Heart Secret (16 page)

The public carrier swished by on the street outside the courtyard. “Dammit, we missed the transport.”

“TQ, when does the next public carrier come?” she asked.

“In half a septhour,” TQ lilted. His tone tipped Garrett off. TQ had distracted them so they were stuck together for another few minutes. Though half a septhour with Artemisia wasn't a lot if he planned on ignoring her for the rest of his life.

She walked toward the gate.

“Where are you going?”

“To the public carrier hub less than a kilometer north.”

“I can call a glider.” Laev T'Hawthorn would do him that favor.

“It's a beautiful day and I've been cooped up.” She shrugged her bag over her shoulder. It didn't appear heavy, as if it contained only the robe and her pillow and his two silver coins.

“I'll walk with you,” he found himself saying. Ever since he'd awakened, he'd been torn. His body wanted his HeartMate, but his emotions still hurt from the loss of Dinni; yet it had been over three years. Experiencing the horror again made him yearn to put it behind him. Keep it in the past and not let it affect the present.

He wearied of hurting.

Losing a HeartMate would be the
worst
.

He wasn't ready for anything like that.

Artemisia pushed against the tall gates enclosing the courtyard. He caught up and put muscle into opening them; that felt good. They exited and he closed the gates. They turned north and stayed in step. His fingers brushed hers, and he liked the tingle and kept it up. She didn't draw away.

They hadn't gone four blocks before his bag wiggled.
Are we there yet?

Fifteen

G
arrett snorted a laugh. “That you, Rusby?”

A hesitation.
Maybe.

Garrett let the laugh roar from his gut into the early-summer afternoon. Let it loosen his muscles, his tense shoulders. For the first time in days, he felt like himself.

Artemisia's lighter laugh rang. It rounded and flushed her cheeks, added sparkle to her eyes . . . they went from deep emerald to a green like grass shadowed by trees in a sacred grove. Strands of hair escaped her braid. What appeared black or dark brown indoors was a blend of brown and a deep auburn. She was simply beautiful.

Warmth suffused him, pleasure in being alive and healthy. And in the company of a lovely woman who laughed at the same things he did.

He opened his duffle enough for the kitten to poke his spotted head out.

I am leaving the Turquoise House!
Rusby sounded thrilled.
I am going home with MY FAMMAN!
The little cat glanced up at Garrett with love in his eyes and Garrett missed a step. He'd never seen that expression for him from a cat. Had rarely seen it at all.

Rusby was very young. Soon he'd don the arrogant cat manner. In the meantime Garrett would enjoy the kitten. He curled his fingers around Rusby's middle, lifted him to stare into yellow eyes.

“We're heading to MidClass Lodge.” Garrett put the kitten on his shoulder and said a simple spell so the young one couldn't fall.

The foxes speak of that place,
Rusby said.

“There were a few foxes once, but now their families are larger, they like more space.”

MidClass is close to the beach of the ocean. I have never seen a beach or an ocean.

With his sandy brown coat and dark spots, Rusby could easily be lost on the beach. Garrett put on a mild expression. “The beach can be dangerous. You must promise not to go there by yourself.”

I promise,
Rusby said easily.

Garrett figured that like all young things faced with irresistible temptation, Rusby would break his promise.

“There are new collars with a recall teleportation spell,” Artemisia said.

“Good idea.” His fingers stroked fur softer than most things he'd touched in his life. So soft. So young. So vulnerable and needing protection. “We should consult with Danith D'Ash, the animal Healer, and make sure you are top-of-the-pyramid fine,” he said.

Cats do not get Iasc sickness,
Rusby said.

“No, you don't,” Artemisia agreed.

A gasp from the kitten.
I will get to see the great D'Ash?

“The sooner the better,” Garrett said. He provided Healing for his feral informants if they got wounded or sick and asked for it. Not all of them did. He was accustomed to sending creatures by translocation to Danith D'Ash and her son for Healing, along with a spell informing them of any data he might have.

Rusby should spend time with more civilized, domesticated Fams. Garrett frowned. What might he lose if the kitten became domesticated? He wasn't much domesticated, either. But he'd feel better if D'Ash checked Rusby out. Closing his hand around his Fam, Garrett released the attachment spell. “I'm sending you to D'Ash's right now.” He tried a guileless expression.

Artemisia arched her brows. “Using Flair?”

“Minor Flair. Rusby, I don't know your dam's or sire's name or lineage. D'Ash likes to note that.”

I am the first Cat in My Family to be a Fam,
Rusby said proudly.

“D'Ash will be interested.”

Rusby grinned, showing pointy baby teeth.
I will tell her all about My life.

Artemisia chuckled. “All five weeks of it.”

“Yesss,” Rusby articulated.
I will tell her of My dam.

“She'll be fascinated.” Artemisia laughed again. Garrett liked listening to that.

“Of course.” Garrett stroked Rusby's tiny head, scratched under his chin, and felt his purr. Nice.

Cupping Rusby in both hands, Garrett muttered the data spell and attached it to Rusby's ear, which flicked. “Translocating Rusby to D'Ash's number four intake room in three seconds.” His voice would be heard in D'Ash's office, and that teleportation pad was free. “One, Rusby cat. Two, Garrett's Fam.
Three!
”

Rusby's squeal cut off midsound as he vanished.

A few seconds later, a blue tag plinked onto the ground and Garrett picked it up.

“What's that?” asked Artemisia.

He flicked it into the air, caught it, made it disappear. “Receipt tag from Gwydion Ash.”

“Oh.” She stared at him with admiration. The warmth of being with her heated to lust. His cock hardened. Though he was glad to know it worked well, he wouldn't follow up on the attraction to his HeartMate. No. Absolutely not.

He tucked the tag in his pocket.

“You're a caring man,” she said.

“Not so much.”

Disappointment crossed her features before she masked them. She shrugged. He walked on; a breeze fluttered the leaves and cooled him.

They strolled together, Artemisia wasn't sure why. Outside was significantly warmer than TQ. She wanted to hold hands with Garrett, had enjoyed the touching of their fingers before as they'd walked. And she was having more feelings than she should for a patient . . . but he hadn't been patientlike from the first time she'd met him.

They'd struggled through a nightmare together, was all. When he'd thanked her, she'd thought he might be mellowing toward her. Now she was disappointed he'd reverted back to ignoring her. Her lips tightened against words—she didn't feel pleasant and didn't want to sound whiny. But she got conflicting signals from him. She didn't need an escort in this part of town, was perfectly safe. Why didn't he just leave?

Yet she was Healer enough to observe body language and she hadn't missed his physical attraction to her.

A puzzle. Unlike him, she didn't need to figure out puzzles. They were rocks in a path she wanted smooth.

So she was torn. She liked him beside her, the scent of his skin warmed in the sun. But if he wasn't going to act on the attraction, if he was more tied to his dead lady than living in the present, Artemisia was asking for trouble if she stayed with him.

Then his fingers feathered hers again as they walked and all her thoughts faded as she let the pleasure of his touch rule. And she sensed that he, too, both fought and wanted their connection.

“What's that?” Garrett said sharply.

She followed his gaze—across the green grass of Apollopa Park to the flat reflecting pool and a splashing center fountain of highly polished glisten metal cubes. She pulled her gaze back to a bundle of clothes.

Nasty odors whiffed to her. The bundle became a fallen person, lying on his side. She raced to him, refusing to admit she smelled death. Garrett pulled at her sleeve, her arm, but she flung his grasp away.

Kneeling, she reached out to touch the crumpled man, then stopped. More than her nose told her he was dead. His eyes stared, a pale brown in a soft-sag middle-aged face. Flies crawled on the long, deep slice in his wrist over a vein where he'd lost blood.

“Don't touch him!” Garrett ordered.

“I haven't.” She had to swallow. Tears hovered behind her eyes.

Garrett sucked in a deep breath. “There's an odd smell.”

She recognized the odor of the drug pylor, simply froze.

Memory rose and smacked her. Angry yelling voices in the night. The windows of her home breaking with exploding smoke bombs releasing pylor clouds. She'd breathed them in and coughed, coughed, coughed. Her Family rushing together, teleporting away from the mob attacking their home, wrecking it.

Her own nightmares threatened. She couldn't speak. Her hands fisted and she shoved them in her opposite sleeves. She focused on the dead man. He had a laceration on his head.

“Looks like someone hit him from behind,” Garrett said. “Then fliggering carved him up.” He gestured to the dark-stained earth and clothing.

Artemisia flinched. The man's veins had been opened and he'd bled out.

“Not a natural death.” Garrett was grim. “You're a Healer, what are your conclusions?”

The breeze picked up and pylor hit her nose. She couldn't speak, held still and forced down bile.

“You know that smell?”

All of her shook inside, so it was easy to shake her head.

Garrett was scanning the park and she looked around, too, so she wouldn't concentrate on the pylor or the body. The fountain cubes reflected in the pool and soft falling water sounded. There was a small, columned round Temple on the far side of the park with no door, showing sunlight inside from a broken roof.

As broken as the body at her feet.

“The killer wanted this body found. He didn't hide him in the Temple,” Garrett said. “I'd better call the guards.” His gaze came back to her. “Murder.”

She managed one word only. “Yes.” Reverberations of the past, that cataclysmic change in her life, pounded in her skull. Those deadly threats to her mother. Artemisia's breath came fast. Could this threaten her mother, too?
Breathe!
Get control and act normally.

He'd taken out his perscry, a small glass pebble with a scryspell, and activated it, was talking to a guardsman. “I'll wait here by the body.”

Discreetly, she drew in a breath, readied herself so her movements would be smooth. She shifted her balance and rose to her feet. Keeping her face set in the shocked and pitying expression she'd had when she'd first looked at the man wasn't too hard.

Garrett's gaze cut to her. “Do you know him?”

“No.”

He nodded and went back to speaking with the guard, listing all the man's particulars—his height and weight, the plump body shape, his callused hands . . . detailing his shabby clothes. “We'll wait here.”

She shrank inside. She didn't want to stay here but had no choice. Arms crossed in front of her, she cupped her hands around her opposite elbows. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself and rock, and cry out for her mother. But she was an adult now, and the Family would rally around to protect her mother.

No. She'd let her imagination run away. Her Family had lost everything because her mother was cross-folk and incense with the drug pylor had been found in their home. Pylor that had been used in the Black Magic Cult deaths. The misconceptions about cross-folk religion and pylor had been enough to destroy them.

Just because she smelled pylor on the man, knew he'd been drugged with it, probably after the blow to his head, didn't mean that her Family would be persecuted or the scandal would be raked up again. No. Breathe easier, steadier, relax muscles. Look concerned—and she was!—but don't appear afraid.

No one could touch her mother and father now. They were safe in the secret sanctuary. They'd already lost their titles and the respect of their peers and their careers. They'd moved on and made a good life for themselves.

That dreadful time was over. As Garrett's was. She'd survived and she wouldn't have to live through it again.

She opened her mouth to tell him of the pylor, what she thought might have happened, but couldn't. Couldn't force the words out.

The Mugworts had been driven from their home during a hideously cold and snowy winter. They'd hung on in lodgings for a year before they'd been hounded from the city, then had been offered the benediction of being caretakers for the old FirstGrove, BalmHeal estate.

She shivered in remembered cold and despair. Garrett wasn't the only one who equated cold with despair.

He signed off of his scry and pocketed the pebble, then glanced upward and frowned. “Clouds are rolling in. TQ should have told us the weather report.”

Artemisia looked. The sun was shrouded by gray clouds with bruised bellies. Good enough reason to shiver.

Garrett squatted by the body. Obviously his ordeal had been wiped from his mind by this new situation. His frown grooved his forehead. “I don't know this smell.”

Artemisia wet her lips. She should force her conclusion into the open, into the freshening breeze that spun the scent of pylor around them.

There were a couple of slight
pops
and two guards, one male and one female, strode from the Temple and up to them, moving together like longtime partners.

The female guard scrutinized her. Her brows came down and her mouth formed “Mugwort,” and Artemisia trembled.

The guards joined Garrett and only then Artemisia realized she'd drawn away from the body and the scent of devastation.

Her perscry in her sleeve pocket lilted a tune. “That's Primary HealingHall,” she said. “I work there.”

“We know,” the male guard said. “All guards are treated at Primary HealingHall and we recognize your tunic and insignia.”

She cupped her marble and Ura Heather's irritated face looked out at her. “Well, where are you?”