Ash looked at me instead. “How much does he matter to you, Your Highness?”
“Everything,” I admitted. I didn’t even care to weigh the words, what I promised or how it might mortgage the future. None of that mattered. “I’ll pay any price.”
“Done, then.” He nodded solemnly, but the starlight caught the craggy lines of his scarred face, showed the twist of his smile. “Now, get out of the way.”
“Come on, Auntie Essla.” Ami tugged me away as Ash held Harlan’s head. “He needs privacy and peace to do this. Hold your nephew and I’ll fetch our packs. Is that Fiona?”
I laughed a little, that she would notice, and took the baby, trying to hold him without getting blood on his blankets. Most of it, though, had dried. We’d sat there some time. Then, exhaustion crashing over me, I folded my knees and sat where I could watch Ash work, fancying that a soft green glow emanated from his hands. Astar hiccupped and I angled my arms to better drink in his sleeping face.
“Does he do nothing but sleep?” I asked Ami when she returned, leading two horses.
“Believe me—you’re grateful he’s asleep. I swear he has all of your meanness and none of my sweet nature. The child is a brat.”
“You don’t look like a brat,” I cooed at Astar and kissed him on his forehead. He smelled of milk and soft, sweet new life. Something to hold on to.
“Here.” Ami tugged out one of my hands and splashed water from a canteen over it, wiping the blood away with a cloth. “Is any of this yours?”
“Some maybe. Most of it is Harlan’s.”
“And he is?”
My lover. My love. My unlooked-for partner for life. All the names for him tangled in my head. “A Dasnarian mercenary,” I finally said, knowing he’d be amused that’s what I’d settled on. “How came you to be here? Terin said he had you captive. He gave us your hair.”
“As you can see, that’s the only part of me that rat bastard has. Not for lack of trying.” She gave me my cleaned hand back and reached for the other.
“He has Andi now. Lured with the threat to your life. Some kind of plan for her to do something with Stella. Rayfe is tracking her. We were attacked and sorely pressed. Harlan injured. They could be back anytime.” The thoughts seemed to come in disconnected bursts. From a distance, I considered that I might be in shock.
“There’s no Tala about. We had to stay away from the area until they cleared out.”
“How do you know?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Can’t you smell them? Especially Terin’s lot. I can smell their particular stink a league away.”
I giggled and Ami stared into my face, using the cloth to wipe the blood away, then to cool my brow.
“You’re bad off, Essla,” she said, a worried frown creasing her forehead. She should be rubbing it away, to prevent wrinkles, but she didn’t. “What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know.” I looked down at Astar. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
She gently lifted the babe from me and I missed his warm weight immediately, a chill making me shiver. “Drink this water and lie back. Let me tend to you.”
“You sound like Harlan.” I did as she bade and she tucked Astar into the crook of my arm.
“Then he must be a good man.”
“He is. I’m in love with him.”
“Quite the development.” She worked on the side away from the baby, removing my clothes in pieces, washing the various bites and scrapes she found. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, I think. You’re hurt more than you knew. Drink more water.”
“He wants to kill Uorsin, though.”
“Good.”
Something about her terse agreement penetrated the dreamy haze. “How can you say that?”
She moved Astar to my other side and set to work again, unbuckling my sword belt. I stopped her. “No.”
“It’s right here. Right by your hand. See? The topaz is glowing.”
It was glowing, as if lit from within. A star to guide you. “The Star of Annfwn.”
“Is it? A pretty name. I always figured that jewel came from Mother.”
“We have to rescue Andi.”
“We will, but it will help if you’re not half-dead.”
“Harlan died.” Tears slid out of me, the stars above kaleido-scoping into a blurry, colorful wheel.
“No, honey. He’s alive, remember? Ash will heal him.”
“Ash saved you.”
“That’s right. Drink some more water and sleep for a bit, and when you wake up, he’ll be waiting for you.”
“He said he’d wait for me as long as I needed.”
“There you go. A good man. A patient one, it sounds like. As would be necessary for anyone foolish enough to fall in love with you. Sleep now.”
“Someone needs to keep watch.”
“I will. I’m here. You watched over me. Let me watch over you.” She covered me with a blanket, tucking it carefully around Astar.
I turned my head, to smell my nephew’s hair. The Star pulsed hot in my other hand. The bright stars dimmed at the edges and I spun away into the dark.
A baby’s harsh wail awakened me, though it was swiftly silenced. I sat bolt upright, sword in my hand, my nephew gone. “Astar!”
Ami turned, a pleased and relieved smile on her lips. She stood with a dagger in one hand and the baby in the crook of her arm, suckling at her breast. Even with her hair a ragged mess, it shone red-gold in the rising sunlight and she could have stepped out of a painting of Glorianna as mother.
“You live.” She sounded wry. “Good. It was getting boring, having no one to talk to.”
I got to my feet, my body a protesting mess of aches and pains. “You’re standing watch alone—with nothing but a short blade and a nursing baby?”
“Yes, well, I thought about washing my hair and having a picnic, but this seemed like the thing to do.”
The meadow rolled bright green around us, the five horses happily grazing and showing no sign of disturbance. A short distance away, Harlan lay where he’d fallen. Ash passed out beside him. I wanted to ask if he’d lived through the night, but terror of the wrong answer kept me from asking.
“He’s alive,” Ami said. “I think it took everything Ash had to bring him back, but—before he toppled over—Ash said that the Dasnarian will survive.”
I nodded. Stood there a moment longer to absorb the crash of relief. Then sheathed my sword and went to him. He looked good. Normal, even, though still covered in dried blood that flaked off his skin. The area where the terrible bite had taken a chunk out of him gleamed a fresh and tender pink, soft to the touch, compared to the rest of him.
“An impressive-looking man,” Ami commented from beside me, then widened her pretty violet eyes in innocence. “What? I can look.”
“When did you get so earthy?”
“Good sex will do that to a girl. Wouldn’t you say?”
“No comment.” I sat back on my heels. “I can’t believe you stood watch all night with all of us out. What would you have done if the Tala attacked? And since when do you know how to use a dagger?”
She looked a little grim. “I was really hoping not to find out. Though Ash can be awakened from the recovery sleep if needed and he’s made me learn enough to stay alive until I can get to him. Still, I’m more than happy to hand guard duty over to you. If you’re up to it. How do you feel?”
“I’m fine. Stiff and sore, probably not much endurance, but I can make it for a while.”
Ami blinked, cocked her head. “Did you just admit to weakness?”
“Oh, shut up. Ash slept for days after healing you—are we in for that again?”
“Maybe not so long. It helps tremendously that we’re inside Annfwn. And, as I said, he can be awakened enough to put him on a horse. We can strap Astar to him and he’ll sleep that way.” She made a face. “We’ve done that quite a bit, with it being just the three of us.”
“I thought you were bringing your personal guard wi
th you.”
“Did. Until we had to cross the barrier. Then we were on our own. Here, now that you’re awake you can take the baby and stand guard. I’ll get more water and we can eat while we catch each other up.” She showed me how to strap Astar’s carrying bundle over my shoulders, so he lay against my chest, looking cranky to be removed from his mother’s far more cushioned breast.
Experimentally, I drew my sword and checked the range of motion. Not ideal, but workable. Astar quit making those grumpy noises and waved his little fists. Moving slowly, I kept an eye on Ami as she headed down to the little stream at the border of the meadow and woods, and I worked through some basic limbering exercises. It helped banish some of the aches, though my head pounded. What were Andi and Rayfe dealing with? There would be no finding out unless we figured out how to move the mountain that was the sleeping Harlan.
“Here you go.” Ami handed me a refilled canteen and transferred Astar to be buckled against her again. “Ash said you’d have a headache, losing all that blood, and to drink lots of water to replenish. He was sorry not to be able to heal you, too.”
“I owe him everything already,” I said simply, my gaze going to Harlan. I’d feel better when he woke up.
“So . . .” Ami sat cross-legged and set out some food—fruit and meat, mainly. “How did my heartless sister fall in love with a foreign mercenary from a country I only vaguely recall hearing about before and swap her sword for a real live man in her bed?”
“You first. Your tale is more salient to our next steps.”
Her gaze flicked to Harlan. “I’m not so sure of that, but okay. After we left Windroven, Ash tracked Terin into the Wild Lands. No big surprise there.”
“How did you pick up his trail?”
She smiled, radiantly lovely, but with an edge. “Mainly Tala network. Don’t look like that. You know better than I, I imagine, just how many prisons hold Tala expatriates—and how many have escaped over time. The ones that can get back into Annfwn have. The ones who can’t, along with the ones who haven’t had the opportunity to make the journey and appeal to Andi for entry, or that have been refused entry, which is something we need to talk about, live in various states of hiding. There are ways of finding them.”
“Especially for one of their number who is also an escaped convict.”
“There is that.” She looked at Ash and her eyes filled with both exasperation and love. “You can guess some of what he’ll ask of you. I hope you’re truly ready to pay his price.”
“A pardon, no doubt. Which is not in my power to grant.”
“Not only for him—for all the Tala prisoners. You’ll have the power one day, thank Glorianna for that.” Ami seemed uncertain, but made a decision. “There’s something else.” She rummaged in her pack and drew out the pink-gowned doll our mother had left her. Hers was far less pretty than mine and, bedraggled to begin with, had suffered from being tossed around on her journeys.
“You’re carrying it around with you?” I tried not to convey how crazy I thought that was, but she glared at me.
“Yes, I do. This is why.” She pricked her finger with the point of the dagger, squinching up her face, and held the bead of welling blood up near the doll’s head. The pink-gold floss of it deepened into a darker red. I leaned in, to see more closely. “You try,” she said, handing me the doll.
Curious, I waited until the red faded away, then simply flexed my arm enough to break open the scab on a minor wound where a talon had torn through my shirt. The head turned even deeper red, and Ami raised her brows. “Even more than me. Who’d have guessed that?”
“More what?”
“Strength of Tala blood, apparently.”
“But you and I should be the same amount—same mother and father.”
She shook her head. The shorter length let it curl nearly into perfect ringlets, and they bounced as she did so. “Doesn’t work that way. For some reason the balance is different in different people. I bet Andi’s blood would make it turn nearly black. Same with Stella. Astar has less than I do; Ash, quite a bit more. More like you, and his mother was all mossback.”
I contemplated the significance of that. Ash’s healing ability seemed to be another sort of shape-shifting, only turned outward. “Andi said that my fighting abilities come partly from the same thing. That what allows them to shift makes me faster and stronger.”
“Why does that annoy you?”
I laughed a little, that she saw through me. “I worked hard for my skills.”
“Ash is the same way, as you’ll recall.”
“Yes.” I’d nearly killed him once. Would have, had it been any easier. Fortunately the man wielded a blade nearly as well as I did. Though I hadn’t known then who he was or that Ami loved him, killing another of her true loves would have begun to look like a conspiracy. “So you used the head to find people of Tala blood and thus trailed Terin into the Wild Lands.”
“Yes. He was moving with a pack and we couldn’t gain on them. Always days behind.” Her pretty lips pursed with frustration.
“How many?”
“It varied. Ash figured about thirty in his core group. Maybe another thirty that came and went. Scouts and so forth.”
“Good to know.” I mentally reviewed the bodies in the clearing and the lizards we’d killed in the ambushes. Some of those would have been staymachs and not in Ami’s count. Still, we’d had to have killed at least forty.
“We tried cutting them off, but they made it across the border—we got the information on that in time to let us cross in a different place—a bit of a shortcut. One that cost us some time in the end because it was more difficult to track them inside Annfwn. When we finally caught up to them two days ago, they were ready for us.”
“They ambushed you?”
“My fault. They made Stella cry. I heard her and, well, lost my head. Ash had Astar, so he was smart enough to hang back. Terin believed I was alone. He promised to give me Stella if I’d fuck him.”
“In so many words?” I couldn’t help but be amused to hear the foul word drip so easily from her pink mouth.
“Exactly. So I led him on, insisting on some privacy, knowing that Ash would be nearby and could more easily sneak up if Terin was distracted.”
“I’m surprised Terin went for that trick.”
“I can be pretty seductive when I want to.” She shrugged it off. “It can be a useful weapon.”
“Clever.”
“Thank you.” She gave me a flirtatious flutter of her lashes, then sobered. “I thought Ash wouldn’t get there in time, and it wasn’t easy, with his men having carried Stella off again. I had my dagger ready, in case I needed to stick him before he could, well, stick me, when Ash arrived. He nearly had him, but Terin sensed him somehow, rolled off me, and had me by the hair, using me as a shield.”
“So you cut your hair.”
She grimaced. “Which will take forever to regrow, but yes. Rat bastard.”
“You got free, but Terin escaped with Stella, and you trailed him here and found us.”
“Nearly too late,” she agreed. “I can’t tell you how I felt, hearing you sing that old lullaby. Gave me the chills. Though I wasn’t surprised. I knew you’d find us sooner or later. Frankly I’d hoped it would be sooner.”
“We had a number of delays. I wanted to be here sooner.”
“I know that, and you—” She took my hand and squeezed, smiling through tears. “You came as fast as you could, just as you promised. Now that you’re here, we’ll get Stella back. I know it in my heart.”
“Yes, we will.” It had to be. “As soon as Harlan awakes, we’ll get moving.”
“Then you’re in luck,” Harlan’s deep voice rumbled. “He’s awake.”
33
I held still for a moment, grasping for calm, sending a fervent pulse of gratitude to Danu—and Moranu, too, for her gifts of magic—finally believing it might be real.
And finally looked.
He sat up, taking
in the sleeping Ash and raising an inquiring eyebrow at me. Unable to restrain myself longer, I went to him and kissed him long and hard. “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” I said when I could tear myself away.
“Well, if you command it, Your Highness,” he replied with a broad, affectionate smile.
“I do command it. Don’t make me hurt you.”
“What am I promising not to do?”
“Oaf.” I tried to wriggle free, but he held on, as strong as ever.
“I’m serious, my fierce hawk. What happened?” He frowned. “I remember finishing the fight. That wolf tore me open, but I had to get you to the horses before I bled out. And you . . .” He raised a hand to brush my cheek. “You said you loved me.”
“Trust you to remember that part clearly.”
He smiled at that. “You sang me a lullaby. I thought I was dying.” Bemused, he let me go—though not by much, keeping one big arm around me as he sat up—and ran a hand over the healing pink skin of his side, then focused his gaze on Ami. “Princess Amelia. It’s an honor to greet you. Forgive my discourtesy.”
“I think, under the circumstances, you’re forgiven.” She cocked her head. “How did you know who I was so fast? I seriously doubt I look like any of my portraits at the moment.”
“You look very like your sister.” He pulled me against his side, kissing my temple. “Though somewhat less fierce.”
“That was ever so,” she replied. “This is Astar, currently winding up to cause a fuss, I suspect. My consort, Ash, lies there, sleeping off the healing.”
“They arrived just in time,” I put in. “Ash saved your life.”
Harlan’s visage darkened. “Raised me from the dead?”
“Not like that, no.” When he only continued to frown, I framed his face in my hands. “Not like the Temple of Deyrr.”
“How can you be sure? Neither of us knows their actual methods. Perhaps it’s the same magic.”
He had a point. I glanced at Ami and she shrugged. “No idea what you’re talking about. It’s your turn to fill me in anyway.” She widened her eyes at my intimate entwinement with the mercenary and fluttered her long lashes, a deliberate parody of her former, more flirtatious self. “So much has happened.”
The Twelve Kingdoms Page 32