by Gayle Greeno
The dripping paddle rose as well, until the boy dropped it back into the barrel. “Take it, Roddy!” he screamed at a friend. “Hold it down till the bubbles stop!” He thrashed in Matty’s arms, hands flailing, yanking his hair. “Jaak!” his high-pitched squeal nearly deafened at close range and, defeated, the young man who’d been planing finally gave up and came over.
“What’s the matter here? Put Quint down, at least! If you don’t, he’s liable to bite your ear off. Bad habit, that.”
“Pull the paddle clear first,” Matty panted, trying to immobilize Quint while the boy crabbed and clawed and kicked. “I think they’re drowning something, a baby larchcat.” Depositing Quint was almost impossible since the boy’s feet and legs wouldn’t stay still. Tail and rear pointing skyward, Kharm fished in the barrel, stretching inside as far as she could reach, her lamentations filling his mind while Quint’s cohort, Roddy, vigorously stirred, water splashing. “Hurry, I don’t think it can take much more!” he implored Jaak.
Good humored but slightly exasperated at the fuss, the fellow called Jaak commandeered the paddle, pulled it free of the barrel. Something resembling a half-drowned black rodent, streaming water, clung to the blade-end. It opened its tiny mouth, gasped and gagged, produced a strangulated cry. Touched by its plight, Jaak worked to detach it from the paddle, miniature claws like burrs in the wood. Its head turned and it spat, then sank sharp baby teeth into Jaak’s thumb to defend itself. Matty held his breath, convinced Jaak would plunge the little beast back underwater, complete its drowning, until a strange look filtered across his face.
“I told him how to Bond,” Kharm whispered, “I had to save his life.” She sprang from the barrel’s rim and stretched up Jaak’s leg to nose at the ghatten. It appeared totally black, just a hint of white at its chest, a patch no bigger than a thumbprint.
Jaak gawped, brown eyes widening to the size of chestnuts as he nestled the ghatten under his chin, water streaking his dusty workshirt. “It’s ... walking around ... inside ... my mind....” He ran a hand through wispy hair the color of walnut shells, tried to push it off his forehead as if the action might clear his mind, erase the voice. “Astounding....”
“They do that, you know,” Matty offered, Quint still locked in his arms. At least the boy had ceased struggling, surveying the scene with interest. Safe to set him down at last. “It’s perfectly natural, you’ll get used to it.” And that’s what the Spacers said about the exploding Plumbs, no doubt. Regardless of Kharm’s penchant for truth, sometimes a charitable lie was best.
Jaak bore the glazed look of someone lightning-struck. “It has a name, it keeps telling me its name. Tah‘m, Tah’m.” He rounded on Quint, furious and protective, “How could you try to drown Tah’m? Now be off with you all, now!” The children scattered like leaves, Jaak and Matty left face-to-face. “Does she,” he nodded down at Kharm, finally stooped and let the ghatta nuzzle Tah’m, “do that with you? Walk inside your head?”
“Yes, although you’re the first person I’ve ever actually told that. Didn’t think anyone else would believe me.”
“Phew! I can see why!” He managed a high-pitched laugh, slowly shaking his head in apparent disbelief. As if struck by sudden inspiration, Jaak stuck out a hand. “Jaak Campaan. I think we’d best talk, must talk. I’ll make up the work later.”
And talk they did, through the daylight hours and into the night when Jaak brought him home with him for dinner. And what amazed Matty most of all was that when Jaak told his parents and his sisters and brothers what had happened, they believed him. Believed even more strongly after Jaak demonstrated Tah’m’s fledgling powers of mindspeaking. Then Matty and Kharm, first hesitantly, then more excitedly, demonstrated it more fully.
“Would she walk in my head as well?” Jaak asked. “There are questions I’d like to ask, things you may not know the answers to.”
“I’m not sure. She’s never done it with anyone else, I mean not directly spoken with them.” A rising jealousy gnawed at Matty. “We’ve always been afraid it would frighten people, make them think they were mad.”
Tah’m asleep on his lap, Jaak bent toward Kharm, but she stalked to Matty’s side. “I’m always yours,” Kharm rubbed one side of her chin, then the other against his knee. “Marked you—mine! Tah’m has Jaak, I have you.” A superior smile curved her face. “Though we’ll see how long before Jaak tires of ghatten-talk.”
Settling himself into the straw he’d carted from the barn to pile into the comer of the grape arbor, Davvy leaned back against the upturned bench, guardedly checked toward the house, the workshop where he and Cady slept. Cold gusts of wind slapped at him; yesterday’d been warm in comparison. But here, with the bench overturned to provide a windbreak, he felt marginally comfortable. He rummaged inside a coat pocket, retrieved an apple, investigated the other one until he found the pocketknife Miz Marbon had given him. Doyce’s father’s, she’d told him. The sun sank, bright bands of deep rose, patches of copper, orange, and purple. He put the apple to his mouth but didn’t bite, polished it once against his jacket and tucked it away with something akin to regret. Too close to suppertime. Adults always knew how to deny themselves pleasures, waited to savor them. Like Jenret putting duty first, ahead of Doyce.
Instead he opened the pocketknife, looked for something to carve. The underside of the bench was tempting, crying out for his initials. He tested the wood with the point of his knife, sighed, and scrambled until he found a bit of branch that last night’s storm had stripped from the maple tree and tossed inside the arbor. Yes, whittling would do and, tongue between his teeth, began to scrape the bark from the branch, painstakingly avoiding the wood beneath. Hard to do with the wood so raw, unaged, the bark ripping, shredding, the knife catching too deeply sometimes before he could stop it.
Frankly, a man needed his solitude sometimes, especially after being so surrounded by women. Only other male around was F‘een, and ghatts didn’t indulge much in idle chatter, or at least not with him. Cady acted cross and grumpy lately, something worrying her. Even his fighting lessons had been curtailed the past few days and he thought he knew why. Whatever was bothering Cady left her distracted, upset, her concentration shot. He should know; he’d nearly succeeded in legitimately throwing her twice because she wasn’t paying attention. All fair and square and above-board. Nothing F’een could yell at him about, scold him for because he’d used his growing skills, nothing more. Enough to make him glow with pride, except he wanted to do it really, really right, show Cady he’d stopped playing around and had applied what he’d learned.
Instead, he’d hung around Francie and Miz Marbon in the house, and that, too, had begun to pall. Cranziliation, what was it with women? Cooing and smirking and crying with joy, tiny baby clothes being unpacked from old trunks and drawers, new ones flourished. If he held one more skein of yarn between his hands for Miz Marbon—Auntie Inez, she insisted he call her—he’d go out of his mind! Francie wasn’t quite so bad, but even she got caught up in the whirl of things. And Doyce, well, she alternated from amusement and bemusement to abstracted silences, face pleasant but distant as if she weren’t even there while the other two women rat-tied away. Did it right in the house sometimes, didn’t wait to reach the privacy of the arbor.
Eyes inspecting every lattice of the arbor to see if he could see what she saw, he tried again to figure out what she saw. Nothing special here that he could judge. Perplexing. Mayhap she missed, needed Jenret more than she’d let on. Mayhap that’s what she yearned after—the way he yearned for Nana Cookie, for Swan. Things had been less complicated then. At least Doyce had seemed happier than she’d been those other times when he’d waited breathless for her to rejoin the world. He’d monitored the babies yesterday, figured his worry canceled his promise not to, checking to see how they fared. The babies acted as restless and irritable as he felt, mewed up in the tiny kitchen with too many women. Worst of all, he could sense how crowded, hemmed in they felt, and he worried they’d
grow impatient, arrive too soon. How they were going to pop out of Doyce’s belly button he couldn’t imagine. The way he’d been told was silly—what else was a belly button for?
Branch smoothed, he concentrated on diamond-notching the green wood. Mayhap if he had some seasoned wood from the workshop, he could carve toys for the babies. Have to carve two, though, and that might give him away. Far as he could tell, Doyce didn’t have an inkling she was having twins, boy and a girl, and the girl was the active one, crabbing her elbows, digging in her little heels, impatient as her daddy. The boy seemed to take it in good stride, more placid like Doyce, though Davvy had seen times when Doyce was less than placid, easygoing.
Almost true dark now, he could barely see from his barricade behind the overturned bench so he worked by feel, almost peeled a knuckle when he heard Cady and F‘een hurrying by the arbor. Starting to get up and join them—F’een sensed suppertime almost as well as Khar did—Davvy folded the knife shut against his thigh, thunderstruck as Cady wheeled round and stood over a throughly cowed F’een.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” At least he could hear half the conversation since she spoke aloud. “You’ve known this long and you never said a word? To me, your Bondmate?”
F’een’s head tilted and he raised a paw as if to touch her leg, pat her to calmness. “Jenret Wycherley held captive by the Resonants and Doyce doesn’t know a thing about it? She’s going to be livid when she finds out. Livid with Khar and with the both of us, my fine furred friend, that we’ve kept it from her.”
Davvy held on to his ankles, kept folded like the knife, wishing his ears could pivot like a ghatt’s so as not to miss any words. Jenret Wycherley a prisoner? Captured by Resonants? It didn’t make any sense. Jenret was a Resonant—why capture one of their own? Were these bad Resonants, like Prince Maurice and Jules Jampolis and the others who’d opposed Eadwin taking the throne? And Maurice had been mad, twisted, like Vesey had been there at the Research Hospice.
They moved on finally, Davvy scrambling on hands and knees, peering through the lattices, watching them out of sight, listening as hard as he could. Smerdlinsky! What he’d give to know what that was all about, but the last he heard was Cady saying, “Well, isn’t someone trying to rescue him?” Her voice dropped as they approached the house, Cady switching to mindspeech now that the worst of her anger had been vented.
A rectangle of light as the door opened, Auntie Inez, silhouetted in it, calling, “Davvy, supper, get a move on, lad.” Scrambling from the far side of the arbor under cover of darkness he dodged and wove his way behind the barn, then straightened and strolled along as if he’d just come from seeing Lokka. If Cady ever found out he’d been listening—and an honest, innocent overhearing it had been, not a hint of searching her mind, whatever F’een might suspect—he’d be in big trouble.
“Coming, Auntie,” he called back. “Just let me wash up and I’ll be in.”
But all through supper Davvy worried the problem over in his mind, elbow on the table, head propped on hand, despite Cady’s nudging rebukes. Jenret Wycherley captive, the babies due to burst any time now, more than ready for an excuse if Doyce found out the truth. His fork moved the food around the plate. Now suppose this piece of carrot was Jenret, surrounded by these tiny pearl onions he’d moved into position. How would you free him? His fork swooped and lifted the carrot to temporary safety before it disappeared in his mouth. Yes, the problem was the gravy from the chicken pot pie. The gravy represented the terrain, an unknown, because he had no idea where Jenret was being held. Made the whole problem particularly slippery. He plowed a piece of chicken through the gravy, scattered the onions.
“Davvy?” His head jerked up, mouth slightly open in shock. Francie held the plate of biscuits toward him. “Another?” He took the plate, thanked her as he selected one, and passed it on, belatedly remembering his manners. What else was Francie saying?
“Today’s broadside says the king’s rerouting the royal progress; he’s going to Gaernett last, not first. In fact, he should be in Ruysdael late tomorrow afternoon.” Her cheeks had a high color to them, as if she’d just come in from outdoors, and her eyes sparkled. “Oh, Doyce, can’t we go, don’t you think?”
Doyce grunted noncommittally, as if she really weren’t there, and said “No, thank you,” to nothing in particular.
“Doyce!” and Doyce shook herself, hazel eyes darting from one to another at the table, faintly embarrassed, unsure what was going on. “Can’t we go see the royal progress? I’m dying to see that handsome Arras Muscadeine ride into Ruysdael, not to mention the king.”
“It’s not romantic, Francie, not something on of the storybooks. It’s to show the world that Resonants and Normals can get along, work together, respect and value each other’s abilities. They have work to do in Ruysdael, and at each town they stop at along the way, talk to people, convince them there’s nothing to fear. We know that already, don’t we?”
Francie’s lips were tight, her mouth downcast, and Davvy felt a welling pity for her. Doyce didn’t have to be so darn self-righteous and serious about it. ’Course it would be fun, something different. Everyone needed something different and exciting sometimes, change their old routines. And Francie, as far as he could judge, had a more routine life than most, few highs, few lows, just a steady, daily sameness, the way he’d had growing up at the Hospice. But Francie didn’t get indulged the way he did—indulged in the things he wanted. They treated her like a child sometimes, indulged themselves, not her, as if being crippled meant she’d never grow up, never know what was best for her. No wonder she reared up against such treatment, though he didn’t think she’d do it now.
“Besides,” Doyce continued, “I want to stay here, not go gallivanting around. Jenret’s bound to come soon—what if I were in Ruysdael when he arrives here? What if I missed him altogether?”
It struck him then—the king, and nearly at Ruysdael! The king and Muscadeine would know how to rescue Jenret. All he had to do was go to Ruysdael and alert the king. Mayhap it should be up to the Monitor and the Guardians to rescue Jenret, but if they’d been trying, so far they hadn’t done a very good job. But the king and Muscadeine were Resonants, could seek out Jenret’s Resonant mind, locate him easy as pie! He snapped his fingers in excitement.
Abruptly aware that every eye was on him, he smiled until he thought his cheeks would crack. “I think you should go to Ruysdael. Don’t think old Jenret is going to get around to coming tomorrow, just can feel it somehow.” To his surprise, Cady nodded, backed him up, but gave him an odd look. Wasn’t half so bad as the sour pickle look that came from F’een on the windowsill. “Did not!” he protested mentally. “Check me and you’ll see I’m telling the truth. ”
“I just don’t want to go,” Doyce protested. “It’s going to be crowded and busy, people milling around, a regular circus of the curious and the titillated, enjoying the idea of tempting fate by even looking at a Resonant. Besides, I’ll never be able to find a privy when I need it!”
“No reason we can’t take a chamber pot with us, leave it in the wagon.” Inez got into the spirit of things. “Did it often enough when you were little and we went to the wool market. Couldn’t always find enough trees to hide one or the other of you behind.”
Francie and Doyce both pointed at each other, exclaiming, “It was always her!”
“Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see,” Doyce grumped.
And with that, Davvy excused himself, let himself out and went to bed in the workshop, mind working furiously. Would they go—or wouldn’t they? Can’t wait on women to make a decision, he told himself. Rise at first light, saddle Lokka, and ride to Ruysdael. Make sure he knew what the town was like, how best to reach the king. Mayhap he couldn’t save Jenret himself, but he had a mission, and if it would keep those babies quiet and peaceful inside their pods a little bit longer, it was worth it. Jenret had to be here when the babies were born or Doyce was going to be sooo upset.
M
ahafny handled the reins roughly, mind still on her conversation with Swan. The black pacer whinnied a protest, but she ignored him, the high, two-wheeled gig taking the mostly deserted streets of Gaernett a little too fast for Saam’s liking. He worried, too, about how much she could actually feel the reins, her hands cramping worse each day, numb at times, but he saw she’d looped them around her wrists.
“It may be late, but there are still a few people out,” he pointed out. “Best not run them over, have the Guardians after you for reckless driving. After all, they know that eumedicos are generally the only ones who drive this sort of rig, and it won’t take them long to check at the Hospice and see who signed one out tonight.”
“I’ll attempt not to leave a trail of mangled bodies in my wake,” she snapped and meant it in utter seriousness, he judged, no subtle humor to her tone. Saam braced himself as best he could and tried not to think about what would happen when they left Gaernett and hit the straightaway. He hoped as well that the bundle in back was securely packed and tied down. Then again, it might be better if it weren’t—if it got tossed out, shattered, and broke. At least it would deter Mahafny for a time. Swan’s cautions hadn’t had much effect, either.
The harder Mahafny tried to push Swan from her mind, the more her jaw clenched, the more erratic her handling of the reins, the horse edgy at her indecisiveness, the contradictory commands. Stop it, she scolded herself, it’s not the poor horse’s fault. With the Monitor entrusted to his beloved Marie’s ministrations—the victim of stress and exhaustion, not a heart attack, thankfully—Mahafny had hurried to see her cousin before joining Eadwin and Muscadeine in Ruysdael. Harrap and Parm unaccounted for, Jenret and the others still missing, her growing hope that her strange machine could prove who was or wasn’t a Resonant, all were enough to occupy her mind. Except she hadn’t allowed her mind to think that Swan might have grown much worse since she’d last seen her.