Weavespinner f-5 Page 9

  That caused Tarrin's pride to rise up. "I can do for myself, Jesmind," he said with a short look. "I'm sorry to break it to you Were-cats, but I'm not helpless, and I don't need protecting."

  Jesmind actually looked a bit chagrined, but Triana's expression didn't change. "If you're taking that room, fine. But I'll be there," she declared.

  "No, Triana, you won't," Jenna told her bluntly. "This is the Tower, if you recall. He'll be quite safe here, so long as he doesn't leave the grounds."

  "Who are you to order me around, girl?" Triana said with an ominous glare at Jenna.

  But Jenna didn't seem to be very impressed. "I'm the Keeper, Triana," she replied in a stiff tone. "If you don't recall, you happen to be my guests. If you don't feel that you need to obey me within the boundaries of my own Tower, you're more than welcome to leave at any time."

  It hung there for a long moment, as the Were-cat matron and the young woman, barely half her height, locked gazes and refused to look away. But then Triana blinked, and her stiff posture softened slightly. "As you say," she growled in acknowledgement.

  There were more than a couple of shocked expressions among them. None of them had ever seen Triana bow to anyone's authority before. Even though Tarrin had no memory of Triana, even he understood that he just witnessed something along the lines of the sun rising in the west, or the Skybands turning sideways in the sky.

  To his surprise, Tarrin realized that that had settled the matter. Jesmind's hostile expression softened, then she glanced at Jasana and her eyes became calculating for a moment.

  "Now, let's all get settled in, and then have some lunch," Jenna said briskly, so the silence didn't fester in Triana's mind. "Dolanna, Dar, make sure Tarrin finds the main dining room," Jenna said with a smile. "Let's all meet there in an hour, alright?"

  There was a rumble of assent, and then the others began to file out. But Tarrin hesitated to say goodbye to the Were-cats, to make sure they weren't very mad at him. "I'm sorry, but I just need some space to myself," he explained to Kimmie as the others listened. "You've been hovering over me ever since I woke up, and if you didn't know, that really aggravates me."

  "I should have known, it aggravated you before," Triana grunted. "Alright, cub. If you want a little space, we'll give it to you. But you'll still come sit with us and spend time with your daughter," she declared.

  "I'm not abandoning you all," he said with a laugh. "And I want to get to know my daughter and my, uh, girlfriends. I just want my own room, that's all."

  "Actually, it may be for the best," Jesmind said calmly, glancing at Jasana again. "All this has to be rather traumatic. And it's not like you're going to move across the city."

  "Exactly," he said with a nod. That wasn't what he expected from Jesmind, but it warmed him to her rather quickly. If she was willing to see his side of it, maybe there was hope that they could be good friends. "You can come see me whenever you want. I'm not going to shut you out."

  Jesmind tapped Triana on the shoulder, then nodded towards Tarrin. Triana nodded. "Jula, why don't you and Kimmie sit with Jasana a bit," Triana ordered. "We're going to go with Tarrin to find his room."

  "Sure, Triana," Kimmie said quickly, picking up Jasana. "Hey there, halfling," Kimmie said with a grin. "Want to meet your brother, or sister, or whatever it's going to be?"

  "Mama said you were having a baby," Jasana told her. "Will you come back, papa?"

  "We'll see each other at lunch, Jasana," Tarrin told her.

  "Alright."

  Dolanna and Dar led Tarrin and the two Were-cats out of the room, then back down the stairs. "I don't like the look in Jasana's eyes," Jesmind explained to Triana as they descended. "I think putting Tarrin out of her easy reach may be a good idea. You know how she is."

  "I know too well," Triana grunted.

  "Giving Tarrin his own room is going to keep Jasana's evil little mind from dwelling on it too long, and besides, I think he really does need a little space of his own. We're all strangers to him, and I think it would be uncomfortable for him to live with us."

  Jesmind did understand. He nodded with a relieved expression, and impulsively reached out and took her hand, feeling the soft-rough pad on her palm on his fingertips. "Is Jasana really that bad?" he asked.

  "Yes," both the Were-cats said in unison.

  Tarrin laughed. "I think I like her already," he admitted.

  "She can be so sweet and adorable that everyone loves her when she wants to be, but when she wants something, there's no such thing as going too far," Jesmind explained. "She's a real handful to manage."

  "It sounds like it," Tarrin agreed. Jesmind squeezed his hand very gently, and she smiled down at him when he looked at her. He decided that he liked Jesmind right about then. She wasn't half as bad as the others had made her out to be. "I guess there's little doubt that she's my daughter," Tarrin chuckled. "Mother always said my children would be impossible to control."

  "Ah, then it's all your fault," Jesmind grinned.

  "You were just as impossible when you were a cub, daughter," Triana told her. "If anything, Jasana's the fault of both of you."

  Tarrin tuned the others out a moment as Dolanna told Jesmind about the Sha'Kar to be very, very relieved. He thought that Triana and Jesmind were going to fight him about him wanting his own room, but thankfully, Jenna had intervened on his behalf, and Jesmind understood better than he thought she would. It wasn't that he didn't like the Were-cats, or he wanted to avoid them, it was just that he didn't know them. He wanted space, a little privacy for himself, and a chance to come to terms with this strange situation without someone looking over his shoulder every moment of every day.

  He was still a bit surprised over Jasana, but he guessed that he shouldn't have been. Kimmie described her to him, and her thinking about biting him to turn him Were would definitely be within her character. He found that he was very much looking forward to seeing her at lunch, and sitting with her afterward and spending time with her. She was his daughter, after all, and he wanted to get to know her.

  "… don't think they're going to be much of a problem," he heard Dolanna saying as he started paying attention again. "The youngers are a bit rebellious, but they are Sha'Kar. I think that when they get accustomed to the daily routines in the Tower, they will find them to be not nearly as bad as they believe. The respect and preferential treatment they will receive from the human katzh-dashi will soothe their egos enough for them to meld with the Tower customs."

  "As long as it doesn't make their heads big," Triana grunted in reply. "Ianelle's going to have to pay close attention to the wildest of the children."

  "She won't have to look far," Dar laughed. "Her daughter has to be one of the wildest."

  "I heard all sorts of stories about her," Triana chuckled humorlessly. "If even half of them are true, I'm shocked Ianelle doesn't have gray hair."

  "Here you are, Tarrin. Your room," Dar said as they stopped in front of a large oak door with a bronze handle. He opened it and stepped aside just enough for Tarrin to look in, and he found himself staring into a rather large bedchamber with a big four-poster bed dominating the left wall. It had a stand on either side of it, the curtains tied at the posts, and there was a huge chest at its foot. There was a writing desk on the right wall, directly across from the bed, and there was a pair of bureaus on the far wall, both to the left of a glass-paned door that led out onto what looked to be a balcony of sorts. There was an actual full-length mirror in the corner behind the bed, a real silvered glass one that had be dreadfully expensive. Tarrin stepped in just enough to see a washstand on the same wall as the door, with a very expensive-looking porcelain pitcher and washbasin, white with elegant wavering blue lines circling the lip of the basin and the neck of the pitcher. A glowglobe hovered over the foot of the bed, in the exact center of the ceiling, shining milky white light down into the room.

  "Wow," Tarrin said in surprise. It was big. Much larger than his room back home, and he had the largest room in th
e house, since it was the attic. The furniture all looked antique, Shacean in style, with sculpted, curved legs on the chairs and burnished, tapering posts on the bed. Even the furniture looked expensive.

  "It's not half as nice as our apartment," Jesmind sniffed. "You sure you don't want to stay with us?"

  "I thought you said you wanted to separate me from Jasana for a while," Tarrin reminded her.

  "It sounded like a good idea at the time," Jesmind grunted. "You belong with us, my mate. If this is what you want, I'll agree to it, but I want you to know that I don't like it."

  "I'm sorry that you don't like it, but I need some space to myself, Jesmind. I'm not used to being so stacked up with people." Tarrin dropped his pack on the bed and sat down on it tentatively. It was a feather mattress, almost criminally soft. "I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all this space. I felt absolutely lost in that room back on the island."

  "You could get lost in that room," Triana snorted.

  "I think Tarrin could use some time to settle in," Dolanna announced. "Dar's room is just to the left as you come out of the door, and my room is at the end of the passage past Dar's room, dear one. If you need us, we will be there."

  "Alright," Tarrin said with a nod.

  "We'll see you at lunch, cub," Triana told him with a level look. "If you need me, just call my name. No matter where I am, I'll hear it, and I'll be here before the sound dies off."

  "Even if I'm just saying your name?" he asked.

  She nodded. "So don't name me unless you want me to come to you," she warned.

  "Alright, Tri-uh, mother," he said.

  "See you in a bit, my mate," Jesmind told him, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek chastely. Her lips felt strange, and it triggered another flash of memory, one that was rather intimate. Something about Jesmind kissing him.

  They all said their farewells, and Tarrin closed the door behind him, leaned against it, and sighed in relief. All in all, it went better than he expected. Nobody fought about it-at least not too much-and what was more important, he'd gotten to meet Jesmind and Jasana. Jesmind wasn't half as bad as he thought she would be, and all in all, he rather liked her. He wasn't sure if she was just acting to try to keep him at ease or not, but regardless of why, he liked her. Jasana was adorable, and he found the idea of being her father pretty good. She was smart, cute, and he rather fancied her. She sounded like a real handful, but in actuality, he preferred having a child like that. At least one knew what to expect from a child like Jasana.

  He just wondered how long their giving moods were going to last.

  The meal to which they went at lunch looked more like a banquet, given the number of people that were there. All his friends were there, naturally, but there were also others there. Ianelle attended with her Council, and Jenna's Council was also present. There were a few Sorcerers Tarrin didn't know there that Dolanna told him he had known, the Lord General of the Knights, an elderly man named Darvon, and a few of the Knights with which they said he'd been very good friends, and there was also a merchant family from town present that Tarrin was told were very, very good friends of both him and his family. Tarrin couldn't remember any of them except the little girl, Janette. Seeing her brought several flashes of memory to him, the strangest of which was looking up at her like she was some kind of a giant. The little girl, about nine or so with dark curly hair and wearing a very fancy lace-lined satin dress, invoked any number of very unusual feelings in him, a powerful protectiveness paramount among them. Tarrin knew that he looked at Janette like a daughter, like a member of the family, but he couldn't remember why he felt like that, when he met her, or how long he'd known her.

  Tarrin felt a little lost again as name after name was given to him, face after face passed by him that he was told he had once known, yet now couldn't remember any of them except Janette. He sat rather firmly entrenched between Kimmie and Jesmind, and the two Were-cat females made him feel rather stifled. He felt again the loss of his memory as he looked out over the many people, knowing that he'd once known almost all of them, knowing that he'd once known the Tower grounds like the back of his hand. It was a strange feeling to see them, to know that he'd once known them, but have no memory of them. It was a helpless feeling, an aggravating feeling, and those were feelings that Tarrin did not feel often at all.

  But the others didn't let him dwell on it too much. During and after the meal, they came over and talked with him, smiling and acting in a reassuring manner, trying to make conversation without bringing up the past. It wasn't easy for them, and it was plain on their faces that the way he acted now was much different from the way he'd acted before. It seemed to puzzle them somewhat… they'd been ready to see him as a human and knew he'd lost his memory, but a change in personality was something that they hadn't expected. They did cope, however, trying to be light and chatty, but without his memory, there was little they could really talk about outside his impressions of the Sha'Kar and the Tower and the weather. And those subjects got old after a while.

  At least he wasn't the main focus of attention for long. The Sha'Kar present stole the thunder from Tarrin, at least among the human Sorcerers, and after they came to talk to him, they invariably ended up with the Sha'Kar. Sapphire too attracted a great deal of attention, for though she looked like a rather exotic human, just about everyone in the Tower knew that she was actually a dragon. Sapphire had come over early in the meal and told him that she'd been given a very nice room, and she was going to remain as a biped, as she called it, so as not to panic the city and also because it was much easier for her to move around the Tower grounds in a form for which the grounds and structures had been designed to accommodate. She still had had no luck in magically tracking down her two youngest children, but she was still trying.

  After the meal, Jenna basicly thumbed her nose at her secretary, Duncan, who was rattling a sheaf of papers for her to deal with meaningfully and took Tarrin out on a tour of the grounds. They went alone, and as she showed him around, from the gardens to the kitchens to the library to the Heart, the center of the Tower, to the training grounds of the Knights, they talked. She told him all about everything that had happened to her and their parents during the time he'd forgotten, told him about the tutor that had died in a Troll raid on Aldreth, and their move to Suld. Then she told him about her time in Ungardt after the Doomwalker attacked them, her getting to know their mother's side of the family, and then her crossing over and becoming a Weavespinner. Then she described the move back, the battle at Suld, and her eventual rise to power as the Keeper of the Tower in Suld.

  "We all thought that Myriam was really sick," she explained as they walked along the pristine pathways of the gardens, a place that was much cooler than the other parts of the Tower. Jenna had told him that a magic spell was placed over the gardens that kept them at a level temperature all the time, making them delightfully cool in the summer and nice and warm in the winter. "She lost alot of weight and she looked really pale, and she was coughing all the time. After she stepped down, she told me that her sickness was just a spell that Duncan had cast on her to make her look sick, and give her a valid reason to step down. It was as much a surprise to me as it was everyone else when she literally hand-picked me to succeed her."

  "I didn't think it worked like that."

  "It doesn't," Jenna chuckled. "The Council is supposed to choose the next Keeper, and the Council did object. But then the Goddess manifested directly in the Council chambers and told them in no uncertain terms that I was her choice. Nobody objected after that."

  "It must be amazing, having a god talking to you that way," Tarrin mused.

  "Mother doesn't really seem like a god most of the time," Jenna said as she ducked under a low branch from a cherry tree that was hanging over the path. "She seems more like a friend than a god. It makes it really easy to talk to her, and in a way, I guess it makes it easier for me to follow her orders."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, if she came do
wn with flashes of lightning and all that fanfare, I'd be too afraid of her," she explained. "She's more personable than that, but I never forget that she is the Goddess. It's hard to explain."

  "You obey her because you love her, not because you're afraid of her," he said sagely, then he blinked. Why did he say that?

  "Exactly," she agreed. "So, what's it like?"

  Tarrin knew what she meant. "I really can't say," he replied. "Since I don't remember anything from before, I don't have anything to compare it to."

  "I guess I should have realized that," Jenna chuckled.

  "What's it like being Keeper?"

  "Well, everyone bows to me all the time, and that annoys me," she said. "And you wouldn't believe how much paperwork there is to do. I never dreamed how much time I'd spend sitting at a desk reading papers. Kings and queens may rule the land, but the paper rules them ."

  "Ban paper."

  Jenna laughed. "I've been sorely tempted, but then Duncan would be dropping stone tablets on my desk, and that would murder the finish."

  Tarrin chuckled. "Imagine trying to store them."

  "I'd have stone tablets stacked up like bricks," Jenna said, holding her arms before her to emphasize the image. "They'd fill up my office until I had nothing but a little hole in the stone."

  "You could build little houses out of them. Not only would you be storing your records, you'd be housing the homeless."

  "At least until I needed it back," Jenna laughed.

  "What exactly do you do as Keeper?"

  "Well, most of it is just diplomacy," she answered. "I answer flowery letters from kings and queens with similarly flowery replies. Sometimes I have to go to the palace and talk to the regent, because of the treaties between Suld and the Tower, and the rest of it is just administration of the Tower. I have to direct the Sorcerers in their tasks, which is kinda silly since they already know what to do, and I send Sorcerers out on missions out into the countryside sometimes."