Wen Spencer - Tinker

"Do other clans have their own stones?"

"Yes. Each clan normally has several. There are four other sets of Wind Clan stones. There is a range limit of one mei ."

A mei was an odd number, nearly a thousand miles in length, and yet only rough in estimate, as if the exact distance wasn't important. It never made sense as a measurement before now.

She looked at her hands, the remembrance of the power still lingering like the memory of pain. "You made it so I can call magic?"

"Yes, but it takes a great deal of learning."

"Can I do it by mistake?"

He shook his head. "The triggers are quite complex on purpose."

That was comforting. Nothing like accidentally frying oneself in the middle of a deep yawn. Still it was mind boggling that Windwolf had gifted her with this type of power. Why her? Every female she'd seen, while maybe not her mental equal, certainly was young and beautiful. Why hadn't Windwolf fallen in love with one of them in the last hundred and ten years? Hell, Sparrow was right under his nose, and already marked with a dau .

It occurred to Tinker that while Sparrow was as beautiful as one of the high caste females, she was in fact still low caste. "Sparrow can't access the spell stones?"

"No. Genetically she is not domana ."

"Why not?"

"That is no longer done." Windwolf reached out his hand. When Tinker took it, he started them toward the gate. "At one time, yes, we freely shifted lesser castes up to domana ability. But that was during a time of war. We no longer do it."

"What about me?"

"You were human and extremely mortal. The two cases are completely different, dire need versus convenience."

At the gate, they picked up shadows in the form of two sekasha . She realized with some mortification that one was Sun Lance. Had the female come with Windwolf, or climbed down the balcony and followed her silently from the very start? What in the world did the female think of her, fleeing into the dark and throwing boots at Windwolf? Tinker winced and thought back through her conversation with Windwolf. What language had they been arguing in? English. Good.

"Will you please explain what you've done to me? Fully."

"Are you sure? It will be a very analytical discussion. You have been through so very much, it might be hard to hear."

"Yes, I want to know."

"Very well. I used a transformation spell, keyed via my sperm, with protections against any radical changes to the original. The spell is considered very safe; the base was developed by the Skin Clan millennia ago and improved since then. I took every precaution to make it failsafe."

"What precautions?"

"That you were a virgin was the ultimate insurance against possible contamination."

She blushed. "You're kidding!"

"No. When you do the spell, you use a source key. Sperm works best; it is, by its very nature, a template of life." What he said matched what Lain guessed. "However, having two sources could be dangerous."

"So I didn't need to be a virgin—just abstaining for a day or two would work."

Windwolf shook his head. "Human sperm stays active anywhere from three days to a week. Elfin sperm stays active up to a year."

"A year?"

"Half-elfin could range anywhere between the two."

"A year?"

"It is a sometimes problematic side effect of being immortal," Windwolf admitted. "It is one reason why we are not as promiscuous as humans."

"Yeah, that would do it."

"With you being a virgin, it wasn't a worry." He reached out and ran his finger lightly over her ear tip. "You are mine, and mine alone."

They had reached «their» living quarters.

She halted him before they could walk on to the bedroom. "Are you—we—there's just one bed."

He cocked his head. "In your bedroom, yes."

"And you have a bedroom too?"

Wordlessly, he showed her the second bedroom, undeniably Windwolf's. His scent hung in the air. A closet door stood open to show off his impressive wardrobe. All about the room were things to catch the eye, objects of beauty and interest, set down at the end of the day and not picked up again.

Two bedrooms? Didn't married people share one bedroom? Or was this whole marriage thing only a way for Windwolf to control the pivot? It certainly made more sense than him suddenly falling in love with her. Tooloo had been right; she didn't know her own heart. That he might not want her, hurt more than she could imagine. She sat on a bench at the end of Windwolf's bed, confounded by herself.

Windwolf had shut the door, giving them privacy from the sekasha , and came to sit beside her. "I know that all this is difficult. I wanted to give you time to think and to adjust."

What do I want? What do I want?

I want him.

She reached out to touch his hair. If he had looked at her, she probably would have lost courage, but he didn't, so she stroked its softness. She gently brushed his hair away from his ear, and explored its outline.

He shifted, and she jerked her hand away.

"I wish you to continue," he murmured.

"Really?"

"I desire it very much."

She leaned against him and buried her face in his hair. She'd never really looked at someone's ear before. Were human ears less delicate and mysterious, with their odd little turns and curls? She kissed his lobe, and the pulse point beating under his ear, and then the strong column of his neck. She realized she was trembling, and wasn't sure if it was with fear or excitement.

She buried her face into his shoulder, and whispered, "Take me."

His arms encircled her lightly. "There is no rush, Tink. Let us learn together what pleases us most."

"You seemed to know what pleased me before." His shirt was bronze silk, warmed by his body, his muscles moving under it. He filled her senses, and she seemed so small.

"And yet you're afraid of me now."

Was it possible to shrink to nothing in his arms? "I'm afraid you don't want me."

"You are all that I want," he breathed against her neck, and even that warmth sent shivers through her. "My universe resides within you."

She peeked at his face, and found him watching her with tender regard. "Does that mean that you love me?"

"Love is such a small word to carry what I feel."

She would have to take that for a yes.

She never noticed her duster coming off, or when the hooks of her nightgown came undone. The nightgown was slipped down over her breasts, and bunched up high on her waist before she realized how undressed she was. By then Windwolf was lightly kissing his way up her inner thigh, and she didn't want him to stop. She raised her hips so he could slide off her underwear. He held her cupped in his hands, his thumbs opening her to him, his breathing the most intimate of touches. She shook with the need of something more, and whispered to him, "Please." He dipped his head, and pleasure seemed to pour liquid out of him, spilling from his tongue and into her.

It was only later, with his soft hair pooled over her bare legs, she realized it had been just like her dream.

They stayed at Aum Renau for three weeks.

Tinker tried to be happy there. Certainly it was a pleasant enough stay. She had the new universe of sex to explore. Outside of bed, Windwolf seemed genuinely in love with her, although why was as hard to fathom as how she felt about him. Her scientific mind wanted something to see and measure and quantify before she was willing to admit that she loved him.

Windwolf arranged things so she could avoid the queen, the court, and all things political—apparently needing only to cite her age and recent transformation to excuse her from those "duties." He, however, could not absent himself, and so needed to spend hours away. The first two days, she took apart everything remotely mechanical in the Wind Clan section of the palace: ten clocks, three music boxes, the kitchen dumbwaiter, and both master bathrooms. After that, Pony and a changing subset of the palace's twenty sekasha took her out exploring the countryside. They rode horses, sailed on a nearby lake, hiked in the mountains, visited the open market down by the river, practiced archery, and played a cutthroat, fast-paced cousin to lawn croquet. Eventually she bored of that, and nosed her way into the kitchen to carry on science experiments in the form of cooking, and spent a day in awe of the massive, steam-driven laundry facility, and finally talked her way onto the dreadnought (but only after promising that she'd take nothing apart).