A Midwinter Fantasy (14 page)

That was also true. Mace still made love to her, but it was rare and done with the gentleness of stroking a dove, fragile and soft. That’s what Lily had become for him, and his fear of breaking her with his lust was something he’d obviously not hidden as well as he’d thought.

Her smile turned into a smirk for a moment and then faded back into that grim practicality he’d always loved. “Look around the Valley and see if there’s a woman you think you could spend another lifetime with. Perhaps someone you could truly love as deeply as some of you silly things do. At least, be open to the idea.” She looked at him directly. “I give you permission.”

“All right, I’ll be open to it,” he promised, knowing she meant for him to make love to this unknown woman: he would need to in order to be sure there was hope for a bond. Regardless of his words though, he had no intention of actively doing any such thing. He leaned forward to kiss her, his mouth gentle against hers. Lily bent into it, one gnarled hand reaching up to stroke his cheek, clean of hair in this form, the way she liked. He’d be open to her idea, and he would find a new master once she was gone, for otherwise all that remained for him was banishment and loneliness. Right now, though, he couldn’t imagine anyone replacing her, and if he was honest with himself, he didn’t think there was anyone out there that he could form a true soul tie with. Not the way Heyou had with the queen or Ril had with Lizzy and even Leon. He wasn’t that lucky.

He’d long since surrendered any hope that someday he might be.

The boy was gone.

Mace found out about it when he was in a council meeting, where he sat on the board to represent the sylphs. Leon Petrule was talking, still the Valley’s chancellor at fifty-nine, though Mace had heard rumors that his wife gave him three more years to retire or she’d cut his ears off. Mace had been thinking to himself that he doubted the human would ever allow that to happen when he felt Lily’s usual calm placidity flip over into horror and rage, and he was bolting for the door before he even realized he was moving.

“Mace?” The queen gasped from the head of the table. There was no order in her tone, so he kept going, shifting his form and racing for the nearest sylph vent to the surface. People ducked out of his way, running from the black cloud that was his natural form. They always did. In the Valley, all battlers preferred their human bodies, and the stronger ties they gave to the human women they loved. To see a battle sylph in his real shape was to know that somewhere nearby was a threat.

What’s going on?
asked Ril, the other battler on the council, speaking directly into his mind. Ril’s tension was obvious, and it spread through the rest of the hive. In another minute, the battlers would all be rising.

My master needs me
, Mace told him. He felt Ril’s tension ease. This was personal, not something that would involve
the hive as a whole. Mace had seen other battlers run off for no reason more pressing than that their masters were feeling lusty, but his Lily had never called him for that. Their lovemaking was controlled and planned. Other than the time one of her orphans decided to fall out of the tree in the front yard and break both his legs, she’d never put out a call that drew him from his work.

She wasn’t at their home. Instead, Mace tracked her a short distance away, to another neighborhood with houses similar to their own, most of them decorated with the pine branches and garlands that heralded the Winter Festival. The parties that marked the event were only days away now and people were already starting to go from door to door, visiting their neighbors and wishing them well. Lily hadn’t gone on such a visit in years and hadn’t made Mace go in even longer, and though the house Lily stood in wasn’t one he’d ever accompanied her to or even visited on his own before, he knew the family who lived there, just as he knew every human in the Valley.

Mace landed before the front door, shifting back to human shape, and charged inside, not bothering to knock. The door led straight into the living room, and the couple standing before Lily jumped at the sight of him. Even if they hadn’t recognized Mace, they would have known what he was from his blue uniform with its gold trim, worn by all battlers so that there were no mistakes made by human men. Angering a battle sylph might just turn out to be fatal.

“What’s going on?” Mace demanded.

The woman before Lily held a boy, her arms around his neck and her hands clasped so that the knuckles were white. Her husband stood nearby, swallowing nervously at the sight of the battler. The boy was rebellious and scared.

Lily spun toward him, years seeming to drop away in her
concern and anger. She looked glorious to Mace. “I came to get Jayden. He was never here!”

She was upset about that? “Where did he go?” Mace asked. It had been five peaceful days since the boy left. Still, he mused, even a human could travel a long way in that amount of time. Perhaps Lily had a reason to be upset.

Crem’s parents felt concerned to him. “He didn’t come here,” the mother told Mace. “We didn’t know he was supposed to be staying with us.”

Lily muttered something under her breath that was completely unrepeatable.

“We d-didn’t know,” the father stammered. Most sensible men were afraid around battle sylphs, Mace especially.

The young boy’s defiance grew, and Mace looked down at him. “Where did he go?” he repeated.

“I dunno,” Crem said.

“You’re lying,” Mace told him flatly. The boy jumped. His parents looked at each other. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Crem said again, and Mace’s hand shot out faster than any of them could react. It locked around the boy’s throat, and he hoisted him up until his shoes were four feet off the floor. Both parents screamed, but Mace ignored them—though he did feel a little bad about the mother’s fear.

“Where
is
he?” he asked a third time.

The boy was ashen-faced, his father trying to work his terror into enough anger to attack. That would only get him killed, so Mace stared at him. The man blanched and backed up. The mother clenched her fists, though, readying herself for a charge that Mace wouldn’t be so quick to retaliate against.

“
MACE
!” Lily barked. “Put him down!”

That was definitely an order. Mace set the boy down. “Where did he go?”

The boy started to cry. “To Eferem!” he sobbed, turning to find comfort with both his parents. “He went to Eferem!”

“Why?” Mace asked, totally baffled. The kingdom of Eferem wasn’t quite the threat it used to be, but he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to go there.

“Tell us why, child,” Lily demanded as Crem kept crying. His parents felt like they very much wanted to tell Lily to take her concerns and get out of their house, but neither of them wanted to face Mace’s reaction.

Crem eyed the battler over his shoulder, his face covered in snot and tears: little boys were especially disgusting. “He said he wanted to show you. He wanted to be a swordsman,” he spat, “but no one here gets to. So he took a mail convoy to Eferem.”

To be a swordsman? For Eferem? Mace had heard of plenty of stupid human motivations before, but this was definitely up there. He looked at Lily to see her regarding him, and he had a sudden, very uncomfortable understanding of exactly what her next order was going to be.

Ruffles adored him.

Mace padded along the dusty road, all four feet moving smoothly. A great deal of work had been done in the Shale Plains since the Valley was established, but the battling sylphs who’d wrecked the original grasslands so many centuries ago had done a thorough job. It took a long time and a lot of work to get the land to come back to life and stay that way without constant attention. Mace had heard that one day the plains would become one of the wealthiest farm belts in the known world, but that probably wouldn’t happen in the lifetimes of any of the humans living in the Valley right now. So it stayed a mostly barren, shale-filled dead zone, filled with slowly spreading wild grasses. The sylphs used them to anchor what little soil there was while they labored to create more. In that soil lay the Valley’s future, which made the effort worthwhile.

It also made traveling a pain, though Mace was doing so in the most efficient way possible, other than flight. He trotted along the side of the sylph-made road in the shape of a large, darkly mottled mastiff. It wasn’t a shape he was used to, but it was no different than any other form he could take, and certainly it was easier than having to bring horses, which he’d need to take care of.

At least Ruffles was capable of taking care of herself, since the dog was trained to hunt. She was a shepherd/mastiff mix
from the Valley’s anchor pool—animals specifically raised and trained to be bonded to sylphs who didn’t want or couldn’t handle human masters. Though they usually preferred it, sylphs didn’t need to be linked to a human in order to stay in this world. Nor did they need one to feed from, as they’d previously believed. Any large-enough animal could provide a sylph with energy and a hold on the world, and when the master was an animal, there was no chance of the sylph receiving abusive orders. For some emotionally wounded sylphs, that was a good thing, though Mace knew of one earth sylph with a dog who was very good at getting across the concept of “Take me for a walk,” and they all did “Feed me now” quite effectively. Anchor animals were usually fat.

Most sylphs didn’t want to have to rely on the anchor dogs, though. Their love was unconditional and simple, but for many, it was too simple. They could give energy and companionship, but no sylph/dog bond could ever come close to the soul tie they all craved from a human master.

In this case, Ruffles was a better choice to take along than an eighty-two-year-old woman who needed a cane. Mace didn’t know how long he would be gone, and he did need to restore his energy levels on a regular basis. That was Ruffles’s job. She was a year old, ninety pounds, and furry, her tongue hanging out and slobbery as she ran at his side. She was meticulously well trained, used to sylphs and their ability to change shape, and even in dog shape, Mace was impressed at how well she obeyed his nonverbal orders. She paced him easily, having been kept fit by her trainers. Mace had never bothered to pay attention to any of the anchor dogs in the Valley before, but with sylph instinct, now that Ruffles was his master, he wanted to protect her. Her emotions were uncomplicated, and she was ready to follow him anywhere, so long as he wanted her.

Given he was the one used to following, it was really rather nice.

The two trotted down the road, wending their way through the spread-out ranks of a mail convoy, the only sort of transport that traveled at this time of year. Mace suspected these men were only doing so now in order to get to their homes in time for the Winter Festival. In the Valley and Shale Plains they were safe from attack, but outside sylph-patrolled lands the roads weren’t always guarded. The men rode with swords at their belts and crossbows on their backs.

From the look of it, Crem was right: Jayden had left the Valley by working for an earlier convoy. This one probably wouldn’t have needed the extra manpower. There were only a half dozen riders and a short string of pack mules loaded high with mail. This was likely the last convoy to leave until spring, and the men peered down at the passing dogs in puzzlement. Mace ignored them, but Ruffles slowed, wagging her tail up at one of them when he clucked. His emotions showed the man thought he was looking at an unattached animal.

Mace swung his big head around. “Leave my dog alone,” he growled.

The man jumped, the others gaping with their jaws open. Ruffles gave them all a very doggy grin, and she broke into a loose run, easily keeping up with Mace as he himself ran, intent upon leaving the irritating convoy behind.

At this time of year, traveling at a rate of thirty miles on a good day, the trip from Sylph Valley to Eferem’s capital took a week for a standard merchant caravan. For a couple of dogs the journey would be much shorter, not that Mace was expecting to have to go all that way. Not if he could possibly avoid it. Eferem at the best of times was a city he never wanted to see again. Eferem in the grip of the Winter Festival could only be a hundred times worse. Humans were
far too invasive into personal space for his liking at this time of year.

At a battle sylph’s flying speed, the trip to Eferem’s border could be done in hours, but Mace didn’t have that option. For one, Ruffles wasn’t likely to understand being carried inside of him, unable to see, but feeling every twist and turn of the flight . . . The thought of what she might
do
while inside him was beyond disgusting. More importantly, the treaty between Eferem and the Valley forbade sylph battlers from passing over the border, save in defense of Eferem itself. Mace had considered that a human rule, not that he would have gone by the border without a very good reason, but the absoluteness of the requirement had been forced on him.

The rules had been given to him while they were at the Anchor Center, the attendant off picking Ruffles as a dog specifically trained to keep up with an active battler. The lazy beasts sprawled out in the front area of the center hadn’t appealed to Mace at all. They’d been mostly mutts, all of them looking at him as though they’d just love to have him jumping to bring them dog food for the rest of their lives. Mace understood the importance of the animals, but he didn’t want to cater to one.

“I suppose we’ll have to build a dog house for it after you get back,” Lily remarked, sitting in a chair beside the fireplace. She’d insisted upon coming and he’d carried her the entire way, cradling her inside the warmth of his natural form. She was a bit pale, but there was a flush of the anger he still felt inside her, along with the worry. Her concern about Jayden was driving her nearly to distraction.

“Yes,” he murmured, determined to tie the boy to the house when he brought him back.

Lily frowned down at a mutt sitting beside her and staring up at her, its tail thumping against the floor. “I don’t want
this animal inside my house,” she decided. “Muddy things. I’d be cleaning up after it all the time.”