Carey ducked his head to hide a rueful smile. They’d had a discussion or two about the need to keep close contact out of the job room, but just this once...
He would have welcomed her.
“Lady’s not going out today?” she asked, poking her hand into the empty space assigned to her horse-self.
He shook his head. “Thought I’d hold you back in case something comes up. Everything else today is pretty routine, as much as there is of it.”
“Suliya is going out,” she observed, nowhere near a criticism.
“Do I know her?” Jaime said. “Pretty young woman, not as dark as Auntie Pib? Hasn’t taken any lessons yet?”
“That’s her,” Dayna said, and then, a more personal aside, “You doing okay, Jaime?”
Jaime took a quick breath—as if she’d been slapped. Dayna immediately said, “Never mind. Not here.”
“No,” Jaime said. “Not here.”
But Jess had ignored this exchange, her attention on Carey and her expression... concerned. Hesitant. Hunting for words.
He broke his own rules and took her hand. She said, “Suliya...” frowned, and then glanced at Dayna. Carey didn’t understand why, not at first.
Dayna snorted and filled him in, brusque where Jess was trying to learn tact. “She’s hardly on the same level as the rest of your riders.”
Carey ran a thumb absently along Jess’s long fingers, and thought he understood where this turn of conversation came from. “She rode Lady yesterday, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Jess said, watching his face, making sure he understood. “But not again.”
“Not to worry, Jess,” he said. “She’s going out on old Bristen today, on the pasture-side run to the little peacekeeper station.”
Her anxiety eased away. “You do know.”
He grinned at her. “I know.”
“She could be good...”
He rubbed at the corner of his mouth, trying to keep the grin from getting bigger. “I know that, too.”
“Good.” And for Jess, that was that was enough—to know he knew. She trusted him in this, as she trusted him in everything.
If she found out about their intent to use the changespell... when she found out...
Best by far to have it a done deal before she learned of it. A done deal, and a successful one. And even so...
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze and she smiled at him, unaware there was anything behind the gesture besides the spontaneous expression of his feeling for her.
Somehow that made it worse.
~~~~~
Despite the pall hanging over the stable, Jess found solace with the hold youngsters, refining basic ground manners with an instinct no human could hope to have. And Jaime smiled, watching her, until Jess declared herself done.
Then she could see Jaime’s thoughts return to the things that hung over them all, and her smile faded.
“Let’s go see if there’s any news, then,” Jaime said. “I want to talk to Simney, see if there’s anything she can do for these... events of mine.”
“You think the thing with your head will come back tonight?” Jess fastened the toggle-flap of her coat, preparing to lead the yearling back into the crisp day and to his paddock behind the hold-hill.
Jaime said fervently, “I sure hope not. But if it does, I’d like to be ready. Even if it means putting me straight to sleep for the night.” She shook her head at the thought of it. “Go put that kiddo back in the paddock; I’ll wait for you in the job room, where it’s nice and warm.”
Jess stuck her tongue out in a recently acquired gesture that spanned both worlds and led the yearling outside, tromping across the snow-crusty ground to the closest paddock where the young horses had a small herd of their own, overseen by a retired mare who made sure they kept their manners. Cold bit through her threadbare pants, and she ran back to the small rear entrance of the stables in a slippy-slidey rush.
She would have headed straight for the job room, releasing jacket toggles on the way, if she hadn’t heard Dayna’s briefly raised voice from down the aisle.
Dayna, in the stable?
She followed the voices to one of the big, private foaling stalls at the end of the aisle—at this time of year, they were usually bare and cold. But as she walked closer, head tipping with the curiosity of it and phantom ears flicking back and forth for clues, Dayna’s voice rose again and she had no doubt. Dayna and... Carey?
Jess hesitated outside the sliding door, making no attempt to conceal herself as she looked through the bars of the upper half. Dayna, as she’d heard. Carey. The stall, fully bedded on one half and in the back, a pile of blankets and... clothes?
And the palomino stallion.
Jess’s stomach clenched, and while she didn’t yet understand, she knew to heed it.
The palomino stood at the end of the lead in Carey’s hand, munching carelessly at a handful of hay. Had Carey been paying attention, the set of the stallion’s ears would have told him to look for someone in the aisle.
He wasn’t.
“It ought to have worked,” Dayna said, anger tingeing her voice. “That last one really ought to have done it.”
Carey rubbed a hand along his jaw; he had that tired look that Jess knew so well from these past days, and something more besides. Worry.
A new kind of worry.
“They’re all pretty recent spells,” he said. “Maybe we wait.”
Wait for what? Jess moved closer, right up to the door—her mouth open to ask the question, hesitating until they noticed she was there.
Dayna gestured vehemently at the horse. “Wait? With who knows what out there going dangerous, the new Council on the wrong track, and the only answers stuck inside this annoying horse?”
They wanted answers from the horse.
Carey’s response held the frustration showing on his face. “You’ve been through every variation of the spell you know, and you said it yourself—no one knows this spell better than you.”
“Changespell!” Jess blurted.
The stallion whipped his head up, more alarmed by Dayna and Carey’s startlement than by Jess; he’d known she was there all along. Dayna scowled, muttering an obscenity she hadn’t learned on Earth.
But it was Carey to whom Jess looked. Carey, with his expression cycling from surprised to aghast to... guilt.
“Changespell,” Jess said again, only this time she whispered it. “Carey—”
“Jess—” he interrupted, taking a step toward her as he thrust the lead rope at Dayna. “It’s all we could think of. We had to try—”
“No.” Jess said it firmly and decisively; she shook her head once, her chin lifting. “Not this.”
“You said it yourself—he saw what happened.” Dayna took a wary step away from the stallion and his twitching lips. “He can tell us—”
“No.” Jess stood in the door, not backing away when Carey opened it. “No,” she said in rising anger, “he can not.”
Dayna said, “If he was human...” and let the implication stand on its own.
“What do you think, if he was human? He would have no words, he would have no knowledge of himself. He would be scared and angry. He would be of no use to you, and you have no right!”
“Jess?” Jaime’s hail came down the aisle, its tone puzzled. But Jess didn’t look away from Carey’s grim face. Couldn’t look away.
Jaime came up softly beside Jess, sliding the door open another foot and looking from face to face—taking in Dayna’s stubborn expression, Carey’s guilt and determination, and Jess’s outright anger. “My God,” she said. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“It’s exactly what you think it is,” Dayna said. “And for darned good reason.”
Jaime didn’t even hesitate. “If the reasons had been good enough, you wouldn’t have done this behind our backs.”
Carey remained silent, watching Jess—trying, she thought, to say something with hazel eyes gone dark with the tilt of his
head, full of pleading words.
She was in no mood to listen.
Dayna gave the lead shank a desperate-looking yank as the stallion eyed her arm, chewing hay with the twitching lips that gave him away. Her voice held a hint that same desperation. “We did it this way to avoid just this—it’s a waste of time!”
“Only if you think you get to make decisions for the rest of us,” Jaime said, placing a quiet hand on Jess’s arm.
“Jaime,” Carey said, his voice low. “Jess. We aren’t making decisions for anyone but this horse. And when it comes to that, I do get to make those kinds of decisions in this stable.”
This horse.
“Trent might disagree,” Jaime said.
“This horse?” Jess said, feeling the sting of it.
“Trent might,” Carey admitted. “I’ll accept the consequences for that.”
Jess couldn’t stop it; the flare of her nostrils, the slight tremble of her chin. She felt it and she hated it, because it meant she suddenly wasn’t so much angry as she was hurt, and angry was so much easier. She said in a low voice, “And me?”
“Ah, Jess,” he said. “Braveheart, I need you to understand—we’ve got an enemy out there, and we don’t know anything about him. Her. Them. We don’t know what happened to Arlen, to any of them. This is our only chance to find out. What choice do we have?”
“You remember seeing the animals who were changed last year,” she said in that same low tone. “What it did to them. Even if you change him, you may learn nothing. He may know nothing. You risk too much for him.”
He quelled Dayna with a look when she would have interjected a comment. This moment was between Carey and Jess... and only Carey and Jess.
“I know those things,” he told her. “But the risk of not doing this is just too great to ignore.”
She eyed him. A moment ago she would have trusted him with her life, with her heart. Now she didn’t know.
It hurt.
He glanced at Dayna, as if he didn’t see it. Didn’t see it at all. “It’s moot point, if we can’t manage the spell.”
“I’ll find a way,” Dayna muttered, as much to herself as anyone else. She jerked her hand away from the palomino just in time. “Burning Hells, Carey, take this lead rope. This horse must be carnivorous.”
“No,” Jess said, and let her words be pointed. “He’s a stallion who spends too much time in a stall with no one bothering to teach him manners or give him things to think about. He’s playing with you.”
“If he really wanted to bite you,” Jaime added dryly, “your arm would be broken by now.”
Jess gave Dayna a long, even look. “He won’t be any different if you change him. Just like I had Lady’s manners when you found me.” She thought about the things that she and Lady shared, from their basic natures right down to her sly practice of stepping on the feet of fools. She still had Lady’s manners and habits.
She was Lady.
“He’ll bite, you mean,” Dayna said in flat distaste.
“All that and more, I would imagine,” Carey agreed. “I never said it would be easy to manage him. Nothing like when you took Jess in.”
Dayna gave Jess a sudden narrow-eyed stare, a piercing look that made Jess shift uneasily. “You ended up as human because Carey used the world travel spell, and a glitch in the adaption sequence changed you. The first world travel spell, that’s what we need! It’s a whole year older than the current changespell version. If I can’t circumvent the changespell problems... that’s our answer!”
“You want to hit Ohio with a human version of that?” Jaime said with a skeptical twist of face, nodding at the stallion. Bored, the horse pawed at the bedding, digging himself a hole. “Yeah, that makes a whole lotta sense.”
Carey moved the horse to the other side of the stall, deftly looping the lead rope to a wall-mounted ring. “Leave Anfeald?”
“I’m not exactly keen on going back, either,” Dayna said. “No matter how much I miss McDonald’s fries. But it’s an option.” She eyed the stallion in a way that gave Jess the sudden impulse to leave. “We’d need me to keep a solid lifeline with magic. And Carey, just because I know he’d never let anyone else run off and have all the fun. And... Jess. To handle the stallion. To help him.”
Jess wished she’d followed that impulse. That she’d gone off to mix a special mash for the hard-working horses. That she’d gone upstairs to meet the silly demands of Arlen’s calico.
Anywhere but here, to hear the choice Dayna asked of her.
She could help the stallion, or not. She could do this thing she hated, or refuse them and allow the stallion to suffer a harder—maybe impossible—transition.
The anger returned.
The moment might have turned into a standoff of glares if Natt hadn’t come rushing down the aisle, his threadbare dresscoat flapping with the breeze of his movement. “Jaime! Jess—have you seen Carey?”
Jess stepped back so Carey could exit the stall, not quite leaving him the space to do it gracefully. He glanced at her; he knew aggressive equine posture when he saw it. “Natt,” he said. “Don’t tell me—”
“It’s not like last time,” Natt assured him quickly. “But maybe just as serious. The... event... that killed the Council, the damage... there’s a new spot. Mangles, they’re calling it.”
Dayna slipped easily past Jess to join the conversation outside the stall. “I already reported yesterday that the mangle was spreading.”
“More than spreading,” Natt said. “It’s shown up somewhere else entirely. Out in Sallatier Precinct, near Lander Chesba’s hold.”
Carey stiffened. “Was anyone hurt?”
Natt shook his head with reassuring calm. “No. One of Chesba’s couriers found it.”
“Then I’m right,” Dayna said, not looking pleased about it. “It’s not just a matter of figuring out who killed the Council. It’s bigger than that, and we’re all in danger until someone puts a check on whoever’s behind this.”
“Maybe now the new Council will be more interested in your observations,” Natt offered.
Dayna snorted. “Maybe,” she said, unconvinced. “But I’ve already told them everything I know. They don’t need me back there.”
“They do if you’re the only one who can feel—” Natt started, but cut himself off at Dayna’s implacable expression.
“I tried it their way,” she said. “Let them keep trying it their way. More power to them if they make any headway. Me... I’m going back to doing things my way.”
Watching Jess, his back straightening with a tired kind of resolve, Carey said, “I don’t think we truly have a choice anymore.”
But Jess didn’t meet his gaze, as much as she felt the weight of it. She looked at the stallion, instead—starting to doze now, his sheath relaxed, sex organ exposed. Raw and earthy, as stallions were.
Jess was under no illusions about dealing with this horse as a man. He would be just as earthy, unruly, and not interested in human rules. Although he was far from mean, he had too many years of coping behaviors gone uncorrected, and they would carry right over to his human form.
She should know.
And Carey should have listened.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter Twelve
Arlen shifted uncomfortably against the seat of the long-bodied coach. Only the second full day of coach travel and already he rued his bony posterior, an anatomical feature that until now had always seemed perfectly adequate.
Until now, with another small town behind him and yet another batch of passengers crowding the longcoach—none of whom seemed to understand that the service disruptions went far, far beyond their mere inconvenience.
So he sat in the six-hitch coach, exchanging the occasional murmur of conversation, reading a booklet on the history of needlework techniques and patterns... and determined to vary the strain on his anatomy by renting out a horse for the next leg of the journey.
The coach jolted, drawing widespread gasps. An
other jolt, and he heard the driver curse right through the separating door.
No little wonder. These long-bodied coaches were heavily spelled for stability and comfort. And everyone knew it, understanding instantly that this was a major failure. Fifteen otherwise stranded passengers, jostling back and forth and grabbing for purchase—showing the alarm that Arlen was trying to hide.
On the third jolt, the longcoach jerked and slewed around—the driver shouted to his horses, panic in his voice, and the wheels lifted beneath Arlen, tossing him upward to the accompaniment of screams—
As swiftly as that, he ran through a quick spell to bleed inertia. As swiftly as that, the coach settled back to the ground and came to a profound halt, jerking slightly once more as the horses hit the end of the suddenly motionless harness.
Men and women looked around, dazed, untangling themselves from each other and their belongings, their voices rising as the driver called back for them to stay calm and stay in the coach.
Arlen was already calm, and he had no intention of staying in the coach. He dropped his book on his saddlebags and slid the door open just wide enough to slip out, closing it again—knowing the others would soon follow suit regardless.
They would wish they hadn’t.
Misshapen, discolored areas potted the dirt road like deformed cow patties, gleaming with an oily sheen. No coach was designed to navigate such obstacles; no coach service wizard would have allowed the obstacles —whatever they were—to remain, not for an instant. They were plenty enough to cause this coach to wreck had he not—
Used magic. Flung his signature around for the world to perceive.
Small magic.
Someone would have to be looking for him to have detected it at all. Not much chance of that, given that he was likely presumed dead.
Or so he told himself.
He found the driver, a small pot-bellied man with a cap covering his baldness and seamed face that had been on the road for a lifetime. Ostensibly checking the near-side lead horse, still visibly trembling in reaction as his gaze lingered inexorably on the road ahead.
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