“Offworld?” Serita’s voice held a cautious note, a negative query that puzzled Gyll. “The offworld contracts have caused us nothing but trouble, Ulthane. Maybe Hoorka should stay on Neweden, where we’re understood.” She looked at him with steady green eyes.
Her words doubly startled Gyll; they were identical to the argument Aldhelm had given him.
Is Aldhelm coming back to haunt me, like the rest of the dead ones that get in my dreams?
“Hoorka must expand,” he began, automatically. “That had always been my intent. Neweden was to be our beginning, our home, but never the totality of our existence. That’s Thane Valdisa’s feelings, too.”
“We know that, Ulthane. Most of us agreed with you.” Bachier again. He shifted in his seat, nervously. “We probably still do, to an extent. But Sartas and McWilms . . . The situation has made
me
think it over again, I know. We’ve enough problems right here on Neweden: the Li-Gallant and Gunnar, the lassari killing Eorl and bothering all guilded kin.” Bachier shook his head. “I’m not saying anything definite, Ulthane. But
maybe
we should ask ourselves whether Neweden should be enough for us. Maybe we should postpone our dreams for a while and make sure we’re stable here.”
Others about the room nodded. A murmur of agreement rumbled around the table.
Gyll pulled back suddenly, the boot that had been on the stool stamping earth. The nightcloak swirled. He could feel anger building inside him and he wanted to leave, before it burst out in front of kin. “That’s a damned poor way of thinking.” As he watched, Bachier’s face went scarlet.
Careful, you fool.
“I’m sorry, Bachier, but I can’t agree with that at all.
I
would not be satisfied with Neweden. I expected us to go offworld one day, even though the code was designed for this world. Opportunities await us—we shouldn’t be afraid to grasp at them.”
“It’s not that we’re being fearful laggards.” D’Mannberg’s booming voice pulled Gyll’s head around. “And we’re not trying to change Hoorka policy. We’re just asking if maybe the time isn’t right.”
“To the Hag with time!” Gyll shouted the words. He strode to the far wall of the cavern, turning on his toes to face them again. “If we do that, Sartas has died for nothing, and McWilms is suffering for a whim. Are you all so afraid of the Hag that you’d cocoon yourselves on this one world?”
“Ulthane—” d’Mannberg began.
“No! Listen to me.” Gyll halted the protest with a raised forefinger. “We have to be able to admit mistakes. That much I can agree with. The Alliance may not be the best way for us to pursue our goals. Maybe we need to examine client worlds more carefully. But Hoorka
will
go offworld. Through the Regent or some other way. We aspire, or we die. I won’t see the Hoorka become like the ippicator.”
“We can understand how you feel,” Serita said.
“Can you? Damn it, I
made
Hoorka. I killed to be sure it was molded the way I wanted it to be. I fought the prejudices of Neweden for it. I gave up the thaneship, but Hoorka is still my creation. I won’t see it die. And to stay on Neweden is to accept a slow death.”
Gyll strode to the mouth of the cavern. He looked back at the assassins. “I won’t have it,” he said.
Chapter 13
G
YLL COULDN’T DECIPHER Valdisa’s mood. She seemed caught on some intangible interface between frantic gaiety and quiet moodiness. Something worked at the muscles of her drawn face—a pensiveness he couldn’t understand.
She was sitting at her desk floater when he entered the room, intent on the flimsies there, a hoverlamp casting a dark image of her head on the cavern wall. She looked up at the sound of the door. Seeing Gyll, she smiled with an odd enthusiasm. She rose and went to him, taking his hands. “Well, Gyll?”
“I told them,” he said. He didn’t return the pressure of her hands. She held them a moment longer, then went to the bedfield and sat. She patted the covers. “Here. Sit with me.”
It was the opening he needed, he thought as he sat beside her. A chance to explain his feelings, to vent all the uncertainties and come to a final understanding. He no longer wanted to go on the way they had, always circling each other and never settling anything. He sat, trying to find a beginning. “The reaction was odd, Valdisa. They didn’t say what I thought would be said.”
“McWilms is coming back to the caverns,” she said, interrupting him. Her eyes were wide, too wide, as if she were frightened. Still, the voice was calm and steady. “They’ll release him tomorrow. I talked with him over the com. He’ll still need a portable med-pack, and it’ll be some time before the arm bud grows well enough for him to begin using it, but he’s anxious to be in Underasgard again. He wanted to talk to you, Gyll. He wants to know about Guillene, how it happened, everything.”
“He knows the man’s dead, doesn’t he?”
“Yah, but he wants it told to him, in all the detail. He’s very bitter, Gyll, very angry.” She picked at the cloth of the bedsheet, then smoothed it down again.
“Does he blame Hoorka, like the rest? Does he think it was all a tragic mistake?” He couldn’t keep his own spite from his voice.
“No.” Her eyes questioned him. “He’s very anxious for his initiation into full kinship, if that’s what you mean. He doesn’t blame Hoorka for what happened. What he is angry about is the Alliance, the way they handled it.”
“Oldin told me that they wouldn’t handle it well.”
Valdisa broke in hurriedly, before he could say more. Gyll could see the nervous smile, the restless eyes, the quick movements of her hands. Though he let her talk, he knew it to be an avoidance.
Oldin’s the key—that’s the subject she’s steering you around. She doesn’t want to argue. But it will just be harder later.
“Well, McWilms doesn’t want us to abandon the work we’ve done,” she said. She faced him, one leg on the bed, one on the floor. Her hands sought his once more, clasped them to her knee. “That’s the good part. He doesn’t feel that Hoorka should stay on Neweden. I thought that the kin might react that way—and your face is too open to have hidden it from me. I can guess at what they told you. But they all admire you, Gyll. You’re the creator. McWilms is still sure of Hoorka’s goals. The rest of them will return to that way of thinking, in a few days or weeks. Ahh, Gyll, don’t look so damned hurt.”
She pulled him to her—he didn’t resist, didn’t help. Arms around chest, she hugged him; after a moment, Gyll put his arms around her and returned the embrace. They kissed, softly, then she laid her head on his shoulder. “Gyll, I don’t want to fight. Not tonight. I’ve hated it, every time.” Her voice was a rough whisper in his ear.
“You don’t want to be Thane?” He spoke into the fragrance of her hair.
He could feel her head shake—a short movement. “I’m not giving that up, Gyll; neh. But I also don’t want it to drive a wedge between the two of us.”
“Valdisa—” he began. Emotions waned: to tell her that he had already made a decision in his own mind, to hold it back lest he ruin the moment—the intimacy had become rarer between them of late. “Valdisa,” he said again.
“Hush, love. Not now.” Her mouth sought his, open. She leaned back, pulling him down on her. He felt her hands slip under the folds of his nightcloak, tug at his shin. Warm, her fingers kneaded his back and ran the hills of his spine. She hugged him fiercely.
Aroused despite himself, he responded. He kissed her, as if that gave denial to his doubts. The interior debate dissolved in heat. He fumbled with the clasps of her blouse, and she laughed under his mouth at his clumsiness. “Here, let me help.”
“Quiet,” he told her. “I can manage.”
Cloth fell away, whispering.
• • •
Afterward, they lay in each other’s arms. Valdisa’s breath was cool on his face as he lazily stroked the damp smoothness of her side, fingers tracing the lines of her body. As he reached her waist, she quickly rolled away, muscles rippling under his hand. “That tickles,” she said, grinning.
“You didn’t think so a few minutes ago.” He touched her again; she moved farther back, then rolled into him, nipping at his shoulder.
“Hey! That hurts, woman.”
“You didn’t think so a few minutes ago.”
Gyll laughed, rubbing his shoulder. “Consider the point made.” He stroked her again, this time with more pressure. “Better?” he asked.
She snuggled against him in answer.
They lay that way for several minutes, simply enjoying the closeness, the dark, cool silence around them. Gyll’s hand moved. They kissed—long, slow, gentle—then lay back again. Gyll found himself more aware than ever of the separation their clashing prides had caused. He found himself wishing that they could have returned to this long ago.
“You’re thinking,” Valdisa said, a contralto accusation.
“I’m not allowed? And how did you know?”
“Your hand stopped. You’re lying there with your eyes focused on the ceiling, open. You’ve entirely ceased to notice me, yet nothing’s intruded on us—the distraction has to be inside. Now, what are you thinking?”
He thought of delaying, of temporizing, then knew that even that hesitation had spoken for him. “I wanted to tell you before,” he said. “So you’ll have to forgive my waiting.”
On her side, head on hand, she waited.
“I think—I
know,
rather—what I want to do, for both your sake and mine,” he continued. The words were slow at first, hesitant, but came faster and more definite as he went on. Valdisa watched him as he spoke, her gaze never letting his eyes wander. “That’s what I’ve been ruminating over for the past several days. You need time, love, time without my interference so that the kin accept you wholly as Thane. I know you’ve felt it—a slowness when they take orders from you, a belligerence from some of them; Aldhelm was certainly that way.”
Sorrow tugged at the corners of her mouth at his mention of Aldhelm, then she frowned. “All you’re doing with this preamble is giving your words a sugarcoating, Gyll. I’m all grown up. If it’s going to be bitter, just say it.” Her stare challenged him. He couldn’t evade it. He said nothing for a moment, gathering the words in his mind. Then he nodded, sighed.
“Yah, you’re right.” He took a breath, touching her, as if by contact he could make her take the phrases as he wished them to be taken. “I want to go with Oldin. They’ll be leaving in a few weeks. I want to spend a few months investigating the Trading Families; see what FitzEvard Oldin is holding for the Hoorka, see if we can be mutually helpful to each other. And that will leave you as the only authority here. It’ll get me out of your way so that the kin don’t go past you to me.”
“The kin have never ‘gone past me.’” Her voice mocked him. “It’s just you and me, Gyll. We fight more than any of the rest of the kin.” She glanced back at his hand, atop her waist. Slowly, he removed it.
“If that’s the case, Valdisa, then maybe we just need the time apart.”
“If you feel that way, all you have to do is say so. You don’t have to go running off with this Oldin woman. Underasgard is big enough.”
So quickly from affection to argument: she had not moved, but Gyll could feel a growing distance between them. He chastised himself.
You knew it, you knew it . . .
“Valdisa, you’re my friend, my lover, my only real confidant among the kin. Do you think I’d give that up so lightly?”
“I don’t think you want to give anything up, Gyll. Not me, not Neweden, not Oldin, not the Alliance, not—especially not—your leadership of Hoorka. I think you’ve found that you’ve made a mistake, giving up the thaneship.”
He didn’t try to deny it. “All I want to do is explore a possible new avenue for Hoorka, for my—
our
—kin. It doesn’t violate any of our present agreements with the Li-Gallant or the Alliance, and it may give us a new avenue for expansion. It’s just me and a few months, Valdisa; that’s all we’re talking about. The Hoorka can spare that much.”
Her laughter scraped at his composure. “With Aldhelm, Renier, Sartas, and Eorl dead? With McWilms hurt? With the kin’s morale at low ebb? Gods, Gyll . . . The rotation’s already too tight.”
“Then one more out of it won’t matter. And my work’s been mediocre of late—that was everyone’s complaint, even yours. I’ll admit it.” He could hear the bitterness creeping into his voice, the pitch moving higher and louder. He forced himself into calmness again; he tried to sound rational. “The kin can spare me. Both you and d’Mannberg are better teachers than I for the apprentices, and a quicker rotation will only hone the skills of Hoorka. We can use the practice room less.”
“It’s amazing how convincing you can be when you want something, Gyll.” Valdisa growled in disgust, deep in her throat. She rolled off the bedfield to her feet, whistling on a hoverlamp. Golden light threw harsh shadows across her body—under the disheveled hair, under the small breasts, across one leg. She half-turned from him, gazing into nether space. Her head shook, then she turned back to him. Her eyes were narrowed, hard; her face was pinched and somehow ugly.
“No,” she said. “No. I don’t like the idea. And Gyll . . . I want you to leave me now. Don’t talk anymore. Just take your clothes and go back to your room. Go pet your wort.”
“Valdisa—”
“No!” She turned her back to him, facing the desk, the cold stone of the wall. “Just go.”
She would say nothing else.
• • •
Helgin lounged against the side of the shuttle’s landing gear. The gear was both dirty and oily; it smudged the sleeve of the tunic he wore. He scratched at his beard with a crooked forefinger and glanced at Gyll. Around them, the port made busy noises.
“She’s not on
Peregrine,
Hoorka. She had business in Sterka, someone to see. I don’t know when she’ll be back, and I doubt that she’ll be in the mood for visitors. Oh, she’ll pretend it, but she’s a poor actress.”
Gyll didn’t let his disappointment show. He nodded. “There wasn’t anything specific . . . I just wanted to talk with her . . .” He felt vaguely foolish. He hadn’t wanted to stay in Underasgard after the argument with Valdisa and had come to the port on a whim. He’d gone to his rooms after leaving her, fed and cuddled the wort for a time, then left. It hadn’t been until he reached Sterka that he realized where he was going. He’d gone through port security and out onto the field after seeing the shuttle in its dock.