Artemis Invaded (4 page)

“Adara has made clear that she's not interested in courting games.”

Terrell nodded. “Julyan resurfacing isn't going to make matters any easier. I'd hoped he'd drowned.”

Griffin agreed. He'd gotten to know Julyan fairly well, enough to understand how charming he could be—and how utterly ruthless. The charm made it easy for Griffin to understand why Adara had fallen in love with Julyan, back when they both had been Bruin's students. It was harder for him to understand what emotions Julyan awakened in her now. Did she still love him? Hate him? Feel something else entirely?

He decided to pretend that what Adara felt didn't matter but, looking at the flash of Terrell's white teeth, he knew he hadn't fooled anyone, most especially himself.

Interlude: Not Absolute

Bad, Good

Good, Right

Right, Left

Left, Abandoned

Abandoned, Wild

Wild, Uncontrolled

Uncontrolled

Bad? Good?

 

2

Ridgewood

When they were a few hours' ride out from Ridgewood, Adara slipped from Tarnish's saddle and handed the reins to Griffin. “Sand Shadow and I will go ahead. I'll find out if there is room for us at my parents' farm and, if not, where we can set up our tents.”

She saw Griffin glance at Tarnish, obviously wondering why she didn't continue riding, then, as obviously, answering the question for himself. Adara slipped away without offering confirmation.

So Griffin's figured out I'm nervous, that I'd like to be able to sneak in and check the place out first. What of it? My home is elsewhere now. Wouldn't it be rude of me to assume my parents could take me and my friends in at such short notice? True, once I knew our route, I did write ahead to warn them, but …

Sand Shadow flicked Adara an image of the two of them skulking in enemy-filled darkness through the maze of passages beneath Mender's Isle. Even without words, the inference was obvious: “You did that. Surely you have nothing to fear here.”

“Are you so certain?” Adara muttered. “The Old One's minions could only kill me. The blows family deal out can cut into the soul.”

Sand Shadow huffed in exasperation. During the year and a few months since they had bonded, they had visited Adara's family only once, and that briefly. They had gone for the wedding of Adara's younger brother, Orion, to the daughter of an itinerant river trader who had thought settling down on a farm would be ever so much nicer than living on a boat. Using the puma kitten as an excuse, Adara might not have even attended the wedding, but Bruin had insisted.

The puma's memories of the event were the enjoyable ones of a kitten who had been much fussed over. Adara's were less so. She also had been fussed over—both for having passed her training and for having bonded with Sand Shadow. However, that fuss had reminded her once again how she was set apart from her family. Nikole was married and had little ones of her own. Hektor and Elektra had come in for quite a lot of teasing about when would their weddings be … No one had teased her.

I felt myself a stranger. Many of those attending the wedding had never been farther than Spirit Bay; most had never been even that far. Most followed some variation on the work done by their parents and grandparents, back to the days of the seegnur. I was a huntress.

Had lingering memories of the events surrounding Orion's wedding led Adara to that imprudent tumble with Terrell the following midsummer? Had she been seeking proof that she was marriageable, even if she chose not to marry?

She shoved those thoughts away, concentrating on circling back and around the village, on finding cover where any but a hunter would have sworn there was none. In time, she came to her family's holding, out some distance from the village itself. She swarmed up a tree. Those dots on the road would be Terrell, Griffin, and the mounts. They would need to thread through the village, so she still had time, although wending through memories had slowed her feet.

Sending Sand Shadow an image to wait for her—her family's livestock would not be acclimated to the scent of a puma as were the animals who resided near Shepherd's Call—Adara loped down the hillside to the sprawling farmhouse she barely remembered as “home.” A sheepdog barked, more in warning than in threat. At the dog's summons, a figure stepped out the back door to see what had roused the creature. For a moment, Adara didn't know him, then he turned slightly and the lines of cheek and jaw were familiar.

“Hey, there, Hektor,” she greeted her youngest brother. “You've grown again.”

Hektor—now, Adara scrabbled through her memory, seventeen?—knew her right away. “Adara!”

His pleasure at seeing her was so obvious that Adara felt ashamed of her snake pit mind. This was the brother born after she had gone to live with Bruin, yet he treated her arrival as a cause for celebration.

Hektor stuck his head inside the door. “Mom! Dad! Adara's come at last!”

The patter of feet on wooden floorboards, a flooding out, arms and hugs and kisses. Her mother, Neenay Weaver, grabbing her, holding her as if she were still five, and not half a head again taller.

“We'd heard something of what happened in Spirit Bay, even before your letter came. We heard you were involved. Willowee's father brought news, turned his boat right around as soon as rumor reached him at one of the river ports.”

Adara's father, Akilles, tall and lean like her, hair dark as her own, though showing silver now. (Had that all come on since the wedding?) Wordless except for the hug he gave her and the brightness of tears in his eyes. Sister Nikole, baby on her hip, a toddler by the hand, grin brightening her face. Little Elektra, budding into womanhood, unsure in her young woman's dignity whether to join in or stand back. Orion, holding his Willowee by the hand.

When the tumult ebbed, Adara asked her mother, “I wrote that I am traveling with two friends. We have three horses and a mule as well. Is there room for us?”

“Plenty.” Neenay gave a casual wave of her hand. “You know we built a cottage for Nikole and Stanis when the babies came. None of us could sleep for all the fussing. We just finished a cottage for Orion and Willowee…”

Adara noticed for the first time that her brother's wife was rounding out in front.

“Folks in Ridgewood are saying we should rename the area Weaverville,” Hektor cut in with a chuckle.

“So there's plenty of room in the main house for you and your friends. We had good moisture last winter, so you can put your animals to pasture. There's space in the stables, too. Your choice.”

Elektra said, “Did you bring the kitten?”

Adara smiled. “Cat now and a big one, too. Yes. Sand Shadow is with me, but she's staying out in the hills for now. Her scent frightens livestock who don't know her.”

Elektra's eyes asked a question she was too uncertain to ask. Adara answered it.

“Would you like to greet her? She's been wondering if anyone remembers her. She remembers all of you with great fondness.”

“Can I? See her, I mean? And do you really know what she remembers?”

Adara felt that alienating uncertainty again, determinedly pushed it away. “I don't know everything she thinks, but we've been practicing. I know enough to know she remembers her visit here and being fussed over. She understands that she'd scare all the hens and cows, so she's fine with staying in the hills, but I'm sure she'd like a visit.”

An image from Sand Shadow flickered into her mind: Terrell and Griffin passing through Ridgewood, turning onto the road toward her family's lands.

“I should go down the road and meet my friends,” Adara continued.

“Can I come with you?” Elektra asked, glancing between her mother and Adara.

“Can she?” Adara asked.

Neenay smiled. “I think we can handle clearing up from supper without you, Elektra, but mind that you make up for it tomorrow, understand?”

“Yes, ma'am,” answered both sisters at once, then giggled as if they weren't ten years apart in age and nearly strangers.

*   *   *

Not surprisingly, Terrell and Griffin were a great hit. True, Nikole did give Adara a long look or two, as if wondering what games her sister was playing with two such handsome fellows, but both men had the gift of making themselves pleasant. Griffin was introduced by the tale they had evolved when they had stayed with the Old One. He was a member of a family who had lived isolated in the mountains somewhere vaguely near Shepherd's Call. They had become friends when Terrell and Adara had escorted him to Spirit Bay because he had desired to meet the Old One.

Questions regarding the upheaval in Spirit Bay—the flooding of the Old One's Sanctum and that revered personage's disappearance—were so based on garbled rumors that answering them was easy enough without going into uncomfortable details. When some element of the conversation became awkward, Terrell showed a factotum's gift for turning the discussion in other directions while appearing to give a complete reply. The full truth would mean explaining too much that must be kept secret, including Griffin's true origin and the existence of the unfortunates who had been born as a result of the Old One's experimentation.

When, toward the end of evening, Neenay Weaver beckoned for Adara to come with her, Griffin was deep in conversation with Akilles, Willowee, and Orion about the manner in which this region was governed. Willowee, who had grown up on one or another of her family's watercraft, proved to have a sophisticated view of the differences of rulership in theory and in practice.

Terrell held the rest spellbound with tales of his travels as he had trained to be a factotum. Watching her littlest sister, Adara wondered if Elektra—like Sashi in Shepherd's Call—was counting through the months until she would be fifteen and of legal age to propose marriage.

“I'm taking Adara out to show her what we've done since she was last here,” Neenay called. “We'll shut up the hens while we're out.”

Adara suspected that Neenay was taking this opportunity to probe after which—if either—of the young men might be a candidate for future son-in-law. The grin that quirked Hektor's mouth and a knowing look on Nikole's face confirmed her guess. However, when they were safely away, and Neenay had led Adara to the pleasant, well-lit building that was her new workshop, Neenay surprised her.

“Adara, the time has come for me to tell you things I hoped I would never need to raise.”

Adara was about to explain that she understood where babies came from and that she knew to take precautions, when Neenay went on.

“I never told you why we fostered you with Benjamin Hunter. However, now that the Old One has been discredited I feel I must. Why don't you sit there?” Neenay gestured to a heap of cushions patchworked from what must be scraps of her own weaving. “I'm more comfortable behind my loom.”

She slid into the chair, and her hands began moving the shuttle and the beater bar through their routine with a practiced rattle and thump.

Adara thought,
Putting a wall between us again, even if the wall is only spun wool. But what is this about the Old One?

As if reading her daughter's mind, Neenay said, “Would you be surprised if I told you that the Old One tried to play matchmaker for me, some years before you were born?”

Adara made no attempt to hide her astonishment. “You knew the Old One?”

“I did. When I was about Elektra's age, my parents sent me to Spirit Bay to stay with my mother's older sister. Auntie had a shop there—still does—that specialized in exotic dyes as well as weaving. I was among her students. The Old One was one of her customers, for he loved the subtle colors she blended. Indeed, he often brought her oddities—fresh shellfish, peculiar nuts, exotic flowers. They would discuss for as much as a half hour at a time how a certain color might be extracted and the best way to fix it.”

Neenay sighed, her gaze distant, her fingers moving as if they had eyes of their own. “Given your recent experiences, I don't expect you to believe me but, for those of us who worked in the shop, those visits were like visits from a king. The girls in particular could get quite silly, for the Old One was—I suppose ‘is,' for he doesn't change—very handsome in his own way. His slim build and measured manner were quite a contrast to the farm boys most of us had grown up with. He was even grander than the rich tradesmen who came to buy my aunt's cloth.”

Adara reassured her. “The Old One is not my type, but, yes, I believe you. He can be very compelling.”

Neenay's lips shaped a small smile of gratitude. “The Old One was not my type either but, nonetheless, I was flattered to be among the small circle he chose to talk with from time to time. One day, he brought with him a young sailor, a handsome fellow with raven-dark hair and light brown eyes. This Jor asked me to go dancing with him that evening. He was quite flattering in his attentions for the few days he was in town, before his ship sailed again.”

Adara felt dread rise, making her heart flutter. As if in answer to her apprehension, Sand Shadow leapt in through the open window and settled at her side.

Burying her hand in the puma's plushy fur, Adara asked, “Do you mind her here? She circled to avoid the flocks.”

Neenay shook her head. “She
has
grown, hasn't she? No. I don't mind. Now, let me go on … While Jor was off to sea, the Old One came by the shop. He found some pretext to get me alone, then asked me what I thought of his young friend. I said I liked Jor well enough and that seemed to please him.

“The Old One hinted that he would smile upon our making a match, that he might even take an interest in our children—arrange for their education and suchlike. I wasn't at all certain I wanted to wed a sailor—they're gone so often—but Jor was in port often and it was fun to go about with him. He was a free spender, though somehow I gathered that the Old One helped line his pockets.