Mortal Ties (14 page)

Sherrianne must have known some of this. She kept glancing down at Rule—not very far
down, since he made a really large wolf—but she didn’t look scared. Not happy, but
not scared.

Lily stopped and faced her witness. “You want to tell me why you feel guilty?”

Sherrianne leaned closer and started to whisper something.

“I’m not lupi. You’ll have to be louder.”

Sherrianne sighed heavily. “I guess they’re going to hear me anyway.”

“Some of them will, I imagine.”

Another sigh. “This is so embarrassing. I was saying that it’s not about the workshop.
Not really. It’s about him.” Her gaze slid to the left, where Cullen stood. “Cullen.
He’s married, you know.”

“Yes, I do.” The only married lupus on the face of the planet. That would change in
March, but right now Cullen was it.

“And I—well—people told me he
meant
it. That he’s being monogamous. I didn’t believe them, and I wanted…I mean, look
at him. Who wouldn’t? But at first I couldn’t even meet him. He’s always either at
his workshop or he’s with Cynna and Ryder, so I asked people about his workshop, what
he does there, and when he’s likely to be there and all. I thought I could, you know,
pull off a meeting that way. That’s why I felt guilty, because I’d been talking to
people about his workshop. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t think you’re telling me everything.”

Sherrianne’s blue eyes opened wider. “I am!”

Rule shook his head.

“You aren’t.”

She gave Rule a dirty look, as if he’d tattled. “I guess
some of it was because of Cynna. It’s not very reasonable for her to expect him to
be faithful, is it? But I like her, and I…I wasn’t able to meet him on the way to
his workshop—”

Rule was shaking his head.

“Oh, all right! I did run into him, and he told me to go away, but everyone says he’s
really rude about being interrupted, so it wasn’t like he’d really turned me down.
So I…I sort of made friends with Cynna, because that’s where he spends a lot of time.
With her and Ryder.”

Rule nodded. She was being truthful now.

“You feel guilty because you used Cynna in order to get access to her husband, who
you want to seduce.”

“That’s such a judgmental way of looking at it.”

“Seems pretty accurate to me. Have you talked to anyone outside Nokolai about Cullen’s
workshop or what he does there?”

“No! Not even once.”

Rule nodded again.

“Just for the record…how did your use-Cynna-to-seduce-her-husband plan work out?”
Lily knew the answer. She wanted Cynna—and the clan as a whole—to know, too.

“It didn’t. He said…it didn’t work at all.” Sherrianne smiled at Lily and shrugged.
If a whiff of embarrassment clung to that smile, the main flavor was relief that her
confessing was over. She’d been raised clan, after all. Wanting to have sex with someone
wasn’t bad. The embarrassment was probably because she’d pushed so hard, and maybe
because she’d used Cynna. But in the end she’d taken no for an answer, hadn’t she?
She hadn’t crossed the line.

Rule nodded again.

“Okay. Thank you for your cooperation. You can go now.”

Instead she turned toward Cynna. “Cynna—”

Cynna’s face was stony. “Not now.”

“But I want you to know that I—”

“Sherrianne,” Isen rumbled. “Go. Now.”

She sighed and obeyed.

Lily turned to look at the other woman. The young, angry, defiant one, who’d been
watching everything Lily and Sherrianne said and did closely. “Brenda. Come here,
please.” She wouldn’t like that, being told to come here like a child.

Her lips tightened before she remembered to duck her head and hide again. She walked
slowly over to Lily.

“Were you raised here at Clanhome, too?”

“No.”

Lily waited, but Brenda was smart or stubborn enough to stay silent. “Isen?”

“When Brenda was five or six,” Isen said, “her mother experienced a religious conversion.
She was born again, and her views on sexuality changed accordingly. From that point
on she wanted to limit Brenda’s time with us. She’s a fair-minded woman. She allowed
Brenda’s father to see her, but only away from Clanhome. After Brenda turned eighteen,
she decided to get to know him—and us—better. She visited her father here several
times, then last May asked to move in with him for the summer. We were delighted.”

Lily had an urge to ask Isen what Brenda’s favorite color was, what she’d gotten for
Christmas last week, how old she’d been when she lost her first tooth. He might know.
He seemed to know everything about every member of his clan. “So she’s been here since
May?”

“No, she went off to college in September, but then the events at the Humans First
rallies made her unsafe there, so she returned here. At first she seemed to resent
that, but I don’t believe she does now.”

Being spoken about instead of to had the expected effect. Brenda went from a simmer
to a boil. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with anything! What do you care
where I lived when I was little?”

“That’s how investigations are,” Lily said blandly. “I ask all sorts of nosy questions
that, in the end, turn out not to lead anywhere. But every now and then one ends up
mattering a lot. Who’s your boyfriend here?”

Brenda blinked. “What—I don’t know what you mean.”

“Would you rather I said
lover
? I suppose it does sound more adult. You have a lover here, don’t you?”

That didn’t make her hide behind her hair. Instead she gave her head a proud little
toss, shaking her hair back. “None of your business.”

“It is, you know. Especially if he isn’t Nokolai. And he isn’t, is he, Brenda?”

She didn’t answer, but she didn’t hide, either. Her head stayed up. Her eyes defied
Lily to pry anything out of her.

She was so very young. Lily didn’t make it a question this time, but a statement of
fact. “Your lover asked you about Cullen Seabourne’s workshop.”

Brenda didn’t answer, but Rule did. Briefly his ears and tail drooped. He nodded.

She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t get it.”

“He means,” Isen said, “that she felt guilt over your question.”

A nod plus drooping tail…“ ‘Bad dog’ equals guilt, huh?”

Rule snorted. That could mean anything from laughter to disgust, but this time probably
meant something along the lines of “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lupi did not like to be
compared to dogs.

And she was sidetracking, big-time. The next part would be…tricky. She thought she
knew what Isen was doing, but if she was wrong, things were apt to skip the handbasket
and go straight to hell. She looked steadily at Brenda, letting the silence drag out.
Finally she spoke quietly. “Brenda. Look to your left.”

More out of surprise than any desire to obey, she did, then frowned at Lily. “What?’

“See all those people sitting over there? Over forty people came forward when Isen
asked. Forty people who aren’t worried about talking about who asked them questions
about Cullen’s workshop. You’re worried about it, though, aren’t you? So worried you
won’t admit you discussed it with your lover. You’re protecting him. You think you
won’t be hurt, but he might be.”

“He didn’t talk to me about it,” she said quickly. “It was someone else. I didn’t
want to get h-her in trouble, that’s all.”

She was such a bad liar. Lily didn’t need Rule’s slow headshake, not with the way
the girl stumbled over the pronoun. “You think he needs protection. You’re afraid
he asked too many questions. That his interest wasn’t simple curiosity.”

Silence.

“Do you think I can’t find out who he is?”

“It wasn’t him. I told you that. It was a woman. She’s not connected to the clans
at all. I sold her the information. I was angry, like Isen said. I didn’t like being
here instead of at university, so I-I sold the information.”

Rule was shaking his head.

“Stop,” Isen growled. He walked up to them—no, it was more like a slow stalk, ending
three feet from Brenda. He didn’t say a word, but slowly she turned to face him. Slowly
her expression changed as defiance faded into fear.

Isen continued to stare at her as he boomed out, “She has confessed! She admits she
sold the information about the workshop to a human. She has betrayed Nokolai willfully,
knowingly—”

“No!”

The slim young man whose shout answered Isen stood among the Laban contingent.

The young man started toward them. The man to his left grabbed his arm. “Hank—”

He shook his clanmate off and kept coming. “She’s innocent,” he said loudly. “The
Chosen is right. She hopes to protect me. I was the one who sold the information,
not Brenda. She had no idea I would do that.”

Lily released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d been right.
This is what Isen had been going for—not poor Brenda’s bungled confession, but the
one they were about to hear.

Of course, things were still going to be tricky. He was lying, too.

H
ANK
Jamison was twenty-seven—an adult, by lupi standards, but a very young one. He was
tall and slim and beautiful, with large, dark eyes and an extra helping of the physical
grace all lupi possess. He looked like a Renaissance poet who moonlighted as a swashbuckler.
He should have been banned from all contact with women under the age of forty.

Hank insisted calmly and definitely on his guilt. His Rho had nothing to do with this,
nothing at all. He’d been greedy. He’d wanted money, and someone—he refused to say
who—had paid him well to give up Cullen’s secrets. He asserted all this without a
quiver of emotion.

Hank’s physical control was good, and he was smart enough to clam up once he’d made
his announcement. Rule smelled no guilt on him. He wouldn’t, though. Hank was lying,
but Rule wasn’t his Lu Nuncio, and he was trying to protect both his lover and his
Rho. No guilt for him there.

An hour after Hank’s confession, Lily was on her way back to Isen’s home with Isen
and Rule, who was two-footed again. Cynna had left to get Ryder from the tenders;
Cullen had left for his workshop to run some kind of test.
He was still obsessed with why his ward hadn’t made flames whoosh up. And Hank was
in leg-irons at the guard barracks. He wasn’t locked up because there was no way to
imprison someone at Clanhome. Lupi didn’t believe in that. Step far enough out of
line and you might get dead, but you wouldn’t be locked up.

Brenda Hyatt would be formally removed from Nokolai. The ceremony of expulsion was
different for a clan female than it was for a lupus since the mantle wasn’t involved,
but it went by the same name:
seco
.

Lily had checked a few things with the other witnesses before Isen dismissed everyone.
As she’d suspected, Brenda hadn’t been the only one Hank had talked to about Cullen’s
device. Just the most cooperative.

As they were leaving the meeting field, someone brought Isen his phone. He used it
to call Leo, the Laban Rho…who wasn’t answering. As they neared Isen’s house he put
his phone up without leaving a message.

“Does that make him look more guilty, not answering your call?” Lily asked.

“Leo never answers my calls right away.” Isen opened the big front door.

“Doesn’t he have to answer when you call?”

“He has to obey.”

Rule filled in that sparse answer. “It’s as you and Cynna were discussing earlier.
Laban is subordinate, but their Rho is very much a dominant. Leo will call Isen back—I
assume you left a callback number?” he added to his father.

“Of course. I believe I’d like coffee. Would you two care to join me?”

“Sure,” Lily said. Might as well. She wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. “So
he’s playing some kind of dominance game?”

Isen headed off toward the kitchen, so it was Rule who replied. “More a way of balancing
dominance and status. The two are connected, but they aren’t the same thing. Leo’s
status is subordinate to Isen’s, but he’s dominant, so he prefers to be the one calling,
not the one called upon.
Isen tolerates this, and generally Leo is careful not to test that tolerance. He calls
back quickly. You may have noticed that Isen didn’t leave a message.”

“That matters?”

“I could leave a message for Leo, if I were calling as Lu Nuncio. If Isen did, it
would send the wrong signal. As if their status were equal.”

Lupi status games made her head hurt. “You think he’ll call back, though. Even though
he must suspect it has to do with Hank. He has to wonder if he’s in a lot of trouble.”

“Leo is sometimes foolish, but he’s Rho. His clan is potentially at risk. He’ll call.”
Rule sank onto the long sofa that faced the fireplace. He leaned forward, propping
his elbows on his knees.

Lily settled next to him. She could hear Isen talking to Carl—a dispute over which
of them would make the coffee. Isen might be Rho, but the kitchen was Carl’s territory.
She turned her head to look at Rule.

He was weary. Weary and worn and barely aware of where he was, and that wasn’t like
him. Sure, it was past midnight, but Rule was a regular Energizer Bunny. He never
needed much sleep. So whatever was eating at him, it wasn’t physical…which left plenty
of other possibilities. It might fall to him to carry out whatever sentence Isen passed
on the Laban Rho.