Light of Kaska (26 page)

It was on their third dive that Stryker realized they weren’t alone. He was wrenching at a chunk of coral, trying to get it to come loose from a critical joint, when a dark shape flickered at the edge of his vision. He glanced up and saw the sinuous form of a selkie floating half-concealed behind one of the playground structures. He paused and stared at it. It stared back, its large dark eyes unblinking. When it did nothing else, he shrugged and went back to work.

A moment later, Harle gripped his arm and pointed excitedly. The selkie had two friends. Stryker gave Harle a disgusted look for the interruption and went back to work. The coral was being stubborn, resisting the wrenching efforts of his chisel, but after some determined cranking he managed to crack a chunk of it off. When he did, a dark shape appeared at his elbow. He looked around and discovered that he had an audience, sans Harle. The big man had moved several yards away, floating with a huge grin on his face and no bubbles coming out of his nose. He appeared to have stopped breathing.

Stryker considered the half dozen selkies surrounding him. They were looking from his work to his face with the curious intensity of small children. He could almost hear them asking, “Whatcha doin’?” in innocent, piping voices. One even wiggled closer to pick at the edge of the coral with a dark claw. Stryker hefted the chunk of coral he’d liberated then held it out to the creature at his elbow.

The animal took a close, almost comically serious look at the hunk of debris for a moment before plucking it off his hand with delicate precision. Turning it over and over in its fingers, the selkie studied the coral as if it held the secret of life until another selkie crowded close to see it as well. The selkie who held the treasure clutched it to its chest and darted away, almost trailing the cry, “Mine, mine, mine!” in its wake. Several took off after it in a dazzling display of aquatic ability.

Stryker watched the chase for a moment until he felt a pressure on his arm. Looking down, he met the eyes of a selkie who had one clawed hand resting on him. It looked down at the crusted joint and back up at him like a child begging for a treat. He would swear the creature was smiling winningly. With a snort of bubbles, he went back to work, popping off a second chunk to hand to the waiting selkie. It took the coral with a gleeful wiggle of its body and zipped away, cutting into the chase to show off its newly acquired prize. A moment later, there were two chases.

Harle was almost as amusing to watch as the selkies at play while he tried to keep both chases in sight. When the two groups darted out through the underwater arch into the sunlight, the big man billowed huge clouds of bubbles and gestured wildly. Stryker moved closer, wondering if he was having a heart attack or something. Harle grabbed his arm and dragged him to the surface.

When they broke water and entered air, the big man bellowed, “Holy sheep shit!” His eyes were as round as a child’s and a grin nearly split his face in half. “I don’t believe it! They swam right around me, did you see?”

“Man, you’re squealing like a girl. Grab your damn nut sack, wouldja?”

“Chase, you don’t get it. Selkies don’t come up to people like that. They just don’t. They only swim with the little ones and Keza. They don’t come near adults. When I came here, Keza was already gone on her cycle. While she was gone they came around so rare, I barely knew what they looked like. And I just
swam
with ‘em!”

“Are you gonna clap your hands and jump up and down now?” Stryker asked dryly.

“Kiss my ass,” Harle responded, but his heart wasn’t in it. “They coulda give a shit about me. It was you they was after. When I first saw ‘em, I backed away a little to see what they’d do. Every bit I backed away, the closer they got to you. One even
touched
you, man. You know how rare that is?”

“They dragged Keza all over this playground,” Stryker objected.

“That’s Keza. They love her.” Harle paused, his face settling into that shrewd expression Stryker didn’t like. “Huh. I wonder if they know about you and her.”

“Are you still drunk?” he asked, giving Harle a disgusted look before striking out for the ledge and his design display. He was disconcerted to discover Myelle standing just beyond it.

She must have been there a while because she was ignoring the holo image and staring at him with a look of horrified fascination. When he reached the edge and hefted onto it to give his suit a breather, she stepped closer and asked, “Is that true? The selkies approached you, touched you?”

He turned to the model and adjusted the viewing angle so he wouldn’t have to look at her. “They just wanted to know what I was doing with their toys.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her put a hand to her mouth as if to hold back a curse or wipe away a bad taste. Then she cleared her throat. “What
are
you doing with their toys?”

“Nothing yet.” He heard her breathe out on a soft sigh. “Relax. I wouldn’t start a tear down or construct without running it by you first.”

She stepped closer, crouching down so he could see her face. She still looked as though she’d bitten into something sour, but her eyes were direct and open. “Thank you. The design is wonderful. Keza is going to be very pleased.”

That did something terrible to his insides. When he swallowed, sharp things seemed to be shredding his throat and working their way down to his toes. He stared at his design and said nothing. What was he supposed to say?
I’d like to lie down and let Keza stomp on me now.
Or maybe,
Thanks for letting me close the cage door myself.

Myelle stood, and her voice was very careful when she said, “There is…something I think you need to see. Could you get changed and come with me, please?”

Stryker looked up, studying her face and those amber eyes that were so like her daughter’s. But unlike her daughter’s, Myelle’s features were mostly unreadable. He thought he saw a guarded dismay in those amber depths, but he could be wrong. Inclining his head, he rose to his feet.

Harle launched his big body up onto the ledge next to them. “Want me to keep the light on?” he asked Stryker.

Myelle answered for him with a faint twist of her mouth. “I’m pretty sure he won’t return anytime soon, Harle.”

The large man nodded with a neutral expression, turning off the IH and pushing to his feet with it palmed in his hand.

“I’ll wait for you at the top of the stairs,” Myelle told Stryker and moved away.

Harle waited until she was out of sight before he chuckled. “Damn, you’re the luckiest bastard I ever met.”

Stryker raised his eyebrows, but Harle only shook his head and led the way to the changing rooms. When they were back in dry clothes Stryker said, “You know where she’s taking me.”

“Yup.”

“So cough it up.”

“Nope. Don’t wanna spoil the surprise.” Harle gave him a lascivious wink that made Stryker recoil.

“Keza’s
mother?”
he asked with a sick feeling in his gut.

Harle roared with laughter. “Shit, I am so gonna describe that face to Nade later. No, man, relax. Myelle ain’t played the Kaskan market in years. Hurry up. She hates waiting and you don’t wanna miss anything.”

Stryker gave him a hard look for that suggestive comment, but Harle ignored him. Myelle didn’t look impatient when they appeared at the top of the stairs, but Harle wasted no time in parting company with them.

“So what’s this thing I need to see?”

“The garden,” she answered serenely.

“I’ve already seen the gardens.”

“The Goddess’s garden. This way.” She led him through the house to the opposite side where the gardens were cradled between the main house and outlying buildings, protected from the ocean winds. One of the outlying buildings was a greenhouse where most of the fresh produce for the kitchens grew. The rest of the gardens were a colorful bounty of flowers, trees, and shrubs. Stryker had hurried Harle through this part of the tour, uncomfortable with all the open space and green growing things. Orbiting stations and space ships didn’t have a whole lot of green growing things, and his childhood held memories of grey but not much green or any other color.

Myelle led him with purposeful strides through the winding paths to a section he hadn’t seen before. The area was on a small hill, as if someone had raised it above the rest of the garden, and it was enclosed by pillars of what looked like carved marble. The ceiling was not solid but a trellising crisscross of wood that supported some kind of wildly growing, flowering vine. Sunlight shivered through the leaves, creating a dappling effect on the area below. The floor looked like smoked marble and in the center was a large fountain. A pale marble statue of a woman stood in the fountain, or maybe it was three women. The figures flowed into one another, like three women had been standing back to back and somehow melted into each other to form one woman with three faces and different shapes to her three sides. Water flowed over shoulders and down arms to pool in the palms of her hands and drip off her outstretched fingers.

Myelle stopped at the edge of the marble floor, but Stryker continued forward, curiosity and a strange fascination drawing him on. He walked around the fountain, taking in the woman’s three faces, one young, one pregnant, and one older.

“The three aspects of our goddess,” Myelle explained in a low, hushed voice. “The maid, the mother, and the grandmother. Passion, fertility, wisdom.”

Stryker glanced at her then studied the statue with a frown. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?”

“Why did you give her Keza’s face?” Her silence drew his attention and he tensed at the undiluted shock he saw on her face. “What?”

Myelle blinked at him, closing her mouth and swallowing hard. She took a deep breath and when she let it out, composure returned to her like a mantle. She gave him a disturbing smile. “She doesn’t have Keza’s face,” she stated matter-of-factly.

He stared at her then took a step back and looked at the statue again. It hadn’t changed. “Yeah, she does.”

Her smile turned almost impish but she turned her head as if to hide it, glancing over her shoulder at the main house. “They’ll be here soon. Have a seat and I’ll explain what you’re about to see.”

“The statue wasn’t it?” he asked with a wary glance at the figure.

She shook her head and gestured for him to sit on a bench at one end of the open temple. “My daughters will be coming soon.”

Stryker felt as though he’d been kicked in the chest and sat on the bench gratefully. “All three?”

“Yes,” she answered with a cool composure that he remembered to detest. “Normally I would be dancing with them, but my heart wouldn’t be in it today and that would not please the Goddess. I don’t like you much, you see.”

“Dancing?” His heart started to pound with foreboding, but not because she didn’t like him. He’d known that already.

“Have you heard of
naevas?”

“Liss told me. A fertile woman,” he muttered, unable to keep from glancing toward the house.

“We have a rite that we do on the day of a woman’s peak fertility. Normally it’s an informal thing, a whispered prayer or a song, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends or family. But since Keza has been away so long, we’ve decided to make her rite a bit more formal, showing gratitude to the Goddess for bringing her home.”

He stared at her, a wave of furious dismay washing over him. “Keza’s going to be a
naeva?”

“Today’s her day,” she said, her gaze on the statue.

“So you brought me out here to make a granddaughter for you, is that it?”

She turned her head slowly to meet his gaze, cold chips of amber shot through with angry fire. “I brought you here to understand us. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.”

“Hey, there you are!” Liss called with youthful exuberance, bounding into the temple and skidding to a halt when she saw Stryker next to her mother. “Whoa,” she breathed, eyes wide enough to see the whites all the way around.

“Did you find Mom?” Nade stepped sedately inside the temple after her sister. Her pause was smoother, but her eyebrows shot up in matching surprise before she turned on her heel. “Ah, Keza…”

Keza glided into view. Stryker’s heart stopped and his temperature went through the trellis and beyond, expanding like a supernova. The sisters had warned him, since they wore matching outfits, but somehow the creamy, silky gown looked a million times more delicious on his Keza. Her feet were bare. He could see most of her bare legs when she moved, the slit material dancing around those sweet limbs like an invitation. Her arms were also bare and the scoop of the dress revealed a succulent expanse of her chest. He stared at the hollow of her throat and fought like hell not to yank her onto his lap and bury his face there. Even from this distance, he would swear he smelled sunshine, and need flared white-hot from his center out, burning through his defenses.

Keza jerked to a halt when she saw him. She met his gaze with wide eyes for an instant before she turned a red-faced glare on her mother. “What the
hell
is he doing here?”

“I know I should have warned you. I’m sorry,” Myelle said in the most conciliatory tone he’d ever heard her use, holding up her hands in a placating gesture. “But I didn’t know I was bringing him until a short while ago.”

“And what exactly made you bring him?” Keza asked through gritted teeth.

She was pissed as hell. Stryker was thoroughly enchanted. He’d never seen his farm girl so riled.

“The selkies,” Myelle answered in an evasive tone, shooting Stryker a quick, veiled glance.

He recognized a cue when he saw one. “I wanted to come.” He settled his arms along the back of the bench and stretching his legs out in a casual sprawl. “She said there’d be dancing.” He raised his eyebrows at her and curled a corner of his mouth.

Her chin jerked up at his challenge, amber eyes narrowing on him.
Kessu,
she was magnificent when she was angry. Those eyes of hers almost glowed with fire. His heart thundered while he waited for her response.

Instead of answering him she rounded on Myelle again. “Very heavy-handed, mother,” she accused, her lips compressing with what might have been bitterness.