A statue of the Lady, a goddess, would please him. Standing before shelves of ristal, he selected a jagged block about a meter high and half a meter wide. Ristal was wonderful to work with. Just by using Flair and his hands, he could create a sculpture. This piece was a rosy pink, and he liked it for Camellia. His hands curved on the stone, an image arose, and he began.
Two septhours later he stepped back and studied his creation. He had an image of the Lady, all right. He also had a nude model of Camellia herself. If he knew his lover—and he did—she’d be uncomfortable with the sculpture. It pleased him very much, the line of her thigh, buttocks, spine. No, he couldn’t give this to her, but he wanted something special. What?
Taking a dinner and some caff from the no-time, he ate and let his gaze wander over the room. He wanted to give her something now. Tomorrow at the latest. He was willing to work all night if he found the right idea.
Think. A sculpture that was just right. Not too intimate like the one he’d just finished of her. Nothing standard. Something that showed he cared, that he appreciated her. That she was unique.
Absently he wiped his mouth on a softleaf, sent the dish and cutlery and mug to the cleanser, and walked over to view the slight gleam of jade that had caught his eye. That thing.
One of the final assignments the master sculptor had given him years ago. Which he’d never finished, never had the urge to finish, until now. Mentally he called up the objects Camellia had decorated her house with and knew that this would be a cherished objet d’art.
He lifted the fussy sphere of jade down. The bottom fit in the curve of his fingers. Then he went to a different corner of the room and called up the brightest spellglobes, opened the drawer of his small worktable for equally small tools. Now was finally the time to finish the puzzle ball—a series of balls carved within each other that moved freely. He had six layers. The outer ball was to be ornately carved with sinuous mythical creatures, and needed to be finished. The second, third, and fourth balls were done, also carved with creatures as well as fancy latticework. He’d never figured out a pattern for the innermost balls, the fifth and sixth, but now he knew. They would be the twinmoons, first Cymru, then the tiniest, innermost would be Eire.
“ResidenceLibrary, project three-dimensional models of the twinmoons on the wall before me.”
“Yes, Laev.”
Once again he got to work, manipulating tiny tools to chip away stone, smooth it, whispered words to polish as he went along. Now and then he glanced up at the models, grunted, ordered them to be rotated.
Finally as dawn was breaking, he laid down his tools and examined the carved spheres. Satisfaction surged through him. He’d done it! Always before he’d been too impatient to work on the puzzle ball, not interested in the thing for himself.
But for Camellia . . . yes, she’d love this. Instead of mythical beasts on the outer sphere, there was a carving of cats chasing fishes, full of a graceful limb here, a flowing tail there. Mica would like it, too.
His gift was finished, and he’d used plenty of Flair in getting it done.
“Residence, please cancel any appointments this morning and request a luncheon date with GraceMistrys Darjeeling at the Acorn Cup, the café near the Green Knight, at NoonBell.”
“Done, Laev. Camellia confirms.”
“Right.” Laev stood and stretched, cracked his back, looked around for a proper box for the puzzle ball, found one of the right size though it was Yule red. He wrapped the puzzle ball and its pedestal in softleaves, placed them into the box.
A good gift, although not his HeartGift. He needed to tell her what happened to that gift, too.
Laev had always liked the Acorn Cup. It catered to the business crowd who worked in CityCenter and to those who trained at the Green Knight Fencing and Fighting Salon. The dark brown furrabeast-leather booths were all deeply cushioned, easy on strained muscles. The wooden tables were functional and showed carved initials of important patrons.
Due to the feud between his Family and the Hollys, he’d started training at the Green Knight late, a few months before his Passage at seventeen. He hadn’t come to this eatery until then, either, and had been too self-conscious to carve his initials in a table.
Impulsively, he took out a folding knife and whisked it around in a few deft motions. A heart, and inside it L.T’H. + C.D. It was foolish, and heat wrapped around his neck, rushed up into his face, but it was done.
Since the carving looked too new and raw—as raw as his feelings—he rubbed a thumb over it and drew tint from the whole surface of the table to darken it until it appeared to be a couple of months old. Still new, but getting accustomed to the fact. Like he was.
But this restaurant no longer pleased him as much as before. It lacked the atmosphere so carefully tended in Camellia’s teahouses—the casual cheer of Darjeeling’s Teahouse and the serene but mysterious Darjeeling’s HouseHeart. He realized that the ambience fluctuated here. Testing his Flair, he sent his senses out around him, found the common problems of working folk, stains of ambition, failure, distress. He shut down his psi but could now smell an undertone of mostly masculine sweat, spilt ale, and whiskey. The Acorn Cup was clean, but the smells still lingered.
Then the door opened and there came a feminine fragrance—fresh water and herbal cleansers, and the scent of his woman. Camellia had arrived.
She nearly bounced toward him, running on endorphins from her session. Laev heard heavier steps approach the bar, Lemongrass order a steak sandwich.
And Camellia was there. Dazzling. More beautiful than Nivea had ever been, the glow of her aura, her natural honest vibrancy filling the booth as she slid in opposite him.
“Greetyou, Laev.”
“Blessings, Camellia.”
She grinned at that.
“Good workout?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I took Lemongrass down, and in the melee I got a blow in on Tinne!”
“Excellent progress.”
“We all think so.”
She wrinkled her nose, a common habit of hers that he’d noticed here, when they’d been here before with other fighters. Now he knew why. She said nothing about the atmosphere, though. The Acorn Cup had its menu against the wall and she ordered a cup of vegetable noodle soup and tea.
Laev was pretty sure that the tea here wasn’t up to her standards, either. He wished he’d asked her to a more elegant dining room.
“I need to tell you about my HeartGift.” He put the box containing the puzzle sphere, the token that was so much less than what he wanted to give her—everything, all—on the table.
She flinched back, withdrew even her hands from the table. “I don’t want your HeartGift.” Words coming from her so fast that he could barely understand them. She stared at the gaily wrapped box as if it carried the plague. “I don’t want—” She stopped, horror in her eyes, but he’d felt all the repudiation of him as the bond between them narrowed to a thread.
“You don’t want me.” After a knife-thrust of hurt to the chest, he was stunned, numb, but knew that was just a receding wave. Agony would flow back.
“I—yes!”
“Not enough to be public with me. To show all that we are a couple . . . a progression of our relationship.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, swallowed, looked aside.
“You won’t take my gift?”
Biting her lips, she shook her head.
He slid from the booth. Stood. He didn’t want the puzzle balls, either. How many times would he be giving gifts that weren’t valued?
It fliggering hurt.
She didn’t trust him. She didn’t think that he was any better than her thieving father or her evil uncle or her worthless brother or any other man close to her that abandoned her.
She believed he was undependable, too. Dishonorable.
He felt the ice of generations of pride slide through his veins, coat his skin, cover his outer expression.
Her eyes went wide, dilated, as if she were
surprised at his reaction, might be hurting, too. Tough. He could be tough. Easily. An ancestor didn’t scrape and fight to fund a starship if he wasn’t tough. A GreatLord didn’t remain part of the FirstFamilies if he wasn’t tough.
The ice was flexible enough for him to bow most formally. He wanted to curse—her, life, the Lady and Lord. Instead he said, “Bless you on your journey. Now and on the wheel of stars between lives, your next life and forever.”
She paled. Yes, this was definitely the end of things between them; how could she believe it would not be?
He pivoted and walked away, and as he did so, the last whiff of her came to his nostrils and everything inside him clenched, ached, scraped with every breath.
He hurt. Nothing in his life hurt as much as this. Not the fear he’d felt as a teen that he’d be executed for killing a GreatLady. Not his father’s death, or his FatherSire’s. Not even understanding he’d been played a fool by Nivea, that she wasn’t his HeartMate. He’d still had illusions then, about love.
Now he had none.
Once again, he had nothing but pride, and honor and duty.
“Laev . . .” He thought he heard her whisper in a clogged voice. He ignored it. Even in the depths of this agony, he knew he had his Family, and his Residence, and his friends. He strode into the future, unpaired but not alone.
Camellia was doubled over the table when her order came. The scent of vegetable soup made bile pool in her mouth. She knew she’d been foolish, but she couldn’t call him back. Couldn’t take back the words that had revealed her fear even though the pain of hurting him, hurting herself, was more than the fear, now.
“What’s wrong?” asked a light and lilting voice of a female server.
“I’ll take care’a her,” said Lemongrass, and his shadow fell over her, no longer as bulky as her father’s would be, and she’d never been so glad to see him.
“So which’a you ended it this time?” he asked.
She just mewled.
“Eat your soup.”
“Can’t.”
“All right.” There was the noise of Lemongrass paying, then his big hand wrapped around her arm and she noted dimly that she had no reaction to him.
No, she’d saved all her fear for emotional threat this time.
“Come on. We’ll walk to the teleportation pad and I’ll take you somewhere. Where do you want to go?”
Somewhere to die. No. Of course she wouldn’t die. A few ideas lightninged through her mind, blazing bright and fading fast as she discarded them. Not her house. It didn’t seem like home anymore. Not to Tiana’s Temple or Glyssa’s Library. They would yammer at her or try and make her talk and she didn’t want to.
“Darjeeling’s Teahouse, can you do that?”
“Of course.” He was calming. He pulled on her and she walked blindly with him, smears of color blurring in her sight. She wasn’t sure why she couldn’t see, except she felt as if she’d fallen into a pit and been impaled on a stake of her own making.
Then there was some blackness and the beloved scent of the teahouse.
“What’s happened?” Aquilaria’s voice was concerned, and Camellia knew she was scaring this friend, too, and Lemongrass, and her heart ripped a little more.
“Where do you want to go?” Lemongrass asked.
“Office,” Camellia whispered at the same time that Aquilaria said it.
Then they were there and her good chair cradled her and she scrabbled for the books. Doing the books would keep her from feeling, would keep her mind going and not thinking. She hoped.
“What happened?” Aquilaria demanded again.
“HeartMate breakage.” Lemongrass sighed. Camellia knew him well enough to know he was shaking his head. “Don’t know if she or Laev sundered the relationship.”
“She did.” Aquilaria was definite, her voice holding an edge of scorn that almost cut through the rest of Camellia’s pain. Then her manager was there, shaking her, and Camellia flopped like a raggedy doll. “Stop this. Go after him.”
“Ouch,” Lemongrass said and Camellia didn’t know whether it was in response to the shake or Aquilaria’s tone. He continued, “Man’s got pride. That boy has pride. No man has more pride than a Hawthorn. And that boy’s already been savaged by one woman. Won’t be easy to get him back.”
Another shade to the painful gloom descending through Camellia. “I’m going to do the books now,” Camellia said thinly. She blinked and blinked again; the office came into painful focus. “Keep me occupied.”
“All right.” Aquilaria huffed an exasperated breath. “Shall I get the books from Darjeeling’s HouseHeart?”
“Please,” Camellia said.
Aquilaria clumped to the corner teleportation pad and vanished with a deliberate pop.
Camellia pulled out the recording sphere that held the figures for the teahouse and attached a link to a special writestick that would enter data into the sphere. With a husky spell couplet, the file for the last two eightdays opened.
Citrus scent wrapped around her and she felt the brush of a kiss disturb the hair at her temple. “I’ll go get that gift—not a HeartGift since I could see it—that the boy gave you, send it to your house cache. Take care. We’ll move our schedule back to before NoonBell. Keep the schedule. It’ll help.” Lemongrass vanished, too.
She lost herself in figures. Sometimes she drowned in them, having to fight her way back to find sense in them. When she was done, her hand was cramped and she sagged in the chair. Eventually the recording sphere blinked off.
Then Tiana and Glyssa came into the office and whisked her away, and she rambled and wept and slept with them and Mica close all night. None of that was a comfort.
Laev went straight to the Green Knight’s shooting range. With a surfeit of rage and pain, he had the energy to translocate his pistols. He spent hours practicing, until he “killed” all the stationary targets, then all the simulacra one-on-one, one-on-two, one-on-three. The Hollys didn’t run to four simulacra. Maybe he should donate one.
Holm Holly dragged him back to the main salon and the melee. Cratag was there, and others that didn’t often come, so a grand fight was on. That helped.
Finally Laev teleported directly to the HouseHeart, let Brazos in, who hissed and stomped and railed against females.
Laev wasn’t too proud to drink a soothing potion from the HouseHeart no-time. It distanced his emotions and let pain trickle in slowly, as he was able to deal with it. Laev thought that he was becoming an expert at surviving a long bitterness. His marriage with Nivea, his grief at his FatherSire’s death, now this. He had much in his life to be grateful for. None of his past mistakes had been fatal, or so dire that he’d been unable to recover from them.
Tomorrow was another day, and he’d make sure he didn’t see Camellia.
Twenty-eight
Early the next morning, Camellia walked back and forth on the sidewalk outside the stoop of the Green Knight, not quite sure what she was doing here. It wasn’t open yet and usually didn’t have people waiting to enter. Like all Holly properties, it was canny in defense. The stairs were steepish and the stoop itself could hold one big man, which meant the door could be defended by one man.
To her horror, she saw a small figure materialize on the porch. Little Cal Marigold, age four. She jumped up the stairs to take his hand, hopefully to keep him safe from walking into the street or teleporting anywhere else.
He looked up at her and offered a sweet smile. “Do you want in?”
That might be the safest place for him until she could scry someone. “Uh, yeah.”
He put his palm on the door and said a few words and the shields dropped. Camellia didn’t know how those particular shields worked, by aura-lifeforce or spellwords or a combination of both, but decided she’d better mention the situation to the Hollys.
She opened the door, felt a ruffling as if Laev was in there . . . even if he was, she couldn’t leave now, not with Cal. Letting a quiet breath out, she made sure the
boy was in—and kept a solid grip on his fingers—closed the door, and physically locked it.
Spell-lights were on. “I think someone’s here,” she said.
Cal nodded solemnly. “Oh, yes. Dey are all here talking about me. Neutwal gwound for Papa and Laev.” He smiled deeply and she noticed he had two killer dimples. “Not Hawthown or Holly Wesidences.”
He’d mentioned the Hawthorn family first, did he now consider himself more Hawthorn than the epitome of Holly-ness, Tab Holly? The questions buzzed in her mind, scarily unaskable and unanswerable.
“It was fun living in dis place, above de salon, but now I live in de most beautiful house on Celta.” Another smile.
“Uh-huh.” She’d never been to D’Marigold’s Residence but had seen holos.
Cal was tugging on her hand and she took small steps to match his and they went through the atrium—she noted that the empty teleportation pad showed it was in use. To prevent Cal from teleporting to it? She didn’t know. But the feeling of impending doom seemed to rush toward her, then the swinging doors opened and Vinni T’Vine, the prophet, stepped out from the main gym.
“Greetyou, Cal. Ah, GraceMistrys Darjeeling, good to see you.” He looked at her hand holding Cal’s and seemed relieved. A smile flashed across his face as he bowed to her. But when he straightened, she felt his fearsome attention focused on her.
“I don’t meddle much in others’ affairs without asking . . .”
“Dat’s not twue,” Cal said loudly, clearly.
Vinni winced and glanced over his shoulder.
“And I tink if people are talking about me, I should be dere.”
“I was speaking to GraceMistrys Darjeeling, Cal, of her life. Mind your manners.”
“Sowwy, Vinni. Sowwy, Camellia.” Cal squeezed her fingers, then went on, “Her life?” Now Cal, too, was completely concentrating on her.
Camellia stiffened her spine. “I don’t—” Her words and mouth dried as she met Vinni’s eyes that held a great sadness. Her heart thumped hard.
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