Arjenie nodded. “Yes, and there are some spells you can only do with sidhe blood. I’ve made some guesses about what they might be, but Eledan wouldn’t tell me, and I suppose that isn’t important right now. I’m considered Sha’almuireli kin now, but if I tested as sidhe I’d be Sha’ almuireli—or possibly Divina’hueli, since my father does have some of that in his bloodline, but he’s Sha’almuireli, so I probably would be, too. If I turned out to be sidhe at all, that is. But being Sha’almuireli, however lowly a member, would probably keep me from being grabbed.”
“I’m guessing that Sha’ almuireli is one of the Hundred?” Seabourne said. When she nodded he added to the others, “There are a fixed number of sidhe surnames, which designate kinship groups similar to clans—though it’s a great deal more complicated than the way we think of clans.”
“It certainly is,” she said with feeling. “I don’t understand it all, but—” But she was trying to be brief. Not succeeding, but trying, so she wouldn’t go into that. “Unfortunately, there isn’t any way for me to be tested.”
“You’ve never been to the sidhe realms, then?” Isen asked.
“Oh, no. Eledan can cross realms whenever he wants—and that’s usually a middle sidhe ability, not low sidhe, but that’s the thing about mixed bloods. Sometimes we’re just a diluted version of a sidhe. Other times we don’t have any sidhe skills at all, but the other parent’s innate magic gets passed on, only stronger than usual. And sometimes we only get one or two of the sidhe abilities, but we get that full-strength. That’s how it worked with Eledan, and with me, too.”
“But he can cross, and he wants you to be tested, yet he’s never taken you there for this testing.”
“There’s a mass limit to what he can carry when he crosses. I’m too big now. When I was little enough for him to take me, my mother wouldn’t permit it. She thought he wouldn’t watch out for me properly, or maybe he’d forget to bring me back. He might have. He’s not very reliable.”
Benedict spoke again. “I take it Eledan is your father’s name.”
She flushed. “Yes. I don’t call him Father because, you know, he isn’t. He’s my genetic parent, and he’s got some sense of duty toward me, but it isn’t very highly developed.”
Benedict’s eyes were flat. So was his voice. “What did you mean about them breeding you?”
He looked scary again. He sounded scary, too. Why did all that grimness make her want to touch him? Right there, along that hard jaw … Behave, she told herself. “The sidhe realms are not uniform, no more than our realm is. Some governments in our world suck at civil rights. Some governments in the sidhe worlds do, too. There’s one place that’s rancid with slavery and other ugliness. According to Eledan, if I ended up there, I’d be used as breeding stock.”
“And how would someone in this slavery realm know about you?”
“Like I said, my father registered my birth, so it wouldn’t be all that hard to find out I exist and that this is my home realm. Especially because of Eledan’s profession.”
This time it was Isen who spoke. “Which is?”
“Um. We don’t have an analog for it. He’s unusually fertile for a sidhe, so basically he gets paid for impregnating women. Um—not my mother. She was a busman’s holiday. He was in our realm and she drew his attention, and he does have a touch of the sidhe glamour, though even without it he’s almost as beautiful as Mr. Seabourne.”
“Cullen,” Seabourne murmured. “Lovely ladies should always call me Cullen, not mister.”
She awarded him a quick grin before continuing. “What I’m getting at is that Mom wasn’t a paid job for Eledan, but he did come back to see if he’d impregnated her. That was partly duty, like I said, but also, the more offspring he registers, the better. Especially sidhe offspring, so we can’t assume he’s right about me testing as sidhe. I suspect he confuses what he wants with what is.”
Benedict shoved back his chair and stood. “Excuse me.” He strode away.
She started to rise, too. “What’s wrong?”
Isen put a hand on her arm. “Give him a moment. “
“But—”
“He’s angry. He doesn’t like the way your father treated you.”
She watched as, in three strides, Benedict reached the retaining wall and leaped almost straight up onto the upper deck. There he began pacing.
Arjenie frowned. Benedict was truly upset. His father seemed to think he should be left alone, but… “Do you always interpret him for people?” she asked Isen, then patted the hand he’d used to stop her. “Never mind. I think I’ll go to the original text.” She stood.
Seabourne spoke quickly. “That may not be a good idea.”
“Resides,” Isen murmured, but to Seabourne, not her. In this context that meant calm down or subside. “Benedict is not you.”
Arjenie limped over to the stairs. Benedict stopped pacing and looked down at her, his expression not at all welcoming, so she was surprised when he jumped down to land beside her. “You’re supposed to stay off your ankle.”
“It’s much better than it was.” She tipped her head up, studying him. “What’s wrong?”
“My father’s interpretation is accurate.”
“Oh. Well, Eledan may a bit of a prick by our standards—”
The muffled snort came from Seabourne back at the table. “—and even for a sidhe I think he’s careless. Of course, that’s based on a sample of one and a half, so I could be wrong.”
“Half? You sampled half a sidhe?”
She waved that aside. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”
“Your father put you in danger of being enslaved and bled or bred in order to further his career as a professional stud.”
“I like that.” She smiled, pleased. “A professional stud. That’s a good way to put it. But I may have made things sound too black-and-white. Registering my birth was partly self-interest, but not entirely. To Eledan, being sidhe is terribly important. In his eyes, he would have failed me in a fundamental way if he hadn’t registered my birth. It wouldn’t occur to him I might not want to be registered.”
“Maybe because the danger isn’t to him.”
“Nooo … at least, I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s cowardly. Self-interested and a bit lazy, but not cowardly. Anyway, I doubt the danger is very great. This is a big world. Someone who wanted to grab me would have to find me first, so I don’t draw attention to myself.” She shrugged. “Maybe no one’s even looking. I’m just careful, that’s all.”
“No Facebook page, or Myspace, or Twitter. No Internet presence at all.”
“You checked?”
“I can Google. I wonder if an out-realm kidnapper could.”
“Who knows? My feeling is that if someone took the trouble to come here at all—and that’s a big if—they wouldn’t mind staying long enough to learn stuff like that. They couldn’t just use a Find spell. My Gift protects me from that.”
He looked so tight. Unhappy. Maybe that’s why she did something unwise. She touched his cheek.
He went still. She skimmed the line of his jaw with her fingertips before reluctantly dropping her hand. “I get the feeling … are you a father?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes as wary as if he were the wolf instead of the man, uncertain about this human who’d dared touch him.
“So’s my uncle Clay. He’s a father to the children he had with Aunt Robin, and to me, too. I didn’t grow up fatherless. I’m not hurting because my genetic parent isn’t my dad.”
His face softened. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it came close. “I’m not to feel sorry for you.”