by Robin Owens
Perhaps when he told his father, they’d repair Lugh’s Spear, make new miniatures of Arianrhod’s Wheel and Nuada’s Sword. Maybe reclaim some closeness they’d lost when Raz had turned his back on the Family business to train as an actor.
As he stepped into the hall he bumped into someone, then squinted at the usual dark aura of a crewman that let him move around on stage unnoticed. “Who the hell are you?”
“Sorry.” The shield was dropped and Raz stared at a short, familiar woman.
Sighing inwardly—he liked to be charming to all women, especially the ones he worked with—he bowed and said, “My fault. I ran into you.”
Her face was puffy and eyes red, probably why she’d shielded. With a grimace, she looked in his room, then away, her lips trembled. “They broke the stuff in my locker. Earlier.” She glanced around, shifted from foot to foot. “Bad luck.”
The manager clapped. “People, the guardsmen will have my office. They have requested that none of us leave until after the performance later tonight. I’ve ordered catering in. While the guards are investigating, we will be using the Noble Lounge. Raz, let wardrobe know what you need for the show tonight.”
Raz’s mouth twisted. “Everything except what I’m wearing now.”
“A priestess and priest will be coming to cleanse the area after the guardsmen are done. If any of you want counseling, they will provide it. Performance in three septhours.” The manager’s lip curled. “Let’s show everyone that we are the best troupe in the business.”
After Raz’s dressing room had been cleaned, repaired, and blessed, he’d spent a few minutes lying on the new couch, testing it and meditating before his performance.
A lingering scent of serenity herbs combined with an atmosphere of soothing calm brought by the priestess and priest. Lily’s area felt less negative than it had since the run had started.
He’d contacted his father about making new starship models and had seen pleased gratification flash in the older man’s eyes. They’d settled on dinner and work at T’Cherry Residence Midweek when he had only an afternoon show. That had felt good.
The rest of the cast and crew seemed equally relieved at having a cleansing and a blessing in the theater. Those who’d lost gilt and jewels had already been reimbursed by the theater owner. A few of the women were looking forward to shopping the next day.
Once Raz took the stage, he knew it would be a good night. There was something about the audience, a certain Flair, that ignited his own. An energizing buzz slid along his skin and sank deeply into him. He sensed the energy of the audience more clearly. They were in a mood to be more entertained with the wit of the play than the mystery so he modified his part. Lily and the rest of the cast picked up on his slight change of character and adjusted their own.
At the end of the last act he was revved as the audience gasped at the final twist, shouted as the curtain came down.
The villain rose from the stage and plucked the dummy knife from his chest. He linked hands with Lily as Raz did, and when the curtain rose, the three of them took their bows.
“Few times in a lifetime do we get energy like this,” the villain muttered from the side of his mouth. “Damned if the place doesn’t feel better than last night, despite everything.”
Lily smiled and bowed with them, angling toward stage left, center, right, talking softly through curved lips. “It will be back to normal tomorrow night.”
The villain lifted her hand and kissed her fingers. “That’s what I adore about you, your unwavering optimism.”
One last bow with all the cast and Raz left the stage with the others, retired to his dressing room. Unlike in the morning, he locked it. The day had been long and weariness hovered on the edge of his mind, ready to crash on him.
He hadn’t had enough time before the show to prowl his refurbished room, arrange his remaining possessions, and in two days he wanted to walk into a space that felt right. Tomorrow the theater was dark. He had the day off, but there was a party that night to celebrate this one hundred and twentieth performance.
A good number, and maybe that factored into why the night had been so successful. Appeared he’d be employed for another one hundred and twenty and that was good.
He arranged his belongings, packed the remnants of Nuada’s Sword and Arianrhod’s Wheel in a shielded box, placed the battered Lugh’s Spear in the center of a very empty shelf. He left, spellshielding the door. As he stepped into the hall, he realized everyone was gone and it was later than he thought.
He looked at the wall timer—a septhour before midnight. He’d be returning to another place that wouldn’t feel good. The decorator would have left her energy in his rooms. Muttering under his breath, he strode to the stage door, stopped when he saw a female guardsman. Raz cleared his throat, smiled, enjoyed the little flush that came to her face. “Good night. Take care.”
She nodded. “You, too, GrandSir Cherry.”
He caught an echoing sound. “Are there more of you?”
“Three. One for the main entrance and one to patrol.”
Now he felt her strong Flair, which reassured him. She was tall and the guard uniform couldn’t hide her breasts and hips. She wasn’t a member of the stage or the crew . . .
The HeartMate card came to his mind’s eye and he gave her another smile and a wave and hurried out the door. He couldn’t be too careful with new women coming into his life.
How was he to know who’d be safe for a nice, brief, sexy affair and who wouldn’t? Cave of the Dark Goddess.
He knew HeartMates usually connected during Passages—dammit, he’d had his last Passage at twenty-seven, a year ago!—and that they could have erotic dreams about each other, especially during Passage. He’d enjoyed those dreams, the slide of his hands along her skin, the slide of his body on hers, the slide into her . . . and damned if he wasn’t getting aroused.
As he left the building he thought he could almost recall her scent . . . an exotic mix of spices, the slight taste of salt on her skin. He tucked the memory into the back of his mind where it would be for comparison to women who came into his life.
Three steps into the street and wariness feathered up his spine as if someone watched him. He tightened his grip on the box containing his destroyed treasures. He was angry and wanted to smash anyone who attacked him, so he decided to walk the half kilometer to his rooms instead of taking the PublicCarrier home. He’d like to catch this vandal and thief.
Yes, he was actor enough to know when eyes watched him, a glance slid over his body. Adrenaline rushed through him and he loosened his muscles, kept his stride easy. His expression showed a man thinking of other things than his surroundings.
His footsteps tapped lonely on the street, though he thought someone followed close. He watched for shadows and saw nothing, listened for the slightest hint of another footfall, a brush of a shoe against a curb. Nothing.
Soon he was at the roundpark in the center of his neighborhood that catered to artists with unique shops and small restaurants and apartments. There were no footsteps, though he thought the watcher was still there. He stepped into the deep alcove of his doorway that led to the staircase to the four apartments above. With a murmured Word he was through the new, stronger spellshield and the sturdy door closed behind him. All the tenants had been burgled.
He’d spoken to the guardsmen at the theater about both thefts. They’d taken notes but had only mumbled at him that they didn’t think the break-ins were connected. He didn’t think the guards would pay any attention to a report that someone was watching him since he had no proof.
When he opened his door, a dim glowing ball of spell-light came on, illuminating the newly tinted walls of his rectangular room. Sucking in a breath that brought him the fragrance of vanilla, he relaxed. There was no lingering or clashing vibration of energy left by the decorator. Three of his walls were a light terra cotta hue, the fourth with the two windows onto the street a bold red.
The broken light-col
ored wood shelves were gone. Instead there were six deep reddwood shelves in a pyramidical pattern, long lower shelf to small upper shelf. He grimaced at their emptiness. Nothing was on the bottom two, a few sculptures were on the middle, but the top meter-length shelf had been made to fit the three starship models.
His arm tightened around the box that held the fragments of Arianrhod’s Wheel and Nuada’s Sword. Flaired craftspeople could repair them, but the damage was so great that the models would resonate more of the repairer than of himself and his father. It wouldn’t be the same. He was a little surprised to realize how much he’d liked the reminder of his Family, the vibration of them and his childhood in his rooms.
He took the box to an ornate cabinet, the one piece of Family furniture that he’d wanted, placed between the windows. As he put the container on the large empty bottom shelf, he saw the colorfully patterned divination cards, also antique.
Family legend said that the pack had been created by their colonist ancestress, Mona Tabacin, who had trekked with others from the crashed Lugh’s Spear to Druida City. Since none of the cards were exactly the same size, he could believe the story. The cards were based on an ancient Earthan divination system and images, not the Celtan Ogham one, but he had taken pride in learning their meanings.
As soon as the psi power of his Family became strong Flair, each card and the deck itself had been shielded, a blessing since they’d been scattered around his rooms during the theft. He’d have been in a great deal of trouble from his Family if the cards had been damaged or lost. They were his sole inheritance of the Family treasures—his younger sister, the child with the Family Flair, was Heir to the shipping empire.
On impulse he took the deck from the cabinet, fanned them out. Family energy caused more of the day’s tension to drain. He particularly loved these cards because each of the backs was different: bold and cheerful patterns of colored bands from deep purple through the spectrum to light yellow.
Closing his eyes he drew in a deep breath and plucked a card from the deck.
The card showed lovers holding hands. He dropped it. This card meant choices. Behind the man there was a landscape with a tiny tower that resembled Druida City Guildhall. Behind the woman was an equally minuscule shape, a crunched starship, Lugh’s Spear.
Choices.
Raz had been set determinedly on one path for a long time: his career. He liked that path. But inside him a seed of a thought sprouted, of loving and being loved by a HeartMate.
How would a HeartMate change his life if he chose her? Choices. He must make the right one.
The next morning Del walked several kilometers from her Family estate to T’Blackthorn Residence in Noble Country. She had an appointment at MidMorningBell.
The sky was a lighter blue in the city, though it was more north than she’d been for a while. The roads were smooth for foot and glider and PublicCarrier traffic.
She breathed deep of the city air, with city scents. Smells of Earthan and hybrid flowers that didn’t grow well in the wild, cut and trimmed hedges that had a subtly different fragrance than when they tangled outside the city.
Shunuk caught up with her as she turned down the road bordering Straif T’Blackthorn’s estate. She hadn’t seen her Fam this morning. Now he trotted beside her, mouth open as if laughing.
“I hope you had a good evening,” she said.
I did, he said. His tongue lolled. Many excellent, intelligent fox in the city. Good to hunt with, good to share food, good to talk with.
“I’m glad.”
You’re not. He gave a short bark. But I love you best.
“Glad someone does.” She’d been having doubts about Raz Cherry as a travel companion. He’d gloried in the applause of the show she’d seen last night. And he’d done extremely well, was a superb actor.
It annoyed her that she was having doubts about anything.
Doubts about Helendula, too. When Straif Blackthorn had returned Del’s scry this morning, he’d told her that he and his HeartMate, Mitchella, had come to love Helendula and wanted to adopt her.
That statement had closed Del’s throat even as she studied the landscape globe she’d made for the child during her long and restless night. She’d stood, stunned, options crashing through her mind, unable to puzzle out what she felt. She’d been getting accustomed to the thought of having a child, working on how she’d fit little Helendula into her life. How she could compromise to give them both what they needed.
Then Straif had pressed for her to come and see them, meet Helendula. Gestured to the background of the scry where his wife held a toddler. The baby Del had hardly known was gone, had become a child with a tragedy in her past.
Would it be selfish or selfless if Del left Helendula with the Blackthorns?
Four
Shunuk wove a pattern in front of Del, drawing her mind back to the present. He angled his narrow muzzle at her. I heard that your kit has found a home with folk who take abandoned kits.
Del winced. If she’d been in town, she’d have cared for Helendula. She hadn’t meant to abandon the baby. The thought hurt. At least there had been gilt enough to give the child the best. She owed Straif a big debt, but she didn’t owe him Helendula.
Shunuk coughed and Del understood that he wanted more than a grunt as an answer. “That’s right,” she said. “You remember Straif T’Blackthorn? He joined us a few times when we were on the road. Made me set up a permanent message cache at the Steep Springs communications center.”
The man who smelled like celtaroon leather and wood shavings and grief. You played with him.
Del chuckled. “Yes, I did.” Drawing her brows together, she looked down at Shunuk. “He’s mated for life now, so be careful when we meet them.”
Another short bark. I am not going into T’Blackthorn Residence.
Del stopped. “Don’t you want to meet Helendula?” She’d been counting on Shunuk for support.
Young child will smell like all other young children. His nose wrinkled.
After a deep breath, Del said, “We may be taking that young child with us on some trips.”
A ripple went down the fox’s back from neck to tail. Maybe. May stay here in Druida—
“No!”
Kit may stay with Blackthorns. I will meet her when she becomes our kit.
Before she could say any more he raced to the greeniron gates set between high brick walls and slid through a gap between the bars that appeared too narrow for him.
Del stopped at the gate, touched a scrystone in a pillar, cleared her throat, and said, “Helena D’Elecampane to see Straif and Mitchella Blackthorn and my cuz, Helendula Elecampane.”
“You are expected,” the Residence said in a voice deeper than Straif’s.
She bowed reflexively as she would to anyone who’d helped her in this polite city. “Thank you.”
The gate swung open and she walked up the well-kept gliderway to the elegant house with rows of Palladian windows. All was neat and tidy and gorgeous, unlike the last time she’d been here, several years before.
Straif had abandoned it. Left no one to tend to the Residence or the estate.
At least she’d never done that, and well to remember it. Before she’d left last time, she’d funded her house with spells to keep it clean and safe for two years.
People were people, everyone had faults. She would not let gratitude or guilt sway her in what was best for Helendula.
Straif opened the door himself, still lean and fit. She looked into his eyes and clasped his hand and felt nothing but friendship.
Nothing like the trembles when Raz Cherry had walked onto the stage last night. She’d gone a little dizzy at the sight of him and the rush of feelings for him, deeper than the lust of the erotic dreams they’d shared.
“Welcome to T’Blackthorn Residence.” That was Straif’s HeartMate, Mitchella. She was as tall as Del, with voluptuous curves and long red hair. Lovely woman. She held out her hands, too, though there was weighing
in her green gaze and strain around her mouth. Was that because the woman knew Del and Straif had been lovers? A HeartMate thing? Del hoped not. She didn’t want to think of all the times this could happen with her and Raz. A HeartMate shouldn’t feel jealousy, should she? Not when she knew that the man was bound to her until both their deaths.
But she confronted this particular problem like everything else, straight on. Gripped Mitchella’s hand and liked her firm shake, met the woman’s eyes. “Yeah, Straif and I rolled around with each other when we met up on the trail. Five, maybe six times.”
A strangled sound came from Straif.
“Glad Straif has a HeartMate, good to meet you,” Del said.
Mitchella threw her head back and laughed. She squeezed Del’s hand and Del felt a warmth, realized the woman had natural charisma. Despite them both, a friendly feeling flowed between them. Then Mitchella dropped Del’s fingers and stepped back. “You’re very direct.”
Del entered the grand entrance hall and looked at the couple. They’d already drawn together. A tiny knot squeezed inside her. She wanted that. “You wish to keep my cuz, Helendula.”
A small breath whooshed from Mitchella. She glanced up at Straif. “You were right.” Then, chin set, she met Del’s eyes. “Yes. We have come to love her and have adopted other children and they love her, too. Our family loves her.” She made a sweeping, graceful gesture. “The Residence can house many children. We hope to adopt more, take six or seven.”
Del nodded, inhaled, released her deep breath slowly. “I will do what’s best for Helendula.” She touched the small landscape globe she’d made for the girl that was in her leather trous pocket. The couple before her were dressed in the height of fashion—Mitchella because she seemed to be that sort of woman, Straif because he was a FirstFamily lord and knew the value of appearances.
