He got there first. "Just listen," he said, catching her gaze and holding it, holding it even when she would have looked away. "Listen well. You may be looking for something more important, but there is nothing more important to me than making sure Jess makes it safely to Second Siccawei."
Trouble-ride, that look of his. She tried to turn her words around, unspoken as they'd been. "I just didn't understand why you picked someone she doesn't really know."
"Because we have a burning lot of messages going out, and they all have to get there right now . You know some of the routes, but you don't know any of the shortcuts. And today," he raised a meaningful eyebrow at her, "is a shortcut day."
She'd know the shortcuts if she'd had the chance to make more runs before this . . . but she didn't say it.
Honestly puzzled, she did say, "Why so many messages? Why can't Mage Dispatch handle some of it? If things are really bad, people could use the transport booths to carry messages. Those shortcuts . . . they're rough. The horses will pay for using them."
He gave her a grim little smile, one that should have warned her. "Takes a while to map it all, doesn't it?
The Secondary Council is in a panic; the first thing they did was shut down the transfer booths—they're trying to contain whoever did this. Frankly, I'm not sure they could keep the whole system running during a crisis of this magnitude. They're only prepared to replace Council members one at a time."
She blinked at him, brushing one fat mahogany corkscrew curl away from her face. "They shut down the whole burnin' system ?"
His wry grin looked a little predatory. "Now you're hearing me. The Council is dead , Suliya. And they died between here and Second Siccawei ."
Definitely predatory. As if he'd let herself follow her ambition right into a job she might have otherwise refused. He'd drive her to the limit, too. . . .
But it might truly be the chance she'd been looking for. If she did well, Carey would know. He'd depend on her again, and she'd have the start she'd been looking for. And then she wouldn't need her family's good will at all— Carey looked at her with suddenly narrowed eyes. "Jess was right, wasn't she? You did put her in the wrong stall on purpose."
"What?" Suliya said, totally taken off guard. "Why—"
"Never mind." He cut her off with a sharp gesture, though his lean features had hardened. He eased a little closer; despite herself, Suliya took a step back, and therefore a step down. "Never mind that," he said again, this time as though more to convince himself than her. "You handle yourself with this run, and I'll forget it. But let that kind of thing happen on this run—even a whisper of it—and you're through here."
He looked at her, at the dismay she was unable to conceal. "Or didn't it ever occur to you that I have to be able to count on you in all ways, whether that means mucking out the stalls on an off day, or being someone my other couriers can trust—just like you can always trust Jess to take the runs no one else can manage safely."
She hadn't thought at all, actually. Not at the moment she'd acted. She hadn't thought about anything more than her resentment, and how unfair it was that Jess had walked in and taken away her rides. At the time—and now she did look down, down at her clenched hands and the worn stone step at her toe—the farthest thing from her mind was that Jess had taken that ride to protect her. Now it suddenly seemed obvious—Lady's assignments were often the fast, hard runs; the other couriers always seemed grateful.
And this time she'd handled the mudslide for Suliya.
Not that Suliya was the least convinced it would have been necessary, but— "I won't let you down," she said.
"No," Carey said. "Don't."
Jaime didn't believe it. Couldn't. Just as when she'd been a girl. "Your mother's dead," they'd said, and she never believed it. Had waited for years for her mother's return.
She'd been wrong, then. She wouldn't be wrong now.
Chapter 5
Jess came down from Arlen's rooms, barefooted and silent on the stairs; dim late-night glows invoked by the housekeeping staff made quiet light in the corners.
She heard no one else. They'd all retreated, like Jaime, to their nighttime quarters. To their families and friends, to huddle and worry and bolster each others' belief that it really wasn't true after all.
Jess believed it. And Jaime didn't, not truly—and didn't want to—so she threw herself into the chore of keeping the practical aspects of the hold functioning even though the housekeepers—wizards and physical workers alike—were long used to functioning on their own. It was thanks to Stenna, the evening maintenance warder, that Jaime was finally asleep; it was she who had mildly spelled Jaime's spiced wine, a thoughtfulness she was well prepared to offer after years of evening rounds to discover overexcited or fretful staff children and their frustrated families. "It only works if you're already truly tired," she'd told Jess when Jess had reacted with alarm at the thought of spelling children to sleep on a whim, and since Jaime had been exhausted . . .
Now, finally, she slept.
While Jess, wide awake, thought of tomorrow's ride and what she might find at the end of it, fully aware that she'd be responsible for reporting every nuance to Carey and Jaime. And Natt and Cesna, of course, but despite her casual fondness for them, it was not they whom she worried about.
Arlen.
She quite abruptly sat on the steps and cried.
In some ways, being a horse was so much easier.
After a while she stopped, and a while after that she scrubbed the hem of her thick, soft, cotton shirt over her face, sighed, and continued down the stairs.
Their rooms—hers and Carey's—were a luxury, a gift of the friend she now mourned. He'd given her the room next to Carey's and then cut a door into the stone wall, adding a lightweight wooden door carved with relief images of running horses. Hand-carved, too, and not done with easier copying magic.
Jess's room held her things from Ohio and from Kymmet—her photos, her horse show ribbons, an old pair of Carey's saddlebags that had given her such comfort when she had been newly human and hunting for the man she had depended on as a horse . . . Carey's things were slowly migrating over from what now served as their bedroom, and it was there that she found him. For a long moment she stood in the doorway between the rooms and watched him staring out the big window that made his such a nice room to have in this hill-held structure.
With no glass between the room and the cold winter air, the unobstructed view had an intimacy that Jess never felt looking out of a window in Ohio. Full moonlight reflected off the snow beyond the hold, making it easy to pick out a late-arriving rider.
"I should be down there," Carey said. "In the stable."
"Why?"
He lifted one shoulder; it had an irritable look from behind. "It's my job. I shouldn't be up here about to climb into bed while my riders are still working themselves to exhaustion."
"They are proud to ride for you," Jess said. "And we are all tired." They would be more tired before this was over; a year and a half of living through crises as a human had taught her that much.
Come to think of it, things had been little different when she was a horse. But then, at least, she had not fully understood what was at stake.
"Doesn't mean I shouldn't be down there," he muttered, sounding every bit as tired as she expected. "If only Calandre hadn't tried to turn me into a garbage heap—"
"We are all tired," Jess repeated. Calandre hadn't actually tried to turn him into a garbage heap, but the spells were similar and when he was feeling bitter he said it that way. "You cannot do everything, Carey.
None of us can."
"So sayeth the horse who learned to be a woman and then, when we all said it couldn't be done, taught her horse-self to use spellstones."
"Just a few of them," Jess said.
"Just a few," he repeated in a dry murmur, resting his forehead against the edge of the window.
"And I still do not understand so many things about being human . . ." It might d
istract him. It sometimes did.
Not this time.
"Carey," she said, and he didn't answer. She glanced at the bed—rumpled, unmade—and at Carey—bare-chested, light sleeping pants tied at his hips. He'd tried to sleep, then, and couldn't. Too bad Jess hadn't brought Stenna here to work her sleep spell on Carey. She gathered her thick hair and shoved it down her shirt so it wouldn't tangle when she pulled off the shirt. "Carey," she said again. "I feel you being far from me, and I need you. Come back."
He shook his head slightly, still staring out the window. Yet another rider came into view, riding a horse that stumbled and almost fell. "Somehow," he murmured. Not much of an answer, but one she understood anyway. Somehow , he had to make it all right.
Except this time, possibly for the first time, he didn't think he could do it. She could see the internal war of it in every tense line of his body. She left the shirt at the foot of the bed, and walked quietly up behind him, putting her arms around his waist and resting her chin on his shoulder. She said, "Come back to me."
He tipped his head so it rested against hers, and they stood that way together, watching the riders come in.
Chapter 6
Twisted magic blooms to life across Camolen like frost coming up on a cold surface . . . strange, obscure morphing corners and isolated crannies, gully bottoms and tree tops. Hissing darkness, wayward odors . . . glanced at, they are dismissed. Inhaled, they are politely ignored.
A madness of reality takes note, unnoticed.
Dayna uncrumpled the dispatch Bendi had managed to pull in off the system—it was all she could do to keep up with the urgent messages, and Dayna was certain Bendi missed at least half of the ones aimed at Second Siccawei. Sometimes the Siccawei dispatch wizards fielded one for them and sent it again, giving Bendi a second chance.
But Bendi was only one person, working within a secondary hold established for retreat work. None of them were prepared to have Second Siccawei as ground zero.
Not that the others knew what ground zero even meant, or had done anything but cast her strange glances when she muttered it. But Dayna knew . . . and she knew they'd soon be overrun by Secondary Council wizards trying to determine what had happened. The illused paper in her hand told her as much, along with its listing of immediate restrictions on basic travel and transport services. Well enough for them—given an anchor point, most of them could free-travel. Certainly they could communicate with each other over considerable distances; their own efforts and convenience would hardly be affected.
But there were those who commuted to work via the travel booths—and some of those people provided basic services. And there were those who were isolated and depended on basic dispatch communication for their needs.
And there were those like Dayna, who'd seen ground zero the day the Council died and who now had little choice but to sit idly by and watch the Secondary Council close down Camolen in their belated search for the cause.
And then there was Dayna unlike anyone else, Dayna alone who had felt the undirected magic sweep through the area, leaving no backlash.
She already knew they wouldn't believe her. Didn't believe her. Undirected, raw magic left backlash.
Always. Therefore she was wrong.
Dayna knew she wasn't.
She just didn't know what it meant . Or if she'd get a chance to find out.
Do something.
Anything.
Make it better.
Right. Stuck here in little Second Siccawei with no one listening to her and no grand ideas about how to make it better , not any of it. How could you make the death of your friends better ?
So she sat cross-legged in the wide-silled first floor window of Second Siccawei, watching for Jess to arrive while crumpling the dispatch from the Secondary—no, not anymore. Just the Council, now. Or as close as Camolen had to one. Crumpling the dispatch and thinking of Sherra. Dignified Sherra, full of calm and somehow always able to share it with others. Sherra who had given Dayna so much—healing her upon her first arrival here, taking her in as apprentice when it became clear that Dayna's combination of ignorance and talent was a danger to everyone around her . . . and then allowing her to stay. On Earth, Dayna had been just another drone, working in a small hotel, a petite woman with life closing in around her.
Here, she had purpose. Here, she had a kind of power she'd never imagined on Earth. Here, she thought she'd found a semblance of control over life . . . though with Sherra's death, with Arlen's death, she now suddenly realized that control was nothing more than illusion, here or on Earth.
Sherra. Arlen. If anyone had enough power to claim control, it would have been them.
But they hadn't. They'd died.
She smoothed the paper over her knee, coming one step closer to hating the crabbed handwriting of whoever had sent it. Around her, the small hold offered unusual silence; it was a hold in mourning—and one in waiting, shackled and unable to act. Muted noise came from the kitchen . . . everything else might stop short, but the people always needed to eat.
Finally, Dayna caught a glimpse of movement at the splotchily snow-covered edges of the hold clearing.
Stables were on one side of the clearing, the hold on the other, and a path leading back to the main route between Anfeald and Siccawei. Jess emerged first, in her characteristic Baltimore Orioles baseball cap—Mark had given her a new one for Christmas—her scarf flapping loosely and her winter coat unfastened almost to the waist, an indication of the exertion of the ride. Dayna didn't recognize the woman behind her, and as she slid from the window sill she craned her neck to keep a view of the yard, waiting for Carey or Jaime . . .
But there was no one else.
Dayna ran to the door, grabbing a jacket from the hook there—way too big, so not her jacket, but who cared. Hadn't they taken her seriously? They'd sent only Jess and this woman Dayna didn't know.
And then she was out the door, getting a good look at Jess's face—tired from the run, grim from what she'd seen along the way . . . from whatever had gone on in Anfeald before she even left. They'd taken Dayna seriously, all right—or no one would be here at all.
Jess met her in the middle of the yard, her horse's winter coat curly wet but cool enough from the final walk in so it no longer steamed. "He needs a cooling blanket," Jess said. "Do you have someone in the barn?"
Dayna hesitated, looking at the second rider. Her horse was still steaming, and although she was flushed and tired from the run, she lacked the haunted expression underlying Jess's exotic features. Whoever she was, she didn't have a personal stake. She didn't even look like she fully understood the situation. She sat her horse awaiting some signal from Jess, her clothes beautifully made and imbued with scintillating magical color, her face a dark cinnamon-tinted tone with features that made Dayna think of Asian and African-American blood—her leftover Earth thinking coming to the fore again—and the most astonishing hair springing from behind her exquisitely knitted ear and scarf wrap.
"This is Suliya," Jess said. "New with Carey. The others couldn't come, but no one takes this route alone for now."
"No one ought to take it at all after this," Dayna said, grasping at her normal composure again. Sardonic.
Maybe not what someone else would strive for, but Dayna found it a comfortable place. "We do have some people working the barn—Siccawei sent us a couple of horses and someone to organize the place, but we're not nearly up to speed for what we'll need."
"It's a small hold," Suliya observed.
"Yeah," Dayna said, giving her a second look. "A small hold that just became the center of Camolen's biggest magical goof-up since the Barrenlands blew up three hundred years ago, and with limited dispatch service available to anyone while we try to deal with the mess. Believe me, we're going to need all the couriers we can get."
Jess swung down from the horse, straightening the snug, leather-seated quilted riding pants she wore.
Suliya, bedecked in similar but sleeker, tailored pants, took
the hint and dismounted as well; Jess pulled her saddlebags from the horse and the smaller courier's bags from atop them, and handed over the reins to her mount as she collected Suliya's bags.
"You might want to take a look in the barn yourself," Dayna said, only just now realizing it. Jess gave her a why expression, eyebrows raised. Dayna shrugged, pulling the oversized borrowed coat more tightly around herself as the wind picked up slightly. "Trent's palomino," she said. "He survived whatever happened there."
"Not hurt?" Jess asked, arranging the saddlebags over her shoulders and taking in Dayna's confirming gesture; in another moment she glanced at Suliya and led the way.
The barn showed all the signs of descending chaos—newly arrived feed stacked in the way, debris and gear and equipment boxes clogging the short aisle. Only one stall had an occupant.
"The others are working," Dayna said. "We don't know how many will actually be back for the night, or if we'll have enough stalls—or enough teams fit to work tomorrow. We're just a small, brand-new hold . . . most of our communication has been handled by chatting to Sherra person to person , for pete's sake. The only thing the couriers handle are the long documents we want her to see."
Suliya appropriated two stalls and went to find cooling blankets, mesh-lined wool that would keep the horses warm but wick the sweat away. Jess dumped the saddlebags over the door of an empty stall and paced down the aisle to the palomino—an end stall with a reinforced wall between it and the neighboring stall. "Light?" she said to Dayna.
Light flared in the corner of the stall in response—a cool, even permalight. Jess hesitated at the stallion's door as she retrieved his halter from the hook there. "Ramble," she said after a moment. "His name is Ramble."
Of course she'd remember.
She lifted the halter from the stallion's door and slipped in the door, closing it most of but not all of the way. Dayna moved closer—cautiously, because she'd already learned the hard way that this one would bite—and got there in time to see the two exchange a greeting, the palomino a little suspicious to be greeted in such a horsey manner as Jess went to his head and exchanged breath with him, first one nostril and then the other.
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