Night Season

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was late by the time they left the meeting. Inside the Chancellery all the lights had gone soft, as if they were on a dimmer switch. Outside, bells tolled. One of their escorts—three gnomes, none of them councilors—explained that the bells marked the "hours"—which weren't terrestrial hours, of course. Each bell-period was one-tenth of the sleep-wake cycle that made up a day in Edge.

The sound, muffled by the walls near the meeting room, grew fainter as they proceeded through labyrinthine halls. It had vanished entirely by the time they reached the wing that held the guest quarters. Their escorts left them with polite wishes for a good meal and a good sleep.

Gan hadn't come with them. First Councilor had wanted to speak with her, and the little not-yet-gnome had gone off with her, all atremble, like a devout Catholic granted a personal audience with the pope. Cullen was ahead of Cynna and McClosky, pushing Ruben's chair. He had a preoccupied look on his face, as if he barely knew the rest of them were there.

Cynna was pretty preoccupied herself. "Did we hear the truth this time?"

"Mostly, I suspect," Ruben said. "Gnomes may prefer misdirection and prevarication, but I'm inclined to believe that First Councilor wouldn't lie about anything significant when so much depends on your finding their medallion."

"So Bilbo will be our traveling companion if we have to take to the road." Of all the gnomes, why did he have to be the one deemed most likely to form a good bond with the medallion? Of course, he might be thinking the same thing, considering the consequences if the medallion decided he wasn't such a great fit, after all.

"Take to the road?" McClosky said. "You think they're right about it not being in the City anymore?"

Cynna shrugged, "I'll find out tomorrow, I guess."

They'd reached a wide place where three halls and a staircase converged. Cullen came to a stop. "I hope someone has been paying attention," he said, "or I'll have to Change and sniff out our trail."

"It's this one," Cynna said, and started for the right-hand hall.

"I guess you don't get lost," McClosky said to her.

"Well, I can if I don't pay attention—knowing the direction doesn't tell me which road or hall or whatever will take me there. Or if I don't have a pattern for where I want to go."

He shook his head. "I don't understand how your Gift works." Then, as if the words had been pent up for hours, he burst out, "Can you do it? No one's asked that. Everyone assumes you can find this medallion. Can you?"

"Probably, I'm pretty good." It occurred to her that McClosky was the only one of them who had no idea how she worked. Since his life depended on her ability, she ought to explain. "Tomorrow I'll do the sorts. I'll need a pattern for the medallion, see—the better the pattern, the more likely I am to Find it. I'm hopeful there. A magical artifact as powerful as this sucker ought to leave strong traces."

"What does this sorting involve? Does it take long?"

"Sorting is a spell, not part of my Gift, but I learned from the best—an actual patterner." Cynna hadn't known that Jiri was a patterner back when she'd been Jiri's apprentice, but that was beside the point. "I expect it will take most of the morning. I'll have to sort the medallion's pattern from things it's been in contact with—"

"Like that poor female, whatever she is."

Or was. Cynna grimaced. "Yeah. And the chancellor's body. I'll be looking for a strong, magical pattern they have in common, see? Plus they've got an engraving of the medallion."

"And then you just go to it?"

"More or less, if we're lucky. If it's warded—which they think it is, since they can't locate it with their own spells—or if it's outside my range, I'll have to Find its trail instead of Finding it. That'll take longer."

"You can Find the trail even if you can't Find the medallion itself?"

"Probably. See, everywhere an object has been carries some trace of its presence. Inanimate objects leave so little behind, I can't Find 'em that way. A living being or something with a lot of magic leaves better traces. Something that's both alive and magical leaves the most. I can Find those if not too much time has passed."

"It's been missing for two months."

True. And that wasn't exactly optimal, but… "It's powerful enough to impose order on a whole realm," Cynna said firmly. "It will leave powerful traces. Speaking of which…" She glanced over her shoulder. "What's a Great Artifact?"

"A magical construct created shortly before or during the Great War," Cullen answered promptly. "By which I do not mean either of the piddly conflicts of the last century. The Great War was fought in multiple realms over better than a century by adepts and gods. Also lupi," he added. "We were created then to fight on behalf of our Lady."

McClosky's voice was thick with disbelief. "Created?"

Cullen made a graceful gesture. "All peoples have their creation myths. You will allow us ours."

The meal was served as soon as they arrived in the common room. The food was good. The first course was a porridge-like mush that looked awful but tasted like berries and nuts, followed by some kind of roasted meat that had not come from a cow. There were roasted vegetables, too—carrots, squash, something pale that looked like a potato, but wasn't.

The porridge went down fine. Cynna asked Adrienne to bring her some water, not wanting to drink the strong, dark ale they served with the meal. Pregnant women were supposed to avoid alcohol, right? She made herself eat plenty of vegetables—they were pretty good—and some of the meat while she talked with the others and listened to their ideas. There wasn't any dessert, but their servants brought them fruit at the end of the meal. Cynna grabbed an apple for later, yawned ostentatiously, and at last, thank God, she left.

Problem was, there was nowhere to go. Except her rooms.

Her damned, tiny rooms with the oily air. She didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be with people, either. And they sure as hell didn't need to be with her. Wouldn't exactly reassure anyone to know just what a thin thread their lives all hung by, would it?

She paced. Anywhere else—back home in DC, or in any of the other cities she'd stayed in while working—she'd go out when she felt like this. She'd walk or run or go to a club and dance for hours. Or maybe she'd go to a gym and work out until she wanted to puke.

These days, she did the workout more often; the club, less. It was too easy, too tempting, to pick someone up at a club. Easy to get in a fight, too. And that's what she really wanted to do—fight or fuck. The nameless feeling scrambling her insides like a cat clawing its way out of a bag would settle if she did one of those things.

No gym here. No nightclubs. Not even a goddamn TV, a book, a DVD player. No, nothing at all to do in the garish little room.

Cullen was just down the hall.

No, she told herself. She'd made herself a promise, right? She was upgrading her taste in men, which meant no more desperate one-nighters. Not even on the bad nights, when she couldn't stand living in her own skin. Because she had nowhere else to live, did she? She had to find other ways of dealing with a really bad mood.

Cullen wasn't a one-nighter. He was a friend.

That thought made Cynna want to put a fist through the wall. He was a friend, and she couldn't go to him because… because he was part of the explosion building inside her.

Besides, what if that elf-lady had beat her to it? The mood Cynna was in, if she saw the two of them snuggled up, she'd try to kill them both. She'd fail, of course, and probably wouldn't be lucky enough to die herself, and tomorrow she'd wake up with post-insanity humiliation.

This will pass, she assured herself. She just had to ride it out.

But how? There was no gym, no club where she could dance, and it would be stupid to go walking the streets of the City when she had no clue what the dangers were. Especially when so much was riding on her and her Gift. She could not risk herself that way.

She shouldn't risk her tiny rider, either. Cynna stopped, her hand resting on her stomach.

Crunches. She could do crunches and scissors and lunges and work up a sweat right here.

Here? She wanted out. Out of this room, away from the oily air and the damned walls and—

Someone knocked softly at her door. She spun. Dragged in a breath, dragged both hands through her hair, and prepared to do her best impression of normal and sane. "Yes?"

The door swung open. Cullen stood in the doorway, wearing what looked like tight gray sweatpants. No shirt.

He held out some cloth. "Put this on. We're going to go spar awhile."

Cynna was staring at him as if he'd grown a second head, Cullen supposed that Rule would have worked out not just what to do, but why he was doing it. Not him. He was right to be here. He knew that instinctively, but the why escaped him.

"Expecting a different sort of invitation?" he said sweetly. "Not tonight, luv. Aggressive sex can be fun, but you'd brood later. Here." He tossed her the knit pants and shirt his servant had scrounged up.

She caught them. For a moment he thought she'd start their sparring session right now. She thought so, too.

She settled for slamming the door in his face. He smiled and leaned against the wall and waited. So far instinct was working out okay.

Cullen's servant had arranged for them to use a room near the guard barracks. It was small and bright and empty. No windows—gnomes didn't like them—but the floor was covered with something with some give. Cullen didn't know what, but it should cushion any falls.

He meant to make sure Cynna didn't take any. But soft was still preferable.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," Cynna said. Her voice was tight.

Cramming it all down, she was. Not that he knew what "this" was, but he had some guesses. "No throws in tai kwon do, right?"

"No. Tae means kick; kwon means hand or fist. It's all about kicking and punching. If you don't know how to do it, though—"

"Good. Don't try any flying kicks. Everything else should be okay."

"I know what to do to protect the little rider," she snapped. "I'm not sure about you. Have you ever practiced tae kwon do?"

Little rider, was it? "Some. We'll stretch first, then forms. Then we spar."

"Forms." She cocked an eyebrow at him. "So you do know something about it."

He hesitated. "Etorri is too small a clan to maintain a separate group trained as fighters the way Nokolai does. We all trained. Our practice included tai kwon do forms."

She was skeptical. "Long time ago. You were pretty young when you lost your clan, weren't you?"

"Twenty-six." She always spoke bluntly of his seco—no sympathy, no mincing around his delicate feelings on the subject. He preferred that. His voice still turned harsh. "And I sure as hell needed to be able to fight. Some lupi see a lone wolf as a target. I needed the discipline, too, until I found I preferred the discipline of dance. You aren't the only one with anger management issues, you know."

"This… this whatever's wrong with me isn't anger. I don't know what it is, but—"

Cullen snorted. "Keep telling yourself that. Stretch," he told her, and dropped to the floor to begin his own stretches.

Truth was, he'd fought often enough in the years since he trained with Etorri, but he hadn't practiced the forms in so long, he didn't clearly remember them. They'd come back. He had excellent kinetic memory. Besides, he didn't have to be good at her particular branch of the martial arts tonight. Halfway capable would do as long as he knew how to spar and was fast. He did and he was. Fast enough to let her work out whatever was brewing inside her without hurting either of them.

"I should see if they've got ice. Ice would help. Surely they have—"

"Shut up, Cynna." Cullen snagged her arm and tugged her back down.

They were sitting on the floor, breathing hard. He leaned against the wall. "It was a fine kick. A damned fine kick."

"I didn't think I'd connect. You said you could keep that from happening."

He turned to look at her and grinned, albeit lopsidedly. His jaw ached like fury. It wasn't broken, thank God. It would have been, if he hadn't pulled back in time. Well, almost in time. "No? And here I thought you were doing your damnedest to clobber me. No, don't try to look regretful. It's my fault you clobbered me. I underestimated you."

Her grin broke free. "Or overestimated yourself."

"Surely not."

"Maybe you were distracted by my breasts. You've got a thing for my breasts."

"Mmm." He smiled. "That I do, but I think it was your legs that got me this time, Wonder Woman."

Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Cullen's breathing smoothed, but hers was still uneven when she broke the silence. "You think the feelings getting to me are like yours, but they—it—whatever it is, it isn't anger."

"It's not regular anger a clanless lupus feels, either." It was loneliness, an unspeakable isolation that sometimes erupted as a red howling against the world. And himself. Always, always, it had been against himself as well, the vast, aching flaw of who and what he was.

That's what she felt. He knew that in the deep places inside him. She might not want to call it anger, but however she named the feeling, it rose from the same ache and fury of isolation, the same certainty of damage, that he'd felt while clanless.

Cynna's head was leaning against the wall next to his. She rolled it to look at him. "Is it okay for you here? The clan bond, the what-do-you-call-it… I should have asked earlier. I didn't think of it. I should have."

"The mantle. Yes. I feel it here. Not as strongly… we need the company of others of the clan to feel the connection clearly. But I'm all right." He could feel it still, and that was what counted. That was what the mantle did. It told him his place, told him where and how he belonged.

Fear or rage could still take him. They couldn't swallow him. "You should have been born clan."

"What?" She shook her head, mouth quirking. "Female clan don't experience the mantle, do they?"

"That's not what I meant. You like to fight. You like sex. If you'd been born clan, you'd see those as normal instead of something to worry about."

"Your female clan members fight?"

"Not all, but some do. One of the members of Canada's women's Olympic tae kwon do team is Etorri."

"Yeah?" That pleased her.

"Come on." Cullen pushed to his feet and held out a hand. "I'm sticky and sweaty, and so are you. Off to the baths."

Cynna let him pull her to her feet but released his hand immediately. "I'm not into public bathing."

"Tough. You may not feel them yet, but you picked up a few bruises yourself when I blocked some of your attempts to destroy me. You worked your muscles hard. You need a good, hot soak, and I want one. I'm told that at this hour the baths should be almost empty. A few trysting couples, perhaps, no more eager to be seen than you are. And I've reserved a private spot for us."

"Oh, you have, have you?" Her eyes narrowed. "No sex."

He could change her mind. He was sure about that, but… his mouth twisted wryly.

"What's funny?"

"I know when to fight with you, but my instincts are mute on when to seduce you."

She thought that over, then gave a firm nod. "Good."