by Tanya Huff
Once in the empire, the smoothness of the roads had finally allowed the sleep insisted on by exhaustion, both friend and foe closing their eyes and surrendering. Danika had forced herself to stay awake until she could whisper the suggestion that they were better men than this into Tagget and Carlsan’s dreams. She sent what comfort she could to Kirstin although the other woman gave no indication she’d heard, even though she was nearly as strong in air as Danika herself, the bright blue mage flecks brilliantly obvious against her dark brown eyes.
They changed the horses just after dawn at an actual posting inn designed for moving Imperial mail coaches in and out again as quickly as possible. Danika had the sudden image of an anthill stirred with a stick as the horn sounded. There were no soldiers standing around the yard, watching and guarding, just terribly efficient grooms hustling the spent horses away and slipping fresh horses between the shafts. Yawning kitchen staff handed out bowls of porridge as though they started every morning serving Imperial prisoners. For all Danika knew, they did.
Their soldiers relaxed again now they were not only out of Aydori but out of the duchies. Everyone from Lieutenant Geurin down to Private Kretien—young enough his five days of beard made a barely visible shadow edging plump cheeks—was less tense on this side of the Imperial border.
The old Imperial border, Danika corrected herself. The border was now at the edge of Aydori and trying to extend further.
Only Sergeant Black continued to split his attention a dozen different ways, but, as Danika understood it, that was part of being a sergeant. Even he had relaxed, however, no longer keeping his prisoners from talking in the line for the privy.
“The emperor’s spending a fortune on this,” Stina muttered, scraping the bottom of her porridge bowl. “Three sets of posting horses at each stage, arming his soldiers with silver shot…Do you think his Soothsayers came from conquered nations and they’re trying to bankrupt the empire?”
Annalyse giggled and, although there were dried tear tracks on her cheeks, the sound contained more amusement than hysteria, Danika noted gratefully. She caught Jesine’s eye over Kirstin’s shoulder as the two of them came out of the privy. The Healer shook her head and, as Stina pulled Kirstin into the circle of her warmth and began gently chivying her to eat, Danika moved to join Jesine at the water barrel.
“As long as I have this net on, I’m limited to a visual diagnosis,” Jesine growled. “I can’t tell if attempting to remove the net injured her, or if she’s suffering emotionally more than the rest of us.”
“She has to be thinking of her twins.”
“Granted. But Stina has three in Trouge, and thinking of them hasn’t shut her off from the rest of the Pack.”
“Have you met Stina’s children?”
Jesine grinned. Stina’s eldest had once disemboweled a rabbit under her dining room table, ruining an expensive rug. “Good point.” Then she sobered. “It could also be the new pregnancy, but I couldn’t get her to talk to me about how she’s feeling.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know she’s carrying. You told me that you only suspected you were and you’re a Healer.”
“That’s possible.” Jesine took a long drink and sighed. “I’m so tired of my head aching and afraid I’m getting used to the feeling. They won’t remove the nets when we get to Karis, will they?”
Danika showed teeth. “Not if they’re smart.”
* * *
In novels, the heroine would wake, not know where she was, and enjoy a moment of blissful ignorance before facing the day. Mirian knew where she was the moment she opened her eyes; burrowed into a pile of old straw in the corner of a three-sided shed. Having nearly drowned then been captured by Imperial soldiers, she was on her way to Karis to rescue the Mage-pack and faced another day of sore feet, aching legs, needing a bath, and not having enough to eat.
Up by the rough boards of the roof, a fly struggled to free itself from a tattered spiderweb.
Mirian snorted. The Lady could be less than subtle, but she didn’t actually need Her reminder. Sore feet, aching legs, hunger, unpleasant odors…they all beat attending card parties with her mother, listening to monologues about unmarried and available members of the Pack, and ignoring the Imperial advance.
“Good. You’re awake.”
Tomas no longer radiated warmth beside her. Mirian blinked and pushed herself up on her elbows, peering around until she found him sitting in a patch of sunlight spilling through the open side of the goat shed. All she knew about goats came from a childhood misunderstanding about her late grandfather’s gout attack, so she’d taken Tomas’ word for the identity of the shed’s intended occupants.
He had clothes on. Tomas, not her grandfather. Her grandfather had always been impeccably dressed, wearing the stiff brocades of his youth until the day he died. Tomas, on the other hand, wore brown wool trousers, a shirt of unbleached linen, and a frayed tweed jacket that looked like he’d grown out of it and hadn’t been able to afford to replace it. His feet were bare and dirty, but then so were hers.
“Where did you…? Never mind.” She emerged from the straw, using both hands to brush bits off the front of her clothes. “I suspect I’ll be happier not knowing. You’re going to stay on two legs?”
“It’ll be less frustrating than running circles around you on four.” He reached into the jacket’s pocket. “But I also got this.”
This was a thick collar with a brass buckle. Mirian took it from his outstretched hand and squinted down at the brass nameplate attached to the leather. “Duke?”
Tomas shrugged. “Not everyone likes their landlord.”
“Or they really liked dogs and considered it a compliment.” The collar looked huge dangling from her finger, but it wouldn’t have been overly large on the guard dogs they’d seen last night. “Does it fit?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to put it on and change in case it was too tight.”
“Should we…” Mirian suddenly found herself at a loss for words. The Pack didn’t wear collars; they weren’t dogs. When she thought of buckling the heavy leather around Tomas’ throat, her cheeks grew almost painfully hot. “Not now,” she said, answering the question she hadn’t quite asked and silently handed it back.
“It’s a better disguise than a frayed rope.” Tomas shoved it back into his jacket pocket like it meant nothing at all and held out a small, round loaf of bread. “I got this, too,” he said, and offered her half.
It was chewier than she was used to, and her stomach growled as she struggled to swallow the last mouthful.
“You’re still hungry. I had a couple of mourning doves, but…”
Mirian waved off the thought of raw mourning dove for breakfast and turned to deal with the blanket. Folded around the hole she’d cut for Tomas’ head, it was still the best way to carry everything. By the time she finished packing up, Tomas had gone outside, so she followed him, squinting up at the sun. “It’s late. You let me sleep.”
He shrugged, pulling at a loose thread on his cuff. “I had to get clothes. And some food.” As the thread came free, he looked up at her from under the fall of dark fur that nearly reached his eyes. He had the longest fur in skin she could remember seeing on any of the Pack. It completely covered the points of his ears. “Getting to Karis isn’t going to be easy.”
He was watching for her reaction, Mirian realized, not even trying to hide that he was waiting to see if she’d changed her mind. She shrugged and enjoyed the absence of her mother’s objection to the gesture. “We’ll have to tell the emperor we object to his scheduling. If it were fall, we could forage for apples and nuts and…”
“Snow.”
“You forage for snow?”
The points of his teeth just barely showed as he grinned and said, “Snow falls in the fall. And there’s apple trees in that fence bottom.”
“But no apples.” Mirian frowned at the tangled branches, only just leafed out. “How can you identify an apple tree with no apples?”
“You said y
ou had first level earth.”
“Which has surprisingly little to do with botany.”
“Apple wood has a distinctive scent. Here, I’ll prove it.”
“You don’t…” But he was already gone. She had no idea why Tomas Hagen needed her to know he knew apple wood, but, since he seemed to, she followed.
As she reached the fence bottom, he bent a branch down toward her. “See that bud with the pink? That’s an apple blossom. My grandfather is an Earth-mage. I used to spend time with him in the orchards outside Trouge.”
Mirian stared at the bud and remembered the honeysuckle in Bercarit. She’d always thought forcing flowers to bloom was a silly parlor trick that allowed equally silly girls to be tested for earth-craft without getting their hands dirty, but that was before half of a small loaf of bread had become her entire breakfast. Reaching past Tomas, she wrapped her hand around the branch beside his.
Felt the life inside the tree.
Nudged it.
Delicate pink-and-white blossoms released their scent into the morning air.
Logically, if she could speed the blossoming then she should be able to speed the entire process. It was, after all, only a difference of degree.
One more nudge.
“Mirian?”
Her stomach growled, and she shoved.
Petals fluttered to the ground, covering her nearer foot. The base of each blossom swelled and kept swelling until the branch sagged under the weight of a dozen dark red apples the size of Mirian’s fist. Sagged until it cracked and broke. Tomas caught it before it hit the ground.
He looked at the apples, rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, then looked at Mirian. “My grandfather says you can’t force a tree to bear fruit, that the best orchards have mixed varieties because each blossom has to be pollinated from another tree.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mirian admitted, picking an apple and taking a bite. The flesh was white with a few pink streaks. It was crisp and sweet and juicy and the most delicious apple she’d ever eaten. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”
“It should.”
Mirian rolled her eyes and waved the apple at him. “But it doesn’t.”
* * *
Tomas ate one of the apples because Mirian looked at him like he was an idiot when he didn’t want to. He didn’t enjoy it. It smelled more like Mirian than like an apple and while that wasn’t exactly a hardship, it was strange. His grandfather helped keep Trouge fed, went out into the fields and orchards with the other Earth-mages in the Mage-pack and got his hands dirty because that’s what Earth-mages did.
His gray eyes were nearly brown with mage marks.
“Maybe because he’s not at first level, it never occurred to him to try.”
He turned as Mirian closed the pouch over the last of the apples. “Him?”
“Maybe it never occurred to your grandfather to try,” she explained, then added, “you were obviously still thinking about it.”
“It’s weird.”
She made a face but didn’t object when he took the blanket roll from her and hung it from his good shoulder. He followed as she crossed to the pond where she wrapped the bulk of her skirt up onto the front of her legs before she crouched and filled the canteen.
“That’s mostly frog shi…waste,” he amended at the last minute. Long-legged shadows dove for the depths around clumps of greenish-black translucent eggs.
“First level water purifies.” She took a drink then offered it to him.
“Why?” The water in the canteen definitely smelled better than the water in the pond.
Her brows drew in deep enough to make a little vee over her nose. “Why?”
“I’m no mage, but it seems a strange place to start.”
“Strange like the apples?”
“Strange like complicated.”
“Oh. They say it’s because convincing water to be nothing but water is easy.”
That didn’t sound easy, but as the water tasted like it had come from a spring and not the next thing to a cesspit in a goat pasture, he was impressed.
“The next level involves parting water,” she continued, almost absently as he handed back the canteen. “The university built an artificial stream in back of the Water Hall. To move into second level, you had to cross it without getting your feet wet. It seemed a bit precious to me because parting water means moving water, so if you could get across the stream with dry feet, you should be able to move any water anywhere.” Canteen refilled, she straightened and swirled one foot then the other in the pond. At first Tomas thought she was making a point, her mouth pressed into a thin line of disapproval at the university. Then he realized she was washing off the dirt and blood, the cold water painful against blisters on her heels. He hoped first level healing—or whatever level she was at—would be up to the contents of the pond. Hunt Pack learned not to wash a wound with dirty water. It seemed Mage-pack didn’t care.
When her feet were as clean as they were likely to get, she took a long careful step back onto new grass instead of mud and said, “My mother could keep her feet dry, as she informed me every time we passed a puddle even though she hadn’t tested high enough to attend the university.”
Until she mentioned her mother and started to smell angry, he’d thought she was talking to distract him from the apples.
“When you get right down to it,” she added, heading toward the road, “it’s a fairly useless skill. If there’s a puddle in your way, go around. If there’s a river, build a bridge. By third level, you can convince rain not to fall on you. Or you could carry an umbrella.”
Tomas frowned at the pond, decided he wasn’t hungry enough for frog, then hurried to catch up. “Are you sure that’s how it works?”
“The university may have been confused by my breadth of mediocrity, but they did let me in.”
The Mage-pack had no first level mages. Harry was no more than second, but Harry was a soldier and his friend, not a mage, and while he’d been upset about not qualifying for the artillery, he’d only really cared when it came to his stupid crush on Geneviene. He did, however, always make sure the soldiers under his command had hot food and coffee. Had been. Made sure. When he finally remembered to always refer to Harry in the past tense, would it be real? “Maybe they start with purifying because it’s useful.”
She shot him a glance that made him think his voice hadn’t been entirely steady. When the brittle edges were absent from her reply, he was sure of it. “Maybe, but it’s still a matter of degree. If you’re only powerful enough for first level, there’s a limit to how much water you can purify. First level Water-mages usually find work in high-end restaurants. First level Fire-mages are thrilled about the new gaslights because they have to be lit every evening and first level Earth-mages work with florists—which is almost respectable. First level Air-mages can blow out a chandelier, one candle at a time, without getting a ladder, so there’s always domestic service for employers with low expectations. A couple of girls had suggestions I’m not going to repeat about uses for maintaining your own body temperature.”
Wait…“Girls had suggestions?”
Her laugh felt like fingers rubbing behind his ears. He smiled freely for the first time in days as they reached the road and he took his position upwind of her right shoulder.
“You’d be surprised at what women talk about when there’s no men around. The point is,” Mirian sighed, the exhalation exaggerated, “with five first levels and only five first levels, my classmates made any number of useful suggestions. Oh, wait, I can do first level metal now, so there’s always a future of finding coins in sofa cushions.”
“It’s just…” He hadn’t forgotten the two second levels, but they seemed incidental. The apples had been more worrying. “…you don’t smell like a first level mage.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Now she sounded sad. Lord and Lady, was it him or was she always that confusing?
* * *
Mirian h
ad a feeling that every time she let an opportunity to mention Jaspyr Hagen pass, the memory of what they’d shared, already ephemeral, was shredded a little more. But she refused have her mage-craft defined by the interest of a man. That would make her no better than the silly girls who wafted their scent toward the Pack, as though that and that alone would validate their existence.
“We could move faster if we’d stolen a horse in Herdon.”
She counted ten strides before Tomas caught up to the change of subject.
“Horses and the Pack don’t exactly get along. Not unless they’re raised together. My cousin Jared unseated half the Traitonian cavalry.”
“Weren’t they on our side?”
“You’d think. Their general was a bigot, and Jared was…”
Dead. She could feel his dead pile up in the pause, so she reached out and squeezed his hand. Words like I’m sorry were so inadequate they’d be insulting. After a moment, he squeezed back and, when she released him, cleared his throat and said, “Can you ride?”
“No.”
“Then why did you think we should have stolen a horse?”
“Because you could run on four legs, too, and it would be faster.”
“How would you falling off a horse be faster?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily fall off. Besides…” She turned far enough to wave at the smoke rising from the chimneys of Herdon, still not very far behind them. “…it has to be faster than walking.”
“It really doesn’t. We’ll walk for fifty paces, run for fifty paces. It’s what the volunteers do…” More dead in the pause. “…when they have to cover ground. Can you run?”
She followed his line of sight down to her feet, dust from the road already sticking to damp skin. At least the dried blood was gone. “Who walks to a rescue? I can manage fifty paces.”
It wasn’t just her feet that hurt. Ankles, knees, hips, calves, thighs…she felt like one of the labeled anatomy posters at the front of the Healer Hall. Personally, she’d have called the first fifty paces of running limping quickly. Eyes on the road to avoid the occasional loose stone on the packed clay, Mirian was peripherally aware of Tomas running easily beside her, and a quick glance showed none of the resentment that had hovered around his four-legged form yesterday like a particularly acrid smoke.