“Neither of them was my fault,” Lena pointed out. “And the second one wasn’t even from Valdemar—he just stumbled across the border before he died.”
“Speaking of the late Lord Kristion,” the King remarked, “his son Jasper has just arrived at court with Lord Teren.”
“Has his widow managed to forgive Lord Teren yet? I could understand being angry with Lord Kristion—it’s idiotic to wear brown leather and a deerskin jacket to go hunting. But she blamed Lord Teren for the accident.” Lena sighed. “She got very angry when she found out that he had been named Lord Jasper’s guardian jointly with her.”
“I haven’t heard one way or the other. You’ll have to ask them when you see them.”
• • •
When she spoke to them after dinner, however, they had other concerns.
“Are my dogs dead?” Jasper demanded fearfully.
“Of course not!” Lena replied. “Why would you think that? Did you not get the letters I wrote telling you how they were doing?”
“Yes, but—” He gulped. “The man in the kennels never heard of them.”
“He must be new. When I came home packed into a coach with eight dogs and six puppies two years ago, I think everyone at court heard about it. Fortunately, I don’t live here. I live at the Temple of Thenoth, the Lord of the Beasts, and that’s where the dogs live as well.”
“Can we go there now?” Jasper asked.
“Absolutely,” Lena replied. “Just as soon as I get the King’s permission to leave.”
Lord Jasper virtually dove into the section of the kennel where his dogs lived, and he was quickly covered with them. It seemed that even the “puppies”—who really could not be called that any longer—remembered him. He looked up at Lena with a wide grin on his face. “Mother entered a convent. She’s going to stay there and pray for my father’s soul for the rest of her life. It’s safe for me to take my dogs home now.”
“We’ll miss them,” she said, “but I’m glad that your home is safe for them now.” She grinned. “I hope you brought a bigger coach than I had! I barely fit in with all of them, and the puppies were much smaller then.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Lord Teren said as Jasper looked anxiously at him. “If necessary, we can set up as a traveling show of trained dogs and give performances along our road home.”
Jasper laughed. “That might be fun!”
• • •
Lena had reason to remember those comments when the crows reported back to her the next morning. The peacocks had been put outside to eat and stretch their wings, and they were quite visible. They were standing in a field where a traveling show was setting up; Lena could see tents being raised. They were also on the road that led to Lord Jasper’s estate, and they weren’t too far from Haven.
“We can catch up with them,” she explained to a group that included the King, Teren, and Jasper. “The hounds have to take that road anyway, and Lord Teren did suggest turning them into a traveling show.”
The King looked at the map on the table in front of him. “How do you plan to train greyhounds to do tricks in the two days it would take Lords Teren and Jasper to catch up with the show? They would have to have something special, would they not?”
“Easy,” Lena said. “Animal Mindspeech. We come up with tricks, and I explain them to the dogs.”
The King raised his eyebrows. “Were you planning on going with them?”
“Yes, of course. Remember, we have to get the peacocks back here, and I don’t think stuffing them in a supply cart is going to work. Do you know how much space they need for just their wings? And the males need much more for their trains.”
“You’ll need a chaperone.”
“Can’t I just dress as a boy?”
“Not convincingly,” the King said dryly. “You are, unfortunately, correct that you will be needed to bring the peacocks back here. I’ll find someone to go with you.” He turned to Lord Teren. “When do you wish to leave?”
“By midafternoon, if we can. Jasper and I have horses, but we’ll need a cart—preferably a light one—for the dogs. And we’ll need good horses for Lena and her chaperone.”
The King sat silently with a look Lena recognized as “I’m having a word with my Companion.” When he looked up, he said simply, “Your chaperone will be at the Temple of Thenoth with your mounts in an hour. Lena, go home and pack, and don’t forget to tell the Prior where you are going.”
Lena went back to the Temple and explained what was going on to the Prior. By the time she had packed what she thought she would need to join a traveling show, Teren and Jasper were in the courtyard. Jasper was holding their horses, while Teren tried to persuade the greyhounds to get into the cart and stay there.
“This is your horse, Lena,” Jasper said excitedly. Obviously he thought this was all a wonderful adventure. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”
She was gorgeous. She was also white, which would make it difficult to keep her clean on the road, unless . . .
Lena walked over to the horse and stroked her side. :Hello,: she thought at her. :What’s your name?:
:Meri.: the mind-voice was amused. :Don’t worry; I volunteered for this. The King wants you safe, and lovely as the Companion’s Field is, it can get boring. I don’t have a Chosen yet, and Clyton says you’re nice.: Clyton was the Companion of one of Lena’s favorite Heralds.
:Thank you. I hope you’ll enjoy traveling with us.: Lena looked around, wondering if her chaperone had arrived.
:Amal and Kyra will be here soon—probably long before someone gets those dogs under control.:
Lena looked at the dogs playing “hop in and out of the cart” and gave a sharp whistle. That got their attention. “Listen up,” she said, both verbally and in Mindspeech. “We’re leaving Haven, and the first thing we have to do is catch up with a traveling show two days ahead of us. You can run beside the horses, but how long is that going to last?” Fourteen dogs jumped into the wagon, wriggled around to find reasonably comfortable places, and settled down, prepared to remain right where they were for the foreseeable future.
“Impressive.” The female voice came from above her. Lena spun around to see a young woman, probably about five years older than she was, dressed in Herald Trainee Grays and mounted on a Companion.
“Thank you,” Lena said politely. “You must be Amal. I’m Lena, and this is Jasper and Teren.”
Teren looked pointedly at the uniform and the Companion. “I thought we were supposed to be disguised.”
“We will be,” Amal assured him. “This is just for tonight and tomorrow night, so we can stay in inns and use chits instead of coin. Then I’ll change out of my Grays, and the Companions will disguise themselves.”
“Companions?” Lord Teren asked. “How many will there be?”
“Just the two,” Amal chuckled. “You didn’t notice that Meri is a Companion, and she’s standing right here.”
“Lena rates a Companion?” Jasper asked. “I thought they only carried Heralds.”
“Unpartnered Companions can carry people if they want,” Amal said. “They’re intelligent beings, and it’s their choice. Meri volunteered for this mission—apparently Lena has a reputation in the Companions’ Field.”
• • •
Four days later, Lena stood on the back of a running “horse” while wearing tight trews and a colorful, scandalously short tunic. The costumes had been in Amal’s packs, but Lena’s planned dog show had been hijacked by the Companions.
:Nobody is ever going to expect Companions to perform in a show like this,: Meri had said, and she was right about that. She and Kyra, Amal’s Companion, with Lena to translate, had quickly trained the dogs. Jasper was doing well as a performer, but Meri seemed to expect more of Lena. It wasn’t enough for her to keep her balance while standing on a Companion galloping in a circle; Meri
kept adding more tricks. She had Lena jumping through hoops, literally. Large wooden hoops, hanging from the rigging in the tent, which meant there would be trouble if Lena so much as brushed against one. Lena was once again thanking Thenoth that she was small for her age.
The next day they were traveling, and she decided to take a stab at both of her problems: Meri’s nagging and her original mission. She left her group and went to the wagon that held Bram and the peacocks. “May I ride with you?” she asked. “Please? My family is driving me crazy!”
“Mine did, too,” Bram admitted, moving over to let her hide inside the canvas shelter. He stayed on the driver’s bench, but Lena noticed he was barely holding the reins, even when the procession started moving. He seemed to be paying much more attention to her than to the horses that pulled the wagon. “The birds are tolerating you, so you can hide in here. Funny, they don’t usually like strangers.”
“They must like you a lot,” Lena said, “to tolerate being in such a small space.”
“They know I’ll let them out as much as I can,” Bram replied, “and they’ve been my best friends for ages.” Lena thought Bram was a year or two younger than she was, but she knew perfectly well that “ages” could be relative depending on one’s surroundings.
“So,” Bram continued, “why are you hiding from your family?”
The story was that Lena and Jasper, who both had light hair and blue eyes, were Teren’s children, and Amal, with dark tan skin, brown eyes, and black hair, was their cousin. They claimed to be a family act, and nobody had questioned it. “They don’t think I’m living up to my full potential,” she grumbled. “They want me to do somersaults on Meri’s back.”
“Can you do somersaults?” Bram asked.
“Not even on the ground,” sighed Lena. “Jasper gets away with little and cute—why can’t I?”
“I’m friends with the flyers,” Jasper said. “Maybe they could help you.”
“Really?” Lena had seen the flyers practicing. They kept a net under them, but their act was done swinging between bars near the top of the tent, frequently with a person starting on the small platform on one side, grabbing a bar and swinging out before sailing through the air to a man she had heard called the “catcher” who swung upside down with the bar behind his knees. He would catch the flyer and toss them back to the bar they had left, and the flyer—usually—swung back and landed on the platform. If they missed, they landed in the net, moved to the edge, dropped down to the floor, climbed the rope ladder back up to the platform, and tried again. And again. The father of their family, however, seemed really strict and not likely to let anyone else use their equipment.
“Do you really think they’d agree to help me?” Lena asked.
“Yes,” Bram said. “I’ve know them for five years. They spend winters near my old home.”
“Have you been with the show that long?” Lena asked.
“No,” Bram admitted. “This is my first season.”
“Do you like it?” Lena asked.
“The people are nice, and they aren’t trying to take my birds away from me.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
Bram gave a long-suffering sigh. “My father thought the King would like to have them.”
Lena gave him an incredulous stare. “Does the King have anyone who knows how to take care of them?”
“They say not.”
:They didn’t take proper care of you at the Palace?: Lena thought at the birds and stared at them incredulously as mental images of being fastened by jesses to perches in the royal mews came back to her.
“Someone put them in the mews?” she said in horror. “And put jesses on them? Didn’t they notice these aren’t hawks?”
“How do you know what happened to them?” Bram asked suspiciously.
“Animal Mindspeech,” Lena explained. “You’ve got it too, don’t you?”
“Is that what it means when I can hear them talking in my head?”
Lena nodded. “If your father really wanted to impress the King, he should have sent you with them.”
“He doesn’t know,” Bram said miserably. “I didn’t even know.”
“Oh.” Lena suddenly understood. “You’ve been taking care of them for years, and because you can hear them, you’ve been making it look easy, so your father thought anyone could do it.”
Bram looked at her in surprise. “I never thought of it that way.”
“Think about it now,” Lena suggested. “Winter is more comfortable at the Palace than on the road, and the King would be glad to hire you.”
“We’re not on the road in winter anyway. But my father’s going to be mad at me, and the King. . . .” His voice trailed off, and Lena decided not to pressure him further. Let him think about it. With luck, he’ll get used to the idea.
• • •
To Lena’s surprise, Bram did persuade at least one of the flyers to help her. Sofia was nineteen and laughed when Bram repeated Lena’s complaint about not being able to get away with “little and cute.”
“Oh, those were the days,” she agreed. “Unfortunately, we grow out of them. At least you’re small, and your weight is low on your body.”
“Is that a polite way of saying I have no breasts?” Lena grinned at her.
“Yes, it is,” Sofia laughed, “but that’s a good thing.” She looked appraisingly at Lena. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” Lena admitted. “Seventeen next month.”
“You may be one of the lucky ones then,” Sofia said. “Let’s see what we can do with you. Have you ever wanted to fly?”
Lena thought of all the birds she had linked minds with. “Oh, yes,” she said fervently.
Sofia strapped her into a wide belt that fastened tightly around her waist, recruited two of the younger men from her act, and led Lena up the ladder to the platform. When Lena reached the top and looked down, she instantly wished she were a bird.
“Hold still,” Sofia ordered as she hooked two ropes to the metal loops at the sides of the belt. The ropes stretched out to the sides, ran through rings above the net, and dropped to the ground, where the men held them. “Don’t worry,” Sofia said. “If you start to fall they’ll make sure you don’t land wrong.”
“So I’ll wind up hanging by my waist in midair?”
“Only if you totally freeze up,” Sofia laughed. “Don’t worry about it. The good thing about having your waist as the pivot point is that it’s the easiest way to learn flips—what you call somersaults. From up here you can get multiple revolutions in before you land in the net.”
“Uh—” Lena hoped she didn’t look horrified, but she was afraid that she did, because Sofia chuckled.
“We’ll start with learning to land in the net,” Sofia said. “Hey, Bram,” she called down. “Come up here, will you?”
Bram scrambled easily up the ladder, joining them on the now-crowded platform. Sofia unhooked a bar from above the platform. “This is called a fly bar,” she told Lena. “All I want you to do is grip it firmly, swing out, let go of it, and drop into the net. Try to land sitting with your legs out in front of you and your hands to your sides. If you think your body is too far back, tuck your chin to your chest, and land on your back. Watch how Bram does it.”
Bram gave them a big grin, grabbed the bar and swung out, releasing it at the bottom of its arc. He even brought his arms down gracefully as he fell to sit in the net.
“Does he spend winters practicing with you?” Lena asked suspiciously.
“Not seriously,” Sofia said. “He comes to us when his father’s not around.” She patted Lena on the shoulder. “It’s not hard, and the men holding the ropes won’t let you fall.” She grabbed a rod with a hooked end and pulled the fly bar back to them. “You saw what he did, right? Just copy it.”
Lena took a deep breath, grippe
d the bar, and jumped. It went faster than she had expected, so she hung on until it swung back to the middle before she let go. Apparently she was doing all right, because she didn’t feel any pulling at her waist. Falling felt slower than swinging had, so she copied what Bram had done with his arms, and landed in the net. “That was fun!” she exclaimed in surprise.
Bram had flipped off the edge of the net and was standing beside it. “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “Now climb back up the ladder and do it again.”
Sofia drilled her until Lena could land in the net as easily as she sat down in a chair. She could also bounce to her feet (the net was rather bouncy) walk to the edge of the net, hook her fingers in it, and flip off the side.
“Now,” Sofia said, “watch this.” She hooked the bar out of the way. “I’m going to jump off the platform and do a flip on the way down to the net. When you copy me, jump out and up to get a good start, and make sure you land sitting or on your back. Do not try to land standing up.”
“I won’t,” Lena promised. “I have absolutely no desire to break an ankle.”
“Good girl,” Sofia said. “Watch me, give me time to get clear, and then copy what I did.”
Sofia jumped, then leaned forward, tucking her head and holding her knees, revolved once, then untucked and landed sitting in the net. She got off the net and looked up at Lena. “Your turn!” she called cheerfully.
Her confidence was contagious, and Lena, rather to her surprise, managed a reasonable copy of the move. But when she swung over the edge of the net, her legs didn’t want to hold her.
“Oops!” Sofia grabbed her. “I think that’s enough for today.” She unhooked the ropes and removed the belt from Lena’s waist.
The man on their side of the net coiled his rope and retrieved the belt. “Good, job, kid,” he said. “Keep training with Sofia; you’ve got natural ability.” He walked off, and Sofia supported Lena as they walked back to the cart with the greyhounds.
“I hope you’ve also got some horse liniment,” Sofia said, waving Amal over. “Get your cousin to rub it all over you before you go to bed or you won’t be able to move in the morning.”
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