What woman want?
"Your strength," Laura said, with a quick smile across at Gidds. "To prevent all the world from following Ramara beneath the waves. In return, I offer you blood."
Ramara drowned. Disdain shot through the kirr-tut’s annoyance. Yes. Will help.
Before Laura could respond, it nipped her—the pain sharp and unexpected enough that she jerked and briefly opened her eyes onto the view from her window seat.
The brand that sealed her first contract was a paw print on the inside of her wrist. Laura regarded it with disproportionate pride for how little effort it had cost her.
"Not that I’m altogether sure what I’ve gained, unless it’s a grumpiness mode. Somehow cross, damp not-a-cat will help me heal holes in the world."
They walked back to the city, discussing the similarities in the game to the crisis that had nearly seen the destruction of Muina, Tare and Kolar.
"And yet with no Ionoth," Laura said. "Forming contracts and healing damage, and so far as I can tell any combat is with nodes of corruption."
"I like it," Gidds said, definitely. "I will have a second evaluation made by another instructor, and if they pass it, approve it for the Kalrani."
And then perhaps they would take another considered step toward each other. Dating, and thinking of introducing family.
Laura felt ready for it.
Chapter Eleven
Gidds' return from Arenrhon coincided with Laura’s weekly family meal with Sue and the kids. Laura was not given to making announcements about her sleeping arrangements, but thought the meal a good opportunity to shift to semi-publicly dating, and so warned Julian there’d be an extra guest. She was fairly sure her son would be a little surprised but not especially upset when he saw who it was: it had to have been a good ten years since he and Cass had given up hoping Laura and Mike would get back together.
The plan had been for Gidds to arrive early to help with preparation, and this time he arrived at her door exactly on time, with a small overnight case in one hand, and a box of a Kolaren treat called keffet balanced on the other.
Laura took him to bed.
Not at all sensible, but very satisfying, and, after all, it had been the better part of a week since they’d seen each other. Besides, she only had him for the night: he would be leaving again almost immediately, to take his daughters away for the weekend. She only wished she’d thought to have him arrive even earlier.
"Fortunately I’d done most of the dinner prep already," she said, not inclined to get up immediately. "I think we can spare a few more minutes and still be able to safely pretend that we’ve just been exchanging mild pleasantries and asking how our days have gone."
"The truth would perhaps suggest that I’ve lost any ability to focus on the task at hand," Gidds said, though with an entirely pleased note to his voice.
Laura smiled, tracing a finger along his collarbone. "You’re very distracting." Then, carefully, because she was still disinclined to rush anything, she added: "Though that distraction makes it hard to see you, sometimes. And I’m trying very hard to see you clearly, Gidds."
He understood her. The sheer natural intensity of the man increased to the point where she felt dizzy, and he responded with a bruising kiss, although did not follow up with declarations. He knew—had no doubt in his Sighted way known from the night of the hailstorm—that a part of her kept pulling away from him. He was not going to push the pace beyond what she found comfortable, although she had a strong suspicion he wanted to. Sight Sight talents were given to certainties.
Since dinner guests were imminent, they managed to postpone further indulgence in favour of a quick shower. Here Gidds paused to examine a large yellow-green blotch down her left thigh.
"You’ve had it treated."
"Yes. Being related to a clutch of Sight talents does cut down on the space for quiet stoicism." She smiled ruefully at the memory. "Kaoren was frowning at me the moment he walked into the room, and Sen was almost distressed, insisting I sit down. Cass sent Ys for a very useful salve, and extracted a promise to come with them on the school shuttle the next morning so I could visit a KOTIS medic. Then she took over cooking."
"I see where Cassandra learned her habit of not informing anyone when she is upset or hurt. What is stoicism?"
Laura explained as they dressed, and they returned to the kitchen well before anyone arrived to wonder at the abandoned crepe batter.
"Did you have to report yourself for spending the night with me, as Kaoren was obliged to with Cass?" she asked, taking bowls of fillings out of the refrigerator, and giving Gidds those that didn’t need to be heated.
"I had myself taken out of your family’s supervision chain," he said. "And made a private report that would not have been necessary if I were not a KOTIS officer. While there is not quite the same strict management around Cassandra now that the crisis has passed, there will always be a level of control regarding interaction with both her and Liranadestar, and that washes over to you."
Too dangerous. Too valuable. Laura didn’t particularly like that KOTIS literally had a committee monitoring developments with her family, but she understood it. Her daughter and granddaughter could be used to reshape reality.
"What happens when Lira, almost inevitably, pushes back on that?"
"Isten Notra has recommended continuing to give her as much freedom as possible without sacrificing security concerns," Gidds said. "Fortunately the decision to allow her to remain with the Ruuel Devlins has proven to be a good one, since they are a steadying influence on a personality which is considerably more volatile than Cassandra’s. But she has been testing her limits—most recently by attempting to stymie the Kalrani set to be her security detail."
"Does she try to leave school grounds?"
"No. She doesn’t wish to put herself in danger, only demonstrate her opinion of KOTIS."
Lira, in the days of old Muina, had been kidnapped and used to power a machine that had almost destroyed her world, and left her in a state that was not quite dead or alive. Even though Muina’s current inhabitants did not fully understand the machinery involved, it was not in the least surprising that Lira wanted to avoid any possibility of the same thing happening.
"Mum! Guess what, I—" Julian, galloping at his usual pace down the stair, checked at the sight of Gidds, who was wearing his uniform minus the jacket, and in the process of putting bowls of filling on the table. But Julian simply switched to Muinan to say: "Hi Tsur Selkie. Hey, are we having crepes? How much grated cheese is there?"
"Feel free to top it up," Laura said, pushing a covered bowl toward him. "What am I guessing?"
"Wouldn’t be guessing if I told you, would it? What have we got to drink? Can I put some spider milk on?"
"If you can manage to heat it without spreading it over everything this time," Laura said, smiling at him.
"Spider milk?" Gidds repeated, carefully sounding out the English phrase Julian had dropped into his question.
"It’s just what we call the juice of those Taren dozai fruit," Laura explained. "Once we saw what it came from."
Dozai juice, when heated, tasted like syrupy coconut milk, and the fruit resembled coconuts—if you replaced thick brown coconut husk with fragile white filaments.
"They just say it’s a fruit," Julian said, opening and closing cupboard doors with as much noise as anti-slam hinges would allow. "Nothing’s going to convince me there’s not something with too many legs laying those things."