light, then the door opened and she stepped inside.
Her first instinct was to cry out that it was too precious a place to house her. The worth of the rugs alone!—not to say the couches, or the clutter of knickknacks on the mantle. Well into the room and to the left was a closed door, doubtless leading to the bedchamber itself; next to it, a compact kitchen nestled inside an alcove. So much she saw in her first glance.
It was the second glance that taught her that the furniture was, if not precisely shabby as Clan Mizel knew shabby, then at least well-used and even worn. The wooden walls were dark, perhaps with age.
The third glance caught the window, and she was lost. Scarcely attending to herself, she crossed the room, light-footed as Daav on the thick carpet, past the desk with its computer and comm unit, and put her nose against the glass, looking out and down into as wild and glorious tangle of growing things as ever she had seen.
“Do you like it?” Daav's voice breathed into her ear.
“Like it?” she repeated. “Van'chela, the little gardens of the city pale.”
He laughed softly.
“Tame and civilized has its place,” he murmured. “So I am told. We have the front gardens under somewhat more control, for the house's dignity. This . . . ” He rapped his knuckled lightly against the glass. “This is our garden.”
“I like it very much,” she said, “and the room—” She turned her head to look into patient black eyes, suddenly and achingly aware of how near he stood, and recalling a slow, growing heat the feel of his body against hers . . .
“The room—” she said again, turning away from the garden, and coincidentally putting several steps between Daav and herself, “—is . . . very large, van'chela. I daresay I will not do it justice, but the view—that I will not willingly surrender.”
He smiled at her from his lean against the window frame.
“It is yours, then, too-large as it is. Though I fear you have not seen the whole of it yet.”
Shifting out of his lean, he crossed the room to the closed door, slid it open with a touch and stepped back, bowing her through ahead of him.
The bed alone was larger than her room in Mizel's clanhouse. Heaped with pillows, it sat beneath a ceiling port through which she could see the paling blue-green sky of a fading afternoon. Chest of drawers, wardrobe, and another door, which she opened, revealing a 'fresher big enough to accommodate most of Binjali's regular crew, all at once.
“What are the rescue protocols, should I become lost?” she asked, stepping back into the bedroom. Daav, she noticed, had not followed her within, but stood in the doorway, his hands tucked into his pockets of his jacket, watching her with an intensity that made her shiver.
“Merely call out,” he said, and his voice was calm as always. “The house keeps its ear open for certain words —help and thief among them. There is a complete list in your computer, in the House file.”
He tipped his head. “Speaking of which—do you still wish to speak with Clonak? I can make the call from your comm.”
“Yes!” she said decisively. “That I must do.”
“Very well, then.” He disappeared from the doorway.
Aelliana took one more look around the room, touched the pale blue coverlet over the bed, and went out into the parlor.
“She is here now, if you have a moment,” Daav was saying into the comm. He paused, then nodded, as if to himself. “The next voice you hear,” he said, and held the earpiece out to Aelliana.
She stepped forward and took it from his fingers, looking at the blank screen questioningly.
“He asks for voice only,” Daav said.
That was peculiar, but perhaps he was in disarray.
“My thanks,” she said to Daav.
“It is no trouble at all. If you have need of anything, only call.” He bowed slightly and left her, moving swift and silent across the rugs and out, the door closing gently behind him.
Aelliana bit her lip and brought the earpiece up.
“Clonak?”
“Aelliana, are you well?” His voice was so earnest that she scarcely recognized it.
“I am most wonderfully well,” she assured him, walking over to the window and looking down at the magnificent tangle of greenery and color. “The Healers' care was beyond anything I could have imagined, and you have no least cause for concern, or to—to rebuke yourself.”
“That I have no cause for concern is welcome news,” Clonak said, carefully. “But I do rebuke myself, Goddess. More than you may know.”
“That is quite ridiculous,” she said sternly, watching a large orange-and-white cat stalk, tigerlike, through a bank of pink-and-white roses. “You could scarcely force your escort on me. If there was error, Clonak, it was mine, in ignoring your very good advice. I should have not, I see now, leaned all of my weight upon custom.”
There was an . . . odd . . . silence from Clonak's side, though Aelliana could not have precisely said how it was odd.
“Why did you refuse me, Aelliana?” he asked then, his voice low and intent. “Didn't you believe that I would stand between you and danger?”
“I believed it all too well—and that was my reason for denying you! My brother—Clonak, you must understand
