of me that . . . that can hear her doesn’t have words, so the rest of me didn’t know about it. But I remember her voice this time. It was a voice,” she added as if the Rhej had disputed this. “Not just a feeling or a knowing.”
“Her voice is beautiful, isn’t it? Like a purring kitten and a thunderstorm all wrapped up together.”
Small and vast, cuddly and shockingly powerful. Yes. All of that at once. A pang shot through her and she looked at Deborah. “She asked me to let her put the mantle into Ruben. She let me know what I was supposed to do for that to happen. So I knew what I was agreeing to. Not in words, I didn’t know anything in words, but I agreed. The Lady needed my permission to put the mantle into me. She needed my permission to take it out, too. So what’s happened to him is partly my fault.”
Deborah frowned. After a moment she said, “Maybe he had to agree, too. If you had to give permission, surely he would have, too.”
“If he did, there’s a good chance he doesn’t know it.” Lily shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about the Lady anymore, but there was one question she couldn’t keep back. “When I said she told me what she’d do, I don’t mean she gave details about the project. How could she turn Ruben into a lupus?”
“Ah. We’ve been discussing that,” Isen said, “at some length. I believe she first had to alter the mantle itself. Cullen said it was changing while you hosted it. I think she was—mapping human neurological paths, perhaps. Or other elements that differ from ours. Second . . . but this is your part of the story to tell.” He nodded at Deborah.
Deborah leaned forward slightly. “Arjenie Fox found something. I think I told you she’d been looking into Ruben’s genealogy for me? Well, after Ruben went through First Change, I guess everyone at Nokolai Clanhome was talking about it. At least Benedict and Arjenie were, and she got the idea to see if any of Ruben’s people could have been lupus. It seems lupi keep records. By combining her search with those records, she found . . . you have a term for it.” She looked at Isen, tossing the explanation back to him.
“A pernato. Yes. One of Ruben’s great-grandmothers on his mother’s side was the granddaughter of a Wythe Rho. One of his grandfathers on his father’s side was descended from a Wythe-Leidolf pernato, who was in turn descended from another Wythe Rho. He had the bloodline on both sides. Very thin, but it was present.”
Lily gave up trying to track the great-greats. “Pernato are the result of recessives on both sides. I get that. But why didn’t you know about him?”
“We knew about his grandfather on one side and his grandmother on the other. But beyond the fourth generation, no pernato are born, so we don’t track our descendents past that point. It’s a matter of magic as well as genealogy, you see. The recessive genes may continue to be passed down, but the power is too diluted for a lupus babe to be born. And, indeed, Ruben Brooks was not born lupus. But he possessed the bloodline.”
And the Lady, presumably, possessed the power.
Deborah chuckled suddenly. “All that fooling around on the side! Plus there’s an elf in the family tree somewhere. Ruben’s forebears were frisky folks. I’m looking forward to teasing him about that.”
The oven timer dinged. Isen pushed back from the table. “No, no, sit down,” he told José, who’d started to rise. “I’ll feed my daughter-to-be.”
Lily looked at Deborah, curious but cautious. “You seem pretty okay with all this. With Ruben turning into a lupus.”
Deborah met her eyes. “He was dying. Now he isn’t.”
“He . . . dying?” Ruben had said there was damage to his heart. That’s why he wasn’t going to head the Unit—the regular Unit—anymore. He hadn’t said dying.
Deborah smiled slightly. “He thinks I don’t know. As if he could keep something like that from me by simply not saying it out loud! But yes, he expected to die, and fairly soon, I think. Now he’s lupus. Lupi don’t get sick, don’t have heart trouble. That was the other reason I came here.” She nodded at Isen’s broad back, bent now to remove the pans of corn bread from the oven. “To find out if that was true. It is.” She