Heart Fire (Celta Book 13) (25 page)

She was gorgeous. And perfect.

She greeted everyone with a curtsey, then took her place in the middle of the room. Glancing up at the illusion of blue sky and white sunlight, she smiled, then lay down, her torso angled against the red velvet pillow. Felonerb trotted in behind her. It didn’t look like he’d done any cleansing at all. He took his place atop the pillow, close to her head, purring rustily.

“Ready?” asked Garrett.

The private investigator and Ilex had consulted and Ilex had given the Garrett the job of asking a list of agreed-upon questions.

“Yes,” Tiana said.

“Would you like me to count you down into your trance?” said T’Sandalwood in his High Priest voice.

Antenn noted the hint of disapproval of this whole matter and flinched inside.
He’d
started this chain of events, and it might cost her more than he’d imagined.

“Yes, please, count down for me.”

“Five, four, three—”

Tiana’s eyes closed on three and Antenn sensed she’d plummeted deep into a trance state. A whole lot faster than would happen with him.

“Hello, Tiana,” Garrett said.

“Hello, Garrett.” She sounded completely calm, and her voice lilted with affection for her brother-in-law.

“I love you like a sister, you know.”

“Yes, I know, and you’re a good brother, too,” she approved.

“I’m glad you think so. Now we want to go back, far back into your past.”

Her body tensed, then eased after a second as if she used all that practice she must have had in her career.

Sexy priestess. The dichotomy hit Antenn squarely, and he accepted that he liked the contrast, his desire for lusty physical relations with a woman who dealt daily with the spiritual.

Not that the Lady and Lord weren’t lusty, too. Physicality and sexual relations were celebrated, especially at certain times of the year—in private—but like most people he thought of the priests and priestesses as focused on more elevated matters.

He thought Winterberry’s gaze stopped on him as the guard scanned the room, and Antenn began breathing in a more calming pattern himself.

“I will count you back,” said T’Sandalwood, “to the last night you spent in the old Mugwort home with your Family.”

“The night of the firebombing,” Winterberry added.

Her face crumpled.

“Are you listening, Tiana?” asked the High Priest. The edge in his gaze wasn’t reflected in his mellow voice.

“Yes.”

“You’re regressing. You can do that.”

“Yes.”

“I am counting down from three. At one you will be there. You will not—”

“You
will
experience the events exactly as you did,” Winterberry insisted. “So that we might bear witness to what happened that night.” He slipped a glass sphere into her palm, curved her fingers around it. “This is a memorysphere to record your experiences. You understand what to do with it.”

“Yes,” Tiana’s voice sounded distant.

“Three, two, and
one
,” T’Sandalwood intoned.

T
iana sat reading a papyrus book about the building of GreatCircle Temple when an odd noise caught her ears. She looked up, but no one had moved like they’d heard anything. She smiled at her parents and sister, all of them gathered around the fire in the ResidenceDen.

Papa was working on an old-fashioned lap desk with papyrus and writestick. He was a respected judge and they were a Family that prized traditions. Mama and Artemisia—who was
almost
an adult since she was seventeen and her Second Passage would come soon—sat together on a twoseat. Both bent over an old diary about Healing herbs.

Tiana glanced at the pile of presents ready to be opened on Samhain, New Year’s Day. The book she read said Samhain had once been called November first by their Earthan ancestors. An interesting word. She mouthed
November
. Contentment welled through her . . . or she should have been . . . no, she
was
happy . . . but there was some mar to her—

Glass broke, then
Boom
!

She screamed and jumped to her feet.

What?
asked a voice in her head.

Who are you?

A friend. Tell me what’s wrong.

She shook her head, staring. “Something came in the window and exploded and there’s fire on the carpet. Papa’s putting it out.” She clapped her hands over her ears, weeping. “I hear more, more of them in other rooms. Here’s another one!”

It arced through the smashed window, a softleaf burning in the top of a glass bottle that broke. Fire flew. Artemisia screamed.

“Oh, no! Noooo!” Tiana shrieked. “Artemisia!”

What’s wrong with Artemisia?
The voice snapped and she heard fear in it. Fear that pounded in her, making her throat dry. Making her tremble. Making her freeze when she should be doing something.

What?
It—he, it was a he—demanded.

“Artemisia’s scalp is cut, and her hair is on fire!” Tiana keened.

“Stop that,” Mama ordered, face pale.

“Yes, Mama,” Tiana said, above the loud voice in her head ordering her to tell her everything that was going on, in detail. She also felt a cool glass sphere in her hand, waiting for her to stuff it full of all her emotions, everything she saw—fire!—and heard—loud voices, yells, shouts, pummeling her ears from outside—and touched—the wood of the top of her chair cracking under her fingers—and tasted—smoke, smoke, smoke!

So she told him everything. And his voice made her less afraid, like this wasn’t the end of the world, and she felt a rumble in her ears, too, a nice sound, that also helped.

“Mama is helping Artemisia Heal and Papa isn’t here. He’s running from room to room, putting out the fires, but he says he is using Flair and spells in the walls to make it look like the house is still burning.”

Canny man, your father.

“Yes. Yes. Artemisia is Healed and Papa says this room, under the desk, is safest and she’s hiding under there while Mama is getting our things to take with us before we all teleport to Papa’s office. He says he’s read about mobs like these and they don’t give up. They will come in and hurt us. So we will go somewhere else.” Tiana panted, glad her fear had lessened because her voice didn’t squeak as much. “Papa is getting stuff, too, and scrying the guards and doing other things.”

Panting, Tiana said, “I think we will be okay.” She crept to the window, keeping to the side, stood, and looked out. “There are a lot of people out there,” she whispered. “Why would they be screaming and throwing fire at
us
? They look like they hate us.” She shuddered and began counting them, each of them, their faces upturned in the bright flickering light engraved on her memory.

What are you doing?

“I am looking at them. I am counting them. I will never forget this. I won’t! I will remember and know them.” She ran and thought someone’s hands tried to stop her and flung them off and didn’t listen to the man as he said, “Easy,” again, but kept on running. “I am looking out every window downstairs. They are all around us! Why are they doing this to us?”

You’re looking out the windows?

“Yes! I told you, again and again and again for years and years . . .” Her voice broke and she shook her head, confused. “Artemisia is hiding under the desk, but I can’t. I
can’t
. I have to see who would hate us so that they threw a firebomb in our house. Who?”

And you can see faces, just confirming.

“Yes!”

Which room are you in now?

“The mainspace in front. They are all around the house. I need to check everywhere! Oh, oh,
oh
! Why is he here, why? The others—I don’t know them except old GraceLord Galega, who hates everyone.”

Who are you talking about?

“He is the man I saw a month ago. The man sent from GraceLord T’Equisetum for a written decision from Papa on a case he’d adjudged.” She moved closer. “Yes, I am sure that is he! An Equisetum. I don’t remember his name. He’s standing in the back, but yelling, ‘Burn them out! Burn them out! Fliggering Cross Folk!’ But . . . but . . . he doesn’t look mad. He looks
mean
. And he’s tossing a bottle and rag back and forth in his hands! He threw it!” She ducked, wrapped her arms around herself, sniffling. Her throat felt raw from screaming, her eyes and nose hurt from the smoke. Her heart just plain hurt.

“Mama and Papa are calling me. I must go back to the ResidenceDen. Here’s Papa. He is calm, but pale. Mama has a trunk. Artemisia is crawling out from under the desk. We’re holding hands and Papa will give us the coordinates for his office at night. He says some bad things happened in NobleCouncil today, and after what happened tonight, he isn’t going to fight, and his office isn’t his anymore, but no one will look for us there. Then we can go to Mama’s relatives, at least for the ni-ight.” She curled in on herself and cried and cried.

One last thing
, the voice said.

“What?”

How long has it been since the first firebomb?

She looked at the timer on the fireplace mantel. “Twenty . . . twenty minutes,” she said.

Sucking in a deep breath—air with no taint of smoke—Tiana shuddered and fell back into the present. She opened her eyes to see a blue sky, with dim shadows around her that moved. Felonerb crawled into her lap and she stroked him and felt his rumbling purr vibrate under her palm, sending loving through the rest of her.

The first face she saw after she blinked away leftover tears was Antenn’s, paler than any time she’d seen him before—strained, too.

Then Chief Winterberry, face set in a grim expression, moved into her sight. He plucked the memorysphere from her hand and put it in his trous pocket. “I have a viz of people we believe might have been in the mob at your home that night. TQ will access the pics, along with miscellaneous other people as blinds, and flash them against the wall, and I’d like you to tell me who you saw.” His voice dropped. “You remember, don’t you?”

“Yes. The ones I saw well. Some were blurred or stayed in the shadows or were overshadowed by others.”

“I understand.”

“Does this have to be done now?” asked Antenn.

Everyone stared at him.

“It’s best,” said Garrett.

Tiana nodded. “While the memories are fresh. Though I think both this memorysphere and the previous ones I recorded should also be fine.”

“I witness that I regressed FirstLevel Priestess Tiana Mugwort to the night of the firebombing of her childhood home, and I heard everything she said while she was in the trance, and no one and nothing influenced that experience,” the High Priest said heavily.

Tiana sat and twisted to see him. He was all stiff and formal and again her spirit sank that she was doing this—no matter how necessary it seemed—and it impacted her career. It appeared as if the process had affected T’Sandalwood, too, and not in a good way.

Something she’d think about later, since guard pics began to appear on the wall, four at once. She jolted at the first image, that of a middle-aged woman who was also one of the first faces she’d seen when she’d peered from the broken window of the mainspace. In the pic, she smiled. In Tiana’s memory her round face had been flushed, her eyes glazed with frenzy, and so Tiana described.

Tired, she went through them as quickly as possible, though sometimes she hesitated and said that she
thought
one or another had been there, had seen his shadowed features. GraceLord Galega was there, but she’d known he’d died before that very winter was over, years ago. She also figured that some innocent people were mixed in the viz, recognized people whom she knew but who
hadn’t
been in the mob that night.

She recognized instantly the relative of GraceLord T’Equisetum, and Chief Winterberry stated the man’s name was Arvense Equisetum.

Finally it was done and she slumped on the pillow.

High Priest T’Sandalwood rose heavily to his feet from the floor, moving more ponderously than she’d ever seen him outside death rites of a friend. His gaze connected with everyone but hers, and he said, “This is very disturbing information indeed regarding GraceLord T’Equisetum. I need to meditate on this, consult with the High Priestess.” His gaze latched on Winterberry. “But first I would like to speak with you in my office. If you would be so kind to accompany me to talk about what actions should be taken, small and large, and the procedure?”

Winterberry bowed stiffly, then turned to Tiana. “I strongly advise that you file a formal complaint against GraceLord T’Equisetum and his relative who incited the mob. They owe you reparations. As does the whole NobleCouncil. The actions of that body must be scrutinized. At the least, the title must be returned to your parents, your sister, and you. You’ve all done work in contributing to Celtan society for which you haven’t been paid your annual NobleGilt.”

“We at the Temple have been paying Priestess Mugwort the standard salary for commoners who are on our staff.” T’Sandalwood sounded offended.

“But even commoners usually have Family members with other sources of income,” Winterberry said.

Garrett said, “The Primary HealingHall hasn’t been as generous to my HeartMate Artemisia, and I guarantee that GraceLord Mugwort and GraceLady Mugwort provide great services to Druida City and our society, for which they have received no remuneration for over a decade.”

“That must be remedied,” T’Sandalwood said.

“Agreed,” Winterberry said.

“But this is a sensitive matter with wide ramifications,” T’Sandalwood stated.

“We can approach T’Ash to lead the charge on this,” Antenn said.

The older men stared at him.

“T’Ash is wealthy, Noble, of the FirstFamilies. Formidable,” T’Sandalwood replied.

Just throbbing silence.

Antenn gave a little cough. “Scary. And
he
had to fight to get his title and estate back after an enemy fired his Residence and killed his Family. That might be a long time ago to some, but”—Antenn swept a hand to Tiana—“like Tiana, he’s never going to forget that night, those moments. He’ll be solid on wanting justice for this, and he’ll be persistent. He won’t quit until things are right.”

T’Sandalwood’s brows dipped as he scrutinized Antenn. “You, young man, are absolutely correct.”

“T’Ash will never give up on this.” Winterberry nodded slowly. He turned to Tiana. “You will have a very strong advocate.” He paused, took the memorysphere from his pocket, looked at the High Priest. “Can we copy this for T’Ash and ask him to join us if he is available?”

T’Sandalwood closed his eyes briefly. “Yes. Let’s hammer some ideas out first.” With an admonishing nod to Tiana, he said, “I would prefer that you fill out the legal documents in GreatCircle Temple and stay there until you are done, so you are available if we need you.”

She nodded.

“After you are finished with the forms, if you have not heard from us, you may consider your day done.” He sighed heavily. “It has been a—challenging—experience for you.”

“Yes, High Priest T’Sandalwood,” she said.

“I will have complaint forms translocated to the Temple for Priestess Mugwort to fill out.” His expression was absentminded as if focused on the meeting with T’Ash. “Surely you’ll feel more comfortable working on them at the Temple.”