Elstan slowed his horse, letting Rethia and Madehy move past him. When Teya drew alongside, he released his mount to the same free-swinging walk they’d held for days now. No hurry; there was no one on their heels anymore, and there were enough Keep forces on their way to counter even the most determined interlopers between here and Norposten.
“Relax,” she told Elstan. “Today we’ll meet the Dragons, and then who’s going to stop us from delivering the new Resioran ambassador?”
Elstan gave her a dark look. “I’m surprised you dare to say such a thing, after these past miserable days. You weren’t here for all of it, of course.”
“Just as well.” Teya fussed at a cowlick on her horse’s mane. “I likely wouldn’t have been of much help.”
“What?” He said it as though he didn’t believe what he’d heard. “Are you serious? Do you know how much easier he’s been to live with since you showed up?” Elstan’s chin jerked forward to indicate Reandn.
“That’s just because I can protect him from the magic,” Teya said, and then thought again of the Knife camp. “Well, usually.”
He regarded her with great skepticism, and no apparent awareness that one of his unevenly woven braids stuck out to the side at a highly unfortunate angle. “You’re a patrol wizard,” he said. “The Knife wizard wasn’t anything special — her magic spilled all over the place. The two times she came after me, it was all force and power and no finesse. I can’t believe you had any trouble with her.”
I didn’t, he seemed to want to add. The restraint made Teya wonder; until they’d started this return trip, she’d seen nothing of restraint in Elstan.
So she didn’t mention that his own magic came through rough and unpolished — typical of wizards who spun spells for the thrill of the magic, without attention to the craft. In contrast, the Knife wizard’s spells had created a brick wall of unsuccessfully shaped magic, the pure assault of which had startled Teya away from her own spells. Her glamour had fallen, her shielding had dissolved — and she had watched Reandn go down.
Patrol wizard, yes. But not one you’d want watching your back when there was offensive magic flinging around.
She thought sadly of all her drills, all the practicing she’d done in Solace. True, she’d kept her head this time. She’d known what spell she wanted — a nice little hotfoot, to keep that wizard distracted — but she hadn’t been able to carry through in the chaos of such magic.
She realized, then, that she hadn’t ever responded to Elstan. But when she found that he, too, had gotten lost in thought. Teya stifled a smile; here he was, looking actually human and approachable, and there was that... braid. Someone was going to have to tell him.
But it wasn’t going to be Teya.
Instead, she asked, “What’s the worry, Elstan? Don’t know what to give Kalena for lunch?”
“Tenaebra take Kalena’s lunch,” Elstan said with a scowl. If he’d started this trip as a wizard pretending to be a guide, he’d ended it as Kalena’s official journey-cook... a demonstratively thankless task. “No, it’s about our Knife friends — bringing them into the Keep is going to cause trouble. Bloody hell, just introducing them to a bunch of Dragons is going to cause trouble enough!”
Teya automatically discounted his concern — until she realized that Elstan wasn’t blustering, or shouting, or shoving his magic where it didn’t belong. He was simply and truly worried. She said, “Dragons can be rough, but they’re as loyal as any Wolf. They’ll behave themselves.”
“Maybe,” Elstan agreed, his flat voice completely unconvincing. As if he knew something he wasn’t saying... as if he had concerns she knew nothing about. Maybe that none of them knew anything about.
And Teya, erstwhile patrol wizard and swamp dweller to the core, began to sift through those spells she’d worked so hard to memorize.
~~~~~
“I want to ride back to Little Wisdom with you,” Kacey said, in that implacable way she had. She didn’t look at him; she didn’t look down at her horse. She watched the road with dogged determination in the set of her jaw.
Reandn knew better than even to consider saying no — at least, not head-on. He knew better than to smile, too, much as the return of the annoyed spark in her eye inspired it. “It’s fourteen days of steady riding,” he said. “That’s a lot for someone who can’t even put her foot in the stirrup. And I have no idea when the Keep will let me leave.”
“The longer it takes, the stronger my ankle will be for the trip.”
“Kacey —”
“Reandn.” Her voice came out lower than normal, and her eyes turned much too serious for the conversation; the combination cut him off short. “Dan... if I go back... if you stay here —”
“You’re afraid.” The realization came with something more akin to shock than understanding. “Kacey, you’re afraid.”
Whatever Kacey had been about to say, whatever she’d been about to confess to, she locked it back behind those brown eyes of hers, putting distance between them. Her voice couldn’t have been more starch. “I am not.”
Nonsense. Not after what they’d been through. He nudged Sky so he bumped her horse, fitting her leg behind his. Neither horse thought much of the arrangement. “I’m slow, Kacey, but I know how to follow a trail. I’m not going to lose my way now.”
Kacey gave an audible and pointed sniff, but wouldn’t yet look at him, no matter how he crowded her horse. “Well,” she admitted, quietly enough so he almost didn’t hear her, “maybe I am afraid. Which is worse, do you suppose — being afraid you’ll never have something, or being afraid of losing it?”
That question didn’t take much thought. “Having something and not knowing it.”
“Well, then,” she said. “Well, then.”
Reandn moved Sky on out, grinning to himself — but only until he got a glimpse of color through the trees.
Red. Movements of color coming from the curving road ahead, standing out brightly in the shade of the spring green roadside growth.
“Dragons,” Reandn said. “Reds. That’s odd. The Blues usually handle the north.”
“Danny!” Rethia’s voice held an urgency he knew better than to ignore; he cast another look at the Reds and wheeled around to thread through the group to Rethia while the others milled to a stop. He found her sitting tensely on her docile horse, one hand on Madehy’s over her reins. Madehy sat frozen, her face paled, her eyes closed. Rethia glanced at him. “I think she’ll be all right. She just needs a moment.”
Madehy already sat straighter, if refusing to meet his gaze as always. Kendall crashed out of the brush to investigate the delay, wending his way through the horses without fear, and she relaxed a little more.
“The Dragons are just ahead,” Reandn told them. “We’ll get a chance to rest, then.”
Madehy made a noise of dismay, and Rethia shook her head. “That’s just it. Madehy and I were practicing — well, we were practicing, and we didn’t deliberately eavesdrop, but —”
Madehy raised her head, catching his eye for the merest instant with her marbled gaze. He knew the effort it had taken, and he to take it seriously. “He’s afraid,” she said. “He saw they were Reds, and he’s afraid.”
Reandn didn’t have to ask who — not with the way Elstan had distanced himself from them.
He seemed to notice what he’d done for the first time. His defiant words were nothing against the flush of his face. “I was expecting Blues, that’s all.”
Teya cocked her head at him, her matter-of-fact tone leaving no room for argument. “You’ve been worried for days, Elstan.”
“Danny,” Rethia said. It was all she had to say, sitting so tall and still on her horse, looking at him so intently. This is important. He’s lying.
Reandn moved Sky up, close enough that Elstan backed his horse another few steps, a few very deliberate and self-aware steps this time. “You’ve had your own plans for this assignment from the start. Otherwise, you’d never have pretended you co
uld shield me from your magic; you’d never have done anything to compromise the escort in any way.”
“Dan?” Vaklar called from the front of the group. “What’s up, then?”
“I’m about to find out.” Reandn didn’t take his eyes from Elstan. “Until then, we don’t want to get too close to those Dragons.” And he smiled at Elstan, a grim and humorless expression. “Do you know what Vaklar will do to you if you know something important about Kalena’s safety, and you don’t tell us about it?”
Teya moved in beside him, her voice cold. “I know how many of us are just going to watch Vaklar do it.”
“Bloody hells,” Elstan muttered, with plenty of feeling behind it. “It could be nothing, nothing. You don’t know what they’ll do to me —”
Reandn cut through the blustering with hard decision, calling up ahead to Vaklar. “We’re falling back!”
Vaklar trotted up to them, Kalena by his side; Kacey now trailed the group and they slowly backtracked, forcing Elstan to do the same. Vaklar pulled up beside Reandn. “What the Lonely Hells’re you up to, Dan? What’re those Dragons of yours going to think when they see us moving away?”
“That’s a good question.” Reandn sent Elstan a meaningful look.
Vaklar’s bafflement turned to something more grim. “Aya? What’s the good ladaboy got to say?”
“The Dragon Blues usually patrol this area when necessary. Instead we’ve got the Reds — and Elstan is unusually concerned about that.”
“Ah,” Vaklar said, and frowned. “But we naya know why, am I right?”
“Oh, for the Goddesses’ Sake,” Elstan snapped. “I think the Reds could mean trouble, that’s all.”
Reandn raised an eyebrow. “Because... ?”
“Bloody damned Wolf,” Elstan muttered. “Because Malik has got ties to the Reds, and Malik is trouble.”
Kalena turned to him with Highborn irritation. “Malik is my father’s friend and business associate. He offered to come out here last fall and stay through the winter to finalize the arrangements for my arrival.”
But Reandn had gone still and cold. “He offered?”
Kalena shook her head in pure denial. “You’re wrong.”
Vaklar watched the byplay between them all, and demanded, “Dan, what —?”
“Malik,” Reandn said. “He’s been behind all our arrangements for Kalena’s transition. He made sure we knew her favorite foods, he helped choose her new horse... and he stood fast that the way to show respect to Resioran pride was to limit our escort. What do you want to bet he also knew Elstan didn’t have the magic to shield me, or even to truly protect Kalena?”
“I had all the magic he needed,” Elstan snapped — and then fell into sullen silence as he realized what he had said.
“It’s over now, ladaboy,” Vaklar said, deceptively quiet; he moved his horse to block the road. Ahead of them, the Dragons took note of their confrontation and halted to exchange a few intense comments. “Give over the rest of it.”
Elstan looked at them all one by one, and found no understanding or sympathy among them. He sighed, and dropped his reins, but it was a signal of surrender and not a precursor to spell-working; he kept his fingers quiet with the same deliberate passivity that Reandn would use to show a hand empty of weapons. “I never planned for any harm to come to Kalena — or to anyone else.”
Vaklar’s eyes flashed. “That didn’t exactly work out, then, did it?”
“I tried!” Elstan said, desperate for absolution. “I really tried! But something kept throwing my spells off.” He gave Reandn a bitter look. “I know you think I’ve no magic of worth, but I’ve never had trouble before. And I honestly thought I could learn the shielding.”
Teya said coldly, “There’s a vast difference in the precision between court spells and field spells. People are so awed by magic, they don’t notice the flaws around the edges of a flashy spell. It matters when you put those same flaws into spells you want to protect someone. Believe me, I know.”
He had been preparing to strike back at her, bitterness intact... but her last words stopped him cold. As did Vaklar.
“Ladaboy, the Dragons won’t wait forever, and we’ve no more idea what you’re about than when you started talking.”
“Just tell us,” Reandn said. “Don’t bother with the excuses. You’ll have plenty of chances for those, later — if you’re lucky.”
“If we’re all lucky,” Madehy said, giving the Dragons a wary glance over her shoulder.
Elstan fidgeted; he lost all traces of court poise and affectation. “Malik wanted someone to travel with the escort... someone to keep the Knife wizard informed about our circumstances and progress.”
“Those times you contacted the Keep,” Reandn said. “You weren’t talking to anyone at the Keep at all.”
Elstan rubbed a dirty finger across the bridge of his nose. “Well, sometimes I was. But not always, no. Sometimes it was Malik; sometimes it was the Knife Wizard.”
“No wonder you wanted nothing to do with the rescue,” Teya said. “She’d have recognized you instantly.”
Elstan nodded. “I don’t know why Malik conspired to do you harm, Kalena. But I never intended to let it happen. I thought... I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to prove myself. That I could play along — and when the attack came, I’d be the only one truly ready to fend it off.”
“You wanted to be a hero,” Teya said darkly.
“I was ready. I just... wasn’t expecting Dan to need as much shielding as he did. Or for the spells to keep breaking apart. We...” He stopped, as if he realized for the first time the consequences of his collusion. “We’d all have been dead on that road, if the Knife Wizard’s spells hadn’t failed, too.”
Vaklar grunted. “We’re bloody-damned lucky not to be dead on that road anyway, boyo.”
“We might end up dead on this road,” Madehy said, and there was a tremor in her voice. Rethia took her arm and murmured a suggestion; Madehy took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and muttered something under her breath. When she opened her eyes again, she was visibly calmer. All she said was, “Whatever he may have said before... this is the truth.”
Kalena clutched at her saddle pommel, as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. “I’ve known Malik since I was a girl —”
“But he’s been borderline Highborn all his life,” Reandn said, recalling Saxe’s words. “He’s in coal, and most of the coal families lean toward Geltria.”
“You think he’d betray me for the coal families?” Kalena couldn’t fathom it.
“It’d be one way to go from borderline to true Highborn,” Vaklar said soberly. “Aya, they’d owe him that much.”
Kalena gave up half her grip on the saddle to point at Elstan. “You called me Kalennie. I thought you were being deliberately rude, but you as much as told me you were working with someone who knew me, and I didn’t catch it!”
“I knew the wizard woman was working with someone,” Fiers said, joining the conversation quite suddenly. “Only Arik knew the details. By Tenaebra’s Hand, I wish I’d stayed to see what my people learned from him. It might well help us now.”
“How so?” Vaklar asked sharply.
Fiers laughed shortly. “We’re in worse danger than your ambassador, I’d say, if Malik’s men are with those Dragons and they realize who we are. Arik might could have given us details on those men.” His companion shifted in the saddle, fingering the sling he wore on his belt.
Reandn nodded — they would certainly fight with determination if not great skill — and went back to watching the Dragons, who were again moving in on them, not far at all now; Reandn lowered his voice. “How many Reds belong to Malik, Elstan?” He eyed the squad, caught by a familiar snatch of brown in all that red.
“As many as he could buy, I suppose. No more than a handful.”
Reandn considered the Dragons, eyeing those patches of brown. Once, he’d have sworn that no Wolf could be bought... but his blind
faith had eroded in recent days. “A handful at most...”
“Dan, you say that like you’ve got a thought.” Vaklar’s gloved fingers tightened on the reins; his horse flipped its head up and down until the guard realized what he’d done and offered some slack. “You have a mind to share it?”
Reandn watched the slowly advancing group — more certain than before that one of the Wolves was Faline — lanky, short-haired and quiet-spoken — once Wolf Third to his Wolf First. Two years later, he still trusted her.
And she would know him, and listen to him — and believe what he might say, with as few words and as little time as he might have to say it. Looking at her, assuring himself it was indeed Faline, Reandn couldn’t help but grin.
Teya gave him a sudden wary look. “What’re you going to do?” she asked suspiciously, raising her hands as if she could — or would — stop him with some spell.
He shrugged. “What I do best,” he told her. “Make trouble.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 18
Vaklar rubbed a hand over his jaw, frowning as Reandn dismounted. “I don’t know I like the sound of that.”
“Why don’t we just run?” Kalena suggested. “We have horses. They seem to have only one among them.”
“We could.” Reandn stood next to Sky, one hand still on the horse’s withers. “And then we’d never know just who Malik has in the Dragons. Eventually you’d land at the Keep, and you wouldn’t know who you can trust. Be a lot cleaner to handle this problem here.”
Kalena made a face. “There are too many of them.”
“They’re not all Malik’s,” Kacey said. “They couldn’t be. Especially not the Wolves!”
Elstan stared down the road at the heated discussion between Faline, the Red First, and the single mounted man. The man clambered off his horse — not a graceful man, no, but one with a comfortable belly and not enough hours in the saddle — and walked slowly forward. “That looks like Malik. I had no idea —”
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