Her gaze had fastened on the wound in his arm.
“Drink this. I'll get flexiclosure tape.”
T'Ash took the tumbler, watched as she chose a wide band, and inwardly winced; it would be hell going on and ripping off. Maybe he'd get a Healer to dissolve it tomorrow. He drank the medicine down. It tasted of sweet, pleasant herbs. He stared at the glass. It must be a natural outshoot of her Flair, to make medicine good-tasting. Everything he'd put in the medicine box had been bitter and astringent.
The painease took the edge off his torment. Now he would be able to enjoy her hands touching him.
When she sat on the permamoss bed again, he took the tape from her and tossed it next to him. Then, he put the tumbler aside and closed his hands over hers, placing her palms on his wound. Together they recited the simple Healing couplet that every child knew. T'Ash boosted her natural Flair for Healing and felt the heat of the injury closing and knitting together.
They were both panting at the end. She pulled away and picked up the flexiclosure tape. Firmly, efficiently, rapidly, she wrapped the bandage around his biceps. Again they chanted the spell. He sighed. Over all too soon.
FAMily,
Zanth called.
“Here,” said T'Ash.
“Here,” said Danith.
Small person-door in corner wall broken. Good thicket for hiding. Alley to Downwind.
“Damn,” T'Ash said. “Can you guard it?”
Not by Self. Other Fam roams this night. Hunting Cat, Fam of Tinne Holly. Some Downwind ferals will fight for food.
“How much food?”
Quarter furra beast and innards.
T'Ash sent his mind to his Residence and scanned the large no-time larder. “We don't have that. We have half a hog.”
Done!
“Do you need anything else?” T'Ash asked.
No. We sit. Wait. Where's My gem?
“It's still by the fountain.”
Gem very expensive.
“I've seen to its security. It can't be stolen.”
You best with stones. But you using lots Flair.
“I'm fine.”
Zanth gave a mental snort.
Holly Cat comes.
Danith looked worried again. “How is your energy level?”
“I'm fine.”
She scowled at him, then shook a finger.
He smiled, liking her fussing. Professional Healers had never fussed over him. “I've enough to do what needs to be done, tonight. It would be easier on us all if we stayed here. Scruffs still roam the streets, and strong shieldspells guard the gardenshed. I want to ensure that T'Blackthorn Residence stands in the morning.”
Danith nodded. “All right.”
He suppressed a jubilant grin. Danith, sleeping in his arms all night, would be both a delight and a torment for him.
The draught, the emotion of the day, and the energy he'd spent made his eyelids heavy. Finally he dozed off.
Danith watched T'Ash sleep. Her heart tightened at seeing him hurt. She must admit it to herself. She was falling in love with him, with his strength she could always count on.
Even his intensity didn't matter very much anymore.
She'd been utterly useless in the fight, unable to help T'Ash or Zanth, unable to run. That she couldn't run scared her more than anything else, showed her more than anything else that she was changing. Who knew what other new developments lay ahead?
She considered T'Ash's previous offer to take her to T'Ash Residence. And show her the MistrysSuite. Obviously he was envisioning her staying there, with him. That was impossible. Living with T'Ash would be wrong. He, and his friends, the FirstFamilies Council, would have expectations about her responsibilities and duties. Much of her life would be taken up with a reflection of his, and if she became a GreatLady, would she even know Danith Mallow? Would she ever know what D'Mallow, Head of a GrandHouse could have ever been?
Her past in the Saille House for Orphans had forced rules and regulations upon her. A future as a GreatLady would do the same. These few years she'd been on her own, able to make decisions based only upon herself, would vanish in her memory as if a dream.
T'Ash moaned and she placed her hands over his wounds. They felt no warmer than the rest of the man, and beneath his bandages, she sensed they healed.
T'Ash opened his eyes. His fingertips came up to stroke her cheek. A thumb swept an errant tear from under her eye. “You worry.”
She smiled crookedly. “I was useless back there.”
“You should not be subjected to fighting. It's not decent. And you weren't useless.” His hand dropped to her ankle, his voice sounded slurred from the medicine, his eyelids closed. “You were there. For me to protect. If you hadn't been there, I would have . . .”
Curiosity stirred. He was sincere, but what was he talking about? “You would have what?”
His lashes lifted and Danith saw sharp awareness, then concentration as if he were thinking back to what he'd said. “If you hadn't been here, Zanth and I probably would have killed them all, instead of three. That's not good, they were just boys. Must do something. . . .” His fingers relaxed around her ankle, and his breathing took on the cadence of deep sleep.
His words shook her to the core. Twice tonight the man had revealed portions of himself. And while she welcomed the fact that he was opening up to her about his past, it made her wonder all the more who he was, and who he'd been.
A wariness had surrounded him at times tonight, as if he was afraid that she'd run from him if he were honest with her about his past. No doubt he'd wish those words about killing unsaid when he woke.
She nibbled at her bottom lip and glanced at him again. Scars showed on his torso, scars that other men she'd seen shirtless didn't have. Not Claif, Pink or Mel Clover, or even Timkin. Timkin's scars had been internal. Danith grimaced. She sensed T'Ash's inner scars might even be more formidable than the ones marking his body.
At least she could figure out which painful topic she'd poked at a few nights ago, and not do it again. She might even learn a little more about this man who claimed her as his own from his equally scarred Fam.
“Zanth?” Danith kept her voice low but called loudly with her mind.
Me hear.
Danith cleared her throat, as if it would do any good in mind-to-mind communication. Her first telepathic conversation. How easy would it be? How draining would it be? How much could Zanth actually hear, just her words or emotions, too? Would he perceive her physical sensations?
“Zanth, a couple of nights ago, when we faced that gang, I said something that made the situation worse. What was it?”
She heard the humming of his cat mind, it seemed to dart here and there, then click.
Rue,
Zanth said.
Only a little hurt in her head came with the word. She'd need to learn how to converse with Fams without any hurt at all.
Never say rue.
Danith nodded, then realized she needed to answer with her mind. “I won't.”
You hear Me.
“Yes.”
T'Ash not hear. Only You.
He sounded satisfied that he'd been able to selectively aim his thoughts.
“T'Ash is sleeping.”
Me can talk to only you anyway. Me know how.
“Why can't I say rue?”
Zanth's mind hummed again.
Rue killed Family.
The Fam went silent and Danith knew he was finished talking. His thoughts became cat-sensings of movement and sound. Now was not the time to find more out about T'Ash.
So, she'd made a dreadful mistake, but plant and herbal sayings were commonplace and loved.
She curled within the curve of T'Ash's large, muscular body. His arm settled around her and drew her close. She closed her eyes, and ignoring the multicolored flashes of the day's memories on her eyelids, she fell asleep.
Â
T'Ash jerked himself from the nightmare. A new, unu
sual horror, not the old one of the fire. His telling Danith about that awful time seemed to have made it less hurtful. Now he wasn't the only one to know his lingering hurt at his mother's choice.
Scenes of the fire and the aftermath had flashed during the Passage they experienced together. She'd have seen them, felt them, and would remember them. And if not now, someday. He knew that from when he and Holm experienced Passage together. The two boys hadn't been as close as Danith and he, physically or mentally, but their memories still bled over from one to another. Holm, too, knew of the fire. And Zanth. And none of them had betrayed him. It was past.
He was delaying thinking about the new nightmare. He shuddered, needing water. The painease and fear had dried his mouth and dampened his body with sweat.
He slipped from the bed, pulled the cover up over Danith and stood looking at her for a while. He could think of Danith instead of the nightmare. She haunted his thoughts. Thoughts of her were more wonderful than anything else in his life, past or present.
T'Ash went over to the sink and gulped the cool water in the pitcher, letting droplets splash in his face and trail down his neck and chest.
The slices on his arm and chest stung, both from movement and from the cold water. And that brought him back to the dreadful dream.
In the nightmare he stood, knife in hand, filled with feral rage, staring at an Uptown man who shielded a pretty woman. When T'Ash looked at the woman, his body hardened with fierce, vicious lust.
He'd been a Downwind scruff, not his lady's protector. He'd been the one who wanted to thrust into her, with his body and then with his knife. He had no morals, no qualms, no compassion, no shred of decency.
Hot, destructive fury had blazed through his veins, and he wanted to hurt, hurt, hurt. And he knew he could win. He had the Flair and the skill, and the Downwind streetsmarts to kill the man and take the woman to play with.
He strutted before his gang, men that would obey his slightest wish, because he was meaner and tougher and bigger than any of the rest.
T'Ash shuddered and shuddered again. He could have been that boy, all too easily. If he hadn't clung to the memories of his Family, the teachings of his FatherSire, Father, and Mother, precepts set out in the history book he'd saved. If he hadn't been determined to avenge the deaths of his loved ones. If he hadn't dedicated himself to reclaiming his heritage and carrying on the T'Ash name.
Even so, a kernel of Downwind still lurked inside him. He went berserk when he fought, became wild and uncivilized, and was no better than the young scruffs who'd faced him that night. At least he hadn't become a member of a triad, brothers and more to two others as wild as he, joined mentally and emotionally into an entity that embodied and magnified the worst characteristics of all three. Perhaps he had managed to hang on to some scrap of honor.
He had a minimum of manners, no courtship knowledge, no optimism or ideals. Nothing to offer Danith, the lady he wanted so desperatelyâthe woman who embodied his future and the future of his line.
The sweat and droplets of water chilled on his skin, as cold as the fear that he'd never be able to win her, and that she would escape his grasp. He'd face the lonely, gray future he'd seen during his Passage alone.
Danith brought color and vividness to his life. She brought hope and delight. She brought innocence, a freshness that made him feel renewed, as if he could finally shuck the dreadful tendrils of the past and learn to live as a normal man.
Except the dream haunted him, reminding him he was nothing in his childhood. Except he berserked when he fought. How would he get beyond both? How could he hide them until he could bring a good man to her?
He would bury his doubts and flaws so deep, she would not find them until they HeartBonded. Surely he could play the Noble GreatLord until then. He would only reveal himself to her after they were wed.
FAMILY!
Zanth's shriek rattled the glass in the windows.
T'Ash whirled to the door. Danith jackknifed up on the bed. He darted a glance to her; she looked mussed and confused.
“We hear,” he said.
COME! Tinne Holly here. Came for Fam. Passage. Death duels. Scruffs followed. Gang of young toms here. Two Glisten Teeth come.
Foreboding chilled T'Ash's spine. He envisioned the whole horrific scenario. The young man, calling for his Fam, leading the Downwind toughs that fought with him to the T'Blackthorn estate. Being joined by the still hurting and enraged two remaining boys of the triad. By now they must have rested, also.
Tinne would be fighting in the exaltation of Passage, but slowing. Other youths would be circling around him, waiting for the kill.
T'Ash felt a surge of emotion from Tinne. Only combat occupied the boy's mind, the next thrust, parry. Killsâthe boy had seven kills this eveningâDownwinders who'd attacked what they saw as an easy mark.
“Stay here!” T'Ash ordered Danith, and plunged from the gardenshed. He ran to the gate, faster than he'd run in years, too upset to 'port.
The scene looked both better and worse than he imagined. Tinne held off the Downwinders, a mixture of men and boys, his emptied blaser cast aside. He fought with broadsword and main gauche. There were too many Downwinders. Tinne's death was merely a matter of time.
Zanth and the hunting cat attacked an opponent together. Brought him down. Claws slashed. A man died.
Tinne's blades flashed in the twinmoons' light. A detached portion of T'Ash noted the bespelled aura around the main gauche, giving extra protection, more skill to the boy. Good.