by David Weber
But somewhere deep inside, he wondered why he didn’t feel gladder.
* * *
Dirt Grubber was haunted by memories of the Landless Clan. He was all too well aware that without the intervention of Death Fang’s Bane, Windswept, and their friends, his clan could be in much the same position—if not worse. Like the Landless Clan, they would have found it difficult to move to a new location without trespassing on territories already claimed by other clans or, worse, settled by the two-legs.
There but for the kindness of some impulsive younglings go we, he thought. Surely I can do something. But what?
He brooded during the flight to Windswept’s home. Even after the evening routine was over and she had fallen into troubled sleep, he tried idea after idea, much as he would have tested plants in various types of soil and light. Somewhere in the darkest hours, he came up with the plan.
The Landless Clan needed to be transplanted. That was certain. However, their route to new lands was blocked by the Trees Enfolding Clan. Nimble Fingers was willing to act as ambassador, sharing his experiences with the Landless Clan with his own, but he was too wounded to travel.
If Windswept could treat Nimble Fingers, perhaps even help bring him close to where Trees Enfolding nested . . . Surely the Landless Clan would have had enough time by now to realize that the outsiders could help them. He was sure he could convince them of what must be done.
The only problem was, how could he explain to Windswept what he wanted?
18
“What is bothering you, Stephanie?” Marjorie Harrington inquired. “You’re squirming inside your skin like a demented stutter bug!”
Despite herself, Stephanie giggled at the image. Stutter bugs were one of Meyerdahl’s more colorful insect analogues. They were also about the size of her hand, and they communicated by drawing air over vibrating spicules that covered their garishly decorated sides. A stutter bug in full mating chorus looked like a bright orange, hairy beanbag someone had stuffed with a vibrator.
“Sorry, Mom!” She shook her head contritely. “I guess I’m just more nervous tonight.”
“Well, sure,” Karl put in, supporting her excuse loyally. “It’s the first time they’ve let you take Lionheart anywhere off-campus, Steph!”
“I’m sure that explains it,” Richard Harrington said in a tone which—to his daughter’s knowledgeable ear—suggested he was rather less certain of it than his words implied. Fortunately, he let Karl’s explanation stand, although the look he gave Stephanie suggested she might well find herself revisiting the topic with him later.
Well, of course I will! We really should’ve told them already, but if we had, they’d have climbed onto the next Manticore-Sphinx shuttle come hell or high water. And the same people who would’ve wondered why Karl and I were running for home would wonder why they were scooting back to Twin Forks while he and I were still stuck on Manticore. Especially when they hadn’t even seen us in the last three months!
“It was nice of the foundation to lean on the restaurant’s management,” Richard said instead of following up on the reasons for his daughter’s obvious anxiety.
“It sure was,” Stephanie agreed sincerely as the taxi grounded at the entrance to the park around the Charleston Arms. The same footman who’d opened the door for her and Karl on their first visit opened it again, but this time he smiled at them.
“Welcome back,” he said. “I understand you two are heading home to Sphinx in a day or two?”
“Yes, we are,” Stephanie acknowledged, and gave him a sincere smile. He’d turned out to be a much more worthwhile person than she’d assumed that first evening. “Steve, this is my mom and my dad. Mom, Dad—this is Steve Cirillo.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Cirillo said, shaking hands with Marjorie and Richard in turn. “You’re probably tired of hearing it, but you’ve got quite a daughter here.”
“That’s not really the kind of thing a smart parent admits she’s tired of hearing,” Marjorie replied, and he chuckled.
“And this—” Stephanie reached up to touch Lionheart’s ears “—is Lionheart.”
“So those old . . . fogies in the front office finally said you could bring him, did they?” Cirillo glanced at Stephanie’s parents from the corner of one eye as he changed nouns in mid flight. “Good for you!”
“I think Ms. Adair had a lot to do with it. She and her cousin,” Stephanie said.
“The earl usually does get what he wants,” Cirillo agreed, and waved them through the ornamental gate. The days when he’d assigned a minder to make sure they didn’t get lost—or steal any doorknobs—were long past, and Stephanie smiled at him again before her parents followed her and Karl past the gate and along the gravel walk across the restaurant’s manicured park.
There was less traffic about than usual, although the paths were seldom very crowded. It had taken Stephanie a couple of visits to realize that the Charleston Arms wasn’t actually a public restaurant at all. In fact, the entire facility was a private club which belonged to the Earl of Adair Hollow. The restaurant was open to the public three days a week, but not on Fridays, which was when the foundation regularly met here. She’d wondered, since she’d discovered the way things were actually organized, why it had taken so long to clear her to bring Lionheart along. She knew Landing had stricter regulations than Twin Forks about permitting “animals” into eating establishments, but they made plenty of exceptions for service dogs and Beowulfan fox bears. Probably just bureaucratic inertia, she’d decided, and the fact that the earl himself had returned to the Star Kingdom this week from his extended business trip probably explained why they’d suddenly managed to overcome that inertia.
Of course—
Lionheart’s sudden, rippling snarl cut her off in mid-thought.
* * *
Climbs Quickly tensed, muscles coiling tightly. His ears went flat to his head and his bared fangs showed bone-white in the illumination spilling from the tall pillar of light behind him and his two-legs.
I should have tasted them sooner! he told himself fiercely. Am I a scout of the People or a just-weaned kitten who cannot be trusted out of the nest on his own?!
Even as he thought it, he knew he was being unfair to himself. Death Fang’s Bane’s mind-glow had been clearer and brighter since her parents had arrived at the learning place, but it remained more shadowed than it ought to be, and he was no closer to understanding the reasons for those shadows. Except for the increasing certainty that they had much to do with the People, that was. And the echo of her fretfulness had seeped into his own mind-glow. It had not dimmed his perceptions, but it had focused his own thoughts on his effort to understand what concerned her so, worrying at it like a death gleaner at a two-day-dead horn blade.
Two-leg mind-glows were always strong, but that was part of the problem. He had grown accustomed to being forced to barricade himself against their intensity, like someone shielding his eyes against too-bright sunlight. And he had been allowing himself to luxuriate in the mind-glows of Death Fang’s Bane’s parents—and in the way her own mind-glow had taken comfort from their presence, even if she had not managed to release whatever was causing so much anxiety. But even so, he knew his own preoccupation with her worry was the only reason he had missed the oncoming mind-glows until it was almost too late.
* * *
Stephanie’s head snapped up, turning automatically to the left. It wasn’t until much later that she grasped the real reason she’d looked in that direction and realized she’d felt it from Lionheart. At the moment, all she saw was a blur of movement coming out of the shadows and the undergrowth . . . and headed straight at her.
“What the—” her father began.
“Richard!”
That was her mother’s voice, and adrenaline rocketed as she realized her parents were in danger, as well.
“Steph—!”
Karl called her name in a hard, harsh-edged voice, but she scarcely heard him through the high, snarling cr
escendo of Lionheart’s warcry, and she felt herself dropping into a half-crouch.
Five of them, a ridiculously calm corner of her brain reflected. At least five. How—?
But there was no time to worry about how they’d gotten onto the Charleston Arms’ grounds, and she felt Lionheart catapult from her shoulder.
* * *
Climbs Quickly launched himself into the overhead branches, snarling his challenge. It wasn’t the first time his two-leg, his person, had been in danger, and the red fury of rage roared through him. The People knew how to deal with threats to those they loved, and his scimitar claws slid from their sheaths.
Yet even as he snarled, even as he tasted Death Fang’s Bane’s fear—for her parents, not for herself—he tasted a sudden spike of fresh and different apprehension flooding out of her. Apprehension with a familiar tang, even if he had never tasted it so strongly before. She was frightened for him, and not just that he might once more be injured as he had been when they faced the death fang together. In its own way, this fear was even sharper than the fear she had felt then, because it was more focused, something which had been with her longer, and he hissed again, more fiercely, as he realized what it was.
I do not want to realize! The thought flashed through his mind. They mean us evil—they mean her evil—and evildoers deserve whatever comes to them!
Yet even as he rebelled, he knew she was right. This was no death fang, devoid of reason. These were two-legs, and he could not slay such as they as he would have slain a death fang or a snow hunter. Not unless there was clearly no other choice.
Perhaps not, he thought grimly. But if they do not leave me another choice . . .
* * *
Later, it was all a blur in Stephanie’s memory.
She felt Lionheart flash from her shoulder into the branches of an overhead tree. She sensed her father grabbing her mother, pushing her behind him and reaching for Stephanie herself. But she ducked under his hand, because one of the vague shapes coming out of the shrubbery carried a weapon of some kind in his right hand, and Stephanie dived for it.
He was a third again her height and undoubtedly outweighed her two-to-one, but she didn’t think about that at the moment. She got her hands on his wrist, shoved it upward with all her strength, and kicked him in the right knee as hard as she could.
Stephanie Harrington would never be a tall woman, but she was a genie, genetically engineered to live in a gravity well thirty percent higher than that of humanity’s birth world, and she was scared to death. The combination of her enhanced muscles and that blast of pure adrenaline had unfortunate consequences for the lead mugger, and he screamed in anguish as his kneecap shattered.
Something hissed past Stephanie’s ear, and the trank dart buried itself in the tree’s bark. She twisted from the hips, getting her shoulders and back into it, and the injured mugger released the tranquilizer pistol. It thudded to the ground, and she heard a high, falsetto squeal from the second assailant in line.
* * *
Climbs Quickly recognized the sound. He had heard it before when Speaks Falsely had faced the young death fang at Bright Water Clan’s nesting place. It was one of the two-legs’ weapons, but not one of the ones that killed instantly, and he saw another one of it in one hand of the second attacking two-leg.
He launched himself from his tree-branch perch as the two-leg Death Fang’s Bane had kicked collapsed, wailing and clutching at his injured limb. He arced over Death Fang’s Bane’s head and struck the second two-leg’s weapon hand with both hand-feet and his remaining true-hand, and his claws sank deep.
His victim howled, waving his right arm frantically as the knife-clawed demon ripped at him. The thug had no idea how fortunate he was, how easily Climbs Quickly could have shredded his entire forearm. In fact, he thought that was exactly what the treecat was doing, and he flung away the tranquilizer pistol, beating at the hissing cream and gray monster with his left hand.
Climbs Quickly’s true-feet raked the two-leg’s other hand, and he hissed again—this time in fierce satisfaction—as the evildoer cried out in fresh pain. He would have preferred to spend a little more time dealing suitably with anyone who threatened his two-leg, but there were more of them behind the first two, and he abandoned his initial victim to hit a second assailant in the chest.
* * *
Stephanie released the first mugger’s wrist to go bounding after Lionheart. It was a mistake.
Despite the anguish of his broken kneecap, the thug managed to get one hand up and grabbed her ankle as she went by. She fell, sprawling forward, just managing to catch herself on her hands before she landed flat on her face.
“Stephanie!”
She’d never heard Karl sound quite like that, but she had no time to dwell on it at the moment. Instead, she twisted to one side and her free foot slammed into her attacker’s chin. It wasn’t as clean and powerful as the kick which had broken his kneecap, but it was more than sufficient to encourage him to let go of her ankle.
She rolled away from him, flinging herself back to her feet, but before she could come back upright, Karl went past her. She couldn’t see exactly what happened next, but whatever it was, it didn’t take very long. She heard a sharp, meaty thud, then a grunt of exertion, a gasp of what was probably pain, and over all of that a strange voice screaming “Get it off! Get it off!”
And then, suddenly, it was all over.
The man she’d kicked was curled in a knot, cradling his broken kneecap with one hand and trying to comfort his equally broken jaw with the other. The first man Lionheart had hit was on his knees, clutching his freely bleeding hands and forearms against his chest. The one who’d been screaming to “Get it off!” was backed against a tree trunk, his tunic and shirt shredded, his chest oozing blood from at least a dozen shallow cuts, while Lionheart crouched in front of him, lashing his tail and hissing. It was obvious from the thug’s expression that he had absolutely no interest in challenging the treecat’s obvious rage a second time.
And then there was Karl, and Stephanie’s eyes widened as she saw one man lying unconscious and another down on one knee, bent sharply forward and obviously trying not to whimper in pain while Karl twisted his arm up behind him, high enough to press his wrist against the back of his neck.
“Are you all right, Steph?” Karl demanded, and she nodded.
“Y-Yes,” she said, and flushed furiously as she heard the catch in her voice. Then she whirled. “Mom! Dad!”
“We’re fine, Steph!” There was a shaky edge in Richard’s voice, too, but he managed to smile as he stood hugging her mother. “We’re fine. Thanks to you and Lionheart—and Karl.” He cocked his head, looking at the younger man. “That was very, ah, efficient of you, Karl,” he said.
“My dad always said it was important to know how to take care of yourself, Dr. Richard,” Karl replied with a brief smile. “He was pretty serious about teaching us how to do it, too.” He shrugged. “I earned my black belt three T-years ago. Never really expected to need it, though.”
He gave Richard another smile, but his attention seemed to be focused on Stephanie.
“You’re bleeding, Steph,” he said a bit sharply, and Stephanie looked down as she realized she’d bloodied one knee through her shredded trousers when the first thug tripped her.
“Only a scraped knee, Karl,” she said quickly.
“Good. In that case—”
“Security!” a voice snapped, and the beam of a powerful hand lamp speared the battered group. “Everybody just stay where you are till we get this straightened out!”
* * *
“Stephanie, I am so sorry this happened!” Gwendolyn Adair shook her head, her expression more distraught than Stephanie had ever dreamed she could look. “I can’t imagine how they managed to get onto the grounds in the first place!”
“Whoever hired them must’ve hacked our security protocols, ma’am,” the senior uniformed guard said unhappily. “The LPD says they were loaded to their un
i-links, anyway.”
“But why?” Marjorie Harrington asked. “I mean, I’m sure the members of your cousin’s club have to be rich enough to be worth mugging, Ms. Adair. But why go to all the trouble of hacking your security and then jump on us, instead?”
“’Fraid I can answer that one, too, Dr. Harrington,” the security man said heavily. “The police found an animal carrier in the shrubbery. I’m guessing they meant to trank the lot of you, including Lionheart, then shove him into the carrier.”
“They wanted to kidnap Lionheart?!” Stephanie demanded.
“We don’t know that yet, Stephanie,” Gwendolyn replied. “It does sound as if it could make sense, but I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet.”
Stephanie looked at her, feeling the residue of too much adrenaline still burning through her. It wouldn’t be much longer before she started to shake, she reflected, but something about Gwendolyn bothered her. There was a flicker of uneasiness, as if something wasn’t quite right. It was almost like . . .
Of course something isn’t “right,” you dummy! she told herself. Someone just tried to mug you all and kidnap Lionheart!
She snorted mentally at the thought. She was pretty sure she was still feeling the echoes of Lionheart’s emotions along with her own, which probably helped to account for at least some of the tension jangling down her nerves. And whatever else might be true, Gwendolyn Adair was nothing like Tennessee Bolgeo, no matter how frazzled her nerves might be at the moment! Besides—
“I’m quite sure they would have thought of it as stealing him, not a kidnapping, Ms. Harrington,” another voice said, and she turned to find herself facing a man who looked so much like an older version of Gwendolyn that she knew instantly he must be the Earl of Adair Hollow. Now he shook his head, his expression regretful in the bright lights his security personnel and the police were stringing up around the crime scene.
“Like Gwen, I’m terribly sorry that this could have happened to you here at the Charleston Arms,” he said sincerely, holding out his hand to her. She shook it almost dazedly, and he extended it to her parents, in turn. “I assure you that we usually take much better care of our guests,” he told them.