And Reandn had just smiled — no uncomfortable shifting, no objections, no evasions. Kacey, too, smiled — if only to herself. For the first time she felt that whatever turn his life was about to take, he would try to keep them a part of it — and not just because he needed Rethia’s healing touch.
~~~~~
Reandn worked chores in the chill moonlight until well after dark. Teayo returned, sensed Reandn’s taciturn mood, and exchanged only as many words as it took to hand over his cart mare. His arrival home meant supper would be served — but also that the family would rehash the events of the day.
Reandn had enough going on in his head.
Kalena turned out to be the first official ambassador from a region whose dependence had previously been too taken for granted to establish any such thing. She was the daughter of a Highborn timberlands minor — a young woman well-known to Malik, the man who had filled that unofficial post for years but who didn’t quite have the status for an official post.
“He’s borderline Highborn, in coal,” Saxe had said. “Paton’s been working with him to prepare things for Kalena — though Malik knows nothing of you. No one else does.”
Perfect. A new Resioran ambassador, too hills-proud to accept a proper escort — so the Keep called on a single to work escort through a tumultuous region during a tumultuous time.
“It’s not that bad,” Saxe had said in response to Reandn’s dark expression. “No one knows she’s coming — we’ve deliberately seeded rumors it’ll be mid-summer. And a small escort is less likely to be noticed on the road.” And then he grinned, a grin of old, when they’d been partnered and equally ranked. “It’s your way back into the Wolves, Dan.”
And still he was out here working, unable to settle... distracted.
As he finally returned to the kitchen — now abandoned — he hoped Saxe was having better luck with arrangements for Rethia. For if his decision to join Kalena’s escort had been quickly made, there still lingered some wrongness, an apprehension that Reandn couldn’t shake.
He ate the food that was waiting for him in the fading warmth of the oven. Kacey briefly came in to revive the fire under the teapot, and then again to take tea out to the sick room; she was putting her patients to bed for the night.
He ducked into the little wash area and pulled his shirt off to sponge away the day’s dirt and sweat, then rinsed the shirt out in the lukewarm, ever-present cauldron, wringing it out to hang by the stove overnight. It was one of the few shirts he owned, and was Wolf-issue at that — he’d let the Keep outfit him for this trip.
Quietly, he moved into the short hall that sprouted the sickroom off one side and the great room off the other. The light of a single lamp shone on Kacey at her workbench, picking highlights out from the curves of her face and throwing her curls into chiaroscuro jumble as she bent over paper with pen in hand.
She glanced up at the movement, carefully putting her pen aside and nodding silently toward the beds that were out of his sight. Apparently even Tellan was asleep.
He kept his voice low. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
She screwed her face up in a questioning expression he couldn’t possibly misinterpret.
“I’m glad you were here this afternoon,” he said simply.
It seemed to take her by surprise, and Reandn didn’t give her time to gather her thoughts. He bid her good night and drew himself up into the loft at the end of the great room, moving quietly under the half-height ceiling. He rolled onto the thick, straw-filled pallet behind the warmth of the stone chimney; something gave a squeak of protest and scuttled away across the floor. Damn chameleon shrews.
Too tired to think of anything more than getting a cat for Kacey, Reandn fell asleep.
But the evasive feelings he hadn’t been able to define invaded his dreams, leaving him full of anger and confusion. He finally woke with a start, rising up with fury — and banged his head on the abrupt slope of the roof. Lonely Hells!
After his breathing calmed, he fell quickly back into the sleep that had never quite let go of him.
This time, he wasn’t alone.
Someone else’s gentle breath crossed his cheek, just enough warning so when lips settled lightly on his own, he was prepared. Adela’s herb-washed hair brushed the side of his face. “Danny...” she said, barely loud enough to call a whisper. “It’s been a long time since you called me so strongly.”
Stunned to feel her touch again after so long, Reandn tangled his fingers in the hair on either side of her face and pulled her close, kissing her long and hard and reveling in the taste and feel of her. He finally released her to bury his head in that long dark hair, right at the sweet curve where her neck joined her shoulders. His breathing had gone ragged and his heart pounded and — and it’s only a dream.
No. It was really Adela. It was truly her touch, and her conversation. But it would all disappear once he woke.
“My,” she said. “I’d almost forgotten what that was like.”
“I haven’t,” he said, his voice as ragged as his breathing. Slowly, he became aware of his surroundings — in these rare moments with Adela, he could find himself anywhere. But tonight he discovered them right where he’d fallen asleep. Gently, he moved back from her, propping himself up on one elbow. She mirrored him, running a finger over her lower lip as if to remind her of his touch. Her bare shoulder peeked out from beneath her hair.
Bare shoulder. Bare arm. Bare everything. “What are you trying to do?” he said, his voice breaking like a boy’s. “Torture me?”
She looked at herself and laughed. “I wasn’t thinking. Here, is this better?” Abruptly, she wore one of his old shirts.
“Well, maybe not better,” he said grudgingly. “But easier.”
She laughed again, a loving sound. “Danny,” she said, still smiling at him. “What’s got you all muddled up? I know you grieve for your patrol. But grief isn’t what I feel from you.” She reached out to the side of his head, running her fingers through the hair over his ear. “It takes a lot to call me these days. I always find myself surprised by how much time has passed since the last time I touched you... and each time, I wonder if it’s the last. It might be. You know that, don’t you?”
A sudden cold hand wrapped itself around Reandn’s heart, but he nodded. He knew. He’d felt it happening. Kavan was already too distant to return, as bright and inquisitive in death as life had never allowed him to be. “He loves you,” Adela said then, letting Reandn know how loudly he’d been thinking.
He wished he could pluck the thoughts from her mind, too, and know — really know — what it was like for her. But all he could do was swallow hard and nod.
“Things change, Danny,” she said. “It’s not always for the worse. I will never, ever stop loving you.” She ran her fingers down the side of his face, and whispered, “But I may change the way I do it.”
“Haven’t things changed enough?” Reandn asked, unable to keep the rough note from his voice. Hadn’t they? Not so long ago, he’d lived in a world without magic. He was Wolf First at King’s Keep, with a wife he adored and a foster son who filled the gap in their lives.
Magic had taken everything away, and gave back only deadly allergies. King’s Keep had created his Remote Patrol — keeping him away from populated areas and heavy magic use while they re-established a Wolf presence outside of the Keep. Teayo’s family, the healers who had once saved his life, helped him manage his reaction to magic.
And Kacey... she tried so hard, but her wistful affection showed in her eyes whether she was laughing with him or lashing him with her tongue.
And now... was he helping Saxe out of knee-jerk loyalty, or because he truly wanted to regain his place with the Wolves?
“I don’t know what I am anymore,” he told Adela. “I don’t know what I want.”
“You won’t know until you know,” Adela said. “It’s not something you can just decide to know.”
“I lied.” Reandn closed his eyes. “I d
o know. I want you.”
“Things change,” Adela said. She leaned over and kissed him again, just as long and hard as the first time. Reandn made a protesting noise deep in his throat as she left him — not pulling away, but leaving — and then she was gone, her touch lingering on his lips and her voice in his ear. However I can, I’ll always love you.
He thought he woke, then. Nothing had changed; his breath came fast and hard, catching at his throat both in and out. The loft was warm, too warm, and yet his skin still ran goosebumps from Adela’s touch. He was awake, wasn’t he?
Teayo’s massive snore broke the silence of the night, and Reandn’s doubt disappeared. He lay there a moment, perfectly still, listening — and then suddenly couldn’t get out of that loft fast enough. Too warm, too close, too Adela. He snagged the blanket and lowered himself to the great room, flipping it around his shoulders and heading for the kitchen door.
The chill night air hit his face like a slap, erasing his Dela-goosebumps and replacing them with commonplace ones. He breathed deeply, his bare feet walking on their own volition, cold mud oozing between his toes. He was halfway down the lane to the road before he realized it — before the cold truly seeped in.
There he stopped. For long moments, he stood there, fighting the need to do something, to make a decision, any decision; feeling the inexplicable desire to run, just run, until his legs gave out from the effort.
Running away, he suddenly realized. That’s what he really wanted to do. But there was no running away from the way he felt, and the confusion wouldn’t settle until he’d somehow faced it head on.
No matter what the Keep called him, in his heart Reandn would always be a Wolf — and this confusion was as much of an enemy as anything he’d faced.
A Wolf did not run from the enemy.
But sometimes they cried.
~~~~~
Reandn stumbled through the great room somewhat later than was his norm the following morning, if not late enough to have gotten sufficient sleep. Kacey’s voice filtered in from the sickroom, and Teayo’s cart was gone. Reandn caught a glimpse of Tellan through the sickroom window as he helped someone out of a wagon. There seemed to be plenty of blood in evidence; Tellan’s improving ability to sedate patients would be well-tested today.
He moved on to the kitchen and found honey out with the oat porridge; he slid a full bowl onto the table and discovered his neatly folded shirt waiting for him there. Just a normal day, he thought, and a deadly ironic contrast to his night.
Rethia came in from outside as he pulled the shirt over his head, her face flushed and muddy spots on her loose trouser knees. “It’s beautiful out!” she said happily, depositing a basket of greens and herbs by the dry sink next to the stove. “You slept through the most interesting sunrise.”
“So I did.”
Something in his voice must have alerted her — but then again, this was Rethia, so maybe she already knew. She looked at him, and her eyes clouded. “Did you talk to her last night?”
Reandn nodded. Rethia sighed, retrieving a small brazier and filling it with some of their precious hard coal. She shoveled already-flaming wood chunks from the stove in on top of it, fanning so the coal would catch and burn. “I thought maybe you had,” she said. “When you didn’t wake up first of us, I peeked up in the loft and saw how muddy your feet were.”
Reandn glanced under the table at his feet, distinctly remembering that he’d wiped them off, and discovered he’d forgotten about the mud squished between his toes. Oh, well.
“You don’t want to talk about it, though,” she said, making the statement an invitation to do just that.
“What do you think?”
“I think not.” She peeled her coat off; mud fringed the hem. “I think Kacey’s going to need your help. Tellan tries, but he’s just not...”
The sentence trailed off into nothingness and Reandn didn’t hesitate to finish it for her, knowing she’d never get around to it herself; she was probably thinking about that sunrise. Or Adela. Or their new patient — or all three. “Not strong enough, I know. What do you do when I’m not around?” For Teayo was always expected elsewhere, and counted on them to handle the sickroom without him.
She looked at him, vaguely surprised. “Struggle.” And then she was gone again, there but not there.
Reandn called breakfast done and headed for the sickroom, pulling his shirt right back off along the way. Kacey would shove one of her father’s oversized old workshirts at him if she cared.
She cared. The first thing she did when he entered the sickroom was point an imperious finger at the wall behind the workbench, where several such shirts were generally available. She didn’t so much as look away from the copiously bleeding little girl on the bed beside her.
The girl’s family crowded around the window from the outside, watching. Tellan sat on the other side of the bed from Kacey, looking pale as he bit his lip and tried to calm the child with magic.
“It would help,” Kacey said to him through gritted teeth, “if you could at least slow the bleeding.”
“I’m trying,” Tellan said. He held three pads of bandages on the thrashing figure; between the squalling child and the appalling amount of slick blood, he had no chance to achieve the concentration necessary for his magic. There was certainly no trace of it in the air.
“I can’t get sweet syrup into her while she’s this upset,” Kacey said shortly, her hand clamped down over the sopping rag wrapped around the child’s forearm. “Goddess, I can’t see a thing with all this blood.”
Reandn stuck his head out the door and spoke to the panicked family. “You’re blocking the light. Leave one person to watch, and the rest of you wait by the wagon.”
They at first stared without comprehension, but the oldest auntie took a second look at his expression and started rounding them up. Eventually only the oldest son stood by the window, and the rest of them huddled together at the wagon.
“Thank you,” Kacey said when Reandn came back inside, barely loud enough to hear over the girl’s shrieks. “Now help me keep this child still! I have got to get her sedated if I’m going to stitch her up before it’s too late, and Tellan —”
Reandn did the first thing that came to mind — he slipped in at the head of the bed and settled the girl in his lap. Lacing his arms under hers, clamping onto his wrists where they met over her chest and used his ankles to hold down her legs. She was a wee thing, and still flailed within his grip — but not nearly as much.
“Perfect!” Kacey quickly turned to her little cup of sweet syrup. Using a tiny spoon, she waited until just the right moment, then darted in to deliver pain killing sedative.
“What the Hells happened to her?” Reandn asked, loud above the noise of the child herself. Beside him, Tellan used the opportunity to tie down his bandages and move on to other injuries, not trying to do anything but stem the flow of blood.
Kacey was grim, her voice steady as she got another spoonful into the girl. “They were all talking at once. Something about the girl taking a fall from the barn loft onto their harvesting tools.”
Plough, scythe, saws, reapers... Reandn winced. And Kacey said in frustration, “This just isn’t working fast enough! C’mon, sweetie, just be still a moment —”
But she wasn’t. She was beyond hearing them at all, squalling and screaming and fighting them as hard as she could. On impulse, Reandn bent to whistle softly in her ear, a muted version of the piercing sound that Sky would hear across a pasture. Startled, the girl froze — just for an instant, but long enough for Kacey’s quick hands to get more sweet syrup into her. As the girl gathered her breath to renew her noise, Reandn hummed in her ear, one of Adela’s lullabies, dropping his voice deep.
She caught a baby hiccough breath and started crying again, more weakly this time — but by then Kacey was sitting back on her short bedside stool, satisfaction on her face. Rethia whisked into the room, carrying the brazier in a small frame and setting it within Kacey
’s reach. From one of the workbench drawers, she retrieved a clatter of miniscule instruments, several of which she stuck into the hottest part of the brazier coals.
Reandn suddenly regretted his breakfast. He realized he’d stopped talking to the girl and resumed humming, but in truth she wasn’t struggling very hard anymore. It wasn’t the syrup; it hadn’t been long enough for it to take effect. He looked up to catch the despair in Kacey’s eyes. “Tellan,” she said. “Please.”
Tellan looked up from the girl’s shin, where he’d found a cut shallow enough to slather comfrey salve on and bandage up for good. “I —” he said, and his gaze darted to Reandn and away again. Reandn was not slow to see the fear there.
“Just do it,” he said, as much of an order as he could make it.
“Will you be all right?” Kacey looked at him with worried eyes, blood smeared across her face, and then looked at the soaked cloth around the girl’s arm. “It may be too late already... .”
“Do it, dammit!”
Tellan found his concentration and reached for the spell, his fingers moving with awkward jerkiness. Reandn concentrated on the feel of his fingers digging into his wrists across the girl, setting his teeth against the magic in his head, his body. Not as bad as the day before, he told himself, and not even close to what he’d endured in times past. Just something to live through... he’d learned long ago how far sheer determination could take him, past the thrumming noise that filled his head, past the tightening of his chest.
When the spell faded, he found himself slumped back against the headboard. Kacey breathed out, “Goddess bless.”
Slowly, he took a deep breath and straightened himself. Looking at the girl, he couldn’t tell much difference; she was limp within his arms. But when Kacey wiped the deepest cut clean, it no longer welled up with blood. “That’s wonderful, Tellan. Now go in and keep her under, will you — don’t forget how much syrup we’ve put in her, don’t overdo it — and I’ll look at this arm.” She glanced down at the brazier, where the coals still glowed red-hot. “I just hope we can save it.”
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