Heart Fate

by Robin D. Owens

  “There are no divorces in the FirstFamilies,” Tinne said. His tongue felt heavy now. “We just suffer through our marriages.”

  “Seems you’ve learned that differently. You look like you’ve been mangled by a grychomp.”

  Tinne inhaled, let his breath out slowly, steadied his pulse. Like he’d been doing interminably the last few days.

  He heard Straif gulp his drink, then his cuz said, “Since you’re going after her, you have to know.”

  “I won’t say ‘thank you’ for that.”

  “You shouldn’t have to deal with this mess with Lahsin, now. Just an unlucky life, I guess. How did you screw up in your last life to deserve this?” Straif paced some more. “I swore a truth statement before the judge as to what I learned had happened to Lahsin.” There was the sound of spit hitting the hearth of the fireplace, hissing of the fire. “Fliggering Burdocks to let that go on. Didn’t defend a daughter of the house.”

  “T’Yew’s a rich and powerful FirstFamily GrandLord.”

  “Honor should not be bought.”

  “High-minded,” Tinne muttered. “You saw her? She’s in Druida? Well?”

  Straif sat again, this time stiffly. “She’s well enough. But I don’t know that it’s a good idea for you go after her. She can’t be wanting a man around her right now. Certainly didn’t want me near her.”

  “You’re a FirstFamily GrandLord.” Tinne found a smile. His energy was returning, with the food, with the whiskey, with the determination to fix something rather than break something. “I’m not.”

  Straif snorted. “Right. You’re close enough.”

  “I’m not as old as you, certainly not as old as T’Yew. She’s in Druida? Or did she really leave by Southgate?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  Then something Straif said finally penetrated. Tinne tipped his glass but the liquor was all gone. “You said she declared herself an adult.” His gut was clenching again.

  “Yes.”

  “That means only one thing. She’s experiencing twinges of the freeing of her Flair, of her Second Passage.”

  But Straif said nothing.

  “Alone, seventeen, a sheltered girl. Wintertime. With an oncoming Second Passage that could debilitate her!”

  When Straif turned his head, he was smiling. He stood and offered his hand, and when Tinne took it, Straif hauled him up and led him to the teleportation pad. “The Blackthorns always track their mates.”

  “I’m not a bloody Blackthorn, I’m a Holly!”

  “But you have a link to her.” He clapped Tinne on the shoulder. “Port to Squawvine Square, you should pick up her scent there. Good luck.”

  “Straif—”

  “I can’t in good conscience tell you where she is. You’ll find her, and the hunt will be good for you.”

  “Spare me.”

  His cuz sighed. “Sorry, you’re spared nothing right now.”

  Tinne teleported to Squawvine Square. It was the last real square just north of CityCenter and the beginning of a maze of little alleys. His ancestors had built the narrow lanes between the founders’ broad, straight streets a couple of generations after colonization. Celta was harsh, and the population could not fill the already designed and mostly built grand city.

  The cold air was sharp and filled his lungs and cleared his head. Maybe Straif was right. Maybe having a definite, short-term goal would be good for him. Maybe being outside in the crisp air would be good for him.

  Or Straif could be crazy.

  In any event, Tinne didn’t think any rest was possible for him tonight. Too many new wounds as well as the new shock of the abuse of his HeartMate, his guilt at not attempting to save the girl-child she’d been, bled in him.

  No one should have been in the square, but he saw shadows lurking around. More likely thieves and criminals than any law-abiding folk.

  He shifted his shoulders, the long coat he wore easing around him, the cold acting on spells in the fabric that sent more warmth to him. He began to overheat, so he stood and centered himself again, regulated his breathing again, and prayed to the Lady and Lord this would be the last time he consciously did both to relieve stress.

  Surely he’d find her. He couldn’t fail. Once again the image of her, young, frightened, helpless, and bruised, facing her Second Passage alone, drifted through his mind. As it did so, he unearthed the deeply hidden thread between them. Examined it. A pure and shining, throbbing silver. Something he hadn’t ruined.

  The mind Healer D’Sea wouldn’t like that idea. She and T’Heather had emphasized that the marriage was over, was twisting and causing him and Genista pain. Injury had happened to them as a result of living in a place cursed with his parents’ broken Vows of Honor. He still felt like a failure. If he’d acted differently or sooner, he would have been able to save his marriage.

  Instead of standing here on a dark winter’s night, watching Cymru moon rise.

  Destiny?

  He wasn’t hot anymore. He shivered.

  He was in no condition to interact with a HeartMate, especially as a man who would be lover and husband. He was tired of being a lover and husband.

  She wouldn’t want that, and neither did he, now. His hurts at the hands of a beautiful woman were so new and bloody. But she was young and naive and alone in Druida in the winter, expecting Second Passage. He could offer her friendship.

  Though destiny might be at work here, his free will was equally strong. He would not hurt Lahsin in any way. Slowly he turned a circle, saw Eire moon, the same phase, waning to a sliver, on the opposite side of the star-sparkling sky with bright veils of galaxies.

  He held the connection between himself and Lahsin gently, gently in his mind. Closed his eyes to the night. Thought of the holo on the newssheet of a girl on the brink of womanhood. Since he’d deliberately avoided her, he had no newer image to focus on. He closed his mind to everything else and sent his emotions, his heart to encompass the bond, to feel it.

  The connection was warm and changing from silver to a sheening metallic rainbow. Of hope. Of the future. Something he dreaded but she anticipated. Warmth was heating inside him. Comfort.

  What surprised him was that he felt no fear from her. He did sense a great anger—understandably so, and if she didn’t work that out, her Passage could go badly. Fear, yes, inside him for her. Her last Passage would have been at seven years old. She wouldn’t remember it much, wouldn’t know that the Second Passage would be exponentially worse.

  So he thought of the link, even whispered mentally to it. Take me to her. To my Heart—to Lahsin.

  Trusting his Holly instinct, he followed the slight tug in the center of his chest.

  He wound through passages so narrow they admitted only one person. Alleys twisting through buildings that blocked everything but a slice of night sky. He walked a long time, sensing he was going ever northward. But not west to the boundary of Druida City, where the six-kilometer-long starship Nuada’s Sword sat on the cliffs above the Great Platte Ocean. Not due north to Northgate, the city exit to the Great Labyrinth and the fishing communities beyond it.

  Northeast. He couldn’t picture northeast Druida.

  His feet tired, and he was glad he’d worn sensible boots to the testing, to the divorce ritual. Had that all happened on this day? The fullness of events of the day was stretching time, blurring the clarity of his memories. A blessing. His steps slowed as he came to a dead end at a tall wall of about six meters. Not the city wall raised by the founding colonists in large gray stone blocks but a brick wall, ruddy and stained, with a tangle of plant life climbing on it. Huge bare tree branches rose behind the wall, so that he had to tilt his head back. The wall was certainly not four centuries and nearly a decade old. But close . . . there was a sheen to the brick that spoke of ancient, strong Flair. Power that had been used so often and so long that it seeped into the walls and regenerated itself.

  Squinting, he scrutinized the area. He didn’t know this place. When he
tried to think hard about it, his thoughts themselves became . . . slippery. He blinked and forced himself through the brush to touch the wall. It felt warm. Who lived behind the wall? All of the great Nobles he knew had estates in Noble Country, in the west of Druida. No one lived in the northeast.

  Again he deliberately tested his link with Lahsin. Was it growing stronger with use? Probably, and he didn’t know how he felt about that.

  She was definitely behind the wall. Anticipation bloomed inside him. Success.

  One action he’d taken lately that had harmed none, not even himself, that had resulted in success.

  The feeling of accomplishment was a small treasure in itself. The tug was to the south. He went that way, and several meters along he stopped and pressed his hand to the wall. Significantly warmer. What would heat a wall? He didn’t know.

  The wall was curved. The city walls of Druida were straight, despite the landscape. North, east, and south stone walls marched in a line. To the west was the ocean.

  Tinne followed the concave wall and touched it again several meters to the north of the alley he’d originally exited from. The wall was as cold as any regular brick wall in the winter would be.

  He walked south, welcoming the pull on his bond with Lahsin, the warmth from the wall. Plant growth burgeoned because of that warmth, spreading a few centimeters from the wall, then stretching a full meter.

  His breath came in huffs of steam. Plants grew lusher to his left. Ragged edges of buildings and the crevices between them were to his right, dark and cold and deserted.

  He’d passed the last of her trail behind a thin tangle before he realized it. Easier just to walk backward a few paces than turn. He was losing energy.

  The cold and the strain of tracking in the night were working on him. Nothing more.

  He saw the small door, inset deep in the wall, went and touched the latch. The trace of her zinged to his toes. He pressed down. The door didn’t open. He set his shoulder against the door and shoved. Again. Harder. Then stepped back, panting from emotional upset more than the physical effort, and stared.

  He scented her. The faintest fragrance of fragile spring blossoms. She was in there, and he couldn’t get in!

  It was the last straw. The day crashed in on him, draining the last of his strength. He sagged against the door. As soon as he closed his eyes, images flashed before him, the room in T’Heather Residence. He shuddered.

  D’Sea’s and T’Heather’s and T’Willow’s faces as they confirmed his marriage was over. His parents’ expressions. He groaned.

  Genista, naked and beautiful, unreachable during the divorce ceremony. Not his. His lack of reaction to her. His breath sounded loud in his ears.

  Feelings tumbled after the images, feelings he would never forget.

  Guilt.

  Relief.

  Despair.

  His heart wrenched, and the door opened to him. He smelled the rich scents of a garden estate, and it was warm. He could again feel Lahsin—and no distress or upset from her—but Lord and Lady help him, he had to concentrate on his unraveling self.

  He staggered along a path. Despite the undergrowth no root or brush tripped him, which was good, because he thought once down, he would not be able to rise again.

  A few minutes later he came to a clearing with a steaming hot spring confined in an elegant pool of curves before him. He saw the coat of arms on a pillar that was part of a grape arbor, that was gray in the twinmoonslight, probably gray in the daylight, too. BalmHeal.

  That name explained everything.

  There’d been much talk among the FirstFamilies when Ruis Elder finally told his whole story after becoming Captain of the starship Nuada’s Sword. Since Tinne’s and his brother’s lives had been radically changed by touching Ruis Elder’s life, they had been allowed to hear Ruis’s tale, too.

  This was the lost FirstGrove, the sanctuary of Druida and Celta.

  The mist rising from the heat of the pool made the air too warm for his coat. He took it off. The place both soothed his heart and hurt it. A lost, untended garden, as lost as he was, as forsaken as he was.

  Still no fear coming from Lahsin. He supposed it was enough to know she was here, safe.

  He went to a bench, sat down, and put his head in his hands.

  Ten

  All the aches and pains of Lahsin’s escape the previous morning and unaccustomed physical activity hurt even worse tonight. She stretched and actually heard some of her joints pop. Giggled.

  Glancing around the room, she was pleased at its cleanliness and warmth. She’d made a temporary home in the largest of the three rooms of the clocktower-stillroom building. Permamoss had been available for a bed, and the walls still held housekeeping, warmth, and light spells. Luxury. She’d moved the drying trays to the edge of the room, bunched and hung herbs. Most were too old to be anything but faded decoration with a hint of scent. The little fuss of settling into her own space.

  She’d never really had her own space.

  Both this room—the middle one—and the smaller storage room had doors to the outside. The herbal preparation room, the stillroom, didn’t. She had both doors closed.

  Continuing with her crazy pity, she’d carved a large piece of bedsponge and put it in the storage room, along with the meat pie she’d bought for the dog. She left the outer door of that room open and announced mentally to the beast—the dog, that he could stay here. When she’d activated the spells, they’d swept through the whole building, even the clocktower.

  She’d walked up to the conservatory and around the house, but hadn’t gone in. Something about its brooding manner told her she’d have a Residence on her hands. An abandoned Residence. Who knew what that would have done to a sentient house?

  But she was sure the conservatory would provide a good place for her to grow her fruits and vegetables. The glass structure had emanated both Growing and Healing Flair.

  Now she had other needs. Like a long soak in a Healing spring. Her own Healing spring! As good as any HealingHall.

  The clocktower and the stillroom were halfway across the garden from the Healing pool, so if she wanted to return to warmth and security at a reasonable time, she should leave now.

  A few minutes later she saw a male figure sitting on the bench near the pool. Through some trick of the twinmoonslight he was clear. A man dressed in Noble fashion with his head in his hands. His posture spoke of despair.

  What could a Nobleman be doing here? One who had enough gilt to make any problems go away?

  Should she stay or run back to the stillroom? Was she going to be a coward for the rest of her life? Wasn’t it time to face her fears and overcome them? She was on her own now and considered an adult. May as well act like one.

  Daring, she walked around the end of the pool to the middle of the same side he was on, though he’d have to move fast to catch her. From the weary slump of his shoulders and the tiredness he radiated, she didn’t think he could do that.

  “Greetyou,” she said, not adding her name.

  He stood, and she saw he was young, no more than a handful of years older than she was. His lips formed her name, “Lahsin,” but he didn’t say it. Didn’t say anything. Her heart sank. If this man knew her name, she was all over the newssheets.

  He made a half bow, and the twinmoonslight caught on the thick silver of his hair. That intrigued her. What color was his hair in the daylight—prematurely gray or a bright blond? She could only tell that his eyes were a light color.

  “Greetyou, GentleLady,” he said. “Would you share—” He wobbled and collapsed more than sat onto the bench. “I was going to say you could share my bench if you wanted company.” His half smile was rueful. “But I seem to be occupying most of it and, no offense, but I don’t think I want to move for a while.” His words were slightly slurred. Not drunk, she didn’t think, but pure exhaustion or emotional trauma. Desperation.

  He was being courteous. At what cost to himself, she didn’t know, but it awed
her a little.

  His wave was more trembling fingers than sophisticated gesture. “But you can have the next bench.”

  She nodded.

  He tilted his head, blinked, and she wondered if he was blinking fatigue away. Maybe he was as wary of her as she was of him. That was a novel notion, but before she had time to consider it, he said, “I see you’d planned to use the hot spring.” He seemed to realize his pronunciation wasn’t precise and his next words were slow but well formed. “The water is not simply a hot spring but a Healing pool?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And I’ve interrupted you. My apologies.” He moved his feet deliberately, setting them under his body in preparation for standing.

  She put out a hand. “No, don’t rise. The pool is large enough and the night dim enough for modesty.”

  “Modesty.” He shook his head. “Not prized in our culture, or by our class. I’m used to nudity, but I see that a girl like you is not. I’ll shut my eyes while you disrobe.” He lowered his lashes, leaving Lahsin with a dilemma. She’d bathed often enough with both sexes of the Burdock Family, but that was years ago, before her body had developed. Since then only T’Yew, and occasionally Taxa, had seen her naked. And T’Yew had made her feel—not right, and very vulnerable.

  But she’d decided to face her fears and do the opposite of T’Yew’s expectations. So she stepped into a pillar’s shadow and skimmed off her clothes, saying, “The pool’s big and the light dim, and the best spot for Healing aches is this section.”

  “Truly?” He sniffed, but his eyes were still shut. “Smells bracing.”

  She dropped her clothes and the small stained but clean hand towels she’d found in the stillroom, then slipped into the water. Immediately the heat and the spells loosened her muscles, worked on her bruises.

  He gave a low moan, and she shot into the deeper water of the pool, but he’d only subsided into a horizontal heap on the bench. “I don’t suppose you would let me share the Healing effects?”

  Lahsin hesitated, but his dark, rumpled shadow didn’t move. He didn’t seem at all interested in getting his hands on her in any way. Or returning her to T’Yew or the Burdocks. He was preoccupied with his own problems.