She frowned at him, moved to the arch. “Yaril, I need you.”
Drifting above the clouds, Jaril spread out and out and out, shaping himself into a mile wide parabolic collector seducing into himself starlight, moonlight, gathering every erg of power he could find; Yaril was a glimmering glassy filament stretching from Jaril to Brann, feeding that power into her; Brann was a transformer kneeling beside Danny Blue, feeding that power into him as fast as he could take it.
Using Ahzurdan’s memories, Danny Blue wove a shield about them like the one Ahzurdan had thrown about the room in the Blue Seamaid; he worked more slowly and had to draw more power than Ahzurdan had, the memories were there but he was no longer completely Ahzurdan and the resonances of word and act were no longer quite true. With Brann feeding energy into him, he got the shield completed, locked it into automatic and found that he’d gained two advantages he hadn’t expected. The smother couldn’t reach him, couldn’t wear at him. And the shield once it was completed took almost no maintaining. Whistling a cheerful tune he unbuckled his sandals and kicked them across the room, grabbed hold of Brann and pulled her into the alcove, shrinking the shield until it covered only that smaller room, it’d attract less attention and he had no illusions about how irritated Maksim was going to be at losing sight of what they were doing. But it was so damn good to be working again on something as simple and elegant and altogether beautiful as lift field circuits-he felt like a sculptor who’d lost his hands in some accident or other, then had to spend an small eternity waiting for them to be regrown.
Yaril filament had no difficulty penetrating the shield; she continued to transmit moonlight and starlight into Brann who kept one hand lightly on Danny’s spine, maintaining the feed as he dropped to his knees on the underside of the tabletop. He brushed his fingertips across the wood, sketched the outline of a sensor panel, but left it as faint marks on the surface. Hands moving slowly, surely, the chant pouring out of him with a rightness that was another thing he hadn’t expected (as if the magic and his Daniel memories had conspired to teach him in that instant what it’d taken Ahzurdan years to learn, as if the rightness and elegance of the design dictated the chant and all the rest), he Reshaped the wood into metal and ceramic and the esoteric crystals that were the heart and brain of the field, layer on layer of them embedded in the wood, shielded from it by intricate polymers, his body the conduit by which the device flowed out of memory into reality, his will and intellect disregarded. When the circuits were at last completed, he sculpted twin energy sinks near the tail (full, they’d power the sled twice about the world) and finished his work with a canted sensor plate that would let him control start-up, velocity, direction and altitude. After a moment’s thought, he keyed the plate to his hand and Brann’s; whatever happened, Maksim wasn’t going to be playing with this toy, it was his, Danny Blue the New, no one else’s. He added Brann, (reluctantly, forcing himself to be practical when the thought of sharing his creation made him irrationally angry), because there was too good a chance he’d be injured and incapable and he trusted her to get away from Maksim if she could possibly do it so he didn’t want to limit her options. He sat on his heels, gave Brann a broad but weary grin. “Finished.”
She inspected the underside of the table; except for the collection of milkglass squares on the tilted board near one end she couldn’t see much change in the wood. “If you say so. Shall I call the changers in?”
He tested the shielding and his own reserves. “Why not. But you’d better tell them I’m going to need them in the morning when there’s sunlight, we have to charge the power cells before we go anywhere.”
She nudged the tabletop with her toe. “I’ve heard of flying carpets, but flying kitchen tables, hunh!”
He jumped up, laughed, “Bramble all thorns, no you won’t spank me for that.” He caught her by the waist,, swung her into an exuberant dance about the kitchen whistling the cheeriest tune he knew; he was flying higher than Jaril had, the pleasure of using both strands of his technical knowledge to produce a thing of beauty was better than any other pleasure in both his lives, better than sex, better than smokedreams; he sang that in her ear, felt her respond, stopped the dance and stood holding her. “Brann…
Mmmtn?”
“Still hating me?”
She leaned against his arms, pushing him back so she could see his face, her own face grave at first, then warming with laughter. She made a fist, pounded it lightly against his chest. “If you mess me up again, I swear, Dan, I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do, but I guarantee it’ll be so awful you’ll never ever recover from it.”
He stroked her hands down her back, closed them over her buttocks, pulled her against him. “Feel me shaking?”
“Like a leaf in a high wind.”
He tugged her toward the alcove, but she broke away. “I’m not going to bruise my behind or my knees,” she said. “Privacy yes,” she said, “but give me some comfort too. Pillows,” she said. “And quilts. Fire’s down, it’s getting chilly in here.”
The children were curled up on the couch in the living room, sunk in the dormancy that was their form of sleep. Brann touched them lightly, affectionately as she moved past them, then ran laughing up the stairs to the sleeping floor. She started throwing the pillows out the doors leaving them in the hall for Dan to collect and carry downstairs, came after him with a billowing slippery armload of feather comforters.
Brann blinked, yawned, scrubbed her hands across her face. She felt extraordinarily good though her mouth tasted like something had died there, she was disagreeably sticky in spots and when she stretched, the comforter brushing like silk across her body, she winced at a number of small sharp twinges from pulled muscles and a bite or two, which only emphasized how very very good she was feeling. She lay still a moment, enjoying a long leisurely yawn, taking pleasure in the solid feel of Dan’s body as her hip moved against his. But she’d never been able to stay abed once she was awake, so she kicked free of the quilts and sat up.
Dan was still deeply asleep, fine black hair twisting about his head, a heavy stubble bluing his chin and cheeks, long silky eyelashes fanned across blue veined skin whose delicacy she hadn’t noticed before. She bent over him, lifted a stray strand of hair away from his mouth, traced the crisp outlines of that mouth with moth-touches of her forefinger. The mouth opened abruptly, teeth closed on her finger. Growling deep in his throat, Dan caught her around the waist, whirled her onto her back and began gnawing at her shoulder, working his way along it to her neck.
Brann dunked a corner of the towel in the basin of cold water, shivered luxuriously as she scrubbed at herself. “The changers are still dormant. I suppose I should wake them.”
“They worked hard and there’s more to do, leave them alone a while yet… mmm… scrub my back?”
“Do mine first. I’d love to wash my hair, but I’m too lazy to heat the water. Dan…?”
“Dan Dan the handyman. How’s that feel?” He rubbed the wet soapy towel vigorously across her back and down her spine, lifted her hair and worked more gently on her neck. When he was finished, he dropped a quick kiss on the curve of her shoulder, traded towels with her and began wiping away the soap.
“Handyman has splendid hands,” she murmured. “Give me a minute more and I’ll do you.”
“Trade you, Bramble, you cook breakfast for us and I’ll haul hot water for your hair.”
“Cozy.” A deep rumbling voice filled with laughter.
Brann whipped round, hands out, reaching toward the huge dark man in a white linen robe who stood a short distance from them.
Dan moved hastily away from her “No use, Brann, it’s only an eidolon.”
“What?” As soon as she said it, she no longer needed an answer, the eidolon had moved a step away and she could see the kitchen fire glow through it.