Olivia (98 page)

“Vorgullum is bringing more humans.”  The thought still stung.  “You could take one.” 

He was shaking his head.  “Not until he commands it.  And he will, I know it, but not this time.  He has enough goat-headed males biting at his ankles.  It will be years before he gets to them all.”  He contemplated this, staring up into the rain.  “But he will.  Truth, we’ve lived under the shadow of slow death so long, it’s hard to imagine finally being free of it.” 

“And all it took was the lives of one or two hundred humans,” Olivia said with quiet bitterness.  And Bahgree’s blessing, once the Great Spirit had his way and Olivia had given up her mortal life.

“Fewer by far than it’s cost us,” Doru was saying.  He stood and paced to the edge of the roof, looked down at the thinning parking lot.  “How’s your mate holding up?”

“His wing has healed…as much as it’s going to, at any rate.”  She considered his broad back.  “Do you know something I don’t?”

“It escaped no one that you chose to spend your season apart from him.  I…understand that humans don’t appear to find their season as enjoyable as gullan females.”  He sounded puzzled by this, but doggedly continued.  “But the clear message you sent was you don’t want to share his pit.”

“Not that it’s anybody’s business but my own,” she said tightly, “but Olivia Issagul is certainly living up to her reputation.”

He glanced back at her, a shadow of doubt in his eyes.  “Olivia, perhaps you have forgotten, but we gullan can scent the musk of coupling, and you haven’t worn it in some time.”

Olivia opened her mouth to argue, remembered the sensation of power, drawing in the essence and scent of her partner as he lay atop her, and frowned instead.  “Sudjummar’s forge is practically right next to the baths.”

“I’m not saying this to hurt you.  I’m saying it to spare you, and to spare him.  Thugg is working himself up.  He’s not young and he’s not too smart, but he’s strong and he’s determined…and he thinks you might be amenable.” 

“Not another blood challenge,” she groaned. 

“Thugg?  I doubt it.  It isn’t considered terribly fair to bring blood down so soon on a male who’s had his wing broken in the last fight.  Thugg’s a lot of things, and not all of them good, but he’s fair.”  He studied her obvious distress with an expression of frustrated sympathy.  “If it makes you feel any better, Damark is having the same problems and he’s none too young to begin with.”

“Blood challenge over Amy?”

“Believe it.  You should hear some of the things Kurlun says she can do.  But it sort of takes the wind out of your wings to square off against Damark and hear Amy shout for him to rip your stones off.  Helps to know where the female stands, so to speak.  But of course, Amy isn’t leader.”

“Neither am I.”

“Yes, you are.  I know, we’re supposed to pretend we all believe Vorgullum made his brother
tovorak
so that he could give you to him.  Ha.  Sudjummar stands tall because you made him tall and for no other reason.”

He returned to her side and extended one wing around her to keep the rain off.  She huddled against his side, grateful for the heat of his body.  “Would it make any difference if I stood Sudjummar up in front of everyone and called him leader?” she asked.

“Absolutely it would make a difference.  He’d be half-killed before the words were out of your mouth.  Sudjummar is flightless and crippled.”  He lowered his horns slightly.  “Which is a pounding shame, because he’s as clever as his brother and far more patient.  There are times, Olivia, when I want to seize some of the thicker heads in my mountain and bash them together.”

A number of cars were starting up in the parking lot.  Doru half-rose and twisted his head to see.  “Not long now,” he said.  “The humans inside need a little more time to sort themselves out.  Then we can go in.”

“Doru, what can I do to make the others back off?  What can I do that I’m not already doing?”

He exhaled through clenched teeth, looked down at her grimly.  “You’ll hate me if I answer, so I’m not going to.”

“Vorung may never be able to use his hands right again.  You’ve lost one hunter already; do you want to lose Thugg, too?  Tell me.”

He closed his eyes, opened them to look up into the rain, then turned and faced her again.  “Leave him,” he said darkly.  “If you won’t take another mate, then wait out Vorgullum’s return in the women’s tunnels.  Hard, yes. Unfair.  But it will keep Sudjummar alive.”

“Right, and send every male with the slightest ambition down to pester me whenever I try to leave.  How am I supposed to get anything done?”

“I said you wouldn’t like it.”  He turned his face back to the sky.  “You could try coupling more and taking less baths.  Couldn’t hurt.  And you need to spend your next season in his company.”

“Impossible,” she said.

He looked at her intently.

“For reasons I could not begin to explain,” she added.

“Are you meeting with someone in secret?”

“Not in the way you mean.”

The corners of his mouth curved slightly.  “How many more meanings are there in that?  You are, aren’t you?  Hm.  Is it Logarr?”

“What is this, Twenty Questions?”  She paused.  “Why would you say Logarr?”

“I expected him to challenge long before now, the way he watches you.  Are you meeting with him, to prevent him from fighting Sudjummar?”

“Oh, and is that the next piece of advice you have for me?” she demanded.  “Just sleep with every male who might challenge Sudjummar?”

He recoiled, plainly startled by her vehemence.  “No, of course not!”

“Just the ones looking for blood challenge, is that it?  You know what, my sex life is none of your goddamned business!  You’re as bad as the rest of them!” she exploded, very dimly aware that this was both untrue and unfair.  “Sniffing around to see when and with you and how often!  Why the hell should I have to defend myself in the first place?”

He inched away from her, this great hulk of a gulla, and showed her his empty palms.  “Easy, Olivia.”

She was not mollified.  “Yeah, that’s right.  Easy Olivia!  Well, you can take your suspicions and your advice and pound them both right up your ass!”

She stalked away from him to the furthest edge of the roof and sat, glaring into the trees.

Time crawled.  Below them, two more people left the store, called goodnights as they got into their separate cars, and drove off.  Somewhere in the night, a dog started barking.

She began to feel a little ashamed of herself.  And then more than just a little.

“I’m sorry,” she grumbled.

“I’ve heard worse,” he said mildly.

“I shouldn’t have gotten so mad.”

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.”  A note of baffled frustration crept into his tone.  “Humans are so touchy about coupling.  Like it has to be some sort of evil secret.”

“Well, you gullan don’t exactly mate right out in public.”

“No, but we talk about it.  Tina says,
privacy
.  Privacy means you keep such things quiet.”  He shook his head as if in disbelief.  “The only things we keep so quiet are unpleasant ones.  Don’t humans
like
sex?”

She was spared having to answer by the sound of voices below.  Keys jingled.  Footsteps splashed through the rain.  Car doors opened and closed; engines growled to life.  Doru watched them pull out of the parking lot and off down the street.  “That’s the last of them,” he said, and crossed over to the roof access door.

She expected him to snap this one open the way he’d done at the birthing center, or, for that matter, at High Hill Apartments.  Instead, to her surprise, he opened up his belt pouch and removed an oddly-shaped tool of some sort: a strip of metal, perhaps two inches wide and twice as long, very thin, with a hook-shaped hilt wrapped in leather.  It wasn’t new, and by the look of it, it had seen a lot of use.

Doru gave the doorknob a jiggle, then, keeping his grip on the knob, deftly inserted the metal strip just below the lockplate and gave it a swift, upwards jerk.  The door popped open.

So did Olivia’s mouth. 

He glanced back at her as he returned the tool to his belt-pouch, and grinned at her expression.  “Bam, as my Tobi would say.”

“Where did you learn to do that?”

“Oh, we’ve always done it,” he replied airily.  “It doesn’t work so much anymore, though.  But that’s another reason I like this place.  Come on.”

Olivia followed him down the dark stairwell and stopped at the bottom to let him lean out into the dimly-lit hall for a sniff and a cautious look around.  His ears turned, pricked forward, then relaxed.  “All clear.  Let’s go.”

Olivia stepped out into a carpeted hall.  She could see the dim evening lights of the store at the end of the corridor, and directly across from her were two bathrooms, an employee’s lounge consisting of a weathered couch and a card table, two vending machines and a water fountain.  Slowly, almost overwhelmed by the novelty of it, she crept up and pushed the button for a stream of cold water.

“So that’s what that is!”

Olivia pinned her hair back with one hand and drank.  The water was very cold, and tasted oddly stale after all the mineral-rich water of the mountain.

“Let me try it.”  Doru nudged her out of the way and hunkered down awkwardly around the fountain.  He took the first spray right in the eye, but caught the second in his open mouth.  He made a game attempt to lap at it, then withdrew and shook his upper body violently.  “I’ll have to practice at that.  Say, is this the same as those white ones?”  He aimed a thumb back at the bathroom.

“No.  Those are for…for using in place of wastewater canals.”

He blinked at her.  “That isn’t very sanitary,” he said slowly.  “The water doesn’t go anywhere.”  He looked back at the restroom door, frowning.  “No wonder it smells so bad in there.”

“I think I should show you.”  She squeezed past him and went into the men’s room.  She waited until he was behind her, then reached out and pushed the handle on the nearest urinal.

He jumped back, his wings slamming into the stalls, and stared as water poured down and flushed itself away.  “Damn, look at that!”  He glanced thoughtfully at the stall, peered over the top of it and said, “Same principle?”

“Yep.”

“That’s amazing.”  He turned and examined his reflection in the mirror, then looked down at the sinks.  “Same here?”

“No, Doru, those are for washing up in afterwards.”

He poked at the faucet experimentally, then managed to turn the hot water tap.  He offered the very tip of his finger to the trickle that emerged and his face lit up.  “Hey, it’s warm!  Ouch, it’s hot!”

Olivia slipped under his wing and stood in front of the second sink.  She turned both knobs until she had a full, warm flow, then pushed at the soap dispenser and held the resulting pink goo up for him to sniff.

Doru grinned, adjusted the temperature at his sink, banged out three or four good squirts of soap and lathered himself up to the elbow.  He washed his hands with unfeigned enthusiasm, then sniffed his pelt and snapped his teeth at his reflection.  He started to shake himself dry again and she raised both his eyebrows by cranking out some paper towels and handing them over.

He rubbed at his pelt tentatively, reached past her to take a few more, then crumpled up the whole damp mess and put them carefully in the sink.

Laughing, Olivia fished them out again and put them in the trash.

“Bam,” he murmured, peering through the metal flap at the rest of the trash.  “Fucking bam.”

“Come on, let’s go shopping.”

He backed away from the sink reluctantly and followed her out into the hallway.  “First,” he said, “we find new packs.  We can always use new packs.  You go get the…whatever it is that Tina wants.  I’ll meet you back by the meat.”  He trotted off, claws clacking primly on the linoleum. 

Olivia moved cautiously around the registers to the pharmacy at the front of the store.  She half-expected that the needles would be in the back, locked up tight with the other medications, and was surprised to find a display of them on the shelf in front of the pick-up window.  She opened her pack and tossed the entire box inside, then helped herself to a glucosamine monitor, six boxes of strips, a digital thermometer, three bottles of pregnancy-formulated vitamins, and one big bottle of aspirin.  On her way to find Doru, she also added a double handful of every kind of battery she thought they could use.

Doru was wandering down the souvenir aisle, and looking for all the world like a conscientious consumer with his huge hiking pack slung over one arm.  He held out his hand absently and looked astonished at the weight of the pack when she gave it to him.  “What did you get?  A bag of rocks?”

“Too heavy for you?”

He frowned at her.  “Hardly.  Here,” he added, opening his own pack for her approval.  “I found some human coverings.  Are they suitable?” 

Olivia rifled through a haphazard jumble of quilted vests, sweatshirts, and hoodies that said things like ‘Welcome to ARLITTLE.  It’s Effin Cold Here.’ and ‘Inupiaq Pride’.  “Fine,” she said.

“Good.  I wasn’t sure.  I also got some timepieces for your humans.  Most of theirs are broken now.”  He zipped the pack shut and shouldered it.  “What next?”

Olivia was about to lead him towards the grocery section when a dark neon sign caught her eye and she swung back.  “How about a new disc for Liz’s radio?  I don’t know about you, but I’m about through with Ricky Martin.”  Olivia jogged down the aisle to Entertainment and knelt down in front of the display of CDs. 

“That doesn’t look like the thing the box takes,” Doru remarked, eyeing the square case dubiously.  “I don’t think it’ll even fit.”

“You need to trust me more, Doru.”  Olivia picked one of each of the best-sellers and stuffed them in her already-bulging backpack.

“That’s enough,” he said firmly.  “Let’s get some food so the night isn’t a total loss.  And remember, you still owe me a box of thumperjuice.  This way.” 

As they neared the coolers and banks of frozen foods, Olivia became aware of the hum of machinery for the first time.  It reminded her of something so she stopped, trying to puzzle it out.