by Sharon Lee
I heard a sharp crack. The wall shook beneath my feet.
Pebbles rained slowly down around me.
“Kate!” shouted Cael. “Quickly! The house is breaking!”
I ran, heedless of the slick underfoot, grabbed his outstretched hand—and we both ran.
The rain of pebbles and grit became a deluge. I raised my free hand in an effort to protect my eyes, and ran as I’ve never run in my life, Cael’s hand hot in mine, We had almost reached the turret—and who knew what kind of shape the steps would be in, if the steps still existed?—when the section of wall beneath our feet disintegrated into silver sand, and I knew in that moment that I was going to die here, like all the rest of my House—
The wind gusted hard, lifting us, up and beyond the destruction—and down, until it settled softly on our feet, inside the shadow of the melted gate.
“Thank you, my lady,” I heard Tioli say, and felt a cold, damp kiss pressed upon my hand.
Behind us, with a groan and a roar, Aeronymous House collapsed, sending clouds of silver sand high into the air.
* * *
“Are you all right?” I asked, some minutes later, after the worst of my own shaking had subsided.
Cael bowed. “Your wolf stands ready to serve, my lady.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Do you plan on doing this kind of thing often?”
He gazed at me somberly.
“As your liegeman, it is my duty to see your honor pure.”
“And you served my grandfather?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Well?”
“Perhaps not so well as I might have done, my lady. I swear to do better, for you.”
I stared at him. He didn’t avert his gaze, and after a minute I sighed and shook my head, wordless.
The pile of rubble that had been Aeronymous House was already melting back into the silver soil. At the rate it was going, by morning, the only thing that would mark the site would be the blasted gate, and the formal gardens.
“You’re completely fine?” I asked Cael. “I don’t want bravado; I want the truth.”
“I am able, my lady. Nor would I ever lie to you.”
Except, maybe, the occasional insignificant sin of omission, I thought, remembering Tioli’s ghost, stapled to the walls. I nodded.
“Please take us home.”
“Immediately, my lady.”
He handed me the blue-and-gold flower. I slid it behind my right ear, and felt the stem seat firmly. I extended my hand, and Cael received it, gently, and one might say, with reverence.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the feeling of being forcibly wrapped inside a thick, cold, soundproof blanket.
I waited somewhat longer.
Finally, I opened my eyes.
Cael shook his head; his face betraying unease.
“There is something—a disturbance. Say, rather, a turbulence. I cannot scent the path to your—to our—lands.” He took a breath and met my eyes. “Perhaps if we wait, and try again, when this storm wind has passed…”
“Let me see.”
“Yes.”
His grip on my hand tightened. There was a change in…pressure, as if a window had been opened in a slightly stuffy room.
“You will want to take the half step beyond, my lady,” Cael murmured.
I stepped Sideways, and was immediately assaulted by the turbulence he described—a hurricane wind, heavy with scents: cinnamon, hot stone, pine tar, kerosine…
Peaches.
“Fuck.” I shook myself fully back into Sempeki. “The wind is Ozali-made. Prince Aesgyr’s starting his move, whatever it is.”
“Are we caught here?” Cael asked. “Perhaps we might go to another of your allies…”
To Daknowyth, for instance?
No. No, if the prince intended to shift the connections between the Worlds, I might never find my way home again. We had to move, and we had to move now, back to the house on Dube Street, where Oscar and Breccia waited—
Breccia.
We were still holding hands. I grabbed Cael’s other wrist and thought about Breccia, with the rakish orange patch over one eye, and the brown patch over the opposite ear. About her quick intelligence, and the power of her purrs. I felt a tingle of jikinap, caught a whiff of dead fish and peppermint, felt power flare up my spine, feral and on the hunt…
“My lady, we are returned!” Cael’s voice was exuberant, which gave me some idea of how worried he had been.
Slowly, I shook my head, blinking at the familiar room around me. Oscar was standing on his back feet, front paws on Cael’s shoulders. Breccia stretched high in a Halloween arc, toes indenting the soft blanket. She leapt to the floor and strolled over to rub against my knee.
“Thank you,” I said. “You did good.”
She gave me one more long stroke, then headed for the kitchen, and, presumably, her food dish.
Well—and why not? Reeling people in from Sempeki was hungry work.
In fact, I was feeling a little peckish myself, now that I thought about it. And I could definitely use a glass of wine.
I turned, took one step toward the kitchen…
…and crashed to my knees.
The lights flickered crazily—and went out.
Chapter Thirty-One
Wednesday, July 12
Low Tide, 6:29 A.M. EDT
Sunrise, 5:11 A.M.
I woke to the gentle clink of china on china, and the strong impression that there was a boulder on my stomach.
A deep breath failed to dislodge said boulder, which could be worrisome. On the other hand, I could breathe, which I decided was a hopeful sign.
I heard the distinctive squeak of the kitchen cold-water faucet being turned on, the sound of running water, soft steps, and the click of nails against linoleum.
So, it wasn’t a dream, that we’d managed to get home after freeing a ghost and a gardener and reducing Aeronymous House to rubble. That was good.
And if it wasn’t a dream that Cael and I had won home, that meant he was making coffee, ably assisted by Oscar, while I…napped on the couch, beneath Breccia, who, like all cats, weighed twenty pounds more asleep than awake.
I heard water being poured, deduced that it was going from the carafe into the coffeemaker, and opened my eyes.
Breccia was staring into my face, amber eyes pensive—or so I thought. When she saw I was awake, she rose onto feet that weighed approximately eight hundred pounds each, bent her head to butt my chin, and jumped off my chest, onto the floor.
“Oof!”
I sat up, peeling drunken elephants off my torso, letting them pool on my lap. I was fully dressed, absent my shoes. Cael hadn’t tried to schlepp me upstairs; he’d just gotten me to the couch. Smart man, Cael. Compassionate, too. I’d’ve just thrown the blanket over me where I’d crashed.
“Good morning, Kate,” he said. I heard a short snap, which was probably the lid being pushed into place over the coffeemaker’s reservoir.
God, we’d actually gone to the Land of the Flowers.
“What’s the date?” I demanded, hoping it was only a couple days missing…
“The day is Wednesday, the twelfth day in July. The year is numbered two thousand six.”
I sat back, staring at him.
“We did all that in one night, our time?”
“Your bond with this land is strong,” Cael said, moving toward the couch. “Also, Breccia was watching.… Are you well again, this morning?”
“I’m well, but hungry,” I said, bundling the elephants up and tossing them to the end of the couch. “Thanks for taking care of me. Didn’t mean to get silly.”
“No.”
I put sock feet flat on the floor, and looked up as Cael perched on the couch’s wide arm.
“No?” I asked.
His face was serious.
“What I mean to say is that you were not silly. Such matters as you attended to are expensive of power. And it was well done, if you will allow a lie
geman to say it, to bring down the House entire. The last duties of the last Aeronymous have been completed; House Aeronymous is no more.” He paused, eyes shadowed, then offered a half-smile.
“All of us are released, now, and free of old chains.”
Really? I blinked.
“What is the state of your oath, Cael the Wolf?” I asked, carefully.
“My oath lives, my lady, to you, and through you, to this land.”
Damn’.
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
The smile this time was quizzical.
“Is my service so poor? I will strive to amend my ways.”
“Your ways—absent an apparent fondness for social engineering—are everything I could ask in a liegeman. What saddens me is that you remain bound. Surely, you would also prefer your freedom.”
“The choice before me was life or death. It speaks to my character that I chose life, knowing full well the condition under which I would live.” He moved his shoulders, nothing so inelegant as a shrug.
“As you said, I served your grandfather. If liege-bound I must be, I would far rather it were you—a fair lady and true, who does not regard the honor of others as a weapon to her hand.” He bowed his head.
“I am content, my lady, in my choice and in my service. And you will not think it an impertinence that I say so.”
I blinked again, this time to clear my eyes. The boy was eloquent, give him that. Well, we were both bound by Grandfather’s geas—at least for the moment. I’d ask Mr. Ignat’ if there was a way to break the damn’ thing, while still keeping Cael—and me—alive.
“I thought that today,” he said, rising from his perch on the arm of the sofa, “I might find Felsic and speak with her.”
“Felsic’s liable to be busy with the baseball toss today, but it can’t hurt for you to wander by and set up a date. She was eager to be of help to you.”
“Then I will today see Felsic and set up a date,” Cael said with decision. “For this moment, my lady, I suggest that I will make breakfast—scrambled eggs—while you make yourself ready for the day.”
By which I guessed he meant that I should take a shower and get presentable.
“That sounds like a deal,” I said, and stood.
By long habit, I checked the pockets of my jeans. Cell phone, wallet, keys went onto the coffee table—which should’ve been it.
But it wasn’t.
My fingers found a small soft lump at the bottom of the right front pocket, like a wadded-up handkerchief. Frowning, I pulled it out, vaguely aware that both Cael and Breccia were watching me.
It was, in fact, a scrap of fabric, sea-green, like Tioli’s uniform, all balled up, and…rather heavier than a balled-up scrap of fabric ought to be.
“What the hell?”
If something had attached to me from the house, I wasn’t sure I wanted it—no, scratch that; I was damn’ sure I didn’t want it. It was in my mind to just throw the little bundle away, take my shower, eat my breakfast, and get on with my day.
Tempting, but not possible. Things from Sempeki…couldn’t be trusted to play nice with the realities of the Changing Land.
I took hold of the ragged fabric and pulled it away from its surprise.
A flash of silver is what I saw, in the instant before the amulet hit my naked palm and lightning flashed along every nerve in my body.
I think I blacked out for an instant. Being struck by approximately seven hundred megawatts of jikinap is reason enough to black out.
I was on my knees, and Cael’s face was the first thing I saw. He didn’t look particularly worried, which I took as a good sign. He was, however, propping me up, his hands braced against my shoulders, like he was afraid I was going to take a nose dive.
I sat back on my heels. Cael did the same, his hands resting on his thighs.
Time passed while I did inventory. Aside from the initial shock, it didn’t seem that I’d suffered any harm at all. The taste of what might’ve been sea wrack lingered on my tongue.
“Kate?”
“I’m fine,” I said, slightly surprised to find it so. I looked down, saw my right hand fisted on my knee, raised it and opened my fingers, so we both could see.
“Ah.” A murmured recognition, that was, from Cael.
Well, and why wouldn’t he recognize it? The silver spiral—or the Great Wave, as we of House Aeronymous styled our House sign. It had been my grandfather’s mark of office. I’d thought it destroyed with him, but obviously he’d had time to infuse it with jikinap—and hide it well enough that Ramendysis had never found it.
“Did you put this in my pocket?” I asked. My voice was really very calm.
Cael shook his head. “No, my lady.” He glanced about, found the scrap of fabric on the floor between us, and raised it to his nose.
“Tioli,” he murmured, and looked up to meet my eyes. “The old lord must have given it to her. For safekeeping.”
And Tioli, naturally, would have passed this item, so precious to the House, and which she had guarded with her life and beyond—to the new Aeronymous.
I took a breath, and did another quick self-inspection, verifying that I was all right and tight. The stored jikinap had accepted me as Aeronymous—witness the fact that it hadn’t fried me—and, apparently, it had flowed through my new, improved connection to the land, pooling with my other accumulated power, waiting for me to draw on it.
Later, I’d think about how that made me feel. For the moment, though—no harm, no foul.
“Well.” I rose, feeling…buoyant, which might be an artifact of my new acquisition, or might just be relief.
Cael also came to his feet.
“Will you still wish breakfast?” he asked.
“More than ever. I’ll take a quick shower.”
* * *
The scrambled eggs were a little tough—Cael had made the beginner’s error of cooking them fast over high heat, rather than nice and slow over medium heat.
“I will try again tomorrow.”
“Might want to have bagels tomorrow.”
He wrinkled his nose.
“Still got cream cheese,” I said, sipping my coffee.
His expression softened into pensiveness.
“I could mix the cream cheese into the eggs,” he said.
I laughed.
“You could do that, but it would melt. The eggs would taste good, but not as…cream cheesy as having it on a bagel.”
Cael finished his toast and reached for his coffee. “I will experiment.”
“Fair enough. Get good and you can hire out as a cook—or set up your own restaurant, like Michelle.”
“This…would be a…service?”
“Don’t see why not. Bob feeds the town.”
“Bob is…trenvay?”
“Sure is—”
My cell trilled.
“Excuse me,” I said, fishing it out of my pocket.
The number on the screen wasn’t familiar.
“Hello?”
“Kate, it’s Dad Davis. Got your number from Anna. Listen, something’s…come up…about Gaby, and I—” A sound like wind rushing, which was probably Daddy snorting in frustration.
“Is Gaby all right?” I demanded.
“Far’s I know, she’s fine. It’s me between sixes and sevens. Listen—can you come down to the club? This is gonna go better, face to face. An’ I got something to show you.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“I’d come to you,” he said, like he’d seen me, “but I got a delivery due in.”
“I’ll come down,” I said.
“’Preciate it.”
He hung up, and I folded the cell, holding it in my hand and looking at the blue and gold flower in the water glass Cael had given it for a vase.
I liked Daddy, and I didn’t think he meant me any harm. But the man had been rattled enough to give me his name—at least, his last name. Which wasn’t a state secret, after all—it’d be on the liquor license hanging
behind the bar—but I really didn’t want to meet whatever it was that could shake Daddy up.
“You will not go alone to treat with this person,” Cael said—not a question.
“Actually, I won’t,” I said, slipping the cell back into my pocket. “You’ll come with me, and after we’re through with Daddy, we’ll go over to the baseball toss so you can make your arrangements with Felsic. That sound good?”
“Yes,” said Cael, and got up to clear the table.
* * *
The delivery was in progress by the time Cael, Oscar, and I strolled into Daddy’s. We waited in the area marked out for the band, Cael squatting on the floor next to Oscar, and me leaning against the wall, watching. I’d never seen the nitty-gritty of a commercial liquor delivery, so I observed it in the spirit of a tutorial, and by the time the delivery man had taken his clipboard and the last box of empties out to the truck, I could say with authority that I didn’t want to run a bar. Or a dance club.
“Sorry ’bout that, doll. Thanks for waiting.”
Daddy gave Cael and Oscar a glance, then looked back to me, eyebrows up.
“Daddy, this is Cael Wolfe.”
“Pleased to meetcha,” Daddy said, but he seemed more interested in the dog than the man.
“Is that Jim Robins’ Oscar?”
“No longer,” Cael said, rising to his feet. “Oscar has accepted my oath.”
Daddy gave him a long, level stare, then shrugged.
“Wouldna thought Jim’d let that dog go. Best thing about Jim, the dogs.”
Cael just gave him his stare back.
Daddy shrugged again.
“None of my business,” he said. “Kate, come over here to the register, willya?”
I followed him across the floor; the land showed me Cael sinking back onto his haunches, his posture—and Oscar’s—alert, but not threatening.
“So it was busy last night,” Daddy was saying, leading the way behind the bar. “Must’ve been—hell, twelve-thirty?—Gaby comes in, right up to the bar, and she’s looking, I dunno…different. Steady, not flinching from the noise, or the lights. She says to me, ‘I got your coin safe, Donald Allen Davis; you’ll hold mine safe for me.’
“And she hands me this.”
He rang out the register’s cash drawer, and held up a rectangle of white paper with the Maine State Lottery pine-tree-and-mountain logo at the top.