"Veroshi City Festival (pt 1)" by Heidi Hecht

In the days following our Landing, we had much work to do: planting the fields which the gods set aside for our use, becoming familiar with our Holy City and arranging matters to our liking. So, too, did the gods themselves, building the Spa by our request, for they were and are possessed of the bad habit of neglecting themselves...
In time, we harvested the first crop and praised the gods, for we had enough to last for two years with care. It is well that we did, for, within weeks, the first Snow came.

-From the Journal of High Priestess Rossa, as published in the New Scriptures, Veroshi Printing Press, 811 I.E. [Imperial Era].

Several Veroshi gawked upward at the healthy snowfall. This was one more reminder that they were on an actual planet and not on the Hoshrin anymore. The Hoshrin, their interstellar sublight ship whose name translated as "Faith-ship," didn't have the extremes of weather that Earth had. As recently as a year ago, whole generations of Veroshi lived out their lives never seeing rain or snow, or even an authentic sunny day. Now, they saw that their gods' insistence on producing warm woolen clothing made sense.

Some half-grown puppies went running to the nearest god, an elderly cyborg Guardian who aimed a glowing green eye at them. To any human child, he probably would have been terrifying: a big hawk-winged lion-monster with one mechanical wing and a metal construct replacing half his face. To a Veroshi puppy, he was just a friendly god.

"Geralt, what is this cold ash?" one of them asked, trying to catch some in her mittens. "And why does it keep disappearing in my hand?"

Geralt curled his tail and caught some snow in his own bare hand.

"It's only snow. See how it melts?"

They watched it turn into drops of water in his hand.

"That's your magic!" said one.

"It's not really magic. Snow is just flakes of frozen water. It'll melt if it lands on something warm enough."

Another puppy's face lit up. "Oh! It's like what you get when you try to chip away at a bunch of ice cubes that partly melted and then froze together into one big lump, lots of little white flakes. But why is it falling out of the sky?"

"It might help if you think of it as frozen rain."

"You mean precipitation?" She pronounced the big word carefully. "That's what Captain Earon used to call it."

Geralt was grateful to the Veroshi leadership for deciding to continue teaching basic science in school now that it wasn't vital for their survival. On the Hoshrin, it would have been a real danger if one of their scientists or technicians died without passing on his knowledge. Here, that wasn't quite so important. It was an ongoing debate in the more philosophical circles of the Grebsa Network: Now that the Veroshi had their Grebsa gods to protect them, would they backslide into a less scientific and more superstitious society? Well, so far, they showed no signs of doing that. Perhaps it helped that Commandrix Tranna had offered a few suggestions about the school's curriculum.

"That is correct."

She wagged her tail, lifted her wings by a couple of centimeters, and wolf-smiled. Geralt lifted his whiskers a little. Like most Guardians, he was trying to learn to be more demonstrative of his feelings and was positive he would never be as good at it as his pretty worshippers were. They showed their emotions with their whole bodies. He only had a limited range. The Veroshi would sometimes complain to each other that they didn't know when they were pleasing their gods. Also, they could tell when a Grebsa became a little too demonstrative. It was a constant problem.

The younglings climbed up on his back. He gave some of the smaller ones a leg up.

"Could you take us to school, Geralt? We're going to be late!" said the one sitting on his shoulders.

He sighed and rolled his eyes. It really wasn't that far. "Okay. Hold on!"

He gave them enough time to get a good grip on his fur, and then galloped to the Temple to the squeals of six Veroshi children. He would have felt it if one of them fell off, but, fortunately, none did. He stopped in the Temple courtyard and knelt to let them tumble off his back. They ran inside and he chuckled deep in his throat. That would teach them not to be late.

He went on to the cafeteria where he had agreed to meet with his Special One for a meal. That small stop had delayed him, too, so he flew the two kilometers and landed on the edge of the unpaved street. His precious Ruyana was waiting for him just outside the door.

She walked gingerly over to him. She would probably never walk or fly with the confidence of an average Veroshi, having been born with deformed legs and a left wing that was half the size of the right. The doctors had been able to fix the problems, even though they probably still hated him for bullying them into adapting a technique for replacing lost limbs they had perfected since giving him his prosthetics.

As far as she knew, it was her same legs and wing, healed through the gods' "magic." He didn't press the issue, especially not when being the recipient of the first miracle did wonders for her social status. He could only thank the stars that she accepted the perfectly true reasons for the gap in her memory afterwards, and that she didn't fall prey to the so-human fault of becoming insufferable as her status went up.

"I'm glad you came, Geralt," she said softly.

He didn't like the sound of that. "I would only not come if there was a crisis the Guardians on duty couldn't handle. Are you all right?"

Whimpering, Ruyana licked the part of his face that wasn't metal. "I just hate that I was the only live birth in my sibling-set. There should have been four of us to take care of you."

Geralt extended his wings around her in the Veroshi version of a hug. Multiple births were so common among the Veroshi that controlling their population on the Hoshrin had meant contraceptives in the water and a complex days-long cleansing ceremony for prospective parents. Ruyana should have been part of a set of quadruplets. Unfortunately, the other three had been stillborn.

"You are enough, dearling. Are the Priestesses giving you trouble again?"

"N-No. I think I'm pregnant. I'm going to have to take care of them, too, and I'm afraid of them turning out like m-my siblings and I did."

"Pregnant? Ruyana, how wonderful! I can contact the Grebsas who fixed your wing and legs. They'll know somebody who can make certain your puppies are perfectly healthy. Though, naturally, they'll want to consult with your Healers, too."

Ruyana looked alarmed. "Not the Healers! The last time I went to them with a pregnancy, they gave me an herb that caused me to miscarry."

Geralt muttered under his breath in Standard. Not Veroshi'i; they didn't have any insults stronger than their word for "deviant," that he knew of. He disapproved of abortion as a general rule and, as far as he knew, there was nothing wrong with Ruyana, genetically. Surely Arax would have said something if her genome deviated from the norm in any significant way. Fortunately for him, she didn't even ask what he meant.

"Okay, if that's what you want," he said out loud.

At the same time, he did the telepathic version of looking in on Tranna to see if she was free. She answered promptly, indicating that she wasn't handling anything of any great importance at the moment.

*Yes, Geralt?* she asked telepathically.

*Could you prevail on the Healers to teach our doctors their prenatal techniques? Ruyana just told me she's pregnant and she has reason not to trust the Healers with it, but it might reassure her to see familiar routines with the doctors.*

*That's a good idea. Some of our doctors are already working with Healers and they say Veroshi preventive medicine is first-rate. They think they can combine our techniques and theirs for this sort of thing.*

*Maybe we should get somebody to ask about an herb that apparently causes miscarriage.*

*Is that what happened? Poor Ruyana; she must have taken that hard.*

*Yeah. Thanks, Commandrix.*

Ruyana said, "Thanks, Geralt. I think I'll splurge a little and have some of that plum pudding. That always makes me feel better."

Geralt licked her cheek and they went into the cafeteria. If it made her happy, he wasn't going to argue. Besides, plums were one of the few native Terran foods that were actually safe for Veroshi to eat. The Priestesses were debating adding it to their list of holy fruits. Geralt was sure they would, if only because High Priestess Rossa was in favor of the idea. In the meantime, Ruyana could enjoy one of those things she couldn't have gotten on the Hoshrin.

He sniffed the air and his nose began to tickle. The smell of Veroshi grain-based dishes always seemed to do that to him. He managed to suppress a sneeze.

Ruyana went off to choose her lunch and Geralt went to see what soups they had. Tranna would often tell him it was a shame that the Panera Bread chain went out of business two centuries ago. She was positive he would have liked their soup and sandwich combos. Well, it was probably just as well. He could not have subsisted on the portions that humans considered a full meal, not when half a ton was normal weight for him at one G.

He filled a half-gallon bowl of broccoli cheese soup and then went to the deli for a rotisserie chicken. Despite his winged-catmonster appearance, he was not a strict carnivore and he couldn't go in for chili because of...well, the beans. The last time, Ruyana hadn't exactly complained, but she had opened all the windows in the apartment they shared.

He got a drink from the fountain and went to the automatic checkout counter, where Ruyana was already waiting. Out of respect for the Veroshi's wish not to use currency of any sort, it didn't have an obvious credit-chit reader. He just had to unobtrusively press his thumb against the thumbprint scanner. It would deduct the appropriate amount from his account. If Ruyana ran into a situation where he wasn't around to pay for things, her thumbprint would work, too.

Checkout went smoothly this time. The first two times they had been here, he had shown Ruyana how to use the scale and the register and carefully explained that they needed to keep track of the resources they were using. Ruyana had a sandwich and her bowl of pudding, along with a glass of the Veroshi version of iced tea. In some ways, Geralt thought she was lucky. She could eat portions that a human who was obsessed with dieting would eat and still stay healthy. Thanks to the special diet-and-exercise program the doctors had insisted on, she was nearly at normal weight for a Veroshi and definitely more fleshed-out than the scrawny thing Geralt had found on the Hoshrin. She still weighed in at slightly less than a hundred pounds.

"It's snowing outside," Ruyana observed as they found a table near the window. "I've never seen snow before, except in pictures."

Geralt curled his tail and told her about the puppies who thought it was cold ash. She yip-laughed at that.

"I might have thought so, too, if Captain Earon hadn't taught me a little about planetology on the Hoshrin."

Veroshi had a habit of lumping all planetary sciences into something they called "planetology." Geralt supposed such a thing would make sense if a society spent ten thousand years on an interstellar spacecraft. He was also glad that somebody took enough interest in a crippled girl to teach her something about the sciences.

"I'm sorry Captain Earon died right before you reached Sol System. He must have been a good person," he said.

Ruyana's eyes filled up with tears. "He was. I think he always knew he was never destined to see Earth. He would say that he didn't d-deserve to. He just wanted to make certain we were as ready for it as we could be."

Geralt wondered what Captain Earon could have meant by not deserving to. It could be anything from not attending regular Temple services to fathering an unauthorized sibling-set. Every Veroshi who had known him always spoke well of him, though. It was probably one of those little things that followers of any religion could get hung up on.

He wiped Ruyana's tears away with one finger. He did realize how ridiculous that was. The fur on her cheeks soaked up the tears that escaped her eyes. She seemed to appreciate the gesture anyway.

"I never thought about how emotional we Veroshi are until we got here," she told him.

"You don't need to be ashamed of it. It's just part of who you are."

She smiled shyly. This was Geralt at his best, when he was relaxed and not growling about a human pest who had gotten into the orchards. He could encourage positive self-expression, but vandalism could earn a person a year or more of pounding nails on some government-sponsored construction project, and that was if the person survived the Guardians' temper. Geralt had told her once that penalties automatically tripled if Veroshi or their property were harmed in any way, though it was hard for Ruyana to see how even the Grebsas could kill a human three times. Humans didn't reincarnate.

~~~~~~~~

The would-be martyr stood at attention before Commandrix Ariana, not even daring to show the fear his potential master could smell on him. The Shadows lurked behind him, as silent as the tricks of light that gave their Faction its name. It wasn't out of fear of him. No Grebsa would lash out at another without more provocation than the Shadows had ever given him. They were giving him a chance to look the slave over without their interference. They ran a secret prison for the worst of criminals, of which this former terrorist was one. Criminals went in...slaves went out. Ariana suspected it was one of the few pleasures the Shadows allowed themselves.

"What is your name?" Ariana nearly purred.

"Daniel Wizenger, Commandrix," the man said without hesitation or wavering, but also without any sign of aggression. That had been conditioned out of him.

"Come here."

Wizenger came forward until he was within claw's reach of Ariana. Their heads were nearly level with each other, and Ariana was in his four-legged pose.

"Do you know why we do not kill you for your crimes?" Ariana growled softly.

For the first time, Wizenger showed a hint of nervousness. "N-No."

"You would have courted death. It is easier than living with the consequences. You understand by now that death is not the worst fate there is."

"As you say, Commandrix."

"You shall serve me. In doing so, you serve the Veroshi you would have given a fate worse than death to. Always remember that."

"Yes, Commandrix."

"Until I know I can trust you, you will stay chained unless I have use for you. I will go hunt now. When I return, I may require a cleaning."

The human bowed. Ariana chained him into a niche in one wall and placed the key on a chain around his wrist. This made five keys, one for every slave he currently possessed. He gave the two Shadows a credit chit.

*You do good work. I don't like to think what you had to do to break this one,* he told them over the telepathic Grebsa Network.

*You favor the clean kill. We know this and thank you for the opportunity to work with an especially troublesome human,* one of them answered.

The three of them left the apartment carved directly into the face of a mountain and Ariana flew the Shadows down. Most humans would call Ariana cruel and inhuman. Well, he was literally inhuman and he did not spare much sympathy for humans, but no other Grebsa Lord of Sol System could match the Shadows for cruelty. Their positions and duties did not allow them to enjoy many of the benefits of ruling the Solar Empire. Therefore, they were given the privilege of running top-secret prisons where they could have whatever revenge they liked...

Ariana decided he really needed that hunt and said his farewells to these two.

~~~~~~~~

Wizenger slumped over as far as the chains around his wrists would let him, aware of the dispirited stares of the other four slaves sprawled on their mats. He didn't even have the strength to hate the Grebsas anymore. They were monsters who didn't even have the decency to let him die. Not that long ago, the thought might have started a chain that worked him up to a state where he could kill them. Now, it echoed rather loudly in his mind.

One of the slaves got up, went to the refrigerator, and got a bowl of fruit out. She brought it over to Wizenger and held a slice of apple out to him.

"Ariana lets us have all the fruit and vegetables we want. We just can't touch his meat unless he gives his specific permission."

Wizenger didn't answer at first. She didn't fit his set image of a slave girl. She wore an ordinary sweatshirt and jeans instead of a skimpy bikini-like outfit. She wasn't bad-looking, but she was no ravening beauty, either. He gingerly took the fruit from her without touching her hand. Even after all the Shadows had done to him, he liked to think he had some sense of decency left.

"Surprised at my appearance?" She shrugged. "Ariana prefers that we wear enough clothing to maintain a 'decent appearance.' Mostly meaning we're not here to impress people with our bodies, and who are we going to impress, anyway? Certainly not him."

Wizenger finally answered, "You don't call him 'master.'"

"He doesn't insist on it. He says a lot of the trouble between humans and Grebsas has to do with that. Before they conquered us, we tried to force them to accept us as masters, and they were too proud. I'm Stephanie Granger, by the way."

"I'm Daniel Wizenger."

"Oh, I remember you. Weren't you one of the terrorist ringleaders who were captured after that Enforcer lieutenant went on a rampage?"

"How do you know that?"

"Ariana has a holovid set he watches whenever he wants to know what the news feeds are saying about Grebsas."

He sighed. "It was a mistake to support the terrorists. I suppose the Grebsas depopulated the Middle East by now."

"As far as I can tell, they haven't. They forced oaths of allegiance out of every religious leader they could think of, except maybe the Veroshi, and those pretties are such sweethearts it would take a real monster to force them to do anything."

Wizenger bowed his head. He saw things more clearly now than he had then. The Veroshi must have caught the Grebsas off-guard as much as it had the human religious community. Only the Shadows would have had the subtlety necessary to exploit the matter. The six other Factions must have vetoed the idea. They took a very lassaiz-faire¹ attitude toward religion, as long as no one committed crimes in the name of whatever god they believed in, and they would have seen no reason to change their policy for a questionable advantage.

"I'm an idiot," he said out loud.

"Yeah. We're all here because we did something stupid. Ariana can be a good master if you let him. Just follow his rules and you'll do all right."

She left the bowl of fruit on a stand where he could reach it. As she turned away, Wizenger saw a burn scar on one side of her neck. The Grebsas were cruel masters, no matter what spin you wanted to put on it. He didn't envy the Veroshi at all.

~~~~~~~~

Ruyana admitted her fear of provoking Geralt as they put their trays on the conveyor. His head and tail drooped a bit.

"You are smart for thinking of that. I would tell you not to worry about it if I could guarantee I wouldn't do more than unsheathe my claws next time something startles me. I will try to shred a piece of furniture if I must shred something."

Whimpering a bit, she patted his shoulder. He purred a little, wishing she could see how brave she was. If he could go from napping to near-attack mode over a broken dish, it wouldn't take much more for him to start shredding things. He honestly didn't know how to reassure her that he wouldn't hurt her if he could help it. He felt his eyes mist over.

She gave him a hug. "Oh, it's not your fault, Geralt. The Scriptures say the humans did this to you, tormenting you until you became vicious and hateful monsters, and we can only counter that with love."

He didn't think it would be that easy. This wasn't a fairy tale. He didn't want to disabuse Ruyana of her idealism, though. He returned the hug.

"I love you, Ruyana. I just wish I wasn't such a brute."

She scratched a spot on his chin. "You do have your gentle side. You wouldn't be my Patron otherwise."

Geralt gave her a leg up and she settled between his shoulders in front of his wings. He wouldn't let just anybody ride him. Only adorable Veroshi puppies and my Special One, he thought with an amused loop in his tail. It was mostly a matter of principle. He was a Grebsa Lord of Sol System, not a beast of burden.

He flew with her to the Temple. High Priestess Rossa had been nice enough to get her into an accelerated Acolyte program. It was a combined internship and classroom learning course for Veroshi who wanted to be Priestesses and maybe a way for them to make up for the way they had treated Ruyana before they reached Earth. Geralt hoped they weren't pushing her too hard. So far, she showed no signs of it being too much for her, but he wasn't sure she would complain even if it was.

"Don't forget there's a blizzard coming," he said as he landed.

She sounded unconcerned. "Okay, Geralt."

She hopped down and Geralt watched her go inside. He was so rarely inside the Temple except on special holy days, when the services required more than one or two Grebsas in attendance. Sometimes he wondered what they did in there besides hold services or classes for the younglings. The one time he had asked Ruyana, she had stammered something about taboos and men getting involved in women's business until he let her off the hook. He supposed he could relay any questions through Tranna, but it seemed like a lot of trouble for something so trivial. He shook his mane and went on with his patrol.

~~~~~~~~

Ruyana was halfway to the High Priestess's office before realizing she had forgotten to thank Geralt for the ride. He could merely consider it a part of being her Patron and not expect any thanks. Still, an Acolyte should never seem ungrateful, especially to a god. She did her best to forestall any guilty-sick feelings by telling herself she could thank him later. He had certainly forgiven worse than a little forgetfulness.

She was saving up most of her sins for Geralt to forgive. Last week, she had told Rossa about that, and Rossa said many Special Ones did that now. It just seemed easier to go straight to the gods now that they were on Earth. In a generation or two, the Priestesses could be all but obsolete except as leaders for the worship services.

Geralt, of course, saw it differently. "Imagine the chaos if every Veroshi who doesn't have a Patron went running up to a random god every time they felt guilty about something! We would never get anything done. The Priestesses will always have their place and they can relay anything they think we should handle to us. I know for certain the High Priestess has a direct link to Commandrix Tranna if she needs anything."

Rossa had yipped softly in the Veroshi version of a chuckle when Ruyana repeated that to her. "Geralt's a nice Guardian. I hope we won't have to relay much."

Now, she reached Rossa's office and knocked softly.

"Come in, Ruyana," came the voice through the door.

The High Priestess always seemed to know who it was. There was some debate among the Acolytes about whether she had a spy device that allowed her to see who was knocking, or was just psychic. Ruyana decided it didn't matter much. She let herself in.

"You asked me to come to you after lunch," she said.

"So I did." Rossa sniffed and smelled Geralt's lingering scent. "You've had lunch with your Patron. Have you told him about your pregnancy?"

"I did. He promised he would get some Grebsa doctors to help me."

"That is generous of him. I'm still sorry we had to penalize Healer Faran over what happened with your last pregnancy."

Ruyana nodded as she sat in a vacant chair, her wings drooping a bit. Abortion counted as murder to the Veroshi, and it was doubly bad when a Healer committed it. Faran's Healer's license had been revoked and he and his children were forbidden to procreate. Among the Veroshi, a sin that serious was a sure sign of a genetic error.

"Anyway," Rossa continued, "I just got Tranna's approval for a Winter Festival. Would you like to help me plan it?"

Ruyana's wings perked up and she wagged her tail. "I'd love to. Only, I don't know anything about planning a Festival."

Rossa approved of her honesty. It proved that she hadn't made a mistake in accepting the young lady as an Acolyte. She only regretted not seeing her potential when she was still a poor crippled girl. Such negligence could easily become a sin, too.

"It's not difficult, just complicated. If you can see the difference."

Ruyana smiled a little. "It's just like being an Acolyte, then."

Rossa yipped. "Really? I guess I've almost forgotten."

"You never forget anything. How about we get started? I'm sure I'll figure it out."

They worked on it for a few hours. Ruyana had the idea of having the main events in and around the Temple grounds. They debated back and forth about whether they should have alcoholic beverages available. It would have been the first time in their recorded history that they had wine, unrationed and outside of holy days. Rossa had heard it was an Earth tradition during a celebration. Ruyana won that one when she repeated what Geralt had told her about alcohol. Its effects could range from mildly embarrassing to devastating if it was used carelessly. Rossa agreed that they should limit it to the more innocent drinks.

After that, the worst of it was the Wind Dancers. They both agreed that it wouldn't be a Festival without them, but didn't want them to freeze in outfits that weren't suited for cold weather.

"It would be better if they could design some warmer dance outfits," said Rossa. "Of course, they will refuse to wear anything but silk and feathers during their dances."

Ruyana fidgeted a little. "Would they accept a compromise? Geralt wanted to turn some of his fur into a winter outfit for me and I saved some of the feathers he shed when he molted. If we could work out a way to turn that into dancing outfits, the weather would be less of a problem."

Rossa shook her head. "That wouldn't be fair to the Grebsas. They need their fur and feathers to stay warm. Besides, we might not have time to-aaah-make the outfits."

Rossa's last few words got wrapped around a yawn. It had been a long day for her and she wasn't as young as she used to be.

"Perhaps we should take a break," Ruyana suggested.

"Good idea. I'll ask the Wind Dancers what they want to do the next time they have a practice."

They left the office together.

"How's the weather out there today?" Rossa asked conversationally.

"Cold. I think it was actually snowing when I came here."

"Snowing! That must be something to see."

"It was pretty. Geralt reminded me about the blizzard forecast for today."

Rossa decided she wanted to see. Just as she was guiding their walk to the front door, the alarm siren blared three times. That was the signal for "stay indoors" in the signal lexicon that the Grebsas had worked out with Veroshi leaders. Fortunately, it was only three times. A signal of three long, three short, and three more long blats would have meant, for the Veroshi, "Disaster! Evacuate the City!"

She hurried as swiftly as her old limbs would allow. Whimpering, Ruyana followed. They reached the doors, only to find that the snow had gotten much heavier while they were working. Visibility would soon be near zero.

"It's not so pretty now," Ruyana said almost unnecessarily.

~~~~~~~~

Geralt carried two armloads and a backload of whimpering Veroshi puppies into his own apartment. They had been playing and hadn't noticed that the snow was getting heavier. He was positive Tranna had put out a bulletin about the coming blizzard. Of course, one never comprehended the true meaning of a blizzard until one lived through it.

He hoped Ruyana had heard the alarm signal. If he was a Veroshi, he wouldn't want to try flying home in this weather. He would keep an eye out for her. In the meantime, he had more Veroshi to rescue.

"You can stay here," he said gently. "I have leftovers in the refrigerator if any of you is hungry. Just stay away from any of the containers marked 'For Geralt'." He then directly addressed the one who looked like the oldest. "What's your name?"

"Yrana, my Lord," she said with an edge of whine in her voice.

"I'm going to leave you in charge until I or another Grebsa comes to take you home, Yrana. If you can help the youngest puppies get some food if they want some, I would appreciate it."

She looked a little brighter. "I will, my Lord."

One of the youngest piped up, "What can I do, my Lord?"

"Um-" Geralt thought quickly. Puppies were adorable, but he wished they wouldn't put him in this kind of position. "I have some bottles of water in the fridge. How about you pass them out to anyone who wants one?"

"I will! Er, my Lord," she remembered to add.

Geralt curled his tail as he thanked Yrana and the puppy and left. He carefully closed the door behind himself on the way out and made certain the safety lock was engaged. In an emergency, he could thank their Prophet that she had bio-engineered the Veroshi to obey him without question. A human wouldn't do that and he was ranked too lowly among the Guardians to get actual obedience even from them. Ruyana had marked everything clearly and the puppies wouldn't poison themselves by getting into something they shouldn't.

Visibility was going down fast. He activated his wrist-com and linked it up with a central computer that would locate Veroshi body heat.

"Two Veroshi-level heat sources to your right," said the prissy system's voice.

He went in that direction and gathered up two adult Veroshi. They were wide-eyed with fear, but not whimpering as much as the puppies had been.

"What have we done to deserve this storm, my Lord?" asked the male, not that gender made much difference in most cases. With the Veroshi, males were only slightly bigger than females and were very similar in emotional makeup.

"Nothing," he said gently while mentally gritting his teeth. Was it the nature of all religious types to think they had somehow brought on their own bad luck? Anybody could get caught in a storm if they were careless or unlucky. However, he reminded himself, not everybody was Veroshi. "It's just a snowstorm. I'll take you to a safe shelter."

The female asked, "Could you take us to the spa? Would that be too far?"

"No, it's only a little way."

Which was the truth. They had put it right next to the Guardian apartments for lack of anywhere else to build that dratted thing. Like most Grebsa architecture, it was designed to be quite safe in a storm. He collected four more Veroshi on the way there and deposited them safely inside. Then, he checked his wrist-com for a readout of the life-form locator program. Tranna had meant it for a complete disaster that flattened the City, but it was proving very useful for finding Veroshi stranded in the storm.

His sector was clear, but there were four Veroshi the next sector over who would blunder across the boundary if not intercepted by the Guardian covering it. He went out again, not noticing that his hands and feet were beginning to turn numb from the cold.

~~~~~~~~

Yrana took her god-given responsibility seriously. With help from the puppy, who gave his name as Srain, she managed to scrape together a passable meal of leftovers and bottled water for the children in Geralt's apartment. None of the others found reason to whine about it, anyway. They all knew how generous the Grebsa Lord was in letting them wait out the storm in his own apartment.

She began the traditional hymn of praise as she passed out plates and silverware. Srain joined in quickly, his voice high-pitched without being shrill. Timidly, first one, then another of the puppies jumped in, and then their voices gained confidence as they began to forget their fear of the storm.

Yrana decided this was what Geralt must have intended by bringing them to his apartment. She could almost feel Geralt's essence here, even when he wasn't present. He wanted them to know that he and every other Guardian would find ways to keep them safe when they couldn't be there physically. Perhaps she could tell Rossa about it during Children's Hour next week.

"I like it here," said Srain when they finished the hymn. "I wish I was Geralt's Special One."

"Geralt's an oddball, for a Guardian. He has only one Special One," another puppy noted.

Yrana laughed at that, but not derisively the way a human child might. "That might be better than having eight the way Tranna does. She always looks a little harried when they're around."

"B-But, that's the rule. T-They're octuplets a-and every Guardian should have a sibling set as Special Ones," stammered a puppy in the corner. Yrana thought she remembered him from Children's Hour. He had a slight stutter and was a little shy because of it, not that any Veroshi would tease him about it. Tranna and Rossa specifically forbade teasing, bullying, and the more malicious sorts of pranks.

Srain yipped, "Isn't Ruyana sort of a violation of that rule? She's the only survivor of her sibling set."

"I'll have to ask Rossa or Geralt about that," said Yrana.

She just wouldn't do it in Ruyana's hearing. She was an Acolyte and a Special One and she wasn't supposed to be treated any differently from her peers. Rossa had come as close as any Veroshi came to losing her temper the one time Yrana had asked her about Ruyana being a child of sin. She said the sin that had produced Ruyana had been erased by Geralt Half-Face and she was the recipient of the First Miracle. That made her special.

The sudden flash of lightning and crack of thunder made them all jump.

"What was that?" yelped Srain.

Yrana whimpered. "Lightning and thunder. I remember Tranna saying it doesn't happen as often in a snowstorm as a rainstorm."

The puppies tried to muffle yelps and whimpers, not entirely successfully. They abandoned their meals and huddled together in the middle of the room, flinching and shivering with every rumble of thunder. Every single one of them wished Geralt, Tranna, or their favorite Guardian was there with them.

~~~~~~~~

Ariana returned from his hunt, purring in satisfaction. He had brought down three rather sickly-looking buffalo and engaged two lieutenants to help him process the meat in exchange for part of it. While they would dip the meat in antibiotics as part of the processing, the Enforcers took a certain satisfaction in culling weak animals out of the wild herds. They had never been able to successfully re-introduce native predatory animals into the wild on a large scale, so they filled that role.

His slaves snapped to attention as he entered the apartment. Even Wizenger did, only a second or two after the others. He preferred it this way, since he could never stand the human tradition of slaves prostrating themselves before their master. It looked very much like a rabbit trying to hide in some tall grass by staying perfectly still and might activate his predatory instincts if he was hungry. An Enforcer could really use up his slaves that way.

Ariana allowed his gaze to pass from slave to slave until it fell fully on Wizenger. The human stiffened as straight as he could. He was probably thinking the same thing his master was. It was finally time to prove that the Shadows had done their usual thorough job of conditioning him. If they hadn't, Ariana had the option of sending him back for a refund.

He nodded his permission for the other four to return to whatever they had been doing and approached his chained slave. They returned to their cushions. He unlocked the cuffs around Wizenger's wrists.

"I will take my bath now," he growled softly.

"You're not afraid of water," Wizenger said, and then flinched.

Ariana's growl got louder. "Not the small amount of water we will use."

The old Wizenger wouldn't have just refused. He would have told Ariana where he could stuff it. The new Wizenger just nodded. Perhaps some Enforcers had been involved with his conditioning in their free time, so he would be used to touching creatures that looked very much like monsters to him. Ariana didn't know, or even care much. What his subordinates did while off-duty wasn't his province as long as it didn't interfere with their job performance or the duty of other Grebsas. He just cared that Wizenger obeyed him.

*The Veroshi would have absolute fits of jealousy,* Tranna broke into his thoughts.

He was getting used to it. In fact, he had once told Tranna they would probably work closely together with anything that involved both humans and Veroshi, so they had to get used to the idea that they could contact each other at any time of the day or night.

*I thought Veroshi weren't prone to jealousy,* he told her.

*How can you think that? You've seen how possessive Special Ones can be,* she retorted. *Just yesterday, my octuplets came close to a major spat with the spa attendants over who had the right to give me a perm.*

It took him a second to remember that "my octuplets" meant her eight Special Ones and not a new litter of kittens she hadn't told him about. That was proof that the Guardians were beginning to deviate from the Enforcers and define themselves as their own Faction. He would never tell her so, but he was proud of her the way a father would be proud of a daughter who proved that she could make it on her own merits.

*You're spoiled. What can I do for you?*

*Nice of you to say so. If your Enforcers see any windblown and terrified Veroshi when the blizzard blows over, I'd appreciate it if they would escort them back to the City. And I'm going to fly back to First's City to take care of some business. I would rather not have what happened last time.*

*Understandable. I'll make certain the slaves are gone and their scent neutralized before you get here,* Ariana answered. Last summer's incident had been partly his fault for not thinking about how Veroshi would react to the human slaves and vice versa. Veroshi considered his slaves to be an abomination, and his humans had been jealous of the pretties who appeared to have a status similar to a duchess' ladies-in-waiting. It had been one of those few times when Veroshi tried to order Grebsas around. He couldn't quite blame Tranna for tackling him and holding him down until he regained his temper. She wouldn't risk her Special Ones for any reason whatsoever.

*My Special Ones complained about that one for weeks. They're convinced that serving us should be a privilege, not a punishment,* Tranna told him.

He looped his tail. Tranna wouldn't have said that if she wasn't halfway convinced of it herself. She didn't even make use of the two human slaves she was entitled to whenever she was in First's City. At first, Ariana thought it was simply a matter of those slaves being superfluous with eight Special Ones to tend to her needs. Now, he saw that it was more complicated than that. The Veroshi viewed humans as something on the order of potentially rabid animals and Tranna loved hers enough to do the equivalent of calling ahead whenever she visited. That gave the humans time to clear out. Tranna faded from his mind.

~~~~~~~~

Ruyana timidly walked a little way outside the Temple after the horn gave the "all-clear" signal. Her legs sank a good way into a layer of snow that had to average at least two feet deep.

She desperately hoped Geralt was all right. He wasn't old by the standards of his people, who could reincarnate themselves with memories intact, but his body was ancient. If he perceived a crisis, he could think nothing of pushing himself to the point of collapse. It didn't take much imagination to picture him rescuing stranded Veroshi in the worst of weather. It would have been worse if there was a large gathering for him to rescue, even with help.

"How are we going to have a Festival if this weather is normal for winter?" she asked Rossa.

"Tranna says a lightning-blizzard is pretty unusual. We may still be able to have the Festival."

Ruyana took it for granted that Rossa would have contacted Tranna over the private link at some point. She firmly believed that the Grebsas were smarter than any human god, if such even existed. Most of the faith issues humans had were actually communication issues. It was easier for people to believe when they could have an actual dialogue with their gods.

"Well, all I want to do is find Geralt and curl up with him next to our fireplace," she said. "That is, if you don't need me for anything."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Rossa agreed.

Ruyana thanked her and flew off toward the sector Geralt would have been patrolling. He would probably be helping to find any Veroshi who had gotten buried in the snow. It was well past the usual time he got off-shift, too. He would say that it made little difference in a situation like this. He would serve when he was needed.

She found the sector boundary posts marked with the Standard symbol for "one" and tried using the back-and-forth sweep flight she had seen her Patron using on patrol. He said these sweeps were an efficient way to patrol, or look for people if you had a good general idea of where they were likely to be. She was soon panting. Her wings were built along the lines of a hummingbird and she still wasn't used to flying long distances.

Finally-really no more than ten minutes into her search, but it seemed like forever-she spotted what looked like a lump of metal and silver-gray fur and feathers, covered with a sprinkling of snow. She came in for a landing. Geralt tried to lift his head, barely conscious.

"Ruyana?" he said weakly. "What-you doing out-in this weather?"

She yip-laughed, but it was more a release of tension than anything. It was just like Geralt to say something like that.

"The alarm's over, so I came looking for you. I'll go get the Healers."

"Take-the children. They need-medical attention and food."

He moved his natural wing to reveal six just-born puppies snuggled against his body. Very likely, he had been trying to rescue them when he collapsed and couldn't do any more to shelter them from the cold. They wiggled and whined in wordless complaint.

"I'll send Healers, I promise. Here." She shrugged off her fur coat and spread it over Geralt. "For stars' sake, don't protest! You need it more than I do."

She scooped up the puppies and flew off. On the way to the Healing Center, she passed six Healers and a Grebsa doctor on their way out. She called to them.

"Are you going to help Geralt? He stayed out too long in the cold."

"Yes, Ruyana. Tranna sent us to fetch him," said the Grebsa.

She recognized him as one of those who had helped when Geralt gave her the miracle. "Thanks, Owen!"

But he was already flying off. Ruyana made it to the Healing Center. The receptionist took one look at her whimpering load and directed her to the pediatrics center. The Healing Center wasn't a sprawling place, mostly because Healers favored efficient aid of their patients. It took no more than five minutes for Ruyana to hurry down a hallway and reach a place designed for the comfort of children.

As she handed over the children, she told the Healer, "Geralt found them in the storm, but he collapsed, I think from the cold. He says they need medical attention and food."

"I always thought nothing could stop Geralt once he set his mind to do something," the Healer said as she accepted the puppies.

Ruyana wolf-grinned at the compliment. "I'm sure he would like for his enemies to think so. But he's probably due to reincarnate soon. He would probably prefer to do it while making us safer."

"Of course."

The Healer took the puppies away, leaving Ruyana at loose ends. It was one thing to know, intellectually, that her god could reincarnate. It was quite another to imagine such a drastic change. What if he didn't want her as a Special One anymore after he reincarnated?

~~~~~~~~

Geralt uncharacteristically growled at Owen when he reached to take the fur coat. Even among the Enforcer Faction, a Grebsa would only snarl at another if they were having a serious disagreement. Owen pulled back slightly.

*I'm here to help, Geralt.*

*Belongs to Ruyana,* Geralt said weakly.

*I understand. You'll have a chance to return it to her, but only if you let us treat you.*

*You just want to pay me back for the way I bullied you into helping her,* he accused, but he let Owen take the coat.

*Nonsense. She's a sweet girl. We would have found a way to help her anyway.*

With help from the Healers, Owen wrapped Geralt in a thermal blanket and wrestled him into the Grebsa version of a fireman's hold. The little dears managed their share of Geralt's weight with less obvious effort than he expected and secured Geralt firmly on Owen's shoulders. Then, they flew back to the Healing Center in a formation that almost looked like the Veroshi were providing an honor guard for the Grebsas. During all this, Geralt didn't make much of a protest except to remind Owen to bring the coat. One of the Healers carried it, perhaps reasoning that he wouldn't have growled at Owen without a very good reason.

When they brought him into the Center, the receptionist expressed shock at Geralt's condition.

"I've never seen a Grebsa look so bad!" she said.

"He's got a big heart. It's probably nothing a little rest in a warm place and some good care won't cure."

Owen took him into the Grebsa wing and found an empty pallet in a quiet room. He arranged Geralt on the pallet and cranked up the room's heat control unit by a few degrees. One of the nurses neatly folded the coat and placed it near Geralt's head.

He checked Geralt's vital signs. They were about what he expected from a near-freezing, slow but still strong. Some of the skin on his extremities was blackened. That meant permanent damage that would need surgery to remove. There was some on his natural wing, too. Geralt was not going to like that. Owen adjusted the thermal blanket and piled a few more blankets on him.

"He will be all right, won't he?" said one of them.

"He'll be fine," Owen said. "He just needs plenty of fluids and something that'll help him fight infection."

Geralt sneezed. That could have been the beginnings of the worst cold of his life or his way of expressing displeasure at needing to be coddled. He didn't make any comments, though. Owen got in a parting shot as he left the room.

*It is your fault for staying out so long in the blizzard, so don't be giving the Healers a hard time about it.*

*I'm not going to let newborns freeze to death just so this beat-up old body can crank on for a little longer. This life isn't all that important and you know it.*

Owen curled his tail. Geralt was already beginning to recover if he could be that irritable. The doctors would only be worried if he wasn't a typical Grebsa "problem patient" and were teaching the Healers not to take it too seriously when their patients grumbled about things that had nothing to do with their illnesses. That was just the natural testiness of a Grebsa who felt helpless.

~~~~~~~~

Ruyana wandered through the Healing Center for a bit. Without meaning to, she found herself on the edge of the Grebsa wing. Owen would have brought Geralt here. She knew she ought to visit her Patron, but wasn't really looking forward to it. No, not so much that. She was afraid to find that he had reincarnated and didn't want her anymore.

She stood at the imaginary line that would take her into the wing if she crossed it, indecisive and whimpering a bit. Owen spotted her and came over.

"He's going to be fine, dearling. I think he took some frostbite damage, but maybe that'll teach him to dress more warmly when he has to rescue people in a blizzard."

She couldn't help smiling a little. Owen always did manage to get a smile out of her.

"I just didn't think he would want me anymore if he reincarnated. He would want a younger Special One."

"I don't see any reason why he wouldn't want you. He certainly bullied me enough when he was trying to get you full use of your wings and legs."

"I never thought Grebsas bullied each other. You're supposed to be better than that."

"We will bully if it's for someone we care about. You should go visit him. It'll probably be the best thing for him right now. He's in the first room on the right, just down that hall."

Ruyana left him with only nominally polite thanks. Owen had told her two things: first, that the pecking order implied by their ranks was real, and, second, that she was maybe wrong about Geralt. Her Patron was a lieutenant, by implication a low rank, yet he seemed able to bully Owen, a doctor whose rank she didn't know and who didn't seem to resent it. She had always heard that the Grebsas couldn't be bullied if they didn't allow it and seen several brief scuffles between Guardians to confirm it.

And would Geralt risk one or more than one such scuffle with Owen to obtain help in pulling off her miracle? He had hinted that he couldn't have pulled it off on his own, as if he didn't have the knowledge or the power. It was more likely the former. A Grebsa was, by definition, powerful. Surely he wouldn't do that if he didn't care about her. She would have to make another confession to him. She disliked disappointing him, but the Scriptures said it was better to confess and get help from the gods than dig oneself into a deeper hole because one didn't.

She found Geralt's room. He wasn't quite sleeping, but he was obviously exhausted. She flew to him and all her fear came out in a babbling rush.

"Are you okay, Geralt? When you sent me away with those puppies, I thought for certain that you were going to reincarnate and you wouldn't want to be my Patron anymore. Owen says you bullied him into helping me and I thought maybe you were angry about me getting pregnant and regretted it."

He extended his obviously damaged natural wing to her and interrupted when she paused for breath. "My poor dear! I shouldn't have sent you off like that. I certainly wouldn't have if the situation with those puppies wasn't so serious. I'm not angry about you getting pregnant. Honestly, I didn't even think of it because I had to help deal with the blizzard. I don't want to stop being your Patron if you still want me to be."

Ruyana discovered the coat folded up next to his head. "You brought this with you."

"I threatened to refuse Owen's treatment unless he brought it."

She scratched between Geralt's ears. That was just like him. He wasn't afraid to tell people what he really thought, even if he sometimes tried to water it down to suit her sensitivities. She sat on the edge of his pallet and gave him a hug, resting her head on top of his. He moved his great head so that it was resting just against her knee and promptly fell asleep.

She sighed and licked the top of his head. He didn't even snore. There was only his deep, rhythmic breathing. By now, she knew what a sign of trust this was for a Grebsa. He wouldn't drop off like this if he thought she might harm him while he was unconscious.

Besides, he had just put in a long afternoon fighting a blizzard. It wasn't something she would want to do, not if the winds had been as strong as they looked. He was strong and brave, but he was also tired and frostbite-ridden. She snuggled against him as well as she could and simply took comfort in his presence. Maybe, when he recovered a little, she could talk him into going over to the spa for a good soak in one of those new hot baths and a day of pampering. Nobody deserved it more than him.

~~~~~~~~

Tranna and two of her lieutenants flew to Geralt's quarters. She pressed her thumb against the reader. The living room was a bit of a wreck: plates of half-eaten food all over the place and a few drinks that had obviously been knocked over by panicked or careless puppies. The puppies themselves were sound asleep on cushions they had dragged into the center of the room and sprawled on. She hated to wake them up, but their parents had requested that she bring them home.

"Hey," she said softly in an attempt to avoid scaring them more than they must have been already.

A few adorable heads went up. They blinked sleepily at her, and then began to wake up the others. She could hear them whispering, "Hey, Tranna's here. The Commandrix is here."

"We've come to take you home. The blizzard is over," she told them.

One of the little ones toddled over. "I helped pass out bottles of water! Just like Geralt said to!"

Tranna could see Geralt doing just that. He was always saying that people were less likely to panic in a crisis if someone in authority gave them something productive to do.

"I'm sure you did a good job."

The puppy went to climb up on her back. They were in full armor today, mostly because they had been preparing for the trip to First's City, and there were subtle saddles built into their armor. A human would only notice stylistic differences between Guardian and Enforcer armor. Though the Grebsas did not mind the Veroshi riding them, they did not care to advertise that they might be used as mounts. The puppy knew what to look for and she settled into the saddle and gripped the small handles.

"Ready!" she yipped.

"Let's let the other ones mount, too," Tranna said.

The three Guardians knelt. The puppies swarmed over and got into the saddles.

"The last time I rode a Grebsa, he galloped all the way to the Temple!" one of them yipped.

"Well, we won't gallop. We'll fly."

As if to prove her point, Tranna and her lieutenants went out to the balcony and took off. In a way, Veroshi City was very much like a big fortress. The Veroshi architecture that their Guardians had ostensibly modified to make more resistant to natural hazards would also hold up to as much battle damage as the material allowed. The Grebsa apartments made up the first defensive wall. The Veroshi apartments were the second wall that could be evacuated while the Grebsas bought them time from the first. Then, if the first wall was breached, the Grebsas could fall back and defend from the second.

It took about five minutes to get from the first wall to the second. If there had been a rebel army in between, the three Grebsas would have been dropping nasty surprises on their heads the entire way. Since there wasn't, they simply split up to drop these children off more efficiently.

Tranna wasn't small enough to fit on the Veroshi balconies, so she hovered right beside the first one and let a pair of twins flutter off.

"Thank you, Commandrix!" they yipped in their usual refreshingly polite manner.

"You're welcome, dearlings."

She watched them go inside. They closed the sliding door, and then toddled into one of the rooms branching off from a living room similar to Geralt's. She could just hear them telling their parents that she had given them a ride home. She flew off to deliver the other puppies.

Yrana was one of the last she dropped off. From the look of her, she was just about to reach adolescence and took her responsibilities a little more seriously than most. She patted Tranna's armored shoulder.

"I'm just sorry we didn't get a chance to clean up the mess in Geralt's apartment. I'm sure his Special One will be miffed."

Actually, the cleaning robots would probably take care of it once they sensed that the apartment was unoccupied by living beings. Tranna saw no reason to remind Yrana of that, though.

"Geralt doesn't think she can stay angry about anything. She'll forgive you."

"Well, I should get inside. I suppose my parents are half convinced I froze to death."

Tranna curled her tail, understanding. The Veroshi claimed to rely on the Grebsas for protection and maybe they did in some ways. They still did a fine job of looking out for each other and especially their offspring.

"Farewell, Yrana."

Yrana smiled a little, gave Tranna one last pat, and went inside. Tranna pulled away from the balcony and flew a holding pattern until the lieutenants reported back. She didn't blame them for wanting a few more moments with the adorable little puppies. They weren't in a hurry.

They went back to collect their Special Ones, who should have finished packing their baggage by now. When Tranna entered the quarters she shared with her octuplets, there were three more Veroshi talking with them. She recognized the visitors as a set of triplets who had been scientists on the Hoshrin.

"Is there something I can do for you, my dears?" she asked them.

"We just want to come with you to First's City, but Srango says there might not be room for us on your backs," said one of them.

Tranna hesitated slightly. Pilgrimages to First's City were rapidly becoming a tradition and she had been expecting some Veroshi scientists to petition Commandrix Era to be allowed to work with the Scientist Faction for a while now. She had been vaguely planning on having the two lieutenants carry a few of her Special Ones along with their own, since she couldn't comfortably carry more than four adult Veroshi at a time in a non-emergency. How could she tell them, now, that they might not be able to come?

She thought quickly for a moment, and then remembered those air-carts the Scientists wanted the Guardians to try. They were supposedly designed to allow Veroshi to ride along a Grebsa's sides. Tranna had been allowing some experimentation with them, but never outside the City and never at high altitudes. The Guardians who, like her, had more Special Ones than they could carry on their backs had reported some success with the latest version of them.

"Maybe if you don't mind trying the air-carts for long-distance travel, we might be able to bring you along."

They looked a little nervous and she understood why. With earlier versions of those carts, there had been significant safety issues. Tranna had even ragged Era for it the time she had tried one and it had tipped over.

"It's that or draft more Guardians to carry you. We won't be going up very high," she promised.

They sighed and agreed. She arranged for one to be brought to her apartment and got in touch with Ariana.

~~~~~~~~

Ariana felt good after his bath. Wizenger had shown a little initiative by asking for Stephanie Granger's help and, between the two of them, they dealt with the dust and dirt from his hunt. He was still a little damp, but he could solve that by draping himself over one of the heated rocks in his bedroom. It also felt good in the winter, not that the weather was as bad as they were having in Veroshi City yet. He hadn't yet figured out why they wanted to build where Old Chicago used to be. The only explanation he had gotten out of Tranna was that it was the only place that fit the descriptions in the Scriptures.

He allowed himself to drift into that halfway state between waking and sleeping. While in the bath, he had received numerous reports from his commanders and captains around Sol System. It was the usual run-of-the-mill stuff, like the Martian Enforcers taking advantage of a quiet period to upgrade their counter-insurgency measures. He would have given the Commander of Mars a promotion if she hadn't already achieved the third highest rank possible in the Grebsa Network. She earned it just by riding herd on a constant problem planet.

Since there were no crises worse than a short-lived conscript uprising on Jupiter Station, he allowed his thoughts to drift to Commandrix Tranna. She was one sharp campaigner in his book. Ariana genuinely believed that she wouldn't back down even if she was faced with God Almighty. If God chose to send her to Hell for posing as His peer, well, it was quite likely that she would challenge Satan, too.

*We're working on strategies for just such a scenario,* Tranna told him, snapping him out of a doze.

*I believe it,* he said, though he wasn't sure if she was joking or not. He knew from experience that she was quite capable of delivering an elaborate joke in her usual deadpan mental voice. *Are you on your way?*

*Yes. Myself, two of my captains who have business in First's City, a set of triplets who have something they want to ask Commandrix Era, and our Special Ones are flying over. We should be there in a week or so.*

*A week?* he asked, surprised. He could make the trip in three days if the thermals cooperated.

*We do have to consider the Veroshi. They have hummingbird wings. They'll ride part of the way, but they prefer not to be more of a burden than they have to.*

*Sure. I'll see you in a week, then.*

Now he just had to find a way to clear the mountain apartments of any sign of humans. He couldn't just order the Enforcers to send their slaves to the nearest holding area outside of First's City. That was getting into the private realm and he didn't like to do that in a non-emergency. He had learned that lesson centuries ago. Still, perhaps he could give them incentives to do without their slaves for a week or two.

~~~~~~~~

Wizenger spent a little more time drying his hands than he absolutely had to. Perhaps Ariana hadn't noticed that Stephanie had done most of the actual work. She knew what kinds of scent their master liked in his bath. She scrubbed down into the shorter layer of fur, while he had been too timid to do much more than pluck at the ends. She had even told him, in the old jihadist code, that Ariana would be irritable if they didn't comb out all the loose fur afterward.

"Wherever did you learn our code?" he asked her when they were both certain Ariana wouldn't hear.

Her eyes clouded over as if his question called up unpleasant memories.

"The result of a misspent youth. I used to go to a lot of Christian youth rallies and I made friends with a lot of boys who had family members or friends in the Christian Resistance League."

The Christian Resistance League had been a passive resistance group with loose ties to Wizenger's organization. Its members used to go in for the sorts of activities that irritated Grebsas without actually being crimes. When the Lords of Sol decided to start cracking down, though, they made no distinction between the major jihadists and mere irritants.

"They must have changed the definition of what constitutes assaulting a Grebsa because of people like that," Wizenger said.

"Yeah. Though if you irritate a Grebsa enough, it won't matter what the definitions are." She tapped her scar. "I learned that the hard way when I tried to stick a pen in a Grebsa's ear. It's fun until you run into one with a flame thrower."

Wizenger managed to turn a laugh into a choke. "However did you get close enough to a Grebsa to try a stunt like that?"

She blushed. "I think something was distracting him right then."

Wizenger helped Stephanie straighten up the bathroom. He used to think housework was women's work. The Shadows had disabused him of that notion, like so many others. They believed in gender equality and women even had a slight edge since the First Grebsa was reputedly female. Stephanie even seemed to be a kind of overseer among Ariana's five slaves.

He lapsed into the old code so he could ask a question that had been bothering him since his arrival. "Have you ever considered escaping this place?"

She looked at him as if he was nuts. "It would be foolish to think the Grebsas don't know our code. If we tried to escape, we would have to get past a door that probably weighs more than a ton and then get across First's City. Every Grebsa in the City would be on top of us in about five minutes because we obviously aren't Amazons, Defenders, or Shadows."

She had rattled off the three human-seeming Grebsa Factions without even thinking about it. Common wisdom had it that these three were the Grebsa equivalent of living fossils, proof that the Lords of Sol System had evolved through a combination of mutation and genetic engineering from the original human form. Naturally, they would know who was one of their own, and who was an escaping slave. The telepathic Network was good for more than just providing an unjammable, undetectable, and absolutely reliable means of communication.

"But that wouldn't stop people from trying," said Wizenger.

Stephanie paled slightly. "No, it doesn't. The ones they deign to take alive go straight back to the Shadows. The last time, Ariana threatened to send all of us back for reconditioning and we had nothing to do with it."

"How did you get out of that one? I've never seen a Grebsa make a threat he wasn't ready to follow through on. Come to think of it, they rarely make threats at all."

"Precisely why we take him seriously. If he does that, beg, plead, bring him sweets, do anything you have to do to convince him not to. The Shadows wouldn't care about your dignity and neither should you." Stephanie's voice dropped to a whisper right before they left the bathroom. "He's probably asleep right now. Don't talk more than you have to and keep it to a whisper if you must. He's killed one slave and clawed the rest of us several times for waking him up. It's probably best if you get some sleep right now, too."

Wizenger couldn't argue with her, especially not when he was yawning. In the secret prison, the criminals were never allowed enough sleep, and this was his first day out in more than a year.

"Do I get a cushion, or do I have to sleep on bare stone l-like back there?" he whispered to Stephanie with a little shudder.

She knew what he meant. "I think there's a cushion for you."

~~~~~~~~

Ruyana woke suddenly, knowing instantly that something was wrong. She reached for Geralt. When he didn't respond with his usual snort and sleepy query of, "Yes, Ruyana?" she looked at him and realized that his artificial eye wasn't glowing, not even the faint purplish glow that would indicate that he was sleeping. It was black, and he wasn't breathing.

She shook him slightly and said his name in his ear. He just moved limply, like a big, heavy rag doll. Just then, Owen walked in with a newborn kitten in one arm.

"Hello, Ruyana."

"Owen, I think Geralt's d-dead."

"Yes, I know. I thought you might like to see his new incarnation. This is Jetral."

Whimpering a little, Ruyana took the kitten in her arms. Only a Grebsa could have been so casual about a death. It meant so little to them. The kitten, his eyes still fixed shut the way newborn puppies' and kittens' eyes always were, sniffed her fur.

"Ruyana! Special One!" he squeaked.

Then, his voice degenerated into inarticulate squeaking as if it had been difficult for him to say that much. If he had been anything but a Grebsa, the fur would have gone up on the back of her neck. A newborn Veroshi puppy wouldn't have been talking for several months. With a little yip, Ruyana held him close to her cheek. He licked her fur with a tiny tongue.

"Jetral," she said, trying out the name. She could feel the warm glow she always felt when she was in the presence of her Patron and she doubted she could feel that with the corpse that Geralt's body was now. "I love you."

Jetral made little happy noises. She could feel his back vibrating as he purred. She yip-laughed a little. Even when he didn't say it out loud, she could tell he loved her. Her fears that he would want new Special Ones after his reincarnation seemed foolish now.

Her fingers ran up against two tiny flaps of fuzzy skin on his back. She looked down. His wings, which had always seemed so huge when he was Geralt, looked proportionately no bigger than they would have been on a Veroshi infant. They certainly would be incapable of supporting him in flight until he fledged. This incarnation of her Patron was, in many ways, a helpless newborn.

"He's going to need his mother for a while, isn't he?" she said to Owen.

"For a little while, yes. He may have a little trouble controlling an infant body since this is his first time reincarnating."

He was busy checking the instruments. He growled a little, but not at Ruyana. He had probably seen something he didn't like.

"Is something wrong?" asked Ruyana.

"Heart failure. The instruments should have set off an alarm. I'll send this stuff back to the factory for a check." He cocked his head as if listening to something. "Captain Sara reminds me that the Priestesses want to see you in the Grebsa nursery."

"Okay, Owen."

She glanced regretfully at Geralt's corpse. They would likely remove it while she was gone. No matter how unimportant Owen might consider it, she didn't feel like it was right to just leave it to the hospital staff's too-efficient hands without some kind of acknowledgement. She went over to it and put a hand on the forehead. Jetral mewed in what sounded like a questioning manner.

"I know, Jetral. This body is dead now. I know it isn't right, but I'll miss how your eye glowed green whenever you were happy."

He purred louder and she laughed. "Oh, I'll still know when you're happy, won't I? I'm just being silly. Let's go see what the Priestesses want."

"Not silly! Just Veroshi," he squeaked as Ruyana turned away.

She followed Owen to the Grebsa nursery. They kept it separate from the Veroshi equivalent because Grebsa kittens tended to play more roughly than Veroshi puppies. The Guardians feared that somebody might get hurt.

The scene they entered was a lot tamer than Ruyana had expected. A few mothers lay on large cushions scattered around the nursery, suckling the kittens who were still too young to be weaned. Most of the older kittens looked asleep, or nearly so. Perhaps their parents had ordered them to behave around the Priestesses. Ruyana corrected herself fast. Superiors, not parents. The reincarnated personalities always kept the same rank and wouldn't be treated like an ordinary kitten would. The three Priestesses waited near the one Owen led her to.

The mother's kittens weren't alone. Six half-awake Veroshi newborns lay near her chest. Are those her Special Ones? Aren't they too young for that? Ruyana wondered.

"Hello, Ruyana," said the mother.

"Hello, my lady," Ruyana said shyly. "Owen said the Priestesses wanted to see me."

"Of course. I think I'll let them explain it. Could I have Jetral? He's probably hungry."

"Oh. Of course."

She didn't want to give him up, but she put him on the cushion near a nipple. He didn't latch on right away. His ears were pricked alertly.

"Ruyana, it's good to see you. I'm Veran, and my sisters are Srain and Oran. We're specialists in the mental arts."

Ruyana nodded, her ears pricked in a fair imitation of Geralt's-Jetral's-alert listening pose. Every Veroshi had some low-level mental ability; enough, at least, to form an empathic bond with a Grebsa. These Priestesses chose to develop it further than that. They preferred to stay cloistered in a special section of the Temple, claiming that the press of too many minds could be difficult for them. They wouldn't have come all the way to the Healing Center if it wasn't important.

Veran said, "These are the six newborns you brought in from Geralt's wings, Ruyana. We believe they are God's-children."

Ruyana sucked in her breath. God's-children weren't orphaned, abandoned, or lost; they didn't have normal Veroshi parents at all. They were only mentioned in the Scriptures: "Born between a new-found god's wings / Revealed by a Guardian in the snow / Children born to correct sins / These are the God's-children." It had always been interpreted to mean that there would be two Grebsas involved to create Veroshi puppies in response to a situation gone badly wrong. Of course, her Patron would probably make a face as if he was suppressing either laughter or tears and say there was a natural limit to what he could pull off.

"Three of them have the sibling-bonds with you, Ruyana. The other three are maternal-bonded to you. I traced them myself," Srain said. "I won't be surprised if you didn't sense it. They are baby minds and you were probably preoccupied at the time."

Ruyana's ears flicked back in surprise. She didn't think the Priestesses would deliberately lie about something like this. No Veroshi was that cruel. She still found it difficult to believe. Some lessons were taught to all children practically from birth. One of them was that only the Grebsas could reincarnate. Veroshi souls were stored in an undisclosed place until the Day of Reckoning, a day on which all deceased Veroshi would receive new bodies.

"I suppose I was," she said politely, not wanting to contradict Priestesses. "All I could think about was getting them to the pediatric ward so I could get back to Geralt."

She reached down, wanting to confirm it for herself. It was always easier to read a mind as simple as an infant's if they were touching. Jetral mewed and tapped Ruyana's hand with his nose.

"Not your fault," he squeaked.

She scratched between his ears. He knew he was the center of her life and he wouldn't blame her for not looking for something she had no way of expecting or even seriously considering. It was also just like him to subtly remind her that not all infant minds were simple ones. She turned her attention to the six napping puppies.

Ruyana expanded her empathic ability to touch the infants' minds. She could only get impressions and flashes of sensation-memories from them. They remembered the cold of the winter storm, and then being enveloped by Geralt's soft, tickly wing. Then, there was the childish unhappiness when that protection was removed and a dizzying flight to a warm place where they were wrapped in cloths that didn't feel nearly as good as the tickly thing that had protected them and passed to a nursing mother who was willing to suckle them. She could sense three of them beginning to wake up and complain that they wanted their wing back.

She quickly descended through all that and reached the more basic parts of their minds. Sure enough, their bonds separated them into two equal groups and, in response to her touch, expanded to include her. One of them had the familiar feel of the maternal bond Ruyana had felt with her mother until she died. The other began to fill a blank spot in her mind that she hadn't even realized existed. Subconsciously, she had always been calling to the missing links in her sibling set and never getting an answer. Now, though, she did get an answer, but it was a very childish reply: We want the tickly!

As if he sensed their distress, Jetral tried to spread his wings to cover them. He could only cover the puppy closest to him, and not very well at that. Whining the wordless, verbal part of his complaint, the puppy caught tiny fistfuls of the wing.

"Whatever is wrong with them? I thought they were fed not half an hour ago!" Oran asked in as close to a frustrated outburst as a Veroshi ever came.

"Geralt protected him with his wings when they were stuck in that blizzard. I think they want the wings back. Jetral's doing the best he can, but, well-" Ruyana indicated the scene.

On an impulse, she scooped up the puppies. She looked around until she spotted an empty cushion in a corner.

"I hope you don't mind if I use one of the cushions," she said, half to Jetral and half to his mother.

The mother, apparently half-asleep, murmured, "It's okay, Ruyana. That's what they're for."

"Thank you. And thanks, Priestesses," she said, sketching a curtsy in their direction.

Ruyana retreated to the corner and curled up with the puppies. She wrapped her wings around them. Her three whimpering sibs settled almost immediately. They seemed to realize, in a vague sort of way, that these wings smelled differently from the ones that had sheltered them from the storm. They didn't have the mental capacity make the obvious logical leap, though.

It gave Ruyana a chance to think. The scientists always said that life couldn't just spring out of the dirt, or, in this case, the snow. It was like raising crops; you had to put a seed in some fertile soil and nurture it to make it grow. Quite possibly, these puppies were orphaned or lost and nobody had reported it yet. Though it was odd that none of the new mothers Ruyana knew about had gone hysterical over lost children, which tipped the odds in favor of orphaned...or abandoned. Abandonment had been known to happen, but it took a major shock to the mother before she could even contemplate such a thing. Possibly one had been so frightened by the blizzard that she lost her wits and her infants at the same time, and then a little self-induced amnesia had caused her to forget that she ever had children at all.

She decided that it wasn't one of those things she could solve on her own and speculation wouldn't do much good anyway. She could only pose it to Jetral, who would know what to do. In the meantime, she could take care of these puppies who were sibling-bonded and maternal-bonded to her.

~~~~~~~~

It felt odd to be called "Jetral" after more than a century being known as "Geralt Half-Face." He was still learning how to control the kittenish body. The hunger urge sent him scooting, instinctively, toward a free nipple. When his hunger was sated, and it was hardly a grilled steak off a fresh-killed buffalo, he fell asleep to the telepathic "sound" of his mother threatening to send him tumbling for ingratitude. He would have laughed at that if he had been human. Grebsa mothers were always making threats like that and he did need to learn not to subvocalize when he was thinking. He slept for over an hour, certainly long enough for Ruyana to have the argument she was sure to have with herself and care for the needs of the puppies.

Those puppies...He had already asked Tranna to do what she could to find the mother or mothers. They hadn't even shown up on his heat sensor until he was nearly on top of them. He had landed, only to find that his limbs wouldn't support him, and darned lucky he hadn't fallen on top of those little innocents. He could only gather them up and wrap them in his wings to get them out of the wind and the worst of the cold. He had called over the Network for help, but the Guardians were busy getting other Veroshi to shelter and couldn't detour. Finally, the storm had blown over, but the damage was already done and he could only send Ruyana on with the puppies. Doctor Owen had probably known that he couldn't do much past a certain point. It was simple courtesy not to do him the indignity of fighting a death that might have been long overdue. A century was a good lifespan and even Commandrix Ariana of the Enforcers said he would have died the day he lost half his face if he had been just a little slower.

He could still hear the Commandrix reassuring him when he was dosed nearly senseless with pain-killers and blind on one whole side of his face: *You didn't do badly, Lieutenant, and nobody can see around corners. We wouldn't have had so swift a victory if it wasn't for you.* Geralt, too drug-addled to realize that Ariana was promoting him, had protested that he was only an ensign. He could laugh about it now. The Enforcer Commandrix liked to pretend he was a heartless brute. If he realized how much the Enforcers and other Commandrices laughed about his bad acting behind his back, he didn't show it.

Ruyana came over and sketched a curtsy to the goddess.

"My duty to you, Lady Sara. May I hold Ger- uhm, Jetral?"

"Of course, Ruyana," Sara said, pretending not to notice Ruyana's slight slip of the tongue.

Ruyana picked him up. He squeaked a little as she settled him into a comfortable position in her arms. She stroked his head.

"It does feel a little odd to hold my Patron. I guess I'm just used to him being bigger than I am."

"He will grow quickly enough. You should enjoy it while it lasts. You are the first Special One to get a chance to carry your Patron around."

Ruyana wolf-smiled. "What do you think of that, Jetral?"

"Sara's being funny," Jetral said.

It wasn't that he minded being carried by Ruyana, as such. He just wished Sara wouldn't joke about it in front of her. His Special One had a hard enough time believing that a crippled outcast was acceptable to even a junior god. He told Sara as much.

She actually managed to sound contrite. *I'm sorry. I didn't know your Special One was that fragile.*

*She just doesn't need the gods making jokes about her. Where the Veroshi are concerned, something that's acceptable to one of us should be acceptable to all of us. Teasing doesn't send that kind of message.*

*All right, Jetral, I'll consider myself cuffed.*

Ruyana carried him over to the cushion she had been using. The puppies were waving their little limbs helplessly and letting out intermittent yips.

"They seem content for now. I just wanted to bring you over before they started whining for the 'tickly' again."

"Tickly?"

"That's how they think of your natural wing when you were Geralt. The big tickly thing."

Jetral whuffed with amusement. He really thought Ruyana was taking his reincarnation well, even considering that she had been afraid he wouldn't want her anymore. Maybe it helped that he was partially responsible for her having six puppies to play nanny for. It gave her something to think about besides him having a new body and a new name.

¹lassaiz-faire: A French term generally translated as "Hands off." Typically used to mean a policy of noninterference.