Shield's Lady

fall; dazzling snows that made the ground look as if it were covered in prisma arrived in the middle of winter; a riot of new color and rich greenery would herald the Spring. Nature was as vivid and cheerfully temperamental in the western provinces as the people themselves. It was all so radically different from the moderate climate and serene tones of her homeland. Sariana sighed softly, thinking about it.
    She would sometimes awaken in the middle of the night with a familiar nightmare. The dream was a strange one, appearing in a variety of guises, but it always had its roots in the same underlying fear. It was a fear that she would somehow become so entangled in the chaos and color of the western continent that she would never be able to return to Rendezvous.
    Lying in her bed after one of those disturbing dreams, Sariana would stare into the darkness and do battle with a homesickness that was so strong and so deep that she sometimes gave into tears.
    The Avylyns would have been shocked to know the depths of her loneliness. They had done their exuberant best to make her welcome. But if they had known about the tears, they would undoubtedly have been relieved by the knowledge that their calm, practical and restrained business manager was, indeed, capable of some strong emotion.
    At least she hadn’t awakened with an attack of homesickness last night, Sariana thought wryly as she hurried through the gardens and into a wide hall. She’d had too much else on her mind to allow herself the indulgence of self-pity.
    Disaster had come within a footstep of her and the Avylyns last night. She knew that now. She had known it when the Shield had grabbed her wrist and looked down at her with eyes that held the lethal allure of a bottomless sea. The memory made her shiver even now in the bright light of day.
    Perhaps she should have paid more attention to her clients’ nervous fears about using a Shield. But it was too late to go back now. What was done was done. They now had a Shield working for them, whether or not they wanted him.
    The middle wing of chambers was always humming with activity, even at this time of day. The Avylyns employed many people, most of whom were related to the Clan. The basic social structure of class and clan was similar to a guild system. A person who could not claim a proper social class or clan family was a true outlaw. He was also usually unemployed.
    As she hurried into her office, Sariana nodded absently at a household attendant and requested a large pot of strong laceleaf tea. She needed it this morning. When the tea arrived she took it with a word of thanks and firmly closed the door.
    With a sigh of relief, Sariana walked across the white marble floor to the circle of black stone that was her desk. In the center was a cushioned chair suspended from the ceiling that rotated easily in a complete circle to follow the curve of the desk.
    She pressed the hidden mechanism that opened one section of the desk, stepped through into the inner circle and assumed her seat. The desk closed soundlessly behind her. It would take an expert’s eye to find the seam.
    The surface of the stone desk was completely bare except for the tea tray. Sariana touched another hidden device and a section of the polished surface opened to reveal a pile of business papers. She stared at them morosely. The last thing she felt like doing this morning was going over the deplorable state of the Avylyns’ finances. She had been doing little else every workday for the past year. At times the task of saving the financial life of the Avylyn Clan had appeared hopeless. But now she knew she was well on the way to salvaging the Avylyns’ fortunes and with them, her own.
    Sariana knew that her hopes of future success and her chances of returning to her homeland were inextricably tied to the Avylyns’ success. She would do just about anything to ensure both. The thought of being stranded in the western provinces for the rest of her life was enough of a spur to make her take risks she would never have taken under normal circumstances.
    It even made her willing to deal with a Shield.
    Sariana stabbed the closure device on the desk and watched with morbid satisfaction as the financial papers sank instantly out of sight.
    The cleverly designed tables and desks in the Avylyn household were not the only interesting discoveries Sariana had made since her arrival in Serendipity. The people of the western continent were an inventive lot