by J. D. Lakey
Chapter Twelve
Cheobawn woke to the sound of soft chimes and an emotionless machine voice that would not go away no matter how far she ran from it in her dreams. Something hard poked her in the back. The web of sleep finally shattered. She opened her eyes.
“You’re lying on my arm. Roll over,” Connor said mumbled, digging his elbow into her shoulder blade.
“It is now six oh five. Vinara has requested your presence in the stables by seven,” the voice out of Connor’s night table intoned. “The breakfast menu in the Common Room is as follows. Honey buns. Assorted Sausages. Breakfast pudding …”
“Hey!” Cheobawn sat up and looked over at the table, “How did you get your table to do that? Can you do that to my table? I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”
“Holy Mother of all that is right in the world,” Connor breathed out, his eyes suddenly open and seeing her for the first time. “How did you get in my bed? What kind of trouble have you got us into now?”
“Calm down. The First Prime put me on the roster last night. I told you all about it when I got under the covers but I think you were not quite awake.”
“No, apparently not,” Connor said. “Move over. I gotta take a shower and my tongue tastes like old socks. What else did you do last night that I don’t remember?”
She crawled out of bed and looked around for her silk underwear. Until she brought her stuff over from Mora’s she would have to make do with what she had been wearing yesterday. Finding the leggings draped over a chair, she got one leg into them and was hopping out into the common room when Connor grabbed her arm and stopped her.
“No, really, Ch’che,” he said, a deeply worried look on his face. “What are you doing here? I thought Mora wanted you to wait until spring before you move in?”
“I got in a huge fight with her last night and said some really bad things. I am not sure if she threw me out or if I ran away but Hayrald thought it was time for me to move in, so here I am.” Cheobawn said this with as much cheer and happiness as she could muster. She really was glad to be here, at last. That part was not false.
“Do you need to talk about it?” he asked, his concern etched in the lines around his mouth. He was not fooled by her smiles.
Cheobawn pressed her lips together and looked away.
“Oh, Connor,” she said forlornly, “how can they say they love you in one breath and then tell you terrible and hurtful things in the next?”
“Because they are Elders,” Connor said, hugging her hard, “I think they take classes in the Temple that teach them how to torture kids.”
He grabbed her undershirt off the top of his work station, tossed it over her shoulder, and pushed her towards the door to the hallway. “Girls bathrooms are down the hall to the right. Meet me back here in ten and you can tell me all about it over breakfast.”
Cheobawn pulled her shirt over her head and was trying to untangle the long sleeves as she stepped out the door. She nearly tripped over a large pile of baskets and bins. Pack Hall did not normally allow clutter to accumulate in the passageways. She thought about getting annoyed at someone’s thoughtlessness when she recognized a tangle of marionettes in the top basket. It was her belongings. She closed her eyes; it just hurt too bad to look at it. Her decision to move only hours old and already her old room had been stripped clean, the sum total of her life delivered under the cover of night like some shameful secret.
Connor followed her out the door, wrapped in only a towel. Something about her stillness stopped him in his tracks. He stepped around her, pushing himself between her and the offending pile of luggage and dipped his head to look into her face. Perhaps he did not like what he saw there because he swore softly.
“Hey, stop it. Look at me,” he said, brushing the tangle of curls off her face with his fingers. She opened her eyes and met his. “Who cares, right? We got you here. That is all that counts. Mora and Hayrald can just go fall off a cliff for all we care, right?”
Cheobawn nodded, clinging to the irrepressible spirit inside him.
“I wish …” she said then stopped herself. “I want to burn it all. I want to make a bonfire out of it and dance naked around it while it all turns to smoke.”
“That’s the spirit,” Connor said with a grin, knocking her gently under the chin with his knuckles, “but the Fathers down at the recycling house would have an issue with that. What say we lug it all down there after we come back from our foray?”
“OK,” she said, using every ounce of her strength to force the corners of her mouth up in a small smile.
“Good. Shower,” he said, pushing her down the hall. “Use a shower cap. No wet heads outside in the cold, hear me?”
A pair of boys walked down the hall, naked, towels over their shoulders. She paid them no mind, distracted as she was with her own thoughts but as she turned into the girls shower she heard one of them say something to Connor.
“Hey, baby Blackwind,” the boy sneered “You forget how to clean your room, ya gotta start storing stuff out in the hall?”
“Eat acid spiders, Jerrek,” Connor snarled. The boy laughed.
“Yeah, whose gonna make him?” the bigger boy asked, “You?”
The two boys’ laughter echoed down the hallway as they strutted on towards the showers.
“No,” said the smaller boy loudly, “that’s why he snuck Mora’s whelp up here. So he can hide behind her skirts.”
Cheobawn stopped and turned around, pausing in the doorway to listen in case Connor needed help. The hall grew silent. Perhaps Connor was learning prudence and had chosen to ignore the stupid comments of mean spirited boys. She took her shower as she thought about that. It made her sad in a way, thinking about Connor growing up and outgrowing his pugnacious ways.
It was not until they were sitting across from each other eating breakfast and she was halfway into recounting all that had happened in Mora’s office the night before, telling Connor about Sam and his stones and Bohea and Oud and her sister Scerron and the doorway in the sky and Bohea’s promise to hunt out ever egg, when she noticed the bruise blossoming high on one cheekbone. She stopped mid word.
“What happened to your cheek? Oh, by all that is holy. Did you fight them?” she asked in dismay as the realization hit her. “Both of them?”
Connor touched his face tenderly with the tips of his fingers.
“Not bad for there being two of them and one of them being bigger,” he said with a grin. “I got a pummeling to the ribs that might need some ice, but I figure we’ll be out in the cold so there’s no need to get too worried.”
“Why didn’t you say something,” she asked, appalled. “I would have come to help.”
“Didn’t need your help, did I?” he said, obviously pleased with himself. “Took Jerrek out with a surprise punch to the ear and I let Mordoc pound me in the ribs while I got under his guard and knocked him senseless with a perfect upper cut to the chin. Taller is not always better.”
“Are they going to get you in trouble?” she asked, suddenly feeling incredibly proud of him.
“Let them try,” Connor said with a predatorial grin. “I have just cause to take them on and they know it. Tell me again about the eggs that glow in the dark. What happens if they fall near a dome? How hard is it going to be finding them and destroying them?”
“They’re bio luminescent,” she reminded him. “I think if we go out just after sunset they would still be glowing, even a couple hours after the light fades.”
“How do we kill them?” he asked at he chewed on his fourth sausage link.
“They’re eggs. Maybe all we have to do is squash them?” she ventured to guess.
“Pfft,” her Third snorted in contempt at her amateur efforts at strategy. “They are tough enough to get shot through that black thing and fall all the way down to the ground. I bet we’ll need something big and heavy to break them open first and then we can squish whatever is inside. Besides, you said they froze and died out in space. We may have
to burn them to thaw them out first. I threw a frozen egg in a bonfire once. It exploded. That would be worth trying,” he said with relish.
Cheobawn suddenly had an image of giant bonfires filled with Spider eggs sizzling and hissing and disgorging their half frozen contents. She shuddered and pushed her bowl of breakfast pudding away.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said, picking up her teacup.
“You still haven’t told me about your fight with Mora,” he prompted.
“Yeah, that,” Cheobawn said as she put her cup down and started playing with her spoon. “I came out of the com-sphere after talking to the Ghostman and she was sitting there with a look that said she had been eavesdropping and had heard everything. We started arguing. She said I liked my secrets because it made me feel important. She said Tam complained about me, about how I did not tell him things,” Cheobawn looked up into Connor’s face and the growing horror there. “I got so angry. I accused her of turning Hayrald into her toady. Oh, Connor, the look on her face … If the desk hadn’t been between us I think she might have hit me.”
Connor put his fork down and uttered a long list of his favorite curses, all of them fervently meant and spoken from the heart.
“Did Tam …” she asked, “He didn’t tell Hayrald he was having second thoughts about inviting me into the Pack, did he?”
“Bloody hell, of course not!” Connor said more loudly than he should have. Elder heads turned towards them, disapproving looks and meaningful harrumphs coming at them from all sides. Connor leaned closer and continued in a softer voice. “Gah, she should talk, our First Mother, mistress of all the secrets in the world,” he said, his ire apparent in every curve of his body. “Tam worries that he will lose you. That you will take it into your head to join some other Pack or worse, take the Forever Vows and disappear into the Temple. If he talks to Hayrald, he does it because he needs advice on how to make you happier.”
“I would never leave you. You are the only people I love,” Cheobawn choked out. “She threatened to send me away, Connor.”
A look akin to terror flashed across her Third’s face before he got his emotions under control and replaced it with something a little more self-confident.
“She was bluffing. You are part of a Pack. Even a First Mother has to follow the rules about Packs. You gotta try to not make her mad at you from now on, though. At least until Tam and Megan get out of the gods cursed Temple. Promise me, hear?”
“OK,” Cheobawn said, “I’ll try but Connor, I don’t know if I am strong enough. She knows I am mad at her and it makes her mean.”
Connor scrubbed his face with his hands and then ran his fingers through his ebony hair.
“Alright, listen,” he said as he bit his lip in deep thought. “I am going to talk to Phillius about this just to get some advice but in the meantime, stay away from her and if you have to be near her, make sure you are not alone.”
“Can we trust any of the Coven’s Husbands?” Cheobawn said, shaking her head doubtfully. “Hayrald said that he understood if I decided to hate him but that I would forgive him one day, though he would not admit to any crime against me.”
“By all the gods,” Connor hissed, his fist convulsing around his butter knife. “You are not allowed to talk to anyone in the inner circle. I have decided. Tell them they have to talk to me instead. Tell them I said so.”
It was a ridiculous strategy at best but for some strange reason this made Cheobawn happy. She smiled and meant it for the first time that day. It seemed a good omen for their foray out to the orchard pastures. The smile lasted long after they went to the weapons locker and was still hanging on at the corners of her mouth after they left the changing room but she lost it completely as they approached the South Gate.
A young Father name Urbo stood at the guard post but he had company. Raddoc, Mora’s Husband and Hayrald’s Second, stood at his side. The Elder looked out of sorts. Cheobawn, careful not to make eye contact, studied him out of the corner of her eye. He looked stretched taught and spread thin, the way someone who had been up all night dealing with problems of a pressing nature might look. Mora and the Coven had been busy while Blackwind Pack slept. Raddoc was in charge of the day to day business of the dome and the security teams who watched over it. She was not surprised by the words that came out of his mouth next.
“Blackwind?” Raddoc said, consulting a check list he held in his hands. “Right. Attached to Ramhorn’s round-up foray. The weather is still clear and cold but the Watch Eyes say something is brewing beyond the Spine. Do not expect fair weather after midday. There is also a general Level One security alert. Anyone who goes out from now until told otherwise will also be burdened with the duty of looking for evidence of an invader species. You are to report any and all anomalies no matter how insignificant to the duty officer. Is that understood?”
“What’s anna-mollys” Connor asked.
“Anomalies. Anything that does not belong,” Raddoc sighed in exasperation. “Strange things that you don’t have a name for.”
“Ah,” Connor said solemnly, nodding like an oldpa over a game of Sticks and Stones. “Understood.” Raddoc pinned the boy with a suspicious glare. Cheobawn looked down and studied the tops of her boots where they poked out from under her riding leathers. Connor knew perfectly well what the word meant and he, more than anyone, knew what they were looking for.
“You should not goad the Husbands like that,” Cheobawn said as the gates snapped shut behind them and the cold settled around them to bite at their noses.
“Yeah, well they only get what they deserve,” Connor said, pulling his mask up over his face. Cheobawn watched him stalk away, a little ghost of worry nagging at the back of her mind. It felt somehow wrong, to set Connor against the Elders, when the war was only between Mora and herself. Was she stooping to Mora’s level, tossing all those around her into the path of the sword that was aimed at her own heart?
It was a question to be left for a quieter time. The stable yard was in chaos again. Half a dozen patrols, all manned by more experienced Elders mounted their bennelk as she watched, heavy lances at the ready. Vinara, voice strained to hoarseness, bellowed her orders to wranglers who stumbled to comply, exhaustion etched on their faces. Few Elders had had much rest last night, it seemed.
Vinara looked down at them as Blackwind presented themselves to her for assignment, a harried look on her face.
“Ach, Little Mother. This is insanity. I ran the poor beasts ragged yesterday, thinking we could rest them for a few days but the Luck of the dome has been nothing but sour this winter. Promise me I will lose no more mounts to great furry beasts with long teeth, I beg you.”
“You don’t have to worry about the smoke leopard,” Cheobawn said. “It was in my dreams last night. He has taken the body of Star and gone to ground. It spent the night curled around its full belly. Now it smells the coming storm on the wind and is reluctant to leave its safe haven.” This was only partially true. Sleep had been a sometime friend last night. Between nightmares, she had lain awake, her mind sunk in the ambient while the roots of the mountains shivered with each flare in the sky. Concern for the smoke leopard had drawn her mind out beyond the dome, down a deep draw, to a natural snow cave formed over the top of a jumble of stone and fallen scrub pines. She was half mist and half dream when she curled against its furry side while it yowled at the demons in the sky, taunting them, daring them to come down and test the sharpness of his teeth. Oddly comforted by that, she had finally fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Is that so?” Vinara said staring down at her with a quizzical smile on her face. “A wise kitty, that. I wish the rest of us were so smart. Was it a truedream do you suppose? No. Never mind. If I were a big cat that is exactly what I would do. Do you know about the thing that Mora has us hunting, as well?”
“Bubbles made of ice and light, I think,” Cheobawn shrugged, looking around for Ramhorn and Erin. “More pest than threat. The bhotta will feast
upon them in the spring and grow fat.”
“Why the mad scramble to find them, I wonder,” Vinara tisked in annoyance.
“Perhaps there is a worry that the storms have driven more than leopards out of the Waste,” Cheobawn said, unwilling to put any kind of lie to Mora’s motives. Erin waved from a small group of riders standing next to a handful of bennelk. Connor waved back and tugged Cheobawn away from the Head Drover. Gann stood among the bennelk with his hand on Cloud Eye’s lead, Kite Wing not far away.
Are you well, Little Mother? Cheobawn asked her mount as they walked across the yard, dodging grumpy wranglers and proddy bennelk as they went. How is your cough?
I am fit, Cloud Eye said. Herd Mother is glad that we hunt the ice demons.
We are just getting lost cows, Cheobawn sighed, weary of arguing this point.
It is all the same thing, agreed Cloud Eye fiercely.
Meshel and Breyden flanked Erin on either side. Both boys turned sour looks towards Connor as Blackwind joined them.
“You give me trouble today, short stuff,” growled Breyden, “and I will squash you like a bug. Follow orders, got that?” As Sigrid’s Second, Breyden took the senior position. It was his foray to command.
“Not a problem,” Connor said coolly, “as long as it doesn’t countermand my Ear’s directions.”
“Listen, you little bug,” Meshel seethed, his hands turning into fists, “If your Pack had done its job yesterday instead of messing around, Sigrid would be in one piece and we wouldn’t be going back out into the cold again.”
“That’s enough,” Erin snapped. “The Goddess spared our lives yesterday. Do not incur her wrath by scorning her gifts. Blackwind and Ramhorn shared equally in the blame and the consequences of yesterday. You will respect Cheobawn. She is my adviser on this foray and you will respect Connor as her protector.”
Erin took Cheobawn’s hand and tucked it into her arm, while turning a pointed smile towards her packmates. Cheobawn got the impression that there was a lot of history behind that smile but in truth, did not really want to know more about the convoluted politics between the lesser Ramhorn members.