When Kelsey saw the white horse enter the pasture runs, she stopped breathing for a moment and squinted into the distance. Then she saw the Herald Whites of the man who walked just beside it, and with a pang of disappointment she continued across the green toward the inn. Shaking her head, she grimaced just before she took a deep breath and walked through the wide, serviceable doors.
"Kelsey, you're late. Again."
"How can you tell?" She pulled her dark hair back from her square face, twisted it into a makeshift coil, and wrapped it up with a small swathe of black silk—a parting gift from a friend who'd left the town to join a merchant caravan. It was the finest thing she owned, and the fact that she used it in day-to-day wear said a lot about her. Not, of course, that she had very many other places to wear it.
"Don't get smart with me," Torvan Peterson snapped, ; more for show than in anger. He had very little hair left, and professed a great resentment for anyone who managed to retain theirs, he was obviously a man who liked food and ale a little overmuch, and he owned the very practically named Torvan's Tavern. Children made games with that name, but not often in his presence. "Not," he added, "that I would disparage an improvement in your intellect." He stared at her expectantly, and she grimaced. "Well, out with it, girl. If you're going to be late, you can at least amuse me with a colorful excuse."
She rolled her eyes, donned her apron, and picked up a bar rag. "We've got a Herald as a guest."
"Chatting her up?"
"He, and no."
"Hardly much of an excuse, then. All right. The tables need cleaning. The lunchtime crowd was rather messy."
She could see that quite clearly.
On normal days, it wasn't so hard to come and work; work was a routine that added necessary punctuation to her life. She saw her friends here—the few that still remained within reach of the inn—and met strangers who traveled the trade routes with gossip, tales of outland adventures, and true news.
But when a Herald rode through, it made her whole life seem trivial and almost meaningless. She worked quickly, cleaning up crumbs and spills as she thought about her childhood dreams, and the woman who had— while she lived—encouraged them.
"You can be whatever you choose, Kelsey," her grandmother was fond of saying. "You've only to put your mind and your shoulders to it, and you'll do us all proud."
Kelsey snorted and blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. I can be whatever I choose, but I'll never be Chosen. In her youth she'd believed that to be Chosen by one of the Companions was a reward for merit. She'd done everything she could think of to be the perfect, good little girl, the perfect lady, the little hero. She had forsworn the usual childhood greed and the usual childhood rumbles for her studies with her grandmother; she had learned, in a fashion, to wield a weapon, and to think her way clear of troublesome situations without panicking much. Well, except for the small stampede of the cattle back at Pherson's, but anyone could be expected to be a little bit off their color in the midst of their first stampede.
She had done her best never to cheat or lie—excepting those lies that courtesy required; she shared every bounty she was given; in short, she had struggled to lead an exemplary life.
And for her pains, she had drifted into work at Tor-van's Tavern, listening to her friends, encouraging and supporting their dreams, no matter how wild, and watching them, one by one, drift out of her life, either by marriage, by childbirth, or by jobs that had taken them out of the village.
She had her dream, but it was a distant one now, and it only stung her when she came face to face with the fact that someone else—some other person, through no work, no effort, no obvious virtue of their own—was living the life that she had dreamed of and yearned for ever since she could remember.
Still, if the Heralds—they never traveled alone—came in for a meal and left their Companions in the pasture runs, she could sneak out for a few minutes and watch them, and pretend. Because no matter how stupid it was, she couldn't let go of her dream.
It was clear from the moment he walked into the tavern that something was wrong. Heralds were able—although how, she wasn't certain—to keep their Whites white and in very good repair, and this Herald's Whites were neither. He was pale, and the moment he stepped out of the glare of the doorway, she saw why; his arm was bound, but bleeding, and his face was scraped and bruised.
- "Excuse me," he said, in a very quiet, but very urgent voice, "I need help. My Companion is injured." " Heralds seldom traveled alone. Kelsey tucked her rag into her apron pocket and made the distance between the table and the door before Torvan had lifted the bar's gate.
"What—what happened?"
He shook his head, and it was obvious, this close up, that he was near collapse. She put an arm under his arms—she was not a weak woman—and half-walked, half-dragged him to a chair. "Don't worry about me," he said softly, his face graying. "She's hurt, and she needs help."
"Why don't I worry about both of you?" Kelsey replied, mimicking the stern tone of her grandmother in crisis. "Torvan—send Raymon for the doctor, and send Karin for the vet!" The Herald started to rise, and she blocked him with her arm. "And where do you think you're going?"
He opened his eyes at the tone of her voice, and studied her face as if truly seeing her for the first time. Then he smiled wanly. "Nowhere, ma'am," he replied. It was then that she realized that he was probably twice her age, with gray streaks through his long braid and two faded scars across his neck and cheek. His features were fine-boned, unlike her own; he looked like the son of a noble, except it was obvious that he was used to doing his own work.
"Good. What are you smiling at?"
"You. You remind me of my grandmother." The smile faded as he winced; his expression grew distant again. She knew that he was seeing not only the loss of the Herald he traveled his circuit with—for she was certain that that Herald must be dead—but also the fear of the loss of his Companion.
She brought him an ale and made him drink; he finished most of it before the doctors—human and animal—arrived.
"If you make her travel on the leg, you can probably get a few more miles down the road, but you'll lame her," the vet said, staring intently at the cleaned gash across the knee. "I don't know much about Companions—but I do know that if she were a horse, she would never have made it this far." That he didn't offer more,
and in the lecturing tone that he was wont to use, showed his respect for the Herald.
The Herald—who called himself Carris, although that was dearly not his full name—nodded grimly and wiped the sweat absently from his forehead with a handkerchief. His uniform was safely in the tub in Kelsey's room, and he wore no obvious weapons, although a sword and a bow were in easy reach. "How long will it be until she can travel safely?"
"Hard to say," the older man replied.
Cams nodded again, absorbing the words. The doctor had been and gone, and Kelsey had been forced to rather harsh words with both doctor and Herald before an uneasy truce had been reached between them.
"You don't interfere with His Majesty's business," she'd snarled at Dr. Lessar. "And you—what did you think we called the doctor for? He'll bind and treat that arm—and those ribs—even if you feel it's necessary to go out and break them again. Is that clear?"
The doctor laughed. "And you're telling me how to talk to a Herald?"
Oddly enough, the Herald laughed as well. And he did submit to the doctor's care, electing to more quietly ignore most of the doctor's subsequent advice.
Torvan accepted Kelsey's desertion with as much grace as he could muster during the season when the trade route was at its busiest and the tavern could be expected to have the most traffic. She did what she could to lend a hand between the doctors' visits with Carris and his Companion, but it was clear that she felt them both to be her concern, and clearer still that the Herald [was almost in bad enough shape to need it, so he gruffly chased her out of the dining room and told her to finish off her business.
&
nbsp; Her business took her to the stables, where, in the dying light, the orange flicker of lamps could be seen through the slats of the door. That's odd, she thought, as she lifted her own lamp a little higher. It wasn't completely dark by any means—but the stables tended to need a little light regardless of the time of day—and she shone that light into the warm shadows.
Cams was kneeling at the feet of a pinto mare, gently probing her knees. She nickered and nudged him, and he nearly fell over as he spun quickly to face Kelsey.
"What are you doing here?" they said in unison.
Then Carris smiled. "You know, lass," he said, although she'd passed the age of "lassdom" five years back, "you should consider a career in His Majesty's army. You've the makings of a fine regimental sergeant."
"Thanks," she replied, feeling that he meant to tease her, but not seeing anything in his words that could be viewed as perjorative. "You haven't answered my question."
He chuckled, and it added wrinkles to his eyes and mouth that suggested he often laughed. "No, lass, I haven't. What do you think of her?"
"Of—" She looked at the horse, and then realized that it wasn't. A horse. "That's your Companion."
"If she forgives me for the indignity and the desertion, then, yes, she is."
"Why—why have you done that?" She lowered her lamp, as if to offer the Companion a little more privacy. Her tone made it clear that she thought it almost sacrilegious.
"Don't you start as well," Carris said, mock severely. "I've done it," he added, his voice suddenly much more serious, "because I've a message that must be delivered—and I can't take her with me, but to leave her here, as an obvious Companion, is to risk her life."
Kelsey let the seconds tick back while she figured out exactly what he meant. Then she lifted the lamp again. "Are you crazy?" she said at last. "You can't ride with your arm like that and your ribs broken—you'll pierce your lungs for certain!"
The Companion bobbed her lovely head up and down almost vigorously.
"Don't start," Carris said again. "We've already covered that ground, and I've made my decision. She knows it's the right one." He stood slowly, but winced with
pain just the same as if he'd jumped up. "Kelsey, you've done as much as any girl can to help me—but I've one more favor to ask of you."
"W-what?"
"I want you to take care of her."
"Of . . . her?"
"My Companion, yes," he replied. "Her name is Arana." He waited for her to answer, and after five minutes had passed, he said, "Kelsey?"
She couldn't even speak. Instead, she walked past him, holding the lamp as if it were a shield. She approached the dyed Companion, met her eyes, and held them for a long time. Finally, she remembered that she wasn't alone, and had the grace to blush.
"I meant to tell you that dinner's been laid out for you. It's probably cold, but you should still get to it while you can."
"Kelsey?"
"I'll have to think about it," she replied, not taking her eyes off of Carris' Companion.
That night, with the moon at half-mast, it was dark enough that she stubbed her toes twice on the path to the stable. The lamp that she held was turned down as low as possible—she didn't want to attract attention from the field mice and the rats.
She wanted to look at Arana again, without Carris intruding upon the privacy of her old dreams and her old desires. Could she watch the Companion. Could she take care of her. Ha!
She opened the doors, paused as the smells of the hay and the horse scent hit her nostrils, and made her way in. Usually Companions weren't stabled like this—but Carris had insisted that Arana be as horselike as possible.
"Does she like sugar?"
Carris had laughed. "As much as a real horse."
She hadn't snuck into stables since she was child, but she'd lost none of her old instincts. She made her way, unerringly, to Arana's stall.
She wasn't particularly surprised to find Arana waiting for her. "Hello," she said softly. The Companion, as expected, didn't answer. A pang of disappointment, like a slightly off-key chord, rippled through her and vanished. "I'm Kelsey."
Arana lifted her head and nodded.
"I suppose you've met a lot of people like me. I—I always wanted to be a Herald. I've always prayed that one day, a Companion would Choose me. It's never happened," she added ruefully. "And I don't suppose you'd be willing to tell me why."
Arana put her head over the stall's door and let Kelsey scratch her. It was easier than scratching a normal horse; the Companion seemed to be more sensitive. "Doesn't matter. Cards wants me to stay here, with you, while he does some fool thing on his own, injured, without anyone to look after his back. What do you think of that?"
Arana said absolutely nothing, but she became completely still. Kelsey shook her head and lowered the lamp. "That's what I thought as well. Here. I brought you some sugar."
"Where do you think you're going?" Carris, dressed like a well-to-do villager, frowned as Kelsey let her backpack slide off her shoulders to land on the ground with a thump.
"Talked it out with Torvan," she replied, around her last mouthful of bread and cheese, "and he says it's a go." She swallowed, wiped her hands on her pants, rolled her hair into its familiar bun, and shoved her coin bag into the inner reaches of her shirt.
"What's a go?" Carris asked, suspicion giving him an aura of unease that made Kelsey want to laugh out loud.
"I'm going with you, Carris." She checked her long dagger, and then picked up her wooden bat. Made sure she had a hat, and a scarf to keep it attached to her head.
"That's preposterous," he replied. "You are doing no such thing."
She shrugged. "Whatever you say."
"Kelsey—"
"Look—what did you think you were going to do? Dress like that, but pick up a fast and fancy horse that'll take you to the capital?"
He looked taken aback.
"You'll stand out like a scarecrow. You're afraid that someone following you would recognize Arana, and if that's the case, you'll be recognized if you travel as you'd planned. Trust me."
"I wasn't aware that you'd studied the arts of subterfuge. You certainly haven't mastered the art of subtlety."
"Ho ho ho." She bent down and picked up her pack; slung it over one shoulder, and then bent down for his. "Don't argue with me," she said, not even bothering to look up. "I'll take the packs. You take your arm and your ribs. Oh, damn."
"What?"
"I almost forgot."
"What?"
"The hair. It has to go."
Carris was in a decidedly less cheerful mood when they finally departed the inn. "Look, Kelsey," he said tersely. "You may not believe this, but that hair was my single vanity."
"A man your age shouldn't be beholden to a single vanity," she replied sweetly. "Now come on. You've come at a good time—I've a friend who guards one of the caravan routes, and they're always looking for new hands."
"As a caravan guard in this territory?" Carris raised an eyebrow. "You do realize that with the upsurge in banditry lately, he's just asking for trouble?"
Something about the way he said the word "banditry" caught her attention; she pursued it like a cat does a mouse. "What do you know about the bandit problems?"
He didn't reply.
"This have something to do with the message you need to deliver?"
He nodded, but no matter how she pressed him, he would say nothing else.
Well, it's King's business, not mine, Kelsey thought. And probably better that I don't know. She knew enough, after all, to know that as a Herald he was trustworthy, and that anyone who tried to kill him was as much the King's enemy—and therefore her own—as a stranger could be. Still, she felt a twinge of envy; she knew that were she a Herald, they'd talk openly of their mission-like equals. Comrades.
As if he could read her thoughts—and it was rumored that some Heralds could—he said, "It isn't that I don't trust you, Kelsey."
"Don't bother with expl
anations. I can come up with a dozen good ones on your behalf and you don't even have to open your mouth." She paused, and then stopped. "You can wield that thing, can't you?"
"Both of them, yes," he replied, smiling.
"Good."
"What did you intend as a weapon?"
"This." She pulled her bat out of her pack and swung it in a wide circle. "I call it a club."
"You're going to sign on as a caravan guard wielding a club?"
"You've never seen me wield a club before," she assured him. Then she laughed. "You should see your face. Yes, I intend to sign on, but I'll probably do it as cook or a handler. If a person's willing and able to work, there are always jobs on the trade routes. Especially now." She started to say something else, and then stopped. "Are you in pain?"
"Yes," he said, but the word was so soft it was a whisper.
She studied his pale face for a moment and then grimaced. The death of his friend wasn't real for him yet, but in bits and pieces it was becoming that way. Kelsey was almost glad that she wouldn't be with him when he finally completed his mission—because she was certain that when he did, he'd collapse with grief and guilt.
She'd seen enough hurt men and women come through Torvan's place to know the look of it.
"That's the life of a Herald, dear," her grandmother would tell her.
"I know," she told her grandmother's memory. "But I want it just the same."
David Fruitman had the look of a barbarian to him. His face was never closely shaven, but never full-bearded, his brown hair was wavy—almost scruffy—and long, and his carriage gave the impression not only of size, but of the ability to use the strength that came with it to good advantage.
Kelsey waved and shouted to catch his attention.
When he saw her, he rolled his eyes. "What, you again?"
Carris hung back a bit, unsure of the larger man's reception, but Kelsey bounded in, slapped him hard on the upper arm, and then dropped the two packs she carried to give him a bear hug. She called him something that was best left in the tavern among friends who had had far too much to drink, and then swung him around.
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