He gave Dakina what might have been a grateful look. “Keep that in mind,” he said. “What happened out there wasn’t your fault, either of you.”
He’d said that before. Teya looked back to his eyes, still trying to decipher what she saw there. On impulse, she said, “It wasn’t yours, either.”
That got a reaction. His shoulders drew back, his expression shuttered down, and all he left to her was the slight gathering of his eyebrows — the edges of anger. She’d overstepped the bounds of rank with that one, and Teya waited for cold, quick words that would tell her so. She’d certainly heard them often enough, and usually over the use of her magic.
He said nothing. He eyed the three unconscious men again, and then deliberately turned away, walking by the two women without saying anything. Dakina touched Teya’s shoulder, catching her eye for a minute and familiar shrug. Don’t mind him.
To Teya’s surprise, Reandn stopped in the doorway and turned back to them, hesitating. Then he offered them a Wolf salute, his closed fist just touching the base of his throat. Teya returned it without thinking — and by then Reandn was gone.
Teya suddenly found herself wondering about all the unspoken words of the last moments, realizing just how many there had been. She wondered just what Reandn wasn’t telling them.
And she wondered why she suddenly had the impulse to label that look in his eyes as loneliness.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
Sky laid his ears back and looked at Reandn from the corner of his eye, nostrils wrinkled in excessive irritation at the sight of the bridle in Reandn’s hand while wisps of his morning hay remained. Reandn offered a pat in apology and tried not to laugh out loud.
Sky. Dark bay racking horse, back hock scarred enough to give his rolling gait a slight hitch. Oversensitive, self-defensive, wanting nothing more than a rider who could see through it all and give him a steady hand. Sky, the horse who’d run himself to death at Reandn’s request, racing to keep Ronsin away from the magic that would make him more dangerous than ever.
And Sky, who’d then been healed by unicorns. A walking testament to Rethia’s success in returning both unicorns and their magic to a magic-barren land.
A testament who hadn’t finished his breakfast thank you very much, and who didn’t have the slightest interest in maintaining the dignity his unique status conferred him. He flattened his ears, flared his nostrils, and tilted his head warningly.
Reandn poked him gently in the shoulder. “Stop that.”
His bluff called, Sky’s ears flipped forward; he waited for both bridle and the treat that would follow. Reandn bridled the horse and gave him the expected chunk of rubbery old carrot, untangling Sky’s forelock from the bridle crown piece with careful fingers and an affectionate pat. There was no true guile in the bay; he was as easy to read as a signpost — if somewhat less consistent.
His saddlebags packed and bulging, winter gear tied over them, and Sky finally bridled and amiable, Reandn headed out into the cold dawn wind. His good-byes had been said, his patrol honored in the Binding ceremony, and his back pay dispensed.
Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find Saxe waiting by the keep gate — such as it was. That gate had probably never been closed, but at least it had a guard — not that the encroaching tree line would allow him time for any useful warning. Arval depended on a perimeter warning spell, Reandn imagined. He’d have been mighty uneasy in the guard’s boots.
The guard stepped away from Saxe as Reandn approached, his expression an interesting mixture of curiosity and disdain. Reandn had seen too much of that expression in the past days; Arval’s small collection of keep guards and strongarms seemed to regard him as stupid for hitting their minor, but at the same time they wondered about the man who’d dared to do it.
Saxe stood in the lee of the gate, his wool-lined collar flipped up to cover his neck and ears, his hands shoved deeply into his pockets. Just looking at him, Reandn felt the wind more strongly; he shivered, hoping for some sun once morning proper arrived. He hunched inside his own wool-lined jacket, Wolf-issue minus its patrol patch, and tucked his neck cape more snugly under his chin. He asked, “Come for some parting I-told-you-so’s?”
Saxe shook his head, but didn’t seem to take offense. “There aren’t any told-you-so’s that are worth this wind to make.” He shrugged inside the jacket. “Just came to say good-bye to a friend, and wish him well.”
“I’ll be around,” Reandn said. “Probably causing you just as much trouble, one way or the other.”
“Going to Kacey’s for a while?”
Reandn lifted an eyebrow at him. “Most people call it Teayo’s.” Kacey’s father still supervised the healing at his home sickroom, though his age and girth were starting to slow him down.
Saxe shrugged again. “She’s got a memorable personality. And Hells, when you two are in the same room, the words fly as sharp as knives. Not much like you and Dela.”
“Nothing is like me and Dela,” Reandn said instantly, his voice hard and edgy, even as he knew he wasn’t being fair. Saxe might not miss Adela in the same way as Reandn, but she’d been his friend, and he missed her all the same.
Besides, Reandn was learning that there was no equating Kacey to anyone. She was too much... her own person. Which was why he supposed they did indeed trade a frequency of sharp words — even if between and even during such moments, the depth of her affection peeked out.
Her patience might run out once he’d been tied to the area for a while. Without Teya buffering him from magic, he’d have no choice; he’d stay near the clinic simply to be near to Kacey’s adopted sister Rethia. Only Rethia’s uniquely gifted touch could keep his potentially fatal reaction to magic at bay.
Reandn twisted in the saddle, looking back at the small outbuilding that housed his — no, not his anymore — surviving patrol members. “I wish you’d let me tell them.” To really say good-bye, he meant, instead of neglecting to mention he wouldn’t be back from this particular visit to Little Wisdom.
“I’m sorry,” Saxe said, and meant it. “They need something to hold them together while they deal with the shock. By the time they learn the truth, they’ll already be separated, and already accepting that they won’t be reuniting under your command.”
“I think that’s a mistake, too,” Reandn said, and at Saxe’s frown added, “Splitting them up, and keeping them that way.”
“Teya’s the least injured of them, and she needs to advance her schooling.”
“But the rest of them? And you should keep Teya and Dakina together. They understand one another as well as pairs that have been together for a dozen years.”
“As well as you and I?” Saxe said wryly. “I suppose you’re right. I’ve seen that in them, these last few days. I’ll keep it in mind — but that’s all I can promise.”
Reandn scowled. Sky shifted beneath him, lifted a hoof to paw the ground, and thought better of it. “What’s going on, Saxe? You never used to sacrifice your Wolves for anything.”
Saxe raised his eyebrows, then shook his head, careful to keep his collar closed to the wind. “Nothing changes, does it, Danny? You’ve never paid enough attention to Keep affairs.”
Nothing changes? Reandn snorted. Only Dela’s death, the return of magic, the new remote patrol... and now the loss of it.
Saxe spoke right over his reaction. “That’s not truly just, given that you’ve been remote for so long. But you could have kept better track. You should have. The Resiores are a mess.”
“Nothing new about that.”
Saxe shook his head, still hunched within his collar. “It’s never been like this. Not since the magic came back.”
“There’s a surprise,” Reandn said dryly, and suddenly — for a moment — they were a team again, commiserating about the way Keep affairs made a Wolf’s job harder.
Saxe gave him a rueful grin. “Half of the Resioran Highborn embrace magic and Keland, and half of them want to break away for Geltria,
where the unicorns run thin and so does the magic. The people fall evenly on both sides, and the merchants — who are, as ever, fussing over Keland tariffs and taxes — do a good job of keeping them all stirred up.”
“We’ve got good people in the Resiores, Saxe. They’ll get things settled.”
“Maybe.” Saxe shoved Sky’s head away as the gelding inspected his ear. “But no one really believes it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have taken in that unofficial Resioran representative last fall.”
Reandn absently lifted a rein, recapturing Sky’s attention. “Why did you? Two factions, one representative... sounds like trouble, to me.”
“I wish you’d asked me earlier, when I was standing somewhere warm,” Saxe said, tugging his collar closed. “You’re right. It could be trouble. But we had to do something, and accepting an official ambassador seemed like the best thing. Once the pass opens up again, we’ll have to do everything right if we’re to avoid war. Goddess grace, so far Geltria is just waiting to see how things play out. Sooner or later, they’ll join the fray.”
The tension in Saxe’s red, wind-bitten face spoke loudly enough, giving Reandn a glimpse of the difficulties his friend faced — difficulties he certainly hadn’t made any easier.
Not that it would have stopped him from unleashing bitter fury on the minor.
Saxe said, “Do you really think we’d have given Arval authority over your patrol if his support wasn’t absolutely critical? We’re not going to be able to handle the changes in both Keland and the Resiores if men like Arval don’t do everything — and I mean every-damn-thing — in their power to help us.”
Reandn grinned, wry around the edges. “Then I’m lucky I’m not stuck in that cell.”
“Don’t forget it,” Saxe said, meaning it. “I fought for you, Danny. But there’s just too much at stake. I had to give Arval something.” He shook his head. “Take the quiet roads, Danny. If you can find them.”
“If I can find them,” Reandn said. He ducked into his neck cape, knowing well enough that Saxe didn’t refer to the physical road before him, and lifted one gloved hand in a final salute. Sky flicked back an ear; Reandn gave him an infinitesimal squeeze of leg. Gratefully, Sky popped forward in his odd hop-start and settled into a quick, steady rack.
~~~~~
Kacey grappled with wet sheets in the stiff breeze of the afternoon. It was the first time in ten days that the sun had hit the clothesline, and she’d be bloody-damned if she’d miss the chance to get things clean and dry without hanging them all over the house.
Quite a sight it was when the sickroom was full up with late winter ills. Thank the goddess — either one, Kacey didn’t care — that as her father Teayo had slowed, they’d hired a part-time cook along with their new healer apprentice. Maybe it was time to get someone to help with the chores around here, too. Kacey would never be a gifted healer like her father Teayo, or as inspired as Rethia. But she ran an excellent sickroom, and she had the exacting hand to prepare medicines and herbs — and she knew her limits. All crucial skills for a woman in a healer’s house.
Rethia was more help than she’d once been — no longer inexorably caught in her own private world. Even now she stirred the next batch of sheets in their giant cauldron.
Farren had just given them a new spell to make fireless heat, and then spent days tutoring their young and fumbling healer-mage to use it. It was, Kacey thought, one of the few truly useful spells to reach their household since magic’s return. Not that she didn’t enjoy seeing chameleon shrews and unicorn sign, but they weren’t of much help when there was laundry to wash and not quite enough wood gathered.
The noise of wind-snapped sheets and bandages filled her ears; her hair blew into her mouth and eyes and her wet fingers grew clumsy in the cold. Slender Rethia would be shivered into uselessness by now. Kacey was chilled enough, despite two layers of sweaters over her tunic and under one of her father’s huge wool shirts. Unlike Rethia, she had plenty of her own padding, but she was still glad enough when the last long bandage dangled from the clothesline. She left the basket and turned for the house — only to discover that she wasn’t alone, and probably hadn’t been for some time.
There, in the lane that wound between the trees between the main road and the large open yard of the house and barn, stood Sky. Reandn sat in the saddle, reins long and looping, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, grinning that lopsided grin that always made Kacey go a little soft inside — though at the same time she had to fight the urge to shake the expression right off his face.
She’d never really come to understand that one.
“Damned Wolf!” she cried at him, nonetheless closing the distance between them with some speed. “Always sneaking up on people.”
Reandn dismounted, keeping the grin. “Only the ones who aren’t paying any attention. No matter how I ask him, Kacey, Sky does insist on putting his feet down. Never fails to make noise.”
“Damned noisy laundry then,” she said promptly, and gave him a hug. His arm settled comfortably around her shoulders, giving her a little squeeze as he flipped the reins over Sky’s head and they walked up toward the barn together. “We weren’t expecting you,” she said, and stopped, giving Reandn a narrow-eyed look. “You’re all right, aren’t you? You haven’t done anything to get your allergies flared up?”
“I’m fine,” Reandn said, lifting both hands in a mercy plea despite the fact that one was still over her shoulder and the other was in Sky’s face. The horse snorted in irritation.
Kacey didn’t reduce the intensity of her gaze. Something was up. It showed in his eyes, where everything always showed.
Rethia came running out of the house, her face reddened by the heat of the laundry cauldron, wearing nothing more than the shapeless light tunic and kirtle she’d donned for the chore. “Reandn!” she cried. “I knew I felt you coming!” She flung her arms around his neck, gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then stepped back to give him space.
One of her wise moments, Kacey thought. Reandn had never quite reconciled himself to the fact that Rethia had restored the magic he’d fought so hard to keep out of Keland — or to the fact that he’d considered killing her to prevent it. Such irony that it was Rethia and Rethia alone, with her unicorn-gifted magic, who could soothe Reandn’s allergy to the magic that otherwise would have killed him.
“What do you mean, you felt him coming?” Kacey asked, suddenly hearing the words. Rethia had felt him from the steamy kitchen, when Kacey hadn’t known he was practically within arm’s reach? That hardly seemed fair.
“Like a scent on the current of magic,” Rethia said, and smiled. “Everyone’s is different; I can feel where Father is right now, if I think about it. Can’t you?”
“Of course we can’t,” Kacey said.
Reandn’s arm tightened around her shoulder. She glanced up and discovered him grinning again. “Just another one of those Rethia things.”
As if he had to tell her about Rethia things. She’d been living with her foster sister since she’d been fifteen and Rethia was six, dammit. But she sighed, recognizing that her snappishness came from being unable to reach out to her father — no, be honest, to Reandn — when Rethia did it so easily that she took it for granted and had never until this moment mentioned anything about it. No, it wasn’t fair. So be it. “Rethia,” she said, “You’re going to freeze.”
Indeed, Rethia was already shivering. “Hurry up with the horse,” she said. “I’ll have some hot tea waiting.”
“Make sure Tellan makes a sickroom check, too,” Kacey said. “Some of them will need a trip to the bathroom by now.”
“He was doing it when I left,” Rethia said over her shoulder, already heading for the house, hugging herself for warmth. “Oh, I never thought I’d miss that laundry! Hurry!” She ran the rest of the way back, heading around for the kitchen door at the back of the house.
“I’m colder just watching her shiver,” Reandn said, removing his arm to tug Sky’s girth loos
e. “Late spring we’re having this year.”
Kacey gave him a little push toward the little barn. “Stall that strange horse of yours and let’s get inside, then.”
But Reandn just looked at her a moment, easily absorbing the nudge. Then he carefully reached out a hand to extract the hair that had blown into her mouth — yet again — and tuck it behind her ear. “Don’t change,” he told her, and led the horse away.
Kacey stared after him, and wondered just what, under the surface — for so much of Reandn lay under the surface — that was supposed to mean.
~~~~~
Reandn withstood the scrutiny of Rethia and her little frown. “You’re back early, especially if that medicine is doing any good. Is it?”
Reandn shrugged. “It’s hard to tell. I haven’t been exposed to direct magic of late.” But he understood her confusion — what she really meant to say. Why are you back so soon?
They sat around the kitchen long table, the one place in this house where Reandn truly felt at home. The huge kitchen was always busy — full of pungent boiling herbs, cooking meals, stewing laundry — and it served as the social nexus of the home. Compared to this kitchen and the sickroom, the rest of the house was quite small — a great room with small sleeping chambers off the back, and the loft where Rethia slept.
There was the small barn, of course, and the several outbuildings, all of which held tools with which he was more than personally familiar. Reandn was all but certain that Teayo made serious effort to save chores for his regular if infrequent visits. It surprised him that he didn’t mind — but that didn’t keep him from muttering when he was repairing shingles on a hot day, or from contriving to look miserable when he forked new hay into the barn and bothered the faint, all-too-normal allergies that everyone seemed to have when immersed in hay.
That was how Kacey had thought to try mixing thick herb extracts for his reaction to magic. She’d dosed him after work on one particularly dusty wagon and he’d noticed a slight effect on the undertone of magic thrumming in his head.
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