“Through Our cameras, sonar and infrared, we have located the crew in the Greensward, immersed in her duties.”
“Hunting rodents.” Ruis went to the washroom and used the flowing water to wipe away dirt and blood, then changed into fresh clothes.
“We will take this opportunity to remind you of your anger-management program,” Ship said.
“I know, I know.” Ruis hit a button and an iris-door opened in the back wall of his study.
“Increasing levels of hard physical exertion . . .” recited the Ship as it had every few septhours.
Ruis grinned, shaking his head. “You mean tramping through the Greensward to locate the ninety missing maintenance robots.” He slid down a tube to the Greensward.
Ship’s voice followed him. “Alternating with intense mental concentration . . .”
Ruis landed lightly, but still shook the creaks from his bruised muscles. “. . . which means learning the intricacies of Earth nanoelectron tech and repairing the ’bots when I find them.” His gaze lingered on the wildly intertwined plants around him. A many-tentacled robot chugged past, clearing a path centimeter by centimeter. Ruis patted it.
Filling his lungs with the sweet atmosphere thick with humidity and scent, he looked around him and grinned. Lord and Lady, what a profit he could make from this natural Earth abundance! Many plants had not managed the transition to Celtan soil. Many others had mutated since. He wondered what he could charge for a genuine Earth lily, or original plants for which the FirstFamilies were named—Birch, Rowan, Alder, Willow—
“We are concerned about your mental health,” Ship continued.
Ruis snapped up straight, dragged from pleasant thoughts. He grabbed a machete and went off at an angle from the robot. Sweat coated him quickly. Increasing levels of physical exertion. He grunted. There were Healers that dealt with the mind. They couldn’t help him, though, their Flair didn’t work around him, and it wasn’t as if Ruis had an illness that could be cured. His Nullness was bred in his bones, never to be removed.
“Every time you return from Outside, your endorphins have spiked. We speculate that your anger is exacerbated when you are Outside.”
“So?”
“If you intend to continue visiting Outside, We must insist that you follow the psychological program precisely.”
Just that quickly fury slammed into Ruis. He strapped it down. Frustration and hurt that even here in the Ship, he was not to be left alone to be what he was.
Samba nipped at him.
“That’s a nice ‘greetyou,’ cat,” he growled.
She slapped her tail against his boots.
“I’m working on my temper. I will continue my morning role-playing exercises,” Ruis said between clenched teeth. “But here, on the Ship, I am Captain and I insist on a modicum of serenity. I will not allow nagging.”
“What will you do about Outside?” asked the Ship.
Ruis snorted. “I’m an outcast in my Society, a criminal, with a death warrant on my head if I’m found in Druida.” All the ills of his situation crashed down on him. He could never claim the Lady he wanted, the one he ached for.
The Ship emitted high-pitched noises that resonated through his bones. Samba flattened her ears and shot into dense bushes.
“Stop!” The noise ended, but his ears still rang.
“Captain, We are gathering information about your situation, and tabulating it to postulate additional hypotheses and options for the psych program. With the synapsis connections you recently reconstructed we can access Our old contact with the main Library as well as other archives.”
“Other archives?” Did that mean the ship had now had access to Family ResidenceLibraries? Incredible.
There was a whir, then the Ship spoke again. “We request that when you are Outside you wear a communicator-throat band in the future so that you may contact Us and We may keep track of your location.”
“Maybe.”
Another whir. “The throat band can be modified to appear like the Celtan jewelry called torques. You will find several new bands in the Captain’s quarters.”
“I’ll consider it.” It could be useful if he was abroad and wanted information from the Ship.
A small maintenance robot came clanking up, Samba followed, sniffing at it.
“PEEP!” it announced itself, clinked, gestured with three flailing tentacles at the heap it had dragged behind it. Another broken garden robot.
Samba swatted the ’bot. It rolled away. Ruis surveyed the broken thing before him that Samba was nosing. “Ship, I suppose you want me to fix this.”
“We would appreciate it. We cannot maintain the Greensward without them. We have catalogued new plant species, and kept records on others, but it is not a complete listing. Our information is deficient.” Something the Ship apparently considered appalling verging on inconceivable.
“Very well.”
Samba came back and climbed into the breached interior. His job wouldn’t be made any easier by removing cat hair. Ruis bent and picked the whole thing up, grunting, until it was chest-high.
Samba, now being carried, sat upright like a queen and increased her purring.
“We also wish to caution you to be extremely careful Outside. We have determined that you are Our best hope for future refurbishment and survival.
“The scholarly Family of Astragalus, who previously studied Us, expired four generations ago. Celtan culture is focused on the future, still exploring and colonizing the planet.” In any other being, Ruis would have called the tone a pitiful plea. “No other Celtans have expressed any interest in Us,” Ship ended, almost in a whimper. “We do not wish to see you harmed.”
Samba swiped a rough tongue under his chin in agreement.
Ruis was touched. He needed the Ship, but not, it seemed, more than the Ship needed him. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, walking back to his portal.
Weariness fell upon him. The night’s experiences had been incredibly interesting. He’d saved and kissed a Lady. He’d returned to FirstGrove and felt a small tendril of rare connection with his home world. But most incredible of all, he hadn’t had any upsurges of blinding anger. Despite the danger, Ailim D’SilverFir tempted him. She was good for him. He would not give her up.
The small canvas tent attached to the large Celebration tent was blessedly silent. Ailim let every muscle of her body loosen for the first time in days. Finally alone. Ever since the night an eightday ago when she came in late with no explanation, one of the Family members she lived with was constantly with her—or watching. Except when she slept. But her days had been longer and longer and her nights so short she stumbled to her bedsponge and fell asleep as soon as she touched the soft permamoss. She hadn’t even managed to meditate in the HouseHeart. Ruis Elder had hung on the edge of her senses, but not approached. Only Primrose had given any comfort.
At least when the outlying SilverFirs trickled into Druida and the Residence for the loyalty ceremony, she had different faces around her—and some genuinely interested and interesting people to talk with. The resentful relatives had been diluted remarkably with those approving of her and her leadership. It lessened her burdens.
Now she was alone, aching with the sheer relief of being solitary. She grinned. No one would bother her here in the meditation tent where she was to keep vigil in the septhours between midnight and full morning. If she knew her fellow nobles, and she did, they would all be considering the impression they would be making on each other and the commoners in the event of the season—her loyalty ritual, followed by formal acknowledgment of her status in the FirstFamilies Council. Both had been scheduled to take place the day of the Autumnal Equinox. The public ritual of Mabon would flow into the annual citywide festivals, parties, and harvest bonfires.
Ailim flopped back on a stack of thick chinju rugs, as soft as a bed. With a spellword, she set her hair free from tight braids and bared her feet.
A slight rustle was the only warning she had bef
ore her Flair failed. She opened her eyes and squinted but just saw a moving shadow darker than the rest. The spell-lit candles had died. The drifting tendrils of smoke filled the tent with rich amber fragrance.
“Ruis?” she breathed his name.
“Here.” The blackest shadow moved, something clicked, and a tiny flame illuminated his elegant hand as he touched fire to several of the candles. She saw a gleam of metal cradled in his fingers.
“What’s that?”
He smiled, and her heart thumped harder. She wondered how often he smiled so, and who had ever seen it.
“It’s called a ‘lighter.’ You don’t want to know where I got it.” He shrugged out of a cloak and she blinked. Suddenly she could see him better, dressed in a tunic and trous of an odd cut. He folded the eye-confusing cloak and set it aside.
She shut her mouth against curious questions and felt oppressed because of queries that never could be asked or answered. She wanted to warn him, but those words, too, stayed in her throat. He knew the danger of staying in the city and seeing her. Yet he came anyway. “I missed you.”
“I was near.”
“I know. I can feel your—absence—at the fringe of my mind.” Again she felt impelled to mention the danger. Again she refrained.
He nodded. “My Null field. I’m honored you thought of me—maybe even sought me with your Flair.”
She didn’t tell him how often she had probed for him, and how comforting it felt when she found a suspicious blankness.
“I wanted to see you again. To talk,” he finally said, then hesitated, “to ease your day with a massage, perhaps.”
“I would have liked that.” Ailim scooted back to lean against huge pillows set around the edges of the tent. The body-sized cushions were also chinju, brighter in color but softer and lighter of weave.
Ruis sat opposite her, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. His boots were as black as ever, but the old gouges still showed in the furrabeast leather. No polish shone—to keep him safe, Ailim knew. Lady and Lord, keep him safe. His trous and tunic were black, too.
She stared at him, and he returned the examination. She knew she searched for all the small indications of difference in him since they had last met, and thought that he might be doing the same. Ailim sighed. He looked relaxed and at ease, more carefree than the last time she’d seen him. The fine lines in his face seemed gone, and she knew it wasn’t simply the dim light. He had changed for the better. She was sure she hadn’t.
“You look tired,” he said.
She shrugged and smiled wryly. “This Loyalty Ceremony has had the household in an uproar, getting ready for a large gathering of all branches of the Family.”
He glanced away. “I wouldn’t know.”
She searched for some other topic, but he spoke first, softly, gazing at her from those intense eyes. “And how do you find my Nullness tonight, D’SilverFir? Interesting? Wonderful? Terrible?”
She blinked, and became aware of the soft night noises outside the tent, the steady, loping tread of one of the D’SilverFir guardsmen who had arrived from a frontier estate that so trained their sons. There was a chirp or two from night birds and the rhythmic rasping of crickets. Beyond that, there was silence that held expectation of a busy day once Bel rose.
Breathing deeply, she inhaled the fragrance of amber and pine and even a faint tantalizing scent of man and most especially, Ruis.
But she could not take her eyes from him—his noble features and the clean, muscular lines of his body. And though she had no Flair to sense his thoughts or feelings, the atmosphere between them thickened with unspoken emotions. She tried to recall what he’d asked her and tore her gaze away from him. She had to think instead of feeling the heat of his body radiating desire and stirring her own yearnings. Cravings that seemed so futile, yet so limitless.
What had he asked? She didn’t remember.
His voice broke her thoughts, and this time it lilted with male satisfaction, as though she’d already given him his answer. “How do you find my Nullness tonight, D’SilverFir? Interesting? Wonderful? Terrible?”
Ailim let her eyes go back to where they wanted to rest, on Ruis Elder. “I asked you to call me Ailim.”
“And you called my name when I entered. Say it again.”
“Ruis.”
He closed his eyes. His chest rose in a deep breath and shuddered out. “That sounds so wonderful it’s terrible. Terrifying.”
Her throat closed and she could only nod. But he couldn’t see, and she couldn’t speak to him mind-to-mind, so she forced the words out. “Our plight is scary, but I want to continue.”
Bright brown eyes pinned her. “I waited in the Grove every day for your followers to leave. But they didn’t. I wanted to massage you again. Touch you.” His eyes gleamed flames in the candlelight. Then he shook his head. “That strange Family of yours hedges you around. You’re never out of their sight. You have small time alone, no wonder you are so self-conscious.”
She hadn’t been until he’d said it. Now she could feel her shift tangled around her, exposing her legs to his view. His gaze slid over her millimeter by millimeter, from her toes up to her wild hair. Her nipples hardened at the desire in his eyes, the flaring of his nostrils. He’d sparked a pooling fire in her lower body as expertly as he’d lit the candles. Her breathing quickened and his gaze went from the shadowy apex of her thighs back to her breasts.
He knelt beside her and his unforgotten scent wafted to her, bringing memories of comfort, of his lips on hers, of his hands on her. She trembled, but did not move, waiting, wondering with exquisite blindness of Flair what he felt, what he thought. What he would do next.
His face had tautened, his lips thinned. The low light burnished the red in his mahogany hair to copper. She heard his ragged breath. Ruis touched the center tab groove of her shift. With one long stroke he separated the material.
Ailim could barely keep still, she wanted to fling herself at him, wrap her arms and legs around him, please them both with rocketing pleasure. The very thought shocked her, but didn’t stop the daring images from flashing through her mind.
Yet something stopped her from acting on impulse. Something she hadn’t felt in a long, long time—sexual anticipation.
The yearning in his eyes made her want to extend the pleasurable tension. His mouth had softened and his expression held more than lust. Need marked his features. Need for intimacy.
Without Flair, without words, she knew that this passion that spun between them had little to do with healthy sexual drives and everything to do with how they valued each other.
The moment stretched until she felt herself arching toward him, offering herself, everything she was. She could not wrench her stare from his.
She’d never felt so aroused. Her senses, so overwhelmed by inrushing sensation, narrowed to the visual. Sight. The sight of his long fingers gently peeling back the two panels of her shift to expose her to his probing gaze. A small moan whispered from her lips, and he looked into her eyes. His hands stopped.
“Don’t stop.” Hadn’t she said that before? Again and again before? She knew she’d say it again and again and again in the future.
He smiled once more, tenderness touching his mouth as he smoothed her shift on either side of her body. His fingers trailed heat to the side of her breasts, the inner curve of her waist, the sensitive flesh of her thighs, and all the way down touching her knees, feathering against her feet.
“Lady,” he said thickly, then touched the peaks of her breasts. Her body undulated. He gasped, pulled his fingers from her, then firmed his jaw and set his hand on her stomach, his thumb close, so close to where she wanted to be touched. “Ailim,” he said.
She wet her lips. She should have felt vulnerable, but instead felt cherished. He stared at her as if she were a prize he’d always sought and never hoped to obtain. His mouth touched hers. Convulsively she entwined her arms and legs around him, seeking to align the most needy part
of her against his sex. He withdrew his hand from between them, and when she shifted, she was where she wanted, her woman’s flesh cradling the thick, long ridge that she craved. She moaned again.
He chuckled, but did not move. His lips dipped to her neck, her shoulder. His tongue flickered against her skin. “So rich and sweet,” he muttered. The edge of his teeth scraped her, bolts of fire arced through her.
“Come to me,” she said, amazed at the need for this particular man.
His hands tunneled through her hair, separating strands still twisted together and the tingling sensation shivered through her and she gasped. Thought spun away.
Rough-padded fingers brushed over her ears, traced her jaw, then framed her face. His lips touched hers, tongue questing and she opened her mouth eagerly. When she sucked on his tongue they both moaned in pleasure. The taste of him speared through her. Heated fire flickered on the inside of her eyelids. Her breath was ragged, her hunger avaricious.
His long-fingered elegant hands slid to her back, between her and the shift, again the callouses roused sparking excitement until she was a mass of unsatisfied need.
He enveloped her . . . the scent of spice and man, his warmth, the sound of his quick breath. Blind with pleasure and seeking tactile sensation, she flexed her hands against his back enjoying the firmness of muscle, learning the wedge shape of his back. She curled her arms around him touching the nape of his neck and laughing lowly as he shuddered. She petted him there, playing with wisps of hair.
His large palm found the roundness of her bottom, and she quivered, then gasped as he pressed her closer and the strange texture of his trous teased her. Now his tongue roved through her mouth, claiming her taste, knowing that portion of her thoroughly, intimately.
“You! Guard!” Aunt Menzie’s high voice from outside the tent whipped against her ears, striking her like lashes on tender flesh.
Nine
The sensual moment of loving disintegrated. Ruis whisked Ailim’s shift together with a fast jerk. He retreated to the darkest corner of the tent, but not before Ailim noticed his hands shook.
Heart Thief Page 15
