by Sharon Lee
“Sure thing, Kate.”
Felsic slipped past on my left side, received the lock with a nod, and moved immediately to the door.
“Thank you,” I said. “Cael—your hand, if you will.”
He clasped my hand, and I felt him trembling, though his eyes were steady and his gaze firm.
“Understand, that I don’t know what will happen, if I take your oath. This is a strange land, and I’m bound to it. The act may kill you. It will surely change you.”
“My lady, I have already been much altered,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes never leaving mine. “If this act should kill me, it only hastens the inevitable. I hold you blameless, whatever goes forth. You are my liege, and I am bound to love you.”
That was…probably the literal truth, considering the device he carried in his chest. I breathed in, and gripped his hand.
“Whenever you wish,” I said, and opened myself to the land, as I do when I prepare for a healing.
The man kneeling before me closed his eyes, his grip on my hand not quite painful.
“I, Cael, do swear upon my soul that I will keep faith with Aeronymous and never cause her harm. I will defend her and reverence her and in all things obey her, and stand her man forevermore.”
That was quite an oath. It struck the land with a boom, reverberating, and I felt power rise and flow through me, to him, as if it were a healing, indeed. He gasped, his grip painful now. His eyes rolled back in his head and for a moment I feared that I had killed him outright—then he blinked and smiled, and the land executed a joyous ripple of what sounded like piccolo notes inside of my head.
I drew a cautiously optimistic breath.
“Rise Cael, called the Wolf, oath-bound to Aeronymous,” I said, and he did, to his full height, which was higher than me, but not nearly as high as Borgan.
He wasn’t exactly dressed for the beach in a long-sleeved red shirt banded with gold, a gold sash, and skin-tight red trousers. The bare feet—strong and brown—were the only thing topical about him.
“Who had you been, in the House of Aeronymous?” I asked.
“My lady, I was the master of hounds.”
The master of hounds was taken, under protest, from Aeronymous House and bound into the high-security carousel prison? That just didn’t make sense. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him For what crime? when I realized that it was late, I was beyond exhausted and the only thing holding me up was the land. Time to ask questions later.
“All right, then,” I said. “You’ll find things a little different here. For one thing, I don’t keep dogs, though I do have a cat.”
“Might be that he’ll find service with the land,” Felsic murmured from my side. She held her hand out to Cael. “I’m Felsic. I’ll be pleased to show you my service, and to help you with any questions about how we do things here.”
More power to him, he didn’t even hesitate, but put his hand in hers.
“Thank you. I will want guidance, I think.”
“Sure thing. Kate, you’re taking him where tonight?”
“Figured my house. He can have the couch, if the cat will share.”
“Right then, we’d better get going. It got a lot later than I was expecting. Peggy’ll be worried, and Vornflee past distracted.”
I laughed. “Let’s go then,” I said, leading the way down the service alley to the gap in the fence that gave onto the beach. “Cael, this might remind you of home.”
* * * * *
Her conversation with Seal Woman had very nearly convinced her that the course of wisdom was to return to the goblins’ lair, and meekly await the end of her dwindling time here in these sweet, subtle waters.
Almost convinced her—but in the end, it did not matter what she may have or may have not decided.
Because the Borgan found her.
Scarcely had she entered the waters, after having taken courteous leave from Nerazi, than she felt the call upon her. Her first impulse was to resist—which was not ill-done, she assured herself, even as the compulsion grew. Anyone would at first resist; it was important, however, to be careful how much she resisted.
Not only would too much resistance be unseemly, it would allow him to measure her strength. It would be very foolish to permit him to know precisely how strong, or how weak, she was.
She therefore allowed herself to be overcome, in perhaps the time it might take a shocked girl to realize who it was that called her.
He was angry; she felt it in the waters she passed through. Chilly waters, that had previously been warm. Gentle currents that had cradled her kindly now snatched, and chivvied her along.
By the time the compulsion released her, she had no need to feign concern.
He had brought her to calm waters, a pool of quiet isolated from the sea’s busy currents. The water here was potent, sleek with power, and icy cold. As was the one waiting for her—
He fair glowed in white leathers, a waterfowl for which she had no name attending him, its red eyes bright. If she had thought him beautiful before, now, seeing him in his full power among the biting waters, with his eyes glittering, black and pitiless, and his face carved from stone—oh, now, she loved him indeed, and trembled before his displeasure like a child.
“What justification, for murdering the sea’s firstborn?”
The question crashed over her, and she fell to her knees, there amid the waters, and stretched her arms out to him.
“I am just now come from Nerazi the Seal Woman, from whom I learned my error,” she cried. “Forgive me; I meant it for a gift, to repay your mercy on a stranger in your waters.”
“A gift,” he repeated flatly.
“I am a fool, Nerazi has shown it to me. But, yes—in my ignorance, in my vanity. They hated you so much, the goblins—ronstibles. They were a danger to you; an impediment to all your plans. I thought…he will not remove them, because honor does not allow. But I—I, whom they attempted to suborn; I could surely kill them, and the act would liberate him.”
“And nourish you,” he added, his aspect no warmer.
“Yes, certainly, but that was not first in my mind. They hated so deeply—they hated so well—I feared the nourishment might rather be poison. Would that it had been! I would willingly be unmade, rather than displease you.”
She stilled, then, her words floating on the deep waters; her words truly spoken.
He must have known the truth as she said it; the waters would hold no such secret from him. It seemed to her that the waters were—only a little—less frigid. She dared to meet his eyes; he did not speak.
“Please, forgive me,” she whispered. “Nerazi said that you would not. But I must ask, for it was an error made by ignorance and overzealousness. I did not know that the sea would care so much, when she had you—”
“They were firstborn,” he interrupted, his voice harsh. “The sea is diminished—the sea is damaged—by their passing.”
Horror shook her. She had expected that the sea would grieve her loss; the goblins were her children, after all, and this sea loved her children. But to have visited actual harm upon the waters—that she would no sooner do than she would harm the Borgan. She loved the gentle, sweet sea; despite ingesting the goblin’s enmity, she loved the Borgan. Almost, she pledged herself, then and there, but it would not do. Her unplanned cry had softened him, a little, and an avowal of her regard would surely soften him more. It was her pride, that she held back from that. She would not approach him while she was yet diminished; an object of pity, whose vulnerability excited his instinct to protect.
No. She would have far more from him than pity and protection.
And so she bent in obeisance, her hair surrounding her in a black nimbus.
“Forgive me,” she whispered. “Oh, please, forgive me. I would never knowingly harm this sea, which has been so generous with me. Tell me what I must do to rectify my error.”
Silence met this. The waters warmed no further, but they did not cool. From so little, then,
she took courage. Truly, she had no hope of eluding the strike, or surviving it, should the Borgan decide her transgression deserved death. It was a piquant feeling, to know that she might die here. She had died, once, or the girl she had been died, wading into those bitter, storm-lashed seas to calm them, and bring her brothers safely home.
She remembered her death. It had been painful, and she had been frightened, even above the joy of having rescued her beloveds. Terrible, the gasping, and the slow strangulation, as the sea filled her lungs, her belly, her veins—and made her his own.
It was possible that something of that terror made its way through the waters to the Borgan, and it came to her that his black eyes glittered, not with rage, but with pain.
If the goblins’ deaths had wounded the sea, then the Borgan was likewise wounded. And that understanding might be the sum of her punishment, for it near cracked her heart, that he should suffer for the deaths of those who had hated him so cordially, and daily worked for his ruin.
“There’s no mending it,” he said now, “so we’ll endure it. In the meanwhile, you’ll finish out the days we gave you right here. I’ll ask you not to do me any more favors.”
“No, of course not,” she whispered, but the Borgan was already gone.
It was not until she moved to exit the still, potent pool he had brought her to…that she realized she was trapped.
* * * * *
Breccia the cat didn’t like Cael the Wolf.
Despite my insistence that he was a friend, she hissed, blew her ridiculous tail up to three times its normal size, arched her back, and in general enacted the super-economy-sized edition of the Cat Is Pissed Off.
“All right, here’s what,” I finally said, kneeling between her and Cael. “He’s staying, for at least tonight. He’ll be sleeping on the couch. If you don’t like it, go upstairs and sleep on the bed. Out of sight, out of mind, am I right?”
It would appear that I was right, because, after issuing one more, don’t-you-try-anything-fast-buddy hiss in Cael’s general direction, she stomped down the hall toward the stairs.
“I have distressed the lady,” Cael said.
“Nothing fatal,” I said. “She’s new here, herself, and she’s an overachiever. You hungry?”
“My lady, I am not. I am very tired. The last…days have not been easy, and the lack of an oath to sustain me was…exhausting.”
“All right, then, let’s get your bed cleared off.” I headed—again—for the couch. “I’ll just put these books put somewhere else…”
“That is not necessary,” he said, taking the cat’s blanket up from the corner, and shaking it out. If he found the elephants in the least unsettling, he didn’t let on.
“I will sleep there,” he said pointing to a spot on the floor between the coffee table and the French doors.
“If that’ll be comfortable enough for you, go for it,” I told him. “You want a pillow?”
“No, my lady; truly, I have everything that I need or want.”
Anybody would have supposed that to have been not one-hundred-percent true, but the feedback I got from the land was of a tired, but honorable, man speaking a truth he had never thought to speak again.
“All right then; I’ll say good night. Tomorrow, we’ll have to talk.”
“Yes, my lady. May your dreams be soft and sweet.”
“And yours,” I answered and left him to it.
Breccia was in the middle of the bed in classic chicken pose when I arrived in the bedroom. She glared at me, and then looked, pointedly, away.
“He actually seems to be a pretty nice guy,” I told her, sitting down on the edge of the bed and bending over to untie my sneakers. “And he’s not a replacement for Borgan, if that’s what’s on your mind.” I dropped one sneaker on the floor and gave a sharp laugh.
“Good God, one boyfriend’s all the tightrope walking I can handle! Not to say that I’m handling it all that—”
My cell phone gave tongue. I fished it out of my pocket, saw Borgan’s number, and a knot that I hadn’t known was tied tight in the middle of my chest suddenly loosened.
“Hey,” I said into the phone, trying to sound cheerful, if not perky.
“Are you all right?” His voice was strained, and the knot in my chest tightened again.
“I’m all right, but—”
“I thought I heard the Gate open, but sea business had me, and—”
“I know; it’s okay. You had an emergency; you didn’t walk out on me. But it wasn’t the Gate opening.”
“What was it, then?” Still too short and too terse. I bit my lip, wondering if he was going to find the truth soothing.
Well, I wasn’t going to lie to the man, not when he’d heard the arrival, plain as plain.
“One of the Wise paid a call,” I said, keeping my voice as even as possible. “She was annoyed that the Gate was opened to let Gran bring my mother home, those weeks ago, and we’re currently under threat of being cut off from the other Five Worlds, if one more funny thing happens here that disturbs the Wise’s peace.”
Silence.
“I figure we’ve got ’til Labor Day before the Varothi’s little bon voyage party catches their attention. How was your evening?”
He sighed, deeply.
“Turns out the lady the sea gave asylum to the other day figured she owed me.” A heavy pause, and another sigh, this one sounding…pained.
“She killed the ronstibles.”
I opened my mouth—and closed it again, fast, before anything like Yay! escaped it.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
There was another longish pause—and getting worrisomely longer.
“Borgan?”
“Sorry. I’m—I took a hit, there,” he said slowly, and then, more quickly, “nothing that won’t heal. But I’m—Finn’s fishing for me tomorrow. What say I come find you when I wake up. We can get a cup of coffee and list out all the ways we’re doomed. Make up an odds sheet and post it in Bob’s.”
I grinned, worriedly.
“Sounds great,” I said, and made a conscious decision not to mention Cael. Time for that tomorrow.
“You get some sleep. And if there is anything I can do…”
“Just—stay safe, Kate. I—I’ll see you tomorrow. ’Bye.”
“’Bye,” I answered, but he’d already hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Monday, July 10
High Tide 11:13 A.M. EDT
Sunrise, 5:10 A.M.
“My lady, you should not cook for me,” Cael the Wolf objected.
I glanced at him over my shoulder. He’d made use of the shower, and re-dressed in his red-and-gold garments. It seemed to me that those were somewhat less grubby than they had been last night, but they still weren’t anything like beachwear. Have to do something about that. Later.
For now, there was breakfast to get ready, and talking to do.
“You want to cook?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes, apparently considering the question.
“I am not familiar with the process, but I can learn, if my lady has no others to serve her.”
Right. I was supposed to have servants to do menial things, so my brain and my powers could be freed to do important work. Like protecting the House and preserving the lives of all my oath-sworn.
“The customs here are different,” I said, turning the burner on under the frying pan, and glancing at the clock. Eight-thirty.
“For instance,” I said to Cael, “I’m not royalty, here. I guard the land, and keep it safe, and assist the trenvay.”
“Felsic obeyed your word,” he pointed out, coming into the kitchen on bare feet.
“Felsic obeyed my word because it suited Felsic to help me out,” I said, cracking eggs into the mixing bowl. “She’s not bound to do what I say.”
“Is that so, my lady? I saw deference, and loyalty, there. Power, too, but bound to your own.”
Fork in one hand, bowl in the othe
r, I blinked.
“You saw that?”
“My lady, I did. It is plain that you do not…require the level of fealty your grandfather felt necessary to secure the House.”
“It’s more of a co-op than a monarchy,” I agreed, and remembered to use the fork to whip the eggs.
“Cutlery is in the drawer to the left of the sink,” I said over my shoulder, as I poured the eggs into the pan. “Coffee mugs are in the cabinet over the coffeemaker. The coffeemaker is the thing the pot filled with dark liquid sits in—it’s all hot, so be careful. Plates are up with the mugs, and it’d be a big help if you brought two over here, please.”
He moved silently, which wasn’t particularly creepy since the land was doing a good job of providing eyes in the back of my head. I watched him pull two mugs out of the cabinet and place them carefully beside the coffeemaker before going back to slide two plates out of the stack, and carry them to my side.
“On the counter, please,” I said, scrambling for all I was worth. “You like scrambled eggs?”
“My lady, I hope soon to discover that.”
Fair enough.
“You’d better start in with calling me Kate—everybody does. Well. If you hear my grandmother call me Kaederon, you’d best get out of town, because that means she’s hot and ready to blow.”
“I will remember. Will I meet your grandmother soon?”
“Funny; a lot of people have been asking that, lately.” I turned the heat off under the pan. “Including me.”
I divided the eggs and gave him the plates to ferry over to the table.
“Cream in your coffee?” I asked.
“I will have it as you have it,” was the reply—and that wasn’t too bad for a dog-boy. No. A master of hounds.
I thought about that as I poured cream and coffee. Grandfather Aeronymous had kept hounds, of course; a man of his station was required to keep hounds, so that he could mount a hunt for the entertainment of visitors, if nothing else. What he hadn’t kept, in my lifetime, was a master of hounds. A dog-boy had lived in the kennels to care for the dogs; he slept with them, fed them, exercised them, and trained them. What other duties might fall to a master of hounds, I had no idea, though it was obvious, from Cael the Wolf’s demeanor and pattern of speech, that he’d held a court position.