and an upstart, know that your whole family is founded on his betrayal of a Bingtown Trader.” I rounded disdainfully on the two young Trader men who sat at his table. The young women beside them, obviously Howarth’s granddaughters, stared at me in white-faced horror. “Consider well what you join your names to, Traders’ sons,” I told them. “It is the Lantis wealth you are marrying, stripped of the Lantis name.”
Howarth had found his tongue. The dapper old man now looked drawn and pale. He pointed a shaking finger at me but spoke to his wife in the pitched voice of the near deaf. “She can prove nothing! Nothing! The money Aubretia gave me, she gave me for love of me. She cannot legally force me to return it.”
His wife’s jaw dropped. I thought she would faint from mortification. I let the silence gather, then floated my words upon it. “And with those words, you admit a guilt and a shame greater than anything I could wish to prove. Keep the wealth, Howarth. Choke on it. You have dirtied it, and I have no need of anything you have touched.”
I turned on my heel then and walked away. A stunned silence hung behind me like a curtain, one that was suddenly rent by the wind of a thousand tongues flapping. Like a stirred beehive, all of the Great Market circle hummed and buzzed. The scandal that Howarth thought he had left behind him would now mark his declining years.
“Nor will his granddaughters wed Traders’ sons. His wife would do best to sweep them back to Jamaillia and marry them off where she can, for after this, they will never mount into Bingtown society.” My pendant whispered to me in savage joy. “You have done it, my dear. You have done us all proud with your success.”
I made no reply, but cut my way through the crowds, ignoring the comments and stares that followed me. My steady walk slowly cooled the angry flush from my cheeks and calmed the thundering of my heart. I had found my way down to the Bingtown docks where the cool wind off the water swept the heat from my face. I pondered the words I had said and what I had done. At the time it had seemed so perfectly fulfilling. Now I wondered at it.
“But what did I accomplish?” I lifted the pendant from my neck and looked at the tiny face. “I thought I was doing all this to regain my inheritance. I thought I would force him to give up the wealth he had stolen from my grandmother. Instead, I walked away with nothing. Not even an empty ring remains to me. Only you.”
“Only me,” the pendant agreed. “And your name. Taken back out of the dust and raised to pride once more. It is what your grandmother abandoned, and what I wished you to reclaim. Not money or jewels, but the rightful self-worth of a Lantis. You are a Bingtown Trader now, by resolution as well as by right. Perhaps you will work as a servant by day, but what you earn will be your own. And when the Bingtown Council meets, you will wield your rightful vote.” The little face smiled up at me. The warmth in the small voice was a family’s love. “And that, girl, is your inheritance.”
Cat’s Meat
How is it, I sometimes wonder, that a dog person like myself writes so many stories that feature cats?
I really don’t have an answer to that. While dogs have dominated my life as companions, I’ve had a fair number of cat companions as well. The first that was mine, really all mine, was Loki, a long-haired black tom when I was a young teenager. He was fearless and as much dog as cat it sometimes seemed. Sometimes I’d find him outside in the dead of a Fairbanks winter, curled up snug between a couple of huskies.
When I was newly married in Kodiak, we enjoyed the company of my husband’s childhood cat, Chlorophyll. As an unspayed female, she contributed quite a bit to the gene pool of cats on Kodiak Island and was fondly known as “Cat Factory” by the neighbors.
Today, I am owned by Pi, a black-and-white tuxedo cat who is currently nineteen years old. She has been the most faithful of writing cats, sitting on my lap for long hours while I typed over and around her. Sam, a junior cat at only eighteen years old, is the table-walking, snack-stealing bane of my husband’s existence. And despite my resolution not to acquire any more cats, in December of 2009 both Princess and Fatty were added to our household. Grown littermates, they’ve proven remarkably adaptable to our dogs, kids, and senior cats.
Fatty is orange. With blue eyes. And full of tales to tell.
I made a mistake and I’m still paying for it.” Rosemary tried to sound stronger than she felt. Less forlorn and more matter-of-fact.
“You’ve already paid enough for that mistake,” Hilia responded stoutly. Her best friend since childhood, Hilia always took her part. She might be tactless sometimes, but she was loyal. Loyalty had come to mean a great deal to her.
Rosemary picked up little Gillam and bounced him gently. The toddler had been clutching at her knees and wailing since she set him down. The moment she picked him up, he stopped.
“You’re spoiling him,” Hilia pointed out.
“No, I’m just holding him,” Rosemary replied. “Besides, I don’t think he’s the mistake. If anything, he’s the only good thing I got out of my mistake.”
“Oh, I don’t mean
“Let her sleep, Gillam. Don’t poke her.”
“You paid enough for your mistake,” Hilia went on, as if there’d been no interruption. “You’ve suffered for close to three years. It’s not fair he should come back and try to start it all up again.”
“It’s his house,” Rosemary pointed out. “Left him by his grandfather. His bit of land. And Gillam is his son, as he bragged yesterday at the tavern. He has rights to all of them.”
“This is
“Look at those curtains and the coverlet on the bed! Look at that hearth, neat as a pin. Look up! That roof’s tight! Well, it needs a new thatch, but where you patched it, it held! Look out the window! Rows of vegetables sprouting in the garden, half a dozen chickens scratching, and a cow with a calf in her belly! Who did that, who did all that? You, that’s who! Not that lazy, good-for-nothing Pell! That stupid little slut winked an eye and wriggled her rump at him, and off he went, to live off her and her parents. And now that she’s done with him, now that her father sees what a bent coin he is and has turned him out, what makes him think he can come back here and just take over everything you’ve built? What right does he have to it?”
“As much right as I do, Hilia. Legally, we are both Gillam’s parents. We both have the right to manage his inheritance for him until he’s a man. As Gillam’s mother, I can claim that right, but I can’t deny it to Pell, too. And that is how it is.” She spoke sadly, but a smile had come to her face to hear her friend defend her so stoutly.
“Legally.” Hilia all but spat the word. “I’m talking about what is right and real, not what is legal! Has that wretch actually dared to come here?”
Rosemary bit down on her rising fear and hoped none of it showed on her face. “No. Not yet. But I heard yesterday that he’d come back to town and was talking in the tavern, saying it was time he went home and took up his duties as a father and landowner. I think he’s working up the courage to confront me. I heard he was staying up at his father’s house. I don’t think his mother has any more use for Pell than I do. Her life is hard enough, with the way Pell’s father knocks her around, without having another man to wait on. So I don’t know how long she’ll tolerate him under her roof. They’ll both lean on him to leave, and I suspect his father will push him in this direction. He’s always resented me living here. He’s always said that the cottage and land should have come to him first, not gone directly to Pell.”
