The dog appeared to remember him, too. His loose-flewed jaw snapped shut, and he repositioned itself to a posture of alert readiness.
Madehy appeared in the doorway to her small house, glanced at the dog long enough to say, “Kendall, leave him,” and then marched to the well, glaring the other two women away from it. She grabbed the silk, stuffed it into the bucket she carried, and headed right back for the house.
“Bring that back here!” Kalena demanded, her voice edging toward shrillness.
“She’s going to boil it,” Reandn said. He eyed the dog warily, although the animal had returned to his previous sunbathing. “You’d be a fool to stop her.”
Kalena gasped, a showy Highborn affectation, and turned her ready outrage on him. “Are you daring to call me —?”
“Are you going to stop her?” he asked. “No? Then I’m not.”
Kalena fixed a cold eye on him, and her voice was Highborn ice. “You’d be dead if I hadn’t done something about it.”
“I know.” His unrepentant response didn’t go over well with her, either, but Reandn was thinking about Madehy. “Sometimes you have to let people make their own decisions.”
“No,” she said, not understanding him and not caring. “I’m not sure I do.”
“You’ll learn the hard way, then.”
“Vaklar,” Kalena said, drawing his name out into a warning. “We can easily get a new wrangler, can we not?”
“Aya,” Vaklar said, looking at Reandn rather than at his meira. “A wrangler, we could. We’ve got other things to settle first, aya?”
“We’ve been through this,” Elstan said with some irritation, assuming on Vaklar’s next words. He leaned against a hitching rail on the outside of the wattle fence, tilting his face to catch the sun. His skin was no longer quite the pale shade it had been when they’d first met in Pasdon. Not as clean, either, and his affected gesture of flipping his hair from his face seemed to have become one of true annoyance. “The Keep put me on the escort as a guide to hide the fact I’m the wizard you didn’t want along. Turns out to have been a good thing, considering what we encountered.”
Right. Then they’d had two wizards running around flinging unsuccessful spells into the currents. But Reandn managed to keep his thoughts to himself, though Elstan gave him a wary and expectant look.
“You knew of him, then,” Vaklar said to Reandn, stating the fact more than asking the question. “Because you were the one who really knew the roads.”
Reandn shrugged, a one-shouldered confirmation.
“Well and good,” Kalena said, her voice full of meaning. “Wrangler and guide, and we need neither of them anymore.”
“What else, then?” Vaklar asked Reandn, while Kalena frowned to be ignored.
“What are you talking about?” Elstan asked, straightening from his studied slouch. “He’s the wrangler. And the thorn in my side.”
“I’ve done what I said I could do,” Reandn said. “If you could say the same, we’d have had no problem with one another.”
“There,” Vaklar said suddenly. “Talking about that.” And he pointed at Reandn, who realized he’d drawn himself tall and tense and dangerous. Vaklar responded in kind, like the experienced guard he was. “What of that, then?”
Reandn relaxed, deliberately taking a step back from Elstan, and told Vaklar, “Wolf.”
“What?” Elstan’s shocked outrage filled the air, while Vaklar merely nodded, his eyes narrowing a touch more, his face hard but not angry. “You’re a what?”
“Wolf,” Vaklar said quietly, his eyes on Reandn. Kalena drew back a few steps, her expression turning thoughtful, her eyes watchful.
“I don’t believe it,” Elstan said, all traces of his languid court speech vanished into sharp, staccato words. “I live at the Keep, remember? I’ve seen all the Wolves.”
“Believe what your eyes tell you,” Vaklar said, a touch of scorn laced in his words.
A wry grin tugged at Reandn’s mouth. “You’ve been at the Keep how long, since your magic was good enough to get you there? A year, year and a half? I grew up there, Elstan. I led the deep night patrol for years — before I ran as Wolf Remote.”
Elstan went speechless for a long moment — not long enough, as far as Reandn was concerned. “They’d have told me!”
“An’ who did know?” Vaklar asked Reandn.
Reandn said, “No one, aside from the Prime and the Wolf Pack Leader.” As Vaklar’s hardening jaw turned his wide face even squarer, Reandn shook his head. “You wanted to travel Keland with nothing but seven guards — you didn’t know the territory, you had no protection against magic, and you were escorting... well, you were escorting trouble. What was the Keep supposed to do? And where would Kalena be now, if they’d done nothing?”
“And if things had gone well, I suppose we’d never have known about you,” Vaklar muttered. He slid his thumbs into his wide leather belt, muting the aggressive hands-on-hips stance he’d taken up along with the conversation.
“Or me,” Elstan put in, interrupting his own fierce scowl, the one Reandn had been ignoring. “But things didn’t go well, did they? Fine job you did. Probably has something to do with the reason Wolf Remote was just kicked out of the Wolves.”
“Foolish ladaboy,” Vaklar said under his breath.
Reandn stood just a little bit straighter. “They kicked me out of the Wolves because I stopped a Minor from manhandling an injured Wolf. Don’t get that one wrong again.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that this escort fell apart around you, does it?”
Reandn’s voice bottomed out to the grit of its lower registers. “No,” he said, closing in so he and Elstan were all but touching, the intensity of his gaze as much of a weapon as the knife at his side. “It doesn’t.”
“The Keep shouldn’t have sent someone who was allergic to —”
“You said you could shield me!”
“That’s enough!” Vaklar snapped, moving in to shove them decisively apart. He stabbed a finger into Elstan’s chest. “You! No more magic! And you!” Vaklar said, turning on Reandn with the same stabbing gesture but pulling it short as he met the fury in Reandn’s eye. After an instant’s hesitation his demanding expression turned toward resignation and he said in a hard tone, “You — don’t kill the wizard.”
~~~~~
“You,” Madehy’s angry voice came on the heels of Vaklar’s injunction. “All of you. It’s time for you to leave.”
Startled out of their confrontation, all three men turned to look at her — her and the dog, standing by the gate of the little yard. Reandn took a deliberate step back, knowing himself too rocked by high emotion to be part of this.
“The wounded,” Vaklar said, deferential as it was. “Surely you know they can’t travel yet, aya?”
“I’ll send for someone to take them to Pasdon,” she said, unyielding. “That’s not far.”
“Might mean the difference between life and death for Kiryl.”
“What makes you think he’s safe here?” Madehy kept her distance. Her puffy eyes were bruised and haunted, and their marbled blue and brown coloration barely discernible. Of her age, Reandn remained uncertain — a young woman not quite grown, he would have said. He couldn’t imagine how she’d already built this life with its broken-in homestead. Nothing about her bearing gave him the impression of such indomitable will.
Instead he saw only fear — a frantic sort of fear at that, here in this quiet yard where no one had threatened her. Madehy glared at him, directing her wrath at him rather than Vaklar. “There are people after you. Your wounded might just as well risk the road to safety as lie in my barn waiting for them. I don’t want you here when they find you.”
“Do you even know who I am?” Kalena asked, a touch of astonishment in her voice. She slid off the well but, after a glance at the dog, stayed right next to it.
“I don’t care who you are.” Madehy kept her gaze on Reandn. “I want you gone. That’s what I c
are about.”
“Healer,” Reandn said.
Madehy looked at the ground. “I heal stock. And I can’t do that while you’re here. I can’t do anything while you’re here. So go.”
Varina cleared her throat, a tentative sound. “I could stay with the others until someone comes for them, and then go to Pasdon with them.”
“Be quiet,” Kalena said, Highborn haughtiness so natural in her bearing that even with her stained clothes and ragged coif, she looked the role. To Madehy, she said, “What scares you so much that you’re willing to ignore our obvious needs? They are in truth the needs of Keland and the Resiores — but you wouldn’t know that — you’re afraid to ask!”
Madehy turned a quick glare on Kalena absently stroking the bristling hair between Kendall’s shoulder blades. “I choose who I help and who I don’t. You’ve already taken more than I care to give.”
Reandn tipped his head at her. “Why do I have the feeling that we should somehow be helping you?”
“I don’t want anything from you,” she shot back at him, glaring fiercely at her hand. “I already have your griefs, don’t I, and me with enough of my own!”
Reandn tried to make sense of that, but there wasn’t any sense to be made. And then he tensed, alerted by the sudden scolding fury of a pine jay across the lane, by the slightest rustle of clothing against leaves at a distance. Vaklar saw it in him, and immediately responded, stiffening to look around.
A man emerged from the trees on the other side of the road; a small spike buck was draped over his shoulders, and though his legs were too short for his frame, his broad build and easy movement under the burden made it plain that he could hold his own in a scuffle. The look on his face made it plain he was prepared to do just that, right now.
He headed straight for the gate, his eyes fastened on Vaklar and Reandn. At the entrance, he stopped and planted his feet. “The meira doesn’t seem to want you here. I’m afraid that means I don’t want you here, either.”
“And your opinion means what to me?” Kalena said, not sparing him her practiced and arch sarcasm.
“About the same as your opinion means to me, I gather,” the man said. He lowered the deer to the ground. “Madehy, this is from Arah, to pay for the healing on his cow and calf. He told me to bring a quarter back for him, though. That what you agreed on?”
Madehy nodded, looking no less distressed now that she had an unexpected supporter. If anything, she had become more anxious. “They’re not trying to hurt me,” she told him, winding her fingers around the dog’s collar. Reandn wasn’t reassured; if the dog decided to attack, dragging Madehy’s weight along would hardly slow him.
“Looks to me like they’ve done it anyway,” the man said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters.”
“We’re not here by choice, aya?” Vaklar said. “We’ll be going —”
“When we can,” Reandn interrupted.
“Maybe you should go before you can’t.” The man faced Reandn, his hand landing on the curved dagger at his belt.
“Stop it!” Madehy said, her words muffled by the hands she held clenched at her mouth. The dog, freed, did nothing more than gaze over at her with his almost comically worried eyes. “I mean it! I can’t bear this!” And she fled into the house. The dog, torn between responsibilities, followed her halfway and then sat across the narrow flagstone walk, trying to watch them all at once.
“You see there?” the hunter said, and he spat on the ground between them. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but it’s got her all set off. Won’t take me long to round up a score of folks to run you off, so you might as well get on the road.”
“I don’t understand,” Varina said softly. “We needed help, that’s all. Just shelter. We would have died last night without it.”
“Mind your place, Varina,” Kalena said through clenched teeth.
The hunter shot her a scathing look, but it faded when he looked back at Varina. “You’re strangers,” he allowed. “You might not know of our healer. She doesn’t take to company, not at all. She’s... special, needs to be treated special. I see her more than anyone, and this time is the first I’ve set foot in the yard.”
“Why —” Kalena started.
“Not your concern,” the hunter said. “She keeps our stock healthy, and she’s stopped more than one family from going hungry in the winter because of it. She’s important to us, you catch my meaning? We don’t let anything disturb her.”
Reandn said, “We don’t want to be here. We have our own problems. But we can’t move on until we’ve taken care of our wounded.”
Vaklar cleared his throat. “Madehy said someone local might escort the wounded to Pasdon, maybe in a day or two, aya? Varina could care for them until then —”
“Varina is under my authority,” Kalena said, but her voice held a petulant note, as if she already realized Vaklar would ignore her.
He murmured, “We do what we have to do, meira.” To the hunter, he said, “Mind you, were my people treated poorly, I’d have to do something about it. But an’ I’m convinced they would be cared for in a proper way, we’d have no reason to stay here and bother your Madehy.” He glanced at Reandn. “You see it that way, aya?”
“Supposing I was convinced.” Reandn gave the hunter a narrow-eyed look, waiting for the slightest sign of something to distrust. He didn’t find it. In the man’s cool green gaze there was only the same kind of stubborn intensity Reandn knew so readily from within himself.
“Whoever’s after you isn’t here now,” the hunter said. He glanced down the road, where the drying mud held the story of their panicked flight. “Someone’s done well enough covering your tracks at the turn-off. You might be well pleased to learn there’ll be near ten head of beef going through to spring pasture this day.”
Reandn relaxed a little. “Tomorrow,” he said again. “We’ll leave tomorrow. I need to check these woods before we move through them.” And that’s what they’d be doing, too — moving through the woods, not sticking to nice predictable roads.
The hunter said, “I’ll be by to check on things.”
“Don’t ride our trail,” Reandn warned him.
The man shook his head. “I don’t care what you’re about,” he said, “as long as you’re not bothering Madehy.”
Reandn stared past the canine sentinel to the almost closed door of the house. Something about Madehy lured him, and he could neither understand the pull nor shake the conviction that she needed help. That he could help, if she’d let him.
But come the next day, he’d be gone. He pulled himself back into focus. Get Kalena to the Keep. The sooner that job was done, the sooner he could wash his hands of her irritating Highborn ways... the sooner he could take his place back in the Wolves — but even so, a nearly inaudible inner voice wondered if he would ever fully trust Keep judgment again.
Keep your thoughts where they belong. Finish this assignment.
It mattered; it had to. For if he didn’t have any trace of Adela left, and if he lost his trust in the Wolves, what was left?
~~~~~
“You’re sure?” Lamar asked Rethia, frowning into the woods. “There’s no easy trail in that direction.”
“I’m sure,” Rethia said. She sounded tired, and no wonder. She’d spent the morning concentrating on the amulet, working with Lamar and his knowledge of the trails so they could find the quickest way to Reandn.
Kacey shifted impatiently on her horse, straightening the twist of her loose trousers around her leg and wondering with irritation — again — what it was about this particular saddle and this particular beast that caused the faded brown cloth to inch its way from shin to calf, front to back, and then around again.
Or maybe it happened on her little black mare, too. Maybe she’d simply never gotten this impatient, this fed up, with the pace of her travel.
We’re close now, Rethia had told her this morning. Maybe they had been, as a bird might fly. But not as
three horses, two women, and one escort might travel.
“Just let her lead us,” she told Lamar, trying not to take her agitation out on him. “We can’t possibly move any more slowly than we already are.”
Lamar glanced up into the moderate slope of the woods and made a face, as if considering the truth to Kacey’s words. “I expect you’re right at that. It’ll be impossible to move quietly in there, though.”
“I want to find Reandn, not hide from him,” Rethia said absently, already turning her horse into the woods.
“We don’t know the circumstances that brought him to breaking that amulet,” Lamar said, his voice taking on the first sharp tones he’d used with either of them. “We want to see before we’re seen.”
Kacey bit her lip, unhappy to hear his concern echoing her own. “It’s been a day since he triggered the amulet, and longer. Surely whatever caused it is over. Besides, he’d never have triggered the amulet if it meant putting Rethia in danger.”
“Of course he wouldn’t,” Rethia said, stopping her horse some lengths into the woods. “Are you coming?”
They traveled without discussion after that. Moving uphill through the woods on horseback demanded a certain amount of attention; branches came from nowhere to threaten her eyes and face, and the rugged ground kept them scrambling.
Kacey was hacking herself free of tangled greenbriars with her little belt knife, muttering imprecations at her mount for its repeated efforts to forge ahead, when she heard Lamar’s heartfelt oath. Rethia, only her head and shoulders visible, had just surmounted a particularly steep outcrop on the slope above; at its base, Lamar hesitated, standing in his stirrups to look ahead.
“What?” Kacey demanded, prickling when Lamar didn’t respond immediately. She opened her mouth to repeat herself just as Rethia cried a fearful protest.
“Lonely Hells,” Lamar spat.
“What?” Kacey shouted, desperation lacing her voice, her irritation vanished and she slashed herself free of the briars, jamming the knife home in its sheath.
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