Heart Fire (Celta Book 13)

by Robin D. Owens

  Her brows raised and she gestured to a tray on the opposite counter where a teapot, caff carafe, sweet bowl, and mugs stood. “If you can put those togeth—”

  Crunch, mumble, sluuurrrp.

  Antenn glanced and saw the bottom end of RatKiller sticking out of a no-time, tail high and waving with pleasure. “Ah, I would recommend that you not let your Fam gorge—”

  Tiana whirled. “I closed that. Get out of there, Felonerb.”

  No response from the cat, of course. She narrowed her eyes, glanced at her nice, professional garb, and said, “I have porcine strips, Felonerb. I don’t think there are any more in there.”

  She’d gone for bribery. Good call.

  With a wave of her hand she heated up the pile of strips on a plate and Antenn’s mouth watered.

  The scruffy cat withdrew from the large no-time compartment that no doubt held full holiday meals. White mousse decorated the tom’s face and whiskers. He grinned. Porcine strips, my FAVORITE.

  A click came as the door to the no-time slid shut. The cat had been quick inserting himself earlier. A whole lot quicker than Antenn’s Pinky would have been . . . but Pinky hadn’t had to scavenge for food since before Antenn was nine.

  He heard a loud gurgle from the Fam’s stomach. No, Antenn didn’t want to deal with this.

  He moved to the far counter and set the caff, teapot, cups, and everything on a large rectangular silver tray.

  Tiana plucked a narrow piece of porcine and bent to a small plate on the floor. The cat snatched it from her hand and crunched. Another intestinal rumble. Tiana’s eyes widened. She set her hands around her Fam behind his front legs. “I’ll just teleport you to the gate home, why don’t I? You haven’t explored the . . . grassyards . . . yet.” In the next second the cat vanished with a yowl that was cut short by a wet whoosh.

  Straightening, the priestess murmured, “Dear Lady and Lord, please have had him land where my mother won’t have to clean him up.”

  Antenn snorted and she went red . . . again. He’d gotten the impression that he’d seen her without her professional calm a lot in the last two days—and liked that.

  Her lips compressed. “Thank you for loading the tray.” Her own hands sped to finish arranging the foodstuffs in some pattern that would look fine to her.

  “One never wants one’s mother to have to clean up after one’s Fam,” he said, leaning against a counter. “I speak from experience.”

  Her laugh was as much a sigh and lightened her face to a beautiful smile. “I’m sure.”

  A bong reverberated and he straightened. “That’s the teleportation signal, the Cross Fo—the Intersection of Hope ministers are here.”

  She nodded and took the tray of breakfast foods from the counter, walking ahead of him through the door to the main room.

  The four greatest ministers of the Intersection of Hope stood in their formal robes, three in primary colors, one in white. All of their expressions were serious bordering on the stern.

  Antenn’s gut clenched. Trouble, and he couldn’t guess what kind so he could head it off, find a workable option.

  The one in red, Foreman, who represented adult vitality, aimed his stare at Tiana Mugwort, and Antenn sucked in a small breath. Maybe they weren’t taking their business to a different architect, then. “We take exception to the messages from your High Priest and Priestess,” Foreman said.

  Eleven

  Tiana bent her head. “If we have insulted you, please accept our apologies.” She set the tray of dishes on a low table in the center of the chairs and gestured as she murmured a couplet. Steam rose from a few of the offerings and Antenn’s nose twitched. Cheese bread. He had a weakness for warm, fresh cheese bread. The lightly spiced scrambled eggs smelled pretty good, too, not to mention the porcine strips.

  “Please sit so we can work this out.” Tiana indicated the plushly cushioned chairs.

  “Come, gentlemen,” said Custos. He was wearing his white robe that signified the Guardian Spirit. “We have a representative here from GreatCircle Temple. As I said before, something like this is exactly why we asked for a liaison. Let us take advantage of her to express our concerns.”

  With slight grumbles, and, Antenn thought, some telepathic messages zinging back and forth, the men sat.

  The priestess poured out a cup of caff and raised her brows at Antenn. He took it. She poured tea for herself, something dark and strong, asked the others their preferences, and provided the drinks.

  After a minute of sipping, the abrasive Foreman stated, “Your Celtan religion that was crafted on the Ships is inclusive.” He took a fork and stabbed an apple turnover to transfer it from the common plate to his own.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Tiana said. “Our ancestors were far too aware of the divisiveness that religious fervor could cause if one religion stated it was the only correct belief system.”

  Foreman slogged on. “Your ancestors”—he pointed his fork at Tiana and Antenn—“and ours on the Ships diluted your main religious beliefs to accommodate many of the religions at the time. Since then, most of those beliefs that don’t quite fit with the belief in the Duology, the Lady and the Lord—”

  “—the Lord and the Lady,” Antenn murmured.

  Foreman shrugged. “The Lord and the Lady or the Lady and Lord, those beliefs that belonged to older religions have fallen by the wayside naturally.”

  Tiana nodded as if this wasn’t a new idea to her, though it was to Antenn.

  “But that is not true with our Intersection of Hope religion.” Foreman jutted his chin. “Our beliefs were well thought out when our religion was created and are not to be mitigated or expanded or tweaked for expediency’s sake.”

  “We do believe we are the . . . maybe not the only religion . . . but that we serve the needs of people best,” said the youngest man there, dressed in yellow, symbolizing the childlike self, surely a new adult at no more than eighteen.

  “I understand,” Tiana said with a sincerity Antenn wouldn’t have been able to fake. “What is the problem here?”

  “We do not want other religions, such as the Celtic religion, involved in our cathedral. We do not want a ritual to set security spellshields up comprising other religious beliefs than our own. We do not want some sort of all-inclusive ritual with a muddle of intentions, of prayers to various spirits. We want our land, our cathedral, our ritual to resonate to our beliefs only.”

  “That is understandable,” the priestess said.

  Was it? Antenn didn’t know. He stopped chewing and began to reconsider the best commission of his life.

  Custos said, “We want our hymns sung, our incense used, our singular faith to infuse our space.”

  Tiana turned her head slightly toward Antenn as if she’d noticed the muscles on his face had stiffened and said, “It is like a Family would prefer their Residence to resonate to their Family as opposed to some different Family.”

  She stared with wide eyes at the four ministers. “And it’s not as if you are saying those who believe in the Lady and Lord, the Lord and the Lady, or have any other belief system are wrong or evil.”

  All four men gasped.

  “Absolutely not,” said the one in blue called Elderstone.

  “Of course not,” said the one named Younger.

  “No,” said Foreman and Custos in unison.

  “That would be wrong. And it is our belief to respect each and every one who is on their journey. Every individual is meeting perils and fighting battles in their personal journey that we might not know or understand,” Custos said.

  Antenn flinched inside, straightened in his chair. Everyone had inner wars they were fighting. He’d never thought of it that way. He certainly fought for self-confidence every day . . . and though they had a great life, he was sure his parents fought their old personal wars: his mother’s sterility, her deepest wound. And his father would never forget that his entire Family had died of a common Celtan disease and that he was a man with great Flair but a ge
netic flaw he would pass down to any child of his blood.

  Words ripped from Antenn. “That is a simple but profound philosophy.”

  Lips curving, Custos nodded at Antenn, then shared a look with the others. “I knew you were the right man for the job.”

  Younger smiled sweetly, innocently, and said, “As simple and profound as your own religion’s ultimate law ‘for the good of all, according to the free will of all, an it harm none.’”

  That was true.

  After a swallow of a jam-filled pastry that left a squirt of redberry across his cheek, Younger continued, “We still want our rituals and only our rituals on the land.” He dusted his hands, flicking crumbs away with abandon. Antenn was reminded of the pure happy gluttony of Pinky. Pretty much everyone else had paused in their eating.

  “I understand,” the priestess said, and Antenn could have sworn he felt a wash of bitter disappointment from her. She’d been planning on officiating at that ritual, he figured. It took all kinds.

  Then he recalled how impressed that rival priestess had seemed, and Antenn knew that it would feel to him like a commission yanked from him—one that would challenge his creativity. He kept his face impassive since the woman wouldn’t want pity, but the cheese bread had dried on his tongue and he scooped up his caff mug to swallow.

  “Please, eat.” She gestured with a serene smile at the food. Antenn glanced at his tunic. The bread hadn’t been too crumbly, hadn’t fallen on one of his best tunic-trous-suits, so he could retain a professional appearance.

  The other men went back to their plates.

  From the side of his eyes, he saw Tiana’s lovely breasts rise as she took a long, deep breath.

  “Would you be open to accepting the High Priest and High Priestess as celebrants in one of your own rituals?” she asked.

  That stopped all talk. The ministers’ gazes met, and from the buzzing sensation of Flair in the atmosphere, they were consulting telepathically.

  “Would they not disavow themselves from their God and Goddess by worshiping with us?”

  Antenn looked on in admiration as Tiana poured more of their various drinks into their cups, treating the matter with casual easiness. He wondered if the Sandalwoods knew what a treasure this woman was.

  When she put the carafe down, she met each minister’s glance in turn. “The Lady and Lord are not jealous beings with regard to their followers. I would say that whether a priest or priestess would honor your four-godhead would depend on the individual’s relationship with their own soul and their relationship with the Lady and Lord. The High Priest and Priestess emphasized to me that this project is important to them.”

  Now she stood and folded her hands in her opposite sleeves, looking every inch the priestess. “You are holy men, filled with belief, with kindness and abjuring hatred and condescension to others. Your religion is kind and worth respect. Why would we not honor and accept you and celebrate your journey as you do so yourselves?”

  Though she spoke softly, Antenn thought that she might have shamed a couple of them. From his own experience he knew that the outcast, the downtrodden, could hold great anger. These men were of a portion of their culture that was usually ignored and sometimes disdained. No wonder they held tightly to their own rules.

  And, if he had to be fair, it was easier for Tiana Mugwort, as a priestess of the main, accepted religion of most Celtans, to be sympathetic and generous.

  Foreman’s shoulders lowered into what might have been a slump for a less muscular man. He shook his head. “We do not have an appropriate ritual for those who do not believe wholeheartedly in our fourfold God’s journey . . .”

  The tension radiating from Tiana was massive. She said, “I am conversant with your rituals. If I . . .” She stopped as all eyes turned her way. “If I help my mother, a member of your faith, draft a ritual for security spellshields? Naturally, you would prefer only members of your temple—your church—to be there for the consecration of the ground, but that can happen later, in a separate ritual after the spellshields go up.”

  Silence.

  “An interesting offer but one I don’t think we can accept,” Elderstone stated quietly.

  Antenn put his plate down and lowered his torso in a sitting bow. “I don’t know what divination systems Your Excellencies use, but perhaps I should tell you that yesterday, at the site of your cathedral, I was approached by GreatLord Muin T’Vine, the prophet.” And damn if Antenn hadn’t picked up the ponderous phrasing. Anything to get the job done. Now everyone stared at him. This time the quiet Flair humming through the room held an edge.

  The tiny muscles of Foreman’s face worked, Younger’s expression had gone blank, and Custos’s and Elderstone’s smiles appeared strained.

  “May we ask what the GreatLord told you?” asked Younger, his voice a little higher than he probably wanted.

  “GreatLord T’Vine told me that the future of this venture is in flux.”

  Everyone paled.

  “He said that security is paramount and that I should put around-the-clock guards on the project.” Antenn turned to look at Tiana, still standing, hands tucked into her opposite sleeves, then back at the men. “I would recommend using any and all resources you have for the spellshields. And that when you announce the project today to the newssheets, you include the High Priest and Priestess of Celta.”

  “We will be happy to be of any service.” The resonant tones of T’Sandalwood came.

  Antenn jerked at the man’s voice; he saw Tiana give a little shiver. Had she known they’d arrived? They must have locked down the teleportation pad from GreatCircle Temple for only their use. Interesting. Because of confidentiality? Or security?

  The Chief Ministers rose, as did Antenn, and faced the couple. All the men bowed and the women curtseyed. The ministers, Antenn, and Tiana sat again.

  Then Foreman’s lips twisted. “Increased security for our temple, our cathedral. We can’t just build it like every other group, every other Family, erects a home or a community center, like you build a Temple.” He sucked in a breath and shook his head and made a cutting gesture. “I need to work on my acceptance of such restraints.”

  He continued. “And despite those greedy cranks who whipped up public sentiment against us Intersection of Hope adherents, burned some of us out”—he nodded toward Tiana—“I must recall that your Celtic religion doesn’t seem to attract many fanatics.”

  The High Priest and Priestess stayed silent but tilted their heads to Tiana. Testing her. Still. Antenn was so fliggering glad he worked for himself and was done with employer tests, with people he could never satisfy because he had commoner blood, or maybe just because he wasn’t of the Cang Zhu Family that he’d apprenticed with and didn’t think like them.

  Tiana said, “An it harm none is the main tenet of our faith. We carefully try to educate any intolerance from our members and limit any fanatics.” Her manner remained completely serene.

  But Antenn’s last taste of caff dried sourly in his mouth as he scrambled to remember the events they referenced: the Black Magic Cult killings—one of his adoptive cousins, Trif Clover, had been kidnapped by the Cult, and the Family had rallied around her. One of the members had falsely implicated the Cross Folk, easily done since the Cult had used the paralyzing drug pylor in their evil ceremonies. A trace of pylor was included in incense most often associated with the Intersection of Hope.

  One Family had been stripped of everything . . . Antenn thought he’d heard his father and some of the younger FirstFamilies Lords and Ladies discuss the incident as political maneuvering, but he hadn’t paid much attention. He’d been concerned about Trif, and, as always, he’d been preoccupied with his own problems, struggling as an apprentice with an architectural Family who’d despised him.

  He should have damn well researched that situation more because he was missing nuances here. Yet the hair on the back of his neck rose in warning that this was important.

  Foreman had leaned forward, starin
g at Tiana, face set in harsh lines, but another spoke first. “Do you limit fanatics of your Lord and Lady?” asked Elderstone, the oldest man, the one in rich blue, the spirit of wise maturity. He shared a glance with his compatriots. “We wondered.”

  “We do,” the High Priestess stated. “Those who, time and time again, show a hatred for other religions are restricted from our public rites.” Now she had her hands in her opposite sleeves in a more formal posture.

  “GraceLord T’Equisetum,” Younger stated.

  Tiana’s face became so smooth a mask that Antenn knew that name affected her on a personal level.

  The High Priest said, “Yes, he has been restricted from our rites. And, yes, he remains intolerant. He believes that our religion is the only acceptable religion . . . but his hubris does not only apply to religion. He believes only his opinion counts in all matters—such as class. He is a member of the new political group, the Traditionalist Stance.”

  “Ah,” Custos nodded. “Then T’Equisetum doesn’t accept that people with increased Flair should Test for, and receive, Noble titles. As far as the Traditionalists are concerned, only those already with titles should be Nobles.”

  The High Priest inclined his head toward Younger. “We can only discipline in our area. We have done what we can to ensure the man is not accepted by our spiritual community.”

  “Greedy crank status seekers will use anything to make their points, including religion,” Younger said, not looking at Tiana.

  Custos angled more toward the Sandalwoods and continued in a bland tone, “If you didn’t hear, the prophet GreatLord T’Vine believes the future of our cathedral is not set in stone and there could be security issues.”

  He paused slightly, gathered the gazes of his colleagues, nodded to them and got returning nods, then met T’Sandalwood’s perusal. “We originally called this meeting to inform you that we did not wish to include you in a mixed-faith ritual for blessing and spellshielding. However, we have modified that to accept a new ritual written in accordance with only our beliefs by Tiana and Quina Mugwort with regard to spellshields.”