about to stop, and Niko’s attempts to calm himself, to find transcendent
perception in his rest-place and pick up the girl’s trail by the heat-track
she’d left and the things she’d said and done here were made more difficult by
Janni’s worries, which jarred him back to concerns he must put aside, and
Janni’s words, which startled him, over-loud and disruptive, every time he got
himself calmed enough to sense Tamzen’s energy trail among so many others like
red/yellow/pink yarn twined among chiaroscuro trees.
Tamzen, thirteen and beautiful, pure and full of fun, who loved him with all her
heart and had made him promise to ‘wait’ for her: he’d had her, a thing he’d
never meant to do, and had her with her father’s knowledge, confronted by the
concerned man one night when Niko, arm around the girl’s waist, had walked her
through the park. ‘Is this how you repay a friend’s kindness. Stealth?’ the
father’d asked. ‘Better me than any of this trash, my friend. I’ll do it
right. She’s ready, and it wouldn’t be long, in any case,’ he’d replied while
the girl looked between the soldier, twelve years older, and her father, with
uncomprehending eyes. He had to find her.
Janni, as if in receipt of the perceptive spirit Niko tried now to reclaim,
swore and mentioned that Niko’d had no business getting involved with her, a
child.
‘I’m not your type, and as for women, I drink from no other man’s tainted cup.’
So Niko broached an uneasy subject: Janni was no Sacred Bander; his camaraderie
had limits; Niko’s need for touch and love the other man knew but could not