"Ah," Helena said, graciously inclining her head. "Androcles, is it not? Your Mistress tells me We have you to thank for the Dark Emperor's survival, and the Dark Emperor for the return of Goldie's health." She smiled. "I am very grateful."
Andi bowed.
The Princess turned her eyes back to the aerie, where the two griffins lounged side by side in the warm sand, necks twined as human lovers twine arms. Andi, dismissed, went back to work.
"A whole man for an apprentice," the Princess mused, loud enough for Andi to overhear. "Very daring, Irene."
Irene startled. "How did you know…?"
The Princess smirked. "How did I know he wasn't a eunuch? How does a mare know a stallion from a gelding? Honestly, Irene, if you have to ask that, you've been celibate too long." Helena cast an appraising eye on Andi, not bothering to be subtle about it. Irene felt a flush creeping up her neck.
"He has very good bones," Helena observed, "but he's awfully thin, and he works hard. I suppose he must be exhausted by the end of the day." She lifted a sympathetic brow. "Really, my dear, don't you want me to send you one of my Varangians?"
The Princess Helena completely misinterpreted Andi's laughter, but that, Irene thought, was probably just as well.
Chain of Command by Leslie What & Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Mom," Kayla said in that tone teenagers use when they're practicing for the time they will put you in the nursing home. "You're not going to wear THAT, are you?"
I forced myself to smile, making sure I showed teeth. I'd had my canines lengthened and my incisors filed to subtle points. Remember, I told myself. I'm the mom. I'm Alpha. Wolf Woman. A CEO of Earth Muthas, a militant woman-owned multinational. Only my teenage daughter was powerful enough to make me forget this.
I was wearing mail and a leather thong and copper breastplate because I had a focus group to lead in half an hour and there wasn't time between now and then to change from civvies. I held the keys in my mouth for a second while I tightened my belt. All I had to do was drop off Kayla at her friend Tiffany's; from there they would walk to their cheerleader meeting at the high school. I could hide in the Jeep; no one need see me.
Kayla was five foot seven and growing fast enough that I expected her to surpass me during the coming year, when she would be a junior. Her hair was bronze from a bottle, though on her, it looked feminine. She preferred a fruity-smelling department store perfume called Flower Power to my musky Marker, the flagship product for my company. Her scent made my eyes water, but I decided against saying anything. "Choose your issues," our family counselor had warned.
I had chosen.
So had Kayla.
The issue was not about scent.
Kayla did not want to come with me to this weekend's Women Warriors retreat, starting tomorrow, where one hundred women would gather to trap trespassing trolls, celebrate our strength, hunt our own dinners and leave nature's scavengers to do dishes when they picked the carcasses clean. Instead, my daughter wanted to stay in town with Tiffany and shop for makeup and high heels. Kayla was a pacifist. I was a warrior, an awkward situation for us both.
"You look good," I said, thinking that if her pleated skirt had been cut from leather instead of polyester and if her tank top had been chain mail instead of spandex, she could have passed. Her arms and long legs were muscled and tan, not from fighting, but from cheering the football team. It stunned me that someone who existed on tofu and fruit could grow the body of an Amazon.
She made a face. "I can't believe you're going to wear that. This is SO embarrassing."
"Are you all packed?" I asked. The counselor had recommended changing subjects to diffuse tense situations.
"Let's talk about packing later," she said, meaning she hadn't started. "We gotta go."
I had prearranged for Bear Woman to get the focus group sharpening knives if I ran late, so I wasn't in any hurry. "Pack," I said, settling into a power pose on the floor. I crouched on my haunches as if ready to spring, fingers poised an inch above my boar-tusk knife handle. I had killed the boar myself while on safari in Peru.
"Mom!" Kayla screamed.
I forced myself not to smile. "Go upstairs and pack," I said. Alpha power surged through me in a premenopausal electrical storm. I unsheathed my knife and lazily carved my initials into the pecan floor.
Kayla stood by, defeated. "Oh, all right!" she said at last. She turned and ran to her room.
Only then did I notice I wasn't breathing. I gasped, both with surprise and the need for air. I had won the battle. The war wasn't scheduled to start until tomorrow.
Kayla's suitcase was big enough to hold a gray whale, which, incidentally, she tried periodically to save. She had packed a month's worth of clothing, makeup, and reading material-nearly all relating to Ricky Martin, her latest pop star heartthrob. She was bringing her own cooler filled with Rainier cherries, mangos, and a chewy vegan concoction called tempeh that Kayla liked to chop and season with sunflower seeds and roll up in whole wheat tortillas.
My cooler held a case of chocolate truffles, a few bottles of my favorite white zinfandel, barbecue sauce, spices, and pork casings to make sausages, in case there were any leftovers from the kill. Okay, so we were militant, but I was born in the Midwest, and when you were from Iowa, you never threw away anything you could can, freeze, or over-winter in the cellar.
The retreat was near the Washington/Oregon border, a three-hour drive by highway, a little over two hours if you knew how to get there off-road, which I did. I ignored Kayla's whining and refused to take the Jeep out of four-wheel drive until we had crossed a shallow ravine called Starving Woman Creek. The creek was empty year-round, except for an occasional flash flood. Tomorrow, if things went well, we planned to fill it with a river of animal blood when we hosted our full moon Earth Mutha ceremony.
"Mom," Kayla said, "you're not really going to trap trolls, are you?"
"It doesn't hurt them," I said, for the umpteenth time. "We just trap them in cages to transport back to the Idaho wilds." I had no sympathy for the hairy beasts. They weren't even native to the area and had been brought to the Northwest by Idaho farmers looking for cheap help to harvest their potato crop.
"Goddess, Mother!" she said, using that I-can't-wait-till-you're-in-the-nursing-home voice. "I suppose you think it was okay for the government to intern Japanese Americans during World War II."
"Not a good analogy," I said. "This is way different. Trolls aren't even human. They behave like pigs. They steal our supplies, trash our site, and urinate on our bedding. That's why they're called trolls, for Goddess' sake."
"Now you're going to pretend like I don't know what I'm talking about so you don't have to listen," Kayla said. "You and your friends are bigger thugs than the trolls."
"I'm sorry, dear, but the trolls are too much of a nuisance to ignore. We tried living in peace with them, but this really is an `Us or Them' kind of issue, and I'm sorry you don't understand that." How quickly our discussions degenerated into variations of Because I Told You So!
"It's people like you who make us have wars," Kayla proclaimed.
I stared at my difficult daughter. She had shed her sweater to reveal the "I heart Trolls" shirt she knew I detested.
"I want peace as much as you do," I said. "We just disagree on the best way to get it."