Eevlina tore off a greasy mouthful of roasted tree barret, then wiped her stubby fingers on her bodice as she chewed. “It’s plain to me now, boy, that I’ll never get one bit of use out of you. I should have packed you off to your father’s people long ago.”
Cale toyed with a bit of berrysauce on his wooden plate, glumly watching the shadows from the fire flicker across Eevlina’s face.
“You’ve never shown the slightest smidgen of sense.” The old woman scraped up the last red smear of berrysauce on her plate and sucked it off her little finger. “I must be going soft in my old age to let you stay on so long.”
He set his dish down by the crackling fire and picked up a stick. “Well, now that I’ve gone to all the trouble of catching one of those high-and-mighty Lords, the least you could do is let me try, Gran!” He poked angrily at the glowing embers.
“That?” Eevlina glanced at the pale-haired girl hunched up in the shadows, then dissolved into gut-rolling laughter. “High-and-mighty?”
Cale got up stiffly and checked the girl’s bound wrists. She stared off into the darkness as though he weren’t even there. Then he settled next to Eevlina again without looking the old woman in the face. “It’ll grow,” he said shortly, his eyes on the dancing fire.
“You bet your worthless life that bit of stuff will grow!” The old woman glared at him. “And then where will we all be? It’ll be jerking us all around like we was puppets on some string the way all them Lords do.”
“No, no!” Cale fought the exasperation in his voice. “I’ll take it back long before that. It’s worth a rare amount of money, Gran. I just know it.”
“Money again!” she exploded. “And can we eat money in the dead of winter, or wear it when we’re cold, or ride it when we’re on the run?”
“You can get all those things and more, Gran, when you’ve got money. Really, it’s the coming thing. Everyone says.”
“‘Everyone says!’” she mimicked. “And I suppose we’ll all jump off the top of the nearest tree, if everyone says?”
He threw the stick into the fire and stalked moodily into the darkness.
“Money!” Eevlina snorted at his retreating back. “You have a distressing streak of silliness, boy.”
Cale snagged the girl by her wrists and hauled her roughly up to her feet. Damnation, he thought, dragging her after him, the brat was almost as tall as he was.
He yanked her around the huge tree to a small clearing where a few silver shafts of the first moon’s light filtered down. “All right.” He shoved her back into the shadows against the hard trunk. “I want to know what House you be from and I want to know now, or I’ll beat it out of you!” Breathing hard, he glared at her.
Moving away, she tugged fretfully at the thong cutting into her wrists. “It won’t do you any good.”
Cale reached out and took a handful of her gown, pulling her close to his face. “You had better pray you’re wrong about that.”
The girl glanced up into the treetops swaying in the evening breeze. “I can’t go . . . back.”
“Don’t feed me that load of—” He tightened his grip and pushed his face into hers until he could smell the faint scent of wood smoke in her hair. “What House?”
She flinched and turned her head aside. “Tal.”
“Tal,” he repeated. “That’s one of them Highlands Houses, isn’t it?”
“If you take me back to Tal’ayn, they’ll kill me, and probably you, too, for that matter.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You can prove it—at the cost of both our lives.”
Cale squirmed as seeds of doubt took root in his mind. He loosened his hold. “Why would your own kind want to kill you?”
The girl stared silently up at Sedja’s silvery crescent, her aquiline profile very different from the snub-nosed ones to which he was accustomed. “It has to do with my father,” she said in a low voice. “He was very important, you know.”
Cale straightened. “All the better then.”
“Not exactly.” Her pale brows knit together as she had trouble finding the words. “I seem to have . . .”
“Blast you, have—what?”
“Killed him.”
He stared at her drawn face in dumbfounded silence, having expected any excuse but that. She brushed angrily at the shiny trail of a tear on her cheek with her bound hands.
He shut his eyes and leaned his forehead on his two fists. Wouldn’t Eevlina just love to hear this? Maybe they should use the brat for silsha-bait, as Mashal had suggested.
Then he had to laugh—fat lot of good that would do. This particular brat seemed to be on very good terms with silshas. Something clicked in his mind; maybe he could make that work for him. “Back there on the trail, how did you know the silsha wouldn’t attack you?”
She considered, her young face standing out white in the moonlight. “I saw in its mind that it didn’t want to hurt me.”
A grin split his face. “And what about a horse, then? Could you see into its head?”
“A horse?” She nodded slowly. “I suppose so. Why?”
“Because we just may be able to do a little something for Eevlina after all, prize.” He stretched his arms behind his head until his joints popped. “There be a nice little fair coming up in a few days.” He winked at her in Sedja’s silvery light. “A horse fair.”
* * *
“A horse fair,” Jarid repeated to himself, as he worked the stiffness of a deep Search trance out of his muscles. As good a place as any to run the skivit to ground. What was the name of that town he’d picked out of the chierra’s mind? He thought for a minute, then he had it—Dorbin.
A few feet away, the old peddler grunted in his sleep, then resumed snoring with his gap-toothed mouth open. Jarid smiled. It seemed they all had an appointment to meet in Dorbin in a few days.
* * *
Cittar glanced uneasily at the tall bright-haired Lord riding beside his old wagon. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember exactly how they had met. Clucking to his elderly ummit, he prodded it with his stick over to the less rutted side of the road.
The Lord looked at him with inhuman golden eyes and reined his dark-brown horse over to give the wagon room. Cittar ducked his head and let the ummit plod on, listening to the tinkle of the tiny bells hung on his wagon. What in the name of the Mother could this silent Kashi lord want from him?
Suddenly his doubts faded like water draining down a hill after a hard rain. Cittar swatted at one of the pesky insects buzzing around the old ummit’s shaggy gray hindquarters and thought instead of the Dorbin Fair.
Although he usually went to Dorbin later in the year, he had the urge to swing by now instead. If he took the next fork, he could reach the town in a day or less.
He nodded to himself. “She might be there,” he said, then wondered if he was talking about the middle-aged innkeeper, Cynnalee Kochigian, who welcomed his old bones most times.
An image floated up in his mind, the milk-white, pale-eyed face of a young girl—a Kashi girl. He mulled that over, feeling angrier at the face with each passing minute. His gnarled hands twisted around the stick, clenching it tighter and tighter.
What was there in that young face that made him so hot, so ready to—kill? The clatter of hoofs made him glance up as the Kashi lord spurred his horse into a ground-covering lope and disappeared up the road ahead of him.
A LIGHT breeze ruffled the pale-gold tendrils around Haemas’s face as she struggled to one-handedly pull herself up into the tree fork. From there, she eased out onto a broad overhanging limb. An iridescent lightwing perched on the branch just above her head. She held it there with her mind for a few seconds, listening to its vague thoughts of flight and food.
Then, releasing her hold, she filtered her awareness outward through the leaf-shrouded trees and the encampmen
t. Other minds, like tiny sparks of light, came to her notice, skivits and tree barrets and other such wild creatures; she could touch nothing else. They had always been there, but she had paid no attention to them. Nowadays, though, she found them a comfort when, to her impaired psi-senses, people still felt no more alive than the wind or the trees or the clear green sky.
Frowning, she slid farther out and settled on her stomach. Below, the matriarch Eevlina presided by the fire pit, glaring fiercely and wielding her knobby walking stick like a scepter. Several men sweated under a large iron tub, trying to place it on the fire to please her.
Haemas sighed. As far as she could see, nothing ever suited that one.
“Move one ladylike muscle and I’ll slit your refined gullet.” The thin cold blade of a knife pricked the tender skin at the base of her jaw. Noiselessly, someone slipped down beside her and grasped a handful of her hair. “What are you doing up here?”
“St-staying out of the way,” Haemas faltered.
The blade eased off. “Well, I have to admit the sense of that.” Jassfra let go and lounged back against the main trunk. “Knowing Eevlina, that is.” She cocked her head. “I thought Cale was supposed to keep you tied up all the time.”
“He doesn’t need to; I can’t go back.” Haemas sat up and steadied herself with one arm around a smaller branch.
Jassfra ran her thumb along the knife’s sharp blade. “If ‘twas me now, I’d be off in a flash, back to all them big fancy houses and jewels and such, folk to wait on me day and night.”
“It’s not what you think.” Haemas studied the hearty red-haired girl with her athletic build and confident air, trying to picture her as the pampered daughter of some High House, groomed first for duty and obedience, then marriage and child-bearing. Jassfra took for granted the freedom women and girls had here in the camp to live as they pleased. None of the men ever dictated what a woman could do or where she could go as Haemas’s father had always done with her.
Without warning, the chilling image of her father’s dead hand flung against her boot washed over her again, bringing back the aching despair. Her stomach tightened and she felt sick. Why had she done it? If only she could remember, then perhaps she could find some peace.
Her head began to throb, a fierce brightness simmering behind her eyes as it did every time she tried to remember that night. She pressed her fingers to her temples, suddenly cold and clammy despite the warmth of the air.
Jassfra slid the bone-handled knife into an ebari-hide sheath at her waist. “What happened to your blade?” she asked. “Did Cale take it from you? I’d like to see me one of them fine Highlands knives.”
The thought of handling a real weapon as these chierra women did brought a blush to Haemas’s cheeks. She drew a steadying breath and shoved the memory of that terrible night to the back of her mind. “Kashi daughters are never given knives.”
Jassfra snorted. “That’s stupid! How are they supposed to take care of themselves then?”
“They—aren’t.” Haemas eyed Jassfra’s lithe, well-muscled frame with a secret envy. “Perhaps you could show me . . .” Her voice trailed off as a sly hunger nudged at the edge of her consciousness.
Food . . . hungry . . .
She braced herself and slowly stood, curling her twelve bare toes over the rough bark. “Maybe you should get down now.”
“Actually . . .” Jassfra pulled herself up. “I was thinking it’s you should get down.”
. . . protect . . . find . . .
Something in the branches far above rustled. “No.” She craned her head back. Strength and cunning enveloped her like a blanket. “I’ll be all right.”
“I don’t like you up here hanging over our heads!” Jassfra grabbed Haemas’s arm. “You get down right—”
A low rumbling growl interrupted the red-haired girl.
“—now . . .” Her eyes followed Haemas’s glance above. The branch immediately overhead shook, then the silsha’s narrow black nose broke through the leaves. Blinking its fierce yellow eyes, it thought, Come! Come now!
Haemas eased her arm out of Jassfra’s stiff fingers and stretched her hand up to the whiskered face. The silsha rumbled deep in its broad chest. She ran a finger along its cheekbones back to its tiny tufted ears and its eyes narrowed in appreciation.
Jassfra’s boots scraped as she slid backwards down the trunk and thumped hard when she hit the ground. Angry, excited voices below tried to shout over each other. Haemas listened, but she couldn’t make out most of what was being said. Finally one voice won out.
“Mother above, girl! What in the seven hells do you think you’re doing up there?”
That was Eevlina, Haemas decided. She dangled one foot over the side of the branch.
“Do you or do you not have another one of those damn silshas up there with you?”
Haemas scratched the beast behind its tufted ears. “Yes.”
“Then get rid of it!”
The silsha leaned its sinuous body companionably against her. “He’s not hurting anything.”
“Get rid of it, you little wretch, or you’ll get what’s coming to you if I have to climb up there and give to you, myself!”
An argument ensued, too low for Haemas to make it out. Then she heard Cale’s voice.
“Well supplied with water and food up there, are you?”
Haemas pressed closer to the silsha’s warmth.
“Blanket and all, too, I suppose?”
Haemas sighed. Wait, she told the silsha. It rolled over on its side and playfully stretched out a foreleg ending in wicked four-inch claws.
Slowly, she climbed back down the massive trunk, favoring her shoulder. When she reached the ground, the whole camp was crowded around. Jassfra stood, feet braced wide apart, an arrow notched and aimed up into the leaves.
“If you kill him,” Haemas said, “I’ll call another one—when you’re all sleeping!”
Jassfra’s hands didn’t move, but her brown eyes rolled down to look at the girl.
“You’ll do no such thing.” Eevlina grabbed Haemas roughly by the shoulders and shook her. “Don’t they teach you to obey your elders up there in the Highlands?”
Haemas stiffened with the pain in her torn shoulder muscles. Above, the silsha picked up on her discomfort and rattled their ears with an angry snarl. Closing her eyes, she reassured it that she was all right. “He won’t hurt anyone. I promise.”
“You’ll bring another one in the night, you say?” Eevlina threw up her hands, then glared at Cale. “We’d be safer, then, just to kill this little monster!”
After a strained silence, Cale smiled thinly at Eevlina. “I’m thinking a tame silsha could be a rare wonderful thing to have along on a raid.”
“Oh . . . ?” Eevlina’s heavy face creased doubtfully. “Well, call it down, girl. What are you waiting for?”
Come down, Haemas told the silsha, quietly.
The leaves trembled as with one great leap, it bounded to a much lower branch, then landed on leaf-covered ground at her feet. White-faced, Jassfra stumbled back, realigning her arrow on the beast’s chest. The silsha flattened its ears, but Haemas placed a hand on the black velvet head. Blinking its hot yellow eyes, it curled lazily around her legs, the flick of its restless tail the only sign of movement.
Eevlina paced warily around Haemas, her face creased in a heavy scowl. “What’s to keep that black-hearted beast from eating the ebari or even, Mother preserve us, one of us?”
The silsha licked its lips.
“We could feed him,” Haemas said.
“Feed that demon-spawned creature!” Eevlina snorted. “The very idea of wasting our food on that—that thing!”
“I’m sure it would be much happier hunting,” Cale broke in hastily, “just as it has always done.”
“See that it continues to do so!” Eev
lina threw back her shoulders with all the dignity she could muster, wielded her stick to clear a path through the crowd, and stalked into the trees.
* * *
“He be asking for you, Lady,” the chierra nurse insisted.
“I can’t possibly come now.” Alyssa unlaced her fingers and tried to stare the woman down. “Tal’ayn does not run by itself, and his Lordship very well knows that. I’ll look in later tonight, when I’m not so busy.”
“Begging your pardon, Lady.” The woman dropped a hasty curtsy. “But that’s what you said last night. He’s rare fit to be tied, he is.”
Where was Jarid, Alyssa thought angrily, when there was real work to be done? How dare he go off and leave her up here alone with this horrid mess? With a visible effort, she controlled her anger. “Very well. I’ll come in for a few minutes, but I want it understood that this inconvenience is not to be repeated.”
Keeping her eyes on the floor, the old woman nodded. “Thank you, Lady. I know the sight of his dear wife will speed his Lordship’s recovery.”
A faint line appeared between Alyssa’s golden eyes. Did she detect an underlying current of sarcasm in the old chierra’s words? Straightening her shoulders, she glided through the doors into the main bedchamber.
The old woman’s homespun skirt rustled as she fussed with the pillows. Then she bent over and whispered to the still figure in the great bed. “A visitor, your Lordship.”
The gray head stirred restlessly on the pillow. “Alyssa?”
Alyssa closed her eyes as she sought to weave her mental shields so tightly that he would read nothing from her. “I’m here, Dervlin,” she answered in a cool voice.
“How . . . long?”
“Two weeks.” She moved closer to the bed, disgusted, as always, by the stale medicinal smells of the sickroom and the sight of his haggard white face upon the pillow. “You had an accident.”
“Accident?” The gnarled hand on the bed strained to reach for her.
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