Menolly started to respond to his oblique apology, but then stared at his face, her eyes widening. Suddenly, she glanced skyward, where the fire lizards were aerially following the skiff in swoops and glides. She watched them for a long moment, frowning slightly as she saw one dive into the waves. Sebell, puzzled by her abrupt curiosity, identified the fisher as his own Kimi and smiled indulgently as she brought the neatly captured yellowtail back to the prow of the ship. Oddly, the others stayed aloft while Kimi tore savagely into the flesh of her still-struggling prey.
Sebell wondered why the other three fire lizards didn’t come to share the feast, but the thought didn’t absorb him long. The ferocity with which Kimi ate fascinated him; he felt as if he were somehow involved in tearing the strips, as if he could savor the warm salty flesh in his mouth, as if—
“I’m sending Beauty to Toric at Southern Hold. She can’t stay here now, Sebell.”
Sebell heard Menolly’s voice but made no sense of the words, his entire attention was concentrated on the unusual actions of his fire lizard queen. He wanted to go to her, but he couldn’t move. He found that he was alternately clenching his hands and then rubbing his sweating palms against his legs. He was unbearably hot and tore at his shirt to open the throat.
“Oh!” he heard Menolly exclaim. “Oh, what else can I do? I can’t send Rocky and Diver away. That’s not fair to Kimi. We’re too far from land to raise more fire lizards, and there’s not a breath of wind to attract them here!”
Sebell pulled off his shirt and tossed it aside. The coolness of the day seemed to have no effect on the heat that consumed him. Then he noticed the two bronze fire lizards, crouching on the roof of the small cabin. They made no attempt to join Kimi in her feast. She was growling, too, her eyes glowing orangely at the two impertinent bronzes, and she seemed to be glowing in the sunlight.
Glowing? Unwilling to share food? What had Menolly mumbled about sending Beauty away? And to Toric? Why would she send Toric another message? What was the matter with Kimi?
He wanted to reprimand her but could frame no message in his mind. And why were those bronzes waiting? Why didn’t they go away and leave Kimi? Why…?
The “why” suddenly penetrated Sebell’s fire-lizard-linked confusion. Kimi eating alone, savagely; Menolly sending Beauty, another queen, away; Kimi, glowing golden and taunting the bronzes, her good friends, with her staring, whirling orange-red eyes! Kimi was about to fly. And it was Menolly’s bronzes who would fly her. A surge of elation swept Sebell, who could scarcely believe his good fortune. And yet…
“Menolly?” He turned to her, hands outstretched, palms up, pleading with her and apologizing for what he knew was about to happen since there were only the two of them on this becalmed boat in the middle of the windstill sea. He hadn’t wanted Menolly coerced, as she now must be; he’d wanted to be in full command of himself, not overridden by the mating instinct of Kimi.
“It’s all right, Sebell. It’s all right.” Smiling, Menolly put her hands in his and let herself be drawn into his arms where he had so yearned to have her.
As if their contact had been a signal, Kimi uttered a shriek and flung herself skyward from the prow, the two bronze fire lizards a length behind her. Sebell wasn’t standing on the deck with Menolly in his arms; he was with Kimi, exulting in her strength, in her flight, determined to outsmart those who pursued her. Just let them try to catch her!
Never had her wings responded so fully to her demands. Never had she flown so high, soaring, veering, gliding. The sun flowed across her body, its rays burning into her eyes as she flew on and ever upward. The heat was unendurable. She glided obliquely to the right, caught movement below her and, sweeping her wings back, dropped down, screaming with delight as she fell between the two startled bronzes.
One of them tried to entangle her with his lashing tail and fell, his flight rhythm disrupted. She beat upward again, calling defiance and deliberately cutting across the path of the second bronze. But, in her desire to flaunt her flight superiority, she brushed just too close to him, and he veered, jamming his wing tip against hers. Her forward speed was momentarily checked. Before she could get away from him, he had caught her, neck twining hers in that instant. Locked together, they fell toward the shimmering sea so far below.
On the tiny bright oblong that was but a mote on the glistening water, Sebell and Menolly, too, were together, lips, bodies, hearts and minds as they, linked by and in the love of their fire lizards, experienced and repeated the joy that enveloped Kimi and Diver.
The flapping of the untended sail roused Sebell first, the rising sea breeze cooling his cheek. He moved aside, shaking his head, trying to orient himself. Menolly stirred against him, awakened by the same sea sounds. Startled, she opened her eyes and saw him, propped on his elbow above her. Surprise, and then memory, changed the color of her sea green eyes. Holding his breath, Sebell watched, fearful of her reaction. Her smile was tender as she lifted her hand and brushed his hair back from his eyes.
“What chance did you have, dear Sebell, with Rocky and Diver so determined?”
“It wasn’t just Kimi’s need,” he said in a hurried voice, “you know that, don’t you?”
“Of course, I know, dear Sebell.” Her fingers lingered on his cheek, his lips. “But you always stand back and defer to our Master.” She did not hide from Sebell then how much she loved Master Robinton, nor would that ever come between them since they each loved the man in their separate ways. “…but I have so wished—”
The ominous creak of the boom swinging across the cockpit warned her just in time to pull him back against her, out of its way.
“I wish,” said Sebell in a growl, “that the bloody wind didn’t choose to rise right now.”
“We need the wind, Sebell,” she replied, laughing with a spontaneous gaiety that drew a laugh from him because they had finally spoken of what had kept them apart too long.
He put up his hand to grab the boom before it could swing back. She half rose and reached the lines to secure the boom, then pulled herself onto the seat to unlash the tiller. As Sebell rose to join her, he caught sight of a curled ball of bronze and gold on the forward deck, but Kimi and Diver were too soundly asleep to be roused by considerations of sea and wind. He envied them.
“Where did Rocky go?” he asked Menolly, who frowned slightly in thought.
“He either joined Beauty…or found himself a wild green. I suspect the latter.”
“Wouldn’t you know?” asked Sebell, surprised.
Menolly shook her head from side to side, with a half-smile, and Sebell realized that she’d been unaware of anything except their rapport with their two fire lizards. He relaxed, thoroughly content with their new understanding.
“If this breeze continues to follow, we’ll make Southern by tomorrow high sun,” she said and deftly played out the line, making the most of the wind that filled the red sail. Then she indicated that Sebell should bridge the distance between them in the cockpit.
Neither left each other for very long all through that brilliant, lovely night.
Menolly’s sea-sense was acute, for the sun had just reached its zenith when they eased the little skiff into the pleasant cove that served the Southern Hold as harbor. Sebell counted the ships bobbing at anchor and wondered where the largest three vessels were. They’d seen none fishing as the Great Eastern Current had raced them toward their destination. Not that Sebell expected anyone in the Southern Hold to be moving about in the heavy heat of high sun.
Suddenly Beauty appeared, chittering a wild welcome. Rocky arrived more sedately, settling on the tied boom. Menolly scooped him from his perch and caressed him, murmuring loving reassurances until Sebell heard her laugh.