Heart Duel (33 page)

Holm shot him a look. “It shouldn't be difficult. My parents had it easy.”

“The older generation.” T'Ash fell back into his chair and stared at the leaves of the tree above him. He chuckled. “Just make her a HeartGift.”

“Your little joke,” Holm grumbled. T'Ash had gone through hell to make a HeartGift and win his HeartMate the easy way. Holm felt certain that particular tactic would be just as futile for himself as it had been for his friend. “She's Mayblossom Larkspur Hawthorn Collinson.”

T'Ash's groan and laughter mixed. “Lord and Lady, you have a worse situation than I did. And I thought mine was doomed.” He turned sky-crystal blue eyes to Holm. “Seriously, consider a HeartGift.”

“What can I offer her that she'll accept? I haven't continually practiced my artistic Flair like you,” Holm snapped. His efforts with the calligraphy brush continued to be ugly.

T'Ash swung his legs off the chair and faced Holm. “I know that feeling. My HeartGift was the least of what I was, and reflected the man I'd been seventeen years before. But you do yourself an injustice. Your artistry will return with practice.”

“Even if that's so, most HeartGifts are backed by the power of Flair being freed during Passage. That's what makes them so potent. My three Passages have come and gone. I could make her a gift, but it wouldn't be the same.”

T'Ash's brows lowered. “Wrong. There are Rituals. I know that now. I was wrong, myself, when I thought only a forced Passage would create a HeartGift.”

Holm couldn't sit still. He lifted Meserv, who opened a sapphire eye and mewed. Holm draped the kitten over his shoulder with a small Word to keep the Fam balanced and comfortable. Meserv shifted to lie lengthwise on Holm's shoulder, gurgled and rolled over onto his back, paws curved over round belly.

T'Ash blinked. “That's a sight.”

“Don't distract me.” Holm began to pace. “I've looked at Rituals to create a HeartGift. There are some, granted, but they aren't as powerful as Passage.”

“Nothing's as powerful as Passage.”

Holm ran a hand through his hair. “And the ones I've studied call for about two eightdays of fasting, purification, and dedication—”

T'Ash laughed. “Hard for a Holly to practice patience for a septhour, let alone an eightday.”

Holm ignored the truth. “—then the Ritual itself takes a full day, in the HouseHeart. When the twinmoons are no more than a septhour from waxing to full.”

“It's just the beginning of Hazel, next full twinmoons and the start of Apple is more than twenty days away,” T'Ash said.

“Yes.”

“You're sunk.”

“Yes. I can't enter a time of purification when I'll be fighting. Neither the Hawthorns nor my father will grant me that time. I can't arrange for a full day in the HouseHeart for myself without requesting permission from my father. And Apple twinmoons is too long from now.” Holm smiled bleakly.

T'Ash stood and shook water from his long, tangled black hair, spraying droplets as far as Holm and Meserv. Meserv hissed at T'Ash.

He grinned, strode over, and tickled the kitten's stomach. “You're not much like your Sire or Dam, young Meserv. You're lazy.”

No reason to exert self,
Meserv said mildly.

Holm ran his own hand along the kitten's plump body. “I think his twin got all his aggression—Phyll, Lark's Fam.”

T'Ash rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You concentrate on dueling. Try not to kill any of her favorite relatives.”

Holm winced.

T'Ash picked up a towel and dried off. “The power of my HeartGift scared Danith. It was a detriment and set me back. Your Lark impresses me as a very sensitive woman. FirstDaughter of a FirstFamily, and great enough Flair to be named a FirstLevel Healer. Your HeartGift won't need much power to impress her.” He grinned again. “And like you keep telling me, most women admire subtlety. So a subtle HeartGift, swirling with power, Flair . . . It could very well do the trick. You”—he leveled a finger at Holm—“practice your calligraphy.” Scooping up his clothes, he teleported home.

Later Holm followed T'Ash's advice. His brush strokes looked better, more elegant and less wobbly. His hand was re-learning the motor skills needed for calligraphy as opposed to wielding a blaser or blade. He set his jaw. Tonight he'd create a piece and infuse it with all his power—as close to a HeartGift as possible.

He was inking his brush and considering the optimum time to arrive at Lark's apartment when T'Holly's viz appeared. The lines in Holm's father's face were more deeply incised than an eightday ago, but hope showed in his bearing and a gleam of battle in his eyes. Holm's stomach tightened.

“All available residents to SparringRoom Three for a free-for-all melée.” T'Holly sounded cheerful. “Common bathing to follow, then a feast, then strategic planning for our feud, then a Ritual of Thanks in the Family Grove for the recovery of our GreatLady. Begin in ten minutes, count starting
now!
”

Holm stared at the space where his father's visage had hovered. Damn! It didn't look as if he could visit Bélla tonight. After what had happened that morning—an incident he hoped he and his father ignored and never spoke of—he must mend his Family ties tonight.

He gritted his teeth and dashed off a symbol. The ink glistened against the papyrus—bold and supple. “Your loveliness haunts me.” He admired the character. Instinctively he drew another. That one looked good, too. “May I linger in your thoughts.” Satisfied he could send her something of himself with his nightly rose, he 'ported the artistic papyrus with instructions to GrandHouse Rose. The ritual would give him excellent energy to make his HeartGift. He wondered what Bélla thought of calligraphy, hoped she admired it.

As he put away his brush set, it occurred to him that she might be expecting him that night, and a little distance—much as he hated it—might put her off balance. He grinned.

Doing a few stretches, he let his grin widen and go feral. He knew where he could release the sexual tension that prowled in him. He'd win that melée.

Twenty-one

That night Lark went wild tinting her walls. She'd seen a
striking sunset as she'd weeded the flower beds in T'Horehound's gardens, and frozen the image in her mind.

Just before darkness fell, the GrandLord had drifted near her work, and they'd shared an inconsequential conversation, as they had every night since D'Holly had fallen. Lark sensed the older man's concern, but she hadn't spoken of her own worries, and the gentle discussions soothed her as much as the physical work in his gardens. She'd scried Danith D'Ash and requested T'Horehound be placed on the waiting list for a rare kitten.

But that night was different. That night hope sang in her veins. The music would not be stilled. D'Holly would live.

Back in her apartment she was physically tired yet emotionally restless. So she tinted the long wall across from her red sofa to match the sunset and rippled the other walls with subtle bands of peach, pink, and coral.

Pleased at the effect, she lay on the couch and stared up at the ceiling of blue sky and white clouds.

The morning after her lovemaking with Holm, Lark had requested special spells and conditioning liquid from the Clover Family to treat her sofa and bedsponge to remove any trace of Holm's scent. The new fragrance of the sofa was pleasantly reminiscent of good Celtan soil. She'd also given all the roses to Trif Clover.

When the white rose had come the first evening she and Holm were apart, she couldn't force herself to give it to Trif. These roses came after their loving—their sex. The new flowers came
after
D'Holly's awful wounding. Lark knew she shouldn't keep them, but couldn't throw them away. She compromised by putting them in a vase in a dim kitchen corner.

The jubilant news while in
Nuada's Sword
that D'Holly could be cured almost mended the yawning hole inside her at her denial of Holm. There was still no future for them. Neither Family would be able to forget what had happened, the feud still flourished, but at least she wouldn't be part of a Family that had committed the heinous killing of a GreatLady.

Lark repressed a tremor at the remembrance of Holm's touch earlier that day. Simply the brush of his hand against hers had caused her blood to race with the pounding of her heart, had flashed visuals of their loving to the forefront of her mind. She'd had to spend energy to control herself, and resorted to her mantra more than once.

She'd been surprised and displeased with the huge cavity of emptiness and hurt inside her now their affair was over. She grimaced in a parody of laughter as she thought that it had truly been a onenight, or a oneafternoon.

The last few days had been horrible. The PerSuns had been a blessing, giving her the strength to go beyond her usual range. She'd pushed herself to the limits every day.

And in the night she ached for Holm and wept silent tears that his tender arms didn't envelop her and never would again.

Lark whimpered and Phyll appeared. He leapt onto her stomach and changed her whimper to a grunt.

While you played in the gardens, Meserv and I played in a Ship. Very good place. Ship belongs to a Cat, Samba. She showed us many games.
Phyll stretched out on Lark and she started petting him, noticing he grew larger each day and was becoming quite muscular.

He answered her general thoughts.
I am strong, but not as strong as Samba. She is a big Cat. Fatter than Meserv. Meserv got
sick after eating an earthplant in the Greensward. Tinne Holly petted us. He does not have one kid-ney. The Ship is growing him another. Do I have a kid-ney?

“You have two, as do all mammals.”

“Yes.”

Hope warred with reason. She shouldn't want him to come back. He
shouldn't
come back, for both their sakes. Pain wrenched through her. “He's not coming back.”

Phyll snorted and jumped off her to trot into the kitchen and investigate his food dish.
You still have a string between you,
he said before munching his crunchies.

The evening passed with relentless slowness. Lark kept an ear tuned to the door and the scry, but the only break in her solitary pursuits was the delivery of the white rose. Curled around it was a piece of papyrus. Lark unrolled it and her breath stuck in her throat.

Calligraphy. Holm's creative gift was calligraphy. What an odd, ironic thing.

She pivoted on her heel and swept into her bedroom. From the top closet shelf, she floated down a large, heavy package. With a Word, she banished the safespell that kept the glass clean and unbroken. Deliberately she sent the three pieces of framed calligraphy to hover around Holm's that sat on the table. She took one pace back, two, then shook her head.

Her father, T'Hawthorn, held a Master's Laurel in calligraphy. She suspected that Holm had never completed formal training, or tested for his laurels in the art, but it was obvious he was equally skilled.

But what a difference in style!

And what a difference in topic.

Her father's was a classic, distinguished hand and his symbols: Duty. Obedience. Family. Even his signature and the Family sigil were constrained and stiffly correct.

Holm's two characters showed grace and boldness. His note spoke of memory and yearning, radiated affection and passion and something more.

She banished T'Hawthorn's pieces back to the closet and paced the room. “Your loveliness lingers in my thoughts.” Sincerity radiated from the papyrus. He truly thought she was lovely. She shook her head. “May I linger in your thoughts.”

She set Holm's work on her desk under a paperweight by Painted Rock, one of her sister-in-law's early works and the reason she took her name.

If Lark was as nervy and fidgety tomorrow as she was tonight, she'd fret away her restday. She
would not
let the presence or absence of that man affect her so.

She scried Painted Rock. Lark had progressed beyond loss and bitterness and tried to help Painted Rock do the same. There was one thing they shared, a love of solar sailing. Painted Rock wasn't in, and Lark left a message in her cache. “I'm sailing tomorrow. If you want to join me, meet me at our cabana near ShipProws at ninebells. Love, Lark.”

Impatient with herself for fretting about Holm, she decided to meditate. If she sank into herself, her mind would ease and her nerves would calm. What would come, would come.