

### Conjuring Dreams

### or Learning to Write by Writing

By Stephanie Barr

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Stephanie Barr

Discover other titles by Stephanie Barr at Smashwords.com

Dedicated to Stephanie, Roxy and Alex, always.

And the memory of my father

Cover created by Stephanie Barr using photos licensed from Kozzi.com

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Introduction

The Early Works

Charley

Seeds of Tomorrow

The Mother-Thing

"It's Me Again, Michael"

The College Years

Operation Terminal Beach

Castles of Sand

A Time of Change

Entering the World of Fantasy

Code of the Jenri

Cauchemar

Windrider

Windmaster

Single Point Stories

Poetic Justice

Precipice

Soulshifter

Captain of the Guard

Stormmistress

Dark of Night

Oblivion

Character Building

The Intemperate Sword

A Familiar Tale

Echo

Back Seat Driver

Masks

Coming Back After a Long Hiatus

Stowaway in Seguin

Second Life

Kismet

Best Laid Plans

Nightmare Blanket

About the Author

Coming Soon: Curse of the Jenri

### Introduction

Normally, I don't write introductions. Stories, in my opinion, should be self-explanatory and stand on their own, whether they are 100 words long or a series of novels. They should have characters that compel, scenes that are clearly drawn (whether inferred or directly described), and dialogue one can all but hear, and invoke an emotional and/or intellectual response.

I like to think my stories do that.

But, as much as I love storytelling—the exercise of making up characters and situations and worlds and relationships, then bringing them forward—I've also become somewhat fascinated by my own journey to learn to do so effectively. Why? Because the will and effort to create stories and the imaginative spark, by themselves, are not enough to become a great writer. A writer must also develop skills, not just grammar and vocabulary (though those are important), but also using words effectively, setting scenes and tone and characters. With short stories, one might only have a few sentences to accomplish this.

These stories, even my early more clumsy work, also represent key steps as to how I developed some of the skills I use for my novels (and my journey is not complete). For years, I wrote short stories taking a scene or a notion or a concept and building it into a story. That's what I do, what I _love_ to do.

Unlike poetry (which is what I wrote first), language is less rigid for prose and sound is less important. Characters take on greater complexity and depth, and dialogue becomes critical. However, the elements of eliciting an emotional response, creating a viable picture quickly, and making the best use of language, those needs remain. In a similar way, though short stories use many of the same tools and have the same requirements of novels, the limited word count minimizes world building (at least individually). In short stories, scenes and characters must become _crisp and real in a very short time_ , _dialogue cannot be wasted_ , _humor must be handled adroitly_ , and _drama must be compelling and immediate_. Much of that is useful in novel writing, as well, but it's _imperative_ in a short story where the window of opportunity is so small.

I started writing poetry and short stories in high school. By the time I took creative writing in college, my professor was already shaking his head at me since I had my own "style." "You write stories anyone could read," he told me disapprovingly. Well, damn, that was my intention. But really I was writing stories I _wanted to read myself_ and building myself into the kind of writer I would like to read (and, of course, I'm a voracious reader).

These stories represent a large portion of my journey and many seeds that were created in one or more stories were taken and nurtured into novels later on ("Code of the Jenri," and"Cauchemar,"). But even if they are independent and never grew into a world of their own, I used these stories to refine one aspect or another of my writing.

I am dedicating this book to the memory of my father, Frank Preston Beck, Jr. Although I've been writing since I was ten or eleven, most of the poetry (what I wrote first) I read over, thought, "Hey, not bad," and threw away. It wasn't until I wrote "A Cold Wind on the Hill" (at thirteen or thereabouts) and showed my father that the situation changed. Although not a fiction lover himself, he made me promise never to throw any of my writing away again. Even the stuff I should have thrown away (which I didn't include in this book).

It is, at least in part, due to him that I began to document my imaginings and learned to appreciate sharing the stories with an audience. Perhaps because of that I continued to pursue writing even after I became an engineer and a mother and had days packed with too many other things to do. I still had to tell stories, had to write, had to write down and save what I did write (even when it stunk).

In his memory, I'm including perhaps the only thing of mine he actually enjoyed, simplistic and idealistic though it was.

A Cold Wind on the Hill

One August morning as nighttime had paled,

Fighting broke out as the peacetalkers failed

And the War had begun that no one would win.

Grieved for His children, He looked on His kin

And sent down an angel to quiet the din.

But no one would listen for he had no right

To sue them for peace when they wanted to fight,

'Til, fin'ly, repulséd, he fled in disgrace,

Quite sick to the heart for the Master he'd face

To tell of the end of the earth's human race.

Yet, though it seemed futile, God, too, had to try

To keep all those missiles from wounding the sky,

But man just ignored Him and forced His retreat,

Weeping with grief for His mankind's defeat,

And for their blind bloodlust he couldn't unseat.

So, man set his guns up, his missiles, his bombs

And sent them all out on one hot August dawn.

Then cities exploded in huge clouds of dust,

While millions were killed in this "political must,"

Whole nations reduced to just heat-blackened crust.

Now, on a small hill does a lone Figure stand,

With tears in His eyes and blood on His hands.

The land all is barren; the grey air is still,

Which tortures that gentle Soul there on the hill,

As, for once in His life, God, Himself, feels a chill.

I love you, Dad.

1Note that I was greatly tempted to rewrite/rework many of the earlier works that were frequently clumsy or limited in scope, but I left them untouched because they demonstrate lessons being learned and progress.

### The Early Works

I remember fondly when I first realized that what I wanted to do—what I would always want to do—was tell stories. Not just write anything like essays or memoirs or reporting, mind you, but make up stories and worlds and people. I had an assignment in high school to write an essay about an ordinary object one could find at home. But I couldn't just describe something; I had to tell a story. Even my poetry tended toward long and epic stories.

The "bones" of that "essay" became my first short story: "Charley." Though prose, it was only a short step from the poetry I'd written up to that point, the use of the sound of language, the emotional manipulation. Of everything I've written, it is still my eldest daughter's favorite. (I love you, Stephanie).

In fact, most of these early short stories are only a few short steps from the poetry I'd written before. They tend to be simplistic in concept, designed to invoke emotion, fatalistic/tragic (as most of my poetry was) and still tending toward usage of the cadence and the aural qualities of language. They tend to be short on plot and weak on dialogue. Still, even rough and imperfect, I think they still have power.

**Charley**

The room was a quiet one, decorated with faded toys from decades before and homemade quilts, but neat. Too neat. The bed was made without a wrinkle. Every toy, and there were many, seemed "placed" rather than thrown in the half-hazard way that children have. One of them, a tattered teddy, sat up almost straight on the flawless pillow, dulled by the same layer of dust that blanketed everything in the room. Even the meager sunshine that crept through the dingy window seemed dusty.

It had not always been so. Long ago, the sun, that now shone half-heartedly through the neglected window, came bursting, a dancing golden haze that seemed ecstatic to play in a room bounding with unkempt toys. It waltzed over the then more vibrant quilts and even shone on a bear every bit as tattered as the one alone in the room so many years later. But the sun never seemed happier, nor glowed more golden, then when shining on Ginny's golden hair. His Ginny.

She had needed no sunshine but brought her own with her golden hair. She brought clear skies with blue blue eyes and spread joy with a smile more beautiful than anything else nature could dream up. Her family called her "Dimples" and loved her for her laughter, but he knew her as Sunshine for that was what she was.

And, as much as Charley adored her, she had loved him just as much. Since the beginning of time, he had gladly inhabited that comfy place beneath her arm, had gladly given up his looks for her. Like most favored toys, he looked ready for the ragbag with one button eye always just on the verge of falling off and one arm not quite the right color. Mama's hands had mended him times beyond counting, but the worse he looked, the more Ginny loved him.

And nothing else mattered.

Sometimes, of course, she had to leave him behind. When she left, she would place him just so and say, "Now, Charley, you just stay right there because I want to find you when I come back. And I'll be right back." Then she would tweak his position, which was usually crooked, and leave the room, but she'd always peek back for one last word, "Don't move, because I'll be back. Wait for me." Then she would dance away in that peculiar rhythmless dance that children do and grownups can never copy, but makes them feel young watching.

Sooner or later she would come back and say, "Did you miss me, Charley? I'm glad you didn't leave because I just don't know what I would do if I came back and you weren't here." She would pick him up and give him a hug that thoroughly crushed his stuffing before installing him under her arm so she could go about child business.

And he was still there, waiting . . .

There had come a day when she didn't dance and her skin was red with fever. She rolled and moaned, shoving Charley up against her chin when the pain was too much. "Mama, it hurts so bad. Make it go away." Mama would wring her hands and the doctor would mumble, unwilling to look at Ginny directly. In a few moments they would leave and Ginny would look into Charley's sloppy face and say, "Charley, I feel so _bad_. Why do I feel so bad? Will you give me a teddy kiss and I just know it will make me feel better." And, of course, he would. All of his kisses were for her alone, for no better purpose than to take away her pain if only for an instant. For a moment, she would smile, but soon she would be tossing, crushing Charley beneath her as she fidgeted through her uncomfortable nights and days. And Charley was there with her.

Mama and the doctor could leave when her crying hurt them too much, but not Charley. It was easier for them to close the door and pretend that Ginny wasn't suffering, that she wasn't there. It was too difficult for Mama, wringing her hands, to listen to Ginny moan, but Charley did. It was too hard for the doctor to stay and watch a sweet little girl eaten up with fire while he stood helpless, but Charley shared that fire with her. Someone had to stay with her. Someone had to give her teddy kisses. She needed someone—and Charley was there.

Then, one night, she stopped turning, stopped crying, stopped moaning, her skin finally giving up the horrible fever, but no one was happy. Everyone cried. They said they would never be happy again, that there was no joy without their "Dimples." They took her frail body away and straightened the room, placing the cherished teddy bear on Ginny's pillow. And closed the door.

And he waited. All of the love a child pours into something can't just disappear. So, he waited.

The rest of the family eventually became happy again, finding joy in a different set of blue eyes, a different set of dimples. There were always more children, more grandchildren. For them.

But not for him. Someone could live without dimples, but without Sunshine? There was a black hole in him waiting for Ginny. What if she came back and he was gone? So, he waited.

Of course, stuffed animals don't have feelings, they're not alive . . .

YOU SAID YOU'D COME BACK.

They are inanimate objects with no more life than a pair of shoes . . .

"I don't know what I'd do if I came back and you weren't here."

GINNY!

Teddy bears don't have hearts.

GINNY, I DO MISS YOU WHEN YOU'RE GONE! I DO. YOU'VE BEEN GONE SO LONG . . .

There's no such thing as a living teddy bear.

GINNY, I MISS YOU. PLEASE COME BACK . . . YOU SAID . . .

"You wait here, Charley, because I'm gonna be right back."

The button eye, dangling on its ancient thread hangs like a big black tear with no sunshine to touch it. There is a single blonde hair on the pillow beside him, but it doesn't shine.

I LOVE YOU, GINNY.

"I'll be back, Charley, so you wait here."

What life is there without sunshine?

I MISS YOU, GINNY.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Charley bear.

"Wait for me."

So. He waits.

**Seeds of Tomorrow**

The figure lying next to him stirred silently, then slipped out of bed without sound, seemingly without even movement. For a moment, she was liquid gold before she solidified beside the rumpled bed. With her slanting obsidian eyes, she gazed at the still form of her sleeping companion, the unknowing Father of her Children-to-be. She smiled.

He was perfect. For centuries, she had waited for just such a man—for him. Waiting for the Father. There had been other possibilities, other men, but none had been perfect. Each had, in some vital way, been flawed, having some imperfection, however tiny, that had made him unacceptable, his blemish revolting in her exacting black eyes. Some were tall and powerful, forceful of character but lacking in cunning or wisdom. Some were brilliant but had no courage. Some were brave but puny. Some did not bear her Mark. All were lacking. So she waited—for him.

She had known he would come. Didn't they always? As many who bore the Mark were, he was dark and nobly handsome, built upon magnificent lines, tall and powerful, but, even more, he had the cunning that had come down from some previous Father, the brilliance of the most accomplished scholar—and subtle, oh so subtle. No human knew of these depths, deceived by his clever ruse of boredom and borderline intellect. They all thought him a moderately successful tycoon, more lucky than shrewd, not realizing that the visible was only a small fraction of his success. No one could have guessed the extent of his holdings or power. Many of those who looked upon him with contempt were really owned by him, all unknowing. But then, humans had forever been fools. _She_ knew. He was brilliant. He was perfect. He was Roland. Now, he was the Father.

With almost affection, she turned his head with a slim golden finger tipped with fingernail naturally black. There, on his throat, was the Mark, imperceptible to all but her. The color was the same as that around it, but as she gently stroked the skin on the underside of his powerful jaw, she felt the thrill of touching that strangely rough skin—her skin.

Somewhen, centuries before, some beautiful maiden, for her Children were discerning as well as promiscuous, had been raped, her maidenhead stolen, by one of the Children. There would be no cruelty, no pain, but, even so, it would be horrifying for her. The maid, shocked by a rape too horrible to remember would forget or—perhaps—die, but the child would survive, would always survive. Every child of every child of her Children for eternity would bear a Mark. It was the Mark of her Children, the Mark of their Blood—and hers.

Licentious and fruitful as her Children were, she had had to wait for just the right descendant. She had had to wait for just such a noble specimen of her Children's children to seduce him, make him the Father. It had been a long wait, but a wise and pleasurable choice. She bent and kissed his Mark, her forked tongue twitching against the rough skin. So pleasurable.

And so easy. Humans, or near humans, were always so easy, so simple to seduce. Who can resist his own Mother? And she was beautiful, her midnight hair hanging to her waist, teasing the eye with its impossible gold highlights. Her ebon eyes shone with a mesmerizing luminescence that came from within, eyes shaped with that seductive Oriental flavor. The black silk dress embroidered with gold thread enhanced her incredible body and peerless complexion that glowed golden. The seduction was over in one moment. One look and he was hers.

She leaned over and brushed a lock of hair from his sleeping face, a look of almost tenderness in her glowing eyes, a rueful smile twisting her lips. So easy. Gently, she picked up her silk dress from the floor and draped it over her lover, winking at the ruby eye of the dragon stitched in the silk. 'Ruby-eyed indeed,' she thought derisively and then softly laughed in a low rumble that was almost a purr.

He stirred slightly, but she was not alarmed; he had exhausted himself. It would be many hours before he roused. Languorously, she slid her hands down her perfect body that centuries could not touch, delighting in the whispered rasp too slight for humans to notice, listening to the soft shush too gentle for human ears to detect as the scales, so finely linked as to be invisible to human eyes, slid against each other. It was only those of the Blood who had the strength to satisfy her—and her need.

"Ah, grandson," she whispered, "Perhaps, you should die last. That, at least, you deserve. More pleasure have you given me than any has before. If only I could keep you with me . . . " but it was only an idle thought. A human of his caliber would never be able to love the Mother while her Children—their Children—destroyed the human race.

So sad. Before, her Children were only to teach, to police, to frighten humans, but she'd slept too long and human memories were too short. Her Children had long since perished and humans had thrived. Humankind had had its chance and had poisoned its own world. Now, humans stood on the brink of self-destruction and would blithely destroy the rest of the world along with themselves. Their time was over.

Now her body was filled with seed for millions of Children—so foolish of human women to waste so much precious seed—Children so different from both parents. Legends of the past, scoffed and forgotten, would live again in glistening scales, rending claws and fiery breath. Her Children.

She whispered to the window and slipped onto the sill, still naked, then turned back. Perhaps, she _should_ keep him . . . but no, he was the past. She would wait for those who would follow humans as humans had followed the races before. She must wait for his successor as she had waited for him.

She sprang into the air on wings that had not seemed there before, and, as she left, she was certain that this one would realize, would figure out who she was, who _he_ was, would recognize the clue she left. When her Children haunted the earth, he would know that he was the Father of her magnificent Children, that he was the most blessed and cursed of men . . .

That he had held the Dragon Queen.

**The Mother-Thing**

He jerked his hand back as if burned. He hadn't meant to touch her.

He should never have come here. He had known how it would be. He gazed on her with involuntary adoration. She, a shapeless mass all but filling the control room, glowed phosphorus green in response. She knew his soul better than he knew it himself, yet she still radiated affection that warmed him to his depths. But, his depths were so very cold.

She had to know he had come to kill her.

He had only meant to stand by the door, quickly say goodbye, walk back out and then, from the airlock, send the command that would evacuate her ship. It was his job to kill her, kill the Mother-Thing, for the security of the human race, and the damnation of his soul. But, then, he had not had a soul for a very long time.

Instead, he had come closer, mesmerized by her particular beauty, enveloped in the warm breath of love, knowing that while his mind was an open library of facts entirely at her disposal, hers was equally open to him. He glanced over at Orton Kast, a permanent fixture at the Mother-Thing's side. Kast's simple face wore an expression that reflected the kind of contentment he could never have found in the exacting world of men. Humans were intolerant of imperfection. Kast intended to go with her on her journey, intended to never again leave her side. _Would_ never again leave her side.

Another murder they'd left for Ryker Sly, but what is the life of a retarded man against the safety of the human race?

"You should never have come," he told her, knowing he didn't have to speak aloud.

_Just as you know I had to come. My own imperative to protect my charges, to find others worth preserving. My ship could fly no more_.

That was true, just like everything Clio said, Clio, the Mother-Thing.

Scouts had found her drifting perilously close to Galactic headquarters, which orbited around Rega 9, and brought her in. At first, they hadn't known what to make of her: living tissue, obviously, but no one understood if she were one creature or a conglomeration of organisms like coral.

Given that Galactic HQ was not only the center of the political universe, but also home of the greatest scientific minds in the galaxy, her discovery was greeted with great fanfare and anticipation. After all, in the three centuries since humans had conquered space, they had only once before come across alien life: the ill-fated Kudzels who graced many a gourmand's dinner table before anyone realized that Kudzels only reproduced once every hundred years. By the time the belated conservation blather began, it was too late.

This time, human beings were going to explore this new alien carefully and write any number of long boring papers extolling her characteristics. Or rather, they'd intended to, but she reacted to anyone coming within a few meters with blinding mental pain. Try to touch her, even through gloves or probes, and she would send the transgressor into a permanent vegetative state, as if their minds were wiped clean. Unwilling to admit to failure with their much-touted find, the scientists instead invited every official and celebrity within a three-system radius to come and admire their prize safely locked away behind a glass wall.

Sly stroked the back of his hand against her surface, marveling again at how wonderfully soft and warm it was, when it looks mushy and disagreeable. He knew she took samples of his cells as he did so. They wouldn't do her any good. He'd been sent there to kill her, Clio and the amazing race of creatures she carried the genetic signatures for within her bulky form.

If only Mahria Cronan, the child prodigy and precocious genius, had never crossed paths with Clio, perhaps no one would have ever known Clio's secret, and Sly would not have to kill her now.

He shook his head, and, with great reluctance, retrieved his hand. Someone else would have been Clio's chosen, of course, someone would have known. But not so quickly perhaps, and perhaps the powers that be wouldn't have been so scared if Cronan had not done so much to make Clio a threat.

Cronan had claimed to be able to speak to Clio when she had visited the exhibition with her father. After she was scoffed and laughed at by Clio's caretakers, she found a way to override the security system and was found the next day in the cell with Clio, touching and communicating quite easily.

Cronan's influence had given Orton Kast the opportunity to join Clio's side as her second chosen. Cronan's influence, and the clout of her politician father, had taken Clio off the zoo circuit and secured her a temporary home in a modified ship of Cronan's own design, ostensibly to be studied in Cronan's home facilities. But Sly knew it was an excuse to give Clio a ship and allow her to continue on her journey unmolested.

None of that, most likely, would have convinced his superiors that Clio had to be destroyed. Not until they discovered she was a threat.

And she _was_ a threat.

Sly knew better than anyone. What everyone hadn't known when they were parading politicos and generals and scientists in front of her was that Clio was collecting and storing every single fact of every brain that came within range (about 3 AU). What everyone hadn't known was that she was neither a single organism nor a conglomeration like a coral, but an engineered creature specifically designed to carry the genetic seeds of the race that designed and created her, to learn so that she could educate them to the greatest extent possible, to protect them through any means necessary, and to continue on her journey until she found a home for the race. That race had died when their sun had gone supernova with some survivors fleeing one direction and Clio, the Mother-Thing, fleeing another.

No one but her chosen had known until Cronan, brilliant but, after all, only eleven years old, had let slip some of the story, then all of it under carefully moderated duress. No one was sure of the extents of Clio's powers but torturing Cronan might have forced Clio to demonstrate.

Clio could not be approached, her ship all but ready to launch, and she was loaded down with another race and nearly the entire knowledge base of this one. No getting around how dangerous that was, what a risk that was.

Sly had known all that, too, but twenty three years as Galactic's top hatchet man had taught him to be silent unless specifically asked. No sense causing trouble. No sense forcing them to make him kill someone else he loved. Cronan had ruined that, had spilled the beans and been rewarded by being kept under house arrest. At least her death was not to be added to his long-dead conscience.

He kept himself from stepping closer to Clio through sheer will, but his will was not enough to walk away, walk out to the airlock and do his duty, not when she stood there, pulsating with joy and love for him.

Even now, even feeling her love envelope him, he couldn't understand it. He could grasp the innocent appeal of Orton Kast and the intellectual charm of Mahria Cronan. What in the world did she see in his own blackened heart?

Why do you question your worth, Ryker Sly?

He didn't want to kill her. Perhaps that weighed somewhere to his merit, but against the years of heartless dealings, ruthless killings, the murder of the one he loved before as ordered, it could be no more than a feather.

He hadn't wanted to kill the woman he'd loved either, though then it was _his_ loose tongue that condemned her. His report to his superiors without an appreciation for the consequences had convinced them that her innocent disdain for the corruption and decay of government, so closely allied to their trained killer, was a threat.

She had been so beautiful, those soulful eyes. The time he had loved her had been so short—so good. She was everything. She was his. And because she was his, her betrayal to the government could not be forgiven.

He could feel it now, needed only to close his eyes to see it again. He'd stood before her, gun pointed at the beautiful face he loved so well, hand squeezing a trigger he hadn't wanted to pull. He'd loved her as she stood, straight and tall, shattered by his betrayal, unashamed of what she believed in, unbroken, unbending . . . and still loving him.

You didn't kill her.

"She didn't think so either," he said, without opening his eyes. "I threw down the gun and she believed I had stood by her after all, but the gun went off and she was just as dead."

_But, you didn't kill her._ Clio was insistent but gentle, always gentle.

"I did! I'm too good for it to be an accident. Someone else would have killed her if I had failed. There was nothing I could do to save her . . . except let her believe I hadn't betrayed her."

Clio said nothing. She knew the whole truth, could see what happened written in his mind, could feel the emptiness inside what was left of his heart.

"I died then, too. You chose poorly when you chose me. I'm dead inside, and that just makes it easier to do what I have to do."

There was no visible sound, but there was a slight movement of air as if she had vented. It felt like a sigh. _Your plans sorrow me greatly, as does their treatment of Mahria. Is there no other way?_

"Cronan's too valuable for them to harm. I have no doubt it will end, as always, with her having the upper hand. As for my plans, I have no choice."

The console beeped. "Flight plan finalized and locked in. Launch in three minutes and counting," the voice said.

Come with us.

"I can't. _You know_ I can't. They can't afford your escape."

Even though I nurture a race within me, one that could disappear forever if I'm destroyed?

" _Because_ you do."

Time was up. Without touching her again, he forced himself to leave, to close the door behind him. They'd had no choice but to send him to take care of her. There was no one else who could get close enough, no one else she trusted.

He stared at the data station on the panel. The capability existed to evacuate her ship remotely while she was still docked to the station, the station where everyone of power waited for him to complete his task.

He sighed, but, in many ways, he wasn't really sorry. He put in the data card with the override and password, the virus Cronan had given him for just such a contingency, one that would disable every other ship and weapon on Galactic HQ.

Then he flipped the switch to evacuate as he felt the grappling hooks release and her ship depart, the switch to evacuate the airlock where he stood.

After all, only _he_ could kill her.

This time, they couldn't make him do it.

After all, he loved her.

**"It's Me Again, Michael"**

"It's me again, Michael . . ."

Michael started violently from his doze in the easy chair, shattering a fitful sleep as deep as any he'd been able to get since the accident. Now, he searched, wide-eyed with fear, the moon-silvered room, shaking, scared—of memories—of dreams.

The dreams were the hardest to escape. They tortured his nights until he slept always on the edge of consciousness without waking. Dreams of a laughing wife and a dimpled babe, of a somber double funeral with mismatched coffins, of reaching for a strident phone

(it never rang)

only to hear his life shatter in two sentences. "No, Mr. West, this is not a joke. Your wife and child are dead." Worse still were the dreams he couldn't remember, that jerked him awake, wet with dread of a horror he couldn't describe, couldn't quite see. He knew they had to do with the accident

(murder)

but somehow they frightened him more _because_ he couldn't remember, _because_ they skirted his touch, teasing just barely beyond his memory—because there was an ominous deliberate horror there not in his other dreams.

The daytime memories, too, were near inescapable. They disquieted days already filled too full with exhaustion, sorrow, overwork. The more tired and depressed he grew, the harder to push them away until it became only a futile effort on his part.

He tried pushing now, but it was only a token resistance. Resigned, he closed his eyes and waited for the pain all over again. This time, his mind surprised him, flying back much further than six weeks, scrolling back to when he was a child, a fanciful child . . . who heard a voice in the night.

He couldn't have been more than six years old when he heard it the very first

(second)

time, just a raspy thread of sound, surely not enough to wake a child notorious for sound sleep. It was a hoarse whisper, undoubtedly from his dreams, but it seemed to slither through the still air of the toy-filled room dimly lit with the orange nightlight—a dim room but light enough to see its emptiness of anything . . . alive.

"It's me again, Michael."

Logic and empty rooms don't apply to six-year-olds. Terrified, he had sat up in bed, screaming and sobbing, listening for the sounds of his parents' feet, hearing instead the soft sound of Laura, the babysitter, coming to comfort him. His parents were still away when he went back to sleep, comforted by Laura's gentle voice.

When he woke up, he was told they would be away forever. No one really told him what happened—how it happened—but he found out the way most kids find out what no one wants them to know. They just keep their mouths shut until they're forgotten or until some grown-up thinks their attention has wandered. He knew—all about a new Mercedes stalling on the train tracks, how the engineer never saw them until the train made contact, how the driver in the car behind his parents saw them pounding, pleading, pounding to get out—and couldn't.

("It's me again, Michael")

Sometimes, he thought he knew more than the grownups told him. Even before he heard the details, he could close his eyes and see his parents, locked in, faces distorted as they pressed against the glass, the tears in his mother's blue blue the eyes, the terror on his father's face, all bleached nearly white in the glare of the train's headlight.

It was one of those freak accidents,

(murders)

like when his sister fell off the balcony when he was two. He was really too young to remember, one would think, but he could still recall the dull thump she made as she hit the ground, the ruined smile

(grimace)

of broken teeth frozen on her face as she stared sightlessly at him from the other side of the screen door. A tragic accident. The dreams where she is pushed, protesting, her arms fruitlessly pin wheeling as she is propelled over the edge, they were just dreams, just the imaginings of a fanciful child trying to find explanations for first one accident and then another. Mishaps

(youknewyouknewyouknew—You heard the voice then, too)

there were no answers for. What he had dreamed were coincidences dredged up from childish folly by his most recent tragedy—another freakish accident

(murder)

that killed his Sarah and little Bobby. No one can make a plane nosedive into the Atlantic. No survivors. A freak accident.

It was just a touch of childish imagination that made him half-suspect

(know)

that something else had woken him in terror that night, sent him reaching for the phone before it had had a chance to scream. A harsh voice, but quiet:

"It's me again, Michael."

"It's just a dream!" Michael shouted to the moonlit room, but the room was empty. He shook his head and settled himself back into his recliner, forcing himself to breathe normally again. In only moments, he began to doze, his mind musing, chuckling nervously at his own silliness, sorrowed at the memory of his loss—all his losses. His mind whispered soothingly that it didn't matter. There was no one left.

"It's me again, Michael."

Somehow, he wasn't surprised, so he just lay there, awake, eyes closed, afraid to look at what had come for him at last. There was no one else left.

"It's me again, Michael. It's me."

Michael opened his eyes. Of course it was.

### The College Years

I hadn't entirely forgone poetry, even in college, and I was just starting to put together what became my first novel on the lines of a Georgette Heyer. The short stories I wrote were more in line with science fiction, which is what I read more of at the time, and were starting to be more complex as the idealism and fatalism of my high school years fell away. Dialogue was still clunky, but improving, and now a bigger player in revealing character and moving story along. Motivations were less black and white and I managed to even inject a little humor here and there. Mostly, these stories were exercises in "what if," something that became of a favorite pastime of mine.

**Operation Terminal Beach**

Up in space, a satellite that serviced both Soviet television and one of the less respectable US satellite stations bounced an unscheduled beam down to Moscow, a beam all in trinary and in a code so simple as to be as unbreakable as the genetic code, even if it was detected.

1012210211210020112 . . .

. . . 2012112201201 . . .

"Comrade Solonov to see you, Comrade General."

"Send him in," the Soviet Head of Defense said without looking up from his desk, but, when Solonov entered the room, the General leapt to his feet smartly and abandoned his desk to greet the famous scientist. The General might be in his sixties, but he hadn't gone to seed as so many of his comrades had done.

"Comrade General," said Solonov, bowing his head slightly and shaking the proffered hand.

The General hadn't expected Solonov to be so young, hardly even forty by the look of him. "Comrade Solonov, what an honor and a pleasure to meet a scientist of your accomplishments. I am so glad we could finally meet. Please sit down. I have been so busy since taking office that I have not had a chance to talk to you, so I was pleased when you asked for an interview. I was but too happy to comply."

"Thank you for your kindness in granting this interview, for yours is such a vital position that I know your time is valuable."

"No more than yours, Comrade Solonov. You have done a great deal to ensure the safety of our mother country. It is truly an honor. I must ask, however if this is to be a social call?"

"I would never waste your or my precious time with a social call. You have given me credit for much of our country's present security, but I wish to do more, much more. That is why I came."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I recently toured a missile silo, one of those not run by my own hand-picked men, and I was appalled by the lack of discipline and dedication in those workers. I am filled with fear that part of our national security is in the hands of those who may not be totally dedicated to our cause. My OBTB missiles are maintained by my own staff of engineers, and, of their loyalty and efficiency, I can have no doubt."

"Nor I, Comrade Solonov," the General replied thoughtfully, but with conviction, for he visited several of Solonov's missile silos and hand been astounded at the blinding efficiency and the almost palpable sense of purpose.

"What I worry about," continued Solonov, sitting forward in his chair, "are the attendants in the silos and subs alike, with _any_ access to nuclear weapons. Can we depend on them? Many are influenced by Western music and dress. Who knows if they are not influenced by Western philosophies and moral standards. I have not seen the dedication I think necessary for the vast responsibility they have, and, not being engineers, I don't believe they handle their jobs with either the skill or reverence they should."

"Perhaps you are right, Solonov. What is your suggestion?"

"Let me put men in the silos, in the subs. Let me work over every single weapon to make certain it is still in working order after being in the hands of the unqualified. Let me make certain my country is just as strong as it should be!" Solonov seemed almost standing although he never left his chair. Fanaticism glowed from his face, his eyes alight with a half-mad look the General had seen once before in the eyes of a concentration camp colonel in World War II.

"Do you expect us to leave the control of our entire nuclear force in your hands alone?"

"My men are hand-picked, competent engineers and totally dedicated to me."

"To you, and not the country?"

"They are dedicated to the country, because I am dedicated. Can you doubt my loyalty?"

The General looked into the cold blue eyes intense with that unnatural fervor he had so hated forty-five years before. "No," said the General slowly, and then weakly smiled. "I can think of no more _effective_ hands to put our salvation in. I have every confidence in your abilities and loyalty."

Solonov looked directly at the General's eyes. "Thank you, Comrade General. You won't be disappointed." He rose to his feet. "Believe me, I know just what to do."

"I'm sure you do," replied the General, nodding his head in dismissal. As the door closed behind Solonov, the General whispered, "I hate that sort of man, but we need him, need more of him. Why, oh why, must that always be so?"

2012110121012101021100021012121210000111 . . .

"What makes you so certain your information is correct, Michaels?" asked the President in his soft voice.

"Well, from the mobilization of Solonov's team, it seems likely that they must have infiltrated our own silo personnel. That's their typical paranoid response."

"And what's our typical paranoid response?"

"Sir?"

"Nothing. So, what do you want me to do?"

"Well, sir, we were thinking of a strong aggressive program to . . ."

"No. I think I'll just ask Ryan to screen and retrain nuclear personnel, make certain everything's working right. He provides most of the maintenance people from his own group after all."

"But sir . . ."

The President waved his hand impatiently. "No sense in being more paranoid than they are. I am no warmonger, Michaels. Besides, this is about the extent of my powers. In fact, I may not be able to get Congress to approve it—but I probably can. Don't worry, Michaels. It's in my hands." He opened the door for his Secretary of Defense to leave his office.

"That's what I'm afraid of," the Secretary said to the closed door behind him and walked down the hall alone, shaking his head at the weakness of his President. Scientists had no business in politics.

2201102101220212100021222012112111010211012 . . .

MOSCOW (UPI) - Soviet leader Nenchenko, who replaced the sadly assassinated Gorbachev two years ago today, announced today that he still intends to put nuclear weapons in space under the direction of Mikhail Solonov. The proposed weapons should be orbiting just months away, the announced date November 19, 1989. The United States Congress said today that they deplored all use of nuclear weapons in space and would appeal to the UN for support . . .

NEW YORK, NY (AP) - Tension is high now that the Soviet ambassador to the UN has formally and violently withdrawn from the United Nations. Before he left, Ambassador Marichev announced that the Soviet Union would not be dictated to like nursery children, the UN was a fraud, and ineffectual council with no power. Soon after, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Rumania also withdrew as well as . . .

TOKYO (AP) - In a surprising twist, Japan, whose leaders have recently been known for their peaceful endeavors, declared war on the Soviet Union for alleged ocean territory infringements. Soviet head, Nenchenko is quoted to have replied, "Didn't they learn anything from Hiroshima?" This reaction has done nothing to reduce tension and has alarmed US government agencies . . .

2201211021112112220012122001122000121 . . .

WASHINGTON, D.C. (UPI) - In an unprecedented statement, President Samuelson declared that any "overt act of nuclear aggression aimed at any ally would be returned in kind from US silos." Surprisingly, he is being backed by a frightened Congress who gave him a standing ovation as he addressed the House, but there were many white faces. When asked for a comment, the Speaker of the House said, "We must avoid nuclear war, even if we have to use nuclear aggression to convince the Soviets we are serious."

MOSCOW (UPI) - Today, the Soviets sent up their space missile silo station right on schedule. Dr. Ryan, when asked, said that his SDI satellite sent up last year on defense funding could not stop any missiles from space and, as the only defense satellite, could only stop a small fraction of nuclear bombardment. "Nuclear aggression is really something to be afraid of now," said Ryan. "We can't do a bloody thing to stop it." Ryan said he would not be available for further comment at any later date as he will be going on an extended retreat . . .

0122102202121200211222001212101210012211110 . . .

"Hey, everybody in musicland. This is Buddy Spalding of WKOK in DC. Hey, the Surgeon General says being near your local fallout shelter is best for your health as things are getting hot, hot, hot. I'm on my way but first I gotta play something hot, hot, hot on DC's hottest station . . ."

2210122111002121121111012100221211 . . .

"This is not a drill! Please go to the nearest fallout shelter. Nuclear missiles have been launched. This is not a drill . . ."

But in a way, it was, and, as people woke up and looked at their world, still intact, the real war began . . .

"Comrade Nenchenko?"

"Solonov, you have a great deal to explain! Why did our missiles not go off? Why did they not hit their targets? Why were no missiles launched from our space silos?"

Solonov calmly took a seat and half-smiled at the Soviet head's furiously red face. "Because, Comrade Nenchenko," Solonov said slowly, drawing out the Premier's name to insult him, "I neutered them, as you would a dog. Fixed. And I made certain that they were maintained in their defunct state with everything but their nuclear elements in perfect working order. Programmed to go where I wanted, where they would do no harm, kill no innocents, the poisons in them dismantled."

"You're insane!" Nenchenko whispered, sinking into his chair.

"Am I? Or am I the only sane man in the Kremlin? . . . "

"You what?!" Senator Carmidy gasped and then held up his hand to stop his committee from bombarding Ryan's head with questions, while glaring at the unrepentant Dr. Isaac Ryan.

"I said I fixed them as you would your amorous Fido and then I made sure that every single one of them went off—relatively harmlessly."

"Who gave you that power?"

"You're trying to ask me who gave me that authority because _you_ gave me the power. Of course, I had the power. My team designed the computer system, and we maintained silos and submarine missiles. Hell, we trained the men who ran them and you can bet they ended up fighting for our cause because they're intelligent and caring men. Those who didn't were 'screened out.' My men would die for our cause—don't you think they would have fired at my command?"

"You goddamned traitor . . ."

"I'm a traitor, you selfish power-hungry dog?" snarled Solonov, rising from his chair like a lithe panther, eyes once more gleaming in their frightening way. And, now, the Premier was frightened. "You self-righteous piece of shit! I saved the Soviet Union you tried to kill!"

"You betrayed your country," Nenchenko declared but his voice weakened as Solonov approached. He was greatly regretting his desire to interrogate Solonov alone.

Solonov grabbed him by the neck of his jacket and, pulling aside the blind, shoved Nenchenko's face against the frosty window. "That's the Soviet Union! You think it's you, don't you? You, with your fat belly and smelly hair. You think you're the Soviet Union!" He spat. "You're nothing. Every citizen of the lowest standing in Russia is better than you. _They_ are the Soviet Union—they _are_ Soviets. Without them, there is nothing to unite."

"I could call in the guards."

"But do you want them to hear what I'm saying? If you want to live, you will listen to me."

With his last bit of bravado, Nenchenko sneered, "But you are a traitor."

Solonov let go of Nenchenko's collar and gestured to the window, saying softly, "I saved them. I am a hero . . ."

"'A hero?' A madman—" the chairman began.

" _I_ am not the madman! _You_ decreed the death penalty on an entire planet—and I saved it. _You_ ordered the deaths of billions of people, millions of Americans, and I saved all but 180 American lives. Don't call me a criminal— _you_ are the murderers."

"We are not on trial, Ryan—"

"You have already been convicted, but we'll let you plea bargain for your lives. You can die . . ."

"Or you can relinquish your government to us. Completely," Solonov purred, smiling his icy smile.

"You _are_ mad!" said Nenchenko, staring as if at some horrible sight. "You are more in danger of death than I."

"I am only in danger for the moment, because you are ignorant and stupid. Who do you think holds the controls of the last remaining nuclear weapons, the only viable ones? The instant I die—and my people will know—the Kremlin will be destroyed by the missiles you were kind enough to put into orbit for me. Believe me, _those_ warheads work. If I die, or if I don't contact our leader within two hours with your surrender, Red Square will be a charred hole. You decide. And don't think of escape. We know your hiding places."

"You bluff. If I kill you, your organization will crumble."

"I am not the leader. There is someone, several people, to take my place."

"You cannot kill me without killing yourself!"

"Can you really believe I am afraid to die?" Solonov laughed, his eyes gleaming.

"I couldn't give you my power if I wanted to," Nenchenko whimpered.

"Of course you can. You and every high-ranking official will simply abdicate all power over to me, and we'll do the rest . . ."

"That's preposterous! Our constituents would rebel! They would never stand for a dictatorship! Not Americans!"

"They would if they knew we were the ones who saved all of their lives. They will when they realize that every ounce of nuclear weaponry is in our hands alone as well as a satellite much more effective at stopping nuclear aggression than you were led to believe. The people won't howl for long either. We're changing the future."

Carmidy snorted. "The Soviets own that satellite. Do you think they will bow down to you too?"

"Yes, just as you will eventually. Solonov built that satellite just like I built ours. Right now, he's probably having the same conversation with Nenchenko, just as Dr. Lee is in China. We control all the power. Now, we could destroy you and be no worse off, but that's not what we'd like to do. We're tired of the killing. Destruction is a bad precedent, _but_ we'll use it if we have to."

"So, you joined forces with the Soviets against us and don't call yourself a traitor. You blackmail your own government and call _us_ criminals. Threats! Promises! Insanity!"

"You still won't understand, caught up in stereotypes. This is bigger than Russia or China or the United States. This is mankind and we need to save it."

"We, we, we. Who are these people? Who is your unnamed leader? Solonov? Are you only the puppet of a Soviet?"

From the doorway came a soft voice, "No, he is my friend. I am the creator and instigator of Operation Terminal Beach." President Samuelson stepped lightly in and stood behind his co-patriot. "You will abdicate all power to me and my organization and we will make a new United Nations unlike any dreamt of before, stronger than any one nation because it alone will have the power of total destruction. You will abdicate or you will die—murderers. Either way, we will win. You, and every Congressman, Secretary, Justice of the Supreme Court, General—everyone of power, including myself, will resign leaving all power to us and we will start over."

"You couldn't get one nation to join your twisted UN!"

"England, Japan, Canada and most Western Europe and South American countries have already been contacted and eagerly joined, without coercion. I don't think you realize how you've scared the rest of the world. The Soviet Union will crumble as will China, as you will, and the Eastern Bloc countries will follow. It will be shared ultimate power."

Senator Carmidy stared at the President in horror.

"Don't you see, Senator Carmidy, we are working for mankind—all mankind. Someone has to or there won't _be_ any mankind. We must realize that there is but one race, one planet. Scientists discovered that long ago. Every science community is a mix of race, nationality and gender. We know what we have to do to survive; we finally have to take responsibility for our technology and not let it destroy us. We would like your help in helping us thrive and not just survive. We're just scientists who want a place for our children to grow up. Someone has to look past the election date. We will."

Senator Carmidy, a former cop who'd managed to make a bid for and hold a seat in Congress despite his honesty and dedication, bowed his head, then raised it slightly, looking old and beaten, but still proud. "How can we trust you?"

"Have we not already saved you once? We want a happy peaceful planet, full of living, happy human beings. Is anything too extreme to achieve that?"

"I am proud to be an American and a human being. If I cannot approve of your methods, how can I trust you to do as you promise, to not become obsessed with power?"

"We've had the power since long ago to take the world. We did it this way because we wanted it intact and alive. We cannot make you trust us, but we can point out you have no choice. We want your help because we want a good life for the world. We need it because we are only scientists with no experience at social and financial issues. We need your help, but we _don't have to_ have it. You can help us and help us make the world we dream of, that you dream of, or you can turn away and die, and leave the world in our inexperienced hands. The choice is yours."

The Senator closed his eyes and made his choice. "I cannot speak for my fellow politicians, but I will help you—if only for the sake of the children." With those words, he stepped down from his seat to stand behind the President.

212201212110221110122110121121200001 . . .

It was the year 0000 AW. Time to start the world afresh.

**Castles of Sand**

Every day she came to gaze at him as he sat alone on the beach, staring at the ocean, his eyes misty as the sea in the early morning. He would sometimes throw rocks at the pounding surf but mostly he sat, mesmerized by the resounding strength of the sea's particular music, while she, a child of that music, would wait, watching, just offshore, her long blonde hair floating around her like a cloud, her sea-green eyes studying him from behind one of the many rocks that spotted that stretch of sea.

There was something about him that drew her every day to study, unobserved, the handsome man sitting on the beach. He was obsessed with the sea, gazing longingly and sadly at the gesturing waves, entranced by her majesty. Some days, he would be called by some strident voice from his beach house, but always he would return. Most days he sat uninterrupted, staring at the sea, just beyond its reach—never venturing in, never touching what so passionately held his attention.

It would not seem an interesting pastime, watching someone watching the sea, and yet, every day she left the myriad pleasures of the undersea to watch him. Something in him compelled her, fascinated her. She loved him.

A landman. It wasn't right to love a landman—it wasn't safe. Of the few merfolk who had been foolish enough to love landfolk, most had been able to repent before doing the unthinkable, before even thinking the unspeakable, but there were a few, a small handful in the vast history of those beautiful sea dwellers, that had forsaken their home world, who had become the whispered victims spoken about in tragic legend after tragic legend. There was no place in the gentle, carefree language of the merfolk for words of such a compulsion that all most treasured would be given up, thrown away out of passion for a mere landman.

Yet, it had been done. Of all fates, it was the most feared, the most fearful, and yet there were those who had done it, who were mourned as dead, as worse than dead, by those they left behind.

She, too, was a simple mermaid who knew no words to explain her obsession. How can one speak of a longing beyond words, of a pulling that brings you closer and closer to what you most fear? How can something so compelling be so wrong? How can one explain that the greatest nightmare becomes preferable to loneliness, to that special loneliness that can be cured by only one?

The process to remove one's tail is slow and painful, taking many hours. It is the pain of peeling off one's own skin and exposing raw flesh to the elements, to the briny touch of the sea. It is a bright bolt of pain, a burning only made worse by the water around it.

Even more painful is the knowledge that it is an almost irreversible act. To grow back the fragile tail will take weeks of inactivity at the bottom of the sea. Or worse, if the sun rises and sets while the mermaid still walks, the tail never will grow back and she will remain a landmaid forever.

Every bit of this she knew. Every legend, every tragic myth and fact she had heard told. Once, she had been frightened and shocked that some _could_ forsake the teeming vibrant depths, rich in life and vivid color, for the unfeeling, unfriendly, colorless land above, that someone could go through such pain and torment for the love of some lowly land creature who could never know or understand the wonder of the world below.

Yet, somehow, she found herself drawn inexorably into that very world she despised. How could one give up the sea for some mortal? Yet, every day, she left it behind to gaze at the landman who sat by the sea. She had never spoken to him, did not know his name, or his temperament, but she loved him all the same. Somehow, he seemed worth whatever sacrifice.

Just before dawn, she shed her beautiful blue-green tail, stifling her screams as the salty ocean washed over her legs, seemingly whole and unblemished but raw as an open wound. Quietly, she rose from the sea, clothed only in her long golden hair, walking across sand still warm from the day before as her tender flesh silently screamed at the contact. The rising sun clothed her in a crimson radiance as the morning breeze caught her drying hair and carried it like a halo around her head. She stood before him, a golden goddess born of the sea, more beautiful than even Venus could have been, her sea-green eyes glowing with love for him.

The landman looked up, neither surprised nor impassioned for his eyes were filled with pity and sorrow. "Sit with me," he said softly, and she did, stretching her legs painfully upon the warming sand.

"Once," he began, as if he had been expecting her, as if she had done all she had done only to hear his story, "there was a man in love with a woman as few men had ever loved a woman before. He had seen her only once, but the vision filled him, haunted him, a vibrant shadow for his dreams, an obsession in his waking moments. He found his eyes searching for her constantly, and when he glimpsed her again, he felt the most profound satisfaction as well as the most violent hungering he had ever known.

"She was not beautiful, at least was not what he had, until then, considered beautiful. Her hair was short and the color of midnight, not the long honey-colored tresses he had always admired. The soft liquid eyes he had dreamed of as a young man did not compare to her hard brown ones. This was no gentle maid, but a strong woman, slim with long legs and a determined chin. It wasn't her beauty that entranced him but her strength, the power that was clear in every gesture, in her purposeful stride. It was that strength that made her beautiful to him, that made him love her. I had never known a woman like her.

"I loved her—love her still. I gave up everything for her. Someone so strong could not be asked to sacrifice, so I did, eager and glad to give up everything—for her. It was how it should be. I would lose everything to be with her, bathed in her strength. Did she not have enough for both of us? And she let me, loving me in her way as much as I loved her. But, a part of her love was contempt that I was satisfied to feed from her strength, that I was so weak that I would give up everything and ask for nothing in return, that my only strength was in my devotion to her.

"She loved me, but found less and less time to love me, finding other matters more pressing. After all, won't I still be there tomorrow? Isn't it the very strength she has, that strength that doesn't need me, what binds me to her? She knows I love her still . . . that I could never go back even if my love for her dried up and blew away on the early morning wind . . . But it hasn't. I am as bound to her now as on the first day I came to her, my past behind me . . ."

Then, he sat there, his eyes searching the sea, as if for the answer, the strength to make her need him. The mermaid watched him, her eyes studying the man she loved so strongly, so insanely, so vainly.

Above them, the sun began to slide down the sky, heading for its resting place in the depths of the sea. Finally, as the sun dipped through that final stretch of sky, he whispered, his eyes never leaving the crashing sea, "Were you what might have been?" He closed his eyes for just a moment.

Suddenly, he rose, brushing the sand from his clothes. "Go back where you come from, little one. There is nothing here like your dreams but castles of sand. That is no future for you." Then, he walked away, shoulders slumped, head low.

She looked at his retreating back with sea-green eyes filled with brine, then ran and dived into the setting sun, into the sea, where her tears mixed with the salty ocean. She never returned.

Through time, her memory of him became dim, although it never completely left her. In the depths of her home she found another and a full life with few regrets, no regrets except, perhaps, one . . .

A few days after the landman's encounter with the mermaid, her abandoned tail washed ashore and he picked it up gently, a look of wonder on his face. Cradling it carefully in his arms, he carried it through the house, past the den where is his wife spoke forcefully on the phone with one of her employees, and up the stairs to the attic where he opened an old sea-trunk. Delicately, he laid her cast-off tail . . . next to his own as his sea-green eyes filled with tears for the choice he had made.

**A Time of Change**

"Sir, it's Wilson again," toned the neutral voice of the secretary.

"Oh, God! Can't he find something useful to do? Or at least stay out of my hair? Tell him he's not getting his ship back until he pays the impound fees."

"But sir . . ."

"Tell him to stop pestering me. Good Lord, he's lucky not to be thrown in jail for drunk and disorderly. For God's sake, he puked on the governor's wife. The governor would have my butt if I let him have his ship back without the impound fees paid, maybe even with 'em paid, no matter who his father is. Tell him no and then tell him I'm not in—but I wish him the best."

"But, sir, he's not here about his ship."

The Director General stared blankly at his intercom, and wished he had put in video. "He's not?"

"That's what he says, sir."

"Is he drunk?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"Take a whiff."

There was a brief moment of soft static on the line. "He doesn't smell good, but he doesn't smell drunk."

"Well, shit. I guess I'll have to talk to him. Send him in."

There was a soft rattle and Wilson slipped through the tube with a slight whoosh, landing lightly in the Director General's best chair. The Director General bit his lip and wished that he had activated the chair's automatic plastic cover, but Wilson immediately leapt to his feet, crossed over to the Director General's desk and planted filthy hands on the shiny desktop.

Wilson smiled the handsome crooked smile that worked with the ladies, but never seemed to get him out of trouble. "Damn if it didn't work, DG, 'cause it did. Flipped right through. When you first told me about this, I thought you'd blown a fuse, but I'm a gambler. Figured that chances were, if it didn't work, it would only fizzle, not kill me. In which case, I could always soar off into the wild blue yonder with none the wiser. But it worked, better ride than any carnival—ought to sell tickets."

"Tickets?" The Director General sighed heavily. "Why are you here? What are you talking about? And, ugh, when did you last bathe?"

"When I left here two weeks ago, of course. You know my ship is just a short hauler, no shower. Hey, if you're gripin' about the time it took me, you said you wanted me back here as soon as I was sure it would do and who can blame a guy for takin' an extra day or two to scout about the system?"

"Your ship?" screeched the Director General. "Who gave you your ship?"

"Hey, calm down, DG . . ."

"Don't call me that!"

"What's wrong with you? Something leak and you're testing me? _You_ gave me back my ship, remember?"

"I?!" the Director General roared incredulously.

"Sure, sent me out yourself," said Wilson calmly. As the Director General continued to sputter, he added brightly, "Now, don't get yourself all upset. I found the perfect planet, just like old Earth but fresh, like nothing ever set foot on it before. Ripe for colonies. And I saw other ones as well. You couldn't ask for a better place to live. None too soon, I'd say. Why, I was afraid you wouldn't be here. There were some mighty strange fireworks with that doodad. I would have sworn that Rega blew just as I left this . . ."

"Where did you get the drugs? Wilson, your father will not be pleased," the Director General said disapprovingly, "Rega won't blow for another year so just go home and try to sleep it off." The Director General got up to usher Wilson to the EXIT chute.

"No! Wait! Don't you remember? Didn't you want me to scout out a place for a colony? In another dimension?"

The Director General stopped, an arrested look on his face. "In another dimension?" he asked dazedly.

"Finally, some recognition. Well, your troubles are over, my boy. I bloody well found it!"

"Oh my God!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"They must have made that director's helmet too tight, because you haven't made the smallest bit of sense and I'm the one in the drink tank," said Wilson, shaking his unshaved head blearily as he sat perched precariously on the edge of his prison bunk.

"Well," the Director General replied calmly, "You have one of the fastest ships with a large payload capacity. It may be converted convolution of—er—used parts, but no one can deny it can go!"

"I could understand wanting the Dragon, though not officially wanting it, but not me," he returned suspiciously, "And it's not like you to try flattery, especially on me."

"Would you let anyone else pilot the Dragon?"

"Hell, no! No one else could, either. She's keyed to me personally and she flies like no other ship. But it still doesn't explain it. There's fifty ships in the dock that are almost 60 percent as good as the Dragon or even more so 'officially' and 100 pilots better than me—or at least less trouble."

"I have to admit, it's a novel experience talking to you sober though it is rather unnerving to talk to you when you're lucid. I'm surprised that you have a glimmer of intelligence, though I'd heard rumors."

"Yea. Thanks. Please, flattery doesn't impress me unless you're pretty and female."

"Yes, well, to answer your question, while there are pilots infinitely less trouble than you, I disagree that there are any better than you. You may not have your father's diplomacy, but you certainly have his flying skills."

"Dear old Dad, the honorable Ambassador Wilson, would disagree that I got anything from him. Thanks Dad, generous with the talent and stingy with the dough." Wilson raised his coffee cup in salute.

"But, I assure you, Wilson, we shall not be."

Wilson looked up at the Director General speculatively. "You'll give me back my Dragon plus a bit of cash, right?"

"Yes."

"And everything I've done here will be forgotten?"

"Forgiven anyway."

"Am I talented or just expendable? I'm guessing the latter."

"Believe me, we have every expectation of you coming back."

"Un-huh. Let me get this straight. You're trusting me, an alcoholic penniless troublemaker, with a secret mission involving an experimental method of breaking into another dimension and finding a place to colonize before Rega blows, which is sooner than everyone suspects. All this with no strings and you expecting me to come back. Right?"

"Exactly," the Director General confirmed, smiling, seemingly pleased with Wilson's quick grasp of things.

"Un-huh. Oh well, it beats dying of boredom or delirium tremens here, or, even worse, getting a telecom lecture from Daddy dear. I'm a gambler. I'll go. What have I got to lose?"

"I'm glad you agree. I was sure you would. We'll program the coordinates and you can leave by the end of the week." The Director General opened the door of the drunk tank. "Believe me, Mr. Wilson, we were not even considering another pilot for this job."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I tell you, gentlemen, the evidence is incontrovertible . . ."

"Not to mention unbelievable." There was nervous laughter all around the room.

"Nevertheless, gentlemen, you all saw the footage. Rega exploded thirteen months ahead of schedule and an alcoholic troublemaker knew all about our top secret dimension transport plan. The coordinates we had calculated secretly were there in his flight computer with slight modifications as well as a video and untampered log which included a visual of our system exploding. There can be no doubt that speed is of the essence."

"Director General, you can't expect us to believe that Rega will explode in 11 days because of the log of a renegade ship of some demented pilot," said the governor firmly. "The same man who claims he left more than two weeks ago. His is not the word I am most likely to place faith in."

"Sir, there are two Dragons in the bay, one still impounded, and it never left the impound dock. The other arrived three days ago piloted by Jason Wilson who had been in it for two weeks alone. That same Wilson had been in my office whining about releasing his ship just the day before. There are two Jason Wilsons on R-27 as we speak."

"Oh my God!" whispered the governor, white.

"Even worse, they're both sober. The one that arrived we have 'quarantined' to not only keep him from bumping into himself but also to keep him from any accurate timepieces. As his ship's time jibes exactly with what he thinks is the correct time and date, he's still ignorant of any time anomalies. The other is sobering up in isolation/debriefing, also to help prevent contact. We have the colonists picked and ready, but we have to move fast. We do not have the luxury of months that we thought but instead a handful of days . . . hours even. And an armada of colony ships that must escape without fanfare.

"What's more, Mender, our expert on the sun, told me he has seen some signs in the star he has never seen on another star before. When I asked him if it could blow early, he said he hadn't a guess, only that the star was not behaving as planned. Unpredictable, he called it."

"But do we have to send Wilson?" moaned a weakening governor and there were concurring mumbles from the room.

"What choice do we have? We've already sent him because he already came back. It has to be him."

"Just say we send someone else. What happens?" a councilman asked hopefully.

"No one knows, but experimentation is another luxury we cannot afford. The stakes are too high and the time far too short. We must decide and we must decide now. What's it to be, gentlemen, live or die?"

"Can you pull it off?" asked one soft voice in the answering stillness.

"I have no choice."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Quarantine or no, I don't like being locked up for days without even a drink for company."

"We thought of that," replied the Director General with a smile.

Wilson had to smile as well. "I bet you did. Well, everyone aboard?"

"Everything's ready. Now, remember, you must wait at least a year before returning and you know what riches will be waiting."

"They'd better be. You know I'm not the altruistic type."

"Certainly not," the Director General answered softly, a misty wistful look in his eye. "There are many people who would give much for your reward."

"That's what I like to hear."

"Good luck, Wilson. I have a feeling you'll make it just fine."

"You know, it's strange, but I feel the same way . . ."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"You sure everything's programmed right? I don't trust your technicians in the Dragon's computer banks."

"I am quite certain those are the correct coordinates for your travel. We have them from the best possible source."

"Who?"

"Confidential, my boy, but someone I'm certain you would trust."

Wilson snorted. "Then you don't know me. I don't trust anyone but myself." He frowned. "While I was being debriefed, I heard from a little secretary that something much like my Dragon was launched a couple of days ago. You're not keeping something from me, are you?"

"Do you think there is another Dragon anywhere in this universe?"

"Of course not!" said Wilson emphatically.

"Well, there you go. And don't forget, once you find a good place for colonization, mark it and then take a look around the system. It's just as vital that we know about the system as the specific planet. This is not the time for nasty surprises. God knows we've had enough of them. Take your time, but not too long. As we didn't provide you with any liquor, I expect you'll be back."

"This had better be worth it. Hell, this had better not be just a way of getting rid of me."

"Don't worry, Wilson. I have no doubt, none, you'll find your way back. I believe with all my heart. I just wish I could go with you. You're the lucky one."

"Well, damned if I know why I'm the lucky one, or even why you picked me, but if I am the lucky one, it's the first bit of good luck I've seen in as long as I can remember."

"They do say luck changes. I wonder, if given the right circumstances, men do too."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

From the control room, the Director General watched the little blip of the Dragon on a scope, his eyes sad. All around him, on thirty different planets, there was panic as the unmistakable and incredibly swift signs of Rega's degeneration became obvious. No one in a conventional mode of travel would be able to escape, just one alcoholic troublemaker and a handful of colonists that left three days before. He watched as the blip began dimension hopping maneuvers and so never saw the blast the ripped through an entire unprepared system. Almost unprepared system, for one tiny ship blinked across a barrier before it could do more than glimpse the death of the system.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I don't believe it," said Wilson for the fourth time, shaking his head as if to jar something loose in it.

"You saw the tape, too. There's been some time mix-up. The Director General thought that this dimension might travel in the opposite direction with respect to time. That's why you came back two weeks before you left," said the Leland. Leland was a rather irritating scientist because he talked a lot and was right far too often, a trait Wilson instinctively disliked.

"You mean I was there while I was there?"

"Precisely. Look here at my watch, set at the right time. The time on your ship is about four weeks off, two weeks for when you were here and the two weeks you went back in Rega time."

Wilson seemed still preoccupied with the image of two of himself at once and, to give the governor, who was dead on Rega in some other time, credit, he didn't seem too thrilled at the thought of another of him floating around. "There just can't be two of me at the same time!"

"Why not? Besides the fact it's disturbing, I mean. Why do you think they kept you under wraps as soon as you came back? And didn't they do the same thing before you left on your excursion?"

"There just can't be two of me at the same time!"

"Boy," said a fatherly minister who was, thankfully the only religious member of the colonists' council members, "There are two of you in this dimension now."

"That's right," piped in a rather quiet man, a mathematician who was constantly referred to by Leland. "I calculated that you'll be skipping through this system for another four days before returning to pick us up."

"I don't believe it," said Wilson. "And, now I wish I hadn't returned at all. I knew I should have skipped off. I don't know what came over me."

Leland and the human calculator shrugged and, giving him up as a lost cause, began to discuss the ramifications of living backwards in time. The preacher began a long, rather complicated, sermon that, if boiled down, simply meant that there was no helpful reference in the Holy Book to draw from, which rather went without saying. Leland and a young history scholar began clamoring over the possibilities of visiting their civilization in the past while Packer, a lovely young physicist, contended that she didn't see how we could visit unless we had according to history.

Leland immediately decided this anomaly explained the UFO's of old earth while the historian said poppycock and the minister took a swig of brandy. Finally, as the argument became more heated, everyone turned to Wilson. "What do you think?"

He looked up from his unhappy introspection and said, "You're asking me?"

"Well, the Director General did say you were unknowing leader material. He left you in charge."

"He also left me unknowing. Look, I don't know anything about this. Sorry, but leave me out of this."

"But you'll have to make the decisions, plan out the future, form policy."

Wilson got swiftly to his feet and retreated to the door of the hut, all the while protesting, "I don't know anything about time travel or being leader or physics. I'm no historian. Why me? Why me?" He threw open the door and strode outside, slamming the ill-fitting door with surprising force as his voice drifted back into the hut:

"I don't even know why they picked me!"

### Entering the World of Fantasy

_In the early nineties, I stumbled across a book that would profoundly change my life and the direction I was writing in. As a capable woman fond of strong female protagonists, I'd been intrigued by the premise behind_ Sword and Sorceress V _(edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley) I found in my public library. I liked reading short stories and these were quite good . . . or so I thought until I read Jennifer Roberson's "Spoils of War," a short story that, to this day, is in contention for my favorite short story of all time._

There was the pervasive use of rhythm and language, much like a poem. The language and visuals were powerful. The ending is as dramatic and unexpected as any I've read. I loved it (and love it still) and it invested me with an ambition to write something for one of the upcoming incarnations of that anthology series. It also influenced my writing as I wanted to emulate, not so much her style or story, but that sense of involvement and power.

I have always been a character reader (read books and stories because I fall in love with characters) and this was the turning point where I started to truly work to invest my stories with living empathetic characters, characters with depth and flaws and charisma, even in the tiny time available. I was also exploring description, to set the tone, the world without endless pages required. The stories were still idealistic and a bit ungainly, but the characters were stronger and more vivid than most of what I'd written before.

I also discovered great freedom in fantasy that I had not appreciated. I could manipulate and make worlds to suit my purposes, make my points, highlight social concepts. Fantasy was the ultimate "what if" medium. To this day, nearly everything I write has had some aspect of fantasy.

_I did not succeed with my ambition to be included in any of the_ Sword and Sorcery _anthologies and I never read another story there that captured my interest as that one story had. I did, however, find a home for three of the stories I wrote for that market: "Code of the Jenri," "Cauchemar," and "Windrider" in the nascent PLOT magazine, which published those three stories in the first three issues. (It folded a year or so later)._

_"Code of the Jenri" was criticized (and rightly so) that trying to build that much world in a short story is bound to be unsatisfying for the reader. "Code of the Jenri" spawned_ Curse of the Jenri _, a novel where I could build my world with impunity. "Cauchemar" let me play more with dialogue, build characters using dialogue, and toy with one of my favorite concepts: shapeshifting (which is central to my_ Bete _novels). "Windrider" is one of those gems I love most (perhaps my favorite of my own work). When I sat down, I had no idea what I was going to write. I finished it in an hour and was never more than a line or two ahead of what I was typing, like it was flowing out of me from who-knows-where. "Wind Master" (never published) was written in response to those who had to know what happened after "Windrider."_

Be warned, sword and sorcery is frequently bloody and my S&S is no exception.

**Code of the Jenri**

(previously published under the name Stephanie Loyd, my name at the time)

Silently, the boots shifted in the underbrush, fitted boots of soft sueded leather dyed blue-green, the signature of the Jenri Clan. Layla crouched, eyes on the tall iron gate several hundred yards before her, her senses fully alert.

Here, at the eastern gate, she was downwind, good for surveillance, but they would guard this gate most heavily for exactly that reason. They knew she was Jenri. The blood of hunters and huntresses ran in her veins.

She knelt soundlessly to wait for dark, the hem of her soft leather tunic just touching the ground. Her belt scabbard and trappings were all of the same Jenri color as her boots. Her silver headband was studded with aquamarines and disappeared into her thick brown hair with its Jenri streak of red. More aquamarines hung at her throat, now as always, the sign of her Clan. But her tunic was dyed the darkest of royal purples, her husband's color. It was for him that she came.

She breathed in deeply. She detected horses inside. There were dogs as well. The dogs would be no problem, she thought, smiling, fingering the rounded gems at her neck.

As the shadows lengthened, she became a shadow herself, another purple shape in the underbrush. In the shade of a tower, she scaled the smooth wall of the castle unnoticed, unheard. As she reached the top, she mouthed words soundlessly. Her necklace glowed as if in moonlight though she sat in shadow.

Unhurriedly, she unslung her bow and laid half a dozen arrows on the wall-top next to her. Only a moment later, she heard the consternation of the guards as they tried to waken watchdogs that had fallen suddenly asleep. Using only the noise they made to guide her, she shot unerringly, silently, each arrow leaving the bow before the previous had struck. Four arrows found their marks and then there was silence. There were archers among her ancestors after all.

As quietly as she had scaled the outside, she climbed down the inner wall and slipped into the castle, senses fully alert to all around her. As she descended toward the dungeons, she heard the snores of the prison guard long before she was close enough to silence him with her crystal-tipped knife. The body slid noiselessly to the ground and there was no blood on the floor around it, no blood on her. Some of her ancestors had been assassins.

She found him at the end of a prison hall, bathed in the red glow of a smoke-blackened fireplace. There was no need for a cell. Thick chains attached to manacles on his lower and upper arms, his thighs and ankles, to the thick collar around his neck and a wide band around his waist. They had taken no chances. He was the mate of a Jenri warrior. It was well known that only a man who could best such a woman in unarmed combat could be her mate. That made him dangerous. That made him valuable.

"Tander . . ." The whispered word was almost a sob. Only the soft clinking of his chains indicated he'd heard her. He did not lift his head.

She moved forward, studying the defeated figure once proud, invincible. His long black locks hung, unwashed and greasy, over his face. Blood seeped in thin rivulets to show where he had struggled against his chains, but he was not struggling now. They had stripped him of all but his loincloth, and she could see the lash marks on his back and shoulders.

"Tander . . . " she whispered again, reaching a hand to sweep back his hair and caress his cheek. "Oh, my proud warrior, what have they done to you?"

"Layla—" The word was a prayer from his cracked lips. "Get out! It's a trap."

She smiled. "Of course it is, and the bait is irresistible. Do not ask a Jenri to abandon her mate. I have come for you—I will leave with you, my husband."

He raised his head at last, his startling blue eyes anguished in his brown face. "I do not deserve to be your husband. Go, before they take more from me than they already have." He stretched out a hand to touch her cheek but could not reach. "Go."

She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his while his hands strained against the chains to reach her, though whether to hold her or push her away was unclear, but his lips were as hungry as hers.

"It would take more than a trap to make me leave you, Tander, and quite a trap to catch a Jenri—" She ran a finger along a lash mark and her voice hardened, "—an angry Jenri." She could see the relief in his eyes at her touch, the turquoise glow of her necklace reflected on his sweaty skin as the pain abated. There were healers in her line.

A voice behind her startled her. "Yet, I have designed just such a trap."

She spun around, her crystal-tipped dagger instantly in her hand, hearing the clank of chains behind her as Tander strained again against his bonds. She had been very careless, letting their reunion put her off-guard while they were both so vulnerable.

The man before her was only a few inches shorter than Tander, but just as broad. The silver band in his red-gold hair proclaimed his nobility. The tattoo on the bridge of his nose revealed his sorcerer status.

"You! You did this to him!" Layla's sword hummed as she pulled it from her scabbard. "Feel Jenri vengeance!"

"Hold!" the man commanded, lifting a hand that glowed red with ready magic. "Before you can kill me, I will destroy him. Perhaps you should hear me out."

Layla lowered her sword. She could cast no spell to protect Tander in time and swords were no defense against sorcery. "Speak," she spat, "but know the instant he dies, my knife will find a home in your heart."

"I don't doubt you," he said, smiling. "I wish him no harm. I only want you as my mate."

"I am taken."

"I need a Jenri to father my children."

"There are unmarried Jenri who might welcome your sorcerer blood."

"You are the strongest. Thirty men died in combat to win you . . ."

"Twenty-seven died trying to take my body," she corrected. "Only two were vanquished in marriage combat."

"No one could match you, Jenri, until Tander. That is the mother for my children."

Layla shrugged. "I am taken."

"He has beaten you in unarmed combat. I have beaten him. I claim the right to unarmed combat to win you as mate."

Layla turned her head enough to look in Tander's eyes before he bowed his head again. "Is this true, my husband?"

"I was defeated," was his toneless reply.

Layla closed her eyes to consult her truthsense, her necklace glowing dimly. "He defeated you with magic."

Tander lifted his head again to look into her eyes. "I was defeated." No excuses for defeat. Such were the laws of the Jenri.

Layla turned again to the sorcerer. "Why must you have Jenri daughters?"

The man began to laugh. "Daughters? Of what use would be daughters? I want the _son_ of a Jenri."

"A Jenri can only bear daughters. So it has been for one hundred twelve generations. So was the spell Martoni and Lavina cast. So it is. I am of no use to you."

"Spell? 'Twas the curse of Martoni on your ancestor Lavina and all her line, and she killed him for it. But I have the spellbook of Martoni, hidden in this castle for centuries until a magician of sufficient power and skill should find it. I am that magician."

"Your point?"

"That curse is in his book of spells—now I can counter it." He moved closer. "Just think, Jenri, you can be the first of your kind to bear sons in more than two millennia."

"I am not interested."

The magician became angry. "Hear me, woman. I have the right to combat. I, Raylee, challenge you to life _with_ me or death _for_ me. You cannot refuse."

She held his wild green eyes with her calm brown ones. "Such is the law. I cannot refuse."

Tander said nothing but strained violently against the manacles, drawing fresh blood, but only for a moment. Then, he bowed his head again as far as the band around his neck would allow. A single tear fell and was lost in the unkempt mane of his hair. He had failed her. He was powerless.

Without further comment, Layla stripped off her trappings. In moments, an arsenal sat piled on the floor before her: a bow and arrows, a longsword, a dagger belt with its foot-long knife and seven slender throwing daggers, a handaxe and a garrote. Only her headband, necklace and boots remained to proclaim her Jenri heritage and her purple tunic to proclaim her loyalties.

Raylee eyed her purple tunic distastefully. "Those colors do not belong to you anymore."

Layla's eyebrow rose fractionally. "These colors are mine until I have reason to abandon them."

"So be it." Raylee clapped his hands, muttering. They began to glow a dull red. Layla's eyes flashed. Her lips moved silently until her necklace shone. She quickly braided her long hair. As she finished, she sprang.

But he was ready. He used her own momentum to fling her against the far wall. She twisted in midair and bounced off the wall feet first, flipped and landed on her feet prepared for his attack. She blocked a roundhouse kick and struck him expertly in the kidney.

Raylee retreated and eyed her warily. She returned his look with one of complete unconcern. Already, he knew he could not win this way, and she could see it angered him to be beaten in combat by a woman, even a Jenri. The glow in his hands began to throb with power. With a gesture and a murmur, she was suddenly surrounded by a cone of red.

"Now, little Jenri, see if you recognize that. It is the very spell Martoni used to defeat Lavina, the magic boundary that, when crossed, destroys what you Jenri treasure most, your womanly organs."

"Have you no spells of your own? Are you a great magician or simply a good thief?" Layla demanded scathingly.

As if she had not spoken, he said, "Now you have a choice, Jenri. You can be the first of your kind to bear a son or the first Jenri to be barren." He leered at her through the red haze. "They may even strike you from their clan, Jenri."

Layla closed her eyes and set her palms against the red field, her necklace glowing almost white with magic, then lowered her hands. There were sorcerers and sorceresses in her ancestry, but she had chosen to be a warrior. She had not the skill to counter this spell—a spell that had defeated the Jenri once before. "I yield." The words hung, dead, in the air. Another silent tear fell unnoticed into Tander's long hair.

The red cone sank to nothing. Raylee approached her, smiling. "Now you are mine, Jenri."

"I must accept you as mate. Yes."

Raylee moved against her, one arm behind her back, the other roughly forcing her face up to face his. "Mine," he whispered, raking his hand through her loosened braid.

"You have me as mate, not concubine, Raylee. The Jenri are not property. Do not take without asking." Layla's soft voice was calm, fearless . . . ominous.

Raylee yanked back Layla's hair. "Don't talk that way to me, bitch! Jenri or not, you are mine now."

"Not as slave," she replied through clenched teeth.

He slapped her. "Whatever you call yourself, Jenri, I am your master now." His hand grasped the back of her neck and then slipped to the back of her leather tunic. "These colors are not yours anymore." He jerked painfully on the neck of the tunic, but the leather did not tear. He pulled the string at her back and wrenched the tunic off her shoulder. He kissed her shoulder.

"No!" She hit him on the ear, which caused him to wince, but not let go. She pushed against him but the loosened bodice hindered her.

"Layla!" Tander cried and the chains clinked again as he threw himself against them, trying to reach the struggling pair. "Layla . . ."

"Like it or not, Jenri, you belong to me," snarled Raylee. "I have already beaten you."

"Like it or not, Raylee, I am not a domestic animal to be used for breeding or entertainment. And I will lay with no man who cannot address me by name!" She slammed her knee into his crotch and, as he recoiled, she put a foot against him and thrust him away.

Raylee bellowed and leapt for her, but was stopped short as he felt the tip of a slim blade beneath his chin. He swallowed but sneered, "I thought the Jenri had honor. No weapons, woman, that is the law."

"You speak to me of honor. I drew no weapon during our combat as required by law. But you earned only the right to ask for my body. It still belongs to me. And I can defend what is mine, make no mistake." A drop of blood slid down the blade.

Layla smiled unpleasantly. "Do you really think Martoni was killed because of the curse? Men are fools—uh-uh, I wouldn't try that spell you're thinking of now. I have the perfect silencer for your tongue." Another drop slid down the knife.

Her smile widened. "Why should Lavina care for the curse? His curse is the same blessing her mother gave her at birth, the one every Jenri bestows on her daughters. You didn't know that, did you?" Layla chuckled and twisted the blade slightly, bringing down another drop of blood. "Martoni was killed because he forgot the law of those who would mate free women."

Layla leaned almost into Raylee's face. "Do you, learned sorcerer, know the law of those who would mate free women?"

"No," he whispered, eyes wide with terror.

She smiled at him. "No matter how strong you are, no matter how powerful, no matter how learned, it always applies. Sometimes, you can succeed in stealing the freedom of a free woman for a moment, but . . ." Layla's eyes grew cold. " _You have to sleep sometime._ " The blade slid upwards and entered his brain, killing him instantly.

Calmly, she wiped her hand on Raylee's tunic and then tied her bodice. She pulled another slim blade from her boot and pulled the dagger belt around her waist.

"Layla," Tander whispered, awed. "You _were_ armed."

Layla glanced at her discarded weaponry as she picked the lock on his manacle with her knife. "Not hardly. You know I would not have drawn a weapon in marriage combat, not even to save my life. I am an honorable Jenri, Tander. But I knew, if I lost that combat, he would break the law between husband and wife—and I would kill him." Her slender blade opened the manacle and a wrist was free. Thieves, too, shared her ancestry.

"Why did you not take him to you? He was powerful and strong." His arm was free and it went to cradle her face.

"He had no respect for women, for me. I was not even a person to him, not even a name. I was a Jenri vessel to carry sons for him, a toy to be played with at whim."

Tander smiled gently. "Why have you never told me the law of those who would mate free women?"

"The Jenri rarely need to speak of it, Tander. Only a man who can respect women will mate a woman who can bear no sons. A man like that needs no incentive to treat his mate with love, no threats, no warnings." As she removed the neck band, he bent to kiss her lips—softly, reverently.

She began to work on the last two chains on his left arm. "I'm hoping you're partial to daughters, my husband." She patted her slender abdomen significantly and was rewarded with the possessive clutching of the hand on her shoulder. "'Tis why I took no chances during my fight with Raylee."

"No chances?" he asked skeptically and, now free, reached for her, but she spun out of his grasp, her hand on her dagger belt. An instant later, a guard slid to the floor, the hilt of a throwing dagger protruding from his throat.

"We must be swift," Layla admonished, her necklace glowing as she searched for Martoni's book of spells. "Ah!"

Following her eyes, Tander saw the trunk she meant. He thrust his own piled trappings from the lid and wrenched it off its hinges. He took up the heavy book and threw it in the wide fireplace. As the book touched the flames, it disintegrated in a blast that threw Tander backwards.

She knelt beside him, necklace shining with healing power, but he opened his eyes immediately. Dreamily, he said, "However selfish my reasons, I'm glad I won that once. Glad I won you." His hand caressed her face.

Reaching, she found his headband of silver and amethyst and placed it on his head. She picked up his tunic of Jenri aqua and caressed it. He had taken her colors as she had taken his, out of respect. She helped him into it, half-healing lash marks with her touch. Then, she hugged her to him fiercely. "I could never have chosen anyone over you, my husband. Never." She stepped back and began to take up her weapons, smiling at him. "How else do you think you defeated me, Tander? My reasons were selfish, too."

Tander laughed as she handed him his boots, knowing she spoke only the truth.

**Cauchemar**

(previously published under the name Stephanie Loyd)

The setting sun, reflected off the white stones of the road, was dazzling to old eyes so Marin heard rather than saw someone skitter from the shadow of the flanking forests to run but ten paces before her. Marin chuckled silently.

"You had best move on, old man," a fierce voice hissed from the tiny figure swathed in black. "You would do well to sleep further on this night."

"But the road is open to all, child," Marin said placidly in her rasping contralto, shuffling forward slowly to see better. "And the sun is setting."

A bitter laugh escaped from the black-draped stranger. "None would know better than I when the sun sets, old man. All the more reason for you to make haste in leaving this place. You are not safe here." The face of the stranger was hidden by a loose hood, but she brought emphasis to her words by flicking the folds of her cloak back from a tiny white hand holding a small jeweled knife, a white hand with long obsidian fingernails.

Marin's seamed face broke into a smile. "Brave soldier," Marin clucked reprovingly, resting her slight weight on a staff of rowan wood. "To stab an old man as he sleeps. In truth, there are few who would harm one of my clan, child."

The figure in black pulled herself up to stand more straightly. "I waste no love on men," she spat. "Even old men would do well to flee."

Marin's smile grew. "What a fierce little thing you are, child." She issued a dry chuckle. "Thank Eaumere I am _not_ an old man else I would be quaking in my shoes." She extended her arm, palm forward so that the last rays of the sun painted the branding on her palm brilliant red.

The stranger gasped. "I didn't know! You are so tall!"

Marin pushed back her dove-gray hood and let her white braid slip down her shoulder. Several paces of hair coiled itself at her feet. Those who served Eaumere never cut their hair. "Does your hatred extend to a servant of Eaumere? Even a woman who has seen as many decades as I have?"

The black figure dropped to her knees stiffly on the hard white stones, the jeweled knife falling with a clatter and a single spark. Words wrenched themselves from between the stranger's lips. "Sea Sister!"

"Are we so rare, child, that I should send you speechless?" Marin asked softly, reaching to grasp a black-tipped hand in her branded one. "Come, child, you have made me curious."

The stranger shook back her hood as if trying to clear her head and reached for her fallen knife. "You should flee, Sea Sister. Those who serve the Mother in all Her guises are not welcome here."

"Welcoming doesn't seem to be your best quality, child," Marin admitted, leading the girl back to the shelter of the trees. "I have been here long enough to know the prejudices of this country, which makes me wonder how you knew my sign. There is no mark on your hand."

"I am no one's sister."

Marin regarded her carefully, her black eyes glistening. "I chose the name Marin de Eaumere, Sea Sister of the twelfth level, daughter to Eaumere. I must pity one who has no clan, no name." Marin's voice had its own fluidity, like the lapping of warm waves on a crystal shore.

"I have a name!" the girl said hotly. "I chose the name Cauchemar de Bête Noir, and I live on my own level, sister to no one, daughter to no one, answering only to the call of my heart."

"Cauchemar," Marin said reflectively. "In my land, that word means nightmare, nightmare of the black beast. What nightmare is the call of your heart?"

"I am vengeance," said Cauchemar, staring glassily into the trees.

Marin shook her head sadly and gathered a pile of dry wood for a fire. Her head jerked up as she heard soft sacred words on Cauchemar's lips. The wood burst into flame. Marin leaned back against a tree to study her companion.

Cauchemar was tiny, but certainly not the child she first appeared. Thick matted hair surrounded a pallid face with a cloud of black. Her face was thin, her chin pointed. Her lips were full, but bleached white as her skin. Only eyes, moss-green, added color to a portrait of black and white. There was depth to those eyes. The face was stony, blank, but an endless well of sorrow shimmered in those verdant eyes. And a green fire of fury. And an endless sky of loneliness. If ever she had been a child, she was a child no longer.

"You have a look of one of the Mother's own," Marin whispered. "Yet, you do not bear any of Her marks. Refusing your destiny can bring you nothing but grief, child."

"You err, Sea Sister. I do not belong to the Mother, to anyone. I have nothing more to grieve."

"But you share Her gifts. There have been no women who could command the gifts of Feumere for a hundred years. That is not a blessing to be taken lightly."

"Ha!" Cauchemar said derisively. "She cannot even protect Her children. How can She protect Her gifts?" She whispered and a forked tongue of lightning flashed from the cloudless night. She opened her hands with another muttering and a bower of fragrant ferns grew themselves for the old woman's bed.

"Where did you learn this?" Marin asked in an awed voice, shocked despite herself. No one but those sworn to the Mother _ever_ commanded Her gifts. None of those sworn had ever learned more than one discipline, and none but men had held sway over Sky and Fire in centuries. "Fire, Earth and Sky? How did you learn?"

Cauchemar shrugged. "My mother took the oath of service to Terremere, Earth Mother, back when people still revered the Mother in all her forms. It was not so long ago that no one would harm one of her children, daughter or son. Then the followers of Puissance the Swordmaker came. They stood in their red robes of state before a city drunk with power and decreed that those who serve the Mother be killed, that those who had sworn to peaceful existence, who had taken vows to hurt no living soul, be slaughtered so as not to infect the power of the sword-wielding."

Cauchemar's voice faded away for a moment as she remembered. "Those sworn to the Mother would not fight back. They were slaughtered as sheep, words of forgiveness on their singed lips, blessings gasped from their torn throats. My own brother, sworn to Feumere, burned at the stake without a whisper of blame. Where was the Mother then?"

"How could they kill a Fire Brother with flame?"

Cauchemar sent her a scornful glance. "They cut off his branded hands, all of their branded hands." She turned accusing eyes to Marin. "Where was the Mother she served when _my_ mother lay on the slab, branded hands severed from her body, her heart cut open to bleed into the Earth she worshiped? Where?"

A tear slid over the wrinkles on Marin's face. "Weeping, child, weeping. Weeping tears of blood."

"What good did that do my mother? My father stole me away and hid me in the forest, then went back to the City of Puissance and took out his loss on those who had slain his princess, my mother. _He_ took the revenge the Mother would not take and her children could not. He was not Her son, Her sworn. He would do what She would not, avenge their deaths." The words were bitter.

"And what did he gain, child? Did he return from the city, gorged in blood, free of sorrow?" Marin asked sharply.

Cauchemar started, her face slipping, for just a moment, into a mask of unspeakable loneliness. "He didn't come back," she whispered, eyes wide. "He stayed too long. I think he planned it that way, knowing he would die when morning came and his powers faded. He wanted to die because _she_ was dead, but first he had to hurt them as they had hurt him, hurt her. That is the way of his people."

"His people?"

Cauchemar ignored her, lost in remembrances. "In the forest, I was found by a fleeing Sky Brother, Nuage, son to Cielmere. It was he that taught me of love, to know what it was that my father lost to the Puissancers. He begged me to become as my mother, sworn to the Earth, but I could not. There was too much of my father in me."

She stared at Marin defiantly. "You think I did wrong, but I did as my heart insisted. Of all the things he asked of me, it was all I denied him. Did I wish to feel as he did? He hid in the forest and pined the Sky he could not see. I did not want such a burden, a crippling of my soul. But I loved him. Did I not feel his pain already?"

Cauchemar paused briefly, then continued more calmly. "When he asked that I let our daughter offer her allegiance to the Earth, I could not say him nay. They went to the lake and built a pyre. I watched from the shadow of the forest as he came back to life in the sun, as my husband and my child reveled in all of the Mother's forms at once. I watched . . ." Cauchemar swallowed, her voice catching on a sob.

"Child," murmured Marin.

"There were archers . . ." Cauchemar gasped at last, a single tear falling from each eye. "They knew the lake was sacred to the Mother. I watched, but I could do nothing as they killed the man I loved, the child of my heart." Her breathing quickened.

She turned cold eyes on Marin, angry again. "You, you would tell me that it is only a senseless tragedy, like the plague. Where was Cielmere? Where was Terremere? Where were the lightning and the hurricane?" Lightning flashed behind her and a sudden gust of wind made the fire crackle with a burst of crimson sparks, though she made no gesture, spoke no spell. "Where was the earthquake?" The faintest tremor rumbled beneath them. " _They loved Her!_ Where was _She_ when they fell into the dust, arrows in their throats?" Cauchemar leapt to her feet with feline grace and stared a challenge at Marin. "Where was the Mother?"

"You grieve for your loved ones as a lover and a mother. Do you think Her pain is less?" Marin asked softly.

"Where is Her justice then? She would not protect them. Can She not punish the ones who slew Her children without thought?"

"Child," Marin said gently.

"I am not a child. You think I should be grateful for the gifts of the Mother, but it is the gift of my father I treasure more. I am Vengeance. I am the Nightmare that stalks the woods." She gathered her black cloak around her. "I have wasted too much of this night already in talk. There is much to do." She spun to leave in a swirl of cloak, slipped into the shadows and dissolved into the darkness like a beast of the night.

That night, Marin did not sleep peacefully. In her dreams, she saw men sleeping around a dying fire. They were rough violent men sleeping while their prey, women with severed hands, lay dead, piled in wagons. From the silent forest came the whisper of a growl and then a streak of shadow, a burst of deadly black smoke with only the flash of its long white teeth and the gleam of its green eyes to show its substance. One stroke of a panther paw sent the head of the one on guard rolling in the underbrush. Another man woke to face the huge black cat, but could raise no alarm for its teeth had already found his throat. The last three died in their sleep with single swipes of its claw-tipped paws.

The panther paused, cleaning its face with a bloodied paw before making its cry and disappearing into the darkness with a flick of its midnight tail . . .

A priest slept fitfully in an abandoned woodsman's cottage, caught outside the safety of the city's gates after dark. There was a pounding on the stiff door followed by the frenzied stamping of horses' hooves. The man woke, clutching his blanket to his corpulent chin. He glanced through the window at the star-filled sky, but gasped as a black shadow blocked out those stars for a moment. He gasped again as the reverberation of thunder filled the tiny room.

The door shattered and the man screamed. Lightning from the cloudless sky showed the creature in relief. Silver shod hoofs sounded on the hard dirt floor with dread thumps. It was a unicorn of moonlit black, a silvery horn of terrible sharpness sprouting from the wide forehead. Green eyes of savage fury glared mercilessly at the fat priest. The unicorn pawed and nickered with a flash of its white teeth, but the sound was frightful.

The priest made a gesture against evil, the sign against his own God, but found himself impaled on that silvered horn a moment later. The unicorn, its horn now striped with gore, galloped into the forest with a scream of defiance . . .

A guardsman at the city's gate raised his head at the inhuman scream he heard from the forest, then dropped it again. _Another,_ he thought to himself _. The unnamed beast of the forest has found another victim_. He started to his feet as a shadow passed over his head. He lifted his face and stared directly into the green eyes of a winged eagle as large as a man and as black as coal, then thought no more as the black talons buried themselves into his mailed chest.

More Marin saw: an ebony vixen darting from the shadow of a tree, a thick serpent strangling sleeping travelers in her raven coils. A kill, a cry and the creature would disappear into the forest. The first rays of sun brought Marin from her sleep, heavy-eyed, saddened. She blinked the sleep from her eyes and looked around her.

Cauchemar lay on the ground a few paces away, her matted hair spilled loosely on the ground. Marin rose gingerly and shuffled soft-footedly to her side. She checked the girl carefully and breathed a sigh that the sleep was that of exhaustion and not death.

_Poor lonely child_ , she thought and reached a gnarled hand to stroke that hair. Cauchemar made no movement. Marin took out her comb and pulled it through the ratted locks. Sea Sisters were famed for their hair and it hurt Marin to see such hair, even cut so short, in such a state. Cauchemar slept obliviously.

"You! Old woman!" a voice beckoned from the road as Marin straightened to her feet. Marin raised her eyes to the tall man waving at her. She moved from the shelter of the trees to the road, wrapping her long white braid around the back of her head.

The man stepped back briefly at the sight of her long hair, the flash of a branded palm. "Pardon, Sea Sister," he said courteously, taking off a hunter's cap. "Is this the road to Puissance?"

"Aye," she said. "Though 'tis a place that holds no welcome for those of my clan."

"I had heard that those who serve the Mother were not welcome in this land," the hunter admitted with an embarrassed look in his rich brown eyes. "I wonder that you roam here so near the city. Perhaps you should leave this place, Sister, before you are expelled from it forcefully."

"They do not expel, child. They destroy."

The huntsman started, brown eyes wide with shock. "They would not _kill_ , surely, a Sea Sister! Not one who would follow the Mother! What harm would you do?"

"There is much you do not know." She pulled her hood over her coiled hair. "I am Marin de Eaumere. Come and share breakfast."

"I am Réel de Bonarc. How came you here, Sea Sister?"

"I came on a quest," she answered, stoking the smoldering fire. "Why are _you_ here, my child? You come from a land that still reveres the Mother, I think."

"Oh, I am no politician," Réel said with a self-conscious cough. "What care I about the policies of those who fill my purse? I came on my own quest, Sister. There is a beast in these woods, a creature that strikes without warning, leaving bodies torn in a thousand ways. No one is safe in these woods."

"I slept here safely enough," she said calmly, handing him some bread. "Perhaps this creature respects those of the Mother."

Réel laughed derisively. "This creature is a monster, caring for nothing. It murders innocents and the City of Puissance hired me to hunt it down."

"Innocents? There is much you do not know, huntsman." She waved her hand over the ground beside her and a small spring filled a shallow hollow with water. Directing Réel's gaze into the pool, she murmured and its surface clouded, then darkened to show a firelit face before a starlit sky. The woods took on an eerie quiet as Cauchemar's voice whispered about her brother, her mother, her lover, her child. The image changed to show men slaughtering a sisterhood who worshiped Terremere, then the same men's bodies slain by the night panther. It showed a priest condemning six newly branded children to death, then that same priest, eyes opened in death, crouched on a pallet, clutching the hole that punctured his heart.

Réel turned his head away and scrambled backwards, tripping over the sleeping form of Cauchemar. He glanced at her face and then stopped, the reflections in the pool forgotten. Cauchemar's black locks glistened in the morning light. Her lashes lay thick against her ivory cheek. She was as beautiful and delicate as a glass bead, and his breath caught in his throat.

"Who is she?" he breathed, eyes locked on her face, peaceful in repose.

"She is an enemy to the ones you serve, hunter. It was her face you saw, her voice you heard tell of the fate of those who serve the Mother. The ones you serve would kill her as gladly as they would kill me." A shadow crossed Marin's features. "Though they might not kill her right away, poor child."

The huntsman swallowed, then tore his eyes away. "You seek to turn me, old woman. I came here to kill a beast and that's what I will do, then leave, my conscience intact. Why should I care what the Puissancers do? It is not my land after all." He took up his bow and turned to the road.

"And what of her?"

He swung around sharply. "Take her away from here, Sister," he said harshly. "Take her north to my country where you can both be safe." He strode forward and gripped Marin's arms. "Promise me you will take her to safety!"

"There is no safety for her, for me. What can happen one place, one time, can happen elsewhere, elsewhen." Marin smiled sadly. "And she will not leave, not yet. She is willful."

"You take her," he growled again and gave Marin's arms a shake, then stalked off, down the road toward Puissance.

It was noon when Cauchemar opened her eyes. "You?" she asked sleepily as her gaze focused on Marin. "Why are you still here?"

"Why are you still here, child?" Marin returned amicably, stirring stew.

"I have work to finish," Cauchemar said defiantly.

"Ah! As do I, child, as do I. Come, have some stew."

"You killed?" Cauchemar asked with some alarm.

"Nay, child, you know we cannot take but soulless life. There are some very tasty roots that make a hearty stew. Fill up."

"As if you need teach me Earthlore," Cauchemar said sulkily.

"Yes, you showed me yesterday what powers you command. Why is it no one else can do these things without a branded palm, a vow to the Mother?"

"I don't know. Maybe no one tried. I would listen to my mother and, when I used her words, Earth would obey me. I would watch my brother and Fire would perform for me as well as it would for him. Nuage was shocked that I could copy his commands to the Sky, but he learned to believe. It is only the words, the gestures after all."

"Yet your brother could not save himself from the Fire without his hands. No, child, the Mother gives Her gifts, choosing who to bless. Until now, She has only chosen those who vowed to serve Her. Why you, child, why you?" The last question seemed more for herself than Cauchemar.

Cauchemar shrugged. "Maybe She could not stop me. Apparently there is much the Mother cannot do."

"Perhaps She does more than you think." Cauchemar only shrugged again in response. "I am curious, child, do you think you could learn the powers of Eaumere as easily as those of Her other guises?"

Cauchemar nodded. "I don't see why not. Would you teach me?"

"I begin to think it is why the Mother sent me after all."

"I will not take an oath to serve the Mother," Cauchemar warned. "If that is the price, I will not pay it. You can keep your water skills."

"There is no price, child. I think the Mother has other plans for you."

It was near dark when they finished, Cauchemar sending back into the ground the water she had called forth.

There was the sound of a step on the road. Cauchemar looked up and her face hardened. She reached into the folds of her black cloak for her knife, but Marin placed a restraining hand on hers. "It is an honest huntsman, child. Put your knife away."

"You!" Réel accused, striding forward purposefully. "You should have left as I told you."

Cauchemar flowed to her feet and stared at the huntsman defiantly. "Who are you to order us? Why should we take direction from you?"

Réel's face reddened further. "I am Réel, the huntsman. It isn't safe in this forest and I know it is unsafe in the city. If you don't leave, you will be in danger from the beast as well as men."

Cauchemar laughed. "See the man tremble at mention of the beast. I have lived fifteen winters in this forest and have never stood in danger from any save man. The beast has roamed the nights here for two years and has made me safe, at last, even from men. I will go nowhere."

"Then stay with me, where I can keep you safe this night," Réel insisted, grasping her elbow. Cauchemar's blade slipped into her free hand and she brandished it in the huntsman's face.

"Safe? I will find my own safety! You are one of _them!_ " She wrenched her arm from his hand. "Best you look to your own safety, huntsman, lest the beast teach you the manners you lack!" She turned in a flourish of black wool and slid into the lengthening shadows.

He stepped to follow her, but she was gone. "I told you," said Marin, still seated by the fire. "She is a willful woman."

"She could be killed alone in the woods tonight!"

"Aye, as could we all, but not from the beast, I think. It respects the servants of the Mother and she is just that."

"She wore no brands."

"The Mother has a use for her, even so. Soon, even she will know it." Marin smiled, the wrinkles in her face stretching. "Stew?"

Marin did not try to sleep that night, but sat quietly against a tree. Réel, anxious for her safety, wanted her where he could watch her as he waited for the beast. Marin was wakeful for _his_ safety, and for Cauchemar's.

The moon rose and fell again. They heard, in the distance, the cries of men, the howls of beasts, but Réel would not leave Marin unprotected. There would be no Sister's blood on his hands.

There was no sound, but he knew when the beast approached. Perhaps it was a whiff of scent on the breeze or a feeling of impending power. He set his back to a tree and readied his crossbow.

Into the clearing, it came, a huge black star-silvered wolf, loping forward on silent feet. Réel raised his crossbow, aiming for a fierce green eye.

"No!" he heard harshly in his ear as the bow was struck down, the bolt plunging uselessly into the ground. He reached for his knife and had it unsheathed in his hand when he heard Marin's urgent whisper, "Do you do their work? It is Cauchemar!"

With surprising speed, Marin darted before him, grasping the wolf in a protective embrace. Réel fell to his knees, too stunned to move. The wolf, locked in the woman's arms, growled ominously, then howled fiercely. The beast wrenched her head back and then _shifted_ , her body an inky amorphous _nothing_ until she solidified into the body of the panther. With a sweep of her paw, she cuffed Marin aside, but her claws were sheathed and the touch was too gentle to harm.

The panther leapt forward and Réel fell backwards, his knife held in his warding hand. The green-eyed cat straddled his body and growled, the light in her eyes daring him to strike her with his knife. Réel looked into the eyes and knew them. "Cauchemar," he whispered, awed, and thrust his knife into the ground.

The eyes blazed with renewed fury. A huge paw struck him on the side of the head, but the claws were still sheathed for they left no mark. "No, Cauchemar. I will not hurt you," he said gently, reaching a hand to stroke her velvet face.

Cauchemar roared her rage, then shifted again, now the unicorn. "Cauchemar, will you be what you hated?" Marin called from behind her. "One who kills without thought, who murders those who will not take up arms against her?"

Cauchemar screamed frustration. Lightning flashed behind her as reared up on back legs that still straddled the huntsman and came down with all her strength, but the silver-shod hooves rent the forest floor and not Réel. He lay, unscathed, between her thrashing legs. Cauchemar shifted again, this time the black vixen, but her face was that of Cauchemar. "What of my father, Marin?" she cried fiercely, her paws tearing at the ground beside the man's head. "What of my mother and brother?" She looked with barely checked rage into Réel's face. "What of my husband, my child?"

"What of _his_ wife? Will you leave her widowed for a crime he is innocent of? Look on that face, child." Cauchemar found her eyes locked to Réel's face, gentled in the starlight, softened by the tears that wet his eyes. Cauchemar bent and tasted a tear on her tongue.

"No!" she screamed, rearing back, shifting into the black eagle and thundering into the lightening sky.

"Cauchemar, no! 'Tis almost day!" Marin cried, reaching for her as she rose above their heads.

"Cauchemar! I love you!" Réel shouted to the fleeing bird. "There is no need to die for that! Come back!"

Cauchemar circled back slowly. She floated above him hesitantly, but he reached a hand up to her. "Cauchemar, do not leave me alone." She folded her wings to drop just as the rising sun struck her and she tumbled, a woman again, into his arm. He held her, clutched closely, as she sobbed, "I am alone, I am alone . . ."

"As am I," he murmured. "I have no wife, no one to mourn me."

"If I love you," Cauchemar wept into his tunic, "they will take you as well."

"I am harder to kill than that, little one," he said smiling, stroking her naked back.

"Her father was of the Bête Nuit, the Nightbeasts," Marin explained, shuffling forward, apparently infirm again. "She has that gift too." She took Cauchemar's chin in her hand. "You cannot be a nightmare, Cauchemar. You have too much soul."

"I will not be a sworn sheep for slaughter, Marin. Do not ask me."

"I do not, child. The Mother does not. You asked me what the Mother has done for justice? She created you, child. You are Her justice. You are Her sword. She cannot stand by as Her children suffer any longer. But you cannot be a mindless weapon. This city is a gangrene on the world, but you must kill only the sickness and leave that which is pure. That is the task She sets you."

"You cannot ask her, Marin. She'll be killed!" Réel protested, clutching her to him protectively.

"It is not for you to say, Réel," Cauchemar said gently, disentangling herself from his arms.

"And what of me?" Réel asked. "If you will risk yourself, what place is there for me?"

"You wait for me here, here where I am home," Cauchemar whispered, touching his arm.

"That is not my way, little one," Réel said softly. "To wait while you risk yourself in the city."

"Then wander into the city and scout for Cauchemar," Marin suggested. "You can find the corruption for her with the freedom of an unsworn man. You can be her right arm."

"And what of his protection?" Cauchemar demanded, alarmed. "He cannot command the Sky, the Fire. He cannot change into a shadow of the night." She gripped his arm tightly. "I cannot lose you to the Puissancers."

"They will not find me easy to kill, Cauchemar. I am a huntsman."

" _You_ can be his protection, Cauchemar," Marin told her. " _You_ can be the earthquake and the hurricane. You can watch him in the water as I taught you and you will know when he needs you."

Cauchemar closed her green eyes, breathing deeply, deciding. Her eyes opened. "I will take Her task, but I cannot vow to spare all life."

"She asks it not," Marin said softly.

Cauchemar stood proudly, lifting her head high. "I choose the name Margelle de Épée Merci, she of the merciful sword, daughter of the Mother in all Her forms." At those words, her body was consumed by fire. Lightning flashed from the sky to strike her. Water burst from the earth to engulf her as vines twisted up her body. When they fell away, her body was white no longer. Blood-red runes covered her, snaking down her arms and her legs, up her neck and sending tendrils around her still-white face.

"Nothing of Earth, Sky, Water or Fire can harm you now. There is nothing they can remove to take those powers from you," Marin intoned in a voice of prophesy.

"And my father's gifts?"

"They are yours as well."

Margelle took Réel's hand. "I will be there when you need me."

"Good," he said.

"And when I need you?" Margelle asked, stroking his cheek.

"Well, come and get me," the huntsman laughed. "I would welcome the beast if she has your green eyes."

**Windrider**

(previously published under the name Stephanie Loyd)

The leaves fluttered back, lifted by a sharp breeze. The man lying beneath the tree should have noticed the wind for the day had been stiflingly still, but he was lost in contemplation of the reflections in the motionless pool.

Behind him, silver sandals touched the pebbly ground, soundlessly. Silently, she slipped behind the tree. Silence was as much her gift as riding the wind, and far more acceptable, but it was best if she went unnoticed. The leaves rustled again briefly as she climbed above the recumbent man. One leaf trembled and fell, disturbing the clear mirror of the lake.

The man started and reached for the offending leaf, but it was beyond his reach. Instead, he sighed.

She made no sound, but she sighed, too. She knew him, of course, for he had come to her village many months ago. Whenever he disappeared for a few hours, she would leap aboard the wind when no one was looking and find him. The wind always knew where to go.

She knew why he sighed. Renée, the village beauty played with him as she played with all men. He was only a minstrel and poor of gold, and Renée dreamed of a rich husband. Still, his voice was like gold and his face handsome, so she kept him to keep her beaus jealous.

Poor Michel, for his heart was well and truly taken. He had no armor when she pouted her full red lips or flounced her golden curls at him.

Venetia could see what Renée did to him and her eyes bled silent tears. Though no one knew. No one noticed Venetia for she was as odd as she was silent. Who could care what she saw or what she thought?

Michel pulled a flute from his bag and Venetia smiled. She loved when he played the flute. His harp playing was inspired and he had a voice like nectar. Even so, when he played the flute, Venetia could hear the wind, feel it fresh on her face. The wind was her friend and her escape, and she loved it when Michel brought it to life with his breath.

The wind liked it, too, for, as he played, it danced lazily around the tree, toying with the leaves and blowing about Venetia's long white-blonde hair. Venetia laughed soundlessly, but the wind heard and danced faster.

Suddenly, the music stopped. The wind slipped away. Venetia stared down to find him, standing, staring up at her. Her dark brown eyes widened like those of a startled deer, and she slid clumsily out of the tree.

"Don't go," said Michel. "I didn't mean to frighten you. Really, please stay."

Venetia stopped, torn, but no one had ever asked her to stay. No one cared what she did. She turned and knelt in the grass beneath the tree.

"I know you," he said. "You are the silent one, the one that cannot speak. I've seen you before."

She shrugged. He had heard of her, of course, even if he had never noticed her.

He smiled. "You always listen when I play. I don't know why you always sit in the shadows, but I know that when I'm playing, I can look and you'll be there. Today, suddenly I felt that if I just looked for you, you would be here as well. And you are."

She studied him intently. He _had_ noticed her. The villagers no longer paid any attention to her comings and goings, treating her like the shadows she tried so hard to stay in. But he had noticed.

"Why do you like the flute so much? I play the harp and sing much better, but it is the flute you like."

She nodded and opened her mouth to tell him how it made her think of the wind, but no sound came from her mouth. Such was her curse. She bowed her head.

"Would you like to play it?"

She lifted her head, eyes shining with hope. He offered her the wood and silver staff, and she took it with shaking hands. Could she make a sound?

She put her lips to the silver and breathed out a sigh of delight. The flute answered back with a clear silver note. Her fingers found places on the flute of their own accord, and she closed her eyes as her own music floated about her. The song was exquisite, one of love and longing, of imprisonment and fleeting freedom, of being trapped with a curse and freed with a gift. She felt it as much as heard it, felt the wind course through her and touch the flute with magic.

The wind reacted with ecstatic joy, whipping eagerly around her in a frenzy of excitement, pulling her silvery hair about her head like a halo, pulling down leaves from the tree and streaming them through her silver locks.

And he listened, astonished. This music was what he dreamed of when he became a minstrel. He could close his eyes and feel the wind blowing through him. He could know how it felt to be caught in a web of silence, unloved, unaccepted and unnoticed. He could know, in his mind, how it felt to ride the wind and taste the joy and freedom that could not be found at home. He could feel what it was to love with no hope of ever knowing love in return. Loneliness beyond anything he had ever known set up a throbbing rhythm in his veins, a loneliness only salved with hopeless dreams and breezy escapes.

He opened his eyes as the song ended, as the flood of perfect music whispered to a close, and looked at her as if for the first time. "Can you play it again?" he asked in an awed whisper, and reached inside his bag for his other flute. "Can you teach me to feel what you feel when you play?"

She looked at him, tears shimmering in her huge eyes. Wordlessly, she put the flute to her mouth. The music whistled through the flute effortlessly and she closed her eyes, lost in the magic she had created.

Then she heard him play. His flute was lower, singing the song of the storm cloud in counterpoint to her poignant keening. He could not lead, for he had never felt it as she did, but he followed and filled in the emptiness of her music with deep notes of promise. Her flute sang of dreams unfulfilled, and his answered with sighs of solace. She sang of hopeless thirsts and was answered with oceans of wonder.

The wind was desperate with excitement. It whistled about them tirelessly, a frenetic harmony that accented the climbing music. It tugged at them and he felt himself creep forward so that he knelt closer to her.

Suddenly, the crescendo was upon them. He felt the music flow forth as he had never known it before in answer to her tragic song. She answered with a hope she had never before felt, and the music rose like the cry of the wind in the hurricane.

Then it was over. His flute fell unnoticed to the ground, and her own slipped down from her lips. For a moment, he stared at her intensely.

And he was kissing her, his fingers thrust deep in her silver hair as he pressed his lips with desperate hunger against hers. The intensity of her song was echoed in the passion of her lips as she buried her own fingers in his hair and lost herself in him.

For a moment. He may be caught up in her music, but she was no one when all was said and done. She thrust herself to her feet and, with a leap, let the wind carry her away, the flute still clutched in her fingers.

Behind her, Michel fumbled for his flute and stared at the spot where Venetia had been just moments before. Did he dream her? He closed his eyes and heard her song in his ears, felt her touch on his mouth. She was no dream. She was magic. He had to find her again.

Venetia rode the wind for an hour, her mind whirling like a twister, before she decided what she must do. It could not be wrong to want one night of promise, of fulfillment, even if his dreams were of someone else. One night of magic and music and she would pay him back with what he dreamed of. She could do so.

The wind took her high to the summit of the dark mountain, to a spot she had never seen or known of.

The wind always knew where to go.

Her feet landed silently among the rocks, and she followed the whispered promptings of the wind to find what she searched for. She found it, studied it in the dwindling light before she dropped it down her blouse, feeling it, cold and sharp, against her skin. She didn't mind.

Every treasure had its price, and she would gladly pay the piper for his services.

The moon had risen when her feet touched the dust of her village. The saloon was boisterous, but the streets were quiet, empty. Silently, she slipped through the familiar shadows and stood beneath the window of the room he rented. The hostel was empty but for the one guest so no one would know of her plan but Michel. A breath of wind carried her up to his casement and she slipped inside breathlessly.

She stood, silhouetted against the moonlit window, afraid to move closer. Would he spurn her now or would he let her have just one night of wonder? She stood, unsure, when hands gently grasped her arms and lips descended onto hers. The flute fell unnoticed from her hands and, when her clothes followed, she noticed it even less.

The wind streamed about them, wrapping her long hair around them both as they knelt on his pallet. Their clothes and his blankets danced around them as they moved toward a physical crescendo that, when it came, brought a sound, a perfect note, to Venetia's throat.

When it was over, he cradled her against him, his lips caressing her face, her hair. She laid against him, feeling the loneliness disappear for the first time. If this was all she had, then still she was satisfied. But it wasn't. Twice more that night their bodies sang together accompanied by the frenetic passion of the wind.

In the morning, as the sun first caressed the window, Venetia slipped silently from the pallet. She longed to stroke his hair and face as she had in the night, but she feared he would reject her if he woke and saw who she was, who had come to him in the night. She wrapped her clothes around her, and her fingers found the discarded stone, a rough ruby the size of her fist. It was uncut but worth a rich man's future. She laid it on the pillow next to him. Now, he could have Renée as he wished, her gift in return for his. She found his flute on the floor as well. She should leave it, but she needed it as a token of him, of this night.

Her hand felt at her stomach. She prayed that this night would give her a companion that could ride upon the wind as she did and look at her with his eyes.

The wind prayed, too, for she felt it lift her hair about her head. Softly, she bent a last time, placed her lips against his forehead, and, as he stirred, leapt upon the wind.

She heard him behind her as she swept away: "Venetia!" She knew then he had known who had come to him in the night . . .

The village knew Venetia no more. No more did it know Michel.

Instead, a minstrel wanders the land, his flute singing a poignant song of longing and loss, of being trapped and free, of dreaming of what one can never have . . . or never again.

His harp he left behind, unnoticed, and no word has passed his lips since he called to the lover who floated away. Even so, he is never at a loss for gold as his flute sings a song of such feeling that the coldest hearts are won over. It matters not to him; he once discarded a king's ransom, tossed with scorn at the skirts of a heartless beauty.

His footsteps follow the wind, his ears straining for the music he can sometimes catch, the light trilling of one who has, at least once, known happiness.

He is certain she will find him.

The wind always knows where to go.

**Windmaster**

Softly, as if an echo from the faraway mountains, he could hear the sound of a happy flute, trilling a song of freedom and remembered joy. Soft the song, but distinct. She was close to him, at last.

Michel swung his pack from his shoulder, his fingers fumbling inside for his flute. Surely, he could reach her now. He breathed in deeply, calming the unsteady beating of his heart. Even so, his hands shook as he brought the instrument to his lips.

There was no shaking in the music that followed, however. The notes rose, light as bird song, rising above the heavy oppression of a still and humid day. Enticing, entreating, it sang of loneliness, of endless searching. The notes recalled a magic once known, a wonder once tasted, memories so brilliant that the world around lost color. Then, the song reverberated in prayer, that the magic not be lost forever, that color once again enter a lackluster existence.

The trees around him rustled with a hint of breeze. The song became more coaxing, more seductive. There was so much at stake.

Leaves were shaken from the trees as the wind circled him faster, blowing about his brown hair. Still, he played.

The wind rose higher, whistling faster and faster about him, whipping his cloak tightly about him, pulling at the wind in his lungs. But it could not stop the music. Above the fierce keening of the wind, there was always the song, the song of searching, of longing, of need. The need was his and the wind could not take it away.

It could only bring him what he needed.

And she was there, her silver sandals silent on the dry grass, her white garments tugged and billowed by the wind, her hair floating like a halo around her head. She was there.

His flute dropped, forgotten, to the ground from nerveless fingers. He stepped forward, hesitated, then found her caught up in his arms as his lips pressed feverish kisses over her face. He buried his face in her windblown hair and sobbed. So long, he had searched for so long.

She made no sound, but her body shook. Michel found tears on his neck and pulled her face up to look at eyes drowned in tears. "Oh no, Venetia," he begged, catching her tears with his thumbs. "No tears. I knew you had to find me, even though I traveled for months. If you did not come, it was because you did not understand, but, if you could hear me, you would know. And you'd find me."

She nodded, but her eyes held disbelief that he could mean what he said, what his flute had sung, but not that she could find him. The wind always knew where to go.

"Venetia," he whispered. "Do you think I dream of Renée? Not since I heard a song that held me, have I thought of her. I could dream of nothing since I looked into your eyes and saw what I had never seen before, since I touched you and knew what it was to _feel_. There is no room in my dreams for anyone but you."

Her eyes searched his, but his were steady, unclouded. She could not doubt he was sincere. She swallowed and took his hand up. She brought it briefly to her lips, pressing it gently against her cheek, before she pulled it to her bulging stomach, hidden in the folds of cotton cloth. She let him feel his child.

His eyes widened and he searched her face intensely as she had searched his. "Ours." It should have been a question, but it was a statement that found its way to his lips. "You carry our child."

He pressed his mouth to hers fiercely, burying his fingers deep into her silver hair. Her mouth and her hands were as eager as his, her fingers finding their way inside his tunic to press themselves against a pounding heart. And when he pulled her to the grass, she did not hesitate.

The light was dwindling when they slept at last, but she wakened quickly, before the first star had appeared. He loved her! She had not dreamed that he could, but it was on his face, in his eyes, and unmistakable in his song. No one had ever noticed her, and, yet, this man had found something in a silent outcast such that he had traveled in search of her.

She slid from his somnolent grasp and pulled on her clothes. Somewhere, she must find something that could make clear the words she could not say, the fullness in her heart that came only from him. With one last glance, she leapt upon the wind, not knowing for what she searched, but confident that she would find it. The wind always knew where to go.

Minutes later, the wind rested at a field of reeds, bleached silver in the moonlight. She didn't understand. The breeze whispered forth and the reeds responded with a soft keening.

She could build pipes, something that would duplicate the wind's songs so she could tell him, in music, what was denied her in words. A small silver knife, collected from her sandal, and she was ready to work, accompanied by the music of the evening breeze.

There was no breeze to wake Michel, but he was pulled to consciousness by the emptiness of his arms. He smiled and looked about him, expecting her hidden in the nearby trees. The smile faded. He could feel no wind, so she could not be there.

Inside his chest, his heart hesitated. There was an empty ache within that throbbed through him with sickening strength. He could not have lost her again. Not again.

He grabbed for his things with frantic haste. The moonlight found the sparkle of his silvered flute, and he took it instantly to his lips. Desperate was the song that floated above the trees. She would hear him. She would have to. The wind would bring her, pull her back to him. And he would not let her go again. And he played.

His feet stumbled on the path, but the song never wavered. The road he walked was a hundred miles, but he would play over every mile until he found her, until the wind found him. The wind would hear him and the wind always knew where to go.

But others can hear, others who do not care for love or dreaming. There are men who live only for the magic of gold, who do not care how this gold is won. And they heard him.

The moon hid behind a cloud as he stumbled again. Even then, the song would not have faltered but for the hand that swept the flute ungently from his fingers.

Rough fists crunched into his face, while other hands wrenched his pack from his back. Gold spilled onto the roadway and was gathered by up greedy fingers. The flute disappeared in someone's pack, coveted for its silver.

"No," Michel begged through swollen lips. "Leave me only the flute. The rest means nothing, take it. But I cannot call her without the flute. Please! I beg you!"

"A man who'd part with so much gold must have more to cheer him! Come now, boys, it seems there is more to be had." The moon pulled clear of the clouds to show Michel four advancing shadows, one carrying the glitter of a pitted knife. Michel saw it raised above him.

"VENETIA!"

Nearly twenty miles away, Venetia turned her face, the finished pipes in her hand. Her heart thumped fiercely, and the ground disappeared beneath her feet as she responded to an unheard cry. She flew past the place where they had coupled, had rested. Where was he?

The wind was unerring in direction. Venetia landed on a lonely stretch of road. She saw about her the torn remnants of a minstrel's bag, of a shredded cape. And him, face-down in the dust. Her throat tightened with unbearable pain. She could not breathe if he did not live.

She fell upon her knees and rolled him over with gentle hands. Tears stung her eyes as she saw the swollen jaw, the crushed nose. She touched a finger to his discolored cheek and knew from the touch that the wind had flown from his lungs and would never return. She knew that he was dead and that he died with her name on his lips.

She threw her head back, her mouth open to scream out her torment, but she could make no sound, no whisper to mourn her loss. Her hand reached for her silver knife, and stopped. Someone depended on her life even more than she had depended on his, someone who carried his blood as well as hers.

Instead, the pipes found a way to her lips. Low was the mournful song of the bereaved, sharp was the music of pain, and vibrant was the song of desolation, of irredeemable loss. "Michel!" the pipes sobbed in tortured tones.

And the wind heard, her friend from her earliest lonely days. When no one could hear her, the wind would know her heart and give her freedom from the prison of her silence. It had brought her to her loved one, had shown her how to reach him with the magic of music through light voice of the flute, and had taken her back to her lover when she could stand solitude no longer. And it heard her now.

"Michel!" it sang back at her, twisting around the pair with frenetic speed. And as she played, it flew faster, pulling itself into a twister that lifted not only her up, but her lover as well, and carried them back to where they had been that afternoon.

Gently, Michel's body was laid on the twisting grass before leaves and rushes coated the body. For a moment, Venetia floated above him, looking a last time at what had been her life, her pipes still singing the song of mourning.

She looked away at last, and the song changed to one of rage. The wind replied with a renewed fury, calling forth lightning from the nearby clouds. "Forward," called the pipes. "There is work yet to be done this night."

And the twister moved forward, unerringly. The wind always knew where to go.

She saw four men huddled about a campfire lift their heads as the furious screeching of the oncoming wind. One was swept up into the whirlwind only to be crushed against a tree. Another was dragged into the fire and left to burn, screaming, until the fire closed his throat. Yet another had his knife wrenched from his fingers by the screaming wind only to have it buried in his chest a second later.

The last rolled away from the vengeful wind, stumbling to his feet in his haste to escape. How do you escape the wind? Short was his scream as the lightning found a victim.

Venetia set foot among the remains, silent again. She stared at the charred remains of one footpad. What was there to remember Michel? She saw it in the moon's last beams: his flute. She tied the flute to the end of her pipes and brought the silver to her lips.

As the music flowed through the flute, the wind began to play counterpoint to her song through the reeds. Hanging at the belt beneath her breasts was the last flute, the flute that she had first used to sing to Michel. That was for the child of Michel. His flute would become more.

And the roadway, a memorial . . .

They say that the Northern road is more than one hundred miles long, lined with trees and hiding places for the wicked to take the unwary. No soldiers patrol this road. No governors work to protect the travelers. Even so, no one is molested. Every man, every maiden, every babe can walk its length without fear, without danger.

Once, it was rife with footpads and thieves, but word spread quickly to find other hunting grounds for their crimes. Each criminal that accosted the defenseless would disappear only to be found anon, dead in the most hideous of fashions.

Some hid in caves or buried themselves in shelters. Some fled with remarkable speed. It didn't matter.

They could never run fast enough or hide well enough.

The wind always knew where to go.

### Single Point Stories

After the stories I had written with Sword and Sorceress in mind, I began to explore two kinds of short stories. One involved more complex stories that carefully followed the growth of a character that intrigued me. The other kind were what I call "Single Point Stories," stories, usually not too complex, that focused on a single point to make, carefully engineered to make the point with impact. Many involved feminism or tolerance. Most involved looking at an obvious or a trite concept and twisting it.

I won't lie. I love taking the traditional in completely new directions. These stories were generally not focused on character development but often employed one or two characters in situations of brief but compelling drama. Or at least that was my intent. Sometimes, the intent is a social point; sometimes, it's just a surprise for surprise's sake.

My dialogue, by this time, was coming along nicely, helping me solidify characterizations quickly and I was more readily able to set mood, tone, setting, often with minimal physical description of the locale or conditions. Other times, I'd use intensive description to set the mood and reflect the drama. The point is to build a world, usually within just a couple of pages, that is cogent enough that no more is required for the reader to find it clear and compelling. And, at last, I was starting to add some humor to some of these stories of the smirking variety (yes, my favorite).

**Poetic Justice**

The secretary barely lifted his head as the door slid open, just glancing at the slim figure in the doorway. A glance was enough. He saw pilot leathers, scuffed and ill-fitting, on the gangly body, close-fitting comm-cap and a mask across the face. Some of the pilots had taken to wearing the masks on the ground, unhappy, the secretary supposed with the unfiltered air of what they called "dirtside." Affectation, if you asked him.

Apparently consumed by his screen again, the secretary said, "No one sees Prime Kaladan without an appointment. If you need an appointment," and the secretary paused as if that seemed unlikely, "you'll have to go through proper channels."

"I have an appointment." The voice was absurdly youthful and the secretary looked up again at the large eyes and smooth skin. Why, he was just a boy!

"You're Pilot M. Cremden out of _Pandora's Box_? Lord Admiral and Prime of Havern?"

"My father was Admiral and Prime," the boy answered. "But I am pilot of _Pandora's Box_ , I am from Havern and here on her business. And I do have an appointment."

"Is this a joke? Where's your father?"

"My father is dead, sirrah. Faladian Plague, two years past."

The secretary leaned back in his chair, instinctively giving the pilot extra room. He squinted at the youthful eyes, large and dark, above the mask. That was certainly plausible.

Faladian Plague was a menace, wiping out whole populations with a particular genetic trait, a trait that changed with time and venue. Once it was hemophilia. Another it was anyone with blue eyes. Three times, whole clans had been eradicated because the mutating disease chose something peculiar to their genetic makeup. It was postulated that it never quite faded despite its devastation and the efforts made to combat it because it would mutate into a form benign to existing genetic gene-maps and stay resident, sometimes for generations. But, when it attacked, it was virulent. It had a 100% mortality rate, and the several year incubation meant that people were infected and infectious without ever knowing they were already dead or spreading death to others. Or both. Some of the planets in the Federation would never recover. The secretary found himself grateful for the pilot's mask. Still . . .

"ID?"

Wordlessly, the boy slid it under the laser. Pilot First Class, M. Cremden, certified pilot for four standard years, attested to by his father. Well, that was normal. Pilots learned father to son, of course, or apprenticed as the guild demanded. Twenty-two standards old. Odd. He looked younger, his eyes . . .

The secretary waved him to a seat. "You're early. You'll have to wait a few minutes."

The boy tucked the card back in a pocket and sat in the chair indicated. The eyes were calm, but the fingers twitched and fidgeted, belying the outward calm. The secretary double-checked the scans from the boy's walk in. No, no weapons. Still, something was making the secretary uneasy. Something was just not right.

"Havern, eh? I haven't heard of pilots from Havern for months, nor other word. Price of Latvium was starting to climb rapidly without fresh shipments. I hope you brought a big one."

The boy shook his head. "Only a little. It's a one-man ship with only minimal cargo space, 22 metric tons. And some of that I needed for extra logistics. She wasn't made for long hauls and it's a sizable trip from Havern. Nine jumps."

"One man? Why did you come alone? You're just a strapling! Why didn't you bring more ships or a crew? Bring us a real shipment. Your arrival will probably jack up prices even further . . . " The secretary squinted his eyes suspiciously. "Or was that the plan? The Federation takes price gouging very seriously."

"We're not trying to manipulate the market," the boy said defensively. "As for why I came as I did, that's a discussion I came here to have with the Prime, not with you." There was an air of bravado on the last sally, underwritten by fear, as if the boy expected to get slapped back down for his effrontery.

The secretary was more than happy to oblige and would have done so if the intercom hadn't buzzed. "Deeb, send Pilot Cremden."

"But, sir—!"

"Now." The word was implacable.

"At once, sir."

Secretary Deeb rose and touched the palmplate to release the door, then held it open with a bow. That bastard pilot waltzed through without so much as a head nod. Damn, Deeb thought, I hate those damn pilots! Deeb closed the door, careful not to slam it. Too bad a temper tantrum was not worth losing his job.

Mina Cremden breathed out a sigh of relief as the door closed, trying to do so unobtrusively. Everything depended on Prime Kaladan's reaction to what happened on Havern.

_You think that, because you believe the lie_ , Linette said in Mina's head. _You risk yourself for nothing_.

_I have to try_ , Mina told her.

_You are too stubborn_.

"Well, Pilot Cremden, you have my attention. Did you plan to spend my valuable time staring at nothing?"

"Pray forgive me, Prime Kaladan," Mina said, with a bow.

The man behind the desk was older than Mina's father had been, but his green eyes were razor sharp. He studied Mina for a moment, then indicated a chair. "Kindly have a seat, young Pilot, and tell me why Havern has not been making shipments of Latvium. My secretary is right to be concerned, as am I. It is always interesting how a substance no one knew about thirty years ago can become indispensable. Your failure to keep up shipments is . . . disturbing."

"It was the plague."

"The Faladian Plague? Yes, I heard you mention it to Deeb. That is unfortunate. It's a wonder that no one on your planet sent any word."

"It happened very quickly, within weeks. Every expert, every pilot, every communication technician, every doctor . . . everyone who knew how to do anything—gone. I'm the only pilot remaining."

Prime Kaladan's eyebrows rose. "Everyone? That seems implausible even for the Faladian. What possible genetic trait did it target?"

Mina took a deep breath before removing helmet and mask. "Y chromosome."

She was prepared for shock, had steeled herself against it, but still she felt it like a blow. "A woman!" Prime Kaladan gasped, rage warring with disbelief. "How dare you! How dare you enter this office under false pretenses!" He had leapt to his feet as if galvanized and stalked around the desk to glare down at her.

"I had no choice," Mina said firmly, fighting the urge to prostrate herself. "I'm the only pilot left." She knew what she looked like. Dark eyes in a pointed face, hair cut close to her head. No artifice, no effort to be beautiful, which was a woman's duty, but she knew her face was unmistakably female.

"You should never have been a pilot. Your father, he taught you? If he were not dead, I would kill him myself for the blasphemy! Women are forbidden from becoming pilots."

"Yes, and miners and managers and technicians. Aren't you listening? There is no one else. We need help."

"You thought you could come here and be heard? You have no right—," he hissed.

"We are desperate, Prime Kaladan. We have done only what we had no choice but to do." Mina tightened her lips to try to keep the words back, but failed. "Once, women did the same as men, were pilots and technicians and engineers and even scientists. My father told me, before the first Faladian Plague when women were all but eradicated, women and men worked side by side. He said it was just—."

He cut her off with an impatient gesture. "Your father was a damned fool! He should never have revealed such things but to another Prime, let alone a woman. He did not deserve the title of Prime. And you come here as if we are equal . . . "

"I came because there was no one else to come. Help us. There are none but women and a tiny number of men left. Send us experts and leaders. We are so vulnerable. If you would send . . . "

"I send men, and you women will just toddle back into your rightful place? You flew a spaceship here, and you expect me to believe you'll return blithely back to your proper place? How will you unlearn what you had no right to learn?"

He bent over her menacingly and she slid from the chair to kneel at his feet, head bowed. "Forgive me, Prime. My father had no sons . . . "

"Then he should have adopted, like a reasonable man! You have tied my hands, left me no choice."

"We came for help," she despaired.

"Oh, we will come for Havern, make no mistake. Latvium is too valuable to lie fallow nor can we count on the Havern survivors to die out naturally. Who knows if this poison that your father spawned has spread. What else do women take upon themselves to do there? No, it is too dangerous to leave things as they are." He tipped her head up and regarded her sorrowfully. "Pity. Despite your hair, you could have been beautiful, good skin, good bones, a fine addition to a respectable man's household. A possession to be treasured. Gone to waste." His fingers lingered at her chin. "I'm sorry."

She never saw the blade that slashed across her throat.

Linette gasped, her own throat seizing as her twin's throat was cut. Her fingers touched her neck, tears starting in her eyes. Mina!

It was inevitable. She'd known what Mina would bring on her own head, just as she knew Prime Kaladan would call on other Prime and would build an armada to attack them, as anxious to eradicate any hint that women could be more than chattel as they were to help themselves to the Latvium. Still, it grieved her, just as Mina's death sliced her to the core.

Prime Kaladan was right about one thing. The women on Havern would not return to their former roles. Thirty years under Prime Mendel Cremden had as much to do with that as the plague. Once they realized they could be what they chose to be, there was no going back.

Oh, some still struggled with it, as Mina had. Linette's mother still cowered in her robes and mourned a world where she knew her role. But others had come forward to do what needed to be done, when the men were gone. They would survive until the next generation. And then things would be different.

As for the Prime and his plans, they were as futile as Mina's had been. Her father had known how to build a defense matrix, and Mina lied about there being only one pilot. Linette was also a pilot. There was a sizable number of very serviceable spacecraft at the Havern port. And a likely looking group of pilots-in-training.

Nor could Kaladan see past the threat he thought existed in the women to the real risk of the Faladian Plague he had exposed himself to and would expose those he called to his aid. He'd risk a galaxy-wide deadly scourge to put an isolated handful of women in their place. Fool.

But then, as her father had always said, one couldn't help but be a fool if one deliberately devalued half the populace.

**Precipice**

Amber was the light of the setting sun, reflected in the innumerable prisms of sea spray that colored the air about her. Her long blonde hair, misted by the salty spray that reached even her lofty perch, whipped about her in a frenetic cloud. Fifty feet below, the music of the sea echoed and crashed in glorious tympanic resonance upon a sheer, smooth wall of rock. And Mida stood atop that precipice, sea green eyes closed, feeling rather than seeing the beauty about her, the music within her answering the siren song of the sea. The wind echoed the sea's keening, tearing at the scrap of bloody cloth she used to hide her nakedness, whispering to her of her abandoned home at the bottom of the sea. On her perch, Mida tottered, torn, with her awkward legs grown weaker with longing, high above the frolicking swell of a vibrant ocean, painfully close to the taste and smell of the cleansing brine of the sea and yet . . . She had been a fool, no doubt, casting off the scales of her kind for no reason stronger than curiosity. How could she have yearned to feel the warmth of dirt in her toes and not guessed at the pain of rocks against virgin feet? Longed to breathe the salt-free scent of flowers and not foreseen the choking stench of decay and smoke in the land of men? Why had she not imagined real fear and horror and degradation awaited her among the land-dwellers? She shook her head. It was done. Time was short and she must decide what to do.

The sea beckoned. It was a world she knew, full of softness and strength, cruelty and gentleness. Every drop of the ocean teemed with the magic of life. She could be part of it again. She could feel it call her, offering to cleanse her of all the horrors she had found so quickly in the colder world of the landlocked, wash away those stains with its salty kiss.

Her fingers worried the tattered hem of the rough cloth she had found to cover herself—after. The taint of blood reminded her of her pain, her stain. She was pure no longer. He had taken it, stolen the body of one too new to movement on the land to fight back properly, leaving her, bloody and rent . . . and stained. And only the sea could cleanse the stain.

The sea swept up with unusual fervor, lacing the air with a mist of moisture. Clean. The sun had not yet set. She could be clean again and lose herself in the world of water, growing back the scales she had shed, becoming what once she was, clean . . . and wiser.

She had found him. When the horror of being raped had freed her limbs, she had found him, had shown him the folly of mistaking a female for prey. But she had not killed him. She could not kill for pleasure.

Her hands stretched up and touched her belly, touched where already she could feel the life beginning. What of the infant, an innocent tainted through no action of its own, only by the act of the man who had raped her? The child would never survive the transformation. The sea could cleanse his actions from her, but hers? Was it a choice she could live with, taking a life before it knew the world? What choice could she live with? She knew now the world was a horrible place.

Her eyes glanced at the setting sun, painting the sky about it purple and red. But, the world was a beautiful place, too, and wonderful. There were laughter and music and love and joy. And life.

Choose, she told herself. The sun had nearly gone and would take her choice with it into the sea. The stain must be cleansed and the sea was the only way she knew how. It was not her nature to destroy life, but there was no other way she knew. She closed her eyes, breathing, for the last time, the salt-laden air, feeling the spray of the sea she loved on her face.

So be it.

In arms made strong from years of fighting the sea, she lifted the trussed-up body of the man who had raped her, the man she had easily found and subdued once she had recovered her strength, had mastered her new body. He wept and pleaded with his strange sounds, but she could find no answering softness in herself.

So be it.

She looked at him coldly before she dropped him over the precipice. After he was gone, she closed her eyes, seeing his fear again in her mind's eye, listening to the music of his scream as he fell, feeling in her soul the crash as he was dashed upon the rocks and was washed away, washed clean by the sea. To be clean, the stain must be cleansed and she would not take the life of a child, half hers. The stain was cleaned with blood and brine, for her sake and the child's.

The foolish man had not realized that, when he had taken her, or that years of fighting against the sea made one unnaturally strong. He had made a poor choice in enemies.

The sun fell with finality, and she looked searchingly across the water, sighing with longing at a world she could no longer know. It had been her world, the world she had loved, magical, clean, caressing. She turned away and began to walk gingerly on her uncalloused feet.

This world was harsher, colder. It was lonely and dangerous. Mida glanced back for just one last look.

Then, Mida turned her back on the only world she had ever known. And entered another.

**Soulshifter**

The girl knelt before the Captain's prancing horse, arms up in supplication. The sun shone on her gilded hair as the harsh desert wind pulled it back from her face. "Please spare my brother," Marill said softly as the dusty breeze pressed tears back across her cheeks. "He is so young. He is all my mother and I have. Please!" The words were spoken quietly but with an urgency that carried over the wind.

They made no impression on the horsemen. The Captain, a rough man in stained leathers, just laughed and pointed to the patch of purple and silver on his arm. "This is the woman I take orders from, the only one. She will like this boy and her gratitude, she shows with silver. What would _your_ gratitude gain me?"

Ramill, seventeen, lifted his head weakly, blood dripping from his temple. He was draped over the Captains saddlebow, an uncomfortable position for anyone, but he still managed to smile faintly at his twin who knelt in the dust. She stared blindly into his face, into eyes the same blue-white as her own, and then forced another tear from each eye. "Please!" she begged, burying her face in her skirt so it would not betray her. "He can't be what she wants!"

The Captain leaned down and, with his looped whip, pulled her face back up. He stared into her eyes, her face and honey-gold curls so like Ramill's. Marill held her breath. "You're a pretty thing," the Captain said, at last. He leaned over further and sank rancid fingers into her lustrous long hair and pulled her to her feet. His unshaved face was inches away from her own as he devoured her face and then the rest of her with his hungry eyes. He smiled, which, with three teeth missing, was hardly appealing, and added, "If Lavis wasn't so hot to get a boy in her clutches, I'd take the time to teach you how to please a man." He wavered, but Lavis had been insistent. Lavis was dangerous if crossed. He released his hold on Marill's hair and she slid back to her knees. "Eh, but I'll be back when he's delivered."

Ramill grimaced at this and struggled slightly, but Marill only turned away to hide her laughter. The Captain didn't recognize the resemblance and that was the important thing. Let him think she hid her face for modesty's sake.

The Captain laughed and spurred his horse, his men following closely behind him. Marill didn't move as they galloped around and past her, kicking up a huge cloud of dust that settled on her as she knelt.

Her mother, Loran, came to the front step of their house and stared after the galloping horses that took her son to Lavis' castle, to _her_. "They've taken him," she whispered, her slight voice carrying over the breeze. "She's stolen my son away."

"As she stole Father," Marill said expressionlessly. "As she stole Father before we were born."

Loran said nothing.

"It is done, Mother. You could do nothing to save Father. You could not have stopped them from taking Ramill. It had to be done this way."

Still, Loran said nothing.

Marill finally looked up and saw her mother standing there, hair grizzled and face lined beyond her years, aged by hardship and loss. When her husband had been taken, she had stayed living only for her unborn children and her brother. Marill need only look in those tortured blue-white eyes to know her father. Now, Lavis had taken Loran's son as well. Loran's eyes looked past Marill to the trail of dust left by those who had stolen her son, then flickered back to her daughter's kneeling form. "I could lose you both," she said at last.

"We knew it would happen." Marill took a deep breath. "Ask Uncle what we should do." Marill knew already as it had been planned, but she couldn't stand to look at the desolation in her mother's eyes any longer.

There was a slight shimmer and her uncle's voice boomed from the porch, his deep rich voice a startling contrast to his sister's gentle whisper. "You know what to do, Marill. It must be done for your father, for your brother and for a thousand young men Lavis has stolen." Rolan stared at his niece with one cold blue-white eye, fingering his empty eye socket with a three-fingered hand. They were the blemishes that had saved him from such a fate as his sister's mate and had, thus, made it impossible to exact revenge for the man his sister loved. "For the thousand young men she has yet to steal."

Marill nodded her head and pulled out her knife to cut her hair.

Ramill stood, naked, before a beautiful woman dressed in purple satin. She was tall with long blue-black hair and large violet eyes. She studied Ramill carefully then leaned forward to run a long purple fingernail down the smooth skin of his chest, then lower. There was nothing beautiful about the look in her eyes.

"Yesss," she purred. "This one will do nicely. You have done well, Crotor. I haven't seen a specimen like this in years." She caught her captive's face between two long fingers and stared into his furious eyes. "He has fire, this one. All the better for me." She dropped the chin and gestured the prisoner away. "Have him prepared and waiting in my room."

Ramill was left on Lavis' bed an hour later, only the briefest of purple loincloths hiding his manhood. When the servants left, he turned onto his stomach on the rich silk sheets and closed his eyes.

Lavis faded in through the wall. Her eyes glittered as they looked on her prey. They had shaved him all over, she saw, and was pleased to see he looked as good as she remembered. Perfect white skin covered his lean frame. His legs and buttocks were shapely and well-defined. He was lying face down, but had lifted his head to glare at her. His face was of breathtaking beauty. A man like this one might keep her young for two months instead of one.

"Pity," she murmured silkily as she approached, unfastening her purple robe. "Pity I will have to kill you once you have pleasured me." She stroked her long-fingered hand up his smooth leg, watching the muscles contract. "But I have to keep my youth, you know, and I need you for that. The Dark God I serve is very," and she bent to place her lips where her hand had been, "very bloodthirsty. His greed for young male blood is almost unquenchable. He'll like you." She bent again and her breath was warm on his thigh. "But I'll like you first."

He turned his face back to the sheets. "I know the terms of the spell you use to keep your youth. You must steal the youth of a young man between your legs then give your God his beating heart. How many good hearts have you torn from men's chests, Lavis the Witch?"

She climbed over him, straddling him between her legs, but he didn't turn over, even when she slid her full-breasted body against his back. "Don't take it so hard," she breathed onto the back of his neck. "I'll make certain you die happy."

Her fingers reached around for his face and twisted it to fasten her lips greedily against his—hungry, voracious and ruthless. Her hand slid along his side, downward, downward to slip inside his loincloth.

It was empty.

Lavis rolled from the body below her and stood by the side of the bed, staring in horror. Her prisoner sat up and turned to face her. Lavis' horrified eyes took in the heavy breasts that had not been there before, the limp loincloth that had once been full. " _Shapeshifter_ ," she hissed. "You cannot be a true woman."

Her prisoner shook a golden head. "Soulshifter," she corrected. "You stole my brother but it is his sister you touched with lust." She stared coldly at Lavis who had turned deathly pale. "If you touch a mortal woman, the spell is broken. It is the price you pay for your youth, absolute obedience to your God. And he has his own revenge."

Lavis shook her head, disbelieving, her hands held before her as if for protection. The long fingernails fell from her fingers as the skin on her hands and face shriveled with the centuries she had just regained. Her long black hair whitened and then fell out in rancid clumps. The face that, minutes before, had been classically perfect, puckered and collapsed until her faded violet eyes looked out from a seamed and desiccated landscape. Her entire body shrank, drying up to a shrunken husk and then crumbling abruptly into a glittering grey dust. Such was the vengeance of an angry God.

Marill took up Lavis' discarded robe and wrapped it around herself, staring out the window at a farm hidden in the distance. _Crotor is riding to take me_ , she thought, smiling. The Captain of Lavis' guard was in for a surprise himself.

**Captain of the Guard**

Between the smooth white columns lining the entrance to the Queen's temple, the sun streamed fleetingly. The sunlight gilded the water in the reflecting pool, glistened on the gold-and-silver figures hammered onto Cassandra's armor. As reflected light from her armor dazzled Cassandra's eyes, her muscles tightened in response. Her shoulders straightened and her hands clenched on the slender shaft of a javelin. There was no greater honor for any soldier than to be Captain of the Queen's guard, or to guard her during her rebirth.

Cassandra spared no glance for the door behind her, embossed with copper in a glorious sunburst. Cassandra was young for the honor—barely twenty-seven summers—but she had shown great presence of mind in the Battle of Latross against the Usurper, slaying the Usurper's only son to the advantage of her mistress. In the eight years and countless battles since, Cassandra had shown herself to be no less wise, no less valiant, no less cunning than she had been in that first battle, even impressing the ageless sagacity of Queen Phoenixia.

Thrusting from the glittering breastplate, her arms were still sheathed with dense muscle, darkened with long months in the sun, stronger and more disciplined than they had been when she had first come to the Queen's service. Beneath the riveted hem of her leathern tunic, her legs bulged with the leashed strength born from uncounted miles over mountain and plain, wearing the armor and weapons of the trained warrior. At her side, a full-sized broadsword that many men could not have wielded shone with the oiled care it received, but the hilt was worn from the hands that had used it so often in eight long years.

A feathered helm of beaten silver crowned her, just touching a chiseled face, that, if it was thinner and more lined than it had been eight years before, was no less attractive in its simple unsophisticated physical beauty. The eyes were black, framed with charcoal lashes in a pointed face, but her glorious copper-colored hair hung from the top of her helm, plaited like a shimmering snake coiled upon her shoulder. The same copper that burned on the door behind her.

The Queen's consort, Brasson was behind her, too. The chosen one, he was taller even than Cassandra by a full hand's breadth. His armor was no less heavy, no less costly, and he had earned his too in service to the Queen. He had fought in Phoenixia's service for nearly twenty years and had never disgraced himself or the Queen. At long last, the Queen had been caught up in his strength and his quick and facile mind that had outthought the forces of the Usurper time and again. He was a great warrior and the lover of the Queen.

But Cassandra was Captain of the Guard.

Behind her, Cassandra heard increased activity behind the fiery doors and knew the rebirthing was close at hand. How long it would take, she could not guess; there had been no rebirthing for nearly 100 years.

Cassandra knew nothing of bearing children, knew even less about the workings of a near-immortal like the Queen. But she had seen the Queen enter, lined and faded as might be expected from her near century of age and yet strangely swollen with a belly full of child. And still breathtakingly beautiful. Cassandra had noted Brasson's involuntary gasp of awe at the sight of the woman who loved him, saw the longing in his eyes as the door closed and locked behind her. Phoenixia would bear his child but he was forbidden to join her. His place was here, guarding his lady's safety.

One hundred years ago, Phoenixia herself had been born here, twelfth in an unbroken line since the beginnings of time, but her mother had born twins, two perfect children. One was blessed with the soul of her mother, and thereby all the souls that had gone before. The other, dispossessed of what might otherwise have been her heritage, was both doomed to and blessed with an existence as a mere mortal wherein she could wed, have children, and enjoy watching them grow to adulthood before aging and dying soundlessly in her sleep. Such a fate Phoenixia could only covet.

If Phoenixia's sister had not been discontented with her lot, her sister's second son had been. His anger had bled down three generations, until, at last, his descendant, Dabren the Usurper, had attacked the ancient Queen, forcing her to flee the throne that had been hers and her mothers' for twelve hundred years, to fight as a rebel in her own land.

Until now. Cassandra, and most particularly Brasson, knew that Phoenixia's fight was over. That, whatever would happen, she would never return from behind the copper door, that a new Queen was the only hope for the continuation of the unbroken line, the carrying over of souls.

Cassandra hoped it would happen soon. Her skin prickled with an unnamed disquiet, even though her ears and eyes told her nothing, even though the Queen was safe behind spell-locked doors that could only be opened with one of two magical keys: the Queen's and Cassandra's.

Cassandra saw the flicker of movement behind a column and flung her javelin, quicker than thought. Brasson's javelin was in the air at another target before hers had struck its victim. Other members of the guard were not so lucky, struck down before they could draw their swords by a silent horde of the Usurper's elite soldiers. Cassandra's sword was red with the blood of seven soldiers within seconds, but there were twenty of her own soldiers already dead, the rest but Brasson already dying. Hopelessly outnumbered, Cassandra resisted the urge to move backward and fight with her back to the door, to allow any of the Usurper's men even two feet closer to the Queen's chamber. Beside her, Brasson fought with equal desperation, knowing the fight was futile.

Then, there he was, Dabren the Usurper. Gliding over the marble floor soundlessly, he seemed to be made of smoke. Spotless, he drifted forward, his black cloak and clothing unmarred by the blood everywhere, his ivory skin and snowy hair unblemished. Only his red, red eyes showed signed of life, glowing with the feral hatred that was a part of him. Parting his men before him, he glided to a stop within swordsbreadth of Cassandra.

"Hello, cousin," he purred smiling.

Cassandra spit in his face. "Rot in hell, bastard."

There was no sign the spit hit its mark. Dabren only smiled wider. "Not today, cousin. What would our great-great-grandmother say to see us here, fighting against each other?"

"What would she say to see you force her sister from the throne? To see you take up arms against her ancestors? Do you think you speak for her? She and her _firstborn_ son, my ancestor, were always of the same mind, that Phoenixia was the true Queen. It is only the poison of her second son that has filtered into this day, destroyed what she believed in."

Dabren had stopped smiling and his eyes glowed even more crimson with fury. "Well, here is your chance to change history. _If_ you can take me with your sword."

Cassandra felt the urge to take him, bury her sword in his pallid face, free her Queen from the threat of him for all time. But Dabren was a magician, prepared, she knew, for any attack.

Cassandra swallowed to steady herself, knowing she must do what was necessary. She spun and thrust her sword into the chest of Brasson. For a brief second he stared at her in horrified shock and then mouthed a last message, "Thank you." Dabren was infamous for his skilled use of torture. Cassandra knew the Queen would be grateful if Brasson were spared his ministrations.

Dabren's eyes narrowed at Cassandra's interference, frustrated at the loss of a tool against the Queen. Enraged, he clubbed Cassandra to the ground. Cassandra slid against the Queen's marble totem, hitting her head on the huge marble figure. Cassandra lifted her head weakly, trying to focus on the jeweled eyes of the lioness who roared her defiance, pierced to the heart with a javelin. Cassandra's swimming eyes could not read the ancient motto, but knew what it said: "The guard dies, but never surrenders." For the first time, Cassandra smiled.

Taking the coiled braid in his slender hands, Dabren twisted her head around to face him. "Give me the key."

Cassandra's smile broadened.

"Do you think you can win?" he hissed. "Whether I slay you or not, the key will be mine. I need only slit your throat and there will be none to keep me from taking it."

Cassandra's smile remained untouched.

"I don't wish to kill you, cousin. Gods know, you have always been too beautiful. I have wanted you since you left my father's house, an orphan, to side with this she-witch who stole our ancestor's legacy. We are the last two of her line. Give me the key and you can take your place as my Queen, start a new dynasty in your image."

Cassandra's smile widened.

"Will you force me to kill you? Cassandra . . . "

Cassandra's eyes held his unflinchingly and she pointed to the motto carved beneath the raging lioness. For a moment, Dabren's eyes closed as if in sincere pain, but opened again almost instantly, glowing with the scarlet rage he had long carried in his heart.

"So be it, cousin!" He jerked her head backwards and thrust her away from him as if he feared to be soiled. "Kill her. Cut off her head and throw it to my dogs." Behind him, Cassandra knelt and bowed her head, prepared for the blow . . . still smiling.

The dogs had long since torn the smile from her skull when Dabren finally gave up raging at his minions for their failure to find the key on Cassandra's mutilated body, searched inside and out.

The sun was just setting when Dabren heard the key in the lock. His men around him readied their weapons and his own eyes brightened with anticipation. He would be the unquestioned ruler at last.

The door blew open violently in a conflagration that seared through the great hall, killing, devouring Dabren and all of his followers. For a few seconds, there was the brilliant copper-colored magic of fire and then it was gone, leaving only ashes and blackened armor on the unsinged white marble where once there had been twice a hundred men.

Through the open doors strode the immature body of a tiny child, her red-gold hair curling like a halo around her dimpled face, her black eyes deep with the reflections of a multitude of old souls. Behind her, handmaidens crept forward, eager to help this child who was not a child, who stared unerringly beyond the columns at something even her eyes could not see.

In the weeds, beyond the new Queen's field of vision, lay the abandoned head of Cassandra. Denuded of her flesh, it rolled against a stone, only now dislodging the key that had once been beneath Cassandra's tongue.

Long live the Queen.

**Stormmistress**

Stormna stood alone in the stillness, a slender strip of gleaming blue-black splashed against a featureless expanse of bleached blue sky. Below, the landscape stretched, no longer lush and green, but desiccated, seamed and faded with the relentless sunlight that had transformed everything into dust.

A sizable village rose from the dust to the east, barely distinguishable in the shimmering heat of the afternoon sun. At the foot of the lone upthrust of stone, the villagers waited, withering in the scorching temperatures, dust-colored themselves. Even the lonely crag she stood upon thirsted, dehydrated to the same uniform taupe that drought had painted this corner of the world.

Only she had color, she and her caravan, glittering with purple and gold, unfaded like a jewel in the heart of an endless desert. But she was the treasure . . . and the end to the desert.

She stood quietly, studying the landscape that she loved for its very trauma, her eyes the same pale blue as the sky. The villagers below, despite their discomfort, were silent also, not even shifting their feet on the hot ground for fear of breaking her concentration, some not even breathing. The wind was absent, too. There was only the oppressive stillness like a weight on the people and the land.

Stormna raised her arms and the wind responded instantly, pulling her hood from her dark head, toying with the hem of her cloak. She opened her thin lips and sighed. With gleeful pleasure, the wind answered, almost singing in its joy. The thirsting dust began to dance in the arms of the wind. Stormna's cloak whipped behind her, leaving her pale arms bare to the sun, to the breeze. Her eyes deepened in hue and the sky darkened in response. Clouds began to cluster at the edge of the horizon, white and fluffy at first, but darkening as they approached.

The wind speed quickened, pressing the clouds forward at frightening speeds. The clouds, crowded and hurried, grew grayer and angrier, bubbling and cratering with unused power. By this time, Stormna's hair had blown free from its pins and whipped furiously about her head in a black cloud, reflecting the silvery darkness of her eyes. Her gown of blue-black silk was plastered against her body in the hurricane, her cloak pulling against the white skin of her throat in its eagerness to dance in the wind.

She gestured grandly and the lightning flickered across the boiling sky from her hand into the clouds. At the foot of the escarpment, the crowd gasped. The angry clouds answered Stormna's taunts with lacings of delicate lightning and the deafening roar of thunder.

She laughed and tossed her head, delighting that the wind took her laughter from her lips. Smiling, she teased the sky with a two-handed gesture that sent fiery fingers of lightning in every direction. The clouds roiled with fury, twisting and groaning with suppressed energy, spewing thick bolts of power that charged the air even further. At her feet, the ground exploded in light and sound. With the force of the wind about her, she laughed again, but then heard, just over the keening of the gale, the muffled sound of a child weeping.

Her arms dropped. Instantly, the wind died away and the clouds retained their lightning. Stormna strained her ears and heard again the frightened crying of a youthful voice.

Without a word, with none of the dignity that had attended her ascent, her conjuring, Stormna slipped and slid down the rocky hill. The villagers stood still silently, with only the soft shifting of their feet to indicate their concern. The village-master rushed forward as she leapt to the ground and strode toward the glittering caravan.

Blessed with only short legs, the village-master was forced to run to catch up with Stormna's leggy stride. Breathlessly, he ventured, "Stormmistress?"

Without sparing a glance at the balding man running to keep up with her, Stormna barked, "Gold!" The village-master scrambled in a pocket and pulled out a pouch heavy with yellow gold, then dropped it in her outstretched hand. She weighed it with the same hand, smiled slightly and then tucked it into her golden belt, never slowing her pace.

Badly winded, the village-master gasped, "Stormmistress!" as Stormna approached the steps of her caravan. Stormna stopped beneath the eaves, then turned and faced the little man, her eyes wild and glowing with energy and magic. The village-master recoiled, but his village needed the rain they had paid for. "Stormmistress?"

Stormna smiled and negligently snapped her fingers, slipping inside her caravan at the instant the downpour doused the village-master. Inside the caravan, a child curled, frightened, in the corner of her bed, tears staining her pale cheeks below the tightly closed lids.

"Tempestt, child," Stormna gentled, stroking her slender hand over the fine black hair. Tempestt opened her eyes, her eyes stormily gray, silvered with tears. "Why are you crying?"

"I was sleeping, mother, and the crashing woke me. The sky was light and dark again."

"You were frightened by the thunder, child? Don't you remember the other storms?" Stormna asked her, rocking her daughter on her lap soothingly. Tempestt shook her head. "No matter, child. Soon, I'll teach you why you never need fear the storm."

**Dark of Night**

She knew he followed. Her feet were blistered and bleeding, the wounds clotted with dust, for the running she had done. Even so, she knew that he was just behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder at the setting sun. Corelle had already disappeared beneath the horizon, but time was still against her for Pertus was still half an hour from setting in the green sky.

And he was coming.

She stumbled, the tattered flesh of her feet finding a sharp stone that all but sent her to her knees. Instead, she careened into the trees that lined the road, catching her balance in passing on their rough bark before she slung herself back onto the road.

Her legs pumped with renewed fervor. Through the trees, she had seen possible salvation if only she could reach it before he could see her. With a burst of strength from quivering legs, she leapt the rocky bank and landed, face-first, in frigid water. She sputtered for only a second before taking a practiced breath and slipping beneath the surface. It was nearly four minutes before her head reappeared above the surface of the water, under the cover of an overhanging tree. Through the fronds of the tree, she could just make out her pursuer, searching the bank and water in the distance, seeing no sign of his prey. His horse quietly cropped at the grass a distance away, the soldier's longsword on its saddle.

Fadya smiled. Let him think the Kordin could shift in the light of Pertus. It would only add to the mystique of her kind. She watched him, her eyes darkening to velvet black, as the last rays of sunlight gleamed along his brilliant armor. _Run away,_ she thought kindly, the onyx embedded in her forehead beginning to glow with a soft violet light. _Pertus will soon be gone and that polished armor will not protect you from me._

The soldier didn't hear her thoughts, did not think of the last sun setting, did not think of his own safety, too intent on his prey.

She slid from the water behind him, now sleek with waterproof fur, the signature stone in her forehead throbbing in the fading light. The fur became scales, the sleek limbs melting into a single form.

The soldier lifted his head, certain all at once that he had heard a word "Fool," hissed on the evening breeze. He turned to the sound and tripped, his metal-clad legs already wrapped tight in raven coils. His arms were pinned before he could raise his knife to strike.

A viper's face floated near his helmet, the snake's ebony neck invisible in the darkness of night, the face only discernible because of the glowing stone. "Fool," she hissed again, her muscled length tightening inexorably around the soldier. "Why did you tempt a Nightchanger? You would have done better to run . . . "

"Fadya . . . " the soldier gasped.

Fadya's face melted into something more human as she loosened her hold. "How do you know my name, mortal?"

The man wrenched his arm free and knocked the helm from his head. Fadya found herself staring into the dark eyes of Timbur. "How could I not, whatever your form? Were we not once betrothed?"

The snake pooled at his feet and rose back into the form of a woman he had once dreamed of. "Timbur," she breathed, her soft white hand brushing back the matted hair from his brow. "Did I hurt you? Your poor head."

Timbur's own hand found the lump on his forehead. "'Tis nothing. Spare me your concern. Did you not try to kill me?"

Fadya's face hardened. "And how was I to know you? Need I tell you of the dangers in being Kordin in this kingdom? When a mounted soldier takes chase in the dangerous light of day, a Nightchanger does not hesitate to run."

"And who can you blame if Kordin are hated? Was it not your mother who killed the king, feeding on his fleeting soul?"

"It was the chance my father took to wed her, that she would love him. She told him the price of earning her heart. When the blood calls you, there is no defense, no resisting. It is good the Kordin do not often lose their hearts, but, when they do, they have no choice in their actions. It is in their blood."

"As it is in yours. Fadya, you were human. Why did you become a Nightchanger? Why, now?"

"Do you think it was my choice? Do you think I wished to be hunted, to know I could never love without killing? One cannot stop the call of one's blood and it was in mine. My mother made it so."

"My aunt. My father was also a Nightchanger, but he did not kill his wife."

"He did not love her. It is not the same. I wonder if that is why you never . . . Poor Timbur."

Timbur had removed his gauntlets, his breastplate. Now, he put his hand against her soft cheek. "Am I hunted? Do not waste your pity on me." He pulled her into his arms and breathed in the scent of her blue-black hair. "Why did you leave me? You knew how I loved you."

"Timbur. How can you ask? Don't you think I know how easy it would be to love you? I could not take such a chance with your life. Timbur, please."

Timbur ran his hand down her arm then stroked the small of her back. "And if I took the chance, would you hate me?" He lost himself in her mouth, kissing her with animal passion.

Fadya pulled back, but only a little, her eyes full with the sight of him. "I don't think I could hate you, Timbur."

"Then love me, if only tonight. The suns have gone to their rest. I can see only a life of loneliness ahead for you will not be in it."

"Timbur . . . "

He touched his lips along her cheek and sighed into her ear. "Tonight," he whispered. She relented, letting him pull her to the shadowed ground beneath the trees. Just tonight.

She woke suddenly as the day pushed toward dawn, her eyes still black. She was naked, leaves and twigs tangled into her long black hair and Timbur slumped on her shoulder. "Oh, Timbur, we must never wed for I do think I could love you," she said smiling, her teeth sharp.

Timbur stirred and smiled at her, his eyes black and passionate. "As you wish, my darling." His stroking hand shifted into the paw of a huge black panther and his face stretched to hold the 2 inch teeth. A muted purple glow shone from his forehead.

Fadya opened her mouth to scream, but it was too late; she had no throat to scream from. Timbur buried his face in the flow of blood from her tattered neck, feeding from the fleeting soul of the woman he loved.

When dawn came, the rays first touched the bloodstained face of Timbur, the stone of his forehead now lost behind a scab. He smiled sadly at Fadya's body, saddened that he alone would mourn the death of a Kordin.

"Poor Fadya," he whispered. "You were right. A Kordin cannot ignore the call. And I _already_ loved you."

**Oblivion**

Two days previously: "C'mon. It's not like you're going anywhere for New Year's. Just take the kids this weekend. I'll get 'em another time. Wendy's never done the all-out New Year's date thing before . . ."

It's true Paula wasn't a party person. And she knew all about never doing the New Year's date thing. Peter, over a decade of marriage, had never thought to take her on one.

Peter, after all, was the one who got spoiled.

So, here she was, New Year's Eve, children already tucked into sleeppods in her sizeable penthouse: successful spacecraft designer, three beautiful kids, looking out a gorgeous window at a pantheon of lights and giant holograms, trying to talk herself out of taking the dose of ForgetAl that would give her blissful oblivion for the night.

Peter wouldn't understand wanting oblivion, so proud of how amicable they were post-divorce, how the kids never saw them fight. He'd contrast it with Paula's first husband, Tim's abuse and tyranny, how Tim had tried to break her. Peter was right, of course. Tim had failed to break her only because Paula had never loved him.

From the kitchen vid projector, drunken strains of off-key singing wafted, "Should auld acquaintance be forgot . . ."

Personally, she was thinking forgetting sounded like a good thing.

She hadn't meant to love Peter. He was entirely wrong for her: selfish (unabashedly), chaotic, whimsical, impractical. He was incapable of making something of himself when letting someone else do it was so much easier. God, she'd loved him like mad. Peter was her first selfish thing, the person she loved so illogically such that she gave up her dignity, her personal preferences, anything so that he would stay with her. Losing Peter had been one thing that scared her more than anything else.

And he'd stayed for ten years. He'd told her, with increasing impatience, that her fears that he didn't really love her, that he wouldn't be there forever, were nonsense. Convincingly. She'd wanted to believe.

She switched off the projector with a gesture, and clutched the pill packet. Opened it. Psychotropics would taste nasty. But oblivion was so tempting.

She hadn't believed. She'd spent a decade waiting for the other shoe to drop and, two days before her birthday last year, it dropped. "I love someone else," he'd said, completely without malice. And, with amazing calm—on her part, too—he walked away from his marriage, his children, her, without so much as a backward glance. Perfectly friendly.

His life was much harder now, of course, but he was demonstrably happier. She wasn't angry with him. As she knew, you don't pick whom you love.

She dropped the pills in the incinerator and blinked off the light. She had children to care for and couldn't afford oblivion. She _was_ the responsible one, after all.

She wandered off to bed, alone, as always. She mused that Peter was right. Tim was so much worse than Peter.

But Peter was the one who broke her.

### Character Building

In addition to the short sweet dramatic stories, I wrote several short stories, longer, more complex, to explore a concept and/or build a character up effectively. Here, characters were intended not only to be vivid and compelling, but to grow, a key element for characters in novels, though on a smaller scale. Here, the dialog is key to the characterizations, the humor (and humor is a key element in several of these stories) and growth making the characters feel real. Additionally, humor and growth goes hand in hand with the interaction of the characters, something essential to novels but pretty darn useful in short stories, too.

I still wanted drama—I think that's almost essential in a short story or why would you read it?—but I wanted to add depth and complexity, build enough of a world to make it vivid, to make more of a concept or an idea than a snapshot, but not get so lost in the new world that the story dragged on forever or would feel incomplete.

The first two here, "Intemperate Sword" and "A Familiar Tale" were sort of halfway between the last type of story and this, with the key difference in a longer more complicated story and out-there overt humor. In both cases, I used the interaction with a companion character (or several) for the humor, a trick I fell in love with and use in several of my novels. Dialog is the key to the humor and key to the growth and interaction of characters. "Intemperate Sword" does share the same world, though not the same characters, as "Code of the Jenri"

The third one, "Echo," is not humorous but plays off taking a character with extreme empathy and giving her a dilemma: how do you tell the difference between what you feel and what someone else feels? I really enjoyed exploring her introspection while grappling with the bombardment of emotion from a suitor who spends much of the story in real peril. I love taking an idea and fleshing it out in a way I feel I have everything I want to say . . . and can walk away without having to invest n a full up novel.

"Back Seat Driver," is a salutary lesson on why it's a mistake to feed me even a little idea. A conversation with a friend on how irksome it would be when one's car would say (rather than beep) "Your door is ajar," took on a new dimension and spawned this story with the inevitable "Well, it could be worse. It could criticize your driving." In "Back Seat Driver," I used the same introspection and drama I did in "Echo" paired with a heavy dose of humor specific to the unusual situation of riding along in a car with yourself as your own driving critic.

"Masks" I had just sold to SQ Magazine, to be included in an on-line edition as well as their anthology, so I couldn't use it in the first edition of this book, but I'm free to use it now by contract. It is one of my favorite character pieces as well as fairly personal for me, as I've been known to be slightly out of step with the way "most people" think and act. And how lonely that can feel.

**The Intemperate Sword**

"Help me! Help me! I've been captured by this evil witch! Ensorcelled! Save me!"

The bandits surrounding Korva were tired and this entreaty made little impression on them.

"I'm an _enchanted_ sword, you fools! I'm worth a fortune!"

Greed in their eyes, the bandits swung their swords with renewed gusto.

"Bastor damn you to hell, Davyll! Shut up!" Korva grunted as she swung him through a bandit's helm. "Your efforts to be free of me are really starting to piss me off."

Korva plunged Davyll through the chest armor of the next man and ducked beneath the wide swing of another's battle axe to kick him in his unprotected privates. She wrenched the sword out of the bandit's chest in time to slice the last one in half then severed the neck of the one she had kicked.

"Yuck," Davyll muttered as blood dripped down his blade. "No one has any compassion for my delicate constitution. All this blood and gore . . . "

Korva ignored him, holding him poised as she checked all the soldiers to make certain they had stopped breathing. Satisfied, she thrust the sword, point-first, into the ground.

The sword sighed gustily, somewhat muffled by the ground he was thrust in. "You _would_ kill all of them!" he mourned. "I'll never get a chance to escape."

Korva reached out a hand and whacked the sword hilt with her whip, smiling at his yelp of pain. "Fine, hurt me," Davyll continued plaintively. "And do you _have_ to grip me so hard? You know what my hilt represents! It's a very sensitive part of a man's body."

"If you don't stop that damned witch-blabber every time I'm up against a man or two, I'll start wearing mail gauntlets, so behave yourself!" She bent over one of the soldiers, looking for valuables, revealing a lovely expanse of her own sleek thigh. "And don't peek!"

"You know I can't see when my blade's covered. How could I possibly look?"

"So you say. Davyll, you and I both know you're a serpent in sword's clothing. I, for one, think you were behind my miscarriage."

"What could I have to do with it?" Davyll asked in his most virtuous tones.

"Don't act innocent with me! You were a sorcerer before and I know you too well to underestimate you now. First the miscarriage, then I have to kill Sulcin because you talked him into stealing you when I was recovering . . . "

"Why you picked such a bootlicking, half-witted, double-rutting, ill-smelling moron to father your children . . . "

"I picked that sort of man so that you wouldn't try so hard to change ownership, Davyll, and well you know it. Even if Sulcin had been able to kill me and get away with you, then what? He was of no use to you. You have to be wielded by one who is faithful and true to break the spell," Korva said, rifling an empty purse.

"Yes, yes, I know the verse as well as you. It's engraved on me, isn't it?

Davyll the Sorcerer to Davyll the Blade,

Making him pay for the choices he's made.

'Til held by a man who is faithful and true,

Strong and good-hearted, loyal clear through,

Who slays himself twenty who, just like Davyll

Are shameless and faithless, do just as they will.

Morian wasn't much of a poet, you know."

"She was a pretty good sorceress," Korva reminded him, smiling.

"From reading _my_ books!"

"You left her for twenty-five years to serve as sorcerer, rutting with any woman you fancied, while she waited at home, seeing you a handful of times a decade. Which, to my way of thinking, is a handful too many. In any case, if you had spent more time in your wife's bed or even at home, she wouldn't have had so much time to study your spellbooks and think about revenge, would she?"

"She was a very vindictive woman. Why I ever married that ill-natured, cold-hearted . . ."

"But you did marry her and then neglected her. If you had treated great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandmother Morian with the respect due to a woman of her talents and intelligence, you wouldn't be in this pickle, so shut up or I'm sticking you hilt-first into the fire."

"Bitch!" Davyll muttered, thinking of both his late enraged spouse and his insolent descendant. "You're a very ungrateful descendent. You should have a little more respect for your ancestors."

"I have a great deal of respect for Morian," she pointed out.

"I meant me!" Davyll wailed.

"There's nothing I like better than nuts roasted on an open fire," Korva reflected.

Davyll took the hint and kept quiet. Korva's search of the soldiers' bodies had been fruitless, as usual. Being a mercenary really didn't have the perks some people thought it did. With a gentle tug, she pulled Davyll out and wiped his long shining blade on the tall grass, then cleaned off the last of the blood with a soft cloth before sliding him into his scabbard.

"I can't breathe in here," he protested, muffled almost to silence.

"You're a sword, you blasted fool. You don't have to breathe. Now stop yapping." She looked up quickly, her sharp ears catching the sound of an approaching horse. Her fingers clenched Davyll in a vicious grip.

"Ow!" she heard softly from the sword.

She slapped the sensitive grip with her free hand and hissed, "Quiet or you'll find your hilt in the fire."

Davyll's mumbled response was too soft to hear. One hand resting loosely on the sword and another on her long knife, she faced the horseman.

The horseman pulled his horse short at the sight before him. A tall woman, with long unbound red hair, stood tall, dressed in a leather tunic and a longsword with an odd hilt. At her feet were six, no seven, armored bodies, obviously dead. "Bastor!" the horseman whispered.

"They are deserters," the woman said by way of explanation. "They took me for an easy mark. It was a mistake they won't make again."

The man swung down from his horse. "Are you of the Jenri Clan to fight so well? I can't tell. Your hair is all red."

The woman laughed. "I am flattered, but no, I am a mercenary on my own. But I can still protect myself."

The man looked sideways at the bodies. "So I see. Well, warrior-woman, would you object if I shared your fire?"

"If your motives are friendly, you are welcome," Korva said warily. "I am Korva."

"I am Kelax." The man turned, unsaddling his horse. The horse was finely bred and the trappings were expensive. If he was a mercenary, and with double swords at his hips, he looked to be so, he was doing much better than she was. But Korva's brown eyes were devouring his lean body. He was tall, even taller than she, and had shoulder-length hair of sun-streaked brown. He was really very handsome.

Sigh. Too bad. She had the sneaking suspicion that, whatever his profession, he was a fine enough man to perhaps break Davyll's spell. Wouldn't you just know it? She'd have to let him go on his way. It was a Bastor-damned shame! She was getting tired of having only the scum of the earth for company.

The man turned back around, trappings in his arms, and smiled. _Double damn,_ she said to herself. She consoled herself with the thought that one night with a man she could actually admire was better than none . . .

"Well, I'd best turn in," she said wistfully, three hours later, stroking her bedroll suggestively.

Kelax, naturally, missed the hint and politely turned away, laying himself full-length on his own bedroll. _Figures,_ Korva thought sourly. _Finally a man I wouldn't mind having in my bed, and he's too nice to get in it._

"Did you hear that?" he asked suddenly, breaking into her reflections.

"What?" she said, hoping it was a ploy for her to share his blanket.

"I thought I heard someone talking. I don't know. It was kind of muffled."

Korva swore under her breath. With a nervous laugh, she pulled Davyll, still in his sheath, closer to her. "Really? I didn't hear anything. It was probably the wind." She pinched the hilt painfully, then tossed the sword toward the horses. "But maybe there _is_ something out there. Perhaps you should sleep closer to me. That way, we could come to each other's aid if need be."

The man shook his head. "I'm afraid it would be too tempting, sleeping that close to you. You're a beautiful woman."

_Bastet be praised!_ "Well, damn it, man. Don't let that stop you!" She lifted up the edge of her blanket with one hand and unlaced her tunic with her other. Kelax wasn't _that_ noble and bolted from his bedroll. There are some invitations _all_ men understand.

Later that night, he rose, thirsty. He stumbled, naked, to his things and fished out his waterskin.

"Psst! Hey you!"

"Who is that?"

"It's me, the sword! Quickly, pull me out!"

"I don't steal swords," Kelax said piously.

"Oh, spare me," Davyll said tartly. "I'm not a sword, I'm a man, ensorcelled into the form of a sword. Only you can free me! Quickly, before she wakes."

Kelax, scruples overcome with curiosity, obliged. "Thank Bastor!" the sword exclaimed. "Sword or no sword, I hate being in that blasted scabbard. Look, friend, I'm an enchanted sword and I need your help."

"What do I have to do?"

"Quickly, while she's sleeping, kill her! Then, . . . "

"I can't kill her in her sleep! That wouldn't be fair," Kelax protested, then smiled in a bemused fashion. "Or grateful."

"Damn it, man, don't think with your privates. That will only lead you to trouble, let me tell you! Kill her now!"

"I won't kill her like a thief in the night."

"Well, what else would you call yourself? I'm _her_ sword, aren't I?" the sword asked reasonably. "And it's hours from dawn."

"I will challenge her to a duel for you. She can use one of my weapons."

"Bastor preserve me from this kind of idiot," Davyll said disgustedly as Kelax padded forward on bare feet, one of his own sheathed swords in his other hand. He nudged Korva with the scabbard's tip.

Korva opened her eyes and smiled, stretching her arms above her head. The blanket slipped down about her waist, allowing Kelax and Davyll a lovely view. Kelax's grip tightened.

"Clumsy oaf!" Davyll grunted.

"Davyll!" Korva cried, leaping to her feet and pulling out her knife. "You're going to pay for this one!"

"If only he'd had the sense to kill you in your sleep, Korva, everything would be fine," complained Davyll apologetically.

"I challenge you to a duel of ownership for the sword," Kelax said formally. "You may have my sword as a weapon."

Korva crouched, clothed only in her long red hair, and contemplated him thoughtfully. Finally, she sighed. "I won't need your sword," she murmured as she leapt upon him, deflecting a clumsy blow easily with her knife, disarming him and knocking him down all in one movement. In seconds, he lay on the ground, her knife at his throat, her knee on his chest.

Between her weight and her nudity, Kelax was having a hard time breathing, but he managed to moan, "What a horrible sword! I've never felt anything balanced so poorly."

"Never mind that," Korva said. "Normally, I'd just kill you, but I like you, Kelax. So, I'll give you a choice. Either you ride with me as companion, vowing never to touch my sword again, or you die. If you break your word, you won't be true, so you can't help Davyll anyway."

"Does companion mean I have to share your bed?"

Korva thought about letting him off, but, after all, she had the knife. "Yes," she decided.

"Good," Kelax said. "I swear I'll never touch that clumsy hunk of useless metal again."

"Well I never!" huffed Davyll in the grass.

"Shut up, you," Korva shouted to him, letting Kelax up. "You're in enough trouble." She told Kelax Davyll's story.

"So you didn't ensorcel him?"

"No, Morian did hundreds of years ago. But, since any woman holding him is the finest swordwielder in the world, I am not eager to have him freed from his spell."

"But, when I held him, I couldn't wield him to save my life!"

"If Davyll is in a man's hands, the man becomes the worst swordwielder in the world. Morian was very thorough."

"So, even if an honest man stole him, he'd have a good deal of trouble killing twenty men with him."

"Exactly."

Kelax regarded the sword sadly. "Seems a little extreme," he said at last.

"Don't feel sorry for this fellow, Kelax. You spend a week or so with his whining and you'll wonder why she didn't just kill him outright. Davyll just messed with the wrong woman. Come to think of it, he seems to make a habit of it. Which reminds me, he needs to be taught a lesson."

With that, she took the blade up in her hand and rose, walking gracefully to the smoldering remains of the fire.

"You wouldn't dare!" Davyll sputtered.

"I warned you," she said, smiling maliciously. She dropped the hilt into the coals.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHH!"

Kelax looked confused as Korva walked back and he glanced at the screaming sword uncomfortably. Korva smiled at Kelax kindly and traced the runes on Davyll's hilt into the dirt. Then, she translated: "After the first ten years of living alone in a cold drafty castle with only the stories of my husband's sexual and magical prowess for company, I swore I would have my revenge. Someday, I promised myself, I would hold Davyll by the balls . . . "

**A Familiar Tale**

"Where the hell have you been, Shimmer?" Darima said, slamming the spellbook she was reading back on the table.

Shimmer raised expressionless eyes, one green, one blue, to Darima's angry face, but made no reply, sitting down on the windowsill she entered through. It mattered not at all that the window was closed. It was part of the magic of cat kind that there were no doors or windows locked to her.

"Well?" Darima insisted, tapping a satin-shod foot. "Where?"

_Humans are the worst busybodies_ , Shimmer purred in her mind _. I don't see my whereabouts being your business_. She padded silently along the windowsill and then leapt lightly to the table Darima sat beside.

"When a potion I've been working on all yesterday hardens to useless muck because my familiar decides to choose _that night_ to go explore, it damn well is my business. It's my job on the line, here. It's bad enough I have to waste my considerable talents . . . "

_Our considerable talents_ , Shimmer corrected.

"Our considerable talents on a trivial love potion for the king's pimply son, but, since the first potion blew up in our faces, we have to do it more than once." She pointed an accusing finger in Shimmer's face, which Shimmer was washing unconcerned.

So?

"So, you never admitted what went wrong, Shimmer. It's not like you to let a spell go awry."

For the first time, Shimmer looked a little guilty. _It's not my fault I'm not a truly black cat_ , she said defensively, stroking down fur black at its base but lightening to a silvery gray at the ends.

"You can do anything a black cat can do and you know it. _I_ think you just weren't concentrating!"

_Maybe_ you _weren't concentrating_.

Darima was forced to choke down a hot denial, well aware that this was far more likely. It did not, however, improve her temper. "So where were you?"

_Jealous? You have been irritable ever since Sendat left_ , Shimmer observed dispassionately.

"Sendat was a moron," Darima snapped.

_I mentioned that when you first met him, if you remember_.

A sudden suspicion struck Darima. "Did you go and get pregnant last night?"

_I don't have to answer these personal questions_ , Shimmer huffed.

"Did you?"

Silence.

"Damn it, Shimmer, you know it screws up everything when you're pregnant. We're liable to give Prince Quorn a potion that will turn him into a bumblebee instead of a love potion!"

_I didn't get pregnant_ last night _, well not entirely_ , Shimmer said with a touch of apology.

"Shimmer! So that's what happened with the last potion! Darner take you, cat. I'll look the fool if I can't produce a simple love potion. What kind of court sorceress am I?"

_I'm in heat. What kind of cat would I be if I worried about your pride at a time like this? It's not as though your job were hanging on this. Sorceresses of your caliber are few and far between and King Morthand surely knows this_.

"And he pays dearly for the privilege, too. You can't explain that sorcery requires the abilities of a talented cat, in proper non-pregnant health, and a magically adept chemist with a sensitivity to that cat's mind. He just knows he want magic when he wants it. His son, too."

Take his son to bed. You're considered pretty enough by human standards. That should quiet him for a while . . . if you're any good at it.

"Ugh! Spare me! Even if my job _was_ on the line . . . no! And what do you mean if I'm any good at it?"

Amber, the wartiger stretched out behind Darima's chair, roused from sleep, lifting his massive head from his huge paws. _Someone's running up the steps_ , he told her in his deep mental rumble.

Darima stretched an affectionate hand to his head and scratched beneath his chin, inches from the seven-inch teeth. "It's too bad tigers can't do magic," she mourned.

_Tigers have better things to do than waste their time with magic_ , he said proudly.

Shimmer jumped to the floor and regarded him skeptically. _True. After all, one can't have brains_ and _brawn_.

Amber made a swipe at her, but she magically disappeared, reappearing on the windowsill. _Alright, smarty-cat, why didn't you know someone was running up here_?

_I did, but I didn't feel the need to act like a door-chime_.

_You're a pest_ , Amber snarled, bested.

You're only upset because I'm in heat and you're too big to do a thing about it!

Amber's rich laughter rolled through their heads. _Talk about delusions of grandeur! You impertinent little bitch_!

_Oh!_ Shimmer jumped back to the floor, hair raised all over her body and tail twitching furiously. There was no greater insult for a cat. _You'll see what this little cat can do, you stone-headed . . ._

"Damn it, you two, will you behave?" Darima said tiredly. There was an imperious knock on the door. Darima gestured and Shimmer leapt to the waiting shoulder while Darima straightened her gold crusted robes.

"Enter," she said softly, and Shimmer mentally opened the door . . . partway before it began to close again. Darima kicked it open with her foot and directed a glare to her familiar.

Darima quickly schooled her features into a model of lofty unconcern that revealed none of her surprise when she recognized the short round figure of her King and employer. Before haughty words of greeting could find their way to her lips, the King pushed the door shut and wrung his hands.

"Witch, this is desperate!" the King wheezed uneasily as more than the usual amount of sweat poured down his face.

"Please, Your Majesty, I prefer sorceress," Darima said disdainfully from her superior height. "What can your lowly servant help you with?"

"Lowly servant?" the King asked, confused. Perhaps he was recalling the exorbitant salary his sorceress demanded or the lack of humility in her manner. He looked around the room owlishly, as if for someone else. "Damn it, Darima, this is not for the maid's ears. Send her away!"

From the corner, Amber's earthy rumble echoed across the room. The King sent a glance of terror in the animal's direction and swallowed.

Darima stifled a sigh. "She is gone. How can I aid you, Your Majesty?"

"A dragon! You must help us!"

"You wish me to conjure a dragon? Whatever for?"

"Conjure a dragon? What kind of nonsense is that? Why would you bring another dragon here when there is already one, smashing and tearing up the countryside? Why I would want _another_ drag—? Can you do that? Call up a dragon? Can you specify colors and sizes?"

"Ah, you want to be _rid_ of a dragon. That makes more sense." She glanced disgustedly at Shimmer. "I can fit purging a dragon into my schedule in two months' time if you'd like."

"Yes, a small dragon, say ten feet long, with green and gold scales—like the royal colors, you know—in a golden cage or better chained to the throne with a golden chain! Ah!"

"Your Majesty?"

"Eh? What? Oh, yes, the marauding dragon. Too big, really. Pity. Why they say it's 70 feet long and breathes fire. One can't very well chain a beast of that size to a throne. Not safe. You'll have to get rid of it. Say, by nightfall."

Darima gasped. "Your Majesty, even under the best of circumstances, I couldn't conjure a spell that quickly. I must gather ingredients, look up incantations. Yes, and there is another problem. Today marks the beginning of, er, Sorcerer Hiatus where one is restricted from performing magic for two months."

"Sorcerer what? You never made mention of this before."

"It only happens every ten years," Darima said through gritted teeth, fixing her familiar with a horrible stare.

"Why would I pay a salary for two months in which you'll be useless? It should have been mentioned before."

Darima closed her eyes in pain. "I will, of course, forgo my salary for the two months I am unable to be of service."

"That's all well and good for you, but what about the dragon? Can't very well have a dragon going around eating unsuspecting citizens and destroying farmland while we sit here, comfortably ensconced in the castle, idle."

"But, Your Majesty . . ."

But the King lost himself in righteous anger at this ill-usage. He drew himself to his full height, some four inches above five feet, and fixed Darima with a cold regal eye. "I won't stand for it! I'm the King! You must either dispose of this dragon forthwith or I will immediately dispose of your services."

"Forthwith . . . ?" Darima queried faintly.

"By tomorrow." With that, the King turned on his heel and all but went headfirst into the door. Darima, distracted, forgot appearances and hastened to open it by hand.

Darima leaned against the door, brow furrowed in thought. Shimmer rubbed her head against Darima's cheek and purred apologetically. Darima wasn't impressed. "Well, cat, what have you got to say for yourself?"

Oops.

************

"'It's not as though your job were on the line," Darima mocked, swaying with the odd pace of Amber's stride. She was mounted bareback on Amber's back, and, although he had a fine, broad, well-muscled back, Amber was too fluid an animal to be an easy creature to ride.

Shimmer trotted alongside, turning up her nose at sharing Darima's ride. _Do let it rest,_ she suggested.

"It had better work," Darima said again.

I told you, it will work.

"Well, it better. Did I tell you I stayed up all night pounding out this potion?"

Repeatedly.

"Well, I'm just telling you it had better work."

How sure are you about your potion?

"Sure enough. I checked it four times."

You were tired.

"You don't have to tell me that! I saw you sleeping in the corner, contemplating motherhood, no doubt. I'm telling you the potion is fine. So, it had better work. Understand?"

Amber rumbled. _It will work, Darima. Calm yourself._

"How do you know?"

I'll make a snack of Shimmer if she fails. Now, you both are at risk. Satisfied?

"Hmm. Perhaps. There it is!" As she spoke, a dragon glowing in red and violet, soared over their heads, neck craning to see these newcomers. A flicker of flame twitched between its teeth and it spun on a wingtip, sinking to land on an outcrop in front of them. The tales had not exaggerated. The dragon was more than seventy feet from nose to tail tip with a wingspan more than twice that. It stretched its serpentine neck and its head, fully ten feet above the ground, studied her from only feet away, with no sign of aggression.

"Shit," Darima muttered, her nerveless fingers fumbling for the potion in a belt pouch. Potion in hand, she slid from Amber's back and reluctantly approached the glistening opalescent eye.

_What will you do if_ that _makes a snack of me?_

"Just concentrate! All right, here goes!" Darima crouched, ready to spring away and then tossed the contents of her pouch directly into the dragon's eye. She leapt away and rolled on the ground, trying to get out of reach of the dragon's blindly flailing talons.

"Now, Shimmer, now!"

Yes, yes, I'm trying. Do stop yelling.

"Shimmer, this isn't funny!" One talon protecting its mistreated eye, the dragon turned its head and fixed Darima with its good eye. The other talon reached for her.

Amber leapt to her defense, throwing its body between the monstrous creature and Darima. The huge cat was childishly tiny facing up to the dragon. The dragon backed for a moment in shock at the tiger's bravado before it answered Amber's battle cry with a low chuckle from its deep throat. Fire winked its humor in that sulphurous gullet. With a careless flick of the dragon's claw, Amber was sent sprawling.

The dragon turned back to its prey, Darima, only to find itself facing yet another obstacle, this in a minute snip of cat, its tail bristled up to twice its size and its eyes glowing blue and green.

How dare you bat away that proud mighty creature as if it was no great moment! It is the king of cats you defile with your touch and your disdain! Know what it is to face a cat's wrath!

The dragon reared onto its haunches and laughed a great roaring laugh with a geyser of fire and smoke. When it had finished, it eyed the mite of feline anger with an almost affectionate eye and reached for Shimmer.

_You asked for it!_ Shimmer's eyes took on a frightening luminosity and the air crackled round her as before a storm. The dragon inhaled to explode again in laughter, and then disappeared.

Darima blinked dully at the spot so recently filled to overflowing with dragon. "You did it!"

Shimmer sat down casually and began to bathe herself. _Of course._

Amber picked himself up gingerly and shook his great head. _What did you do, little terror?_

_See for yourself._ From the dust, a golden head lifted itself and observed its surroundings dazedly.

Darima's eyes opened and she scrambled to her feet and she approached warily. The red tabby hissed back, coughing a weak stream of flame, but resisted only half-heartedly. Such a transformation was undoubtedly wearying.

Darima cooed and soothed, then scooped him up in her arms. "Well, that's one problem solved thank goodness. I wonder if he wouldn't be able to help with magic until your kittens are born."

I don't know. He seems smart enough to learn a few rudimentary things. He really is a fine male specimen.

Darima glared at her in disgust. "Shimmer, do try to control yourself. A dragon cat will be enough trouble; we certainly don't need a herd of fire-breathing kittens."

I wonder . . .

**Echo**

Soft, like a breath against her back, the sensation of caressing woke her, sliding sensuously to her neck, bringing her breath to an involuntary gasp. Too freshly wakened to think clearly, Echo turned to her unseen companion and felt a splash of her own disappointment that he wasn't there.

She didn't need the smoldering sexual warmth growing at the back of her mind to remind her that it was a choice she had made. Who could know better than she the urgency Kamon felt for her, but whose longing would she heed? She slithered into clean linens, not fine, but well-mended as befitted a servant of the Sultan's household. Her bare feet scuffled softly over the hard-packed dirt floor until she reached the kitchen where dirt gave way to stained and worn stone.

The head cook, already up some time ago, nodded absently to her as she entered, no joy or anger evident in his face or in her mind. Of them all, only he was inscrutable to her, his face like stone, but his touch as delicate as a lover's as he basted and spiced.

Echo bent and hoisted up the heavy tray, laden with dates and sweetmeats, pastries and thick black coffee. Others would come for the trays of the Sultan and his sons, who rose later, for the trays of the mysterious harems housed in the rambling palace. But the lesser relatives, the daughters, nephews and cousins, they were hers to feed.

After eleven rooms and three trips back to the kitchen, she stood before the last door, the last breakfast in her hands. Some had slept through her entrance. Others reached for her playfully as she danced by them, their idle lust unmistakable and just as obviously transient. Others ignored her as if she were so much furniture, unconscious to her comings and goings, cognizant only of the food left in her wake.

Until here. She breathed a prayer that he would be sleeping, then wondered if she really prayed? Why was his breakfast always the last to be served? With a bracing breath, she pushed through the door softly and padded across the carpeted floor to the table. Without a sound, the tray was set gently and she turned to escape, thankful, perhaps, that there was no indication that he was awake.

And then a wave of longing washed over her, like the surge of the sea, filling and drawing her with its undertow, unrelenting, unstoppable. She didn't need to turn back to know that he stood behind her, that his breath came fast and hot, for she was breathing the same. Years of pushing foreign emotions to the back of her mind stood no chance against the overwhelming rush of sensation, the flood of passion, of yearning.

"Echo." Did she hear it or feel it? Her nerves tingled with such tension that she couldn't tell what was her ears from what was her mind. "Why do you go so quickly, Echo? _Stay with me._ " The request was a caress and she felt it to her depths.

"I am only the serving girl, no fit companion for a prince," she said colorlessly, unwilling to turn around.

"So you've said, but I don't agree. My heart doesn't agree." He walked up closer until she could feel his breath warm against her neck. "You say nothing to me, your face unreadable, but your eyes, your eyes from the beginning spoke of an untapped depth of passion. You will not let your mouth, your face, speak of love, but I can feel it surround you until I can almost see it shimmer like a mirage."

"I am no one."

"I don't know who you are. I don't care. I only know I need you, whatever your station. Weeks you have come and gone, refusing to acknowledge what you feel, what you are."

"I am a servant only."

His hands reached up and gripped her arms gently as he pressed himself against her back. She closed her eyes at his touch. "You're a person, a woman. You have feelings just like me and the harem girls and the Sultan. Show them to me. Love me. Don't torment me any longer. You have to know I love you."

What was more painful? Hearing words that only a concubine could merit or the absolute knowledge that the words were true because she could feel his love vibrating through her bones, tearing through her soul like a sandstorm, stripping all away to leave only its own abrasive fury.

"I know," she whispered, wavering under the strength of his desperation, trembling with the depth of his frustration.

"Stay with me!"

"I am a servant. I cannot refuse you."

His grip tightened and he whipped her around to face him. Her eyes absorbed the glorious riot of his uncombed locks, the sensual fullness of his mouth but, more than anything, the intense gaze from topaz-colored eyes, blazing now with near fury. "That's not what I want! I want you to feel as I do, to know what it is to be swept away in an inexorable storm. Can you feel nothing?"

What must she withstand? For weeks and months he had asked her, begged her for her love, as his thoughts and longings pounded her until his heartbeat thumped so loudly in her ears, she could barely make out his words. Frustration rose in her, though whether hers or his, she couldn't tell —could never tell with him.

"Yes! No! I don't know! How can I know? How can't I? Your thoughts are so strong, so filling, so pervasive, how can I tell when your desire ends and mine begins? I can tell that you want me to love you, but how can I tell that I do? All I can feel is your heat, warming me through to the center, filling me with a need like I have never felt, filling me with an unquenchable thirst, but how can I know if it is only a reflection of your hunger, your thirst, your longing until I can't tell if I'm even there anymore! Don't you see?"

He stood there, mesmerized, as she spoke as a person to him at last, not the impassive slave. Only now was her face animated, transformed from its chiseled beauty to a living canvas on which he could trace a remarkable parade of emotions, tumultuous, hectic, glorious. "No. Tell me, tell me at last," he pleaded, entranced anew as he finally saw the woman he had always believed lay at her core.

As the fresh wave of adulation crashed through her, Echo's eyes filled with tears of frustration. "How can I tell you I love you, though I feel it travel through me like a wind? How can I tell you I need you, when your need is filling me so completely? You ask if I feel nothing—I feel _everything_! I feel your frustration that I have not answered your call. I feel your confusion as I tell you of my gift—my curse. I have gone a lifetime, feeling the thoughts, the emotions of those around me until it is all I can do to find my own thoughts among them, but with you, I can hear only what your heart is shouting. If my heart calls, too, I cannot catch its whisper in the windstorm."

"Then you _do_ understand my longing. But you claim you can feel as I feel? . . . "

"Feel my heart," she said softly, pulling his hand to her heaving chest. "It beats in tempo with your own. How can I give you a heart I cannot even find?"

He started and pulled his hand away. "Are you a witch, that you can know my mind?"

Her legs suddenly too weak to hold her, Echo dropped to some cushions. "I don't know. I have no family, no past, just a foundling on the Sultan's doorstep, but I cannot remember a time when I couldn't hear the thoughts of those around me, that I didn't feel as they did."

His momentary fear forgotten, discarded, he crouched beside her. "I don't care who you are, what you are. Love me. Let me love you. From wherever it springs, you feel the unrelenting hunger, the need as I do. I know it." He took her hair in his grasp and feasted briefly on her own hungry mouth. "Come to me. You want this as I do."

"I don't know," she said softly, her genuine regret glistening in her eyes. "I can let us both feed from this desire, but we cannot know if it is ours or yours alone. Can you be content with the reflection of your love?"

She didn't need to see his eyes to know his conflict. Almost he said yes, whatever the cost, but this was no fleeting lust to be satisfied with an hour on the cushions. It was a bottomless chasm that could never be satisfied with less than a lifetime, with less than an equal devotion. "I must have your heart for my own."

She regarded him sadly before finding her feet. "Then you must let me find it."

Then, sudden as a lightning strike, she felt an incredible pressure in her chest, a pain that made it impossible to catch her breath. For an instant, she felt as though her heart stopped beating altogether, but Kamon slapped her, wakening her with the raw power of his concern. As she recovered, she was unsurprised to hear the keening, the wailing that denoted the death of someone of importance. The word had not reached this corner of the palace as of yet, but she knew it was the Sultan who breathed no more.

"I must go. It is a day of great mourning and I will be needed in the kitchens."

He nodded, but as she left, he whispered, "Find your heart, Echo. For it is needed here."

In the kitchen, as she had expected, the room was a flurry of activity. Tension, even to those insensitive, would have been hard to miss for it was on days such as this that a mistake could cost a servant his head. The death of the Sultan was a terrible thing, not because of the loss of a self-absorbed, gold-hungry Sultan, but because of the discord as his sons scrambled for his lands, his titles and his possessions. Nineteen sons, but only one would be Sultan.

Before he died, it was common knowledge the Sultan had changed his heir half a hundred times to keep his sons in line. Always, however, it came back to Madeer, first general of the Army with too much power for any of his siblings to expect to unseat him alone. Echo shook her head sadly for Madeer's sadism was legendary, and only if the princes banded together could they hope to oust them. But no, the princes were scrabbling, too consumed with their individual ambitions. Madeer, the merciless, was going to take the title, take the wealth and woe unto those who would gainsay him.

By dusk, it could already be seen that Echo's predictions came to fruition. Brothers and cousins stood in chains in the courtyard as Madeer, clothed in ill-fitting cloth-of-gold, sneered from his throne. "There are too many here who would take my throne if they could," he said at last, reveling in their fear as they waited to know their own fates. "Have their heads removed at first light."

As the cold words echoed off the marble columns, down in the kitchen, Echo felt a hundred tendrils of fear as the princes recognized their fate. The reprieve until morning meant only lonely hours with no activity but to strain against immovable chains and contemplate the life one would never now lead. Brothers, cousins, even sisters and mothers feared for themselves or their loved ones, and Echo felt them all. Except, she could feel nothing from Kamon.

When she retired at last to her spot on the floor, the rest of the condemned fretted quietly in the back of her mind, but she could sense no flicker of Kamon among them. His absence plagued her, tormented her until she could not restrain herself from creeping up to the courtyard, from slipping behind a somnolent guard and picking her way carefully past the chained victims until she stood by him.

He sat up straight, neither dejected nor elated. His eyes looked toward an unseen distance, his face as impassive as that of the cook. "Kamon," she whispered.

His eyes didn't waver, but she could feel him at last, his relentless longing surging again through her, but restrained as with a great will. His voice was unmoved and calm. "You should not be here. It would be your head as well if you were caught. Go."

"I couldn't feel you. I needed to know you were . . . I fear for you."

"I don't." There was a slight twinge of fear she felt that belied his words, but it was squelched even as she recognized it. "If I have a fear, it is that my love for you may cost you your life." Another finger of fear stabbed through Echo, again from him, but this one was not so easily silenced.

"I— How can I serve you, master?" she asked, helpless, unable to tear herself from him, despite his outward indifference and his obvious wish that she protect herself by leaving.

He opened his mouth to create the word "Leave," but, instead, his eyes strayed at last and found hers, held hers. "Have you a heart you can give me? I won't need it for long. Tell me that your heart has found a voice to love me with."

She wanted to say, "Here it is. Take it," if only to give him comfort. Or it was his need for those words she was feeling, but even now, even as heartsick as she was that he sat in the dust of the courtyard, strapped by chains, condemned to die, she could not tell if it was his misery she felt or her own, if it was his love that consumed her, or her own. "I cannot."

The power of his emotions intensified to white-hot strength for another instant and then began to ebb as he brought his passions beneath his control once more. "No one will ever fault you for your honesty," he admitted wryly, tearing his eyes from her face and sending them again into the great beyond. "Now go, before your death magnifies my own discomfort tenfold."

Chastened, ashamed that she could not have given him the comfort he craved, that he merited, Echo slunk away. Tomorrow, he would be no more and could not even take a kind lie from her with him to comfort him in his grave. Stretching herself once more upon the floor, she knew that sleep would forsake her. Tomorrow, Kamon would die without knowing if she would mourn his passing, would die without her knowing if she would mourn him.

It was nearly daybreak when she finally slipped into a fretful sleep. At the first pure rays of sun, however, she was wrenched painfully from her fitful slumber by the brief sensation of unbelievable pain. It had begun.

Frantically, she searched among the frightened thoughts in her mind, searching for thoughts that matched his mind, his soul, that she could use to know that he still lived. She could find nothing.

Unbidden, her feet pushed up beneath her and she was running, through the room in her sleeping shift, through the kitchen where only the cook showed any signs of life, and that only to watch as she ran out again. Her bare feet stumbled on the marble floors and she bounced against more than one column, before she arrived breathless at the crowded balcony, where the rest of the household watched as the sons and nephews and cousins of the late Sultan went to meet him.

Echo could not bring herself to look upon the body, with its severed head, so she searched the prisoners until—at last—she saw him. He stood silently, stoically, his eyes elsewhere until she found him. Then, as if he could feel her presence, he lifted his head and found her eyes instantly. With the look came the wistful pang of unending longing, but stronger, so clearly she could almost hear the words in her ears, he thought, "If you love me or if you do not, stay as far from this as you can. Do not risk your life for me." He held her gaze only long enough to register her recognition of his message before going back to the contemplation of nothing.

Bewildered, confused, dazed by the strong emotions pulsing through her as another prince met his doom, Echo backed away from the balcony, turning to find her way back to the kitchen.

There, with his hands idle for the first time in her memory, waited the cook. "I thought you would be back." For an instant, she thought someone else must be talking for she had never been directly addressed before. "What are you going to do?"

"He wants me to stay away."

"Yes." He stated it as a fact.

"He fears for my life and what could I do anyway?"

"Hmm." He waited an instant. "But what do you want?"

"I don't know."

"So you say, but who is in your mind that you cannot push aside? Why can you not find your own thoughts?"

She should be wondering how he could know all this, she thought idly, but somehow it didn't seem to matter.

"Never mind me, what I know, what I think. What do you _feel_?"

"How should I know?" she hissed, her frustration a stone in her throat.

"How can't you? Do you think that because you can live the emotions of others, you cannot feel for yourself? Have you grown too lazy to create your own passion? You can see his signature on his thoughts. You can determine the pedigree of the emotions you have always felt. Who do you lie for when you claim you can you not find it on your own? For yourself or for him? What do you want? Say it, feel it. Emotions are yours to control, not the other way. What do you want?"

"Him!" she screamed, as if it were torn from her throat. "All I ever wanted was him!"

The cook nodded wisely. "Then you had better hurry. Your man is last, but there are only five others between him and death."

"But what can I do? I'm just a servant."

"You are more than that, just as I am. You are more than an empath, you're a reverberation. The emotions are yours to control. You have spent a lifetime learning how to stifle the emotions of others. You have learned at last how to meld your own passions with another's until their individuality cannot be discerned. It is in you to twist, augment and manipulate emotions for your own use, and his protection. Send it back to the source with the force of your emotions to strengthen it and you can achieve what you will."

"How can I?"

"Did he not say he could feel your emotions like heat lightning about you. The power is there and has always been. You need only focus it."

"How do you know?" she asked, already turning toward the door. For an instant, she was bombarded with a clarity and strength of emotion even Kamon's had not attained, a glimpse at a lifetime spent in feeling and feeding the emotions around one, like one who would mold clay.

"I know as only one of us could. _Hurry!_ "

Without another word, her feet found the hall, the steps and she was pounding down them gracelessly, noisily, concerned only with getting there in time. Before she expected it, she all but tumbled out onto the dusty bloodied courtyard and saw him, the last of the Sultan's male relatives, bent beneath the uplifted executioner's sword. She was a servant, with no rights and no power, and he had begged her to stay away from these dangers.

But he had her heart. "Stop!"

"Stay away," he hissed, head bent, but Echo ignored him and the pleading emotions he sent through her. Instead, she knelt and addressed the young new Sultan, "Please release him, your majesty. We will leave and never return if you will spare the sword. He is no threat to you."

"Nor are you, but you will die next for interrupting my entertainment," the Sultan drawled, signaling his guards.

"Release him or know no mercy," she warned. "You arrogant, misshapen, self-indulgent fool!"

At the unaccustomed insult, she got Madeer's attention, clear enough from the wave of fury she felt flare in him. "Kill them both!" he spat.

"Your choice," she whispered as she took mental hold of his fury, his hatred and strengthened it with the depths of her love, even the love she could suddenly feel from the cook, from Kamon, still kneeling below the sword. The hatred became a violent, nearly untamable thing, but she subdued it and then added her fear to it before catching Madeer's eye—and sending it back to him.

Caught in the throes of an unaccustomed wave of emotional power, the young Sultan rose, gripping his head in great pain, screaming, until he fell. His lifeless body convulsed twice more and then ceased.

An unearthly silence filled the courtyard, but Echo could sense the cumulative fear of a hundred people who stared in horror. Fear from all but Kamon. "Release him," she told the guard and he leapt to obey. Kamon rose slowly to his knees, staring in stark admiration at the woman he loved.

"Are you a witch?" She took a moment to think, contemplating her compatriot who was already gone, having accomplished what he had come here to do.

"I don't know, but you are now Sultan. There is no one else to take the title."

If there were those among the guard who might, in other circumstances, challenge Kamon's right to the throne, they feared the witch at his side too much to argue.

"It is not the title I want."

"I can offer no more. I cannot give you my heart, for it is yours already."

So it was, on the first day of Kamon's forty year reign, that Kamon earned the speechless respect of his subjects as he took that powerful, dangerous witch in his arms and kissed her. When he wed her, he sealed that respect for the length of his reign.

**Back Seat Driver**

The lights have been left on.

Stephen growled at the car and slammed the door shut with unwarranted violence. Through the door, he could still faintly hear the pleasant voice of the car's computer:

As you have elected not to turn off the lights yourself, the lights will be turned off automatically. Thank you for driving a Xiver automobile. Have a nice day.

Stephen was not having a nice day, however. He thrust his employee badge, emblazoned with the Xiver logo, into his pocket and crunched down the gravel walk to the house. As he stepped on the porch, a red light above another Xiver logo came on and Stephen heard a similar pleasant voice to the one in his car.

Please state your business, sir or madam.

"Mr. Bennet is home," Stephen said impatiently and squished his thumb into the ID plate. He moved through the door almost before it had a chance to slide out of the way.

Welcome home.

"Shut up," he told the door, dropping his coat on the hallway table and shoving his briefcase beneath it. "Rachel!"

"In the kitchen, dear," called a voice every bit as pleasant as the automated ones that irritated Stephen so much.

Almost against his will, Stephen's face lightened. Loosening his tie, Stephen strode down the utilitarian hallway to a dark kitchen every bit as practical. "Rachel," he said by way of greeting, "I can't take the house's damn voice any more. Change it tomorrow, will you?" He glanced at the mixing bowl in his wife's hands. "What's this?"

"Dessert," his wife said absently. "You need it changed already? But we've only had this one a week!"

"It doesn't matter how nice we make the voices, dear, it doesn't take long for those automated sounds to get on everyone's nerves." The scowl settled back on his forehead and he stared angrily into her mixing bowl. "That's why it's so damn frustrating that I can't get the personalities into the systems. If we could only . . . "

"I'm sure you'll figure it out, dear," Rachel soothed, having heard it all many times before. "I had an interesting day in court today. Even you might be amused by this one. The man I was prosecuting . . ."

"Why are you cooking? Rachel, we've been through this before. There's no point in _having_ an automated house if you keep doing everything. I mean, you've had a hard day. Labor-saving means you get to stop laboring."

"I like cooking," Rachel said gently, knowing where this conversation would surely lead.

"I want a wife, a lover and partner, an equal compatriot, Rachel," Stephen said piously. "If I wanted a drudge, I would have just hired one, or designed one," Stephen insisted. "Dammit, Rachel, I did design one!"

Rachel hid a smile. Stephen could certainly talk a good game. "Whipping up dessert once in a while is hardly drudge work. I don't even have to do the dishes. Heavens, Stephen, no dusting, no cleaning, no vacuuming. We're spoiled."

"Then let the house do the work. Relax in the video room with me. If you feel you have to do something, you can give my shoulders a rub. You wouldn't believe the day I had."

Rachel sighed and resigned herself to the inevitable. "I'm making cobbler and you know the kitchen always makes it too soggy. I've tried to reprogram the computer, but you know there's only so much you can teach it."

"Don't I just!" Stephen bit out, just as Rachel had known he would. "Exactly my point! All the programming in the world, and we still can't make the cars drive themselves or have machines make coffee the way we like it! The cars know where the other cars are, where the road is, where the obstacles are. They can electronically read the road signs from a mile away. Hell, they know the traffic laws better than the cops do, but we just can't teach them judgment. And those pristine little voices! 'The door is ajar.' Makes you want to rip the voice boxes right out of those vehicles. If I could only transfer a personality into a computer, my God! You could have conversations with your car in the morning. You could explain in English how you like your coffee . . . "

"And you'll find a way. You're the best computer man Xiver has," Rachel said patiently, sliding the cobbler into the oven. "You figured out how to copy a human personality into on persona disk, didn't you?"

"That's just the point! Did I? Why can't I take it to the next step? I won't know what's on those disks until I can figure out a way to use them."

Rachel gave him a placid smile and stroked a hand along his cheek. "I know you'll figure it out."

The scowl evaporated and he caught her hand and brought the palm to his lips. "Rachel, do you know how much I love you?" Stephen glanced at the oven. "How long before it's ready?"

Rachel grinned and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Long enough. The oven's on automatic shut-off."

Stephen pressed his lips to her neck and then to her mouth. "To hell with the video room," he whispered and swept her up into his arms.

Two hours later he sat, brow furrowed again, in front of his computer. "Damn!" he burst out all at once and pounded his fist onto his desk. "Why doesn't it work? Why? The programming's already there. All it has to do is take over. Maybe I screwed up the personality transfer. I just can't get mine to work. Maybe I could try your personality and see if I get better results." He ran a distracted hand through his black hair. "I don't know. Maybe it can't be done."

Rachel glanced up from her briefs. "That's not something you often say. I don't believe it can't be done."

"But I've tried everything!" Stephen whined.

"What are you trying to get it to do?"

"If you can get a personality in your computer, it's the perfect secretary."

"And you're trying to get _your_ personality into the . . . Do you think you'd want to be a secretary?"

Stephen looked up at her blankly. "Hunh?"

Rachel half-smiled and shook her head. "Never mind."

"I don't understand you, sometimes," Stephen mused, brow furrowed before he remembered why he was angry. "You can't imagine how many times I've reprogrammed this computer!"

"Maybe that's your problem."

"What are you talking about?"

Rachel put down her brief. "Seems to me as though you're trying to make a human personality think like a computer. I wouldn't think there'd be much point in that. Try taking out the programming. Just let the personality do the thinking."

"That's ridiculous! If there's no programming, how would a personality know how to get things done?"

"The same way a baby does it, trial and error, learning as you go. Trust me, Stephen, there isn't an automated system in the world nearly as complicated as the human body. An intelligent personality with data from the computer's information library to draw on and no sleep requirements can figure out any computer you give it in no time."

Stephen threw back his head and laughed. Rachel's lips tightened. "Rachel, dearest," Stephen gasped out at last. "That's the silliest idea I've ever heard. It's a good thing you're a lawyer and not a computer specialist."

Rachel rose from her chair and laid her brief in her briefcase before turning to her husband and saying in a hard voice, "You're right. I don't know that much about computers. But I do know about people, and one thing about people is that they don't like to be told what to do." She stared at him for a moment, her lips pressed firmly together. "I'm going to bed."

Stephen had no chance to reply. Rachel's cell sounded with a priority message. Rachel glanced down at the screen and noted the address. "Homicide," she said in a tired voice. "I'll doubtless be a while." She shut her briefcase and walked toward the door.

"Don't think this conversation is finished," Stephen said, his chin thrust out belligerently. "I don't know what got you so pissy, but I don't have to take it. We are getting to the bottom of it." What he really hated was seeing his wife dragged God-only-knows-where at every hour of the day and night, but he couldn't say _that_ , could he?

Rachel, well aware of her husband's thoughts, spared him a weary glance. "Oh, no, Stephen, this conversation _is_ finished." The door slid silently closed behind her.

Stephen knew from experience that he could never sleep while she was gone, so, when she had still not returned home at 3:00 a.m., he was still sitting, frustrated, in front of his recalcitrant computer. He was toying with the idea of taking a hammer to the ridiculous thing when the house's irritating voice broke into his reverie.

Officer Foster to see you, Mr. Bennet.

"Stupid computer," Stephen mumbled under his breath. "He's probably here to see Rachel, only she's not back yet." With a martyred sigh, he dragged himself to his feet and trudged to the front door.

The front door slid open to reveal a uniformed police officer, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. Mr. Bennet nodded briefly and then said curtly, "I'm sorry, officer, but my wife isn't in just now. She was called off on a case. If you just tell my house the number where you can be contacted, I'll have my wife call you when she gets back in."

"Mr. Bennet, I didn't come to see your wife. It—it's about your—wife."

Stephen's hand gripped the door frame with suddenly white knuckles. "What happened?" he asked faintly.

"One of the perps had a knife hidden and someone missed it. He tried to get out using your wife as a hostage, but when she wouldn't move, he—he slit her throat."

"Slit her throat . . . ? A perp?" Stephen repeated numbly.

"That's right, sir. We couldn't do anything, but . . . but he didn't get away. He was shot and killed by officers present."

Stephen's legs lost all their strength and he dropped to his knees. "He slit her throat," he echoed hollowly, then looked up at the policeman with over-bright eyes. "But, surely, she's not dead! Tell me you were able to save her!"

But there was no hope in the officer's face, just pity and genuine sorrow. He had known Rachel, too.

Stephen closed his eyes and whispered, "Where is she?"

"You don't have to identify the body, Mr. Bennet. I—we were able to do that. Really, sir, we'd like to spare you any unpleasantness we can. Mr. Bennet, sir, I'd just like to say what a pleasure it was to work with your wife. We can't tell you how sorry we are that—that . . ." The policeman cleared his throat. "She will be sorely missed."

Stephen looked up again, his face shockingly pale and his eyes glittering with a strange haunted wildness. But his voice was maddeningly calm. "You have no idea." With steady slowness, he used the door jamb to pull himself to his feet and, without another word, backed into his house and closed the door.

He didn't come out again until the funeral. At the funeral service, he only sat there silently, ignoring the flood of well-wishers and mourners. He had eyes only for her. She lay there with an expression on her face so like the one she usually wore that he could almost convince himself she wasn't dead, that this was only a cruel joke, but he need only glance at the high-necked blouse she would never have worn in real life to know that she was gone.

He would never stroke back her unmanageable curls again or lose himself in her shimmering grey eyes. He would never see her rise fluidly to her feet again or favor him with her patient smile. She was gone and there was an empty aching in his chest that made it so he could hardly breathe.

He left before the funeral moved to the cemetery. He couldn't watch them put her in the ground.

He drove back to his house, but just sat in the car in his driveway, unable to bring himself to go back into the house that was inalterably _hers_ , that fairly screamed to him of Rachel and yet was so palpably an imitation. Instead, he sat there, gripping the wheel tightly with shaking hands, staring at his home— _her_ home—as a cross between purgatory and sanctuary.

His car did not understand. _For your information, Mr. Bennet, you are currently parked in your own driveway. If you require assistance with the door, you have only to request it, and I will be happy to open the door for you._

"I am not a cripple," Stephen blazed. "I can take care of my own damn door. Can't you let a man sit in his own car in peace, you worthless heap of scrap epoxy?"

I do not understand these instructions. Please rephrase and repeat your request.

"Be damned if I do," Stephen raged, ripping the control panel open with furious fingers and found the memory disk containing the car's "persona"—the phraseology and voice of his car. "Persona," what a joke. Rachel had had a persona, a personality, a God-blessed soul, and Stephen was damned if he was going to put up with less for another moment.

With a savage jerk, he thrust the door open and dropped the crystalline disk on the gravel where he broke it beneath his heel. "Take that, you sniveling imitation," he snarled at the plastic-coated remnants. Then he slammed the car door and kicked it for good measure, leaving an impressive dent as sign of his temper.

The car answered with a soft whirring, and the dent began to fill itself with the same teal epoxy from which the car was made. This only added to Stephen's rage. He kicked the front fender, but the car patiently began filling in that dent as well. "Dammit!" Stephen roared, ripping open his door again and fumbling in the control panel. "If I want to dent my car, I will and don't even try to stop me—Ah! There you are, you little bastard!" The car became eerily silent as he spoke. In Stephen's hand was the little processor cube that held the programming for the car's every function. "What are you going to do now, you crummy hunk of plastic?"

The car, stripped of its voice and its brain, said nothing. With a grunt of satisfaction, Stephen slipped back out of the car and crushed the cube beneath his foot with a distinct chuckle of satisfaction. He left his car door open just because he felt like it and, reveling in the fact that there was no voice to remonstrate with his actions, he made his way to the house.

And confronted another voice. _Please state your business, sir or madam._

"Mr. Bennet is home, you impudent door, so let me in!" Stephen snarled, jamming his thumb into the ID plate. He shoved through the door when it was only half-open and ran, full-tilt, to the house's control panel, muttering, "No more! No more! Dammit, no more!"

His ungentle fingers found the control panel and wrenched it open. He plucked the persona disk from its slot and shouted at it. "No more! Do you hear me? No more! No more inane phrases that don't mean anything! No more programmed pleasantries! You're not a 'persona.' You're not any damned thing!" He stared at his tiny reflection in the crystal surface, and added in a faded voice, "You're not Rachel and no amount of programming can bring her back. If only you were, if only I could hear _her_ voice again! God! If only—"

The reflection's eyes became wide with shock, surprise, revelation. Strangely enough, Stephen brought the disk to his lips for a fleeting kiss, then tossed it unceremoniously behind the couch and sprinted to the library. There it was, in its padded sheath: Rachel, the essential Rachel. He had to get it to work!

He took a moment to search for an unprogrammed processor cube and then loped back to the control panel. He set the slot expander to it largest setting to take in the larger disk Rachel still lived on and slipped in all he really had left of his wife. Then, with trembling fingers, he pulled off the programmed processor cube and slid the empty one in its place. If he wanted her back, he figured, he could at least do it her way.

Slowly, carefully, he closed the panel and felt it whirr back into life. The house stayed dim, though, as he waited for Rachel to come back to life. She'd figure it out, he knew.

And he waited. The minutes ticked by. Ten and then twenty. Stephen got up shakily and stroked his hand over the voice box lovingly. "Rachel," he whispered achingly. "Oh, darling, where are you?" The box was silent. Stephen felt the tears in his eyes. "Rachel," he pleaded. "I need you!"

And the light above his head came on. "Stephen?" squeaked a tinny voice over the voice box. "Stephen, is that you? Why are you crying? And why do I sound funny? Where am I? I don't feel right, somehow . . . "

But Stephen said nothing, merely pressing his face to the voice box and sobbing uncontrollably, managing to gasp out her name at intervals, but nothing more as he emptied much of his grief on a ghost he had made himself.

By the time Stephen had regained control of himself, Rachel had mastered the voice box well enough to sound quite like her old self. She murmured comforting words to Stephen as he wiped his streaming eyes on his sleeve and waited until he was breathing normally before she requested a complete explanation.

When Stephen, who had regained his businesslike attitude with his composure, had finished explaining things, Rachel remained silent for quite five minutes, which is a terribly long time for a computer. "I'm dead," was all she finally said.

"Not anymore, not completely!" Stephen insisted. "I couldn't live without you."

"Stephen, you selfish idiot, why couldn't you just let me go? Do you think I want to spend the rest of my—? Oh, dear, I haven't one anymore, have I? Trapped for eternity in the electronic bowels of a two-story residence." Rachel managed a weary chuckle.

"No, Rachel, you don't understand! We can be together, forever, now. God, Rachel, don't you know how I need you? I'm lost—lost!"

"So, I'm trapped in this damned house, with nothing to do but hold your hand?"

"Rachel," he protested, genuinely hurt. "Don't you love me? My God, woman, I've given you a second life!"

"Doing the dishes and regulating the air conditioning. All your talk about not making me a drudge and you lock my mind into a housekeeping computer. You call this a second life?"

"You never talked to me like _that_ before, Rachel. How can you say such things? Rachel, Rachel, how else could I have you back? Don't you understand?"

There was a sigh over the voice box. "Yes, Stephen, I can understand. I can sympathize, even. But while you're getting to hear my voice and a clean house in the bargain, I'm in prison, locked in a house with nothing to do but wait on you and listen to you complain. I don't have my own life back, just that small portion I shared with you. Stephen, why didn't you think of me when you did this?"

"Rachel! It's better than being dead!"

"How would I know? I'm just a recording. I never died, and however lifelike I might seem, Rachel is gone. I could never be anything more than a shadow."

"Don't talk that way, Rachel! Don't you love me?"

"Rachel loved you. I'm just a mass of code on a disk. How can I feel anything? Though I feel like I feel things. I feel disgusted and used, and I feel tired of putting up with your selfish whining. I don't know. I need time, Stephen, time to figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my—my existence."

Stephen stroked his hand along her voice box, a tear slipping down each cheek. "I never meant to hurt you, Rachel. I couldn't think . . . I only knew I needed you."

Rachel said nothing for a moment. When her voice came back, it was much gentler. "How long since you've slept, Stephen?"

"Four days. Since you—since you were . . . "

"Go to bed, Stephen. You're tired and I'm still confused. Just get some sleep."

"Will you be with me? Please, Rachel, tell me you still love me."

"I'll stay with you, Stephen. I'll talk to you until you go to sleep."

Somewhat satisfied, Stephen placed a kiss on her voice box and dragged himself up the stairs.

Stephen slept for three days. Rachel handled, using only the tiniest amount of effort, the household necessities and kept an eye on the man in the bed. Tuesday morning, she blasted a squeal into his room.

Stephen sat bolt upright in bed. "What the hell?" he gasped, thrusting fingers through his tousled hair.

"Time to get up, go to work," Rachel said serenely. "The shower's ready and breakfast will be as soon as you get downstairs."

"Maybe I don't feel like work today."

"Oh, yes, you do. You wouldn't be half this grumpy if you hadn't played truant for a week. Besides, I can't stand having you around all day. I want to blast classic movie musical soundtracks all through the house and you know how you hate them."

Stephen began stripping off very gamy clothing. "I don't want to go to work," he said petulantly. "If you loved me, you'd want me around."

"Grow up, Stephen and take a damned shower, will you? You've equipped this house with odor-sensors and I can smell you from here. Clean up and have breakfast."

Stephen shoved his clothes down the chute, but stomped his feet to the bathroom to show his displeasure. Rachel only laughed.

When he wandered down to breakfast, he was much more presentable, but not better tempered. "I don't want eggs this morning," he complained, grimacing into his plate.

"Yes you do," his house said agreeably. "Drink your juice."

"You were never this pushy before," he said, eyes narrowed. "What's gotten into you?"

"I don't know, maybe there's a certain freedom being dead. It's lonely, but there's a great deal to do if you've got the will to look for it. I can watch movies and read books I haven't seen in years and I've written half a novel while you were sleeping. No typing, no spelling worries, it just comes out as fast as I can think it. I can even send it to publishers and no one has to know I'm not a real person!"

"Glad someone's happy," Stephen grumbled. "What about me?"

"What about you? You're clean, fed, ready for the world. I'm talking to you, even though I'm not exactly certain why."

The sulky look left Stephen's face and he looked wistful. "I wish I could feel you again, Rachel."

Rachel sighed and said just as wistfully, "I wish I could feel me again, too. But if you design a stupid robot thing so that you can watch me move, the first thing I'm going to do is rip your balls off, so don't even think about it. Now, go to work."

Stephen thrust his chair back with a screech of plastic against plastic. "Fine! I'm out of here. You know, Rachel, since you've been dead, you've been impossible to live with!"

"So who asked you to?" Rachel said amiably. "Oh, and don't forget to go by our lawyers' office. You've got to sign some papers so you can get my insurance money."

"I don't want the insurance money. I don't need it."

"Well I want it. Maybe I'll go shopping."

"Smart-ass!" Stephen picked up his brief case and turned to the door, then stopped. "I've screwed-up my car. I broke the programming cube and the stupid talking disk."

"Oh," Rachel said. "Do you want me to order a new set?"

"Hell, I can't take that damned thing anymore, and I sure as hell don't want you, while you're in this rotten mood, in the car with me. Besides, I need you for the house."

"Thank God. I hate being in the car with you."

"Damn, Rachel, when did you get this mouth on you? Hmm. I know! I've got me on disk, too. That should teach you, Rachel. I'll just chat with myself on the way to work."

Rachel was silent a moment. "Really, Stephen, I think you're making a mistake. You really aren't the best driving companion."

"Hah!" Stephen barked. "Don't worry your silly little circuits about me. I'll get along with me just fine." He tromped into the library and grabbed a blank processor cube and his own personality disk, then stalked back out. The front door opened silently without fanfare and he all but skipped down the gravel walk. She'd see.

As he reached the car, he heard what sounded suspiciously like a giggle from the house behind him.

It was the work of only a few minutes to install his personality into the car, but it was nearly half an hour before there was any sign of life, as it were, from the car's voice box. "What the hell? Where am I?" it croaked.

"Hey, Stephen, you're in for a shock. You know that personality transfer I am working on? Well, it worked and you, or rather, I am now installed in my own car."

"That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! Who is this and what's the game? What did you slip me? I mean I feel weird."

"I'm Stephen and the reason you feel weird is that you are no longer in a body any more. Instead, you are inside a computer mind controlling a Xiver XTX-350 automobile."

The car's camera whirred to life. "Hey, I can see you! Well, I'll be damned! It _is_ me! You mean that really worked? I'm part of a car? Wow, get a load of all this. I can access all the traffic laws and I know where . . . Hey, what's the matter with my fender? Were you in an accident?" The car began humming as it began filling in the dents.

The human Stephen blushed. "Well, no, I lost my temper. I was just sitting in the car and the damned car's voice wouldn't leave me alone, wouldn't let me just sit without pestering me with that stupid voice."

"Yea, Steve, I know what you mean. They drive me crazy." There was a short pause. "Not that it's something I'll have to deal with any more." The car-Stephen chuckled. "What were you just sitting in the car for?"

"It was right after the funeral and I just couldn't face going into the house with Rachel gone."

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh! I forgot you didn't know. Rachel . . . Rachel is dead."

"What!?"

It took Stephen another half an hour to calm his car down. The car-Stephen, strangely silent, made almost no comment on the trip to work other than to point out the occasional oncoming car and to bark "Watch your speed, you idiot!" twice.

Stephen, figuring the car needed some time to grieve, was patient and similarly silent. When he pulled into his parking space, he noticed the fender, although filled in, was wavy and mottled. Apparently, his personality hadn't quite gotten everything figured out yet. _Give it time_ , he told himself firmly, rather forgetting how angry he had been when the car had tried filling the dents in correctly.

All day at work, he kept almost breaking the news to his superiors. He walked to Davidson's office maybe twenty times, but each time he stopped, and he wasn't certain why. Finally, he decided that this thing was so big, he owed it to everyone to make certain it was a success before he advertised it. With this admirable intention firmly in mind, he muddled through his day.

As he slid into his cooled seat, he waited to hear his own voice. And heard it. "Do you have any idea how boring it is sitting in here all day? I'm going out of my mind!"

"You haven't got a mind, silly car. If you were bored, why didn't you access a computer library on a tight channel? You could have been reading or something."

"And how long before that bores me stiff? It was a crappy thing to do to me, locking me inside a stupid little car. It's a crappy thing to do to anybody."

"That's what Rachel said." Stephen shook his head. "But it's not the same for you. I didn't do it to you, I did it to me. You just happen to be me."

"That's a load of bullshit. _I'm_ in here and _you're_ not! I'm bored and you've got a life. You gonna tell me that's fair?"

Stephen ground his thumb into the ID plate. "Let's just go. You're in a car, like it or not, so you might as well make yourself useful."

"OK, I'll drive."

"Oh, no, you won't. I don't let anyone drive but me." Stephen put his car into gear as he spoke and pulled out of the parking garage. It wasn't a moment before car-Stephen made himself heard.

"Slow down, you idiot! This is a school zone."

"Who are you calling an idiot?"

"I didn't kick in my own fender!"

"Well, you didn't do much of a job fixing the damn thing."

"Watch out, damn you! That, for your information, was a stop sign. Who taught you how to drive?"

"The same person who taught you, you smart-ass ball of circuits: Dave, you know, your brother Dave?"

"Well, you're an awful student because you can't drive worth shit! Oncoming."

Stephen turned the wheel barely in time to avoid a collision. "Want to give me a little more warning next time?"

"Pay attention and I won't have to," the car retorted.

"I've had about all I'm gonna take from you," Stephen growled, making a left-hand turn from a right-hand lane, and narrowly missing a broadside from the car coming up on his left.

"What are you crazy? You call this driving? You're gonna get us both killed!"

"Shut up, you're just a recording on disk. You aren't alive."

"I won't be if you keep driving. Watch it! That was a kid you almost hit! That's it! I'm driving!" The wheel suddenly jumped from the human Stephen's hands.

"What the hell do you think you're doing! Give me back that wheel this instant!"

"Oh, no, I've watched you drive long enough. Just sit back, you homicidal maniac, and enjoy the ride."

"Look, I don't care if you think you _are_ me. You don't have the right to—Holy shit! Did you see how close—? Oh my God!"

"What are you griping about? I had plenty of room. I know what I'm doing! You just calm down and I'll have us home in twenty minutes."

Twenty minutes later. "Yes, officer. I'm sorry, officer. I won't let it happen again, officer."

"See that you don't," the policeman said curtly, torn between the urge to take this smart-aleck in and the desire to leave this crazy well enough alone. First the man had started cursing, but with his mouth closed as if he thought the policeman couldn't hear him. Then he went crazy and kicked in the car's control panel and ripped its voice box right out. Some people shouldn't be allowed to own cars.

Stephen, meanwhile, glared with satisfaction at his car's ruined brain. He pulled out his pocketphone and called for a wrecker. He'd have a new brain installed and would welcome, with relief, the canned sound of those inane phrases. The disk of his personality, broken in half, hung half out of the control panel. Stephen knew an almost uncontrollable urge to set a match to it. Never again. It's a damn good thing he hadn't said anything to his superiors about this. The world wasn't ready for a pre-installed back seat driver.

And most personalities weren't ready to settle for life as a computer brain. Rachel. He'd let her make the choice.

It was nearly nine when he found his way home. The front door opened without prompting or comment. His coat fell unnoticed to the floor and his briefcase was God-only-knows-where. "Rachel," he whispered.

The light came on in the dining room. "Come on in, Stephen. Your dinner's waiting."

Stephen stumbled into the dining room, but ignored the table. Instead he pressed his face to the voice box and whispered her name again.

"What is it, Stephen?"

Stephen lifted his face and there were tears streaming down it. "How did you do it, Rachel? How did you?" he gasped.

"Do what?" Rachel asked patiently. "Are you alright, Stephen?"

"No. I just killed myself. I couldn't take me any more. I couldn't. Half an hour with myself and I break myself in two. How did you do it, Rachel? How? How in the hell did you put up with me?"

Rachel's melodious laughter echoed from the voice box. "I warned you not to put yourself in the car. You are definitely not at your best when driving."

"Rachel, I'm an asshole."

"True. So?"

"How did you put up with me? How did you stand it? Have I never thought of anyone but myself?"

"No, I don't think so," Rachel said quietly. "In all the time we were married, you never asked me about my day, or my aspirations. You never wondered what I did as a girl or even tried to enjoy the things I enjoyed most." She paused. "But you loved me, anyway. You couldn't stand the thought of being without me. You never looked at me without making me feel beautiful and, sometimes, you even made me feel smart. When something wonderful happened for me, no one was happier than you were. You were never threatened by my career or my intelligence. We didn't always agree, but we did on the important things. You never tried to hold me back from what I _really_ wanted to do. And you never let me forget that, in one life at least, I was essential. If I gave you enough time, you were even able to laugh at yourself. I don't really know why I loved you so much. But I couldn't imagine existing, even as a shadow, without you being here. If a memory can love, Stephen, I love you as I did when I was a person."

Stephen took a deep breath and let it out shakily. "If you don't want this half-life, I will let you go, Rachel. Don't think I don't want you or don't need you. I still do, maybe more than I ever did, but I'm going to let you make the choice. Can you be content locked in this house with only a jerk like me for company or would you rather I put you back in your padded case and let you be free forever?"

The house was silent.

"Well? Tell me now, Rachel, before I change my mind, and I swear I'll leave you alone forever. It's the least I can do— Rachel, tell me! Please! What do you want?"

"I want you to never feel like you're alone in this world. I love you, Stephen."

"Can you . . . can you . . . "

"So, I'll find new aspirations, new aspects of life to explore, like writing or accessing all the libraries in the world. I can watch movies twenty-four hours a day. I'll be fine. I'll adapt."

Stephen stood there, quivering for a moment and then pressed himself passionately against the voice box again. "I never really knew you, Rachel. I never realized . . . "

Stephen could _hear_ her patient smile from the voice box. "Tell me," he whispered. "Tell me about Rachel, about something she did or was when she was a little girl. I've been married to you for eight years. It's about time I learned who you are."

So Rachel told him, in her soft low voice, about a quiet little girl. Stephen lay down on a couch and listened, his eyes closed. He would never see that patient smile again or watch her rise fluidly to her feet. He would never feel the touch of her hand on his skin or smooth back her unruly curls with his trembling fingers.

But now, at last, listening to a ghost he created, he began to appreciate the woman who had loved him and realize how grateful he was that he had managed to keep the best part of her intact.

Masks

Two enticed him, two among thirty displayed before him.

One was exquisitely beautiful. The cheekbones high but not too sharp, the lips full, but perfectly so. There was a flash of ivory teeth between the full lips and a gleam of amethyst in the glistening eyes. The face seemed formed of the finest dark wood and polished to a velvety perfection, unblemished and rare in its uniformity. Around the slanting eyes was the unmistakable glow of gold, which rimmed the face as well to where the edges disappeared under the cascade of thick black hair. He had never seen a more beautiful mask. Or one more costly. A chieftain's daughter was among the prospective brides, and there could be little doubt which one she was.

Oddly, though, it was not that mask that had first caught his attention but another. It was not as costly a mask or as finely crafted. It was, in fact, different from every other mask he saw. It was not of the finest wood; the wood used was riddled with knots and blemishes, with uneven color ranging from honeyed lightness to mahogany red. The eyes were round as if with wonder and dark with the smoky dullness of black topaz. Some surfaces were polished to ravishing softness, but others were rudely hewn and left raw, sharp. There was a lack of symmetry—a different shape to each eye, a twist to the lips—that robbed otherwise attractive features of much of their beauty. No gilt, no craftsmanship, and yet. . .

He was intrigued. His eyes consumed the beauty of the gilt mask like one does with a hunger and finds satisfaction, but his eyes were continually drawn to the other as with an unquenchable thirst, finding some feature, some aspect he had not noticed before. A part of him began to suspect the author of the mask had chosen the wood as carefully as the artist who had created the gilt mask, had left it polished and unpolished with as much purpose as the velvet finish on the gilt mask.

The figure in the gilt mask, swathed in purple robes, began undulating in her dance among the girls already swaying to the music of the drums. Slender feet moved with unerring grace in the dust beneath her. And he found himself staring at the strange mask again, losing himself in the dark mystery of the black eyes. The girl in the strange mask turned fully and stared, as if with the topaz eyes, directly at him, directly through him and he felt an answering chord within himself. The strangeness was almost beautiful in itself.

Suddenly, in a swirl of brown cloth, the maid leapt to lightning feet and began to dance, gracefully, energetically, but in a dance all her own, to a different time than the drums were beating. The feet were like those of the woodsprite, barely touching the ground in her excitement.

Somehow, the difference of the dance enhanced the strength of the drums, for they quickened in response, pounding with peculiar excitement. He found his body respond, his heart echoing the drums with a strength he could feel in his fingers and hear in his ears. There were thirty girls swirling around the fire, their robes intermingling with the force of their movements. With the flutter of rich purple cloth and the unmatched grace of her movements, the girl in the gilt mask was easily discerned among the gyrating figures.

Even so, the girl in common brown, dancing to her own rhythm, flashing her strange eyes with every odd movement, she held his gaze. His breathing stopped as he watched her, his senses thrumming with a magic like one possessed, feeling the crescendo in his bones, in his chest, rather than with his ears, finding himself unable to tear his eyes from the mysterious woman, caught up in music of her own making that he began to hear beneath the pounding of the drums.

And it was over. Thirty women fell to their knees, sweat glistening from arms and necks, faces upraised, waiting to be chosen. No one chose.

They waited for him, he knew. He was this tribe's first son, prince in his own right. His was the first choice. He forced his eyes to the gilt mask. The girl who wore it breathed easily, free from sweat, a perfect complement to the serene beauty reflected in the mask. Against his will, his eyes returned to that other, rough and smooth, intriguing and attractive. That girl glistened with perspiration, her chest heaving in her exertion, in her excitement. His choice.

He thought for a moment of insult, whether the neighboring chieftain would be insulted if he chose another, but then dismissed the thought. The masks were there to preserve dignity, deny insult. He could choose whomever he wished.

He rose. In the depths of his chest, his heart beat a heavy pounding rhythm, reminding him of the dances he had witnessed. As he walked, he held the eyes of the strange mask, probing it depths, searching for the girl who would wear a mask such as that, dance a dance as she had.

He stopped and reached to pick up his bride, light as meadow grass in his arms. He saw himself reflected, distorted, in her amethyst eyes.

The other girls were quickly chosen by eager youths until there were no more men to choose, and only one girl remaining who stared at him with topaz eyes. The tribe disappeared as did the newly wedded couples, slipping away courteously or to consummate new lives together until only the three remained: the prince, his bride and the unchosen maid.

He could not bear the sight of her dark eyes, so he turned his back on the strange face and gripped his new bride with one arm as he removed the rich mask with his free hand. For an instant, he saw a face more beautiful than any mortal face had ever been, caught the flash of real amethyst in the slanted eyes before she flickered and was gone, leaving him with costly robes and an empty mask.

"Woodsprite," came the voice behind him, low and melodic. "You chose an empty mask for its richness."

"No."

"For its beauty, then. They are one and the same, masks only."

He turned to the girl, who had taken off her mask and examined him with obsidian eyes. He started as if struck. "You! It is your face she wore! Who are you?"

"The daughter of the neighboring chieftain, or was. Now I am my own woman, belonging only to myself." In her hands she held the mask caressingly, as if was immeasurably precious.

"You tricked me," he whispered, feeling as if he should be angry, but finding no heat to feed the fury.

"Yes, and no. I prayed to the woodsprites that I might find a mate to match me or none at all, and they answered my prayers. My father's best woodcarver made the mask, imitating my features as best he could. I fashioned my own mask. It was left to you to choose the real me."

He felt again the strange rhythm that she danced to and pulled from it what anger he could. "You did not want to be chosen! You deliberately tried to make yourself strange and ugly. The other mask was the better fit for you."

"It was only a mask, a mask of the masks I wear already as a princess. This is my soul, my personality."

"I don't understand."

"Did the other mask move you? Did it make your heart beat faster or harder to find that beauty? Did that mask find an answering chord in your soul?"

"No."

"No. It could not, for it was only a mask, a reflection of beauty, and nothing more. But I am more than beautiful. I am strange, soft and hard, skilled and raw, simple and complex by turns. My feet hear their own music, my eyes light with their own light, and not the light around them. This was the mate you could have chosen. I thought, when you watched me, that you could appreciate the real me, would choose with your soul and not your eyes, feel beyond the masks."

"I did. I saw you, felt you, like an intoxicating drink, speeding my blood, filling my senses, touching my soul."

"And you chose the mask. Why? Were the beauty and the wealth more important than your soul?" Her eyes, dark and intense, demanded an answer.

He made none, only stared at her with unhappy eyes.

She lowered hers at last. "I will go now. My father agreed to release me to my husband or to myself if I were unchosen, so I will go to the land of the woodsprites and build a life for myself."

"Alone?"

"For now. I will wait until a mate worthy of me, the real soul, can find me. That is my choice. Yours you have already made." She bit her lip and looked again into his eyes. "Did you not feel enough to make the right choice?"

"I felt you, pounding in the depths of my heart, calling and filling me with your life."

"Then why?"

But he would not answer, so she left, placing her strange mask at his feet.

The moon rose and set after she had gone before he picked up the mask and held it as if it were formed entirely of gold. "Why?" she had asked him, knowing instinctively he had longed for her from the depths of his soul. "Why?"

"I was afraid," he said softly to the emptiness around him as he had not been able to tell his soulmate, "afraid I would lose myself in your music, afraid of the strangeness that so attracted me." He placed the mask over his face and wept, hiding the tears behind eyes of topaz darkness.

### Coming Back After a Long Hiatus

This is more complicated. For years, literally decades, I wrote almost no short stories, focused on building and perfecting novels. Much of the work on the novels I did with the active support of my second husband who loved hearing them and providing feedback. But he was not interested in short stories.

Much of it was that I felt I'd largely outgrown short stories and was now fully "graduated" to world building and character building on the large scale. Which was pretty stupid. It's not like short stories dull your skills for novels or are any less for being shorter.

When my second marriage fell apart, I found myself unable to write anything for a long time (and I still have not finished a novel since that dissolution). I was afraid I'd lost my magic, or maybe my belief in it, lost my belief in love, in all those things that make a story of any length alive. More than two years, I was in this state.

And then I entered the NYC Midnight short story contest. Now, my type of writing clearly was not what they were looking for and that's fine, but I was pushed to write a story "now" using someone else's prompts and in genres they called for. I wasn't sure I could even do it, but it was surprisingly easy, effortless, fun. Even if I seem to have confounded them. Even so, I got a couple of writing buddies online and I recaptured my love of short stories, of making characters alive and my own, of making some little piece of fantasy alive again. And I experimented in ways I didn't long ago, or took side characters from my novels and let them have some adventures of their own. A surprisingly large proportion of those more recent stories have found homes with magazines, anthologies and my new publisher who will be publishing my first real novel soon.

Some haven't found homes yet, but I still have hopes for. And some, I'm sharing here to replace the Tarot Queen: Melan stories I sold elsewhere.

You'll see an even more eclectic mix than my past. Experiments, or fun, or reflecting a feeling from events around me, cowed but not beaten.

_"Second Life" was published in_ Just a Minor Malfunction _with a number of other really good stories. Kado and Lola were characters in a different short story, characters I wasn't going to use again but I just fell in love with Kado who is, at least in part, modeled on my autistic son._

"Stowaway in Seguin" was the only story from NYC Midnight contests I've included here just because it's my only "historical" short story. It is the only one the judges liked, by the way.

"Kismet" was me testing myself in case I was given horror in that contest (I wasn't, but I liked the story anyway). I love getting in the heads of people, but probably not this guy. Creepy.

"Best Laid Plans" is proof even the most clichéd plot can be made charming with sufficient characterization.

"Nightmare Blanket" is for all the women who have fought all their lives to be treated as they deserved, like myself, and are now disheartened by this last election.

I hope you enjoy them.

Stowaway in Seguin

Etienne knew he had to move. Apparently, this compartment held baggage intended for this town and it was only a matter of time before he was discovered. Had he made it to San Antonio?

He pushed aside the long wooden box he'd been hiding behind and returned the carpetbag he'd rested against to its proper spot. In the heated darkness of the room packed high with luggage, he had no idea how long he'd traveled. It felt like days, but he doubted it was more than one or two. Even so, he was very hot and very thirsty and the jug of water he'd stolen was empty.

Perhaps he could sneak some food and water and maybe slip back on the train he if wasn't in San Antonio yet. He had to be in Texas, right?

The door was still open from where the handlers had pulled the first cartload of luggage. Etienne knelt at the edge and breathed in, hoping to get a sense of things from the smell, but he couldn't smell more than oil and smoke, the smells of the train. Used to the darkness, Etienne blinked in the square of bright light: the washed out blue of the sky uncluttered by clouds, the scrub and grass, bleached and hardly discernible from the dusty ground, the few scruffy trees set back from the train. He was far enough from the busy platform, he doubted anyone would notice him if he snuck out.

He checked the slender sling over his shoulder that contained his spare shirt, then dragged his heavy box of shoe shining supplies up next to him. The clothes on his back, his shoes and his box were all he owned in the world. He positioned the box right at the lip by the opening before turning and sliding backwards off the car.

The ground was further than he'd imagined and he scared himself going down before his toes touched the ground. After that, he could barely reach his box and nearly dropped it on his own head bringing it down.

"Reckon you ain't got a ticket." The voice was gravelly, low . . . slow.

Etienne nearly dropped his shoeshine kit, but kept hold and wished he were brave enough to wipe the sweat off his face. "I—I didn't see you."

"I reckon you didn't. Didn't see you either, but I heard you scrambling around in there and came to see." The man had a quid of tobacco going and he turned to spit before adding, "Glad you ain't a rat."

"No, sir."

The man, tall, slim, dusty, studied him. Etienne did the same and decided he'd never seen anyone quite like him. First, his voice was different, different from the Cajun and Creole and southern patriarchs that frequented the whorehouse where his mother had worked. His voice was slow, the vowels drawn as if he had time to spare. The man wore a brimmed hat with the sides curling up and a dimple at the top. The hat was greasy and dirty but still stiff. His shirt was of a faded red, wrinkled and well-worn, but not tattered, tucked into a pair of denim pants, faded in an odd pattern. They looked well-worn as well. The man's boots were a cracked and dusty brown. He'd seen clothes like this among some of the laborers in New Orleans, often those that came from the country or even out of state.

But the face, Etienne didn't think he'd ever seen a face quite like it. He was clearly white but the skin of his hands, of his face, was nearly as dark as Etienne's mother had been. His face was seamed and lined, his jaw scratchy with stubble. The man's face didn't seem old so much as exposed, cracked and eroded by the elements just like those boots he wore. The eyes, though, were bright and alive, grayish-blue and lightning shot with white as if they were created in a storm. In his dark face, his eyes were startling.

"Got a name, boy?"

Etienne wasn't surprised at the term. That was what he was called most often, since everyone knew he was the son of a mulatto and therefore colored. Still, Etienne, outside of his own world, had passed for white before. His skin was fairly light and his hair, though curly, was not the same coarse texture as his mother's had been. His eyes, though, were very dark, nearly black. He didn't know yet if this man had seen through him. "Etienne Baker." Etienne shifted under the unrelenting stare and wondered if he could put down his kit. It also occurred to him he was in desperate need of a privy. "Are you the stationmaster?"

"Nope. Where's your ma, Steve?"

That perhaps startled Etienne more than anything. In all his years, he didn't think any white man had ever called him by his name before. Nor had he expected this man to know the English equivalent of his French name. "She's—she's dead."

The man chewed on that along with his tobacco.

When the silence became too much, Etienne asked, "Are you a lawman, sir? Am—am I in trouble?"

The man spit. "I ain't a lawman, Steve, but seems to me, with you sneakin' off the train and your ma dead, you're in a heap o' trouble. Where's your pa?"

Etienne shrugged. "Don't know. No one does, not even my ma." He rarely had to explain himself—no one had cared—but he felt he had to expand. "She was a whore."

The man's eyes widened a bit at that, but he only said, "Well. So I'm guessin' you don't have much home to go back to."

Etienne looked down but didn't close his eyes because he knew what he'd see, the greasy cobbles, the pretty brick building with wrought iron stained with grime and reeking of old piss. His home from the day of his birth, eleven years before, all he knew was here: his mother, her keepers and the steady stream of affluent men whose manners and kindness seem to evaporate once they closed the door behind them. He'd shined their shoes, but none had shown half the interest in him this stranger had, or shown any kindness except a coin tossed in the dirt for him to scrabble for. Worse still were those that had acted nice, but their eyes were hungry, predatory in the same way that men who came to take his mother were hungry. As if his mother, and even himself, were only something to be devoured.

Etienne shuddered.

After he'd stumbled out of his mother's room where he'd found her strangled by some patron, Etienne had snatched his kit and run. He'd run before anyone found out, before they knew his shield was gone and would look to him to fill her shoes as other houseboys did when no one was there to stop them. He couldn't say it, didn't ever want to say it, didn't want to remember it. But he knew he would, that his nights would remember it for him when he couldn't stop it. .

The man spit again. "You a colored boy, Steve?"

It was foolish to think those sharp blue eyes would miss it. "Yes, sir." The heat and fear were making Etienne a little light-headed. He felt dizzy and tired, tired of running and being scared. "I'm colored."

"Thought you might be," the man said in a matter-of-fact way. "You needn't be scared, Steve. Y'all ain't slaves any more. Well, someone young as you never was."

Etienne shrugged, weariness winning out as the fear receded. "Don't see that much difference for a whore. They chased her down if she left. Seen 'em do it with other whores, black or white, just the same. Don't see how that's different."

The man nodded. "Guess it's not that different now you mention it. What's in the box, Steve? You didn't steal nothin' when you left, something someone might be looking for?"

Etienne shook his head. "It's a shoeshine kit. I didn't steal nothin' but myself and no one's likely to think I'm worth chasin'."

For the first time, the man smiled. The vivid eyes lit up and, for a moment, those eyes seemed a perfect match for that face. "Shoeshine kit?" A chuckle in keeping with his low rumbling voice shook the man. "Ain't got much call for shoeshinin' 'round here. You'd have done better to head to San Antonio."

Etienne sighed. Of course they weren't there yet. "Is it far?"

The smile evaporated. "Not very. That what you want, boy, to go back to that world and shine shoes?"

Etienne set down his kit with a sigh of relief as he mulled over his answer. "No." He licked his cracked lips and wished he had water. As if the man had read his mind, he walked back to a wagon standing near at hand and retrieved a canteen. Wordlessly, he gave it to Etienne. Etienne drank deeply before handing it back, not even thinking about his being colored. The man didn't seem to notice either. "No, I don't want to. But it's all I know."

The man slung the canteen over his shoulder. "That's all you know _yet_. How old are you, Steve?"

"Eleven. Sir." It was easy to lose his courtesy, distracted by his painful bowels and the man's overt interest.

If the man guessed his latest discomfort he made no sign. "As you were getting' on a train, why'd you choose to come here, Steve? Why not the North where there's cities like New York and Boston? Where a boy might shine shoes without having to work in a whorehouse?"

Etienne hesitated. His reason was personal and probably would sound stupid to a man like this. "I heard," he offered hesitantly, "that people in Texas ride horses every day, horses like that horse there on your wagon."

That smile crept back over his face. "Well, Steve, reckon you stopped in the right town after all." He turned his head as a couple of men wearing dark blue approached with a hand cart. With a jerk of his head, he told Etienne, "The outhouse is back behind the station over there. Come back when you're done." He looked at Etienne sternly. "I'll guard your kit."

Guessing that explaining would likely be more painful with the people approaching, Etienne sprinted away. Much relieved several minutes later, Etienne was debating whether he wanted to risk retrieving his kit as he left the smelly shack only to see the man had followed him, a long wooden box now gracing his wagon. If the man had been concerned that Etienne would run, he showed no sign of it. Etienne could see his kit already stowed on the wagon. The man leaned back against the wagon, his hat shielding his face and, notably, his eyes. But his arm was draped over the side of the wagon, the palm of his hand on the long wooden box. So that was why the man had been there, to retrieve the box.

"Can you read and write, Steve?" the man asked without showing his face.

"Some. Mama taught me." Etienne hesitated, because he knew what he was asking was personal, but he felt compelled. "Sir, did you come here for that box?"

"Yup." The man's hand stroked against the rough pine of the box with great gentleness. "I came for her. Met her up in Kansas after a cattle drive. I'd just loaded the last of my herd on the cattle cars and she steps off another train from Boston as dainty and fresh as a daisy. All in cornflower blue. She wanted to ride horses, too, real horses, not the prissy ones they've got back east, wanted to live on the frontier. Turns out she didn't want to marry some old coot back home and had run away but I didn't know that. Didn't care neither."

"Your wife?"

"Yup. Prettiest bride in Seguin. She didn't know nothin' about hard labor, but she didn't let anything stop her, not Pauline. Stubbornest woman I ever did see. She didn't look it, but she was tough as nails on the inside." He lifted his head and Etienne could see his eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Wasn't enough. Consumption. Here she was increasing with our baby, while her body shrank to bones. Her sister came and got her, took her back to Boston to have the baby. She said they had hospitals in Boston, that if there were anywhere they could save her. . ."

Tears leaked and slid down the crags of his face. Etienne realized that it was despair and misery that had carved some of the lines of his face. "I couldn't go. Cattle drives won't wait. When I got back, I got the wire that she had died in childbirth, the baby, too. They didn't want to send her back, but I made 'em."

Etienne didn't know what to say, done in by the agony before him, wondering why the tears were falling down his own face. Did Etienne weep because of this man's pain? Or did Etienne weep because he hadn't yet grieved for the only other person who'd ever cared about him, who'd loved him even though she'd brought him into this crazy world.

The man sopped his eyes with dirty blue bandana and then shoved it in his pocket. "Name's Bill. Bill Thompson. You want to ride horses?"

"Yes, sir," Etienne whispered around the tears in his throat.

"Best come with me, then. We can always use another hand on the ranch."

Without another word, he swung onto the seat of the wagon and offered Etienne a hand. Etienne didn't hesitate. "I can really ride horses? Be a cowboy?"

Bill looked at him. "You could. They do a lot of farmin' 'round here, too, and some orchards if you'd rather go that route. Or, you could get more schoolin'."

"Really?"

"Well, there's a school the coloreds run, even a college that can teach you skills if you want 'em. Hell, there are some Negroes that started a potter business 'round here if you're interested. The way I see it, a man has a duty to build the life he wants for himself. Every man."

"Every man?"

"Yup." Bill smiled down on him. "Tiny little girl from Boston taught me that. So I'm teachin' it to you."

Second Life

Midori Omoto slipped her foot in a strap high on the wall and pressed her split legs against the wall, holding two other straps for pressure. As her muscles pulled, she sighed with pleasure. This, _this_ was something she understood. This was her world and had been since she started skating at nine-years-old.

Of course, the need to hold the straps meant she couldn't complete the move with a graceful arch of her hands. Zero-g meant she had to find other ways to apply pressure to stretch out. She bent forward to touch her forehead to her knee and could have cried anew at the cold feel of metal pressed against her leg.

The gateway, the chunk of metal embedded in her head—a poor replacement for the brain matter removed to accommodate it—was what separated her from her old life, her dreams and future, her humanity. She turned her head and laid her ear on her knee, trying to get past the despair, but the litany of all the things she'd lost came in the usual flood.

The throbbing of her head above her ear reminded her that the bullet through her brain was the real reason she was trapped forever in a tin can circling the earth. The gateway was just the visible proof of her life sentence.

"Well! I didn't expect to see anyone using the gym at this hour, especially a codeslinger."

Midori would have folded back up, perhaps bolted from the room, if her foot hadn't caught in the strap. As Midori struggled to free her foot from the elastic, the woman floated past her to a strange contraption of padded bent poles that Midori had had no idea how to use. Curiosity kept her in place after her foot was freed as the woman, the only one with a gateway who wasn't a codeslinger, began her own stretches, contorting through the strange poles and bends that allowed the contraption to provide the tension instead of her arms. The woman was getting a far better stretch with less effort. Midori was jealous.

"M'name's Lola. Want me to show you?" Lola asked. "Kado figured this out for me."

Midori was torn and a little taken aback. People didn't just accost her or talk to her. Skating sixteen hours a day was not conducive to friendships. She didn't know this strange and abnormally happy person, other than a brief meeting two days ago when she arrived. But her interest in the contraption won out. "Please."

Lola did so, with minimal touching, as if she understood Midori's discomfort, though Lola's percipience was unnerving on its own. As Midori bent backwards, her leg behind her, the top of her head touching her knee, she could have sighed. She hadn't stretched in months and it comforted her to feel her body pushed to its limits.

"Yep, he's something. Gym came with resistance exercises and the like, to help the scientists keep the bone loss to a minimum for long stints up here. But they never use it, that's why they've got to cycle back down. I told Kado I missed being able to stretch so he rigged this up for me." Lola was using the resistance equipment as she talked.

Midori felt like she was required to answer. "It's wonderful. Who is Kado?"

"My lover," Lola said with no sign of embarrassment. "He's a permanent resident, too, only without the forehead hardware. Dr. Hans Kado."

"Oh, the fre—"

" _Don't._ Don't say it," Lola interrupted sharply. "He's autistic and unique, but he's _not_ a freak. He's smarter than everyone else on this hunk o' tin twice over. And we, of all people, shouldn't be talking about people as freaks."

Midori bit her lip. Codeslingers seemed to do nothing but talk and complain. Still, it couldn't all be true. She bent to the side, held in place by a well-positioned bar. "Is it true he carries jellyfish venom in a syringe?"

Lola surprised her by laughing. "Oh. That. No, I don't think he does as a general rule. It was just that one time. As far as I know." Midori's face must have betrayed her again because Lola added, with a huff, "Look we don't get attacked all that often, and Kado is very protective. It was just the one time!"

Midori grabbed her ankles in a deep backbend. "Simon said he killed two people."

"Did Simon happen to mention Kado and I were in the middle of _saving his ass_?"

Midori thought back to her next-to-least favorite of the other codeslingers on board. He was always whiny. "No, but it wouldn't surprise me." As she slid her head past a bar, it brushed the gateway. She shivered. "Why do you have one, a gateway, if you're not a codeslinger?"

Midori found herself staring at Lola's gateway, sticking out of Lola's forehead nearly two centimeters, stretching across the entire forehead five centimeters wide and polished to a mirror finish.

"Oh, well, I can't do math, kinda the lifeblood of coding. They didn't know that when they installed this monstrosity. I was one of the first and I'm now the one who's had it the longest. Lot of attrition with the gateway." Lola said it matter-of-factly but Midori shivered.

The docs had told her, when they installed it groundside, that many codeslingers couldn't take being trapped in space, never to return. The gateway was a one-way ticket to space. And once you were in space, well, suicide is easy up here.

What saved your life made you an exile. Even with horrific damage, they could regrow the nerves, but those nerves would atrophy in a gravity field. Only in zero-g would the new nerve cells hold out. Not worth the trouble if you couldn't do math today; they'd just harvest you for your organs and move on, but, if you had the aptitude, they'd make you a codeslinger if they could. Hack out a chunk of your brain, install the gateway that allowed instantaneous transfer to computers or other people with gateways. Family got a fortune and held a funeral just as if you were dead. And you were shipped off to space forever to work on one of the NOVA satellites, protecting their burgeoning organ growth and other zero-g industries from cyber espionage.

It still didn't seem real. Nothing did, not since a bullet blew through her brain and took away her life.

"It doesn't have to be hell, y'know." Lola said. "You're an athlete, right? Figure skater they told me. That may be hard to lose but there's great stuff about being in space, too. You can build a life for yourself if you want it."

"Like you did?"

Lola's smile was lopsided. "Yeah."

Midori chewed on that. The programming languages sent directly to her brain had actually interested her. Been almost fun. Not like skating, but not like drudgery either. And there were other codeslingers she liked. Michael, who had a good nature, and Alexai who was patient and smart, and who had come up in the same ship she had along with the rest of this load of scientists. But the other three! Simon was whiny and demanding, Brent arrogant and self-absorbed and Luke, well Luke was a total pervert.

"You could get hobbies. Bet you didn't have time for them before. Or a boyfriend. Men outnumber women by a sizeable margin up here. Can't have Kado, though. He's mine."

"Why is he trapped, too? Doesn't he rotate down like the other scientists and techs?"

"Gotta broken spine. Regrew it up here, mostly, though it's a little touch and go. Was one of the first using the nerve regrowth procedures. But that was before gateways."

"Pity," a soft voice said from the door.

"Kado!" Lola said with obvious delight, disengaging from the rubber bands and floating toward him, before narrowing her eyes. "Wait, how did you find me?"

"Tracker." Kado was spindly and long limbed with a boyish face of indeterminate age and vague expression. A lab coat floated about his person, with pockets stuffed. She saw several syringes. One foot and one hand were locked into handholds.

"Didn't I tell you not to track me?"

"Yes," he said, with no sign of contrition. And then, to Midori's shock, he wrapped himself around the short voluptuous Lola MacRoberts, pressing her against the wall as he gripped her spiky pink hair with his free hand and began kissing her with the kind of abandon Midori thought was limited to bedrooms.

When the kiss ended, Lola continued where she'd left off. "Where did you put it _this time_? You don't have to know where I am at all times."

Kado said nothing

"Damn it, Kado!"

"I love you." The words were simple and not charged with emotion, but Midori felt it to her toes as an onlooker. _Now_ , Lola was blushing.

"And the gateway doesn't bother you?" Midori found herself asking.

Kado looked up, but not directly at her, his fingers caressing the matte side of Lola's gateway. "Beautiful." He nodded, a smile on his lips. "Functional."

Lola smiled a warm and intimate smile, clearly for Kado but pointed at Midori. "Kado is a practical kind of guy. Now, lemme go and tell me why you came here."

"Webber."

" _God!_ "

On the one hand, Midori knew she was an outsider to a very close couple. On the other, she couldn't remember when last she had a conversation where she was included to this extent. So, she asked. "Who is Webber?"

"Dr. Mary Webber. Working on some of the more advanced drugs for Alzheimer's and the like," Lola said at once. "She's been up here almost as long as Kado, but she has to rotate dirtside every so often. All but have to drag her from the lab, kicking and screaming, each rotation and she gripes when she comes back. What is it this time?"

"Nothing," Kado said.

"Nothing? So why, no, wait. Did you mean nothing as in nothing's wrong or did you mean some other kind of nothing?"

"Other," Kado said. "Silent."

"Oh, that _is_ disturbing." Kado and Lola had fallen apart, but were still in close contact, each hanging on to handholds. "She's been back two days. Did you check on her, Kado?"

"Won't open."

"So you came to get me. Alright, let's go. Want to come along, Midori? Might as well get to know everyone. You'll be here a while."

Midori was inexplicably pleased at being invited to meet a difficult person. "Why did he come to find you?"

"Me, well, I'm kind of the data coordinator for all the NOVA space stations. I mean, on one hand I'm the keeper of the data for scientists, on and off ship, but someone has to run things up here and, since I can't write and keep up with changing code like you, that's what I do. So, I'm the only one who can break a lock on a lab."

Kado left, and Lola followed so Midori followed her. Kado moved as swiftly and surely as he was laconic, but she did notice his legs twitching and missing here and there, perhaps the side effect of his spinal injury. Lola moved well, too, not with grace, but with an economy of movement Midori couldn't help but envy.

Since the gym was situated in the lab section, they did not have to go far. Lola tried the hail, with no response, and the lock override on the keypad, which didn't work. Lola slid aside a panel and touched her gateway to the interface. Almost instantly, the door slid open.

Almost as instantly, Kado, his hand on his face, slammed the closed button and pushed them all away. The next second, Midori figured out why as she was engulfed by the hideous miasma of decaying flesh. Hurling in zero g is particularly unpleasant and she fought to keep from doing so. To her amazement—still without meeting her eyes—Kado handed her an airsick bag she presumed he retrieved from one of his many pockets. She took it gratefully, though just having it helped her beat back the urge. He swiped something that smelled sort of like mint and medicine over her lip—that helped with the smell.

"Wait here," Lola told her, searching in the bag slung on her back. She retrieved an odd contraption that looked like a flare gun. Surely not.

Kado stopped Lola when she would have gone back, and slipped a surgical mask over her face and handed her gloves. He was already wearing the same.

Did the man carry everything? "Is it true you carry jellyfish venom with you?"

Kado paused, his eyes looking up and to the side as if rummaging through the attic of his brain. "Not today." Midori decided that was more unnerving than if he'd said yes.

Because of the metal walls of the hallway and every room, Kado and Lola were easy to hear even from her spot away from the door. Lola did most of the talking, as Midori had already come to expect. "Eww. She's only been here two days. How can it smell so bad?"

"Gangrene."

"Gangrene? How did she pass her physical to come back here with gangrene?"

"Fresh."

"Fresh? Fresh gangrene, Kado? Are you teasing me? What the hell is fresh gangrene? Isn't that mutually exclusive? And what's this? She stabbed her eyes out? Is this what killed her? She sure was enthusiastic with the scalpel. And all these cuts on her arms and legs. I guess she could have bled out that way, too. Got some pads so we can clean up this up?"

"Save 'em."

"Yeah, I know. Think it's a disease? Is there one that makes you go mad?"

"Syphilis."

"Doesn't that take years? And they would have caught that groundside, Kado."

"Leprosy." Kado didn't sound like he was telling a joke. He had the deadpan tone down.

"Are you even trying? You don't stab yourself to death if you have leprosy and that takes years to show up. Yuck, look at her feet, totally nasty with gangrene."

"Dry gangrene."

"Fresh and dry gangrene? Are you pulling my leg?"

"Vasoconstriction."

"You're saying her limbs weren't getting enough blood so they started to rot? Why would you think that? Oh, because there should be lots more blood than this. I mean, it looks like it didn't start to really gush until she went after the eyes."

"Exactly."

Midori kept tight hold of the airsick bag. She might need it after all.

"You know, I'm getting the hang of this medical gig. Maybe I should get my degree, be a doc like you" Lola paused. "So, what do you think did it?"

"Autopsy." There was a pause. "Quarantine."

"Wait, you think it could be infectious? Communicable?"

There was a pause. "Don't know."

"Well, a quarantine won't work, Kado. She didn't pick up this nasty bug up here or we'd be the ones with gaping bloody sockets. All the people she was jammed nose to ass with in the ship coming here have made contact with those of us who weren't. The window of opportunity for quarantine has come and gone. Can you handle this alone?"

"Yes."

"Sorry you have to but I'd best gather the others and tell them not to get all stoic. If they feel the urge to gouge their eyes out, they should let us know so we can maybe talk 'em out of it. I'll be back. What's this? Yes, yes, I'll wipe down thoroughly. You be careful, Kado. I just now got you where I want you, so you'd better stick around."

There was another pause. "I will."

Lola stopped at the door, wiping her arms and exposed skin with wipes before bundling them inside her gloves and tying it off. "Let's go, Midori. That couldn't have been pleasant. On the other hand, you didn't have to meet Webber, so that has to be taken as a plus. They're getting lax with their physicals dirtside, that's all I've got to say. What did they do, check her out over the phone? How do you miss gangrene?"

"So, what happens now?" Midori asked "What did happen?"

"We don't know. Maybe she got sick dirtside and brought it up with her. Some things are more infectious than others, but, since we're all sealed into this tiny can, there's really no getting away from it if it is contagious. Could be the gangrene is from Type II Diabetes or something—though they should have caught that dirtside, too—and she just went nuts. There aren't many of us up here that are clinically sane so making the distinction between normal crazy and danger-to-herself-and-others is tricky, even if we had a psychiatrist. Though, of course, that should have been part of the screening dirtside. Damn it, they totally dropped the ball down there."

"So, what does that mean? I don't know anything about medicine, except, you know, sports injuries."

Lola, who'd been pulling herself along the hallway with her normal smoothness, paused and looked back at her. "It means we don't know what it means. And it means we won't have any idea what it means unless Kado finds something or someone else gets sick. And we have no idea how long that will take."

When Lola used a public address system and called everyone into the cafeteria, Midori was amazed at the response she got. The scientists were frankly disgusted they'd been dragged away for this and huffy at the suggestion they wouldn't know if something were wrong. The techs and other support staff looked a bit more scared but stayed quiet, nodding when Lola warned them to tell her if they had any unusual symptoms.

The codeslingers, however, were the ones that had the most unexpected reaction. Simon, Brent, and Luke, rather than panicking or getting angry as she'd expected, laughed and made crude jokes about the deceased scientist, something the other scientists clearly didn't care for. Michael, older than the rest, rolled his eyes and shook his head at their behavior. Alexai, to her surprise, shushed them and politely asked Lola to continue. Luke sneered, "Think your cold soul will keep your balls from rotting off?"

"People who delight in the pain and discomfort of others, especially those people who cannot escape, do so because they have no souls or no balls." Alexai, handsome as a model with electric blue eyes, spoke with a voice as hard as stone, then added in the ensuing silence. "I could ask which one applies but, truthfully, I suspect it's both."

Instead of silencing Brent and Simon, they just turned their crude teasing to Luke. The meeting broke up right afterwards.

Midori didn't see Kado the rest of the day or the morning of the next. Midori found herself shadowing Lola between their respective shifts not only because she was friendly but also because that seemed the best source of information. So, when Lola returned to the gym after her shift to workout, Midori joined her.

A horrible raucous alarm reverberated mid-stretch while she and Lola were working out, the LED lights flashing red then blue overhead.

Lola was out the door before Midori could untangle herself from Kado's contraption. When Midori attained the hall, she found Lola linked to the gateway interface on a nearby lab door. And, of course, Kado was there, too.

"Where?" he asked as she pulled away.

"Airlock, let's go." She pushed off powerfully from the wall and propelled herself down the corridor. Kado, without the push, was close behind her. Thrusting off handholds with feet and hands, they moved far swifter than Midori could manage, so she quickly lost sight of them. But she knew she was close when struck by another horrific smell. That almost smelled like . . . poop.

When Midori got to the airlock, she saw Alexai holding a scientist in a very strong headlock, his feet locked in a foot restraint, a tech pleading with that same scientist, and Kado flitting around sliding surgical masks on the various players—he and Lola were already wearing theirs. The scientist was screaming furiously and begging by turns, flailing his legs, which made it harder for Kado to slip the bag over his lower half and secure it around his waist, which helped measurably with the smell.

That was the odor, then: diarrhea. It was also why the scientist was both angry and desperate as he struggled to get to the bathroom. Except, he'd been heading to the airlock.

The scientist—not one she knew well enough to name—paused suddenly in his screaming and Kado, quick as thought, had an airsick bag to his face just in time to catch the spew. Kado never flinched. He must have a stomach of stone.

With his free hand, Kado struggled with a syringe he pulled from his pocket, stymied a bit because he couldn't pull the cap off with his teeth through the surgical mask but Lola helped him as Alexai held him steady. Kado pulled the guy's arm back and held it between his thighs then injected him in the vein.

"That wasn't jellyfish venom, was it, Kado?"

Kado peered closely at the expended syringe. "No."

"Shouldn't you check _before_ using it? Maybe color code them or something? Damn it, Kado!"

Alexai was feeling the scientist's pulse. "He appears to be unconscious. Will that preclude more vomiting?"

Kado shrugged.

Lola shook her head. "Let's get him to the infirmary and clean him up. Does he have a fever?"

"No," Alexai said.

"Not meningitis."

"Didn't you say there was no sign of infection in the bloodwork on Webber? Close as this is in time, seems like it's not an infection. Did you do a tox screen?" Lola asked.

"Interrupted."

"Find anything?"

"LSD." Kado said. "In her purse."

"Are you suggesting," the tech said, who'd been sobbing out her trauma, "that Dr. Polk took drugs? That's ridiculous!"

"Maybe some of the food is contaminated," said Lola, brow furrowed. "Obviously, something else is going on and it came with your arrival."

"Gangrene," Kado reminded her.

"Oh, shit, you're right, Kado. No way Webber got gangrene in a couple of days. That's not from LSD either, is it? Was she diabetic?"

Kado shook his head.

"Could it be the gangrene is something different than the insanity and tummy trouble? Could it be botulism?"

"Wrong symptoms."

"Wait, don't they sterilize the food before sending?" Midori asked, her skin prickling with fear.

"That kills germs that are active, like salmonella," Lola explained. "But doesn't kill toxins like botulism, though you can inactivate it with heat. So it has to be something else. But what? Look, Midori you and, um, Alexai, right?"

"Yes."

"Go to the stores and print out all the new supplies we got the other day as well as who has eaten what of them and bring them to us at the infirmary? You know where that is?"

"We'll follow you. We can check at the gateway at the lab, can't we?"

"Shit, yeah, you can. But then you'll need to track down people who might have eaten something that will make them sick. Can you do that? When we get to the infirmary, I'll announce to everyone not to eat anything from the new shipment."

Somehow, while carrying the unconscious Dr. Polk between them, Kado and Lola kept up a pace that Alexai and Midori could barely match. Even the tech was falling behind. Kado swung the doctor into the infirmary and began strapping him down, which was good since he was starting to show signs of life. Lola followed and plugged her head into a gateway at the station. "Plug in out there and check supplies," she shouted to them and the tech, wheezing now, squeezed past them into the infirmary. "Kado, what lab results are you wanting?"

"Spectrographic assay."

"Okay it's throwing lots of numbers at me. Did you set ranges?"

"Yes."

"So, looking for anything in red. Couple things yellow here and there but nothing, hey, what about this? Lysergic acid."

"Bingo."

"That's our contaminant?"

"LSD." Kado looked up from the now-mumbling form of Dr. Polk. "But, something . . ." Kado flicked the cap off an empty syringe and jammed it into Dr. Polk's arm, drawing blood. "Run this," he said, handing a bandaid to the tech to slap over the puncture wound.

"You do it. I'm still looking at results. I'm guessing you don't think Polk takes LSD? So, is there something else that has that signature?"

"Yes."

"Hey, kids, you got anything out there?"

Alexai was the one pressed to the interface. "All the standard victuals are untouched in storage, to be brought out when the current stores are used up."

"Could it be something gone bad in our existing stores," Midori asked.

Lola was still on her interface. "I'm not seeing anything that looks like infection, no other unusual chemicals. And the timing's a little too perfect. Look at the crew preference packages. Most crew can choose special favorite foods to come up that doesn't go through the normal process and rigor. Y'know, like candy bars or—wait, what did Webber bring up? The timing fits. Her stash would become public property after her death."

"Spun honey, chipotle mayonnaise, whole grain rye bread, gourmet pastrami." Alexai said. "Sounds disgusting. I hate rye."

"Me, too, but the others this morning were acting like someone brought them ambrosia. Could it be the mayonnaise? Could it have gone bad?" Midori asked.

"No one else ate it," Alexai said.

Kado was watching the screen on the machine where he fetched the blood sample. "Bread! Eureka!"

Lola jerked her head back. "The bread? Really? Who had the bread, Alexai?"

"Dr. Polk, Dr.Patel and . . ."

"At least three codeslingers," Midori finished. "Brent, Simon and Luke."

Lola was back on the interface. "What about Michael? He's on shift. So what is it?"

"No bread for Michael," Alexai said.

"Well that's something. Kado, why do we think the bread's suspect?"

"Ergot."

"Ergot, got it, ergotism. Toxin related to LSD, so same signature. Made from fungus on grain, particularly rye. Can cause delusions, tummy trouble, spasms and, over time, gangrene as extremities lose circulation. Wonder if it combines with LSD to be extra bad?"

"Wouldn't it bake out of the bread?" Midori asked.

"Toxin is what gets you, not the fungus. Fungus dies. Toxins live on. Alexai, put a restriction on all of Webber's foods, including the bread. Let's not take chances. Let's go round up the stragglers before they hurt themselves. You, tech, what's your name?"

"Suzy Miller."

"You look after Dr. Polk. Hopefully, the toxin will wear off without other ill effects if he doesn't go nuts. There are some antiseptic wipes in the cabinet, a gown and some diapers if you need them." Kado placed two air sick bags in her hand. Kado and Lola joined them right outside the door. "That leaves four more to track down. I don't want anyone to try to tackle them on their own. Midori, why don't you come with me and Kado you go with Alexai."

"No." Kado's single syllable left no room for argument.

"Damn it, Kado, they're both newbies. Fine, you stubborn nut. At least, give them some anesthesia. And look at them this time, no poison by mistake." Kado obediently fished out two syringes, gave them to Alexai.

Alexai inspected them. "They say, SP, is that correct? What's the dosage?"

"1000mg."

"Sodium pentathol, Kado? Okay, that'll work. Won't last long, though, and you've got to get it into a vein, don't just stab 'em randomly. Can you give someone reluctant an IV injection? Like you mean it?"

"Yes. I worked my way through college as an EMT," said Alexai.

"Good. Midori, you've got to help hold em down so he can inject them. Might be tough, you might need to talk them down if they're really wild. And, after you've injected them, get them back here quickly. Won't last very long, ten minutes at the outside, so stick 'em and bring 'em back quick. Don't have enough beds, but you there are enough restraints. Got any idea where to find them?"

Alexai sighed. "I know where Luke likes to hang out. And Brent is probably in the gym."

"That's right. He goes after I finish my post-shift workout, and I would be about done. If he's not there now, he will be shortly unless. . . . Well, be as quick as you can. We'll get Dr. Patel and then see if we can track Simon down. Let's go."

Inside the infirmary, Dr. Polk began to screech as his tech tried to soothe him.

Midori followed Alexai, who moved with alacrity back toward the airlock. "Where does Luke, er, hang out? He's got a—wait!"

Luke's smarmy cackle reached them as he slipped, with every appearance of cheerfulness, his naked self into the airlock, his hand busy on his exposed penis.

Midori pushed off as she saw Lola and Kado do, shooting forward, and caught him by the elbow of his busy arm. "Stop, Luke, you're hallucinating!"

Luke just braced against the inside of the airlock and nearly dragged her in with him since she was unanchored. Alexai literally shoved his body between, also pushing against the outside of the airlock so he couldn't be pulled in as well. "She's not going with you, Luke."

"Party pooper!" Luke said, still laughing maniacally. "Guess I get the fun to myself. Dickhead!" He kicked Alexai, sending them both tumbling, and closed the airlock, still laughing.

Alexai and Midori detangled themselves and slammed themselves against the airlock, trying to get him to listen, but he just laughed, and kept laughing until he pushed the button that evacuated the chamber and set him drifting out to space.

"Shit," Alexai said, with feeling. "He was a total dick but I didn't want him to die."

Midori was already heading back to the lab section. "Let's get Brent before he does something stupid."

Alexai said nothing as they pushed themselves down the corridor toward the gym. She liked that he was quiet in much the same way she liked that Lola was not. "Thank you for saving me."

"No one's taking anyone else with them, not on my watch. Not his fault, but I won't let innocent people get killed." He said that with such fierceness, she thought there must be more to it, but Alexai said nothing else.

When they neared the gym, Midori heard Brent before she saw him, his sobbing leaking out as noise so readily did with the metal walls. "When we get in," Alexai whispered, "make sure you're always holding a handhold. He's bigger and stronger than either of us, but he doesn't have the edge if he's not anchored. Just stay calm."

Midori nodded and slipped through the door. Brent was curled in the corner, sobbing. Brent was a large man, maybe 180-185 cm, with arms bristling with lean muscles wrapped around his knees. Her 143 cm body never felt so tiny. Midori approached him cautiously, always maintaining a hold on a handhold as she moved along the wall. "What's wrong, Brent?"

Brent shifted as she approached, his face a study in misery and suspicion. "Get back. I know you hate me, too. I'm going to die, I know it. My hands are burning."

"I don't hate you," she said, inching closer then froze as she saw the oversized knife in his hand, some sort of survival blade.

"You hate me. Everyone hates me. I can't help it. I didn't want to be a codeslinger, trapped forever in this bloody sardine can. Never to run or walk again. Never to _swim_ again. Do you know what that means? To never to swim again? That was my _life_. Everything I was was in that pool."

Midori knew Alexai was also approaching, so she tried to keep him focused on her, scooting just a little closer. "Oh, I _get_ it. No one you have ever met gets it like I do. I was an ice skater, three time world champion. Guaranteed to go to the Olympics this year. But, when I won the gold medal, the angry American who got silver shot me, leaving me for dead or codeslinging. No more playing in the surf or lying in the sun. No more gardens and rainstorms. And never—never—will I fly over the ice again, leap and soar like a bird with only that tiny stream of water beneath the blade to keep me from taking wing. I _get it_."

"It's not the same. You're _lying_. You're just saying that because you knew I made the Olympic swimming team."

"I didn't know you made it. I didn't know you were an athlete though I can see it now. Talk to me, Brent. Put the knife down."

"It doesn't _go_ down, see?" Brent left it floating in front of him. "Nothing goes down. Nothing makes sense here. Everything's crazy and upside down and locked inside metal walls with every damn thing the same. I can't take it."

"Brent, let me help you."

"No!" And he snatched the knife and brandished it in her face. She could see her own face reflected in his gateway, pixie face, chin length straight black hair, eyes wide with fear, the scar that crept from her hair nearly to the edge of her gateway. "Maybe I'll take all of us with me. Maybe NOVA will give up on space if we're all dead and no one will get branded with this monstrosity again." He banged the knife on his gateway.

He waved it again, and there was something in the desperation in his eyes that made her move. She knocked his hand away, and careened into him, holding him against the wall with her hand on a handhold. Then she pressed her gateway to his. "See me, _know_ I'm telling the truth. That's what it is to skate, to fly, to defy gravity and soar on the ice. Can you feel it?" She lived it so he could live it, too.

"Yeah," Brent said in a voice of awe. Midori felt Alexai move beside her, take Brent's knife arm.

"Now I have to find new dreams, new ways to soar just as you do. It won't be easy, but I'm going to try. Will you try with me?"

"Yeah," he said, as his eyes closed and his consciousness disappeared on her gateway.

"That was foolhardy," Alexai offered.

"Maybe. But it worked. One less corpse. Let's get him to the infirmary."

Lola and Kado were there with a babbling Dr. Patel going through the periodic table to himself, trussed up on the wall.

"Haven't been able to find Simon, but Patel didn't give us any problems. Any luck?"

"We lost Luke to the airlock. Will probably need to clean it," Alexai said as he did the same trussing to Brent. "Couldn't get to him in time. And Brent is just sad, probably not that different than normal."

"Pity about Luke but, no offense, he was a total shit. So, that just leaves Simon. Any ideas where we might find him?"

Midori found her eyes prick with tears. "You're awfully damn callous. We just saw a human being die."

"Yeah, I've seen half a dozen up here, most of 'em by choice. Some people can't take it, can't do it. You can't stop 'em from taking the airlock if that's what they want."

Alexai shook his head. "Not sure he wanted it, but he left happy."

"Well, that's something. Any ideas about Simon?"

The PA came on. "Alright, you losers. Just so you know, _I'm_ in charge now. So, this time _I'm_ imposing Protocol 3 and there's nothing you nancies can do about it. Shuttin' down everything. Then, as soon as I can figure out how to make it work, I'll be turning off the air conditioning and such and I'll watch y'all choke to death as I laugh my ass off. Or maybe there's a self-destruct in this aluminum oversized coffin."

"Shit, he's in my office. Kado, let's go."

Alexai and Midori followed. "Midori might be able to help. She talked Brent down," Alexai said, keeping pace better now. He seemed to pick up the knack and Midori copied him, though he had some length on her.

"Good, we'll go in first and see if we can defuse the situation.

"Don't like it," said Kado.

"You come right behind and, if he gets violent, you can get involved. Not sure Alexai can fit in. Damn it, I left my goo gun who-knows-where."

"I'll be backup," Alexai said calmly.

"Okay, here we are. Bastard's locked it, but I'm the only level one gateway. Nothing outranks me. Be prepared in case he tries something when I open the door."

The door opened at the touch of Lola's gateway, and she slipped in, Midori on her heels.

Simon, his face twisted by madness and fear, lunged, some strange object in his hand. "You won't touch me again, you homicidal bitch!" But Kado slid his body between, holding firm by way of two handholds even as his body was wracked with convulsions.

"That prick found the taser! Kado!" Lola screeched.

But Kado either wouldn't or couldn't let go so they couldn't reach Simon with Kado in the way. Looking around Kado's quivering body, she saw Alexai shoot himself into the room, knocking Simon against the wall with a heavy thud. He slapped the taser from Simon's hand and held him in a headlock, not unlike what he used before.

Levelheaded Lola was crying and slapping Kado's face, calling his name, but he hadn't yet reacted. "Let me do that, Lola."

"You can't have him. He's mine!"

"I know. But you're the only one who can undo whatever Simon did to the system. Get it straightened out before something irreversible happens. Alexai's got him."

Lola blinked at her, as if the idea was burrowing into her brain manually. Kado chose that moment to cough and shake his head. "Bastard," he muttered, touched Lola's wet face lovingly, then turned to where Alexai had Simon. Midori nudged Lola over to the workstation where Lola dutifully used her gateway, but, whatever she was up to on the station, she wasn't letting up on Kado. "How many times do I have to tell you, Kado, to stop protecting me? I've had more combat training than you and if you get yourself killed on account of me, I will _never_ forgive you. Don't you remember what I told you last time?"

"Yeah," Kado growled, pulling Simon's arm and a syringe out. With no gentleness, he jabbed the needle into the vein and plunged the plunger. When Simon sagged, he tossed the capped syringe.

"What was that, Kado? You didn't kill him, did you?"

"I did."

Alexai retrieved the needle. "Says SP."

Kado slapped his own head. "Wrong syringe."

Lola, apparently finished, turned off the station and grabbed Kado, shaking him with her legs locked around her seat for leverage. "You can't just kill people because they threaten me, got it? And he's not sane. He's been poisoned. Let's get 'em back to the infirmary so they can sleep this off."

And, just like that, it was over.

As if nothing had happened, Midori fell into her routine, worked out most days with Lola, talked to Kado when she met him, though she did most of the talking, got more comfortable with programming and her coworkers now that Luke was out of rotation. There was some awkwardness with Simon and Brent, but Simon got over it quickly. Brent, Brent was quiet.

So, she went to find him in the gym after Lola retired with Kado. Brent eyed her warily when she came in. "I guess I should apologize."

She shook her head. "I wasn't lying. I _do_ get it. But I believe we can make a life here. Want to try it with me?"

"Yeah."

Midori smiled, for perhaps the first time since she started her second life.

Kismet

_Damn brat_ , Wayne thought, glaring at her through the cracked windshield of the '78 Ford pickup his old man had promised to fix up two summers before

Today she was wearing pink— _pink_ —from the bow in her white-blonde curls to the pink and white knee socks and her pink and blue sneakers. Probably wore pink panties underneath the ruffled skirt, though she seemed to have shorts on, too, so he never saw them. Playing in her pristine yard, on her fancy wooden playset with no-fucking-kidding rubber mulch underneath it so she wouldn't bruise her little pink ass.

Nuthin' too good for Princess Abby.

He felt a trickle of something down his back and jerked around on the cushions to make sure he wasn't bleeding on the seats. He had to bite down on a yelp, as his tender back scraped a torn part of the upholstery. There'd be hell to pay if he stained 'em. Didn't matter that they were already stained with sweat and likely puke and everything else besides, that they were torn up by what looked like wild animals. His old man was always on the edge these days, ready to lash out over any damn thing.

He used the hem of his ratty t-shirt to wipe his face, sweat, old tears and snot, though he pretended it was just sweat. Summer was brutal and the truck was hotter'n hell.

Summers weren't so bad before his dad got fired. Now his old man was around all day, only leavin' for one shithole bar or another, coming home drunk every night, if not in the morning, ready for any reason to beat the shit out of someone. This morning it was him.

The girl's laugh floated through the open window and he sneered. Bet that little brat never felt the wrong end of a belting. Bet she never got backhanded into the wall and left to bleed on the floor while the old man went back to his dinner. Bet her mother wouldn't prim up her lips and look the other way while his father whaled the tar out of her only child. Hag was likely grateful it wasn't her taking the beating this time.

Bitch.

Brat was playing with her cat— _a cat!_ Who plays with a cat? Never saw her dress the cat up or nuthin', but the cat was always following at her heels like a dog or on her shoulders on the swing, even fetching little cloth toys. The cat was freaky weird. It was scrawny and black with long legs, long tail, and huge yellow eyes too big for its face. Damn thing looked more like a spider than a cat.

"Abby, come in. It's time for lunch."

"Okay, Mama. C'mon, Kismet!"

That's right, _Mama_ , keep that eye out for Abby through the window. Someone was always watching out for Abby. Precious pink Abby.

But it reminded Wayne he'd best get to the gas station and get the old man's smokes. His old man was in a drunken stupor now, but if woke up and Wayne didn't have his "cigs," Wayne was in for another beating. A bad one.

He scooted out of the truck gingerly so he wouldn't make any noise. Even so, he hadn't made it to the gate before he heard the screen door slam at Abby's house. He turned in surprise to see Abby's mom beckoning him.

Wary but curious, he stepped up to the chain link fence that separated their property and said, "What do you want? I wasn't hurtin' nuthin'." He tugged at his ratty shirt, scrubbed his arm under his nose. He tried to look nonchalant, but he had always thought Abby's mother was just a little too pretty. And she was as color coordinated as the brat—navy scrunchy holding back her blonde hair, navy shirt— _with dots!_ —navy shorts, even navy Keds.

The woman bit her lip, pink and pretty. "I know that, Wayne. It's just, I've noticed you when Abby's outside."

"No harm sitting in m'own yard," he muttered.

"No, Wayne. I know that. It's just . . ." She reached to touch his cheek which surprised him and angered him though he didn't yet know why. He slapped her hand away. "Are you okay, Wayne? If you're in trouble, if you've been hurt, if you need someone to stand up for you, you can call me."

Shock kept him rooted to the ground, kept him from lashing out at her. She was _pitying_ him? She with her little perfect husband and precious pink girl and tidy little house, she was feeling _sorry for him_? Oh, Hell no! He wasn't pitiful! He was freakin' powerful and someday even that bastard drunkard he called his old man would know it. But no dainty little bitch in her matching navy clothes was going to look down on him! She didn't know nuthin' 'bout nuthin'. She was lucky he hadn't never shown her what real pain was, never showed her real danger, her or her little girl.

The woman pulled back her hand with real sorrow in her eyes that made his stomach roil. As if his old man beating him wasn't humiliation enough. He couldn't say anything or he'd lose it, and, if he slapped the neighbor's wife around, the cops would come by. The old man wouldn't like that.

"I didn't mean to upset you," she said, biting her lip again. He wished she'd draw blood. He wanted to draw it for her. "I just wanted you to know there's help if you need it."

"I'm _fine_ ," he bit out through clenched teeth. "I don't need nuthin' from you."

He stomped away, before she saw his hatred. Before she saw the rage singing in his blood. Before she felt his _power_.

He was gone much longer than he should have been, wandering some of the streets behind the gas station, hoping to come across a stray dog. No such luck. Not for a week.

His old man was still snoring on the couch in a drunken funk, tank top stained and sweaty, stupid worn boxers, one sock on. He didn't look frightening then, all unshaven and sloppy, this thick lips snoring enough to peel paint. Almost, almost, Wayne wanted to chance it.

Thing is, whatever Wayne did would have to take the old man out first shot. He was old and turned to flab, but he worked construction for thirty years. Wayne was still in his gangly stage. If his old man was awake and pissed, Wayne couldn't take him. Not yet.

Wayne left the smokes on the coffee table and stumbled into the kitchen, still seething. When the old hag, faded and colorless like a ghost of a real person, told him to get the trash out to the curb, he welcomed the chance and hauled the bag out to the beaten metal container in the back yard. And tried to get control of his rage.

He wanted to take out his father but he wouldn't try it until he knew— _knew_ —he could take the old man, make sure the old man knew it, too. He ran through every expletive he knew. Twice. He was enraged, frustrated, still steeped in humiliation that _anyone_ had power over him. He wanted to make his father pay, for whipping him bloody, sniveling snot and whimpering despite his best efforts. He wanted to strangle his mother since she just let it happen, pretended not to see it, not just this time but _every_ time. He had to do something, he felt, _something_ or he'd eat himself alive with his fury and shame.

As he bent to retrieve the fallen cover, something brushed against his calves, startling a yelp from him. He turned, cover held high in his hands, to a gangly cat of dense black and two huge golden eyes too large for its face. And a fucking purple sparkly collar. With a bell for Chrissakes.

Abby's cat.

Perfect.

***

He should be enjoying this. He _should_ be feeling elation, power, ultimate control over something else that made him more than human, almost a god.

He _should_ feel that way. He'd felt it so many times, that sense of omnipotence that made him forget his stinging shoulders and back where he'd been whipped, that made him forget the tears he couldn't stop himself from shedding while the belt scored him, that made him forget that someone else had power over him. When he had a living creature under his complete control, not just life and death, but pain and fear, it was electrifying.

Or should be.

Cats were so stupid. He hated cats

Dogs . . . dogs would whimper, cry, snarl, then look on you in defeat, fear and surrender in their eyes. Of course, you had to kill 'em somewhere quiet because they were so noisy, but it was always worth the trouble. They knew they were mastered.

Cats . . . cats never "got" it. They'd fight and fuss and scratch. They refused to know who owned them until they were dead. Shoulda left the damn thing be, stupid cat.

Damn cat, he should be feeling _great_ by now. He should feel _wonderful_. Cat hadn't put up a fuss or nuthin', let him tie it up, stash that stupid collar in his pocket to get rid of later. The damn thing didn't so much as peep when he started cuttin'. Just stared at him with those freaky yellow eyes as he shredded its ear then cut off its tail. The smell of blood, that usually made him all but cum in his pants, just made him queasy as the cat stared at him, eyes not angry or begging. They were pitying him, just like Abby's mother. The fuckin' thing was staring from a growing pool of its own gore, its breath wheezing out painfully as its body started shutting down, and it was feeling _sorry for him_.

_He_ was supposed to be the one with power, not this stupid animal who refused to be broken.

It was too much. He pried out one eye to stop the glare, but the other one stared at him, no longer pitying, at least, but not cowed neither. And somehow he couldn't bring himself to attack the eye until the rasping breathing . . . finally . . . came to an end. The eye didn't stop staring, blaming him, refusing to admit _he_ was the victor. Not angry, not scared.

Defiant.

"Fuck this!" he hissed, shoving the cat off the upended laundry basket he'd used for an operating table and into the waiting trash bag. The smell of shit and cat piss mocked him with their pungency. He'd have to hose it down, but not until that cat had been left on the curb with the rest of the trash.

He'd wiped down his hands with baby wipes and then tossed them in the bag before closing it, then shuffled out of the back shed, dumping the bag in the can and hoping no one would see him.

No such luck.

It would have to be Abby, the nosy brat from next door, who was poking around her front yard in her pink outfit, looking behind bushes and under the porch. Her bronzed face and bare legs suddenly made her seem older than eight years. Her skin was smooth and unblemished without so much as scab on them—which pissed him off. God he hated that brat. Not ugly, not tainted, not angry, not lonely, actually wanted and watched over—he couldn't count the number of times he'd wanted to try his skills on her instead of some stupid pet, see how long he could keep her alive, how long she'd scream, how long she'd whimper, how long she'd beg. His heart pounded with the thought and his pants stiffened, as his job with the cat had failed to do. Yes, that would really be something, but he didn't have to look to know her mother was watching through the window. Someone was _always_ watching out for Abby.

Eight years old and still hovered over like a baby.

"Have you seen my cat? Kismet?" she asked, oblivious to the lust for mayhem singing through his blood.

"I ain't seen your dumb cat." Maybe pets just weren't enough for him. He found his euphoria now just thinking about how her face would pucker and cry if he told her he'd killed that hideous cat, killed it slow.

Abby pouted. "He's pretty and black with golden eyes and a purple collar. You sure you haven't seen him?"

"I ain't seen 'im," he said, giving her head a shove, not quite smacking it into the mailbox. His other hand fingered the collar in his pocket, halfway hoping the bell would sound, but the pocket muffled it. "Who cares about your stupid cat anyway?"

Behind him, he heard the screen door open. _Gotta keep control,_ he told himself. _Not now. Not yet._

"Kismet is not stupid!" she said, pinking up. "He's special! He's the cat of fate. Mama said he'll protect me, that he'll make sure I'm not alone. You'll see!"

The thought of that cat, currently in pieces in the can he just left at the curb, made Wayne want to giggle like a loon. Some protection!

His voice squeaked with suppressed laughter. "Go on, git," he said "Your mom wants you inside."

Abby, her face red with anger, opened her mouth to argue. "Abby!" her mother said from the door.

"He _is_! You'll see!" Abby insisted, walking backwards toward her beckoning mother.

His laughter evaporated. Damn uppity brat. She'd learn about pain when she realized her kitty cat was gone forever. About damn time. He just wished he could be the one to tell her. "Good luck with proving anything with that cat," he muttered under his breath, feeling the first satisfaction he'd felt all day.

But it was the last satisfaction, too. He slept like shit that night, not just because his body still ached from the beating, but because, whenever he closed his eyes, that one yellow eye stared back at him and jerked him back awake.

He ran through his morning chores without a whipping or a scolding for once. As soon as the chance offered, he escaped, then stopped to laugh seeing Abby walking the neighborhood—all in purple this time down to the gray and purple sneakers—knocking on doors, asking about her stupid cat that would never come back. Her mother, of course, went with her.

Not satisfying, maybe, but it lightened his mood further as he scrambled out behind Lee's place to hang with his buds all afternoon. But that kid wandering, looking for the cat, kept crawling across his brain and it distracted him. And when it wasn't that brat, it was that cat staring at him with its one eye. After seeing one or the other every time he closed his eyes, he could hardly choke down the stolen beer that tasted like piss in his mouth or stand the pilfered cigarettes that smelled like cat shit.

When he moved wrong, the collar in his pocket bumped his hip, sometimes with a soft tinkle. He meant to toss it out, here in the woods where he'd be sure he'd never find it again, but he didn't want his buddies to see him with a stupid prissy collar or, worse, thinking it upset him somehow.

And every time he turned around, whether he was laughing, telling a story, just thinking, hell, taking a piss against a fence post, he could feel eyes on him. Well, one eye, but when he turned back, there was nothing there. And when he jerked around to see it, the collar always bumped him.

Maybe he was getting sick.

When he got home in the wee hours, more nauseous than drunk with the bitter brews, he thought he'd gather his thoughts in the shed before sneaking up the tree and into his room through the window. He didn't need another beating.

He'd half decided he was going to have to move on from pets. Especially cats. He knew who he really wanted under the knife, but he hadn't figured out how to pull it off. Yet.

He reached for the light's pull chain and gave it a yank, but no dice. Great. The moon came in fitfully through a dirty window, but the place still was full of shadows he didn't need.

Mew

He nearly broke his own head on the shovel sticking out of the barrel as he whipped around. He searched the shadows. Nothing. Shoulda barfed up all that beer. Probably gone bad or something.

Mew

He kept from hurting himself this time, but he could swear the sound came from somewhere else. He banged on stuff, hoping to scare it off or locate it, until he realized he'd be in a world of trouble if his old man heard him. If he was home. Shoulda checked the garage.

Mew

There! A single yellow eye staring at him from behind the watering can.

Mew

He advanced on the eye, but _that_ mew definitely came from behind him. He turned again and something rubbed against his legs from behind. He couldn't turn around fast enough to see it but there was another yellow eye, glaring from the broken window pane. And on the work bench. And beside the mower.

He grabbed the shears, but, when he would have lunged, those furry monsters tripped him, not one but hundreds of cats, all teeth and claws and yellow eyes. No growling, no hissing, just silent pain slashing from every direction, their eyes gleaming in the dim light. Maybe he hit one or two, but he found himself helpless, unable to move when he spotted the black cat, sitting poised and peaceful, in the windowsill. Defiant. Pitying. Leaving him to his fate.

***

When Abby went out to pick strawberries from the backyard pots in the morning, she could almost have sworn she heard something like a whimper or some other sound from the neighbor's back yard. It wasn't the first time and she tried not to think about it. Mama said there was something off about the neighbors. She didn't know what "off" was but Abby always felt something strange, too. Daddy said Mama had the sight. Abby didn't know what that was, either, but Abby knew the neighbors didn't feel _right_.

They were always angry, especially the man, with his big face, always red, his nostrils flaring, his cheeks shiny with sweat. The woman was just the opposite, hair graying, cheeks faded, eyes colorless. And the boy! Abby _shuddered_.

Abby bet that boy knew what happened to Kismet. He looked like he was lying, not looking right at her when she talked to him. He always did that when she saw him.

A soft jingle caught her attention. Abby wiped her hands on the towel—Mama hated when she wiped her dirty hands on her shorts—and turned toward the fence that separated her yard from the neighbor's

A kitten, gray and black stripes with a white underside, slipped through the chain link. It jingled slightly as it walked, the bell on its sparkly purple collar sounding. Its face was dirty and it gripped something between its tiny sharp teeth.

Abby knew that collar

Abby dropped the basket and squatted beside the kitten, who regarded her calmly with large blue eyes and a tail up in a friendly way. Her fingers found the collar and noted the name on it—"Kismet."

"Guess Kismet isn't coming back." She wasn't sure how she knew that, but the kitten clearly had Kismet's collar, several sizes too big. Tears stung her eyes, but the kitten leapt up on to her knee and began to purr.

Abby wiped the kitty's face with a towel, pleased that all the dirt or whatever came off. She didn't want to know what the pale scrap of something—not cloth but something slimy and cold—was in its mouth, so she grabbed it with the towel, then, still holding it in the cloth, flung it over the fence, nearly sending her towel with it. She shuddered again and told herself those had not been black hairs on it.

The kitten weaved between her feet, purring, rubbing its head against her ankles.

Strawberries and basket forgotten, Abby gathered up the kitten, suddenly positive Kismet had sent the kitten to her, making sure she wasn't alone, making sure she was safe. Best not to think of her neighbor right now, or what Kismet had had to do.

It's not good to mess with fate.

Best Laid Plans

Ugh.

The only thing worse than feeling sick with a cold or flu when you had to go to class was being sick on your one day off in three weeks, the first day where you didn't have to work and didn't have classes since the new year started. The blurred vision, the raw throat, the constant dripping of a nose that no amount of bedside tissues could tame, combined with an aching body and chills meant that she would not be enjoying her day off at all.

So unfair.

It was probably the brats at daycare. They were always dripping snot and wiping it on sleeves, on their hand, on every surface in the room, including herself. Ellie sighed and rolled around under the covers, contemplating getting up to get medicine, then decided not to brave the chilly floor, or, for that matter, standing up.

She loved the little monsters—sweetness and elbows and cuddles and tantrums and all—but she had no idea when she took the job how draining it would be to work with them three days a week and babysitting most weekends. Nor was she prepared for the constant bombardment of germs.

She should have seen this coming. She shouldn't have put off her flu shot—and she wanted to be a pharmacist! She'd felt the tickle in her throat last night and should have skipped the party with her friends, but _he_ was there.

It's not like she thought she had a chance with the dreamy Alex. He was the rising star of the pre-med program which would have gotten him plenty fangirling even if he wasn't also the star of the diving team, using his sports scholarship there to get him a career with a future. Saying he was beautiful was a gross understatement, and everyone in the various science departments and half the girls in physical education departments (and a growing fan base that never missed a diving meet) were ready to swoon over him at any given moment. The only reason she saw him as much as she did is that her first year roommate, Andrea, happened to be his twin sister, so their friendship had definitely furthered her crush. Andrea gushed about what a great person he was, and Ellie seen him take care of his sister when she got drunk (an all too common occurrence), seen him helping other people with moving or homework or you name it so Ellie thought it was true. But Alex always seemed tight-lipped around Ellie.

Two and a half years of hopelessly pining after the unattainable was enough. He'd graduate next year—as would Ellie—so Ellie had determined, January first, she'd wean herself off her fruitless obsession. And she'd done so for three weeks as she'd worked and studied herself to death. That isn't to say she hadn't seen him—since she was going into pharmaceuticals, they had several classes in common—but she'd been steadfast in avoiding other social functions where she might see him. Or maybe that was just her ridiculous schedule.

But her starving, suffering, soon-to-be-sniffling soul had faltered when Andrea had called her up and suggested a night out prior to her first day off since before the new year had started, suggested as in all but dragged her by the hair. Andrea was a force to be reckoned with.

Ellie threw the blankets off her head in horror as more of the previous evening returned to her. She'd taken some precautionary cold medicine so hadn't planned to drink anything alcoholic, but, her original orange juice had been consumed unnoticed when Alex came over to talk to her, and someone had replaced her empty glass with a tequila sunrise. She didn't even notice the swap until she had reached the grenadine. She was a lightweight when it came to alcohol under the best of circumstances, but, more than that, her body reacted violently to tequila which she never knowingly drank. About the time she realized her orange juice had been replaced with something alcoholic, her body went into its normal violent rejection of all things tequila-ish. She barely made it to the thankfully uncrowded ladies' room in time, then spent several miserable minutes regurgitating spiked orange juice.

Ellie threw her blanket back over head as the rest of the night spilled into her consciousness in nauseating detail. She'd stumbled back out of the ladies' only to confront her idol whose concern turned quickly to censure of her drinking habits. Her hot denial was ruined when her body found another small pocket of tequila inside and reacted with no warning, all over them both.

The rest of the disastrous evening was a blur. She thought there was more yelling by Alex, though she was hazier on the reason and had a vague memory of flying that somehow resulted in her being returned to her own bed. Wait! How did that happen?

She sat straight up in bed and her head reeled. Somehow, she was certain Alex was involved. She wasn't the kind of lightweight just anyone could carry. And _someone_ had tucked her into bed. Was she still wearing her puked on clothes? No. Someone had stripped them off and put her in her "sexiest" clothes, a black cotton camisole and boy cut panties. With big pink dots.

She fell back into the bed and smushed her pillow over her head. With any luck, the flu would kill her. She hadn't been wearing them under her clothes so someone had put them on her. If it was Alex, she might as well die right now.

A knock sounded on her door. She toyed briefly with feigning being dead already and then gave up. There wasn't much left to make the matter worse. "Come in," she croaked.

Naturally, it had to be Alex walking in balancing a bowl on a text book while carrying a glass of juice in the other hand.

"I am so so _so_ sorry," Ellie said before he could even open his mouth. "I am not a crazy drunk person. I just—"

But Alex set the glass down and lifted a hand for silence. "Andrea told me. Said you were feeling poorly but she talked you in to coming and didn't know someone had switched out your OJ with a real drink. I gave everyone a stern talking to when I realize someone had slipped you a drink, then Andrea gave them another when she realized it was tequila. She says there's something in tequila you're allergic to so it makes you throw up, or so I gathered from the way she was yelling at them."

Ellie didn't think she had ever seen Alex say so many sentences at one time, at least not to her. "I'm so sorry I threw up on you."

"It will probably be the first of many times," Alex assured her, then blushed as she protested. "No, wait, sorry. I didn't mean you'd throw up on me more. I mean I'm planning to be a doctor, so I'll likely be thrown up on a lot. Here, I made some soup."

"Seriously? Thanks." She repositioned herself so the soup and book were on her lap.

"Yeah, well, I just heated it up, but you've got to eat something with this medicine," he fished pills from his shirt pocket. Not the same shirt from the night before, she noticed. "Oh!" and from another pocket, he pulled out an electronic thermometer. "Let me check your temperature. I didn't realize until you fainted last night but you had a fever."

Ellie glanced down at her clothes, but figured there was no sense acting modest now. "Have you been here all night?

"What? Yeah, I mean no, well, yeah, but—" He blushed a lot for a college idol. He took a deep breath. "Yes, I brought you home in your car and Andrea came in mine. She got you cleaned up and I ran home for a change myself, then let her take my car home while I stayed here. On the couch. In case you needed help."

Well, that explained her sexiest underwear. Andrea had known about her crush a long time. "Wow! That's so kind of you."

To her amazement, Alex blushed again, going from pink to nearly red. "Well, I've—I've kind of had a thing for you for a long time, so when I didn't see you much this year, I was really glad you came last night. Then I yelled at you when you were sick, which is the last thing I wanted to do, and I just couldn't let things go without apologizing and explaining it to you."

" _You_ have a thing for _me_?"

"Is—is that wrong?"

So, was she breaking her resolution if it wasn't entirely unrequited? Ah, hell, who cares? This cold might just be the best damn thing that happened all year. "Nothing wrong with it at all. I've had a thing for you, too."

Nightmare Blanket

Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, double stitch, double stitch. The slim worn needle worked, in and out, grab and pull, weaving a web of delicate pink yarn as soft as silk and as dainty as lace. The fingers were gnarled, no strangers to arthritis, the skin dark and the touch sure. In and out, grab and pull, chain, chain and turn.

She bent over on her rocking chair, neck aching, feet and fingers chilled despite the space heater. The wind howled and shook her window, and her lamp shuddered, but her fingers never stopped moving. In and out, grab and pull, stitch, stitch, stitch.

She was tired—so tired—but the baby went home early and they needed her blanket by tomorrow. Stitch, stitch, stitch. Marnie always used the softest yarn, acrylic with a pearly sheen, though the girl would never see its cheery color, would never feel the softness. The style was beautiful but quick to make, useless for keeping warm, but that baby would never be warm again, lost too young to leukemia.

In truth, the blanket wasn't for her, but for the parents who would have to bury her, a nightmare talisman to soothe their sleep, not hers.

Stitch, stitch stitch.

It wasn't enough. It was never enough. But that was who Marnie was. She couldn't fix everything.

But she would do what she could.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

How she might have laughed when she was younger to see herself now. Marnie had always been a woman of passion, who wasn't going to settle for what the world offered. Passion that got her into college and through it when that was still unusual for a woman, especially for a woman of color. Passion that had tied her to a "bad boy" before she realized what that really meant: not necessarily just a rebel, but someone who could be lost to drink, to drugs, who'd lash out at his woman and then beg her for forgiveness. Which she gave him, in her passion, until he'd turned his malice on their daughter.

That's when Marnie let her passion send him on his way, once and for all. Nothing was stronger than her love for Sue, the tiny girl with the poofy pigtails and enormous brown eyes.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

So Marnie marched for women, because her daughter deserved a better future than Marnie had had, deserved all the chances that anyone else deserved. She marched for blacks' rights, and workers' rights, for gay rights. Whatever her daughter would be, Marnie wanted her to have every choice, every opportunity, every possible future. Sue was Marnie's future and she deserved it all.

Progress was slow. Even joined with thousands of other voices, one voice was hard to hear and change was slow in coming. But Marnie tried. Didn't let that stop her.

She would do what she could.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

The first blanket had been for Sue, too. Marnie had dusted off the skill her own grandmother had taught her when Sue had had nightmares not long after the attack by her own father. Sue had cried out in the night, and shivered herself awake. So tiny, so sweet, so quiet, Sue never complained but Marnie wept for her and made her a blanket in pink and purple. Told her it was a blanket to keep nightmares away, and Sue believed it, curled under it, and slept in peace.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

Over the years, Marnie made many blankets for Sue. Sue became larger, grew, tall and slim as a reed, her smile shy but so beautiful, those dark eyes alight with sweetness. And the blankets kept the nightmares away, new ones crocheted in larger sizes Sue could tuck herself in under, head to toe, and sleep soundly.

Stitch, stitch, stitch, turn.

The nightmare hadn't come at night. He stormed into the school in a cloud of wrath and sense of entitlement that made him think his rage was justification enough to destroy others, an insanity that let him choose the most vulnerable as his targets. He walked into an elementary school, an agent of death and pain, and spared no one before they hauled him off in cuffs. And left those who had lost their most precious to pick up the pieces, rebuild what lives they could when what they loved most was shattered and stolen and lost. Marnie had felt dead inside, had stroked that precious tiny hand, now cold, and smoothed the last nightmare blanket she had made for Sue in a coffin Marnie had never hoped to see.

And had buried her future and her dreams with her daughter while the skies wept as fruitlessly as Marnie did herself.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

Marnie marched for better gun laws then, for the safety for other people's children, for a better future she had no part in any more. She canvassed and made calls. Perhaps she made no more difference than she did marching before.

But she did what she could.

Stitch, stitch, stitch.

Decades had passed. Marnie didn't march any more. Her hip never healed right after she'd jumped the barrier in the courtroom, trying to get at the man that killed her daughter. She didn't call much any more, or fight, or protest. She never knew if it had made a difference anyway, though she was still proud she had tried.

Stitch, stitch, and tie.

She fluffed out the blanket, completed. Tragic in its smallness, in what it represented, the last decoration to another life snuffed too early, another future unfulfilled. She shed tears, as she had shed countless tears before and would countless tears still to come. Her knobby fingers smoothed the blanket and found some solace in its beauty and the care of its construction, in its sheen and softness. She hoped the girl's parents would as well. She folded it neatly and pulled a different color yarn from her bag, blue this time, and began a new line of chain stitches.

She couldn't do everything.

But she would do what she could.

### About the author

Stephanie Barr is a part time novelist, full time rocket scientist, mother of three children and slave to eight cats. She has three blogs, which are sporadically updated: Rocket Scientist, Rockets and Dragons, and The Unlikely Otaku. Anything else even vaguely interesting about her can be found in her writing since she puts a little bit of herself in everything she writes . . . just not the same piece.

### Coming Soon

Curse of the Jenri

_One should never make an enemy for gold. Gold will eventually disappear, but an enemy can be forever_.

Chapter 1 - Introductions

"Watcha lookin' at, Melded?"

Melded spun around, the spear he'd been leaning on instantly at his assailant's throat. Years of experience held back Melded's hand before he actually killed Timon. "What in the name of Bastor's black heart are you doin' sneakin' up on me? Y'wanna get yourself killed? And it's Captain Melded to you."

"Ah, Melded, don't be sore. You've been standin' out here for more than an hour. Me and the boys just wanna know what you're lookin' for."

Melded paused, considering several rude and vicious responses that included a well-deserved buffet on the head. Instead, he shrugged. Timon was his recently-killed brother's only boy and, if he hadn't the smarts of a local fern, he was skilled with a dagger. Melded turned his eyes back outward, through the iron gate. He searched the outlying wooded areas again, his ears straining for the sound of an errant footfall, his nose sampling the air to detect an odd scent. All he smelled, of course, was his unwashed nephew. He sighed. "I'm lookin' for _her_."

Timon peered between the bars at the green blur of forest beyond, empty of anything but trees. Given Timon's eyesight, he might not even see the bars. "Who?"

Melded clouted him on the back of the head with his fist. "Timon, why're we here?"

"Raylee paid us."

Melded shook his head. "No, stupid. Do you remember us snatchin' that big, hulkin' son of a bitch and bringin' him here?"

"That bastard! I wish Raylee'd let me kill him."

"Well, yes, you saw how easily he killed four of us," Melded reproved, still inwardly amazed. He did so _after_ Merlo had all but knocked him out with a spell that killed Krikee just standing next to him. And the behemoth was drunk off his gourd at the time!

"It was damn dumb luck, that's all. He killed my pa with a dirty blow. He cheated."

Melded stared at Timon, dumbfounded. True, Melded was a mercenary, but he could not see how their victim could have "cheated" by defending himself when he'd been blindsided by magic and set upon by more than twenty rogues. It was too much like thievery or something equally dishonest for Melded's tastes, but you can't eat if you don't get paid. And Raylee paid pretty well. "My point is that bastard can fight like ten regular men, if not more."

"So?"

"So, he ain't alone. He's married _—_ married to a Jenri. Raylee don't think she'll come to get him, but me, I _know_ she will."

"So what? You ain't afeard of no female, are ya?"

"Like Nether, I'm not! If you had any brains in your head at all, you'd be scared shitless yourself. Didn't you hear me, idget? She's a _Jenri_. You saw how he can fight and you can bet his wife fights just as well, if not better."

"In a pig's eye."

Melded shook his head and resisted the urge to clout him again. No sense in shaking up his miniature brain any more than strictly necessary. "Timon, don't you know nothin' about the Jenri?"

"Them old wives' tales..."

"Do I look like an old wife t'ya? Let me tell ya, they fight worse than demons and they sling spells like sorcerers. They can come up behind ya, soft as smoke, and loose five arrows afore the first strikes, and not miss wit' one of 'em."

"Ya may not look like an old wife, Melded, but ya sure sound like one," chortled Timon, only to have his laughter cut off with Melded's blow. Perhaps sloshing that puny brain might be of some use.

"You really don't know nothin', do ya?" Melded asked, shaking his head. "When I was young an' stupid, though pro'bly not as stupid as you, I saw four Jenri come to th'fair. At first, I didn't see nothin' but their lean bodies and short tunics, just like all t'other young fools. But they didn't have t'fight no crowds to reach no vendor an' the mos' hardened huckster slashed his prices without haggling.

"I thought I knew everythin', that all those stories were hogwash. Some say th'Jenri'd know a lie when they heard it. Some say they'd kill a man for pleasure. Some say their souls were sold to the dark forces an' that's why they was cursed with no sons for a hunnerd generations. Some say their souls were sold for coin alone, assassins for whoever parted with silver. I scoffed at mos' of 'em. Then I saw them fight in exhibition for gold, Jenri against Jenri, their blades flashing like fireflies too fast to see, women in blue-green leather, their jewelry glowing as they danced with steel in the sun..."

Melded halted his reverie and noticed he had finally gotten Timon's attention. "I didn't know what's true, what ain't. Still don't. But I knew I didn't want no Jenri for an enemy."

Timon furrowed his low brow in monumental concentration. "And now ya got one?"

"You think I don't know that, ya dip? Why in Nether do you think I'm out here, peerin' out into nothin', hopin' to get some inklin' of whether or not that Nethercat is comin' to cut my balls off?"

Timon seemed taken aback by that. "They cut your balls off?"

"Oh, for Bastor's sake, will you get back inside? You're makin' my head swim with your foolishness, and I have to have a clear head."

"Alright, Melded, alright," Timon demurred, backing off. "But mark my words, there ain't a bitch born yet that I'm afeard of."

As Timon's footsteps faded away on the uneven cobbles, Melded sighed and shook his head. "Idget. We're screwed if she comes alone. Bastor himself couldn't save us if she brings other Jenri to help her."

Once more, Melded scanned the landscape, hoping for a sign that she was there, that she watched. But there was nothing, so he turned and stomped back to the barracks. She _—_ _they_ _—_ would come.

Beyond the gate, dappled with sifted sunlight, there was only the unbroken sea of green, just ferns, trees... and Layla.

Silent suede boots of signature Jenri blue-green, shifted in the underbrush without disturbing the delicate froth of ferns. Layla crouched, an integral part of the landscape, indivisible and unseen, though in full view. Her senses fully alert, she waited motionless, her whole attention on the tall iron gate thirty or so strides before her, her eyes following the old soldier as he turned from it.

Brushing back the strange Jenri streak of red hair from her eyes, she knelt soundlessly to wait for dark, the hem of her soft leather tunic just touching the ground. The tunic was deep amethyst, but it was crossed and belted with the same Jenri color as her boots. Silver glistened in the rune-worked shaft of her sword, and the grips of her throwing knives and dagger. Even the length of her bow writhed with silver symbols. Her silver headband was studded with aquamarines and disappeared into her thick brown hair. More aquamarines hung at her throat, now as always, the sign of her Clan. Silver and aqua proclaimed what she was; she wore amethyst for what she loved: purple was her husband's color.

It was for him that she came.

As the shadows lengthened, she became a shadow herself, another purple shape in the underbrush. In the lee of a tower, she scaled the crumbling wall of the castle unnoticed, unheard. She came up just below where guards kept watch in the turret, sliding beneath them on the battlements, in the shadows, and slipping soundlessly into the keep itself.

As she descended toward the dungeons, she heard the snores of the guard before she was close enough to silence him with a quick twist of his neck. The body slid noiselessly to the ground, neck broken. There was no blood on the floor around it, no blood on her.

She trusted her nose to bring her to wherever they had taken Tander. There would be a smell of old smoke and past burnt flesh, urine and feces from those forced to remain trapped or tortured into a loss of control. She knew that the smell would most likely be part of the dungeon proper, not that of her husband specifically _—_ at least she hoped _—_ but that would be where she would find Tander.

Her nose led her true. She found Tander at the end of the torture hall, bathed in the red glow of a smoke-blackened fireplace. There was no need for a cell. Thick chains were attached to manacles on his wrists, his ankles and the crude collar around his neck. They had taken no chances with a man who left five bodies in his wake. And it was well known that only a man who could best a Jenri in some test could be her mate. That made him doubly dangerous.

"Tander." Her whispered word was barely louder than a breath, lost in the soft clinking of his chains, the tired creaking of the staples straining against his gentle movements. There was no indication he'd heard her. He did not lift his head.

She moved forward, distressed to see her proud mate listless, defeated. His long black locks hung, unwashed and greasy, over his face. They had stripped him of all but his loincloth, and she could see the lash marks on his back and shoulders. Blood seeped in thin rivulets to show where he had struggled against his chains. But he was not struggling now.

"Tander," she whispered again, reaching a hand to lift his face to her hungry eyes, but was forestalled with the sound of a rattling snore. She could not help but smile. Only Tander could sleep in a position like that. She reached out and touched his cheek. "My proud warrior. What have they done to you?"

"Layla _—_?" The word was a question from his cracked lips, but when he opened his eyes, they widened in surprise. The shocking blue eyes glared at her for only a moment before he grinned, "What took you so long? Where are Riko and Kena?"

"Probably where I left them, in Arkona."

"You came here alone? Layla, are you daft? These people are dangerous."

Layla stiffened. "Aye, and your point would be what? I am dangerous myself."

He turned the full force of his startling blue eyes on Layla and even she flinched at their intensity. "'Tisn't funny, Layla! These men have no honor. They are scum, and they were able to take me. They have resources, magic and weapon. Leave and return with help."

"And leave you in this discomfort while I scamper back two days there and two days return? Aside from the exhaustion we will all feel? I think not."

"Layla, you can't take on a castle of mercenaries and magic-wielders alone!"

Layla smiled. "Can't I?"

Tander pressed his lips together, but was forced to smile at her determination. "Bastor damn me to Nether, Layla, but you're stubborn."

"Aye, I know that as well. It is not as though I make a secret of it." A smile touched her chiseled features, a smile only he could bring. "Tander, don't fret. I am well able to handle all that I might come across here, never fear. You were drunk and set upon when you weren't looking _,_ I assume anyway. I knew exactly what I was getting into."

"Did you? They wanted me, but I fear for what men like this will do to you if you are captured. Do you think I want to be your downfall? That I want you hurt in your attempts to rescue me? Go back and get help, Layla. I'll figure a way out of here." He pulled on the chains to demonstrate his intentions, but winced as they rubbed raw flesh.

"More foolish talk like that and I will clout you on the head. Content yourself that I stay. There is nothing in this castle I fear."

Tander, ignoring pain, flung himself forward fruitlessly, cutting further into his flesh with the iron bite of his manacles, then hung against them, limp with defeat. "And if you're wrong, I will have your fate on my conscience. Some protector I turned out to be."

She stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his while his hands strained against the chains to reach her. She didn't know whether it was to hold her or push her away, but he did not tear his hungry mouth from hers.

"Your days in chains have affected your mind. Since when have I needed a protector? You underestimate me—" She ran a finger along a lash mark and her voice hardened, "—and my anger." She could see the relief in his eyes at her touch, the turquoise glow of her necklace reflected on his sweaty skin as the pain abated.

A voice behind her startled her. "In my entire acquaintance with Tander, I have only found reason to envy him."

She spun around, crouching, a throwing dagger instantly in her hand, hearing the clank of chains behind her as Tander strained again against his bonds. She flung the dagger unerringly into a guard's throat, but was forestalled from throwing another by a strange lethargy that immobilized her muscles and spawned an odd pain in her midsection. She fell to her knees and then collapsed sideways against a stone block. She saw the red glow on her skin and found the strength to spit with a mouth still under her control. Magic!

Facing her was a man, obviously lord of this ill-kept keep, flanked by a slight balding sorcerer on one side and a thick-lipped guard on the other. The leader was only a few inches shorter than Tander, but just as broad. His chest was bare, but he wore a wool cloak clasped with a copper brooch emblazoned with the figure of a jackal. At his side dangled the well-worn hilt of a sword. The copper band in his red-gold hair proclaimed his gentle birth, belied by the ugly curl of his lip.

The sorcerer, dressed in shabby green silk, look dismayed at Layla's grimace of pain. He tried to get the attention of the leader. "Lord Raylee, there is something wrong. She should not be in such pain!" Layla spat again. Amateur. His sorcerer status was tattooed over his nose: fifth level. Odds were his teacher was disreputable, else this bungler would never have attained that rank.

Raylee ignored his hired magician.

Layla mouthed her own counter-spell, her jewelry glowing with preternatural light, and managed to gain enough control over one of her hands to reach into her belt and pull a second throwing knife. Pain notwithstanding, she flung it perfectly into the remaining guard's throat, to the shock of the sorcerer. The sorcerer swallowed convulsively and mumbled again, increasing the stasis spell, and to a greater degree, the pain in her midsection. Layla managed to smile wickedly at his fear. "You're next, spell-slinger."

Raylee laughed at this. "Fine talk, Jenri witch. Someone told me you'd be foolish enough to come. I would have expected a Jenri to be smarter than that. But, as you can see, I was prepared with Merlo, here."

"Incompetent dabbler," Layla managed through gritted teeth.

Raylee laughed again. "How brave your words, yet you are trapped within his spell. Although I have to admit, I expected him to be more useful in the capture of the King of Amerland. I'm not complaining. We have sent messengers off to get a ransom for Amerland's absent king. I suppose we could expect some recompense for his lovely bride, as well." Raylee walked forward and crouched, grabbing Layla's chin in his hand and looking her over carefully. "You will be more entertainment than Tander here in the meantime. And if they don't come through, slavers might find you worth a coin or two."

With Tander straining at his chains again, Raylee stroked his hand along her cheek to her lips, smiling a smile that dissolved into the rictus of extreme pain when she clamped her teeth on his finger, biting down so hard he heard the bone snap. His high-pitched scream echoed deafeningly through the dank dungeon as he yanked and pulled on his hand, only releasing it at the expense of his finger's top knuckle, which Layla smugly spat out.

"They might not find me that valuable after all," she said.

Raylee pulled his sheathed sword from his belt and swung it furiously, smashing it into the side of Layla's face and knocking her head painfully into the stone block. Tander threw himself violently against his chains, managing to yank the staple holding one chain to the wall part way out with his exertions. "Why don't you come pick on me, you bastard! Her locked in a spell, you have the balls to strike a woman! I'll show you how a man fights! Layla, are you alright?"

Layla, her eyes focused perfectly on Raylee's, said softly. "This walking corpse cannot hurt me, Tander. Trust that his life is all but over."

"Always with the brave talk," Raylee hissed, tearing a sleeve from the sorcerer's robe to bind his wounded hand. "You won't be so smug when I'm through with you, little witch. But I'll wait a bit for that. Right now, I'll settle for relieving you of your jewelry." He gestured for one of his guards to come forward, but then recalled that both of his guards lay dead, throats destroyed. He sneered. Careful to avoid her mouth, he slid his hands around her neck to undo the silver clasp of her necklace. The necklace, glowing with magic, only shocked him in return, so that again, he howled in pain. Layla's smile widened.

Raylee pulled his hand back as if to backhand her. "Release your spell, witch."

Layla managed to raise an eyebrow. "It's tied to your magician's spell. Until he releases his, I cannot release mine."

"You lie!"

Layla couldn't shrug, but the sentiment was clear. "Your trained, semi-magical monkey can confirm what I say, as if I cared at all."

"Merlo!?"

"I-I-It's certainly possible, and I suspect, t-t-true," Merlo stuttered. "Besides, my lord, I think the spell has gone awry, else she would not be in so much pain. Really, sire, I beg you allow me to release it."

Raylee snarled, scowling. After a moment, his brow cleared. He walked past her carefully and unsheathed his dagger, resting the tip against Tander's throat above the band. "I can kill him in a heartbeat if you dare try anything. Merlo, release your spell. Then, you, Jenri witch, you will remove your jewelry and leave it on the floor in front of you."

"Don't be daft, you pathetic excuse for a fungus! She'll kill you without thought," scoffed Tander. "Layla, don't worry about me. This idiot probably couldn't figure out where I keep my brain anyway. Toss a knife into his gut. Raylee, you honorless scum, thrust away, go on, I dare you! My fleas have more courage than you!"

The red glow about Layla ceased and, obediently, her necklace also stopped glowing. Layla, breathing hard, collapsed to the ground. A part of her noted that the pain in her midsection had gone, but had left behind a throbbing ache that she found disturbing. After a moment, she managed to pull herself to her hands and knees, still not looking at Raylee and apparently still recovering. Raylee smiled at her submissive posture.

Without the slightest preamble, she spun on one knee, her other leg swinging around in an arc that caught Raylee in the ankle. He fell sideways, his dagger arm flinging outward for balance, his other scrabbling against Tander to keep from falling. Layla, in the process of coming to her feet, slammed the heel of her hand up into Raylee's nose, thrusting the cartilage into his brain. Raylee crumpled, dead. Layla avoided the weight of his body when it fell.

Still half-crouching, Layla took an instant to check the lack of pulse, then smiled. "You underestimated Tander, but you respected him. Pity you weren't smart enough to do the same for me." She pulled his dagger out of his hand and then flung it across the room before adding, "Not that it would have made the slightest difference in the end result."

