Heart Search

by Robin D. Owens

  The three-septhour trip itself was uneventful. As soon as they exited the vehicle, the Fams spotted some small fluff-tailed rodents and took off chasing them.

  She and Laev stood on a ridge looking down into a green valley, holding hands.

  “Yes,” Laev said. “I think I’ll take it.” His shoulders shifted and a half smile curved his lips. “I got a buzz about this place. The company that wants to farm and settle the land is right. It will draw people.”

  “Why?” Camellia asked.

  “First, the land and weather are perfect for growing NewBalm, the recently developed hybrid Earthan-Celtan herb.”

  Camellia stared at the slopes of the valley. “I’ve heard of that. It’s a derivative of the herb that was used to mitigate the sickness two years ago. The medicine stopped the epidemic.”

  “That’s right. The FirstFamilies Council has allocated a great deal of gilt to studying the plant and its properties. We have the science and Flair to begin exploring the DNA of plants that the starship, Nuada’s Sword, still has locked within itself. Celta is a harsh planet, and modifying plants from our home planet to grow with flora here could help our numbers.”

  “Everyone agrees with that,” Camellia said.

  Laev nodded and his smile faded. “Yes, we all agree that Celtans must multiply. Deciding on the means to ensure that are hard-fought battles.” Camellia suddenly knew that he and his FatherSire must have worked hard in the FirstFamilies Council to make sure the gilt was available for the development of the herb. She squeezed his hand.

  He smiled again, tugged on her hand, and they walked along a path toward the river that flowed into the valley from the northern mountains. “Not only that, but in the next couple of generations, as the general Flair of our populace rises, this valley will be within teleportation range of the Great Labyrinth, and the town that is growing there.”

  “The north wasn’t hit as hard by the sickness as Druida and Gael City in the south.”

  “No. And we’ve funded studies to learn about that, too.” He stopped and scanned the land again. “I think we’ll buy the eastern side of the valley. That way the project can go forward even if no one else invests.” He shrugged. “We may take a loss, but it’s important research that must be done.” Eyes narrowed, he continued, “I’ll have Vinni T’Vine, the prophet, evaluate the options. But I do feel that buzz of success.” He slid a glance to her. “Even a small plot here might bring a good amount of gilt in the future. Or an investment in Medica, the company developing the herb.”

  Her heart fluttered as she understood that he was sharing confidential information with her, that he trusted her, that he cared enough to give her financial tips to make her life easier. She stood and kissed him on the mouth. “Thank you.” Kissed him again. “I think that I’ll stick with my tearooms.”

  He drew her close and the next kiss was a full-body experience—a tasting and cherishing of each other, the bond between them throbbing with . . . affection. Laev withdrew first, and as she caught her breath, she saw that he was shaking his head at her, but smiling again. “You’re a very independent lady.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not sure that was a compliment.”

  She chuckled. “That’s all right.”

  He dropped her hand and focused on the valley. His back stiffened. “I hope you know that if you ever . . .” He stopped. Probably because she’d moved away and the bond between them was now flowing with irritation from her.

  “I won’t ever need gilt.” She tried to keep her breath even. “I have a tea set worth a fortune.”

  Turning, he stepped close again and framed her face with his hands. “And I know you love that tea set.” His eyes were dark, intense, and demanded she meet them. “I don’t ever want you to feel desperate. Never. Anything that is in my power, I will give you.”

  She swallowed hard. He was moving faster than she in this relationship. He wanted more from her, from them.

  A burden seemed to settle on her shoulders. How had she missed that? Words hammered in her brain, scared words, defensive words, angry words. She should say none of them and for once she was smart. “Thank you.”

  Laev jerked a nod, stepped away, but she thought he was disappointed in them both—himself for pushing her, and her for her fear. He turned and led the way back to the waiting airship.

  Fams, we are returning to Druida City! he shouted mentally.

  You woke us, Brazos grumbled. We finished our hunt, there was a small catch in his telepathic stream that seemed like a burp. And returned to the airship. This place is not as good as alleys.

  “Oh,” Laev said. With a laugh, he reached for Camellia’s hand and she let him take it.

  They walked into the airship and saw the cats tangled in a large, cushioned saucer-seat with a security field over it. Mica opened an eye and smiled at Camellia but said nothing.

  Once she and Laev were seated again and the ship was on the way back to the city, his jaw flexed and he stared out the window and said, “I spoke out of turn, but you must know that you can call on me if you need.” He cleared his throat. “You must know that I am not the only one who would . . . ah . . . help. There is D’Ash. She is interested in tea, and her daughter is my journeywoman, always interested in new ventures.”

  “Thank you.” This time she summoned a sincere smile.

  He turned his head to look at her and she saw vulnerability. That made her more wary than his financial offer. Too much was happening in too short of a time. The sex had been wonderful, the time with him so comfortable that she hadn’t noticed how truly strong the bond was between them.

  “I care for you,” he said, his head angled, awaiting her response.

  But she could give him that. “I care for you, too.”

  “Good.”

  But the word HeartMate, and all the binding ties that concept brought with it, echoed in the quiet.

  They watched the scenery pass under them. Then the airship drink no-time pinged and a tray protruded holding two mugs, one of black caff for Laev, the other sweetened tea for her. Laev took the mugs and passed hers to her. “Your calendarsphere showed dinner with your brother tonight?”

  “Yes, every first Mor evening.”

  “Ah. Do you cook for him, too?”

  “Yes. He has a fondness for thin-sliced furrabeast sandwiches and rice. Some are in the no-time.” The hidden one.

  Mica yawned, added, It is the only time he gets to eat furrabeast, with us.

  “Oh.” Laev grimaced. “I have no siblings. My closest relative is my aunt Lark, married to Holm Holly. I go eat with them once a month. She insists. We usually dine with the rest of the Hollys. They are a loud Family.” He shifted in his seat. “Before dinner there is sparring, and T’Holly usually pummels me.” Now Laev smiled. “But I’ve been practicing and I have a new strategy for getting Holm and Tinne on my side that I’ll try out next time.” Laev rolled his shoulders. “T’Holly may have been the premiere fighter of Celta, but for pure strategy, no one can beat the Hawthorns,” Laev ended with satisfaction.

  Which only made Camellia wonder how much he was steering and planning this affair. Not much, she thought. But the longer it went on, the more he’d consider how to control the relationship, wouldn’t he?

  As soon as Camellia and Mica walked into the house, she knew her father and uncle had been there. Of course the alarm spell had not notified her, nor had the guards contacted her by perscry, so the alarm hadn’t contacted them, either. When she tried, she found no trace of it with her Flair

  Horrible smell!

  “Rotten meat,” Camellia said, going immediately to the kitchen. Low-grade ground furrabeast was smeared on the floor and counters. She stopped just outside the small room. Keeping her mouth shut and blocking her nostrils, she pressed a spot on the kitchen wall and a deep-cleaning spell rippled through the area. Mica sat and watched with round eyes. In under a quarter septhour, the place sparkled.

  That was the new spell you
bought earlier this week.

  “Yes. It wasn’t cheap, but it’s good value, and I didn’t have to spend my own Flair and energy.”

  Bad men were here.

  “Yes.”

  I’d better check all my toys. And my fish. Mica trotted away.

  Feeling a small trickle of satisfaction, Camellia went to the concealed no-time, slid off the panel that made it look like part of the wall, and checked it. Full of good food. The other two had been raided, but she hadn’t kept anything but the furrabeast in there.

  Hopefully her father and uncle were thinking they continued to win the nasty game they played, that they were depressing her spirits so she didn’t keep food or valuables around.

  And in one way they had won. She’d packed her treasures away and given them to Tiana to store. She’d replaced the knickknacks with minor objects that she’d only feel a twinge or two if they were broken. Still, she thought of that as fighting back.

  She went to the bedroom and saw that the tapestry had been ripped down and the wall safe opened. She and Tiana and Glyssa had put some trinkets they’d wanted to get rid of in there. Camellia had recorded them all in a sphere and would send it to the guardhouse. Maybe that would help trace her relatives, certainly it would add to the evidence against them.

  At least the wall wasn’t damaged any more than it had been. The gouges around the lockbox were still ugly, but they’d be hidden by her new wardrobe, which was scheduled to be delivered the night after next.

  Camellia sat down on her bedsponge and Mica settled into her lap. My fish is safe. Mica purred. And all My catnip toys. And Brazos’s toys, too, Mica said.

  Stroking the cat, Camellia said, “That’s very good.”

  “Yessss,” Mica said, then added telepathically, They did not break anything.

  “Not this time.”

  Maybe they were in a hurry.

  “That could be,” Camellia agreed.

  But they did what we thought they would! They found the furrabeast-for-Fams and threw it around, and took the bits of jewels.

  “That’s right.”

  We can strategize, too.

  “Yes, we can.” Gratification unfurled inside Camellia. This time she’d lost nothing that she’d miss, hadn’t spent energy or Flair in cleaning up or in worry. It wasn’t much, but it still felt like a small triumph.

  Her brother knocked on the door and Mica hopped to her feet and ran to the mainspace. Senchal had begun bringing string toys to the Fam. It was always good to please a female FamCat who might someday have kittens.

  Camellia followed and opened the door.

  Senchal seemed to glow with pleasure.

  “Work went well today?” Camellia asked.

  “Yeah, very well. Finished the mural project. And you’ll never guess who gave me a commission!”

  “Who?”

  “That Feam Kelp, the son of the lady who found your tea set in that sunken ship. He wants a wall holo of his mother working underwater on that ship.” Senchal rubbed his hands. “A real challenge.”

  “Great!”

  “Yeah.” Senchal smiled and was charming. Then he unrolled a string and added a little Flair and the scraps on the end became a dancing spider for Mica to play with. She squeed and pounced and he left her to it to hug Camellia.

  “What did you do today?”

  We went to Rushes Vale, Mica said, rolling on her back and all four paws tangled in the string. You should buy land there!

  Camellia simply froze, along with the smile on her face. How much had Mica overheard, how much would she reveal of Laev’s plans? Of the confidential information.

  Quiet! she snapped mentally to her FamCat. He talks to the bad men, remember!

  But Senchal shivered. “Up north? No. If I move anywhere it will be to an artist’s colony. Mona Island or or Toono Town in the south.”

  Mica abandoned the string and sat, head tilted, looking at him. You smell like the bad men.

  “Bad men?”

  The ones who come in here and break things.

  “What have you been telling the cat?” Senchal said to Camellia, flushing. From the sibling bond between them, she felt more anger than embarrassment from him.

  “I don’t have to tell her anything,” Camellia said. “She lives here and sees what happens.”

  They take things and break things, Mica said. They took My furrabeast steaks. She picked up the string and dropped it on Senchal’s shoes. I do not want toys from you.

  Senchal’s mouth dropped open, he jerked a shrug. “They aren’t bad men.”

  Yes, they are, Mica said.

  “Yes, they are,” Camellia said.

  We go to the guardhouse all the time.

  “You’re reporting them!” Senchal gasped.

  “Every time,” Camellia replied. “They’ll never change. They’ll always be vicious.”

  “Maybe a little selfish . . .”

  Camellia stared at him, knew he still wanted to please the older men. She turned on her heel and went to the kitchen, gesturing to him to sit. “Your dinner’s ready.”

  “Cammi—”

  “We’re not going to agree on this, Senchal,” she said.

  “I hate that we can’t all love each other,” he said. “Thank you for the meal.”

  She served herself a bowl of clucker stew. Just inhaling the scent of it steadied her. “There was precious little love in our Family.”

  Senchal’s eyes dampened. He sent the warmth of love to her through their bond, said quietly, “Don’t ask me to choose between you, please, Camellia.”

  “When have I ever?” She ate quickly, not savoring her food. “But I can’t go on like this forever. If they don’t leave Druida City soon, I’ll sell this place and move into D’Licorice Residence.” The words sprang from her lips, that option sudden and fully formed.

  “Father isn’t looking well.”

  She met Senchal’s eyes with a hard gaze. “That might be because he blasphemed the Sheela Na Gig.”

  “No!”

  “Yes.”

  Senchal choked, put his sandwich on his plate, stared at Camellia. “If what you say is true, father and uncle will pay someday.”

  “That’s right, and the sooner the better.”

  Laev finished his notes on Rushes Vale and authorized the purchase of the property. Jasmine bought a small parcel on the western slope. It was all she could afford since T’Ash and D’Ash hadn’t made the final decision to give her a quarter of their funds to handle. Grumbling to herself, she waved good-bye to Laev as she left for home.

  He checked his message cache and heard from Primross that the investigation was proceeding well—but no details. The man had spoken to Winterberry about the odd note, and his observer had reported no unusual threat to Camellia from an unknown person.

  Laev’s housekeeper had left two-dimensional blueprints of the MasterSuite and MistrysSuite on his desk, along with notations of all the ways they’d been configured in the past. At one point, there had been a kitchen in the present MasterSuite. He didn’t think that floor plan would work when Camellia moved in.

  A hole opened up inside him and all the bad memories of being wed to Nivea bombarded him. Watching their marriage deteriorate as the illusion she’d woven around him peeled away. The discovery that she’d wed him for status and wealth only the first betrayal.

  But Camellia wasn’t Nivea. What would have happened this morning if Nivea had been standing on the ridge looking down at Rushes Vale? He wouldn’t have told her of his plans, not even in the beginning. Nivea was bored with business.

  And when he’d offered her the financial advice, Nivea would have cooed that he should put some of the property in her name, linked arms with him, rubbed her head against his shoulder. She’d always expected to get something for nothing—or for nothing more than sex.

  Never would she have been irritated or angry, staunchly independent, insisting on making her own way.

  Camellia, his HeartMate, was not anyth
ing like the woman he’d married.

  It was time to accept that Camellia was his HeartMate, the woman he should bond with this lifetime, so closely that they would die within a year of each other.

  Time to push her a little. No more being indirect, dancing around the subject of HeartMates. Camellia had shown him how constricted he had been, living with Nivea. How his love hadn’t been true, but infatuation and sex that might have been a fleeting but wholesome part of his life if circumstances had been different, if Nivea had been more honorable.

  But first, a gift. Not the HeartGift; he still couldn’t find it by himself, and Primross wasn’t back from Gael City.

  Camellia had shared her talent with him, had spent hours preparing food for him, had created special recipes for him . . . none of which would be used in her tearooms. Nivea never would have done something like that.

  For the first time in weeks, he went into his studio with the intention of working. There was a heated pressure infusing his body, not sexual but creative. He needed to sculpt. He wanted to give Camellia something of himself. The statue of the Lord had been a standard image, and part of a trade.

  Last night she had made special Beltane stew for him. Tonight he’d sculpt for her.

  Twenty-seven

  His lost HeartGift ghosted through Laev’s mind. No, he didn’t want to give Camellia something that important. He couldn’t duplicate those circumstances of creation anyway. Deep in Passage, hardly knowing what he did, he’d carved the Lady and Lord from marble. Through the hours that he’d suffered and sweated, every stroke of his chisel reflected who he was. Flair had created it, was bound up in it.

  He prowled his studio, went to the worktable that held the rough bust of his FatherSire. The man had posed for studies for septhours, and Laev was glad of that. The time they’d spent together was a treasured memory now. He still hadn’t quite gotten the angle of GreatLord Hawthorn’s jaw right. Someday he would. There would be less grief mixed with his love when he worked on the piece again. For now he shrouded it and thought of Camellia.