Heart Fortune

Everything in there would be the property of Camellia Darjeeling D’Hawthorn, with a finder fee going to the discoverer and the Elecampanes. Camellia was Glyssa’s friend. The one she laughed with as they rode with Del D’Elecampane toward the Deep Blue Sea.

That had his fingers curling, hands fisting.

A slight whimper came, more heard mentally than with his ears. Lepid? he projected.

FamMan. Now a loud whine, not behind the great door. A few doors along the hall, deeper into the ship. Dammit, why had Lepid gone so far?

Because the young fox had wanted to be a hero. Wanted to reach the Captain’s Quarters, see what treasures it contained, who wouldn’t? Then, like many young things, had been distracted by something else, in this case, an intriguing spell.

Shrugging, Jace turned away from the engraved door, tilted his head. Talk to me, Lepid. I am close.

You are here? In the SHIP? For ME?

Sure.

Jace felt relief panting from the fox.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! WONDERFUL FamMan.

Jace smiled, found the closed door on his right and knocked.

Wild barking came from behind it.

With effort, Jace enlarged his light-spells until they showed long meters before and behind him . . . and no one else in the corridor. Several dark squares in each direction showed open doors, but he noted no movement in them.

FAMMAN!

Now Jace could hear the frantic scratching of claws.

Calm down. I want to check some doorways first, and this door, too. He could already tell it wasn’t spellshielded. No Flair to stop him from going in.

Unlike the starship in Druida City, Nuada’s Sword, Flair worked fine here.

He powered up his spell lights so the bright brushed metal walls gleamed and the colonist-abandoned objects on the floor cast hard shadows. Retracing his steps, he paused outside each open door, sent another spell light in, and resisted the desire to explore when a gleam of an artifact or an odd shape teased his curiosity.

Behind his eyes a headache at the amount of Flair he was using began to build. He turned back, then headed farther down the hall to check out those doors. Even when one of the usually empty nameplates announced Umar and Dayo Clague, the former Captain and his lady, he didn’t stop. Narrowing his gaze, he placed the location on the blueprint in his mind’s eye, then turned back to the door that Lepid yipped behind.

As he returned, he banished his secondary light-spell and let the first shrink. When he reached the correct door, Jace ran his hands all over it, from top to bottom, along the recessed panel that would slide aside.

He felt nothing unusual, saw, heard, sensed nothing strange. The palm control panel came off easily in his hand, showing electronics and the manual door crank. That moved readily, too, as did the door sliding open.

Lepid’s barks rose to a crescendo when Jace stepped in. He didn’t see the FoxFam in the medium-sized room.

Here, here! In the wall!

In the wall?

He took another step, the door began to close. Stup! Sliding his foot into the crack, he stopped it, muscled it back all the way open and looked for something to prop it open . . . just in case. There were no loose items within reach. Testing the inner control panel, he flipped open the outer cover, used the manual crank to test closing and opening the door, set the door lock in the open position. Still . . .

FAMMAN! Lepid shouted telepathically.

“Just a minute!” Jace sat down in the threshold and took off his heavy boots, wrinkled his nose. He really should have gone for the suppress odor spell on these and his liners . . . and he thought that every time he took the damn things off.

FamMan odors, rumbled Lepid, actually sounding cheerful.

Huh, it took all kinds.

Jace put the boots side by side next to the far edge of the threshold, stood up, slipped a little and set his hand against the wall. He walked past the built-in closet on the left and the bed on the right. The small cubicle holding a toilet and a tiny shower was also on the left. Too small for Jace to feel comfortable in.

DOWN HERE! One last, demanding bark.

Lepid was hidden behind a wall panel. All Jace could see were pinholes.

Thank you, FamMan, for the light, Lepid whimpered.

Jace flinched. He hadn’t figured that the poor fox had been in the dark. Of course Lepid could see better in the dark than Jace, but all the same it had to be scary. Grimacing with effort, Jace conjured another tiny spell light and threaded it through one of the minuscule openings.

Oh, FamMan, you are so kind. Lepid’s tone was such that if he’d been human, he’d be sobbing.

“I’m here,” Jace soothed. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

Panting came from behind the wall.

“So a smell led you here,” Jace said.

It was a very interesting smell, Lepid said in a small mental voice.

“Not like the earlier smell that hurt your nose, the chili pepper,” Jace said. The perpetrator of these series of crimes knew about animals and odors and effects. Of course, since Jace had gotten a Fam himself, he’d become more aware about birds and animals. He supposed those with Fams would be good suspects . . . though he couldn’t imagine hurting a Fam.

He ran his fingers around the outline of the small panel that looked to be for ventilation. The metal didn’t feel like Celtan metal, odd, that. He did feel a trace of Flair, no doubt some sort of trap.

“So how long have you been exploring the ship?” he asked.

All the time, Lepid whispered. I thought going into this wall would be fun. It wasn’t. It was dark and I got tired and I didn’t see any openings to anything else. He paused for a moment. There should be openings to other places from the walls, shouldn’t there? T’Ash Residence had openings in the walls here and there. Another small pause as Jace determined the damn panel wouldn’t pop off with an application of more Flair.

And the cats in the PublicLibrary got into the walls and laughed at me when I tried to follow. So there are holes and passages in those walls, too.

Jace wondered if the Licorices knew that. Shrugged. Not his problem. Getting Lepid out was. He replied, “I think there should be openings to the walls somewhere. People would have to go in to work on . . . stuff.” Pulling the tool from his pocket, Jace pried around the ventilation grate. “But maybe before they landed all the openings were sealed or something. Or after they landed. I think they must have sealed all they could to preserve the ship.”

Lepid pawed at the grate again. Get me out!

“Did you see who did this? Did you smell him or her?”

Barely probable that the culprit was the cook, Myrtus Stopper. Jace really couldn’t see the man coming back to the camp to raid the ship, no matter how valuable the items might be.

Stopper hadn’t had to go into the ship to make his score, and though Jace didn’t know how much he got for those subsistence bars, it had to be plenty if the amount had impressed Laev T’Hawthorn.

That left the unknown villain who’d stolen the first box. The man or woman Myrtus said had caused the explosions. The Elecampanes hadn’t kept Jace or Glyssa informed about that, but the owners would have announced to the whole crew if some other culprit had been caught.

Snapping teeth from Lepid. NO! I did not see or smell the bad, mean person! I will hunt for the bad one’s smells, then I will BITE him.

“Nope, I think we’ll just teleport from here to my tent. We’re not staying down here any longer than