Talo-Toecan’s shoulders lifted and fell. He looked up to find Connen-Neute watching him with solemn, knowing eyes. “I’ll be back before dawn,” he muttered to the captain. Saying nothing to Connen-Neute, he went to the railing. Levering himself onto it, he dove cleanly into the waves, enjoying the warmth of the water. He shifted before finding the surface. With some surprise, he felt an odd, not uncomfortable surge from his source as it bound the extra energy it found in breaking down the small amount of salt water around him.
He bobbed to the surface as a raku. It would be difficult to get into the air, but easier than trying to explain why he had tangled himself in the rigging and swamped the boat. His heart heavy, he shook his wings free of water and forced himself into the air and among the stars.
Again, his eyes closed as he rode the wind, feeling the similarities and differences from standing on deck of the Albatross . All too soon the outline of the island showed a darker patch against the water and sky. Faint tugs on his awareness gave hints to the preparations the conclave was making below. They wouldn’t leave for several weeks, but would still arrive at the Hold nearly that same span of time ahead of those on the Albatross. Talo-Toecan thought distancingthe youngest members of the Hold from the rest would be a good thing. Too many personalities had been dominated for too long. They needed time alone to realize who they could become.
His thoughts were despondent as he ran a faint, very tentative search. Guilt, and an even older emotion of betrayal, surged through him as he found her on the island at the end of the chain. A large fire winked and flickered on the widest cove, and it was here that he landed, shifting into his human guise.
She stood before the flames, posing so that the amber light flickered against her face and hid the faint lines. Her hair was bound in ribbons. He had given them all to her: signs of his love, tokens of his desire to understand her. His muscles tensed as he steeled himself against her wiles. It had been so long. And he had desperately wanted them to find common ground.
“You’re late,” she said, hitting the two syllables with precision.
“I didn’t want to come.”
She sniffed, her eyebrows arched mockingly. “I can see why. You ruined her, Talo. She was supposed to be mine, and you ruined her.”
His resolve hardened. “She was supposed to be everyone’s and entirely herself.”
There was a twinge on his thoughts as she made a cushion. Folding herself gracefully, she sat down. “You gave her almost everything,” she accused. “How were you expecting me to mold her into something we could use when there was nothing left to force her obedience with?”
“I thought you were dead.” The words came from him unbidden, and he belatedly decided there was no harm in having said them. He stood with his arms crossed, watching her features shift in the upwellings of heat from the fire between them. “And Alissa needed a Master’s repertoire of skills to survive.”
Keribdis’s face twisted, the high cheekbones he had once thought beautiful making her look severe. “All the skills you gave her did her no good,” she said, satisfaction permeating her as she tossed her head and touched her ribbons as if to be sure they were in place.
Talo-Toecan’s stomach clenched. She didn’t care. The woman thought Alissa was dead. She didn’t care she had torn Alissa’s source from her soul and left her for dead. Keribdis had more empathy for her long-dead horse than she did for Alissa. “You think so little of her,” he said with a harsh satisfaction. “Have you searched out her presence lately?”
“She’s dead,” Keribdis stated, her lips pressing tightly together.
Talo-Toecan willed his hands to stop trembling. How could he have ever loved her? Had she changed so much, or had he been blind? “Look for her,” he said.
Keribdis’s gaze cleared. Wide-eyed, she stared at him. “On the water? She’s alive?” Then she stiffened. “Silla is with her!”
She rocked forward to rise. Talo-Toecan started. Once he moved, his body took over. Striding around the fire, he put a heavy hand on her shoulder and forced her down. He wouldn’t let her take to the air. He would be unable to carry out the Hold’s justice if they flew.
“Alissa is alive. Yes,” he all but hissed, an unexpected satisfaction jarring him when her face turned to his went startled. “Yar-Taw gave me the memory of what happened. She bested you in the air. She bested you with words in front of the conclave. You tried to kill her, knowing she was stronger of will than you and therefore could force you to obey our laws.”
Keribdis’s gaze was bewildered. “She has no source,” she said, mystified. “How can she still be alive—” Then her confusion vanished. Talo-Toecan could almost see the winds of her thought shifting her path. “She’s an abomination, Talo. How could you presume that you alone could manage a transeunt’s first transition to raku?”
“She came to the Hold. You were gone. The choice wasn’t mine,” he said flatly.
“You couldn’t even tell she had retained her feral consciousness!” Keribdis berated. “She has a beast in her thoughts waiting for the chance to kill us all, destroy our way of life!”
“So do you,” he said, giving her shoulder a small push as he stepped from her in disgust.
“You maggot!” she shouted, her face going white. “I do not have a—a beast in my thoughts. I am not an animal! She is a worthless guttersnipe of a human. A mistake. And you will let her drag us down to wallow where she is.”
Heart pounding, Talo-Toecan forced himself to take a step away from her. “Alissa is right,” he said, hearing his voice tremble. His head hurt, and his arms ached from keeping them unmoving. There was no compassion in her anymore. It was gone, driven away by fear. “She’s right. She’s right in her theories, and I think you know it.”
“She poisoned you, too,” Keribdis said, her voice rife with scorn. “It doesn’t matter,” she gloated. “Your little dress-up doll has no source. She won’t survive the trip back across the ocean. It’s a long way. Too long to live without hope. She’ll go insane from the loss.” Keribdis made a cruel-sounding laugh. “No, that’s right. She already is insane.”
Talo-Toecan tensed. He wanted to shout that she was wrong. That he loved her but that she was wrong to treat their weaker kin as if they were sheep. That he couldn’t look the other way again. That he was here to bring her to justice. That he was sorry. That he was angry. That she had caused more pain and suffering than a thousand winters, and why couldn’t she be different? A score of things needed to be said, but what fell from his lips was simply, “She bested you. She has Redal-Stan’s source.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. “Redal-Stan—”
He pulled his eyes up to her, feeling his gaze harden. “I’m not going to waste my breath telling you how. I didn’t come here to give you answers. I came to carry out a judgment.”
Sitting on her cushion before her overindulgent fire, Keribdis went white. Now there was the barest hint of fear, Talo-Toecan thought. Only now, knowing he hadn’t come to forgive her, was there a glimmer of emotion. “You wouldn’t,” she whispered. “You can’t.”
He said nothing. Part of him buried under his resolve and anger was crying no. He sealed it off.
“You can’t!” she exclaimed again frantically. “I’m your wife!”
His breath came in a ragged sound, and he held it. “I can’t look the other way anymore, Keribdis,” he finally said. “You’re hurting too many people.”
“They’re just humans!” she protested.
“That doesn’t make it right,” he said as his faint hope she might be repentant died. “The divided groups of people are mixing. The alleles have escaped. We’re no longer in control. We shouldn’t be. Over the next few centuries, we’re going to be up to our wing tips in Keepers and transeunts, not to mention the shadufs and septhamas. We won’t have time for your games.”
“Games!” she shouted, her cheeks spotted with red.
“I’m asking you to stay here.” He met her eyes, despondent
. “Forever.”
Her jaw clenched, and she stiffened. Looking magnificent, she stood. “I won’t!”
She vanished in a gray mist. He stumbled back as she reappeared in her raku form. The fire glowed against her, making her golden and young again. “I’m done with this,” she thought savagely, crouched for flight. “You’re going to ruin everything. Everything! You never cared about me. You only cared about your precious Keepers and your Hold!”
Talo-Toecan’s guilt was black and bitter even before he acted. She’d never understood. How could she be so brilliant, yet be so blind? “Keribdis,” he pleaded. “Please. Just tell me you’ll stay here.”
She snaked her neck down, breathing on him. “I’ll let you in on a secret everyone but you seems to know, Talo. We are nothing like them! Humans are fodder. Raw materials. They’re not our equals. Not even our transeunts!” She raised her head to look toward the island where the rest of the conclave was. “I’m taking them home. We’re going back to the old ways. We will take back the foothills and the plains. The humans should never have been allowed past the coast. The Hold will be taken apart and thrown over the cliff, and you!” She shouted the word into his thoughts. “You will never—never—be taken seriously again. Your idea of equality is worthless tripe. The last five decades prove it!”
Talo-Toecan was riveted by her magnificent fury. She was beautiful when she was impassioned, and perchance that was why he hadn’t stopped her sooner. Some of this was his fault. Most, probably. “I’m sorry, Keribdis,” he whispered, caressing her thoughts one last time.
She drew back in surprise, and he struck.
Her body stiffened as he dove deep into her thoughts, taking advantage of her shock to slip past her defenses. He saw her fear that she had lost the grip she maintained on the conclave. He pitied her terror that she might not be superior to humanity, then recoiled at her frantic need to keep them ignorant to maintain her self-worth. His heart clenched in grief at her needless jealousy of him for his easy companionship with humans, and he wept at her loss of hope that he might still love her. And somewhere, deep within her, almost lost amongst her fears and the terrible needs those fears demanded be met, he found her joy of flight.
With a savage vengeance, he fastened on that. Pushing everything else away, he gave it room to grow, to expand. Her joy flickered, seeming to hesitate. Stark terror filled him, and he recoiled as he realized Alissa was entirely right.
Keribdis’s feral consciousness had been curled up about that joy as if it were a starveling curled about a dry crust of bread. As he watched in a horrible fascination, her feral consciousness saw him. For an instant, he stared at the face of instinct. Then it exploded, pushing him from Keribdis’s thoughts as it struggled to be free.
Again before the fire, he reeled backward, falling. Keribdis towered above him, straining as if chained to the ground. She screamed aloud and in his thoughts. Staring at her with his hands pressed to his ears, he realized he had done it. Horror twisted his stomach, and he cried her name in heartache. She was feral. It couldn’t be undone.
The raku that had once been his wife shrieked, rising up on her haunches with her wings spread wide. The firelight enveloped her in an unreal glow. Talo-Toecan scrambled to his feet. “I freed you!” he shouted, knowing her feral consciousness would understand. “I freed you. Go!”
And the raku went. The force of her single wing beat scattered the fire. Talo-Toecan covered his face, quickly patting at his trousers where an ember had landed. When he looked up in the new darkness, she was gone.
For a moment, he listened. He sent a thought after her to find nothing.
Slumping to the cooling sand, he put his head in his hands and wept.
40
“Love is not anything like dominance,” Strell was saying, his resonant voice swirling into Alissa’s dream of hoeing beets like cream through tea.
“You’re mistaken. It is. Everything I’ve seen says so,” Alissa heard her voice say, her tone unusually precise. In her dream, she straightened from her work and leaned on the mirth-wood handle. Someone was coming over the field. They were little more than a blurry shadow, and she wondered who it was. “This is too hard,” she found herself saying, and her dream shattered as she realized Beast was speaking directly to Strell. Startled, Alissa jerked awake.
She found herself sitting upright on their small V-shaped bunk. The underside of the top deck was a handbreadth above her head, and a soft glow filled the low-ceilinged cabin from a gimballed oil lamp. A wisp of fright from Beast went through her, and Alissa wasn’t surprised to find Beast had jammed herself against the wall. Alissa clutched for a hold with her good hand as the bow of the boat rose and dropped with a thick whoosh of water.
Within an arm’s length, but as far from her as the small cabin would allow, was Strell. He watched her carefully from the other side of the bunk. His hair was mussed, and his nightshirtwas in disarray. He looked softer, gentler. She liked it. “Why are you talking to me?” she said, confused. “I was asleep.”
“I was talking to Beast.” His brow pinched. “She said she didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t.” Sort of, she added silently. “What happened?”
“The boat shifted tack. You rolled into me. I put my arm around you. Beast woke up.”
Alissa’s eyes widened, and she searched his face for any sign of pain. “Did I hit you?”
He smiled. “No. I told you I loved you, and Beast decided she would rather talk. It was either I talk to her or the ghost of that sailor who died hitting the deck above us.”
She went uneasy, not sure if he were joking or not. Seeing her wide eyes, he added, “I think I frightened Beast. I’m sorry.”
Concerned, Alissa searched her thoughts to find Beast in the unusual state of bewilderment. “Beast? What’s the matter?” Alissa asked.
Slowly her second consciousness took shape. “It can’t be true, what he says.”
Alissa looked at Strell. Her lips pursed, not liking to see Beast’s usual confidence shattered. “What did you say to her?” she asked again.
“You don’t know?” he asked in surprise.
“I told you I was asleep.”
His brow furrowed, and he stretched his long legs. His bare toes brushed against her leg in passing, and she pulled her leg closer to herself. Yes, they were married, but still . . .
Strell ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I—ah—told her I loved her as I loved you. See, we were discussing the difference between love and lust. She seems to equate the two, which may account for . . .” He shrugged, wincing.
Alissa’s face pulled into a sour expression. Reaching to tug the blankets more securely over her bare feet, she paused in thought. A feeling of titillation, of daring, set her fingertips tingling. “Well . . .” she said as she put the back of her hand to her warming cheeks. “If Beast thinks love is dominance, perhaps we’re going about this the wrong way.”
Strell’s face went slack. “What do you mean?”
She gave him a wicked half smile. “Hold still,” she said, scooting across the V-shaped bed. Her broken hand hurt out of its sling, and it was awkward holding it close to her.
He put out a protesting hand. “Wait. You’re going to hit me again.”
“No, I won’t,” she protested as she knelt beside him on the bed.
“You will!”
His eyes were wide in trepidation, and she felt a wash of bother go through her. “Hold still . . .” she grumbled, edging closer. “I’m just going to kiss you.”
“No. Alissa, wait!” he exclaimed as she put her arms about his neck and pressed close.
Their lips touched. The fingers of her left hand grasped his hair at the back of his neck, overriding the pain of using them. “Mumph!” he mumbled in warning as she held him unmoving and punched him in the stomach with her good hand.
Strell grunted in pain, and she let go. “Oh, Strell!” she cried, almost beside herself with frustration and guilt. “I
’m sorry! I thought it would work. I thought if I was the one who—”
“’S all right,” he said, his face red. “I was expecting it.” Eyes watering, he glanced up at her. “Hounds, it was almost worth it.”
She miserably put herself back in her corner, shamed. At least he wasn’t gasping for air. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, her broken hand throbbing with pain. “I thought it would work.”
“I, uh, am going to get some air.” Strell carefully edged the to the end of the bunk and the tiny floor space the cabin had just before the door. “I’ll be right back.”
She said nothing, knowing air was not the reason he was leaving.
Strell jammed his feet into his boots. Not looking at her, he fumbled at the door and gently closed it behind him. The awkward clumps of his unlaced boots grew distant, and she heard him stumble under a wave.
Alissa looked about their small room and tried not to cry. “What’s wrong with you, Beast?” she accused. “Why can’t you understand?”
“Why can’t you fly?” Beast said sourly.
Alissa uncurled herself, searching Beast’s emotions, feeling her feral side’s honest desire to grasp the concept of love. Beast knew she was lacking something and truly wanted to understand. It just wasn’t in her. Just as it wasn’t in Alissa to understand and trust the wind.
“Lodesh is going to laugh at us,” Alissa thought bitterly, her motions sharp as she arranged the bedclothes with one hand. “He’s going to laugh and laugh, and when Strell dies, he’s going to try to bring us to ground as well.”
“I’ll hit him, too,” Beast said.
“Is that so?” Alissa turned sullen. “In the meantime, he’s going to laugh at us. If you would just trust him . . .” she pleaded.
Beast’s feeling of shared dislike of being laughed at vanished. “I’m trying,” she protested. “Just as you try to trust the wind. I think we’re too far apart.”
Alissa settled herself cross-legged at the very center of the bed where the ceiling was the highest. The boat’s motion had eased into a gentle rocking, and Alissa shivered. “I want to understand,” Beast whispered. “He said he loved me, but I don’t know what that means. I can’t imagine why you will allow him to bring you to ground. Love must be—a very strong reason?”