Feather finally scooped up the little dog. She blinked at Garrie as if the words made no sense, and that’s when Garrie realized that she was still in an old bathrobe, her feet in flip flops and her faded hair pulled into a sloppy scrunchy. She blinked, no doubt still half asleep.
It gave Trevarr time to settle his duster around Garrie’s shoulders and tug his shirt over his head. It fell casual and sloppy, rucked up on his belt buckle and so obviously an incomplete state of dress that the bare chest somehow might have been better.
Feather blinked again and said, “Yes, I do have some information. Not much. If you want to stop by the office once it’s open, I’ll be there today.” She hesitated. “About Caryn—”
“I get it,” Garrie said. “You’ve tried to stop her.”
“No, that’s not—” Feather made a reluctant face, wiped a hand across dry lips. “She’s my niece, and I love her, but she hurt you and I don’t think she learned from that. I think it made her curious.” Feather looked at Garrie, whose face inconveniently took the first hint of sunlight over the horizon and turned it into a shimmer. “Whatever it is you have, I think she probably wants it.”
“That’s never good,” Garrie said, gripping the edges of the duster.
As if encouraged by this distraction, the ghosts surged up against her. “Me, me, me!” Plucking at her, imploring... growing petulant, Jim Bob Dandy at the forefront of them. When Garrie pushed them back with a gust, he sucked it up with the same parasitic zeal she imagined him to have shown in life — swelling in size and intensity, reaching for more.
Cut the breeze, Idiot Reckoner. Throw it away!
But Garrie was one with the breezes. For all she pushed the energy away, for all she waved her hands as though flipping away water droplets, there still remained the trickle of that connection. Jim Bob sizzled a back trail, following energy to the source with the speed and fervency of a lit fuse.
“Atreya...” Trevarr said, feeling just enough of something from her to grow wary.
“Oh farking crap!” Garrie backed away from Jim Bob Dandy, as little good as that would do. “I am so not awake enough for this!”
“What —?” Feather asked, finally realizing this particular little dance had nothing to do with Caryn. She tightened her hold on the squirming little dog. “Trickle, no!”
::Shields,:: Sklayne remarked, so casually.
“If I only had a brain,” Garrie muttered, and threw a set of rock-hard shields into place.
Jim Bob ran into them at full blast, hard enough to reverberate — hard enough to set her back a step or two. He flattened up against the dome of energy, spreading thin — seeking a way through.
Not these shields, mister.
He slid back to the ground, a shrunken, pale version of himself. Puddling there.
::Rude,:: Sklayne observed, not a hair ruffled.
Garrie straightened, hunting nonchalance and dignity. “So listen,” she said, as if Feather hadn’t already noticed the oddity of the moment. But so very few people would break that conceit if she held it out there. It was just an extension of the social games everyone played, pretending not to see when someone had had spinach in her teeth, or that a stranger’s ragged bra strap was so totally showing, or worst of all the dreaded nostril malfunction. “Later in the office, you said?”
“Any time past eight.” Feather drew the little dog closer as it lifted a lip at Sklayne, its tiny soprano growl vibrating in the air.
“Great,” Garrie said. “That’ll be just — oh, farking—”
For Jim Bob had not given up. He pushed against the shield where it met the ground, making a sucking, slurping noise that Garrie could not — seriously could not — believe that the others hadn’t noticed.
But they noticed it fast enough when the very visible earth gave way to Jim Bob’s energy inhalation. Gave way because there was nothing else left to give, here where Huntington’s Sin Nombres had already sucked the earth dry, creating a desert land now parched for more than water.
The ground uttered a deep groan. The bedrock, so near the surface, shuddered and shrank. The earth tightened into itself, leaving a network of cracks. Feather slowly backed away, holding her hand over the little dog’s eyes as if to shield it from a scarring sight.
Garrie shoved Jim Bob away with the shield. “You stop that! All of you! Just get over yourselves!” She glared at them, gathering breezes. “Yes, there’s trouble! Yes, I’m working on it! But news flash — you’re not making it any easier! And I’m not going to let you become the problem.” She held her hands out, cradling breezes... massaging them with the lightest touch — and she let them see what she had. “If I have to use this, I’ll use it for keeps. You got it?”
Dissipation. The ugliest threat she could use... the ugliest outcome. Dissipation meant failure, no matter how it seemed like victory to those on the solid end of the spectrum. No resolution, no completion, no passing beyond.
But she meant it.
And they knew it.
Within seconds, the area had cleared. All but for Jim Bob, who lingered — chastened, but still wanting. She gave him a poke, and that left only Bobbie sitting on top of the porch roof. Still faint, and now faintly amused. She’d asked, but she hadn’t pushed... and this was her territory. Garrie gave her a warning look, but nothing more.
“Coffee,” Feather said faintly, easing away from them — easing away from a reality she’d always claimed to believe, away from a truth Garrie had already explained but which hadn’t yet been seen or truly believed. “I need coffee.” She fled toward the office.
::Fark,:: said Sklayne. ::Bring back my snack!::
~~~~~
It was amazing how quickly a day could turn ordinary.
Garrie did calisthenics, waiting for Lucia to relinquish the shower while Robin scooped up her car keys, promised to return in little more than an hour, and left. When Garrie’s turn finally came, she found, to her surprise, a bar of the luxurious soap she hadn’t had the chance to buy at Robin’s shop — all handmade and olive oil and ginger-scented with little flecks of cinnamon.
Sklayne’s voice drifted into her head. ::Gift.::
She decided against questioning it. And what with one thing and another and then adding breakfast to the mix, the day had turned its heat up to sizzle before the team quit bumping around the two rooms and each other, preoccupied with their various morning things — Quinn’s information mining and Lucia’s yoga stretches and Garrie’s immersion in what had happened in the yard, what had happened the night before, what was happening in her body... what was happening to Trevarr.
Trevarr, hiding exactly that.
If not as successfully as the day before.
But they finally settled down, water bottles recharged and chilling, sunscreen applied. Lucia’s tote waited by the door when she finally appeared, dressed and perfectly appointed — just the right delicate jewelry to set off her sun-kissed olive skin, a faint hint of lavender dusting her lids and tinting her lip gloss. Today’s outfit was all flirty silk tiers in the top, slim crop jeans and itty bitty sandals below, hair drawn back into a high ponytail with just enough deliberate rumple to make it interesting. Cool and classy.
Garrie’s trail shorts, washed in the shower the night before and dried over the air conditioner, didn’t look quite as crisp as they had. The filmy blue-toned top was also a rerun. And the ribbed spaghetti strap tank she wore beneath was the last of those she’d brought with her.
One way or another, she’d lost much of her clothing in San Jose.
Lucia gave her a critical look. “I should have picked up more clothes for you,” she said. “Where is our pajarito, anyway? She’ll know the best places to stop today. She won’t want to, I’m sure. But we can’t have you running around without clothes.”
“I have clothes!”
Lucia gave her nothing more than a silent oh, please and flung the door open. “Where is she?”
Not answering her phone, that’s what. They’d alrea
dy tried.
And there was Trevarr in the doorway, looking nearly as startled to have it flung open as Lucia was to find him there. They collided; Lucia clutched at him to keep from going down, and almost did it anyway as Trevarr recoiled.
::Silver,:: Sklayne said, suddenly sitting not in the doorway, not outside the room — but there, on the foot of the bed, as if he’d actually entered the room in some fashion along the way.
“Silver!” Garrie repeated out loud, panic hitting a button she hadn’t known was lurking. She pushed up against Lucia in the doorway. “Are you — did it—”
::Not stabbed,:: Sklayne said, still bored. ::Not blooded. You see? Not hurt.:: He seemed to consider this, sniffing the air with a contemplative expression. ::Much.::
“Silver,” Lucia said, floundering. “That’s right.” She shook her head, looking down at her rings and bracelets.
“It was nothing,” Trevarr said, his expression was as distant as it ever got. As if he had to be more Trevarr than thou to prove his words.
Sklayne jumped from the bed, winding himself along the edge of the open door, tail held high. So casual. ::Stupid Trevarr. Burned. Should not be so. We must fix.::
I know, she told him, and bent to scratch along his cheek — only belatedly realizing that perhaps it wasn’t quite done.
But Sklayne was a creature of indolent hedonism, and accepted the attention as his due. It didn’t change the resentment in his voice. ::I could,:: he said. ::I should be allowed. Should be free. ::
Trevarr said, “That was your bargain to make, little one.”
“Rather than be left out of the conversation,” Lucia said pointedly, “I believe I will follow through with my dramatic gesture of stomping out into this little dusty yard with its charming new earth cracks to exclaim about Robin’s absence.”
“Oh, I think you should,” Garrie agreed. “It’s time to get this morning moving.” She stepped out behind Lucia, closing the door behind her.
In tandem, Quinn burst through the other door only a few feet away, veering away from collision with Lucia by a hair’s breadth.
“Aiee!” Lucia said. “Will you men watch where you’re going! And where is that Robin!”
Quinn’s bright blue eyes went grim even in the glimmer of the sun. “They have her.”
“I — what?” Lucia’s dramatic gesture petered out into surely I didn’t hear that. “Who has her?”
“Who else would, besides the Sin Nombres? Her friend Nancy just called — there’s been a break-in at the shop and she can’t reach Robin anywhere. The police are on the way, but the vandalism and heart attack calls haven’t stopped since I turned on the scanner this morning. Crystal Winds is pretty far down that list.”
“But Robin was coming here,” Garrie said, baffled. “Why would she be—”
“Because she lives over the shop!” Quinn interrupted, a desperate kind of anger in his voice. “Remember that apartment up there? It’s hers! She should be there — or here. And she’s not either, and she hasn’t been. Not for far longer than it would have taken her to get here from there. So who else would have gotten to her, considering she hasn’t exactly been secretive about her concerns?” He hovered on the edge of something — Garrie didn’t know what, and she thought Quinn didn’t know, either. Of doing. Of needing to do.
“You need to go.” Garrie gestured at the parking area. “You and Lucia. Go. Maybe she’s having a long soak in the tub, or maybe she shouldn’t have carried her phone into the arch energies last night. Or maybe you’re right, and she’s in trouble. If so, you might see something in the shop that no one else would notice.”
Lucia tilted her head at Quinn — at his remaining hesitation. “Come, Quinnie. She needs to do her own looking, and we can’t help with that. Besides, when you get back, you can check your little chat forums. Right now, no one even knows about it. But we can spread the word... stir things up.”
“Stir things up,” he repeated grimly. “Yeah. Let’s go stir things up.”
“Hey.” Garrie caught his arm as he turned to go back into the room. “You find anything, you call. Right? Because this isn’t a hero set-up. There’s nothing you can do with that lerkhet.”
“No?” he said. “And what about you? Is there anything you can do with that lerkhet? Or these people? You said it last night, Garrie. We do ghosts, not people. We’re not prepared for this. I should have known better. I should have remembered—”
He cut himself off with a sharp shake of his head. “Okay. I’ll get the keys. I’ve got one for her apartment.” He gave her a glance, as if expecting a reaction to that. “If you find anything when you go poking around with that reckoner radar—”
“I’ll call.”
He gave her a look.
“I’ll call,” she said.
And she would. If he could do anything about whatever she found.
Chapter 17
Kehar: Not Biddable at All
Ghehera’s share of Kehar was full of mountains and vast, deep lakes and scant salty shorelines — all with plenty of danger by way of the ethereal tides, the predators, the persistently rugged terrain. Mining towns were common; territory for mining communities, equally so.
But the new Solchran was nothing like the old. The new Solchran was a slashing scar on the earth, sitting high in thin air. The firs grew stunted instead of majestic and the scrub grew tight and gnarled. The forests scattered more thinly across the ground, making way for lichens and mosses and fragile, friable ground.
The villagers built the communal shelter as a dug-out, the upper walls a combination of rock and interwoven scrub branches. They found water, they learned the dangers of rock fall from above, and they quickly reinforced crumbling paths with Nevahn’s stability glyphs.
In the process, Nevahn found a promontory with a stable approach. He claimed his solitude there, gazing down at the village as it grew. Not far away, a slot canyon held their modest spring. Several small garden patches were under seed, each an experiment in dressing the soil.
Maybe they would survive after all.
Nevahn licked his thumb to draw a glyph of hope on the promontory rock, leaving a damp trail over layered and hardened sediment.
As if in response, the dark tide billowed with disturbance of an oskhila minor. An arrival, unheralded and unwelcome. Nevahn knew who it was; he kept his back to her.
Anjhela’s voice was silky, like her movement. Low and faintly husky and offering the illusion of intimacy. “Do you miss him, then?”
Always the threat of the mendihar behind any question, even one so simple. Living gauntlet of pleasure and pain.
But mostly pain.
Nevahn had no need to risk that pain with this particular question. “Of course I miss him. Do you?”
He took that risk, knowing his best chance lay in the ability to keep Anjhela off balance with unexpected honesty. He had no other defense against her mendihar — a gauntlet of metal fused with flesh, subsumed beneath the skin and emerging at need. He had only himself.
But at least he also only belonged to himself.
She’d hesitated, which was all he could have hoped for. “Where is he, then?”
Nevahn glanced at her in surprise. “You would know better than I, from this place.”
She made a soft and dangerous sound. “You expect me to believe he has not been here?”
“Not since before you moved us.”
“Ah. He has abandoned you.”
It was meant to provoke denial. To reveal Nevahn’s deepest beliefs about Trevarr’s intentions. And indeed, the mendihar had emerged to cover her hand and wrist, metal glinting and nails turned to the tight, sharp curve of claw.
Nevahn reflected careful honesty, the frustration of not knowing. “Has he? I have no idea. But he cannot come here, can he? He has neither the time or resources to come overland, and if he still possesses the oskhila, he has no locator image for it.”
Anjhela returned his honesty with skepticism. “And what of t
he one with whom he now travels?”
For a confused moment, Nevahn thought she referred to the skklar. She flexed her gloved hand in the corner of his vision — not an ostentatious gesture, but an unconscious one. Yes, the mendihar picked up his reactions, even from here. But not details, or she would have leaped on the notion of a bonded skklar, leaving all other inquiries aside.
In this, the confusion served him well.
She said impatiently, “The companion who stopped the Krevata portal. Had your precious Trevarr given him up to us when we first asked, we would not be hunting him now.”
Nevahn didn’t believe that for a moment. Ghehera’s tribunal had made its mind up with regards to Trevarr. Not biddable. Not amenable. And far too strong, too much of a threat, to live on.
Not to mention too wise to Ghehera’s ways, for he’d mentioned nothing of a new companion, and thus Nevahn could only shrug, inwardly and out.
Anjhela crouched beside him. “If you see your precious son,” she said, a disdainful snarl at her lip, “ask him of this companion. Ask him if this person is important enough to sacrifice his people. Because you, Nevahn, might yet survive.” She lifted the mendihar, uncurling one graceful finger to tuck a claw beneath his chin. “Your son and his companion are lost to you regardless.”
That single point of contact speared him with exaggerated dread. Not the village! Not my son!
The mendihar at work. Nevahn gathered his deepest resources and sent her disdain. You are traitor. To your kind, to your people. To Trevarr.
He’d meant that she was traitor in a general way — one mixed blood to another. But the gauntlet wasn’t any more biddable than Trevarr, and it trickled her reaction back at him. The deepest grief and the anger, a sense of betrayal.
“You do know him!”
She jerked her hand away, sneering at him as she stood. “And who does not? He is a disgrace to us all.”
He had nothing to say to that. And the wisdom not to say it.
She looked out over the growing bones of the village, her very glance as good as a threat. “Learn what I need to know,” she told him. “While you still can.”
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