Heart Thief

by Robin D. Owens

  Danith dropped Canadena’s hands, turned to Ailim, and inclined her head, one FirstFamily Lady to another, then left.

  Danith made dealing with hostile people look easy. Of course, they weren’t her relatives. Still, the GreatLady’s secure self-confidence was something Ailim vowed to learn.

  Want down. Down! DOWN! Primrose insisted.

  In a moment. Ailim cuddled her new Fam closer.

  “A kitten.” Cuz Canadena drifted out the door.

  “Cona, please show GreatSir Reed to his new suite in the northwest round tower,” Ailim said.

  Cona glared at her. “You’ve not heard the last of this.” Cona pasted a smile on her face and simpered at Donax. He looked stunned at her liveliness.

  Ailim sighed.

  Primrose licked Ailim’s chin. Down!

  Ailim placed the small energetic bundle of fur on the area rug. The puppy took off at a run. Cona sent it a repugnant glance and hastily moved away, her hand on Donax’s arm.

  “Awful thing!” Backbone stiff, Aunt Menzie marched away, trailing the men in her wake.

  Primrose nipped at their heels, and they sped their retreat. The door slammed behind them.

  Primrose sat on the floor facing Ailim, tongue lolling. Love You. The puppy’s eyes filled with adoration. She puddled on the pine floor.

  Ailim collapsed into her chair.

  Before Ruis reached Eastgate, he took off his red silkeen shirt and dragged it through dirt until no bright color showed.

  He opened the arched door in the guard tower wall and ducked into the small building, crouching under the sill of the large window of the guardroom to his left. Due to his Nullness the spell-light wavered. The guard’s snores hesitated. Ruis hurried through the tower to the door opening into the city. He sighed with relief as soon as he shut the portal silently behind him.

  Druida had quieted into night’s slower pace, but Ruis kept to the shadows. A fine tension imbued him, sharpening all his senses. Whispering, he sent Samba ahead to scout for any danger. Stealthily he followed.

  A septhour later he walked into the large dim park at the southwest part of Druida. This was the last area before the cliffs. Leaving the nightpoles that framed the park on the city street behind him, he glided through tall trees, avoiding the crisp leaves underfoot. He strode past the Summer Pavilion. Samba bounded beside him.

  Then he stopped and looked up and up and up at his new home.

  It loomed above him, dark and massive, blotting out the starbright sky and even the radiant twinmoons’ light. It blocked the horizon on both sides.

  The only whole spaceship left. Nuada’s Sword.

  Four

  The ship filled Ruis’s vision.

  Stretching six kilometers in length, two in width, and twenty-five stories high, it was too huge for the FirstFamilies to protect with shieldspells. By law no destruction or pilfering was allowed, and none had taken place.

  Celtans were superstitious about the ship. The technology that had brought the colonists had long been superseded by the combination of psi power/technology developed by the Celtans. Preferred by the Celtans. Now the old mechanical and nanoelectron engineering systems were almost lost. The texts Ruis had managed to glean from T’Elder ResidenceLibrary and the public GreatLibrary were nearly impossible for him to understand.

  Deep silence pervaded the night. No noise drifted from the city beyond Landing Park. Between midnight and dawn, nothing stirred here, except Samba.

  She danced around his feet, traveled the few meters to the spaceship in leaps, and sniffed along a portion of its length, paying attention to the outline of the hatch.

  A few rooms of the ship were open near the main landing ramp three kilometers away, but fewer and fewer Celtans visited the museum each year. The metal spaceship seemed alien to the descendants of the colonists, sterile when compared with the verdant Celta, claustrophobic to a people who still had most of a world to explore and tame. The chambers contained strange machines that didn’t work with the common spellwords.

  Lights flickered inside and out in strange patterns. There were rumors that if a Celtan stayed in the ship for more than a few hours, he or she would go insane. School groups hurried in and out of the museum rooms through the main landing portal.

  Ruis had chosen his route and this door as the most inconspicuous.

  Here? Our new home? Samba’s sounds rang like words. Ruis marveled again that he could understand her perfectly.

  “Yes.” Nuada’s Sword was still inside Druida. If he was found on her, he’d be executed. Yet everyone believed he’d left the city. A slow smile filled his face as he considered the nobles’ shortsightedness. They didn’t take care of the starship, thought of it as a lump on the horizon. But for Ruis, it was perfect. He would do what no one else on Celta had done—he’d attempt to restore the colonists’ most important machine.

  His new home.

  His new life.

  It must be better than the old. He’d work on the ship, master its systems. Even more important, he’d master his own anger. Most important of all, with care, he’d be able to see Ailim D’SilverFir again.

  Going to the hatch, he watched as a tiny green light flickered, then shone steadily. He picked up Samba and positioned them both in front of a smooth, black glassy-looking plate, nothing like the faceted scrystones Celtans used at the entrances of their homes.

  “Request permission to board the ship.” He said the odd-sounding words. He’d constructed the phrase from several sources, and learned the strange pronunciation through trial and error from ancient audios. The sentence was referred to once as “Standard Portal Acceptance Command for Entry.” A bright yellow light flashed from the plate and disappeared; clicks followed.

  Samba pressed her nose to the plate and hummed.

  “Feline. Some traces of sentience,” a mellow voice intoned.

  “Her name is Samba,” Ruis said.

  “Acknowledged. Status?” asked Nuada’s Sword.

  “She is a crew member.” Ruis held his breath, hoping his poring over tomes of archaic information would pay off.

  The plate hummed. “An overabundance of rodents in the Greensward has been verified. Samba accepted provisionally, upon determination of the human male status.”

  “Yesssssss,” said Samba.

  Ruis shifted his grip. Samba’s fur felt slick under his sweating palms. His heart thudded with anxious anticipation.

  The ship rumbled, the light flickered from the plate and over him once more. “Human male primarily of the genetic code of Elder and Oak, with traces of the Houses of Comfrey, Rose . . .”

  Ruis’s mouth fell open; even he didn’t know that.

  “. . . some slight mutation as expected over time. Status?”

  Ruis gulped. “Of Command Officer rank.”

  Dead silence. Ruis stood, every muscle tense.

  Samba rubbed her head against the underside of his chin and began a quiet, soothing, rumble-purr.

  “It is noted that Our last Captain was an Elder. However, in accordance with Our programming, a sufficient time has elapsed that a new Captain may also be appointed from the genetic code Elder. Acknowledged and accepted. Welcome aboard, Captain.”

  Captain? Ruis stood, stunned, as a square silver door rose upward with a quiet whoosh and a ramp angled out and down to his feet. He’d had no notion he could be named Captain, still the highest rank in all of Celta. The highest rank ever held by any ancestor. Captain.

  Let’s go play. Samba wriggled in his arms.

  He’d wanted to be of a Command Officer rank to access as much of the ship as he could. He’d thought he’d be a Lieutenant.

  Ruis walked up the incline of the short ramp into a small spherical room. He looked around the tarnished metal interior as the ramp retracted and the door closed behind him. Then he followed the ship’s directions to the omnivator and took the box to the Captain’s Quarters. The metal wall beneath his fingers was warm to his touch. Too warm for regular metal, mor
e as if it were truly alive. He curled his fingers and pulled them away.

  Ruis squinted at the golden insignia on a gleaming wood door of the Captain’s Quarters. “Too dim,” he murmured.

  The light brightened.

  Ruis shivered. He’d just been reminded that the colonists had come from a yellow-sunned, dimmer world.

  The quiet was incredible. No night noise. No wind. No insects. No animals.

  No people.

  His ears strained to hear sounds other than his own breathing and Samba’s. Nothing. He squared his shoulders. This was what he wanted.

  “Request entry,” Ruis said.

  Let’s go IN! demanded Samba.

  “Place your hand on the palmplate,” the deep, reverberant Ship’s voice said.

  He put his hand against the slot.

  “Align your eyes in relation to the retina scan,” Ship said.

  Ruis shifted and let a light sweep across his eyes.

  “Captain Elder examined and data stored. Initiate Password Sequence of three words.”

  “Machine,” Ruis said, thinking of the Earth Soil Analyzer that had started the whole thing. Machine was a word that defined the inner creativity that kept him sane, his quest to restore Earth technology.

  Excitement made his voice higher than he liked, so he cleared his throat. “EarthSun,” he said. That word symbolized his past—the anger that burned, the restless life he had to lead, his thievery to survive and elude Bucus.

  Now he needed a third, something special and precious. Before he knew it, he’d said, “Ailim.”

  “Ailim,” the Ship repeated, pronouncing it differently. “You mean the sixteenth letter of the Ogham alphabet?”

  He meant the GrandLady who haunted him. The one he yearned to meet again. The only reason the origin of her name mattered was that it marked her as a GrandLady, a woman who should have been far beyond his reach. But Ruis began to believe that as Captain of Nuada’s Sword, he might dare anything. “Yes.”

  Ruis and Samba stood before the doors to the Captain’s Quarters. He traced the ancient Earth symbols: “Captain of Nuada’s Sword.” From what he understood, the Captain had a suite with visual and audio access to the entire ship, a tradition the GreatLords had continued in their Residences.

  “The chosen passwords of Captain Ruis Elder are: machine, EarthSun, and Ailim,” the Ship intoned. “Accepted.”

  Samba yowled. And Me! She jumped to Ruis’s shoulder and planted a paw on the palmplate, blinked as her eyes were scanned, and mewed the familiar Let’s go play!

  The plate closed. With a swish the door opened in the middle, sliding to each side.

  Home. How fun, a new place. We will play well here. Samba set her claws into his shirt, pricking him, as he strode inside.

  She jumped down and strolled through an entryway into a large room. The walls were blue-gray, austere and empty of ornament. The furniture was square and functional, built into the walls. The seat coverings and the cloth over what Ruis thought was the bed shimmered blue and silver. Wooden trim seemed the sole natural touch in the quarters.

  Samba sniffed and Ruis noticed the faint metallic odor permeating the suite. She rubbed against the furniture to mark her scent.

  “All automated systems are in need of priority lists. Does the Captain wish to review current shipboard specifications?” the ship asked.

  A thrill ran through him at the title. He grinned. “Yes.” Huge three-dimensional holo diagrams appeared. “The Ship’s outer hull. A crack in the northwest quadrant upon landing. The Ship’s energy reserves: energy acceptable for planet-side, our stellar-solar radiation collectors in our skincells are at sixty percent efficiency, additional catalysts to repair them are needed. Ship’s weapons are depleted since rerouting to general maintenance. Ship’s communication system: acceptable. General maintenance includes testing of all lights at intervals . . .”

  Ruis swallowed and struggled to keep up with the information. He darted glances around, looking for papyrus and writestick to take notes, but saw nothing recognizable.

  Finally the ship ended its report. “The personal DaggerShip is ready for spaceflight, as is a glider for land transport.”

  Ruis’s jaw dropped. He had personal transportation other than his feet. He controlled the ship, its energy, its weapons. The idea sent tremors up his spine.

  Better than anything, he had knowledge. With the things this ship could teach him, he could become as mighty as any GreatLord. Even more.

  Power. Immense power, and all his. Energy. For anything he wanted to do.

  He was the Captain of Nuada’s Sword.

  Ailim struggled to keep her eyes open as dawn lightened the windows of her den. She sipped caff and concentrated on the numbers of the ledgersheet on her desk. The numbers in all the tiny rows blurred except the huge, red negative total.

  At least she had a new, substantial income to place in the “credit” column. Her judicial record had been reviewed and she’d been appointed the SupremeJudge of Druida. There were few telempathic judges, and she was the most powerfully Flaired.

  She’d hoped for the post. But she had doubted the appointment. Before her mother’s death, she would have been sure of her vocation and her world. But when she’d returned from her circuit rounds and discovered the Family’s financial mess, she’d been shaken. The problems demanded desperate measures and her utmost of effort. She couldn’t ignore the smallest detail or take the tiniest possibility of income for granted. She’d worried about whether she’d be named SupremeJudge.

  Ailim gazed at the golden pine walls and their paintings. She lost herself in the still-lifes of D’SilverFir symbols, wandering through the fir grove to a meadow of cowslips. She imagined the warm texture of a glowing stone huddled with eggs in a nest—the magical Quirin. Just sitting in the ancestral chair caused her grief to surge.

  When her Family problems crashed down and she’d realized she hadn’t the time or the luxury to grieve, she’d gone to a MindHealer who’d distanced the emotional storms. Little by little the grief worked itself out of a huge tangled knot into the small, even threads of memory and life.

  Ailim bent again to the figures, trying to make sense of them. She was expected at JudgmentGrove by Eighth Septhour chime as the new SupremeJudge. She’d already reviewed her cases. Those were understandable and interesting and resolvable. These numbers weren’t. She couldn’t do anything more to make them better. She gulped and put them in a drawer.

  Unfolding a papyrus, she frowned at the sketchy information, every official record about Ruis Elder before his trial. There was no mention of him as a child or a young man; no birth data or the report of a Flaired oracle that attended every noble birth. Nothing showed the man he had become—the fascinating man that she’d been drawn to in the hallway of the Guildhall.

  The new puppy-flap in the den door banged as Primrose hurled through to zoom under Ailim’s desk and land panting on her feet. Then the door slammed open and Uncle Pinwyd stalked in. He scanned the room with an angry scowl then dumped an armful of shoes—a single shoe of ten pairs, on her desk.

  “My ex-footwear wardrobe,” he said through clenched teeth. “The puppy chewed everything. I demand redress!”

  Red anger blasted from Pinwyd. Ailim rubbed her forehead. “I will obtain matching shoes for you.” How and with what funds, she didn’t know.

  “NOW!” he shouted.

  “I will take care of it promptly,” she said.

  “That miserable cur!” He kicked the desk, then swore.

  Bad man chases me! Primrose shot from under Ailim’s desk, zipping through Pinwyd’s ankles.

  He windmilled, then fell, yelling in fury.

  Ailim clapped hands over her ears and shut her eyes, erecting her strongest barriers. As a greatly Flaired person she could, and did, teleport her Uncle to his room. She didn’t care that most of her energy was drained. It was worth it to get him out of her presence. She massaged her aching temples.

  The scent of d
og pee permeated the air. Uh-oh. Sorry. Accident, whimpered Primrose from a corner.

  Ailim wondered if the Chinju area rug was ruined. She bit her bottom lip and stared at the puppy. Big brown eyes peered at her from an adoring, furry face. Accident. Yes. So sorry.

  Ailim’s anger drained. She stood and walked over to the dog, then picked her up. “Don’t do it again.” She pointed the pup to a thick pile of papyrus. “There are newsheets in every room. Run there if you think you’re going to have an accident.”

  Primrose hung her head, then peeked up from under heavy lashes. Love You.

  Sighing, Ailim petted Primrose. Ailim couldn’t do anything but return the little dog’s love. And nothing could make her give up her Fam now. The puppy wriggled happily against her and licked Ailim’s chin.

  “ResidenceLibrary, is the Chinju rug in the den spelled against puppy ‘accidents’?” Ailim asked.

  A soothing voice answered. “The Chinju rug of a lapwing and her eggs, woven for the den two hundred years ago, contains a simple cleaning spell. The words are ‘Dog Begone. ’ ”

  Ailim looked down at the damp rug. “Dog Begone!”

  The carpet dried before her eyes. Then the rug rippled in a wave. When it finished the colors showed brighter and a fresh scent of herbs hung in the air. Ailim frowned. How long had it been since the rug had undergone a complete cleaning? Just what was Aunt Menzie, the ostensible D’SilverFir housekeeper, who only had to activate the various household spells, doing to occupy her time?

  A rap came on her door. She turned with the puppy in the crook of her elbow. “Enter.”

  Cona swept in, garbed as usual in an exquisite and expensive robe. This one was of midnight chiff with sapphire embroidery.

  She sneered at Ailim and Primrose. “That Donax Reed’s a pest,” Cona hissed, pacing. “I spoke with him last night. He’s given me a pittance of an allowance. How am I to dress? Or to entertain? How am I to keep up appearances?”

  Ailim set her teeth and twisted her fingers in Primrose’s fur. “All Druida knows of our financial woes. The most we can do is hold our head high and work to solve our problems.”