She was older and wiser and, to her surprise, a whole lot more discriminating than she had been before her marriage to and divorce from Tinne Holly.
Divorce. The huge scandal of being the first to divorce at the highest noble level. Which was less important than the fact that she’d hurt a good man. But the pain of staying in the relationship was more than the severing of their marriage.
“Nista!” GentleMistrys Faverel’s voice was sharp. She didn’t like having an attractive woman in her business. It didn’t matter that Genista was completely uninterested in the woman’s husband. Well, in everything other than his skill with mechanical-Flaired works.
Genista set down the spell-coated gear she’d been working on—ancient clocks were a specialty of the shop—and strode into the store, wiping slightly oily fingers on her bib apron. She wore the gray apron to show she was all business. So far it had impressed no one.
As soon as the lean man with handsome features, curly black hair, and bright blue eyes saw her, he smiled. Genista returned his smile, but her heart—and other bits of her anatomy—were unmoved. No fluttering, no warmth. Years ago that wouldn’t have mattered.
Tinne had been so good for her. She sent a mental blessing his way—and to his HeartMate, the woman she’d never met but who had hurt Genista just by her existence.
Flicking her fingers behind her apron to banish the past, Genista walked up to the counter. “Yes, GentleSir Asant?”
He leaned an elbow on the wide wooden counter and pushed the mantel timer toward her with a self-deprecating smile. “It seems to have stopped again.”
This was the third time the clock had been in the shop in the last month.
“I’ll look,” Genista said, as she had twice before. She hadn’t worked on this timer; Master Faverel had. And she never questioned his competency. If there was something wrong, Asant’s environment was causing it.
GentleMistrys Faverel scowled at them both. Genista turned the clock around and tapped on the back; the wood panel fell into her hands and she checked the works. Everything appeared fine, the small mechanical parts all present, all having the proper amount of Flair magic . . . except .
. . She glanced up at Asant. “Did you put this timer anywhere near a no-time storage unit?”
“But timer clocks and no-times are not mutually exclusive,” he said.
GentleMistrys Faverel bumped Genista with her well-padded hip and answered him. “A timer and a no-time food storage unit work fine together now, have for the last century. But I know you, GentleSir Asant, love antiques.”
“Yes, I do.” He sent a crooked smile at Genista. “Or, at least, I have a lot of them. Trying to get my inheritance in shape after my cuz’s death.”
His lips turned down.
Taking the timer in both hands, Genista said, “Let me put a stronger spell on the works . . . but be advised that it might affect the no-time, and if I had to choose between a functioning no-time and a clock—”
“A no-time is more important,” GentleMistrys Faverel ended for Genista, motioning her back to the workroom.
“You know we do handle no-time refurbishment, reconstruction, and servicing here, too,” GentleMistrys Faverel offered. “For anything prior to the last twenty years. Now, the spell reset will cost you fifty gilt.”
Genista set the timer down on her table. The workroom was still empty. GentleSir Faverel had slipped out the rear door for his usual MidAfternoonBell caff break at the shop next door. She glanced at her wrist timer, a nice large unit that a working woman would wear, nothing like the twenty or so delicately jeweled ones she had in her cottage safe. She had a weakness for timers, which is why she was here.
“Nista!” Another shout from GentleMistrys Faverel had Genista wincing. Using the Flair she could command, the psi magic of a woman born of a long line of people with great magical powers, she sent a tiny but potent spell to coat the tech parts and form a slight shield that would spring into place as soon as she replaced the back.
“Nista!”
“Coming!” She picked up the timer, said a small housekeeping spell to remove any fingerprints and polish the glass of the face.
Asant straightened from a desultory conversation with GentleMistrys Faverel, whose smile was strained since there were two more people in the shop whom she wanted to wait on.
Genista tapped on the clock back and said, “Here.”
The man took the timepiece, stroked the fine wood, smiled at Genista. Lowering his voice, he said, “New Year’s, Samhain, is midnight tomorrow night. Will the shop close early on Halloween?”
Genista blinked. “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “This is my first year with the Faverels.” She’d left Druida City immediately after her divorce, taken a few weeks to settle herself here in Gael City, applied for a job when she’d seen the sign in the Faverels’ shopwindow, and renamed herself Nista Gorse.
GentleMistrys Faverel was helping her other customers. Business was picking up as people shopped for last-minute Samhain gifts.
The rear door slammed. GentleSir Faverel had returned from his caff break. The faint scent of cocoa from the mug he’d brought back for Genista wafted to her nose. Now she felt warmth. Comfort. From the thought of a cup of cocoa caff with white mousse topping and cocoa sprinkles. Her smile was genuine. “I have work.”
Asant began to say something but she was focused on her treat and left.
GentleSir Faverel was tying on his own apron and looked up as she bustled in. “Customers in the front?”
“Yes. Three. Asant brought his mantel clock back in. I think he set it on a no-time.”
“He has an antique no-time. That’d stop it, all right.” Faverel handed her the mug.
She inhaled deeply. “Really lovely, thank you.”
“’Welcome. Glad you’re here with us, good help.” His thin gray brows lowered. “You don’t seem to understand that. You need to believe in yourself.”
Genista’s mouth fell open, then she swallowed, not knowing what to say. The man had touched her deepest fears. She shivered at his insight, unwilling to confront it.
But he was just slurping his caff and looking around the room. “We’re caught up on all the minor projects.”
Faverel walked past her to the front showroom, and she heard his gruff voice as he spoke to his wife and customers. He didn’t care to interact with the public. Questions were asked and he replied briefly.
He came back holding a tiny china bedside timer all gold and white with a painted face, shaking his head. “This won’t take five minutes,” he said. “Regular five-month maintenance.”
“Um-hmm,” Genista said, sipping her luscious drink and leaning against her worktable.
Voices rose in the shop and penetrated the workroom. “Mille Thelypod claimed thieves stole a gold box.”
Mistrys Faverel snorted. “Mille Thelypod always says that when she has to sneak out of her house and sell something. Why, we bought one of her Family clocks ourselves.” Another loud sniff. “She didn’t report this new ‘theft’ to the guardsmen or tell the newssheets, did she?”
“No-oo,” the other gossip replied.
“There you go, then,” Mistrys Faverel ended decidedly.
“Is that true about you buying Mille’s clock?” Genista asked Faverel idly.
He grunted, flicked the back of the timer with a finger, and the tiny door popped off. “Yes. But I wish my lady hadn’t said so. You should be out there in the shop. An attractive girl like you would draw in more folk, sell better than my lady.”
Genista choked on her drink, spewed a little down her apron. “No.”
Brows lifted, Faverel continued mildly, “I don’t take you for an introvert like me.”
She pulled a softleaf from one of her apron pockets and wiped her mouth, scrubbed at her bib. No use for it, she’d have to take it home and put it in the cleanser tonight. “I like working with timers . . . and clocks. I don’t like selling much.”
“Ah.” He hummed a spe
ll, said the Words to set the clock to the official time as determined by the Guildhall in Druida City, and polished the piece as he took it back into the shop.
When he returned, he appeared a little flushed, and Genista figured that the wet smacking noise she’d heard was his wife kissing him. An unusual public display of affection for them, but the woman had been doing that more often now that Genista worked with them full-time.
Faverel stopped in a shaft of light as if he wanted the autumn sun to warm his bones. He rubbed his hands together. “Speaking of no-times, we haven’t worked on them together.”
He was a good man and an excellent teacher. He didn’t ask outright if she knew how to fix no-times. She’d been a dilettante with mechanical-
Flair objects in her former life. “I don’t know how to repair no-time food storage units,” she said.
He nodded, went to the safe, and pulled out three slips of paper. “These are proprietary spells that the Thymes have developed and sold to others—creators and producers of no-times, and for people like us to service. These three handle the items we typically receive.”
Genista scrutinized the elegant scrawls of spell formulas, in three different hands. She didn’t know how such Flair technology stopped time, but she could inscribe the patterns and apply certain twists of Flair to power them, if she learned the original spells.
Faverel was going to tell her. Excitement sent blood to her cheeks. “You’ll teach me?”
He nodded. “You have good manual dexterity, nice penmanship.” He smiled and his face wrinkled into a dozen folds. “And the Flair, eh, that isn’t too difficult. You should be able to master one spell by the end of the day.”
Genista grinned and rubbed her hands, just like he was doing. This was better than caff.
When WorkEndBell was sounded by a multitude of timers and clocks in the store, Genista was glad to push away from her bench. She’d practiced one spell formula for septhours until she’d gotten it right. Her brain felt heavy and dull with effort.
“Excellent job,” Faverel said, his smile creasing his face. “There’s a good reason to take older people as journeymen students.”
A little shock sizzled through her, clearing some of the exhaustion from her mind. “Am I a journeywoman?”
He raised a brow. The man could do that, raise just one brow. It made her feel like a child, not a woman of twenty-six.
“I’m teaching you my craft. You’re learning well. Want to formalize it?”
Genista hesitated. Formalize meant contracts and contracts usually demanded real names. On the other hand, she’d like to earn a certificate.
A piece of papyrus that showed her worth, that she’d grown as a person.
The last formal piece of papyrus she’d signed was her divorce, and she still wasn’t sure whether that showed she had grown or just wearied of hurting. “GentleMistrys Faverel might not care for it.”
He shrugged off his wife’s opinion like most men did. “May or may not. Might be if you have a solid status as journeywoman instead of just an employee, might soothe her.” He shrugged again, opened his hands. “Might not.” Then he actually winked. “Having you around has made her more interested in me, and I like that fine. Think about becoming my student.” He opened a drawer in his worktable and handed her a document with sections he’d already filled out, then swaggered to the front of the shop.
Genista put away the shop tools, hesitating as she fingered one. If she became a journeywoman, she’d need her own tools. She would have a career. She would be someone that she’d made herself.
Not the ignored third daughter of GreatLord Furze. A girl who’d craved attention and found that men would give it to her.
She rolled up her soiled apron and tucked it into her bag, carefully placed the journeywoman form on top.
She could have teleported home, but the Faverels didn’t have a teleportation zone. She didn’t need one to leave, of course, but the lack of one indicated that they—and the people they knew—didn’t teleport often, if at all.
Genista teleported, but not to and from work. Like the rest of her Flair, her teleportation skills had become stronger now that she practiced them more often.
And she liked walking from her job to her cottage on a pleasant fall day. She had plenty to ponder.
Evening was falling and the workday was done for her, but the store would stay open for another septhour. She lingered in the back room. If she entered the front area, she might interrupt a bit more of the public displays of affection—or there might be customers the Faverels would want her to serve.
Just before she was forced to go into the shop to say good-bye, GentleMistrys Faverel came back to stare at her, arms crossed over her modest bosom. “Taking off?”
Two
That’s right,” Genista replied to her employer’s question. If she was a journeywoman in timer service, would she have to work the counter? Or would she always stay in the back room? She’d check the duties on GentleSir Faverel’s form.
“Harrumph,” GentleMistrys Faverel snorted. “We’ve decided to close early tomorrow on Halloween—MidAfternoonBell. In case any of us want to participate in rituals, or celebrate Samhain early.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Genista said.
A sniff and a wave of the woman’s hand. “Be off with you. And I want you in tomorrow thirty-five minutes early to make up for the time off.”
Genista suppressed a sigh. “Yes.”
“Yes, mistrys,” the woman corrected.
Squashing rebellious thoughts, Genista said, “Yes, mistrys.”
Two minutes later she was walking home. She enjoyed the scent of turning leaves and stopped now and then to watch an orange or red or gold leaf separate itself from the tree and drift down—symbolizing the end of the year and looking toward the future.
Neither she nor her ex-husband had been ones to watch serenely instead of acting. She didn’t know if he had changed now that he’d found and claimed his HeartMate, but for Genista, becoming a contemplative person was a hard, ongoing process. And she knew and accepted that there was no HeartMate for her.
She sighed and scuffed her shoes through the dry leaves, breaking them. They cackled like old women. Plenty of old women and nobles who’d talked about her in Druida City. She’d be shunned if she ever went back there.
A man’s voice lifted in one of the back grassyards of the houses she passed, and she flinched a bit as it reminded her of Asant. No, she wouldn’t be taking him as a lover. Too bad he couldn’t be her friend, but a man like that, one aware of his own attractiveness and self-worth, didn’t settle for a friendship when he wanted an intimate relationship.
Maybe she did need to build friendships again, come out of this self-imposed isolation. A woman called out to Genista from her front porch and waved. With a smile, Genista waved back and revised her thoughts. She wasn’t as isolated as she thought.
At the corner of the block where her little house stood, she stopped to really look at it. It was a bungalow with a small porch just big enough for a rocking chair and tiny table. Her home was tinted a cheerful creamy yellow with light teal trim. Her spirits lifted just to look at it. Hers. Her very own.
Not a noble, intelligent Residence that housed a FirstFamily like the ones of her birth Family and in-laws. She had wanted that, once, status and stability. Or stability and status. But had gradually discovered that her soul needed other things.
Her spine and shoulders straightened. She was constructing a good life. And she’d spent too much time thinking about the past and not the future. She would do better.
A sound of clipping came from the front yard beyond hers. Cardus Parryl was out. Again. He was always there.
He’d tinted his home the same light teal of her trim and trimmed it in the same soft yellow cream of her house. He was irritating that way. That unobtrusive way.
The cottages were alike, set no more than four meters apart. In the front, she had a low iron-spiked fence and gate. Car
dus had low wooden ones. On the boundary they shared, the front half of her house was hedge. The rear half of her property was surrounded by a high iron fence with a gate to the park she backed up against.
Genista thought the houses might have the same layout inside, and she’d watched with reluctant envy as he’d built a porch all along the front, with lovely small columns and a nice overhang. And made a swing to put on the porch. And sat in that swing during the summer months to greet her as she’d arrived home.
As she drew closer, she saw him use flashing silver, wickedly sharp shears to cut the top of the yew hedge between their houses. Her teeth gritted. She’d liked the summer spearing of ragged growth. Now the hedge was down to waist high on him, again.
She lowered the spellshield and went through her gate.
“Greetyou, GentleMistrys Gorse,” he said.
His voice was slightly rough, deep and dark, sending quivers of awareness along her skin, slipping into her blood. Thrills that were becoming harder to ignore.
Maybe she was cautious because he affected her.
“Turned out warmer than I thought. A lovely day, isn’t it, GentleMistrys ?” he prompted, shifting his weight slightly.
Genista wasn’t fooled. He could be over that hedge in an instant. She was glad she had good spellshields.
At that moment the sun lit his hair, and it looked like a torch of red and orange. His body was outlined in a golden aura. Since she stopped to stare, she decided she had to answer. And considering the day she’d had and the journeywoman document in her bag, it had been a lovely day.
“Greetyou, GentleSir Parryl, you’re right,” she said.
Clouds hid the sun, and the man dimmed from larger-than-life to her quietly intense neighbor again. It was just that his coloring was so vivid.
“Have a good evening.”
A great sneeze came from him and she paused, threw, “Lady and Lord Bless You,” over her shoulder, and caught a blank look of surprise on his face.
Hearts and Swords: Four Original Stories of Celta Page 19
