by Jim Butcher
“Bernard,” she said. “Why is there a girl in your bed?”
Her brother coughed and flushed. “Isana, when you say it that way —”
She turned to blink up at him. “Bernard. Why is there a girl in your bed?”
He grimaced. “That’s Amara. The slave Tavi helped. I was going to lay her down on a cot by the fire, but she panicked. Begged me not to let her sleep down there. Whispering like she was afraid of something. So I told her I wouldn’t, and she just passed out.” He glanced back toward his room. “I brought her up here.”
“To your bed.”
“Isana! Where else was I supposed to take her?”
“Just tell me you don’t think she’s actually a lost slave who Tavi happened to rescue.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. Her story didn’t add up. It sounded all right at first, but I cleaned out her cuts and didn’t give her anything for the pain. She got tired fast. Nearly collapsed.”
“She’s hurt?”
“Nothing to kill her, so long as she doesn’t take fever. But yes. Her feet got cut up on rocks, and she’s got what looks like a blade wound on her arm. Says she got them falling down.”
“Clumsy girl,” Isana said. She shook her head. “Sounds like she’s someone. Maybe an agent of one of the Lords?”
“Who knows. She seemed decent enough. I suppose she could be what she says.”
A quiet and desperate fear curled through her. Isana felt her hands start to shake, and her knees. “And she just happened to arrive that close to him?”
He sighed and shook his head. “I didn’t like that part, either. And there’s more. Strangers, downstairs. Three of them. They’re asking for shelter until the storm blows over.”
“And they just happened to show up today.” Isana swallowed. “It’s happening, isn’t it.”
“We knew it might.”
She swore softly. “Furies, Bernard. Crows and bloody furies.”
His voice sounded pained. “Isana —”
She held up her hand toward him. “No, Bernard. No. There’s too much to do. How is Tavi?”
He pressed his lips together for a moment, but said, “Not good. I was hard on him. Guess I was upset at not knowing what was going on. Worried.”
“We have to find out what’s going on. We must know whether or not he’s in any danger.”
“All right. What do you want me to do?”
“Get downstairs, to those strangers. Be polite with them. Get them some food. Get their shoes off.”
“Their shoes—?”
Isana snapped, “Have someone wash their feet, city-style. Just do it.” She closed her eyes, thinking. “I’ll talk to Tavi. And this Amara. Make sure they aren’t hurt worse than you thought.”
“She’s exhausted,” he pointed out. “Looks like she’s been run into the ground.”
“She shouldn’t be up to telling much of a lie, then,” Isana said. “I’ll be downstairs to talk to the strangers in a bit. Do you know how the storm is shaping up?”
He nodded. “Not as bad as last night, but not pretty. Everyone should be all right if they’re indoors, but I’ve called everyone into the hall, just to be safe.”
“Good,” Isana said. “The more people there, the better. Don’t leave them alone, Bernard. Don’t let them out of your sight. All right?”
“I won’t,” he promised. “What about Tavi? He should know.”
She shook her head. “No. Now more than ever, no. He doesn’t need that on his head.”
Bernard looked unhappy with her words, but did not gainsay them. He turned toward the stairs, but hesitated, looking into his bedroom, at the girl who lay on the bed. “Isana . . . the girl is barely more than a child. She’s exhausted. She had a chance to do wrong, and she didn’t. Tavi says she saved his life. You should let her rest.”
“I don’t want anyone to be hurt,” Isana said. “Go on.”
His expression hardened. “I mean it.”
“All right.”
He nodded to her and vanished silently down the stairs again.
Isana went back into her bedroom and took up her bone-handled brush. She took it with her, gathering her hair over one shoulder, and knocked at Tavi’s door. There was no response. She knocked again and said, “Tavi, it’s me. May I come in?”
Silence. Then the doorknob turned and the door opened a fraction. She opened the door the rest of the way and walked into the room.
Tavi’s room was dark, with no lights lit. Of course, he couldn’t use the furylamps, she reminded herself, and he’d been inside since Bernard had come home earlier that day. With the windows shuttered and the storm gathering outside, the place held a surprisingly deep collection of shadows. She could just see him settling back down onto his bed, no more than a dim outline across the room.
She began to brush at her hair, giving him a chance to speak. He remained silent, and after several moments she asked, “How are you feeling, Tavi?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” he said, his tone sullen. “I don’t know any watercrafting, so how am I supposed to know?”
Isana sighed. “Tavi, that’s not fair. You know that I don’t have a choice about what I sense from others.”
“Plenty of things aren’t fair,” he shot back.
“You’re upset about what your uncle told you.”
“I worked all year to get those sheep he promised. And this . . .” He shook his head, his voice tightening with anguish, frustration that pressed against Isana like the heat from an old fire.
“You made some bad choices, Tavi. But that doesn’t mean that—”
“Choices,” Tavi spat the word bitterly. “As though I ever had that many to make. It isn’t like I’m going to have to worry about that again, now.”
She tugged the brush at a tangle in her hair. “You’re just upset. So was your uncle. This isn’t anything to get worked up about, Tavi. I’m sure that when everyone’s calmed down —”
The sudden surge of frustration and pain from Tavi hit her like a tangible wind. The brush tumbled from her fingers and to the floor. She caught her breath, though the intensity of the boy’s emotions nearly robbed her of balance. “Tavi . . . are you all right?”
He whispered, “It’s nothing to get worked up about.”
“I don’t understand why these sheep are so important to you.”
“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t. I want to be by myself.”
Isana pressed her lips together and bent carefully to recover her brush. “But I need to talk to you about what happened. There are some things —”
Anger, real, vibrant rage rushed across the room along with the other sensations pouring from him. “I am finished talking about what happened,” Tavi said. “I want to be alone. Please leave.”
“Tavi —”
His dim shape rolled over on the bed, turning his back to the door. Isana felt her own emotions begin to drift dangerously toward what the boy felt, his feelings beginning to bleed into hers. She drew a breath, steeling herself against them and said, “All right. But we aren’t through talking. Later.”
He didn’t answer.
Isana retreated from the room. She had hardly shut the door when she heard the latch slide shut on the inside and lock it closed. She had to take several steps down the hall before she emerged from the deluge of the boy’s emotions. She couldn’t understand it: Why was Tavi so upset over what had happened?
More to the point, what didn’t she know about the events of the day before? Could they have any bearing on the arrival of so many strangers to the Valley at once?
She shook her head and leaned against the wall for a moment. Tavi had a powerful personality, a formidable force of will that lent his passions an extra weight, somehow, and forced her to struggle more sharply to keep them separate from her own. Not that it was surprising that she should feel him more keenly than anyone else, in any case. She loved him too much, had been near him too long.
To say nothing of the other rea
sons.
Isana shook her head firmly. Regardless of how drained she felt from last night’s crafting, there was no time to waste. She should have remembered her purpose when speaking to the boy: to learn what she could of the previous day’s events that Bernard could not remember.
She turned toward her brother’s room and took a deep breath. Then she paced inside, determined.
Bernard had left the lamp burning on a low flame, and the room’s interior was lit by soft, golden light. Bernard lived simply: He had, ever since Cassea and the girls had died. He had removed all of her things, packing them in a pair of trunks stowed underneath his bed. He lived out of a single trunk, now, as he had in the Legions. His weapons and gear were stowed on racks on one wall, across from the bare writing desk, all the records for the steadholt stowed neatly in its drawers.
The girl slept in Bernard’s bed. She was tall, with lean features that seemed particularly drawn in the light, dark circles like bruises beneath her eyes. Her skin glowed golden, almost the same shade as her hair. She was beautiful. A braid of leather circled her throat.
Isana frowned at her. Her brother had gotten down the extra blankets and piled them over the girl — though she had evidently stirred enough that her feet had slipped from beneath them. Isana stepped forward absently to cover her feet again and saw that they had been bandaged and covered in slippers of soft calfskin.
Isana stared down at the slippers for a moment. Pale white, stitched neatly, with delicate beadwork tracing a design over the tops. She recognized it at once: She had done it herself, perhaps ten years before. The slippers had been a birthday gift for Cassea. They had been in the chest beneath the bed for more than a decade.
Isana stepped back from the bed. She wanted to speak to the girl—but her brother had warned her against disturbing her. She had hoped for years that he would find someone else, after he’d lost Cassea and the girls, but he never had. Bernard had continually kept a quiet distance between himself and anyone else, and those who lived in the Valley, those who remembered his wife and daughters, had simply given him the solitude he wished.
If her brother had found it in himself again to reach out to someone else—and from his words to her and the way he had treated the girl, it seemed that he had—could she so readily act against him?
Isana stepped forward and laid her hand across the girl’s forehead. Even before she had reached out through Rill, she felt the mild fever in her. She shivered and slowly extended her senses out, through the fury, and into the sleeping slave.
Bernard had not been mistaken. The girl bore several injuries, from painful cuts upon her legs to a painfully swollen ankle to a sharp, vicious cut along her upper arm. Her body had been pushed to exhaustion, and even in sleep, Isana could feel that the girl was gripped by a terrible worry and fear. She murmured softly to Rill and felt the fury course gently through the girl, mending closed the smaller cuts and easing the swelling and pain. The effort left Isana’s head light, and she drew her hand back and concentrated on remaining on her feet.
When she looked down again, the girl had opened her exhausted eyes and was staring up at her. “You,” she whispered. “You’re the watercrafter that healed the Steadholder.”
Isana nodded and said, “You should rest. I just want to ask you one question.”
The girl swallowed and nodded. She let her eyes fall closed.
“Have you come for the boy?” Isana asked. “Are you here to take him?”
“No,” the girl said, and Isana felt the simple truth in her words as clearly as the tone of a silver bell. There was a purity to the way she spoke, a sense of sincerity that reassured Isana, let her shoulders unknot, if only a little.
“All right,” Isana said. She adjusted the blankets over the girl, covering her feet once more. “Sleep. I’ll bring you some food in a little while.”
The girl did not reply, motionless on the bed, and Isana withdrew from the room, to the top of the stairs. She could hear voices, below, as the holdfolk gathered into the hall. Outside, thunder rumbled, low and ominous, from the north. The events of the night before, the Kordholders’ attack on her, came rushing back in memory, and she shivered.
Then she straightened and walked down the stairs, to deal with the other strangers who had come to Bernardholt.
CHAPTER 17
Fidelias waited until the big Steadholder had padded up the stairs and out of his sight, carrying someone wrapped in a blanket. The former Cursor glanced around the hall. For the moment, at least, he and his companions had been left alone. He turned to Odiana and Aldrick with a frown.
Aldrick stood staring after the Steadholder and murmured, “Well, I wonder what that was all about.”
“Fairly obvious,” Fidelias said. He glanced at Odiana.
“Fear,” she whispered, and shivered as she leaned closer to Aldrick. “The most delicious fear. Recognition.”
“Amara.” Fidelias nodded. “She’s here. That was her.”
Aldrick lifted his eyebrows. “But he never turned around. You never saw her face.”
Fidelias gave Aldrick an even look and suppressed a surge of irritation. “Aldrick, please. Do you expect her to hang a sign on the door that she’s here? It all fits. Three sets of tracks—the boy’s, the Steadholder’s, and hers. She was limping. That’s why he was carrying her.”
Aldrick sighed. “All right then. I’ll go up and kill those two, and we can be about it.” He turned away and lifted a hand to his sword.
“Aldrick,” Fidelias hissed. He seized the swordsman’s arm at the biceps and reached down into the earth to borrow from his fury’s strength. He stopped the larger man cold.
Aldrick glanced down at Fidelias’s arm and relaxed. “That was the point, wasn’t it?” the swordsman said. “Fidelias, we have to stop them from reporting to Gram. Withoutthe element of surprise, this entire campaign could be for nothing. We came here to find the Steadholder and the boy who had seen our friend Atsurak, and kill them. Oh, and the agent of the crows-eaten Crown if we happen to run across her, which we have.”
“Love,” Odiana said. “We still don’t know where this boy is, do we? If you go and kill the ugly little girl right now, won’t the Steadholder object? And then you’d have to kill him as well. And anyone else upstairs. And all these people here . . .” She licked her lips, her eyes bright, and said to Fidelias, “Why shouldn’t we do this again?”
“Remember where you are,” Fidelias said. “This is the most dangerous area of the Realm. Powerful furies, dangerous beasts. This isn’t one of the old plantations of the Amaranth Vale. It breeds strong crafters. Did you see the way that boy handled those gargants out front? And he calmed our mounts when they got nervous—that wasn’t me. And he did it without so much as stopping to make an effort. A boy. Think about it.”
Aldrick shrugged. “They don’t go armed. They’re Steadholders, not warriors. We could kill them all.”
“Probably,” Fidelias said. “But what if that retired Legionnaire Steadholder is a strong crafter to boot? What if some of the other holders here are that strong? Odds are some of them would escape — and since we don’t know who the boy we’re looking for is we’d never know if we got him.”
“What about that boy out front?” Odiana asked. “That lovely strong tall one with the gargants.”
“His feet are too big,” Fidelias said. “The rain all but obliterated the tracks, but the ones from earlier today are clearer. We’re looking for a smallish boy, not growing a beard yet—or possibly a girl. Atsurak probably wouldn’t know the difference at that age, if a girl had been wearing breeches. The Marat don’t make the same distinctions we do.”
“He had big hands, too,” Odiana mused, and leaned against Aldrick, her eyes heavy, drowsy. “May I have him, love?”
Aldrick leaned down and absently kissed her hair. “You’d only kill him, and then he’d be no good to you.”
“Get the idea out of your heads,” Fidelias said, his tone firm. “We have an objective.
Find the boy. The storm is rolling in behind us, and everyone will be gathering into the hall. As soon as we find him, we’ll take him, the Steadholder, and the Cursor and leave.”
Aldrick grunted assent. “And what if we don’t? What if he’s already gone off to Garrison to warn the local Count?”
Fidelias grimaced and looked around. “I grew up on a steadholt, and you’d never keep something like that a secret. If that’s what has happened, we’ll hear about it when everyone gathers in.”
“But what if—”
“We’ve borrowed trouble enough,” Fidelias sighed. He shook his head and slapped Aldrick’s arm gently, releasing him. “If the boy has already left, the storm will be as dangerous to him as anyone. We’ll catch him, and the result will be the same.” His eyes glittered. “But Aldrick. Why don’t you take Odiana out to make sure the horses are all right? I’ll handle things in here, and if there’s killing to be done, I’ll let you know who and where.”
Aldrick frowned down at him. “You sure about this? In here by yourself — what if you need help?”
“I won’t,” Fidelias assured him. “Go on to the stables. Make it clear that you’re looking for a bit of privacy. I’m sure they’ll let a couple of newlywed travelers have it.”
Aldrick arched his brows. “Newlywed?”
The water witch’s eyes smoldered. Odiana flashed a smile to Fidelias, then turned to Aldrick with a sway of her hips and took one of his hands in hers. She kissed his fingers as she walked backward, toward the doors to the hall. “I’ll explain it to you, love. Let’s go find the stables. There will be hay there. Would you like to see the hay in my hair?”
Aldrick’s eyes narrowed, and he let out a low and not un-pleased sound. “Ah.” He started out, keeping hold of Odiana’s hands. “I knew there was a reason I liked working with you, old man.”
“Just be listening,” Fidelias warned quietly.
The witch nodded and replied, “Keep a cup in your hands, and drink in the cup. I’ll hear.” Then she and the swordsman vanished toward the stone stables.
