by Dawn Cook
“We’re going!” she shouted in her thoughts to Connen-Neute.His enthusiastic response resonated in her mind as Alissa flung herself at Useless. He gave a startled grunt as she hugged the imposing Master. “Oh, Useless. Thank you!” she babbled, putting herself at a proper distance again. “We’ll find them. You’ll see.”
“I fully expect you will,” he said, a worried frown passing over him. “Let’s all have a good dinner,” he said as he rose to his feet in an effortless motion, “and then you’ll leave tonight by starlight. From here.”
“Tonight!” she exclaimed, getting to her feet.
Useless nodded, squinting at the lowering sun. “The updrafts coming off the cliff face are strong enough that you, Connen-Neute, and I can manage Strell and Lodesh’s weight in a slow glide most of the way. We can set down a day from the coast in the salt swamp. It will save you weeks of travel. I’ll leave you there, and you can continue on alone.”
Alissa tucked her hair behind an ear in worry. “I can’t carry the weight of a man.”
“Which is why you will have the packs—in case you drop one.” Useless moved forward until his toes edged the drop-off. Surprise crossed his features as Connen-Neute’s massive wings eclipsed the light. “What are you doing here?” Useless asked as he took Alissa’s elbow and moved them to the shadows so Connen-Neute could land.
“We’re going,” he thought excitedly as his claws scraped the opening. “I wanted—”
“You aren’t,” Useless interrupted.
Alissa turned to him in surprise, and the old Master sent a terse, “Hush,” into her mind.
Connen-Neute’s head drew back in surprise, and his wings drooped. With a tug on her awareness, he shifted, vanishing into a pearly mist to coalesce down to a tall, thin man standing with his heels hanging over the edge. His long face was pinched in distress, and Alissa looked at Useless in surprise. He had just said Connen-Neute was going.
“I’m going,” Connen-Neute said. His breathing was fast, and his solemn face looked frightened as he tugged his red sash. “Technically, you’re not my teacher. Keribdis is. I should rejoin her now that I know she lives.”
Useless crossed his arms. “You never wanted Keribdis as your teacher. You only accepted because you knew she would be instructing the next transeunt.”
The rims of Connen-Neute’s ears reddened as he flicked a glance at Alissa. “She is still my teacher.” He adjusted his long sleeves, pulling his arms into them so the hem covered his fingers. “I can hide my hands and wear a hat,” he said.
“It’s too risky.” Useless shook his head. “I’ll not be responsible for starting a panic with the appearance of long-fingered men with golden eyes abroad to steal children.”
There was another tug on her thoughts as Connen-Neute crafted a red scarf matching the one around his waist. He bound it about his head to cover his eyes. “I have been burned,” he said softly. “And I’ve wrapped myself so no one has to look upon my ruined face and hands.”
Useless sighed and turned away. Alissa thought she saw him hide a pleased smile.
“I’ll wear them all the time,” Connen-Neute persuaded. “Even on my hands. It will be safer than sending her alone with a wandering piper and a cursed Keeper. And if I’m with them, I can call you when Alissa eventually hurts herself.”
Peeved, Alissa smacked him lightly on the shoulder with the back of her hand.
Useless made a soft groan. “All right,” he said. “You can go.”
“What?” she cried. “I had to beg for three days. I cleaned your shoes. I made candied apples. I swept your balcony. He gets to go with only that?”
Useless coughed to hide a chuckle. “There was never any question as to whether he was going,” he replied mentally, the tightness of his thought telling Alissa she would be the only one to hear. “As he said, someone has to keep an eye on you. But if he couldn’t find the courage to ask himself, then he ought not go.”
Alissa smiled, seeing the slow but honest building of Connen-Neute’s nerve.
“I just hope he doesn’t lose his new confidence when he finds Keribdis,” Useless added sourly, and Alissa went worried. Keribdis was trained to spot Beast, and Alissa would have to work hard to keep her second consciousness hidden.
“Go tell Lodesh and Strell,” Useless said aloud. “They can bring their packs down the tunnel. I’ve unwarded the capstone already. With any luck, Lodesh will decide to stay once he knows he’s going by air.”
Alissa grinned. Lodesh was terrified of flying, but she knew he wouldn’t risk Strell traveling alone with her. Brimming with enthusiasm, she almost danced to the drop-off to prepare to shift, wanting to tell them in person. Toes edging the deadly fall, she hesitated. “You’ll let me go halfway across the world, but you won’t let me cross the plains to find my mother?” she asked.
The amusement in Useless’s face was easy to read in the orange light of the setting sun. “You can get in less trouble aboard a ship than if I let you loose on an entire continent again.”
“Useless . . .” she cajoled, and his eyes narrowed.
“Not another word,” he cautioned. “Or you’ll be staying here with me.”
Her mouth snapped shut, and she stared at him, thinking the situation grossly unfair. The Master was driven entirely by his egotistical urges—but she wouldn’t say anything this time.
“This is a courtship excursion between you and Connen-Neute, as far as I’m concerned,” he continued, and Alissa and Connen-Neute exchanged tired looks. “Or would you rather pick berries—”
“No,” Alissa quickly said.
Useless turned pointedly to Connen-Neute.
The tall, awkward Master seemed to jump. “No,” he agreed belatedly, the dullness of his words standing in stark contrast to his excitement slipping unbidden into her mind. “This is fine.”
6
The wind slipping over her was chill, and she imagined she could smell salt in it as she flew. The sun was long set. She moved like a ghost, hidden from the superstitious coastal folk by height and shadow. Her frustration that Useless would let her go across the ocean to find his kin yet refused to give her leave to find her mother had settled to a familiar, dull irritation. Going anywhere was better than being stuck at the Hold.
Clutched in her hind clawlike feet were the packs. They were slung in a tarp hanging from her mirth-wood staff. Alissa squinted into the night to find Connen-Neute ahead of her. The young raku was clearly straining, more from worry that he might drop Lodesh, Alissa thought, than from the weight of the Keeper dangling from a taloned hind foot. Behind her was Useless with Strell. Alissa had fallen appreciably in altitude, and at her soft inquiry, Beast beat their wings three times so as to rise and match Connen-Neute’s path.
“Set down, Connen-Neute,” came Useless’s thought into hers, and Alissa winced. “We’re close enough.”
“I’m fine,” Alissa contended, feeling her wing muscles ache all the way to her tail. “Just a bit farther, and we can make the coast by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Which is why we’re setting down now,” Useless said, and Connen-Neute obediently turned into a downward spiral, disappearing in the tall vegetation. She angled to join them, glad to see the black ribbon of a stream only a stone’s throw away. As she hovered, Connen-Neute vanished in a swirl of mist to coalesce down to his smaller form. Lodesh hunched against the wind from her wings, and the young Master pulled him out of the way for her to land.
Alissa dropped the tarp at the edge of the pressed oval of grass, quickly following it down. The wind didn’t abate at all when she landed. If anything, it became worse. She squinted up to find Useless hovering with Strell. Immediately she shifted to her usual form to give her teacher space to land.
The air felt colder as she reappeared, and she held the hair from her eyes and tried to find Redal-Stan’s watch and get out of the way before Useless landed on it or her or both. Bits of vegetation and tufts of grass flew wildly, and her hair tangled. She gasped as
Strell hit the ground next to her in a smooth crouch. Squinting from the raku-made wind, he took her elbow to move her to the edge of the flattened grass. Useless, though, simply landed to press out an adjacent area.
The wind suddenly ceased. Relieved, they all straightened. As a raku, Useless held his head high above the grass and scanned the black horizon as if expecting trouble. Alissa flashed Strell a smile and bent to look for her watch. “Here,” he said, taking her hand and dropping the ring of metal into her palm. Her smile deepened. One of these days, she was going to lose it.
She slipped it into a pocket, thinking the night was completely different through her human senses: the shadows were darker, the buzz from the insects was louder, and the distant rolls of thunder that wouldn’t reach them until tomorrow had vanished. Even the grass was taller than she had imagined, waving high above her head where it hadn’t been flattened. Peering into the dark, she looked for Talon. The small bird hadn’t been able to keep up. Alissa wasn’t worried. Talon had found her in thicker surroundings than this.
There was a tug on her tracings as Useless shifted to his human guise. Another tug—this time subsiding into a steady pull—and a head-sized globe of light came into existence. Useless set it down as if it were a campfire. Hands hidden in his expansive sleeves, he ran his unsatisfied gaze over her clothes. She knew he wasn’t happy she had appeared wearing her sturdy, more practical Keeper garb rather than the refined Master attire she was capable of.
“I’ll head back to the Hold now,” he said, giving her a final, sour look. “I won’t slap at insects and sleep on dirt when I have a bed a short flight away.”
Alissa’s breath caught. He was leaving already? She thought she’d have all night to say good-bye. “Um, Useless?” she said, hating the way her voice went up at the end.
Lodesh drew his leather hat down and shifted from foot to foot. “I think I saw a dead tree on the way in,” he said, pointing. “Help me get some wood?” he asked Connen-Neute.
“I thought your eyes were shut,” Connen-Neute said, and Lodesh frowned. “Oh! That tree!” the young Master exclaimed.
Lodesh sighed in exasperation, giving Useless a respectful nod of farewell before striding into the tall grass. Connen-Neute followed, hesitating briefly as he, too, said his good-bye to Useless. A faint buzz of private conversation drifted at the edge of Alissa’s awareness, and she grew worried when Connen-Neute smiled wickedly at her before vanishing into the grass.
Strell took a step after them, then mumbling something about water, yanked an empty sack from the pile of belongings. Slapping at the returning insects, he went the other way to the stream. Alissa turned to find Useless rummaging among their packs. “Here. These are for you,” he said, extending a small pouch to her.
Alissa’s brow rose as she peered inside the palm-sized sack. She shook it upside down, and three silver bells fell ringing into her hand. A delighted smile came over her. “Thank you, Useless,” she said, nudging one with a finger. “They’re beautiful.”
Useless’s white eyebrows were gray in the dim light. “You wear them. On your ankle.”
She warmed at the idea of drawing attention to her feet. “My ankle?” she questioned.
“It’s a harmless tradition. Everyone wears them on the coast. The women, I mean. Put them on a string or something.” Running a hand over his short hair, he winced. “M-m-m-m, if everything is settled, I’ll go.”
Alissa tucked the bells in her pocket. “Useless . . .”
“Tell everyone good-bye for me. I expect to hear from you every night at sunset until you are so far away we can’t reach each other. With any luck, we won’t lose contact at all.”
“Useless, I—”
“Keep Connen-Neute talking aloud,” he said, his eyes searching the thin updrafts. “Don’t let him slip back into his usual thought-speech. I expect him to be fully verbalized when you get back. No shifting to raku once you find people. And you burning-well better not do anything to link rakus to Masters. Who knows what they will do if they figure that out?”
They had been over this at dinner, and she took his long hand so he would stop. A heavy sigh escaped him, and he dropped his gaze. “You’re the first Master I have taught,” he said as he drew his hand from her and put it on her shoulder. “Don’t let Keribdis make you feel as if that leaves you lacking. You’re an excellent student.”
Alissa’s stomach clenched at the reminder of the woman, and he stepped back. In a swirl of gray fog, he shifted. He towered over her as a raku, his color almost amber in the dim light of his ward. “But I wouldn’t let on that I’ve already given you some of the more complex wards,” he added soundlessly, and he leapt into the air.
She covered her face as the grass hissed and waved. The camp went black as he reached a raku length above the ground and his light vanished. Arms clasped tight about herself, she watched him gain altitude, wings pushing against the still air strongly. No more than a shadow against the dark sky, he angled east to the Hold. Only now did he whisper, “Goodbye, Alissa,” into her thoughts.
Her throat tightened, and she turned to find Strell watching her from the edge of camp with knowing eyes. Sniffing once, she made a light to replace Useless’s. The rich scent of river muck pulled her attention to Strell. He was soaked to his knees, and her eyebrows rose.
“The bank was softer than I expected,” he said as he set the water sack down. Shaking the muck and slime from his hands, he gingerly reached into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out his pipe wrapped in a roll of leather. He carefully set the instrument aside on his pack. “Least these didn’t get wet,” he said, more to himself than her. Dropping to the ground, he tore a hank of grass from the earth and tried to clean the mud from himself.
A smile that was almost a smirk came over Alissa as she set her light down. Her hair swung forward, and she impatiently tucked it out of the way. Her eyes fell upon the roll of leather, widening as she recognized it. It was her papa’s old map, the one that showed the way to the Hold. He was using it to wrap his pipe with? Her lips parted in surprise, and she glanced at Strell, flicking mud from his hands as he scraped it from his worn boots. He had gotten the map years ago in a trade with Alissa’s mother for a length of coastal fabric, and Alissa had been trying to get it back ever since.
Her envious gaze lingered on the copper-colored hair ribbon binding it to the length of mirth wood. That had been her mother’s, too. Strell wouldn’t trade that to her, either. Standing silently before him, she arched her eyebrows hopefully. Seeing where her attention was, he shook his head. Disgusted, Alissa glanced at her pack and the ribbon her mother had used to tie her cup to her pack over three years ago. The once-bright copper color was grimy and stained. It was too filthy to wear, but she needed something to tie her hair back with. “Strell?” she questioned. “Trade me the ribbon at least?”
Strell rubbed the back of his hand over his ugly, infant beard. “No,” he drawled.
Frustrated, she came close, wrinkling her nose at the rank smell of mud. “Please?”
Strell’s eyes grew mischievous, making him look more like a vagabond than ever. His newest preoccupation with facial hair didn’t help. “Only a cad gives away a woman’s heartfelt sign of affection. Besides, you might shift while wearing it, and it would be gone forever.”
Alissa took a breath to argue, letting it out in a puff of sound, deciding he was probably right. Grumbling, she fought to tug the tarp from under the packs, taking her frustrations out on the well-oiled cloth. The entire situation reminded her of when she and Strell had met. Ashes, he had been more irritating than a wasp bumping the ceiling. Nothing had changed since then.
She glanced at him as he industriously scraped at the mud. His sharp features were blurred under the shadow of the old hat she had given him when Talon shredded his original one. Slowly her anger eased, and a smile crept over her. Struck by an idea, she scuffed the ground with the toe of her shoe until she loosened a handful of dirt from under the thick mat
of grass. Grinning, she extended half to Strell.
“What?” he questioned, peering up at her and wiping his hand before accepting it.
She smiled. “Rock in the east, keeps away the beast,” she said with a mocking seriousness, throwing a clump in the proper direction. It was a charm from the coast he had once used to protect their camp for the night—though he insisted he never believed in it.
Strell’s mouth turned up. His eyes glinted in her warded light as he stood. Gaze fixed to hers, he chose a rock from the cup his hand made and tossed it to his right. “Stone in the north, spirits won’t come forth,” he said, his low, musical voice soft with the sound of remembrance.
Taking a step closer, she dropped a rock. “Pebble in the south, seals the raku’s mouth.”
The dirt sifted through his fingers. Strell took her elbows to pull her willingly closer. The pungent smell of river mud filled her senses. Her pulse sent tingles to her toes. “Sand in the west, will protect you best,” he whispered.
His hands were warm on her, and a wave of emotion sent her heart racing at what might follow. The remaining dirt fell from her hand. The stiff bristles on his face made him look more unkept than usual. “What’s this?” she said, smiling as she ran a nail over his prickly cheek.
“A hobby.” His eyes were as soft as his voice.
“I don’t like it,” she said mischievously, not moving from his arms.
“You will.”
Her heart pounded. Twin feelings of desire and common sense flashed through her. She couldn’t. If she changed the distance she had been keeping between them, the rivalry between Strell and Lodesh would turn ugly. “I don’t want anything to change,” she whispered, watching his brown eyes for any sign of anger.
“Nothing changes if only you and I know,” he answered. He was poised at the moment of pulling her closer—waiting.
She closed her eyes to find the strength to make her hands fall from about his neck. Taking her hesitation as acquiescence, he drew her closer. “Strell . . .” she protested, wanting nothing more than to willingly respond. But she looked down, putting her forehead against his chest to hide her frustration as well as ease the sting of her refusal. “I can’t.”