Heart Legacy

by Robin D. Owens

  Huge emotion was her only option, to cover all and any slight reactions with major ones. She jumped to her feet, threw up her arms, and stomped back and forth, letting the simmering resentment of her whole life flash into anger. “What? Who has told you that?”

  But this rage, this fury could burn all her resolution to ash, could ruin all her plans if she continued the outburst. She must control her ire. Tamp it down, grab a different feeling. Confusion. Yes, confusion would work.

  She collapsed back into her chair, huddled in it, face in her hands, discreetly wiping away angry tears, awaiting the Residence’s answers. Though she knew.

  Only two people who lived in the Residence visited Druida City openly.

  When she lifted her face, she kept her expression bewildered. With all her might she projected hurt bewilderment.

  “Why would my cuzes lie?” She uncurled from her hunch but kept her shoulders slumped and her arms in front of her body and turned her gaze to the Residence’s scrystone. “Did they say they saw me?”

  Making her gulp obvious, she whispered, “You know there have been more conflicts than usual between us, lately.” She paused so her next words would carry weight. “About the gilt for allies, and how many animals I should be able to have.” A big breath. “Why would they lie about me?” she wailed.

  “Act like D’Yew,” the Residence snapped. “Not a child.

  Automatically her spine straightened, not touching the back of the chair; her knees and feet came together as she sat properly and folded her hands on her lap. Her chin lifted. Big emotions, yes, more anger could be released now. “I am not a child!”

  “You are certainly acting like a child,” said Cuspid as he stepped into the room, his lined face set in a disapproving frown. His children, Vi and Zus, followed him.

  “That’s right, Loridana, you’re acting like a little girl.” Vi glided into the room.

  “Did you call in reinforcements, Residence?”

  “He had no need,” Cuspid said. “I could hear you well outside in the corridor.”

  “How interesting. I closed that door. We shall have to study your soundproofing capability for this chamber, Residence. I quite thought it was superior to what it is. As for lies.” She faced the twins. “Why are you telling them about me? Saying I’ve been off the estate. Where and when did you see me?”

  “How do you know we were the ones who told the Residence you were in Druida City?” Zus asked.

  Lori suppressed her childish habit of rolling her eyes. “You are the two who are allowed out of the estate—”

  “For political purposes and meetings with our allies!” Zus said.

  “So you told your father”—she glanced at Cuspid—“and he told the Residence. So the Residence heard the story thirdhand and believed it?” She let her voice rise in shock and paused a good thirty seconds and watched as the twins shared a glance, then repeated herself. “Where and when did you see me outside the estate?” She hoped she had her emotions, her small physical reactions locked down and masked by now, and suffered through more silence as no one answered her.

  “Perhaps we should drop this matter—” Cuspid began.

  “So I can be brought from my work at any time to be asked about my conduct? Is that fair? Is that honorable? I have been taught to be fair and honorable all my life . . .” At least the Residence and Family had given lip service to those qualities, even though the old stableman and her nursemaid had instilled the basics. “So I would like that applied to me. Did you see me in Druida City, Zus?”

  Twenty-seven

  Another glance at his sister. “No.”

  She aimed her gaze at Vi. “Did you see me, Vi?”

  “No.”

  “Then why would you tell your father and the Residence that you did?”

  “We didn’t see you. A friend of ours did.”

  Lori let the gasp come. “Who?”

  Zus shrugged. “You wouldn’t know his name. The person who told us they saw you is quite reliable.”

  “This person who casts aspersions on me, lies about me. How does this person even know what I look like?”

  The twins appeared startled. Vi pressed her lips together.

  “Have you been passing out vizes of me?”

  “Of course not,” Zus said.

  “Then how do they know it was me?” Lori hesitated. She’d have to burn some bridges, and that was her tentative controversial relationship with the twins to downright adversaries. Not a decision she liked, but she had to protect Draeg and her affair with him, and her plans to escape.

  She stood and fixed her gaze on Zus, the more spoilt twin. “Where was I supposed to have been? When? You don’t give any of us details where I was supposed to be or when.”

  “Night, out at night, after dinner,” Zus muttered.

  Lori wanted to fling out her arms; she swallowed her anger instead. “Oh. When I’m refinishing the boathouse? You’ve already gone through the boathouse to check my progress.” She met Cuspid’s eyes. He was poker stiff, which meant he was uncomfortable, his children’s manners reflecting upon him. Lori angled toward the Residence scrystone. “When they came to summon me to see you about this whole mess, they toured the boathouse. Did they report on my progress?”

  “No,” the Residence said.

  “And I met with Fastig Yew, the fisher, this morning. He saw my work. You may ask him.”

  “Get a fisher involved in Residence inhabitant matters?” Vi snorted delicately. “No.”

  “He is a Yew. He is Family. And he wouldn’t lie for me. You think he is less because he doesn’t live here in the Residence?”

  That statement lay heavy in the air because no one, not Residence or Cuspid or Vi or Zus, wanted to answer in the affirmative, though they all believed it was true.

  Lori stood tall. “Your friend erred in thinking he saw me.” She slid a glance toward Vi. “Since you weren’t with him, perhaps he mistook you for me. We are somewhat similar.”

  Vi’s mouth tightened.

  “He couldn’t have done that. Look at you and your clothes. My sister is fashionable and sophisticated,” Zus sneered, flicking a hand up and down Lori.

  “Yes, my clothes. My work clothes that I dress in every night after dinner. Would I look like D’Yew in Druida City in these stained and mended clothes? Did he describe these clothes?”

  Zus’s mouth fell open. “Ah—”

  “Check all my good clothing to see if it’s been used anywhere other than here.”

  “It has not,” the Residence said heavily. “Loridana is correct, your friend must be mistaken. How would he know her? Cuspid, your children have wasted Loridana’s time, and more importantly, my time, carrying outrageous tales to us. Perhaps outsiders hope to manipulate us; certainly association with outsiders is besmirching their characters. You and Folia and I should reconsider these outside meetings with so-called allies. I have not seen any benefit—”

  “No!” Zus yowled. “You can’t do that to us! Keep us here on this bor—”

  “Zus,” Vi warned.

  He shut his mouth, but his pale face flushed with anger and his hands fisted.

  “You gave us permission months ago to prepare the ground for the Yews’ entrance into Druidan society again. That’s what we’ve been doing, circulating in small gatherings. We should continue to do so,” Vi said soothingly.

  Lori’s anger surged. Cuspid and the twins would flatter the Residence and smooth everything over, as usual. She clamped her mouth shut for a full minute as blocked fury pounded in her ears, and then she said, interrupting someone nattering about something, “This does not concern me. I am weary and wish to retire.”

  “Permission granted,” the Residence said. “You need not go back to the boathouse to finish work.”

  She hadn’t been asking, but she inclined her head. “I will see you all later.” With gliding steps she went to her rooms.

  * * *

  Draeg had teleported away naked, his clothes in his h
ands, and cursed under his breath as he landed in the bedroom of his stable apartment. The cold diminished his ardor, but Lord and Lady, he ached.

  No way could he sleep.

  After a quick waterfall he dressed in another set of work clothes and went down to check on the beasts. He found them calm and mostly sleeping.

  He also kept his bond with Lori open, felt her emotions—fear and anger, confusion and impatience— sensed how she covered or exploited her feelings for the Residence and her Family. It occurred to him that she might be an excellent actress.

  Was she pretending to him, just as he was to her?

  No.

  He’d experienced her open heart, seen her vulnerable expression when they’d first met. And he’d been with her often enough as she moved with her animals to know she hid nothing from them . . . and nothing from him, either. She didn’t mask her emotions to him any more than anyone would with a stranger.

  She didn’t deliberately deceive him. He’d have perceived that.

  He moved through the shorter east arm of the stables in use to the main north stable block that Lori worked on now and again. Draeg had done a bit, too. As far as he knew, it would be the next block rehabilitated.

  He needed action. Creating a couple of lightglobes illuminated the front stones of a medium-sized entrance hall meant to impress at one time.

  Rolling his shoulders, Draeg muttered a housekeeping spell he’d become all too acquainted with lately and watched it scour the floor. He rubbed his hands and translocated boxes of materials for his creative Flair from a storage room to land with clinking near him.

  Greetyou, FamMan, what are you doing? Corax asked, perching on the top of a stall divider.

  “Thank you for watching over the animals. I know you aren’t nocturnal.”

  I love my horses and they are happy here. Stridebeasts are nice, too, but not as interesting as horses.

  “Yeah,” Draeg said.

  Nobody threatened.

  “That’s good.”

  I do not like the feel of this place. Like Blackthorn’s better.

  Draeg opened his mouth to agree again, but shut it. He didn’t know the Residence, but what he’d experienced, he didn’t like it, nor the Yews of the Residence that he’d met. The other members of the Family that he’d run into while working seemed like regular people except for being a little insular.

  But the land—the estate—something about the place satisfied him, and more than the Blackthorn estate. More variation in the landscape, ridges, and hollows. And Straif T’Blackthorn had worked hard on making his estate a gem, groomed as well as efficient. Yeah, if the Blackthorns had wanted to withdraw as the Yews had, they could do it. Most of the FirstFamilies could be self-sufficient, probably the very reason for the large estates in the first place. The FirstFamilies were descended from the colonists of old Earth who funded the starships, people with psi power who’d been threatened back then. Security had been a big deal. Mostly still was, and part of that was being able to live off the land, if necessary.

  What are you doing? repeated Corax.

  Draeg grunted. Though his mind had run off in a different direction, he still had too much energy and unfulfilled lust. He’d use it.

  Rubbing his hands, he said, “I’m going to practice my creative Flair.”

  Shinys! Corax flew down to one of the boxes, flipped open the top, and began poking into it with his beak.

  “Careful, some of those small tiles are delicate.”

  Corax looked at him with a beady eye. I will be careful.

  Draeg moved so the closed entrance doors were behind him, measuring the area by eye. Standing in the middle of the hall, he gathered his Flair, his psi, his energy and let it sear through him. He had no image in mind, but let the pattern groove into the stone beneath him, setting no bounds on it.

  Flapping and squawking came from Corax, and when Draeg opened his eyelids, he saw the bird staring at him. His Fam opened and closed his beak. Big Flair, smell of burning STONE.

  “Friction,” Draeg said, and stepped away with a gesture that would clean up the ground stone dust of the meter-sized engraving.

  He stared at the pattern. He’d thought of Lori and horses, and beneath where he’d been was a Celtic knot incision of two horse heads staring at each other—in a heart shape. Ready for him to set mosaic tiles into the grooves.

  With a nod to himself and Corax, he decided the left horse would have Smyrna’s gray and black coloring and the right Ragan’s roan shade. The rest of the knot itself would be a dark brown.

  He stretched and did a quick drill to loosen his muscles, then summoned his knee pad for the work. A lot could be done with Flair, but setting the small tiles in the stone could be as much a meditation as sitting in a grove. It freed the mind except for contemplation of color and the right tile, as well as the repetitive action of his hands.

  Hooks and tracking were his primary Flair, his best Flair that he used to support himself. He expressed his creativity in mosaic making, and tonight he wanted to burn his energy and Flair here in the stables. And not worry about Lori in the great Residence.

  Corax kept him company, commenting now and then as Draeg set the outline first, then the bird culled some tiles from Draeg’s boxes and flew off to stow them in his cache, or nest, or whatever.

  Draeg himself sank into a rhythm, moving dexterously and with Flair so that his hands blurred. A septhour passed, nearly two, before he inserted and glued the last tile into the dip where the two curves joined to make the top of the heart. He chanted a spell to clean it up, shine it, protect it.

  When he finished and stood, scanning the beautiful work—perhaps his best mosaic—a streak of understanding nearly knocked him to his knees. He staggered the couple of paces to the side of a stall and leaned against it, hoping the wood was solid enough to take his weight.

  He was falling in love with Lori. So quickly after meeting her.

  And Loridana Itha Valerian D’Yew was his HeartMate.

  Twenty-eight

  If Draeg had made a HeartGift for his HeartMate during one of the Passages that freed his Flair, he could offer it to her and, when she accepted, wait a week or two and outright claim her as his HeartMate. Those were the laws of Celta and HeartMates.

  But his Passages hadn’t followed the standard model. None of the three had occurred to him at the usual age, and when they had inflicted him, it had been like his brain had exploded with Flair and he hung on to survive. He’d survived only because of his links and the physical presence of much of his Family in his bedroom, his bonds with them, and Straif T’Blackthorn holding on to him for septhours. So, no HeartGift for his Lori.

  The laws also stated that he wasn’t allowed to tell her that he was her HeartMate, because it took away her free will to choose someone else. His gut grabbed a quick clutch of fear at that thought, and anger, and the determination to win her at any cost. Though lying about his true identity wasn’t the best position for wooing her. Somehow he’d manage, even though guilt at what he did seemed to coat his every vein.

  * * *

  Lori huddled in her bed, thoughts spinning. She’d lied to the Residence, serious lies, not omissions, not little cover-ups, not pretending, all immoral in themselves, but out-and-out untruths. Well, she hadn’t actually spoken words of denial. Guilt chomped on her, right in her stomach, clogged in her head like the tears she shed. The Residence monitored her, of course, and the stuffy nose from tears worked with the knowledge that she was being observed to act like a suffocating blanket.

  She’d lied to the Residence and her Family to protect Draeg, because she wanted him unscathed, and here with her. And she’d lied to protect her plans. To abandon the Residence and the Family.

  A sneaky feeling of glee whipped through her. She’d outmaneuvered the twins, as she had the day before. But yesterday she’d let them win. If she stayed she could erode their influence . . . but it wasn’t worth it. They weren’t worth bothering with.

  The Res
idence would believe her, give her the benefit of the doubt. But the twins would know she’d lied. So she couldn’t stay on the estate. If she was lucky, Vi and Zus thought she was rebelling against the restrictive life for fun, or simply exploring something different. But they’d keep a lookout for her, scrutinize her actions more. And Lady and Lord help her if they found her in the city. Somehow she’d have to figure out how to avoid them.

  Straightening her legs, she murmured a little warming spell on the sheets and tried to quiet her mind, to stop thinking of what else she’d planned on doing tonight. She’d wanted to meditate with Draeg in the small grove after sex with him.

  With a look at their bond, she found him asleep. Just as well, because speaking with him mentally would have stirred up all sorts of emotions again and had her disguising her reactions again, tiring her more.

  She took long, deep breaths and her mouth turned down. She’d thought to end the night by trying her skill at personal armor on one of her stridebeasts. She certainly couldn’t sneak out now. She felt the Residence actively observing her. No way would it allow her to leave the house.

  FamWoman, your thoughts are restless and noisy in My head, Baccat said, obviously returned from his wanderings in Druida City.

  I will have you know, I have NOT been wandering. She sensed his nose lifting, and he stopped from kneading his pillow in the shed. I WALKED Our route from Our gate to the southeast city gate. And I obtained a map.

  Tiny excitement spurted through her. Well done!

  If you will not accompany Me as I examine Our path, I suggest a memory sphere so I can record My observations.

  She’d never heard of a Fam transcribing a memory sphere, but if anyone could do it, it would be Baccat. Lori let her admiration fill their bond. Baccat settled on his pillow and purred.

  Then she ran through her confrontation with the twins, Cuspid, and the Residence.

  Baccat sighed through a yawn. This is not good news, Loridana.

  No.

  I will think on it.

  As I have, she said. But the twins may very well retaliate and try to hurt those I love. So I MUST experiment with my personal armor more. The armor helped me a little last night after I was hit by the glider. How is yours? Does your personal armor work well?