“What!”
Ailim bit her lip to stop a whimper from the grinding pain of the rocks on her foot. “Menzie is your uncle’s mistress. He gave her the amulet. He was at D’SilverFir this afternoon, visiting his nephew, Donax—and her, too. I believe he gave her orders to throw the amulet in the fault. She acted as if she was bewitched.”
The angle of his jaw sharpened in the wavering light.
“Bucus! Donax isn’t his nephew by blood. He’s my aunt Calami’s. I’m Bucus’s nephew. He’s your enemy, too.”
“Yes.” She sighed and collapsed against her prison walls.
“Ailim, my dear one. You know I’d never hurt you.”
She didn’t answer.
There was a moment of silence, and when his voice came it was full of suppressed emotion. “If you want me to leave so you can use your Flair, I will. I’ll stay near to help in any way I can, at any cost to myself.”
“No.” She could hardly envision the tumult a broadcast alarm could cause, nobles ’porting here, confusion, the capture of Ruis. “You must not be found in Druida.”
She stared up and they locked gazes. Her face crumpled. “Will you coerce me by saying that you will stay and be caught if I don’t do as you wish?”
His breath hitched, his expression froze. Pain ripped across his face. “No. That would be blackmail.” He spoke, words jerky. “If you insist, I’ll go and watch from afar. Not come near you.”
She heard the echoes of a lifetime of rejection in his undertone. She tried to clear her mind. His ideas were fantastic; she couldn’t imagine how he could do as he said. His solution was inconceivable. She couldn’t weigh her choices. Except to consider the man himself. She had to decide whether to trust the man himself. Her heart cracked at the amount of faith he was asking, how vulnerable she’d show herself to be if she trusted him—having so much trust in him that she would believe him able to achieve the impossible on his word alone.
But she loved him.
“I’m your lover.” He echoed her thought, his words dropping as softly as tears. “Can’t you trust your lover?”
Ailim surrendered. Stripped to her core, she knew herself, knew she loved Ruis. Love demanded trust and faith. “Yes.” She shifted to be as comfortable as possible and closed her eyes to his scrutiny. “Bring on your Earth machines.”
Her eyes flew open a moment later as clinking sounded above her. Her mouth slackened as a long gray tentacle slithered down the hole. She didn’t know how the machine had gotten there, hadn’t heard a sound.
The cylindrical thing slid against her body as it burrowed. She screamed.
“Easy now, dear one, nothing to fear,” Ruis said.
Ailim glared up at him. “You aren’t the one being fondled by an unnatural snake!” Watching in fascinated horror, she had second thoughts as the tentacle flexed and poked.
Snick! Four shiny metal prongs sprang out. Ailim tried to crawl out of her hole.
“Easy!” Ruis said.
You fine, Samba mewed.
The snake angled down toward her ankle, probed around the compacted dirt and rock. With a whir, it drilled into the stone. Ailim panted. Sweat from fear and the heat the tool generated coated her body. She moaned.
“Ailim!”
“Yes, Ruis?”
“Take this.” He tossed an odd little ball down and Ailim caught it. It fit in her palm. The upper half was metal with switches and buttons. The bottom was encased in soft fabric and snuggled into her hand.
“The red button is a lazer. Don’t press it,” he said. “The blue switch is a light, the green one is a little scry. If you turn on the scry and the light, I can see what the digging machine is doing.”
She blinked. The amulet’s evil waves were much less noticeable. “Ruis?” she asked.
“Yes?” He sounded preoccupied.
“This object you gave me—”
“The multitool?”
“Yes.” She held it up to her temple and tried a small telepathic spell to Samba. She’d been able to sense Samba’s thoughts just a moment before—nothing! She looked at the tool in wonder, turning it over and over. “This sphere has a small energy field that works much like your Nullness.”
“What?” He sounded startled. His head darkened the hole, his eyes round with curiosity.
She held up the tool. “It dampens my Flair. A pity it’s too strange and large to carry in my pockets.” Ailim studiously avoided glancing at the writhing tentacle near her ankle. She tried not to speculate what the loud noises were. She realized the snake-arm smelled familiar, like that additional tang of Ruis’s personal scent.
Ruis frowned, examining the multitool. “Interesting.”
The pressure on her foot vanished. Ailim moaned as a tide of numbness, then a different pain from her foot flooded her.
“Ailim?”
She knew she needed to attempt to move her foot, but had to regain control. A couple of minutes, maybe.
“I’m all right,” she said through gritted teeth. “I’m free.”
“Wonderful! Lift!” Ruis ordered.
Before she was ready, the arm curled around her waist, squeezed too tight, then relaxed as if sensing her weight and its surest grip.
It dragged her up, and her useless foot bumped against rock. Ailim clenched her hands tight around the tentacle to keep from crying out. The snake-arm didn’t compress under her grip. After a meter, there were no walls close and she dangled in space, inching up. Ailim panted, then Ruis’s arms reached for her, drew her close to his body.
He held her too high for her to set her good foot down. His strength and warmth and the pounding of his heart overwhelmed her as much as sheer relief. She couldn’t prevent a steady oozing of tears.
“Shhhh. Shhhhhh. I’ve got you. Almost over.” He cuddled her close, then lifted her and walked.
Ailim blinked, unable to comprehend what she was seeing until she was on a floating raft with strange machines.
Ruis gestured to a squat white one with a red cross painted on it. “Scan GrandLady D’SilverFir’s left foot for harm.”
The little robot waddled up and extruded a soft white cradle. Ailim decided she was supposed to put her foot in it. She bit her lip when the weight of her foot hung in the cradle. The robot hummed as warm yellow lights flashed on her foot. She turned to ask Ruis what was going on. He wasn’t there.
Squinting, she saw him being lowered into the hole, holding another little machine. Terror jangled her nerves. The robot peeped.
“Ruis!”
He lifted a hand. “I’m getting the amulet!”
“Don’t! Forget it!” Nothing was as important as his life. Not her estate, not her Family, not her own life.
He disappeared. She tried to move, but her foot was trapped again, this time by an infernal machine. She felt a sting and her gaze shot back to her ankle. A long shining needle-like instrument slowly withdrew from the slit in her boot. At the end of it a single red drop of her blood beaded.
Her mouth fell open, dizziness overcame her. She battled the dark, but it won.
Ruis’s lips peeled back from his teeth when he found the amulet. The charm bag was filthy, the smell disgusting. The odor comprised the well-known stench of his uncle when in a torturing mood: high excitement, sweat, and his cologne. There was the stink of rotting corruption like when he faced Hylde’s body; the sickening aroma of a woman, and a note of frantic, rough sex. Ruis struggled to keep his gorge down. He sipped the hole’s air shallowly through his mouth.
Pulling a ragcloth from his belt, he dropped it over the thing and gingerly scooped the shrouded amulet up, treating it as if it were the decaying corpse of a small animal.
“Up full speed!” he shouted.
He was whisked from the hole in less than ten seconds. He glanced at the raft—Ailim was sleeping. Good, the best thing for her.
On either side of the main hole other machines were venting the crust at intervals to dissipate noxious Flair-energy.
He walked along the ravine, away from the epicenter of the faultline, and crossed into Elder land, discernable by the lack of fir trees. He found a barren spot and dropped the revolting amulet. The ragcloth opened. The bag had shriveled into a small dry lump. Getting his lighter, he flicked it and looked at the clean orange flame. He calculated the amount of time he’d been close to the bane, whether his Nullness would have allayed the evil spell. He glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes before Ship’s deadline. After his watch ticked away four minutes, he torched the rag. Black flames spewed up. Ruis jumped back. The thing burned gray, then purple, then blue, and finally vanished in a cracking white flash.
When Ruis touched the ash mummy of the amulet with his boot toe, the bane flaked to nothingness and drifted away on the wind.
Ruis grinned and dusted his hands. He threw back his head and laughed, triumph rising in him. He’d beaten his bastard of an uncle. He’d won!
This battle. This first battle, he’d won!
Sensations slowly filtered into Ailim’s mind—an acrid smell that made her wrinkle her nose, the sense of lying on a hard pad, her ears filled with a humming and breathing of more than one set of lungs. Her mind quested—nothing.
She jerked upright and opened her eyes. Her vision blurred and she fell back into Ruis’s strong arms. He pulled her close and she heard his heartbeat’s steady thump-thump-thump.
Ailim touched her skull where she’d had a lump. It was gone now. Daring pain, she pushed her fingers against her head. Nothing. She wiped dirt from her eyes and looked down at her feet. They were bare, looking pink and healthy and freshly washed. She rotated her left ankle and flexed her left foot. No pain.
She opened her mouth to comment, then noticed the strange surroundings. The walls were a mixture of brushed metal, glassy panels, and woven tapestries. The bed she slept on was nothing like she’d ever seen before—an inset mattress filled with a firm but supportive substance that didn’t feel like permamoss. She poked it. “What is this?” she said.
A rumpling purr came from near her right foot, and she lifted her head. At the end of her bed Samba sat on a—tray? “What? Where?” She was stupefied.
“Welcome to the sick bay of Nuada’s Sword,” Ruis said, making no sense at all.
“What?”
“Pppprrrrrrruuuuuup,” Samba rumbled as if coaxing.
Ailim peeked at the Fam cat again. Samba’s whiskers twitched. You in Our home. Ship!
“Ship?”
Nuada’s Sword?
Trembling started from inside her body and spread until Ruis pressed her against him again.
“Nuada’s Sword?” she asked, certain she’d misunderstood the cat’s mutterings.
“That’s right.” Ruis’s low voice soothed her.
She braced herself. “You’re living in Nuada’s Sword?”
He nodded.
Ailim licked her lips. Ruis got a metal tumbler from the tray and handed it to her.
Of course she’d seen goblets made of precious metals, but nothing this utilitarian. It was cold in her hand. She looked inside, then back up at Ruis. “Water?” Her voice was still husky from all the dust.
“Yes.”
She gulped it. Coolness slid down her throat with such soothing freshness that after she swallowed she let out a moan of delight.
She looked around—even though it was obvious that this was a place unlike any she’d ever seen, she still found it difficult to believe Ruis was actually living in the starship. She pressed the tumbler to her forehead as if the cold would penetrate her skull and stimulate logical thought, and enjoyed the beaded dampness of condensation.
“Nuada’s Sword,” she whispered again. “Isn’t there supposed to be a curse that drives a person mad if they spend more than a couple of hours here?”
Ruis’s lips twitched. He lifted her to a full sitting position and dropped his arm from around her. She missed it.
“That’s what they say,” he said. He turned and stared over her head. She craned to see an indicator panel behind her. It appeared a lot like a Healing Chart.
“You’ll do.” His smile looked strained. He took a step back to a chair, sat down, sank his head into his hands, and threaded his fingers through his thick mahogany hair. “Lord and Lady, you scared me,” he mumbled. “I didn’t know what had happened to you or what to do.”
“You are living on the Ship, Nuada’s Sword,” Ailim said carefully.
“Yesssssss,” hissed Samba, bobbing her head, then lifting her nose in smug superiority. I am Ship’s Cat.
She put the water down to rub her eyes. “Despite the fact that Nuada’s Sword is on the cliffs on the very edge of the city, technically, you’re living in Druida. If you were found here—” She couldn’t go on. This was madness.
Ruis raised his head. “I didn’t know Ship had sedated you and started the Healing program—”
“The patient GrandLady D’SilverFir is recovering nicely,” said a deep voice from thin air that ruffled the hair on the back of her neck.
Samba sniffed. That is Ship. We fixed it. Broke curse.
“Ship,” Ailim said weakly. She looked around again. Perhaps if she looked long enough, observed everything thoroughly, she would be able to think rationally.
“A simple matter of subsonics,” said the Ship.
Ailim wasn’t sure what subsonics were, but with one more scan of the room, everything fell into place, Ruis’s words about his passion, his skill in fixing ancient artifacts.
“You’re rehabilitating the Ship?” Her mouth wanted to fall open in blank wonder.
Ruis stood and walked back to her raised bed. “That’s right. Now you know all my secrets.” His smile didn’t touch his anxious eyes.
She reached out both hands to him, noticing that they appeared clean while the rest of him was dirty. It didn’t matter, she needed his touch. “Please, Ruis,” she said when he hesitated, “come to me. Help me understand.”
Samba snorted and jumped down from the metal tray, leaving it vibrating. She stalked to the door. You slllooooowwww.
Ailim winced.
The door slid open to the side, and Ailim felt her eyes widen even more. Samba exited, tail up.
Ruis remained beyond her outstretched hand. He put his fists on his hips and frowned. “I want you to stay here tonight.”
“It is recommended the patient D’SilverFir stay for observation,” the Ship said.
Ailim stared at her bare feet, which were getting cold. She shook her head in disbelief. “What did it do to me?”
Ruis’s smile was lopsided. “I don’t quite know. I’m sure it would explain everything in excruciating detail if you asked.”
Ailim winced, then sighed. “Don’t say ‘excruciating,’ please.”
He took the final pace to her side, his hand curved around her face. “I don’t know what happened. I just know that the whole mess was too risky for my blood.”
Ailim raised her eyebrows and shook her head again. “I can’t believe that’s true. You are the most reckless man—”
He stopped her words, her entire train of thought, with his firm lips on her mouth. She moaned again and leaned into him, bringing her hands to his shoulders so he wouldn’t escape her again. She needed him. Badly. Now.
When he looked up, his pupils had dilated and his expression was one of stark hunger. “I was so afraid.” He brushed little kisses all over her face, then buried his face in her neck.
Tears tightened her throat at his emotion, his ability to express it, to be free with his feelings in front of her. “You saved me again,” she said huskily.
Raising his head, he tapped her chin with his index finger. “You could have saved yourself.”
“Maybe.”
“You would have tried.”
She met his eyes steadily. “Yes.”
He smiled. “We’re fighters, both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Survivors.”
“Yes.”
“Stay with me tonigh
t.”
“Yes.”
He laughed out loud. “You’re very good for me.”
“You’re good for me, too. Better than anyone I’ve known.”
Ruis ran his hand through his hair and grimaced when it came back dusty. “I need to clean up. There’s a shower-room in the corner. Will you wait here for me?”
She examined the unfamiliar room one more time. “I don’t think I dare explore.”
“It’s wonderful here,” he said, bending an intense look on her. “And the Greensward is beautiful.”
Ailim tried a smile. “I’m sure.”
He shook his head. “You’ll see.” With a flick of his hand he headed off to a corner, opened a door she hadn’t noticed, and disappeared inside.
Ailim swung her legs to dangle over the side of the bed and stretched. She felt unaccountably good.
“GrandLady D’SilverFir,” the Ship said.
“Yes?” As long as she pretended it was the voice of a Residence instead of a Ship, she’d be fine.
“We have reviewed all your personal and professional records—”
“What! How?” Her lips thinned.
“We have reconnected with the Public Archives and the D’SilverFir computer.”
“What?”
“Ah, the D’SilverFir ‘ResidenceLibrary,’ ” Ship said.
“Oh,” Ailim said hollowly.
“You are noted to be a lady of great integrity.”
“Thank you.”
“Our Captain, Ruis Elder, is in danger Outside our skin.”
“Ah.”
“We must insist that you swear an oath not to betray him.”
That sent anger spurting through her. “Of course I won’t betray him.”
“You are an official judiciary officer and have sworn to uphold the laws of Celta.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t forget my vows.”
“Yet you are breaking them,” Ship pointed out.
Fifteen
“All human rules and laws must be somewhat flexible,” Ailim told the Ship. “Extenuating circumstances must always be considered.”
Heart Thief Page 26