Heart Thief (3 page)

“There is no reason to go over old ground,” Ailim said, knowing it was futile, that Menzie would yammer at her during the entire drive.

“You—”

“Silence. I need to compose my thoughts.” With a wave of her hand she thickened the shield between them until no sound came through. Menzie squawked in outrage, but Ailim didn't hear.

Menzie's mouth moved faster and faster. Ailim turned to the passing city scenery. Autumn foliage melded into a vivid blur that both comforted and hurt. Hurt because this was the first fall her Mother and Mothersire would not see, but comforted by the brilliant colors of her favorite season. It was a blessing that autumn could lift her spirits.

Another blessing, Ab and Menzie wouldn't be allowed to attend the FirstFamilies Council meeting. Her relatives intended to wait for her. She longed to wash her hands of the Family and all its responsibilities, but that would bring a chaos of infighting amongst the others that would destroy it.

So Ailim had bespelled the glider to return to the Residence as soon as she stepped from the vehicle. She'd face the consequences of that later.

The vehicle stopped. G'Uncle Ab made no move to exit and help her disembark. Ailim scrambled out and said the Word that sent the conveyance away. She shouldn't have enjoyed Ab and Menzie's startled faces as they were whisked away, but she did.

Ailim stood before the doors of the Guildhall and sent her mind out to brush against others for observers, but dusk shadowed an empty CityCenter. She relaxed a little, pulled a delicate handkerchief from the inner pocket of one wide robe sleeve, and wiped her damp palms.

She set her shoulders and forced gray exhaustion from her mind. She had to consciously lift each foot to walk. Her feet wanted to drag, her eyes to shut. And she desperately wished to escape into the oblivion of sleep. All eightday she'd worked around the clock, fueling herself with StayAwake.

The Family had decided she'd go to the FirstFamilies Council and request a loan—in her mind, to beg. The twenty-five Families who'd descended from the colonists who funded the journey from Earth were still the most powerful in fortune and Flair. They'd judge her. She, who had only been the head of the Family for little more than a month and who had not yet formally been accepted into the Council as D'SilverFir, would make her first appearance as a supplicant.

She didn't want to beg.

She was going to do it anyway. Ask the Council for a long-term loan at an absurdly low interest rate. The whole business left a bitter taste in her mouth.

To fail the Family would be to fail all her predecessors who had struggled to keep the Family together for four hundred years, and even before—to deny the colonists their great sacrifice in leaving their home planet. Ailim would not be the one who shirked her duty and allowed the Family to founder.

She stared at the large brass embossed doors and muttered the opening Words. The doors did not swing apart. Odd. She blinked—perhaps she'd misremembered the code, but at least the doors should be keyed to her touch. Sighing, reaching out with her mind again to check if she was still unobserved, she pushed against one door with all her weight, making sure her robe didn't touch the door coated with the day's dust.

Slowly the big door swung open and she entered the hushed silence of the Guildhall atrium. The quiet felt uncanny, as if all the myriad spells were stilled, and all the magical-technological machines were dead. She shivered and walked through the glass-domed antechamber and into the sky-lighted corridor, then turned left to the CouncilChamber and stopped.

Someone else sat—lounged—on the carved celtawood bench outside the rich Earthoakwood doors. Across the wide hall from him, in a tipped back chair, a guardsman snored.

At the sight of the handsome man on the bench, she summoned the last dregs of her energy to try and act like her normal self. How she wished she had his audacity, even though it was obvious that he, too, was a petitioner to see the FirstFamilies Council.

His long legs stretched well into the hallway, clothed in fine furrabeast leather breeches and black boots. His flamboyant red shirt with its bloused sleeves and tiny intricate embroidery on the cuffs that showed his Family made a bold statement Ailim wished she could follow. She smiled.

“Merry meet,” she offered the formal greeting.

The man's red-brown head jerked up, and Ailim realized he hadn't heard her approach. She smiled again, in apology for startling him. “I see we are the two matters that the FirstFamilies Council will consider tonight. I'm to be seen after you, I believe. I am here to beg.” She felt a dull horror at such revealing words. She'd just opened her mouth and they'd emerged, without thought. But then she wasn't thinking much, with her brain clouded by fatigue. And there was something about him that innately appealed to her.

She lifted heavy eyelids to study him. His aristocratic features showed generations of noble breeding. His body was strong and well-formed, his chestnut hair wavy, and his deep brown eyes attractive. Yet it wasn't his appearance that so drew her.

Nor was it his casual manner that she sensed overlaid a naturally energetic individual. It was something else.

She couldn't quite determine the quality that pleased her.

He stood with a small clinking sound and she glanced at his boots, but no spurs gleamed in the dim light. His bow was graceful and elegant. He smiled, and a deep dimple showed in his left cheek. His brown eyes sparkled.

She felt her heart pick up pace. The sensations were new and unusual. And enjoyable enough to be dangerous to her peace of mind.

Peace of mind.
That
was what he gave her. Just being in his presence was soothing. No intrusion of his thoughts or his emotions impinged on her awareness.

A staggering thought.

Ailim faltered to the bench, sat, and slipped, prevented from falling off the polished wood by one strong, calloused hand.

“Thank you,” she whispered, knowing she flushed.

He gave another half-bow and sat beside her. Again a metallic chinking came. She looked around, but saw nothing to explain the sound.

“Begging is wretched,” he said, finally responding to her earlier comment. “I grew out of begging early. I'll never beg for anything from anyone again.”

Her lips compressed. She hardly believed she'd told him. But she hated what she'd have to do for her Family. “Unfortunately this is my first experience. At least it's just the FirstFamilies Council and not the whole NobleCouncil.”

He shrugged. “I don't care who hears my story.”

She sighed. “Family business?”

The bitterness of his expression outdid her own. “Oh, yes.”

Interested and curious, she moved closer to him, closer than she meant to when she realized their thighs touched. She started to shift away when his hand grasped her arm.

“Please. Stay,” he said.

The stillness of the building and of the man himself lulled her. She fought to keep her eyes open. She would be able to sleep after the meeting, she told herself. Her gaze stopped on his fine hand that rested on her arm. She could sense his vitality, and wondered why she kept thinking of him as peaceful.

She dragged her thoughts back to the topic. “Families.” She sighed again. “There are no more troublesome problems than those of Family.
They
made me come. To beg.” She didn't like the petulance in her voice, but she couldn't seem to hide her emotions from this man.

“Oh, did they?” He glanced at the bright gold embroidery around her sleeves. “D'SilverFir,” he mocked gently.

And it was that tone that won her. A sympathetic note in his voice that still poked fun at both her status and his own. She looked to his cuffs, but couldn't make out his embroidered rank and name in the low light.

“You're the Judge, aren't you? Why aren't you in the CouncilChamber with them?” He nodded to the ornate doors.

She managed to sit up straight but it took most of her energy. “I've only been D'SilverFir a month and a half. I haven't gone through the Loyalty Ritual with the Family or been confirmed and accepted by the Councils, yet.”

“Ah. I heard of your loss and that you'd returned, but I've been occupied and didn't know the rest. My—condolences? Or congratulations?”

“Thank you for your sympathy.” Unwanted fatigue crept over her, the long hours without sleep catching up to her. The potency of the StayAwake spellpill had diminished. “You don't think the head of a FirstFamily House has problems? I've been working for weeks to save my Family.”

“The head of my House never acted as if he had problems. He removed all obstacles, including myself, quickly and efficiently. Some Families don't deserve to be saved.”

His soft voice held anger. She wanted to comfort him, to find his difficulty and solve it, as she solved all the problems brought to her as a judge. So tired that words were beyond her, she could only pat his shoulder in support. Her eyes closed.

She felt an ease with the man that she'd never felt with anyone before, a complete lack of pressure from any of his thoughts and emotions ruffling her energy field. He must have an incredible natural inner shield.

The fact she couldn't read
anything
from him should have been frightening, but instead the silence was blessed. A peace and a privacy that she'd never known enveloped her like the softest cloak. She relaxed her own shields, both the instinctive ones and those built with experienced care. And as she loosened her mind's defenses, her body drooped. She found herself breathing deeply, sliding into sleep, resting against the man.

She jerked awake. “My apologies,” Ailim muttered. Yet she'd never been so unself-conscious before.

He chuckled and his strong arm curved around her and pulled her to him. “As long as you don't mind your elegant dress brushing against my simple attire.”

She sniffed. “My best begging clothes. I wish I could wear a bold red like you and tell them I had no need. You look like you'll stand in front of them and
demand
.”

“I wish it were so. But I can stand in front of them and not care about their decision.”

“Lucky you.” His warmth encompassed her, adding to her serenity.

For the first time in her life, her physical senses were free from her mental telempathy. She'd never been aware of the scent of a man. Her nose twitched in appreciation of a spicy fragrance. There also came a hint of another aroma she didn't consciously recognize but which raised echoing genetic memories of metallic ships and the deepness of space. Surely no man would ever smell so good as this one. This incredible one.

Beneath her cheek the silkeen of his shirt and the firm muscles of his body felt warm. She appreciated the catch of his breath, liked hearing the strong and steady thumping of his heart. How wonderful. She couldn't remember having enough quiet to hear her own heartbeat, let alone another's.

“Nice,” she said.

“What?”

“You're nice.”

His laugh followed her into the darkness of sleep.

Marching footsteps woke her. Her companion set her from him with that odd clinking sound.

Heat suffused Ailim. “Forgive me.” Her voice emerged strangled and husky.

“I'm glad to be of service.” His eyes held a softness that hadn't been evident before.

He stood as the guard across from them woke and four other guardsmen marched in from an opposite door. A pair took position on either side of him.

Ailim blinked, trying to gather sleep-hazed thoughts. “What's going on here?”

A Petty guardsman inflated his chest. “Judgment of the Null, Ruis Elder.”

“Null?” She tried to cope with the idea. It made no sense. Instinctively she looked to her companion. She licked her dry lips and tried out his name. “Ruis?”

“Yes.” His smile mocked both Ailim and himself. “A Null is not an appreciated creature, but I'll wager that's why you felt so peaceful in my company.”

The guard's word stuck in her mind. “Judgment?” Dread uncoiled within her. She, better than anyone in the hall, knew about judgment.

He shrugged. “You won't see me again. By tomorrow I'll be either banished or dead.” When he bowed, the hidden chain tying his outside wrist to the wall and between his feet clinked.

She hadn't noticed the manacles. The black cuffs blended in with his boots, and he'd had enough inherent grace to manage to bow. Twice. Ancient chains to bind him, a Null. Her mind processed everything at triple slow speed. Of course, her StayAwake spell and pill would have failed around him.

“Now the FirstFamilies will decide my fate,” Ruis said.

No hope, then, that she could do anything to put this right. Too late. Once again too late to stop disaster. She rose and dipped a curtsy. “My thanks for your companionship.”

He stood proudly, ignoring the guards snapping the chain from the wall to his other wrist. “I'd be glad to place myself at your service, but all the spells of your Residence would suffer. Even the great generational spells of your HouseHeart would wither and die.” His mouth twisted. “My Family moved me from the ancestral Residence to a cottage on the far edge of the estate before I was two years old.”

She didn't need to read his mind or feel his emotions to know his deep, caustic fury. It laced his voice, his manner, his expression, everything she watched for as a judge.

“I'm sorry.”

He inclined his head.

A guard snuffled. “Ain't you two going to give them noble goodbyes? You know, like ‘Merry meet.' ”

Ailim froze the man with a look. The guard snapped to attention. She frowned. All the guards looked to be large of muscle but small in intelligence. Not the usual highly Flaired, trained, and shrewd guards assigned to the FirstFamilies Council, or even the Guildhall. Another indication of Ruis's uniqueness. Lowly Flaired men to watch him.