Heart Dance

by Robin D. Owens

  Fairyfoot sniffed. Mean to Us. We should not pay.

  Dufleur looked at Passiflora from the corner of her eyes, but the GreatLady seemed amused. “They just don’t understand us.” Her mother had never understood her father and his obsessionwith time. “D’Winterberry Residence is an excellent place to live and work.” At least cheaper than anything she’d find on her own. Not to mention your traitorous ways, she sent to her Fam. Fairyfoot ignored her.

  “We’re here,” said Passiflora.

  Jumping up, Fairyfoot put her paws on the glider window and watched as one half of the great greeniron gates swung silently open. Dufleur sat up straight. She’d heard a lot about the modern design of T’Ash’s Residence and now saw it— smooth armourcrete and glisten-glazed hardglass windows in angles and curves that rose three stories. She heard that it had once been white but when T’Ash wed his HeartMate, Danith D’Ash had it tinted a pale yellow.

  Though the sweeping bulge of the front was quite different than the castles of other FirstFamilies Residences, Dufleur had no doubt it was a fortress.

  The glider drove up to the wide alcove of the front entrance, and the Holly footman lifted the vehicle door just as T’Ash’s butler opened the Residence door. Dufleur was unsurprised to find dried flagstones under her feet. Fairyfoot hopped out first and adopted a dignified swagger, tail in the air.

  The butler bowed as she entered, “Greetyou, Madam FamCat.” Since Danith D’Ash was the person who certified Fams— as she’d done with Fairyfoot a couple of months ago—the man must be used to all sorts of telepathic animals. A few animal hairs dusted his sharply pressed dark brown livery trous.

  Fairyfoot nodded to him as she went by.

  T’Ash waited in the entryway. He and the butler took Passiflora’s and Dufleur’s coats. There was an enraged child’s cry from the depths of the house. Fairyfoot hopped behind Dufleur. A faint smile crossed T’Ash’s face. “My son, Nuin. He’s determinedto get his way.”

  Like every other great Nobleman Dufleur knew.

  “We have hired a nanny. Our fourth. Nuin is just testing him.”

  Dufleur suppressed a shudder.

  D’Holly frowned. “I hope you don’t have more problems.”

  “Won’t happen.” T’Ash grinned. “This one’s a Clover. They have staying power.”

  “Oh, yes! An excellent idea,” Passiflora said.

  “Thought we’d better get a Clover while they’re still middle class and inexpensive. That Family is rising fast.” He winked at Dufleur, and her tension eased. Everything she’d heard of T’Ash had told her he was a formidable man. “Let’s go to my work suite, shall we?” With one cool glance, he looked her up and down and led them to the back of the house. “Baubles for the social season, I’ve heard.”

  And a collar for Me! Fairyfoot trilled. She hesitated at the door to T’Ash’s worksuite, nose sniffing. Zanth is not in here?

  “No. My FamCat is watching the nanny mind Nuin. Zanth likes to torment them both.”

  Baubles. A flush crawled up Dufleur’s neck and tinted her cheeks. “I might just be able to afford baubles.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” he said, ushering her into a fancy workroom. She half-smiled. If she knew workmen, and she did, he had another room besides this one where he did all his rough work. This was a place where Nobles would feel comfortableand believe T’Ash worked . . . though since T’Ash was also a smith, he must have a forge somewhere, too. Probably an outbuilding.

  Fairyfoot immediately leapt onto a table displaying wares— far too expensive items for Dufleur. The cat looked at T’Ash with a winsome smile and wide, round eyes. I need a Good collar.She hesitated, licked a forepaw delicately, glanced at him again, making her eyes even bigger. Dufleur wondered how she did that. Zanth has an emerald collar. And earrings.

  T’Ash seemed immune to big eyes. “That’s right.” He folded his arms and leaned against the table. “Zanth was with me for many years Downwind. When it was a real slum.”

  Dufleur blinked. Seemed as if someone else was negotiating for her today. Fine with her.

  Waving a hand at another polished “worktable,” T’Ash said, “I brought out jewelry appropriate for a woman attending her first social season.”

  “I’m not a young girl,” Dufleur said. “I’ve suffered Third Passage.”

  T’Ash shrugged. “There are traditions.”

  Honestly curious, Dufleur said, “I didn’t think you attended the social season?”

  “I can’t think of anything Danith and I would enjoy less,” he said, then, “Those emeralds don’t truly match your eyes, Fairyfoot.Too dark and don’t glow enough. I think cabochons— uncut round stones—would suit you better.”

  Unfaceted stones. The man was definitely steering Fairyfoot to his less-expensive stock. “You know Fairyfoot?” Dufleur asked. Passiflora had drifted toward some jewelry that gleamed gold and redgold and glisten, appearing “casually arranged” on another table.

  T’Ash smiled, but kept an eye on the cat. Dufleur wondered if he’d ever experienced cat theft. Probably. Zanth was legendaryin his arrogance. “Danith remembered examining and certifying her.” His smile widened. “She had fleas.”

  Fairyfoot hissed.

  T’Ash continued, meeting Dufleur’s gaze. “And I’ve had plenty of experience in selling jewelry to Noblewomen for themselves and their daughters just before the social season. In my early days, those sales supported me until Discovery Day in the summer.”

  She nodded.

  He pushed away from the table, went to an elegant desk that appeared unused, and drew a pouch from a drawer. “Fairyfoot, you should examine these. Didn’t know til I saw you, but I believethey’ll suit.” He jiggled the pouch, and musical clicks came from it. Fairyfoot watched his every motion. “Unique. Just discovered in a new mine.” Going to the end of the table, he drew out a thick felt pad and poured the stones onto it.

  Eight

  Dufleur caught her breath at the beauty of the green stones. They were right for Fairyfoot—highly polished, almost spherical jewels, glowing green with occasional darker depths. The stones were a mixture of sizes. The largest were as big as the cat’s eyes, but seemed a little duller than the smaller stones. Which were the more expensive?

  “I had the honor of naming them. Green moonstones,” T’Ash said.

  Fairyfoot strolled to the pad, but from the way the tip of her tail twitched, Dufleur knew she wanted to pounce. The cat walked all around the mat, angling her head to study the stones, sniffing or licking one or two. Then she tumbled them with her paw. Finally she sat her butt down, wriggled a little, and stared at the stones, as if she checked them out with her senses— including her Flair.

  With flicks of her paw too fast to see, she separated twelve, graduated in size. I will have these.

  Gruffly, T’Ash looked at the stones she’d chosen and then at her neck. “These won’t make a full necklace. I’ll embed them in Flaired furrabeast leather, and with a small spell, the leather will disappear, and it will look as if the stones float.”

  Like that idea. Fairyfoot beamed. She slanted a look at Dufleur. And when We are together more and make more gilt, I will get more stones.

  Dufleur didn’t think she should promise that. “We’ll see,” she said. She let out her breath, inhaled, and looked at T’Ash. “How much?”

  He looked at her from under heavy brows. “I have not tested the Flair vibrations of this kind of stone. I don’t know what effectsthe collar might have on Fam or person.” He named a low figure.

  Passiflora and Dufleur stared at them. Fairyfoot chortled and gathered her stones close to her belly.

  He lied. Dufleur knew it even as she met the startling blue eyes in his dark complexioned face. He could no sooner keep himself from experimenting with stones, knowing each and every type, than she could stop working with time.

  Still, something about the fact that he made an effort to lie about it to save her gilt gave rise to a lump in her throat.
But she looked at him, and his past wavered before her for a few seconds—a large boy living in the old Downwind slums, stealing.He’d known poverty.

  Clearing her voice, Dufleur said, “T’Ash Residence?”

  Here, said the house voice. Dufleur stiffened. It was male and sounded a little like the lost Thyme Residence. She swallowedtears. Perhaps she should go look for the HouseHeart again, see if it had Healed, but after a year and a half . . . It had broken her heart that she hadn’t been able to sense it. Definitely time to do that again. If even a kernel of it had survived, she wanted it.

  GrandMistrys Thyme? prompted the Residence.

  “Please connect me with Cascara Bank and Financial Services.”

  Done, said the Residence.

  Dufleur completed the transfer of funds from her account to T’Ash’s. Fairyfoot amused herself by floating her stones up underher neck, one after the other. Pretty. Mine.

  Now it was Dufleur’s turn. She looked at the necklaces and earrings as if they were colored embroidery. Wonderful. Understated.Simple and beautiful. A little lust for the gems lodged inside her. “What’s the minimum I need?” she asked.

  Passiflora drifted over to stand next to her and T’Ash. “With the gowns you are having made,” she tapped multicolored polishedcabochon gemstone beads separated by gold and silver, redgold, and glisten drops. “These would be the best value.”

  Dufleur stared at them. They seemed quietly polished, and she hadn’t much noticed them, but the more she looked at them, the more she liked them. The more she wanted them. She had a feeling that was often the case with T’Ash’s work. Certainly Passiflora hadn’t let the white diamond and ruby necklace go since she’d picked it up, and still held it in her fingers.

  “Perfect,” Dufleur said, nerving herself to meet T’Ash’s blue gaze. “How much?”

  He smiled, and she stiffened.

  “Let’s discuss this,” he said with a smooth lilt in his voice.

  He took her to another room across the hall. Passiflora followed,Fairyfoot stayed behind. Lined up in a row were eighteen large, old no-times. “These don’t work anymore,” he said.

  She stilled, slowly turned to him. His face was impassive. Awareness prickled over her.

  This man obviously believed she carried the Family Flair for time and that her Flair was strong. He was a powerful member of the FirstFamilies Council. People would cross the Captain, T’Hawthorn, or even T’Holly, before they’d go against T’Ash.

  Was this a test?

  What would happen if she refurbished the old machines? Would T’Ash report her skills to the Noble Councils? She wasn’t allowed to manipulate time.

  No. Not correct, she realized.

  She wasn’t allowed to experiment with time. No one was, not even her father’s chief competitor, GraceLord T’Agave.

  She walked down the line. “Some of these are centuries old.” They’d obviously come from Nobles.

  “The spell that captures the time flow doesn’t work,” T’Ash grumbled.

  “You expect me to revitalize them?” Dufleur asked softly.

  Passiflora was watching her keenly, too.

  T’Ash lifted a shoulder. “You can do it.”

  She’d never Tested her Flair with T’Ash’s Testing Stones. He hadn’t been so established when she was seven and experienced her First Passage.

  Tilting her head, she said, “I’m sure you intend that these go back to their Families.” She touched the gilt crest tinted above the smoky door of one of the no-times. Hawthorn.

  T’Ash said, “I just told them that I’d run across a charm.”

  “Did they believe that?”

  A white grin flashed in his outlaw’s face. His fingers touched the knife he wore at his hip. “People don’t make a habit of disbelieving me.”

  Dufleur hadn’t noticed the weapon. She knew he spoke truly. His story had been a sensation. Even her father had read the newssheets and commented on it to her.

  Entire GreatLord Family murdered when T’Ash was a child by a rival. Boy growing up in the Downwind slums. Vengeance stalk. Helping Holm Holly during his Passages that included Death Duels. Mortal dueling. Questioning by the FirstFamilies Council. Acknowledgment of his lineage and Flair. Building a new, modern, home—

  “My father consulted with you on your no-time storage.”

  He gave a short nod.

  “You wanted twenty no-times, plus two no-time vaults, one a walk-in.” She finally realized that was the gilt that had eked them through the last years of her father’s life. Brows lowering, she said, “You wanted a no-time storage for roc—stones.”

  “That’s right. The crystalline vibrations of stones go in cycles,and I wanted to store them at their peak.” He grimaced. “But they didn’t like that, so I no longer use that no-time. For stones, at least.”

  She didn’t want to think about that. Stones were T’Ash’s interest.Time was hers.

  Shaking her head, she said, “And no one would figure out that you had Dufleur Thyme consulting with you today.”

  “I had T’Agave here yesterday.”

  Her stomach clenched. Once old D’Willow had announced her father was a dangerous fraud, his enemy T’Agave had made sure the lies about Vulg Thyme grew and spread throughout all of Druida, from the noblest classes to the lowest. He, too, had given interviews to the newssheets.

  “Why do you want me to fix these?”

  “Because you can. You should not deny your Flair.”

  “People would delight in smearing my name, as they did my father’s.”

  “Is Celta to lose a great Flair because you are too cowardly to practice it?”

  She clamped her teeth shut. Surely this man used his Flair to forge swords and knives and whatever into new patterns. Surely he created with his Flair every day. She was forbidden by law to try something new. She wouldn’t bring that up, couldn’t let him know that she might be breaking laws.

  “Dufleur’s personal creativity is for embroidery.” D’Holly stepped between them, facing T’Ash. “Her art now hangs in my brother’s gallery.”

  “I’ll have Agave fix the things, then.”

  Dufleur snorted. The man might be able to do so. What did she know of his Flair? But T’Ash had spurred her pride. She stalked to the end of the line and popped off the side panel of the first one with an easy Word, looked at the tracery of the equation that activated the spell. It was old and clumsy, but would work . . . and continue to work for another century if she redrew it and recharged it with her own Flair.

  Dared she?

  Touching a faded symbol, she sensed the lingering Flair of a female ancestor who had crafted the spell. Modern no-times used the general spell her Family had sold linked to a time-gathering storage nut that producers could power themselves.

  With a shrug, she fumbled in her pursenal for a writestick. She didn’t find one, but her fingers closed over a large needle. Close enough. Perhaps even better for her. With a wave of her hand the antique no-time angled itself so she could work. Once again she studied the equation—one only a master or mistress of time could read.

  She sucked in her breath, coalesced the particles of time spread throughout the room, bent them into a stream, and with her needle, created a new equation. Time sped up around her, and she was done with the job before Passiflora and T’Ash blinked.

  She gestured, and the panel fit once more against the box.

  T’Ash frowned. “Does it work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.” He strode to a table holding a caff mug, mumbled a word, and steam rose from the drink inside, then he came back and stuck it into the no-time. “I’ll check it.”

  Dufleur raised her brows. “Do you want me to finish the others?”

  “Please. Then I can return these to their owners.”

  After the first one, the rest came easy. Her eyes stung as she saw the different hands of her ancestors, female and male, their personal modifications of the spell when the units were new. Soon
she was finished, and T’Ash nodded as he sipped his caff. “It works.”

  She started to put her needle away, when T’Ash held out his hand. “I can sharpen that for you.” Dufleur and D’Holly followedhim across the hall to his workroom. He gestured at the jewelry. “Take whatever you want, Dufleur. Passiflora, you’ll pay me for that necklace.” He opened a door and left them.

  Passiflora looked at the diamonds and rubies she still held, noticed some softleaves and small boxes, and went over to wrap her choice. She sighed. “T’Ash is a very strange man.”

  Presented with a choice of everything in the room, Dufleur simply froze, still trying to puzzle out what the man was trying to say to her. That she should continue to experiment with time? No. That was not it.

  “Yessss,” said Fairyfoot, and once again began circling the tables. She touched a paw to a heavy collar of large square pieces of gold.

  “No,” Dufleur said.

  Sniffing, the Fam went back to her small pile of stones.

  As soon as Passiflora was done with her own selection, Passiflora picked up the two necklaces and earrings they’d looked at, then three more—smoky pearlescent beads, a trio of glisten chains woven together, and another of gold, silver, and glisten.

  T’Ash entered and handed Dufleur her needle, with a tiny bit of cork on the end, placed in an equally small leather sheath.

  “Thank you,” she said, then decided to be bold. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “You do no honor to your father by not practicing your GrandHouse Flair.”

  Dufleur raised her brows. “All the old Family spells are well standardized and can be included by others into such things as new no-times.”

  T’Ash grunted. “The producers sketch the spells, but do not know the reason they work. I certainly don’t know why or how a no-time works. But you do. We humans don’t have such numberson this planet to be sure of our survival. We need all the knowledge—all the expansion of knowledge, possible.”