Heart Fortune (Celta) Read online

  Soon she headed back to work, stretching her legs as she sauntered in the open air, enjoying the sunlight. In Druida City, she spent most of her time in the PublicLibrary and teleported home to her Residence, hardly ever getting outside . . . and forgetting about time as it passed.

  She already knew that here in the camp she’d be very aware of the time. Unlike in the city, nature affected people’s lives greatly here. Breakfast began near or at dawn, lunch at midday and dinner just before dark. A couple of septhours after dark and campfire stories everyone retired. Meals, sunrise, and sunset were the main time distinctions of the day.

  She smiled, knowing she’d fall into that mind-set, too.

  After dinner, Lepid deserted Glyssa again, saying that Zem needed more food, hadn’t been eating enough. Since her small fox appeared unaccustomedly serious, she thought he told the truth. So she agreed he needed to hunt more for his “good friend.”

  She had no illusion why Lepid liked Zem so much. Her FoxFam had saved the bird and loved being the hero. Something she sensed was true of her HeartMate, too.

  Not something she had ever considered important, like knowledge, or learning a new skill.

  Had to be an aspect of self-identity. She didn’t need to be a hero, didn’t much—hadn’t much—cared what others thought of her before today. When she thought of how the gossip had spread that she’d fallen into immediate lust with Jace . . . that had been humiliating. She’d formed and implemented a plan to poke gentle fun at her newness to the camp, her naïveté in living here, added a tiny touch of bumbling scholar. People had thawed toward her.

  But if she had to divide them into groups she believed there were three: one bunch liked her for herself, was amused by Lepid, liked animals. Such as the Healer Symphyta.

  One group thought she was snobbish, too fussy, and believed she embodied a number of other negative characteristics, or these folk simply didn’t like animals. Trago, the Healer.

  A calculating third portion thought she could be useful to them, maybe manipulated by them—a scholar who understood esoteric, uninteresting matters, but with little innate cleverness. Funa Twinevine.

  She found herself building a persona to shield herself, not being completely open, for the first time in her life—outside her Family. Glyssa at “Lugh’s Spear” as opposed to Glyssa the SecondLevel PublicLibrarian that most of her friends knew. Or SecondDaughter, in her Family.

  Even after hours, duty called. Today she’d started work and it was time to set down her first day in a log.

  With a few moves, Glyssa changed the large table into a smaller desk, no Flair needed, all excellent workmanship by one of the top luxury furniture providers, Clover Fine Furniture.

  It felt odd to sit in the middle of the room at a little desk, but her desk in the PublicLibrary was larger than this pavilion room, with plenty of space to move around. Rolling her shoulders, she admitted a new discovery. She liked a lot of space around her as she worked, and preferred that to a huge desk. Trade-offs, something she should have anticipated she’d have to make, compromises with regard to her living space, but she hadn’t because she hadn’t correctly envisioned her space.

  She’d have to keep this desk and her files—both papyrus and recordspheres—ruthlessly organized.

  She’d known she’d have to compromise with Jace. She hadn’t handled that well, either.

  Early days.

  She glanced out at the to-ing and fro-ing of the camp at sunset. This was one of the weeknights that a huge bonfire was lit in the circle and people gathered around it.

  Though she wanted to be there, she was also tired of so many people being around her all the time and the lack of privacy. That she’d foreseen, but hadn’t anticipated how naturally solitary she was and how much she stayed within her own little social circles. Though she had decided she wanted to change that. She wanted to experience the frontier and all the sorts of people drawn to a project such as the excavation of Lugh’s Spear.

  And she would be more extroverted. Tomorrow.

  She set a stack of papyrus to her left and pulled out a writestick. Those tools were traditional and her Family, that is, the First Level PublicLibrarians insisted on such a written record so that old ways were not lost.

  There came a wild, gleeful shriek in her mind, Lepid with feelings following closely: I have it! I have the mocyn! Kill! Yum! Food for Zem, too!

  She withdrew fast, but knew her wonderful Fam had dealt bloody death. And was feasting on mocyn—the Celtan equivalent of Earthan rabbit.

  Rubbing her face to block any images, she tried sinking her mind into a meditative state.

  But anxious vibrations came to her from the Elecampanes’ tent. Should she go over there or not?

  Her nose twitched. They could always refuse to talk to her.

  She headed to their canvas pavilion, stopped outside the threshold guarded on one side by two cats and the other, the older FoxFam, Shunuk. The cats eyed her and twitched their tails, said nothing.

  Greetyou, GrandMistrys Licorice, Shunuk said. He peered around as if searching for Lepid.

  “He’s out hunting,” she said. Lifted her chin. “He just caught a mocyn.”

  Shunuk lifted his upper muzzle in a sneer.

  Ignoring him, she called, “Here!”

  “Come in,” Raz said.

  He and his HeartMate sat on the inflatable twoseat. Maxima wasn’t with them. The couple held hands, their expressions were smooth—rather like the expressions on Glyssa’s parents’ faces when an emergency came up at the PublicLibrary.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, then winced.

  The Elecampanes shared a look, then Del D’Elecampane got up to pace the short length of the sitting room and back, letting herself frown. “The rumors about a damn cursed project aren’t dying. More like spreading like wildfire.”

  “Negative ideas are always easier to entertain than positive thoughts,” Glyssa said.

  Del laughed shortly, aimed a forefinger at Glyssa. “That’s damn true.”

  Raz said, “And it can get boring here. We are, after all, essentially an isolated small town. We had all the crew we needed, so we haven’t signed on very many this year.” He smiled at her. “You’re the newest face we’ve seen in months. The airship pilots don’t tend to stay.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Del said. “But I don’t like how some of the crew are spooked. Some people might have left already except that they’d have to walk out across the plains. Not much between here and Verde Valley, our place, which is the closest real civilization.” She ran a hand over her HeartMate’s head. “Because of you.”

  “Because of us.” He reached out and snagged Del’s hand, kissed it.

  Thousands of kilometers, and they’d walked . . . or ridden it themselves with Maxima.

  “I don’t doubt some are considering heading back to Druida when the next ship comes in,” Raz said.

  “The cowardly ones,” Del agreed. She stopped her pacing to sit next to her husband.

  Raz chuckled and a not-quite-nice gleam came to his eyes. “Most of our staff are adventurers, mercenaries, those who don’t fit well in cities and like the risk of the frontier.”

  Like Jace.

  “Usually they live from paycheck to paycheck, and to get them out here, we offered a deal.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’d fly them in. But if they wanted to leave, they had to find their way back. We offered to take the cost of their return trip out of their first paycheck.”

  That sounded a little bit mean to Glyssa. “Clever.”

  “Very. Only about twenty-five percent accepted that.”

  “So now some of them are stuck.” D’Elecampane glanced at Glyssa. “Including Jace Bayrum. Until they get their next check and make an appointment with the airship company to pay for their return flight.”

  Raz cleared his throat. “Cherry Shipping and Transport, my Family’s company, is leery of taking I.O.U.s from our staff.”


  “Understandable.” But sneaky. Glyssa ached for Jace. Trapped. He wouldn’t like that. She didn’t dare offer him gilt.

  “Of course, a lot of barter for goods and services goes on,” Del said. Again her light green eyes met Glyssa’s. “Jace Bayrum does quality leatherwork.”

  “Beautiful,” Raz said. “I’ve purchased a few of his items myself recently.”

  “Have you?” Del perked up.

  Raz winced. “For holiday gifts. Don’t tell Maxima.”

  “Of course not.”

  Glyssa thought of the wallet she had tucked away in her most private no-time storage unit. How often she’d taken it out to look at it, tried to sense the vibrations of the man who’d made it. “I have an item of his work,” she murmured.

  “So do we,” Raz said. He shared a significant look with his wife. Hesitated, then gazed back at Glyssa. “We have his HeartGift.”

  Glyssa stopped breathing. “What?”

  Del swept a hand around them. “When you travel a lot like Jace, bunk down in camps like this, or merchant caravans, or whatever, you keep what’s important to you with you. We offer a very secure vault for our staff. He put the HeartGift in there.”

  Raz said, “Naturally, since neither of us could see it well, and it radiated intense Flair beneath the excellent spellshield, we knew what it was when we stowed it.”

  “The HeartGift he made for me,” Glyssa breathed. It was here. At the camp. Where Jace could offer it to her and she could accept it and they could be legally and formally mated. For a moment she was dizzy with the possibilities. Then her dreams crashed. He was barely speaking to her. If she thought hard, she’d still be irritated at him.

  “Did you bring yours?” asked Raz softly, trying to draw the information from her.

  Relationships were built on trust. She wanted them to trust her, so she had to give a little. “No. It’s . . . fragile.”

  Del nodded. Shrugged. “All well and good, and this was a nice visit. But it didn’t help us much.” She stood again. “We still have problems, and if the majority of the crew get angry with us, we’ll be in a bad fix.”

  “Final option is that we will have to subsidize their leaving,” Raz agreed.

  They both looked at Glyssa. “We don’t want to shut this project down. Once we do, who knows how long it will take to get started up again?”

  Del grunted. “Or Laev T’Hawthorn and Straif T’Blackthorn and the other FirstFamilies will swoop in and make it their own.”

  Now that was a possibility Glyssa could see. “I don’t want that. This project is yours,” she said before she thought.

  “Thanks,” Raz said drily.

  Glyssa shrugged tightness from her shoulders. “Camellia deserves her share from Captain Hoku pursuant to Celtan salvage rights.”

  “We agree,” Del said. “We’ve always agreed, even before her line of descent was proven in JudgementGrove. We are honorable.”

  Glyssa nodded politely.

  “This venture has cost us a lot in gilt, energy, Flair, time,” Raz said. “On a project like this, investigating the past, doing something never done before, superstition runs rampant.” He spread his hands. “We are isolated from Druida City and the other smaller cities and towns established on the west coast. Below us is an ancient relic that could hold anything. Great, unimaginable treasures of the past. Knowledge of our ancestors and ourselves beyond anything we have now.” His voice dropped. “Or terrible curses—bad air, sicknesses that still live on from the colonists, or have mutated from Earthan viri to a plague that could kill us all.”

  Del snorted and broke the spell that had enveloped Glyssa at the actor’s words. “And we’ll have to deal with danger, and greed. That greed has escalated since we opened the hole down into the interior of the ship.” She squeezed her husband’s shoulder. “Which we haven’t yet planned for.”

  “We’ll need dedicated guards. Men and women who actually hire out as those. We had that slated for next year. Time to move it up.”

  Sighing, Del subsided back into the twoseat. “So we need to offer shares in the project.” She stared at Glyssa. “Current crew only. Deducted from their pay if they want. We’ll offer that soon.”

  “Staff includes you, GrandMistrys Licorice. We did a little checking on you with our friends. You could make a bona fide gesture. Are you in or not?” Raz asked.

  Her life wasn’t here. This was only her third day here. Her Family, and their investments, were always conservative, and her gilt was mixed with theirs.

  The way the rumors were running around the area, the dissatisfaction of some of the staff could bring down the whole venture. She’d be foolish to put gilt into this. To tie herself and her funds to the Elecampanes instead of Laev T’Hawthorn.

  But the thrill of adventure, curiosity, and the yearning for a fascinating project had her saying, “Count me in.”

  Raz sprang to his feet, laughed, and hugged her tightly. He was a strong, charismatic man, no matter that he was older than she. A man she’d once had a tiny infatuation for, like most other girls in Druida City. She felt nothing but a low wash of affection for him . . . and excitement at the gamble she was taking.

  Del stood, cocked her head, narrowed her eyes. “How much are we talking about from you?”

  Since Glyssa had studied her finances before leaving, she named a fairly high figure, and gasped at Raz’s renewed hug.

  Del’s eyes glinted as she grinned. “That should buy you some percentage points of the venture.” She tucked her thumbs in her trous pockets. “We’ll figure out what kind of bonus we can give you, too, in a choice of items recovered.”

  Glyssa’s eyes went wide. Imagine having something from the starship Lugh’s Spear!

  “I’d bet good gilt that Jace Bayrum will be one of the staff who’ll buy into the excavation,” Del said.

  Glyssa believed so, too. Maybe she was more like her HeartMate than she thought.

  She could imagine his scowl at being tied to a venture financially, the same venture as she.

  He wouldn’t like it.

  Too bad. She did. And she loved the excitement coursing through her. The dazzling hope of future discoveries.

  “I can . . . I can write out a letter to transfer the funds to be taken to my bank by the next airship.”

  “We’ll have a contract for you by then, one copy for us, one to be filed with the All Councils Clerk, one for you,” Raz said.

  The practical specifics jolted her back a little. No way to keep this from her parents, her sister. They would strongly disapprove and look more askance at her field study than ever.

  Laev T’Hawthorn would be disappointed. So would Camellia.

  She’d have to explain herself to all of them and she didn’t know how.

  Meanwhile Del D’Elecampane had grasped her arm in a show of unity, a bond of business, squeezed. Glyssa returned the pressure, but her airy thoughts had coalesced into a solid, heavy lump in her stomach.

  What had she really done? How much trouble was she in now? With her Family since her money would be separated from theirs. With her friends, Laev and Camellia, who’d believed she was on their side if any struggle for control of the project manifested. With the expectations of the Elecampanes for the support she’d be expected to give them, subtly and openly.

  With Jace who, if he subscribed to the project like she thought he might, wouldn’t want to be linked with her through business for as long as the excavation went on.

  Trouble, for sure. How much, she didn’t know.

  Fourteen

  A little stunned, a little nauseous at the huge commitment she’d just made, Glyssa trudged back to her pavilion. Once the threshold air turned opaque and hardened behind her into a door, she settled herself. After a minute she slipped into the chair behind her desk and took up her writestick, focused on work. That she could control.

  As she wrote, she marshaled her thoughts to record them on a sphere.

  Glyssa finished her description
of the day, being professionally cool with regard to the accusations against Jace—just relaying the facts. She spent a great amount of time on the description of the box retrieved from Lugh’s Spear. This included an exact tracing of the letters on the carton, and her conclusions, then finished her account.

  Satisfied with her report, both written and viz, she decided to use the same procedure for Camellia’s project, a story, of her ancestor, the last Captain of Lugh’s Spear and the pilot who’d landed the ship. The only starship that had had casualties when landing, though all experts at the time had agreed it had been a miracle that no more than seven had been lost.

  She researched and thought. Crafted a word, a phrase. Outlined the story.

  Time passed and the twinmoons rose. Their half-full, silvery light painted the empty path between the tents. She heard the murmur of voices, then singing. She could barely keep her eyes from closing.

  Lepid! she mind-called her FoxFam.

  A distant yap came. I am by the fire. You should come, too. It is very pleasant. A pause. Though some people do not sing very well. I sing better than they.

  She laughed, then stood and stretched, set the page of her story atop the many sheets of papyrus she’d used to detail her report of the camp, the Elecampanes, the progress of her studies, as well as the investigations of others and the progress of the excavation. Put the longer outline for her story atop that.

  I am going to bed now, she sent to Lepid.

  I will come in when people go away, and I check my caches and munch a little snack. Wariness came through their link.

  What is wrong?

  I will find out if those cats or that other fox have found my caches and are eating from them.

  Possessiveness and territoriality. She should have considered that. Other staff had Fams. I will always provide food for you. You will never go hungry with me.