by Sharon Lee
This was not to say that Sam Moore blundered in the wood, or was bewildered under leaf; indeed, as the leagues fell under their boots, Meri began to form the opinion that the trail was clear because the Newman wished it so, and that matters might have been different had he not wished to be followed.
He was startled to find the Newman so accomplished in woodcraft. Had not Sian said that her band of Newman land-held were farmers, lacking in tree lore? Though Sam Moore must know this ground well, if he was spokesman for his kin-group and traveled often to the Engenium in Sea Hold.
There was a danger, with the aura out of range, in thinking of the Newman as a fellow Wood Wise. He must guard against that, and recall what he had learned beyond the keleigh. The Newmen who had tortured them for secrets they did not hold had lived separate from the land, unlike Sam Moore, on whom the trees doted. Still, the thoughts and reasons of trees were sometimes strange, even to a Ranger. He must hold his—
A hard edge of color obtruded on his vision. Meri paused, testing the air, listening . . .
Ahead, was the sound of labored breathing, and whispers of what might have been curses.
Meri frowned and crept forward, his passage displacing not so much as a blade of grass. The cursing thinned out and stopped, the breathing seemed to ease somewhat, though the sound was still hoarse and strained.
Pausing in the shelter of a spinictus bush, Meri surveyed the scene before him.
Sam Moore, on his knees in the dirt, one hand clutching a simple pine, for support, Meri thought, rather than for strength or sustenance. His head was bowed, his shoulders tense.
Had the Newman taken harm? Meri wondered, then sighed silently, and moved away from the sheltering bush.
There was only one way to find out.
"Sam Moore?" His voice was as neutral as years of state craft lessons could make it. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm not hurt," the Newman said shortly, a faithful echo of Meri's bad behavior of the early morning.
"What's amiss, then?" he asked mildly.
No answer. Well, and it wasn't as if he really needed one. It would seem that Sam Moore had driven himself too hard, and now suffered his body's rebellion. The cause for that, now . . . Meri settled down on his heels at some small distance from the Newman kneeling next to the pine.
"The Sea Folk say that a wandering mind steers a wandering ship," he commented. "If you drive yourself to exhaustion, you will come later to your people, rather than sooner."
Sam Moore shook his head. "I know that," he rasped. "I can keep the pace. I just—wish I knew . . ."
. . . if the Brethren had only been about the work the Brethren did best—sowing mischief and discord—or if indeed his home and his folk had taken damage when he was gone away and unable to protect them.
Meri pressed his lips together, and looked about him. The land had changed since the last time he had walked these paths, but it would have taken more years than he had slept to wear away the spystone.
"Near here there is a naked hill of rock—the same sort that forms Sea Hold. Do you know it?"
Sam Moore turned his head to stare. His breathing, Meri noted, was no longer so harsh.
"I know the place," he said. "We bear north of it."
"Let us instead go to it," Meri suggested, and raised his hand as the Newman drew breath to speak. "Agreed, it is out of our way. But we may discover something of your home there."
Sam Moore frowned. "What?"
Meri shook his head. "I cannot say until I have seen," he said curtly and came to his feet. "But I am willing to look."
"No," Becca said, staring at herself in the mirror. "Nancy—I cannot wear this to greet a guest!"
Her maid darted off, hopefully to return with a dress more becoming to the occasion.
This dress—this robe—she wore now was modest in design: round-necked, long-sleeved, with the hem sweeping the floor.
The fabric was utterly transparent. It was rather like wearing a small gold-tinged fog.
"I might as well," she said to the room at large, "go down naked."
Actually, she thought, it would be better to merely be naked. The robe somehow . . . put her on display in a way that transcended mere nakedness. Becca shivered, and looked up hopefully as she caught a flash of wings in the glass. Alas, Nancy bore only her brush, which she began to apply in long, gentle sweeps from the top of the head to below her waist.
Becca's eyes drifted shut, and she opened them by main force, staring at her reflection in the mirror to keep alert.
"Altimere can't want me to wear this!" she said finally. "I will have another dress, Nancy! No more of your pranks."
Nancy fluttered up and down, which Becca took to mean that Nancy was innocent of pranks.
"Fine," she said. "I will chose my own dress." She turned and stalked off across her room to the wardrobe on the wall next the bath, and put her hand on the latch.
She half-expected that it would be locked, and staggered a little when the door came open readily in her hand.
And after all, there was no need to lock the door, she saw.
The wardrobe was empty.
Becca stood for some minutes, staring into the vacant depths. Nancy rushed over, and fussed about, pulling the collar straight, tucking the ends of the belt up, tweaking the sleeves.
"Leave it!" Becca snapped. "I will not wear such a—"
Still speaking, she turned, and walked on bare feet toward the door of her room. Her unbound hair belled behind her like a cloak. The door opened as she approached, and she passed down the hall, to the ramp. At the foot, Altimere and a gilt-haired lady slightly taller than he awaited her.
Becca paused at the top and lifted her chin haughtily. Altimere, dressed in russet and black, his hair caught over one shoulder with a jeweled clasp, smiled at her and bowed, hand over his heart.
The lady—was this, after all, Sanalda, his old and abiding friend? The lady tipped her head, frowning slightly, for all the world like a housewife considering the merits of a particular piglet.
"Come," Altimere said, holding his hand out.
Becca glided down to him, and set her palm against his. He smiled again, and inclined his head, turning her to face the lady.
"Sanalda, I make you known to Rebecca Beauvelley. Is she not exquisite?"
Chapter Thirty-One
"So, Altimere, what mad start is this?" Sanalda's voice was light and dry, sounding much, Becca thought as she reclined at Altimere's side and accepted tid-bits from his plate, like a garden snake's skin felt. She could only be grateful that the lady's regard of herself fell into the lines of distant curiosity.
Altimere favored his friend with one of his slight smiles. "Am I mad, then?"
"I've had occasion to think so, from time to time," his friend answered. She sipped her wine and set the glass aside. "You would hardly be a son of your house, if you did not excite some speculation in that direction. But." She raised her head and favored him with a grave look from silver eyes. "You will note that I accused not you, but your—project, shall we say?—of madness."
"My project." He sipped from his glass and extended it to Becca, who leaned forward to drink, though she did not wish to do so.
He took the glass away, placed it on the table and looked at it for a moment before raising his eyes again to his friend.
"My project seems to be delightfully simple, with a low probability of discovery. I would be interested in hearing in what way you find it to be . . . may we agree on 'unsuitable'?"
Sanalda appeared to be giving her entire attention to the cheese plate. She made a leisurely selection before she answered.
"Simple," she said eventually, "I allow. However, I am inclined to view the risk with nothing short of alarm, and wonder how you can commit yourself to such a scheme. When last we spoke, you had been a man of reason."
"And my reason tells me that this plan, now underway, possesses the twin virtues of simplicity and surprise. It will succeed because it is not possible to h
arvest kest one bright pebble at a time, adding each to the same pile."
"Oh, nonsense, of course it is possible to annex kest! It's done all the time. The bedraggled Wood Wise you keep caged in your stables demonstrates my case. Where is he, by the way? The Gossamers were most unsettling to my poor horse. Did the trees come for him at last?"
"In a manner of speaking. But you have imperfectly understood what I am about, Sanalda! What I propose—what I have done!—is no brutish act of dominion." He raised an elegant white hand, as if he placated her. "The stronger dominates the weaker—that is natural law. And as so many natural laws, it lacks finesse." He leaned forward, speaking intently.
"What I will do, with the willing assistance of my pretty child, here, is to detach the merest morsel of kest—a single, golden nugget caught in the net of her aura, then transferred—"
"Forgive my interruption of these poetical flights," the lady said dryly. "Her willing assistance?"
Altimere raised elegant eyebrows. "Indeed. Would you like a demonstration of her willingness?"
Sanalda settled back upon her cushions, wine glass in hand. "I would like such a demonstration," she said. "Yes."
She raised her glass, and Becca rose, also, uncoiling from her cushion. Facing the reclining lady, she placed her right hand over her heart and bowed deeply from the waist, then turned and glided in a manner entirely unlike her usual form of locomotion to the center of the floor. There, she bowed again to the lady and straightened into an attitude of attention, her right hand clasping her left.
The harp, which had been providing its usual pleasant background music, went silent.
In the absence of sound, and staring directly into Sanalda's ice-colored eyes, Becca began to dance.
She moved gently at first, merely swaying, shaking her head so that her hair rippled and shimmered in the light from the fog bowls. As she swayed, her right hand rose, pinched each of her nipples in turn, and glided in a long, sensuous stroke down her crippled arm to her shoulder, then back, her palm skimming the silky-smooth diamonds of the collar, and descending to her right breast, which she fondled for a time, her hips lazily thrusting, while her left arm . . . her left arm began to rise away from her side. Pain flashed along the ruined muscles, while she pinched her nipple hard, harder, her hips moved more urgently now, and her left arm was at right angles to the floor, fully extended, pain and pleasure woven together, indistinguishable each from the other, and suddenly her ruined arm thrust straight up, fingers pointing at the ceiling. She screamed, falling to the warm wood and rubbing herself against the floorboards until she released, screamed again . . .
. . . and lay there, her face against the wood, strands of hair stuck to her sweaty cheek, and wished to die, then and there.
Even as the thought formed, she began to move again, worming her way across the floor on her belly, until she reached the cushion where Altimere's friend reclined, coolly sipping her wine.
Becca nuzzled the inside of the lady's knee, feeling the liquid gold stir.
"Enough," Sanalda stated, and Becca was withdrawn to rise and sit back on her heels, her breasts thrust wantonly forward against the transparent fabric.
Sanalda turned her head to address Altimere.
"You had said, I believe, her willing assistance."
"I did."
The lady shook her head. "You have fashioned yourself a slave. I confess to . . . disappointment. One has come to expect a certain . . . elegance and flair from you, even at your most . . . unsuitable. This—" She flicked a negligent hand in Becca's direction. "—is only sordid."
"You fascinate me," Altimere said lazily. "Tell me what you see."
"I see a changeling, unschooled in the use of kest, and with an aura bright enough to burn, wearing an artifact with what would appear to be her signature upon it—which I allow to be clever. For the rest of it—" She shrugged. "The artifact compels the girl, and she dances as you will it." A sigh and a flicker of white fingers. "So tedious, Altimere."
"You miss two points of interest," he murmured. "Shall I elucidate?"
The lady inclined her head. "Please do."
"The first point is that this girl—this so rare and beautiful girl—has given her kest and her life into my keeping, willingly and without coercion."
Sanalda's eyebrows twitched, and she turned her head to study Becca from cold eyes for a long moment before she turned again to Altimere.
"And the second point of interest?"
"She has by her own choice retained her name."
The lady was so still upon her cushions that she scarcely seemed to breathe, and Becca feared—but then she leaned forward and placed her glass on the table.
"She retains all memory of what transpires?"
"That is correct."
"Do you mean to leave her here when the Constant is recalled to Xandurana?"
"What would be the purpose of that? I intend to introduce Rebecca Beauvelley to everyone, and she will know no lack of company."
"And what will you do, should one of her future legions of lovers compel her to answer questions?"
"She cannot be compelled by another; the collar guarantees it."
"And if the collar is removed?"
"It can be removed only by she who accepted it."
Sanalda nodded. "And if she who accepted it wishes to remove it?"
"Wishes," Altimere murmured, "are not horses."
"I see." She turned again, and Becca lifted her chin to meet those cool eyes.
"I believe you delude yourself, Altimere," she said at last. "This plan is neither simple nor is it likely to succeed. I advise you to give over."
Altimere stirred, and Becca wondered if he were angry, or hurt, but his voice was mild when he spoke. "Do you not wish to see Diathen the Bookkeeper Queen deposed? You had used to want it beyond anything."
The lady shook her head without looking at him. "Indeed, I wish the upstart deposed, the Elder Houses restored to their previous position, the keleigh dissolved, and the war that has brought us to this pass unfought." She did look at him then, long and serious.
"However, as we have just agreed: Wishes are not horses."
Altimere said nothing.
Sanalda sighed. "I believe there is a flaw in your work, my friend. May I demonstrate it to you?"
"Of course."
She nodded and looked into Becca's face. "Remove your compulsion, old friend. If you please."
Shame suddenly burned Becca; she dropped her eyes, unable to meet that chilly gaze, and flinched at the sight of her naked thigh, seen through fabric no thicker than a spider's web.
"Look at me," Sanalda said.
This was not a lady who tolerated disobedience, Becca thought, and forced herself to raise her head once more.
Sanalda nodded. "What is your name and condition?"
"Rebecca Beauvelley, eldest daughter of the Earl of Barimuir, of the Midlands, beyond the keleigh."
"Attend me carefully, Rebecca—did you give your kest and your life into Altimere's keeping?"
Becca nodded. "Yes," she whispered.
"Ah. Why did you do such a mad, desperate thing?"
"He—he showed me two futures, and I—I asked him to save me from the, the one where my husband abused me and I was dying of the cold. He asked if I put my power in his hands and I said I gave him my life and my future, because, after all," Becca finished plaintively, "all I had was my life and my future; it was ridiculous to speak of my possessing the least bit of power!"
"There is power and power," Sanalda commented, and leaned forward slightly. "Nor can a future be given away." She tipped her head, consideringly. "Why did you keep your name? You had offered Altimere everything else. If he held your name, you would at least be free of these things you do as an agent of his will."
"I—" Becca swallowed, trying to remember. "My name is my own possession. Who will fight for it more strongly—I, who have born it my entire life; or Altimere, who has a name of his own which must be protect
ed before mine."
"So," the lady murmured. "Pride."
"Of a sort," Becca agreed, looking down and plucking at the thin cloth. "It seemed necessary at the time."
"I am certain that it did, though it cannot add to your comfort at present. Look at me."
Becca raised her head.
"Now, Rebecca Beauvelley. Do you wish to remove this artifact which makes you only an extension of Altimere's madness?"