At dawn she woke, discovering herself completely covered by the cloak. Had she moved it in her sleep, changing it as she turned, or had Bane done it? It hardly mattered, yet she was inordinately curious.
She sat up and stretched, so that her belly thinned and her breasts lifted, choosing her moment when Bane was facing her. Then she stood and pulled the cloak on over her head, and shook her hair into place. She stepped out back to the privy, then took the short walk to the stream near the village where she could wash her face and arms. This was not exactly the Tan Demesnes, but it was a pleasant enough bucolic locale, and she rather liked it. She saw Fleta in animal form, still grazing in the near distance, and marveled again how the rovot could love such a creature, knowing her to be an animal. Bane’s dalliances with her in the early days had been but natural; a young man experimented on whatever was available. So did a young woman; Tania had practiced both Eye and sex with village louts, getting the details of it straight. She knew how to make a man respond. But love? Marriage? Reproduction? It was laughable!
She returned to find a breakfast of fruits and nuts and milk in the process of delivery. The townsfolk were being most hospitable! Did this owe more to the Eye she had given the patriarch, or to their ardent wish not to affront the Adepts in any manner, so that there would be no cause to harm the village? A bit of both, she concluded, satisfied. She had for gotten what pleasure it could be to intimidate rustics! Fleta came in to share the meal, resuming human form. “What, not enough greenery?” Tania inquired lightly. “Me thought thou wouldst have got a bellyful by now!”
“Aye,” the mare agreed, giving her a direct look. Bane kept a straight face. Tania smiled, masking her ire; the animal had struck back effectively enough. Well, it was a useful reminder; she might address the mare contemptuously, but she must never forget that this was a canny creature whose intellect was the equal of most full-blooded humans. The king of the snow demons swore by her ability in chess. Tania knew nothing of chess, finding such pastimes boring, but it was said that it required considerable savvy for good playing. She must confine her contempt to her manner, not her belief, or she could one day regret it.
And of course she knew why the mare had come in: she could not graze enough in six hours to carry her the rest of the day and night, unless the foraging was excellent, and here it was only average. Also, she intended to prevent Tania from flirting with Bane during the meal. Lots o’ luck, filly! she thought. It was almost as much fun aggravating the unicorn as it was tempting the man.
So it went for the days and nights until the village personnel assembled. Bane never gave a sign of being affected, but she knew he was, in the way a piling was weakened by the surging water of the shore; eventually it would give way. On the morning of the third day the villagers lined up: a motley collection of men, youths, women and children. They hardly seemed to have a good suit of clothing between them. Tania stood before them and made her statement: “We search for a child who may have joined you this past week. Bring forth your children.”
Fearfully, they brought them forth. She inspected the ragged urchins, then questioned each in turn. “Be thou native to this village? Know ye o’ any who be not?” All the children were native. Tania went to the adults, fixing each with just enough of her Eye to be assured they were telling the truth. “Dost know an any child came here, or departed here, o’ the type I seek?”
No one knew of any. It was as she had expected: it had taken more than two days to verify that this village was clean. And only about ninety-nine villages to go! Actually it took less than six months to check all the human settlements, because news of their search spread, and each village was eager to be exonerated. Soon the far-flung personnel were arriving almost as their party did, so that the job could be done in a day. Of course the very time consumed in their search caused the event in question to become increasingly remote. But since the villagers knew the nature of the search, their memories of the time in question were sharp-ened. They could not cheat or conceal anything, because Tania always cross-checked, inquiring not only of individual memories, but of what they knew or had heard of the experience of others, and of any missing villagers. No one escaped scrutiny, and no one dissembled; all were clean. As expected. In Tania’s mind. Purple had done much damage by his foolish insistence that the human population be checked first. Translucent was right: the boy had avoided that form, knowing it would be checked.
‘And now needs we must verify the ‘corns,” Tania said as they finished with the last village. “Another colossal waste o’ time.”
“True,” Fleta agreed. “My boy be not among mine own kind.”
“Yet needs must we check, by order o’ those we answer to,” Tania said, disgusted. They were unified in this: they knew they were about to waste another significant portion of a year.
In the course of these months, Tania knew she had made an inroad on Bane, though he still held out. She caught him looking at her when she supposedly slept, and he pretended to ignore her when she found pretexts to make close contact, instead of disengaging. He wanted her, but would not admit it. She might have done better, had it not been for the monthly exchanges he made with the rovot. He went to Proton to be with his alien love, while Mach the rovot assumed control of his body. That complicated things, because Mach loved Fleta and she him; it disgusted Tania to see them together, and to have to share residence when they were sleeping together. But, worse, Mach was a full Adept, whose power vastly over matched hers; she could hope neither to tempt him nor defy him. She was definitely the odd one out, during that month, and it grated fiercely.
Yet Mach supported the search, both because he was committed to it and because he wanted his son back. He could cast a spell that verified the knowledge of a village in a moment, instead of the hours Tania required. He could conjure them from site to site far more swiftly and accurately than could Bane, who had to devise a new spell each time. Increasingly, with Bane, they were planning their route carefully and walking or riding from village to village, borrowing a horse for Tania while Fleta assumed ‘corn form and carried Bane. Thus the time they saved at the villages was expended in travel. But with Mach it went phenomenally fast. They checked the unicorns. The Herds were more resistive to the process than the human villages had been, but after Tania called on Translucent for aid, and he sent a deluge—not a storm, merely a horrendous burst of water—against a recalcitrant Herd, that washed out its best pasture, drowned three foals, and left erosion gullies where their trails had been, they decided to cooperate. Unicorns had magic, and Herd magic was strong, but it was sheer hubris to oppose an Adept, and that single reminder sufficed.
Mach was a complete loss, but during the Bane-months, Tania continued her unsubtle campaign of seduction. When he had an erection during sleep, as men did, she teased him unmercifully, suggesting that he had suppressed and unrequited urges. Sometimes she joined him under his blanket. When he tried to ignore her, she nudged closer, until she was on the verge of initiating the act. That forced him to get up and move, erection and all, to her obvious amusement. For a time he slept with Fleta: riding her as she grazed. But that was wearing on her, and too much contact with his other self’s lover, and he had to give it up. Yes, Tania was making progress. The irony was that if Bane had been a less decent man, he would have had less trouble; he could have warned her off, then struck her when she impinged, and she would have had to take it lest she forfeit all future opportunities. But something else was happening. She had set out to seduce Bane away from his alien lover, but the more he resisted her, the more personal this challenge became. The longer he did it politely, showing consideration for her dignity despite his objection to her effort, the more she came to respect his consistency. Obviously his days of playing were over; he neither yielded to her nor abused her, being always proper in his actions despite what might rage within him. She had to admire that control. She realized one day that this was a two way business: while she was making progress in arousing his desire, he was arousing her own. In fact, she was falling in love with him.