Ramble persisted, bringing Jess's hand back into the stall, leaning his brow against the bars to regard her.
"Going home?" he asked, not for the first time that morning.
"Yes," Jess told him. "Soon." And to Suliya, "If he is the kind of man to send people like Wheeler after people like us, he is careful enough to make certain what you saw was not important. He cares what you think."
"Ay!" she said, offended. "As if you've spent so much time in spell corps facilities to know what is and isn't important."
Jess gave her a brief frown, a flattened ear; she traded her hand for a grape and moved away from the stall. After the day before, Ramble made no attempt to leave his safe area on his own; he spent a great deal of time making soft snorting noises at the remains of Wheeler's partner.
Suliya offered her own hand to Ramble, who wasn't interested. Pretending the rejection hadn't happened, she flung herself down on the hay bale that would precede Jess and Ramble to Camolen and plopped her chin in her hands, elbows on knees. "I just don't spell it," she said. "It is a company that makes people's lives easier and provides services. Why do they need someone like Wheeler?"
Jess shook her head. "I used to think I understood human things, but now I know I don't. And that was just small human things, like friendship and how you are with one another. I have no answers about big things like companies."
Suliya gave her a funny look, wrinkling her nose; all her excessive mannerisms dropped away for this moment to show the core Suliya. "Jess," she said, "friendship is the big thing. And you have that. You have all these friends looking out for you—all the couriers at Anfeald, that guy Ander who visits from Kymmet and wants you bootin' bad, and Mark and Jaime and, I swear, everyone who meets you. I hated the way you had so many friends so soon after you got to Anfeald, and I had none. And you have Carey. The bigfriendship , if you trail my meaning."
Jess looked at Ramble—still leaning against the bars, regarding her with clear possessiveness. Simple.
Unmistakable. "I know what you think to say," she said, "but I'm not sure you are right. Or if you are, that I can understand enough to be on the other side of those things and . . . manage."
Suliya sunk back into herself. "Some people just don't know when they have everything—"
But she broke off as one of the double doors slid aside, filling the aisle with indirect sunlight that made the overhead fluorescents pale in comparison. Dayna entered, followed by Mark, who opened the door yet further for his own larger self, and Wheeler, and . . . Carey.
Of them all, only Wheeler looked largely unaffected by recent events. The smile Dayna gave Jess came across as wan and tired, as though the efforts of the previous day had continued to drain her through the night. Mark pulled off sunglasses to reveal worry that didn't belong in those largely carefree eyes, his gaze moving from Dayna to Carey to Wheeler to Jess as if he couldn't decide which concern to settle on. And Carey . . .
She couldn't look at him long enough to know just what struck her as not-right. Then again, he didn't want her to go. Didn't want there to be consequences to the moment he'd walked out into this barn to interrogate Ramble. Or the moment before that, when he'd taken a palomino stallion and brought him to this world.
She didn't want there to be consequences, either. But there were.
"I don't understand," Suliya said, "why we don't all just go home. Right now. Why should any of us stay in this place? We came to hear what Ramble could tell us, and we have—even if it amounted to nothing.
Let's go back then, okay?" She added the American colloquialism awkwardly, but pleased with it.
Oddly, Carey glanced at Wheeler, a subtle reaction that made Jess glance at the man herself.
Comfortable under the scrutiny, he said, "It's not a good idea. You're safer here right now."
"But Jess is going back. And Ramble."
"Horses," said Ramble unexpectedly, startling them all as he lurked uneasily by the stall door and prodding a little grin out of Mark.
And from Wheeler as well. "That's the crux of it," he said. "They'll be two horses in a disrupted land.
Even if SpellForge sends out a FreeCast team to their arrival site—"
"They cannot catch us," Jess said scornfully. SpellForge had not been a consideration in her decision.
She was taking Ramble back to go home, not to play a role in human games.
"Maybe," Wheeler said. "More likely, they won't think to try."
"They wouldn't think to try for me, either," Suliya said. "They don't know I'm here. And it's Dayna and Carey they really want, I'm spellin'."
Wheeler said nothing, but his light brown eyes glinted with mild amusement . . . as close to confirmation as he'd no doubt ever give.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Dayna said. "You guys seem to think I'm some sort of walking magic shop.
We need a spell, Dayna, pull off a miracle, Dayna. Well, I'm not. I'm tired, I'm making things up, and the only reason I know half this stuff in the first place is because I jumped into the deep end— without water wings—when I landed on Camolen. I'm not supposed to know it yet. I'm supposed to be playing with safe little spells to . . . to . . ." and she glared at Suliya, "straighten hair!"
"You keep the wrong company for that," Carey said, not a little ruefully.
Suliya's hand crept up to her shoulder-length curls in a protective gesture and she glared back at Dayna.
"Are you saying you can't get us back?"
"That's right." Dayna crossed her arms, daring Suliya to challenge her word on it. "Can't. Not right now.
Everything I've got is going into the spell for these two, and I have no idea when I'll feel ready to try siphoning magic into storage stones again. If you had any idea how close we came to—"
"It's all right, Dayna," Carey said. His voice was a little raggedy; he cleared his throat, shooting Wheeler a baleful look that only Wheeler seemed to understand. Jess certainly didn't. "Wheeler is right, I think.
Best that we're not in Camolen right now. Jess will get what little we know to Jaime, and we'll all take a deep breath before we go back."
"I don't need a deep breath," Suliya muttered.
"Wheeler could probably do something about that," Carey muttered back, suppressing a cough that nonetheless made itself obvious. Jess watched Wheeler for a reaction, trying to understand . . . but the man gave no clues. No change of expression, no meaningful glances.
Instead he looked straight at Jess. "I should try to stop you."
"Why aren't you?" she asked him.
"Aside from the fact that creating another major scuffle right now will cause me more trouble than it'll save?"
"Aside from that." She, too, could use light human sarcasm when she chose . . . that she chose so rarely gave it all the more impact.
He shrugged—one-shouldered, the hand of his injured arm tucked into his waistband. He said evenly, bluntly, "Because I don't think you'll succeed. Not getting caught is a whole lot different from reaching Anfeald Hold. Especially for two horses."
She wanted to snap at him . . . but she had no answer to that. He was right. And all she could do was lay back her phantom ears, tilting her head at that certain angle and doing it unequivocally enough that both Carey and Mark reacted, shifting uneasily, and Ramble glared, not following the byplay enough to know why Jess had gone angry, but ready to respond to it.
Wheeler shrugged again. He looked like the arm hurt.
Jess felt not the slightest twinge of guilt.
They all held their breath, waiting for the hay to come back. All of them, eyes riveted to the spot where the bale had been sitting, where it had wavered and then winked away. They weren't, Jess was sure, aware of their collective reaction. But she was. Ramble was. Both of them, shifting uneasily, knowing that holding breath generally followed on the heels of hearing something potentially threatening , and when the whole herd did it at once, run for your life! often came next.
Jess couldn't blame Ramble; he hadn't had
the chance to learn human habits. But she turned annoyance on herself, and she broke the moment that somehow seemed to hold them all. "It's gone," she said. "Now we'll go, too."
Dayna gave the slightest of sighs—the sound of relief, and also the sound of heavy responsibility. "I'm not sure where you'll end up, you know."
"I know." They'd talked about it the night before, briefly, before she and Carey had retreated to their privacy. Originally, the spell had dumped them out somewhere between Anfeald and Siccawei—Arlen's first attempt to bring someone back to Anfeald, off the mark. Dayna thought it might do the same, but since they were triggering it from a different location, she couldn't be sure. Dayna knew it held safeguards, that they wouldn't materialize inside a tree or rock . . . but that was all of which she was certain.
"We'll return. We'll recover. We'll eat. And we'll find Anfeald from wherever we are."
"You sound so certain," Mark said, a wistful note in his voice as he absently raised an arm to wipe the sweat off his cheek against the sleeve—the spring day, creeping past noon, had gone warm and humid, and the normally airy barn gave them no relief, not with hay bales blocking the airflow down the aisle.
"I am," Jess responded, aware of her own surprise. "For the first time in a while." She crossed her arms to grab the hem of her crop-top shirt, and Ramble took it as his cue, tugging at his own clothes in undisguised eagerness to be rid of them.
"This is where you leave," Carey said abruptly to Wheeler, even as Mark said, "Whoa, wait a minute Jess—give me a chance to say good-bye while you've still got some clothes on."
Jess tossed her head in mild irritation. "It doesn't matter."
But to them it did, and she knew it. And she did want to say good-bye to Mark. They hadn't spoken much about it, hadn't said I might never see you again , but they both knew it, just as Mark knew he might not see his own sister again. When he reached for Jess he did it in typical Mark fashion; arms open wide, he wrapped a big hug around her and lifted her right off her feet in spite of the fact they were nearly of the same height. "There," he said, and set her down to give her a kiss on the cheek. "That should last me until next time." But when he stepped back to look at her he faltered, and took her in for another, gentler embrace. "Okay," he said in her ear. "I admit it. There's never enough Jess until the next time."
"Never enough Mark," she said, knowing well enough why he jammed his sunglasses back on the moment he broke away. Men. She would teach him to cry, sometime. The next time, if there was one.
He took another step back and turned on his heel, grabbing Wheeler's good arm with none of the careful physical respect they'd given the SpellForge agent up to that point, literally dragging him the first few surprised steps out of the barn.
But Wheeler followed the rest of the way without resistance, only one backward glance at Carey and then Jess. After that, Dayna pinned Suliya with an unwavering, sky-eyed gaze, until Suliya belatedly threw her hands up and left, giving Ramble a reluctant glance as she closed the door behind her.
Ramble by then was out of his clothes, the spellstones sitting on top of the haphazard pile of material while he hovered in the stall doorway, waiting for permission to leave.
If nothing else, he was returning to Camolen with better manners than when he left.
Jess held out her hand and he came to her, though her eyes never left Carey. They'd said their good-byes the night before. The day before, when Carey had made his choices. And possibly long days before that, when he'd determined to bring Ramble here in the first place. She wasn't sure, and she could see from his expression as he moved up beside Dayna that neither was he. "We'll make it back," he said.
"Soon. I'll see you in Anfeald."
Anfeald. Home to her, whether she was horse or human. She wanted to say he might be safer if he stayed here, with SpellForge agents after him and magic gone awry in Camolen. But he'd take it the wrong way, the way she didn't mean it, so she stayed silent, watching him. Hoping he could read her as well as ever, barring those times he refused to listen at all. That he could see she wasn't leaving him, but that she was returning to something else.
"Soon," was all she could say, and she could barely get it out at all. Quickly, unable to bear it any longer, she stripped off her clothes, threw them out of the spell area, and stood in the aisle with Ramble's warm broad hand in hers.
"Here goes," Dayna said. "See you on the other side, Jess."
"Thank you," Jess told her, removing her gaze from Carey just long enough to catch Dayna's eye, to make the words mean more than just two simple syllables.
Dayna nodded, closing her eyes to concentrate, her storage stones clenched in one hand and the magic rising around her. Rising around Jess and Ramble, percolating right through them. And Carey lifted his head, his eyes full of purpose, opening his mouth to call something, an offering. " Braveheart," he said, but—startled—bent over for a sudden fit of harsh, deep coughing.
When he straightened the magic had her, slower than a spellstone as Dayna pulled it together but just as strong, percolating up through her skin and bone and muscle with Ramble's scared and tightening grip on her hand the only counterpoint. When Carey straightened— He stared at the bright red blood covering his palm, put fingers to the blood at his lips, lifted them to stare in disbelief. Looked over his hand to meet her eyes, a moment of shock and significance passing between them.
The magic took her away.
Chapter 22
She remembered this.
All of it.
The harsh change, the shock that came with it, not easing from one form into another, but being jerked out of one and crammed into the other. The dull ease with which she could simply continue to lie on the rough ground, rocks jabbing her skin and a damp drizzle leaking down from a featureless grey sky to bead upon her deep dun coat. The droplets collected, marking the time Lady spent stretched out on her side as they gathered, outgrew themselves, and rolled down her well-sprung barrel, leaving damp trails behind. Water beaded on her long black lashes, framing dull eyes. Water beaded on her whiskers and dribbled into her exposed nostril, inspiring not so much as a twitch.
Not at first.
Hampered by the rough transition, Lady floundered in the leftover Jess-thoughts, the ones full of concepts and meanings too complex for her abilities. She needed an anchor, a single simple thought to start with. Something to build on.
Blood.
Wrongness.
Her legs flailed in a brief spurt of energy, hooves scraping against the rocky ground, churning up clots of lime mud and grey, wintering moss; she heaved herself up to rest on her chest, front legs stretched awkwardly before her. Beside her, a palomino, his gold coat deepened by blotches where water soaked through at hip and shoulder and the slabby curve of rib, lay motionless aside from shallow, eratic breathing.
Blood.
Wrongness.
Message for Anfeald.
She braced her front legs against the top-slick ground, digging down to a firmer base, and shoved herself to her feet to stand braced, head down, long mane and forelock obscuring her eyes and a coating of mud along one side turning her into a half-and-half horse—half dun with all the primitive markings a dun could carry, and half coated by light clay with gravelly little rocks sticking to her skin, smirching the boney features of her face above eye and cheek and jaw.
Lady again. A rough, hard slap from one form to another, but Lady again. Home.
Blood.
Carey, coughing so hard, looking at his own frothy bright blood with befuddled surprise. Back in what Lady vaguely thought of as the other world , knowing only that she couldn't reach it . . . knowing she'd chosen to leave and now feeling the pull of her fear for him.
She lifted her head slightly, snorting harshly to clear her nose of water and mud—and as much as the memory-sight of Carey's blood worried her, the sight of the palomino relieved her. Ramble. Himself again. She took a step closer, running her whiskers along his hip, taking in the strong wet and musk
y scent of him. His ear flicked; he knew she was there. But his open eyes were as dull as hers had been, and he offered her no other response.
She nickered at him, barely making a sound. Question and request. Get up. Get moving. Find yourself.
The ear subsided; the eye closed.
She nuzzled his hip again—and when he didn't respond, she bit him.
His head jerked up; she bit him again. Hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to wound. He surged to his feet, a two-toned horse just as she, and stood with his head lowered to shake like a dog—orange-streaked mane flopping, small stones flying, freeing himself from the confines of what until so recently he'd been. And then he snorted—great big sneezy snorts, as wet as the drizzle around them, a whole series of them.
When he lifted his head, his eyes had brightened. He knew he'd come back to what he wanted to be, and unlike Lady, he'd hardly been human long enough even to consider taking on the form again. He was simply Ramble, a palomino stallion who had once been human and who for some time—a short while or maybe the rest of his life—might, if he chose, have a certain insight on human behavior.
Although it looked as though he might choose not . For he lowered his head again, bogging it, leaping into a back-arching buck and then another, squealing and grunting and charging a small circle with the pure physical expression of aggressive joy at shedding that human form. His second circle around he tried to entice Jess into the game, but she tucked her tail and haunches and tipped her head to warn him off with flattened ears; he veered away.
After a moment he approached her more courteously, waiting for permission to come all the way to her, to arch his neck over hers and most demurely nibble along the base of her mane. Flirting, but not strongly. Connecting.
Claiming.
It felt strange. Strange because Lady, sorting equine memory, could not remember a time since first becoming Jess that she'd had a simple, quiet social moment with a herd member. Strange because the Jess-voice in her head made mild protest, trying to draw her attention to Carey and to Jaime at Anfeald.
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