along his jaw.
Cuspid Yew gave him a contemptuous look. “With the resources we have in our FirstFamily Residence, a break like this should be Healed within three days.”
Grunting, Draeg hunched back into a servile position. “Huh. I dunno. Thought that a reg’lar Healer could do that bone in a night.” A Healer could mend a clean break in a septhour, more like, but Draeg kept that comment to himself, and just said, “I’ll keep the beasts fine for her then, an’ won’t expect her down at the stables fer a while.” He cleared his throat. “Pretty clear she likes riding, though, and is an active wo—girl.”
After only another sniff as punctuation, the man disappeared. Corax launched himself from the tree and flew toward the Residence. Draeg walked down the steps to the boathouse and back up, looking for any sign of blood, and found nothing.
Questions buzzed in his mind that he’d ask Corax, and Baccat, and, when he could, Loridana. Meanwhile the edgy energy cycling through his nerves demanded he move, so he ran to the secondary shed he’d begun to clean out and prepare for two of the animals, then back to the stables. Around him, the night breeze whispered secrets he couldn’t catch, but the hard earth under his feet felt good and right.
* * *
Murmurs and shifting shadows and just plain distress, physical and emotional, pulled Lori from bad dreams.
A drifting scent, a stroking hand along her arm outside the covers—and what was her arm doing outside her covers in the cold?—slid hard nails along her skin. Someone was in her room, a Family member, even! Watching her. She hated that.
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