A Girl’s
Best Friend
in the
Sorashi finds Deirdre meditating in a black satin
sari. Asfar seems to have placed her in the harem
suite without asking. As it is secure, very comfortable and spacious enough for
perhaps a dozen individuals, Deirdre certainly isn’t complaining. It shares
baths with Sorashi’s own quarters but that’s not
proven a problem so far. Like most of the
Sorashi, wearing a cream tunic over
loose olive-green trousers and slippers, enters and sits, waiting patiently for
Mother to finish her meditation.
Deirdre gives no sign that she’s aware of her daughter’s presence
but presently, without opening her eyes, she asks, “Does it hurt?”
After a bit of thought, Sorashi replies “Shifting? No, it’s more like stretching
upon waking.”
Deirdre’s eyes snap open and her voice turns a shade waspish. “I
know that! You’re not the only one who listened to your father, you know.” She
closes her eyes again and breathes once, very deliberately. Sorashi
can feel her mother relinquishing tension. When she speaks again her voice is
softer. “I meant your wound.”
“The cut doesn’t hurt.” Sorashi’s voice
is even, ignoring a sneaking suspicion that if she’d replied with this
originally, Mother would have meant shifting. “Though my
teeth are protesting at having tried to chew metal.”
“I’m sorry!” Deirdre sounds like she means it. “I didn’t… I never
mean to hurt you. But the robot worried me, we didn’t know what they could do, and
unfortunately the only weapon in easy reach was another damned axe. It was a ‘social’
occasion so, unlike the boys, I didn’t have anything suitable ready to hand.”
She trails off a little, “Not exactly subtle…”
“I know you never meant to hurt me,” replies Sorashi,
“and I really appreciate your help in despatching the robot. The scratch is all
but gone.”
Deirdre nods. “You always heal quickly, yes, but it was a poor way
to repay you for saving me from the Abyss.” Her eyes open again, but she keeps
the lotus posture, hands on her knees. She looks more relaxed than usual.
Sorashi is silent for a moment,
clearing her mind. “You are my mother. I would not let you die when I could
prevent it – you do not need to repay me.” There is a slight smile on her face
as she says this.
“Everything must be paid for.” Deirdre’s cynical words are
slightly softened by her tone, as if she wishes it were otherwise. “Anyway, I
want to, whether I need to or not. So work out what you want, anything you like
and I’ll make it happen… if I can.”
Sorashi is not sure what to make of
this comment. “I will think about that and let you know,” she responds, trying
to sound as cheerfully matter-of fact as she can. “I think we need to talk
about what happens when we get back to Amber.”
Deirdre nods again, recognising the reason Sorashi
has called on her with no surprise. “Well there are several ways you can look
at that, but of course so much depends on politics. What would you like to
happen?”
“I would like to see Amber, of course. But I would also like to
explore in the shadows around Amber.”
“Sure!” Deirdre shrugs, “Short of chaining you up, who can stop
you? And you shouldn’t just limit yourself to the closer shadows; there’s things deeper in Shadow you wouldn’t believe.
“But Amber… yeah, it’s special. You should take some time out to
explore the place but you don’t have to see it all at once. Whoever’s king,
expect to be called up for important festivals several times a year.” Deirdre’s
eyes narrow. “But the way you raised the subject makes me think you’ve
something particular on your mind…”
Trust Mother to be suspicious. “I will be going to a new
place and starting a new life – I would like to know what to expect. I know
what you’ve told me of Amber’s culture, but it’s different when one actually
lives there.”
“Yes,” agrees Deirdre, “you’re right! And I wish I could give you
an answer. But anything I could say would be based on an
Amber ruled by Oberon. Dad had his own way of doing things. I can tell
you right now that if Random is actually King then things will be very
different – definitely for me.”
“Do you not get on with Random?”
Deirdre shrugs again. “We’ve had occasional run-ins; he likes to
show-off his sense of humour and sometimes says things he shouldn’t. (Don’t
take my word for that, ask anyone!) Don’t get me wrong, generally we’ve got on,
but he’ll run things differently… to your grandfather…”
Deirdre trails off into silence and her head falls as her gaze
turns inward. “Dad’s gone; everything’s going to change…”
Sorashi respects her mother’s inward
musing and waits a while to let her finish. “I never knew him. Oberon, I mean.”
Deirdre remains in a brown study; evidently Oberon’s death is very
much on her mind. “No, you never really had the chance, did you? It just wasn’t
safe to bring you to Amber and frankly he was missing for much of your life
anyway. Then suddenly he reappeared again for just a few days… And now’s he’s
gone…
“I suppose I owe you another apology.” Deirdre shifts her gaze
across but it’s still directed downward, inward and a thousand years into the
past. “When Rashin died… it was upsetting I guess,
but when you’ve been around for as long as I have you get used to shadow
dwellers dying on you – one day you adopt a kitten, the next you’re burying a
cat. But of course when he died you lost your father…” Deirdre’s stare is still
distant but it rises to find her daughter’s face. “I suppose I’m only just
realising how you felt then…”
Sorashi feels her eyes prickle – she
is not sure if it is the expression of sympathy or the reminder of her loss.
She calms her breathing, and the sensation fades. “How did Oberon die?” she
asks, realising she was never told.
“Repairing the Pattern; that’s what he was preparing to do when we
left. It seems he was successful but it cost him his life – Fiona says he knew
it would before he started.”
“What happened to the Pattern?”
“Your latish uncle Brand lured your cousin Martin onto the Pattern
and stabbed him – family blood damages it in some way. I didn’t see it so I can’t
tell you how badly.”
Badly enough to kill Oberon in trying to repair it, thinks Sorashi – and I don’t need to ask why Brand did it
(assuming Mother’s information is correct). Power, pure and
simple. Whoever did it.
To change the subject, Sorashi says, “Dad
died peacefully – he remembered you with love ‘til the end”.
Her mother raises an eyebrow in a ‘really, I didn’t know that’
expression, but Sorashi is sure she does know, it’s
not something you would keep secret – some inner thought is distracting
Deirdre.
“I owe your father so much. Mother died giving birth to me and
Rhiannon was gone long before, so I grew up in a completely male household and
none of us were exactly spiritual. It was all about this and that title, this
and that office; who had dad’s favour and who didn’t; who had the bigger and
better sword, or the stronger and faster horse.
“Then dad married again – Clarissa – we all hated her, and it was
mutual. Her firstborn was Fiona and suddenly there was another girl in the
palace. Suddenly Daddy had another little princess…”
Sorashi makes a sympathetic ‘hmm’
noise and inclines her head, feeling her initial assessment of Fiona was
perhaps not as unkind as she thought.
“Fiona has always had a natural spiritual bent, I can see that
now. But then I… we… just didn’t have the vocabulary to even describe such
things. Instead I can now see that I tried to be everything she wasn’t. We hated
each other for centuries – please don’t worry, we buried the hatchet long ago –
how could either of us hate the other as much as we both detest Flora?
“But without even making a conscious decision, I’d somehow defined
myself a certain way. I never really felt it was an issue but then, after
Corwin vanished, I kept getting this nagging feeling that something was missing
– something inside me. I began spending more and more time away from Amber,
where it had all got quite poisonous.
“As you know, I found Rajput, where I
was Ranee, using Pattern to find a shadow of my
desire. It took some time before I felt I’d found somewhere I could call home.
But the Pattern is tricksy, girl, you’ll need to
understand that when you start exploring. Along with your conscious desires it
can satisfy your unconscious needs – and it found me Rashin…”
Sorashi nods. “I will definitely bear
that in mind,” she says, making a mental note to make her own mind up about
Fiona – and Flora.
“You have no idea, have you?” smiles Deirdre, possibly
misunderstanding her daughter’s words, “You really don’t know what I was like
before I met your father. He showed me… how to be a better person… and I’ve
spent all this time since trying to live up to his vision of how I… could be… not
always successfully, I must admit, but I am trying.”
“No,” admits Sorashi “I don’t know what
you were like before Rajput, or how to survive
in Amber as one of the Royal family.” She pauses, trying to find words which
are not patronising or clichéd. “But I am proud to be your daughter.” She
cannot help but wonder if her mother’s words, sarcastic as they may seem,
might possibly be viewed as almost an apology. Strange things happen in Chaos.
Deirdre makes a peculiar sound, sort of like a mewling kitten, and
suddenly slides off her divan and throws her arms round Sorashi,
sobbing. It’s hard to make out what she’s saying but the last few words sound like,
‘I don’t deserve you’.
Sorashi makes no answer, just hugs her
mother.
Presently Deirdre pulls herself together, flashes a brief smile of
thanks at her daughter and returns to her divan, opening a compact. She spends
a minute or so, wiping away the tears and repairing the damage. Then she puts
the compact away and resumes the lotus. She breathes twice – deliberate pants
through her mouth. Outwardly she’s recovered her composure again but Sorashi senses a brittleness – and
she still hasn’t fully ravelled her thread.
“Your father believed in reincarnation; what do you think?”
Not a question Sorashi was expecting. “I
do not think there is any way we can know for sure – but it seems a fair system
so I hope it is so.” She does not go into the belief in the evolution of souls
– not when it was used so often against her people.
“You ‘hope’?” Deirdre purses her lips; that doesn’t seem to be the
answer she was looking for. “What I should have asked is what do you believe?”
It seems the momentary empathy has dissipated, and Sorashi has to bite back an impulse to ask why she is
asking this.
“I have been brought up to believe in reincarnation but, given the
interpretation some others have put on it, I am not sure, assuming they
are right, that I find it as easy to believe in as when I was a child. In
short, I believe reincarnation is as likely as any other Afterlife belief,
given we cannot know for sure until we die. Why do you ask?” Some impulses
cannot be constrained for long.
“Huh?” A brief, wry grin crosses Deirdre’s face; Sorashi senses no animosity, her mother is just darkly
amused at the irony. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that your view tempers
Rashin’s with my own. I just hoped that you’d have
some sort of… definitive answer, I guess. Was that silly of me?
“In Rajput, outside of Ikisadha, everyone would
assume your father, as Brahmin caste, would reincarnate as another brahmin, unless his karmic record
led him to higher things. But Rashin once told me he
didn’t think his spiritual journey was ended, so he expected to reincarnate as
a tiger, or possibly become some sort of tiger-spirit if his karma was really good.”
Deirdre sighs deeply, “I was just wondering about us…” Sorashi understands that ‘us’ means the family.
Sorashi is silent for a while and then
says, “The only answer I can give to that is the teaching that the Wheel is
fair, but not harsh.”
Deirdre nods, staring into the distance, then sighs again. “I
wonder, if your father had met mine, what sort of ‘soul animal’ Rashin would have seen in him?”
“I didn’t know him, as you know, but somehow I am put in mind of a
bear,” Sorashi shrugs, as though to distance this
opinion from anything to be taken seriously.
Deirdre giggles (evidently she’s coming out of her mood), “I’d
like to tell him that – ‘Hey, Dad, your granddaughter thinks you’re a cuddly
bear’…”
Sorashi smiles, though she is sure she
never implied the adjective ‘cuddly’ – bears are large and threatening,
possibly protective, but not cuddly. As this subject seems to be
finished for now, though, she returns to her earlier train of
thought. “What will you do once you are back in Amber?” she asks.
“No idea!” Deirdre’s impish grin turns wry. “Like I said, under
Random everything will be different. I don’t want to stay away but, if things
go the way I think they might, I won’t want to spend a lot of time watching it
all turn toxic. I’ll probably come back for the festivals but spend time away
in between – see if Rajput’s still there, maybe?”
“I hope so. I would like to see it again.” Sorashi
hesitates slightly, but then takes the metaphorical plunge. “If you wanted, I
could come with you to find Rajput.” She steels
herself for the potential rejection. Better now than later, she comforts
herself.
“Look, I’m happy to have you around, Sorashi,
whenever you like – unless I have an… um… romantic
assignation, in which case I’d appreciate some discretion. But I should warn
you that you may find Rajput… feels… different, even
beyond whatever happened from Oberon’s repair. It’s the Pattern; it changes you
– you can go back, but you can never go home.”
Sorashi nods, her gaze briefly a
universe away. “I understand; it was more a chance to spend time with you I was
interested in.” There is a small pause. “My life in Ikisadha had changed anyway; it was not
really home any longer.”
“Darling!” squeals Deirdre, apparently genuinely happy, “Of course
I’d be delighted to explore with you – I just never thought, with all your new
cousins and the friends you’ve made here, that you’d want to bum around with
your mother.”
Sorashi smiles, “I can think of
nothing better.”
Deirdre licks her lips, “Tajal seems to
be growing up fast…” Something about her delivery suggests this isn’t a
non-sequitur.
Sorashi purses her lips and nods – it
doesn’t take much thought to follow this change in direction.
“Yes, she is. I don’t know how fast.” Pause. “Though she won’t be
the only child from Chaos – there’s Margrath’s
adopted son, and Darig’s two. I’ll have to speak to
them about possibly sharing childcare in Amber,” she muses. “I’m sure we can
work something out between us.”
“Please don’t think I don’t want her around. Actually, in our
conversations in Cloud Nine I’ve found her a remarkably accomplished and
personable girl, with a refreshingly honest and original view of things. Since
she’s growing up so fast I think her company might be very stimulating so by
all means bring her along too.” Deirdre grins wickedly. “I promise I’ll be on
my best behaviour.”
Sorashi is unsure how good an idea
this would be. Nice to hear that Mother gets on with Tajal,
though – at least for now.
“But speaking of Darig – funny him begetting two brats so quickly. I’m tempted to say something
catty like ‘a chip off the old block’ except that Corwin seemed pretty sure he
wasn’t his…” Deirdre’s quirked eyebrow asks for Sorashi’s two pen’orth.
She wonders if Mother is more concerned with Darig’s fatherhood or his parentage – probably the latter. “No?
I don’t think Darig is totally sure, either, one way
or the other.” As though it matters, thinks Sorashi,
but this she keeps to herself. Paternity and legitimacy were somewhat of a
family passion, she remembers.
“It doesn’t seem as though it should be important, does it? That’s
because we girls are blessedly free from the boys’ macho drive to be alpha-male
– to be king, in other words. That and the fact that we always know our kids
are ours. Have you noticed how insecure the boys are about such things?”
“Women do have an advantage in that respect,” admits Sorashi, “but yes, my uncles and cousins do seem
preoccupied with the matter of paternity.”
“Oh we have lots of advantages,” smiles Deirdre, smugly. “So,
paternity aside, what’s he like – Darig, I mean?”
Sorashi wonders if Mother has singled
out Darig particularly, or is just angling for
information. “He’s very much a soldier, competent, resourceful. Quite self-contained, but not arrogant.” She wonders if she
should mention the Faerie heritage. Only if asked, she decides.
“No,” muses Deirdre, “he didn’t seem arrogant to me either, if
anything the reverse – but then playing second fiddle to Benedict for any
length of time might do that to anyone.
“I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m prying…” she begins, before
doing a mental double-take, “…but of course I am prying, so let’s
pretend I didn’t just say that.” She puts a perfectly manicured finger to her
lips as she stares up and aside, searching for the right words.
“Look, I know all my brothers and sisters
pretty well, even Sand; well enough to know pretty much what they’ll say, or
even think, on most subjects. But your cousins, my nephews and nieces, are
unknowns – Sorashi, you’ve had a lot of time to get
to know them and I’d value your observations…”
Various caveats and qualifiers spring to Sorashi’s
mind, but she discards them. This is not the place to adopt the meek and lowly
woman role – opinion is what Mother wants and opinions are what she will get.
“Firstly,
Her mother nods agreement through most of Sorashi’s
description (and it occurs to Sorashi that
“Then there’s
“There is no way to get Julian to show affection – no one could
thaw that icy reserve – but better Julian than some simpering lounge-lizard,
for my money. She doesn’t know when she’s well-off.”
“She’d make an excellent Thuggee.”
“Self-centred and cruel?” Deirdre shrugs with a smile. “We
might get on. Perhaps I’ll ask her for some sparring practice. There’s a streak
of something exotic about her; I wonder who her mother might be?
“Margrath is a wonderful dancer but
doesn’t come over as exactly martial – he’s Sand’s boy, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is. A sorcerer rather than a fighter, but he’s good at it,”
Sorashi answers. “He’s reliable, though, and of them
all, he’s the one I’d trust the most to back me up.”
Deirdre’s eyebrow quirks in
mild surprise. “Praise indeed! How did he come to make such an impression?”
Sorashi is a little taken aback by
this, but with a mental shrug replies, “He has helped me out when I needed
help, and has been with me in potentially dangerous situations.” It sounds a
little naïve expressed thus, thinks Sorashi, but that
cannot be helped. It is how she feels.
“Of course he also helped save me from the Abyss – I recall his
voice calling my name…” Deirdre drifts into a brief reverie before shaking her
head and returning to her normal, incisive self. “That’s another debt that
needs paying – have you any idea what he might need?”
Sorashi considers for a while. “I know
he wants to go back to Corillaine, his home. He may need
help with that. Do you want me to find out?”
“Hasn’t he walked the Pattern?” Deirdre frowns, “He must know his
home better than the rest of us, except for his mother, of course. If he can’t
find it I don’t know how we can find it for him.”
Sorashi shrugs minutely. “You are
probably right – it was just a guess. So, would you like me to find out?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.” Deirdre flashes a smile. “…I
understand that Dirk’s a bit of a gallant…” The smile becomes a smirk.
Sorashi ignores the smirk and wishes
Mother would stop trying to get her a paramour, or at least acting as
though she is.
“Hmm,” Sorashi replies with a mouth
movement which indicates a lack of agreement with this description. “He’s
charming enough, but…” she searches for the right phrasing, then
continues, “…he seems to lack subtlety. And Caine is
very obviously pushing his wires.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” The smirk has died and Deirdre shudders as
if someone just walked over her grave. “While my big brother has many qualities
I approve of – his archery, for example – we should both be thankful that either
of our fathers were not Caine.”
“No,” agrees Sorashi. “Though
he has saved my life, through Dirk, once.”
“Oh yes! I remember you told me, shortly after the Opera – any
ideas how we should repay them?”
The conversation is getting a little repetitive, thinks Sorashi. “Well, I saved Dirk from having to dance with the
lady with the icicles on her face, so I think that would suffice – at least as
far is Dirk is concerned.”
“I don’t know about Dirk, but I know Caine;
he will expect a favour in return for saving your life and somehow I don’t
think shuffling his son’s dance card will quite cut the mustard.”
Deirdre drums her nails on an adjacent table, the cogs grinding
behind her eyes. “I can’t think of anything either at the moment. Damn! He’s
the one brother you don’t want to owe an open favour. Hmph!
Oh well,” she shrugs, “we’ll just have to wing it – let me know if he calls it
in – and I mean that minute, OK?”
Sorashi feels like someone who
goes down a gib-gib hole and finds it’s actually a
cobra’s lair. “Yes, I will.”
“Cheer up! It’s not so bad – maybe you’ll get the chance to save
Dirk’s life.” Deirdre flashes a smile, which stays as she slides off her divan
again, collecting her trump case from the table. “Now, have you got your new
trump? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…”
Having already seen Mother’s trump, Sorashi
is a little confused by this but selects her card and passes it over to
Deirdre.
Deirdre lays the two cards next to each other where mother and
daughter can survey them in comfort, rubbing shoulders. [For clarity, I’m
including both descriptions.]
Deirdre: a woman
in a black frock stands amidst the neatly manicured bushes of a formal garden.
Her dress fabric, shot through with occasional strands of silver thread, is
lustrous instead of dour, and subtle silver trim completes the vibrant costume.
Her gaze falls to where her left hand cradles one of the silver-white roses of
the nearest rosebush. Meanwhile her right loosely holds a long knife. A grass
clearing lies between the garden and the wall that forms the scene’s backdrop.
Upon which a tiger cub and panther are playing with a silver orb.
Sorashi: a young woman, standing right of centre,
showing a 3/4 profile. She looks straight ahead of her, with a neutral
expression on her face. She is
There’s
a long pause while Deirdre’s piercing stare rakes the two portraits. Then…
“Perceptive
bastard, isn’t he?”
“Makes him a good Trump Artist. Though I
wouldn’t like to rely on him for information.”
Deirdre points to the background in Sorashi’s
card. “He’s caught the flora of Rajput almost perfectly
and I recall this ruin near Ikisadha
– I took that sign down myself, to prevent marauders teaching the village a
lesson, courtesy of the Brahmins.” Then she points to her own card. “And I didn’t
tell him I’m a werecat but it looks like he knows…”
I didn’t, thinks Sorashi, but I bet
Bleys does now. “Yes. One of the perks of Trump Artistry, I suppose. Another reason not to trust him.”
“Maybe, but we already know he’s a redhead.” Deirdre is still
comparing the two cards. “When has he lied to you?”
Sorashi considers. “To my knowledge,
he hasn’t. But I feel he shares very little of any information he has unless he
has to.”
“Good! I like a man who’s discrete.” Deirdre licks her lips and
smiles – the cat that got the cream – and hands Sorashi’s
trump back to her. “Personally, I like his sense of taste. Yes, he’s a redhead
and we can’t trust him further than we can throw him, but you can say the same
for everyone else and I like the idea of having a pet redhead available.
“Thanks for those little character-sketches – you don’t know how
naked I feel talking to a member of the blood I’ve not known for centuries – it’s
really a very odd sensation, I can tell you. Now what would you like to ask me
in return?”
Sorashi is unsure of how much of a pet
“How did Benedict lose his arm?”
“Good question! Flora claims Corwin told her that some Chaos woman
seduced Ben and then attacked him while his defences were down. He lost the arm
before he killed her.” Deirdre quirks a wry smile, “Only trouble is, that doesn’t
sound like Ben and this femme fatale bore him a daughter so I think Flora’s
missed a few chapters of her bodice-ripper – especially since that daughter is Corwin’s
latest lay – the moral is, always take Flora’s gossip with a pinch of salt.”
“I always take gossip with a pinch of salt.” Sorashi
smiles, “Does Corwin know that his concubine is Benedict’s daughter?”
“Miaow, darling!” Deirdre smirks back. “Yes,
I think so,” she continues breezily, “and Ben too, which is more worrying – he
seemed quite… protective of her for the brief time they were together in Amber.
Dad chose to relay his battle instructions through her, which put some noses
out of joint.
“Fiona says Dad wanted Dara to be Corwin’s
queen after he’d gone. I don’t know what he’d think of his crown going to
Random. He was arguably Dad’s least favourite son – I honestly think Dad would rather
have it go to a daughter than Random.”
“I don’t know much about Random,” Sorashi
admits, “How does Corwin feel about the Unicorn’s choice?”
“He says he bent his knee with the rest. As far as I can tell all
my brothers and sisters did the same after the battle, except for Flora…”
Deirdre somehow manages to look slightly shifty. “…and me, of
course.”
Perhaps Flora is less cotton-headed than she appears, thinks Sorashi. “I assume Random will expect me to swear fealty,”
she ventures.
“Sooner or later! None of your cousins have
either, so I understand. Dad would have had you all do it together in some big
ceremony, but Random?” She shrugs, “Who knows?
“Part of me says ‘don’t volunteer’, but another part says doing it
off your own bat when you first meet him could be a cool move – like it was
spontaneous? What do you think?”
Sorashi considers. “If he’s vain, it
may be a good thing to do. If he’s untrusting, it may seem a little too
overeager or forced. Maybe I will wait and see what the others do – safety in
numbers.”
“Vain?” Deirdre shakes her head. “No, that’s not Random, but he’s spent most of his life being the unwanted
son and I think he just might be a sucker for a calculated display of
spontaneous devotion. But perhaps you’re right – play it by ear.
“This place could also be a useful bargaining chip.” She gestures
at the room as from somewhere she pulls a pack of cigarettes and shakes one
straight into her mouth. With it still unlit she offers the pack to Sorashi, eyebrow raised.
Sorashi looks at the white paper
tubes, the smell faintly reminiscent of something she can’t bring to mind at
the moment. With a shake of her head, she declines the offer. Instead, she
looks around. “There is a thought to turn this place into the Amber embassy, if
one is wanted.”
“That’s my girl!” Deirdre’s eyes flash red for a brief second,
lighting her cigarette, as her off hand vanishes the pack. “Something like that
will be needed and…” she takes a long draw, shuts her eyes and breathes out
slowly, “…having a suitable building at your disposal, particularly one with
cachet in the Thelbane, will put the Crown in your
debt.”
Deirdre casts an appraising eye over her daughter. “You know you
could be in a very strong position if you play your cards right.”
Sorashi nods, “Let’s hope I can play
them correctly, then.”
Deirdre smiles through a haze of cigarette smoke as she cups her
elbow in her free hand. “Don’t sweat! You’re better than you think.” She taps
ash into a nearby ashtray. “I have every confidence in your instincts, and you
can always ask if you need advice.
“Nothing else…?” Deirdre takes another draw and smiles.
Sorashi considers. “I think so,” she
smiles back, “but it would be nice to have a proper chat every now and then. Just to keep in touch.”
The cigarette smoke is so dense all Sorashi
can see is her mother’s grin but a wave of her hand suggests ‘any time’.
Something nags at the back of Sorashi’s
brain. Ah yes… “No, there is one thing. Can you teach me Power Words?”
“Sure! They’re actually quite simple. I’ll show the method and a
couple of basic examples and you can work out your own from there.”
[And
from here on it gets boring and technical.]