Heartmate (40 page)

T'Ash grabbed his blaser and fired. Nothing. A tingle in his hand told him that the second boy of the triad, the Flaired one, lurked in the shadows and chanted a spell to negate blasers.

T'Ash drew his broadsword and waded in. Through slashes and cuts, clangs of sword against sword, he saw the difference between Tinne and the Downwinders. The Downwinders, some men, some boys, all held a bitter, destructive expression in their eyes. Their clothing was as tattered as their decency. They smelled with layers of dirt. Scruffs. Just like him.

Tinne flashed T'Ash a grin, a clean, honorable, well-dressed fighting GreatSir grin. A grin inspired by Passage.

A dying cat howled. Not Zanth.

The Holly hunting cat.

Tinne shuddered, his defense faltered. Then his face hardened in fury at the thought of his dying Fam. The additional anger fed his Passage. His hands blurred, too fast for T'Ash's eyes to follow.

A ululation of agony tore from the boy's throat, a denial of the truth, an emotional demand that his Fam be whole, even though he knew better. Then vengeance for the loved and lost friend rushed through him.

T'Ash fought with efficient precision.

They were winning.

Until Danith screamed.

T'Ash spun. Damn! Of course she'd respond to a dying animal. His worst fears crashed through him.

She stood in a circle of fire flaming higher than her. Blazing streamers arced above her, caging her, surrounding her. Flames from fireballs catapulted to the dry summer grass around her.

The second Flaired triad youth did this, tried to kill his HeartMate with firespells. T'Ash shouted with rage.

A sheet of flame obscured her from view, then subsided.

She stooped, threw rocks. Boys grunted. She held her hands palms out, chanting some small, useless self-defense spell.

Terror burst inside him. His opponent fell under his blade. T'Ash ran toward her.

Black fear and red fury darkened his vision. He fought them with every gram of strength. He could not go berserk now. He could not. Too dangerous for Danith.

He sent a knife winging to the young, Flaired boy with cat wounds on his face and pointed, glistened teeth at the rim of the circle. The youth fell, but the flames he'd set remained.

T'Ash screamed a battle cry.

He jumped through the fire, smelling the searing of his hair and flesh. He ignored the pain to sweep a circle with his sword, catching a man. The Downwinder crumpled.

Torrents of desperation, determination, anger merged into a blazing union. His past, present, and future clanged together in a whole.

They were outnumbered.

He must protect Danith.

T'Ash reached past his instincts honed by a Downwind boyhood. As his arm swung the sword automatically, he fought the inner battle—through his feral nature to face the deep-seated agony and despair he harbored from the murder of his Family, destruction of his House, and his own abandonment.

Sweat rolled down his body. He conquered the old emotions, the pain, the desperation, the frenzied wrath. With the mastery of the childhood fury, his wild berserker madness dissipated.

He backed a step and Danith's body glanced against his. Hot anger faded, replaced with cold calculation and an icy, pure will to triumph.

T'Ash said a Word. The flames vanished, leaving a black ring of grass and earth.

Boys ran from him toward Tinne. The last three men pressed their attack.

T'Ash fought.

A final, mental groan of the dying Holly Fam pierced T'Ash's mind.

Danith echoed the sound. She ran. To the Holly hunting cat. To Tinne. To the fight.

T'Ash swore and picked up his pace. Two men bolted, wounded. One fell.

T'Ash ran. The two glisten-braceletted boys hunched together, the healthy one supporting the wounded Flaired one. As he passed them the unhurt one jumped; only T'Ash's instincts kept him from being gutted. He kicked the knife from the boy's hand.

“Go, Nettle!” cried the fallen youth.

“Shade! No!” said the other, crouching, circling T'Ash.

“Go, Nettle. We kill later. Slower. By selves. Better.”

“Better,” repeated Nettle, baring his teeth at T'Ash, then bolted into the trees.

T'Ash joined Tinne. Five against one. Danith curled over a huddled shape, her hands spurting the green Flair of Healing in sheets of raw power. Zanth guarded, growling.

A man toppled at Tinne's feet.

Tinne grinned, pivoted, slashed at a new opponent.

T'Ash fought.

Two ran.

Two hit the ground with bleeding wounds.

Danith moaned.

T'Ash spun. She lay still over the cat. Blood trickled down her cheek from some cut she'd gotten before and he hadn't noticed.

Fury claimed him. T'Ash strode to the fallen boy with glisten teeth, Shade. The boy faded, trying to teleport, but his wounds made him too slow. T'Ash grabbed him, pressed one large hand on his thin chest, raised his blade.

“No!” Danith cried.

She struggled to sit and looked at him, pale from the loss of the energy she'd used Healing the cat, eyes huge and smudged in her face.

He lowered the blade to gently rest against the boy's throat. The Downwind youth glared with hate-filled eyes.

“No,” Danith repeated, her voice slurred. “The fight is won. Now it's time for Healing.”

Tinne straightened, his face as white as Danith's. He shook himself, looked around the scene of destruction. He swallowed. He staggered over to where Danith and the cat lay. Then his knees buckled. He reached out a hand and caressed the cat. “Ilexa?” His voice shook as he touched her side. “She took a blade, here.”

A tremor shook Danith. T'Ash wanted to go to her, but some subtle connection between the young Holly, her, and the cat held him in place, an outsider.

Danith smiled, a wondering, lovely smile T'Ash had never seen. It radiated joy. “I think she'll be fine. I think I Healed her.”

With a shaking hand, Tinne picked up Danith's limp one. He kissed her fingers. “My Fam. Anything you ask in my power is yours, D'Mallow.”

D'Mallow. Danith deserved the title. She was the epitome of a true Noble—mannered, honorable, generous, kind, responsible.

T'Ash only wore a noble's title. He'd been mean in his life, destructive, obsessed, and murderous in his vengeance against his Family's killers. He'd been dishonest with Danith, and manipulative.

She'd seen his feral nature. She'd seen him fight and kill.

Me hurt,
Zanth said.

T'Ash whipped around to see his Fam limping over to Danith. The cat collapsed beside her, the fat bulge of his side evident. He waved a paw in the air, a little too enthusiastically to be hurt much.

My paw cut. My ribs bruised. My ear gone,
he whined.

T'Ash looked at Zanth's ears. They were the same tattered folds as always. He wondered which ear Zanth thought was gone.

The boy beneath T'Ash's blade expelled his breath on a hissing moan.

“Send him to a Healer, T'Ash,” Danith said, looking at Zanth's paw. “Send all the wounded. You can afford it, and there's no reason to repeat the vicious cycle of killing.”

“No,” T'Ash said. She was right. The seed of an idea germinated in his mind. Downwind had to be improved, he'd said so for years. But he hadn't done anything further than attend some FirstFamilies Rituals that only superficially addressed the problems. Now he'd take action.

He studied the boy beneath his sword, one of a triad. Three bound together, nearly one mind, giving up individuality for the power of three. He wondered if the boy's mind could be healed as well as his physical hurts, if the youth's Flair could be developed and channeled for good.

T'Ash glanced at the others lying on the grassyard. Perhaps it was too late to turn the men into decent, productive people, but the remaining boys . . .

“No! What do you mean, no?” Danith scowled.

T'Ash put a foot on the boy's chest to keep him from trying to escape, and sheathed his broadsword. “No. There's no reason to repeat the vicious cycle of killing.”

Danith smiled once more, and T'Ash felt her approval, in his heart and lower, a reflexive response to his HeartMate. It felt good.

Tinne moaned, then toppled slowly sideways. T'Ash glanced from the Noble to the glisten-toothed Downwinder. T'Ash shuddered again at the obvious differences.

He cupped his hands in front of him, crafting a message to the AllClass HealingHall, telling them to care for the wounded and bill T'Ash. Then he attached the spun-light message globe to the youth's chest and teleported him away.

T'Ash strode over to Tinne. The boy breathed deeply, exhaustion showed on his features. His death-dueling Passage was over. Whatever Flair had been freed this night, the young Holly would use worthily and honorably. Envy stabbed T'Ash at Tinne's pleasant past and fine future.

“Holm!” T'Ash called with his mind.

“Here.” A misty viz of Holm Holly stood before him, looking worried.

“I have Tinne and his hunting cat. Tinne is tired but free of Passage. The cat had wounds, Healed by D'Mallow, but you should probably have a vet check them.” He cocked an eyebrow at Danith to see if she approved. She nodded.

“Thank the Lady and Lord! Mamá has been frantic. He just 'ported out and we couldn't locate him without his House Ring.” Holm expelled a breath.

“Focus on my position, and teleport them both.” T'Ash shooed Danith away, moved Tinne to lay beside his Fam, and curved the young man's arms around the hunting cat. “Ready,” T'Ash said.

Tinne and the cat disappeared.

The viz of Holm remained. His eyes narrowed and he craned his head as if to see through the night. “What do you have there? Bodies? There was a fight, and I wasn't invited? How many?”

T'Ash flicked his fingers. “Call ended.”

Silence and the night shrouded the T'Blackthorn estate.

Slowly T'Ash turned, drinking deep of the night air, summoning his strength to look at the other shapes on the ground, to discover whether they lived. He used some of the adrenalin energy racing through him to teleport the wounded to AllClass HealingHall.

Moments passed as he completed his task. Zanth hummed mentally in satisfaction at Danith's Healing and fussing. By the time T'Ash returned to them, Zanth sat upright with a smug cat-smile on his round face, and one folded ear now straight up.

T'Ash stared. “You Healed his ear.”

“Yes.”

“But only one.”

“The other wasn't hurt.”

“He looks odd.”

Zanth glared at him.
Food for feral cats. They wait in shadows.

T'Ash closed his eyes and heaved the half-hog from his Residence no-time to small moving shapes near the garden door.

Danith looked at Zanth, proudly sitting with one ear straight up. He swished his tail.
Life is good.

She sighed. “Sooner or later the other will be hurt again. Maybe then I can fix it.” Her gaze went beyond T'Ash to the still forms on the ground.

“Dead,” he said. “I can teleport them to the Downwind DeathGrove.” And one by one he teleported them away.

Her lips pressed together.

He crouched down. When he looked in her eyes, they appeared large with tears. Her expression was of a woman totally lost. His heart clenched.

Then she fell into his arms.

Darkness filled his vision. His knees gave out.

Passage took Danith.

He swore. Passage. Now. Her Flair was breaking completely free at last. She'd suffer both her second and third Passages together, and over a matter of hours, not days.

He grabbed her. Her skin felt chill against his palms, a very bad sign. She moaned. The convulsions began.

They were alone in a breached GrandHouse estate. The strength of the Passage would be deadly. Would they survive? Would only one survive? Terror ripped through him.

Blackness swept him away.

 
A million fingers of intense emotion plucked at her soul,
each one laced with the powerful Flair swirling through her, tinting memories with different aspects she'd never felt before.

She hadn't really remembered the sound of the speeding airship that had plunged into her little home, killing her parents and miraculously sparing her. She hadn't remembered the blistering heat or the shattering of brick. She'd suppressed it. She remembered now. In every detail.

She hadn't really remembered the dread of the towering, formidable strangers dressed in eye-hurting bright robes muttering things she didn't understand—her first contact with the Maidens of Saille. She remembered now.

She had forgotten the rough, urgent hands and body of a sweaty Timkin as he took her maidenhead. She had coated the memory with the love she'd felt. She experienced each harsh touch now.

All her memories battered at her, flashing through her too quickly for her to grab and master, as the Flair roared through her like an enormous fire. No wonder T'Ash feared fire.

The thought was swept away, all thought seared by the blaze within. She could not protect herself from the emotions, she could not grasp control of the Flair. She could only exist and suffer, and only for a short while.

A shield came. Strong and dark. Buffering her from the emotions. Holding her. T'Ash.

Some awful pain smashed both of them—when she was told she had no Flair. T'Ash grunted, her Flair resurged in flames around them, carried them away.

But they survived, together.

She closed her eyes. She felt safe.