by Robin Owens
As soon as the kitten had finished and Del had stowed the dishes in the cleanser, Raz picked up Rosemary and met her gaze. “You and I will make up our own rules, too. Like never going outside my dressing room at the theater.”
The kitten glanced aside.
With another yip, Shunuk bounded off toward the house, where Del’s duffle was. “Did you come by glider?” Del asked.
Raz nodded. “I’ll drive it to Southern Airpark and someone will take care of it.” His smile showed white teeth. “Probably my father.” Then he frowned, cuddled his kitten closer on his chest. “We’ll be taking a large airship down to Gael City, thirty twoseat couches, seven and a half septhours. Is it all right for Rosemary to be with so many other people?”
“Good for the kitten, D’Ash said. To be socialized.”
Raz snorted. “As if she wasn’t socialized by being in D’Ash’s menagerie or will be in the theater.”
When they reached his glider, Raz put Del’s duffle in the trunk, lifted the passenger door, sat, closed the door, and said, “You can drive if you want.”
“I don’t know how to drive a glider,” Del said.
“And I don’t have time to teach you now. Cherry is fully automatic, so just tell her where to go.”
Hoping she didn’t show her sudden nerves, Del took the driver’s seat.
“Just push the steering bar out of the way.” But Raz did that for her, clicking it into the console. He said the Word to envelop them in the web safety shields she’d rarely noticed. “Go ahead,” he said.
“Southern Airpark,” Del muttered. She wasn’t sure she wanted to learn how to drive a glider. Gliders were useful only in cities. Though they could go off gliderways and roads, they didn’t handle rough terrain well, and this sports model . . . definitely a status symbol.
Shunuk hopped in on Raz’s lap, laughing at his expression and the kitten who sat on his shoulder. Rosemary hissed at the fox, but he only waved his tail at her.
When the vehicle raised its landing stands and moved smoothly along the gliderway, Del acknowledged that the ride was a lot easier than on a stridebeast, or even a horse. No jolting at all. From what Raz had said, he’d become attached to his glider as much as she was to her animals. She didn’t know how that could be.
You are crowding ME! Rosemary snapped at Shunuk. He ignored her.
The driver’s area, even with the steering bar lifted, was a little too cramped to hold Shunuk on her lap.
Rosemary hopped through the webbing to the little ledge at the bottom of the window and sat in the middle, back turned on them all, staring out. The tip of her tail twitched.
Del turned her head to see Raz’s lips pressed together, laughing silently, but telepathically she heard, Thank you very much, dearling. She will be constantly amusing.
You’re welcome.
My third gift.
Deciding to let Rosemary enjoy her sulk, Del continued to talk mentally with Raz. Shunuk could overhear if he wanted, but he was watching Druida City speed by. How did you like the tapestry?
Twenty-five
I like it very much, it’s very vivid. He winked. I bought mine when I passed my apprenticeship tests to become a journeyman. I didn’t replace my tapestry after I became a Master Actor. I think your weaving is a higher quality.
Del shrugged. Like I said, I have several. I love maps.
As usual, Raz reached out and took her hand. She intertwined her fingers with his, both glad of the contact and wary. His touches were becoming necessary to her. She was beginning to love him too much. She’d seen other people set aside their needs to focus on their mate and it had never ended well. She’d always thought that she was too strong for that. But how she wanted him!
The glider slowed and stopped. Shunuk hopped out. Raz picked up Rosemary, who’d curled on the ledge and fallen into a snooze. When they followed the fox to the end of the line of the people boarding the airship, Raz murmured, “Rosemary is a wonderful gift, Del. A lifetime gift.”
That wasn’t the only lifetime gift she’d given him. She could only hope he’d keep her HeartGift with as much joy as the kitten.
They landed in Gael City in the wee hours of the morning. Del stepped into cool night air and a galaxy-studded sky that seemed a thousand times brighter than in Druida. All those shields in the capital city—security shields, weathershields—slightly distorted the atmosphere.
She shook out her limbs and inhaled deeply of the slight mechanical scent, letting the middle-class passengers file by her to the free Cherry Transport shuttle that would take them to the center of town. She began to trail after the people at the end of the line, and Raz tugged at her hand.
He’d kept a touch on her since they’d met again, his hand on her waist or fingers laced with hers. Close enough that Rosemary could hop from his shoulder to hers, though they’d both kept a small safety field around the cat in case she fell.
Del turned and saw a young woman dressed in a pilot onesuit striding toward them.
The pilot nodded. “GrandSir Cherry?”
“Yes.” Raz flashed her a smile and the serious expression vanished from her face as she smiled back. She had to make an effort to switch her attention to Del. “GrandLady D’Elecampane?”
Del nodded.
The pilot blinked, sent a long breath out, and inhaled, grinned even wider at Del, holding out her hand. Del shook.
“Really pleased to meet you.” The woman cocked a hip. “I’m one of the pilots on the new canyon run. Top-of-the-pyramid fun! Got a glider for you.”
Remembering the zooming papyrus transports in her dining room, Del repressed a shudder. Give her a nice, steady stridebeast any day.
The pilot had already turned and was walking away. Raz’s glance had fastened on her butt. Del squeezed his fingers and he laughed, raising his eyebrows. He was a man and appreciated women and would never hide that, HeartBonded or not.
Since she was equally amused watching him, she winked and said, “Straif Blackthorn has a nice butt, too.”
“I didn’t notice.” His tone was actor-cold, but his eyes were dancing.
They were pleased with themselves, she realized. Just happy being together . . . and away from all the city pressures. She breathed deeply again.
Or it might just have been that he’d noticed the midnight blue sports glider sooner than she.
It looked sleeker than his red one. The pilot flung up the door with a flourish and gestured to the leather interior. The vehicle had a small carpeted bench in the back.
“Nice.” Raz shared an appreciative look with the woman. “Very nice.”
“Hot from T’Elder’s shop,” the pilot said, running a hand along the subtle metallic curve of the front.
Raz slid into the driver’s side, flexed his hands.
“I’m sure it is fully automated,” Del said.
Raz and the pilot stared at her. “You don’t let your horse or stridebeast go where they want, do you?”
Actually, she did. They sometimes had better trail sense than she did, but she knew when to keep her mouth shut.
Shunuk barked a laugh and hopped onto the back bench, stretched his front paws to the back of Raz’s seat, and delicately lifted the kitten with his teeth from Raz’s shoulder to the bench beside him.
I want to sit on FAMMAN. I want to SEE, Rosemary objected.
“Let Raz drive without distractions, Rosemary,” Del said firmly. She went around the glider to where the pilot had raised the passenger door and sank into cushioned leather. Better than the airship twoseat, and that had been nice.
Her door clunked shut and the pilot went back to Raz, leaned down. “Sorry for your Family’s troubles.”
Raz tensed. “You haven’t had any problems here?”
The pilot shook her head. “No.”
Smiling up at her, one of those actor’s smiles that masked his face—and the young woman didn’t seem to realize that—Raz said, “I don’t think you will.”
Her shoulders
relaxed. “That’s what T’Cherry and GrandMistrys Seratina Cherry said, but we have guards now.”
“It will be over soon.” Raz’s fingers flexed again and this time Del thought he was imagining getting his hands on the culprits who’d upset his Family. “We think thieves are after an old diary. One the Family lost,” Raz explained.
The pilot snorted. “Lost old diary? Huh.” She shook her head in disgust, clearly firmly rooted in the present and looking toward the future.
“Spread the word about that,” Raz said.
She gave him a little salute. “Will do.”
Del only had an instant to brace before Raz said the Word and they zoomed into the night. To distract herself from the blurring of dark scenery, she said, “Your Family doesn’t think there will be problems here?”
“No,” Raz said grimly. She sensed that he barely concentrated on his driving, the road familiar. While she admired his skill, she wished he’d slow down. “My FatherDam built this yard. Our original Gael City yard was more northern but was torn down and housing constructed as the city grew.”
“Gael City is growing,” Del said. Unlike Druida, which had been built by colonists of an overpopulated planet and still had empty areas within the walls.
“Druida is growing in populace.” Raz shot her a look. “It’s just harder to notice. You said yourself that it’s busier each time you return.”
Del sighed. So much for steering his notions to work somewhere else. “True,” she said. “The press of people and Flair, the hurrying is greater in Druida than when I first took the trail.”
They fell into a silence that was only broken by an occasional Whee! from Rosemary and arrived at the Cherrys’ Gael City house in a quarter septhour. Del was disappointed to see that it was a smallish estate among a lot of other small noble estates. The lights of the neighbors’ houses could be easily seen. Only when she felt her spirit depress did she realize that she’d hoped that this would have been an option for them in the future, living in Gael City.
The glider stopped in a bricked courtyard area several meters from the house. As she stepped from the glider and watched Shunuk shoot into the brush to explore, the buzz of humanity slid up her skin like an irritant and the press of people living close together clogged her throat. This was not a place on the outskirts of town, but an old established community.
Rosemary hopped from Raz’s hands and made a bolt for the bushes, too, but he scooped her up before she could escape, held her up at eye level to talk to her . . . that was already becoming a habit. “You must stay near to me so we can bond well,” he projected in a serious voice. He’d watched the holo of D’Ash’s instructions on the trip.
The kitten stopped wriggling, mewed in a small voice, We are together, so we ARE bonded.
Raz shook his head. “We have to be together for a while before we have a bond.”
Rosemary’s expression turned suspicious. How LONG? I can talk to you. You can talk to Me. She offered a cute kitten smile. You can call when you want Me to come.
“And you will always come when you’re called?” Raz asked.
The kitten didn’t answer.
“I didn’t think so. I’m not as stupid as you think. I know something about cats. Please stay close to me.”
Shunuk gets to explore, Rosemary said sulkily.
“Shunuk is a FamFox used to the trail,” Raz said.
“He’s been on the trail for years,” Del said. “He wasn’t born in the city.”
A cough came from near the door. “GrandSir Cherry? Gael City Guardsman Patrick here. Been waiting for you.” Another cough, this one deprecating. “We haven’t cleaned anything up. Wanted your first impressions of what’s missing. The insurance woman has already been here with a recording sphere. T’Cherry authorized that—authorized everything.”
Raz had tensed beside her, then put on a casual, one-of-the-guys manner and loped toward the front of the house. It was dark, and as Del approached she saw the globes on either side of the door that should have flickered with spell light were the odd grayish color that showed their spell technology had been tampered with, all their power drained.
With Rosemary tucked securely under one arm, Raz held out his hand and gave the guard a lopsided smile. “Sorry to be late, and sorry to have a strange one-sided conversation—”
“It wasn’t one-sided.” The guard smiled back. He was a middle-aged, solid man, well-spoken. Raz had gauged him right. “I could hear the kitten. New Fam?”
Raz sighed. “Very new. We are trying to get our rules set.”
“Always good to have boundaries with young ones,” the guard said with the air of a man who had children. “Pretty Fam.”
“Thank you.”
I know, said Rosemary.
The guard laughed. “The door is fine; the burglars came in through one of the side windows.”
“I can guess,” Raz said. “The west side of the house that has the grove between us and our neighbors?”
“Yes, dense, brushy area, that. You might consider trimmer landscaping.”
“I’ll tell T’Cherry, or my sister, GrandMistrys Cherry. They’re the ones who will be making the decisions on this. I’m just a pair of convenient eyes.”
The guard looked as if he doubted that but said a Word that would unlock most doors and the door swung wide. The lights of the small entry hall lit.
“They didn’t drain the interior lights,” the guard said.
At first glance, nothing looked bad.
Then they all stepped inside and Del saw doors to each side of the entryway were open and the rooms beyond were a shambles.
Though she’d sensed Raz had tried to prepare himself for this, he flinched, braced further.
“Broken glass and china,” the guard said. “Hard on bare paws.”
Raz set Rosemary on his shoulder. “I need you to stay with me,” he said to her. “Attach Fam to clothes,” he ordered. Rosemary tried to lift a foot from his shirt, hissed when she couldn’t.
“Please, Rosemary,” Raz said, voice thick.
Rosemary subsided. Blinked big eyes, mewed in sympathy.
An intelligent Fam and fast learner. Or she was acting. Del wondered how much cats acted around their humans. Well, however much it was, Rosemary would do it, learn from Raz.
He’d stuck his hands in his trous pockets and let the guard go first into a room that appeared to be the den.
“This is the worst,” the guard said.
It was plenty bad. The walls had been lined with built-in shelves. Now all the contents were jumbled on the floor—some broken, some not. Some deliberately smashed. At least one shelf of each section had been destroyed.
Raz said, “Druida Guardsman Winterberry said that he would tell you of a lead on who might have done this to my Family. Have you caught the man?” His voice was all suppressed anger.
Obviously Raz wanted to get violent hands on the guy. Carefully stepping over upturned chairs, righting them as he went, he moved toward one corner of the room . . . where a spotlight showed rawly splintered shelves. On the floor were bits of metal, some gleaming as they’d twisted to show where tint had never been.
He crouched down. Del joined him, standing helplessly as his hand hovered over the metal and grief at the destruction throbbed from him.
The guard made a commiserating noise in his throat, then said, “We’ve got recordings of everything, you can move it.”
Raz inhaled audibly, picked up a battered model. “Lugh’s Spear. Again it’s less damaged than the others.”
“It’s a smaller model, right? About half the size of the ones in Druida?” the guard asked.
“That’s right.”
The man nodded; his face went grim. “Not much left of Nuada’s Sword.” He gestured to an object a couple of meters away tilted against a desk chair, as if the model had been flung. Sharp, flat strips and planes of metal showed broken lettering.
Raz winced but said nothing. He stood, holding the crumpled Lugh�
��s Spear, tilting it this way and that. Rosemary leaned forward and sniffed at it, mewed pitifully again.
“Not as bad,” Raz said.
“You can see that there wasn’t any room to hide anything inside it, like a diary,” the guard said.
Turning to look at him, Raz said, “You’re well informed.”
“Winterberry respects our department.”
Raz nodded, looked down at the model once more, grimaced. “My father and I made these together.”
“Always tough,” the guard said.
Del wasn’t sure what she should be doing. She wanted to summon spells to put everything back in order in an instant, but it wasn’t her place. She linked her arm in Raz’s and sent him love and comfort. Then she righted a table that had held a vase that was in broken shards around them, but the bouquet of flowers treated with a stayfresh spell was still pristine. She set the flowers on one end of the table. Raz put Lugh’s Spear in the middle. “We can repair this,” he said briskly and glanced down. “Arianrhod’s Wheel and Nuada’s Sword are hopeless.”
Del didn’t want anything in Raz’s life to be hopeless but could only say, “Let me help.”
He looked down at her and smiled, but that didn’t reach his eyes. “You are helping. Just by being here.”
ME, too! Rosemary said. I am sad because FamMan hurts. She licked his face.
“Thank you,” Raz said. “I think the best way you could help would be if you sat, ah, here,”—he placed her on a high shelf—“and supervised. I’ve found cats are good at supervising.”
Sighing, he gestured to one of the bookcases along the wall. “We had several bound editions of The History of Celta and The Encyclopedia of Celta. They’re all gone.”
The guard said, “No real books or holospheres or vizes left.”
Raz’s jaw flexed. “We had a library, not just objects on the shelves.”
“Figured that,” the guard said.
“At least we didn’t keep any memoryspheres out. Losing those would be devastating.” Letting out a sigh, Raz started picking up the remaining whole objects, stone figures of the Lady and Lord, a battered brass scrybowl with etching around the rim, all its power drained, too.
