Evennight is not long away.
Are they still planning to have it … up north?
I don't know.
Or were all bets off until the alben were found?
Cold impatience filled me. I thought of following the hunters, finding out which Route 66 sleazebag motel the alben were crashing in, phoning in an anonymous tip to the police.
You would be sending the police to certain death.
I stopped walking. Resentment, partly because I knew he was right, morphed into irrational anger.
I wish you wouldn't snoop on my thoughts all the time.
Lomen stopped suddenly, as if I'd struck him a blow. He turned to face me. I was already sorry, but the look in his eyes made it worse.
“I will do my best to stop. You might want to keep practicing your shielding.”
Lomen—
He turned and kept walking. The silence in my head was thundering; he'd shut me out.
Shit.
I hurried to catch up to him as he turned the corner on to Len and Caeran's block. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean that.”
“Your instinct was correct. We have become too enmeshed, too quickly. A step back would do us good.”
But I didn't want a step back.
This was the Lomen I'd seen the morning I found Kimberly and called Manda. Aloof, cold. Giving me a chance to walk away, he'd said. Or maybe walking away himself.
“Don't leave,” I whispered, but he had already turned up the path to the door of Len and Caeran's house. A few butterflies rose from the bushes as he passed.
I stopped halfway up the path and shielded three times. Stood there trying to get zen. I had to settle for not quite panicked.
Everyone was in the living room except Manda and Savhoran. The sun was still up; they wouldn't leave their apartment until sunset, another hour or so.
Lomen was talking quietly with Caeran, who looked up at me as I came in. I felt a blush coming in hot and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
This was not good. I needed to talk to Lomen, apologize some more, work things out. I shielded again, swallowed a swig of water.
Len came into the kitchen. “Want to help with dinner?”
“Sure,” I said, grateful for the distraction.
She set me to chopping onions. They stung my eyes, tempting me to give in to a good cry. I ignored that and kept my thoughts off of Lomen by going over that day's class in my head. I had some homework for that, and needed to catch up on a lot of reading.
Just don't think about it. That was a plan.
Len was stirring something on the stove. She threw the onions into the pot and gave me some cooked chicken to shred. The smell of the sautéeing onions woke up my brain, which informed me I was hungry. I'd forgotten lunch again.
A pungent smell, vaguely reminiscent of marijuana smoke, tickled my senses. Len was chopping roasted green chile on another cutting board. She added that to the onions, and when I was done with the chicken she threw that in along with some broth.
“That needs to stew for a bit. Want a glass of tea?”
I nodded. She fixed iced tea for us while I washed my hands and tidied up the kitchen. We went out back, leaving the ælven to their conversation.
“What happened?” she said softly when we were sitting with our glasses on the patio.
I swallowed a mouthful of tea. “Just a misunderstanding. I said something stupid. I need to apologize some more.”
She gazed out at the yard. “They take their time over decisions,” she said. “They have all the time in the world, so they forget that we want to feel secure.”
That seemed like a non sequitur. I sat pondering it, trying to apply it to my situation.
“I have something for you,” Len said, getting up. She left her glass on a table. “Be right back.”
I stared at the garden, trying to resist feeling miserable. Lomen would forgive me. It was just a thoughtless whine, I hadn't really meant it. He had to know that.
Len came back and handed me a couple of sheets of copy paper. “This is just the beginning. It's long.”
It was a copy of a handwritten poem. At the top of the first page it said “Creed of the Ælven, translation by Lenore Whiting.”
“So you found time for it.”
“For starting it. The whole thing's going to take me a while, but it's good for me. I had to ask Caeran about how to translate some words. There are nuances.”
I started reading.
Walk many paths, leaving no mark behind but of beauty.
Honor the ældar and spirits who watch over all.
Most of it seemed idealistic and a bit unreal. I was reading about an alien culture, I reminded myself.
One line really caught me, though:
Find your way back, when you falter, and seek to atone.
I sat staring at that, a hollow feeling in my heart. Had I screwed up irreparably? If I found a way to atone, would Lomen forgive me?
This was their code of ethics. My culture didn't have much of one, compared with this.
“What do you do about atonement?” I asked Len.
“We're not required to atone. We're not ælven.”
“Not even as a member of the clan?”
She grimaced slightly. “I've offered atonement a couple of times. Caeran insists I'm not obligated, but it does seem to make them more comfortable. They feel responsible for my actions, having accepted me into the clan. So it's kind of a grey area.”
“Have you ever offered atonement to Caeran?”
“I've never needed to. It's not that bad, is it?”
“I don't know.” I put the pages down and drank some tea.
A big part of the problem was that I was ignorant. I could have mortally offended Lomen without realizing it.
We needed to talk.
Len went back to the kitchen. After a couple of minutes, I followed. She gave me some cheese to grate, then lettuce and tomatoes to chop while she assembled a pan of rolled enchiladas. By the time she put that in the oven my stomach was grumbling.
I wandered out to the living room where the ælven were talking in their own language. Waited a while trying to catch Lomen's eye, but he ignored me. Finally I gave up and went back to his room.
I sat at the desk with my genetics text and stared at the screen, not seeing the words. Lomen was going to go out hunting again, without saying a word to me. Without giving me a chance to atone.
He could be killed.
Not likely, I told myself, but still it was possible. The alben were murderers—multiple murderers. They did not acknowledge human law, true—but neither did they acknowledge the ælven creed. They were outlaws in either culture.
A soft knock at the door made me look up, heart leaping with hope. Len stuck her head in.
“Did you want to keep this?” She held out the copy of her translation.
I swallowed disappointment and came to take it from her. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“Dinner's ready.”
I stuffed the creed into my pack and followed her to the dining room. The four ælven had already served themselves and were sitting around the dining table. Len and I took our plates to the living room.
Len turned on the TV. Caeran looked up, but she just gave him a flat stare and he went back to his conversation.
Poppy was the top story on the news. They had cropped the picture of her to just show her head, but that brought the whole image back to me. I wondered who had snapped it and posted it, and whether they were in jail now.
The story had no content. UNM student found murdered. We all knew that.
I couldn't eat more than a few bites of my dinner, though it was excellent. I took my plate to the kitchen, covered it with plastic, and stuck it in the fridge. I'd try again later, maybe.
I tidied up the kitchen, rinsing dishes and sticking them in the washer, putting away the leftover enchilada sauce and scrubbing the pot. Wiped down the stove and the counters. Filled the kettle and started it heating for tea.
Nothing left to do.
I heard the scrape of chairs from the dining nook. Busied myself wiping down the sink, but they didn't come in. Instead, I heard them saying goodbye to Len.
I stepped into the living room in time to see Lomen go into the garage. He didn't look back.
Bironan sat on the couch, frowning at the TV which was still on, playing a game show now. He glanced at me.
I headed for the bathroom. Washed my face and brushed my teeth. I knew I wouldn't be able to study, so I went back to the living room and sat in Manda's chair, staring stupidly at the TV.
Had the other three gone to Manda's to get Savhoran, or were they going against the alben alone? Three against two—not great odds, from what they'd told me. Not enough for control.
The night outside darkened until I couldn't see the front yard for the brightness of the porch light. Bironan picked up a magazine and flipped through it, ignoring the TV and me both. Len was in the kitchen doing the rest of the dishes.
I heard a noise outside that made me stare at the window. Bironan heard it too—he looked, then jumped up from the couch and retreated to the back of the room.
The front curtains were open, and through the picture window I saw a white-haired figure stagger up the path, heading for the door. Pirian.
“Len!” I called, even as two heavy thumps fell on the front door, followed by a more muffled thump. I went to open it.
Pirian stared at me dully, then sank to his knees in the doorway. He would have pitched onto his face if I hadn't caught him. His coat was wet.
Wet with blood.
I
looked over my shoulder at Bironan. “Help me!”
The ælven shook his head, white-faced. “I dare not—his blood is a danger to me—”
The curse. Fucking hell.
“Just get some blankets out of that chest and put them on the floor.” I jerked my head toward the cedar chest under the window where Manda stashed her bedding during the day.
Len appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, already on the phone. I dragged Pirian through the front door and kicked it shut.
Bironan spread a cheap Mexican blanket on the living room floor and laid a sheet over it, then retreated again, backing away as I edged Pirian toward the bedding. Len hung up and came to help me.
“Get his feet. Can you lift them?”
She did. “Caeran and the others are coming. He's going to call Savhoran.”
I heard the back door slam. Bironan, escaping the mess.
Len glanced that way. “Can't blame him.”
“No. A little farther—OK, set him down.”
My arms ached from manhandling Pirian's dead weight. Blood from his clothes started seeping into the bedding.
“I'll get some bandages,” Len said.
“I'll get water.”
“Not from the kitchen! Let's just use the front bathroom. Keep it as contained as possible.”
“Jesus.”
She was right. For the ælven, this was like having an AIDS patient bleed all over your house. No wonder Bironan ran.
I was covered in blood. I couldn’t get the curse, I told myself, but it was hard to believe it when I was bathed in contamination.
My heart was beating hard. I kicked off my shoes and followed Len to the front bathroom. She turned on the water in the sink and I rinsed off the worst of the gore. My clothes were a mess, though.
Len was ransacking the cupboards. She handed me a towel and I rubbed my arms down with it, then took it out to the living room.
Pirian was out cold. I looked for a wound but didn't see one. His jacket and the shirt he had on underneath it were soaked. The blood seemed to be coming from everywhere.
I stuffed the towel along one side of his torso and went back for another one. Grabbed one off the rack without touching anything else in the bathroom. Len had an armful of first aid stuff and followed me back out with it.
“Spirits!” she said as she dropped the bandages on Manda's chair. “What happened to him?”
“I don't know. He passed out right after I opened the door.”
“Get his shirt off. We've got to stop the bleeding.”
I wrestled him out of his jacket, which was no easy task. I lifted his shoulders with one arm and pulled up his shirt with the other hand.
Len gasped.
His chest was a mass of cuts. While I was struggling to remove his shirt, Len ran back to the bathroom and returned with a stack of towels. She laid one over Pirian's chest. Blood started seeping into it at once.
She reached toward the towel.
“No, let me,” I said, grabbing two more towels to stuff along his sides. “I'm already a mess.”
“OK, yeah. Put some pressure on it. See if you can stop the bleeding. He's still breathing, right?”
“Barely.”
With both hands, I pressed the towel down between his armpits. From what I could tell, the cuts started there and continued down his chest. After about thirty seconds I moved lower, putting pressure on the next few inches.
Len was busy unwrapping a roll of gauze, softly cussing to herself.
I had a few seconds to think about what might have happened, and I didn't like what I came up with.
I worked my way down Pirian's chest and returned to the top. The bleeding might have slowed a bit. I kept pressing on the towel until Len came and knelt beside me.
“OK, lift it. Gently.”
I carefully pulled the towel away. Blood started seeping again here and there, but more slowly than before.
“Sweet spirits!” Len whispered.
I swallowed. “It's ælven, isn't it?”
She nodded, then started cutting strips of gauze and laying them over the lines of curved and swooping letters that were slowly oozing blood. I gently pressed the gauze down.
“What does it say?”
She shook her head, lips pressed together and tears starting in her eyes. We kept working, adding a second layer of gauze while the blood reddened the first.
The front door opened. I looked over my shoulder and saw Lomen, eyes wide, coming toward me.
“Steven!”
My heart lurched with fear.
“Stay back! Don't touch me!”
I'd shouted louder than I'd meant to. Lomen froze.
“It's not my blood,” I added, my voice shaking. “It's Pirian's!”
Caeran stepped up behind him. “Come away.”