by Sharon Lee
"Of course not," he answered, his voice easy once more. "Let me consider this, zinchessa. It may be that there is a . . . more apt . . . location for such a garden. The elitch—as you say, it stands close upon the wild wood. I would not risk you needlessly."
Becca smiled and rubbed her cheek against his knee. "Thank you, Altimere," she murmured.
Chapter Twenty
The summons came at dawn, as though Sian were aware of his wakefulness. Or, Meri thought, recalling his youthful residence within these walls, as if the rock had informed her.
He closed the book he had been reading—a history of the settlement of Sea Hold, and dry stuff it was, but he would by no means have the volume of poetry that completed the room's slender library—and stood, inclining his head to the page sent to guide him.
"I am ready," he said, and followed the child along corridors lit with a pale pink glow from the walls itself to the Engenium's audience chamber.
He was in for it now, he thought, touching the elitch wand in his belt. For a moment the walls receded, and he smelled—not salt air, but a pure, leaf-washed forest breeze. A breath only, but it put heart in him.
Then the page opened the door and he stepped into the room, reminding himself to bow nicely to the Engenium's honor.
He might have saved the effort.
Sian was sitting, knees drawn up under her chin, on the wide stone windowsill overlooking the sea. Breakfast was laid on a table directly before that same window, and two chairs drawn up, facing each other across the board.
"Meripen Vanglelauf," the page stated in a high, sweet voice, and departed, the door closing softly behind him.
Sian turned her head and gave him a smile.
"Cousin," she said, softly. "Will you break bread with me?"
Traditionally, an offer to share a meal was a guarantee of accord—at least so long as the meal was in process. What happened when one rose from the table was uncertain, but, Meri reminded himself with a sigh, so was life.
"I will be very pleased," he said, "Engenium."
She laughed and slipped out of the window.
"I really would rather a rousing scold, you know," she said, pulling out a chair and waving him to the other.
"I know," he said, lips twitching despite himself. After a moment, he moved forward and took the indicated seat.
"Of course you do. But, Meri, I think I have been punished enough." She pointed at the tureen in the center of the table. "Chowder?"
If he had awakened without knowing his location, the offer of fish chowder for breakfast would have immediately given him his bearings.
"That would be delightful," he said, trying—and, to judge from Sian's quirked eyebrow, not entirely achieving—a less formal tone.
She ladled stew into a sea-green pottery bowl and passed it to him, the aroma waking an unexpected hunger. He broke the loaf before him, and passed half of it to her, winning a grin and a nod.
"Eat," she instructed, and he found that he needed no such urging. Sian apparently shared his hunger, for there was very little conversation until both had sopped their bowls dry with ends of crisp bread and Sian had refilled their cups with ale.
"You slept badly," she said then, throwing one slender leg over the arm of the chair, and cradling her cup between her hands. "In our house."
Meri sat back in his own chair, feet flat on the floor, the elitch wand digging into his ribs, a little, and gave her a direct look. "I slept badly under leaf, too."
Her brows drew together in a frown, and she looked down into her cup.
"That is . . . unhappy news," she said eventually, and said nothing more, her attention apparently focused on the contents of her cup.
Meri waited with what patience he might muster, nursing his own ale. Finally, though, he could bear it no longer.
"Sian."
She looked up, blinking as one newly awakened.
"Cousin?"
"Why did you have me wakened?"
She shook her head, sea-colored eyes wide and guileless. "I did not."
He raised a hand, frowning. "Your letter to the chyarch, and the—"
"I did not," Sian interrupted forcefully, "send that thing to you!" She shook her head and added, quieter, "Nor the letter. I swear it, on the tides."
The elitch wand warmed against his side, but even he could feel the prickle of a true-oath along his skin.
Meri let his hand fall to his knee. "Who, then?" he asked simply.
"The philosophers are at work; they have orders to find me, wherever I am, whoever I am with, when they have the answer to that question," she said, and he heard anger running beneath the true-telling. "Someone wished you ill, Cousin."
Ill. Almost, he laughed.
"Well." He finished his ale and sat with the cup in his palm, taking comfort from the weight of it. "If you did not send for me, and never thought to do so, then there is nothing here for me. I will, with your permission, withdraw to Vanglewood, and take up the life of a simple Ranger."
Across from him Sian laughed aloud.
He waited, head tipped to one side, an eyebrow up, until she had subsided into chuckles and raised a hand to brush the tears from her cheeks.
"I am pleased to have amused the Engenium," he murmured, which tipped her over into hiccuping giggles.
"You . . . were," she gasped, "never a simple Ranger, Meripen Longeye!"
His fingers tightened on the cup, but he thought he managed not to flinch.
"Clearly I was once a very simple Ranger, indeed, and have lately reverted to type. Let it lie, Sian, and grant me leave to go home."
She sobered then, and shook her head. "I cannot."
"You did not send for me—" he began, and stopped when she raised a long hand.
"I did not send for you," she agreed. "But someone did, using my name and my influence to do so."
Meri thought about that, the cup cold against his palm. "What reason could there be? I—"
"Come now, Cousin," she interrupted, softly this time. "A hero is always of use to someone."
He closed his eye. "There were those who were pleased to name me a hero," he said, keeping his voice steady. "Once. Since that time, I have done only my duties, as Ranger and as Longeye, until I chose a course that endangered me, and brought doom and destruction upon the blameless."
Sian tipped her head. "You speak of Faldana Camlauf."
Tears pricked. "I do," he whispered, and cleared his throat. "I must go to her kin . . ."
"Her kin," Sian said coolly, "are aware of her fate. You need not put yourself at their disposal."
It struck him to the core, that chill note, and he opened his eye to stare at her. "Sian—yes, I have been long asleep! But surely custom has not changed so much as that! Faldana gave up her kest to me. Wounded as I was, I would never have won through the keleigh without—"
Her hand rose again, stopping him in mid-sentence.
"Dear Cousin Meri, I ask your indulgence. Stay at least until the philosophers have done their work, and we have both heard what they have to say." She smiled at him. "Is that a bargain?"
He thought of Vanglewood, the sunlight filtered green and sumptuous through the leaves, and the wind tasting of growing things. And yet—he was weak, wounded. If he was also hunted, it were only prudence to know it—and the names of those pursuing, if they might be learned.
So thinking, he returned Sian's smile, and inclined his head.
"It is a bargain," he agreed. "Cousin."
The bath water was like heavy silk, rippling intimately over her skin, kissing her breasts, stroking her private parts. Becca drifted, drowsy with pleasure. Of all the things Altimere had taught her, this savoring of pleasure was the strangest. Indeed, it seemed to her that, before she had come away with Altimere, that she had never truly experienced pleasure. Oh, she had known satisfaction—in a successful planting, in seeing a patient regain health through her offices, or—more rarely—in duty done. Pleasure in the simple sensations of daily life—th
e scent of growing things, the firm stroke of a brush through one's hair, the taste of sorbet, or the feel of Rosamunde's coat beneath her palm—no one had spoken of such awareness at all, as if everyone she had known had moved through their days with eyes closed and hands fisted in pockets, refusing to see, to touch.
To be.
To be in the moment, Altimere had taught her, thinking neither of the past's mistakes nor the future's uncertainties—that was the greatest pleasure of all. Becca rarely achieved such an exalted state of sensation, and she suspected that Altimere, with his correspondence, and the projects that kept him all day in his laboratory, approached it even more rarely.
In the bath, Becca sighed.
"Altimere?"
"Yes, my water sprite?"
"Does your work give you pleasure?"
"Certainly it does, or I should not pursue it. Though I will own it to be a different sort of pleasure than that which will have you at one with the bath water, if you do not rouse, just a little."
She laughed dreamily, and opened her eyes to show she was awake. Altimere reclined upon a cushion at the edge of the bath, his head upon his hand. His hair glittered like a king's ransom in the soft illumination from the fog-bowls.
"You will also find," he said, giving her a slow smile that edged her languor with . . . anticipation, "when you are as old as I, that your pleasures will change. Those which beguiled you in your youth will interest you no longer, while sensations you had scarcely noticed will exert a . . . fascination that cannot be broken. Some pleasures will cool and be taken sparingly between warmer delights."
"Like sorbet," Becca murmured, moving her fingers to feel the water swirl between them. "How old are you, Altimere?"
He raised an eyebrow, by which she knew she had surprised him.
"I am of the Elder Fey, child. Did you think it just a pretty claim?"
"I don't know what it means," Becca said, smiling. "Certainly it is pretty-sounding. But tell me, sir—were you in . . . the war?"
There had been a war, so she had learned, though it had been unimaginably long ago. There were surely books dealing with the topic in Altimere's extensive library, and she doubted not but that one day she should read them. For the moment, however, her work was to learn to decode the strange, swirling pictographs that made up the written Fey language. No easy task, when Altimere could spare her only a few moments in the mornings before his own work called him to the laboratory, and Elyd with only the patience to bear with her for a page or two.
"I was in the war, yes," Altimere said, and put a languid hand down to stroke the water.
"The bath grows cold," he said, sitting up with his boneless, effortless grace. "Come out now, zinchessa."
Obediently, she rose, the water clinging to her for a moment like a garment, then falling away, leaving her to tremble deliciously in the scented air.
"Stand still," Altimere murmured, and began to towel her dry. The cloth was light but very absorbent, the texture as rough as a kitten's tongue, rasping every inch of flesh into tingling attention.
Altimere knelt, the towel never ceasing its rough ministrations. Becca looked down as he bent closer to his task, his hair trailing golden threads along her brown skin. She moved her left arm and stroked his head; his hair was light and soft—like feathers—and warmed her weak fingers where the tendrils 'round wound them.
He dried her legs, and her feet, one by one, then looked up, his smile squeezing her heart.
"So," he murmured, trailing long, white fingers across her belly. "Do you like this, pretty child?"
Like was not the word she would have used, though certainly the sensation was . . . compelling, even riveting. Breath caught, she watched as he played his fingers along her flesh, and felt the fire flicker in her belly, heating her blood until she shook with it, and now his lips were following the burning path his fingers had left upon her, and she clung to him, wrists bound with golden tresses.
"Please . . ." she whispered, and shuddered when he laughed against her breast.
"Please what, I wonder?" he murmured, his breath cool against her flesh. "Please stop?"
"Please . . ." she gasped. "Please let me touch you . . ."
"Ah, how the child grows . . ."
He rose suddenly, sweeping her up into strong arms, her heat pressed against his coolness. He kissed her throat, her temples, her eyes. Becca moaned, and moved her head, capturing his mouth on hers, all the heat in her body pouring into the kiss . . .
Sensation erupted into color, into light—into the wide world. She was every plant in Altimere's formal gardens, the water in the pool, the elitch in the far garden; she was the stars, signing in the great, curving wheel of the—
She was, some timeless while later, a gently glowing and langorous body lying between cool sheets, her left hand cradled between Altimere's long fingers. He was smiling down at her with such pride and wonder that tears started to her eyes.
"No, zinchessa. There is no need to cry. You have exceeded yourself. I am very pleased."
His words comforted her; the tears evaporated and she smiled.
"I believe," Altimere murmured, leaning over to stroke her hair, "that you are ready."
"Ready?" she asked, sleepily.
"Indeed. What do you think keeps me for such long hours in my workshop?" He smiled at her, sweetly, and put his smooth cheek against hers. "I have been making a gift for you."
"But everything you give me is a gift!" She lifted her good hand and touched his face. "Please," she murmured. "Is there nothing I can do for you?"
He paused, then turned his face into her caress. His lips grazed her palm.
"Perhaps there may be something you might do for me," he murmured. "Very soon, now." He leaned closer, still smiling, and blew across her eyes.
"Sleep," he whispered.
Becca slept.
Chapter Twenty-One
"Were you in the war, Elyd?"
The stable boy turned, Rosamunde's saddle in his arms, and gave her a hard stare out of stone grey eyes.
"Do I look like I was in the war?" he snapped.
For all his peevishness, he walked light around the horses. Becca followed him and stood to one side, watching as he put the saddle gently on Rosamunde's back.
"How would I know?" she asked reasonably. "Altimere was in the war—"
Elyd snorted. "Oh, aye, he was in thick of it, no mistake there."
"Well, then," Becca persisted, "why can't you have been, also?"
He brought the belly strap under and tightened it with a steady, unaggressive pressure, shaking his head the while. "Because I'm not an Elder Fey." He gave her a sideways glance. "Very few of the Elders left—nor should there be, for what they'd done."
Becca blinked. "What they'd done?" she repeated. "But—what did they do?"
Elyd sighed heavily. "There's books about nothing else, you know."
"Doubtless there are," she retorted. "And I would read them, if some people were a little less jealous of their time."
"It's not my job to teach you to read," he said, snappish again. He turned away to pick up Drisco's saddle. "I'm a stable hand."
"I know that," Becca said, "and I'm sorry. I wouldn't trouble you at all except there are only you and Altimere to teach me, on this whole vast estate. If I'm to learn how to read, it must be one or the other of you who helps me, and Altimere—"
"Is continuously busy with his work," Elyd interrupted and pulled the cinch tight across Drisco's belly. "I know."
"Well, then," Becca said, as he went to get the rest of the tack, "you can see why I have to ask all these idiotish questions. I'm very fortunate that you and Altimere both speak my language, at least!"
Elyd turned, giving her a look that was perilously close to pity. He shook his head and returned to his task.
"I don't speak your language."
Becca laughed. "But of course you do! We're talking even—"
"We're talking, right enough," he said. "But I'm no more spea
king your language than you're speaking mine, no matter what either of us hears."
Becca studied his craggy brown face, and after a moment decided that he was serious. "How do we understand each other, then?" she asked quietly.
He shrugged. "The trees whisper your meaning to me. Perhaps they do the same for you."
"The trees?" Becca frowned. "No, I hear your voice, directly."