“Be of some use,” he said, ignoring the belated arrival of both Dayna and Suliya. “There are stalls to clean.”
“You had no right—” Suliya started, crowding close behind Jess—close enough to make Jess shift her weight, one leg aching to kick behind. Dayna hauled Suliya back, hissing words with an undertone of warning.
“We are not yours to order,” Jess said. “The horses were not yours to assign.”
He shrugged. His heavy features, starting to sag with age, offered no apology. They looked—and Jess wasn’t sure, but the sight of it made her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare—smug.
“We’re in emergency conditions,” Garvin said. “And I outrank you, so I suggest you do as you’re told and keep your complaints to yourself.”
Suliya moved up beside Jess, more carefully this time, and she said in the coolest of tones, “Carey is expecting those horses back today. He’s expecting us back today, and back at work. Since you’re inclined to throw rank around, I’m sure you realize the extent of Carey’s influence. Or had you intended for this to be the last job you ever worked?”
A different Suliya, one apparently used to playing games of rank and influence, and one Jess was grateful to have beside her.
“Carey,” Dayna added, much menace in her voice, “isn’t the only one with a louder voice than Garvin’s. Courier shortage or not, none of the holds can afford to retain a man who makes a bad situation worse.”
“Get off,” Garvin scoffed, not looking quite so smug but far from convinced. “I’m getting results; I’m getting the messages out. You can be useful here as well as anywhere, whether it’s cleaning stalls or running messages. If you really want to get back to Anfeald, then you,” he gestured impolitely at Jess, “can play at being a horse and carry your friend home.”
Jess went cold-angry, her eyes widened and head lifted. Play at being a horse?
Suliya’s hand landed gently on her shoulder; she raised her other hand, cutting off Dayna’s hot response to Garvin. When she spoke, her voice had gained a cutting edge.
“Your mistake,” she said, “is that like most small people who have overstepped their authority, you think you can intimidate us out of recognizing it. But I’ve been watching my father run SpellForge meetings since I was old enough to sit on a booster pillow.”
Behind them, Dayna made a noise; to Jess, still seethingly speechless, her response meant nothing.
But Garvin hesitated, appreciably taken aback. “This has nothing to do with SpellForge—”
“No,” Suliya said. “It doesn’t. But I can recognize when a career is ending, right on the spot. I’ve seen it often enough. And I’m very, very good at weighing clout. And ay, you know what? You don’t have any.”
“I’m serving my hold,” Garvin said, although this time the words held less certainty. “The horses won’t be back until the end of the day. You can weigh clout all you want; I’ve done my job.”
“You’ve done far more than that,” Suliya said. She glanced at Jess, and, with the first signs of hesitation, nodded at the end of the barn.
She wanted to talk in private. Fine by Jess, who was thoroughly irritated with her own inability to understand the undercurrents of the conversation, not to mention with things human in general.
When they reached the far end of the barn, Jess kept her voice low, but couldn’t mask her anger. “I want to kick him from here to—” She stopped, took a deep breath, and found solace in Dayna’s sympathetic expression. “Against the Rules. Even human ones. So I won’t.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t feel like it,” Dayna said. “I feel like making his nose hairs grow down to his chin.”
“Can you?” Jess said, somehow instantly comforted at this image.
Dayna shrugged. “Sure. Lots of hair growth spells floating around. But... rules. I won’t.”
Suliya’s mood had gone from cool to grim. “Sorry if I overstepped,” she said. “I just thought... he was so insufferably—”
“Is it true?” Dayna asked her. “About sitting in on SpellForge meetings? Your father is—what, the SpellForge chair?”
Suliya shifted uncomfortably. “Yes. But I don’t want people to know it. And I won’t answer questions about why I’m here. Either way, he’s right. We can change his attitude, but we can’t change the fact that we’re stuck here without horses. Even if you—” she looked at Jess, hesitated, and said, “even if you agreed to change, you can’t carry two of us over that terrain. And we don’t even know if there’s another saddle here.”
“The palomino’s...” Jess said, but with doubt in her voice. Her horse-self was an athletic creature, sturdy in size and build and well-sprung in the ribs. The tall, rangy stallion had a leaner build and sharper withers and his saddle would pinch her back.
“The palomino!” Dayna said. “We could take him. That would make two horses.”
“He belongs to Trent,” Jess said.
Suliya glanced over her shoulder at the erstwhile head courier for Second Siccawei. “Let Garvin deal with that.”
Jess shook her head, short and sharp. “He belongs to Trent.”
Suliya said, “But—” and Dayna stopped her.
“Jess makes the call on that one,” she said. “I can talk to Trent. The question is, can you ride Lady without a saddle?” The she stopped, her expression going wry. “Or maybe I should try that, because I’m not sure I can handle that stud.”
“The saddle is important for you. He will be easier, following me,” Jess said, shivering as the cold bit through her sweater. She looked at the younger courier, trying to keep her misgivings from her face. “Only Carey and Jaime,” she started, and then stopped, hunting for words that could express the depth of her misgivings without insulting Suliya.
“Don’t worry,” Suliya said, too glibly to be of any real comfort. “We won’t have any trouble. And we both know the way.”
“I’m going to find Trent,” Dayna said. “I’ll leave you two to settle things with our good friend Garvin.” She peeled off her coat and gave it to Jess. “I’ll bring your coat and saddlebags when I come back out.”
Jess took the coat gratefully, although the stretch of it across her shoulders was a laughable thing. As Dayna dashed out the barn and back to the log-walled hold, Jess strode down the aisle, Suliya on her heels. She found sullen defiance stamped in every heavy feature of Garvin’s face. He said, “Don’t think you can make trouble for me—”
“You have made your own trouble,” Jess said, no longer interested in him, but only in getting on the road. In returning to Carey, the solid and dependable part of a world now fracturing around her. “We need the gear for the palomino, and I need to see your extra bridles. A sidepull, if you have it.”
“This isn’t a training facility—we’ve got a couple of extra bridles, but no sidepulls. And that palomino’s not going anywhere—”
Jess said nothing, just looked at the man. After a long moment, he cursed and flung himself gracelessly down the aisle toward the tack room.
Jess didn’t care. She’d already put the man behind her, and Anfeald ahead.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Nine
Lady smelled the death long before they reached it.
Smelled it and tasted it and felt the fear of it trickle through her withers and stiffen her back. Not death precisely... a wrongness with death twisted in.
She tensed, jigging along the path with her neck raised, very little of the Jess-self present. For now, she was Lady—a smart, honest horse, straightforward in thought and action and just as wary of wrongness as any other horse, just as concerned.
Just as needy for her rider’s support.
Suliya, feeling Lady’s gaits shorten, clamped down on the reins, tightening her thighs around Lady’s barrel. Lady’s head shot higher—trapped by those reins, by the unpleasant pressure on her tongue from this thick, unfamiliar bit... by Suliya’s demands.
Ramble, his deep gold color hidden beneath a light wint
er coat, pale mane and tail floating in pampered thickness, tread close on her heels—crowding her, scenting her... occasionally snaking his neck as if to herd her, just as often nickering an invitation to admire his magnificence. He was far too preoccupied with Lady’s presence to care about the inexperienced rider clinging to his saddle, and didn’t yet care about the wrongness they approached—even if he’d been here once before, and survived it when no one else had.
A small covey of wood grouse burst into flight from the path-side brush. Lady startled sideways.
The bit jerked in her mouth—run from it—legs clamped around her barrel—run from it—and her rider’s fearful stiffness pervaded Lady—run from it!
She didn’t. Legs spraddled, head flung high... she somehow didn’t.
Bolting was against Carey’s Rules.
After a long moment, Suliya began to breathe again, probably never supposing that Lady could tell she wasn’t—and that her failure to do so frightened Lady as much as anything.
Dayna said dryly, “Maybe we should walk through this spot.”
“She knows better,” Suliya said, frustration pushing the breathless tension in her voice.
“I’ve never,” Dayna said, dismounting the palomino with a little stagger, “seen anyone pull her mouth like that before. And I mean ever. Don’t think Jess won’t remember when she changes back.”
“She—” Suliya said, and stopped; after a moment, the tense pull of the bit eased. Lady, reassured by Dayna’s matter-of-fact behavior, lowered her head to huff at the bush where the grouse had been.
“They’re gone,” Dayna said, and gave her a pat on the neck. Suliya threw a leg over Lady’s rump and slid down to land beside her, and Lady lowered her head far enough to give a relieved, mane-flapping shake.
But she didn’t relax completely. Not with the wrongness ahead.
Then Dayna, too, stopped short. “Burning Hells,” she said, her voice full of intricate human feeling. Surprise and fear and awe—Lady recognized them all, and her ears flicked forward and back... listening to Dayna, listening for danger.
“What is it?” Suliya flipped the reins over Lady’s head, giving them an absent tug before Lady had a chance to step out politely on her own—and not noticing Lady’s offended hard, round chin.
Oh, yes, she would remember.
“The ugly spot through the null wards!” Dayna said. The palomino snorted wariness behind her shoulder.
“Maybe they missed some of it when they set the wards,” Suliya said. Lady, too, snorted at the ground before them, bringing her head up in an attempt to focus—to make sense of it. The offensive and alarming smell was stronger than ever.
“Not they,” Dayna said pointedly. “Me. I know damn well we had this area contained. There’s no way—”
But she stopped short, and after a moment said more quietly, “I guess there is a way, whatever it is. I could probably tell, if I got close enough—”
“No!” Suliya said, and Lady danced a little in place at that sharp tone.
Dayna laughed with no amusement whatsoever. “Theoretically, I could tell. But let’s just give this whole mangled mangle a very wide detour. The horses don’t want anything to do with it, and I don’t want to push them any harder.”
Suliya glanced at Lady’s bare back, giving it a rueful pat before she swung herself up, athletically light as she settled, at least. “She’s... more sensitive than other horses I’ve ridden.”
“She warned you.” Dayna turned the palomino around, hunting the woods for something to stand on just so she could reach the stirrup. “Carey’s a head courier with the reputation for the best training stable in Camolen, and Jaime rides the highest levels of competition at home. You might be good, but you’re not that good.”
Suliya said nothing... but Lady knew resistance when it sat on her back.
~~~~~
Arlen, bedecked in a faded orange knit shirt that made him wince, his hair shorn close to the nape and the short thickness of it absurdly refusing to lie tame at a forgotten forehead cowlick, tucked his bulging saddlebags behind his calves and tried to keep his knees from straying into the coach space of the tired-looking man seated opposite him.
They’d grunted acknowledgment upon embarking, muttering a few polite words about the weather (sparkling clear); the roads (not as kept as a coach route should be); and the inconvenience of the service failures (damned inconvenient).
“Family expected me home two days ago,” the man said, annoyed but resigned. “The Council never thinks of the rest of us when these things happen. Insignificant, that’s us.”
Arlen wanted to say, Fool! Can’t you tell something horrible has happened? Is still happening? Instead he rubbed a finger over the smooth and sensitive area his mustache had once covered and said, “Mmm.”
“My sister is probably worried spelless.” The neatly arrayed woman sitting beside Arlen shifted uncomfortably. The coach’s permalight caught the glint of her hand jewels; she fussed at one of them in a fitful gesture. “But surely she’ll realize I had to take a roadcoach.”
And then there was Jaime, who must still believe that Arlen had been killed. He’d almost reached her the evening before, he was certain of it. And as careful as he’d have to be with magic—about splashing his signature around where other sensitives could recognize it, revealing his presence before he’d figured out what had happened, what was happening, and how to respond to it—he knew he’d try again this evening.
He’d try, and he’d keep on trying until he was close enough to cross the distance between them, or until she somehow recognized his far-off touch and responded as she could.
“How about you?” the woman asked him, her raised voice indicating it hadn’t been the first time she’d tried to get his attention. “Do you have family expecting you?”
“Hmm?” he said, coming back from his thoughts. Jaime. Carey. Jess. His family.
The people most associated with Arlen the wizard, the man he couldn’t be.
He offered her a vague smile. “No,” he said. “No one.”
But he closed his eyes and thought of them all. Thought of her.
I’m on my way, Jaime. Whatever’s happening, hold on.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Ten
On a small farm in eastern Camolen, beyond the boundaries of Sallatier Precinct and within a craggy area so sparsely populated its namesake wizard hasn’t the skills to earn a place on primary or secondary councils, reality twists. A young boy hunts his family’s hardy wool-producing goats... and eventually, he finds them.
What’s left of them.
~~~~~
Suliya slid from Lady’s warm back with a groan, shoving at Anfeald’s heavy stable door. Dayna, too, dismounted, although the doors were made to ride through. The sooner out of the saddle, the better. And oh, bless the warmth of the stable, its cobbled aisle and big square stalls and the welcoming scent of horseflesh.
Suliya directed Dayna to an empty guest stall and hesitated before Jess’s changing stall, easing the bit from the mare’s mouth. She’d never expected it would take so long to get here, not even with detours around the damaged area and the mud-slide along the river bank.
But then, she’d never considered just how much she relied on her stirrups in such terrain, or just how slick a horse’s bare back could be.
It had been just as hard on the mare, she knew—not that she’d ever admit just how many times Lady’s sudden shift of weight or speed had kept Suliya on her back.
She looped Lady’s borrowed bridle over her shoulder and grabbed a halter for the stallion; not even the day’s ride had taken the wander out of the palomino’s lips, and she’d tie him when she pulled the saddle off.
Dayna waited outside the stall with the palomino’s bridle, holding it with a puzzled look—as well she might, for she’d unbuckled it in the wrong places, creating a tangle of disparate leather pieces. Suliya handed over Lady’s bridle and slipped inside to tie the stallion and make short
work of untacking him, emerging with his saddle propped against her hip. “We need to make sure he gets a good grooming,” she said. “And we need to get his mane spelled with an orange lock as soon as possible. Can you—?”
Dayna lifted a questioning eyebrow, her face badly wind-flushed, her sandy hair pulling out of its tie-back.
“It means he bites,” Suliya said wryly, hanging the halter at the door.
Dayna shook her head. “Specialty spell,” she said. “Probably one of those easy ones—you just have to know the spell. I don’t.”
Jess came up the aisle at somewhat less than her usual energetic pace, her hair in need of a brushing. She stopped next to Dayna and turned her rich brown, too-large eyes on Suliya for a long moment.
A very long moment.
Suliya felt the sudden urge to say, I wouldn’t have pulled if you hadn’t been bouncing around like a three-year-old! and somehow found the necessary restraint to not.
Jess eventually released a long sigh, fluttering it slightly through her lips just as a horse might do. She said, “I know the spell,” and went into the stall, laying four quiet fingers on the horse’s crest.
After a moment, bright orange color crept down the flaxen mane, a streak for each finger.
“Four streaks,” Dayna said. “I take it that’s pretty bad.”
Jess retreated from the stall and latched the sliding door closed behind her. “It means to always watch.” She bent to retrieve the saddlebags—and instantly abandoned them, straightening to head for the back cross-aisle with most of her usual spring returned to her step.
“Carey,” Dayna said with satisfaction, just before Carey rounded the corner.
“How’d she—?” Suliya stared, baffled.
“His step, I think.” Dayna watched with a small, tired smile—but it faded when Carey opened his arms and wrapped Jess up in a long embrace, pulling back to wipe some imagined smudge from her cheek and smooth her wayward dun hair. He had a habit of trailing his hand down the dark central stripe of it; he did that now.
“What’s wrong?” Suliya asked her, watching her concern grow.
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